Death and what is actually costs ??? Needs to implement meaniful consequences ASAP.

ATM all it does is cause a little exp poll ding?

There was talk about it forcing oyu to go back to your corpse to get stuff you harvested in the area you are in and also an item or two left on body like happen in PvP and Ransoms.

If you are going to even do anything of the type it needs to happen ASAP, the longer players just run around and die to carry stuff out of zones and or the penalty is as negligible as it is now . . .

If/when your actually make it painful you are going to have such an uproar you will prob cave in a retreat.

Fix Death ASAP so it mean something. This is one of the few things you should have initiate much more sever at the start so you could tone it down then try and catch up later on.

 

lol @ ASAP

While I do like the idea of needing to get to your corpse to get some stuff back, ASAP is kind of ridiculous. So is the idea that Port would "cave in a retreat" (what does that mean exactly? there would be a cave-in as they retreated?).

Im sure there are more important things to work on .

 

You're welcome to delete your account when you die. Then you have hardcore, perma death.
Not sure why you're care what happens to others.

 

Risk at death does create a sense of urgency and excitement. If there's no consequences to death it kills off most of the thrill of difficult fights or overcoming obstacles.

The current death mechanics are way too forgiving. Hell, people even use death to travel or bypass content as ghosts it's so trivial.

 

Agree, and it also makes everything you do that much more significant. I am not against loosing all of your (non pledge, non add on, non quest, non "newbied") items when you die. At the least, your gold and collected resources should be on your corpse for you to go and try to retrieve.

This also makes banks more than just storage - much like ultima, you need to keep your money in the bank so you dont die and lose it. Also, money needs to be a physical object with weight, but thats another story...

Well, again, a world where there is actual risk, and not just a momentary setback of time, creates a deeper and richer game culture. It also makes us rely on each other more. There have been many times in ultima where I had to ask friends to help me get my corpse from a really dangerous place. It can be frustrating, but in the long run, the game will be richer and more exciting if there is meaningful risk when you die. You will also just get much better at running away.

I still actively play UO (and I love playing it along side with SotA and comparing game mechanics), and I rarely die in it - at least, I rarely die in a way that is not immediately recoverable. But the "excitement" of the consequences of death in that game not only make me an expert at avoiding death (which is quite complex, and a minigame in itself), but makes everything about the game more exciting.

In fact, while I am heavily invested in SotA and doubt Ill ever leave, I still think UO beats the pants off of it, and SotA is way too easy and forgiving. Its not a spiritual successor to ultima, but its in the vein of ultima . Id like it to be much more ultima-like, and significant risk when dying is part of that.

 

The exp loss has definitely changed my desire to stay alive. It could be better in terms of risk, but it could also be worse. I am grateful that there are consequences.

 

I think death should wipe out your entire experience pool. (maybe the slower you get to an ankh the more xp you lose including all of it if you never make it to the ankh). In addition, ankhs should be randomly picked, you should not get to go to whichever one you want.

But because this would risk too much (imo) in PVP, I don't think pvp related death should do this, just pve.

 

I vote no.
If you drop items on death, then your going to have everyone in nothing but founder gear, and ruin the crafter economy that hasn't even gotten off the ground yet.
If you drop a crap ton of xp, then your back to DAOC or Ever Quest days, were one death can set you back days, or even weeks of leveling.
If you force them to remain a ghost for an hour before they can rezz, they will just do log off and do something else.
If you give them massive penalties for long periods, they will just do the same.

If you send them back to their bind point everytime they die, then it'll be like a blood gate, and people will just die instead of wasting a recall scroll after their first death of the day.

Basically, anything I can think of to make the Death Penalty more severe, encourages people to play with less of the game, or play the game less, or die more often.

 

The generalization that death has no sting is wrong. For many folks it doesn't, but for others it certainly does. I lose several hours of adventuring experience when I die, and when you're struggling to raise a single skill from level 51 to 52 through immersive play (no gustball stuff) death is a tangible setback. There are many casual players in the same boat.

 

Ok look all I am saying is they have said death will have more meaning - Go back to body, stuff left on body . . . . I honestly do not care - the point is if they are going to do it they need to do it sooner than later.

Every day they let is stay with as little consequences as it is now (weather you think it is meaningful or not) they are hurting themselves. Since as soon as they implement anything they are going to get a tidal wave of negative (whining) feedback. If you think you are suffering now ? Or if you think it is ok . . . I bet over 90% will just plain flip out if either of the two mentioned mechanics are implemented.

This is one of the major things they should have put first and foremost on their plates since the affect on player is actually major.

All your feedback shows it already, I do not want to unsheathe the ITYS dagger, but I am sure it is coming.

It is akin to taming changes they started the game with poor taming mechanics and now are making adjustments after the fact that some players have been walking around with impunity, and soon will have to learn how to do it all again.

 

What I support is an injury mechanic.

When you'd die, you'd gain injury, which would mean your Max Health would go down until you took care of it some how. The more you died, the more injury you'd accumulate, and the greater penalties you'd have to your Max Health. After some time, it wouldn't be viable to go around fighting anymore. One possible way to reverse injury would be to apply a bandage, which wouldn't heal it instantly, but promote healing, and regen over a long period of time. Other alternatives might be more expensive.

The Dragon Age games have something like this.

 

On the one hand ppl create many threads how everything penalizes you too much, is too much of a grind and takes them too long to reach, on the other they ask for more punishment.

Days have changed. Were not in Everquest classic where ppl make a can of coffee and lovely wait for 12-20hrs for a boss at spawnpoint (add variants of 3days and 12 hours, more cans off coffee). Theres lotsa ppl playing casual (aka an hour or two a day or even less), and they want fun and reach their goals, too.

Even Everquest nowadays changed to a similar model we have now for today, from whole raids running naked trough the zones since items stayed at their corpses in the past and needing hours for it (plane of fear for example) to some xp loss now.

A good thing would ideally be, to implement something you cant abuse death to walk trough difficult parts as a ghost, that you normally wouldnt eventually be able to beat. Gem mines for example, to reach deeper parts etc.

I still remember waiting tedious hours for a boss and calling it fun, but we tend to mix our memories after ten years+ and making stuff seem better as it was. It wasnt fun simply.

 

Agreed, this is something that needs to be where its going to be sooner rather than later so the uproar is less.

There was an idea something like that but they shelved it as the argument was if people lost con then the instance would close and corpse wouldnt exist.
However it would be relatively simple I would have thought to just store the location and zone of death and the persons corpse contents aswell as there backpack contents, just treat it as another player owned container.
This could then be recreated when they next entered the zone, or if they didnt wish to go back it could be put on a price of the oracle page with maybe a per item fee for recovery or maybe just a single fee to get it all back.
It could be 1 or 2 items, or the same as pvp or the whole set, or even for the most hardcore everything .

Also there could be a timer, maybe 48 hours or so to retrieve the items so people have a bit longer than the 2 hour pvp time, its not as if yout keeping someone else waiting here so the timer can be lenient to allow noobs time to recover.

Anything not reclaimed could then go into that zones loot table, maybe even to the mobs that killed them as that detail could be stored when the holding corpse was created, options are endless, it was always fun in Uo trying to track down
some loot that mobs had taken

 

When the linux client had the bug that crashed it on death - thus forcing you to restart the client, chin up the whole death penalty and always restart at scene entrance - I found I avoided dying a lot more than now.

Sure, it sucked that the death was way more significant, but in a way it was very rewarding and exciting; we had to come up with clever ways to cheat death, to avoid trouble we knew was mortal, to better use all our resources and skills, to better ourselves and our playstyle, instead of sheepingly rush in and "who cares if I die - I'll resurrect on the other side of the control point".

Somehow, I miss that bug.

I know, I know, the industry is swamped down by damn casuals, farmvillers and secondlifers who feel fully self entitled to expect that every game caters to them and to them only "or else the title will tank and the sky will fall".

I come from an age when you lost half your XPs on death, or you totally lost your ship on destruction, so whatever comes up would be fairly mild in comparison. I still hope that this game will be a tad different from the ocean of clones we swim into.

Hoping is free.

 

They really should leave all stuff at corpse. If you die more than 5 times without retrieving it, the oldest stuff will get removed from the game (moved to bank if it is pledge gear, maybe all can be moved to bank at scene where yo uare binded to or your starting scene by default without any binding).

It is so easy to get past monsters by dying, with ankhs everywhere it is actually handy shortcut to just jump off high place and resurrect at scene exit. I am afraid people get lazy and exploit death mechanic as it is now. I am not for harsh penalties in terms of xp or gold lost, but dying should slow you down. If you die, get back for your stuff.

Dying should not be easier than living!

 

I agree with you and some of the ideas posted are game breakers for me. I happen to like the game now . This is not UO and unlike UO I do not PVP in SOTA.

 

Should've known I could count on you. I was thinking more or less the same until I got to this.. but I wouldn't stop at health.. I would do random injury penalties.. call them what you like.. broken bones.. head injury.. a -1 to hit here.. slower focus regen there.. You would either have to wait for it to heal.. or find a healer. Self healing magic could only heal so much.. lest everyone feel they've no choice but to master healing magic. There should be NPC healers who could do this for you.. (for a modest sum).

 

Oh I wanted to comment on XP loss.. that it is only effective when you have XP to lose. If you're already rock bottom then who cares? Meaningful death mechanics should be relatively universal and no dependent on factors that tend to vary greatly.

 

I think also focusing too much of the death mechanic on XP loss just encourages people to think about the game in terms of numbers, in terms of min/maxing. Not sure if players should be laser focused on whether a skill number is 51 or 52, and I'm not sure a lot of players are.

 

Old UO death style.... Go get your stuff on your corpse... if you can!
This method qill remove some item from the game helping the economy