I had a discussion on the Discord server yesterday about the death of your character with regard to experience and equipment. I then thought it over and figured, with some of the free time I had today, I'd entertain the concepts here to see what people think. I welcome any criticism and discussion. The topic is about what happens upon death and subsequently, with your equipment and items as well as death penalties and more specifically, experience loss.
A bit of a disclaimer, we know their position and that it's still up in the air as to where they are likely to go with it and on top of that we know it's not that important this early on. This is because with testing purposes through implementation of features, it's typical to just turn off experience loss upon dying. This is to entertain it as a concept for the later stage of development.
Death and Continuity: What happens to your equipment or inventory upon death?
This process allows for a heavy item sink within the game. It also allows for the player and or group to fight back through content during a corpse recovery without having to do so while naked.
- When you die, all equipment (equiped armor and weapons) as well as your inventory remains on your corpse. You essentially respawn naked.
- You may bind your armor or weapons to your character via two methods. Inventory items such as bags are not permitted.
-- Method 1: Interacting with a player-crafter with an appropriate skill in a number of crafting professions whether Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing, Tailoring, Woodcrafting, Runecrafting or the like, they may -- through breaking down valuable weapons, armor or other items, as well as harvestables -- apply a magical effect on said armor piece or weapon allowing it to be bound to your character.
-- Method 2: Interacting with a respective crafting NPC, by handing them dropped weapons, armor or other items, they deconstruct those items and fill a resource pool. Different items, based on level, value, etc., give different amounts towards that pool. You may then insert your weapon or armor and apply the effect which binds it to your character. This process however requires more of an item sink than the player based method.
Death and Experience: When you die, do you lose experience and if so, how to you recover said experience?
Death contributes to a normal experience loss similar to other MMORPGs and Everquest in particular.
- Remove the experience component from the resurrect spells for all resurrection capable classes. This can make the issue problematic as you are forced to search for one with the appropriate spell or experience return amount. This creates an atmosphere where those classes overwhelmingly go anonymous because of the spam. On top of that, some players due to not being able to find that experience resurrection, take a loss which itself can be defeating and in the current era, detrimental to the players and their continued interest in the game.
- Allow those same resurrection spells to continue to return the player to their corpse.
- When you as a player has a corpse or corpses, once or if it is clear of equipment and inventory it becomes a skeleton. At that point you are permitted to pick up your skeleton and put it in your backpack.
- These corpses/skeletons have a timer that begins to tick down upon the death of the player. This number can be 2 hours, 3 hours or even 6 hours depending on how Visionary Realms wants to balance it.
- Introduce Priests in major cities and even major towns. If you give these priests your skeletons, they may perform a 'Rite of the Divine' giving you back your expeirence or a set amount depending on a number of factors designated by the developers. One factor can be in currency sink while the other can be in item sink similar to how the equipment binding option above works.
My core feeling about dying is that it should *always* be painful enough to sting. Possibly with an exception at very early levels.
I think the corpse run should be something that can be bypassed by making the penalty significantly higher. Thus, go to a corpse retrieval NPC or gravestone and get back to playing immediately with e.g. the loss of 20% of a level if the normal loss is 10% (numbers used for illustrative purposes and not as a suggestion for what the penalty should be). Why? Because sometimes a corpse run just cannot be done for fairly long periods of time (player may have logged off, group may have been unwilling to help, getting a new group in that particular area may be very difficult) and not being able to play at all for days or weeks other than desperately spamming chat for help is just too punitive.
Even there I think buying insurance in some way so that if you die you can simply continue on about your business makes it far too easy especially for lower level characters with higher level alts so that they have virtually infinite money compared to the cost at low to medium levels. If you die you either actually do the corpse run or you start over at the graveyard. You do not shrug it off because the right class or craft did something to your soul or gear in advance.
Loss of experience or gear (if the game has potential loss of gear - I advocate neither for nor against it in this thread) is another matter entirely. There should be no way to avoid it completely. If this can be totally avoided by doing something in advance you make the marginal cost of dying zero - or close. This entirely defeats the purpose of having a death penalty. It replaces the concept of death penalty with the concept of money sink, and a trivially irrelevant money sink at that after you have one or more reasonably well off characters.
If I die right outside of town (trivial corpse run) with 200 players who can resurrect me 50 feet away that death should still sting. Just not as badly as if my corpse was unreachable.
Agreed on most points from Dorotea, and I'll add these..
--
Personally, I don't like the behavior that the skeleton mechanic would encourage in the players I know. Specifically, the ever-present desire to leave the group and return to town. It's one of those things where it's the opposite of community-building or group-focused.
Similarly, everything VR has mentioned about their current public design goals states that permanent item loss will not be a mechanic they're implementing in Pantheon. As such, I'm not inclined to speculate too far down the rabbit hole of implementations that have that. I mean, EQ1 had it, it's true, but I do know several cases where players unsubscribed as a result, and/or players couldn't play for weeks as a result. Both? Undesirable from a retention perspective. Yes, it creates mental threat and psychological avoidance state, yet, there are better ways.
While respawning a character naked was done in EQ1 originally, there are considerations; If you want gear to be important, taking it away when the player needs it the most will be seen as overly punitive. Do you include glyphs in this? If so, you may be guaranteeing failure, which again, will be seen as overly punitive.
Corpse banking is/was a thing in EQ1, and it's possible this would still permit it (via temporarily temporally persistent XP containers), which is ... not ideal for all the reasons corpse banking is/was not ideal. :) Among them? Max level players 1 hour after an expansion launches with an increase in max level.
Deaths due to bugs, glitches, falling through the world, warping, summoning, wrapping signed integers for falling damage, and more... basically any death caused by the game world itself doesn't fit inside this box. And there will be TONS of deaths like that, forever. It's the nature of online games.
Being forced to rely on BOTH PC's and NPC's for each one of these? Again, overly punitive. Relying on one? Sure, maybe. NPC's only? Again, sure.
Dying at 1am PDT on a Monday (while playing in Japan), due to falling through the world with a resulting un-targetable, un-summonable corpse, that no PC can retrieve because it's "too far away" or can't be targeted or for any other reason something doesn't work quite right? Or worse, there is no body, and the only record of your death is in the server logs? Yet.. you absolutely MUST get it or lose all your gear, or 20% of a level of XP, or any other punitive thing? Extremely undesirable.
Do you want to create any death mechanic that requires a petition and waiting for an in-game GM, or 9-5 employee (or 9-9 employee) before the player can play again? VR has confirmed 24x7 Employees-paid-in-USD GM's will NOT be a thing at launch. It's worth erring on the side of in-the-favor-of-the-player.
Lastly, there should be a provision for "plot deaths" or deaths whereby a marker or corpse is left, yet, the player or target loses absolutely nothing. Why? Because it allows for extremely creative mechanics regarding NPC guilds, diplomacy, hiring, bribery, faction, reputation, prestige, influence, world plot mechanics, and insulated PvP. Note: These would not be and would not be used for normal adventuring deaths. This would be in addition to a 'normal' death.
dorotea said:My core feeling about dying is that it should *always* be painful enough to sting. Possibly with an exception at very early levels.
I agree. Death must always be painful, something you want to go to great lengths to avoid. Death is the result of a mistake, either yours or someone elses. Mistakes have consequences. The severity of consequence must relfect the severity of the mistake. Thus much of your personal penalty for dying can be reduced by careful planning, being mindful of your surroundings and having a strong understanding of strengths and weakness of your class and those in your group.
Personally, I prefer harsh penalties: XP loss. De-leveling. Naked corpse runs. Why? Because, for one thing, harsh penalties help to spread out the players. Those more capable players will move away from the less capable, on down the line. Also, without death being painful, victory then loses much of its attractiveness. To never lose something means winning just isn't that interesting.
Firstly, thanks Janus for the thoughtful post and putting forth some interesting ideas around how to to deal with the death penalty. My main concern around the item binding concept is that it would create situations where some party members have bound their items and others have not, either because they couldn't afford it, just got some new items that they didn't have time to bind, or they just felt like taking a risk. In any case, the incentive to do a CR would be very different for each member of the party.
As to the skeleton idea, I like it. It still requires a CR but if you take further action there is a way to mitigate some of the pain, though I don't think the xp loss should ever be fully mitigated. I don't think there necessarily needs to be a timer on when you complete the 'Rite of the Divine' just so people don't feel rushed to leave the party to get it done.
@Dorotea The debate over should there be a CR at all and should there be ways to avoid it completely has me the most torn and I can understand why VR and the community as a whole is struggling with it. I know there are already several lengthy threads on this topic. I'm still in the camp of requiring a full CR to get your gear back (this is assuming that glyphs are soulbound, if not, then my position would shift). I can only speak anecdotally, but in all the MMO's I have played that didn't require a CR, while death was sometimes painful and annoying, I never feared it and without fearing death I never fully respected the world. It is this that puts the Risk in Risk vs. Reward. Knowing that I could possibly lose all my gear if I am unable to gather friends to help me out puts #communitymatters forefront and highlights the understanding that a truly challenging game is truly rewarding. This is even with the understanding that some deaths are not our fault and that there may be times I go for days trying to get my corpse back.
I think that if something is not broken do not fix it
and with this I mean that the EQ1 system was perfect
both in the case that Janus says of the skeleton that you put in the backpack and you are going to resurrect an NPC in the city like Dorotea's case of putting an NPC in the cemetery to invoke the body
I find it horrible for two reasons
1. encourage leaving the group every time you die
2. the community matters we want unique and interdependent classes, we can not put NPC's to solve all those things that our character can not do so we can avoid the community when it suits us
((Deaths due to bugs, glitches, falling through the world, warping, summoning, wrapping signed integers for falling damage, and more... basically any death caused by the game world itself doesn't fit inside this box. And there will be TONS of deaths like that, forever. It's the nature of online games. ))
In this you are manifestly correct.
What we presumably want in the case of death caused solely by bugs are in this order of importance. (1) Ability to keep playing without the need for GM intervention. Any mechanism that lets the player summon the corpse will accomplish this and, if allowed, the player can petition for the return of lost experience without having to wait upon a GM's availability to keep playing. I say "if allowed" because I have no idea if a GM would be able to verify the cause of death hours or days later and if they could not surely just the player saying "I died to bug - not a large insect either" would not be enough to warrent return of experience. Some of us ...lie.
(2) Some means of providing whatever remedy VR sees fit to allow without having to get a GM involved. Reducing the number of petitions is always a plus. I can't think of an obvious way to do this automatically however. If VR knew the bug in question that well it would probably have been fixed already.
Although perhaps the game could identify situations where the death was from falling into a bottomless pit. Normally no one dies from falling so this might be easy to isolate. In cases where death is from falling, no penalty and you resurrect with all your gear at a graveyard. Bad - since you lose all your progress to wherever you had been playing - but at least no penalty on top of that.
In the more typical case death isn't from falling. It is from *landing* and your body is at the bottom. But falling through the world may be more likely to produce an endless fall with no resting place.
*Elki. I do not entirely disagree but my concern is with situations where the community cannot or will not help get the body back in a reasonable time frame. A substantially greater experience point loss for using the gravestone or corpse retrieval NPC is a strong encouragement for the player to stay with the group and get the corpse the more normal way. Note that if the game does not otherwise provide for deleveling (which it should IMO) this can and should be an exception since losing a level at the corpse NPC doesn't have the same impact as losing a level in the middle of a dungeon to the serious detriment of the entire group.
*Thorndeep. I am not thinking about whether there should be a CR since I assume there will be one. My focus is solely on whether it should be mandatory. I see the arguments for mandatory CRs but for the reasons I gave I prefer not having a corpse that cannot readily be retrieved as a complete barrier to playing that character and I rely on a heavy additional penalty to discourage use of this mechanism.
Keep in mind everyone, the concept still allows for the pain of death and the risk factor. The timer to get your corpse experience resurrected is no different than in EQ where you sometimes had to break from group to track down a Cleric with the appropriate spell or clicky. That took a lot of time and at times which happened to me often enough, I couldn't get one to get to me in time. That instance would be extremely detrimental to the current crop and demographic even those interested in this game.
An example. Let's say you die, get resurrected and you now have your corpse looted and your skeleton stashed in your inventory, would 6 hours not be enough time to go to town? Going by that, like in EQ, the countdown for that rez was shorter.
The goal ultimately was to do a number of things...
1. Keep death as a risk factor and something you as a player do not want to happen.
a. Introduce a range of experience return not making 100% similar to in Everquest.
b. Requirement to run back to your corpse and retrieve it IF you aren't resurrected.
c. The possibility if you go past the 6+ hour timer on your corpse to use a priest in a city or small town nearby, you would lose that chance to return the experience.
2. Remove the detriment found within Everquest where you depended on a Cleric of an appropriate level to return said experience. As of now, only the Cleric has the experience return function in Pantheon and that should probably be removed. This allows for...
a. The Clerics in the game not having to go anonymous due to the consistent begging and pleading where they're spammed with requests.
b. Players having a method to do so without the need to find a class to return experience. This is not a process of valued community interaction, only an instance of exchange.
c. An instance where people still only want a Cleric as the healer in group because of the experience return function.
3. Due to their decision to allow for armor, weapons and other items to be fully tradeable, you would have found a need to create an extensive item sink in the game. Both methods on my post contribute to that.
a. Currency sink used to act as both a deterence for the player, but also, as a method to remove coin/currency from your system.
b. Item sink used to act as both a deterence for the player, but also, as a method to remove weapons, armor or other items from your system.
I feel the same today as I did a year ago, minus a small edit or two.
oneADseven said:While traditional corpse runs serve as an efficient catalyst for loss aversion I'm not convinced that there aren't better ways to achieve the same thing without forcing players down a linear path of recovery. Holding our gear hostage basically means we have no choice but to do X (retrieve corpse) before we can continue to progress. To that end, I would propose:
1) Every death results in a loss of 15% XP, with the possibility to de-level.
2) Finding your corpse will grant you 10% XP. (Corpses last 3-6 hours before decaying.)
3) Being rezzed will restore 10% XP.
I try to imagine scenarios where players gain entry to areas that require enhanced acclimation, player abilities, access keys, or a combination of each. Death in these areas are extra punitive if players don't have a reliable way of returning to their corpse. So imagine you have the summoner who builds a raft or bridge … or the rogue that drops rope, the warrior that bashes a wall, the ranger that helps you fly over a chasm, the druid that grants acclimation bonuses or calms a storm. If you die after navigating past these obstacles you're at least semi-reliant on having those people in your group to return to that same location. Add in access keys (they won't all be as simple as the first key in HC) as an additional layer and now there are a bunch of situations where people can die in an area that could be extremely difficult to return to. This sounds like a really stressful situation to be in … whether you are the player relying on others, or the player that others are relying on. Player interdependence is a beautiful thing but I think we're pushing it too far if someone can end up being naked for an extended period of time because they can't recreate the exact set of variables that allowed them access to a given area.
To be clear, I'm okay with the idea of "Death in these areas are extra punitive if players don't have a reliable way of returning to their corpse." If players can't get back to their corpse then they suffer additional XP loss. That's fine. You adventured deep into a dungeon, bashed a few walls, took a raft down the stream filled with piranhas, and explored an area that is usually locked. The stakes are high in this situation because if you end up wiping there is a chance you'll lose a significantly higher chunk of XP than you would in an area where you could reliably return to your corpse. That seems fair and I think most players would be willing to push through in this scenario despite the added risk. Attaching item loss to corpse recovery changes things, though, as it feels like the ultimate "artificial limiter." What happens when our gear has acclimation bonuses on it? We meet the cold threshold with our situational gear but then we die and lose it … how are we supposed to get back to our gear? I'm sure this aspect of the death penalty resonates with former EQ players but we need to remember that Terminus is going to be much more dangerous than Norrath ever was. Penalty or not, the current iteration of "corpse run" doesn't sit well with me. There are too many implications that will need to be compensated for with this kind of penalty and it really gets in the way of:
- 7.0 Will there be a ‘death penalty’?
We want the player to respect and even fear the environment, but also to be enticed by it. A big part of achieving this balance is making sure there is an incentive to avoid death. While the details of this system are not yet fleshed out (and will likely be tweaked and changed a bit during beta), you can expect death to be something you’d rather avoid. That said, if a death penalty is too severe, it can keep players away from some of the more challenging and rewarding content, and we are keeping this in mind as well. So death will sting, but it will also not involve losing an unreasonable amount of experience, or levels, or a permanent loss of items.
I would rather see the penalty shift toward increased experience loss (that can cause you to de-level) and maybe gold / deity favor loss than forcing players to return to the scene of the crime which feels linear, artificial and limiting. Maybe it doesn't seem like any of those things if you have a ton of experience playing EQ but as an MMO veteran who has never dealt with this exact type of penalty I can tell you that I think it will feel like all of those. I think about the world being designed with this type of penalty in mind and it really inhibits the potential of what I think is possible. Is this truly the best way to handle the death penalty or are we only doing it this way because it's the EQ way? There is a balance that needs to be struck when it comes to creating truly challenging content and punishing people for mistakes. My understanding is that EQ focused way more on the latter than the former. I hope we can achieve a healthy middle ground but it's going to require give and take. I consider the following excerpt from "What is Pantheon?" and can't help but think that there is a better way to go about this.
"Because Pantheon values the paradigm of great risk vs. great reward, the player will always be encouraged to push themselves out the door and to embrace exploration, adventure, danger and the community of players alongside them."
oneADseven said:Aradune said:Dullahan said:I think it's very important that it be mandatory we retrieve our corpse to preserve the tension and risk aspect of gameplay. If we don't have to go back and get our stuff (at least some of it), it will directly impact the sense of danger which should accompany combat, as well as the sense of accomplishment that comes with success.
That may mean that only unequipped items remain on our corpse. I can see how that might being necessary, especially if we have to return to environments that would be too troublesome to endure without equipment. Either way, it's imperative that the time sink surrounding corpse retrieval be in place.
I hear you loud and clear. I would add that significant exp loss at death, most of which can be recovered when you return to your corpse, can be pretty compelling as well.
There you have it. Recovering significant XP from our corpse can be pretty compelling. That isn't coming from a perspective of how things worked in EQ (which is irrelevant to this discussion) -- it's coming from the Chief Creative Officer of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen -- if he is convinced that XP will be meaningful in this game and that players will feel compelled to retrieve their corpses in order to recover a portion of what is lost, that is good enough for me! There is no diving into specifics here on why XP will be more of a treasured/precious resource in this game than it was in EQ and there really doesn't need to be. There were lessons learned in EQ and Vanguard and with those lessons, there is obvious room for improvement. If anybody at VR has been reading these threads I hope they take a good long look at the amount of people who considered XP negligible in EQ. That speaks volumes. It's not an issue of concept, it's an issue with implementation. Make XP matter in this game and while you're at it, please consider corpse decay as I think it would add a very interesting layer of flavor and urgency to corpse runs.
I would much rather play a game where I have to fight my way back to my corpse before it decays to alleviate a portion of the loss rather than rely on corpse summons or begging for people to sneak/invis/FD-flop-drag my corpse back to me at the zone line. Naked corpse runs sound absolutely dreadful in a game where situational gear is supposed to be important not only for overcoming encounters (that respawn), but also the environment itself. We have seen newsletters that discuss artifact items that allow you to traverse areas with boots that levitate or grappling hooks that help you get into otherwise inaccessible areas. If you lose those items how are you supposed to get back there? Rather than pigeonholing people into being useless, add options -- how is that not considered layers of risk vs reward? If you lose a corpse in a really dangerous area and aren't able to recover it before it decays, you suffer an increased penalty. That qualifies as risk vs reward in the traditional sense of the words and adds a sense of urgency that will motivate people rather than a sense of fear or brick wall that will discourage people from taking risks or exploring into areas that require certain abilities/keys/gear.
oneADseven said:Here is another quote from Brad:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty/view/post_id/59612
"Whew, awesome thread, great ideas, etc.
As I've stated before, the 'severity' of Pantheon's death penalty will likely lie in between two 'extremes': Vanilla EQ and Vanilla VG. We need to find that sweet spot in-between the two. Totally naked corpse runs are probably too extreme. But, on the other end of the pendulum, trivializing death penalties leads to all sorts of problems. Players don't respect the environment, aren't encouraged to play seriously and with forethought, etc. At the same time, if we go too far the other way, many players will want to avoid death to such a great degree that exploration, trying new tactics, taking on that formidable boss-mob, etc. will suffer.
The goal, of course, is to come up with a death penalty that is desired by our target audience. That's easier said than done, though, because even though you all are more often on the same page than not when it comes to design and mechanics, there are a few categories where there is not an obvious or clear mandate from our community. The death penalty, of course, is one of these.
So when it comes to situations like this, here is our general approach:
Define the two extremes. Set up the system where it's relatively easy to 'tune' between these two extremes. Implement during alpha and beta the system and adjust the 'tuning'. Watch the players, listen to the community, etc. Adjust accordingly and, hopefully, narrow things down.
This is, of course, a great example of why a long beta is so important to MMORPG development. Opinions and plans are great, but often until players are actually experiencing these critical mechanics and systems we developers need to wait and watch (and not commit to specifics)."
The key takeaway for me is that they want a system that is easy to tweak. XP percentages accomplish that. (It probably shouldn't be possible to recover more than 50% of what is lost at death, either. I'm sure 97% rezzes went a long way toward trivializing the XP component of the penalty in EQ.) It was also stated that they are shooting for an area in-between the two extremes and totally naked corpse runs appears to be one of them. I'm not saying that this totally rules out naked corpse runs but when I follow the logic that has been shared, they don't objectively meet the desired criteria. If anything, they seem to satisfy the "undesired" criteria since they qualify as an extreme.
The other extreme appears to be a "trivial death penalty" which is obviously subjective. XP Debt is trivial at max level so hopefully, de-leveling makes the cut. They want players to respect the environment, to play seriously and with forethought. As long as XP is considered a meaningful resource in this game and players stand to lose a significant amount of it if they fail to recover their corpse, that falls well within those lines, IMO. I know that some people want the death penalty to be terrifying ... to discourage people from taking risks, yada yada yada. Again ... just my opinion here, but that seems to be an established extreme that will be intentionally avoided. I guess we'll see how things shake out in Alpha/Beta.
We don't need an NPC that can summon our corpses as long as corpse decay is in tact. Recover your corpse before it rots or suffer a bigger penalty. Loss aversion is desired, excessive risk aversion is not.
Janus said:Keep in mind everyone, the concept still allows for the pain of death and the risk factor. The timer to get your corpse experience resurrected is no different than in EQ where you sometimes had to break from group to track down a Cleric with the appropriate spell or clicky. That took a lot of time and at times which happened to me often enough, I couldn't get one to get to me in time. That instance would be extremely detrimental to the current crop and demographic even those interested in this game.
An example. Let's say you die, get resurrected and you now have your corpse looted and your skeleton stashed in your inventory, would 6 hours not be enough time to go to town? Going by that, like in EQ, the countdown for that rez was shorter.
The goal ultimately was to do a number of things...
1. Keep death as a risk factor and something you as a player do not want to happen.
a. Introduce a range of experience return not making 100% similar to in Everquest.
b. Requirement to run back to your corpse and retrieve it IF you aren't resurrected.
c. The possibility if you go past the 6+ hour timer on your corpse to use a priest in a city or small town nearby, you would lose that chance to return the experience.
2. Remove the detriment found within Everquest where you depended on a Cleric of an appropriate level to return said experience. As of now, only the Cleric has the experience return function in Pantheon and that should probably be removed. This allows for...
a. The Clerics in the game not having to go anonymous due to the consistent begging and pleading where they're spammed with requests.
b. Players having a method to do so without the need to find a class to return experience. This is not a process of valued community interaction, only an instance of exchange.
c. An instance where people still only want a Cleric as the healer in group because of the experience return function.
3. Due to their decision to allow for armor, weapons and other items to be fully tradeable, you would have found a need to create an extensive item sink in the game. Both methods on my post contribute to that.
a. Currency sink used to act as both a deterence for the player, but also, as a method to remove coin/currency from your system.
b. Item sink used to act as both a deterence for the player, but also, as a method to remove weapons, armor or other items from your system.
i'm a simple man here. what i'm seeing is some type of cushion for death. uhh i'm thinking about it like if i was a kid and i did something stupid like run naked around the house with a bucket of purple paint. it would be like me standing in the corner for 30 mins holding the can of paint(an eternity as a kid) or instead of getting spanked with a paddle and having to clean up my mess.
sorry for the simplistic nature of my mind >.>
Seems to me an easier solution, Janus, would be:
- Give all priests the ability to return XP for a res, rather than just Clerics. Instead of removing it from all of them all, give it to all of them.
and/or
- Guarantee a loss or XP debt of 10% of your current level, per death. No matter what, that's the best case scenario. You do everything right, you will always still lose/incur 10% loss/debt.
Then? I don't care what the corpse/skeleton mechanics are, as long as one of those or both of those is in place.
It makes death sting, yet, if your cell tower in Alaska is hit by lightning and you have no Internet for a week, you don't lose everything.
Similarly, it makes zerging content unlikely, as.. every death is at least 10% debt/loss. If that's not enough, add in 5% stat loss on death too, or 5% damage reduction, or 5% healing reduction. Make them stack, or put them in place if you die more than x times in x minutes/hours. Or not. Whatever it takes. But some of those things will create extremely predictable emergent behavior. Just like XP loss did in EQ1 before the Cleric epic/water sprinkler.
There's lots of choices that make death something to avoid, instead of de-leveling and the risk of item loss.
After 10 deaths, if you were half as effective, in every way, until you recovered that XP? Sting-a-ling. :)
I understand the goal of the skeleton mechanic, but in practice, it just means two tasks instead of one, plus the ... ever-present pull to leave the group.
I know, 6 hours seems like a long time, yet.. it is a deadline, and customers don't respond well to those under certain circumstances. If Pantheon is going to have the same issues as Plane of Air, or having to break Fear, Hate, or the monumental effort required for similar one-way or time-sink content like that? 6 hours isn't enough.
Heck, for scheduling purposes alone, do you want your customers in game for longer than that?
That's why I think just saying "Look... if you die repeatedly, you're going to incur a 10% debt per death and stacking 5% +whatever penalty, guaranteed." would be sufficient.
vjek said:Seems to me an easier solution, Janus, would be:
- Give all priests the ability to return XP for a res, rather than just Clerics. Instead of removing it from all of them all, give it to all of them.
and/or
- Guarantee a loss or XP debt of 10% of your current level, per death. No matter what, that's the best case scenario. You do everything right, you will always still lose/incur 10% loss/debt.
Then? I don't care what the corpse/skeleton mechanics are, as long as one of those or both of those is in place.
It makes death sting, yet, if your cell tower in Alaska is hit by lightning and you have no Internet for a week, you don't lose everything.
Similarly, it makes zerging content unlikely, as.. every death is at least 10% debt/loss. If that's not enough, add in 5% stat loss on death too, or 5% damage reduction, or 5% healing reduction. Make them stack, or put them in place if you die more than x times in x minutes/hours. Or not. Whatever it takes. But some of those things will create extremely predictable emergent behavior. Just like XP loss did in EQ1 before the Cleric epic/water sprinkler.
There's lots of choices that make death something to avoid, instead of de-leveling and the risk of item loss.
After 10 deaths, if you were half as effective, in every way, until you recovered that XP? Sting-a-ling. :)
I understand the goal of the skeleton mechanic, but in practice, it just means two tasks instead of one, plus the ... ever-present pull to leave the group.
I know, 6 hours seems like a long time, yet.. it is a deadline, and customers don't respond well to those under certain circumstances. If Pantheon is going to have the same issues as Plane of Air, or having to break Fear, Hate, or the monumental effort required for similar one-way or time-sink content like that? 6 hours isn't enough.
Heck, for scheduling purposes alone, do you want your customers in game for longer than that?
That's why I think just saying "Look... if you die repeatedly, you're going to incur a 10% debt per death and stacking 5% +whatever penalty, guaranteed." would be sufficient.
so what you are saying is if i am an idiot running around in the living room with purple paint, i should have to get spanked 10 times and clean that space. if i ran around the living room, kitchen and bathroom, i'll get 30 spanks and have to clean up all the rooms?
yea that sounds reasonable to me.
I can understand that people who did not play EQ1 have their doubts and fear of the system
but the system was not excessively punitive and in large part although it seems absurd it was highly rewarding
most players could tell you emotionally excited stories directly related to the recovery of corpses
if you died traveling in the middle of a forest and did not know where your corpse was the nether rods and SK had spells to locate them there was also an item with the effect of that spell and the tracker skill of druids rangers and bards could also locate it
if you died inside a dungeon, it was normal to be in camps, the next camp group could always lend a hand, if we say it was too late and since there were few people, you just disconnected the next day there was a group in that camp that normally it helped you
you could give someone permission to drag your body to the entrance the low lvl just had to call a high lvl friend
and at lvl a rogue with invis could get you a body of 99% of the sites
and in the last case (or the first one if you had money left over) you bought a coffin and a necromancer invoked your body
no NPC is needed to do things that players already do, that there is no kind player at the moment offers a bit of platinum that greedy players always have
1AD7 we already know that glyphs remain permanent for extreme climates
I can assure you that in the EQ there is no area left to explore
the higher the risk the better the reward
you just have to prepare a little before leaving the adventure and not invite the group to leroy jenkins
Janus if you are going to put npcs in all the cities and towns and you give 6 + hours to recover the experience by dying the only thing you get is to annoy the classes that have the ability to recover the experience of dying
since nobody is going to fear for losing that experience because nobody is going to lose it if you want to do that, simply do not lose experience when you die
Dorotea in my opinion so that this is a last resort and not the usual way of acting you should lose an entire level by using that system and not being able to resurrect the body
Elki said:you could give someone permission to drag your body to the entrance the low lvl just had to call a high lvl friend
and at lvl a rogue with invis could get you a body of 99% of the sites
and in the last case (or the first one if you had money left over) you bought a coffin and a necromancer invoked your body
no NPC is needed to do things that players already do, that there is no kind player at the moment offers a bit of platinum that greedy players always have
These sound like gimmicks that were necessary in EQ specifically because of gear being attached to corpses. The world is supposed to be dangerous. Recovering a corpse shouldn't be as simple as finding an at-level rogue who can sneak/drag. Sneak/Invis/FD-Flopping are tools that help players navigate the world, and that is fine. At the same time, there should be natural counters to all of these ... otherwise, they end up being an easy form of content circumvention. If rogues can recover 99% of corpses then that sounds like a great incentive to multi-box a rogue. That isn't player/group interdependence. Group interdependence should require a defeated group to fight their way back to their corpse before it expires. That sounds a lot more interesting than waiting on others to cheese summon/drag your corpse to you. I'll take the 50% success rate over the 99% success rate all day every day ... I enjoy thrill, surprises, and a sense of urgency.
Elki said:1AD7 we already know that glyphs remain permanent for extreme climates
We also know that gear/buffs/exposure will play a role in whether or not players can survive/navigate certain climates/atmospheres. It's been mentioned numerous times including in the most recent newsletter.
Elki said:I can understand that people who did not play EQ1 have their doubts and fear of the system
It's not about having doubts or fear of the system itself. Please read my previous post, particularly the quote from Brad where he suggested that the death penalty in Pantheon will fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes between EQ & VG. That stance has been shared consistently over the past 4-5 years. Since "naked corpse runs" were referred to as an extreme ... how could they then be the middle ground? Pantheon is a new game with new challenges and circumstances. There are many features/systems/mechanics that will exist in Terminus that did not exist in Norrath, several of which should be considered a monkey-wrench as it relates to this topic. It is unrealistic to assume that the EQ penalty would see a smooth transition to this game. I laid out very specific examples of the monkey wrenches I was referring to. All these new features/systems/mechanics can also be considered a gating mechanism depending on how you look at it. There are several outcomes that can be trivially predicted that run counter to stated design goals. We can plan/prepare for them now or see them materialize in Alpha/Beta when the game is more fleshed out.
((We don't need an NPC that can summon our corpses as long as corpse decay is in tact. Recover your corpse before it rots or suffer a bigger penalty. Loss aversion is desired, excessive risk aversion is not.))
Take my hypothetical. Corpse cannot be recovered at the time of the death. Next time player logs on no one is even close to the area and because of the location and the nature of the area it simply is not feasible to get a group together for a significant amount of time. Yes it would be nice if we all have large guilds that play the same hours we do and are willing to drop what they are doing to help but the death system needs to work for players without this safety net and the slow transportation system almost all of us want can work against getting enough people of the right levels and classes out to the corpse. If it isn't in a popular area. Obviously this won't be an issue if someone dies 50 feet from a popular camp in a much used dungeon but the death penalty system has to work under less convenient circumstances too.
I don't love the idea of an easy way out but if you think it isn't needed for this type of outlier situations this may well mean you are right and I am missing something basic. Can you or someone else explain how the corpse owner would get back to playing the next day without an emergency (and expensive) get out of jail NPC? If the standard corpse run system can do this without actually having a corpse run maybe I am suggesting a solution where there is no problem.
dorotea said:Can you or someone else explain how the corpse owner would get back to playing the next day without an emergency (and expensive) get out of jail NPC?
In the example I provided ... our gear wouldn't be attached to corpses. We wouldn't need an NPC that offers to summon our corpse for an XP penalty/fee because the corpse rot mechanic would essentially offer the same thing. If you lose your corpse at the bottom of the dungeon at 3 AM and cannot possibly stay up long enough to attempt a recovery ... it is what it is. You go to sleep and eat the additional XP loss 3-6 hours later when the corpse decays. Instead of losing 5%, you lose 15%. (Technically you lose 15% at the time of death but you forfeit 10% that could have been recovered when the corpse decays.) Since gear wouldn't be attached to corpses ... the game wouldn't need to provide gimmicky recovery options such as allowing a rogue to recover 99% of player corpses simply because they have sneak and drag permission.
Players would be encouraged to fight their way back to their corpse and get revenge. There is an added layer of risk here since it's possible that they could lose another corpse while trying to recover their first. That is an engaging experience that also provides a sense of urgency, particularly to the group that lost their corpse, as it should be. Anybody who suggests that XP loss isn't enough of a penalty hasn't played a game where XP is truly a precious resource. It's like arguing that the concept of limited lives is bad because of the implementation in Contra where a short button sequence provided infinite lives. As long as XP is difficult to acquire and easy to lose, it's quite easy to tweak the numbers for the desired potency. At the end of the day ... the value of XP is still an unknown. 5% in my mind could be far more punishing than the 10% another person is imagining. I'd like to play a game where losing 5% XP is considered harsh, and where losing 15% is considered "extra extra punitive."
I'm on my weekend so I can't quite respond to each comment in great detail. I will when back at work tomorrow but reading through everyones responses, there are a lot of really good points being made, criticisms and even a few refutations. I'll try to narrow the key points from everyone the best I can tomorrow night.
For reference also, I'm very familiar with the death system in every MMORPG from Meridian 59, especially Everquest and through to today. While I know that mimicking Everquest's system is as you say in Korean, 'no bueno', it never hurts to entertain systems and trying to work something out that can touch off of it but also prevent it from going into something as overly simplistic like in later MMOs and WoW before them.
Thanks all.
I am for High exps loss. most certainly want Level Loss. But I want to respawn with all my gear and ressing the corpse or simply looting it will give back some exps. Like EQ1 basically. But I don't want a corpse summoning NPC. You wouldn't be losing Gear (using the idea that you'd respawn with gear) so if you can't get the corpse back, you just lost a crap ton of exps and possibly your level, and you move on. Sometimes, you don't want to do a 3 hour corpse run after playing all day. Lossing exps and levels is harsh enough. I also don't want gear decay or repairs etc. Harsh exps hit. Level loss. Done.
Looting corpses would give back a maybe a little bit of the lost exps. a Ress, again, like EQ, could be from 0% to 96% depending on the level of the ress spell used. I have had my internet go down for 2-4 days because Xfinity sucks sometimes. Corpses should last at least 7-14 days. Of course everyone can do /hidecorpse option
my .02 cents
Since early EQ:
The average player has improved. They are more familiar with the genre. More familiar with game commands. More experienced.
Technology has improved. Less lag, better connections. Faster load times etc.
Add ons have improved. There will be more parsers/meter data etc. (even if it is simply parsing the logs to get around the ToS)
Communication has improved. Everyone is connected quickly and easily. Early on voice chat wasn't readily available and later it was archaic by todays standards.
There are many quality of life improvements in this day and age that make gameplay easier compared to what it was during early EQ. If we don't start with a base level of penalty for failure that was similar to what it was in EQ, this will be easy mode with little fear of consequences for failing.
I'll leave the CR debate for what it is. It could or could not be a thing.
Concerning death penalty my thoughts would be, that there are different options after dieing. Xp loss would be the main revive currency for me. (again not touching on the CR and related risk on gear)
The main idea is that you have three choices when the REVIVE window pops up. You as a player CHOOSE which option to click.
1. You die by a mob or other deadly encounter and Revive by a player with some loss.
2. You die by a mob or other deadly encounter and Revive at nearest tombestone thingie, with some loss (equal to option 1, you just end up somewhere else).
3. You die by an error in the game and Revive with an very high cost (not deleveling). You fill in your ticket and get the cost reimbursed from the VR employee who reinstates you for the ingame error causing your death. (if proven it's not a lie ofc)
The frequency of dieing might be tied into the increase of Revive cost.
Up to again three stages;
1. Initial death, a fair amount of xp is lost (cost of reviving your initial death)
2. The first few deaths within a timeframe, starting after your initial death, will cost somewhat higher then your initial death.
3. When you die every few seconds, the xp cost to revive will be at it's highest. (basically, the game is telling you here; "you're trying/doing something that is not meant to be like that") For example jumping of cliffs to bypass content or storm through a dungeon to reach other revive points, or strategical points in an encounter, lvl 1 being dragged for xp with a group of lvl 20's, etc.
After some time without dieing has passed, the scaled cost resets back to 1. and starts over as counting the next death as an "initial death". Stage 3. is a crucial point, since you'd actually be losing more then you'd have to gain. Making this a "not like this you won't"-point of the game.
So to recap this last suggestion; First time death, you lose a fair amount, you want to avoid it even now. Died 5 times in half an hour?; you're struggling to maintain upper hand in your situation, pushing on is getting costly. You're dieing 20 times in half an hour (every 5 minutes), try something else, cause this ain't worth it. (numbers are exemplary)
I favored the idea of having basically save points at Inns.
Resting at an Inn sets your maximum exp loss point (current exp -20% of a level)
You can also insure your gear for 24 hours as a cash sink based on the item value.
At 10x insurance cost you can SoulBound an item that makes it no drop but never need to insure it again.
In the event of an unrecoverable death you can choose to restore to your save point. (Thematically it could be an NPC reviving you)
A forced revive returns all your insured items and removes the insured flag. Any insured item you trade loses the insured flag. All other items and cash go poof on a forced revive.
You revert to your saved point exp -20% of a level with the chance to delevel (maybe more than once if you got more then a level since you previously bound to an inn).
This leaves with an out if a brutally painful on one of those no win situations and encourages centralizing at inns before and after adventuring. This might help group assembly to create a rallying point.
oneADseven said:Elki said:you could give someone permission to drag your body to the entrance the low lvl just had to call a high lvl friend
and at lvl a rogue with invis could get you a body of 99% of the sites
and in the last case (or the first one if you had money left over) you bought a coffin and a necromancer invoked your body
no NPC is needed to do things that players already do, that there is no kind player at the moment offers a bit of platinum that greedy players always haveThese sound like gimmicks that were necessary in EQ specifically because of gear being attached to corpses. The world is supposed to be dangerous. Recovering a corpse shouldn't be as simple as finding an at-level rogue who can sneak/drag. Sneak/Invis/FD-Flopping are tools that help players navigate the world, and that is fine. At the same time, there should be natural counters to all of these ... otherwise, they end up being an easy form of content circumvention. If rogues can recover 99% of corpses then that sounds like a great incentive to multi-box a rogue. That isn't player/group interdependence. Group interdependence should require a defeated group to fight their way back to their corpse before it expires. That sounds a lot more interesting than waiting on others to cheese summon/drag your corpse to you. I'll take the 50% success rate over the 99% success rate all day every day ... I enjoy thrill, surprises, and a sense of urgency.
If it is correct, it is things that happened in the EQ which I tried to explain even if your item is in your corpse and your corpse disappears in 7 RL days there were safety ropes provided by players who made it practically impossible to lose your things
unless it happens as Vjek says you live in an isolated area and lose electrical energy from a natural disaster for more than 7 daysThe normal situation is that you and your group would come back and do the CR for yourselves and you had 2 hours (online) so that the resurrection spell returned the experience after those two hours the spell invoked you on top of your corpse but you did not recover exp
which is practically what you ask but without having the equipment,
Going back to a place you already accessed under the same conditions in less than 3-6 hours is 50% seriously?
99% of the rogue is to recover your items not exp
I would be in favor of the fact that when you die you will appear with a no-rent copy of your equipment (inventory not) to favor the CR but not have the possibility to ignore itElki said:1AD7 we already know that glyphs remain permanent for extreme climates
We also know that gear/buffs/exposure will play a role in whether or not players can survive/navigate certain climates/atmospheres. It's been mentioned numerous times including in the most recent newsletter.
correct which means that it will not be impossible to do CR in areas of extreme climates
Elki said:I can understand that people who did not play EQ1 have their doubts and fear of the system
It's not about having doubts or fear of the system itself. Please read my previous post.
(I know that some people want the death penalty to be terrifying ... to discourage people from taking risks, yada yada yada.)