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Death penalty seem too harsh?
Drokk
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I was reading about the death penalty and was surprised how severe it seems to be. While you can't de-level you get:
This seems a bit excessive. I'm a player who likes to explore a lot, go off the beaten path and just see what's out there. I hate the feeling that I have to worry about incurring all these penalties for taking risks. If I was a designer I'd want players who seek to take risks, throw caution to the wind, engage powerful enemies, go explore an evil looking cave...without the constant fear of attaining these negative effects. It seems like it'll create an atmosphere of playing things safe, not taking risks, not exploring or being adventurous. I don't understand these types of penalties. I know people will say that death should have significance and to a point yes, but I think they should be rather minor (especially in pve). This is a video game, first and foremost, shouldn't it be about FUN? This just seems like it'll lead to frustration.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.
- Experience debt
- Skill and stat dampening
- Lower health and mana
- Lower gear proficiency
- Reduction in drops from monsters
- Durability loss
- Drop a percentage of raw materials
This seems a bit excessive. I'm a player who likes to explore a lot, go off the beaten path and just see what's out there. I hate the feeling that I have to worry about incurring all these penalties for taking risks. If I was a designer I'd want players who seek to take risks, throw caution to the wind, engage powerful enemies, go explore an evil looking cave...without the constant fear of attaining these negative effects. It seems like it'll create an atmosphere of playing things safe, not taking risks, not exploring or being adventurous. I don't understand these types of penalties. I know people will say that death should have significance and to a point yes, but I think they should be rather minor (especially in pve). This is a video game, first and foremost, shouldn't it be about FUN? This just seems like it'll lead to frustration.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.
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Do i feel like its a little too much? Yes. But we won't know it until we see it. So we just have to wait and see.
I quit like it the way it is.
Too many games in the Past had what you described as "Minor Death Penalty's", whats basicly a boring world were you never have to really watch yourself.
Whats more engaging?
A fight were is you loose you can quickly get up or a fight were if you loose, it really hurts you.
For me the answer is the second one.
If i win a fight were dying would set me hours back then the feeling of fulfillment is much better then if i barley lost anything in it.
But as you said its personal preference and i am from the generation of 20 years old MMORPGs were the Death penalty could destroy weeks of effort. But oh the sweet feeling of success if you won.
might have to be adapted for siege scenarios though
I can see the reasoning behind the cumulative effects, especially the reduced drop rates and the chance of dropping harvests. They want to prevent a player from "dying" towards a rare resource or guarded area that is rich in resources, for instance.
If it is too expensive to follow that course of action or the gain is miniscule, people will refrain from doing so.
And I think, people will be inclined to ask for help before entering certain areas where they might get slapped around by mobs. I remember those things from EQ2 when people basically offered some stuff if you escorted their gatherer/crafter to an area with stuff they need, their crafter level being on a much higher tier than the adventurer level. That died when everyone and their dog sold raws for coppers on the broker, but still.
Based on how I've seen similar things work in other games I think these debuffs will start off very small and almost inconsequential. Likely things that are easy to work off. So for the average player trying to play well and not die, and taking appropriate risks, you won't have many issues with occasional deaths.
I think the idea is to punish people who die repeatedly. So you might want to bring friends along and go with a group of people, or you might want to make a character that is more survivable and perhaps take Tank as your secondary class, etc.
So there's risk vs reward in there - you don't want to take a solo glass cannon deep into a dark cave with tons of mobs because there's a cool surprise to see at the end or a huge treasure chest. That wouldn't be balanced without a real risk there, but the lack of risk would get boring as well. So with this type of death penalty, if you were super skilled, maybe you could get there with few or no deaths on your glass cannon, but that is the reward for perhaps risking a lot of XP debt and dropped items to get to the back with the huge chest, for example.
Anyway, I'm just trying to think of scenarios where this kind of design is good, and I can't. But obviously that's my opinion. I'm just saying as a player I've always hated the feeling that I need to be overly cautious. I don't think it's particularly helpful in a video game. It creates what is, to me, the wrong kind of environment and atmosphere.
If you're trying to train or improve or challenge yourself in something...you don't make each failure cause the next attempt to be even harder. That's contradictory. If I'm trying to jump a 6 foot gap on a bike and don't make it I don't try 7 feet the next time. You do that and what happens? People just give up.
You'll just have to change your expectation of the game. It's not a fun romp where you just kick ass and win big, you go out and survive to have tales to tell.
No, death itself is pretty harsh, even if you stay out of trouble.
I know that in games like DAoC, if there was a group wipe, you would HOPE someone with rezzing ability was nearby so you wouldn't take all the rez sickness penalties.....ah, good times.
That is not harsh. Try falling in The Hole and dieing at a level nowhere near good enough to be in The Hole. Your corpse is lieing down there and there is no way for you to get it, or your gear.
That is a penalty.
Background: The Hole was a level 50ish dungeon within the city of Paineel in EQ. It was a big hole in the middle of Paineel, with an entrance at the bottom. Paineel was evil, but good characters could pass through it to get to a lower level dungeon called The Warrens. Scarily, there was a Shadow Knight guard that wandered the path right where it crossed over The Hole as a bridge. That guard could fear and cause you to fall in The Hole.
Dieing in EQ caused xp loss and your gear stayed on your corpse.
Death should mean something in an MMO.
Play stupid games, earn stupid prizes.
I think the developers know this, They're experimenting with a zone in the next expansion where you have the potential to lose all of the resource (Stygia) you need to progress your character if you die. You must retrieve the resource by doing a corpse run! The metrics that Blizzard have collected for Shadowlands show, comparatively, the highest interest in virtually any expansion to date. They'll also be implementing a procedural instance. It isn't lost on me how WoW will have a procedural instance in an expansion called "Shadowlands" and that we will be returning to "ICC" for the pre-patch event. I'm excited to play Shadowlands because I see the beginnings of a return to form, not just in WoW but in the industry.
I chose AoC because their passion is reminiscent of their predecessors, but their goals are so much more established and well defined. I encourage people to research how MMORPGs are developed so that the scales may fall from their eyes.
True. But there comes a point where you ask does this make the game better or more realistic?
Being more realistic isnt always a postive nor does it always make the game better. You should always want to make the game better since making a game more realistic is a self-defeating idea anyways in an online game where the objective is Massive Multiplayer and socialization. Its nice to have realism, if checked properly without being a source of inherent frustration
On the topic of the death penalties. At first glance it looked like the Corruption death penalties. So in my opinion, yes it looks to extreme if it mirrors what is essentially corruption penalty death.
However we have to keep in mind we dont know how the system works yet and Intrepid is building placeholders that can and will be adjusted once properly tested. So dont use the "First Pass" as the concrete be all end all. Because a lot of mechanics and placeholders will go through several different iterations before launch
[*] Experience debt
This depends on the amount loss and time spent to recuperate lost EXP.
For example; dying looses 4% exp. But 4% exp takes 1 week to recup, that's a bit rough, but if the content is there, and it's fun, loosing exp should be ok. It really depends on the exp curve they have set for each level and their goals for the game. It also influence if that also applies to Pvp deaths, Aggressive Actions resulting in death and exp loss? Sure. Getting pk'd? That's a bit much.
[*] Skill and stat dampening & Lower health and mana
Same as above for EXP.
Can be good, and should not influence your Group PvE that much. Should only really influence you in PvP.
Also, depends on how much and for how long. Otherwise, it's fine.
For example: 10m a la World of Warcraft Rez Sickness? Debuff time seems right, the hp/mana loss is a bit much though. I always thought you should at least be able to play, albeit a lot more carefully but you should definitely avoid PvP with this, it becomes a direction issue again, as to where they want to take this and a tuning issue down the lines in alphas/betas.
[*] Lower gear proficiency
I would need to see a more detailed explanation from the dev team on this, but coming from MMOs where you just LOST everything, or had a chance to loose 1 or 2 pieces of gear per death (10-20% chance kind of thing) it's not bad. It depends what's the mechanic to get it back or grind it back, because if its just permanent loss without any way to recup, that's more annoying than fun. It doesn't provide replay-ability at that point, unless gear is super easy to come by.
[*] Reduction in drops from monsters
I'm fine with this, as long as it's short enough to not cause you to go afk waiting that it drops and not harsh enough to cause the same problem. It should at least make it so you cant throw your body until you 80year old at a mob to get his special loot when you clearly cannot be there.
[*] Durability loss
I feel that's just normal MMO thing now a days. Doesn't seem harsh at all. Also, your body literally died, and your equipment would be fine? IMMERSION!! (jk)
[*] Drop a percentage of raw materials
Same thing as Drops Reductions for me.
In my opinion, an MMO without any risk while stepping into the world or even worse a dungeon where there is a potential for mistakes to be made, is not fun to play during the levelling process, however long that may be. There are even mechanics that can be implemented specifically for dungeons to help streamline this.
Cheers
Are you saying you’ve never played an MMO that had res sickness before? I remember when every MMO had it, it was just the expectation. The reason why it existed was because the game wanted you to take it easy and wait before charging right back in there. Usually it was around 10 minutes or so. Long enough to maybe make you impatient, but it also ensured that death felt like a setback.
It also made you think, plan, strategize. You had to weigh your risks. After beating an enemy you could charge over to the next one immediately, or wait and heal up properly, With res sickness you had a real choice; if you were reckless and took on too much too fast you could actually lose time because you were forced to wait. Without it there is never a reason to not push the envelope every time.
It’s good to see it in this game. It makes it a big kid game.
But even if it was I like harsh death penalties, imo death should sting. Maybe I have been playing a lot of full drop survival games, but I like death mattering.
This.
The dividing line between "too harsh" and "just right" might be the people who played EQ. EQ had real corpse runs (unless you had someone who could summon it of course) and I still get PTSD from some of the runs I had to make.
Both sides have arguments that cannot be ignored, yet I'm still with the crowd that calls for clear risk vs. reward.
Being able to die towards a goal with minimal consequences is brushing me the wrong way. You should feel the pain if you were careless enough to die multiple times. And if you continue to do it, yes, the character should temporarily be crippled.
Need to be tweaked to feel right
might have to be adapted for siege scenarios though
nah you won't try the 7 feet gab next time. But you might be slightly hurt from the crash, which weakens your ability to do 6 feet gab the next time around.