What do you think of the Death Penalty ?

Kumapon

Looks like someone has been leaking info on the net. Joppa came into the unoffical discord, to clarify a few things. One of them was the Death Penalty. 

Looks like some of the leaked info was true, as Joppa confirmed what the Death Penalty will be. 





So what do you all think of the Death Penalty ?

achesoma

I feel like corpse runs are a waste of time. I'm fine with everything else.

TwoTubes

I think its a giant easy button if you respawn with your gear.  

TwoTubes

Players don't care about exp loss.  That is easy to replace.  It was the difficulty of getting your corpse naked that made players fear death.

Sephros

Seems fine. Keep your gear, drop all inventory. Makes it a corpse run or not for you to decide. 

Kyleran

Very similar to early Shadowbane as I recall, lets you wear good gear without fear if extraordinary loss.

Surprised to see whether or not to implement durability is still in question, seems like a foundational gameplay design.

Sovrath

Sounds fine to me.

Wizardry

So basically ...Everquest.
Not enough thought is put into the durability idea.
So you can utilize crafting to craft an item to reacquire durability to your gear.If we are repairing our gear it SHOULD be done at some kind of crafting table and not instantly via some item.Eventually the repair idea is put into cash shop form,something i want to see no part of in the game i play.

% of experience towards next level,NOPE.I feel a little more effort is needed.If you die to an easy mob you lose 50% of that entire levels xp total.So if the entire level needs 100 mill xp you lose 500k and if that 500k means you lose a level great.
If you die to a mob that is 1 level or 2 or 3 or 5 levels above you lose different xp accordingly.

I would also like to see each SKILL have a stat POOL.So if you die you lose from your stat pool,meaning it will take longer to skill up your Axe skill or your healing skill etc etc.

The whole idea of dying is to say you were not proficient with your skills and perhaps not an intelligent player because you took on more  than you should but typically gamer's don't care because there is little risk to dying.So game designs and death penalty usually encourage BAD game play,BAD decisions because the risk is nothing to worry about.

Imagine in REAL LIFE if death was on the palette,you would be pretty darn careful and sure of yourself now wouldn't you?

delete5230

Will this make you re evaluate your class for self preservation or popularity ?

Healer class ?
Stealth class ?

Just a thought off the top of my head.... Make resurrection abilities more available to more classes to not screw up group wait time.

Wizardry

I'll be perfectly honest,i have spent 30 years evaluating mmorpg's and where they have come and gone and i am not happy with the genre at all.

I feel like there is a very real possibility i never play another mmorpg ever again.I actually feel like mmorpg's are going backwards,getting worse in design.

So the death penalty means little to me,more like just another piece of the puzzle when i sit back and evaluate the entire puzzle.
I feel survival games is the way to go,they offer a better role playing experience.All we need is to get bigger better developers on board and invest more time and effort into the survival genre,then we will surpass the last 30 years of mmorpg's progression.

Sadly people are not even engaging in any type of role playing or even MMO gaming,all we see is the push and favor towards INSTANCE RAIDING for loot,to that i say a HUGE NO THANKS.

Vrika

I think they should use equipment durability penalties instead of exp. loss.

If I lose my life doing something that allows the party as whole to survive and have to pay repair costs for helping my party that way I feel good about what I did, but if it's an exp. loss for me I feel like an idiot.

Iselin

tzervo said:

Any loss on death makes player decisions matter more by forcing them to ask:

- Should I try this fight? (evaluation of risk vs reward)
- Am I really skilled enough for it? Or am I overestimating myself? (more sincere self-evaluation)
- If I lose, do I have enough fun with the game to get the lost assets back? (more sincere evaluation of the game)

The particular death loss penalties sound lke a fair middle ground between negligible and too harsh. Potential downside might be forcing micromanagement of carried assets (including gold). I like it. I also think most players don't, but those players might not be the target audience of Pantheon in the first place.

That sounds like a reasonable thought process... if it's just you and the game.

But I thought Pantheon is all about group play, so how does that work when your death is caused by someone else in your party screwing up, as is often the case?

Vrika

tzervo said:

Any loss on death makes player decisions matter more by forcing them to ask:

- Should I try this fight? (evaluation of risk vs reward)
- Am I really skilled enough for it? Or am I overestimating myself? (more sincere self-evaluation)
- If I lose, do I have enough fun with the game to get the lost assets back? (more sincere evaluation of the game)

The particular death loss penalties sound lke a fair middle ground between negligible and too harsh. Potential downside might be forcing micromanagement of carried assets (including gold). I like it. I also think most players don't, but those players might not be the target audience of Pantheon in the first place.

Potential downsides are also:

-Players don't want to group with strangers and/or people who aren't as good as them
-The game is less exciting if players play it too safe to avoid death penalties

Death penalty can be a bit of a blessing and a curse at the same time: On the other hand fear of death itself makes the game more exciting and often more fun, but on the other hand in PvE environment it also makes the game more boring by making players stick to safer choices.

Abscissa15

Respawn with gear takes some of the bite out of death. I recall incidents relevant to corpse runs in Feerrott where your corpse was surrounded by lizardmen - many more deaths before successful retrieving your worldly goods.

XP loss as a % is not unreasonable as long as that number is not excessive.

An interesting concept (for the sake of mentioning) that I haven't seen in a long time is the nororiety system used in UO. If you had achieved Great Lord status and died for whatever reason you lost a huge chunk of that and were bumped down a rung on the ladder. It took a HUGE amount of good deeds and mob kills to regain that loss and I mean days worth of work. Ages ago

cheyane

Quite light the penalty.

itchmon

Modified EQ, sounds ok to me.  Technically a lil harsher than EQ because in EQ you repop with all your inventory and in Pantheon you appear to only pop with what you wear.  Would make for some interesting content if someone wins a raid item but doesn't equip it right away and their raid TPWs at like 2am.

Honestly the exp loss and non work inventory loss seem like a hard, but not oppressive, death penalty.

Kyleran

cheyane said:

Quite light the penalty.

By modern standards its positively draconian, but probably the best which a decent size number of players will accept today.

Vrika

Kyleran said:

Surprised to see whether or not to implement durability is still in question, seems like a foundational gameplay design.

It's not that foundational. If it's a simple system where vendor repair the armor, it's more on the level of deciding whether hunters need arrows, rogues need poison and spellcasters need reagents.

For me personally those are the kinds of old school mechanisms that I hope they'll use in moderation. It feels right to send a couple of minutes repairing and re-stocking when you enter a city. That's something I think a hero/adventurer is supposed to do, as long as it doesn't take too much time and doesn't distract from the main gameplay too much.

Amathe

If this was just any old game I would say the system is ok. Not great but ok.

But it's not just any old game. It's the spiritual successor to Everquest. And this is too easy to be that. They have removed a signature element that comes to mind when somone says "EQ." 

And this is how it starts. A concession here, a concession there. Pretty soon we have the spiritual successor to WoW.

All that said, I'm not going to play a game, or not play one, because of a death penalty. I just hope we're not setting sail on the good ship EZ mode.

Amathe

Btw, things that are different than EQ:

No corpse decay timer. You can get your inventory when it suits you I guess.

No backwards xp loss that can result in losing a level.

Worn gear respawns with player at bind point. No naked corpse runs.

Corpse run optional.

So like it or hate it, but don't say it's like EQ because it's not.

Kyleran

Vrika said:

Kyleran said:

Surprised to see whether or not to implement durability is still in question, seems like a foundational gameplay design.

It's not that foundational. If it's a simple system where vendor repair the armor, it's more on the level of deciding whether hunters need arrows, rogues need poison and spellcasters need reagents.

For me personally those are the kinds of old school mechanisms that I hope they'll use in moderation. It feels right to send a couple of minutes repairing and re-stocking when you enter a city. That's something I think a hero/adventurer is supposed to do, as long as it doesn't take too much time and doesn't distract from the main gameplay too much.

In some older games like DAOC items had several factors affecting their usefulness.

Durability was one, starting at 100 which would move slowly downwards with normal use, or take a bigger hit if the player died. More importantly, durability could not be restored back to 100%.

The lower the durability, the less benefit it provided, and most folks didn't really want to use them if durability dropped too low, for some 95%, others 90%

Items could be repaired, but when was the right time to do so? Each repair permanently reduced the durability, so before too long the item could be rendered useless as lower than 80% it was totally useless and had to be discarded.

This had a huge impact in the early days when crafted gear was the best in the game.  Also gear "conned" just like players or NPCs, even con or yellow gear lost durability at a much slower rate than if a player tried to wear higher orange, red, or purple gear.

Woe to a player who tried to wear red con gear, could totally wear out in a matter of days, so most stuck to orange and yellows.

Gear also had a condition as well, again ranging from 100% (very rare to come by) ranging down into the 70s but which were considered to be junk.

Most in game drops ranged from 75 to 92 or so, which normally only newer players wore until they could afford crafted gear.

Point is, incorporating durability into other factors is an important design considering which can greatly impact player gameplay behaviors.

Sure, it can be tacked on as you mentioned, the approach taken by most MMORPG's from WOW onwards, but there was a day when gear had so many more factors as part of the equation.

Oh, I forgot to mention, gear varied in effectiveness to different damage types, plate was more vulnerable to hammers, but, neutral to slashing, and near impervious to piercing. Chain was weak against piercing, but strong against slashing, neutral to bashing, etc etc.

cheyane

Like @Amathe says don't call it an Everquest successor cause it sure ain't. Don't bargain with that cache when appealing to EQ fans.

cheyane

itchmon said:

Modified EQ, sounds ok to me.  Technically a lil harsher than EQ because in EQ you repop with all your inventory and in Pantheon you appear to only pop with what you wear.  Would make for some interesting content if someone wins a raid item but doesn't equip it right away and their raid TPWs at like 2am.

Honestly the exp loss and non work inventory loss seem like a hard, but not oppressive, death penalty.

Everquest originally you popped completely naked. They may have changed it later but you never repop with your inventory when it launched and for years later. Are you talking about how Everquest is now? Pantheon is very mild in comparison.

Mendel

The death penalty seems livable to me.  Not my idea of perfect, but a reasonable compromise.  EQ1 Light, I'd call it.

Like @Kyleran, I'm a bit baffled at how VR still hasn't decided on a function as critical as item "wear and tear".  I'd rather see a robust system for gear degradation than not, and it seems quite a bit late for this kind of decision not to be firmly in place.  Tacking this kind of change on at a later stage doesn't always work.

delete5230

It should be if you die they come take your children your house, clean out your bank account, give bad credit rating and leave you with a Walmart gift card with nothin on it.

Then knock you out, and when you awake you find a note on your chest saying "good for ya".

Now that's a real game !

Sovrath

cheyane said:

Like @Amathe says don't call it an Everquest successor cause it sure ain't. Don't bargain with that cache when appealing to EQ fans.

I think they are trying to go for an Everquest successor that works with contemporary players.

May or may not bite them in the butt.

I actually don't think it will. "But" contemporary players are going to be looking for a "modern" game in everything, animations, graphics, gameplay, and they aren't going to get it with this.

So while I don't think more old school players will balk (more just roll their eyes) new players aren't going to be captivated by this game.