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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.
Exp loss upon PvE death
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
Currently I am playing ffxiv eso.
I have played tera and bdo, and I must say I find death in mmorpgs these days extremelly meh.....
Back in 2003-2009 that I was playing Line][Age gaining 4% of a Level was about 2h solid exp in mid levels, 2 days xp in near high lvs and a week of xp in 78lv.
Upon death there was a good chance to drop inventory items and a rare chance to drop PRECIOUS equiped gear.
Needless to say that some areas that offered good xp, mats/part and loot were difficult to reach on a small group of 3-4 ppl and wiping was dreaded.
At high levels if a group wiped the guild would have to send a group escorting a healer to rez us in order to receive full XP back.
In most mmorpgs now there is no xp loss,
1) you can mount and reach an area in two minutes (or use GF and go to an instance in a few minutes)
2) auto rez on the spot
3) teleport back to the location in the blink of an eye.
I honestly feel sleepy playing most mmorpgs now.
I never liked features such a death penatly (debuffs for X amount of time) but the fear of losing XP and having to make my way back in the location I was made adventuring and exploration SO GOOD. Not too keen on being afraid to lose gear upon death.
What does the community think about loss of exp upon death?
****** please understand the concept and then participate in convo. Also understand what game AoC is trying to become. Did not expect this to be such a heated topic.*****
I have played tera and bdo, and I must say I find death in mmorpgs these days extremelly meh.....
Back in 2003-2009 that I was playing Line][Age gaining 4% of a Level was about 2h solid exp in mid levels, 2 days xp in near high lvs and a week of xp in 78lv.
Upon death there was a good chance to drop inventory items and a rare chance to drop PRECIOUS equiped gear.
Needless to say that some areas that offered good xp, mats/part and loot were difficult to reach on a small group of 3-4 ppl and wiping was dreaded.
At high levels if a group wiped the guild would have to send a group escorting a healer to rez us in order to receive full XP back.
In most mmorpgs now there is no xp loss,
1) you can mount and reach an area in two minutes (or use GF and go to an instance in a few minutes)
2) auto rez on the spot
3) teleport back to the location in the blink of an eye.
I honestly feel sleepy playing most mmorpgs now.
I never liked features such a death penatly (debuffs for X amount of time) but the fear of losing XP and having to make my way back in the location I was made adventuring and exploration SO GOOD. Not too keen on being afraid to lose gear upon death.
What does the community think about loss of exp upon death?
****** please understand the concept and then participate in convo. Also understand what game AoC is trying to become. Did not expect this to be such a heated topic.*****
3
Comments
Gear loss would be painful, but loss of some supplies seems reasonable. Especially if tied to/with gear degradation.
I am 100% on board with having to back track. I just don't want to do that without my gear. I would be against teleporting back and I am not a fan of any fast travel.
I know its not always the case, but now a days it seems like a lot of people just treat others like garbage in the games. This was compounded with cross-server groups.
I also remember in EQ1 where necromancers would pay good coin to fill their gems with the "deaths" of sacrificed players. Meaning they would cast the spell on a willing player, the spell would kill that player, that player would then looses EX (and possible level).. in turn the necromancer received a "filled" gem used as a component for another spell. That was actually pretty cool. Not sure if that changed over the years.. I'm sure it was..
I also remember De-Level races.. How fast could you delevel your high level character back down to like level 10.. haha..
L2 vet here too, I love this idea with some significant improvements. The down leveling should not be a thing. This way it can discourage bots from farming one area till they peek then killing them selves to go back down to a profitable level. Dropping gear is a big no no but as for losing more than just XP how about stats? when you die your stats are reduced in some way. Like a debuff that can only be cleansed by some NPC in town or a healer class. This buff is also compounded, the more you die the more your stats go to the pooper. When you res you have a 3 minute avoidance of this buff if you die again (so as to not stop you from dying right after rezing).If you do get rezed (self or by healer) you will have to either deal with the reduction of stats on site or run/port back to town and trec back to your spot. This idea is similar to L2s PK debuff but modified as a death penalty.
The debuffs on death are a horrible idea, all it does is encourage you to go afk while you wait for a timer or make a mad dash to someone to cleanse it as a currency sink. I prefer the days of FFXI you would lose exp on death so obviously you tried to avoid dying. On "raid" nights you could lose a level or 2 and then you'd go out with a party the next day get your levels back with a buffer and prepare for the next raid type event. Having a character with raise abilities that reduce exp loss is ideal that way you don't always lose full exp. Personally I think Ashes is going the wrong way with the exp debt thing and degrading stats until it's gone.
Don't get me wrong it adds a little weight to death but if you've already lost one fight with full stats what makes you think your gonna go back and win it with a debuff
Yea I misread a post and saw a "timer" as protection from having the debuff reapplied from dying consecutively in a short time frame.
Your right the system as is I think will work ok but I don't think it's severe enough on paper so we will see. it doesn't make sense to me that you would die in challenging content only to be punished with a stat loss to go back and face that same content.
As long as you lose skills, abilities, or efficiency's similar to actually deleveling without actually losing a level with enough exp debt I think it'll be fine.
I do somewhat agree with the over-automation in MMO's, though, and MMO game worlds feeling smaller and smaller, even if they aren't, simply because of too many instant-travel options.
If there are no penalties, and time sink is a concern, then why have death at all? Maybe just a 3 second time out?
I am a big time casual player. I am also a fan of RPGs. So I understand the loss of character progression and time needed to restore that. Players that are uncomfortable with that type of play style may be looking for a FPS MMO as opposed to a MMORPG.
I understand the concern, but also find it, along with leveling, a core mechanic of the genre.
My first MMO was Asheron's Call. They had an xp deficit, a stacking stat debuff, and you would lose your highest monetary valued items, starting with cash, gems, and so forth. If you kept dying, and your last item on you was worth 1c, you lost it. YOu had an hour to get back to your corpse to reclaim you items, after that anyone could get them.
We could counter the item lose by carrying valuable but worthless items like gems and jewelry.
Then why should they even let you die? You can do mindless grinds without penalties.
IMO, the problem with MMORPG these days is that people want it all without much effort. That's also the reason MMORPG's are dying. Take WOW for example. You grind multiple mobs, almost never die and as a newcomer, a month later you're max level. Great. The leveling experience and being scared to face certain mobs just fades away. Then all of a sudden you're max level but feel no accomplishment because, damn, my unborn baby could get to max level in a week without dying.
It shouldn't matter if I can only play 1 hour a day (probably 2-3h a day though) too. Playing 1 hour every 3 days shouldn't get you to max level in a short period.
Why should players be punished for dying in an mmorpg? What does the game hope to achieve by punishing the player?
It's only once you understand this that you can decide what kind of punishment (if any) is appropriate for the game. Putting in death penalties just for the sake of it or because "[insert school-mmorpg here] did it and I really liked that game" is pointless.
On the flip side, EQ2, death is basically the "poor mans" teleport. It's no good when death can actually have an advantage.. ug..
*Edits, not emphasis
No, your character dying is the result of failing. Death penalties are extra punishments on top of that. It's like giving someone an exam, and if they fail the exam not only do they have to take the exam again, but do 1000 pushups as well.
Your example would be failing the test and then that score not mattering at all to your overall performance, which would make trying to take the test pointless. There would be no reason to make effort.
Sigh, I tried to choose a simple example to illustrate my point, and you have decided to complicate it unnecessarily. Oh well. Just because failing a test doesn't affect your overall performance doesn't make the test pointless, because you still want/need to pass that test.
My point is that there are already natural consequences for failing in an mmorpg (your character dies). Adding additional punishments and penalties onto that just for the sake of it is pointless. Think of it this way. If you are in a raid fighting the boss and your team fails, you die and don't kill the boss. If it is a linear raid (as most raids are), you won't be able to move on until you beat that boss. Do you need more penalties than that?
How many times haven't people died due to issues you weren't in control of, like lag. Or the game crashes and when you log back in, you are dead
I do not consider a death penalty as punishment. It's there to encourage you to try harder and not take the easy way out because its only a 3-minute walk back.
What is the consequence of failing if there are no penalties. A dead character that doesn't have a penalty or item loss or item degradation or any of the other penalties any game uses suffers no consequence.
If you need to reclaim the body then maybe you have to add 3 more minutes of gameplay. That's not a consequence, that's getting lost.
That is a very old-school approach and isn't always necessary in a game. I know it's a different genre but consider a game like Super Meat Boy, arguably one of the hardest platform games ever created, and yet there is no death penalty at all. There are no lives, and when you die all that happens is you start the level again (the levels are so short that this is rarely an issue).
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/119093/Super_Meat_Boys_McMillen_Explains_Why_So_Hard.php
This is a wonderful article on the subject written by the creator of Super Meat Boy.
Going back to mmorpgs, as I said before the death penalties need to have a purpose. For example, in Albion Online you only lose your equipment on death in Red and Black zones. This plays into the risk-reward aspect of the game. The Red and Black zones contain greater rewards to players who survive them, with the greater risk of losing all your items if you die.
In Dark Souls games, players lose all their souls upon death (souls are used as exp to level up your character). The trick is you can only level up your character at bonfires that are placed in specific points in the level. When you use a bonfire it respawns all the monsters in that zone. If a player is in the middle of 2 bonfire locations and is low on healing items they have 2 choices:
1. Go back to the previous bonfire to heal and use the souls they have collected then have to fight through all the monsters again
2. Press onwards to the next bonfire and risk losing all the souls they have collected if they die
That is again the risk-reward aspect talked about in the article. The point I'm making is that it's not just about the death penalty, but how the penalty interacts with the rest of the game mechanics. I don't believe that putting exp loss into a game like Ashes would have any purpose other than frustrating players.
In all honesty I would rather bein a position to have to gain more xp to level than lose all my gear.
In Dark Souls if you can't reclaim your souls and die again the penalty is time spent grinding or potentially being out leveled by an area. That is a particular type of risk for that game.
As for the platformer. To me it sounds like the method is try and try and try again until you get it. Then congrats you finally got it.
Is this really what you want all content in Ashes to be reduced to? For me this would make all PvE aspects of the game an endless trial by error without any consequences.
Usually I can find a point to agree with and simply suggest why I don't. That is not the case here.
Hopefully one day players that don't think failing should negatively effect their character can find an awesome RPG to play. Unfortunately, I hope that is not the case with Ashes.
RPGs require a time investment, they always have. A mobile game may be better suited to your gaming style.
That is a stupid comment. I can only assume you are a troll. So just because i don't want to spend several days, just to progress a little, i should go to a cash grap, shitty game. Maybe you need to get a life, besides playing games. Maybe you should go play single player games, where you can increase the difficulty
The constant dying in games adds up. So if it xp loss, gear lost etc. or just time. It all adds up in the end
That sounds like a participation award.
You don't pass a driving test when you get back to the testing office if you run over three old ladies and two school children on the way. Just because you got to the 'finish line' doesn't make you a winner.
The character death is the cause of the penalty.
You tell Johnny not to hit the cat.
Johnny hits the cat anyway.
Cat bites Johnny.
The Cat bit Johnny because Johnny HIT the cat, the fact that Johnny disobeyed is a separate issue which requires resolving.
Your character (Johnny) dies because you aren't doing something right. Your actions caused the death (a bite), now you have to receive the penalty.
I'm on the fence about a debuff from dying depending on how bad the first debuff is and how hard the debuff is to work off. It is bad enough without fast travel and having to run back to an area I might be leveling/questing in and having a patrol or something kill me, then not being able to do quests my level, and having to go poach mobs like 5 levels under me from people trying to level. If the debuff is severe enough it doesn't just penalize you, but penalizes everyone in a lower level area as higher characters have to come down and work off their debuffs by grinding lower level mobs.
If the first debuff is just a slap on the wrist and instead of being able to take like 3 mobs I have to take 1 or 2 for a bit, for instance, it might be ok.