Rallyd said:
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.
You may be onto a great ALTERNATIVE idea here.
Imagine that when you die, your corpse drops your inventory instead of ALL of your equipped gear? This is your magical bags of weight reduction/increased slots... Clickies, food, water, reagents, resist gear.. and QUEST ITEMS, LOOT, and CASH gained in the area you died in.
This would still make the player feel the need for a CR without the feeling of helplessness. The player/group would have a fighting chance to get back down to their corpses, but would have to improvise to a degree. Think of a death in EQ1 with this ruleset --- The cleric would no longer have reagents for symbol. The melee wouldn't have their clicky attack buff from Shrunken Goblin Skull Earring. No potions for emergencies. Food/Drink would have to be summoned. Maybe ammunition (arrows, bullets, pet food, ect) would have to be repurchased. Treasure obtained on the way back down --- With no bags, can you say inventory problems? The group is basically not operating at full strength --- And may not be able to even reach where they were prior to their deaths due to this.
Worse case scenario --- You still have classes to drag, summon, sneak, ect... and a healer type to ressurect the exp loss away.
EDIT: Formatting... Eeek!
Dullahan said:
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.
A few posts up I stated the fact that what mattered to me most in any death penalty is that it should never be beneficial to bind-rush anything. I should probably make a broader statement in that it should simply NEVER be beneficial to die (barring of course some sort of quest that involves you entering the realm of the dead or some such). At no point should someone be like "Oh **** I need to hit the bank... May as well just suicide and save myself the run back...". It has to matter in some fashion that prevents this type of scenario or the one you described above.
As for your other statements. I think you are still referring to risk as challenge. Obviously removing any risk reduces challenge to some degree if the situation can be overcome by simply bashing your head against a brick wall until it eventually falls down. I think any devs worth a damn can create scenarios where it is impossible to overcome something by this means. In such a situation the challenge remains no matter what the penalty for failure is.
Again though I want risk simply because it makes the game more exciting to play. I want to have that sensation of walking through Kithicor at night and being terrified that something would see my naked level 5 ass and I'd be back in Qeynos with another long ass walk through the Karanas ahead of me. The risk made it exciting. I don't feel like it took any sort of skill to succeed or fail.
Going to keep this short because it's all been covered already, and I'm more of tossing my voice as a vote on stuff already mentioned before.
1. Keep the old EQ system, exp penalty and level losses are awesome - sure I would rage about it in EQ whenever I lost a level (playing a warrior was not all too uncommon), but still, those are the most memorable moments I have of dying in a game.
2. Corpse runs are awesome, the graveyards in PoP were a nice convenience, but I would NOT want to see a graveyard in every zone. Instead, a centralized graveyard in every hub zone would be great - let me run around the world a bit if I die. Also, "release" timing on corpses is key here, it shouldn't be too low imho.
3. Keep other players involved in the death loop - resurrects, corpse summons, all are awesome and actually drive interaction between players.
4. Exp penalties should be flat and based on the choice of method dealing with death. I would NOT want to see variable exp regain based on resurrection spell level, or variable exp loss based on zone/monster level. Instead, I would rather have a fixed percent rate for death, for resurrect via spell and for resurrect via picking corpse. For resurrection spells, tiers can vary in cast time / hp and mp recovery and status ailments from resurrection (making higher level spells more viable for in combat resurrection)
5. No corpse decay or permanent item loss - that's just horrible. If anything, I would want to see a system where when a corpse decays after a set amount of item, all the items on the corpse can be reclaimed from the ether.
6. Please save me the hassle of item conditioning and item damage, I've yet to see this system ever work in an MMO.
[Edit: formatting what turned into a massive wall of text]
I am for all the EQ style death penalties. Necked corpse runs/xp loss/perm item loss if corpse is not recovered/ect.ect.
Now if we are trying to brainstorm different style death penalties one idea that popped into my head would be:
The inherent magic of Terminus after a set time period(to allow time for players rez) will resurrect the player(with all gear), but will randomly port the player to a random outdoors location. There will be a HUGE xp loss along the lines of 60% of the xp needed for the level you are(example if your lvl 40 and it takes 150 mil xp to lvl 41 then you just lost 90 mil xp). Also a huge side effect of being rezzed by the inherent magic of Terminus is a "death pall" glamour is placed upon the player along with a 20% reduced run speed.
The glamour persists until all lost xp is regained. While under the effect of the glamour the player is KOS to all npcs except for a very select few(chance of opening certain quest lines). Since the player is KOS to all NPCs that means no selling off loot,no using your bank,no going to town to craft,unable to use any type of NPC transport,having to take a lot longer time to travel anywhere with having to skirt around populated areas and also the reduced movement speed, locked out from certain raids since your raid atunement items are in your bank.
I for one would take necked corpse runs and possible perm item loss over my proposed idea, but if your looking for a harsh death penalty(remember we are talking weeks/months to recover large amount of loss xp) w/o corpse runs and or item loss while still retaining the community interaction(need friends to craft for you/bank items/sell loot while KOS) there you have it.
I liked how death worked in EQOA. No running to your body and when you died you got XP debt you had to pay off when gridning. It made dying a bad thing you never want to happen unlike most MMO's now where death is a few gold and a quick run. The best part of EQOA's system though was that if you found a cleric, he could rez you even after you were back alive qnd could take away some of your debt. If i remember correctly too there was a Class Mastery for clerics too that could make it take away even more XP debt...it gave that class some extra sought after usefulness like Rangers and their SoW.
kilguril said:Going to keep this short because it's all been covered already, and I'm more of tossing my voice as a vote on stuff already mentioned before.
1. Keep the old EQ system, exp penalty and level losses are awesome - sure I would rage about it in EQ whenever I lost a level (playing a warrior was not all too uncommon), but still, those are the most memorable moments I have of dying in a game.
2. Corpse runs are awesome, the graveyards in PoP were a nice convenience, but I would NOT want to see a graveyard in every zone. Instead, a centralized graveyard in every hub zone would be great - let me run around the world a bit if I die. Also, "release" timing on corpses is key here, it shouldn't be too low imho.
3. Keep other players involved in the death loop - resurrects, corpse summons, all are awesome and actually drive interaction between players.
4. Exp penalties should be flat and based on the choice of method dealing with death. I would NOT want to see variable exp regain based on resurrection spell level, or variable exp loss based on zone/monster level. Instead, I would rather have a fixed percent rate for death, for resurrect via spell and for resurrect via picking corpse. For resurrection spells, tiers can vary in cast time / hp and mp recovery and status ailments from resurrection (making higher level spells more viable for in combat resurrection)
5. No corpse decay or permanent item loss - that's just horrible. If anything, I would want to see a system where when a corpse decays after a set amount of item, all the items on the corpse can be reclaimed from the ether.
6. Please save me the hassle of item conditioning and item damage, I've yet to see this system ever work in an MMO.
[Edit: formatting what turned into a massive wall of text]
I agree on all points, except the resurrection spells. I think the spell used should determine the % of exp loss returned. Pally res was 90% in EQ, but the best cleric res was 96% (or was it 98%?). I liked the ability of choice... accept the pally res or call in a favor from a cleric friend. Also the /ooc and /shout we heard on occasion... "Paying 100pp for a max res... will drag to you."
As a blanket statement, I am generally opposed to automation in MMO's... or anything that replaces human interaction with a game system.
I respect EQ1's death penalty. I won't say I am a fan of it, because it hurt every time. I do think that a strong death penalty is essential for a game to prevent people from blindly throwing themselves at content above their ability. It feeds into the great risk, great reward mentality. What is the risk if I can just attack a mob over and over again until I get lucky and down it?
Having the death penatly makes it more likely that instead of soloing I am going to ask for help or form a group. It also opens up a lot of options on how to minimize the penalty. Player interdependent skills like cleric rez that reduce the penalty, Necro corpse summon, maybe even craftable items all can help to soften the pain while increasing community interaction.
I am also a big fan of bind points and graveyards as long as they are not too common or easily found.
Castwell said: I think EQ did death pretty well. EXP penalty and having to get your corpse. Adventuring should be dangerous! I think the only part I would change is return to bind point. I like the way WoW handled that. Pop up at the nearest graveyard, which might be in friendly territory, might be in enemy territory.
^ This. EXP penalty has to be there and should be fairly severe. And I also think going back to a graveyard or something makes a lot of sense compared to old school EQ. Don't get me wrong I still play P99 and love everything about old EQ but no sense to make that same mistake twice. The game should be hard but i'm old now lol... I don't have time for a 3 hour nightmare corpse run because a group member went afk without saying it and I die somewhere horrific far away from bind. Death should hurt pretty bad but it shouldn't ruin your night/good time.
kinidin said:Castwell said: I think EQ did death pretty well. EXP penalty and having to get your corpse. Adventuring should be dangerous! I think the only part I would change is return to bind point. I like the way WoW handled that. Pop up at the nearest graveyard, which might be in friendly territory, might be in enemy territory.
^ This. EXP penalty has to be there and should be fairly severe. And I also think going back to a graveyard or something makes a lot of sense compared to old school EQ. Don't get me wrong I still play P99 and love everything about old EQ but no sense to make that same mistake twice. The game should be hard but i'm old now lol... I don't have time for a 3 hour nightmare corpse run because a group member went afk without saying it and I die somewhere horrific far away from bind. Death should hurt pretty bad but it shouldn't ruin your night/good time.
As a hardline old-schooler, I can still appreciate this sentiment. Death should hurt and hurt bad, but it shouldnt ruin your night with a 3 hour nightmare corpse run. Very well said. I like the idea of using graveyards as an in-zone respawn point, making a corpse run a bit less painful. I would even go so far as to say I would be OK with no corpse runs at all, ONLY IF the exp loss was very very substantial with the possibility of deleveling. Simply losing time by dying isnt enough, and the system gets abused. In EQ2, suiciding as a method of teleporting back to the dungeon entrance is common and a shining example of death being handled poorly to the point where the playerbase uses it as transportation. There is exp debt in EQ2, but the amount of debt incurred is non-existant in relation to exp gained.
I really hope they get it right in Pantheon, and if anything, error on the side of being too punishing. Remember the people you're catering to and what systems we grew up with. EQ, DAoC, AC, AO, UO, etc etc
Silvanoshi said:Rallyd said:
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.
You may be onto a great ALTERNATIVE idea here.
Imagine that when you die, your corpse drops your inventory instead of ALL of your equipped gear? This is your magical bags of weight reduction/increased slots... Clickies, food, water, reagents, resist gear.. and QUEST ITEMS, LOOT, and CASH gained in the area you died in.
This would still make the player feel the need for a CR without the feeling of helplessness. The player/group would have a fighting chance to get back down to their corpses, but would have to improvise to a degree. Think of a death in EQ1 with this ruleset --- The cleric would no longer have reagents for symbol. The melee wouldn't have their clicky attack buff from Shrunken Goblin Skull Earring. No potions for emergencies. Food/Drink would have to be summoned. Maybe ammunition (arrows, bullets, pet food, ect) would have to be repurchased. Treasure obtained on the way back down --- With no bags, can you say inventory problems? The group is basically not operating at full strength --- And may not be able to even reach where they were prior to their deaths due to this.
Worse case scenario --- You still have classes to drag, summon, sneak, ect... and a healer type to ressurect the exp loss away.
EDIT: Formatting... Eeek!
that is such an amazing idea.... I can't believe I've never heard the idea of just your inventory dropping before. Wow...mind blown
Rallyd said: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.
Well said, Rallyd! Fear of death is one thing, but fear of death that feels realisitic is another thing entirely. We need to fear certain areas of the game. Its hard to convince those who have not experienced this kind of death penalty before. We're not masochists, but rather looking at the implications that fear of death has on the players, the actions they take, the risk vs reward assessments, etc. It changes the community and how players approach the game.
The bottom line is we're all in it together, and we need each other to overcome the games challenges, and that includes mitigating and dealing with death. It was in rare form for an EQ group to abandon ship after dying in the bottom of a dungeon, leaving players to figure out their corpse run on their own. We worked together to help each other out 99.9% of the time because we had to. If a group wiped and a cleric abandoned the group corpses and all, they were dead to the world. Our in-game reputations depended on us working together. Is it always a pleasant and joyful process? No. But working together to overcome unforgiving death circumstances that affect us all equally is preferred to the selfish indifference we get in todays MMO's.
Krixus said:Anyone playin ARK? Why is that game such a rush? You can lose all stuff at any time. Don't have friends? You're screwed. You're on edge, heart beating, for one reason, because you can lose your stuff.
You can also earn most of it back in minutes or you have many copies stashed away. I wouldn't commit hundereds of hours of play to earn gear to see it vanish away on death.
Mekada said:Krixus said:Anyone playin ARK? Why is that game such a rush? You can lose all stuff at any time. Don't have friends? You're screwed. You're on edge, heart beating, for one reason, because you can lose your stuff.
You can also earn most of it back in minutes or you have many copies stashed away. I wouldn't commit hundereds of hours of play to earn gear to see it vanish away on death.
The point isn't to make a direct literal comparison, I'm sure you know that. The point is that you get a RUSH because of the RISK.
I'm for the following ((Could go really in-depth with this but here's a quick run-down)) : [[On a PvP server, if killed by a player than this doesn't take effect?]]
o Every piece of gear as a chance to break (Crafting quality can increase/reduce this % chance).
o If you have a piece of broken gear equipped, there is a chance it will be destroyed upon death.
- If it's not destroyed it doubles the resources needed to repair, this stacks until item is repaired or destroyed.
- Crafter's can repair in dungeons/raids/etc:
- - It's VERY resource heavy.
- - Will lower the quality of the item.
- When item's are repaired at a workstation (Towns/Houses/Etc):
- - Minimal resource cost.
- - Will not effect quality.
o After 12 hours your corpse begins to decompose, and after 24 hours it's just a lootable skeleton.
- Anyone (Strangers/Guildies/Friends/Groupmates/Etc) can use an item on your corpse to slow down the decomposition.
- - This would be good for longterm internet outages and hardware failures.
o NOT in favor of XP/Level loss if there's a similar system to above.
- I personally believe XP/Level loss is a boring system. It's been done many times (In more than just mmo's.).
- I'd rather a more interesting and in-depth death penality.
- Resurrection sickness is dumb too, imo.
::EDIT:: Rip my nice formatting.
Krixus said:The point isn't to make a direct literal comparison, I'm sure you know that. The point is that you get a RUSH because of the RISK.
If the point is getting a rush because of risk, yes deaht penalty should do that. But risk of permanent loss of items is a line I wouldn't like to see crossed. IMO, there is just too much time involved in gearing out to lose it on something is inevitable as death.
Mekada said:Krixus said:The point isn't to make a direct literal comparison, I'm sure you know that. The point is that you get a RUSH because of the RISK.
If the point is getting a rush because of risk, yes deaht penalty should do that. But risk of permanent loss of items is a line I wouldn't like to see crossed. IMO, there is just too much time involved in gearing out to lose it on something is inevitable as death.
/agree Gear takes too long to get, is in places that normally takes a group to get , so yeah, I think I can live without that much risk.
Great discussion. Lot of good ideas. Too early to set the death penalty in stone, but if you know us, read up on Pantheon, the FAQ, you can get a good general idea: death needs to sting for victory to be sweet. If the death penalty is too light, players will not respect the environment, risk vs. reward is damaged, as is sense of accomplishment. If a death penalty is too great, people won't take any risks and just try to find the safest, no matter how boring route to progression. So we need to find the middle ground that works for our target audience, and I am confident we will dial that in.
For the sake of brevity and since I'm on my mobile device I'm copy pasting my ideas from another thread. Death penalty is a huge issue to me. It adds impact to every decision IMO.
I was thinking about death penalties last night after reading this thread and I would like to see something that impacts XP gain, but also can reward the player with more choice.
1. Make it so players have to return to a camp/base to "deposit" their xp gains and level up once they reach the xp requirement for that level. Get rid of the auto-level as you kill monsters in the wild.
2. These camps would be in each city and maybe a few in the wild.
3. In return for the hassle of returning to deposit xp the player would be free to choose how they level up. (Pick what stats to improve, talents/skills at certain level intervals, etc..)
4. If a player dies they respawn at their bind point with all their gear and no stat deductions, but the xp they haven't deposited is on their corpse still. They have 1 chance to make it back to the corpse to regain that xp. If they die again it's gone. Rezzes could be used to skip the runback.
I think by using a system like this we gain a great sense of tension while dungeon crawling. Should we keep pushing forward for better rewards or should we return and deposit our xp and have to potentially fight our way back to where we were? Maybe also have a class that could set up mobile xp deposit places, I don't know. This also provides a more player involved leveling system than everyone receiving the same stat increases and spells at each level interval.
Coming from EVE I would like for some items break permanently. Random choice of what is gone and what is dropped. It would make crafting more important. However I recognize that just wouldn't work in a PvE focused game. Losing raid NODROPS would be WAY to punishing. I also really don't feel that durability loss provides any sting of death In a PvE game. Repair costs are never a problem that I have ever experienced.
I do like the lose unsaved Xp idea though. Anarchy Online was like that. A good potential source of sting of death. The longer you are out in the field away from a bind location, the more you gain to lose.
Bluefyre said:Coming from EVE I would like for some items break permanently. Random choice of what is gone and what is dropped. It would make crafting more important. However I recognize that just wouldn't work in a PvE focused game. Losing raid NODROPS would be WAY to punishing. I also really don't feel that durability loss provides any sting of death In a PvE game. Repair costs are never a problem that I have ever experienced.
I do like the lose unsaved Xp idea though. Anarchy Online was like that. A good potential source of sting of death. The longer you are out in the field away from a bind location, the more you gain to lose.
In a game all about rare loot, I think durability is a bad idea.