This is one of my "hot button" topics. When death is free or so cheap that people suicide to get to another spot in the zone faster as in Vanguard later on, it takes so much away from the experience. A fight is much more fun if losing it has consequences. Though some people like to run around, pull very hard mobs just for fun and jump off of mountains and bridges and I would never say my approach is better than theirs. But it is better for *me* and from what I read here, for many of us. That's why I'll sometimes play "hardcore" mode (later called "permadeath") - if a character dies it is deleted and you start over. So I support a more robust death penalty than is typical these days.
But a very very legitimate counterargument points out that deaths can well be the result of bugs or crashes totally beyond the player's control. Which of us hasn't had the game crash, or the internet crash, or power go out and log in to a cemetary screen? Or been killed by a known and acknowledged bug such as in certain EQ2 instances a mob that should have had its level lowered to match the party that was doing the zone instead hitting like a maximum level mob and one-shotting players. A bug the lazy mothers never bothered to fix (they KILLED Vanguard I don't have to be polite about SoE/Daybreak Gods bugger them with a cattle prod).
So while I can live with a robust death penalty and shrug it off when it is imposed because of a crash or bug the penalty shouldn't be too harsh. I figure these developers can find a balance better than I can ((sucks-up shamelessly)) so I won't speculate on what it should be.
Aradune said:So I've said in the past that the death penalty will be somewhere in-between vanillia EQ and vanilla VG. So there will be a corpse. What is undecided is whether you just need to get to your corpse to lose less experience or whether it will have your items on it (and then is it all items or a subset?). And some other details.
The reason we've not made these decisions yet is that something like the severity of a death penalty needs to be determined during beta so we can tune it such that people respect the environment but aren't discouraged to explore and take risks. Something like this and the details of several other systems really require a decent population of people playing the game, listening to them, watching them, etc.
I think a cool system would be that normal armor will drop on the corpse, however, if you are lucky enough to loot Pantheon's equivalent of no-drop (whatever it's called, if you have it) that it says on your character if you die. Call it Soul Bound, or something. That way players need to decide, "should I equip my soul bound gear that might not be as good, but respawns with me in this dungeon, or equip my better magical gear that will drop if I die".
I know you said limited or no no-drop will be in Pantheon, but I think in certain scenarios it's OK like for planer armor.
I hated dying. Hated long corpse runs. Hated the waste of time.
Did I hate the mechanic? Not really, it kept me on my toes and taught me not to @#$% around and think that I am superman all the time. I used to get mad until I realised most deaths could have been avoided with some simple logic and a little patience. (other than trains or whatever reason of course)
EQ1 punished groups and raids for ignorance, impatience and carelessness, and it punished them hard for it in the form of that nasty death mechanic. People got mad and sometimes ragequit over it, but that stinging burn they felt was usually their own conscience telling them that the death could likely have been avoided by being a bit more cautious, or waiting that little bit longer for more group mana or health or pulling that mob back just a little bit further
I am cool with whatever you guys implement, but for my game experience I hope it leans more on the side of harsh penalty than easy penalty so that death and dying are taken seriously in the Pantheon world
We've all played EQ and we've all dealt with Corpse Runs and if it wasn't for Corpse Runs the world would have felt way different. Those penalties didn't prohibit us from tackling dungeons, they just made is more cautious and plan ahead before venturing forth. I say let us at least test it during Alpha and Beta and see how it goes combined with the collection of new abilities/content that is unique to Pantheon.
So heres a funny senario I was like 15 at the time pulled a all nighter playing EQ. Well next morning I woke up with keyboard prints on my forehead... I had the up arrow smack dab in the middle Of the forehead. Good times, no idea where my corpse was or how to get it. i spent about 6hours running around the zone i woke up in looking for it. I wasnt even sure if i was in the right zone cause my toon was running forward into a wall nakid. I wouldnt change anything even though i was pissed i lost it and ill be honest i was to young to know a gm would help me, well honestly in eq i dunno if they would have helped lol. Anyhow i felt a huge sense of accomplishment once i found my corpse. No clue how much xp i lost or how many times i died.
I think it's important to focus on how the world feels while you are worried about -not- dying. The plan is to spend much more time being alive and well than dying and recovering corpses. When the penalty is not stiff enough to bother you, the world feels much less powerful and immersive (to me, at least), and so it's important to get this as close to perfect as is possible.
My instinct is to want the death penalty to be as harsh as they are willing to make it. Everything stays on your corpse when you die, you lose a big chunk of experience, and you can even lose your level? Sounds great to me. Since there won't be any permanent item loss, seems safe to leave items on the corpse. If you have a bad wipe, or just a bad night, you can take a break to calm down and get some fresh perspective. The corpse and equipment will be there for you when you are ready.
That said, I'm also open to most of the ideas I've read here. Respawn with gear, but your inventory stays on corpse? Obviously have a strong desire to retrieve your corpse, but now it's a bit easier to get to it if fighting is required. Also, you can decide to do other things in game for a while to clear your head before going for the corpse. Respawn with everything, but you have lost a ton of experience that you can only recover by returning to your corpse? I'm good with that one also. I never played Vanguard, but Nikademis posted the original death penalty from that game and it also seems pretty reasonable to me. Experience loss, and equipment stays on the corpse. If you aren't able to recover your corpse the traditional way, you can pay money to have it summoned to you and give up your chance to recover the experience. I think any of these penalties could be effective.
I think the key here is to leave a corpse in the world when you die and to also feel like you -must- return to your corpse before carrying on with whatever else you want to do. If some or all of your items are on the corpse, you'll obviously want to recover them. If you simply lose a chunk of experience that can mostly be recovered by returning to your corpse and being ressurected, they'll have to make sure that (in almost every death) you aren't able to make up that experience more quickly by fighting more mobs somewhere else instead. They'll also have to allow you to lose your level by dying too much or -at least- put in some sort of experience debt system (as others have mentioned in this thread) that requires you to make up all of the experience you have lost before you can start to move the bar again. Not sure that would work for max level characters, though, so I think they'd need the threat of level loss, really, if they want to go with a death penalty that relies solely on experience loss.
I'm okay with any of these mechanics (or any new mechanics that we'd never thought about) as long as they have the desired effect, which is to make it so dying is scary shirt (thanks The Good Place) again. I feel confident that this team will test thoroughly and find the right recipe for this in the end.
Who ever lost their level in just one death in EQ? The only time I lost a level was when I went into a dungeon like Befallen and died. This was usually because no one had equipment to fight back to where the group had wiped. This resulted in a lot of running for your life inside the dungeon and praying you could loot your corpse and run out. After about 10 deaths you might lose a levle or give up. I'm not sure that a minor experience penalty would be enough of a sting to make the world feel dangerous. Lets consider that the ultimate death penalty is perma death and EQs death penalty pales by comparison to that.