Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Let's talk Death Penalty

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    • 3852 posts
    March 25, 2017 7:10 PM PDT

    >Where upon death the Gods summon a player to a PvP situation or would have to complete an assigned task, for the right, to enter the Realm of The Living<

    I don't pvp so no comment on that piece of the quote. Having to do a quest to continue playing the game is not at all a bad idea although it shouldn't be mandatory. Think of a group waiting for hours while the tank tried to figure out how to do the "You bet your life" quest.

    • 332 posts
    March 26, 2017 5:32 AM PDT

    dorotea said:

    >Corpse runs have never made dying less painful..not at least in vanilla EQ<

    Probably I wasn't clear enough - sorry. And I was focusing on general concepts not on how vanilla EQ worked.

    What I meant wasn't that a corpse run was easy or pleasant. What I meant was that if a successful corpse run reduced the cost of dying it, obviously, made dying less painful.

    Thus, if death meant that you lost an equipped item selected randomly from your equipment, which might be the best-in-slot item you spent enormous effort to get, death could be really really painful. Whereas if a successful corpse run let you keep all of your equipped items death wasn't nearly so painful. I've played games with that system. Not recently I hasten to add - not for decades.

    Or if death cost half a level, but a successful corpse run reduced that to 1/10 of a level, having the option to do that corpse run reduces the pain. By 40% of a level. Less the value of the time spent doing the actual run.

     

    I am against auto regain of exp on a death no matter the % regained , just because you are able to perform a simple run to corpse and click stuff. The reason I am against it is simple, it trivializes other class specific abilitys such as res or a necro summon corpse and the option for a viable plat sink (graveyard/repair).

    This not only makes the game easy mode , no matter how you want to justify it but does not bring the community together. There is a reason it is called risk vs reward... this just makes the risk trivial.

    It promotes a more solo aspect that I am against. 

    • 154 posts
    March 26, 2017 2:37 PM PDT

    After thinking about death penalties I realized I was basing my views on other games I've played, EQ in particular. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather nkow more about how much more dangerous Pantheon will be in comparison. EQ in it's original form was hard enough imo. Please don't get me wrong... the tough mobs and the trains kept us alert and aware. Groups also had to be aware of other Group's camps in case we would inherit their mobs. That happened a lot as I recall.

    I'm not so swift to plead for extreme death penalties until I know more about how much tougher Pantheon will be than EQ. For those of us who do want that, we may very well get our wish. The old saying comes to mind " becareful what you wish for because; you may get it...all of it. If that's the case remember we asked for it if the game is so tough that extreme penalties make it virtually unplayable. 

    Note: the reason I edited was due to too many miss spellings. Sorry about that.


    This post was edited by Risingmist at March 26, 2017 2:38 PM PDT
    • 123 posts
    April 1, 2017 11:04 AM PDT

    I'm not very fond of corpse recovery, there are too many ways to exploit corpses as "marks" for using rez as a teleport for example, and at some point death and corpse exploitation became a strategic element to avoid some fights and go quicker in front of a boss. I must also admit that growing older, with professional duties, I cannot consider a CR up to 2 or 3 am the same way than when I was a student or young and dynamic (hum !) worker. By the way, death by itself was not really feared in EQ, it was pretty harmless, I remember guys getting killed in order to go to the bank get an item and being rezzed with cleric stick, it's mostly the impact on connection time and real life that was sometimes painful.

    Basic approaches of death in MMOs are making it time sink, an xp sink, or a gold sink, I would a bit change of point of view and make it a "zone/opponent sink" by applying a cumulative debuff on each death depending on which enemy killed you or on the whole zone in which you got killed. For example, you're on a raid on nagafen, you die once, you get a lvl 1 small debuff on resist fire that last 1 hour. If you die a second time, the debuff gets up to lvl 2, more powerful and lasts 3 hours intead of 1. If you die a third time it gets to lvl 3 and lasts 6 hours and so on, making it impossible to face Nagafen if you die 5 or 6 times for example, with a debuff that last 1 week.

    The goal here is to materialize the fear of what killed you (or the zone in which you were killed, could be a debuff linked to the zone and not to a mob) and to move elsewhere to raid/fight. I like this idea cause it encourages the "quality" of raid/groups that kill bosses in less tries that others. This can be also combined with xp/gold sinks, whatever, these are usually no big deal.

     

    • 267 posts
    April 2, 2017 12:38 PM PDT

    So, I have a ton of thoughts on this topic, most of which have already been covered (I think) but I'm going to hit whats on my mind.

    So obviously this entire topic is about striking a balance between the "Death doesn't matter so let me do stupid things because I can do X and be back to normal in 15 mins or less" and the "Wow death sucks, I could loose days of progess or more if I do anything risky at all". On the one extreme if death doesn't matter then there is no reason not to always push you and your group to the absolute limit because the gains are just too good. On the other side you actually inhibit what people are willing to do in game, and if severe enough could completely kill the "Random" pickup group because why would you put all that at risk with people you don't know. I mean I don't think I need to tell anyone here about what it is like to be in a pickup group that hasn't got a clue in a typical game, I can't imagine what it would be like in a game where you have so much more to pay attention to.

    All this said, I'm in favor of a combination of things, however mostly I like "Options"

    A harsh base EXP death penalty, say 50% of a level or like 6-8 hours of killing/questing or whatever, I feel its important to make death sting, but with that said there needs to be options for reducing that pain, obviously Rez would be a great way to lower the penalty, but 1 thing I don't want to see is any 1 class have a monopoly on the rez gambit. Clerics/Paladins are both candidates for a rez that removes a significant penalty, but I'd also like to see alternatives available from other classes, Druid Rez is one option that makes sense, but what about thinking outside the box with (for example) an Enchanter "Forgotten Knowledge Transfer", that doubles your EXP for the dead player where if you lost 100,000 exp then for the next 90,000 exp you gain you'll get double exp or effectively a 90% rez. I also don't want to see anyone class have the definitive "Best" rez, I'd rather see them approach Rez like they intend to approach spells in general where some will be more effective under certain circumstances. Fresh Corpse? Well Paladins can provide a 95% rez if they rez within 5-10 minutes, Old corpse? Necros can still provide a 90% rez whereas others might have their Rez % drop to 80% or lower. Mind you I'm not saying every class should have a rez but I feel strongly that its best to avoid the EQ model of 1 class being the only ones that actually do it and in fact I'd like to see some scenarios and/or areas where a class that can typical rez, cannot.. such as a desecrated zone where clerics ability to rez has been compromised and so on.

    Corpse Runs, I don't mind seeing them, however leaving all your gear on the corpse, forcing you to keep second and third sets of gear banked to fight back to your corpse or relying on 1 or 2 classes who can summon or drag your corpse out of tight areas is just ridiculous. I think a combination of graveyards that automatically summon after 15-30 mins and allowing players to keep their equipment, while leaving their inventories is the correct move. Or, perhaps a system that leaves everything except soulbound equipment on your corpse if you die, where we have a way of soulbinding equipment that doesn't start as soul bound. Such a system would have a duel effect of forcing players to choose between potentially not having something until they retrieve their corpse in case of death or soul binding the item and never being allowed to sell or trade the item again. In fact I'd rather favor the soulbinding option now that I think of it because it has risks/reward choices tied to it.

    Durability of Items, Assuming they have durability and such, I would like to see a system similar to SWG in place here. Your items would start at max durability when you get them (say 100/100 for common, 200/200 for uncommon and 400/400 for rare) and as you get hit or use them they slowly get damaged (99/100 and so on) and as they got damaged their stats would go down but if you die, can't get a rez and are forced to "Release" then your "soulbound" items take a large durability hit of say 10% or so as they are damaged due to their connection with your character, items left on your corpse wouldn't take any damage beyond the typical wear/tear but you'd have to retrieve them. If you got a rez then maybe some of that damage could reverse but ultimately you'd be forced to repair them yourself after it got soo damaged. The act of repairing would restore their stats to full but reduce the max durability of the item based upon how damaged it was when you repaired it and your skill at repair (95/95 vs 100/100 when new, items would always have no less than 1 max durability so that quest items could be maintained and wouldn't be outright destroyed allowing you to still turn them in). I know durability of items/decay of items often gets a bad wrap because players don't like to loose the items they work hard to obtain but it does have the bonus of generating a healthy player economy and crafting economy as players would frequently need to replace damaged gear / weapons and ultimately when housing is released it allows you a reason to retire your favorite weapons to the wall (one of my favorite things from SWG was after I failed a repair and an amazing item was worthless, I could still plop it on the wall in my house as a display piece like "Look at this amazing item I had/used".

    Get out of jail free card, honestly this is the last and most critical piece of the puzzle to me. I strongly believe that every character should get 1 AA type of ability where it would allow the player once a week to summon/rez 100% the last corpse they made. Make it take 5 minutes to cast, make it only work from a City or whatever, but ultimately give players a get out of penalty free ability for 1 use a week (168 hour cooldown). This allows even the cautious player a chance to push their comfort zone once a week and explore just a little beyond their safe place in the hopes of getting them more comfortable in taking on the risky environments and seeing what the extra risk is worth without risking it all. It will allow the more casual "I need to work in the morning so lets wrap this up" players a once a week, "Dang we wiped, let me just go to bed without a long corpse run". However ultimately it allows the player a choice in testing the deep end of the pool without forcing them to jump in and sink or swim. The AA being on a once a week timer and only usable for 1 corpse only will prevent abuse and would be much better than giving out, for example, 5 - 100% Rez's in a bottle which most players will keep on them but likely never use because of the "I better save this for when I really need it" mentality. (my EQ enchanter still has all her 100% HP and Mana restore potions from expansion preorders because of this reason).

    Hardcore Mode, I'd also like to see the option for a group (as a whole upon starting) could select a harder difficulty that would up the chances of the quest/mods dropping rarer loot but as a result, however any death could be stronger and would block all rez exp restoration (even the get out of jail free aa above) forcing them to take the full max penalty. This really needs to be a knock you on your face if you fall option and while it should offer noticeably more frequent rewards or nicer rewards, it should ultimately fall more on the Risk side of the equation. Give the hardcore players a way to earn their things a little faster and most are bound to use it regardless of if the risks don't entirely make sense.

    • 85 posts
    April 2, 2017 1:14 PM PDT
    So my biggest problem would be corpse rot.

    I have a life, a job, kids, a wife, etc. I can't afford to be "forced" to keep playing to get my corpse back. I may not be able to log back on until next week. Or whatever.

    The first time I lost all my gear, or an entire inventory, because I couldn't stay logged in for a corpse run - I very likely would quit the game.

    I am all for XP loss. Corpse runs / rez to get some XP back would be fine. Loss of 8-10 hours of XP grind for not getting my corpse would be fine.

    But loss of hundreds of hours of work done to acquire gear, es no bueno.
    • 483 posts
    April 2, 2017 1:48 PM PDT

    @Kurgon999

    You got nothing to worry about, no permanent gear loss.

    From the FAQ

    "

    • DEATH

    • 7.0 Will there be a ‘death penalty’?

      We want the player to respect and even fear the environment, but also to be enticed by it. A big part of achieving this balance is making sure there is an incentive to avoid death. While the details of this system are not yet fleshed out (and will likely be tweaked and changed a bit during beta), you can expect death to be something you’d rather avoid. That said, if a death penalty is too severe, it can keep players away from some of the more challenging and rewarding content, and we are keeping this in mind as well. So death will sting, but it will also not involve losing an unreasonable amount of experience, or levels, or a permanent loss of items."

    • 542 posts
    April 14, 2017 1:02 AM PDT

    if all these pages prove anything,its that the thoughts on death penalty vary a lot
    Everyone has their thoughts on death penalty ,often based on how it has been experienced in past games.
    Having everyone agree is near impossible I think but I do like to point out a few things.

    Actually death penalty is one of the few game elements where you can really compare it from game to game and notice
    the huge negative impact convenience has been having on the genre.
    -I can't see a safe way off the cliff,so I'll just jump and kill myself- If death is used as some form of fast travel to bypass certain areas,
    and players are willing to kill themselves just to get out of a situation,it shows what is wrong with these games;
    Just like I mentioned in the Mail handle topic,convenience features are a pest on the genre and might eventually mean the genre totally falls into obscurity
    Convenience works against character attachement,just like how all convenience features work against attachement to the game.
    The death penalty is the perfect system to put in the spotlight to show the effect of convenience features,as in more recent games
    more and more situations arise where it is convenient to just die when things go not the way you want them to.

    Death penalties come in 2 forms;permanent and temporary.
    Permanent;currency,exp loss,permanent death or dropping items,totally naked
    Temporary;players become weaker until they can improve morale.

    Now,drifting between the 2 extremes,you can have those in either direction
    Death is so trivial it is abused by the player ,while on the other side of the pendulum the loss on death is so great that it griefs the player
    and they might rage quit or stop all together.
    I don't think it is either permanent or temporary penalty,a mix of 2 ,without pushing it to one of the extremes is possible.
    Should be punishing enough to prevent death penalty from turning trivial

    So basically,we need a moderate death penalty where players are afraid of dying (players need attachement to their character and the weight of a death penalty influences this)
    A death penalty where player respect the environment,play carefully ,seriously and with forethought (leaving the convenience features behind)
    The desire to play careful also has a positive effect on community and forming bonds I believe.

    If we leave behind convenience features,the game itself will matter more to the players.
    We can't have death penalty as a convenience to bypass areas of the game.(And in other areas of the game ,convenience has the same negative effect,
    but those effects are not as pronounced there so players think nothing of it because it seems trivial)

    Not going to try to reach common ground,just pointing out that no matter what.Having death penalty as a convenience feature is no longer an option if they want to turn things around for the genre.


    This post was edited by Fluffy at April 14, 2017 1:10 AM PDT
    • 19 posts
    April 17, 2017 1:44 AM PDT

    Kilsin said:

    How would you describe the perfect Death Penalty in an MMORPG, and how would you like to see it implemented into Pantheon?

     

    http://on.fb.me/1O36oxL

    The perfect death penalty is one that makes me tenative and stressed that I might die.

    So Exp, possible item loss.

    • 542 posts
    April 29, 2017 12:07 PM PDT

    Like to share some thoughts that have been on my mind for death penalty since the last stream 

    What if death was a series of physical events?
    So if someone in your group dies you have the reversible stage(exception fatal blows?)
    Think of the reversible stage as a period where the group can revive a player on the spot,but in order to do so the group needs some revival initiation points ,gained by neutralizing x hostile target(s)
    For each group member killed, the pressure on the group will increase
    so extra revival initiation point(s) need to be earned for every member that dies.

    The reversible clinical death stage time is calculated individually for each player
    20 seconds flat , the endurance of the character can add 1-5 seconds , the local atmosphere can go from -10 penalty up to + 10 bonus (depends on acclimatization resistance)

    When a player does pass the reversible stage the only way to revive is releasing the corpse
    The group can decide to spent the revival initiation point in order to drag a corpse to the next shrine too
    (if they have initation points left after combat ,otherwise they need to decide if it is worth it taking the risk to gain more initiation points by neutralizing hostile targets with less group members that are still alive)


    This post was edited by Fluffy at April 29, 2017 1:56 PM PDT
    • 74 posts
    April 29, 2017 1:09 PM PDT

    I loved the idea of having to bind to a new city or town and make sure I had that for teleportation and death purposes. It always made traveling a little more dangerous. And it was fun to be able to pick where I was bound rather than having a static graveyard. I also loved the idea of corpse runs and experience loss. In order to make it a bit even more hard hitting, perhaps there could also be a chance that the monster that killed you did a good deal of damage to your equipment, and perhaps your favorite helm got a huge dent in it, either making its durability drop significantly or maybe even making the stats on the item drop. On repair the item the durability and stats would return to normal. On a long journey through a dungeon, do you truly expect your equipment to be unscathed after dying?

    • 175 posts
    April 29, 2017 1:35 PM PDT

    Keldaria said:

    So, I have a ton of thoughts on this topic, most of which have already been covered (I think) but I'm going to hit whats on my mind.

    Rez ... [different rez-type options on different classes]

    Corpse Runs... [soulbound vs non]

    Durability of Items... [diminished stats, soulbound vs non]

    Get out of jail free card... [long reuse timer]

    Hardcore Mode... [choose the level of penalty, as long as it's still harsh for the minimum]

    Really liked each of these ideas. Kudos on the great post! It'll be interesting to see what they put in, but I'm glad they're clearly waiting for alpha/beta to set anything in stone on this, especially on this.

    • 416 posts
    April 29, 2017 3:01 PM PDT

    Aethor said:

    While Pantheon is not EQ 1, people recommend features from EQ 1 because they worked in long term.

    These features and design decisions made people play EQ 1 year after year for more than a decade, which is more than any game in the history of computer gaming ever did.

     

    Now, specifically about the death penalty: IMO it should be EQ 1 without any graveyards.

    Why?

     

    1) Death should hurt

    2) Careful playing should feel different than mindless mistakes

    3) Interdependency should be encouraged.
    If I want my corpse summoned, I should have to get a necro or SK to do it, a live player, not go to a graveyard or some sort of a temple and click on the game UI.

     

    EQ 1 death penalty was not bad at all. You would not lose items unless you let your corpse rot for a month or so. If you cannot recover it, it was always possible to summon corpse. The only difference I would make - there should be no zone in which corpse summon is disabled. Corpses must be recoverable, and if that has to be limited in order to prevent content skipping, make them summonable at zone entrance at least.

     

     

    My stance as well.

    • 160 posts
    April 29, 2017 9:51 PM PDT

    Thorndeep said:

    Aethor said:

    While Pantheon is not EQ 1, people recommend features from EQ 1 because they worked in long term.

    These features and design decisions made people play EQ 1 year after year for more than a decade, which is more than any game in the history of computer gaming ever did.

     

    Now, specifically about the death penalty: IMO it should be EQ 1 without any graveyards.

    Why?

     

    1) Death should hurt

    2) Careful playing should feel different than mindless mistakes

    3) Interdependency should be encouraged.
    If I want my corpse summoned, I should have to get a necro or SK to do it, a live player, not go to a graveyard or some sort of a temple and click on the game UI.

     

    EQ 1 death penalty was not bad at all. You would not lose items unless you let your corpse rot for a month or so. If you cannot recover it, it was always possible to summon corpse. The only difference I would make - there should be no zone in which corpse summon is disabled. Corpses must be recoverable, and if that has to be limited in order to prevent content skipping, make them summonable at zone entrance at least.

     

     

    My stance as well.

     

    Hear, hear.  A lot of good points here.  I'll never get it though...I had a lot of fun doing corpse recoveries...many were very challenging, and as a result...satisfying.

    • 119 posts
    April 30, 2017 1:26 AM PDT

    i also like how EQ handled it. but to correct the above info a little: death (without rez) cost you at least one hour worth of play time in exp. that's not negligible. corpses rotted after one week. corpse summons (as well as rezzes) were only available at high levels. and summons were expensive as well. but usually you got people to help you out by finding and dragging your corpse, or fight down with you, which is again a "community feature".


    This post was edited by letsdance at April 30, 2017 1:27 AM PDT
    • 902 posts
    April 30, 2017 4:05 AM PDT

    I offer my experience of a bad death situation that stuck with me since EQ1. I had just got the hang of the game and I was out growing Qeynos Hills and decided to explore. I zoned into West Karana and marvelled at its expanse and mobs. I wandered about conning everything when I saw a hill. "Great place for a view", I thought. Up I ran, straight into Froon or Choon or something. I stopped short and hadn't agroed him. Phew, I thought and started to back away when out of nowhere, I got clobbered from behind. Doh! Two of them! Anyway, I was way to young for them and my corpse was smack bang in the middle. No way could I get to it. I wasn’t in a guild and only made a couple of friends who weren’t on line. I honestly thought I had lost my gear.

    Out of nowhere, a ranger just ran up to me and offered help. Alone he was no match a pair of cyclops. But in he ran, grabbed my corpse, pulled it out, dropped it in a safe place and ran for it. That’s all I ever saw of him or her. It was a long time ago and I am sure I don’t have the exact course of events, but that was essentially it.

    Death was painful. XP debt and corpse runs in (obviously) very dangerous areas. That episode alone taught me to respect the terrain, it taught me that games should not be easy and it also showed me how valuable a simple act by one person could mean so much to a total stranger. No gold transfers, no debt, just a "Thank you" and a "Your Welcome."

    I'm very mixed about death penalties. On the one side, I think anything that makes you stop and think about what you are about to undertake, strategize and implement is a good thing. On the other hand, a tiny mistake could waste a whole night for you and probably your party too.

    I think a slap on the wrist is a good thing if you do something dumb (xp loss). I have fond memories and loathing for corpse runs in equal measure, but on the whole, I could live with it again. I am not fond of having to pay in coinage for a death, though. Some death sickness effect, I think would be acceptable, especially with all the other effects going on in the game (climate, magic colour, etc.). It makes sense to me.

    I always found, when I got into a bad situation, usually, there was someone around who could and did help (and vice versa). Any death penalties should encourage social participation too.

     

    • 175 posts
    April 30, 2017 4:59 AM PDT

    chenzeme said:

    ... I'm very mixed about death penalties. On the one side, I think anything that makes you stop and think about what you are about to undertake, strategize and implement is a good thing. On the other hand, a tiny mistake could waste a whole night for you and probably your party too.

    If a "tiny mistake" costs you/your party an entire evening of play, should probably reconsider what you consider as the mistake.

    I get your point though. There is definitely a balance to be had. I'm all for a harsh death penalty, something well beyond "annoying". The only way it works effectively, though, is if the enjoyment of living outweighs the pain of dying. I don't think many of the games of today could sustain a harsh death penalty. They're not nearly fun enough for that kind of anxiety.

    • 902 posts
    April 30, 2017 5:36 AM PDT

    Archaen: If a "tiny mistake" costs you/your party an entire evening of play, should probably reconsider what you consider as the mistake.


    Maybe an exaggeration to say a whole night, but if a wipe happens because of a bad pull, unexpected mob popping, a train, etc, etc, and that happens deep in a dangerous area, then I still think it could take a significant amount of time to recover. Zones seem big from what I have seen. Fairly dense with mobs. So, all in all. I think I stand by my exaggeration. Im not sure on the mechanics of a group wipe and how people will get back to where they were, naked. Lets just hope repops are fairly far apart. ;-)

    And, yeah lets hope that Pantheon does live up to our expectations for being fun with tons of anxiety.

    • 1921 posts
    April 30, 2017 7:36 AM PDT

    Having to get back to your corpse to recover some XP, sure.

    Having to get back to your corpse to recover all your items? That's... problematic.

    I don't mind the idea in principle.  It's internally consistent.  The issue is this, which happens every day in every game that uses a mechanic like this:  You lose your corpse.  What do I mean?  I mean you fight back to where your corpse is, everyone else can see their corpse.  Everyone else gets their xp, items, and/or rez's, but your corpse is not visible.  You relog.  Same thing.  Now what?  Necro/DL says: Sorry, there is no corpse in this zone to summon. *gulp*  /petition.  Miraculously, a GM is there, and says the same thing: Sorry, there is no corpse in this zone to summon, submit a ticket.  /pray?  Days later, Ticket comes back:  There is no corpse for your account in that zone to recover, sorry.

    This is why EQ1 stopped putting items on corpses and implemented graveyards.  No matter what, your corpse would end up there.  Even if the zone crashed and/or all your groupmates wi-fi was struck by lightning, you could at least recover the corpse and/or get a rez if all else failed before the rez timer expired.  Given the operational and transactional nature of MMO's, I am strongly in favor of such a system to cut down on CSR load and petitions.

    So, maybe put in a 1 hour timer on the graveyard summon, and make it so you can recover XP for 2hr, but put a looong timer (many days) on item retrieval if that's going to be a thing.

    But you know... I'm not sure it's worth it.  Having to track items on player corpses makes it a do-or-die transaction.  When a server or zone crashes.. do you want to risk the loss of all the items of a player or players, just because you want to force two more clicks on the player? (right click loot, click loot all) Because really, that's what it amounts to, in the end.  There's also the issue of corpse banking which... yeah, not even getting into that.

    • 3852 posts
    April 30, 2017 9:20 AM PDT

    >I'm all for a harsh death penalty, something well beyond "annoying". <

    I've made it clear that I support a death penalty strong enough to make death painful and something that people should go to some effort to avoid.

    But VR should - and doubtlessly will - keep in mind that death will happen for reasons totally beyond player control such as crashes and bugs. Or someone else deliberately training you (here I'm in the minority - trains shouldn't be allowed to do that - other players shouldn't be able to kill you deliberately on a pve server).

    Since they cannot have a death penalty that differentiates between death due to carelessness and death due to bugs and crashes they really can't have one that is TOO strict.

    On the other hand - they can have a system where each time you die within a reasonably long timeframe the penalty gets stricter. If the game is going to routinely crash three times an hour none of us will care about the penalty we will all be gone after a few months. So having a real but limited penalty for the first death and a rather ...harsh penalty for the fifth death will both discourage carelessness (we will want to save that first death in case we need it) while ameliorating the pain of crashes and bug-deaths. No disrespect to VR both crashes and bugs are inevitable though if they do the good job I expect they won't be common.

    • 1303 posts
    April 30, 2017 9:38 AM PDT

    Archaen said:

    chenzeme said:

    ... I'm very mixed about death penalties. On the one side, I think anything that makes you stop and think about what you are about to undertake, strategize and implement is a good thing. On the other hand, a tiny mistake could waste a whole night for you and probably your party too.

    If a "tiny mistake" costs you/your party an entire evening of play, should probably reconsider what you consider as the mistake.

    I get your point though. There is definitely a balance to be had. I'm all for a harsh death penalty, something well beyond "annoying". The only way it works effectively, though, is if the enjoyment of living outweighs the pain of dying. I don't think many of the games of today could sustain a harsh death penalty. They're not nearly fun enough for that kind of anxiety.

    A tiny mistake should be all it takes to cause significant pain if the mistake is made in an encounter with the greatest possible rewards. I will grant you that in a basic dungeon grind group a tiny mistake shouldnt be enough to cause a wipe, let alone lose significant playtime recovering. But if the tiny mistake is a raid on a mob that is higher difficulty than your guild is geared/practiced/disciplined enough to tackle, then a mistake should be down-right dibilitating. 

    • 1778 posts
    April 30, 2017 11:26 AM PDT

    So what then? The greater the risk vs reward the greater the penalty? Could a system like that work?

    Also what about what Project Gorgon does with death curses? If you die to a boss you could get hit with a nasty curse that doesnt go away until you defeat that boss mob. Imagine a curse like half mana regeneration, or double stamina costs to abilities........ until you go back and get revenge.

    • 12 posts
    April 30, 2017 2:36 PM PDT

    I'd like to see a death penalty similar to EQ.

    • Exp Loss, with possibility to lose level
    • Items stay on corpse until looted, with a week or so before the body decomposes. Two days or so timer on regaining experience via resurrection.
    • Return to bind location
      • Soulbinder NPCs in major cities
      • Spellcasters have the ability to bind groupmates, with consent
      • No binding in dungeons

    Some things that differ from EQ that I would be onboard with would be:

    • Regional graveyards (not necessarily a GY per zone, but maybe a couple per continent).
    • Corpse pops at graveyard after 24 RL hours or so. This is mainly to prevent item loss if you have a bad day running from mobs and die in the middle of a lake.
      • Resurrections occuring at a Graveyard have a res penalty (Half of the experience regained from the spell... Eg. 96% rez would only be 48% in Graveyard)

    I think the corpse run is one of the main reasons to fear death. Experience can be regained, almost in its entirety, if there are resurrections in the game.

    • 123 posts
    May 1, 2017 9:50 AM PDT

    Corpse runs and death penalties are not really a problem for players that spend 10 hours a day or more on the game, but are a pain in the ass for players that spend less than 3-4 hours a day.

    If you spend for example 1h or more to go deep into a dungeon and die there, you have to spend at least the same amount of time to go there get back your corpse, and probably more considering you are naked or nearly naked. If you play 10 hours a day or more, it's not a problem, but if you play 3-4 hours a day your gameday is ruined, that's the reason why many players that cannot spend too much time a day cause of work or family did go play WoW instead of EQ, because they wanted their gameday being a fighting day, not a 'corpse run day' or a 'sit and wait at bind point day'.

    Many people talk about fear of death, but is death feared when big guilds can make 20 tries on a boss in a row ? I don't think so. Death is not feared the same way depending on how much time you play, exp loss and corpse runs are not painful when you have a huge playtime. The global meaning of death penalties is saying to the player : "this area is not for you, it's too hard, go play elsewhere", so if a guild is able to make 20 tries on a boss in a row, then the message is broken. I like the idea of being feared by what killed you, getting a long and cumulative debuff that makes you less and less able to succeed in killing it, then each death would be important no matter how much time you play per day. That could also be a solution against too much camping and encouraging mobility.

     

    • 902 posts
    May 1, 2017 12:09 PM PDT

    Feyshtey: A tiny mistake should be all it takes to cause significant pain if the mistake is made in an encounter with the greatest possible rewards. I will grant you that in a basic dungeon grind group a tiny mistake shouldnt be enough to cause a wipe, let alone lose significant playtime recovering. But if the tiny mistake is a raid on a mob that is higher difficulty than your guild is geared/practiced/disciplined enough to tackle, then a mistake should be down-right dibilitating. 

    I think my point is getting a little bit skewed. I was not complaining that mistakes shouldn't cause wipes or be punished. They most definitely should do so, in raids or PVE. If I or a party member does a dumb thing then I am absolutely fine with being wiped and getting a penalty because of it, but (specifically in PVE) there has to be a way to get back to your equipment without doing a naked run through hostile territory which can take longer than the original progression took. It shouldn’t be a piece of cake, but, if it took you an hour to get to where you wiped fully equipped, then it will take considerable longer being naked. That isn’t fun and should not be what the game is about. XP loss, fine. Death sickness, yup. Temporary stat adjustment, fine. Just allow a group to get back their equipment relatively easily, so the fun can begin again. Personally, I’m fine with corpse pulls, soul runs and/or player summons. Make the death penalties apply to actual game play, not to the amount of time it takes to get the party back together again.

     


    This post was edited by chenzeme at May 1, 2017 12:09 PM PDT