The eternal death penalty thread..

Its going to happen anyway, so I thought I'd post some stats that seemed interesting to me from my initial adventuring in R58, where incidentally I have died a lot, certainly died a lot more than R57 and initially I had the MDK hit.

I am fairly 'low level', at least as far as the folks that tend to discuss this topic are concerned.
I do understand for high level payers stuff ans ratios will be different.

Anyway, this is what happened -

- I started R58 with circa 750k pooled experience in Adventuring 2.5 hours ago..
- I am now 100k lower in exp 2.5 hours later at almost exactly 650k.
- I have died six times (at least). My initial death hit cost me close to 40k exp.

- The net impact is -

+2 AL levels in a level 45 skill
+4 AL levels in a level 62 skill.
+1/2 an AL level in a level 91 skill.
+1/5 an AL level in a level 83 skill.
+2 AL levels in a level 6o skill.
+1 AL levels in a level 82 skill.
+1 AL levels in a level 85 skill.

Is this bad? It doesn't seem punitive to me.

meant to say, currently AL 90.
also this isn't a defence of death penalty, just some data and facts.

 

If you lost a total of 40k for your first death, you are nowhere near the level where decay starts to be a problem =-/

 

Hehe yup many players loosing 500k plus now thanks upper tears

 

This.. (the follow up comments) is kinda my point. My understanding (please correct me if wrong, I'm trying to learn all the time), is that the AP pool only uses the first 1 million points to apply the percentages of exp gain to skills on use.
This of course makes perfect sense, otherwise folks with a 3o million Ap pool would level 30 times quicker than someone with 1 million..

However, the death penalty is (I believe) a percentage of your pool, so if you have 30 million you will lose a hell of a lot more than someone like me that tries to keep the pool at the 'optimum' 1 million...optimum in that I max out my exp gain, assuming I manage my skill learning flags correctly, but lose the minimum amount of pooled exp on death. Yea I know at a pooled exp of 750k I'm a little low right now, I need to get it up by about another 250 to 500k.

I don't understand why people amass so much in their pool it just gets smashed on death and doesn't increase level gain as far as I can see. Though there must be a reason? I'm a casual player so i don't understand the game mechanics anywhere near as close to what some folks do.

 

The death penalty is based on the amount of exp in your skills (maybe also in pool? but that's tiny in comparison). A high level who regularly runs UT will have an insanne amount of exp put into their skills, which is why the penalty racks up. But to put it into perspective, consider how much grinding it takes to reach that. Even Another 10M exp into their skills will not even be noticable for the power level, which is plenty of deaths even for a high level.

 

Ahh, ok, my bad, its based on accrued exp in skills, I thought it was based on pool. Maybe that's logical on reflection, otherwise the penalty would be meaningless the higher you got and if your pool was dry.

So... do you need a huge exp pool at higher adventure levels to attempt to soak up the penalty so it doesn't hit the actual skill level? I'm guessing here that a death for a level 100+ player results in such a high % of exp hit to potentially deduct from skills so that to offset this from the pool instead of the skill (which is set to maintain or learn) the player needs a huge exp pool buffer?

Am I getting this twisted all up? If I'm close to being correct then I'm starting to see how the higher level players view the death penalty as harsh! To be honest if the death mechanic is such that to just maintain skills beyond level 100 I have to sit in UT (a place I don't really enjoy) building a 3o million exp pool buffer just to prevent skill regression it doesn't sound appealing.

 

Yes that's probably a big part of it. But you need to be way higher than lvl 100 before it starts to become harsh. You won't reach that kind of level unless you grind for hundreds of hours at the highest exp spots. And at that point, yes you will probably want to build up a pool to keep the investment safe.

 

I'm going to start locking my skills and impose a personal "hard" cap on myself when I reach AL110! I think I should be pretty OP by then right?!

 

We shall just lock all our skills when we are around AL110 and then all our exp will be accrued into our pool and we shall have a billion exp over time and will never worry about maintaining our skills upon death! hahaaha

 

Just to kinda answer your questions Steevo -

Skill training beyond 100 needs a lot of XP
Raising say, Fortify Defenses from lvl 100 (+15 avoidance, costs 1.2 million) to lvl 120 (+17 avoidance, costs an additional 7 million)
Essentially you get a 13% power increase for a 583% cost increase. Going beyond 120 the scaling is even worse.
In order to fuel the skill so it actually levels at something other of snailpace, I usually recommend that people have all the XP needed for their goal plus a "4 million float".
The amount of XP transferred from pool to kill per "triggering action" is percentage based
When you start pushing skills to 140 its not uncommon to see it sucking down 100k per hit or more. Since you need 50+ million invested at that point, even sucking down 100k per hit can feel slow!
Not all skills are equal. Passive skills tend to be easier to raise (albeit cost significantly more). Some skills just seem to have a deliberately slow 'transfer rate'.

With regards to decay, decay is based as mentioned above on the total amount of XP you have invested in all skills, with some caveats. Skills over lvl 100 give double decay. Skills in specialized trees only give 25% of decay. Decay's not even really a good name for it, its really just "exp loss." If you don't have enough in your pool to cover the loss, it starts taking from your skills.

I actually suggested well over a year ago that leaving skills out of it and just making it affect your pool would have been a much more sensible penalty - you'd be pooling up XP to get a quicker training/tranfser rate - but the more you pooled the more was at 'risk' if you died. This would allow players to do things like burn pool down before going to try something stupid and likely resulting in death, for example, but would also enforce active use/skill training when grinding or the pool was at risk. Didn't get any traction on it because this didn't serve the "limit player growth" mechanic that was trying to be pegged onto the back of the death penalty. I think we can all agree that ship's sailed now, so I'm curious to see what the team will implement.

 

Thanks for taking the time to do that @kaeshiva that is really useful, makes perfect sense and will assist my character planning in new ways.
One clarification if I may - you say "The amount of XP transferred from pool to kill per "triggering action" is percentage based" is this a percentage of the entire pool or the first one million as I'm sure has been suggested?

 

I don't know the math on it precisely, but it "seems" to me that more pool = faster gains and I've not seen any indication that this has to do with a "1m threshold" as such. I test this more with crafting as there's a material cost implicit in levelling say, enchanting. With 50 million pool it didn't take long at all to push things from 120-130 but it was taking a LOT of XP every time. (ie hundred thousand or more). I can only assume this has to do with having a larger pool as when my pool dropped the amount 'pulled' decreased significantly. This could be completely anecdotal of course. I personally never let my pool drop below 10m or so because when I decide to train something I usually want to just be done with it and turn it off again, I have a little bit of OCD when it comes to having things at even levels, though.

 

According to Chris, it's a percentage of your pool, but there is a maximum per use, so you can't save up a few hundred million xp and then GM each skill with one or two uses of the skill. He is unclear about what the maximum is and what the percentages are, but I have definitely noticed a difference between leveling skills with 2-3 million in my xp pool versus having 12-15 million, especially when going from level 90 to level 100.

 

The experience that you have in your pool it not used in the decay calculation. Only the experience that you have in skills counts. When you die, the experience is taken first from your pool. If you don't have enough in your pool to cover the decay cost then the balance is taken from your skills. The amount taken from each skill is equal to it's contribution to decay. The amount of decay builds up over time since your last death and reaches a maximum after 24 hours. When you die, half of your accumulated decay is applied. If you die again, you take half of what is remaining plus any that accumulated since the last death.

 

Let's make this problem explained with the most simple example possible. Now focus numbnuts...

You can at maximum get 10 candies per hour.

At some point, you might lose on each death 11 candies per death or more.

Now how many candies you will have if you lose more candies than gain candies per hour?

Voila

 

@kaeshiva , skills over 100 give x2 “xp loss” ... does that count if my skill is halfway between 100-101 or do I get double skill loss if my skill is halfway trained to level 101? ... is it better to leave your skills at 99 to avoid the double XP loss? And maybe if the double XP starts at 101 it could be possible to train a skill past 100 to almost 101 to help avoid this skill decaying if you want it to stay at GM level?

 

I believe this doesn't affect you until you flip over to 101, but have no evidence of this as such - feels this this is what I heard when it was implemented -someone can correct me if not.
The spreadsheet I saw that had decay calcs didn't add x2 to the formulas until 101 - but this was made by a player, so they coulda been wrong!