JDNight said:What if when you died, you were given a choice on how you wanted to be "re-animated". You could either come back "drained", and lose a chunk of EXP, or you could come back with a semi-long term de-buff that could not be removed in any way. The de-buff might reduce your max HPs, mana, AC, and other defenses by 60%. Effectively taking you out of combat. The length of time on the debuff could correlate to your exp level. As an example: A level 5 might have a 5 minute de-buff, but a level 50 might have a 25 minute de-buff.
It depends. By "come back" do you mean respawn at your bind or at your corpse?
Another potential problem with this is that it could have a serious negative impact on your group. It would encourage leeching while you're basically useless. It would also allow you to circumvent the death penalty by simply leaving your character afk while you go do something else. I don't think either scenario is particularly good.
JDNight said:Also, what if the level of a resurrection spell did not affect that amount of EXP you would get back (or lack of de-buff), but instead affected the level of target you could resurrect. Also, it would allow you to resurrect with your party, rather than at your bind point.
This is a little confusing. I don't really see why a resurrection spell should have any bearing on the level of the target. What would that really stand to achieve?
Also, if you get resurrected don't you usually appear back at your corpse? Maybe I'm out of the loop with how games do it nowadays, but when does a resurrection spell not return you to your party or the place of death? I guess if none of your inventory or equipment remain on the corpse resurrecting to bind wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure you will drop something when you die in Pantheon.
Dullahan said:...but I'm pretty sure you will drop something when you die in Pantheon.
Maybe I am not all caught up on how things are progressing, but is the penalty going to be that you drop an item? Like drop it on the ground? Leave it in your bank? Or is it destroyed? I guess I don't understand.
Dullahan said:Kalgore said:Sorry but EQ death penelty was a small annoynace at Endgame. For well ran guilds it hardly slowed them down. IF we want a real hard core game then lets have real death Penalties.
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3: Massive XP hit that results in lost lvls.
I agree. The main thing that made death so trivial at high level was access to resurrection spells that returned so much of your experience.
I don't think there should be a spell that returns more than 50% of your experience. Perhaps some rare expendable item or something, but not a normal spell. If they do decide to add a spell that returns more than 50% experience, the reagents for it should be bank breakers.
I like that and agree big time bank Breakers.
Dullahan said:JDNight said:What if when you died, you were given a choice on how you wanted to be "re-animated". You could either come back "drained", and lose a chunk of EXP, or you could come back with a semi-long term de-buff that could not be removed in any way. The de-buff might reduce your max HPs, mana, AC, and other defenses by 60%. Effectively taking you out of combat. The length of time on the debuff could correlate to your exp level. As an example: A level 5 might have a 5 minute de-buff, but a level 50 might have a 25 minute de-buff.
It depends. By "come back" do you mean respawn at your bind or at your corpse?
Another potential problem with this is that it could have a serious negative impact on your group. It would encourage leeching while you're basically useless. It would also allow you to circumvent the death penalty by simply leaving your character afk while you go do something else. I don't think either scenario is particularly good.
JDNight said:Also, what if the level of a resurrection spell did not affect that amount of EXP you would get back (or lack of de-buff), but instead affected the level of target you could resurrect. Also, it would allow you to resurrect with your party, rather than at your bind point.
This is a little confusing. I don't really see why a resurrection spell should have any bearing on the level of the target. What would that really stand to achieve?
Also, if you get resurrected don't you usually appear back at your corpse? Maybe I'm out of the loop with how games do it nowadays, but when does a resurrection spell not return you to your party or the place of death? I guess if none of your inventory or equipment remain on the corpse resurrecting to bind wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure you will drop something when you die in Pantheon.
I'm not 100 percent sure but I thought I read something that said no item drop and no durability hit when you die.
Raidan said: I've tried to brainstorm many ways to creatively implement the death penalty for a new MMO, but, ultimately the ideas are just trading one time sink for another.
As have I. I have had a chance to read through some older threads. They were about porting, travel, leashing, zones vs no-zones, economy, ect... The more I read, the more I realise that all of these things are interconnected. The death penalty will interact with the way people travel and leashing, which will affect the economy, and grouping, and porting, ect... I do not evny Brad and Co. the decisions they have to make here. EQ1 had a very good mix of mechanics. Messing with any of these will have an impact on the others, as can be seen in other games.
I want a game where there is a very large world, that is dangerous, but has porting. I want to be sitting on the edge of my chair 90%+ of the time. But, I also want to be able to group with my friends when I feel like it without having to re-roll a new character on each continent.
Good luck Brad! If I come up with any ideas, I'll post them.
PS I personally do not mind XP loss. I think it greatly adds to the suspense. Many (all?) will cringe and freak out at death. Some will break their own key boards. But, 99.999% of them will be back, and likely with a vengeance. Corpse runs, on the other hand... can cause people to lose interest. Or at the least, log off until tomorrow when they have the patience to deal with it.
I want to echo the sentiment that experience loss should not be trivialised at higher levels by offering almost full experience resurrections. 50% would be a good limit.
I know naked corpse runs aren't any fun, but giving more classes the ability to summon corpse and early in the game is a great compromise I think. Make it so those corpses can't be ressed after being summoned like was mentioned. This would encourage player interdependence and allow the player to make a trade-off if he didn't have time for a long corpse run.
I don't mind experience loss, but don't care much for de-leveling. It changes the way you play the game if you are not far in to your level. I would prefer an experience debt system but I can live with either system.
The biggest problems i heard about in-game with reagrds to death and corpse runs (CRs) were really 'bugs' or related (primarily) to Raid zones.
1. Corpses stuck under/in objects and cannot be dragged etc
2. Corpses located deeeeeep at the bottom of an ocean
3. Corpses located deep inside a Raid zone
4. People who (foolishly, perhaps) died with their bind-points being a gazillion miles away!
5. Porple who died in front of KOS mobs (such as town guard) and entered a death loop.
Most of these problems can be solved. Many were easily solved with use of firiends etc Bards to locate your corpse, hunting long enough, making a note of 'loc' *before* you died (I had a button setup *just* for this after I temporarily lost my corpse in EC of all places! Hey, it was dark and one bush looks much the same as another when you have your face planted in it!)
For bigger issues, it may be as simple as :
- lengthening corpse decay time,
- allowing a town NPC to summon it at cost (money + faction) with a mega-lengthy rez-sickness time.
- more meaningful LOC values, eg Long/Lat and depth +/-
- town noticeboard where you can put up message
'Corpse Retrieval Job offered. Pays 4 Plat. Deliver to (destination)'
... and the system sets up job contracts which allow /consent, etc.
... ofc would have to have mechanism to stop griefing (dropping ur corpse in lava) etc
PS: I heard of an example where somebody managed to commit 'perma-suicide' in such a way that his char was eventually delevelled back to level 1 ....
Larirawiel said:I find EXP loss too harsh. Because it will force you to grind the lost EXP back. And i do not think that to be forced to grind belongs to a modern MMORPG.
Greetings
That is where pre planning comes in to play though. What has been lost in mmo's is the aspect of when you would zone in to Estate of Unrest you grouped up at the zone line and you moved in slowly, you had a pre plan of where you wanted to camp before you started to move, you had an idea of what you were looking for before you moved in, simply because you could wipe at the very entrance and this is from yard trash. Remember this game is not about intentionally making things hard. It's making you plan, it's making you use caution. This is what seems to be lost with modern mmo's so to the younger gaming generation these things seems harsh. It doesn't take long to get xp back with a good group, and with a really good group you won't lose any xp, the xp gained will far outway the xp lost :)
This is my own humble opinion.. had to say this before bottles start flying at me :P
durability loss would put you in a worse shape though wouldn't it ? A tank would hate life at that point because if he was taking damage before , now with durability loss he is really going to get smacked around and i feel for the healer having to heal him. Same with a leather wearer, and god forbid cloth wearer getting hit with durability loss.... one shot :( weapons would do less damage, meaning harder to maintain agro .or burn a mob down before he starts raging on the whole group. How would it be regained ? curious
You could repair your items to regaine the durability. Or you know a craftsman, which can repair your items for you if you have the wrong jobs learned. Or the craftsman could sell repair kits to you. This could stimulate the server economy. There are many ways to make dying not so trivial and not to force players to grind lost EXP. If repairing would be an expensive thing then dying would still hurt.
Greetings
The real difference is this:
Loss of Durability = need for repair = gold cost
After a while, all players have more money than they need, therefore death = trivial now
Loss of EXP = need for regain it = more time exp'ing
This impacts you no matter how much cash you have in the bank. Be stupid = dead = wasted time
Now, I actually like Durability systems for the reason you mention (+Crafting) but I see this as a mechanism in its own right, not a replacement for death. I personally would like to see casters use reagents, archers use arrows and tanks get dented armour. All need replacement and repair.
But DEATH is the great leveller... it should have impact, no matter how rich you are.
Larirawiel said:You could repair your items to regaine the durability. Or you know a craftsman, which can repair your items for you if you have the wrong jobs learned. Or the craftsman could sell repair kits to you. This could stimulate the server economy. There are many ways to make dying not so trivial and not to force players to grind lost EXP. If repairing would be an expensive thing then dying would still hurt.
Greetings
To a degree, and it would not be balanced for all cases. Some classes/roles in groups are expected to be the front line for defensive and last line when it goes south. So the amount of dying won't always be equal among players in groups (typically). This only stacks against the balancing more so because if you have repairs as the primary penalty for dying, then it will come down to how easy it is for people to make money. Some classes will naturally be able to solo things easier than others, which will likely be the same classes that are ranged and not as close to immediate danger alone/grouping and also have better odds at avoiding death. There will be exceptions to this, the odd melee ability that allows escaping aggro, feign death or a rogue vanish etc, allowing them possibly the greatest survival chances - but they can't solo well themselves.
Also if you are making money more critical, it will likely encourage real world transactions more.
I am not claiming there is no better idea than a hefty exp loss (and imo a lesser percentage of exp returned from rezzing). Just that there doesn't seem to be one thought of yet.
Larirawiel said:You could repair your items to regaine the durability. Or you know a craftsman, which can repair your items for you if you have the wrong jobs learned. Or the craftsman could sell repair kits to you. This could stimulate the server economy. There are many ways to make dying not so trivial and not to force players to grind lost EXP. If repairing would be an expensive thing then dying would still hurt.
Greetings
I agree with this.. I don't think repair should replace exp loss though nor do I think players should just make kits.
I don't really understand why there wouldn't be durability loss on items. Crafting and repair specifically is just one more form of interdependence and more importantly a form of social gameplay that Pantheon could offer beyond combat. That is why I don't particularly like the idea of kits because players could just buy them in bulk which also limits the amount of interaction.
I really think Pantheon offering reasons beyond combat for players to interact is really important for inhancing the virtual world aspect of the game.
Evoras said:But DEATH is the great leveller... it should have impact, no matter how rich you are.
Agreed 100%. If it ever comes to a point where death becomes trivial, then so will the excitement and fear. The best memories I have in MMOs involved some form of fear, excitement, and adventure. Need I mention Nektulos Forest again? Imagine Nektulos Forest if death mearly cost you a few silver pieces for a repair.
Besides, I really do want death to sting, even at high levels. In fact I think it should be worse at high levels. Zerging, ranger gating, training because you don't care about dying, or anything that someone might do because they just don't care if they die will likely result in exploits and griefing. Not to mention PvP shenanigans.
I do hope they keep leashing to a minimum. I also hope that someone who is careless enough to walk into someone elses fight can and will get agro as well. But if these mechanics are there, griefing and exploits will occur if the death penalty is easily mitigated.
My 2cp. I am not saying exp loss is the best answer, but equipment decay from death always felt contrived and trivial to me. Not to mention, how and why does it occur?
Personally am I not really a fan of XP loss, in the old games that just meant we spent some extra time farming in our pretty safe farming spot. Loss of gear is bad in games focused on getting good gear (particularly raiding for it).
Death penalty still should make you fear dying, no death penalty or a minor one just leads to silly stuff like when people used dying for fast travel in AoC after launch.
If I could pick I would lock your character out for 24 hours unless someone rezz you. That can still be bloody scary when you just log in on a free weekend, you might be forced to either not play or run a crappy alt but it wont add any boring grind. Of course in game less focused on gear you can lose gear as well but raiders who spends months finding gear would ragequit fast if they lost their goodies.
Save time and money and use EQ1's death penalty as a template.
Evolve it in some way if you must, but if it isnt broke, dont fix it.
Make it really hurt. Make us need help to get to it and rez it.
Make us need eachother.
death penalty should be harsh enough that 90% of the people that try the game quit rather than continue. if the 90% threshhold is not reached, just increase the death penalty. rpgs are not about having fun, it is about being as tediuos as being a grave shift security guard in rural iowa. man those guys know, when they receive their $7 an hour paycheck, that they earned it in a way noone with an interesting job has.
Repeated deaths as a result of trying to get your corpse back can get to be far too extreme. It becomes more of a necessity if corpse rot is on a different timebase than playing time. Casual players need to get at once moreso than those who play far more. I would be in favour of having an ability to be resurrected as the Gods have witnessed your pain and offer to help (which can be refused). All XP loss remains just the painful repeated deaths. Perhaps after 5 deaths and a level of XP loss.
And I notice how the hardcore gamers and raiders have extolled the virtues of being in a raiding guild and engaging in high end content. It's what they strive for it's what they want. They have also indicated that the death penalty in EQ1 may not have been severe enough. Well then, make certain zones have a far harsher death penalty. Say, for example, raiding zones and end game content zones have the huge death penalty that even hardcore gamers fear. Casual gamers will probably never experience those zones and when they do they do so at a far greater level of anxiety than do others based simply on the timebase difference between corpse rot and play time. And if casulas won't go there or can't get there very often then the raiding guilds have their cake and can eat it, too. The casuals while striving to experience those high end and end-game content zones will still be suffering through the death penalty as before as they attempt to level up to enjoy those end-game zones.
Generally, not always, like plays with like. So the high end raiding guilds that have multiple players online and available on demand for things like corpse recovery, when required, are not so plentiful for those that play in 2-3 hour gaming sessions 2-3 days a week.
Death penalty should be viewed as a penalty. But at some point when help by other means is simply not available (5 deaths and loss of a level) then perhaps one last gasp helping hand can be made accessinle - even if it comes at an even greater cost.
muscoby said:Repeated deaths as a result of trying to get your corpse back can get to be far too extreme. It becomes more of a necessity if corpse rot is on a different timebase than playing time. Casual players need to get at once moreso than those who play far more. I would be in favour of having an ability to be resurrected as the Gods have witnessed your pain and offer to help (which can be refused). All XP loss remains just the painful repeated deaths. Perhaps after 5 deaths and a level of XP loss.
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Death penalty should be viewed as a penalty. But at some point when help by other means is simply not available (5 deaths and loss of a level) then perhaps one last gasp helping hand can be made accessinle - even if it comes at an even greater cost.
I don't think theres any reason to have repeated deaths. Talk to people, get help, find a group nearby, or a friendly rogue to sneak and drag, or a class that can summon your corpse. There should be plenty of ways to avoid chain deaths, but in a social game it requires communication. If you don't utilize them, you have only yourself to blame.
People have to stop looking at Pantheon through the lens of solo MMOs. You aren't supposed to be able to do everything on your own... by design.
muscoby said:...make certain zones have a far harsher death penalty. Say, for example, raiding zones and end game content zones have the huge death penalty that even hardcore gamers fear. Casual gamers will probably never experience those zones and when they do they do so at a far greater level of anxiety than do others based simply on the timebase difference between corpse rot and play time. And if casulas won't go there or can't get there very often then the raiding guilds have their cake and can eat it, too. The casuals while striving to experience those high end and end-game content zones will still be suffering through the death penalty as before as they attempt to level up to enjoy those end-game zones...
I like the idea of death penalty varying. I like the idea of having a few options, but there's not reason the number couldn't vary or the settings vary.
I don't think you lost XP in early levels of EQ (I think? Good grief that was only a few months ago - my brain is going). No reason there couldn't be more sophisticated variances.
Dullahan said:I don't think theres any reason to have repeated deaths. Talk to people, get help, find a group nearby, or a friendly rogue to sneak and drag, or a class that can summon your corpse. There should be plenty of ways to avoid chain deaths, but in a social game it requires communication. If you don't utilize them, you have only yourself to blame.
People have to stop looking at Pantheon through the lens of solo MMOs. You aren't supposed to be able to do everything on your own... by design.
People also need to stop looking at Pantheon through the lens of top level guild experience and convenience factors of "it's always available everytime all the time if you just communicate." When I speak of multiple deaths I am not speaking of solo play. I am speaking of also group play and the experience is also as a group; I assume others post based on anecdotal evidence also. I am speaking of the days in EQ1 where the opportunities and all things available to some were not at the disposal of others all the time every time. It could simply be playtimes. Reaching out for help from others could be met with "I'd love to help but we're busy at the moment." Heck even posting for help on guild forums was difficult enough to coordinate times when people could be online together. Group wipes with PUGS made of casual players from differing guilds (in theory what Pantheon is allm about) and a couple of multiple deaths generally resulted in people logging out and doing a retrieval in a different fashion at a different times because of play times and availability. The convenience that some have is not available to others. Like plays with like. So while you cannot think of a reason simply does not mean a reason does not exist. I have anecdotal evidence based on experience. Everything offered on this site is anecdotal evidence based on experience. Even a survey is simply a collection of anecdotal evidences summarized. Experience differs between people and I accept that and acknowledge that and do not dismiss it.
So while I can accept where there are some folks who have their own thoughts on why there should be reasons and why there should not be reasons, I can also see where there are situations that call for extreme measures - even if I haven't experienced it. It's rather narcissistic to hold the line that not being able to think of a reason means that there is no reason and therefore the lens is as someone who plays the game in a manner for which the game is not designed.
I haven't asked for the elimination of the death penalty and I haven't even insinuated in an easy way out. I simply suggested an option for extreme situations once the pain and penalty has gone on long enough. I'm not sure that "kicking someone while they're down" is what Pantheon is all about. But, hey, to each their own. The forum title said "Let's talk Death Penalty" so I have.