Tikki Tooki

[Lujo]

Wrote it. Sort of

Hoping for dialogue rather than taking my suggestions at face value. The principles are there though.

Important summation: "Having a way to acess small piety per hit gold boons for "macro" and "micro" use without havingto deal with TT is probably really needed. It's not just the economy it's also the "in dungeon" gold thing."

[Lujo]

I've edited the "I'm too tired post", I could repost, but its a bit long.

[Nandrew]

Ah, I see your edit.

But again, I'd have to ask (from a macro-economic perspective): would you really want us to erase TT's role as a lesser-known Kingdom gold farm?

I have my concerns about balance exploits and broken builds that make the in-dungeon romps easier than intended, but if there's an experienced player who starts up a new profile and wants to optimally unlock game content (optimal in terms of speed, mind you, not narrowing their field to "only X gods" and "only Y items"), then why not give them this quiet option, and instead of building an entirely new god to inject into the system and balance out (which we actually DID have an office chat about, funnily enough, a couple of weeks ago), simply take what exists and refine that for new players?

TL;DR how about we just make sure early game progression gets polished up / balanced without resorting to building a whole new god, and TT's dirty little gold farm secret stays as a "bonus extra" for people who figure out the exploit?

In-dungeon balance is another matter, obviously, but to that my answer would be thus: we are having trouble enough balancing 9 gods. I do not want to turn that into a problem of balancing 10 gods.

[Lujo]

I actually do have some repiles to that (and it might have cropped up during that office chat). I'm also sort of aware that asking for one more god is a huge deal, but I also wouldn't do it unless I really ment it. It's the "can't afford to waste credibility in case I run into a huge thing", I've mentioned.

But you're sort of looking it it from the wrong perspective. You're thinking of gold as an extra "bonus" on TT, while from the perspective of anyone not pro enough to figure the boons out and deal with the restriction (most people apparently), the boons are an extra on the GOLD. Gold is easy to figure out, and highly sought after, both micro and macro.

I'll throw you an example, I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was somewhere along these lines. When all the gods got ther boon list shortened, the potion boons got bundled togather. I think they used to be 25 per previously, and gave gold when you took them. Now there was one less cheap TT boon to get gold out of, so I felt bad, because I felt like TT got nerfed. (I can't remember the exact way it went, but it would've been like that if it happened the way I said it).

Then when I figured out that you get 2 potions for one, I felt like he was buffed because I get more gold-per-piety than before. I never knew for sure if the potions actually turned into gold after I've exited, but I was ready to risk it HOPING they would. And never had it occured to even try them out - I was so happy about the gold I didn't care. And I certanly didn't want to risk messing up my run by experimenting.

The supposed "nerf" seemed very unjust and elitist because from my perspective I never ever got anything from TT but the gold and poison. Poison was broken, I knew that, but I'd gladly see it go if it ment I get to keep my "piety for gold" buttons. "If TT is overpowered, why nerf Glitterfinger? Don't take away my gold farm just because you feel the need to have a ridiculous boon easily acessible! I won't use it I promise, I'm just here for the gold, I don't even drink the potions! Nobody does, honest!"

I had enough problems being aware how broken in theory poison is, and was sort of waiting to see when the eventual nerf would come and how it would affect my favourite god - yes, I was a newbie, and Glitterfinger (part of TT) was my favourite god at the time. And still is, really, I can do Gaan'Telet with a Tinker, items, CP and prepped out runs are sort of my thing. Collections of inexpensive little things that make the whole more than the sum of it's parts kind of thing.

So what I'm saying is not exactly making a new god, rather than detaching two gods you have rolled into one. You can't really have TT available as a prep unless you remove the Glitterfinger part - but then you're not taxing players for prepping TT at all. And you can't tax people for wanting to prep Glitterfinger by TT's standards. And what's currently going on is being taxed for prepping both even if you want to prep only one of them.

TL;DR - the gold-as-bonus-for-vets thing isn't working because if you fix the economy the vets can do without it, and the newbs and casuals can't deal with TT's restrictions (or his boons, apparently), but really want the gold - micro and macro. Sure, poison and the potions really should be put behind a skill-wall, but if you're also putting a much needed newbie crutch there it sucks for all the newbs. And there are more of those then there will ever be pros.

It's not helping at all that a very untaxing and casual deity, the Earthmother, can't be unlocked before you unlock TT. And the only reason for TT himself to be anywhere near the starting zone is the much needed Glitterfinger aspect. Potions and Poison are A-bomb level stuff, gold is obvious to anyone.


So:

1) I'd love to get info on how the original Glitterfinger worked and how and why and when he was scraped.

2) I wouldn't mind a good discusion on how to make a new one. My suggestions were sort of the "allready in game, so less balancing / coding needed".

[Lujo]

And a quick addition to the "my newbie perspective of TT": the incoming nerf to poison I was dreading wasn't that they'd make poison weaker. It was that they would make the boon MORE EXPENSIVE. It was allready the priciest "piety for gold" button, and I was afraid they'd price it according to it's power (100 Piety or so), and put my Glitterfinger boon even more out of my reach. Just... Think about it.

I'm actually annoyed by the lack of the third 25 piety for gold button even now, and I can't stop thinking about the doubling of Tiki's Edge price as unjust - simply because I'm not looking at it as a "god of rogues" boon, but a "piety for gold button" that gets as expensive as the one that forces you to pay for posion on top of the gold. If I was going to pay 50 piety for ten gold, I would've been playing TT and got poison in the first place.

[Nandrew]

[Lujo]

Np, ty for hearing all this out.

Compliant, reasonable and constructive stuff follows, for when you get the time, and I'm done with the topic:

I hope the economy can be made less dependent on having the Glitterfingers, erm, sucessor in every possible run. The "newbie perspective" and how it affects the gold part of the boons is absolutely true. Since the potions and poison are both in theory and (proper) practice very, very powerful, the relative lack of recognition that TT has as a gamebraker is indicative that more people have been worshipig him in his mony aspect, rather than the other one. Otherwise I wouldn't've had to pull peole by the ears back with the Monk bussiness.

As for the difficulties of introducing a new god - I know. If you manage to fix the economy to make a "newbie money god" less of a necessity, you still have to pay attention to the "dual nature" of TT and find a way not to tax the Glitterfinger worshipers along with the "TT worshipers". Yes, thieves and money go hand in hand, but economists and cuttroats are both thieves, except that they go about their bussiness in completely different fashions. There probably is a whole lot of grief about having to pay for TT balancing if you're just in for a bit of in-dungeon or macro gold.

On demand in-dungeon gold is also one more thing to note related to the attractivness of TT worship, and so are the prices of the "elite" items. "Money god" worship sort of allows for enough mileage out of cheap items, well, you know how it goes.

My proposal for balancing TT for both kinds of players, if he's going to remain 2 gods in one, is to allow easier separation. Upping poison's cost is iffy because of the balancing agains abusing it (and regen fighting in general). But if poison costs 50 piety, then the second level of Tiki's edge can't as the value is incomparable. The Potions could also start out at 25 and scale by 10 or 15. Whatever gets more "piety for gold" buttons at around 25 in there is probably good. About three hits of "10 gold for 25" would probably be good.

As for the preps and punishments - having TT lose the money aspect and be preped for heavy Potions or Poison strats might work out. I'd still be wrecking house, but I guess most people won't, so as long as the general economy gets fixed I guess it'll be fine.

Again, thanks for the chat, it dredged up a whole lot of apparently non-adressed stuff which needed looking at. Least of all the consensus bussiness. Ty

[Nandrew]

I could also switch prep penalty to "no Piety for lower-level kills". Rather heavy, but if you want to worship TT early, you should be getting by on the provided First Strike and other piety sources anyway, no?

Also, I was kinda thinking that instead of upping Piety, one could also tweak Tikki's net gold yield for the same piety cost. A slight de-exaggeration of the money aspect couldn't go amiss, surely?

[Lujo]

You are joking with me, right? If you remove the big lower-level kills bonus and keep the "on hit poison balancing penalty" the player would be pretty screwed. Yes you can keep your piety pretty stable once oyu have the dodge and the poison, but as far as I know there IS no reliable way to get piety unless you're killing lower level stuff.

Joking aside, you might consider giving a small piety bonus for killing stuff without being hit at all. And the WHEYTWUT bonus is incredibly random.

If taking the same boon over and over reduced the gold yiled (10, 5, 0) and there were 3 boons which started at 25 and incresed by whatever from there I guess it would be interesting, as long as Tribute is reverted back to what it used to be. The ability to "tribute up" Tiki's Edge would reintegrate the aspects a bit more, and with poison piety gain fixed, that whole bussiness is porbably not as dangeroous as it used to be.

Alternativels, having him fork over a Gloves of Midas instead of the tribute boon is also something worth testing out, maybe. That would be cutting the gold farmers some slack, and warrant a massive penalty upon breathing.

Rearanging the boons in the menu by ease of use and commitment level is also something that would help in an non-obvious way - Tribute, Tiki's Edge, Dodge, Potions and then Poison instead of the way it is now.

As for the prep penalty - if taking the gold gain away isn't enough, why not give all popcorn "retaliate: any" on top of it. And for the desecration penalty - take away a random building from your kingdom. Nothing happens in game, except TT snickers and when you exit the dungeon, you get a heart attack.

Alternatively, he could replace all the gold in the dungeon with treasure chests with nasty crap in them on top of losing the gold gain. See how we like THEM apples.

[Nandrew]

Lots of interesting stuff in that last statement.

Also, I removed treasure chests a while back for reasons I can't quite remember (either imbalance or a technical issue, can't remember), but I'd love to bring them back sometime. They were particularly close to my heart as a concept, even if not perfect.

Maybe not with Tikki specifically, but y'know.

Also, bear in mind that you *can* still improve TT piety gain without lower-level kills (and get to that valuable poison/dodge threshold), it's just that it gets ... well, kinda ugly. So it wouldn't crop up in normal play, most likely.

But we had another brief chat about this in-office, got other ideas we're going to test. I also like the gold returns lowering on subsequent boon requests, that's actually something I didn't think of at all. Would have to see if coding wizardry permits it.