Venjenz said:If gear cannot be lost, there is no fear. Total removal of the fear makes the game another ho hum, PUG gear grind where the gear is meaningless because you have exactly zero chance to ever lose it. If there is a summoning system for corpses, there is no need for corpse runs.
Are you saying the corpse retrieval system has the same EXACT risk of losing ALL your gear? If so, why even have it? If summoning my body means all my gear is destroyed anyway, that seems like a totally useless mechanic. Methinks the graveyard concept means maybe you lose one piece of gear? Maybe extra exp, something far less harsh than losing all your gear to corpse poof.
As I said in the other "please make death nicer and kinder since we all have RL emergencies every 7.01 days" thread - the only way that mechanic keeps te fear is if it too represents a legit threat to your precious gear. So make the penalty 1 entire level of lost exp that cannot be rezzed back and one random piece of equipped or carried (in case people think they can quickly stash all their gear in bags to avoid this penalty) gear is destroyed with no possible GM rewind, since you chose to hit that summon button. Maybe two pieces of equipped/carried gear. Something that makes you think long and hard about using that system and retains the fear.
I think you're actually closer to agreeing with many of us than you realize.
Given:
- Sometimes corpses will be in hard to retrieve places that may require the person to come back in a different session to attempt CR.
- Sometimes RL emergencies or problems will force players offline for extended periods of time.
- There will probably need to be an expiration timer on unclaimed corpses in the world just to prevent them from piling up over time.
- It's likely that server downtime (intentionally or unintentionally) will cause unclaimed corpses to disappear or otherwise become inaccessible.
Goals:
- We want to insure that death still stings and a retrieval system can't be used as a way to cheat part of the death penalty
- We want to minimize the number of CS tickets that get generated because of "I can't get my corpse"
Proposal:
- Allow players to use a "graveyard" system to retrieve corpses that have expired or are inaccessible to them for any reason.
- Retrieving a corpse in this way gives no experience back that was previously lost.
- Retrieving a corpse in this way carries an additional penalty:
Option 1: Randomized item loss (one item equipped/carried is lost permanently. Chance of this happening could be 100% or could start lower and scale up with level. Unique items (epic quest rewards, etc) would need to be protected from being lost in this way, but anything that could be reobtained by the player should be fair game.
Option 2: Retrieving a corpse from the graveyard incurs a hefty fee in terms of in-game money. Players who cannot or will not pay this fee may pay the penalty by taking additional experience loss.
Option 3: Retrieving a corpse from the graveyard introduces a long term (2-4 hour) debuff of significant potency (-20% to all attributes, -50% xp gain, etc). This debuff can not be removed but must expire naturally.
Questions:
- Are there other potential penalty options?
- How do we (all of us) feel about the options presented? Just right? Too weak? Too harsh?
- What, if anything, should VR do in the case of RL disasters (both natural and man-made) that impact their players in entire regions? (ex: Wildfires, hurricanes, floods, terrorist bombings). Should this be handled proactively by VR (we know people in Hawaii are busy dealing with a volcano right now so we're removing the graveyard penalty for them until that's resolved) or should we expect CS to handle it on a case-by-case basis?
Having your gear rot is more a punishment for failing a corpse recovery than it is a punishment for your death. I think penalties should occur as a result of your death (the thing you did wrong), not as a result of failing a corpse recovery (something that should just delay your progress).
I'm looking forward to see what VR's mechanics are and I think their stated direction (while it doesn't have details) seems fine.
Ainadak said:Having your gear rot is more a punishment for failing a corpse recovery than it is a punishment for your death. I think penalties should occur as a result of your death (the thing you did wrong), not as a result of failing a corpse recovery (something that should just delay your progress).
I'm looking forward to see what VR's mechanics are and I think their stated direction (while it doesn't have details) seems fine.
Yep, it's really just a punishment for for failing corpse recovery which almost only happens due to things coming up in real life. So it's really more a punishment for having a life/responsibilities outside the game, whether planned or not.
Personally I wouldn't mind having some sort of graveyard/corpse summon NPC system in the game provided it was always a last choice option, something that becomes more and more harsh with use. Maybe it's a feature that costs 20 plat the first use, 40 plat the second, 80 plat the third, 160 plat the fourth, 320 the 5th and so on... and the price never drops or resets for the lifetime of a character. You'd have to seriously think twice about wasting those first few uses.
Ainadak said:Having your gear rot is more a punishment for failing a corpse recovery than it is a punishment for your death. I think penalties should occur as a result of your death (the thing you did wrong), not as a result of failing a corpse recovery (something that should just delay your progress).
The way I'm reading this, you just want part of any death penalty to be non-recoverable. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
From my perspective, the penalties (loss of xp and gear) are incurred as a result of your death and completing a corpse run is simply a (potentially challenging and community-building) way to recover some of what you lost. Since corpse running would be a known mechanic, your ability to recover your corpse would largely depend on forethought and risk management. The remainding scenarios where a failed corpse run is unavoidable could be allieviated through some other means of forethought (using currency, etc).
I wonder if a "body collector" skill and related NPC-guild could work well. I'm imagining some type of skill-ups obtained via helping others with corpse recovery. At certain threshholds, this could enable purchase of helpful recovery items or services through a body collector guild. I'm definitely not a game-designer, but I think a base-system like this could provide any number of avenues to help combat the occasional times where corpse recovery might be impossible due to situations beyond the players control.
I'm confused by how this exp debt st max level would work. Because you are all claiming that theres no fear to die at max level if you dont delevel, and that would promote people serving things until they accomplish their goal.
Well, assuming that this game does in fact take a while to level. If each death is essentially the equivalent of 1hr of game time in a decent exp group.. eventually you will have to make up that debt. Eventually you will have to level up for an expansion. And I dont know that many people that would like to start an expansion -400% exp.
I agree that the fear of de-leveling is a much higher deterrant, but we dont want to punish people at max level who want to try things. If the fear is too much. Then you get people afraid to venture into that new dungeon, and you significantly take away the fun of exploration.
Me dying. Knowing that I'm going to have to spend several hours getting that exp back is MORE than enough to deter me from not caring.
Porygon said:I'm confused by how this exp debt st max level would work. Because you are all claiming that theres no fear to die at max level if you dont delevel, and that would promote people serving things until they accomplish their goal.
Well, assuming that this game does in fact take a while to level. If each death is essentially the equivalent of 1hr of game time in a decent exp group.. eventually you will have to make up that debt. Eventually you will have to level up for an expansion. And I dont know that many people that would like to start an expansion -400% exp.
I agree that the fear of de-leveling is a much higher deterrant, but we dont want to punish people at max level who want to try things. If the fear is too much. Then you get people afraid to venture into that new dungeon, and you significantly take away the fun of exploration.
Me dying. Knowing that I'm going to have to spend several hours getting that exp back is MORE than enough to deter me from not caring.
I think to really be a deterrent for everyone, you'd have to couple it with some kind of debuff if you dropped below the amount you needed for a level. Basically the game saying "you *should* have de-leveled, so here's something to remind you of the hole you need to dig out of"
>but we dont want to punish people at max level who want to try things.<
Of *course" we do - any death penalty punishes people that try things more than people that never take risks. This is the nature of the beast and cannot be avoided. Punishing someone at level 10 but not punishing someone at level-cap is ridiculous. VR just needs to come up with a good way to do it. IMO deleveling is probably the best way to keep things fair and balanced at all levels but maybe VR has a better idea.
Are you saying that level-cap characters are too big to fail? ((laughs)). Why should they get a pass from a basic game mechanic (death should hurt)?
A level cap can grind experience to regain the loss at least as easily as a lower level.
Maybe the issue is that you think of level-caps all being in a situation where they cannot store up experience to protect against deleveling? A very valid point if every level-cap is viewed as 1xp above the prior level. But easily handled by letting them continue to earn xp until the next level minus 1XP. Or halfway into the next level. If a level-cap dies so often that he or she loses a full level of xp from the deaths, or half a level, they *should* be deleveled.
Knot said:Ainadak said:Having your gear rot is more a punishment for failing a corpse recovery than it is a punishment for your death. I think penalties should occur as a result of your death (the thing you did wrong), not as a result of failing a corpse recovery (something that should just delay your progress).
The way I'm reading this, you just want part of any death penalty to be non-recoverable. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
...
I didn't see this when it was posted, but I feel like responding anyways. I want the experience portion of the death penalty to really sting and halt progress for those who aren't skilled enough. When I was 13 and playing EQ for the first time I died enough that it really felt like a reasonable punishment for not being good enough - especially in the hell levels. I had to actually figure out how to play better in order to stop dying and progress. I always made it a point to do some random content every few levels (I played a paladin, so it was slow going) in order to test my mettle and see if I had the chops to gain more exp than I lost from deaths. Many times it took quite a while to get out of the red. I think the younger generation will perform admirably if posed a similar challenge in Pantheon. Many kids don't know the first thing about how games work under the hood, but they're actually very willing to persevere and improve - a good learning experience for them.
As to the question of the non-recoverable aspects of a death penalty - I would embrace them if that's the direction they want to go, but I want it to be a punishment for death and not something that happens a week later. If they want to destroy an equipped item chosen at random every time you die, then I would think that's a harsh, but fair mechanic. If they want to destroy an enchantment, item attunement, or something along those lines on death, then that hits a better balance point for me.
I also think that EQ's system was very lop-sided. If you die and have a high level cleric give you a rez 6 days later, then you lose 5 minutes of work. If you die and try to get your corpse 8 days later, then you lose years of work.
Aradune said:As I've stated before, the 'severity' of Pantheon's death penalty will likely lie inbetween two 'extremes': Vanilla EQ and Vanilla VG. We need to find that sweet spot in-between the two. Totally naked corpse runs are probably too extreme. But, on the other end of the pendulum, trivializing death penalties leads to all sorts of problems.
Once EQ1 integrated graveyards the fear of death was removed. I still remember learning about the graveyards and was like "ok.... I just wont play until my corpse repop's". I was nearly ready to quit the game anyway. I do think we should have naked corpse runs or allow some sort of soulbound item feature so some special items stay with us if we die.
Lastly, in the event that the community becomes truly split on something as critical as the Death Penalty and its associated mechanics, we always have the option to implement variations on the theme depending on the server/shard. Athough it's far too early to speculate with any certainty, the penalty for dying in Pantheon may turn out to be something that becomes part of our Alternate Ruleset Servers, with the details and severity depending on which server/shard you've chosen to play on.
To me, i think the game should start with a base ruleset of having a graveyard, but it takes forever for it to summon (two weeks plus). And the alternative server/shard would be the "hardcore" server that has corpse rotting like original EQ1. That way you are forewarned that your corpse will rot and CS issues regarding corpse rot on the alternative server will be dismissed.
In the event that they decide to allow Necro's or other class the ability to summon corpse - They should be a Master of thier Class. Lich level Necro with command over death and dead things. Or at least a fairly hard epic quest.
Death penalty is one of the most important parts of the game for me. I don't know what they are going to do all I know is that it should be pretty harsh. What I want to see is that if the whole Leeroy Jenkins scenario were to happen in this game two things would result immediatly.
1. When that idiot charges off like he did everyone in the group would be trying to get the hell out of there. Evac, run to zone, FD anything. In WoW they tried to go through the battle. They knew they couldnt do it but tried anyway, and when it was over? They just called him names, and probably tried again. No big deal. They lost a little bit of time and thats it.
2. The guy that does it is really called out for it and gets a rep that hurts their ability to find groups. Something like that would spread. It will only spread if the penalty is so bad that it really angers people to have died needlessly.
If the penalty isnt bad, rep wont matter because playihng with an idiot isnt a big deal. It will make you a bit more careful when grouping with people.
Hope they get it right.
I think any death penalty mechanic that goes down the road of "after x amount of time y benefit unlocks" is a bad choice. If your corpse pops to a graveyard, then as kreed99 pointed out, you are given an incentive for inaction. Fortunately that runs completely counter to a tenet - "Apathy or lack of action should not be rewarded with bonuses." I don't think we need to worry about a graveyard timer mechanic.
I do agree that apathy shouldnt be rewarded, but the kind of apathy i am refering to is weeks of inactivity. Which is counter productive to any realistic gameplay achievements. Can you imagine 2 weeks or a month of inactivity? It would be worth it to just try logging in and finding someone to drag your corpse. And the alternative ruleset server/shard of have corpse rot would allow for more alternative rules that facilitate these actions. I personally love the idea of having corpses rot. I lost a few and am better for it. But i understand the CS side and feel that if certain servers are given this ruleset and the rest doesnt have this issue than CS complaints about corpse rot on those specific servers would be ignored.
I am just revisiting a discussion. I know that VR will choose whichever path they want, however i think a fresh take on things based on previous discussion is warranted. All i am saying is that if we have graveyards make it a looooong time before the corpse pops. The Exp penalty can still be tuned for regular gamers. And thise that choose to wait out the timer will have an even longer journey ahead of them. Realisticlly, if things are tuned so that you can regain full exp loss in a 2-4 hour session. Missing out on 2 weeks of gameplay is insane..,..
Yeah, getting your corpse after being effectively barred from that character for an extended period is not rewarding apathy. I'd be up for that. If you somehow let your corpse rot for 2 or 3 days then not getting it for 2 or 3 weeks (maybe a month?) would be pretty serious punishment.
Losing all your gear is an horrendous punishment that might well stop people playing, but a month off that character would encourage maybe trying an alt or something while you wait for your main to come back.
I'd also suggest you have to pay cash somehow - maybe donate at a temple in a hub city - to kick off the process. It shouldn't be 'free' else people with a lot of alts will see it as much less inconvenient. Maybe you need to sacrifice a bunch of coins or even a level of XP!...
"Hey, Dispo. You're using your bard a lot lately?"
"Yeah, my warrior is still travelling back through purgatory since that volcano dive last week"
"But you'll miss the dragon raids!"
"Yeah :( But, it would've taken a full raid and lots more death to get him back. I'm actually enjoying the break kinda"
"Enjoy missing out on those phat dragon lewts! What did you sacrifice at the temple again?"
"Yeah shaddap hehe"
disposalist said:Yeah, getting your corpse after being effectively barred from that character for an extended period is not rewarding apathy. I'd be up for that. If you somehow let your corpse rot for 2 or 3 days then not getting it for 2 or 3 weeks (maybe a month?) would be pretty serious punishment.
Losing all your gear is an horrendous punishment that might well stop people playing, but a month off that character would encourage maybe trying an alt or something while you wait for your main to come back.
I'd also suggest you have to pay cash somehow - maybe donate at a temple in a hub city - to kick off the process. It shouldn't be 'free' else people with a lot of alts will see it as much less inconvenient. Maybe you need to sacrifice a bunch of coins or even a level of XP!...
"Hey, Dispo. You're using your bard a lot lately?"
"Yeah, my warrior is still travelling back through purgatory since that volcano dive last week"
"But you'll miss the dragon raids!"
"Yeah :( But, it would've taken a full raid and lots more death to get him back. I'm actually enjoying the break kinda"
"Enjoy missing out on those phat dragon lewts! What did you sacrifice at the temple again?"
"Yeah shaddap hehe"
I liked all of that. Ya. Temple donation for sure. And working on an alt wouldnt be the worst thing. You might even exp in the same zone and come accross the corpse. I was thinking that it would cost you a really expensive coffin or soul stone or other expensive reagent donation at a necro guild or the keeper temple. That way you have a month to gather the funds.
Wowsers, it sounds like most everyone here would like a harsh and horrible death experience haha...Well from my experience with death being very punishing, it would make me fear going out and adventuring in areas that I didn't know. I don't mind corpse runs, they add to the challenge of the game.
Vanguard death was so serious I was never able to level cap my characters, but not a bad thing, it was a game I always had something to strive for.
Baldrith said:Wowsers, it sounds like most everyone here would like a harsh and horrible death experience haha...Well from my experience with death being very punishing, it would make me fear going out and adventuring in areas that I didn't know. I don't mind corpse runs, they add to the challenge of the game.
Vanguard death was so serious I was never able to level cap my characters, but not a bad thing, it was a game I always had something to strive for.
Exactly why the penalty should be harsh.
And without Fear, Bravery can't exist.
Zorkon said:Baldrith said:Wowsers, it sounds like most everyone here would like a harsh and horrible death experience haha...Well from my experience with death being very punishing, it would make me fear going out and adventuring in areas that I didn't know. I don't mind corpse runs, they add to the challenge of the game.
Vanguard death was so serious I was never able to level cap my characters, but not a bad thing, it was a game I always had something to strive for.
Exactly why the penalty should be harsh.
And without Fear, Bravery can't exist.
Harsh does not equal fun tho...that's my point
Baldrith said:Zorkon said:Baldrith said:Wowsers, it sounds like most everyone here would like a harsh and horrible death experience haha...Well from my experience with death being very punishing, it would make me fear going out and adventuring in areas that I didn't know. I don't mind corpse runs, they add to the challenge of the game.
Vanguard death was so serious I was never able to level cap my characters, but not a bad thing, it was a game I always had something to strive for.
Exactly why the penalty should be harsh.
And without Fear, Bravery can't exist.
Harsh does not equal fun tho...that's my point
I'm of a different opinion. Without harsh there wouldn't be fear and without fear you have boring.
Boring is not fun.
Wow, there are a lot of posts and good ones!
I won't lie. When I first played EQ I disliked the death penalty. But back then, I was rather a noob. Many games now do not have death penalties and I think that is a shame. It makes the game too easy. If I want an easy game, I would play those silly free to play games on my tablet.
I'm currently playing Conan exiles while I wait for Pantheon. It reminded me on the death penalty and in Conan (at least on my friend's server), it can be a bit rough. No, I don't lose xp (at least I don't think so) but losing all my stuff and spawn naked on the other side of the map (and I mean, really naked), it was a rude awaking. At first, I hated it but then it taught me how to prepare because it will most likely happen again.
I think that is part of the problem with games is that the penalties don't really exist anymore. If you had to take away a penalty, then I feel it should be the debt. If you can't get a rez, or some other mechanic, I think for sure you should run back to get your stuff. Or take the hit and remake/get new gear. In Conan, I just make extra gear and weapons and I only retrieve my stuff if it is close by or if there is really cool stuff I need to get.
Or have a PvE server with a more forgiving rule set.
Zorkon said:Baldrith said:Zorkon said:Baldrith said:Wowsers, it sounds like most everyone here would like a harsh and horrible death experience haha...Well from my experience with death being very punishing, it would make me fear going out and adventuring in areas that I didn't know. I don't mind corpse runs, they add to the challenge of the game.
Vanguard death was so serious I was never able to level cap my characters, but not a bad thing, it was a game I always had something to strive for.
Exactly why the penalty should be harsh.
And without Fear, Bravery can't exist.
Harsh does not equal fun tho...that's my point
I'm of a different opinion. Without harsh there wouldn't be fear and without fear you have boring.
Boring is not fun.
I think we need to be thinking of what is fun rather than what is harsh. I agree that having to find your body else suffer some penalty would be challenging and rewarding or punishing in it's own right. Just making something a drudgery for the sake of fear etc does not always equate to less boring or less fun. I have been dead and unable to retrive my body too many times to know that this time of thing equates to frustrating and not fun.
If the game punishes too harshly it will create frustration which will cause quitting etc. Best to find a happy medium where death means something, has some value to your learning experience. I have no problem with losing your gear if you die and don't recover your body somehow. There definately needs to be ways to recover your body tho. I have died at the bottom of a lava pool in UO...there isn't a real way to get your body in that case which would really suck if you were wearing gear you couldn't easily replace.
Baldrith said:Zorkon said:Baldrith said:Zorkon said:Baldrith said:Wowsers, it sounds like most everyone here would like a harsh and horrible death experience haha...Well from my experience with death being very punishing, it would make me fear going out and adventuring in areas that I didn't know. I don't mind corpse runs, they add to the challenge of the game.
Vanguard death was so serious I was never able to level cap my characters, but not a bad thing, it was a game I always had something to strive for.
Exactly why the penalty should be harsh.
And without Fear, Bravery can't exist.
Harsh does not equal fun tho...that's my point
I'm of a different opinion. Without harsh there wouldn't be fear and without fear you have boring.
Boring is not fun.
I think we need to be thinking of what is fun rather than what is harsh. I agree that having to find your body else suffer some penalty would be challenging and rewarding or punishing in it's own right. Just making something a drudgery for the sake of fear etc does not always equate to less boring or less fun. I have been dead and unable to retrive my body too many times to know that this time of thing equates to frustrating and not fun.
If the game punishes too harshly it will create frustration which will cause quitting etc. Best to find a happy medium where death means something, has some value to your learning experience. I have no problem with losing your gear if you die and don't recover your body somehow. There definately needs to be ways to recover your body tho. I have died at the bottom of a lava pool in UO...there isn't a real way to get your body in that case which would really suck if you were wearing gear you couldn't easily replace.
In EQ even if your corpse was at the bottom of a lava pool, a necromancer anywhere in zone (I believe) could summon it (or you could short-range summon it yourself unless the pool was many meters deep). The worst that would happen is if you got your corpse in a lava pool *and* in a zone that was expensive to get to (teleport gem or some such) *and* difficult to get to (needing a raid force to fight your way there maybe).
That combo would be extremely rare, though and, even then, if you exercise some social skills (which could be fun) you would just have to ask around some of the larger guilds and see when they next planned to go and see if you could tag along. Most would be willing to help and you'd make some new friends or at least contacts even if you owed them a favour (or money) to do it.
I agree there should be some last resort alternative, but I don't see it being needed anything but very rarely so it could/should be very costly in some way to discourage it's common use.