Trying to better understand PvP/My current opinion

Hello everyone,

First of all, explaining my title: I'm relatively new to AoC, and while I've been eagerly reading the wiki, I'm still very much a noob, so the points I'm going to raise might be flawed due to my poor understanding of the game. Please let me know if my knowledge is lacking.

So the PvP is going to be everywhere, at all times. Right, I got that part. But upon dying, one would lose xp, health/mana, get less mobs drops, etc...., losses would be mitigated by a player's status (non-combatant, etc..)

So my questions would be as following:

Assuming "wild PvP"of being randomly attacked in the wild and not a castle siege or other type of planned PvP.

1) What would prevent a non-combatant player from simply... not fighting back? The way I understand it, to become a combatant, you have to engage in a fight, either by attacking first, healing/buffing, or fighting back. As a combatant, your losses are mitigated by half from a non-combatant upon losing. Okay, so Intrepid expect players to fight back in case of an attack to either lose nothing or at least less, right?
However, the player that attacked first has an advantage, and in a rock-paper-scissor type of PvP, it will probably mean they'll attack players they're strong against. With that in mind, winning is less than guaranteed and fighting back instantly makes you a combatant player, so a walking target for everyone to attack without penalties if you nonetheless end up winning.
However, Intrepid also prides itself in their "corrupted" mechanic that, based on the downsides, most people would want to avoid. So, once again, why would someone non-combatant want to fight back while they're at a disadvantage, assuming the other player would want to avoid the downsides of killing you as a non-combatant player at all costs (if not, then Intrepid's corrupted status idea might not exactly be an effective deterrent)? You could just literally sit there and wait until they leave, thus defeating the whole point of open world PvP.

2) Once again, assuming a wild PvP encounter.
Winner pros:
pride and satisfaction: positive

Loser cons:
frustration of losing : negative
xp, drop rate, mana/health, etc... : big negative

That would mean that the sum of most wild pvp encounters would be, with everything weighed in, negative. How can a game promote an healthy open world pvp where the gross sum of said pvp is negative?

For me, 1) and 2) seem like pretty heavy flaws. Then again, they might be wrong due to my lack of understanding of the game.

My potential solution: offer reward incentives for winning wild pvp rather than punishments for losing it (except if you are corrupted, in which case punishments should be enacted). And make bigger rewards if one won a fight when someone else initiated it, thus giving an incentive to fight back rather than just sitting there.
After all, it's been proven times and times again that a reward system to encourage a certain behavior works a lot better and is seen a lot more positively than a loss system for not doing it. But, once again, I'm just a noob that understands nothing.

Last minute thought: then again, I can see players making alt accounts between friends and use them to artificially win fights and keep piling up rewards, so there'd need to be a counter-measure for that... Tricky situation, but I still feel like losing things like xp upon dying would not promote a healthy PvP environment, besides the fact that more casual players would hate to see their already slow progression further hampered. Just my 2 cents.

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Depraved

zKrash wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

sign of the game and there's a fair bit of people who prefer it over the current trends of "your death doesn't mean anything. you can die as much as you want and never be set back by it". Intrepid knows that the amount of those people is way smaller than the amount of casual players, but Steven seems to be fine with that (at least currently).

tautau wrote: »

Regarding the loss of progress from death, probably at least 4 out of 5 of my deaths in Alpha-1 were from mobs, not PKers. Yes, the loss was frustrating. But the main impact of the loss was to make me pay attention and become better so as to avoid the deaths. In other words, the loss was a major motivator to play the game better and to become better at managing my character - a good thing (at least for me).

Well, the whole point of the majority of RPGs, shooters, and most competitive games is already to get better and better manage your character/skills. But how do they do it? By offering rewards, rather than punishments. You want that sweet title/sweet loot? Gotta get better and beat your opponents, beat that boss, etc... Intrepid adds a "solution" to an issue that simply doesn't exist.
With the current system, deaths aren't made more meaningful, they're made more annoying. On the contrary, character progression is made less meaningful, since you can lose it by a stroke of bad luck.
Why not add a feature that per x amount of mobs killed (from your level or above), you get an extra % of loot dropped and xp, up to a certain %. But as soon as you get killed, that % drops back to 0? It adds a proper reward (because I still don't think not getting punished is a reward in itself), and makes avoiding deaths more meaningful.
Steven does seem to be fine with a game that isn't for everyone, and that in itself I am fine with as well. But he also stated he's aiming at 1 mio players at launch, and to create a healthy PvP environment. With the current system, I don't really see this happening. Hopefully, I'm wrong.

(Thanks for the answer!)

Depraved wrote: »

you are still not seeing the big picture. you are only seeing the system in isolation, not how it interacts with other systems.

2 of the design pillars of aoc are player agency and risk vs reward. you dont do open world pvp just for a few materials, you do it to have access to certain things, such as the best farming spot, boss drops, prevent people from farming everything in your node and triggering the surveying system, etc.
players can decide wether to cooperate or fight for something. it creates alliances and wars (also the war system is not explained here yet).

there wotn be little pvp, there will be a lot of pvp, and it will be mostly parties fighting over a spot against another parties. the game isnt balanced around 1v1 and there are systems in place to deter pointless pk over and over.

Well, I'm not the only one missing the big picture. Once again, I don't mind the ability to pk, or to be able to attack anyone, nor the risk vs reward. Actually, I welcome most of the stuff you've listed above. I'm against losing stuff upon death, which I see as a plague, not a boon, to the PvP (and the game as a whole). All the things you have mentioned are doable without losses upon death, aren't they?

Depraved wrote: »

when people tell you the game isnt for you, well, you might not be the target audience of the game, you are just an added bonus. there are lots of players who are ok with the system. if you dont play the game, then another person will occupy your spot. why does the game need to change to cater to what isnt their target audience? why are people with your playstyle more important than the rest?

"Just an added bonus" Well, let me answer your as "just an added bonus" then. Take my arguments with a grain of salt, as I am apparently just a trophy player it would seem. Seriously, why do people feel the need to try and picture others as "just a margin" with them being part of the "lots of player" to give more weight to their opinion, but without anything to back it up?

Right back at you, buddy. Why is your opinion more important? I've laid out my arguments, explained my point of view and why the loss upon death system adds nothing to the table, and is actually an anti-PvP mechanic.
Not like I'm trying to have anyone cater to me just because.

Depraved wrote: »

if you play less than 3 hours a day, what are you going to do when you cant farm or gather because the area is full of players farming everything (in a game with no open world pvp). arent you wasting your play time as well? probably the best solution for you is one of those solo mmorpg

Sigh... I am not against slowed-down progression because of exterior factors, it happens in every other game. I am against negative progression: the risk of losing what you've worked for which adds nothing to the game.

thats my point, my opinion isnt more important than yours, or vice versa. look, there are systems that i dont like. i also dont wanna lose stuff when i die and i wanna be able to kill those who annoy me without any consequence. but as part of the overall design, i see how these systems adhere to the design philosophies and are actually good. you gotta feel the sting of death, even if its a little. this goes hand in hand with the risk vs reward philosophy.

the system isnt an anti pvp mechanic. you have to see the big picture. look at today stream about land management. if you didnt lose anything upon death you could just go to someone elses land or whatever and take everything, then ruin their land. you get all the rewards but not the risk. if you wanna ruin someone elses land, so oyu dont ruin yours overgathering, then there should also be a risk, not just a reward, and that risk is dying to the land owners and losing the stuff you collected. you will probably still fk up his land a lil bit but atleast you wont be keeping all the rewards. on the other hand, you can defend your land as well.

progressing slow vs losing stuff. at the end of the day what matters ishow much progress per hour you make, because we all have limited time. if you ather 100 herbs in 1 hour and you die and now u respawn with just 75, then u sell those 75, isnt it the same as only being able to gather 75 in the first place, since the area was already infested with other players? the current system also allows you to gain progression faster, because you might find materials on the ground from players who died to mobs, or you might win pvp and get stuff as well.

i still think you are only looking at the negatives, or the risk, not the positives or the rewards.

zKrash

NiKr wrote: »

zKrash wrote: »

I am against negative progression: the risk of losing what you've worked for which adds nothing to the game.

I know I've said this already, but really if you're against these kinds of mechanics - you're not the target audience.

The game has death penalties, caravan attacks, node sieges, item decay and potential destruction, owpvp, supposedly hardcore pve, ffa pvp open seas where your ships can get destroyed and also guild wars that can go on for days with potentially hundreds if not thousands of deaths - literally all of those are "negative progression" mechanics. And the game is build around all of those mechanics and has them all interconnected, so the current design would have to drastically change if Intrepid suddenly decided to move away from negative progress.

I don't understand how caravans, node sieges, guild wars, open world pvp, hardcore pve or guild wars are negative progress? Penalties don't apply to caravans, node sieges and guild wars, and the rest are features. I can agree with item decay and destruction (although I should hope destruction can be easily prevented). Open seas? Yes, but that is a feature that can be easily avoided completely by not engaging in it. It is but a feature among many, many others. Losses upon dying is present everywhere without, imo, a tangible justification for it.
The incentive to get better? The thrill of the fight? All of those can already be felt without the loss upon death system.

Natasha wrote: »

zKrash wrote: »

I am against negative progression: the risk of losing what you've worked for which adds nothing to the game.

This game definitely isn't for you.

The risk of losing progression is a huge draw, it makes you fearful of the danger of the world youre in. It's a big dangerous world. It shouldn't be like wow where nothing happens.

You should be going into combat feeling nervous, getting the shakes when youre down to that last 20% health and contemplating running off or staying the course you've set in the hope you triumph. And then feeling elation when you do. A true achievement for overcoming something that could have caused hours of progression gone if you had lost.

Thanks for the answer!

Achievement, elation, nervouseness, all of those can be easily felt without the risk of a punishment, no? I played a lot of PvP back in the days, and I always felt like that even after 100s of hours in battlefields. Deaths sucked enough for me not wanting to repeat the experience, but weren't overly frustrating to the point of making me want to quit.

I think that anyone feeling like what you've described above would still feel it the same if there were no penalties for losing. As I said multiple times, wouldn't a reward for winning be a better incentive than a punishment for losing? Right now, the risks of engaging in a PvP encounter far outweigh the rewards.
Btw, I think the main issue with WoW PvP is that the comabt gameplay itself sucks. If AoC goes the GW2 way for combat (which I believe is an excellent idea), it will shine a lot more. GW2's PvP was, and I believe still is pretty popular within the game. Haven't played it in 10 years though, because of the lack of endgame back in the days.

Ludullu

zKrash wrote: »

I don't understand how caravans, node sieges, guild wars, open world pvp, hardcore pve or guild wars are negative progress? Penalties don't apply to caravans, node sieges and guild wars, and the rest are features. I can agree with item decay and destruction (although I should hope destruction can be easily prevented). Open seas? Yes, but that is a feature that can be easily avoided completely by not engaging in it. It is but a feature among many, many others. Losses upon dying is present everywhere without, imo, a tangible justification for it.

A failed caravan defense, especially if it was a solo one, is a x200 death penalty (and that's if you lose 50% of your stuff on green death). And even if you somehow managed to grab some of the dropped certificates, a portion of them just get sunk and disappear. So running a caravan means a potential of losing hoooours of progress.

A failed node siege leads to the loss of citizenship (which is pretty much a money investment) and some portion of your goods because your freehold will get raided and the node bank will get emptied too if you had anything there. And to get another citizenship will cost you way more, because by that point the housing prices would've grown above what you paid for your first citizenship.

Guild wars are an ffa pvp for the enemy guild against you. They see you - they kill you. You suffer death penalties multiple multiple times, even if they're just purple ones.

OWPVP is literally the stuff we're discussing and as you said yourself - it leads to negative progress.

Hardcore pve means that you'll die more often than against easy mobs. Which means death penalties which means negative progress.

Open seas provide huge rewards (as restated by Steven on today's stream), so by not participating in that content you're limiting your progress. And while it's not quite as negative as other examples, it's, in function, the same as running away from a pvp on land. Instead of progressing further you decide to avoid any interaction with the risky content.

The tangible justification is "risk vs reward". Steven wants the world to feel dangerous and for that danger to have consequences. If all you do is win win win no matter what - that ain't risk and that definitely ain't danger. And as we've stated multiple times already, it's fine if you dislike this design, you're just not the target audience for it.

Depraved

NiKr wrote: »

zKrash wrote: »

I don't understand how caravans, node sieges, guild wars, open world pvp, hardcore pve or guild wars are negative progress? Penalties don't apply to caravans, node sieges and guild wars, and the rest are features. I can agree with item decay and destruction (although I should hope destruction can be easily prevented). Open seas? Yes, but that is a feature that can be easily avoided completely by not engaging in it. It is but a feature among many, many others. Losses upon dying is present everywhere without, imo, a tangible justification for it.

A failed caravan attack, especially if it was a solo one, is a x200 death penalty (and that's if you lose 50% of your stuff on green death). And even if you somehow managed to grab some of the dropped certificates, a portion of them just get sunk and disappear. So running a caravan means a potential of losing hoooours of progress.

A failed node siege leads to the loss of citizenship (which is pretty much a money investment) and some portion of your goods because your freehold will get raided and the node bank will get emptied too if you had anything there. And to get another citizenship will cost you way more, because by that point the housing prices would've grown above what you paid for your first citizenship.

Guild wars are an ffa pvp for the enemy guild against you. They see you - they kill you. You suffer death penalties multiple multiple times, even if they're just purple ones.

OWPVP is literally the stuff we're discussing and as you said yourself - it leads to negative progress.

Hardcore pve means that you'll die more often than against easy mobs. Which means death penalties which means negative progress.

Open seas provide huge rewards (as restated by Steven on today's stream), so by not participating in that content you're limiting your progress. And while it's not quite as negative as other examples, it's, in function, the same as running away from a pvp on land. Instead of progressing further you decide to avoid any interaction with the risky content.

The tangible justification is "risk vs reward". Steven wants the world to feel dangerous and for that danger to have consequences. If all you do is win win win no matter what - that ain't risk and that definitely ain't danger. And as we've stated multiple times already, it's fine if you dislike this design, you're just not the target audience for it.

dammit man, i didnt wanna tell him. now he wont play for sure.

BaSkA_9x2

First of all, many of your questions and answers are based on speculation and experience from similar games. With that said, here's my 2 cents (speculation + experience + common sense):

zKrash wrote: »

So the PvP is going to be everywhere, at all times. Right, I got that part. But upon dying, one would lose xp, health/mana, get less mobs drops, etc...., losses would be mitigated by a player's status (non-combatant, etc..)

We haven't had any confirmation regarding lower mana/health and lower mob drop rates if you die as a green in a long time, I would not be surprised if this has been removed.

zKrash wrote: »

1) What would prevent a non-combatant player from simply... not fighting back?
...

So, once again, why would someone non-combatant want to fight back while they're at a disadvantage, assuming the other player would want to avoid the downsides of killing you as a non-combatant player at all costs (if not, then Intrepid's corrupted status idea might not exactly be an effective deterrent)?

You could just literally sit there and wait until they leave, thus defeating the whole point of open world PvP.

Who said the attacker cares about the consequences of gaining corruption? What if you only need to kill 10 mobs to lose the corruption from killing one green player?

As an attacker, if you decide to attack a green, you should be ready to turn red in case they don't fight back. Also, if you decide to attack a green, you must have a reason to kill them if you're smart: they have been farming for hours, they have a good spot, you hate them, etc. Therefore you want them dead regardless of gaining corruption or not.

As a green victim, it's an easy decision: do you have a lot of loot?

No: don't fight back and let them gain corruption, fuck them, maybe even try to come back and kill them if they're still red.
Yes: fight back so you only lose half of what you would've lost.
Irrelevant because I have 2 friends nearby: don't fight back and let them gain corruption, then proceed to call your friends and hope the red guy drops gear if he dies.

zKrash wrote: »

2) Once again, assuming a wild PvP encounter.
Winner pros:
pride and satisfaction: positive

Loser cons:
frustration of losing : negative
xp, drop rate, mana/health, etc... : big negative

That would mean that the sum of most wild pvp encounters would be, with everything weighed in, negative. How can a game promote an healthy open world pvp where the gross sum of said pvp is negative?

For me, 1) and 2) seem like pretty heavy flaws. Then again, they might be wrong due to my lack of understanding of the game.

The PvP "winner" gets a portion of the dead guy's resources, I guess you forgot that part. The PvP "winner" gets to farm the area the dead guy was farming before, honest mistake.

Unfortunately, if you believe "1) and 2) are pretty heavy flaws" or if you believe that people fighting for resources is not "healthy open world PvP ", you're a PvE player, which is fine. If I had to bet, you've never played a game where you lose stuff if you die. And, if you have, you probably quit that game or avoided the areas where there was loot on death.

The game will try to discourage unhealthy PvP such as griefing low level players, spawn/corpse camping, etc. Will it work? I don't know, but they're trying.

zKrash wrote: »

Tricky situation, but I still feel like losing things like xp upon dying would not promote a healthy PvP environment, besides the fact that more casual players would hate to see their already slow progression further hampered. Just my 2 cents.

Respectfully, you're wrong. Losing things makes you think about your actions. Losing things makes you value what you have. Losing things makes for memorable experiences. What's an unhealthy PvP environment for you is healthy for me. You can't speak for collectives, in this case casual players. I'm a casual player, I'll have maybe 20 hours per week to play and I want this game to be a challenge, not another FFXIV.

Cheers

zKrash

NiKr wrote: »

A failed caravan defense, especially if it was a solo one, is a x200 death penalty (and that's if you lose 50% of your stuff on green death). And even if you somehow managed to grab some of the dropped certificates, a portion of them just get sunk and disappear. So running a caravan means a potential of losing hoooours of progress.

A failed node siege leads to the loss of citizenship (which is pretty much a money investment) and some portion of your goods because your freehold will get raided and the node bank will get emptied too if you had anything there. And to get another citizenship will cost you way more, because by that point the housing prices would've grown above what you paid for your first citizenship.

Guild wars are an ffa pvp for the enemy guild against you. They see you - they kill you. You suffer death penalties multiple multiple times, even if they're just purple ones.

OWPVP is literally the stuff we're discussing and as you said yourself - it leads to negative progress.

Hardcore pve means that you'll die more often than against easy mobs. Which means death penalties which means negative progress.

Open seas provide huge rewards (as restated by Steven on today's stream), so by not participating in that content you're limiting your progress. And while it's not quite as negative as other examples, it's, in function, the same as running away from a pvp on land. Instead of progressing further you decide to avoid any interaction with the risky content.

The tangible justification is "risk vs reward". Steven wants the world to feel dangerous and for that danger to have consequences. If all you do is win win win no matter what - that ain't risk and that definitely ain't danger. And as we've stated multiple times already, it's fine if you dislike this design, you're just not the target audience for it.

-Failed caravan defense: I scoured the wiki, but I didn't see anything about a 200% death penalty anywhere.

-Node siege: this one's a bummer, but I really don't have enough info to give a proper opinion about it. How often can they be challenged? How hard are they to defend? How important is storage there?

-Guild wars: "Death penalties (mostly) do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges" as per the wiki, but maybe there's something I'm missing?

-OWPVP, Hardcore PVE: Yeah, they're basically exactly what I meant by losses upon death being not a good system imo. They're fine and punishing enough as they are, why add the extra hassle?

It would seem that most objective-based events don't get a death penalty (wiki), so that's good. More incentive to play.
As for caravans or ships, you're not forced into the content. You said it yourself, you can weigh risk and rewards before going in, which I can totally get behind.
Losses upon death are forced upon you at all times. You go into the world where you're basically always at risk whether you want it or not through PvX, and the only reward for not dying is to be able to... play normally as in any MMORPG?
In "play normally", I also mean fighting for resources and other stuff, as is expected in OWPvP.

BaSkA13 wrote: »

First of all, many of your questions and answers are based on speculation and experience from similar games. With that said, here's my 2 cents (speculation + experience + common sense):

We haven't had any confirmation regarding lower mana/health and lower mob drop rates if you die as a green in a long time, I would not be surprised if this has been removed.

Yes, the game's still in alpha, so most of what we're discussing in this forum is based on speculations.

As for the mod drop rate etc... I'm referring to the wiki. If this had been removed, wouldn't it have been removed there as well? Unless they'll be announcing it later. Hopefully, you're right.

BaSkA13 wrote: »

Who said the attacker cares about the consequences of gaining corruption? What if you only need to kill 10 mobs to lose the corruption from killing one green player?

As an attacker, if you decide to attack a green, you should be ready to turn red in case they don't fight back. Also, if you decide to attack a green, you must have a reason to kill them if you're smart: they have been farming for hours, they have a good spot, you hate them, etc. Therefore you want them dead regardless of gaining corruption or not.

As a green victim, it's an easy decision: do you have a lot of loot?

No: don't fight back and let them gain corruption, fuck them, maybe even try to come back and kill them if they're still red.
Yes: fight back so you only lose half of what you would've lost.
Irrelevant because I have 2 friends nearby: don't fight back and let them gain corruption, then proceed to call your friends and hope the red guy drops gear if he dies.

The whole point of corruption is to be a great enough deterrent for any potential griefer from ever wanting to turn red. If it isn't, then the system is a failure.

-They have been farming for hours: so they kill the green player, turn red, pick up their loot, then what? They're red, a walking target among walking target. There's definitely no guarantee they'll make it back home safely. And they're also at risk of losing far more than they've gained by turning red.
-They have a good spot: once again, turning red near "a good spot" does seem like a death sentence in the making.
-You hate them: now that's an entirely different matter. Soothe your anger by killing them, then same scenario as mentioned above. Get red, high risk of being killed, and lose a lot.

In a risk vs reward game, none of them seem like they'll yield good enough rewards to be worth the risk. That's why I'm saying don't fight back because turning red for your corpse usually isn't worth the risk.

BaSkA13 wrote: »

The PvP "winner" gets a portion of the dead guy's resources, I guess you forgot that part. The PvP "winner" gets to farm the area the dead guy was farming before, honest mistake.

Unfortunately, if you believe "1) and 2) are pretty heavy flaws" or if you believe that people fighting for resources is not "healthy open world PvP ", you're a PvE player, which is fine. If I had to bet, you've never played a game where you lose stuff if you die. And, if you have, you probably quit that game or avoided the areas where there was loot on death.

The game will try to discourage unhealthy PvP such as griefing low level players, spawn/corpse camping, etc. Will it work? I don't know, but they're trying.

I have mentioned about resources in other comments, but I don't blame you for not looking through all of them. Afaik, they're pretty insignificant according to Alpha-1 players, so probably not worth the risk (not that I'm advocating to lose more of your stuff).

I am a PvP player. Why do people always assume that I'm not? I've never said I was against PvP, quite the contrary. For me, PvE content is only a stepping stone for the PvP content. Get better gear to get better in PvP. That's why I care about it feeling good.
Yes, I've always avoided games where you lose stuff on death. I've never seen the appeal of negative progression as a punishment for a core feature of any RPG - death.

It generates frustration and disbelief that's usually bigger than the relief of not losing anything. By generating more negative feelings than positive, that's what, imo, makesthis system unhealthy. Not griefers, etc... For that, I trust the corruption aspect of the game.

BaSkA13 wrote: »

Respectfully, you're wrong. Losing things makes you think about your actions. Losing things makes you value what you have. Losing things makes for memorable experiences. What's an unhealthy PvP environment for you is healthy for me. You can't speak for collectives, in this case casual players. I'm a casual player, I'll have maybe 20 hours per week to play and I want this game to be a challenge, not another FFXIV.

Losing things makes you think about your actions: you don't do it normally?
Losing things makes you value what you have: you don't do it normally?
Losing things makes for memorable experience: you don't have them normally?

I say unhealthy because it generates a ton of negative feelings from losing stuff, with the only advantages of having the positive feelings mentioned above slightly enhanced by the potential loss. Positive feelings that, let's be honest, would be present either way if the game turns out good.

You want a challenge? Tell me, how is losing stuff a challenge? It isn't challenging to lose stuff, is it? Who said that if there wasn't any loss upon death, then the game would be less challenging? Souls game are considered challenging, but you don't lose anything upon dying, do you? You make a game challenging through increased difficulty, complicated boss mechanics, etc... not by making it so that you lose the stuff you've worked for.

zKrash

So yeah, going any further would seem pretty meaningless. Our opinions differ, and I’m generally at odds with the community.

I just want to make clear of two things:

1) I want the game to thrive

2) I enjoy PvP a lot, and don’t mind open-world PvP

My main gripe is with the mechanic of death penalties through loss of experience, stat dampening, reduced loot drops from monsters, losing some of your resources, etc… which, from my perspective, doesn’t add enough to the game to be justified.

The reasons I got from other people to support it are:
1) It makes sense within the Risk vs Rewards core gameplay of the game.
However, all I see is:

Risk: losing a bunch of your hard-earned progression + hampering your progression even further
Reward: not dying? A bunch of resources? The privilege to farm a certain spot? Most of them can be acquired through open-world pvp, without having to add the risk of losing anything.

2) It enhances the thrill of PvP and PvE through the fear of potential death penalties and loss of resources.

Maybe it enhances the thrill, but it doesn’t create it. I highly doubt anyone would be left unable to feel anything from PvP or PvE if they didn’t run the risk of losing their stuff/xp/etc…

3) It makes you care for what you’re carrying

My point is about the same as above. You may care for it more, but most would still care if they didn’t risk losing it. Also, this argument only takes into account potential resource loss, not the rest.

4) It is an incentive to get better

This is, in my opinion, a non-issue. Most people don’t need the fear of punishment to want to get better. The potential rewards for it are usually more than enough.

Now, the main part, the reason why I’m being so annoying with this opinion of mine: I want the game to thrive, because it made me genuinely care for it until learning of the death penalties severely lowered my enthusiasm.

Sure, you can always say “it’s not for you”, “you’re not the targeted audience”, etc…, but that argument might just keep pushing people away indefinitely until the target audience is reduced to a smaller playerbase unable to support the financial needs of the game. Having a clear vision is nice, but knowing when to compromise is too.

Making the game into an open-world PvP will make it niche, but death penalties will further make it a niche within a niche. Maybe you think the playerbase within said niche is big enough to support the game, and maybe you’re right. But what if you’re not?

It might just be me, but I have a feeling that death penalties will discourage far more people than they will attract them, particularly among the more casual playerbase. Arguably, I’m no expert, and the closer example to AoC’s death penalties concept I can find is Mortal Online 2, which can hardly be compared to AoC. Still, its highest player count ever never went above 10k concurrent players. AoC will of course far exceed those numbers, but by how much, and for how long?

That’s why I’ve been advocating against death penalties in this thread. Sure, it will hamper the fun of some people, but will it really make the game that much worse? Will fans really stop playing if it isn’t implemented? Will it really jeopardize the core concept of the game? I can’t say for sure, but my guess would be no.
Would it, as a result, make the game less niche and attract more players that would otherwise be turned off by it? Again, a wild guess, but probably.

A necessary compromise in my opinion, but I am obviously biased on this issue.

Is it just my opinion? Yes.
Is my argumentation mainly made of speculations? Of course.
Will we only know once the game launches? Absolutely.
Still, this is a forum meant to share, and I’m doing just that. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t care about the game or simply wanted it to fail. Maybe someone, somewhere, will find it an interesting enough read.

PS: Apologies for this text being terribly written. It is currently 4 AM, my brain is really foggy, and English isn't my first language.

Ludullu

zKrash wrote: »

You want a challenge? Tell me, how is losing stuff a challenge? It isn't challenging to lose stuff, is it? Who said that if there wasn't any loss upon death, then the game would be less challenging? Souls game are considered challenging, but you don't lose anything upon dying, do you? You make a game challenging through increased difficulty, complicated boss mechanics, etc... not by making it so that you lose the stuff you've worked for.

Not losing the stuff is the challenge. And the stuff that you can lose is the stakes for that challenge.

And as for Souls games, you do lose souls (or their alternatives). And I don't know about other gamers, but my adrenalin always spiked when I could lose my souls after a very long session of successful kills w/o depositing my souls.

Now in Souls games it's a staggered death, meaning that your first death is not as impactful because you can come back and pick up your souls, but that "come back" is the true challenge now. If you farmed a ton of souls after several hours of playing in a flow state, you would have obviously died to either a strong mob or just in a tricky location. So now you need to overcome that heightened difficulty in order to not lose several hours of progress.

And that situation heightens the stakes to their maximum state. But at the opposite end of stake values is the post-double-failure state. A place where you've lost all your souls and you now got literally nothing to lose. There's no adrenalin (or at least way less of it), no risk but way more risk taking. You're now free to do much more dumb shit than you were able to do during your "come back" run.

And some people prefer that heightened amount of adrenaline when they play games. But as you've said, we just have differing views on this and the only thing that can prove either of use wrong or right is the game coming out. But until then we can't really do much outside of presenting our opinions and feedback to Intrepid. You've presented yours and a few of us presented counter arguments to it, so now it's on Intrepid to deicide which one they gonna go with (probably both throughout the testing phase).

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