I think it is fairly obvious that whether you use the term hardcore, old school, challenging or the like Pantheon is intended to be slower paced and more difficult than is typical today - by a significant amount. While many things may change before release - this is such a basic part of the concept that it is unlikely to. If I had to pick two things that will make Pantheon different, this is one.
It is equally obvious that Pantheon is intended to strongly encourage social play more than is typical today and that includes both strong encouragement for grouping and more focus on other means of socializing such as guilds. This is quite distinct from being difficult and slower paced - a purely solo game can be slow and difficult while a group-focused game can be trivial. Thus to me this is the other core distinction. There are other core goals but these are really basic.
I expect and hope that the early levels will reflect these, but will lead new players into it more gradually. Levels 1-5 or 1-10 will be harder than the same levels in LOTRO or Rift or SWTOR but much of the content will be soloable and no class however group-focused will be unable to solo. I may well be wrong about there being no death penalty at early levels - perhaps I should be wrong. Folks should see how the game works and what its philosophy is.
To correct myself - rather than no death penalty at low levels a death penalty that isn't too discouraging. No loss of levels, and death costing only an amount of experience that can be regained fairly fast. Either because the death penalty formula is more lenient or because experience is easier to gain at low levels. The latter being typical in old school games - 49-50 always took a lot longer than 2-3.
i hope they dont go overboard. vanguard was fine by me but even then the death penalty made PUGs absolutely suck. the harder the death penalty the less risk people take. pugs go so slow, you can solo faster and most important class isnt tank or healer, but feign death/aggro dump classes. generally unless the death penalty is draconian, like hours of grinding xp, it doesnt matter to people raiding anyway. just get a group or even a raid and chain pull massive numbers of trash mobs (solo or group mobs a level or so below) to powerlevel back up.
anyway, unless it is permadeath it doesn't really matter. i do get concerned about delevelling as content will change, abilities lost, gear unequiptable, which leads to bugs being introduced.
edit: i remember looking at the vanguard players leaderboards and the vast majority on the death count leaderboard were members of the top progression guilds because death penalties just don't matter.
alephen said:i hope they dont go overboard. vanguard was fine by me but even then the death penalty made PUGs absolutely suck. the harder the death penalty the less risk people take. pugs go so slow, you can solo faster and most important class isnt tank or healer, but feign death/aggro dump classes. generally unless the death penalty is draconian, like hours of grinding xp, it doesnt matter to people raiding anyway. just get a group or even a raid and chain pull massive numbers of trash mobs (solo or group mobs a level or so below) to powerlevel back up.
anyway, unless it is permadeath it doesn't really matter. i do get concerned about delevelling as content will change, abilities lost, gear unequiptable, which leads to bugs being introduced.
edit: i remember looking at the vanguard players leaderboards and the vast majority on the death count leaderboard were members of the top progression guilds because death penalties just don't matter.
Countering things is not trivializing them, and forcing pug's group to be carefull and not reckless and dumb is by far more interesting than just letting the game be another scuicide rush game.
You die, you loose exp, and you have to get it back instead of just shrugging of and doing it again, griefing then comes at a risk, rushing comes at a risk, solo dungeon exploration comes at a risk.
While the risk is only to loose a few hours of play for each death, it remains a risk and a timesink that devaluate recklessness and improve immersion, because as long as you are concerned about dying, you just emulate survival instinct.
If you can solo faster than cautious pugs, then it's a design error, carefull but effective teamates should be a reward by itself, and will probably be in Pantheon.
And of course tryharding bosses will results in more death count, but since you are sure to get an xp recovery rez, it's a risk worth taking.
I am completely fine with old EQ1 rules. That being said my change would be to low level corpses. It makes less sense for a low level player to have less time to get their corpse than a higher level player because if they were like me they will get lost and die a few times trying to find their body.
I'm in favor of the same system they used in EQ...that said I agree with Joppa's take on it (from 2015):
Joppa said:I have never felt fear in a video game the way EQ1 made me feel it, and always at the brink of death.
But you know, if I think back carefully to the near-death experiences I can amazingly still remember (a testament to how powerful and real the emotion was), it rarely had to do with experience loss. It almost always involved the times when I was unbelievably deep in a dungeon, or had crawled too far into an area I wasn't strong enough to be in, things would start to go bad and then the fear would hit me: if I die, I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to get back to my corpse. Or I would be rooted and getting nuked to death by a Festering Hag in Unrest and realize I was still bound in Ak'Anon... or I was over-run in the Cazic Thule maze and completely lost - if I died in there, how would I ever find my body, much less get back to it - and I have to run back all the way from Freeport?
To me, 'naked corpse runs' are much more punishing than experience loss, and they actually invoked fear in me, not just frustration.
*DISCLAIMER* This post is not intended to imply any design direction we're taking with the death penalty. I think experience loss can serve a very legitimate purpose as well. I'm merely giving my opinion on what aspect of death stings the most to me!
philo said: Naked corpse runs are in game. You will have to retrieve your gear.
And this is great. Give me experience loss with that and I am good to go. I would prefer not to lose my level like in EQ 1 and I believe I read that they were not going to have this. Death should sting and it will be interesting to see the testers feedback on this.
Death *has* to hurt. If that means you are very cautious, fine. If you're that type of person that would rather only do the safe stuff because you might die then *shrug* I don't doubt you will be able to do that and can make sure you get in with a good group for more tricky stuff.
Death penalty, like the difficulty of encounters, is absolutely fundamental to the feel of old-school MMORPGs for me. If it's easy then it's not really fun.
Fear of death is what gives joy of life.
As much as that naked corpse run is terrifying and perhaps (as you die multiple other times) is aggravating, eventually, the elation is magical *because* of how rough it was and, since you probably had to ask for help from another group, you also just made some new friends, or at least some new debts. Either way, the social aspect is excellent.
It'll get tweaked in Alpha and Beta, but I truly hope they err on the side of TOUGH.
MauvaisOeil said:alephen said:i hope they dont go overboard. vanguard was fine by me but even then the death penalty made PUGs absolutely suck. the harder the death penalty the less risk people take. pugs go so slow, you can solo faster and most important class isnt tank or healer, but feign death/aggro dump classes. generally unless the death penalty is draconian, like hours of grinding xp, it doesnt matter to people raiding anyway. just get a group or even a raid and chain pull massive numbers of trash mobs (solo or group mobs a level or so below) to powerlevel back up.
anyway, unless it is permadeath it doesn't really matter. i do get concerned about delevelling as content will change, abilities lost, gear unequiptable, which leads to bugs being introduced.
edit: i remember looking at the vanguard players leaderboards and the vast majority on the death count leaderboard were members of the top progression guilds because death penalties just don't matter.
Countering things is not trivializing them, and forcing pug's group to be carefull and not reckless and dumb is by far more interesting than just letting the game be another scuicide rush game.
You die, you loose exp, and you have to get it back instead of just shrugging of and doing it again, griefing then comes at a risk, rushing comes at a risk, solo dungeon exploration comes at a risk.
While the risk is only to loose a few hours of play for each death, it remains a risk and a timesink that devaluate recklessness and improve immersion, because as long as you are concerned about dying, you just emulate survival instinct.
If you can solo faster than cautious pugs, then it's a design error, carefull but effective teamates should be a reward by itself, and will probably be in Pantheon.
And of course tryharding bosses will results in more death count, but since you are sure to get an xp recovery rez, it's a risk worth taking.
kill one (group of) trash mob(s), wait until 100% then pull next mob, rinse and repeat, may well be more interesting than a game with penalty-less death. it is not interesting, at least to me. I would rather solo even if it took 10 times longer. (i would rather pull some extra rl work so i can go on my next trip a bit sooner) in my case, no worries, I will wait for a guild group. I am fortunate to play with some very good players, if they are unavailable (or just particularly annoyed with me,) then i can craft, which is likely solo anyway. something like 10 minutes per death with recovery, 1 hour if you absorb the death and call your gear leads to a much more interesting game to me.
as far as heavy xp loss affecting griefers. you are assuming their aggro dump fails or they havent a rezzer. in fact, it makes griefers FAR more effective. griefers usually 1) dont care about dying (quitting, hacked account, can exp quickly) or 2) have a plan. if you get rid of one of the first set, they just need to slightly adjust. it is MUCH harder for the griefed to always be prepared to be griefed.
so there is the answer i suppose, if you can be sure to get an xp recovery rez in a hard boss, you can anywhere. so just power level with a FDer/aggro dumper or box an out of group rezzer safely behind the group. poof death does not hurt. dragging a boxxed toon is tedious, but it is better than needing to grind 3 more hours.
/meh, i doubt the devs care what i think. i am ok with that, but the more the game emulates real life, the more i think, 'i got real life for that, and real life has cherry blossoms in tokyo. and rainstorms in rome, and missing a kangaroo by about 4 inches while driving 40 miles from anything, and floating villages in cambodia, and...'. i think the irritation i get about these forums is the underlying feeling that many, maybe only some, posters (and not the above quoted, necessarily) seem to feel like the game HAS to be the way THEY want it to be. the game does not HAVE to be severely punishing to be fun....
it is perspective, i guess. i have never considered grinding to be hard, and death penalty is artificial, lower dev investment needed grind content. (i died, i need to redo 3 hours killing the mobs i was killing the last 3 hours, yay!) thus 3 hours worth of content is now 6 hours worth of content. the most fun games to me have always been difficult ones, which is why i love raiding so much. i suspect that is much harder to program, and without adding artificial grinding would take programming 6 hours of content to have 6 hours of content.
stupid ai mobs with high hps or mitigation that take forever to kill? yawn - even if they are group balanced.
stupid ai mobs that you have to kill for 40 hours to level? program my g15 amd watch the game.
questlines with interesting storylines? fun even if they are long.
mobs that require more planning and coordination? fun even if they take a long time to kill. (bosses, particularly raid mobs, usually fit this mold. trash almost never.)
disposalist said:Death *has* to hurt. If that means you are very cautious, fine. If you're that type of person that would rather only do the safe stuff because you might die then *shrug* I don't doubt you will be able to do that and can make sure you get in with a good group for more tricky stuff.
Death penalty, like the difficulty of encounters, is absolutely fundamental to the feel of old-school MMORPGs for me. If it's easy then it's not really fun.
Fear of death is what gives joy of life.
As much as that naked corpse run is terrifying and perhaps (as you die multiple other times) is aggravating, eventually, the elation is magical *because* of how rough it was and, since you probably had to ask for help from another group, you also just made some new friends, or at least some new debts. Either way, the social aspect is excellent.
It'll get tweaked in Alpha and Beta, but I truly hope they err on the side of TOUGH.
even if they put in permadeath, it is still a game, you dont actually die. you get to reroll. comparing a toon death to actually dying is absurd.
a better comparison is like getting a cavity. and arguing that if they increased the sugar in candy people would eat less due to not wanting cavities. if you are really bad: gum disease, maybe dentures.
i have had one cavity in my life, and have never been elated about not having cavities, as much as i prefer not to. i eat alot of candy.
i have met my dentist and hygenist. they are nice people and pleasant to chat with, so the social aspect is there.
Personally I'm not a fan of the corpse run method.
I liked the XP debt in EQOA because you could still explore, test, raid without the fear of losing everything.
Maybe if you have options to get gear back other ways. Rez, full release, etc that have penalties involved with them also but not game breaking
Maybe a penalty to get gear back would be 90% reduced damage, healing for a hour of active play time. (Have to be logged in)
I just know from real world discussion on this that many feel they would never explore dungeons/raids with a new group if they had to worry about a corpse run.
The other discussion was constant turn over in groups if people feel you have weak links in the group so they have no desire to continue with the group which leads to less grouping, more downtime.
*Also a side note even Lassiz in the stream noted he isn't a fan but it has some points for keeping it.
I hope they work to strive to that.
alephen said:MauvaisOeil said:alephen said:i hope they dont go overboard. vanguard was fine by me but even then the death penalty made PUGs absolutely suck. the harder the death penalty the less risk people take. pugs go so slow, you can solo faster and most important class isnt tank or healer, but feign death/aggro dump classes. generally unless the death penalty is draconian, like hours of grinding xp, it doesnt matter to people raiding anyway. just get a group or even a raid and chain pull massive numbers of trash mobs (solo or group mobs a level or so below) to powerlevel back up.
anyway, unless it is permadeath it doesn't really matter. i do get concerned about delevelling as content will change, abilities lost, gear unequiptable, which leads to bugs being introduced.
edit: i remember looking at the vanguard players leaderboards and the vast majority on the death count leaderboard were members of the top progression guilds because death penalties just don't matter.
Countering things is not trivializing them, and forcing pug's group to be carefull and not reckless and dumb is by far more interesting than just letting the game be another scuicide rush game.
You die, you loose exp, and you have to get it back instead of just shrugging of and doing it again, griefing then comes at a risk, rushing comes at a risk, solo dungeon exploration comes at a risk.
While the risk is only to loose a few hours of play for each death, it remains a risk and a timesink that devaluate recklessness and improve immersion, because as long as you are concerned about dying, you just emulate survival instinct.
If you can solo faster than cautious pugs, then it's a design error, carefull but effective teamates should be a reward by itself, and will probably be in Pantheon.
And of course tryharding bosses will results in more death count, but since you are sure to get an xp recovery rez, it's a risk worth taking.
kill one (group of) trash mob(s), wait until 100% then pull next mob, rinse and repeat, may well be more interesting than a game with penalty-less death. it is not interesting, at least to me. I would rather solo even if it took 10 times longer. (i would rather pull some extra rl work so i can go on my next trip a bit sooner) in my case, no worries, I will wait for a guild group. I am fortunate to play with some very good players, if they are unavailable (or just particularly annoyed with me,) then i can craft, which is likely solo anyway. something like 10 minutes per death with recovery, 1 hour if you absorb the death and call your gear leads to a much more interesting game to me.
as far as heavy xp loss affecting griefers. you are assuming their aggro dump fails or they havent a rezzer. in fact, it makes griefers FAR more effective. griefers usually 1) dont care about dying (quitting, hacked account, can exp quickly) or 2) have a plan. if you get rid of one of the first set, they just need to slightly adjust. it is MUCH harder for the griefed to always be prepared to be griefed.
so there is the answer i suppose, if you can be sure to get an xp recovery rez in a hard boss, you can anywhere. so just power level with a FDer/aggro dumper or box an out of group rezzer safely behind the group. poof death does not hurt. dragging a boxxed toon is tedious, but it is better than needing to grind 3 more hours.
/meh, i doubt the devs care what i think. i am ok with that, but the more the game emulates real life, the more i think, 'i got real life for that, and real life has cherry blossoms in tokyo. and rainstorms in rome, and missing a kangaroo by about 4 inches while driving 40 miles from anything, and floating villages in cambodia, and...'. i think the irritation i get about these forums is the underlying feeling that many, maybe only some, posters (and not the above quoted, necessarily) seem to feel like the game HAS to be the way THEY want it to be. the game does not HAVE to be severely punishing to be fun....
it is perspective, i guess. i have never considered grinding to be hard, and death penalty is artificial, lower dev investment needed grind content. (i died, i need to redo 3 hours killing the mobs i was killing the last 3 hours, yay!) thus 3 hours worth of content is now 6 hours worth of content. the most fun games to me have always been difficult ones, which is why i love raiding so much. i suspect that is much harder to program, and without adding artificial grinding would take programming 6 hours of content to have 6 hours of content.
stupid ai mobs with high hps or mitigation that take forever to kill? yawn - even if they are group balanced.
stupid ai mobs that you have to kill for 40 hours to level? program my g15 amd watch the game.
questlines with interesting storylines? fun even if they are long.
mobs that require more planning and coordination? fun even if they take a long time to kill. (bosses, particularly raid mobs, usually fit this mold. trash almost never.)
Griefer's plan is that they can grief, and so they take the risk to make it a pain. Let's not pretend it's a 100% calculated scheme, but mostly a revenge / expell tool used by hot headed dummies. If the griefer fails to grief, as every troll, he will just step back and do something else because his objective is to make it work, and not make it a pain for him.
That's, however, interesting how you devaluate possible timesinks into "boring" or "lazy dev solution" or even "costless". Basically every answer you don't agree with seems to enter one of thoses pre-made cases, but what is a "cost" then ? Loosing an item is a harsh cost, loosing exp is a soft cost that will be compensated somehow, but still a cost. Some costs are meant to be huge (corpse running in a hard area), some will be light (exp loss), but there are no true solution. Because in the end, only perma death or perma item loss would solve the fact players will play the game for fun and to achieve and stacks things, and ultimately will not care much about some losses. But this choice would make the game un-fun for most, and thus make it a graveyard.
I guess for you, xp loss is nothing because everyone will just have a parked rezzer. Corpse run is nothing because everyone will have a parked rogue. Any difficulty not including instant failure or success, will for you, be countered by scheming and alt parking. While that might be something when the game will have 10 years, it won't be for a long time, and an exp rez will require a guildmate to travel for some time before he can reach your corpse, loosing time for everyone plus the mentionned cleric, but making bonds by so. Time beeing play, loosing it somehow will allways result in a loss overall for failure.
Lots of different idea's suggested here so just going to throw my thoughts in the mix.
Death needs a penalty, seems most agree on that it is just how severe. Me personally believe CR should be part of the game, however there should be a secondary corpse recovery stystem in place. First though XP loss should be a must, whether losing levels or not is part of that or you just kind of go negative XP I am fine either way. Gear level plays into this, if you lose that level and already got rid of your old gear now you are hampered. I think if you never recovered your gear from the original corpse though subsequent deaths until you do should be a smaller xp loss. I am sure a lot of us remember racking up a 10 death counter before getting your gear back and with that a lot of lost xp. If your whole group wipes in a bad spot we all know how tough it can be to get back to your corpses which I think the decreased per may work. If you get your corpse back through traditional CR I feel that the XP loss alone and the struggle to recover your corpse is enough.
Now onto my idea for the secondary recovery system which I believe you could make lore for and have it work. Basically some race living in Terminus are masters of recovery/disposal and that is how they make their living. Traditionally you find them at the entrance to a dungeon just waiting for some poor sap to come along to make some cash. You would basically pay them a fee that is relative to your level and then maybe 10 minutes later they would have gone out and recovered your corpse. Why do the mobs of the zone not interfere? Because they perform CR for the enemies also hench the disposal aspect. This way you can have a lore reason behind a corpse recovery that makes sense for actual players and NPC's.
There would have to be restrictions in place to use this system or everyone with a ton of money would just use that and never deal with a CR. I believe before this race would even perform this service for you enough time would have to pass to where the enemies are no longer viewing you as a threat. Thoughts behind that is they don't want to anger anyone so until the enemies determine you are no threat they stay out of the mix. I would think maybe 3 hours would be where I can imagine this, and after 24 hours the price goes down or something perhaps. This would still make CR a viable option if you want to continue going and not just make it easy mode to get the corpse back.
Other penalities that would need to be included would be that the corpse is no longer rezzable making that XP loss permanent, another reason you want to try CR. Making the cost somewhat significant also would be a detterent and a way to get cash out of the economy also. I don't believe item durability will be a thing at all but if so the secondary CR would also have to have more of an impact. Maybe this could also only be used once a day just as another negative to doing it this way.
Bazgrim said:Krixus said:Bazgrim? C'mon dude. No excuses.
My excuse is that I was sleeping lol. Much to my dismay, I have not yet mastered the skill of posting while asleep... maybe some day :P Anyway, enjoy these threads:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3116/the-fear-of-death
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2558/making-death-impactful
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3353/death-penalty-idea
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3817/the-case-against-the-death-penalty
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3819/a-clear-discussion-on-death-penalty
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5088/slow-progression-and-fear-of-death
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6183/death-penalty-level-loss
Thank you, Baz :)