oneADseven said:Watemper said:Griefing would happen at the highest level of the debuff system too....much fun.
Care to elaborate on what you mean?
purposely getting your group killed and getting away scott free...only to play it off and seem innocent....training people..if that will be a thing...and giving them the debuff and lowering their precentage in efficeny that all players can see... You know...stuff that a player shouldn't be able to see in the first place. I bet you like gear score and ilvls and stuff like in WoW too right? Also with raid wiping will the debuff also effect them...and their efficiency? Sounds elitist to me. That is what I am trying to get away from. I want a hard MMO...but I don't want some sort of stupid rank system put on my character soo people can judge me before they have played with me. Just stupid imo and I highly doubt Pantheon would be stupid enough to go down a route like that.
Watemper said:purposely getting your group killed and getting away scott free...only to play it off and seem innocent....training people..if that will be a thing...and giving them the debuff and lowering their precentage in efficeny that all players can see... You know...stuff that a player shouldn't be able to see in the first place.
I don't follow your logic here. Are you suggesting that players would be more inclined to intentionally train others because you think the debuff (with visual) would be more humiliating than causing them to be naked? Players are more likely to do bad things and then act innocent, specifically because of the debuff?
Watemper said:I bet you like gear score and ilvls and stuff like in WoW too right? Also with raid wiping will the debuff also effect them...and their efficiency? Sounds elitist to me. That is what I am trying to get away from. I want a hard MMO...but I don't want some sort of stupid rank system put on my character soo people can judge me before they have played with me. Just stupid imo and I highly doubt Pantheon would be stupid enough to go down a route like that.
Strawman much? It's difficult for me to respond to this because it seems like you're just making things up as you go rather than responding to specific points. What is the difference between a debuff and a character being naked when it comes time for someone to judge you? The only way someone would have the debuff is if they died so many times that it would otherwise cause them to de-level. The debuff would only be intact while someone has debt. Responsible players would likely play around the available XP buffer so I'm not sure what the issue is?
It's been discussed lots before, but just to put in my tuppence-worth.
I've been playing Classic WoW. The death penalty is an invulnerable corpse run (as a 'ghost') followed by an instant 'resurrection' including instant re-gearing when you are close, at your button-press, so you can usually resurrect in a safe-ish location. You can do all this solo.
This leads to, or is at least intrinsically part of, a totally different gameplay experience. Different to what you might consider harsh or 'old-school' and Everquest-like anyway.
It means you can often get back to a dungeon group or raid or whatever before they have even finished the fight that killed you. The only real 'cost' is a little time. It makes for (or at least suits) a much more immediate and fast-paced gaming experience than I think most would want in Pantheon.
I, personally, want a harsh death penalty. Large XP loss NO MATTER your level. No 98% resurrections at high level. No 100% regain when you retrieve your corpse. BUT I want options on getting that corpse.
It leads to a much more considered and slow pace, I think, to have real consequences, but allows for situations when you really have gotten your corpse somewhere very nasty and can't get help.
If the normal penalty were a 20% loss with 10% regain when fetching your corpse, then if you use a means such as corpse summoning (cash at an NPC or free from a PC) then you don't get your 10% back. In that way if you try and get your corpse and die again, then use a corpse summon you've lost 40%, but at least you got your gear back.
The exact figures can be tuned, but, as I say, I think it should hurt at all levels, but there be a get-out-of-nastiness option, even if it's even more painful.
I should add I was never really a fan of naked corpse runs. Being punished is fine, but in a gear-centric game to be gear-less to return to a place where you died even with all your gear has always seemed bizarre. You magically pop back into existence, fine, but not with your gear? Why? I'd almost rather have gear damage and repair and I *hate* that dreary frustrating mechanic. Leaving you gear means you have no option but to stop everything and retrieve. Waiting while begging for a group to let you follow them naked to where you died was never a great social interaction. Going in your own group that died and then wipes again because with no gear you are hopeless was more a pointless additional frustration than a punishment. Naked corpse runs would often lead to the end of a gaming session one way or another, not a re-doubling of effort - just a re-scheduling of you gaming to when an easy way to get your corpse is available.
I'm always torn on this. On the one hand, "realism" would demand permadeath. Any other form of death isn't "realistic". On the other hand, permadeath is obnoxious to most people, for fairly understandable reasons.
My opinoin is that death should be enough of an impediment that people try not to die, but not so much of one that people never do anything dangerous at all. It should also be based on the situation. For example, suppose you fall in combat, but you have a party that quickly revives you. You should suffer a lesser penalty. Suppose they don't res you for a few hours. The penalty should probably be more (e.g. you did something by yourself, not with a group, and take a few hours to get your body back...)
It could even depend on the circumstances. For exmaple, if you die right outside of a capital city, maybe have wondering NPC Clerics reviving people (this would help with the "but it needs to not be that big of a deal for the first few levels/new players"), but on the other end of the spectrum, if you're max level and deep in the heart of an end-game raid and your entire 72 man group is wiped, then you should probably lose a level and have a corpse run. There's a gradiant that can be established, and being KOed by a random gazelle in the forest shouldn't carry the same penalty as being incenerated by Flame Duke Ragnarok in the belly of Lava Center at the heart of DarkSoul Mount (yes yes, I'm making a WoW joke reference. :p)
There's not really a simple, one-size fits all solution.
I know it isn't central to this matter - but since I have often played permadeath - in many games over many years - I will add a few comments on that.
Firstly - permadeath simply doesn't work in a MMO without major protections - protections that can easily lead to cheating and evasion. Not even the most rabid fan of the concept would argue that it is desirable to lose a character permanently because of a crash or bug (as when a safe encounter one-shots you because the giant spider's 10 points of damage are taken by the game engine to be 10,000). Or that it is desirable to lose a cherished character after hundreds of hours because your power or internet goes out.
On the other hand the frantic reach to turn the computer off before the character is recorded as dead by the game goes back to at least Wizardry 1 and is neither more nor less than cheating.
Secondly, as suggested by others, permadeath is a wonderful way of providing a different form of gameplay, and a temporary server created for a limited period may be a great idea. Thus - the server is created for three months, no transfers off are allowed. So if you die unfairly to a crash you have lost the contest unfairly but not lost a character you could ever have kept. So the pain is less. The first x characters to achieve a certain result are winners whether the result is completing a certain dungeon or reaching a cerrtain level. Time is not, repeat NOT measured in real world time allowing no-lifers like me with few distractions to spend 10 times as much time playing as people with real lives. Time is measured in character time /played actually on-line. Winners get a cosmetic reward or title on the "real" servers.
Thirdly - in a fantasy or high-tech world realism does not demand permadeath. The developers just need to spend some effort making the game world such that resurrection is entirely logical. Not in LOTRO's somewhat idiotic fiction that you didn't die you were "defeated" and no enemy ever finishes you off. But e.g. with a cloned body and frequent personality/memory uploads so that "death" costs you only the latest body and a bit of memory, represented by the xp penalty.
oneADseven said:Watemper said:purposely getting your group killed and getting away scott free...only to play it off and seem innocent....training people..if that will be a thing...and giving them the debuff and lowering their precentage in efficeny that all players can see... You know...stuff that a player shouldn't be able to see in the first place.
I don't follow your logic here. Are you suggesting that players would be more inclined to intentionally train others because you think the debuff (with visual) would be more humiliating than causing them to be naked? Players are more likely to do bad things and then act innocent, specifically because of the debuff?
Watemper said:I bet you like gear score and ilvls and stuff like in WoW too right? Also with raid wiping will the debuff also effect them...and their efficiency? Sounds elitist to me. That is what I am trying to get away from. I want a hard MMO...but I don't want some sort of stupid rank system put on my character soo people can judge me before they have played with me. Just stupid imo and I highly doubt Pantheon would be stupid enough to go down a route like that.
Strawman much? It's difficult for me to respond to this because it seems like you're just making things up as you go rather than responding to specific points. What is the difference between a debuff and a character being naked when it comes time for someone to judge you? The only way someone would have the debuff is if they died so many times that it would otherwise cause them to de-level. The debuff would only be intact while someone has debt. Responsible players would likely play around the available XP buffer so I'm not sure what the issue is?
Not really. When you want to have a debuff for all to see based on performance then that is elitism. No one should be able to see that.
And Yes. People would be inclined to grief in that manner. As much as I would like an old school MMO community that isn't going to happen.
Watemper said:Not really. When you want to have a debuff for all to see based on performance then that is elitism. No one should be able to see that.
And Yes. People would be inclined to grief in that manner. As much as I would like an old school MMO community that isn't going to happen.
Isn't that what being naked is though? While not technically a "debuff" it is a negative character predicament derived from performance. Isn't it super obvious and visible to all?
oneADseven said:Watemper said:Not really. When you want to have a debuff for all to see based on performance then that is elitism. No one should be able to see that.
And Yes. People would be inclined to grief in that manner. As much as I would like an old school MMO community that isn't going to happen.
Isn't that what being naked is though? While not technically a "debuff" it is a negative character predicament derived from performance. Isn't it super obvious and visible to all?
Not really there are a ton of reasons why that is the case. For instance, being AFK in the wrong spot and a train killing you, trying to recover someone elses corpse and failing, group pulling more than they can handle and getting wipped, another group training their group, drowning in water on auto follow. No one looked down on anyone who did a naked corpse run...because everyone dies at some point. A debuff though that tells them how efficient you are or w.e is retarded to say the least.
You are also suggesting the debuff is made after several deaths in a row...or a bad day one might say. And if it is based off of exp debt than the person who just levels and dies is screwed in a sense also. I know Pantheon won't go down a route like that. You are comparing apples to oranges with a naked corpse run and some debuff that indicates efficeny lol, which is elitism.
I don't see how it's apples and oranges. Every single one of those things you mentioned involves some sort of death. What I'm failing to understand here is why you think a visual debuff that indicates XP debt is "elitist." You're suggesting that if you see someone naked ... there are all these excuses that justify why someone could be naked. But if someone sees a debuff that was the result of the same exact situations that you justified, those thoughts somehow change? Why is that?
Because a debuff lingers...while you can recover your corpse relatively quickly depending on the situation. Not that hard to understand. Let me ask you. Why do you want a debuff to be shown to all? What is your reasoning? If it isn't a good reason than it shouldn't be implemented at all.
The debuff only lingers as long as you maintain debt. The time it takes to remove that debuff depends on how irresponsible you are with managing your XP buffer. It's possible that a threshold could be made for levels 1-49 where the debuff would only trigger at a certain percentage of debt ... maybe 25% or so. The reason for wanting the visual indicator is obvious. If someone is only 70%, 80%, or 90% functional ... it's important for players to know that as it helps them manage their expectations. It's not much different than when someone is sitting there naked. If you see that they are naked then you know they aren't going to be all that useful until they get their gear back. If you see someone with debt, you understand that there is additional risk that will need to be accounted for. In most cases, if/when players agree to group with someone with a debuff, they would attempt to work off that debt before engaging anything really difficult. Imagine if naked players could hide the fact that they have no gear equipped and instead appear to be normal. The point of having the debuff indicator is to be consistent with that aspect of the penalty.
Alright so an elitist standpoint thanks. Not good enough. How about you determine the persons performance when you play with them. Not some arbituary debuff system.
Edit: Btw deleveling solves your worries rather than a stupid debt. Sooooo problem solved?
I'd be perfectly fine with de-leveling but as I mentioned previously, it's been stated that we will be testing multiple penalties, some that include debt. My stance toward debt in this thread is reflective of how I would want that to look. I'm not a fan of typical debt systems because they make death at max level trivial. I saw that in EQ2 and I wouldn't want to see it here ... hence the debt-debuff distinction.
Watemper said:Well with the glyph system then deleveling and corpse runs shouldn't be too big of a deal then.
This is where our disconnect is. Why does the glyph system solve anything? Because the glyphs are attached to the character? What you are implying is that having these acclimation bonuses attached to the character is important -- otherwise, players could end up having corpses dropped in areas that required them to have the very same glyphs that would otherwise be on their person. My opinion is that the game should be so challenging that it should work the same way for gear. If I'm required to have 200 cold acclimation to navigate through the snowy drift, I'm okay with that. It would be really bad, though, if I died just beyond that drift ... and then had no chance to recover my corpse because the glyphs that allowed me to traverse it in the first place would be inaccessible. I think weapons/armor should be just as "necessary" when it comes time to go from Point A to Point B. The thresholds aren't exactly the same but it sounds ridiculous to me that naked players should have even a faint chance of recovering their gear from an area that was capable of killing them while they were fully outfitted. That to me spells out a soft world full of loopholes and tricks.
To add some context ... imagine this death penalty. When you die ... your entire bank becomes inaccessible. Your mailbox becomes inaccessible. All of your alternate characters become inaccessible. You can't review your quest logs. All of that is lost until you recover your corpse ... sounds harsh right? Not so fast ... now also imagine that corpse retrieval is trivial. It kind of has to be, right? If there is an expectation of naked players being able to retrieve their corpse from areas that are supposedly dangerous? In those cases the naked players don't really do anything. They follow other players around or have someone else summon/drag their corpse back to them. They aren't doubling down in effort to exact revenge ... they sit there and let someone else clean up their mess. I'm not a fan. I'd rather the burden of corpse recovery be placed squarely on the shoulders of the players who lost them. Instead of attaching something like gear to the corpse ... or bank/mailbox/alts, things that drive the underlying need of the "workaround" that makes retrieval trivial ... they should have something on them that can be lost, permanently. That would lead to a real sense of urgency and there would be no summon/drag tricks to bail you out.
That is fine. But if you do have your gear lets say and you still want your corpse back for exp recovery or w/e. You still need to rely on your group to get to your corpse or a rez still. I think it is fine relying on the community. That is what we want rather than what WoW created.
Edit: The reason why glyphs help is that the resitance isn't on the gear. So if you die in a cold climate you still have your glyphs attached to you and makes corpse retrevial easy. If the resistance is on the gear, then things get complicated. But with glyphs it doesn't. I also don't think you will die right away if you go into the cold...it will progressively get worse. They talked about different levels of these enviroments.
That is exactly my point Watemper. I'm perfectly fine with requiring my group to recover my corpse that has XP on it that will disappear forever after the corpse decays. If my group can't help me then I'm fine finding others who will. The main issue is that I don't want to have to rely on other people to "carry" my naked character. I don't want to be bailed out. I want to fight my way back down to that corpse and if I can't manage to get there in time, the 10% XP that was on the corpse decays forever.
Then have a second set of armor if you feel that way. Most people who did corpse runs that were in the pits of a dungeon would have second gear sets to go in. I think corpse runs are a much better punishment with naked corpse runs. They don't even have to have corpse decaying anymore with technology now in days. But you can't objectively say that your system would be better. I will say with no other risks other than exp will not have people respect the enviroment...especially with exp debt. If they want a truly immersive world then there needs to be danger...and the penalty just being exp loss, no matter how much, won't be enough. You can ask anyone who does hardcore modes when you lose all your gear in some games, like Diablo, and people who had to do some form of corpse retrieval, key word is had, and they will 99% tell you that just exp loss doesn't cut it. The more you lose the more annoying it feels, but the notion of your gear being gone, or having to go get your gear, is on a whole nother level exp alone can't touch.
I disagree with your assessment of XP loss. I have spoken with plenty of former EQ players who said that XP loss was the most severe aspect of the penalty. This is because they knew there was very little chance of them actually losing their gear ... but lost XP? Cleric rezzes were extremely popular because they would eliminate 97% of what was lost. (This ended up trivializing the XP component of the penalty because that barely amounts to a fraction of one percent.) That's why people would refuse non-cleric rezzes at times and opt to instead wait for a cleric who could offer one with maximum potency. As long as XP is a precious resource then it should absolutely qualify as something that players wouldn't want to lose. It's important to not lose sight of concept vs implementation. Brad said years ago that restoring XP would offer a very compelling reason to recover a corpse. As someone who has experienced that kind of penalty ... one that focuses on XP loss (and de-leveling) ... I know that it can be wickedly severe. I am also a fan of corpse decay and hope to see it in some form. Maybe that was a technical limitation in 1999 but I think a decaying corpse is something that should be part of the experience.
Not really. Don't know what EQ players you talked too, but there is a reason why you still lose exp in EQ, but keep your corpse now. Corpse retrievals were much worse than exp lost. The Plane of Fear zone is a good indication of that. Many people got killed in there with no way of getting their corpse back. GMs had to go in and get their corpse for them because of how unfair and brutal that zone was at the start. No one cared about exp that I can remember when going into that zone..they just wanted their bodies back.
And yeah. clerics rezzes were very popular and trivialized exp...which is kind of redundant to say when you claim EQ players hates exp loss more than corpse retrievals. which goes to show that the people you talked too are either lying or you are double talking here.
Also you need to take into account that people,especially at the early levels, didn't have those rez connections, or even knew about the necro summoning corpse method. Most EQ players just jumped in with no knowlege of the game. This made the corpse retrieval way more scary than usual. However, the later levels when you knew everything was a different story. Still, those times you couldn't get to your corpse, like plane of fear, proves that the corpse is way more important than the exp...by alot.
Watemper said:And yeah. clerics rezzes were very popular and trivialized exp...which is kind of redundant to say when you claim EQ players hates exp loss more than corpse retrievals. which goes to show that the people you talked too are either lying or you are double talking here.
I'm not sure how it's redundant? They mentioned that cleric rezzes were extremely important because of how much they alleviated the penalty. Clerics were really popular and the existence of their most potent rezz turned the XP loss component to a fraction of 1% loss. That is almost nothing. It took something that would arguably feel severe (sizable loss that would need to be worked off) and made it trivial. The popularity of the cleric rezz highlights how important XP really was. It's too bad that aspect of the penalty disappeared.
Watemper said:Also you need to take into account that people,espcially at the early levels, didn't have those rez connections, or even knew about the necro summoning corpse method. Most EQ players just jumped in with no knowlege of the game. This made the corpse retrieval way more scary than usual. However, the later levels when you knew everything was a different story. Still, those times you couldn't get to your corpse, like plane of fear, proves that the corpse is way more important than the exp...by alot.
I'm more interested in a penalty that is consistent throughout the game rather than something that is only terrifying in a specific raid zone. You're talking about 1999 -- if players didn't know about the corpse summoning method, that was a product of the times. Any bit of information that can be useful in this day and age will have a Youtube video posted online. The interesting observation I have here is that you brought up Plane of Fear (it always comes up in the corpse run discussion) ... that sounds like an area of the game where it truly was difficult to recover a corpse. What was it about Plane of Fear that made it so difficult to recover the corpse? Mob density? I'm assuming they also saw through sneak/invis? At the end of the day ... this reinforces my thought process here. If there were only a select few areas where players were truly terrified of losing their corpse, it's because the rest of the game allowed for loopholes and parlor tricks.
You specifically said that you talked to EQ players who said exp loss was the harshest penalty over corpse running. Then you said that cleric rezzes made exp trivial. If you don't see the problem with that line of thinking then you are on your own on that one. It is quite obvious.
Secondly, there were 3 zones..not just one. Hole, and Plane of Hate were also gruesome...and several other zones over expansions. If they took the necro summoning out then many more zones would of become a nightmare.
I was just saying Plane of Fear is an easy example of gear over levels. A failed Fear break in had guilds of people delevel 2-3 levels after rezzes from trying to get their bodies back. Other guilds would come in and help out to recover a failed Fear break in. GMs also helped out in some cases. But if exp was more important than your body than they wouldn't have sacraficed 2-3 levels in getting their bodies back. Objectively gear is more important than exp in 99% of the cases.
What made Fear..well Fear was that when you zoned in you couldn't zone out from the same place. The way to zone out was in Cazics temple. So you could port out..but couldn't zone out. When you zoned in you were immediately attacked...and waves of mobs would be comming in due to the aggro range being very big. Imps would teleport you away from your group chaining other mobs to come in and kill your group. Monk FD did work...but it wasn't guaranteed.
I will say this..if they took out necro summoning, which they should of, it would make corpse running way more difficult. The rogue stealth, and FD aren't gimmicks, that is your personal problem, and are very much in line with rpg elements. There were mobs that could see through your sneak, stealth, invis, FD failing etc. Necro summoning corpses weren't hardly used because it cost soo damn much for a coffin, but still would be the only spell I would take out and then every zone would have a nasty spot to die in where corpse retrieval would be difficult.
So I agree with you that necro summoning should be taken out, but that is about it. That would make corpse retrieval very difficult in many zones of EQ..and probably pantheon.
translation up to this point:
20% xp loss upon death, 10% refund upon corpse run recovery, 15% refund upon resurrection via spell is the medium consensus.
still retain equipment with durability loss.
glyphs have nothing to do with xp loss, but factor into corpse recovery (although it really doesn't matter but if you wanted it to matter make it atrocious like locking your chat, banks, character sheet and inventory until you get your body back)
tanks don't have to worry about being naked to recover corpse.
elitism sucks.
(disclaimer since i speak in absolutes everything is subject for change or adjustments, plus i suck at math, can be scaled since 5% xp loss at high level hurts more than at low levels)
did i understand all that?
Watemper said:You specifically said that you talked to EQ players who said exp loss was the harshest penalty over corpse running. Then you said that cleric rezzes made exp trivial. If you don't see the problem with that line of thinking then you are on your own on that one. It is quite obvious.
I stand by what I said. XP loss was a critical aspect of the penalty, and one that many players feared ... until the point where it was trivialized. As soon as the 97% cleric rez became available, the fear of XP loss basically disappeared from the game. Is it really that hard to see why? Clerics literally transformed XP loss into 3% of its original potency!