I read an article that Raidan and Kilsin posted in the other thread that was closed, and I must say that Wolfshead makes a lot of fair points in his article on death penalties and loss aversion. If anyone wants to give it a read I will post it here.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-death-penalty-mechanic-and-loss-aversion-in-mmo-design/
I had my doubts in the previous thread, but reading this article just helped me make sense of it all. EQ had a pretty taxing death penalty but I think something like this would be appropriate for the kind of experience the developers are hoping to bring with Pantheon. Maybe not take it EXACTLY as it is, but definitely something quite similar to EQ.
Nickdread said:I'm for the death penalty, corpse retrieval, all the stress and inconvenience you won't find in other games. When trying to play modern EQ, summoning corpse, getting a rez and 10 mins of grind to make up for lost exp. is pretty much in line with other current MMO's. It's like playing Xbox. When Naggy was camping my corpse and it took a couple of days to get it back, begging to be invited to closed raids, working with new people who ended up becoming friends etc...those were the high points of the game for me. I lost a few corpses and subsequent articles early on, which taught me caution and offered a heightened playing experience. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. I had friends that lost everything at lvl 50 (cap) trying to break Fear, Time, Hate...So they started over and the compassionate community helped them re-equip. Down the road, experience, friendships, spells mitigated the risk somewhat but you still had to be on your toes, do research, get advice, etc.. to attempt difficult zones. it's just another rinse and repeat otherwise. Many of us banked less precious articles (just in case) during the learning curves in early EQ. I've come to terms with the fact that most people probably don't feel the same way, but I challenge you to think of actual reality and the most thrilling times that are burnt into your memories. For me, they always involve risk-taking behavior, often with consequences.
I can take a drive through Yosemite National Park, safe and comfortable in my car and enjoy the awesome views, get a nice prepared meal and sleep in a comfortable bed and in the moment I'm having a great time and it makes for a decent memory. The alternative is backpacking into the Himalaya carrying 50 lbs. back-pack, eating crappy food, freezing my ass off, getting attitude sickness, getting helicoptered out into Kathmandu and end up in a dirty Hospital for 2 days...In the moment it is harsh and seems to suck, but in the big picture.........
+1 to this. ! BTW all my fondest memories of trips I've taken have been the worst in the moment. They are the ones that I look back at and say "Damn, we made it thru all that. Man that was awesome!"
While fearing death is necessary I could care less for corpse runs...although it's not a deal breaker for me.
I would like to see 5-10% xp loss for first death or 2 then a debt system after that...
On top of that your gear would take a 33% durability hit....
Then (if there are corpse runs) you get the option when standing at your spirit master of having them summon your corpse to you for a 10min 50% less hp and dmg done debuff or you can go get it and keep exping....
Bonus thought even though it's semi off topic....
If there are guild levels and perks in this game then you can make a perk to lessen the amount of debuff by 50%
I posted this in a locked thread.
On another note...players should be limited to binding in safe areas inside and around towns and outposts...no binding in raid zones unless you farm a ton of faction for some towns ppl or something like that inside of the zone...and that bind point needs to be a fair distance away from any content.
Megaera said:On another note...players should be limited to binding in safe areas inside and around towns and outposts...no binding in raid zones unless you farm a ton of faction for some towns ppl or something like that inside of the zone...and that bind point needs to be a fair distance away from any content.
This is something I just don't like. I'd like it expanded upon original EQ in that I would like anyone to be able to be bound nearly anywhere, limits being not inside dungeons/raids. I'm all for having to get your corpse and losing exp but it was always so odd to me that a caster dying was no big deal because they usually were bound less than 5 minutes away at a zone line but if a melee died it was waiting upwards of 20+ minutes for them to run all the way back.
Dangoss said:I read an article that Raidan and Kilsin posted in the other thread that was closed, and I must say that Wolfshead makes a lot of fair points in his article on death penalties and loss aversion. If anyone wants to give it a read I will post it here.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-death-penalty-mechanic-and-loss-aversion-in-mmo-design/
I had my doubts in the previous thread, but reading this article just helped me make sense of it all. EQ had a pretty taxing death penalty but I think something like this would be appropriate for the kind of experience the developers are hoping to bring with Pantheon. Maybe not take it EXACTLY as it is, but definitely something quite similar to EQ.
For me personally I want to thank you Dangoss for posting this entire article. That was an amazing read. This reminded me of why I truly enjoyed the MUD I played so many years ago and still refer to it as the best gaming experience of my life.
P.S. Everyone in the MMORPG genre should read that article.
I share the opposite opinion on binding your character....unless there is a person or a master that has the art soul binding down to a science...you should not be able to bind there....the Only exception I could see to that at this moment is for a druid because they are of nature so they could bind to "natural points"...and maybe wizards if you made magical points....then if you had a priest you could then make the argument for spiritual points.....
then would be best to keep the playing field level and limit binding to spirit masters spread through the world... if you die...get a line of sight res so you can pop back to where you were.
I thought the death penalties in EQ1 were great, created a real sense of emersion and adventure. There are tons of stories on this thread about how it added to the experience, and if I thought it was necessary I could launch into a handful of my own stories.
That being said, I would appreciate the ability to rage quit. Nothing is worse than dying on your 5th attempt at a CR @ 1 in the morning on a work night. You then have that CR looming over you for the next 3 days before you have time to head back at it. So it would be cool if like after a day or two your corpse is just summoned too you. So you can rage quit and head to bed and work the next day without having to worry about that CR.
Seems I remember Brad saying there would be no gear loss, like he was drawing a line at that (needs verified)
I would like to suggest "Decomposition"
At the sake of loosing some immersion, I have to say a "corpse" in a MMORPG is still simply a line of code and after a set timer there is really no need for some zone or graveyard where all the old corpses go to lay arround waiting to be recovered. A 5 day cycle of decomp..
1) first 24 hours rez=100% of rezers ability
2) 24 -48 hours rez= 80% or rezers ability
3) 48-72 hours rez=60% of rezers ability
4) 72-96 hours rez=40% of rezers ability
5) 96-120 hours rez=20% of rezers ability
6)@120 corpse decomposes and all gear is placed in an Overflow in the charrictors bank.
In a daily situation all is normal, get your corpse 96% rez and your on your way.
Ragequit and cool down the next day and you get your rez at 80% of the clerics or druids ability.
Plane of Fear senerio and you simply can not get your corpse, it will decompose and you have all your gear by the next weekend to try to raid Fear again.
Get your corpse or let it Decompose, your choice.
CoffeeManiac said:-30-40% of xp needed to lvl up should be loss. So that way you can lvl down.
-25% of your inventory money loss
-If you can't get your corp's after 1 week,the corp's decompose and turn into a skeleton or bone pile.
-when you loot your skeleton only non rare vanish
And when you die someone comes to your house to punch you in the genitals.
Right? Lol I liked the loss aversion reaction to death penalties in FFXI but let's not go overboard on punishing people. It's supposed to be a disincentive to mass deaths and zombying from an exp point of view, not a method of utterly wiping out 5+ hours of work. 25% of exp tnl (with possibility of delevel)? Probably fine, higher level rez can reduce penalty substantially. All that **** Coffee said? Incredibly overly punishing.
Jimmayus said:Right? Lol I liked the loss aversion reaction to death penalties in FFXI but let's not go overboard on punishing people. It's supposed to be a disincentive to mass deaths and zombying from an exp point of view, not a method of utterly wiping out 5+ hours of work. 25% of exp tnl (with possibility of delevel)? Probably fine, higher level rez can reduce penalty substantially. All that **** Coffee said? Incredibly overly punishing.
I am just assuming he is being sarcastic.
Oldtimer said:Shadowbane was my first MMO back in 2003 and I think the Death Penalty was handled pretty well. This is from the Wiki:
Dying in Shadowbane carries a few penalties:
Inflicts a temporary "death shroud", which reduces defense and attack rating by 100% as well as blocking the casting of any powers.
All armor, jewelry, and weapons will take percent-based damage that may accumulate and eventually destroy them if not repaired (for instance, at a vendor).
Any items in one's inventory will remain at the place of death in a universally lootable corpse (represented by a tombstone).
The character is transported to his bind point, and will need to return to his place of death to retrieve his inventory items. If the character has no bind point (aka being errant) he will be sent to Sea Dog's Rest.
When one is killed by another player or by drowning, this death will be broadcast to the entire server via the PVP channel.With all of the great ideas being discussed, hopefully VR will come up with a DP ruleset that will not drive players away.....
This is very close to what VG had. You received a 5 min debuff of -10% to stats and abilities, which would increase by an additinal 10% if you died with defuff still active. Up to a maximum if -50%. Most of the time in raids, once you hit -30% you just sat out until debuff wore off, you were pretty useless by that point.
All items would degrade a bit on death, if they hit zero would be useless until you repaired them at a merchant.
Any gear not bound to character remained on tombstone until you were rezzed or looted by you.
Any time you died, you would appear at nearest alter where you could someone your tombstone to you, but not recover any exp.
This is my my idea .
There needs to be a learning curve , so the death penalty needs to be based on level. Corpse runs are optional but should be considered for the "end game" ie last 5 levels .
The higher the level , the harsher the penalty. 1 - 20 a exp debt 21 - 30 exp loss minor amount 31 - 40 exp loss curved higher 41 - 45 a higher curve and final few levels the *max* exp loss.
This does a few things , it gives room to establish a learning curve that promotes learning the basics of a class.
I think we have all ran into that one wizard that did not understand aggro control or the healer that did not understand cure mechanics. This establishes that higher level players understand basic game concepts.
It also promotes a few fundemental concepts that these games need ie res / summon corpse / risk vs reward and so on.
Also keep in mind a few basic concepts , the game with this type of learning curve the population is more spread out between zones as each person is trying to learn there specific class, instead of a top heavy end game this also promotes a sense of accomplishment in a level based enviroment.
Make the death penalty as punitive as you want, the exact moment it's possible to:
Remove all chances of a zone crash, server crash, DDOS attack on VR, lightning strike, child/cat sitting on the wifi access point, child/cat pressing the power button, power grid failure, lag spike or any other random thing that can disconnect a player.
Until then, I would prefer a less punitive approach, when it comes to designing a death penalty. :-)
Also, if there is XP loss at death, I would prefer it be an XP Debt that you pay off, rather than de-leveling. The reason is, it gives designers that option to have "You must be this level to enter here" and be sure that person will remain that level, no matter how many times they die inside. It also simplifies granting abilities, spells, and skills, as once you get them, they won't be taken away after possibly de-leveling.
As long as death isn't so trivial that it's used as a means of travel (like some MMO's) I'm sure VR can make it sting enough but not make it table-flipping.
The amount of time required to recover from a death penalty can be greater/more, when using XP debt. It doesn't crush the spirit of the player, even though it can be more punitive, mathematically.
During that larger time required to recover, they should learn to play better. Should. ;)
I'd like to see some studies establishing a causual relationship between death penalties and player quality. Sounds like conjecture, to me.
It is dependant on a few factors such as is it fractional gain ie 1/2 exp gain going towards debt , 100 % going towards debt etc
Is there a exp gain still while under debt? If the answer is yes , it defeats the point of a debt , since it just slows progression. In EQ2 debt is trivial , in fact at times it is faster to just die and respawn to use as a example. This defeats the entire risk vs reward.
There are a few factors I have issues with a debt based system with no loss. For example it will always lead to the person , no matter there ability to reach end game being a top concern.
This type of system also leads to a top heavy game , where as in a exp loss enviroment all zones are always being used. Since there are various people at diffrent stages of the learning curve.
This also leads to other in game options such as res , summon corpse etc. I guess just diffrent view points :)
I don't think loss of XP stopped a significant amount of people from reaching max level in EQ. They were either slower getting there, or they outright quit the game out of frustration from repeated deaths.
Not only that but if you can neutralize a significant portion of the XP loss by rezzing then it actually becomes less of an impediment than debt, which generally can't be artificially recovered.
The concept of being able to level backwards is more fun than having debt. One of the more interesting things I saw in game was a person who had many AAs and then deleveled to around level 10. The AAs were still active and the person was much more powerful than they were supposed to be for that level.
Losing a level also stings a lot more and that's not always a bad thing.
I'm for the death penalty...but give a week for retrieval of corpse, just in case. Death penalty made me more aware of my surroundings, the mobs that hung out in each area. I think after awhile it just becomes the way you play, you adapt. I made some good friends in EQ, we helped each other when we got into a bad spot. Looking forward to good friends, good community. :)
Liav said:I don't think loss of XP stopped a significant amount of people from reaching max level in EQ. They were either slower getting there, or they outright quit the game out of frustration from repeated deaths.
Not only that but if you can neutralize a significant portion of the XP loss by rezzing then it actually becomes less of an impediment than debt, which generally can't be artificially recovered.
If we are talking in the time frame of hell levels in eq1 then I will have to say it forced you to perform better.
As for the neutralize affects of xp loss by rez , that is player based interaction and promotes a social enviroment.
In fact this dynamic brings the player population closer together and promotes player interaction.
I am all for player interactions, with debt this is not a factor.