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Player Death
Mangert
Member
I’m curious what people’s thoughts are on the player death penalties. They seem to be quite taxing. Experience debt, stat loss, durability loss (that’s fine and typical), lower drop rates, health/mana loss, and lower gear proficiency (I don’t know if this means like instead of being able to wear plate u can wear mail only, making all ur current gear useless. Or that it just means ur gear is weaker).
Regardless my biggest issue that I’m curious about is how this will affect pve content. It seems penalties don’t really apply in most pvp situations like seiges/caravans/guild wars. But what about raids and dungeons! Any mmorpg player knows that the first time your guild goes through a raid, there are a TON of wipes. Even dungeons can have 1 or 2 wipes. Now the variable difficulty that happens after the first boss implies it should be moderately difficult but not too difficult that you are wiping 10 times right? However what about that first boss! Also with the penalties being combat related, just one wipe makes the next attempt will be harder. Then harder and harder after each wipe! I understand how in the open world you want to create a little fear. But shouldn’t normal raids and dungeons be considered events, atleast for death penalties? I really worry that how player death works, it makes stuff either easy enough that you rarely die progressing content so the penalties aren’t an issue or impossible because after 1 or 2 wipes it’s impossible to progress with the debuffs. Also would I even want to do a raid if I knew it would end up costing me like 10+ Deaths worth of experience debt?
What are people’s thoughts?
Also side note: what if I’m barely living killing a mob solo out in the world, and some random guy sees that and just kills me. Did he really earn the right to loot my gatherables, and did I earn those death penalties? I don’t think so. Shouldn’t it be like how they said loot system will work for mobs where you need to deal like 60% of the damage or something.
Regardless my biggest issue that I’m curious about is how this will affect pve content. It seems penalties don’t really apply in most pvp situations like seiges/caravans/guild wars. But what about raids and dungeons! Any mmorpg player knows that the first time your guild goes through a raid, there are a TON of wipes. Even dungeons can have 1 or 2 wipes. Now the variable difficulty that happens after the first boss implies it should be moderately difficult but not too difficult that you are wiping 10 times right? However what about that first boss! Also with the penalties being combat related, just one wipe makes the next attempt will be harder. Then harder and harder after each wipe! I understand how in the open world you want to create a little fear. But shouldn’t normal raids and dungeons be considered events, atleast for death penalties? I really worry that how player death works, it makes stuff either easy enough that you rarely die progressing content so the penalties aren’t an issue or impossible because after 1 or 2 wipes it’s impossible to progress with the debuffs. Also would I even want to do a raid if I knew it would end up costing me like 10+ Deaths worth of experience debt?
What are people’s thoughts?
Also side note: what if I’m barely living killing a mob solo out in the world, and some random guy sees that and just kills me. Did he really earn the right to loot my gatherables, and did I earn those death penalties? I don’t think so. Shouldn’t it be like how they said loot system will work for mobs where you need to deal like 60% of the damage or something.
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Comments
It is the first feature on the front page for a reason. The game is harsh to make accomplishments meaningful.
The reason why many MMOs don't feel rewarding anymore is because the concept of Risk Vs Reward has been nurfed into the ground. Steven has said many times that everyone is not going to like Ashes and that is okay. Ashes is not trying to appeal to everyone. They can't, a game that appeals to everyone appeals to no one. Right now, the focus on a dynamic open world with Risk Vs Reward makes Ashes my cup of tea. If they change the focus in the future to be more forgiving I will re-evaluate my feelings about the game.
So yes, I think a harsh death penalty is needed.
If you are barely killing a mob and I kill you and take your stuff, I earn corruption and go red. Yes, I get your stuff, but I also get to be red and all the "rewards" that come with being red.
That is just the way Ashes was designed. It is also the reason why many of us want Ashes in our lives.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
If you die you also get xp dept. In L2 you'd get xp loss, 4% or your current lv progression. For end game lvs this meant that you just lost 2-3 days of hardcore progress.
You lost 1% or less for Guild War death or Siege. You didnt lose anything inside arenas, casual or ranked.
You will also drop a portion of your raw materials in your inventory. In L2 you had a chance to drop an armor piece or jewelry you wear, sometimes even the weapons you hold. If they were just in your inventory the chances were higher.
In AoC only if you are corrupted you will drop whole items.
All in all AoC doesnt seem too punishing compared to L2. I dont like item durability in any mmorpg. Hope AoC makes it fun and interesting.
PS. Those that will inevitably say "AoC isnt L2 ", I want to say "insightful comment..."
There is nothing wrong with taking good elements from previous games and improving them.
In MMORPGs, I'm not particularly interest in PvP combat, but I like the idea of protecting towns and cities from attacks so, in an 8 hour game session, I can enjoy about 1 hour of PvP combat if I stumble across a town/city under attack by opposing faction player characters.
Or, in the case of NWO, I can enjoy about 1 our of the instanced, objective-based PvP combat...where a mostly ignore the combat and focus on completing the non-combat objectives.
I'm not a "risk v reward" fan. It doesn't interest me at all. I don't like the concept.
What I love about Ashes (coming from a love of the EQNext design) is the investment derived from constructing our own towns and cities that can be destroyed if we don't defend them, either from mobs or rival player characters...or possibly even natural disasters.
Not only do we need to defend the town/city from total destruction, we also need to defend key individual buildings from being destroyed to prevent the services they provide from being shut down until we reconstruct them. This remains true whether it's a Monster Coin attack by mobs or a siege by rival player characters.
Which means I can focus mostly on defending crucial buildings or securing key objectives.
Or, if I'm attacking, I can focus on destroying crucial buildings or securing key objectives.
If I'm inhabiting a Monster during a Monster Coin event, I can acquire cosmetics as rewards for disabling certain buildings, services or NPCs... I'm hoping the same is true during sieges and dungeons and raids.
Adventuring through dungeons and raids shouldn't just be about the combat. Ideally, in an RPG, there should be ways to accomplish objectives or defeat challenges without engaging in combat. In an MMORPG, which relies way too much on combat as pretty much the only method of defeating challenges, there should be other objectives for which we are rewarded besides just killing everything in sight or clearing the entire dungeon.
Where we have the primary objective of killing the Winter Dragon in order to eradicate the perpetual winter which is negatively impacting our Desert Node, there should also be rewards and positive consequences for smaller objectives we complete along the journey to killing the Winter Dragon. Perhaps there will be a cult of Frost Wizards who are using relics in key locations in the raid area that heighten the effects of Ice abilities and Ice damage in the region, so just destroying those relics improve the quality of life in the region somewhat during the days it takes to destroy the world boss.
We should be able to be content with having completed the smaller objectives even if we haven't cleared the entire dungeon or raid - just as we can get cosmetics for disabling key buildings, services or NPCs even if we don't destroy the town/city during a Monster Coin attack.
All of that to say...hopefully, we get more accustomed to saying, "Hmmn. You know what? We've sustained too many wipes for us at the moment to worry about killing the Winter Dragon. It's not a total failure; we destroyed a few Ice Wizard Relics. The region is still better off with what we've accomplished so far. Let's be content with the lesser objectives we successfully completed, retreat, fix ourselves up and return later."
We shouldn't have to feel so beholden to immediately go through a ton of wipes as if we must absolutely suck if we don't kill the boss in the first game session that we make the attempt. We should be able to be content even with what we accomplished before we sustained the 2nd or 3rd wipe. Retreating is sometimes the best course to take, but it seems common in MMORPGs that gamer feel retreating is worse than eating kittens.
Don't sustain 10 deaths. If you sustain 2 or 3 deaths, retreat, get rid of your xp debt, get some new gear, have a romp at a tavern and return to the dungeon or raid later.
If the reason we're trying to kill the Winter Dragon is to end the negative impact to the region caused by the perpetual winter, why is that random guy going to kill you just so he can loot your gatherables? It's probably going to be better if you work together to destroy some Ice Wizard defenses to help reduce damage from Ice abilities.
If you die, you earned the death penalties, yes.
I dunno why it would be worth gaining Corruption for a few gatherables when the primary objective is to reduce the negative impact the perpetual winter is having on the region.
When you die, it's just a portion of your resources that drop and it's the same amount that drops if a mob kills you, so I dunno why you're worried about the random PK any more than you're worried about the dying from the random mob that seemingly popped up out of nowhere.
I like an idea for this system because it makes death matter, it is not something players brush off like in other MMO's and move on with their day. It's like in Sea of Thieves where after a day of hauling if you meet other players you have to deal with them cause they are not going to leash, they want your stuff and you can either run, fight or die and loose everything. It encourages people to get better at the game, invest more time in a safer manner to overpower their enemies or make friends/hire people, potentially creating a new ecosystem where there is a demand for bodyguards and crafters that can prepare you for the worst.
As a non-alpha player I can only guess what the actual numbers, however what I know is that if they are too lenient then people won't be afraid to die and do potentially recless things and go murderhobo more often. While having too harsh penalty might prevent people from ever leaving safety of towns and villages for most of the time so this is something that needs to be considered to be rebalanced couple of times (However I would prefer it on the harsher side than too soft).
Like... Dying sucks, but it IS going to happen, just as a matter of course through gameplay, and dying because you AFK to use the bathroom or the server DCs you, or an NPC bugs out in some way... the penalty for this shouldn't be harsh at all.
I don't think it should be to the point where a bad night can undo a week of progress, but if your doing the same thing over and over and dying 10 or 20 times there should be some sort of a significant penalty for recurring stupidity.
In WoW it's just a gold penalty to repair, a corpse run and you need to recast most of your consumables. In Everquest you got XP debt, could lose gear, and had to do a sometimes VERY LONG corpse run... I think the best would be the WoW model for the first few deaths, then the game makes it VERY CLEAR that whatever your doing is going to start accruing more massive penalties if you continue
You are approaching it as this were an instanced raiding MMO (Like WoW) but this is not the same type of game.
If things are as expected, I see killing a world boss more about negotiations between guilds and players than a Full PVE Mechanics Simulator.
I've played to both type of games, and the lattest example is way more engaging and interesting.
I do have the concern that boss difficulty isn’t going to be that high, which would be very disappointing.
It's easy to read a little bullet point and say you don't like it or you fear it but in the past, similar systems were used and those systems were good. I wouldn't fear the death penalties. At least death penalties won't occur in guild wars, caravan and sieges.
Edit: Spell mistakes.
Steven said that he is not making the game to appeal to everyone , Ashes has more old school features that other game companies wouldn't do these days , the corruption system and letting people freely PK other players is a big one that will turn off a lot mmorpg players from trying Ashes. The kickstarter for Ashes was successful and proved that there is some demand for a harder mmorpg.
The situation remains for every one person being hyped, 5 more people are saying the combat looks bad, the character models looks out of place, the mob varieties don't fit the biomes and the bosses are too generic. I hope the NDA Lift can remedy these complaints but the complaints are valid to those people that make them. There's making a game for the few, and then there's making the game for too few. I haven't backed any other recent MMO and Ashes is my last foray into the new MMOs but so far, its not revolutionising the genre like Steven promised. Interestingly, google trends hit 25 between may 2 and may 8 when Alpha 1 Sale reopened. Spike fell during Verbal NDA drop. Perhaps when we have a visual NDA drop the number could reach 100 again.
Edit: Clarified the numbers and spelling check.