Decay – Perception vs. Reality and a Recommendation

People don't understand how attenuation works so they do stupid things when they see the buff. If Chris would explain it in english people wouldn't do stupid things cause of it. For the most part there is no reason to stop playing just cause you are attenuated. Perhaps it makes sense to maximize time to do your crafting once you get attenuated and then go back once you lose the buff but my understanding is that you're always at least as well off to keep killing as you would be taking a short break. If its taking you nearly an hour of steady paced killing to get the buff there is vitually no reason to stop. If whatever you are doing gets you the buff in like 10 mins then I can see stopping.

Perhaps the buff display shoudl be updated to show amount of attenuation instead of an on/off style buff.

 

If you attenuate in 10 minuites

You could keep killing anyways for a full hour, then not grind for a full hour, then grind an hour again right?

 

I don't craft, I don't have to time to spend learning to craft (I rather buy from crafters). I enjoy adventuring or questing the most. So if while doing that, a wolf, bear or whatever comes and attacks me than my attenuation stays on longer. So rather than risk it, I have to step away from the game for 30 to 40 minutes which means I just log off.

I do like @xadoor idea about the visual buff display that shows the amount or a timer.

 

If the entire point of the death decay is because to stop people from leveling in every single skill, shouldn’t the decay only happen after you have trained a certain number of skills?

Under that number, no decay, just some other penalty.

 

I dont totally get how attenuation works either but you shoudnt' worry about killing a bear here and there. It won't noticeably change when your buff comes off. Its a rate that baed on how much exp you've earned int he last say HOUR. if you've earned like like 1 million in the last hour attnuation will being but at first its not noticalbe. If you've earned 2 million in the last hour I think you are pretty much turned off. The reduction is related to how much over the million you've gone over the last hour. so if you are earning at a rate of 1.1 million an hour you'll be earning at about 90%. You'd have to earn a full 2 million (with increasingly harsher attenuation) to get completely shut off.

Thats my horrible understanding of how it works. Thou I'm not even sure the base number is 1 million. The people I play with insist its 500k but I think they are wrong

How it doesn't work is you attenuate and then right before it wears off you hit a squirrel and reset the timer to 1 hour. That's NOT a thing at all(or I quit).

 

I love having a death penalty, if anything I think the death penalty should be more severe. As for the decay system, I rather enjoy having it as well, and I think its a very good thing. I've spoken about this more in-depth in another thread, but basically I think removing or nerfing either of these two systems is a terrible idea and will only lead to a negative outcome. It will do the opposite of improving the community. You're looking at things through the lens of the micro level and not the macro. Those penalties you are talking about getting rid of are a huge part of what makes the game experience a rewarding one. Look elsewhere to better the game experience is my suggestion!

 

THIS !
This is a more than sufficient death "penalty".
Don't steal our time by setting us back, simply make less for a while after a death.
That's plenty.........

 

loss of forward exp for time at first glance seems horrible as it might lead to people logging off....but honestly when I'm getting killed I'm typically not getting exp anyway. If we go farm the lich or the blue dragons is when I'm getting killed and the irritating thing is there is no exp reward for even killing them successfully anyway.

 

I attenuate all the time. 3 runs of upper tears usually does it for me. Takes me about 20 to 30 min to do it to depending if I loot or not. When I attenuate I DO go and do other things for 30 min or so. Usually it involves hitting up a practice dummy to dump my hard earned exp into a skill. Other times I jump into a mine to collect some gold or silver but the fact that I attenuate literally all the time doesn't stop me from playing...

 

The current death decay is of no concern to me and literally does nothing to stop my forward progression of my characters or anything else for that matter. My toon is adventure lv 110 with 63 skills gm'd and a number of those at 120 or higher so when I die that first time its a big hit but shoot, I'm doing content that nets me 1 mil exp in 20 to 30 min so in the grand scheme of things its no big deal to me. Fyi. I die all the time because I love trying new thing and pushing the limit of what I can do so even with all the dieing, I am still sitting on an exp pool of about 25 mil, I'm saving up for a major training session and am completely content with the current system.

 

Exactly, I die all the time and I never feel like I've been set back very much at all. Its literally not a big deal, which is why I recommend they actually increase the penalty (and not in some bizarre forward fashion that seems like a cop out of consequences to me).

 

@ShurTugal & @Blightlord Knightmare
How much does your 1st death cost you, if you don't mind sharing ?

Edit: NM, Blightlord.... I see where you're coming from now....

If I played solo, I wouldn't care about the death penalty either.

 

How many people in those 3 runs, @ShurTugal ?
Just for curiosity, really........
Oh, and mind telling me who your ingame char's name is ?

 

Just me. I actually have a video up of me doing it at www.YouTube.com/drizzt. I have gotten faster since I made the video since I discovered the banish undead skill.

I wish I can say. Its noticeable obviously but like I said it matters so little to me I have never actually checked the number. Usually I'm like, "darn, died, quick do a couple runs of UT. Ok good now"

 

Yeah, and I read this as "decay isn't doing what it was intended to do". And, since its PISSSING off some number of people lets just axe it or at least nerf it in some way as a QOL change. The world wont end if its axed. I can't think of what I'd do to take advantage of it being removed that would harm the game.

 

@ShurTugal
So you generally run solo I take it ?

 

Sighs. This again.

Deth decay is being replaced.

It needs to be done correct, or it will kill the game for sure. Some people argue that a risk keep people away, but i can guarantee that a game without challanges and no risks keep even more people away.

A healthy game need to have limitations or risk. The only other game i have heard about that has no limitations ( like sota ) , is EVE Online, which happens to have the highest risk of any game i have ever seen ( You die and your stuff is gone )

Having no limitations and no risk is not an option, so they are trying to figure out what to replace it with.

 

Its already that in a way. Under a sertain amount of XP, the loss you get is trivial.

 

Can you lend a number to what you consider "trivial" ?

 

The problem here has always been that the "penalty" for dying is wasting several hours of a players time.

If you make gear - gear that takes MONTHS to gather materials for and craft - degrade even faster than it already does - by taking a "huge" hit upon death - well, you think you'll invigorate the economy, I see its death throes. Nobody will wear good stuff, it will be a celebration of mediocrity moreso than it already is due to the exorbidant gear costs. Gear is already TOO DISPOSABLE and there is already no market for it, your recommendation would make gear completely disposable. Then you ask why you're wearing/risking your good stuff and nobody else in the team is? And then everyone just grinds in founder gear. None of this helps the economy, or crafting.

While I'm 100% in agreement that decay needs to go, replacing it with something worse or making it an economic issue isn't going to fix the perception problem or the reality problem.

If we must have death waste a players time, it should be enough of a sting so that players aren't dying willy-nilly, but not so bad that you want to log out and uninstall.
I've played a lot of games where people would die rather than walk back across the scene because the death-teleport was faster. That is stupid and I agree death should be something players strive to avoid.
We already have ghost mode, finding an ankh, rez sickness, etc. I'd suggest just make that rez sickness more severe and we'd be in business. Maybe while rez sick, you can't earn XP - that'd be a nice little time out and should waste enough of a players time to satisfy the people in favor of such.