hopefully this will give a better sense of what the disagreements are instead of the sound and fury, signfying nothing.
ok, so 2 other current death penalty topics, but kil, this is different!
instead of discusing in vague and really meaningless words like 'harsh' 'should hurt' etc. lets actually quantify what you mean by those terms:
say a raid mob takes 50 hours of game time to defeat for a group (good group properly geared to start progression on the mob, etc.)
say it takes 10 minutes per pull (buff/pull/wipe until the last one which is buff/pull/kill)
how much of that 50 hours should be fighting the mob?
how much should be recovering running to the mob/rez sickness/buffing after a wipe?
how much should be regaining xp?
some examples: instantly pop up after wipe with no penalties would be 50/0/0 thus 200 pulls to learn the fight, 50 hours in the raid 12.5x 4 hour raid nights
15 minutes to recover and 30 minutes of xp grinding would be 12.5/12.5/25 thus 50 pulls to learn the fight, 25 hours in the raid 6x4 hour raid nights
30 minutes to recover and an hour of xp grinding would be 29 pulls to learn the fight, 7.5 hours in the raid or 2x4 hour raid nights
my opinion is the second one. 10-15 minutes of recovery allows another group to pull if you wipe. 30 minutes of xp grinding is enough to keep most people from dying for travel or trivial reasons, but short enough that you can occasionally get a wild hair up your craw and think, hmm, i wonder if i can billy goat up that cliff.
game example: it took my vanguard guild (at obviously different points in our progression) about the same amount of time to learn the wyvern queen and the spider. the spider was 1 chunk from an altar, while the wyvern queen was about 5 chunks at the time. the wyvern queen was an easy fight, just a dps check while the spider took a decent amount of discipline along with a dps check and was MUCH more fun. same time spent on progression, twice as many pulls for the spider.
the time can be scaled, so the anticipated argument 'you can have the 3rd option and the mob takes 50 pulls' is true. but then, for the same gametime you could up the second option boss to 90ish pulls.
and obviously more pulls to beat means only harder, not more interesting. but more interesting also tends to increase the number of pulls needed if the hardness remains the same.
Heh - i was kinda hoping not mentioning this, but I used to do the analytics on a different MMORPG. This is actually the basis of one of the analytics we discussed. Recovery. Recovery covered a few things. The TIME used, the Risk vs. Reward system, repair bills, etc. We even would discuss what to do about recovery in specific situations. Let's say for instance a raid was having a hard time of it and was approaching a "Critical Recovery Point" meaning that they were about to give up and be disappointed. We, meaning he DevTeam, could decide to put an "event" in play. Let's say at this critical time a friendly NPC happens to come by and offer repairs for the entire raid at normal +15% prices. You can see where this could go. Maybe a different random special event brings about a different NPC with suicidal tendencies that wants to charge into the raid mob first - thus sucking up about 15 seconds of Mob DPS before the NPC dies etc. The possibilities are almost endless. Unfortunately analytice is seldom a one-time thing. You would need to pull DB entries a number of times to get a "feel" for what's going on. Thank the gods for monthly updates eh?
I even used to push for actors. Not the same thing as guides. Actors would be well-versed and trained in how to use their NPCs. They could be used to livin up the experience for specific event-mobs. But back then no one though it was a viable solution to have these types of folks. Meh. Maybe one day.
Kilsin said:Definitely pushing it, mate lol
I will let it continue for more technical speak on this subject but just keep in mind it is unlikely the Devs will join in until we get into testing, so a lot of this will be theories and opinions, so knowing that, feel free to continue. :)
Would this fall under the speculation part of the current state of the game? Serious subject with some bovine humor!
Ox
Oxillion said:Kilsin said:Definitely pushing it, mate lol
I will let it continue for more technical speak on this subject but just keep in mind it is unlikely the Devs will join in until we get into testing, so a lot of this will be theories and opinions, so knowing that, feel free to continue. :)
Would this fall under the speculation part of the current state of the game? Serious subject with some bovine humor!
Ox
You guys are free to speculate on the current state of the game and all things related just keep it reasonable and tag it with [Speculation] so it is very clear that it is speculation and opinion/ideas and not fact or official info taken from somewhere else ;)
alephen said:say a raid mob takes 50 hours of game time to defeat for a group (good group properly geared to start progression on the mob, etc.)
say it takes 10 minutes per pull (buff/pull/wipe until the last one which is buff/pull/kill)
how much of that 50 hours should be fighting the mob?
how much should be recovering running to the mob/rez sickness/buffing after a wipe?
how much should be regaining xp?
Where is this '50 hours' coming from? Just from you? Or do you think that a specific encounter (group/raid/whatecver) has some decided upon timeframe which developers believe players should expend to defeat that encounter?
Yes, there can be hard coded 'timings' within an encounter (X adds spawn every 3 minutes) but beyond that I'm not confident developers go into that degree of detail..and here is why: Players are the ones which determine how slow or fast content takes, not the developers. Yes, the developers set the stage, but its the players that set the tempo.
In your next statement what is your baseline comparison? Are you assuming it should be consistent across all situations or could the location, environment, spawn timers, NPC abilities, etc, etc etc have an effect? The lazy player will say 'It should take no time at all' while the realistic player will say 'it depends upon the situation'. Wipe close to the zoneline? Quick recovery..probably. Wipe at the far end of the dungeon long after everything between the zoneline and your corpse respawned? You are probabaly looking at a significant length of time.
Then onto XP. I'll say it again, it depends upon the players. Some groups kill faster than others, either due to gear or desire or whatever while other groups/raids dawdle, chat too much or go AFK after every pull.
Then think about what happens over time. Yes, those very first tries at a new raid encounter are going to take quite a bit of time but as you gain knowledge of the encounter(s), improve your gear, etc that timeframe will get shorter and shorter until you do reach that point of event being trivial.
the 50 hours is admittedly out of the air. it really wasn't a question about how long it would take to defeat the mob, but more about the ratio one would prefer between learning the encounter, recovering to reengage, and regaining xp at some future time. it seemed (and seems) to me that having a number to the hours would help an individual better 'visualize' that ratio.
i was thinking it is quite possible that one person might be saying 'we should feel a death penalty' and want it in the vanguard range, since that individual felt that penalty. while another is saying 'it should be there, but not too bad' thinking that vanguard would be a perfect example. so both people are agreeing to what the penalty should be, but are arguing because of their perceptions of that penalty.
Disposalist, if i didnt respond to the question in that post, i likely didn't notice it. this post is not intended to be about tactics at all. honestly, i was hoping to get a less emotionally infused thread where devs could see numbers that might be useful to them. although after kilsins gentle (for a murderous assassin) chiding, it is clear that, perhaps, it is very early for them to be worrying about things that could be tweaked during alpha/beta testing.
Dont reinvent the wheel.
All you need is Corpse-runs and 10% EXP loss. Cleric to rez back most of the exp. The statement above describes a tried-and-true death penalty.
No need to waste time, money and man-hours on this. It worked for the game that was the supposed inspiration or predecessor to Pantheon.
Do what is proven.
When raiding always expect the worse. I think they should do something like eqoa...you respond where you are bound....and go into an xpac debt that capped at 68.75 million if I remember correctly. This will make you think twice about stuff before you do it, and even at max levels, when they eventually put in aa or masteries or whatever they decide on at that point it will slow you down.
As for the amount of time to reset, I would say it would depend on how long you attempt at said boss was. Usually when you are preparing you cast buffs with a cool down timer, usually 5-10 mins. So if you attempt is shorter than that, you die...res....drink up....and wait for buffs and debuff to be ready then go again.
If your attempt is longer....die...res...drink..rebuff...go again.
Rinse and repeat until either you kill it, or have to wait for another guild to attempt in between your tries until it's dead. If there are 3 guilds there...the guild leaders should work together to determine a rotation and wait patiently for their turn....
Greattaste said:Dont reinvent the wheel.
All you need is Corpse-runs and 10% EXP loss. Cleric to rez back most of the exp. The statement above describes a tried-and-true death penalty.
No need to waste time, money and man-hours on this. It worked for the game that was the supposed inspiration or predecessor to Pantheon.
Do what is proven.
The issue with this is well ran raiding guilds the death penalty was a 3 second roadbump. It did nothing to slow down the pace nor did we care if we died a few times. Something that affects across all teirs needs to be looked at
I do want some type of experience penalty/debt (but no level loss) associated with death penalty. I also want the penalty to not be capped. I don't want to get to a point where a player hits a reverse wall which means death from that point on no longer matters.
What I think the solution is a reverse scaling system where if you currently have XP debt (meaning you haven't fully recovered from a death) a scaling system is put in place. The first death adds a lot of debt, the second adds a bit less and so on. Eventually deaths won't add much debt but they will still count against you. That way if you ever die like 5 times trying to get your corpse back (which has happened to many of us) it's not like 5x as bad. When you die once and get hit with 10% debt, once you pay that debt back and start gaining again, death is reset back and can get hit with 10% again next time you die.
So:
Death 1: -10% (Pay back 10%)
Death 2: -5% (Pay back 5% plus remainder of previous debt)
Death 3: -2.5% (Pay back 2.5% plus remainder of previous debt)
Death 4: -1.25% (Pay back 1.25% plus remainder of previous debt)
Death 5: -.75% (Pay back .75% plus remainder of previous debt)
Etc.
Greattaste said:Dont reinvent the wheel.
All you need is Corpse-runs and 10% EXP loss. Cleric to rez back most of the exp. The statement above describes a tried-and-true death penalty.
No need to waste time, money and man-hours on this. It worked for the game that was the supposed inspiration or predecessor to Pantheon.
Do what is proven.
I'd rather resurrection exp return be reduced from EQ. Combat is more intense and death scarier when you have more to lose. In EQ, it got to the point where you just stopped worry about dying and I believe that was a design mistake. Especially when clerics with epic could give a free 96% exp recovery resurrection.
I think about 50% should be the cap. For someone to get back more than that, it should require a high level priest class, a lot of mana (down time) and an expensive reagent. This will be even more important if Pantheon offers more ways to retrieve your corpse.
Just going to repost this blog from Wolfshead again in case anyone missed it.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-death-penalty-mechanic-and-loss-aversion-in-mmo-design/
Hmm, i say You lose Exp upon death, Armor Durability isn't really a penalty honestly just a bump in the road, To make it interesting i say no corpse runs simple becuase then invising past targets towards raid targets or end game dungeon content doesn't exsist so you have to Dungeon Crawl to them. I say the Clerics can keep there 96% rez like in EQ simple becuase i know in the beginning of EQ dying 20 times for a tank going after a new unknown target either it be a difficult Dungeon guy or a raid encounter either way isn't very hard for them. Remember CT back in the day or Dread/Terror with there DT's if they were stuck at 50% tanks wouldn't fight them more than likely due to losing too much EXP per attempt. Also to spice it up upon getting Rezzed I say for 5-10 minutes upon getting rezzed in mid fight of any kind you get an addition sickness stating you get reduced 25% more towards you stat than usual and also recieve a 25% reduction to haste so making you realize just getting brought back to life might add in a little bit more dps but signifantly less than if you didn't die at all and also making it to where if you have a haste item on it doesn't take effect til your rez sickness is gone.
Or if you want to just clump up the 2 rez effect and scratch if it's in combat or not i say make it a 40% stat reduction, 25% haste debuff i believe that it enough to make any class getting rezzed a singificant lose in dps regardless of class, also casters have 0% mana like you do in EQ. Also going to state that if we get Disciplines/AA's like in EQ they can't be used while having Rez sickness cuase i know back in the day as my paladin i would taunt get myself killed to get my LoH back lol, this should not happen on Pantheon, and also lets say they do skill like Conjuration/Evocation and the cap is 200 with rez sickness you lose 25% to these stats for the 5-10 minutes like melee loses haste so your max is 150 until rez sickness is gone as well, so all class are affected evenly.
Larirawiel said:A serious death penalty would be perma death or you lose an item when you die. Exp loss or item durability loss is not a real death penalty because you can easy grind it back. It is a primitive time sink.
Greetings
All death penalties are going to be a timesink one way or another, there isn't really anything you can do about that, plus if Clerics get a 90-96% rez spell exp loss/gear durability will just be small hiccups and nothing more, so im more focused on the after math of becoming rezzed, plus for anyone playing hardcore deaths shouldn't bother them much i would thnk, due to always being the first ones to check out new targets if they get up there that fast.
Blazoned said:Corpse Recovery I think is important. I have been back on EQ on a progression server - but now you respawn at bind with your gear. Frankly sometimes its faster to die and grind than it is to run back...
Sounds awful, and just another example of how out of touch Daybreak is with what made EQ memorable.
Dullahan said:Blazoned said:Corpse Recovery I think is important. I have been back on EQ on a progression server - but now you respawn at bind with your gear. Frankly sometimes its faster to die and grind than it is to run back...
Sounds awful, and just another example of how out of touch Daybreak is with what made EQ memorable.
I agree.
As much as corpse runs sucked, they also helped foster that community. Countless times I'd start my CR only to get a tell from some random stranger "Hey, I'm by your corpse. Do you want a rez?" Or they offer to drag it somewhere safer. And many times, that person would be standing there waiting until I got there before going on their way, or we'd group up and form a friendship.
Now, this doesn't mean I'd wouldn't like to see an alternative to CRs, but they must come with penaties. Even is it is something like a graveyard in each or nearby zone, where after a certain period of time, say 24hrs? Your corpse can be retreived there, no xp recovery or anything. Alternatives that make them a last resort, something you do because you just can't recover your corpse for whatever reason.