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[KingDinosaurGames]

Where the hell are these bursts of backers coming from? From what you were saying before, I thought that there was hardly any media for this.

Belial did it

The sacrifices were not in vain. 

[Jalak]

Besides the Death God, were there any other old ones that were cut out of the game? What were they, and why?
Also, what was it about the Death God that made it too unbalanced but essential to his theme that you had to get rid of him, rather then mod out whatever it was that was causing the problem?

[KingDinosaurGames]

Besides the Death God, were there any other old ones that were cut out of the game? What were they, and why?
Also, what was it about the Death God that made it too unbalanced but essential to his theme that you had to get rid of him, rather then mod out whatever it was that was causing the problem?

There is a sixth Old One, the Slivered Divine, the Mirror of Fate - can manifest itself as avatars across the world and is attempting to end forever the cycle of prophecy.  Many of its powers dealt with time, and distorting gameplay - we simply hadn't finished it when we decided to lock down to go towards the demo.  Plenty of fun bugs right now.

The problem with the Death God is that everything is a positive feedback loop for him - death strengthens him, all his powers rely on death, and of course the effect of his powers is death.  You're really just looking for a tipping point with him, make him too weak and it's not enough fun to get there, too strong and it occurs too quickly and the game is a foregone conclusion.  We don't really want such a simple gameplay for what should be a core Old One. 

[Jalak]

How about having a Death God that takes the death part as it is naturally intended to? Have an Old One that gets it's power from death without the actual rising part. you get a bunch of powers relating to that that slowly kills the world (plagues, blights, blotting out the sun) and the balance is in trying to kill off the world while making sure you don't accidentally put down your own allies/agents too quickly at the same time? Although, I guess you could put that under some different Old One, like Nurgle or something.

By the way, can you have the official (or modded) Old One's that you can choose at scenario start possibly show up in the game as rival Old Ones later on in that game?

[KingDinosaurGames]

How about having a Death God that takes the death part as it is naturally intended to? Have an Old One that gets it's power from death without the actual rising part. you get a bunch of powers relating to that that slowly kills the world (plagues, blights, blotting out the sun) and the balance is in trying to kill off the world while making sure you don't accidentally put down your own allies/agents too quickly at the same time? Although, I guess you could put that under some different Old One, like Nurgle or something.

By the way, can you have the official (or modded) Old One's that you can choose at scenario start possibly show up in the game as rival Old Ones later on in that game?

We're going to continue to try and balance the Death aspect - it may be that the AI can be enhanced to react faster to such a global threat as "the death of everything." 

Currently the Rival Old Ones are a separate construct, but we do want to look into enabling the primary Old Ones as Rivals. 

[rylen]

Maybe some lore would help with the death god. If it ruled in the ancient past, why was there anyone alive to oppose it? Perhaps it needs to be the one seeking balance; after all, if there is no life there can be no death.

[birdy51]

Perhaps a view change is also necessary. Death can also be seen as the absence or weakening of Life. Death's march can be seen as that of a virus, it weakens it decays. It doesn't find allies, it makes them until the host is unable to fight back. But particularly virulent diseases are the ones that people eliminate quickly. A Death God that is raising armies of bones is going to be countered. Instead of burying the dead, burning them so that their bodies cannot be eliminated. Priests are like Doctors, they know how and where to find cures. A priest in the right place at the right time can counter, even cure the disease of death.

In addition, I have a feeling that Death does not gain allies easy. It's binary nature, live or die, does not normally attract allies. Revealing Death's true nature should and would rarely be a good thing. No one sane would want support death. Logistically, death doesn't retreat. Although Death should be able to raise larger armies than the other Old Ones, it's not a sophisticated living army. Retreat is not an option. Most undead creatures aren't sentient enough to run. Therefore, Armies are expendable, although not unlimited.

So perhaps that should be the game of Death. Wait in the shadows, slowly building a sizeable army. Timing is everything because Death cannot hide.

Meep. Thoughts.

[thepodger]

Dominions 4 has some interesting effects relating to death magic.
A dominion of death lowers income and causes population loss across the board lowering income for everyone.
A "well of misery" that bestows the caster with considerable resources for death magic rituals, but acts a global misery and illness syphon, slowing the spread of disease, raising happiness and taxation efficiency, etc.
"Burden of time" causes -everyone- in the world to age extraordinarily quickly.
Ideas like this, and perhaps playing into Death as an aspect and champion of natural growth and justice, the passage of time, the judge and executioner, rather than a pure malevolence that wants to replace humanity with the walking dead... that angle might result in a more interesting Great Old One.

After all, Death created time to grow the things it would kill.  When the world is ash and everything is dead, death has defeated itself.
Death's agents, rather than grow ever more powerful, should opt to "join their master" once they've become true disciples.  His greatest servants become the soil which will grow the food that will feed his disciples that will become the soil...
Death should revile healing and the sciences.
Death should view the undead as an abomination.
Death has no enemies, nor does it play favorites.  It will take you no matter how much you love it or how much you hate it.

It's win state is the undoing of the sciences, the return of mankind to its natural state of savagery, beasts that eat and sleep and shit and procreate.  To break man's yoke over nature, arrest its dominion over the course natural law.

[KingDinosaurGames]

Maybe some lore would help with the death god. If it ruled in the ancient past, why was there anyone alive to oppose it? Perhaps it needs to be the one seeking balance; after all, if there is no life there can be no death.

The lore behind the "Death God" is pretty simple, essentially he was reigned in by the other Old Ones but now as he rises alone (or must overcome his rival old ones) he can finally achieve the true "End" of life that is his essence.  If we want to look at him as part of an Order where Life and Death are unified, he is part of that only while balanced out, in realizing his ambitions he may end himself, but that is his essence to struggle for that absolute end.

As usual, we try to leave the particular lore of the Old Ones somewhat ambiguous, to let the player inject his own reasoning for his actions.

Perhaps a view change is also necessary. Death can also be seen as the absence or weakening of Life. Death's march can be seen as that of a virus, it weakens it decays. It doesn't find allies, it makes them until the host is unable to fight back. But particularly virulent diseases are the ones that people eliminate quickly. A Death God that is raising armies of bones is going to be countered. Instead of burying the dead, burning them so that their bodies cannot be eliminated. Priests are like Doctors, they know how and where to find cures. A priest in the right place at the right time can counter, even cure the disease of death.

In addition, I have a feeling that Death does not gain allies easy. It's binary nature, live or die, does not normally attract allies. Revealing Death's true nature should and would rarely be a good thing. No one sane would want support death. Logistically, death doesn't retreat. Although Death should be able to raise larger armies than the other Old Ones, it's not a sophisticated living army. Retreat is not an option. Most undead creatures aren't sentient enough to run. Therefore, Armies are expendable, although not unlimited.

So perhaps that should be the game of Death. Wait in the shadows, slowly building a sizeable army. Timing is everything because Death cannot hide.

Meep. Thoughts.

I do like that approach, and we do have a Old One that was cut who is much more similar to that mechanically (we will be presenting him as a Stretch Goal choice for the backers). 

As far as mechanics, I think what you are describing with more ad hoc methods to prevent Death is the direction we will go in to balance his gameplay - stronger direct counters that you need to tactically prevent.  However, to make this fun we will need to work specifically on the AI to counter these approaches that Death can take - and balancing when these countermeasures emerge will make all the difference.  These issues are a big part of why we simply put him aside for now.

Dominions 4 has some interesting effects relating to death magic.
A dominion of death lowers income and causes population loss across the board lowering income for everyone.
A "well of misery" that bestows the caster with considerable resources for death magic rituals, but acts a global misery and illness syphon, slowing the spread of disease, raising happiness and taxation efficiency, etc.
"Burden of time" causes -everyone- in the world to age extraordinarily quickly.
Ideas like this, and perhaps playing into Death as an aspect and champion of natural growth and justice, the passage of time, the judge and executioner, rather than a pure malevolence that wants to replace humanity with the walking dead... that angle might result in a more interesting Great Old One.

After all, Death created time to grow the things it would kill.  When the world is ash and everything is dead, death has defeated itself.

Death is a large penalty in That Which Sleeps, losing population means less resources, less heroes, and even worse less men to raise to arms for war.  We do have many death-centric rituals, but worst of all are the abilities in the Old One's ability tree - the world slowly crumbles as the dead rise and strike out at every point of interest throughout the world.  Such a fun way to see the world fall, but I do agree with birdy51 that we want to focus on tactical countermeasures - while the Old One's abilities go to work Agents will act to hasten the spread of death or to prevent those who would work against it.

[Cthulhu]

Well of Misery in Dominions is a good example of a death spell that doesn't do what you'd expect, yeah.  Since you're pulling all the world's misery into one place it technically makes everything nicer for everyone else.

Nurgle is another weird one.  He's actually a god of life, it's just that humans aren't really the form of life he loves.  Microbes outnumber humans trillions to one, were here before us, and will be here after us.  What else would a god of life love?

A really obscure one is Philipp Mainlander (the pessimist's pessimist) 's God, who committed suicide by disintegrating his substance into creation and thus imbuing it with the Will to Die which he saw as the core driving force of existence.  When everything in the universe has killed itself God's suicide will be complete.

That's a weird one but it shows how it's totally reasonable to have a god whose ultimate goal involves self-destruction.  What death is more powerful and more final than that of death itself?

Now I'm wanting a god that makes people commit mass suicide.

[birdy51]

Huh. That very last idea of the dead rising everywhere gave me a fun image. Death in the traditional sense is seen with a scythe, a symbol of harvest. In essence, Death as a farmer, souls being is crop. If he attempts to harvest the world too early, his efforts will fail because people are simply spread to thin. Wait too long, and the crop will be too large to harvest. There is more to this metaphor that is eluding my tongue. But perhaps this is one route to go down assuming there is time to explore him again.

At the very least, he may make a thematic Rival Old One.

[thepodger]

Yeah, the idea of death as a farmer, one that tends and cultivates, that is spot on to what I was going for.

I have a bad habit of hitting post, then doubling the scope of the post as an edit that nobody ends up reading haha

After all, Death created time to grow the things it would kill.  When the world is ash and everything is dead, death has defeated itself.
Death's agents, rather than grow ever more powerful, should opt to "join their master" once they've become true disciples.  His greatest servants become the soil which will grow the food that will feed his disciples that will become the soil...
Death should revile healing and the sciences.
Death should view the undead as an abomination.
Death has no enemies, nor does it play favorites.  It will take you no matter how much you love it or how much you hate it.

It's win state is the undoing of the sciences, the return of mankind to its natural state of savagery, beasts that eat and sleep and shit and procreate.  To break man's yoke over nature, arrest its dominion over the course natural law.

[birdy51]

I've grown fond of that view as well, though I wish I would have seen your edits! Death as the Lord of Harvest raises an interesting question too. Yes, he is the God of Death. But you can't always harvest. You do that, and you fail to get any traction. Yield is too small if you keep killing the plants before they can really grow.

Basically... When do you want to plant seeds?

Here's a thought. Giving the God of Death an ability that kills off something that is inhibiting the growth of towns and cities. In a farming sense, it is tending and fertilizing the crop. Killing off Locusts that are eating the local wheat farms allows for a surplus of food, which in turn boosts that population. Fertilizing the fields with Death.  Then, when Death finally chooses to "reap" the seeds that he has sown, he'll have a harder job of it do in a large part to the fact that there is a larger population, but his yield is much greater.  His reward for helping a city to grow is now that there are a lot more people in that city that are going to die.

Malicious and underhanded.

[thepodger]

Exactly!  And that's the kind of thing that makes for fun mechanics and abilities that avoid the typical undead zombie apocalypse snowball. 
Death seeks the quickening.  Everything so busy growing, screwing, and dying, that they don't have time to move out of the caves and start developing medicine and culture.
Human mayflies.  Culture is idolatry, medicine and science are outright defiance.

[Jalak]

The biggest issue with that, though, is convincing a player that making their ultimate enemy stronger is worth the time and effort required when they could possibly get the same results by trying to kill everyone now. I suppose one way you could motivate the player to go down that route would be that some of their more powerful rituals cannot to be used (or at least used effectively) unless there is some sort of status effect on a certain number of POI's that can only brought on by casting another, earlier ritual.