Decay – Perception vs. Reality and a Recommendation

This would be a sure fire way to get me to abandon SotA.

 

Why?

 

Really? You need me to explain how that would be so much worse?

 

Yes, please. It looks like you are part of the camp that would like to buy a 2 million gp triple enchanted triple master crafted item from Elrond and have it last forever. Do you really need me to explain why I think that is a bad thing? Items last way too long in this game. I have been playing for 5 months now and my Healer and DPS guy are still on there FIRST set of armor they crafted for themselves, and its still looking good. I am the tank so i am taking most the hits, I run with 2x preservation buffs and repair daily so it seems like my stuff will basically last forever too. I have over 1000 tailor repair kits and 1000 carpentry repair kits cause we just dont have to use them. What is your complaint?

 

It takes me a week to mine enough materials to replace one piece of my armor that if I'm lucky, will be on equal footing as what I currently have equipped. If gear becomes the new death penalty we will all be wearing add-on gear or accepting mediocrity (due to cost) at which point you may as well abandon the crafting system. People will just level their crafting to 80 and not bother making anything better.


I still don't know why we need a death penalty at all. None of the reasons stand up to scrutiny.

 

I guess you did not play Ultima Online? You say accepting mediocrity, I say having something to aspire to. I would like to not be rich enough to wear all the best stuff all the time, it would give me something to work towards, and maybe I would be using White Iron instead of Obsidian Plate armor. I don't see that as a bad thing.

No death penalty ? Lets just remove any challenge, risk and excitement from the game at all! How about giving me free loot when I login too?

 

Bug report: Game has risk involved. Please fix immediately.

 

Aspire to? If gear wears out quicker there would be nothing to aspire to since it just wouldn't be worth making "nice" gear.

Would removing decay increase or decrease the challenge of any encounter? Not in the slightest
Would removing decay increase or decrease the risk of any encounter? Not in the slightest
Would removing decay increase or decrease the excitement of any encounter? Not in the slightest.
Challenge and excitement are gained by trying something new and succeeding at that challenge. At the moment if you fail and die you just join a tears group and gain back the lost xp in 15 minutes. Dying doesn't add challenge or risk or even excitement. It just adds a time sink to go get back the lost xp. Changing this for decay on gear instead of xp would just be switching one time sink (of 15 minutes to gain back 1m xp) for another (weeks of mining, smelting and crafting to replace gear)

See the oracle for that.

 

Where was the risk? I'm adventure level 114 and can gain back the death penalty in 15 minutes. This isn't risk, its a time sink.

 

No. It isn't. And this statement is SO WRONG on so many levels that i want to scream.

But your perception is your problem. Not that of the devs. Not mine. Not that of the interwebz. Fix it yourself please.
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So, non the less, to topic. Overall i like your idea. If the dur loss isn't too brutal it might actually support the market without annoying players the same way XP loss does now.

 

And if things are LESS realistic, how often would you buy gear?

Hint: The answer is never, because why buy gear when you dont ever need to replace your current?

People need to get a grip and realise that we need something in the middle.

 

You are mostly right and I have to concede that I also do not have any answers or suggestions about a perfect system.

But as you become more wealthy it would enable to you to spend more gold and resources crafting and using better gear. Do you think the rich would run around wearing trash gear?

Death penalties do stop people cheesing through content when they do not really belong there. This will come more into play as boss loots are improved. That is basically what I am greatly against.

I want to care about if I die or not, but I suppose its just me.

 

Are you drunk or otherwise impaired right now?

 

No?
I think you are confusing risk with penalty.
Does a lich hit you harder because it knows how much xp you will lose when you die? No, the risk is the same.
The penalty increases as you get higher level yes but logically the risk also diminishes as you get higher level since you have better skills, hit harder etc.

The penalty at the moment basically comes to deciding if you want to spend 15 minutes doing a tears run later or if you want to spend 30 minutes doing 2 tears runs later. As such, its a time sink. I don't know what the solution would be to make the people who want it think that your death has meaning but clearly the current system is pointless. Changing this from losing xp to trashing your gear is worse in every way and doesn't solve the problem. You might as well just stick a 20k gold loss on death and be done with it instead.

 

Gear breaking faster (by death or other means) is not going to help the economy or crafting - not unless the crafting system gets a major overhaul. Gear is already too disposable that you can't sell anything for a fraction of what the materials cost to make it, despite your level of skill. Crafted items with lvl 130-140 skill ? you MAKE A LOSS. That's the reality. I'd only accept 'gear durability loss' as a death penalty if ALL other gear degradation was completely removed. Its already beyond ridiculous how quickly you shred through things that takes weeks/months to acquire materials to make.

I object to any system that just wastes player time. There's no reason for it. It just removes any motivation to do anything that might result in death knowing you're going to turn around and go waste your time regrinding XP or, worse, waste even more time trying to replace gear. This sort of change will effectively ensure that everyone just starts wearing mediocre crap and gets killed- because hey, if there's no XP penalty anymore, why worry about it? Your gear is junk anyway? Or addon gear? Who cares?
I do NOT want to see a shift toward mediocrity - we might as well remove the crafting system entirely if you're going to heavily penalize actually using crafted gear. The dura loss - even with the maint blessing, GM'd preservation skills, and the coto potion is still far too fast - shredding through an exceptional weapon with 100 max dura in a week needing to major it is absurd enough, thanks.

If you want to slap my wrist, and stop me gaining XP for a while as a "bad kitty, you got killed" punishment, I'll do my best to avoid dying but it wont be a 'waste the rest of my afternoon' (or week) setback - meaning I'm a lot more likely to engage in "risky" activity (which I am extremely unlikely to engage in now, unless I accept going in that I'm going to have to "pay" for admission by grinding later).

 

Here's my suggetstion & why I think this would be a good death penalty:

On death, trigger XP attenuation. All gains halved for an hour.
If you die again while this is on, trigger super-attenuation (All gains stopped)

This is enough of a discouragement and wastes a fixed amount of player time, for those who feel we need a time-waster, regardless of level.
Encourages people to "grind within their means" and not just death-cheeseball somewhere they have no business being.

However, what it does NOT do, is it does NOT discourage group play, boss fighting and eventually raid content, because XP is not the objective in these scenarios. Sure, you'd miss out on the paltry XP killing the boss awards, but that's not what you're there for. Its certainly better than having to go pre-grind (or post-grind) to pay an 'entry fee' for doing anything that isn't grinding.

I think its an eloquent solution which fills the "need for a penalty" element without adding the "don't bother doing anything challenging" element, the latter being the biggest problem with the death penalty - how it changes player behavior.

When they first added decay, I'd see players asking for help doing stuff and there was no response but crickets - nobody was willing to go die and lose XP. Better scenes, increased XP rates and such since then have mitigated this a lot, but the situation remains that grouping up to go and try an aether lich with a party of mixed levels inevitably ends up in someone dying and losing XP. Trying to put together parties for this sort of thing gets harder and harder, as the higher level players you need to be successful don't want to pay the grind tax - its just a waste of their time.

The original purpose of decay was supposed to be a system to curb player power and growth. It has failed utterly at this, and will continue to fail utterly at this, and was never a sustainable solution to begin with in a system without caps because as the average level of players increases over months (years) the losses for casual players, who took longer to get to that point, become untenable. Honestly, I just think it needs to go. Player growth is already significantly hampered due to the extreme limited returns curve that the actual hard caps will not be reachable even with years of grind. The system is working exactly as it should, and there's no need for artificial setbacks.

Death penalty is a separate issue, as it always should have been, from the player growth issue. We already have 'find the ankh' and 'ankh penalty' - which to be honest, is enough to discourage me from dying but clearly many think "more punishment" is needed. So make the timeout longer, make the debuff more severe - but hitting players with a massive repair/replacement bill is going to make things worse, not better.

 

Absolutely not true, jesus christ, i cant believe i have to use my second language to explain basic things.

The core defenition of a RISK is
verb
verb: risk; 3rd person present: risks; past tense: risked; past participle: risked; gerund or present participle: risking
1.
expose (someone or something valued) to danger, harm, or loss.

In the case of Sota, you risk LOSING XP.
Taking away the XP Loss completely will take away the only penalty to dying, and will therefor remove the risk completely.

Penalty is the negative outcome of a risk(In videogames), its not two seprate things.

 

You're kidding right? Do we play the same game? I am the tank for my group, I play more than what is healthy, my Obsidian Armor is over 2 months old, and NOT EVEN CLOSE to needing a Major repair...

You say you can't sell anything. You do not think that is because someone can buy one good item and have it last them for over 6 months?

 

I think you may need to go re-read some of my original comments.

In the case of Sota the risk is DYING.
This whole thread was about a replacement for the penalty for dying.

The risk of death will still be there. We are discussing the penalty of that risk and trying to come up with alternatives since clearly losing xp isn't working.

 

Dying is not a risk if it doesnt come with a penalty, it would just be a slight inconvenience of getting to an ankh. Yes, this is about REPLACING the penalty, but You want to REMOVE the penalty of dying, which will remove risk.

( Just to make it super clear, i dont want XP Decay in its current form, i want to REPLACE or Modify it, but not remove it. because we need risk. )