I think the death penalty is in a really good place. You have a fighting chance to get back to your body since you keep all your equipped gear. I wouldn't want to play a game without XP loss on death. Also, frankly, I don't think the devs need your ChatGPT code.
Gear durability and repair can make a nice gold sink to tamp down inflated economy if it gets to that point. I suppose lost items do the same. I died with a torch equipped at night by getting two-shot by a viper, so my main weapon was on the corpse. That kind of sucks.
I do think the death XP needs to be tweaked and the lost XP returns faster than what it currently is set at. From the little bit of time in the test, I was getting like 5 XP from it back out of a 3k debt so at that rate I'll never get it all back without some serious grinding and no future deaths.
Reichsritter said: I think the death penalty is in a really good place. You have a fighting chance to get back to your body since you keep all your equipped gear. I wouldn't want to play a game without XP loss on death.
I agree with this.
Also, frankly, I don't think the devs need your ChatGPT code.
Please don't make comments like this. Kittik is trying to help. If the code doesn't help the devs, it certainly doesn't hurt anyone. Comments like this lead to arguments, personal attacks, and other unpleasantness. They're also technically off-topic since the thread is about the Death Penalty and not what the Devs may or may not want in the way of help.
Jothany said:Reichsritter said: I think the death penalty is in a really good place. You have a fighting chance to get back to your body since you keep all your equipped gear. I wouldn't want to play a game without XP loss on death.I agree with this.
Agreed. Death penalty was strong deterrent and the ability to make it back without rez seemed like a happy bonus. Losing levels and re-dinging made a real difference for spell / skill options. I know before level 5 I was charging into fights with 20% mana thinking "so what" but after 5 both solo and in groups people acted like living mattered....which it should.
AzDrake said:Gear durability and repair can make a nice gold sink to tamp down inflated economy if it gets to that point. I suppose lost items do the same. I died with a torch equipped at night by getting two-shot by a viper, so my main weapon was on the corpse. That kind of sucks.
I do think the death XP needs to be tweaked and the lost XP returns faster than what it currently is set at. From the little bit of time in the test, I was getting like 5 XP from it back out of a 3k debt so at that rate I'll never get it all back without some serious grinding and no future deaths.
This is what I was aiming for. Gold sinks will always be needed.
Using EXP as a ressource is the way to make it relevant at XP cap and continue to incentive players to participate in XP grind sessions, even with AA/mastery next to it, having to actually care/bank experience and plan for future death allows your failures to compete with your horizontal progression.
Being old doesn't mean being outdated, mathematics, physics, politics are all very old in design, that doesn't mean they are outdated, so, to me, craving for an easier playtime with less consequence isn't a good justification for a replacement mechanic.
Also "gold" debt with cash is imho the lazy and weak way to manage things, because while Experience is an universal value you get from killing mobs, money is highly dependant of your skills to manage sales and cross player trade. I was broke in wow when it released and when classic was there, I was rich because I knew the game well enough to manage sales and profit. I would really not pretend it's innovative, honestly it's been overused far more than XP debt and whatever the written script, it still sucks like it always did.
If your gear has 0 durability and you're broke you can't play.
If your character loose a level and you can no longer do lvl 50 content, then you jump in lvl 45+ activities for a couple hours.
Kittik said: We can all agree that a game without consequences for your actions lacks excitement. The existing penalty for death in games seems outdated, don't you think? Rather than employing traditional penalties like corpse runs or losing experience points, let's explore an innovative approach. Death should carry weight, encouraging players to avoid it, but why waste their time?
I like the current death penalty system. It seems harsh when compared to "modern" MMOs. But how many of us are clamoring to play a modern MMO that has already made all of these "improvements" to gameplay? If you want a game with minimal death penalty so as to not "waste your time," that's fine. There are many games with minimal death penalty out there for you to choose from.
But I keep coming back to the question of why do you want a game that is trying to be different from the majority of everything currently on the market to be more like everything currently on the market? It doesn't make sense to me. The "outdated" game mechanics that have been replaced in many newer MMOs have only served to make everything bland and create an environment where it's mainly solo players running around not really interacting with each other until they are forced to in a raid or something. That's already been done as well. Why aren't you satisfied with these newer games that have already adopted the changes you're proposing for Pantheon? If you do truly like the game mechanics you're arguing for, then why aren't you playing a game that already has them?
And you're not wrong for having your opinion. But that's just it. It's your opinion. I would venture a guess that most people who are interested in Pantheon are interested in it precisely because it's taking a more "old school" philosophy toward its game mechanics. Please don't turn Pantheon into yet another game that does the same things as most MMOs since around 2010.
What are the two extremes? Exp loss and spawn naked is pretty extreme, but I suppose deleting the character is the most extreme (I won't count that one because that's already got a name and I know no one is talking about that). The other extreme is when you die you just respawn with all your gear and inventory at the nearest safe spot with no exp loss.
What is something that would be a decent compromise between the two? How about spawning with your equipped gear only, and you have to retrieve the rest of your gear by working your way back to your corpse? How about losing some experience when you die, but if you retrieve your corpse you start to earn back your lost experience PLUS any new experience you get until you're back to the point where you never lost any at all?
I dunno, just trying to think of a decent middle ground.
Ranarius said:What are the two extremes? Exp loss and spawn naked is pretty extreme, but I suppose deleting the character is the most extreme (I won't count that one because that's already got a name and I know no one is talking about that). The other extreme is when you die you just respawn with all your gear and inventory at the nearest safe spot with no exp loss.
What is something that would be a decent compromise between the two? How about spawning with your equipped gear only, and you have to retrieve the rest of your gear by working your way back to your corpse? How about losing some experience when you die, but if you retrieve your corpse you start to earn back your lost experience PLUS any new experience you get until you're back to the point where you never lost any at all?
I dunno, just trying to think of a decent middle ground.
IMO:
I seriously doubt they'll change it, because they haven't changed it in years, but..
Current Death Penalties:
1 ) Travel time. You have to travel back to your corpse, for whatever reason. Given there is no bind system (or if there is, it was in game during the december testing) this is, can be, or will be a significant time sink. Many testers died simply trying to get back near their corpse, by sticking to the roads, at night. Many corpses were camped by the mob that killed them, and attempting to get near enough (because the range on /drag is so short) caused a second death.
2 ) Risk of obtaining your items. Let's be real, no-one is going to give up their bags, given how rare bags are. If bags aren't a progression system, why are they given as a pledge reward? Bags are a progression system. Rare consumables, potions, food, drink, clickies, weapons, more. Once players carry multiple sets of gear for multiple environments, losing all that unique gear is a non-starter. Everyone MUST go back for your items, if you're playng the game the way it's intended.
3 ) Risk of obtaining your coin. This is the only way to gain coin, so.. everyone will go back for their coin.
4 ) Possibly (and immediately) recover XP by /dragging your corpse and then clicking on it.
5 ) Possibly obtain the soul memory 'buff' which apparently adds back your lost XP over time, over hundreds of fights.
So, the two extremes are: you either attempt to recover, or you don't. If you don't, you will likely lose a significant, tangible portion of your progression of your character in everything other than XP. It's not that the current system doesn't provide enough penalties. It does. Every tester I grouped with during the december tests felt that Soul Memory was an XP debt system, not an XP recovery system. De-leveling was universally hated, and I can understand why.
The general flow was: Get level 5, fantastic. Go out , get grouped, and wipe to a single yellow con in a cave or similar 'underground' location that auto attacks for 1/3 of the dmg of the tank. Many/some/all delevel, and now have a huge purple bar overlaying their XP bar, which gives the very strong impression you have XP debt to repay. The messages in the text box do not really help, and are ambiguous. Repeat, several times throughout level 5, dying multiple times throughout level 5 in an attempt to test non-solo content, possibly de-leveling multiple times. Gain enough 'debt' (again, perception, not reality) that hundreds or thousands of fights will be required to remove the purple bar from the character.
Now there are a few ways to address the perception of debt vs. non-debt, but de-leveling is.. well, there's a reason games did away with that. It's a profoundly negative experience, added on to an an experience that is already negative in multiple ways. You failed, and for good measure, we're going to make sure you will be less effictive in recovering from that failure, and even better, some abilities you had? You can't use them now. And some gear that's level restricted, you also can't re-equip that now. And some areas that are level gated? You can't go back there, now. It also leads to the very real possibility (if VR chooses) to lock people out of their corpse location, either directly or indirectly, with de-leveling, possibly multiple times, in an attempt to recover hundreds or thousands of hours of progression equipment on your corpse.
Personally, I don't care how much XP I have to repay, as long as I don't de-level, but I understand there are dozens of heavily invested testers that feel that punishing your customers is the best way to retain them, and VR has listened to them, so I don't think this will change.
Personally, if Soul Memory is here to stay? I would change the purple Soul Memory XP bar overlay to a buff icon that shows you're gaining 'extra' XP. It's weird that dying provides a bonus, but if that's really what is happening, then make it a buff until it's gone. The rate of that bonus XP should also be modified several times greater, so it won't take hundreds or thousands of fights, but scale it so it recovers completely in ~50-100 fights or less, (per death) no matter what, fighting blues/whites.
I would remove Soul Memory entirely, and simply make death cause a 10% XP loss if you abandon your corpse, and 5% if you recover/click on it/are rez'd. I would also remove any penalties related to the recovery of gear, bags, money, or items. This greatly simplifies the CSR burden on lost corpses, and leaves you with the existing penalties of:
1) De-Leveling
2) Travel Time
3) XP Loss
To me, given the hardcore/random-death nature of combat during testing in Dec 2023, those three penalties are sufficient to create the emergent behavior of wanting to get back to your corpse and recover from a group wipe.
Resurrection spells should add to the % of XP recovered, and remove the travel time. I would also be in favor of: losing 15% of a level if you abandon your corpse, 5% recovered if you click on it, and an additional 1-5% if you get rez'd, which means no matter what, even with the best rez in the game, you still lose 5% XP from a death. Why? Because you want players playing your game, not quitting out of frustration. Recovering XP is playing the game.
Optionally, you could skip the direct XP loss penalties entirely and simply add a temporary death debuff to stats, abilities, and skills that must exclusively be worked off by gaining XP. This would remove de-leveling from the penalty list, but would affect max level characters as well as leveling-up characters. This was covered/discussed in the past.. here . It also creates new emergent social behavior, if such information was 'knowable' on other characters, that is, if the temporary debuff was visible.
No matter what? Soul Memory has to change, either in portrayal, communication, UI, message, math, recovery time, or all of these. It is chronically misunderstood.
tl;dr: Having seen how punitive death & CR is in Pantheon in December 2023, I would say I am in favor of (as a middle ground):
-- losing 15% of a level if you abandon your corpse, 5% recovered if you click on it, and an additional 1-5% if you get rez'd, which means no matter what, even with the best rez in the game, you still lose 5% XP from a death.
AND
-- a temporary death debuff to stats, abilities, and skills that must exclusively be worked off by gaining XP, after level 25.
OR
Either of the two, rather than both, from level 5+. (and no item, gear, money loss, ever, no matter what.)
AzDrake said:Gear durability and repair can make a nice gold sink to tamp down inflated economy if it gets to that point. I suppose lost items do the same. I died with a torch equipped at night by getting two-shot by a viper, so my main weapon was on the corpse. That kind of sucks.
I do think the death XP needs to be tweaked and the lost XP returns faster than what it currently is set at. From the little bit of time in the test, I was getting like 5 XP from it back out of a 3k debt so at that rate I'll never get it all back without some serious grinding and no future deaths.
I proposed an idea where the longer you go without a death, the more soul exp is returned.
Say you're averaging 10 soul exp returned per kill, after an hour of no deaths it could start returning 20, then 30, after every hour it goes up to a certain TBD point.
This penalizes death but then also efficient grouping. It also gives a bit of an incentive to craft or do other things if you build up a bit of soul exp loss.
I could also see something like 0.5% or 0.25% returned per hour logged out. 0.5% would be about 8 full days logged out to return all lost soul exp, 0.25 16 days and on and on.
Not sure if they're keeping this same rate of gain back but like you I had 6k exp soul debt after the test, at our current average return on mobs we were killing I would have need ~600 straight kills without a death to get that all back which was too much.
Mmm... If accumulated death was that much, maybe your group should stop attempting things they shouldn't be (i.e. stop dying)? Having said that, obviously, in this case the death penalty amount didn't stop you trying, so didn't actually perform its purpose. Maybe it should be even more severe? LOL!
chenzeme said:Mmm... If accumulated death was that much, maybe your group should stop attempting things they shouldn't be (i.e. stop dying)? Having said that, obviously, in this case the death penalty amount didn't stop you trying, so didn't actually perform its purpose. Maybe it should be even more severe? LOL!
Yes, this is what we want. We want death to be so obnoxious that people shouldn't attempt to have fun. Death penalties like this are great at detering you from exploring, from trying to fight challening mob, from playing solo. Perfect. This is what we want. Death is so bad that we dont' want you to look to have fun, such a great idea!!
Does anyone here know with 100% accuracy how the current Soul Memory system works?
When you release from your body after death you lose 10% of your current level's exp total (one "bar" of exp)
When you retrieve your corpse that 10% that you lost is added into your Soul Memory
As you continue to play the game, every mob you kill still gives you what they would have normally given you PLUS 10%, until you've recovered all your soul memory.
Your soul memory caps at 3 deaths worth of exp in the current level.
If you die 3 times in succession, and then don't die again while recovering your soul memory, by the time you recover all your soul memory it will be as if you never died at all. You'd have recovered all lost exp.
If you die more than 3 times in succession any exp lost above the Soul Memory cap is permanently lost.
The current recovery rate feels very slow, and the feedback is fairly consistent that the rate of recovery should be sped up.
Ranarius said:When you release from your body after death you lose 10% of your current level's exp total (one "bar" of exp)
When you retrieve your corpse that 10% that you lost is added into your Soul Memory
As you continue to play the game, every mob you kill still gives you what they would have normally given you PLUS 10%, until you've recovered all your soul memory.
Your soul memory caps at 3 deaths worth of exp in the current level.If you die 3 times in succession, and then don't die again while recovering your soul memory, by the time you recover all your soul memory it will be as if you never died at all. You'd have recovered all lost exp.
If you die more than 3 times in succession any exp lost above the Soul Memory cap is permanently lost.
The current recovery rate feels very slow, and the feedback is fairly consistent that the rate of recovery should be sped up.
Thank you, Ranarius.