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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Death
Death. Will it matter?
I was wondering how everyone feels about death in mmorpg games as of late? Personally I think it has become a very underutilized mechanic that once upon a time made players think carefully about their actions, but now seems to amount to little more than a short corpse run.
So how do we recapture that feeling of risk that gives your virtual life (and death) meaning?
My first thought goes to respawn times. I absolutly hate when you're at war or fighting over an area and players on both side simply need to run back immediately after death. It just drags a fight on for unnecessarily long amounts of time as you push them back to a spawn point and kill them until they get bored or until an incremental timers counts up to a significant amount of time that players can not effectively mount a counter attack. Attacks should be planned out, coordinated, and then success or fail and a node based game opens a lot of doors for making this much easier to enforce.
Given that this is a game that revolves around node based player interaction, what if, upon death, a player is forced to spawn at a bound location within a controlled node that is not under siege and must stay within a set range from that spawn point for an hour or possibly two. This would allow the player to take a break from the game, or work on their crafting, shop or work on their character or take care of any other intown business. It would also make the risk vs reward for attacking/defending caravans extremely fun instead of just having the same group of people attack it every five minutes. As for siege warfare, well it would take some more thought but I still think the value of player planning and coordination should be the source of success or failure as opposed to just having numbers and relying on respawn support.
Now, I could go into greater detail but this is just the 10k foot view that's given so I can see everyone else points of view on the matter. There are definitely many other possible options that could be utilized like xp decay or gear runs just to name a few. I would love to hear some of what others would like to see. Something new? Something old? A mix? You clever bastards probably have some amazing ideas, do share!
I was wondering how everyone feels about death in mmorpg games as of late? Personally I think it has become a very underutilized mechanic that once upon a time made players think carefully about their actions, but now seems to amount to little more than a short corpse run.
So how do we recapture that feeling of risk that gives your virtual life (and death) meaning?
My first thought goes to respawn times. I absolutly hate when you're at war or fighting over an area and players on both side simply need to run back immediately after death. It just drags a fight on for unnecessarily long amounts of time as you push them back to a spawn point and kill them until they get bored or until an incremental timers counts up to a significant amount of time that players can not effectively mount a counter attack. Attacks should be planned out, coordinated, and then success or fail and a node based game opens a lot of doors for making this much easier to enforce.
Given that this is a game that revolves around node based player interaction, what if, upon death, a player is forced to spawn at a bound location within a controlled node that is not under siege and must stay within a set range from that spawn point for an hour or possibly two. This would allow the player to take a break from the game, or work on their crafting, shop or work on their character or take care of any other intown business. It would also make the risk vs reward for attacking/defending caravans extremely fun instead of just having the same group of people attack it every five minutes. As for siege warfare, well it would take some more thought but I still think the value of player planning and coordination should be the source of success or failure as opposed to just having numbers and relying on respawn support.
Now, I could go into greater detail but this is just the 10k foot view that's given so I can see everyone else points of view on the matter. There are definitely many other possible options that could be utilized like xp decay or gear runs just to name a few. I would love to hear some of what others would like to see. Something new? Something old? A mix? You clever bastards probably have some amazing ideas, do share!
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Comments
I wouldn't mind at all if there were some time limit on being able to go back to a battle you die in...
I consider myself a casual player and in the past have done little PvP, but in the context of a MMORPG I feel this part of the game has to be tough on players... the greater the risk.. the bigger the reward. Imagine being on a team where your side is taking mass casualties and then you band together, regroup and come up with a strategy to turn the battle .
Maddstone
Zombie hordes are the bane of my life.
Die damn it !
You could have res sickness, but I think that would kind of neuter the effects of corruption.
Putting the corrupt on a level playing field with the dead.
That would be be bad.
So I cant really see past the minimal distance random respawn option which is in anyway.
Pretty sure that was mentioned in one of the twitch Q&A.
Imagine this, you wait for the siege, you are really excited and all and then the fight starts and it seems you were very unlucky and a lot of people focused you and you died in 3 seconds. I also know we want this game to be perfect and imagine 0 lags at all, but... sometimes lags happen. Being punished for having lag in bad moment for 2 hours is just bad.
Also - let's assume your guild and friends fight in this siege as well and it's your home that is on stake. Don't you wanna watch whats going on, even if you're unable to fight?
I believe death penalty is enough. A short timer to respawn (growing higher every time you die) and combat penalty( -10% hp and dmg ) for let's say 15 mins (stacking up to 9 times if you die again in this period of time) is enough.
The most important issue here is players are here to actually "play" and have fun and not to sit idle in graveyard "watching others having fun" and not be able to play more because they died.
The more cool down you add to player respawn, you increase realism (which is good) but you decrease players fun (which is bad).
This is why this is hard to balance.
I would rather approach this issue from different angle, avoiding including any debuffs and cooldowns to players (debuffs and cooldowns / idle time are always bad).
I would rather add temporary buffs to a group of players that are "doing good" based on number of kills.
If your group is on "killing spree" they get a temporary raid wide buffs giving you a chance to capitalize on your good performance.
If you fail to capitalize, and your buff expires, battle continues as normal. If you do good again, you gain buff again, and win yet another chance to hit a boost to your battle progress.
TLDR:
- don't add debuffs to players that die and don't put respawn cooldowns to players that die
- instead do add temporary buffs to a group that is doing good to reward their progress
I do agree that idle time is bad, so lets fill that idle time with other tasks while keeping a good degree of negative effect for player death. Even a 15 to 30 minute window would be enough to make most players want to think before they act (something that makes gaming way more fun when successful) and if they die, they simply have to work on other character development aspects in town before they are allowed to head back out.
The player would still be playing, it would promote trade skills and the like, and no need for this corruption system or buff/debuffs that just result in less fun game play for one side or the other. This system could even work with player death in pve. I know, shudder to think that we would have to actually gauge our success vs. a mob before attacking!
It would definitely keep people from mindlessly grinding or plowing through content to some degree. As for dungeons and raid type environments, put a 10 to 15 minute respawn timer on the group and spawn everyone at the entrance once it's up. It would give groups time to reset most cool-downs, and more importantly, discuss what happened. Who knows, this might just make groups and guilds stronger overall as they develop communication skills and strategy around their strengths and weaknesses rather than just following the latest guide or youtube video.
Sure this wouldn't cater to everyone, people love instant gratification after all. I do think that mmo players are sick of having their hands held to some degree though, and its incredibly difficult to really connect with your character when you can just throw caution to the wind at every turn. A little risk might just be whats missing from current mmo games, who knows?
I don't see this being implemented in this game but I still like to discuss it with other gamers. It would be interesting to see tested however..
Why would you give someone god mode like this and attempt to call it balance combat ?
Why would you give someone god mode like this and attempt to call it balance combat ?
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Lets say you have a siege, and whoever dies is constantly respawning and returning to fight, and you have a situation of a stale mate due to that.
You can resolve this in 2 ways:
1. Giving players that die a cooldown before they can return to fight, so one side will actually prevail eventually (but then players have idle time waiting at graveyard, which is bad)
2. You can positively reward a side that is doing "better" (more kills, more objectives done or however you measure it) so that buff causes them to eventually prevail ending a stale mate.
In my opinion number 2 is much better then number 1 because all players still get to play and have no extremely boring idle time.
Also in scenario of a siege (an organized PvP event) breaking a death cooldown with PvE crafting is definitely a bad option, player came to this time limited event to PvP and not to craft.
TLDR:
To prevent stale mates in sieges, instead of implementing respawn cooldowns which are very unfun for players, implement a progressivley increasing buff that particular side gets upon completing siege objectives.
This incentivizes paying attention to objectives rather then mindless slaughter, and eliminates a danger of a combat stale mate without having to implement unfun respawn cooldowns.
Lets say you have a siege, and whoever dies is constantly respawning and returning to fight, and you have a situation of a stale mate due to that.
You can resolve this in 2 ways:
1. Giving players that die a cooldown before they can return to fight, so one side will actually prevail eventually (but then players have idle time waiting at graveyard, which is bad)
2. You can positively reward a side that is doing "better" (more kills, more objectives done or however you measure it) so that buff causes them to eventually prevail ending a stale mate.
In my opinion number 2 is much better then number 1 because all players still get to play and have no extremely boring idle time.
Also in scenario of a siege (an organized PvP event) breaking a death cooldown with PvE crafting is definitely a bad option, player came to this time limited event to PvP and not to craft.
TLDR:
To prevent stale mates in sieges, instead of implementing respawn cooldowns which are very unfun for players, implement a progressivley increasing buff that particular side gets upon completing siege objectives.
This incentivizes paying attention to objectives rather then mindless slaughter, and eliminates a danger of a combat stale mate without having to implement unfun respawn cooldowns.
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The way it will turn out is one group that's getting the kills will just scale up and up and up compared to all the other local groups.
Until no one can beat them under any circumstances.
I am thinking from the angle of 10 groups vs 10 groups in a siege rather than 1 group vs 1 group.
Consider an unskilled group take out all the low level player groups first.
Thay aren't skilled, but their stats have been amplified beyond the need for skill anyway.
So they win regardless of the quality of opponent in front of them.
1. First phase lasts 1 hour (duration can be adjusted). Fighting is normal without any special buffs, debuffs or cooldowns. If winner can be reached in that time without implementing any of the above, fine, even better.
2. If one hour has passed and system estimates battle is still balanced, something gets implemented to unbalance the fight. Either respawn cooldowns and respawning at further locations (both for attackers and defenders), giving extra buff (per player) for some accomplished objectives or all of the above. This phase lasts 1 hour (duration can be adjusted).
If 2 hours have passed, siege fails and defenders are the victors.
SPECIAL NOTE: Why people suggest that only defenders get respawn cooldowns or get respawned at further location. Like siege HAS to succeed. Siege is also allowed to fail you know? :) Attackers and defenders should have equal buffs / penalties regardless of how the fight is going.