About shrines and altars

so after playing a little bit of desktopdungeons, atleast i want to write down my vision about how shrines could be handled.

In Diablo1 we always needed a seperate list, and in D2 it was dumbed down to a point where i would say only the expierience shrine was usefull. What about a system in the middle of those two ?

Altars
An interactable object, like a mayan sloughtering altar. Where you are allowed to select one of the gods as your personal one. Sacrificing currency or other items to your god on this altar boosts the strenght of the buffs you recieve from this gods shrines.

Changing between gods comes with the cost of loosing your whole piety to the previous god, but if you served him well he might refund you with a random item.(Some sort of gambling)


Shrines
First we need some stupid names for the different kinds. How about Bloodred, Indigo, Obsidian, Gold and Alabaster Shrine.

Gods
similar to this:
http://www.qcfdesign.com/wiki/DesktopDungeons/index.php?title=Gods

And an example
Im currently worshipping Dracul.
Dracul likes the Bloodred and Obsidian shrines. Bloodred gives 1% - 30% Lifeleech. While Obsidian gives 500 - 2k Armor.
Dracul hates Alabaster shrines like Kittens. If i accidently aktivate a Alabaster Shrine he will reduce my Hitpoints by 90%.
He doesnt care much about Indigo and Gold.


Other gods like the Pactmaker could like all shrines, but would provide lower strenghts of the same buffs the other gods provide.



- The specialising in gods methods provides a simple "share the shrines" in multiplayer, while other gods could be more tailored to soloplay.
- A list wouldn´t be needed becouse its easy to learn your gods likings.
- The gambling aspect could provide a neat effect of continius god switching, getting confuesed on the new shrine-liking situation and a "where did you get this weapon ? PlayerB: Dracul gave it to me, he wants me to kill all living creatures"
- Not to mention the currency item downsink, could also be replaced with normal items.

I really liked how in diablo 1 you had shrines that felt random. You were actually sometimes scared to use them because of the risk of a negative effect. The risk was good.
Only problem was you could lookup the effects of shrines based on their name.

Like shrines in D2 and other games? Go play those, don't bring them in PoE, THX!

"

tormenta wrote:

Like shrines in D2 and other games? Go play those, don't bring them in PoE, THX!

Yeah, we wouldn't want to draw from other successful games in order to come up with ways to improve PoE. that would just be silly.

@port
what about naming them Unknown Shrine and release their name after we aktivate them ?
The good part about this would be we choose the risks we want to go into by ourselfs (by god-selecting)

@tormenta and Wittgenstein
funny part is that i scrapped the idea of a levelable/selfselectable/on-your-own-activatable god/shrine-buff becouse i expected a moar tratiditional viewpoint from you guys ^^
shrines would have given piety = lower cooldown
altar would have improved their strenghts and would be needed to customise your buff

The word shrine could also be replaced by the word skullpile, i just found "shrine" easier to explain.

What about the "limited gambling" suggestion ?
I find it pretty good to limit it to 1x gambling/month. It somehow reduces the need to mule/hoard all of your currency items just to unload your whole whealth in one day at the gambler-npc.

I´m also thinking about letting every1 in group activate a shrine, every1 would have different results. In D2 it would look stupid if every1 would run around with "Fire resistance" at the same time.

Keep it simple and innovative.

I would actually want to more about the theology of wraeclast. I think things like this add to the game.

I think just having unknown shrines that have a random effect when used. Could be awesome and give you extra xp per kill or it could stunt your health.

Example would be a shrine that has 2 mods to it.
So it could be;
-increased max hp
-reduced max mana
or
-reduced armour by x%
- +x% lifesteal/hit

The possiblities are endless and nobody will have a clue what its gonna be when they click on it.

If you were exploring some strange ruins and you found a big magic statue, would you have any idea wtf it does?

:O maybe you can use identify on the shrines?

"

p0rt wrote:

If you were exploring some strange ruins and you found a big magic statue, would you have any idea wtf it does?

:O maybe you can use identify on the shrines?

This is a much more interesting idea. I like the idea of ancient enigmatic statues instead of overdone shrines or altars.

I'm not a big fan of the random unknown effects. In general I feel people tend to be risk averse and would rather stick with the character they know than experiment with with unknown debuffs.

Maybe a particular type of shrine gives you the random buffs then.
Example,
Shrine to the Erratic God
- Gives player 2 random effects
- Each effect can be positive or negative buffs.(potential for 2 debuff effects or even 2 +x% xp/kill effects)


You ever been to a casino before? Gambling is fun and addictive. It could make people excited to see the shrine. In d2 there was the Gem Shrines. In PoE I say we have the random buffs shrine. It would make you stop and think "Do I really want to try this?"