Decay Removed

Wow only had durability loss and a corpse run from the start. No xp or item loss, even in Vanilla. The corpse runs could be significant though as graveyards back then were few and far between. If you were in enemy territory, there wouldn't even be one in the same zone.

 

Yes you are correct. I was also referencing games like UO, EQ, AC, Shadowbane, Lineage.

 

When I used to play D&D, if I died, it was permanent. At that point, I had to roll a new character. This made me think about what I was doing; it made me plan and look for alternate solutions rather than run in, guns-a-blazin'. Decay was a very, very watered down version of that (it actually had no real consequences) but it still made me plan out what I would do and even look for ways to make my avatar better. Now I won't care.

 

What is depressing about this change is that it is yet another example from Port of a non data based reaction to vocal and persuasive forum members who may well be in a small minority, even in the forums. Also, if SOTA forums mimic other games, then the vast majority of SOTA players don't even use the forums, they just play. How do Port know that the majority of players hate the death penalty and will quit unless its gone? Was there even a player run poll? If there was please link it someone.

We have seen many reactions from Port like this recently and it seems you only need to call it a QOL improvement, or threaten to quit or link it to poor player retention to get it to happen. It smacks of panic and desparation, but mostly of inconsistent and eratic design principles.

I desparately hope that the death penalty is replaced with a mechanic that has 'some' kind of penalty, not just gear decay. As someone pointed out earlier far better than I could, with no significant consequence to death, then everyone just blunders around trial and error and many of the carefully ballance risks and rewards fall apart. The consequences to the game are far greater than simply removal of exp loss.

That said, I fear that if exp loss is replaced by something else equally painful, the QOL arguments will be raised again and we know what happens then.

 

No, my first MMO was EQ, played it for over a decade. I remember raids taking hours just to retrieve corpses. No one really thought it was fun back then. Maybe the mechanics of figuring it out, but the hours of sitting and waiting doing nothing, no. Then there was the de-leveling, no one liked that either. I think we all would have taken the corpse drags to the de-leveling. Then there was on guild mate that was playing a hunter. No one wanted a hunter in the group back then. She gave up the game due to having to sit and wait fir all her free time to try and find a group. There is nostalgia and there is work. I am old enough to want to enjoy my free time gaming and nit stressing over losing all the stuff on my corpse that took me six months or more to acquire.

The good things I enjoyed would be the puzzles to figure out raid mechanics. I like the definitive differences in classes; specializations and an expected role. I enjoyed spilling my beer while fishing and having naked gnome runs in kelethin drunk, but no I did not enjoy de-leveling. I didn’t like feeling inferior that I couldn’t level as quickly and join my other guild mates that had more time to game. I enjoyed that stupid ding when I gained a level. Oh and I hated the combat music. Dear god how much better in-game music has come. I used to play with my sound off and my own music in the background I enjoyed the silly talks we all had camping the rare spawns. There were many good moments, but none of those included de-leveling.

 

hey coming from ascension to this.. I cant complain 1 bit I use to hate their skill system in ascension. ( but preferred the uo version )

 

Finally i can group with other players again and hunt the harder mobs without losing days of XP gathering. Now i can even look for the unicorns and wyverns again.

I like the removal of the frustrating death decay. SotA will be much more fun again for me.

 

attenuation

From what Starr was saying, a lot of the changes they are making recently do have data like "this person stopped playing at all after hitting a control point/siege". And they've been talking about removing decay for a while now, the question is what it will be replaced with.

 

Lol well that teaches me for posting at stupid o clock.

 

This reminds me of when I was a DM with my younger cousin playing D&D. He would die and cry and run away and throw a fit until I made this character alive again. I did it and in 5 minutes he was dead again. Rinse and repeat. I don’t think he ran out of tears and tantrums.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/decay-yay-or-nay.109327/page-7#post-939439

There was an official survey last year as well, i dont remember the results but i think decay was not the top complaint, but was one of the top complaints. Could be wrong, still looking for it

Maybe shroud just attracts the kind of people who want an easy game, which is wierd considering the ammount of UO and EvE fans that stop in. You literally lost everything on you every time you died in those games.

O.O I hope they are making u drop everything then have to return to where you died to retrieve it that would actually be way better!

 

I would love to see something that let you choose, like:
Resurrect where you died = You lose xp
Resurrect to the Ankh = No xp loss

 

Predicting there will be people throwing tens of millions mroe XP into skills immediately after decay is removed. Likely in 1 or 2 days.

 

Well unless you grind through attenuation, which I am sure some will, attenuation is still going to be a thing, so there is that limit to contend with. It just means that deaths will mean they keep their XP on death. It will end up making levelling more consistent though I agree. I still wish it was not being removed, but hopefully whatever Chris has in mind will still leave some form of bad taste in a player's mouth.

 

alot of people have tens of millions of XP int heir pool right now to buffer decay

The risk of increased XP loss from levelign skilsl rediculously high will also be gone

 

All of the things you mention above can be achieved by having a death penalty of any sort. The death penalty doesn't need to be a permanent setback of hours in order to be a suitable deterrent.

Having the decay did not keep people from doing "stupid ****" because decay was NOT equal for everyone - plenty of people for whom decay wasn't a big deal due to lower level did stupid **** all the time. The result of decay was more elitism, more people refusing to group with lower level people, or just downright refusing to do content at all because the reward wasn't worth a fraction of the risk. Decay did not stop any of the first three items on your list. I also reject the 'lazy' thing...what has that got to do with anything? People were grinding anyway, and will continue to grind. Nobody 'grinds' stuff that can kill them or is risky, its inefficient. Death penalty was irrelevant there.

I argue that HAVING decay makes designing interesting/challenging content pointless, because nobody will participate in it if the cost for failure is hours of their time doing boring trivial content as a price to entry. Those that do participate certainly wouldn't bring "lesser" folks along because the cost of failure was astronomical for them.

Decay being gone is a GOOD thing. We can finally go explore/do stuff/bring people along without having to worry about "what this adventure is gonna cost me." We can have fun again.

Again, all of your points are addressed by having a DEATH PENALTY. The death penalty did NOT need to be a loss of progression or an extreme time sink. I agree we need a death penalty. But it should be more of a slap on the wrist and less a punch in the face. Especially if you're dying because of broken/bugged mechanics or teammates doing "stupid ****". The whole 'go solo' mentality was exacerbated by not wanting to put my entire Saturday in the hands of someone who is going to potentially negate all my progress for the day by being an idiot.

It will be fun to 'go try hard stuff again' knowing that if we fail, we lose the time we spent trying, our gear takes damage, etc. It was not fun trying hard stuff, and then realizing you need to go spend the next hour doing UT just to make up for it. Or bank up several hours of UT to "pay" for doing something more interesting. That got really, really old, and I'm grateful that the whole "grind tax" for doing anything outside your comfort zone is gone.

Large scale group content / raid content was an absolute impossibility with the decay mechanic, removing it opens up a LOT more options.

 

Yeah that loss will be gone for sure, I am currently losing 200k a death at the moment, so of course I will benefit. Now though it means that I will unintentionally be a little careless as it will "be ok to die."

I know what you mean though, I tend to keep at least a 2 million buffer at the moment because that is a number I like. However even then if we do spend down to zero, we are still at mercy of attenuation. The majority of players just want to attenuate within 15-30 mins in the upper tears, and sit down for the cooldown. So even though from one perspective it will make it easier to level, it will still be bound to some rules.

Besides the people that use their whole buffer will probably just have a one time boon, unless of course they happily grind hours and hours at a time with no spending.

 

yea itll be 1 time, but it also only takes like between 2 to 5 mill XP to get most skills to 110, I doubt there is noone thinking of shotgunning XP into their primary magic tree for another +10 or +20 attunment.

even if its just 1 time, if someone end sup with a death ray that does 400 damage then a balance change is made, you may end up hearing the "my death ray only does 300 damage this is bullmess" posts start up en-masse.

The concern is about a drastic increased power gap, which is unlikely but still possible.
a massive gap in power can be incredibly demoralizing especially in shroud, where all builds are created FAR FAR from equal.

 

Yeah it is totally possible for sure. However the only side benefit is that we will all benefit from the changes. As long as I can fulfil my goal (291/301m exp to get from 106-115) in 3 months, then I am happy.

 

i ninja edited my last post.

Also, attunment and strength are by a massive margin the most powerful stats in the game, and attunment can be raised easily by throwing more XP at it. I learned yesterday that you can get close to 100 attunment in soemthign without ever even training a skill, then another 100 jsut from GMing everything in that tree which is like 20 million XP or so on average. Thats what leads to the "wtf i only did 300 dmg stop nerfing me" mentality while the majority of people excited to see a 200 dmg crit are left ultimately jsut feeling weak for not having "the right build".

But if you just make everyone who's not scoffing at 300 damage strong enough to scoff at 300 damage, you're making every monster int he game easier