Liav said:Literal apples and oranges. World of Warcraft has some of the most challenging raid content of any MMO that has ever existed, as well as a massive amount of diversity. The first 5 years of EQ's life were encounters that you could simply zerg with numbers and auto attack to death. The only people who even remotely had to pay attention were CH rot Clerics and occasionally a tank would eat a DT.
The leveling experience of World of Warcraft is relatively simple and straightforward. However, calling the game "easy" as a whole is simply misleading. Nothing in EQ even remotely approaches some of the challenging content that World of Warcraft has, regardless of if that content is restricted to endgame.
I haven't been as frequent a poster as I usually am around here lately but I do still lurk :P This is one of those that I felt I needed to comment on.
While WoW does have some, albeit little, challenging content, I don't feel that they have "some of the most challenging raid content of any MMO that has ever existed". This is coming from someone that has all current mythic content cleared within 2 weeks of release. WoW mythics are challenging simply because you need to find 20 people that actually know how to play their classes and can adapt quickly to unexpected things. Something that I praise EQ for teaching me. Nothing can force people to adapt faster than being trained on a boss by a rival guild trying to wipe you. Outside of mythic raiding, wow is a complete joke in terms of difficulty. They have dumbed down that game so much that it is literally a shell of what it started as. Yes they have added a ton of conveinence but at the same time they have killed any hardcore aspect of the game.
The early years of EQ were exactly as you have stated. They were slow and in most cases completely relied on having enough people with either no life or the ability to be batphoned at 2am to log on for a boss. So I am by no means comparing current 2016 wow to 1999 eq. That is literally apples to oranges. The advances in pc's, internet, etc. have made it possible for companies to do the things that wow can currently do. This wasn't available back then on most peoples 56k modems. Hell even having 72 people on screen back then usually lagged me. But even then, there was mechanics and things to deal with. Even using your example of CH rot Clerics, if you were one of the first guilds doing the fights wiping and figuring out the correct timings on things made all the difference. 1 Cleric in the rot lagging at any point could mean wipe. Not having sacrifical rangers that knew how to pull threat off tanks to take DT's could mean wipe. Hell I remember us kiting AoW around for almost 10 minutes while clerics rezzed people after being trained by another guild. There were a lot of things that made EQ genuinely unique. Granted not that all of those things made it better or worse just unique.
The challenge in EQ came from the logistical side more than anything. It came from being able to find the amount of people that were active enough to raid when targets came up. This is ofc before pet walling became a thing and you could down bosses with 15 mages. Personally, I hope this is not a thing in Pantheon. Pet walling was one of EQs biggest failures ever in my book. As well as the 72 person raids. I would so much prefer 32 or less man raids. It's a logistical nightmare to keep that many like minded and skilled players together in a game where kills all come down to not skill but amount of free time.
I honestly liked CRs... and folks referenced EQ always being 2 to 3 zones away from your corpse and I feel like that ruined it for me. It started with The Nexus zone..and then was amplified in Plane of Knowledge...and all future expacs included a "hub zone" transport or quick path to each zone after you've travelled there once..
There SHOULD be a risk of losing everything, that is what makes it great and scary and awesome when you succeed playing there.
MMOs are NOT FPS games.....you should have a penalty for death other than exp loss and a 5 to 10 minute inconvience.
Don't forget to read the FAQ, guys:
"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."
This is a really good answer. This tells me that they're shooting for a system in which you lose a noticeable amount of XP, but not enough to make you lose a level, and you cannot lose gear from dying. I think this will satisfy the most amount of people. And everything else is up in the air. Maybe your gear stays on your corpse when you die and you have a period of time to recover it. (as well as a portion of the lost xp) If you don't get to it in time, then maybe the corpse is taken to a separate plane (kinda like EQ's Shadowrest), in which you have to go and pay gold or perform some sort of task to have the keeper of that realm return your gear to you (but the XP is still lost).
Anyway, we're just gonna hafta be content with the FAQ answer until more concrete info is released. I think we can agree they have the right idea.
Gnog said: What is happening again?
This is happening again...
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3353/death-penalty-idea
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3260/death-penalty-idea-s
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1299/the-sting-of-death
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3116/the-fear-of-death
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2558/making-death-impactful
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4305/the-birth-of-the-death-penalty
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3819/a-clear-discussion-on-death-penalty
Times have changed, as have games and players. Many have brought up the benefits of death penalties. The idea of loss, and fear of loss are crucial to many in what makes a game a truly memorable experience. That said, many have stated that they don't have the time that they used to. This includes me! Although very community engaging, corpse runs can be long, boring periods that can turn a player off from the game.
I am all for experience loss on death. I am also in support of requiring a player to "run back" from their bind point (or whatever) to rejoin a party. Resurections should mitigate some of these issues. All of this said, I am not for a requiring a player to find their corpse to get their gear back. Unless the system is set up with a "equipment is disposable" type attitude/economy, this forces (FORCES!) the player to retrieve their corpse. This can be so demoralizing and flat out inconvenient for anyone who happens to have a job/family/pet/responsiblities. I spent to many nights during the velious period in which I lost most of a nights sleep so that I could avoid the loss of my gear. I just cannot do that now. I have responsibilities. Most people do.
I am all for hearing anyones alternative ideas to the classic death penalties. However, long, required corpse runs are just not convenient to the realities of life. Not everyone (most, yes most) will not be in an elite guild with awesome corpse recovery abilities.
EDIT: And as I was writing this Bazgrim put up his post just above. Thank you Bazgrim.
Maybe it would be cool if you see player corpses deteriorating to give you an idea of how long it's been there. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume a corpse remains for 7 real-life days. Rather than having a bare-bone skeleton appear as soon as you die (like we saw in the screenshot), maybe for the first couple days, the corpse looks pretty much just like your character, but for the next couple days, it's basically a pile of rotting flesh. Maybe there's even flies and maggots surrounding it. And then the next stage would be reduced to just the skeleton.
Just an idea - take it or leave it haha
Gnog said: Ha, Thanks! But now which thread should we use? So many options...
Well it's all just speculation right now. Maybe they will explain more during the next stream which way they are leaning. But I bet that would be subject to change. Hopefully it will give us more to talk about though
Liav said:Kilsin said:corpse runs are in right now to a degree (if you die you can run back to your corpse and loot it)
Most disappointing thing I've read here. :(
It is the first iteration man, still a large work in progress and far from its final form, death penalty is something that gets implement in the later stages of development and we know how important it is to the overall gameplay and balance so when the time comes, we will give it the attention it deserves but for now, when we die in game, we needed a way to show that and we have implemented a corpse model and allowed you to loot exp back off it, you keep all your items when you die though for our developer version for our convenience.
Again, this is something that is unwise to judge until it is nearing its final form, we try to keep you folks updated with progress screenshots and posts where we can but judging them each time, before they are fully ready, will just end in unnecessary disputes and crushed dreams :)
Nikademis said:Gnog said: What is happening again?This is happening again...
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3353/death-penalty-idea
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3260/death-penalty-idea-s
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1299/the-sting-of-death
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3116/the-fear-of-death
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2558/making-death-impactful
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4305/the-birth-of-the-death-penalty
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3819/a-clear-discussion-on-death-penalty
The only reason this is allowed to stay open is because it is based on Brad tweet which is our new corpse model and it is speculating on new information but believe me, I was trying to find a way to close it and refer everyone back to one of the many other death penalty threads ;)
Maybe I overreacted. I'm still firmly in the camp that corpses are fine for the purposes of rezzing, but not leaving loot on them. I hope through alpha and beta testing myself and likely others who feel the same way can encourage the developers in a different direction.
I'll just throw my opinion in too. I said earlier in this thread I suspected they were leaning towards recoving a corpse for regaining exp, but I would prefer the player to have to recover their gear from their corpse. I don't feel the loss of exp is enough of a threat - at least I know it isn't for me personally. I feel like there needs to be a 100% reason to go get that corpse, and to really make people not want to die. Basically like how EQ was, but I'd change one thing: the possible permanent loss of gear. Either the corpse can sit there forever or after a certain amount of time, maybe it's sent to say, the character's home city after 1 week? 1 day? 3 days? But no one should ever lose their stuff.
Liav said:Maybe I overreacted. I'm still firmly in the camp that corpses are fine for the purposes of rezzing, but not leaving loot on them. I hope through alpha and beta testing myself and likely others who feel the same way can encourage the developers in a different direction.
That is the kind of feedback we want during testing and I hope everyone carries that attitude forward into the testing sessions ;)
On a personal note, and I don't do this much anymore to stay relatively unbiased and neutral but I am not in favour of full loot being left on the corpse either, I could handle a VG version if I had to of keeping some main items and things stored in a specific bag (VG used saddle bag as you know but we don't have that type of bag implemented at this stage and I am not sure if we will) but I am all for harsh experience loss and death penalties to make people fearful of death, I am even for item degradation like we had in VG, which people hate me for lol, but that is the beauty of personal opinions, everyone has them and when we get to implementing these types of systems, mechanics and features we will be relying heavily on the testers to help us balance them or get rid of them completely if they don't work and replace them with something else that does.
Kilsin said:That is the kind of feedback we want during testing and I hope everyone carries that attitude forward into the testing sessions ;)
On a personal note, and I don't do this much anymore to stay relatively unbiased and neutral but I am not in favour of full loot being left on the corpse either, I could handle a VG version if I had to of keeping some main items and things stored in a specific bag (VG used saddle bag as you know but we don't have that type of bag implemented at this stage and I am not sure if we will) but I am all for harsh experience loss and death penalties to make people fearful of death, I am even for item degradation like we had in VG, which people hate me for lol, but that is the beauty of personal opinions, everyone has them and when we get to implementing these types of systems, mechanics and features we will be relying heavily on the testers to help us balance them or get rid of them completely if they don't work and replace them with something else that does.
Vanguard had item degradation but it wasn't a severe impact on gameplay. EQOA had more severe degradation, generally groups would throw all of the vendor trash loot at their tank after a group so they could afford to repair, as getting hit the most would break their armor faster than anyone else. Plate also had higher durability than other forms of gear, so it was more expensive to repair as well.
Permanent item degradation is what I'm primarily against in that regard. That's one of the issues I take with corpse loot, is that the repercussions of not recovering a corpse involve permanent item loss. I'm all for punishing mechanics but permanent loss of items is way over the line. I think we agree on that, maybe.
Corpse runs are a great way to make friends. People generally are helpfull in games that have them (looking at p1999) because everybody knows how bad a lost corpse is. Things like that tighten community bonds. My preferred way to handle dying would be this:
1) All your worn items and bags stay on your corpse. You lose some xp (like 10% of level), partly regainable by a rez spell.
2) If its impossible for you to get to your corpse (or you just can not find help) you can go to a specialized NPC (or maybe even a PC necromancer) to get your corpse summoned to you. That comes with another xp loss and/or some item degradation that is noticable and not easily shrugged off. So if you are desparate there is always a way to get your stuff back.
Instead of xp loss you could implement an xp dept system (like in the earlier city of heroes). You incurr an xp dept that halves your xp gain until the dept is paid. That way you won't need to implement delevelling and all the problems that come with it (equipment not working all of a sudden, having spells higher than your level etc.).
Bazgrim said:Nikademis said:I see some corpse runs inc on the upcoming Twitch stream ;) Might we even get some answers about Shaman heals (and resurrect)??
lol they've confirmed there'll be no corpse runs. I do hope we see some resurrection/death penalties tho!
That's sad to hear because Corpse Runs made dungeons that much harder and not a casual thing to do. When you go in a dungeon with your friends, because of corpse runs, everyone is on their toes. Everyone works as a team and everyone pays attention and everything seems 10 times more serious and heart racing. Without corpse runs, who cares... just fool around. That kind of gameplay mentality is boring.
Humperding said:1) All your worn items and bags stay on your corpse. You lose some xp (like 10% of level), partly regainable by a rez spell.
And then your power goes out for 2 days and all of your items disappear. You petition a GM and they either tell you they can't help you, or they offer to restore your corpse for you.
You're stuck with XP loss regardless. I don't understand why that isn't bad enough.
Laura said:That's sad to hear because Corpse Runs made dungeons that much harder and not a casual thing to do. When you go in a dungeon with your friends, because of corpse runs, everyone is on their toes. Everyone works as a team and everyone pays attention and everything seems 10 times more serious and heart racing. Without corpse runs, who cares... just fool around. That kind of gameplay mentality is boring.
Have you ever played a game without corpse runs? Fooling around doesn't get content cleared. Having corpse runs does nothing except add a massive time sink to recovering from failure.
If your raid wipes on Phinigel, in its current state, you're still looking at 10-15 minutes of recovery time due to running Clerics bag or logging them back in, rezzing, waiting for mana, buffing, waiting for mana again, then re-pulling.
Corpse runs turn a 10-15 minute punishment into a several hour affair. Punishing death is good, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Investing several hours in fixing a mistake is not how most people want to spend their play time. I guarantee it.
Liav said:Kilsin said:That is the kind of feedback we want during testing and I hope everyone carries that attitude forward into the testing sessions ;)
On a personal note, and I don't do this much anymore to stay relatively unbiased and neutral but I am not in favour of full loot being left on the corpse either, I could handle a VG version if I had to of keeping some main items and things stored in a specific bag (VG used saddle bag as you know but we don't have that type of bag implemented at this stage and I am not sure if we will) but I am all for harsh experience loss and death penalties to make people fearful of death, I am even for item degradation like we had in VG, which people hate me for lol, but that is the beauty of personal opinions, everyone has them and when we get to implementing these types of systems, mechanics and features we will be relying heavily on the testers to help us balance them or get rid of them completely if they don't work and replace them with something else that does.Vanguard had item degradation but it wasn't a severe impact on gameplay. EQOA had more severe degradation, generally groups would throw all of the vendor trash loot at their tank after a group so they could afford to repair, as getting hit the most would break their armor faster than anyone else. Plate also had higher durability than other forms of gear, so it was more expensive to repair as well.
Permanent item degradation is what I'm primarily against in that regard. That's one of the issues I take with corpse loot, is that the repercussions of not recovering a corpse involve permanent item loss. I'm all for punishing mechanics but permanent loss of items is way over the line. I think we agree on that, maybe.
Yeah exactly, the VG version was manageable but still played a small part in keeping the economy healthy, in the early days anyway, and I didn't know that about EQOA, I never got to play it myself, I only played the PC version of EQ for around a year but I am against permanent degrading of anything as the work put in usually deserves a lasting item, in most cases anyway.
We certainly do agree, I think it is a nice balance to hit exp and item durability with a death penalty of some sort but leaving you with all of your earned loot. It will be interesting to see what we end up going with and how well it tests. ;)
Laura said:Bazgrim said:Nikademis said:I see some corpse runs inc on the upcoming Twitch stream ;) Might we even get some answers about Shaman heals (and resurrect)??
lol they've confirmed there'll be no corpse runs. I do hope we see some resurrection/death penalties tho!
That's sad to hear because Corpse Runs made dungeons that much harder and not a casual thing to do. When you go in a dungeon with your friends, because of corpse runs, everyone is on their toes. Everyone works as a team and everyone pays attention and everything seems 10 times more serious and heart racing. Without corpse runs, who cares... just fool around. That kind of gameplay mentality is boring.
Nothing is confirmed yet, we have not fully implemented the death/corpse mechanic so when we do we will get everyone to test it before we make a final decision :)
Liav said:By the time World of Warcraft came out, EQ had already passed what many to consider to be the "classic" era (Vanilla-Velious) by several years. World of Warcraft wasn't even a game yet when EQ became "easy".
That said, the 1999 era of EQ can not be reproduced. Even a server like P99 that is as close as it gets has an entire chat channel dedicated to finding ports. Transportation will never be as challenging as it was in vanilla EQ due to the simple fact that computers, the internet, two decades of MMO knowledge, and various other factors have fundamentally changed the way people perceive MMOs.
Doing away with corpse looting is one of the best changes they ever made to EQ, in my opinion. XP loss is also negligible, which I'm perfectly fine with.
I have been playing P99 for the last 8 months regularly and while it is *usually* easier to find a port than it was during the actual live time frame that P99 is trying to recreate..CRs are still not that trivial of a task (especially for melee who can't bind nearby). The time of day and the place where you need to go play a huge role in how difficult this is. Porting is also just the first step of the CR. You still have to run from the port location to the dungeon (not always that close or easy) and then you have to get to your corpse inside the dungeon without your gear (again..not always a trivial task). Just because CRs are not as difficult as they were doesn't mean they aren't difficult and when you compare P99 of today with virtually all modern MMOs the death penalty is comparitvely brutal.
I think if you are looking for a low risk type of game this is not the right game to be looking forward to. Having a weak death penalty would be completely counter to what this game is supposed to be about. Bringing the risk vs. reward type of gaming back means there has to be risk..and with a weak death penalty there is no risk.
I think Leaving loot on corpses vs a long hairy/scary CR's can be split into seperate issues and discussions.
Leaving loot on corpses can allow exploitations to happen that can assist a the PC's in unintended ways..but it also was a tell tail sign that someone was in trouble and needed help.. I often sought out naked PC's and would port them or offer to port them on my druid.
Maybe a hybrid approach would be to make the "you just died" buff make all of your gear useless/not visible until that buff wears off or is removed...and still leave a corpse until it is rezzed...and it poofs when your rez timer is up?
EQBallzz said:I think if you are looking for a low risk type of game this is not the right game to be looking forward to. Having a weak death penalty would be completely counter to what this game is supposed to be about. Bringing the risk vs. reward type of gaming back means there has to be risk..and with a weak death penalty there is no risk.
I don't really appreciate having my position on gaming labeled "low risk" because we disagree on one specific mechanic. Risk can come in an infinite number of forms. The weakness or hardness of a death penalty can come in quite a few different forms.