Livestream and decay

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Barugon, Oct 4, 2018.

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  1. Black FjP

    Black FjP Avatar

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    There seems to be a very vocal group of people who don't understand the purpose of decay.
     
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  2. StarLord

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    I also do not really understand the purpose of decay.
    It just forces me to grind XP in "safe" areas like UT and not do dangerous stuff.
    For me it is just a barrier to try "stupid" things at least once - I do not want to die and I prefer to be a coward than dead.
     
  3. Black FjP

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    You can still do those things, there is just a consequence to failure. You can choose to be a coward if you want to. If there is no consequence then nothing seperates the cowards from the brave. Your argument is that you don't want to do dangerous stuff becuase it is dangerous, so lets make it so nothing is dangerous.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2018
  4. Timmy Vortex

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    Well when Vero and me duo-d the Aether dragon there is this sense of accomplishment, although high chance of death as well even for me as healer. That's risk vs. reward, plus abit of a nice feeling it can be done.

    However in most cases there is risk, but no real reward. So the talk of cowardice and bravery doesn't make any sense at all. Why on earth would you risk loosing a million xp and get some extra ore, a gem and some gold? Loot could still use some serious work. That's why people take an easy route often, because why wouldn't you; if there's no real reward.
     
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  5. Scoffer

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    My choices are:
    I can go try to kill this dragon, it will take me 5 minutes, maybe I lose 1m xp, maybe I get 500 gold.
    I can go murder these 20 kobolds, it will take me 5 minutes, I won't lose any xp and I will get 500 gold.

    This has nothing to do with being a coward or being brave. Thats tipping the risk vs reward into the reward side of things.
     
  6. kaeshiva

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    Well, I am not disagreeing with you.

    But the fundamental problem with the XP loss / limiter mechanic has always been linking it to DEATH.

    I'm not against diminishing returns as an asymptote (infinitely approaching zero)
    I'm not even against hard caps
    I'm not averse to there being some sort of death penalty.
    The problem has always been trying to combine two things that shouldn't have been combined.

    The issue is that linking "death" to "progression" essentially means that if you don't die, you're never limited.
    The goal then becomes not to die.
    The best way not to die, is to not do anything dangerous that can get you killed.

    This in turn changes player behavior, as we see every day, and not for the better. Just yesterday someone wanted help trying to get an Aether Orb, and a tumbleweed rolled through guild chat. Doing anything with the slightest risk of death is basically asking players to grind XP as a cost for entry - not XP they get to keep/spend/use- just XP that goes into a drain.

    The more you play the game, the more you stand to lose. This is the other fundamental problem with linking the progression limit to death is that higher level players lose so much that the mere thought of having to stomach another hour of 'boring grind in UT or equivalent' (or sometimes several hours of normal, non-grind gameplay) to recoup what was lost, vs. a lower level player having a not-even-noticeable penalty that they can get back killing 3 mobs - is overly punitive and unnecessary. It actually discourages people to continue to play/invest in their characters, which just seems completely the opposite thing than what you want to do.

    But back to decay - So there's two aspects of it:
    1. A way to limit player growth
    2. A penalty for dying

    These do not need to be and should never have been tied together. The system that tied these together was unsustainable from day 1. With the recent bump to the advancement rates and the elapsing of time since this system was implemented things have unfolded exactly as predicted. Now the system is being scrapped. Good riddance!

    My concern is, when they are talking of replacing the system, which aspect are they going to replace? Are we going to get some sort of new (potentially worse) death penalty which will only exacerbate the above problems that the death penalty causes? I hope not.

    Are we going to get some sort of different "player growth limitation" imposed on us?

    Both?

    This is a very significant change that could fundamentally change the game - for better or for far far worse.
    I hope that the secrecy gets unveiled soon.
     
  7. Feeyo

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    I seriously hope they are not removing it. There SHOULD be risk on fighting. Having no risk at all when you die makes the game experience utterly boring.
     
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  8. kaeshiva

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    And I could argue that having too much risk when you die makes the game experience completely unexperience-able; it makes things not worth the risk. I absolutely agree death needs to be something players are encouraged to avoid, but not "avoid at all costs."
     
  9. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Alot of folks say they dont understand what decay was intended to achieve:

    It had two purposes. To make death undesirable (yes people actually WANT to die in some situations if there is no penalty. Fear creates adrenaline) and to make it more difficult (not just take longer, but actually harder) to progress the more you level up. And yes there is a big difference in something actually being harder instead of just taking longer.

    The difficulty of progression was not achieved, decay would have had to be much much higher to do so. And that was attempted (remember a friend freaking out after losing 12 million to decay long before decay was implimented) but deemed far too punishing, so the idea that it would make progression increasingly more difficult was dropped.

    So my guess is that if he intends to replace it with something to achieve the same result, it will be something that deterrs death. The idea being that getting close to death in a fight gets your adrenaline movin and makes you say “dammit!”
     
  10. Kain Darkmoor

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    I think most people understand what it was trying to accomplish and respect that. However, decay in theory and decay in reality ended up not working out. It's one of those things where the data doesn't matter if player experience is just bad. Decay in reality was not fun and once people got to the point where they were losing hundreds of thousands or a million or more exp on death, it just caused those people to stop playing.

    I am all for some kind of penalty on death, I just hope whatever they come up with makes sense and is also not a funkiller.
     
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  11. kaeshiva

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    I'm fine with that.
    Adrenaline good, avoiding death good, no argument there.
    Happy to say "dammit!" and jump back in.
    Not going to be happy if its "dammit!" and now I have to go spend xx hours doing something else to make up for it.
     
  12. Spungwa

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    I hope the secrecy get revealed for feedback BEFORE it is implemented. I'm personally not against death decay, but getting what they want to do and why and validating from the players how that will affect their behaviour. This way they can see if leads to the player behaviour they want.

    Regards
    Spung
     
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  13. Black FjP

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    Then just be the kobold killing guy?
     
  14. Arkah EMPstrike

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    I think theyve read enough feedback about the psycology of decay to know making it look like a step backwards is not ideal @Spungwa

    Im very curious to see
     
  15. Calan Caitin

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    The only times I have issues with penalizing death is when there are mobs in the game that can effectively 1 shot kill you. I was hit twice yesterday with 1 shot kills. Once for 1060 hps and the 2nd time before I could buff was around 960 hps. Now I know I'm not one of the top tier players like Mac, Sara, Devilcult and the handful of others that can stand toe to toe with any creature in the game, but instant death isn't fun for anyone and less so when you are penalized on top of it. It is like rubbing salt into the wound.
     
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  16. Black FjP

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    If characters exist who can go toe to toe with a monster than can 1 shot you, then those monsters must exist in order to challenge those players.
     
  17. Daxxe Diggler

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    Well, Chris did say he was going to explain the change in great detail soon. I'll wait to see/hear what it will be before commenting on it, but if I were to guess I'd say it will probably be a debuff that reduces experience gain rates after a death instead of just taking it away on death.

    This would be a big enough penalty to fear death without taking away what we already earned. Again, that's just my guess.
     
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  18. kaeshiva

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    Well this is exactly what a lot of players are doing. Its not good for group content, its not good for player retention.
     
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  19. Arkah EMPstrike

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    I agree with you daxx im suspecting the same thing

    @kaeshiva you now me, and the gold increase has me wanting to go into rise and boss groups again. Yay for money! \o/

    I opted out of most group stuff cuz i didnt earn nothin from it (being a slave to round robin is NOT fun, i wanna be able to quit anytime i want).

    So the gold increase is a big help on this side of the fence. Death penalty change should be the big help for the other side
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2018
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  20. Calan Caitin

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    Untrue. To make monsters challenging for that handful of players as a baseline only makes it near impossible for the average player. And regardless of how difficult any single mob in the game is, there will always be those players that will figure out how to kill it single handed. This is a truth across pretty much every game. There needs be a baseline for the mob for the average player and a way to scale the difficulty for party/badass mode players.
     
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