Chaoticus said:I love the fact they are bringing back death penalties. But what will really pop the minds of newer players.. is losing your level :)
Are we also bringing back "hell" levels? that would be awesome!!
Why would VR deliberately introduce a coding error, which is what EQ1 hell levels actually were? I'd rather not see such things as they served no purpose.
The problem with a penalty is that the game exists in a world were players are extremely adverse to anything other than instant gratification. People rage quit WoW groups because someone didn't do something the split second they thought they should have, and there are essentially zero consequences in WoW.
Not to say that is reason to run away from a death mechanic that causes friction. Friction is good. The problem is that general game design in 202x is aimed towards selling dopamine addiction, just like social media is selling dopamine addiction to women with false validation and games and other content on the internet is selling dopamine addiction to men. The problem is that friction has been stripped away to leave pure dopamine, like a mental pixie stick of pure refined sugar.
A game that provides friction, and allows for the act of overcoming that friction, will be a more balanced game that will be more satisfying and frankly more ethical. You can't just hit people with both barrels as soon as they walk in the door. It is a balancing act that can't go to either extreme, and that balancing act has to take into account that in 202x that most of the people have a pre-existing condition of being strung out on dopamine and that will make it harder to get them to respond to a balanced and sustainable approach because the games they came from are basically cocaine. It was A LOT easeier in 1999 when people didn't have messed up brain wiring from the mental health version of cigarettes that the tech industry has been turning out. I dusted off EQ and no, EQ didn't start the trend. EQ is very much akin to an attempt to make an AD&D like virtual world with friction and triumph. It was later MMOs that streamlined the dopamine delivery into something dysfunctional. The problem was the people who worked on EQ who were way deep in the rabbit hole and recognized the dopamine but "optimized" away the friction instead of recognizing that the friction was actually the most important part and the dopamine was just there to keep you coming back for the friction.
I really hope they don't get scared, or have investors that get scared, and go all in on dopamine delivery. I think it would be equally as bad if not worse to throw out all the dopamine and only create friction. Honestly, I always got the vibe that Brad recognized the value of friction but was too dismissive of dopamine in the manner of an overly adversarial DM in an AD&D game, while the WoW developers who came from EQ overreacted by going monte haul in response to that. Could be a totally inaccurate perception.
I think it is a hard problem in an environment making it even harder than it otherwise would be. One hopes that everyone making the game is aware that the souls games exist, and Elden Ring made a lot of money despite the professional dopamine hucksters saying it did everything wrong.
The more I read and think about this the more worried I am.
In previous threads talking about things like LAS and Dispositions, I've expressed concern that having dynamic/random aspects to encounters in addition to having locked-in limited action sets means players might often feel they are suffering random unavoidable, and thus unpleasant and irritating, deaths.
There are three alternatives: -
Let players deal with it
I am all for this. The return to a good level of challenge is fundamental to Pantheon's difference and appeal. Players will learn to mitigate the randomness by bringing along more just-in-case consumables or targeting lower level encounters unless they are sure they can cope. Players will learn to add a bit more margin into their contingency.
Players can learn to cope - and enjoy the feeling of overcoming - but a watered down game mechanic can't become meaningful and robust again.
Tweak what is *causing* the issue
If things like the clash of forced LAS planning against the dynamism of Dispositions are causing a problem, change those things.
Dumb down the consequences, like death penalty
It's obvious I think this is a terrible idea, but the worry is VR might be leaning this way. I truly hope I'm wrong. Watering down things that are fundamental to making the world feel dangerous and exciting just to avoid making some players worried about being adventurous would be a calamity for a game trying to return old school levels of challenge and social gaming. The game feeling 'hard' such that you feel you need to find more help and/or synergise better with your group is a *good* thing, not something to be mitigated in case some players are 'scared' to explore. Exploration feeling scarey is a *good* thing.
Disclaimer: I *am* still an optimistic fanboi hehe. I do have faith that VR are aware of these issues. I just feel the need to get my thoughts out and hope VR are reading this and reminded that backers like me are not wanting them to 'soften' old school features/mechanics/aspects into oblivion. We are here *because* VR is choosing to buck modern trends of convenience and ease that remove meaning and satisfaction.
A cynical person might worry recent investment came with strings attached eg. Watering down the challenge to widen the audience, but not me, no sir...
Nephron said:I think it is a hard problem in an environment making it even harder than it otherwise would be. One hopes that everyone making the game is aware that the souls games exist, and Elden Ring made a lot of money despite the professional dopamine hucksters saying it did everything wrong.
Indeed. Keep The Faith, please, VR, and we will too.
Nephron said:
The problem with a penalty is that the game exists in a world were players are extremely adverse to anything other than instant gratification. People rage quit WoW groups because someone didn't do something the split second they thought they should have, and there are essentially zero consequences in WoW.
disposalist said:The more I read and think about this the more worried I am.
In previous threads talking about things like LAS and Dispositions, I've expressed concern that having dynamic/random aspects to encounters in addition to having locked-in limited action sets means players might often feel they are suffering random unavoidable, and thus unpleasant and irritating, deaths.
There are three alternatives: -
Let players deal with it
I am all for this. The return to a good level of challenge is fundamental to Pantheon's difference and appeal. Players will learn to mitigate the randomness by bringing along more just-in-case consumables or targeting lower level encounters unless they are sure they can cope. Players will learn to add a bit more margin into their contingency.
Players can learn to cope - and enjoy the feeling of overcoming - but a watered down game mechanic can't become meaningful and robust again.
Tweak what is *causing* the issue
If things like the clash of forced LAS planning against the dynamism of Dispositions are causing a problem, change those things.
Dumb down the consequences, like death penalty
It's obvious I think this is a terrible idea, but the worry is VR might be leaning this way. I truly hope I'm wrong. Watering down things that are fundamental to making the world feel dangerous and exciting just to avoid making some players worried about being adventurous would be a calamity for a game trying to return old school levels of challenge and social gaming. The game feeling 'hard' such that you feel you need to find more help and/or synergise better with your group is a *good* thing, not something to be mitigated in case some players are 'scared' to explore. Exploration feeling scarey is a *good* thing.
Disclaimer: I *am* still an optimistic fanboi hehe. I do have faith that VR are aware of these issues. I just feel the need to get my thoughts out and hope VR are reading this and reminded that backers like me are not wanting them to 'soften' old school features/mechanics/aspects into oblivion. We are here *because* VR is choosing to buck modern trends of convenience and ease that remove meaning and satisfaction.
A cynical person might worry recent investment came with strings attached eg. Watering down the challenge to widen the audience, but not me, no sir...
Nephron said:I think it is a hard problem in an environment making it even harder than it otherwise would be. One hopes that everyone making the game is aware that the souls games exist, and Elden Ring made a lot of money despite the professional dopamine hucksters saying it did everything wrong.
Indeed. Keep The Faith, please, VR, and we will too.
I wouldn't worry about the randomness having bad consequences, for two reasons :
1) Not having the exact partition for the right piece to play is good, and forces players not to think that a standart bar with zero counters is useless. It basically drives away cookie cutter full builds (I imagine people will still have 80% cookie cutter skills, but 20% flexible is great, especially if each player has one or two abilities dormant just to counter one type of randomness). Also sometimes failure do not come from execution (which is against what all mmo's have been teaching use due to information sharing, guides and such) but should also come from inhability to react to the unexpected, or even ween overpowered by the unexpected. Failure should happen, the game should not be 100% in control of players.
2) Experience is meant to be a ressource in pantheon, not a bar you fill until you're done and never look back for TWO YEARS (modern MMO xperience). It should flow and ebb, be used for something or for something else.
disposalist said:The more I read and think about this the more worried I am.
I find myself becoming less worried. I think the risk of 'too easy' is real but this system has many balance points that can be adjusted so that the death penalty can end up anywhere from trivial to fairly harsh, depending on where each variable is set. Thus, I think this system can still align with stated goals and philosophy. It will take a while to get the balance right, but I'm willing to play a healer in Alpha and let DPS die to help find fine-tune it.
I really like the near death mechanic and think the tension this can add is overlooked. There is a 'death anxiety ' when someone is about to die, and having a short timer to act will add a sense of urgency,, especially if other urgent priorities also exist. For example, healer goes down, tank is low HP, mob is low, and a patrol nears. Should you stabilize the healer and probably lose your tank, DPS the mob and have your healer full die? And can you do it before the patrol arrives?
Needing to make quick, meaningful decisions creates dramatic tension similar to the tension created by standard death penalty fear. And the addition of a near death mechanism allows VR to reduce total HP, keeping us all a bit closer to dying. This can help to add a feeling of risk back to more mundane content.
And don't overlook de-leveling. This will keep death meaningful for max levels.
disposalist said:The Eternum
I would be all for it if equipped gear was on the line and it was an absolute last resort, but this is sounding like a lazy option for rich, high-level characters. Death often becomes a 'nothing' for high level characters, when it should become more and more meaningful and scarey.It will be a real shame if this turns out to just be 'an option' for those who prefer to not do a corpse run even if it costs coin and XP. Gamified again.
I consulted my most valuable resource -- my wife's opinion -- and she also immediately pointed out that far more casual games (e.g. Minecraft (hard)) may result in losing all of your enchanted equipment, weapons, and tools necessary to traverse the land, so the fact that Pantheon would give those back to you guaranteed following death is already a big advantage (and an understandable one given how difficult it will be to get to traverse some areas of Terminus and the fact that death will likely be more common in Pantheon than classic MMORPGs of old).
Upon hearing Disposalist's thoughts and those of many others I re-evaluated my position and yet am coming to the same conclusion: giving players the "agency" to regain lost loot/money from The Eternum feels unnecessary, particularly if you also have a bank (or other non-character-based personal storage) where you can keep your valuables. The loss of items like bags, rare loot, spare equipment, clickies, consumables, and a bit of money is a reasonable cost to pay for not performing the obvious duty of retrieving your corpse, yet not so harsh that the player can't get right back into the action and start regaining money, loot, & experience.
The most valuable part of your kit stays with your character after death, so it would never get so frustrating that a death would be cause for quitting, particularly since this is already an edge-case seeing as players are expected to retrieve their corpse or seek a rez.
Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards. Unless I'm missing something, it seems this new mechanic will hurt the community aspect of having to rely on other players for this part of the gameplay.
Wellspring said:Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards. Unless I'm missing something, it seems this new mechanic will hurt the community aspect of having to rely on other players for this part of the gameplay.
Not at all. There is still value in faster recovery by getting a rez as well as the fact it restores a portion of the lost exp immediately. Having that portion not clogging up the "soul memory" means one can take on more risks before reaching the point they start losing all exp from further death. This can be very important when it comes to attempting bosses etc.
Desryn at PantheonPlus gave a disclaimed summary I thought was well done.
I love what I heard and the thought behind other interesting mechanics like Eternums (they had something similar in the EQ Graveyard if you lost your corpse for 2 weeks or something.
I also liked the idea of "Remnants" - makes a lot of sense.
I've been advocating for item damage and field repairs as a tradeskill value "forever". IMagine having a big important raid and you have to bring a black smith to re-sharpen your swords and repair your armor.
I also thought the first aid idea was great - in EQ it was called "going purple" because your red health bar went purple when you had negative hitpoints. I'd rather see you "go purple" at very low and have zero truly be the death number. Negative health kinda seems silly.
One thing to please conisder, especially when mudflaiton happens and everyone has a zillion plat and money is no object to anything:
Make the Eternum summoning take some time. For example if a corpse run and retrieval would have taken half hour, an Eternum should not summon a corpse in 30 seconds. Make the player "waste" time so they cant just bypass the penalty of death. And make the time inversely proportional to the cost. For example, if a low level player doesnt have a lot of money they can run around and gather some reagents for the Eternum to summon their corpse - the penalty they feel is the chore and time they have to do work. But if a player is on an epic raid and they die on the way to their turn in and need their corpse frantically fast, they could pay an outlandish fee for a quick corpse retrieval. Their penatly is high cost.
However you do it, guard against it being misused as a shortcut.
Iksar said:Wellspring said:Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards. Unless I'm missing something, it seems this new mechanic will hurt the community aspect of having to rely on other players for this part of the gameplay.
Not at all. There is still value in faster recovery by getting a rez as well as the fact it restores a portion of the lost exp immediately. Having that portion not clogging up the "soul memory" means one can take on more risks before reaching the point they start losing all exp from further death. This can be very important when it comes to attempting bosses etc.
That's a good point. I forgot about the soul memory aspect. Cleric rez = instant exp back, where manual corpse retrieval = having to kill mobs to recover the lost exp.
I guess that could balance out, because max level players aren't going to want to grind to recover their lost exp and will prefer clerics to rez for convenience. And players currently leveling up will not be as penalized if they can't find a cleric since they will get it back slowly through grinding.
Wellspring said:Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards.
This is something I actually didn't like about EQ1. The "value" of playing a cleric was supposed to be your group role of healing. Charging players gold for stuff your class is designed to do was often exploited by clerics, druids, and wizards. If every class had something unique that other players would be willing to pay for, maybe it would be different, but groups are not expected to pay tanks for tanking, or mezzers for mezzing, or anybody else for doing the job that their class kit is designed to do. I never charged for those kinds of services out of principal because it is shady to take something you were given for the benefit of all, and monopolize it for personal gain. Casting a single spell for someone else is not exactly going out of my way.. If I wasn't busy actively fighting a mob or something I would always help someone who asked.
Telepath said:Wellspring said:Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards.
This is something I actually didn't like about EQ1. The "value" of playing a cleric was supposed to be your group role of healing. Charging players gold for stuff your class is designed to do was often exploited by clerics, druids, and wizards. If every class had something unique that other players would be willing to pay for, maybe it would be different, but groups are not expected to pay tanks for tanking, or mezzers for mezzing, or anybody else for doing the job that their class kit is designed to do. I never charged for those kinds of services out of principal because it is shady to take something you were given for the benefit of all, and monopolize it for personal gain. Casting a single spell for someone else is not exactly going out of my way.. If I wasn't busy actively fighting a mob or something I would always help someone who asked.
These things promote community gameplay and communicating with other players to accomplish your goals. The more things you let players do solo or through NPCs, the less it becomes a MMO and more of a shared single player experience.
In EQ1, almost every class had "something" they could contribute to other players. Magicians had summoned gear and player summoning. Necros had corpse summoning. Shamans had buffs. Druids had buffs and teleporting. Wizards had teleporting. Monks had feign death related services. Bards had selos. Rangers had dieing. Clerics had buffs and rezes. Enchanters had mana regen. And warriors had bind wound ;).
As far as charging players gold for these things, that's really just supply and demand, and compesating other people for their time. Casting a buff in passing may take 10 seconds, but running with you to lguk to rez your corpse at your camp, would take significantly longer. Other than perhaps making a friend, in and of itself, it doesn't benefit the cleric at all to spend 10 minutes traveling out of their way in order to rez some rando's corpse.
Wellspring said:That's a good point. I forgot about the soul memory aspect. Cleric rez = instant exp back, where manual corpse retrieval = having to kill mobs to recover the lost exp.
I guess that could balance out, because max level players aren't going to want to grind to recover their lost exp and will prefer clerics to rez for convenience. And players currently leveling up will not be as penalized if they can't find a cleric since they will get it back slowly through grinding.
I'll note that all healers are stated to have rez and equal returns.
In old school combat, there was a challenge of managing your resources, but I felt the real challenge back then was managing your aggro. A dps class that was equal or a level or 2 above the tank could out aggro the tank. This meant you couldn't just unload your big damage hits, you had to find where the aggro ceiling was for the tank and try to get as close to it as you could without crossing the line and getting yourself killed. This meant all dps classes needed to be skilled at walking that line instead of having a small percentage of skilled min/maxers who post their findings so the other 90% could copy their work without using any of their own skill. This is where my only concern comes in to play with the new death mechanics.
If I understand it correctly, a dps class can burst a mob, grab aggro, get beat down to 0 health, get healed by a healer class, pop up and go back to burst dps because they're now at the bottom of the aggro list. I'm not sure if I explained that very well, but it feels like we'll be giving a free pass to players that can't/won't control their aggro. Maybe it's not a big deal, but it makes me a little nervous anyways.
streeg said:In old school combat, there was a challenge of managing your resources, but I felt the real challenge back then was managing your aggro. A dps class that was equal or a level or 2 above the tank could out aggro the tank. This meant you couldn't just unload your big damage hits, you had to find where the aggro ceiling was for the tank and try to get as close to it as you could without crossing the line and getting yourself killed. This meant all dps classes needed to be skilled at walking that line instead of having a small percentage of skilled min/maxers who post their findings so the other 90% could copy their work without using any of their own skill. This is where my only concern comes in to play with the new death mechanics.
If I understand it correctly, a dps class can burst a mob, grab aggro, get beat down to 0 health, get healed by a healer class, pop up and go back to burst dps because they're now at the bottom of the aggro list. I'm not sure if I explained that very well, but it feels like we'll be giving a free pass to players that can't/won't control their aggro. Maybe it's not a big deal, but it makes me a little nervous anyways.
One of the things that worries me about this 'gamifying' death, yeah. It should lower aggro, maybe, so you aren't instantly one-shot when you pop back up on low health, but dumping you aggro completely? Ugh.
Hopefully one of the aspects that gets tweaked...
I think it was said that the first drop was agro free but after that they might not ignore you at 0.
Iksar said:Wellspring said:Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards. Unless I'm missing something, it seems this new mechanic will hurt the community aspect of having to rely on other players for this part of the gameplay.
Not at all. There is still value in faster recovery by getting a rez as well as the fact it restores a portion of the lost exp immediately. Having that portion not clogging up the "soul memory" means one can take on more risks before reaching the point they start losing all exp from further death. This can be very important when it comes to attempting bosses etc.
The corpse run requires much more community gameplay, for ports, runspeed buffs, help fighting your way back, etc, than a cleric passing your corpse and hitting a rez button does.
The advantage of cleric rez is an instant teleport to your remence avoiding the potentially long run back.
Adding a huge instant XP regain is totally over-the-top and removes the sting of death almost completely.
This is one thing that almost eradicated the sting of death completely in games like Everquest at high level and should not be brought back in my not-so-humble opinion.
Death at high level should hurt *more* not less. Also, now there is near-death, real death shouldn't be so trivialised.
I think the remance run should be giving back instant XP not the cleric rez. If you die over and over, instantly pinged back by a cleric, you should pretty quickly not be getting XP back, else the lesson is "getting yourself in a bad situation or attempting an impossible encounter over and over is no big deal".
Getting a cleric rez is 'the easy route' to recovery and shouldn't also be the one with least impact.
Telepath said:I think it was said that the first drop was agro free but after that they might not ignore you at 0.
Yes, but still, one 'free' aggro drop per fight is a lot. And subsequent ones being not-a-total-aggro-drop effectively would mean more than one 'safe' aggro drop per fight.
It would severely diminish the excitement of managing aggro.
Telepath said:Wellspring said:Anyone else concerned that allowing players to get their exp back simply by running back to their corpse, hurts the value of playing a cleric?
Rezzing players so they could get 96% of their lost experience back, used to be the what group ports are for druids and wizards.
This is something I actually didn't like about EQ1. The "value" of playing a cleric was supposed to be your group role of healing. Charging players gold for stuff your class is designed to do was often exploited by clerics, druids, and wizards. If every class had something unique that other players would be willing to pay for, maybe it would be different, but groups are not expected to pay tanks for tanking, or mezzers for mezzing, or anybody else for doing the job that their class kit is designed to do. I never charged for those kinds of services out of principal because it is shady to take something you were given for the benefit of all, and monopolize it for personal gain. Casting a single spell for someone else is not exactly going out of my way.. If I wasn't busy actively fighting a mob or something I would always help someone who asked.
I agree. Always annoyed me in EQ that clerics, druids and wizards got to make a lot of money out of rezzes and ports. Fundamental things like avoiding death and fast travel got turned into class-specific service industries. Examples of 'emergent gameplay' they may be, but guilds "Dial-A-Port" and "Dial-A-Rez" convenience services are not *good* examples of emergent gameplay.
And I was a high level cleric in EQ and no I never charged for a rez.
If there are abilities that players will pay so much for, it means that ability probably shouldn't be there or should be something everyone can accomplish in a different gameplay-related way, not pay-for-a-button-click way. And, yes, those ways could be social, interdependant ways, just not so class specific or powerful.
I'm not suggesting clerics shouldn't get rez at all, but it shouldn't be as powerful as it is. If you get a rez, avoiding the remance run completely, you shouldn't get instant XP returned as well.
In EQ players would die and just sit waiting for a rez rather than playing, because it was so powerful, because it near completely avoided death penalty. They would log off and play an alt, while /who checking for a high level cleric in the zone they died or waiting for a guild cleric to log in.
It was a silly situation where the sting of death was rarely actually felt after mid level.
So I know I'm in the minority on this, and everyone will bash me for this and tell me not to let the door hit my butt on the way out, but I think this inception of the death penalty is a dealbreaker for me, and I wish I had not even pledged at this point. I know all the hardcore fans who want brutally difficult content are SUPER excited about the harsh death penalty, but I am not.
First, they have completely and totally over-complicated a series of mechanics, and I don't understand why. I'm not sure if they just changed the names of everything to avoid getting used by other MMOs, but we all know what a corpse is, and we all know what an experience bonus is, but Remnances and Soul Memories just sound like a way of making the mechanics seem more glorified than they are.
Second, the entire concept is totally contradictory. In the beginning of the newletter, they specifically say: "While it isn’t our goal to make Death an overly-steep obstacle in which players lose hours of effort in a single moment," but then they describe a system which does exactly that.
When you die, you will:
That's a harsher penalty than any MMO I have ever seen, including original EQ. It blows me away that there are people on here talking about how it light this death penalty is.
If a group has a difficult time completing content but takes on a challenging area (which the devs are wanting groups to do), and they die, then it's going to be difficult to get their corpses back, or else they will chain die, which then punishes them even harsher! I dont' see how this lines up with their idea that death isn't going to have players lose hours of effort in a single moment. That is precisely what is going to happen when you die.
Then, if you were freshly leveled and using gear or spells of the new level, and you die and lose a level, you are stuck in a really tight spot. You have to have your old set of gear ready to be used. Everyone either needs to run around with an extra set of pre-level-up gear just in case they die and have to go back to old gear, which is just plain silly, or never equip new gear until you're significantly into the new level; it takes away the excitement of gaining the new level. An experience debt would have been perfectly acceptable solution here.
Now, I'm not a young kid with tons of time on my hands like I used to. I was excited to play Pantheon because I wanted a slower paced, more socialized game, but not necessarily a more "hardcore" game. With a full time job, a wife, and 3 kids, I am busy enough doing other things. I don't want to waste what precious time I have trying to get my corpse and chain dying, or spending an hour trying to grind back to the same spot, or spend hours grinding lost exp, etc. If I have to log soon because of work maintenance, to make food for my family and tuck in the kids, or because it's getting late and I need to sleep, and I end up dying, then I don't have the opportunity to get back to my corpse. Since I can't get my corpse back, I will have to The Eternum, which means I'm potentially going to lose an item I spent forever trying to get?
I just don't understand how they think this is NOT losing hours of work in a single moment. That's precisely what it is. Repairing your gear, fighting back to your corpse, finding someone to rez your body, or even grinding mobs to get back your "soul memory" all sounds like hours of loss time from a single moment.
I suppose I could gloss over all of this if somehow the game were an easy game, and thus death would be incredibly rare. Instead, this game is already brutally difficult. They recently mentioned that overworld mobs were 1-shotting adventurers who attempted to go solo. Yes,I understand they made a pass a this to make it more do-able, but that goes to show you how over-tuned this game currently is. Additionally, I have rarely seen "success" in this game, especially by the developers who pretty much chain die in every stream. Back when Brad was still with us, there were streams where the devs were dying over and over to orcs and mobs inside Blackspire Keep (I have might that name wrong). When they stream with COHH, they are dying left and right. They wiped in the Jim Lee stream. In one video, Joppa wanted to show off a difficult area, and at level 6, they chain died. So they just leveled themselves up to level 8, and they still couldn't get past the first 2 mages which nuked them down in 2 seconds. The point I'm trying to make here is that this is already looking to be a brutally difficult game that even the developers who made the game do not ever seem to be able to succeed at. If they can just level themselves up, give themselves any gear they want, and not deal with corpse runs (teleporting themselves on streams), then how are average gamers supposed to complete this difficult content without dying frequently.
In short, I really think the current death mechanic is too harsh, especially when content is already incredibly difficult. Also, I don't want to "lose hours of effort in a single moment," but that's precisely what they are doing with the current mechanic. Since I know I am going to be shorter on time than others, going to the Eternum to get my items now means I can permanently lose an item. How is that not hours of effort lost in a single moment/death?
I also feel that they have overly complicated the death mechanics, and I don't understand why. I mained a monk in EQ for years, so I considered playing the Monk until I read about all of the gates and chakras and methods to open certain abilities. It sounded so convoluted that I decided I never wanted to play a monk. Luckily, VR decided it was also too complicated of a mechanic for the monk, so they have stream-lined that process. I can only hope that they decide to do the same thing with the death mechanics. VR, please review these death mechanics and make them more reasonable, or change your stance and admit that death will absolutely cause hours of gameplay to make up for.
Go ahead and flame me and tell me that I'm too modern or weak or whatever to play an MMO like this. The truth is, this looks like original EQ but worse. I play games to have fun and make progression, but if I'm spending half my time recovering from an already harsh game, then this just isn't the game for me, and I wish I would have known about the difficulty and mechanics before I first pledged.