jezebel said:
I do not feel that time spent EVER equals challenge and I do not feel that EQ was a challenging game. Vanilla WoW is harder than EQ through Velious any day of the week.
Well, yes and no. In EQ you could level in outdoors... it would be much less challenging and you would miss much of the game.
Or you could go into dungeons. Remember Lower Guk? Sebilis? Chardok?
Even in dungeons, people could stay in safe places, or go deep in. I was one of those who, in Velketor's Labyrinth, weren't happy just by killing spiders for hours on end, but went deep in, which sometimes tended to create epic trains (/ooc Velketor to zone)
Those places were challenging.
Even at low levels, there was Befallen for example... you fall down through the hole in the floor (intentional design, not a bug in the geometry), you find yourself several floors down, behind several locked doors for which you don't have the key, and a ton of undead around.
If you die outside, corpse run for that is next to trivial. A simple SoW will usually do the job, SoW + invis will do it in 95% of the cases.
The only time when someone can lose a week of exp is at the very beginning, when he doesn't know the game mechanics well yet, but at those low levels the exp loss is very small (and later they made you not lose it in the first few levels, IIRC).
By level 20, everyone knows the basics.
jezebel said:
My last post was just sort of an offhand thought as I had been talking about the reality of who really feels the "consequences" in an exp loss and/or corpse run type scenario. Personally it doesn't matter. I do not feel that time spent EVER equals challenge and I do not feel that EQ was a challenging game. Vanilla WoW is harder than EQ through Velious any day of the week. If you doubt this go play on P1999 for a bit, then spend 2 days on Nostalrius and tell me how easy vanilla WoW is and how hard EQ is lol. I guarantee your experience will not match what you remember unless you have completely forgotten how to play EQ (or you play a hunter on Nostalrius). EQ really only requires patience and a lot of free time.
Strongly disagree. As someone who played vanilla WoW, I died very seldom and accomplished 95% of the content available with the same 5-10 people. Breaking plane of fear alone was harder (in the early days) than anything vanilla WoW had to offer. Dying meant nothing, failure meant nothing, and there was an abundance of reward with a total lack of risk.
There are two main reasons why that statement is incorrect. First, the power of mobs grew exponentially with levels in comparison to players. By virtue of that alone, EQ was harder. It wasn't necessarily harder mechanically in all respects, but in most cases content did tend towards a greater social challenge; one that required the player to interact with more people in order to overcome increasingly harder challenges. Beyond that, the fact that death had sting required players to learn the ins and outs faster and better than WoW which had a very small learning curve and allowed most players to complete all the content.
The second reason your statement is incorrect is because something that takes longer is actually considered harder in most cases. Running a 10k race is harder than a 5k race. Building a skyscraper is harder than building a mini-mall.
What you actually mean is you want your rewards without the risk. You want a game that challenges your personal skill rather than the additional challenge of finding and interacting with other capable players who will minimize your chance of failure. You want your challenge immediately rather than the skill of managing health/mana and leveraging progress against downtime which mechanic adds a whole new level or risk and challenge to a game.
EQ1 death penalty, without the ability to lose a corpse forever. I also would like to add that you must NOT spawn at a nearby graveyard, it must be bind based, or you must be sent to your home city. If you spawn at a nearby graveyard, you take most of the time sink penalty for death away.
jezebel said:
I do not feel that time spent EVER equals challenge
With all due respect that's a nonsense statement. Which is harder running 8 miles an hour for a block or 16 miles. Which is harder a 6 week course in Calculus or three semesters of it. As long as the thing being done is challenging in some way then more of it is more challenging. That's not opinion it's simple logic. Now if you'd have said time spent doing nothing then I'd have no quarrel, but you said time spent EVER equals challenge which is just outright illogical.
Dullahan said:
jezebel said:
My last post was just sort of an offhand thought as I had been talking about the reality of who really feels the "consequences" in an exp loss and/or corpse run type scenario. Personally it doesn't matter. I do not feel that time spent EVER equals challenge and I do not feel that EQ was a challenging game. Vanilla WoW is harder than EQ through Velious any day of the week. If you doubt this go play on P1999 for a bit, then spend 2 days on Nostalrius and tell me how easy vanilla WoW is and how hard EQ is lol. I guarantee your experience will not match what you remember unless you have completely forgotten how to play EQ (or you play a hunter on Nostalrius). EQ really only requires patience and a lot of free time.
Strongly disagree. As someone who played vanilla WoW, I died very seldom and accomplished 95% of the content available with the same 5-10 people. Breaking plane of fear alone was harder (in the early days) than anything vanilla WoW had to offer. Dying meant nothing, failure meant nothing, and there was an abundance of reward with a total lack of risk.
There are two main reasons why that statement is incorrect. First, the power of mobs grew exponentially with levels in comparison to players. By virtue of that alone, EQ was harder. It wasn't necessarily harder mechanically in all respects, but in most cases content did tend towards a greater social challenge; one that required the player to interact with more people in order to overcome increasingly harder challenges. Beyond that, the fact that death had sting required players to learn the ins and outs faster and better than WoW which had a very small learning curve and allowed most players to complete all the content.
The second reason your statement is incorrect is because something that takes longer is actually considered harder in most cases. Running a 10k race is harder than a 5k race. Building a skyscraper is harder than building a mini-mall.
What you actually mean is you want your rewards without the risk. You want a game that challenges your personal skill rather than the additional challenge of finding and interacting with other capable players who will minimize your chance of failure. You want your challenge immediately rather than the skill of managing health/mana and leveraging progress against downtime which mechanic adds a whole new level or risk and challenge to a game.
Jezebel,
I played both EQ and WoW at launch, and I'd have to agree with Dullahan here, EQ was harder than WoW content-wise. You could solo quest your way to 50 even at launch in WoW - the quest gear rewards weren't as great as the later expansions, but that aspect alone should end the Wow vs EQ content difficulty argument. Yes, with some classes in EQ it was possible to solo to 50 also (necro especially), but it was not nearly as easy or quick. And, with vanilla raid content - poorly geared players trying to take down Vox/Nagafen and or break/complete the Plane of Fear/Hate was much more difficult than any WoW content.
Also, using P1999 of today to accurately portray EQ launch is misguided - and you're not the only person on this forum that I've seen use it. The difficulty of P1999 in 2015 can't compare to EQ launch with everyone on that server being ridiculously twinked due to the expansion being locked at Kunark for years. It still can be an enjoyable experience down memory lane, but you can't use it as the baseline to compare the difficulty in EQ Vanilla to WoW (or any other game) - If P1999 had a server wipe and locked at EQ launch without Kunark gear, it would be a much better comparison, but still not the same. The only aspect of Vanilla WoW that I would agree that added to the challenge unique from the PvE servers in EQ was the World PvP ganking that occurred - especially in areas like Stranglethorn Vale. But, even then, if you played on a Red server in EQ, the PVP aspect could be a wash.
And, like Dullahan said, in addition to the content - it was the social aspects of EQ that made the game much more challenging. If you wanted to accomplish anything meaningful, you couldn't just rely on you. Fear of death not only affected you, but your group members. Corpse runs could be a pain, exp loss was punishing, but the experiences were memorable and the successes much more satisfying. Basically the challenges and yes time you put into those challenges helped the bonds form between players. Will people have the time to establish those same bonds in Pantheon? We'll see, but if you don't have the challenges and required time to complete them, as Bloodbeard said, it won't be a Brad-Like game and it won't be an MMO - it will be another Diabloesque single player online game.
Raidan said:
jezebel said:
That said no matter what level you are or how hardcore you are, a naked corpse run is pretty much ALWAYS annoying. Sure if you are in a huge guild you can always have your buddy fetch it for you or a friendly guild necro summon it. That however still puts you in a position to be unable to play for a short while as things are organized. This to me is a much more all encompassing punishment for death than xp loss or debt ever will be.
That line there to me is exactly why naked corpse runs are needed. Everything else with death penalties are trivial, and, even naked corpse runs become more trivial once characters achieve a high enough level for res/corpse summoning abilities.
I actually was for having your equipped items (or possibly just soul-bound items) remain with you if you died rather than a full on naked corpse run. Reason being, if you are in a full group and completely wipe your group could possibly be in a real deep portion of a really hard place to get to and having at least the gear you had equipped would allow you a fighting chance to get back to where you were.
But as I read everyone's thoughts and think about it more myself, I like the idea of a complete naked corpse run. This opens up a few options if your group does happen to die. The sole purpose for a corpse run is to recover xp debt/loss. A naked corpse run forces a player to either A)have an extra suit of gear in your bank just for corpse runs or B)summon your corpse and take the xp hit.
The main reason for changing my mind is because of option A which gives players another reason to collect gear which creates a new timesink for them. On top of that it obviously creates a situation that the player will want to avoid in the first place.
EQ vets already know this, but for those that weren't familiar with EQ's naked corpse runs... they REALLY aren't that bad. (Not talking about raids here, I'm talking about the rest of the 90% of the game). There were several tools available to players to help retrieve them. First of all, a total wipe could be avoided altogether if you had an EVACUATER in your group. If you had a monk in the group, they could FD to survive, and work to drag everyone's corpse to safety. A necromancer could as well, and maybe they could even rez the cleric who would rez everyone else, then no one would even need to run back. Heck maybe even a ShadowKnight could FD drag corpses. Outdoors and not sure of where you were (since we're not going to be dumbed down here with all kinds of maps and coordinates, right?)? That damn bard running around like a fruity ass will help locate it, or the necro or SK.
A rogue could hide/sneak anywhere safetly - by both living and undead - and drag everyone's corpses to safety. A necromancer or ShadowKnight could summon corpses. These players wouldn't always be IN your unfortunate group, they might be in the zone waiting to get a group themselves, or maybe they're not looking for group, and they're just that damn cool! My point is, you're not alone in what may seem a dire situation - the community is there and the kind of people that are looking for this type of game to play WILL help!
Does anyone remember hanging around North Freeport's bank and seeing a naked player appear (bound there) and getting a SoW from that druid trying to port people for plat (free of charge of course, don't be a mean druid and expect a donation for a corpse run SoW!)...or maybe the naked party that zones in to Lower Guk, where a few other players are hanging out looking for groups...and they get buffed up from the friendly troll shaman to help them reorganize. Or maybe that poor sap who spawned in North Freeport (or in Kelethin, if you swing that way!) has no SoW and is hoofing it and passing by some groups in Oasis is hit with that random SoW + Levitate to which he gratefully thanks the player.
Community man! Taking this mechanic out of the game is going to rob everyone of these types of situations, even lame ass graveyards will cut down on them! Look how many opportunities have been created here, for people to work together all because that tank made a horrible pull and got everyone killed?! (It HAD to be the gnome tank's fault, right?!) I've seen a few concerns about how game play shouldn't be halted because of a death - who says you have to stop playing the game? What are you going to do, drink at the Maiden's Fancy in Neriak while your corpse is making it's way back to you on it's own?! Finish that grog you're crying in to, get off that fat ogre butt and go get that corpse, and then some revenge! This is part of the game, nothing's halted, you're still playing while you're experiencing everything stated above!
GIVE ME NAKED CORPSE RUNS, OR GIVE ME DEA.........oh...well...I guess I already got that c(:
AgentGenX said:EQ vets already know this, but for those that weren't familiar with EQ's naked corpse runs... they REALLY aren't that bad. (Not talking about raids here, I'm talking about the rest of the 90% of the game). There were several tools available to players to help retrieve them. First of all, a total wipe could be avoided altogether if you had an EVACUATER in your group. If you had a monk in the group, they could FD to survive, and work to drag everyone's corpse to safety. A necromancer could as well, and maybe they could even rez the cleric who would rez everyone else, then no one would even need to run back. Heck maybe even a ShadowKnight could FD drag corpses. Outdoors and not sure of where you were (since we're not going to be dumbed down here with all kinds of maps and coordinates, right?)? That damn bard running around like a fruity ass will help locate it, or the necro or SK.
A rogue could hide/sneak anywhere safetly - by both living and undead - and drag everyone's corpses to safety. A necromancer or ShadowKnight could summon corpses. These players wouldn't always be IN your unfortunate group, they might be in the zone waiting to get a group themselves, or maybe they're not looking for group, and they're just that damn cool! My point is, you're not alone in what may seem a dire situation - the community is there and the kind of people that are looking for this type of game to play WILL help!
Does anyone remember hanging around North Freeport's bank and seeing a naked player appear (bound there) and getting a SoW from that druid trying to port people for plat (free of charge of course, don't be a mean druid and expect a donation for a corpse run SoW!)...or maybe the naked party that zones in to Lower Guk, where a few other players are hanging out looking for groups...and they get buffed up from the friendly troll shaman to help them reorganize. Or maybe that poor sap who spawned in North Freeport (or in Kelethin, if you swing that way!) has no SoW and is hoofing it and passing by some groups in Oasis is hit with that random SoW + Levitate to which he gratefully thanks the player.
Community man! Taking this mechanic out of the game is going to rob everyone of these types of situations, even lame ass graveyards will cut down on them! Look how many opportunities have been created here, for people to work together all because that tank made a horrible pull and got everyone killed?! (It HAD to be the gnome tank's fault, right?!) I've seen a few concerns about how game play shouldn't be halted because of a death - who says you have to stop playing the game? What are you going to do, drink at the Maiden's Fancy in Neriak while your corpse is making it's way back to you on it's own?! Finish that grog you're crying in to, get off that fat ogre butt and go get that corpse, and then some revenge! This is part of the game, nothing's halted, you're still playing while you're experiencing everything stated above!
GIVE ME NAKED CORPSE RUNS, OR GIVE ME DEA.........oh...well...I guess I already got that c(:
According to what we know from round tables, if a player was to die and leave that particular set of items on their corpse, they would be unable to use certain abilities that require a type of mana that only their equipped gear provided. It could also mean you have to go back into an area with a particularly harsh climate without the gear necessary to survive it. I could see equipped items remaining on a corpse being problematic for these reasons.
In no way am I suggesting that there shouldn't be a corpse run. I think pretty much everything should remain on your corpse, provided its not impossible to get your body back without said items.
AgentGenX said:
I've seen a few concerns about how game play shouldn't be halted because of a death - who says you have to stop playing the game? What are you going to do, drink at the Maiden's Fancy in Neriak while your corpse is making it's way back to you on it's own?!
I feel like you missed the point with this. The point being made was that it halts whatever you were doing dead in its tracks. You were exploring a zone? Now you're running back to a corpse. You were farming for money? Now you're running back to a corpse. You were about to go meet up with friends? Now you have to go get your corpse instead.
They didn't have corpse runs in my oldschool mmo of choice (ffxi) but even there you get some of the same effect. Unlike everquest (where from what I can understand you could set a bind point almost anywhere if you had a mage of some kind?) you could only set a bind point in several specific places (there weren't very many) so if you didn't get a raise (effectively the same thing as a resurrection or whatever equivalent) you would often have a very long and sometimes dangerous trip back if you needed to be where you were when you died. The difference between the two is that you had a bit more of a choice. Sure you could just leave your corpse there if you really wanted to but the cost of doing so is extremely prohibitive. I would rather be able to say after dieing "I really need better gear or more help if I want to be going in there" and change directions rather than "I now have to risk a second death and more loss trying to get back or I need to wait for help".
I am all for making player interaction and dependency important but I don't think this is the right place/way to be doing it.
Mephiles said:
I feel like you missed the point with this. The point being made was that it halts whatever you were doing dead in its tracks. You were exploring a zone? Now you're running back to a corpse. You were farming for money? Now you're running back to a corpse. You were about to go meet up with friends? Now you have to go get your corpse instead.
They didn't have corpse runs in my oldschool mmo of choice (ffxi) but even there you get some of the same effect. Unlike everquest (where from what I can understand you could set a bind point almost anywhere if you had a mage of some kind?) you could only set a bind point in several specific places (there weren't very many) so if you didn't get a raise (effectively the same thing as a resurrection or whatever equivalent) you would often have a very long and sometimes dangerous trip back if you needed to be where you were when you died. The difference between the two is that you had a bit more of a choice. Sure you could just leave your corpse there if you really wanted to but the cost of doing so is extremely prohibitive. I would rather be able to say after dieing "I really need better gear or more help if I want to be going in there" and change directions rather than "I now have to risk a second death and more loss trying to get back or I need to wait for help".
I am all for making player interaction and dependency important but I don't think this is the right place/way to be doing it.
Obviously, we are in complete disagreement on this, and neither of us are going to change the other's mind. I do understand the point, and I disagree with it because my opinion is that it is just flat out too easy. Sure it's an annoyance for having to stop what someone may have been doing and run back to their corpse, but that's the price the player pays for dying.
Unless there's some other mechanics related to a FFIX death I'm not aware of, what penalty was there from dying? (I'm just going by what you wrote here, as I never played FFXI.) Just running back if you wanted to continue what you were doing? That's it? Not even a loss of exp? Although the loss of exp alone isn't enough to strike fear into people, just being able to die and change your mind to do something else because you respawned with all your gear, does not strike fear in to me whatsoever! In fact, if I'm a class that has no fast travel abilities, I'll just kill myself on purpose to get that free port back to the city! Not to mention the player would miss out on all those opportunities for social interaction! (I know you're all for social interaction too, but I had to throw that in there since I built my case around it in my last message.)
Dullahan said:
According to what we know from round tables, if a player was to die and leave that particular set of items on their corpse, they would be unable to use certain abilities that require a type of mana that only their equipped gear provided. It could also mean you have to go back into an area with a particularly harsh climate without the gear necessary to survive it. I could see equipped items remaining on a corpse being problematic for these reasons.
In no way am I suggesting that there shouldn't be a corpse run. I think pretty much everything should remain on your corpse, provided its not impossible to get your body back without said items.
On the subject of attempting a CR in a harsh climate zone hmm, I don't have enough information about these types of zones to form an opinion on it. I'd probably have to play in one and see the results firsthand to see how a CR might be done. And not having the items that provide you the specific type of mana you need for your chosen set of skills... well that is pretty cut and dry. Could these two situations, be the reason they have to decide to make CR's not exist at all?
There is also EXP loss and deleveling in addition to getting returned to your home point (like a bind point but as I said the locations of them were pre-determined).
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand why you support the idea but as you said we just are at a disagreement on it. I feel like either way the fear of death would be the same for me but that in the case of corpse runs I would also be annoyed when it actually happened on top of it. Im thinking its a matter of balance. You want death to be meaningful, you want players to want avoid it and you want it to be something players can bond over. I think both corpse runs and purely penalty on death systems accomplish this (and which does so best is debatable) but I still feel that the side effects of derailing player activity are a mark against corpse runs.
Either way however I am sure I can tackle the system.
Just exp loss isn't enough, deleveling isn't enough. A corpse staying in the area you died in with an inability to retrieve it without going back to that very area is absolutely critical to creating a fear of death that feels realistic.
Going into that dungeon that appears foreboding and dangerous in any game that has been created since Everquest has not been the same, there has been no sense of danger or fear instilled in me at all, in fact the first thing I said to myself was I wonder whats down here, let's go look!
I haven't played a game since Everquest that had corpse runs, and I feel the corpse run is what forces you to think twice before going into a dangerous place.
Experience loss is not enough, it will be but a nuisance to experienced players. There must be a real danger of losing access to what you had in your bags at the very least, and you should NOT be able to click on some kind of stone outside in town to summon it for a fee until at least 24 hours have passed, or else I am basically just able to buy my corpse back, and to any experienced player buying your corpse back will be irrelevant in cost as well.
I think what this comes down to is that death should have consequences such that they are felt in-game, in what and how you play, not just a number.
If all that happens is that you lose exp, it's just a number in the UI.
But if you have to do a naked corpse run back to where you died, or alternatively to get someone to go there and do it for you, then you actually have to do something.
Without actually having to do something, if all that happens is that you pop up and continue, the penalty will never feel real.
This all goes back to the discussion on whether we want an easy game - and there's any number of such games already, I don't see the need for yet another - or a challenging one, with experiences that will stay with you for a long time to come?
I still remember getting people's corpses from the bottom of the middle of nowhere in the Ocean of Tears in EQ 1. I remember raid wipe recoveries - pulling corpses to a safe spot, a cleric logging out when it was clear we're about to wipe, recovering in a tiny area, waiting for mobs to start respawning on us... I remember a bard who lost his corpse deep in VL and asked me to summon it. I remember recovering from wipeouts in Plane of Fear, and getting people's corpses from Plane of Sky - the one with islands in the air.
If you reduce this to just decreasing a number in the UI (your exp), all the related experience will be lost.
And that's one of the main points: what we needed to do because of deaths is not something that should be avoided and removed; it's an in-game experience in its own right, it's enjoyable in its own right, it's memorable. It's not something to be removed as inconvenient.
Aethor said:
I think what this comes down to is that death should have consequences such that they are felt in-game, in what and how you play, not just a number.
If all that happens is that you lose exp, it's just a number in the UI.
But if you have to do a naked corpse run back to where you died, or alternatively to get someone to go there and do it for you, then you actually have to do something.
Without actually having to do something, if all that happens is that you pop up and continue, the penalty will never feel real.
This all goes back to the discussion on whether we want an easy game - and there's any number of such games already, I don't see the need for yet another - or a challenging one, with experiences that will stay with you for a long time to come?
I still remember getting people's corpses from the bottom of the middle of nowhere in the Ocean of Tears in EQ 1. I remember raid wipe recoveries - pulling corpses to a safe spot, a cleric logging out when it was clear we're about to wipe, recovering in a tiny area, waiting for mobs to start respawning on us... I remember a bard who lost his corpse deep in VL and asked me to summon it. I remember recovering from wipeouts in Plane of Fear, and getting people's corpses from Plane of Sky - the one with islands in the air.
If you reduce this to just decreasing a number in the UI (your exp), all the related experience will be lost.
And that's one of the main points: what we needed to do because of deaths is not something that should be avoided and removed; it's an in-game experience in its own right, it's enjoyable in its own right, it's memorable. It's not something to be removed as inconvenient.
Well said. I agree completely. I hear us all say we want a challenge, but then I read lots of posts complaining about inconvenience, grinds, time sinks, flagging etc. These are all things that help contribute to the "challenge". Obviously, the content needs to be difficult, but that shouldn't be the only thing. I like many others, don't have the time that I did when I played EQ, but I think Brad has addressed that or has a plan with the "safe to log out and continue the next day areas" he has spoken about. Other than that, I am really hoping the challenges in Pantheon are greater than any we have experienced in any MMO to date.
Aethor said:
I think what this comes down to is that death should have consequences such that they are felt in-game, in what and how you play, not just a number.
If all that happens is that you lose exp, it's just a number in the UI.
But if you have to do a naked corpse run back to where you died, or alternatively to get someone to go there and do it for you, then you actually have to do something.
Without actually having to do something, if all that happens is that you pop up and continue, the penalty will never feel real.
This all goes back to the discussion on whether we want an easy game - and there's any number of such games already, I don't see the need for yet another - or a challenging one, with experiences that will stay with you for a long time to come?
I still remember getting people's corpses from the bottom of the middle of nowhere in the Ocean of Tears in EQ 1. I remember raid wipe recoveries - pulling corpses to a safe spot, a cleric logging out when it was clear we're about to wipe, recovering in a tiny area, waiting for mobs to start respawning on us... I remember a bard who lost his corpse deep in VL and asked me to summon it. I remember recovering from wipeouts in Plane of Fear, and getting people's corpses from Plane of Sky - the one with islands in the air.
If you reduce this to just decreasing a number in the UI (your exp), all the related experience will be lost.
And that's one of the main points: what we needed to do because of deaths is not something that should be avoided and removed; it's an in-game experience in its own right, it's enjoyable in its own right, it's memorable. It's not something to be removed as inconvenient.
Experience loss and the possibility of deleveling IS a consequence. It holds a similar concept of loss to losing anything else and it did in fact work very well in final fantasy xi (which was NOT in fact an easy game, it was in fact notoriously difficult) people knew that death would cost them so often dangerous areas would be avoided unless you were prepared to deal with them.
I don't know if it is merely because everquest was many peoples favorite or first mmo here or what but the idea that corpse runs are the only system that can cause fear of death is baffling. Personally I don't fear death to any significant degree in any game regardless of the penalty. Instead it tends to determine how cautious I am. The souls series of games for example (demon souls, dark souls, blood borne) have what is effectively corpse runs that don't take your items. I actually felt more concerned about death in ffxi where I just lost exp outright than I did in any of those.
Im not knocking the idea as a reasonable approach to making death meaningful but it is not the only way to accomplish this. Death should NOT be something you can or should in every case be able to avoid (this will definitely be a thing at endgame and I imagine there would be pleanty of things that could kill you along the way too), you do not want players to never play in a fashion where they will take risks. What you should want is to make people care about their deaths which the potential for loss WILL do. If you don't think exp loss would and down leveling would make you care, start thinking about just where exactly that system could go like losing an entire level on death or several or any number of other on death penalties (crippling debuff on death, status effects that impede your ability to do certain things, permanent death), not saying any of that specifically is what I want but that the notion that corpse runs are the one and only way to make death meaningful is something that needs to go away.
I vote for EverQuests's old system. Experience/Level Loss and a corpse on the ground with your items and inventory. I have a few reasons why this is a good thing for everyone.
First --- Experience loss forces players to perfect (to a degree) their gameplay. If a risk is taken, everyone usually communicates/asks if everyone "wants to try it" rather than just go for it and "lol" after you die with no penalty. Final Fantasy 14 is a great example of what happens to your playerbase when there's nothing forcing your playerbase to get better --- A large portion of their playerbase cannot "raid" their "raids" because they had an easy ride to max level with no penalty --- They never had to improve.
Second --- Experience loss prevents the "race" to max level to a degree and forces people to slow down. This is either by considering the strength of an encounter or by simply dying and having to regain experience loss.
Third --- Experience loss extends the games life dramatically. This is good for the business model and the game company as a whole. It also gives people a little more "feel good" moment when they do finally hit the max level. Plus, the danger is always still there at the cap because they can lose that max level.
Lastly, Fourth --- Hopefully dungeons are large and uninstanced like in EQ. If so, death deep down in the Hole, Chardok, Ssra Temple, and whatever place it was with the invis bridge in Luclin... Those places were scary because I knew if we failed as a group to get through, it was going to be a long road to recovery. It almost dramatized the experience for me --- Added a huge fear element in new area's.
Note: I understand others are working adults like myself and worry about the time investment. Just remember --- Healers SHOULD be getting Ressurection lines that restore experience/teleport you to your corpse if we're following tradition with this game. I do agree that the travel time sucks --- Maybe just have you pop up in a designated "I just died" spot that each zone has --- Naked of course. wink emoticon (Maybe let bind spots be used only for teleporting, translocation, ect?)
Repairing is good for the game economy. It removes currency from the game. I am all for it either from a NPC or PC --- Final Fantasy 14 had a decent system where you either paid a NPC to repair... or if you were a crafter of a certain type, you could repair armors of a certain type (Weavers would repair cloth, Armorsmiths, metal armor, ect). You could repair your own gear PAST 100% Durability --- But you were NOT able to repair anyone elses... period.
Silvanoshi said:
Note: I understand others are working adults like myself and worry about the time investment. Just remember --- Healers SHOULD be getting Ressurection lines that restore experience/teleport you to your corpse if we're following tradition with this game. I do agree that the travel time sucks --- Maybe just have you pop up in a designated "I just died" spot that each zone has --- Naked of course. wink emoticon (Maybe let bind spots be used only for teleporting, translocation, ect?)
I disagree with designated "I Just died" spots, partly because it trivializes death, but mostly because we need to remember that games should not just be about reaching max level as fast as possible and then quitting, as they have become known for in the past decade. They should be known for the journey itself to get to max level. A large part of that journey for myself and I would imagine most people that played Everquest was corpse runs, you met people you may otherwise not have, you formed bonds, and by the absolute need to help one another as a community, we came together. From the outside people view it as a penalty, while from the inside, from those of us who played Everquest in it's hayday, we view it as a feature.
If you respawn at a nearby graveyard, I doubt within 1 day you'll remember how you died, or what it took to get back there, or who you met doing so. If you respawn at your bind in town, I guarantee you'll remember who helped you get back, how you died, making sure to never make that mistake again, and you'll be a better player for it.
Silvanoshi said:
Repairing is good for the game economy. It removes currency from the game. I am all for it either from a NPC or PC --- Final Fantasy 14 had a decent system where you either paid a NPC to repair... or if you were a crafter of a certain type, you could repair armors of a certain type (Weavers would repair cloth, Armorsmiths, metal armor, ect). You could repair your own gear PAST 100% Durability --- But you were NOT able to repair anyone elses... period.
Not entirely sure why I feel the need to point this out but you actually 'were' able to repair other peoples gear (and actually that was the only way to repair to full as there were no npcs that could repair or they could only partly repair your gear) before they rebooted it in a more WoW style setup (FFXIV).
DP is a good thing to have. It adds an ominous and frightening element to the game. As a large person I am not easily scared or made apprehensive. However, I have found that I fear for my avatar. Everything becomes much more intense as I play a game that has costs for my characters. I found myself trying to peek around a corner by leaning forward in my chair. I would walk away from games feeling exhausted. Vanguard had just enough of a cost to make me not want to die. Please add DP! (even though i hate having a penalty it enriches my gaming experience).
Rin
Dullahan said:
Strongly disagree. As someone who played vanilla WoW, I died very seldom and accomplished 95% of the content available with the same 5-10 people. Breaking plane of fear alone was harder (in the early days) than anything vanilla WoW had to offer. Dying meant nothing, failure meant nothing, and there was an abundance of reward with a total lack of risk.
There are two main reasons why that statement is incorrect. First, the power of mobs grew exponentially with levels in comparison to players. By virtue of that alone, EQ was harder. It wasn't necessarily harder mechanically in all respects, but in most cases content did tend towards a greater social challenge; one that required the player to interact with more people in order to overcome increasingly harder challenges. Beyond that, the fact that death had sting required players to learn the ins and outs faster and better than WoW which had a very small learning curve and allowed most players to complete all the content.
The second reason your statement is incorrect is because something that takes longer is actually considered harder in most cases. Running a 10k race is harder than a 5k race. Building a skyscraper is harder than building a mini-mall.
What you actually mean is you want your rewards without the risk. You want a game that challenges your personal skill rather than the additional challenge of finding and interacting with other capable players who will minimize your chance of failure. You want your challenge immediately rather than the skill of managing health/mana and leveraging progress against downtime which mechanic adds a whole new level or risk and challenge to a game.
Since I have seen quite a few people use the running analogy... You are comparing a test of physical endurance to time spent in a video game. If you really feel that more difficult content in terms of having to actually play your character better is on par with something that is a matter of pure time and patience then we clearly have different ideas of what constitutes challenge. To Kayd, the 6 week course that covers the same amount of information as the 3 semester course is obviously more challenging as you are doing more in less time. Adding time does not add challenge again unless you consider having more free time and/or more patience difficult. To give a better example, would you feel that turning on auto-attack, and sitting in front of your PC for 10 minutes doing nothing while your character beats a mob to death is more challenging than fighting a mob for 30 seconds where you have to actually counter its attacks or die?
I played both Vanilla EQ (since October 1999) and Vanilla WoW (open beta through TBC raiding through Naxx in Vanilla) and WoW takes more skill to play than EQ. If you are super awesome at MMOs I'm sure you could play WoW and barely die just the same as EQ. I'm just saying I think most people remember playing Vanilla EQ as a complete noob and playing WoW as someone with 6+ MMOs under their belt when it released. I would challenge anyone who feels that EQ is harder to make a new character on P1999 and a new character on Nostalrius (not a hunter) and play each for a couple of weeks and tell me which feels harder.
I think people get hung up on the way mobs are labelled within the game world as adding to difficulty. "EQ mobs were clearly harder because an even con mob would destroy you." Really they could have just made the mob that was too hard for you con red instead of even as that would be a more realistic representation. Or if you wanted to flip the example, remove the "elite" classification from WoW mobs and just have them stand around just like normal mobs until you hit one and realize you have no chance to survive.
Raidan, I had 3 50s on P1999 long before Kunark. A cleric (first), necro (second) and ranger (third). While I will agree that P1999 is not perfect Vanilla EQ I find it hard to believe that P1999 is 10X easier EQ or Nostalrius is 10X harder vanilla WoW. Maybe I just had a really weird experience but I can tell you I remembered WoW as its modern incarnation and playing on Nostalrius is pretty eye opening. Even people who were significantly more hardcore EQ players than I have ever been were saying the same thing. Just give it a go you don't have to take my word for it.
As for the social aspect of things, I am by no means denying that EQ had WoW beat by virtue of requiring player interaction. I'd easily say 90% of my fond MMO memories are from the Vanilla->Velious EQ days. It's hands down my favorite game of this type. I just don't think it's super challenging in terms of personal skill required to play. I'm not sure how this statement means I want the game to have no risk. I think some of you are simply mixing up Challenge and Punishment which are NOT the same thing. You can play a game of Poker and put 5 dollars on the line or 5,000. The game doesn't suddenly become more challenging but there is certainly an increased risk and the punishment for losing is obviously increased 1000 fold. It sure as hell makes it more exciting though lol.
Dying in EQ and losing 3 hours of exp and having to spend an hour walking back to your corpse does NOT create challenging game play. It increases RISK by increasing the amount players are punished by failure. If you know you will be punished for failing the whole experience is certainly enhanced. Jumping out of a plane wouldn't be exciting if there was no risk involved. So please by all means make it sting when people die. Just don't make the silly claim that it makes the game challenging. *shrug*
jezebel said:
Dullahan said:
[snip]
Dying in EQ and losing 3 hours of exp and having to spend an hour walking back to your corpse does NOT create challenging game play. It increases RISK by increasing the amount players are punished by failure. If you know you will be punished for failing the whole experience is certainly enhanced. Jumping out of a plane wouldn't be exciting if there was no risk involved. So please by all means make it sting when people die. Just don't make the silly claim that it makes the game challenging. *shrug*
Totaly agree,
I don't equate testing one's patience to testing one's abilities.
Also, just to be clear, i want people who want the corpse runs and exp loss, to also state, are there going to be cheats allowed (aka corpse summons, cleric 99% exp restore rez)? My view is that most people who push for this "wasted boring time equals challenge" want it to apply to everyone else but not them.
This is going to sound harsh but corpse runs and exp loss are for lazy dev's who cant come up with actual challenging content. I know thats not quite true, but why does the risk have to be boring.
Mippy said:
This is going to sound harsh but corpse runs and exp loss are for lazy dev's who cant come up with actual challenging content. I know thats not quite true, but why does the risk have to be boring.
What it really amounts to is death = forced downtime. No comment on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. An argument could be made for either side.
But what if death had realtime consequences interwoven with gameplay? Active downtime with a residual and cumulative penalty that can be reduced through gameplay and/or social elements. Such as:
1) Resurrection corrupts the soul. Each time you cheat death through resurrection it becomes more taxing on your soul, in the form of increased exp penalties with each death. First death = base penalty, second death = base + 5%, and so on.
2) The greater the risk the greater the reward, right? How about also the greater the cost of failure? Die to standard mobs and the penalty is minimal. Die to a boss and the penalty is increased in relation to the challenge. Die to the uber raid boss only the elite few will face and your soul becomes fully corrupted.
3) Your soul is cleansed over time. Killing mobs and completing objectives speeds up the process. But die too many times and you reach full soul corruption. When that happens you awaken in the underworld and must either complete a series of objectives to escape or get a ritual rez that requires a full group of healers.
(To avoid raids being ruined by a single wipe Paladins could be immune to soul corruption, and holy priests/clerics could have a resistance to it requiring only a single rez rather than a full group rez. Everyone but the pally ends up in the underworld and he/she can still rez the healers who then have the task of group-rezzing everyone else one by one. Very costly, but not game-ending.)
4) Soul cleansing could also be performed by players with the appropriate skill. To add a social element (and character maintenance) to the game, much like musicians and dancers in SWG, there could be a place where players could go to relax and socialize while other players perform a service of some sort (like a dance or a sermon) that is both entertaining and greatly reduces the soul corruption of those nearby. This would only be done in a designated place (an inn or a shrine) and would require a particular skill/tradeskill to perform.
I'm really just brainstorming here, but I think something like this would create a more dynamic death penalty, as well as add social and gameplay elements to it.
The underworld idea might seem a little silly at first glance, but if it were explored in-depth I think it could add to the game. There could be reasons to spend some time in the realm of the dead -- stuff to do there. Who says death can't also be an interactive experience? Maybe you could learn some skills there that no mere mortal could ever achieve. (But it won't be easy to get there and it won't be easy to leave!) But make no mistake, when you come back from the dead (as we tend to do in MMORPGs) you're no longer mortal. Shouldn't Pantheon's death penalty system reflect that fact?
/shrug
Mippy said:
jezebel said:
Dullahan said:
[snip]
Dying in EQ and losing 3 hours of exp and having to spend an hour walking back to your corpse does NOT create challenging game play. It increases RISK by increasing the amount players are punished by failure. If you know you will be punished for failing the whole experience is certainly enhanced. Jumping out of a plane wouldn't be exciting if there was no risk involved. So please by all means make it sting when people die. Just don't make the silly claim that it makes the game challenging. *shrug*
Totaly agree,
chal·leng·ingˈCHalənˌjiNG/I don't equate testing one's patience to testing one's abilities.
Also, just to be clear, i want people who want the corpse runs and exp loss, to also state, are there going to be cheats allowed (aka corpse summons, cleric 99% exp restore rez)? My view is that most people who push for this "wasted boring time equals challenge" want it to apply to everyone else but not them.
This is going to sound harsh but corpse runs and exp loss are for lazy dev's who cant come up with actual challenging content. I know thats not quite true, but why does the risk have to be boring.
I started to thank you for this post, because you definitions actually proved the inverse of the point you and the quoted poster were making. Testing, taxing or demanding your time in the event of failure.
By virtue of the time involved, there is challenge. No one said that had to be the only challenge. No one said that we don't want harder gameplay in addition to death penalties, but having harder gameplay that you can continually bind rush like modern games, actually removes much of the challenge. Eventually, by way of continually rushing in, you will find success with any modicum of common sense or bit of favorable RNG. That sort of thing isn't conducive to teaching players to think things through, doesn't create a realistic fear or tension surrounding death and it definitely doesn't make it feel like there is consequence connected to your decisions.
Taking away the sting of death hurts games in many ways, some of which people never even consider. The ability to pick right up where you left off prior to dying is not a good thing. It means you don't have to learn from your mistakes. It means you are receiving more reward, with less risk.
A more recent example would be in EQ2 on TLE. I never actually played this game until the recent TL servers, and I have had a bit of fun despite my disdain for its design. Their respawn system allows players to spawn after dying only seconds away from the place they died. This inadvertently created numerous issues, even washing over into PvP. The go-to strategy there has been to bind rush from the zone in of a dungeon, losing over and over to prevent the competition from killing a raid mob, until you can amass enough players to zerg the opposition down. There is no sense of victory in PvE or PvP due to these mechanics. The point is, these poor design decisions have an adverse effect on everything from the sense of accomplishment in PvE to a decisive victory in PvP.