Player Death - Suggestion for adjusted death penalties

DraconicPanda

I am going to preface this by stating that I don't think anything related to XP debt needs to be adjusted, as I feel like the current system for this is actually very fair. What I do think needs adjustment is the complete destruction of a % of carried materials on death.

In the current state of the game, when you die, you drop a portion of materials which can be recovered by either you or another player BUT a certain amount of materials are destroyed completely and can not be recovered.

To me this doesn't make a lot of sense. If we use the most basic example of glint which is probably the most common material that a player would be carrying at any given time, a player carrying 100 glint will drop 25 glint that can be recovered and 25 glint will be removed entirely from the game on death. The same applies to wood, leather, ore, etc. The materials turning to vapor is just not something that seems logical or that feels right for the game. I have the following suggestions to improve this current system.

1) instead of the materials being deleted completely, the materials that would have been deleted are instead included with the materials that can be recovered by a player (self or 3rd party). This way if you for example get killed in PVP, you can attempt to kill your attacker and recover your stolen materials completely while also getting more of their materials. This provides more of an incentive to actually go back and loot your corpse and attempt to recover your materials instead of cutting your losses because even if you kill your attacker in the current state of things, you will not be recovering all of the materials lost due to the constant removal of a % of dropped materials until eventually no materials remain.

2) I think that death should carry a much more severe durability loss on equipped gear. This would provide a harsh penalty on death so that it is still impactful but it is harsh in a different way that I also think is more fair. If dying forced you to repair much sooner this would do a few things that would have some pretty impactful effects:

- it would force groups farming static locations to move from the location to repair upon death. This would punish players engaging in PVE content in a way that makes them consider what and how they are farming in an area as if they do die they have to give up their spot. It would also provide an avenue for PVP that carries risk and reward that I think is more fair and balanced. If you want to take over a farming spot for example, you could engage a group and if you are able to kill them, you know that their gear would have suffered heavy durability damage and may need to be repaired before they could retaliate. This also gives the people that were killed the opportunity to gather reinforcements and come back to reclaim their spot. This would create a natural gameplay loop for groups/guilds to engage in that would stir up activity in the world.

- It would act as a pseudo money-sink similar to losing glint.

- Crafting materials like copper which are in high demand and seemingly scarce supply would not be removed from the game until they are used in a recipe or sold. I don't have the data to back this up but I have a strong suspicion that a big reason we have these perceived shortages in materials is because they are being destroyed upon player deaths. So a large quantity of materials that are being gathered are never making it to a crafting station or vendor, limiting the supply even further.


I would love to start this discussion to hear the community/designer's thoughts on this feedback and see if this is something other agree with or could be iterated on to provide a better system for handling player death.

nanfoodle

I get people upset with the death penalties if you have never played a game like this. Today we died 3 times at an out door dungeon to another team training us. We picked up our socks and keep playing. The death penalty lasted as long as killing one pull of mobs. Solo it takes a few pulls. It's really not a big deal. My only problem is when it comes to sanctioned PvP events. There should be no debt there.