I never cared for permanent gear loss, and I didn't like death loops, especially when caused by a greifer.
Many types of games, make you invincible upon spawning, but once you move, you become "live". And if you don't move for a set time say 2 minutes, you are auto-logged off. Expections would be ressurections, as that is a choice to spawn at your corpse, versus spawning at bind upon death, and gating to bind is not the same as spawning after death.
Pilch said:There is a lot of potential for Pantheon to have horizontal progression, and keep players from getting stuck at "end game"VR recognizes that "end game" is one of the big issues witih current MMOs and, I believe, the progeny system is one of the ways they plan to combat it. If they provide good incentives to use progeny, like some horizontal progression or unique class/race combos etc, then I could see end game not even being a thing anymore, and it shouldnt be part of the game. All the aspects of "end game" in current games should be incorporated through the entire game.
First off, thanks for providing some ideas. I think VR should be careful about how the Progeny system is treated. Everyone talks about feeling connected to their character a lot, but if the Progeny system innately devalues your first character (or first several characters) through a drop like you described, that would do the opposite. It would feel really shitty to have to choose between making a character I know I'd want to main but having that character never be at par as future Progeny, or delaying making the character I really want to play in order to ensure the character I want to main can take advantage of future Progeny bonuses.
I agree with your two ideals. But, people will still reach level cap, and there needs to be something other than the Progeny system awaiting them. Nor should "BiS" be reserved for those who got ridiculously lucky at level 15.
philo said:AAs, Progeny. Systems like these have been utilized in other games as a form of horizontal progression for a long time. They keep people playing when they would have otherwise have run out of content.
You'll have to excuse my dumb brain, but what is "AA"?
Naunet said:First off, thanks for providing some ideas. I think VR should be careful about how the Progeny system is treated. Everyone talks about feeling connected to their character a lot, but if the Progeny system innately devalues your first character (or first several characters) through a drop like you described, that would do the opposite. It would feel really shitty to have to choose between making a character I know I'd want to main but having that character never be at par as future Progeny, or delaying making the character I really want to play in order to ensure the character I want to main can take advantage of future Progeny bonuses.
I agree with your two ideals. But, people will still reach level cap, and there needs to be something other than the Progeny system awaiting them. Nor should "BiS" be reserved for those who got ridiculously lucky at level 15.
In a certain way I am excited about the progeny system but also a bit cautious as well. I have been trying to brainstorm some ways VR could implement it but not make it necessary to have for raiding etc. I guess a drop rate "bonus" would probably turn into a necessary thing, so in reality that is probably not a good one. Some people have mentioned the progeny system unlocking certian race/class combos, which I think could be cool. It will be interesting to see what VR has in mind.
My main experience with MMOs was with FFXI and during its heydey it could easily take the average player a year to reach max level. Also, once you got there it could be another year before you completed your gear set(which came from open world dungeons and also instanced raids). There were 3 expansions that came out consecutively that did not increase the level cap because there was no need to. I hope Pantheon can achieve something like that.
Pilch said:There were 3 expansions that came out consecutively that did not increase the level cap because there was no need to. I hope Pantheon can achieve something like that.
Absolutely agree! VR's job will be to nurture an attitude that both encourages people to feel like they can take their time, as well as a bit of forcing people to take their time. If they do it right, they could probably design expansions that truly expand the game at all levels, instead of just adding more content at level cap.
(Oh god I hope we have a lot of character slots... I'm gonna need 'em.)
Nephretiti said:But there are plenty of situations you have not addressed here. Believe it or not, many of our young men and women are deployed into some not-so-friendly areas. They can be playing one moment and then suddenly a 4 day "event" happens in real life and they are no longer able to log in for a few days. Do we punish them for something beyond their control? What about medical events? I know a young man who slipped into a diabetic coma for nearly a week. Do we make some kind of exception for someone like that? How? Did Nephretiti die to Faydedar 47 times in one log-in session? Was it too much? Did Nephretiti make an absolute FORTUNE on th server by being bound in that specific spot? What about risk vs reward?
Everything is situational. We can only hope that we get it right, then we analyze what is actually happening during game, and then adjust accordingly. I trust these guys. They have a LOT of experience behind them. Let's let them get the game up and operational before we start making nasty assumptions.
I don't know if this was towards me but if jt is than you have to cap out first so if they were at 48% debt and had something going on they were safe, the 50% cap idea is to make sure people always try to pay off they're debt before it actually gets there not the other way around, so if they were lazy or unlucky enough to get it to the cap than well that does kind of suck, but it does require you to pay off your debt and it has a mix of debt and real exp loss, which is what my idea came from. So yes if they do hit cap of 50% and didn't pay it off in time they lose it simple as that you can get mad cuase of certain situations that occurred but I'm sure they had a chance in one time or another 95% of the time to prevent getting to the cap limit and getting rid of it completely before they actually got to cap.
Naunet said:Jabir said:Nevertheless, I think it should to be possible to come up with some other means of horizontal progression while we're waiting for the next expansion without resorting to mobs so challenging that dying and dying is the only way to approach them.What, then, would you suggest? In a game designed around fighting monsters, it makes sense that as you play through, you face off against tougher and tougher monsters. Though, this is why most of the successful MMOs have a variety of options at "end game" - in both PvE and PvP flavors. But even ignoring PvP folk (sorry, y'all!), PvE end game is just different iterations of fighting more and more powerful bosses, be it in small-group content or larger raids.
(To be clear, I love dungeons and raids.)
I think we're drifting into off-topic territority, and others have already outlined possible solutions to the horizontal progress issue at max level. I have little experience with end games and have nothing to add.
It's true that fighting monsters is an important part of any MMO, but I wouldn't say that it's "designed around" it. To me, killing monsters is a means to an end, which is character progression gradually unlocking new content, and when that is no longer possible the game becomes almost pointless and I roll an alt. To others, character progression is a means to reach the raiding game where much of the fun is perceived to be. Both views are equally valid and the game must support them.
However, it appears that the two playing styles call for very different death penalty rules, unless a way can be found to keep raiding fun and sufficiently challenging without causing countless wipes. At lower levels you can choose to ignore a boss for a few levels, at max you need other ways to balance risk vs. reward. Maybe you could provide max level characters with various sophisticated, but not trivial means of retreat without wiping, I don't know. What I do know is that I don't want dying to become a minor nuisance. Death means failure, and I want the death penalty rules to reflect that, if possible at all levels.
Naunet said:As others have said, however, we clearly have different opinions on this that won't be changing.
Having different opinions is totally ok.
However, if you do it like this :
The game will most likely fail.
I'm 100% sure you cannot concentrate all the difficulty of the game only in raids.
If you make the game easy peasy lemon squeezy and then suddenly hit a hardwall on first raid, many people will quit.
You shouldn't want to smash (psychologically) players down.
Before reaching difficult raids, the players have to be used to a difficult game.
That way, they will be prepared for difficult raids and will accept it as a part of a difficult game, and won't (rage)quit.
Death penalty is a part of that "difficult game" factor that will make players resilient and persistent through the difficult content of the game.
Naunet said:philo said:AAs, Progeny. Systems like these have been utilized in other games as a form of horizontal progression for a long time. They keep people playing when they would have otherwise run out of content.You'll have to excuse my dumb brain, but what is "AA"?
Alternate Advancement.
I think a lot of people might be in a similar boat as you Naunet: concerned about the exp penalty because of limited experience those type of games.
There have been almost no mmos that came out post 2004 that had a harsh death penalty so that is completely understandable.
I ask you to have faith in the devs and the community. We wouldn't be here asking for it if it made the game worse.
I see similar concerns from others about things like the possibility of a corpse rotting and gear loss. I never once heard of an active player lose gear in Eq. It just didn't happen. There were always multiple ways to get your corpse if you cared enough to try. There seems to be a general fear of the unknown.
I ask you to be patient and wait to give input on any system until you have experience with that type of system.
bobwinner said:Before reaching difficult raids, the players have to be used to a difficult game.That way, they will be prepared for difficult raids and will accept it as a part of a difficult game, and won't (rage)quit.
You don't need to tell me this. Not once have I asked for all the challenge to be in endgame, so don't pretend that I have been. Yet again, something WildStar handled wonderfully. The leveling dungeons and prime mobs in the open world (at least until the latter were nerfed) provided a great deal of challenge throughout leveling content. Gosh, I remember my first crack at Stormtalon's Lair... eye-opening, and so exciting!
I simply disagree that XP loss and deleveling is necessary for a difficult game.
philo said:I ask you to be patient and wait to give input on any system until you have experience with that type of system.
I'm still here, aren't I? But I also feel obligated to break up the echo chamber sometimes, so that VR realizes that not EVERYONE likes these things.
I do have experience with XP loss, by the way. I played Aion. And in that game, you could just buy back your XP with in-game gold. But I quit at level 30 because of that as well as how the game expected me to do nothing but grind mobs for significant level stretches (there weren't enough quests).
Naunet said:I'm still here, aren't I? But I also feel obligated to break up the echo chamber sometimes, so that VR realizes that not EVERYONE likes these things.
I do have experience with XP loss, by the way. I played Aion. And in that game, you could just buy back your XP with in-game gold. But I quit at level 30 because of that as well as how the game expected me to do nothing but grind mobs for significant level stretches (there weren't enough quests).
We are all glad you are here! I think you have a valid point that you are just trying to break the echo and want VR to know that there are gamers that want some of the modern features. Heck, I'm from the older era and I'd be lying to myself if I said I didnt like at least some of the modern features in games today. I think it is ultimately a healthy thing to have different kinds of players on the forums suggesting what they feel is the best forumla.
I will say this however, I don't believe they should drift too far from what their original vision was, at least not until thorough testing is done. Afterall, VR is a small team with limited funds; They have to bring something unique that no other MMOs today are willing to do in order to secure a particular player base. If VR drifts to far away from the "oldschool" formula then many of the older players may not stick around, then Pantheon will be competing with AAA MMOs with huge teams and budgets.
Avaen said:Don't forget we also had 96% exp rezzes in EQ after each wipe, many with their own click stick. So every wipe you're losing 4% exp and on really bad nights you might be looking at 15 wipes? Which would be 60% of a level (that's a bad night).
That is not how it worked.
The 96% rez return 96% of what you lost, not 96% of a level. So if a death caused you to lose, for example, 6% of a level, a max rez would return 5.76% of your level (96% of what was lost), meaning your net loss was 0.24%. If you died 15 times, receiving max rezzes, you would have a net loss of 3.6% of your level for the evening. Nowhere near 60% of a level. That is either a group with zero rezzes on a bad night or a group that wiped an absolutely astounding number of times with full rezzes (250 wipes in a single evening?).
Naunet said:Avaen said:I think exp loss and de-leveling is a great mechanic and it gently forces people to really think about what they're doing. It's like a sweet kiss from death saying "you can do it" with an evil smile. It causes you to respect the environment in a way that makes an MMO feel wildly alive.I just will never feel that way. Hopefully I can deal with it and the rest of the game is fun enough that it will be marginally tolerable. If not... guess that's it for me.
Don't let the exp loss thing turn you off too much. It wasn't nearly as bad as some are making it out to be. I gave pretty accurate approximations of what was likely to be experienced in my post above.
I'm actually ok with experience loss or not. The reason is because it honestly isn't that big of a deal.
At low levels, even eating a full experience loss death, you kill maybe 2 or 3 mobs (that a group should be targeting, mind you) and you're already back. At higher levels, the full rez almost completely mitigated the loss and again it only took a few group kills to be back where you were. It's honestly not that big of a deal (and I would tell you if it were as I'm not shy about correcting some "misrememberings" around here, and I'm currently playing with experience/level loss which confirms how I remember it.
[Minor addition -- if a person plans to be soloing the whole game then experience loss will take more effort to overcome, as you will likely be targeting lower level mobs resulting in less experience gained/regained.]
Naunet said:I simply disagree that XP loss and deleveling is necessary for a difficult game.
It isn't as much about difficulty as it's more about it making for a player experience multipler: higher highs and lower lows. Without some form of stinging death penalty the risk/reward balance for many of us feels very close to no risk for high reward. With the threat of growing experience (and possibly level) loss the scales balance closer toward equal and finally winning after a long loss/death streak while learning feels sooooo much better, the accomplishment becomes far more sweet for us.
It's like the difference between a practice or pick-up game of soccer (or any sport) vs a league game; You might have fun in the practice/pick-up game but if there are no stakes the win is less exciting. The same reason you don't generally see sports teams going wild in excitement and running around on the field lifting teammates for normal games yet for the wins of high stakes championship games that behavior is common.
Naunet said:philo said:I ask you to be patient and wait to give input on any system until you have experience with that type of system.I'm still here, aren't I? But I also feel obligated to break up the echo chamber sometimes, so that VR realizes that not EVERYONE likes these things.
I do have experience with XP loss, by the way. I played Aion. And in that game, you could just buy back your XP with in-game gold. But I quit at level 30 because of that as well as how the game expected me to do nothing but grind mobs for significant level stretches (there weren't enough quests).
Not just in this post, but most things I hear you asking for makes me think you aren't in the standard demographic that this game is targeting. Hopefully you will find some things you like enough to stay with it for the long run. Who knows, some of the systems that you might disagree with now could grow on you.
The "high highs" and the "low lows" in EQ had absolutely nothing to do with experience loss. Experience loss was nearly unnoticeable.
The real thing in the back of the mind concerning highs and lows was ALL about the corpse. Period. Nothing else was on the radar.
Let's say you've spent who knows how long clearing Vex Thal, and you finally make it to Aten Ha Ra's room. Now, if you were a raiding guild you would've had a mage alt parked in the zone which would help you bypass some of the earlier areas (this was a GOOD thing in spite of what some around here would have you believe, and I'm happy to explain why), but there would still be a lot of stuff between that mage and AHR's room.
So you've cleared up to AHR, you pull, and you wipe. In that moment, nobody gives a rat's hind end about the experience loss because it's almost always irrelevant to anything. You get almost all of it back. (Really, the ONLY way it would matter is if someone in your raid group decided to raid immediately after having killed the mob that dinged you to level 60. But even then, it's pretty unlikely that a fresh level 60 would even be on a Vex Thal raid, especially since you had to go through a fairly lengthy process just to get your key to get into the zone to begin with.) But when you see the wipe is coming you are now realizing all that trash that has just respawned between what is about to be your corpse with all your gear on it and your person which is about to be at your bind point somewhere. That corpse is the ONLY concern. You're not clearing all the respawned trash with everyone naked or in a hodgpodge set of junk gear stowed away in the bank.
Hence the yells for "CAMP A CLERIC! CAMP A CLERIC!"
Any cleric left alive would be trying to move to a non-aggro corner and crossing their fingers that 30 seconds would pass for them to camp to character select before the mob chooses them as a dance partner. You might even have a Paladin or two trying to camp out for the same reason.
See, without that cleric (unless you got lucky with a necro), and with absolutely no way of clearing the trash without your gear, your ONLY recourse is run back to the very entrance of the zone and let the necros start summoning corpses. That means your night is over. You're not going back to clear all the trash between your parked mage and AHR's room all over again tonight. And in addition to that, there may be another guild waiting for you to wipe without a rezzer camped which gives them a pull on AHR. And then if they or another guild kills it that night then that means she's gone for a week so you don't get another chance.
It's all about the corpse. The puny amount of experience lost after a rez is nothing. But death meant A LOT because of what it could cost you in terms of lost opportunity.
philo said:Not just in this post, but most things I hear you asking for makes me think you aren't in the standard demographic that this game is targeting. Hopefully you will find some things you like enough to stay with it for the long run. Who knows, some of the systems that you might disagree with now could grow on you.
There are only two things that could actually be deal-breaking for me: having the only leveling option being grinding mobs for XP, and XP loss/deleveling. Two things out of an entire game. The latter I am willing to wait-and-see on, to determine how impactful it will be on my personal game experience (though not particularly hopeful).
So, time will tell. :)
Searril said:The "high highs" and the "low lows" in EQ had absolutely nothing to do with experience loss. Experience loss was nearly unnoticeable.
The real thing in the back of the mind concerning highs and lows was ALL about the corpse. Period. Nothing else was on the radar.
...
It's all about the corpse. The puny amount of experience lost after a rez is nothing. But death meant A LOT because of what it could cost you in terms of lost opportunity.
You are speaking specifically toward raiding in EQ, I am talking about the other 98% of the game and with the assumption we won't see absurd 96% exp resurrections return. In any other content if you didn't have a cleric then the experience loss was the main contributing factor to the high highs/low lows (especially in low-mid levels) though the corpse run was of course still part of it, depending on the zone. Those times you took just enough damage to not die but get knocked unconscious only to pull out a win and recover felt awesome (and rare), and it wasn't the corpse run that was on the mind in those moments it was the exp loss.
Iksar said:Searril said:The "high highs" and the "low lows" in EQ had absolutely nothing to do with experience loss. Experience loss was nearly unnoticeable.
The real thing in the back of the mind concerning highs and lows was ALL about the corpse. Period. Nothing else was on the radar.
...
It's all about the corpse. The puny amount of experience lost after a rez is nothing. But death meant A LOT because of what it could cost you in terms of lost opportunity.
You are speaking specifically toward raiding in EQ, I am talking about the other 98% of the game and with the assumption we won't see absurd 96% exp resurrections return. In any other content if you didn't have a cleric then the experience loss was the main contributing factor to the high highs/low lows (especially in low-mid levels) though the corpse run was of course still part of it, depending on the zone. Those times you took just enough damage to not die but get knocked unconscious only to pull out a win and recover felt awesome (and rare), and it wasn't the corpse run that was on the mind in those moments it was the exp loss.
It's probably a combination of the two, but every time I had a corpse deep in a dungeon or a raid, my primary concern was getting my gear back. Once I had that out of the way, then came the feelings of remorse when looking at my xp bar. This makes sense from a prioritization perspective, because you literally could not regain the lost experience before you recovered your items. But either way, a wipe resulted in loss of time via a cr, and experience loss, regardless of whether it happened in a dungeon or a raid zone. Those same issues existed in both environments.
Both are mechanisms to make you respect the environment and it really had a profound effect on creating heroes and villains within the community. It was a big deal when someone would train you, just as much as it was a big deal when someone stopped what they were doing to come help you. In some cases, even leaving a spawn camp in the same dungeon or area to help perform a CR. And then the ettiquite would be, you helped us retrieve our things, let us help you get back to your area before we split off.
There's pros and cons to everything.
In this case, there's obvously many who believe the pros outweigh the cons in terms of punishing death penalties. Different strokes...
Naunet said:bobwinner said:Before reaching difficult raids, the players have to be used to a difficult game.That way, they will be prepared for difficult raids and will accept it as a part of a difficult game, and won't (rage)quit.
You don't need to tell me this. Not once have I asked for all the challenge to be in endgame, so don't pretend that I have been. Yet again, something WildStar handled wonderfully. The leveling dungeons and prime mobs in the open world (at least until the latter were nerfed) provided a great deal of challenge throughout leveling content. Gosh, I remember my first crack at Stormtalon's Lair... eye-opening, and so exciting!
I simply disagree that XP loss and deleveling is necessary for a difficult game.
I really disagree with your wildstar statement. Levelling was a joke and none of the dungeons or adventures weren't hard at all. Even at level max you had to start with "adventure gearing" which was a blatant joke with only bugs making it so you could miss the gold rating and thus the Epic reward.
Then came the veteran dungeon and everything was twisted back and forth. Completing the dungeon had little to no value, unless you matched : The timer, the optionnal useless quest, no death at all. Which was the only way to obtain the gold rating and thus the epic loot.
This design emphased not only good play, but min max comp since bosses were way harder to dealth with would you dare to bring more than one melee DPS character, rushed gameplay, cookie cutter specs, etc.. It was not really MMO but more "Instanced Flashmobs" mixed in a tryhard genre with a quit at the first mistake since basically, the dungeon was wasted if you did.
I really found this design unamusing, you weren't competing for completion but you had to complete it with too much specific clauses that made beeing fast the only way to do it. I think it pretty much hit everybody back then since the game became ghostly after most people did hit lvl max, that and the very long, strict and unamusing harmonization quest for raid tier withouth a possibility to catch up friends or simply complete steps in disorder.
The game died and due to that, they changed things into a less "binary" reward style, but the evil was done. While the game had a very precious gameplay (Warrior Damage dealer and Medic ray DPS were really fun to me), a little too jumpy overall, it wasn't well designed. Advertised as an "old MMO style" it was mostly an unflexible crossover between wow Vanilla and guildwars 2, with a lot of flaws despite having distinct strength they couldn't capitalize on.
Iksar said:You are speaking specifically toward raiding in EQ, I am talking about the other 98% of the game and with the assumption we won't see absurd 96% exp resurrections return.
I already covered the other part of the game. And I'm going with the assumption that Pantheon will have adequate rezzes (90%+).
Porygon said:Theres no reason for permanent gear loss. You can make the death penalty severe enough without making people lose everything in the event of an unfortunate situation.
There's absolutely a reason for permanent gear loss - fetching the corpse the gear is on.
There's nothing unfortunate about losing gear on a corpse that has a one week timer. It may suck, but fortune/luck had nothing to do with the gear loss, player choices did. Part of the fear/excitement/adrenaline of doing more and more challenging/dangerous and yes, rewarding content is going higher/deeper/farther into bad areas, knowing that if you die, getting your corpse and your items is going to suck. Take away gear loss, you negate the need for the corpse run and you just got rid of a major chunk of the excitement and thrill of even trying hard content.
Iksar said:90%+ makes death a total joke and they may as well not have a penalty at that point.
In classic Velious, 90% is the rezz clerics get at level 49. OK, you die in a group somewhere in the world, but your group is either lower than level 49 and/or that group doesn't have a cleric. OK, go find that 90% rezz. My cleric in p99 gets tells for rezz plenty, and often times, I am healing for a group and cannot leave. So my rezz is unavailable. Just because players can cast it doesn't mean those players will be there when you need them.
In a raid setting, it's different. You bring the rezzers because death is a guarantee, but you also need many healers. And let us say the max rezz is 90%. Ten deaths later, it's like tyou never got rezzedfrom any of them, because the 90% thing just replaces 90% of what was lost. In current p99, that's around 6-8% of a level depending. But let's say it's 10%. Even with rezz, you lose 1% exp on every death. Now, I am not sure how many times you raided max level content in an MMO, but 10-20 deaths per night is not uncommon when pushing content, and even with rezz, you're going to have to grind back exp or delevel eventually.
Point being, rezz doesn't trivialize the game. You still have to find people to cast it (and take it from a cleric in an old school MMO, there's fewer of us than other classes because the job is tough in groups and worse solo), and you still lose some exp.