Hieromonk said:Death in early EQ had it right. (before nerf)
Problem is, only a few remember it, or can recall the respect one had for wilderness.
It certainly does not stink except maybe to todays generation of gamers. You don't know the excitement/trepidation of dying, say, in Sebilis, and popping up naked in (insert city/outpost of choice) if you were not a caster that was bound outside the dungeon. For the time period it would be very dangerous, and a bit time consuming, to run back praying you did not die along the way. All the while, while running back, you were asking for sow's, an evac to EJ (iirc), or sending /tells to get someone to res you in the dungeon assuming you were not grouped and were being taken care of.
THAT excitement/trepidation is gone. The excitement of surviving a tough fight knowing your skill and the group saved everyone, of breaking into a tough camp, and holding it for 10+ hours simply because you couldn't take the excitement twice in one day. ;P
Nowadays death in MMO's is simply, "Oh, I died?" (click) and you are back at your camp 10 secs to 1 minute later no worse for wear. Then again, there are not that many "camps" in todays MMO's. It's simply run up to a mob that's a joke to kill solo and turn some quest to a questgiver for some weapon or armor that took no effort to get and'll be thrown away if not immediently, then a level later.
I personally am interested in this game, in part (among many parts such as an early EQ1 vibe), of a harsher death penalty. If people want to get rid of rezzing, running back to the group, or etc, it's best to look for another game. That or you get used to it. You may actually enjoy it. But I really do not want to see the casual crowd (not saying you're casual, it's casual in general) start asking for nerfs and/or easing of gameplay. Dumbing down, casualizing, and making things accessable to anyone no matter how bad they are is what has destroyed most MMO's to me.
-- Just a FYI, I was in Inner Circle on Xegony (Cennyin Deathblighter) and Realm of Insanity on Stromm (Besmear Souldevourer) which were the top guilds, for their time, when I played. You don't know fear until you break into the original Plane of Fear and have to run half the zone to a mildly safe wall as a cleric and hope nothing started following you so you could res others in who WOULD be dying on the way to the wall. Fun times. But that would NOT have been nearly as fun if there was a minimal death penalty.
Hail Lochaber,
Inner Circle, top? Havenlight may disagree ;p lol I was in Havenlight on Xegony - Zacknafeinn Dourden dark elf Cleric.
And, recently I was in a wing of Realm of Insanity on Ragefire. TLP server. before they went to Lockjaw and I didn't want to go.
I agree with everything you said ;) Don't casualize the game to please the microwave society.
Hope to group with you in Pantheon Lochaber!
Completely agree with death being something that leaves a considerable sting.
Part of what made EQ memorable for me was running across a new zone trying to find a zone entrance or get out to a group and aggro something you really shouldn't have. You'd hear that combat music kick in and panic. Raids were exciting knowing a loss was painful and a win was all the sweeter.
A harsh death penalty usually meant for me to plan better in advance, gear up more, etc. Playing a game where the strategy is just to fling yourself at enouncters wouldn't be fun to me.
I don't think I can do early EQ1 multi-hour corpse recovery runs (or item loss) again, but I think Vanguard death penalty was a little light. Somewhere between the two would feel about right, maybe with a slight lean toward VG over early EQ1.
I want it to suck for me when I die, but I want to know clearly why I died so I can adjust/plan (gear/strategy/etc) accordingly to deal with that death reason. In some cases, the reason may require additional time to gear up or learn the fight mechanic.
Personally I think EQ had it mostly right. Here's what I would change:
Once you die, you have 3 options.
1: Get ressurected for varying % of exp returned, starting at 50% as the lowest res. As far as what classes can res, I think the OP makes an interesting point.
2: Run back to your corpse, and retrieve it. If you successfully do this, you will automatically get 50% of the exp you lost back
3: Summon your corpse using a necro guild or something that makes sense with the lore in town. If you choose to do this, you get NO exp back, and your corpse cannot be ressurected for exp either.
What this does, is take away the brutal hopelessness of getting a corpse back from a place that is extremely hard to get back to by allowing you to summon your corpse in town, but at the same time, incentivising the player to go retrieve their corpse to recover the EXP lost.
Exp loss for dying should be a very big deal. I think you should be able to lose a level from dying, however perhaps only 1 level lost max.
If a player runs back to their corpse, I agree they should get part of their experience returned (or debt eliminated).
If you have corpse summoning in the game (as a last resort) through players or shrines, there should absolutely, positively, no experience recoverability if you need to summon it. Experience recoverying should only be if you return to where you died (either running or resurrection.
I like player resurrections that return experience. You could make it so that resurrection spells only work on players up to a certain point. This would mean that just because you have a 96% res doesn’t mean you always do. Maybe at level 45 96% is available but at level 50 only 50% is available, but at 55 a 96% will be available again (newer spells). Or you could have that the basic spell you buy is 50% recoverability but the raid looted one is 96%.
I disagree on if they return to their corpse that they should get experience. Experience should only be returned by resurrection spells. If you run back to your corpse you should simply be able to loot your items (assuming we hopefully keep loot on the corpses) and thats it. Unable to find a priest or was soloing instead of being grouped without a rez'r? You're just out of luck and use it as a lesson for the future.
Being able to simply run back to your own corpse to get experience (unless you yourself are the priest and can cast it on your own corpse) is straying into the casual side of things and negates much of the need for player interdependence.
Sabelian said:I'm fine with rezzes, but think they should be capped at 75%. If you have a healer you shouldn't be dying.
Ummm...not really. You can have a healer who is incompetent, or easily distracted, or unable to make fast decisions, or have little knowledge about their own class or about game mechanics in general and you will probably die...alot.
You should instead say "If you have a group of compentent players, knowledgeable about their class, its strengths and weaknesses, the capabilities and limitations of the other classes in the group and a solid understanding of game mechanics you shouldn't be dying."
NoobieDoo said:.... it means the group has to decided whether or not to fill a spot with a class that CAN rez. ...
if you are actually filling your group based on a characters rez ability, you are playing wrong. No one should ever PLAN to die, or even make plans in case you die.
Disclaimer: There are some situations, usually in higher end raids, where it is expected that the puller will have to die in order to break an area, but those are far and few between.
Linkamus said:Sabelian said:I'm fine with rezzes, but think they should be capped at 75%. If you have a healer you shouldn't be dying.
Not trying to be rude, but did you play EQ1? Even very skilled groups/raids died all the time.
Yep, played a healer and a Pally from 2000-2003.
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.
Don’t forget that in old EQ1, rezzes also consumed reagents. Among other special use utility spells, rezzes were not cheap, and the higher the level of resurrection, the higher the associated cost. This is also an in-game dynamic that can dictate which spell you can ultimately cast/have cast on you. A poor low-level character isn’t going to be able to fork over the cost for a high-level rez spell. It added an interesting dynamic to the early game. Later on the reagent price became trivial, and everyone went for max rez. I thought the dynamic of “how much rez can you buy” was both meaningful and pretty cool at the same time.
xtnpd said:Don’t forget that in old EQ1, rezzes also consumed reagents. Among other special use utility spells, rezzes were not cheap, and the higher the level of resurrection, the higher the associated cost. This is also an in-game dynamic that can dictate which spell you can ultimately cast/have cast on you. A poor low-level character isn’t going to be able to fork over the cost for a high-level rez spell. It added an interesting dynamic to the early game. Later on the reagent price became trivial, and everyone went for max rez. I thought the dynamic of “how much rez can you buy” was both meaningful and pretty cool at the same time.
Maybe I've simply forgotten, but I do not ever recall needing a regeant for my cleric to res. You may be mixing things up with Symbols, which did need one. That or necromancers needing EE's, but that came later on.
Lochaber said:xtnpd said:Don’t forget that in old EQ1, rezzes also consumed reagents. Among other special use utility spells, rezzes were not cheap, and the higher the level of resurrection, the higher the associated cost. This is also an in-game dynamic that can dictate which spell you can ultimately cast/have cast on you. A poor low-level character isn’t going to be able to fork over the cost for a high-level rez spell. It added an interesting dynamic to the early game. Later on the reagent price became trivial, and everyone went for max rez. I thought the dynamic of “how much rez can you buy” was both meaningful and pretty cool at the same time.
Maybe I've simply forgotten, but I do not ever recall needing a regeant for my cleric to res. You may be mixing things up with Symbols, which did need one. That or necromancers needing EE's, but that came later on.
I could very well have my spells mixed up. It's been over 10 years since I dabbled in EQ. I still think that a costly reagent for a Rez might make an interesting dynamic.
Fulton said:NoobieDoo said:.... it means the group has to decided whether or not to fill a spot with a class that CAN rez. ...
if you are actually filling your group based on a characters rez ability, you are playing wrong. No one should ever PLAN to die, or even make plans in case you die.
Disclaimer: There are some situations, usually in higher end raids, where it is expected that the puller will have to die in order to break an area, but those are far and few between.
Sabelian said: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.
There was some 60 corpses when we finally broke fear for the first time, & established a safe area to start rezing people. Was a 8h stint.
As one of the highest wizards, I had almost lost my lvl by the time we finally broke in... I had 4 corpses, got rezed, gated out.. and started to bring more people in after, a manditory 10m camp/log off, for those who made it in alive and could camp.
GMs were looking in on us & watching us the whole time... they wanted to see too.. if we could break the Planes. It was a multi-guild effort.
Death needs to hurt... death needs to make you look both ways when you are on a known path through the woods. You have to be aware of your surroundings, because death lurks. It should take HOURS to overcome dieing.. unless you have means to shorten the sickness.
I believe the penalty needs to be compared to the difficult to the game.. I myself would like to see a very slow grow rate, meaning the standard would be a long time,hardwork/dedication to end game. This is where death is very important.. Generally speaking the more risk the more reward, at the same time if you think you can just run around and not think your way through things you should suffer because of that.. I know there is probably noway people will wake up nekking like the good ole days.. Yet penalty is very important if anyone wants to know how to build real comradery, be careful on the groups you are involved in especially vs difficulty.. The games of today promoting "group que, warp to zone, get your stuff, leave everyone behind" "someone dies and no one cares" just lack in any real community.
Thanks for listening,
Skezix
You guys should probably merge this with https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty/view/page/17
It is basicly the same topic we have going on in that thread.