I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with EQ at max level. When I played EQ2, they also used an AA system. I believe it was pretty underwhelming compared to what you probably saw in EQ ... it definitely didn't hold up to what I remember from EQOA. From what I can remember, it wasn't really all that difficult to max out your AA when they were released. The level cap was increased to 70 and if I had to guage how much time it took to get to max AA after achieving level cap I would approximate it to be around another 20 or so levels. The main issue I had with the system is that as soon as you finished churning out those AA levels the death penalty once again became meaningless.
The idea behind spirit power would probably function very similarly to AA's but it shouldn't really get to the point where players feel they have to grind out massive amounts of it before being eligible to raid or get in on some of the more difficult content. After spending more time thinking about the idea I have been wondering if spirit power could be used as a form of deity favor. I assume we'll be able to sacrifice gear to earn favor as I have seen a few games do that and believe it was mentioned here on the forums that Pantheon might do the same. If good death prevention habits would allow players to more efficiently gain/manage their deity favor I think it could end up working.
A lot of this depends on what kind of rewards are gated behind acquiring and spending deity favor but if it's similar to what I have seen in the past, it was usually used for temporary buffs. I would be perfectly fine with that but the conundrum then becomes ... would a player be better off just buying gear and then sacrificing it? What if there were 2 separate kinds of favor and they needed to be used in conjunction with each other? For example, in order to unlock a temporary buff you would need X amount of "spirit power favor" and X amount of "sacrifice favor" -- this would make it so that you still have to sacrifice gear but you can never just pay your way out of having good death prevention habits.
I really like the idea of losing something tangible and as far as I know, both de-leveling and permanent item loss have already been ruled out. With that said, what else do players stand to lose? I'm pretty sure armor repairs have also been ruled out or at the very least they are unlikely. I would love an AA system but we probably won't see one until a future expansion. I think something like spirit power or spirit favor or whatever you want to call it could be easy to implement and serve as a stop-gap for the eventual implementation of AA's. The main pain point I wanted to discuss was the idea of the death penalty becoming less potent at max level. I can respect that some people might be okay with that but I know I would feel a bit let down if that were the case. I like to think that the game should feel even more dangerous at max level because that's the point where you stand to lose the most. From what I gathered in that article from Wolfshead, he seemed to share that sentiment.
Yes de-leveling, corpse rot are probably both out. Which I think is a shame but won't stop me from playing.
Loss aversion really only works when you have something to lose that is meaningful.
Temporary buffs aren't really that meaningful, I mean they are temporary so your going to lose them whether you die or not.
Now if there is no summons of corpse and your stuff doesn't rot, ok you may not have access to your corpse/gear for some time if you lose your corpse in a hard to get to area. That could be a good loss aversion motivator in itself but at the price of limiting mechanics that could be done with corpses. IE: Drag, Summon, Rez - which would noramlly be tools in your toolbox to recover from wipes. Would make things more shallow.
Unfortunatly, there seems to be greate resistance to this old school death system, which in pretty much every way scales well to your risk taken and effort put into the game thus far. Maximizing the loss aversion you feel at every level.
So, again how to attain real loss aversion without risking anything? Not really sure how to do that.
I do know that once the loss aversion has been lost :P due to being max level; no risk of leveling down, no risk of losing stuff that it will indeed become much less exciting. Even the journey itself will be less exciting as there is still essentially no true risk. Maybe some debt (meh) which is even more meh at max level.
I would truely like to find a way to experience true loss aversion again without said death mechanic but I personally am at a loss as to how to do this.
-Az
Actually while driving in to work I thought about this.
Perhaps we don't de-level, fine. XP debt serves some minor loss aversion purpose but its not true loss. Still would prefer XP loss as a more constant loss aversion mechanic.
Corpse rotting is out, but there may be a way to change this in some way that attains loss aversion in a meaningful way.
What IF, instead of risking total corpse loss you instead risk losing some items.
Here is the idea:
1. Many items are normally tradeable but could be, for a fee or as a natural stat to any given item, be converted to no-drop items. These no-drop items would no longer be tradeable/sellable and also would not be subject to loss. So there is a way for the player to mitigate item loss but its not free, items such as epic weapons would never be subject to loss because they are no-drop from the start.
2. Upon death you leave all items on corpse (this is in so far as we know)
3. If you do not retreive your corpse and loot its items after some moderate amount of time (7 days, 14 days, 30 days???) then items on that corpse that are not no-drop could be subject to loss.
4. For those items subject to loss, if a mob happens to wonder by, maybe once per day or every other day, a mob can choose to loot one dropable item, increasing that mobs power as it would for a player. The longer this goes on, days or weeks, the mobs in that area would eventually obtain all dropable gear.
5. If a player later kills this mob that item could become theirs, but would now be marked as Original Owner: Player X that died on mm/dd/yy at hh:mm or something along those lines, perhaps items could even ratain a log of ownership in this manner. If the original player later goes there and kills the right mobs, you could get your items back or another player could choose to find you and give you back your items that they recovered for you on their own adventure to the area.
6. If a player, other than the orignal owner comes into possesion of an item, then that item can never be converted to a no-drop item and will forever retain a log of its owners over time.
Now some caviats may apply such as, if your surrounded by rats, then maybe only things like rings and necks could be looted. Afterall how would a rat loot a breastplate or a sword? But if you died at the feet of a humanoid, then perhaps they would find that breast plate and shiny sword a nice find. Also class restrictions should apply so that only casters may be interested in the silk items etc.
And a mob has to be able to find your corpse, if you are quick enough to insure you die in a safe area then no mob may ever find your stuff.
Also along those lines it could be that corpse recovery could in some circumstances be turned into a player made quest. You could offer a reward for x amount of money or some item to any player that delivers your corpse to the nexus stone in the zone. This could allow players to accept the quest and get drag permissions until they are at the nexus stone, at which point they would recieve a reward and you would get a notification that your corpse has been recovered.
To prevent greifing, if the player that takes the quest is no longer in the game, your corpse pops back to its original location and the next player can choose to take up the quest or you can go find it yourself.
The point is though, you probably won't be offering one of these quests unless you really need to. You do risk real item loss but not a total loss and you can mitigate it all together if you want to pay the proper NPC to convert your tradable items into no-drop items. You do however have to get your new loots back to town to be converted to no-drop, so you would risk losing newly aquired items automatically, furthar raising the loss aversion factor the longer you stay in a dangerous area.
It retains a fair amount of loss aversion while also scaling well to the amount of risk taken when you died.
As a side aspect, items that have a log on them may become collectors items over time. The original owner of this sword is the now very famous player yada yada yada and you can decorate your house with these interesting artifacts or something.
Anyway thats my basic thoughts on a way to retain good loss aversion while also mitigating total loss.
-Az
@oneADseven: So I will admit that I have not read every post in this thread in detail. I did skim through trying to make sure I understood the concept that you brought up though.
I don't really see a problem with it, per se, but I feel like it lacks something. The question I kept asking as I read through it was "why do we accumulate this spiritual currency? What's the benefit of having it?" If it's only to prevent us from losing XP on death, it feels a little wasted. I also get the part about having a money sink associated with it too, but that feels a little clunky to me.
So here's a what if:
What if, at max level, you earned spirit power as you suggest, and on death you would lose a portion of it, as you suggest. But suppose the amount of spiritual power you had directly impacted the power level of artifacts in your possession?
- We already know (lore-wise), that one of the things that our characters will do in Terminus is work to acquire artifacts of great power.
- Presumably, those artifacts take the form of nice pieces of equipment - a shield, a dagger, a belt, a cloak, etc, with really great stats.
What if those artifacts had something akin to a set bonus that gave increasing benefits the more spiritual power the wearer/wielder had? Essentially, the longer you could make it without dying, the more "attuned" you become with the artifacts, and the more power they grant to you. Die, and it sets you back, so you lose that bonus until you can build it back up.
Would that be enough to encourage people at max level to try not to die?
I personally like the idea of allowing players to spend the points (or bank them) as they go rather than using them to affect the power scaling of anything you have on you. If they affect the power of artifacts you could run into situations where it becomes a requirement to have X amount of spirit power on your person prior to attempting certain content. This could lead to players not getting involved with risky endeavors because they know they need to have X amount of the resource prior to raid night or whatever. Maybe using the artifacts would consume a portion of your banked spirit power? When it comes to the really challenging stuff I wouldn't want to see it balanced around having X amount of the resource on you because a single wipe would make it so that content effectively becomes harder.
The primary incentive for this extra resource is to give players something they stand to lose (but also something they want to gain a bunch of). You will naturally acquire it during your adventures but you can add a layer of strategy in how players are able to save it up. If you die, you're going to lose some of it. Every time you bank it, you have a choice to make. Do you have enough on you to warrant paying a fee to bank what you have earned, or should you keep pushing forward to try and accumulate more? The longer you go without banking, the more you stand to lose (especially if you die multiple times in a single day because the loss penalty scales) ... but the more often you bank it, the more it costs. The daily/weekly resets for how much you lose and how much it costs to bank it are pretty major considerations.
So in a nutshell, using your example, I absolutely think that it would be enough to encourage people to try and avoid death. But ... it could end up being too encouraging to the point where players aren't willing to push the boundaries and attempt anything risky because they don't want to set themselves back and not be up to par for attempting certain content. I don't think we want to see situations where someone says "I would love to do that dungeon with you but if we die it will screw me for raids tonight." What if our deities granted us access to certain abilities (that are maybe tied into these artifacts you mentioned) but every time you use them it saps some of your banked spirit power? This would allow players to spend their off-time trying to accumulate the resource (and manage their deaths and bank allotments to maximize how much they earn) but also make it so that a death doesn't make your character weaker.
I guess that's what I'm missing - what exactly would players be spending the points on in your envisioned system? You've probably said it three times in this thread and I'm just not picking it up, so apologies. I just feel like there needs to be a carrot to go with the stick, if that makes sense.
I tried to leave the reward part open-ended because things can get out of hand when you start talking about anything shiny. I think the consistent answer to your question would be "something desirable." That's obviously a pretty broad statement but I think it serves it's purpose. Another factor that was mentioned is that players shouldn't be able to fully exhaust the reward tree. This could be accomplished by adding useful consumables or temporary buffs to the mix. What if this resource served a purpose similar to deity favor? What will those benefits be? Nobody knows at this point but I think the expectation is that players will most likely be willing to sacrifice gear in order to acquire it (deity favor). I'm going with that same train of thought but rather than putting an emphasis on sacrificing gear, it would be based entirely around tactical risk vs reward decisions and good death prevention habits.
Another interesting thing to consider is how player strategy can yield different results. The penalty for dying would scale the amount of spirit power lost for each death (resets daily) and the cost to bank it would go up every time you bank it (resets weekly.) It's designed to entice players into acquiring it (everybody wants "something desirable") but to also always respect their environment because they don't want to lose it. It's flexible in the sense that players can bank it (for a cost) but since that cost goes up for every successive banking, it wouldn't make sense for players to just bank it every time they have the opportunity. A risk averse player may be willing to spend a higher amount of gold per week to maximize what they bank whereas the gamblers might try to create an "amount banked vs cost-to-bank" strategy that could reduce their costs if they play their cards right and avoid death.
Either way you look at it, it creates a high stakes environment for max level players and that's something I really hope to see in this game. A big part of the penalty for death through the first 49 levels is XP loss. If you die, it's going to take you that much longer to level up. It costs you time. Once you get to max (and can no longer level up) where does that sense of risk go? You aren't trying to level up anymore so what impact does XP loss (or debt) really have on you at that point? In EQ2, the "ceiling" for that impact was 100% XP debt and increased armor repair costs. As long as you worked that debt off a couple days before the expansion hit, the only difference between a player that died 30 times or 3,000 times was the increased cost to armor repairs. My understanding is that we won't see armor repairs in Pantheon ... but it's not like they were much of a deterrent in EQ2 anyway.
It's possible that you could allow players to bank it while out in the field as well. I think it would be kind of crappy if players make it deep into a dungeon and then decide they don't want to risk pulling a name because they haven't had a chance to bank all the spirit power they earned on the way down. Maybe you can allow players to purchase a token (lore, can only hold one at a time) that they can carry with them and when they consume it, all of the spirit power on their person is banked. In any event, if players are worried about dying because they don't want to lose this resource ... then the system is working. You don't want to scare people off from attempting challenging content altogether and I really don't think that would happen. "Something desirable" doesn't need to be an end-all-be-all type of reward. The more times you die in a single day, the more difficult it becomes to leverage your ability to harness the resource. It is what it is.
Balancing the numbers might be a little tricky but a system like this could definitely be utilized as a "sting" factor for death. How much it stings depends on what kind of rewards are available and how much they cost. Ideally there would be some rewards that have a really high cost that players might have to spend weeks or months saving up for. One person mentioned a utility spell. I think something like that would be fantastic. You wouldn't be able to just mass-farm and crank out this resource over a weekend. You could create long-term goals that will require many meaningful pitstops (bank allotments) along the way. Each and every death is going to put that spell a little bit further out of reach. That sounds similar to how the death penalty works during the leveling up phase and that's pretty much what I was aiming for. Loss aversion should influence player decisions regardless of what level they are.
I wonder if there could be some penalty that's not even tied directly to death? Sorry if this is somewhat off-topic...
As I was remembering about armor repair and whatnot and I remembered how unfair that was in some games since warriors were pretty much the only ones getting armor damage.
That lead me to remember that in some games, including EQ, some classes tended to die a lot (tanks and pullers) and others did not (Clerics were protected above all others in order to be able to recover from group deaths) and death penalties like XP loss were not really 'handed out' equally. Did XP loss at one stage get shared across the group?
Death must hurt, yes, but perhaps any system should consider who is hurt the most? Maybe group deaths should hurt group spirit?
Anyway, I love the concept, 1AD7, but I think the idea of what spirit should 'do' is quite important when it comes to whether the system would work or not... it won't sting or be bothered with if the up-side isn't good, but if it's too good, it'll be tough to balance... Hmm... Nothing is coming to mind - I'll think on it!