One of the things that really bonded me to EQ (1999 - 2002) like no other MMO was the slow progression that most of us had to endure. You stayed in one place and got very familiar with it.
My first character was a Human Wizard on Nameless "Devo". I spent months in Quenos exploring it and the sewers below it, slowly ventured my way to Black Burrow. I really got to know each zone along with its magic and danger accordingly. The penalty for stupidity was death, experience loss, corpse recovery drama etc. Although it seemed tedious, it was really what made that game epic for me.
I've tried many MMO's since and the mad dash forward is designed into most games.
My hope: A more refined version of the same experience. I'm keeping an open mind, but for the love of god, make me fear dying, or even venturing out of my comfort zone!
I don't know. I see a lot of folks here urging VR to implement a steep death penalty, and indeed devs have commented that they want death to be meaningful. I get that. But to be so steep you actually fear it? That's counter productive. One thing is for sure in anybody's MMO experience: you are going to die. And probably a lot. Make it so punitive that it's feared and people will be reluctant to explore new areas or to be that first raid group to try a new encounter. I've been in EQ2 raids that wiped so many times people's armor was broken (that takes about 10 deaths). Still in the end we finally figured out the strat needed to beat the boss. There's a nice rush when your raid is finally successful even after many, many wipes. Not so when forced to call it because people start bailing after they've died too many times.
Anyway, just my two coppers.
I think you will be happy with the direction of Pantehon Nick! I too would like a fairly steep death penalty and difficult agressive mobs that makes me nervous when i enter a new zone!
We wil be testing all these things during beta i am sure and there will be plenty of opinions on both sides and without forfeiting their vision of the game i am sure VR will land somewhere in the middle!
+1. This game needs to have slow progression and a harsh death penalty to make it different to any mmo that has came out in the past decade. If they just make it easy to corpse run or not much need for it then I will most likely play for a couple months and get bored then move on.
Old School mmo gamers have been asking for over a decade now for developers to bring simple concepts like these back into the genre. I just hope they do this and bring back my love for the genre again. I have been so let down over so many years now by devs promising things and it never making it into the game or being patched after a few weeks to make it easy mode again. I feel like a crack addict these past 12 years trying to find my drug again and unable to find it haha.
Make the death penalty as steep as you want, the exact moment:
You remove all chances of a zone crash, server crash, DDOS attack on VR, lightning strike, random disconnect, child/cat sitting on the wifi access point, power failure, or lag spike.
Until then, I would prefer a less punitive approach, when it comes to designing a death penalty. :-)
vjek said:Make the death penalty as steep as you want, the exact moment:
You remove all chances of a zone crash, server crash, DDOS attack on VR, lightning strike, random disconnect, child/cat sitting on the wifi access point, power failure, or lag spike.
Until then, I would prefer a less punitive approach, when it comes to designing a death penalty. :-)
What death penalty would see as reasonable then?
The important thing with the death penalty is it needs to be designed remembering that the players of this game are real people with real lives outside of the game. If the death penalty includes the danger of multi-hour naked corpse recoveries that can last deep into the morning, that is when it is too steep. I remember being part of an eight hour CR in Plane of Fear and not being able to leave because if you did you would never get your body back. Stuff like that absolutely needs to be avoided. If XP loss, gear staying on your corpse, etc, are a thing, there absolutely needs to be some emergency card to play so people don't end up losing sleep or having negative impacts on their real lives. Something like the graveyard zones from PoP, a once a day game-wide corpse summon, etc.
Liav said:I still don't want to see a death penalty quite as severe as EQ. I was happy when they removed corpse runs, but I'm fine with severe XP loss.
This. I spent hours and hours one night trying to get my and my wife's corpses back from deep within Guk. Finally had to spend every plat we had to get a necro to summon them. Set us way back and we both took a break from the game after that. Death penalties can be too steep. Sorry, not sorry.
XP debt is fine, reduced stats for a time is fine. Losing everything you were wearing and carrying because your group broke up after wiping is too much.
lewicki said: My heart has never beat so fast as in games where consequences actually matter. Take EVE for instance; you spend days, even weeks, saving up for ship and it's modules only to have it blown up...Again....And again. Why do you think people do that? It's exciting. Risk is exciting. And let's face it, we're playing against NPCs. Not some SkyNet AlphaGo AI that will faceroll us at any chance that they get. The threat has to be there. The possibility of losing all that you hold dear is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. The threat that, if you **** this up, you will regret it. You will regret it when you respawn, running back to your corpse naked, and working your exp back to where you were.
In fairness, people don't really play EVE. Not anymore. Unless my knowledge is flawed, the population of EVE is constantly dwindling downwards.
Ozmani said:Liav said:I still don't want to see a death penalty quite as severe as EQ. I was happy when they removed corpse runs, but I'm fine with severe XP loss.
This. I spent hours and hours one night trying to get my and my wife's corpses back from deep within Guk. Finally had to spend every plat we had to get a necro to summon them. Set us way back and we both took a break from the game after that. Death penalties can be too steep. Sorry, not sorry.
XP debt is fine, reduced stats for a time is fine. Losing everything you were wearing and carrying because your group broke up after wiping is too much.
What about if anyone can summon their corpse to the zone upon entering, but you still have to get back naked? Either through a general skill or preferably a consumable sold via a general merchant for X plat? Just expensive enough to encourage getting your own corpse but always there if you don't want to struggle to the depths of a hellish dungeon.
Calling a game dead, a game released in 2003 with 20k online right now, is a stretch, no? How long do you expect a single game to live? Every game follows an adoption curve and an abandonment curve.
http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility
Would what you said invalidate my personal experiences even if you were right?
lewicki said:Calling a game dead, a game released in 2003 with 20k online right now, is a stretch, no? How long do you expect a single game to live? Every game follows an adoption curve and an abandonment curve.
http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility
Would what you said invalidate my personal experiences even if you were right?
I guess I was mistaken. Even so, the intent wasn't to invalidate your experiences. My concern is going overboard with these hardcore mechanics might just end up being too extreme even for the niche players.
Making Pantheon more hardcore that contemporary MMOs often gets conflated with making Pantheon as hardcore as humanly possible. I just don't know if there's a significant number of people who have 4 hours to dedicate to corpse recovery.
1 extreme to the next Liav, apparently wanting EQ's death penalty carried over to Pantheon is equivalent to "making Pantheon as hardcore as humanly possible"
I think not, I think people talking about why they liked EQ's death penalty is just fine, and I also believe it's the best death penalty in any game I've played yet.
I think the penalty for death needs to be properly balanced with how easy it is to die in Pantheon. Watching the livestream, it seems quite easy to die even in areas where you are within the level recommendation.
Going off of the last stream in December, I feel that each death should instantly remove at least 25% of all experience currently gained towards the next level, as well as reduce the durability of all worn equipment by at least 25% of their maximum. For example, if you currently have 40,000 and need 50,000 to level up, then if you die you will lose at least 10,000 experience points. And let's say your chestplate was at 64/100 when you died. It would then be reduced to 39/100. There should also be a debuff of some kind imposed, but I currently do not know what the debuff would do. Will edit this post later when I think of something appropriate.
I do not feel as if retrieving your body should be necessary.
I suspect some of you underestimate the strength of social cohesion a, so called, 'harsh' death penalty brings out in the community. Early EQ1 with EXP loss and Corpse runs and Corpse Decay was certainly enough to focus the mind. Many even suggest it was 'so punitive' that it prevented any risk taking at all ...
... quite the opposite.
I recall winding down late one Sunday afternoon in SRo and seeing a plea in OOC for help after a small Guild wiped in Plane of Fear and had already tried to re-break in twice, to no avail. Now they just wanted to get in to loot corpses and excape. So they were asking for help as they had no gear, reagents or anything! I was amongst 6-8 people who offered help... and the only Mage.
We spent the next 4+ hours trying to fix this mess.
.... we all died twice or more
..... burned through stacks of reagents
.... summoned masses of death sticks
Eventually we got in and through to their corpses (and ours)
By the time I logged out and went to bed it was nearly 2am ... and I had work the next day!
The 'moral' of this story was that, even though you may consider the death penalties to be 'the harshest humanly possible', it did not stop the community from helping each other, even in the face of the almost certain risk of death, exp loss and corpse runs. Indeed, it was this very danger, common to us all, that bound the community together.
TL;DR
Adversity, in the form of a common danger, breeds strong social reliance and cohesion...
... and DEATH is the ultimate adversary!
Rallyd said:1 extreme to the next Liav, apparently wanting EQ's death penalty carried over to Pantheon is equivalent to "making Pantheon as hardcore as humanly possible"
I think not, I think people talking about why they liked EQ's death penalty is just fine, and I also believe it's the best death penalty in any game I've played yet.
I don't know what the future holds. I still think it's a valid concern worth voicing, though, that there is a chance that it could do more harm than good porting EQ's mechanics 1:1 into Pantheon. It's as equally valid as people talking about liking it.
I don't want to see it. If other people do, go for it.
@Megaera
I like pretty much all of those suggestions. I think the only exception is the spirit master as it reduces dependency on other players. I think allowing bodies to be rezzed exclusively by players would be fine, as long as items stay on you after death. Thoughts?
A fear of death is necessary - A Wolfshead article that addresses the need to fear death sums up my thoughts perfectly - what he calls loss aversion - it's been linked on this site by Dullahan previously.
The Death Penalty Mechanic and Loss Aversion in MMO Design
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-death-penalty-mechanic-and-loss-aversion-in-mmo-design/
We also had several threads discussing the death penalty and slow progression - this is one of the larger ones:
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty/view/page/1
Raidan said:A fear of death is necessary - A Wolfshead article that addresses the need to fear death sums up my thoughts perfectly - what he calls loss aversion - it's been linked on this site by Dullahan previously.
The Death Penalty Mechanic and Loss Aversion in MMO Design
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-death-penalty-mechanic-and-loss-aversion-in-mmo-design/
We also had several threads discussing the death penalty and slow progression - this is one of the larger ones:
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty/view/page/1
Thank you Raidan, you beat me to it ;)
The links Raidan provided are worth a read and the forum thread on the Death Penalty is quite in-depth so please continue your discussion in that thread as this one will now be closed
as it is a duplicate. Please use the search function prior to creating a new thread as more often than not you will find that it has already been posted and discussed over the year that we have been in development.
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty/view/page/1