It seems to me that in a group centric game an overly harsh death penalty punishes players for joining bad groups. This enhances the mindset that "I never join pugs because you always get noobs", which in turn pushes new players out. If people wont group with strangers then there is a problem. There must be a balance.
Nowadays if you draw a group member whose play is bad, then they just get a scarlet letter "N" for noob and are kicked from the group. Of course, they don't learn anything that way.
In older games, if someone's play was poor, people were much more likely to help them. "Hold off on the nukes until the tank has a minute to build aggro." "Come closer or you will get adds."
Hopefully Pantheon's players won't bring the worst of WoW culture to this game. If they do, it will be interesting to see whose customs and practices win out.
Without constant in-game moderation, the toxic culture almost always wins.
Usually the only people willing to continue to play in a toxic culture are the people responsible for it. At least until there is nobody left to play with and they move on to poison the next game.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
I never played EQ1, but I did play Vanguard and I found the naked corpse running just annoying, especially when my corpse was camped by enemy faction players who just killed me relentlessly.
Stupid mechanic....
1) VG had PvE servers for you (as will Pantheon) 2) if you let yourself get relentlessly corpse camped in VG you were not playing it right 3) death isn't supposed to be enjoyable
I never played EQ1, but I did play Vanguard and I found the naked corpse running just annoying, especially when my corpse was camped by enemy faction players who just killed me relentlessly.
Stupid mechanic....
1) VG had PvE servers for you (as will Pantheon) 2) if you let yourself get relentlessly corpse camped in VG you were not playing it right 3) death isn't supposed to be enjoyable
1) yeah, but I generally play on PVP servers, spices up the game play a bit.
2) probably not but my system at the time struggled running the game well which contributed to the problem.
3) true, but death isn't supposed to be unavoidable and relentless and having to go back and recover my gear made it annoying and pointless.
At least in EVE after getting my ship (and Pod sometimes) blown up I could just reship where my gear was and go about my business.
They never put any real effort into the faction servers, it could have been better.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It seems to me that in a group centric game an overly harsh death penalty punishes players for joining bad groups. This enhances the mindset that "I never join pugs because you always get noobs", which in turn pushes new players out. If people wont group with strangers then there is a problem. There must be a balance.
Nowadays if you draw a group member whose play is bad, then they just get a scarlet letter "N" for noob and are kicked from the group. Of course, they don't learn anything that way.
In older games, if someone's play was poor, people were much more likely to help them. "Hold off on the nukes until the tank has a minute to build aggro." "Come closer or you will get adds."
Hopefully Pantheon's players won't bring the worst of WoW culture to this game. If they do, it will be interesting to see whose customs and practices win out.
Without constant in-game moderation, the toxic culture almost always wins.
Usually the only people willing to continue to play in a toxic culture are the people responsible for it. At least until there is nobody left to play with and they move on to poison the next game.
Perhaps. But this game is being designed on the premise that social, cooperative play will be rewarded. So I am holding out that they come through on that intention.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
To complain about Vanguard death penalty is almost like opposing a death mechanic in general. You could summon your body from any rift and get back the lost exp in under 30 minutes. A fairly light cost of repair, no time lost, and with it's ez fast travel, you were back fighting in minutes.
I would be extremely disappointed if Pantheon's death penalty were as weak as Vanguard's. I had no fear of dying in games with such weak penalties. As a result, rewards in those games and sense of accomplishment paled in comparison to that of EQ.
Agreed.
It's been almost 10 years since many of us have played Vanguard, so it bears refreshing.
When your Hit Points are totally exhausted, you die. However in
Vanguard, death is only a temporary setback — though there is a cost.
Note: These rules are subject to change on alternate ruleset servers
Altars & Resurrection
When you’re killed, you have two choices. First, you can lie there
and wait for an ally or passing player character to use a resurrection
spell on you. This is the best option if such a healer is at hand. You
will be raised near the spot where you were killed (watch out for
hostile creatures that might try to ambush you while still weak from
resurrection) and you won’t have to worry about recovering your body.
If there’s nobody around to raise you from the dead, you can click on
Release Your Body and raise yourself at the nearest altar. This option
drains more Experience than second-party resurrection, but you can
mitigate some of this experience loss by recovering your body (see
below).
If you lie dead for 10 minutes without being raised, your body will
automatically release to the nearest altar.
New Characters. Note that new characters (Levels 1-10) do not suffer
experience penalties from death, nor do they leave behind bodies when
they release to an altar. As soon as you reach Level 11 you will start
to suffer body loss and experience penalties.
Body & Equipment Recovery
If you release your body to resurrect at an altar, you leave your
body behind in the place you died. Your body is marked with a tombstone,
and you automatically have its location recorded in your Quest Journal.
If you return to the place of your death and recover your body
(double-click or right-click on your tombstone) you will regain some
lost Experience.
It takes a few uninterrupted seconds to recover a body in the wild, so
make sure the area is secure before you double-click on your tombstone.
There is no limit to the number of tombstones that you have, but
tombstones will disappear after a while (two hours). If you lost any
equipment at a tombstone that has disappeared, you can buy it back at
any altar, for a percentage of its original value.
Altar Recovery. As an alternative to visiting your gravesite to retrieve
your belongings, you may also have your remains summoned to you at an
altar. The gods do demand a high price for this service, so don’t expect
this option to be easy on your pocketbook.
Soulbinding. Most equipment in the game is “Bindable”. This means is
that you may use a Binding Crystal (obtainable at General Goods
Merchants throughout Telon) on an item, which will cause it to become
Soulbound. Soulbound items may not be traded to other players, but when
you die and appear at an altar, your soulbound items will still be with
you rather than at the site of your death.
Experience Penalties & Debt
When you die, you lose some of the Adventuring experience you have
accrued. This is true whether you are raised on site or release to an
altar. Recovering your body can reduce this penalty, but won’t eliminate
it.
You can’t lose an earned level due to experience penalties, but if you
forfeit all the experience you’ve earned in your current level, you will
start to go into experience debt. This debt will have to be worked off
with new earned experience before you can resume progress towards the
next level.
Currently you respawn without equipment. All of your equipment that is
either soulbound (magically linked to you) or in your saddlebags will
still be with you. You have the option of paying an additional penalty
at
the altar to retrieve your belongings back, or re-equipping (with gear
in your saddlebags, or wherever else you can get it) and doing a corpse
recovery. Recovering your corpse will always be the better choice, if
you have the time and resources to get back to where you died. Paying
the penalty and regaining your equipment at the altar forfeits the
opportunity to get experience back by recovering your corpse.
Hardly a very punishing death penalty system by any means.
This is just one thought, building on what some others have said.
Assume that max level players will still have an xp bar of some type.
I think (at max level) that each death should impose a debuff that only the use use of earned xp from that bar can remove. The more deaths, the more debuffs, and the more xp earned it would take to remove them all.
But conversely, I think at max level buffs should be acquired for the amount of xp earned without any deaths.
That way, max level players would have a carrot and a stick to avoid dying.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
This is just one thought, building on what some others have said.
Assume that max level players will still have an xp bar of some type.
I think (at max level) that each death should impose a debuff that only the use use of earned xp from that bar can remove. The more deaths, the more debuffs, and the more xp earned it would take to remove them all.
But conversely, I think at max level buffs should be acquired for the amount of xp earned without any deaths.
That way, max level players would have a carrot and a stick to avoid dying.
I like where your mind is at, trying to come up with an innovative solution.
Playing a little devils advocate, however, would you consider deleveling from 50 to 49 to be basically the same as a debuff?
Or the progeny system basically the same as a buff for earning exp beyond max level, but on a macro scale?
Maybe the added complexity doesn't add value?
Not to knock your idea or the other related ideas by any means -- it's a better solution to the "Xp-debt at max level" problem than anything I've come up with. I'm just trying to poke holes in the idea to see if it can still float.
To complain about Vanguard death penalty is almost like opposing a death mechanic in general. You could summon your body from any rift and get back the lost exp in under 30 minutes. A fairly light cost of repair, no time lost, and with it's ez fast travel, you were back fighting in minutes.
I would be extremely disappointed if Pantheon's death penalty were as weak as Vanguard's. I had no fear of dying in games with such weak penalties. As a result, rewards in those games and sense of accomplishment paled in comparison to that of EQ.
Agreed.
It's been almost 10 years since many of us have played Vanguard, so it bears refreshing.
When your Hit Points are totally exhausted, you die. However in
Vanguard, death is only a temporary setback — though there is a cost.
Note: These rules are subject to change on alternate ruleset servers
Altars & Resurrection
When you’re killed, you have two choices. First, you can lie there
and wait for an ally or passing player character to use a resurrection
spell on you. This is the best option if such a healer is at hand. You
will be raised near the spot where you were killed (watch out for
hostile creatures that might try to ambush you while still weak from
resurrection) and you won’t have to worry about recovering your body.
If there’s nobody around to raise you from the dead, you can click on
Release Your Body and raise yourself at the nearest altar. This option
drains more Experience than second-party resurrection, but you can
mitigate some of this experience loss by recovering your body (see
below).
If you lie dead for 10 minutes without being raised, your body will
automatically release to the nearest altar.
New Characters. Note that new characters (Levels 1-10) do not suffer
experience penalties from death, nor do they leave behind bodies when
they release to an altar. As soon as you reach Level 11 you will start
to suffer body loss and experience penalties.
Body & Equipment Recovery
If you release your body to resurrect at an altar, you leave your
body behind in the place you died. Your body is marked with a tombstone,
and you automatically have its location recorded in your Quest Journal.
If you return to the place of your death and recover your body
(double-click or right-click on your tombstone) you will regain some
lost Experience.
It takes a few uninterrupted seconds to recover a body in the wild, so
make sure the area is secure before you double-click on your tombstone.
There is no limit to the number of tombstones that you have, but
tombstones will disappear after a while (two hours). If you lost any
equipment at a tombstone that has disappeared, you can buy it back at
any altar, for a percentage of its original value.
Altar Recovery. As an alternative to visiting your gravesite to retrieve
your belongings, you may also have your remains summoned to you at an
altar. The gods do demand a high price for this service, so don’t expect
this option to be easy on your pocketbook.
Soulbinding. Most equipment in the game is “Bindable”. This means is
that you may use a Binding Crystal (obtainable at General Goods
Merchants throughout Telon) on an item, which will cause it to become
Soulbound. Soulbound items may not be traded to other players, but when
you die and appear at an altar, your soulbound items will still be with
you rather than at the site of your death.
Experience Penalties & Debt
When you die, you lose some of the Adventuring experience you have
accrued. This is true whether you are raised on site or release to an
altar. Recovering your body can reduce this penalty, but won’t eliminate
it.
You can’t lose an earned level due to experience penalties, but if you
forfeit all the experience you’ve earned in your current level, you will
start to go into experience debt. This debt will have to be worked off
with new earned experience before you can resume progress towards the
next level.
Currently you respawn without equipment. All of your equipment that is
either soulbound (magically linked to you) or in your saddlebags will
still be with you. You have the option of paying an additional penalty
at
the altar to retrieve your belongings back, or re-equipping (with gear
in your saddlebags, or wherever else you can get it) and doing a corpse
recovery. Recovering your corpse will always be the better choice, if
you have the time and resources to get back to where you died. Paying
the penalty and regaining your equipment at the altar forfeits the
opportunity to get experience back by recovering your corpse.
Hardly a very punishing death penalty system by any means.
No, just time wasting and annoying, especially on the faction server which I'm guessing you didn't play.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
To complain about Vanguard death penalty is almost like opposing a death mechanic in general. You could summon your body from any rift and get back the lost exp in under 30 minutes. A fairly light cost of repair, no time lost, and with it's ez fast travel, you were back fighting in minutes.
I would be extremely disappointed if Pantheon's death penalty were as weak as Vanguard's. I had no fear of dying in games with such weak penalties. As a result, rewards in those games and sense of accomplishment paled in comparison to that of EQ.
Agreed.
It's been almost 10 years since many of us have played Vanguard, so it bears refreshing.
When your Hit Points are totally exhausted, you die. However in
Vanguard, death is only a temporary setback — though there is a cost.
Note: These rules are subject to change on alternate ruleset servers
Altars & Resurrection
When you’re killed, you have two choices. First, you can lie there
and wait for an ally or passing player character to use a resurrection
spell on you. This is the best option if such a healer is at hand. You
will be raised near the spot where you were killed (watch out for
hostile creatures that might try to ambush you while still weak from
resurrection) and you won’t have to worry about recovering your body.
If there’s nobody around to raise you from the dead, you can click on
Release Your Body and raise yourself at the nearest altar. This option
drains more Experience than second-party resurrection, but you can
mitigate some of this experience loss by recovering your body (see
below).
If you lie dead for 10 minutes without being raised, your body will
automatically release to the nearest altar.
New Characters. Note that new characters (Levels 1-10) do not suffer
experience penalties from death, nor do they leave behind bodies when
they release to an altar. As soon as you reach Level 11 you will start
to suffer body loss and experience penalties.
Body & Equipment Recovery
If you release your body to resurrect at an altar, you leave your
body behind in the place you died. Your body is marked with a tombstone,
and you automatically have its location recorded in your Quest Journal.
If you return to the place of your death and recover your body
(double-click or right-click on your tombstone) you will regain some
lost Experience.
It takes a few uninterrupted seconds to recover a body in the wild, so
make sure the area is secure before you double-click on your tombstone.
There is no limit to the number of tombstones that you have, but
tombstones will disappear after a while (two hours). If you lost any
equipment at a tombstone that has disappeared, you can buy it back at
any altar, for a percentage of its original value.
Altar Recovery. As an alternative to visiting your gravesite to retrieve
your belongings, you may also have your remains summoned to you at an
altar. The gods do demand a high price for this service, so don’t expect
this option to be easy on your pocketbook.
Soulbinding. Most equipment in the game is “Bindable”. This means is
that you may use a Binding Crystal (obtainable at General Goods
Merchants throughout Telon) on an item, which will cause it to become
Soulbound. Soulbound items may not be traded to other players, but when
you die and appear at an altar, your soulbound items will still be with
you rather than at the site of your death.
Experience Penalties & Debt
When you die, you lose some of the Adventuring experience you have
accrued. This is true whether you are raised on site or release to an
altar. Recovering your body can reduce this penalty, but won’t eliminate
it.
You can’t lose an earned level due to experience penalties, but if you
forfeit all the experience you’ve earned in your current level, you will
start to go into experience debt. This debt will have to be worked off
with new earned experience before you can resume progress towards the
next level.
Currently you respawn without equipment. All of your equipment that is
either soulbound (magically linked to you) or in your saddlebags will
still be with you. You have the option of paying an additional penalty
at
the altar to retrieve your belongings back, or re-equipping (with gear
in your saddlebags, or wherever else you can get it) and doing a corpse
recovery. Recovering your corpse will always be the better choice, if
you have the time and resources to get back to where you died. Paying
the penalty and regaining your equipment at the altar forfeits the
opportunity to get experience back by recovering your corpse.
Hardly a very punishing death penalty system by any means.
No, just time wasting and annoying, especially on the faction server which I'm guessing you didn't play.
No, I didn't. I played on the FFA PvP server, which was later merged with the other PvP servers into Sartok, which was also a FFA PvP server. I never tried the team PvP ruleset.
I did come from EQ1 though before VG, so that has a heavy influence on my death penalty preferences.
This is just one thought, building on what some others have said.
Assume that max level players will still have an xp bar of some type.
I think (at max level) that each death should impose a debuff that only the use use of earned xp from that bar can remove. The more deaths, the more debuffs, and the more xp earned it would take to remove them all.
But conversely, I think at max level buffs should be acquired for the amount of xp earned without any deaths.
That way, max level players would have a carrot and a stick to avoid dying.
I like the thinking here. What about an alternative? You only gain XP at level 49, never at max level. Once you ding to max level, you get a special buff to take you back to level 49 (turning on XP). It would be a guaranteed duration of 3 hours. When the buff expires, you can purchase another buff with XP, like you suggested. If you want to work on AA progression, you need to drop back to 49th to level away. Maybe dropping back to 49 is a bad idea, but the on-off switch of max-level XP via an XP-purchased buff could work.
If you just want to raid or craft (or goof around) you wouldn't need the XP ON buff. Use your idea of max-level death causing a debuff (fixed 3 hour duration) that can only be removed with an XP purchase.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Many games save your best and most powerful abilities for max level. If you are on an end game raid and you de-level, that could result in you becoming raid ineligible or no longer being able to meaningfully contribute. So I think some sort of alternative penalty would be appropriate in that situation.
But it definitely should matter. I would hate to see Pantheon morph into WoW at max level, where death is merely a run back.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
#1 I hate any focus on max level play ,especially before a game is even out.
I get it. "Enjoy the adventure, don't focus on the end game."
But don't be short-sighted. Vanguard launched w/ that philosophy (0 raid content, no quests past lvl 40, the exp debt system described) and look how that turned out.
When designing a system as important as the death exp penalty, you have to take into account all levels of play -- especially max level. Because after the first X amount of time it takes to initially level up, max level play is what everyone will be experiencing from then on out.
Using Vanguard as a measure of failure for another MMO is like using WoW as a measure of success. Both are exceptions, not the norm. Vanguard's problems are well-documented, and were apparent, from level 1 on up.
As for end-game and so on... I've always considered End-Game to be a kind of abstract thing that I'll reach "eventually". I don't worry about it or consider reaching it "a goal", any more than I consider finishing the last page of a book "a goal", or reaching the end credit scroll in a movie a "goal". What matters (to me) is what happens, and how much I'm enjoying myself along the way.
For me, in all the MMOs I've played, those with death penalties - including level loss - always had that extra amount of 'oomph' to them. Actions and decisions carried that much more weight, because the repercussions for failure had that much more bite. And, for me, it made succeeding at a dangerous task all the more satisfying.
My view on level and xp loss was always in the context that I treated MMOs as a long-term hobby, not something I was trying to finihh and move on from. So, if I died and lost xp? No big deal. I'll get it back. If I died and lost a level? Again, no big deal.. I'll get it back.
No point in making things overly complicated with debuffs and such. Just make it a naked corpse recovery with experience loss. Make it so that at level 50 once you max out experience that you have to really be stupid and die a lot to lose the whole level. Also either do a better job than EQ did about addressing game bugs that prevent you from getting your corpse or have the corpse after a certain amount of time be at graveyard with a significant experience loss like a half or so of a level if you want it back. The only time in EQ that I though I was going to lose a corpse was due to a game bug. It was a dungeon in velious that I had not been in for a month or so but apparently the dragon at the bottom of the thing remembered me because as soon as I zoned in he screamed my name and summoned me to him and of course killed me. As a result most of the rest of the mobs rushed the zone and killed the rest of my group. They then got bugged at the zone and you would actually die before you finished loading into the zone. The GM of course would not help. DMKano old guild (Bots) actually helped me get the corpse although that was certainly not their intention. It was sort of funny but the guild leader at the time came by with a couple of groups to go in. I tried to warn him but he was rude and I not repeat was he said. But anyway they went in and died of course. As they were what we called a zerg guild and apparently lots of them were online, they sent in 6 or so groups in the dungeon at once. I not sure if they cleared it or crashed the zone but anyway the mobs were gone and I got my corpse.
Some alternate advancement system at cap is fine, and even have that AA system have loss if wanted, but I'm completely against losing base levels. Always have been and always will be.
Doubt there will be many, if any, hard level requirements on gear, so still voting yes on this imaginary poll.
Also, if it's like EQ1 classic, you didn't get any new spells at lvl 50. So if you deleveled to 49 you basically only lost some hp, mana, and AC stats. Basically just a debuff.
Losing the ability to wear your L50 gear because you deleveled to 49 means you need to carry around an extra set of gear. Vote no on level loss.
No level requirements on gear so no worries (at least in classic EQ). P99 makes it so you have to be at least level 46 to equip your epic but not sure if this was "classic" or not. Everything else will equip at any level.
Losing the ability to wear your L50 gear because you deleveled to 49 means you need to carry around an extra set of gear. Vote no on level loss.
You don't stop gaining XP as soon as you level. You keep going until you reach the XP cap, i.e. when the level cap eventually goes up, you only need 1 point of XP to level to 51.
If you are loosing access to gear you either (a) were a twink carrying a full set of gear you were unable to use prior to leveling or (b) died a great many times.
Without twinking, a player is going to continue using the same gear he was using at level 49 for long enough to obtain new gear. The process of doing should provide significant XP, ensuring the player does not delevel. This is also true for any other level in the game.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
Correct. If you want to avoid de-leveling you just maintain a buffer, which at max should be 99.9% of the level. You don't have to maintain the buffer that high but it gives you the biggest safety net. Either way, every death matters because it eats away at that buffer.
What the threat of delevelling at max level does is force raid guild players to play for exp during the day to make up for the exp loss from all the deaths raiding (raid experience being nil). At least that was the way things were in Everquest 1. And yes you did occasionally have people un-ding at a raid and lose dkp for it.
Assuming the group content is tremendously easy for a raid guild player, or at least that the path or least resistance didn't provide any tangibly less loot than harder group monsters, it makes the solution not very fun.
Assuming a raid progression at level 50, the better way to handle death at 50 would be unluck. Lets say that for every death you have you get a point of unluck that decays over a three hour period. Each point of unluck that a raid has reduces the chance of meaningful loot by 1 percent if playing in a raid. It would be by 2 percent in a group, and 10 percent while solo.
This would mean that a guild who was wiping over and over trying to get to the end of a raid dungeon would only be getting common loot from the endboss when they finish. The fewer times your raid lost players, the more chance they would have for getting something decent.
If one players unluck affected the rest of the group or guild, they'd end up getting kicked. I like the idea of debuffs, but it does come with that drawback.
If one players unluck affected the rest of the group or guild, they'd end up getting kicked. I like the idea of debuffs, but it does come with that drawback.
It would last 3 hours, but yes if you had say a dps that was constantly dying by not doing his job well, I could see a group kicking him. In the case of a raid, maybe people would get better at doing their jobs. Would a raid group boot someone from the raid for excessive dying during it? Kind of depends on the guild in question, and how much they needed body count to survive. It would make guilds a lot more conscious of people dying and make them be more careful when it came to raids, which is a good thing not a bad thing. I could see dkp loss for dying to trash in some guilds.
What the threat of delevelling at max level does is force raid guild players to play for exp during the day to make up for the exp loss from all the deaths raiding (raid experience being nil). At least that was the way things were in Everquest 1. And yes you did occasionally have people un-ding at a raid and lose dkp for it.
Assuming the group content is tremendously easy for a raid guild player, or at least that the path or least resistance didn't provide any tangibly less loot than harder group monsters, it makes the solution not very fun.
Assuming a raid progression at level 50, the better way to handle death at 50 would be unluck. Lets say that for every death you have you get a point of unluck that decays over a three hour period. Each point of unluck that a raid has reduces the chance of meaningful loot by 1 percent if playing in a raid. It would be by 2 percent in a group, and 10 percent while solo.
This would mean that a guild who was wiping over and over trying to get to the end of a raid dungeon would only be getting common loot from the endboss when they finish. The fewer times your raid lost players, the more chance they would have for getting something decent.
This is basically a soft lockout. One wipe by a 24-man raid means the raid would only have 1/4 the chance of getting loot. After another 3 total wipes, your guild might as well just pack it in for the day since there is only a 4% chance left for loot.
Not sure how this is a better way to handle death?
IMO if your guild manages to kill the boss, no matter how many tries it took, they should receive the same loot as everyone else. The penalty for multiple tries is the abundance of extra time it took to do corpse recoveries, rebuff, and the exp debt (or loss) that occurred along the way.
I can tell you in some of the raids I have been with, they would kick you if you had unluck. If for some reason they couldn't see your personal unluck, they would probably have every member of the raid stream their stats and debuffs before being invited. That is how serious a lot of people are about their gaming.
Comments
Without constant in-game moderation, the toxic culture almost always wins.
Usually the only people willing to continue to play in a toxic culture are the people responsible for it. At least until there is nobody left to play with and they move on to poison the next game.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
2) if you let yourself get relentlessly corpse camped in VG you were not playing it right
3) death isn't supposed to be enjoyable
2) probably not but my system at the time struggled running the game well which contributed to the problem.
3) true, but death isn't supposed to be unavoidable and relentless and having to go back and recover my gear made it annoying and pointless.
At least in EVE after getting my ship (and Pod sometimes) blown up I could just reship where my gear was and go about my business.
They never put any real effort into the faction servers, it could have been better.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
It's been almost 10 years since many of us have played Vanguard, so it bears refreshing.
Here's the death penalty system from Vanguard:
(Source: http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Combat)
Hardly a very punishing death penalty system by any means.
Assume that max level players will still have an xp bar of some type.
I think (at max level) that each death should impose a debuff that only the use use of earned xp from that bar can remove. The more deaths, the more debuffs, and the more xp earned it would take to remove them all.
But conversely, I think at max level buffs should be acquired for the amount of xp earned without any deaths.
That way, max level players would have a carrot and a stick to avoid dying.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Playing a little devils advocate, however, would you consider deleveling from 50 to 49 to be basically the same as a debuff?
Or the progeny system basically the same as a buff for earning exp beyond max level, but on a macro scale?
Maybe the added complexity doesn't add value?
Not to knock your idea or the other related ideas by any means -- it's a better solution to the "Xp-debt at max level" problem than anything I've come up with. I'm just trying to poke holes in the idea to see if it can still float.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I did come from EQ1 though before VG, so that has a heavy influence on my death penalty preferences.
If you just want to raid or craft (or goof around) you wouldn't need the XP ON buff. Use your idea of max-level death causing a debuff (fixed 3 hour duration) that can only be removed with an XP purchase.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
But it definitely should matter. I would hate to see Pantheon morph into WoW at max level, where death is merely a run back.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
As for end-game and so on... I've always considered End-Game to be a kind of abstract thing that I'll reach "eventually". I don't worry about it or consider reaching it "a goal", any more than I consider finishing the last page of a book "a goal", or reaching the end credit scroll in a movie a "goal". What matters (to me) is what happens, and how much I'm enjoying myself along the way.
For me, in all the MMOs I've played, those with death penalties - including level loss - always had that extra amount of 'oomph' to them. Actions and decisions carried that much more weight, because the repercussions for failure had that much more bite. And, for me, it made succeeding at a dangerous task all the more satisfying.
My view on level and xp loss was always in the context that I treated MMOs as a long-term hobby, not something I was trying to finihh and move on from. So, if I died and lost xp? No big deal. I'll get it back. If I died and lost a level? Again, no big deal.. I'll get it back.
Also either do a better job than EQ did about addressing game bugs that prevent you from getting your corpse or have the corpse after a certain amount of time be at graveyard with a significant experience loss like a half or so of a level if you want it back.
The only time in EQ that I though I was going to lose a corpse was due to a game bug. It was a dungeon in velious that I had not been in for a month or so but apparently the dragon at the bottom of the thing remembered me because as soon as I zoned in he screamed my name and summoned me to him and of course killed me. As a result most of the rest of the mobs rushed the zone and killed the rest of my group.
They then got bugged at the zone and you would actually die before you finished loading into the zone. The GM of course would not help.
DMKano old guild (Bots) actually helped me get the corpse although that was certainly not their intention. It was sort of funny but the guild leader at the time came by with a couple of groups to go in. I tried to warn him but he was rude and I not repeat was he said. But anyway they went in and died of course. As they were what we called a zerg guild and apparently lots of them were online, they sent in 6 or so groups in the dungeon at once. I not sure if they cleared it or crashed the zone but anyway the mobs were gone and I got my corpse.
You don't stop gaining XP as soon as you level. You keep going until you reach the XP cap, i.e. when the level cap eventually goes up, you only need 1 point of XP to level to 51.
If you are loosing access to gear you either (a) were a twink carrying a full set of gear you were unable to use prior to leveling or (b) died a great many times.
Without twinking, a player is going to continue using the same gear he was using at level 49 for long enough to obtain new gear. The process of doing should provide significant XP, ensuring the player does not delevel. This is also true for any other level in the game.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Assuming the group content is tremendously easy for a raid guild player, or at least that the path or least resistance didn't provide any tangibly less loot than harder group monsters, it makes the solution not very fun.
Assuming a raid progression at level 50, the better way to handle death at 50 would be unluck. Lets say that for every death you have you get a point of unluck that decays over a three hour period. Each point of unluck that a raid has reduces the chance of meaningful loot by 1 percent if playing in a raid. It would be by 2 percent in a group, and 10 percent while solo.
This would mean that a guild who was wiping over and over trying to get to the end of a raid dungeon would only be getting common loot from the endboss when they finish. The fewer times your raid lost players, the more chance they would have for getting something decent.
Not sure how this is a better way to handle death?
IMO if your guild manages to kill the boss, no matter how many tries it took, they should receive the same loot as everyone else. The penalty for multiple tries is the abundance of extra time it took to do corpse recoveries, rebuff, and the exp debt (or loss) that occurred along the way.