Chris new changes about decay.. death.. 10000 xp for newbies...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Gatsu., Jun 17, 2017.

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  1. Satan Himself

    Satan Himself Avatar

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    As a casual player I had insufficient time to grind back my lost XP. I like to take risks as a player, so I died often. Casual players who adventure at all suffer even more from decay than active players IMO.

    Truth is decay has sucked since day one and it now sucks even more now because it has been made weird and complicated by the devs, on top of the general suckiness of decay. Begone!
     
  2. !(Blood0men)!

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    Ok, Just gonna give my 2 Cents; But
    When this game was out they wanted some sort of Death penalty, Chris already apologized that he didn't get it in the way he wanted once Persistence came out and now those whom got Millions of built up Pooled Exp are now feeling the Decay.
    Those whom did not go out and Farm for hours afterward, like myself don't have that problem.

    I feel that Some penalty is needed, To many MMOs out there do NOT have it and should be added, If you don't want a Death penalty, then go play ESO or WoW
    You wont lose anything on those games, Except repairs in ESO

    Many games today are to Soft and cater to those whom whine, People "Should" wait and see what the Changes are once finished and see if they Work; If they don't then ask for them to be reversed back to what there were before the changes

    Right now, people should Calm down before grabbing the Pitchforks and Torches
    [​IMG]
     
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  3. Arkah EMPstrike

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    It was jsut hearsay, i dont have a definitive source
     
  4. Arkah EMPstrike

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    The two peopel i play with that are near my level that dont do anything because of decay are hurt mroe by decay BECAUSE they dont do anything. In order for it to hurt bad at all, you have to be a really high level, die once a day, and do virtually no PvE. Even if you do lose skills, it isnt a whole skill, just a small part that you can quickly regain.

    They are lookign at adding a daily XP bonus for true casuals that this would affect, which are the die once per day and do nothing crowd, or the level 90-100 people who did soem hardcore grinding (or early persistance exploiting) claiming they are casual. At my level, you would pretty literally have to log on, die, and log off and not log back in for a day in order to "not have time" to earn your death buffer back
     
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  5. Tahru

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    I went to Appalachian State this past week for my daughter's orientation. During the parent's lecture on expected student conduct, the following was put on the screen. It is the only photo I took the whole 2 days. When I took it, I thought about this forum.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2017
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  6. mikedeathdealer

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    In all reality decay was just put in to tone players like me down to the current mass of players.. It has failed and has backfired!! It's just another negative penalty put in to discourage people from wanting to continue playing.. With this recent change to decay adding 2x decay they put in unlearning skills grant 100% exp i have dropped a lot of skills i don't normally use anymore.. Since then i prob get a 425k or so, give or take some exp from death.. Yes i am currently the highest level in game and i just don't feel like playing much anymore like i used to.. Everything has been watered down release by release.. I've seen many people stop playing because of this.. We already have a steep progression when leveling skills past 100.. NO WAY can we reach level 200 ( takes about 107+ years at 1 mil an hour exp..) So if you want to pass your char down the your grandchildren so they can slave away to reach that goal so be it.. But in reality we already have a soft cap and even more so with them nerfing anything rewarding for your time and effort. It's time to take away things that are making people stop playing and the devs need to start looking into things why people want to continue to play and "pay" for things on the addon store.

    Bring Back Control Points - We want group play and it was the best thing to do as a group. <-- Most activity i have seen in the game as of yet! (Dance Parties don't count)

    Bring Back Decent Loot Spots - Halberds have been nerfed, Everything and anything that used to yield decent gold has been nerfed to the ground. People want to feel like the time they spend in the game doing things make them keep coming back. Sure you didn't get the "most exp" for doing it but that was the trade off.. More gold Less Exp!

    Resources - When you unclone a scene and make it 10x worse for gathering resources it makes people sick to their stomach and want to just quit. It's not rewarding, it's down right boring and not rewarding enough.

    Stop Obsessing Over The Data - Seems that the devs are obsessed over looking over the data of the most populated scenes. Then nerf them to other related same scenes skull levels. They need to boost those scenes to that current scene rather then nerf that one scene.. Example deep ravens wood.. I know they take short cuts and don't want to spend time revamping all the other 5 skull scenes making the mob density like deeps, but they should! Make it worth the time and effort that one scene provides instead of making that one stale and bland... Please stop being obsessed over the metrics!! You are killing the game that we want to log in and continue playing!!

    All in all they need to stop moving a step forward and then jumping two steps back.. Just like the current buffs they put in for our stat buffs, increasing the time they last.. Then to put in negative penalties for having such buffs.. I can go on and on about the negatives like Mob resistances that warrant Mage classes worthless against most boss and higher tier stuff. They wanted melee classes to have a leg ahead of us caster type that were the most popular.. But now it has just backfired like most of the changes they have done.. Stop with the crazy nerfs and make us want to play and enjoy the game! Who cares if someone is a higher level and has more exp!!! It doesn't matter with the current exp diminishing returns!!! Only people that realize this is the ones who GM a tree and want to continue progressing that tree that they love.. It takes so much more effort and time to get a minor % in that skill tree. It's time to let loose and take away the stuff that is limiting the player base to have fun!!! No More Fun = No one wants to play!! Dingle <Order of High Magi>
     
  7. fonsvitae

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    I've posted my thoughts previously on a few other decay threads, even one I began. It is awkward to address the matter again at all, but the fact this issue continues to bubble up is proof of how contentious it is.

    First, one should know that three (3) caps currently existing in game...

    a) a vertical cap wherein one receives tiny, incremental and non linear gains per skill level advancement; these gains are so small per advance (up to skill level 200) and so far in between each that it would take decades of full time dedication to advance just one skill to its max...

    b) a horizontal cap which is the combat bar/ deck; by its nature, the combat bar is a bottleneck which only allows 10 skills to be used per given situation (or deck), thereby effectively limiting an avatar no matter how many skills he/ she may otherwise have

    c) lastly, we have death decay... this cap comes sooner than the rest to keep an avatar within a certain amount of skill and no more; anymore, and it would be too uncomfortable/ not cost effective to continue...

    The first two (2) caps create the following scenario: an avatar can continually progress exceedingly slowly but at the same time not have the option to include all skills in an effective deck. This option allows one to grow and learn anything and everything but be limited by situation (deck).

    Adding the third (3) cap to this (death decay) creates an effective hard cap in disguise. It brings a more immediate limit to the potential skill(s) an avatar can possess.

    Obviously, @Chris is in favor of this hard cap in the form of death decay, and so is a portion of our player base. I can appreciate their perspective but I respectfully disagree; here's why:

    a) I do not feel we need such a limitation when the first two caps mentioned above are effective enough

    b) I do not like having to earn back experience that I've already earned; I find the concept downright insulting

    c) I like the idea of having a potentially open ended character where I can continue to progress (even ever so slightly) into different fields; death decay completely puts a stop to this

    One of the saddest sides to death decay is that, as a hard cap, there will come a nearby point when it is no longer cost effective to grow a character. What then? What does xp game content mean when one cannot benefit from it any longer? This spells no future; people know this instinctively and draw away. This is a matter that deserves its own thread...

    Here is another sad situation (and I've been there): not having experience in pool upon death and losing skill levels... now, one not only has to regain the lost xp but also retrain the lost skills one small gain at a time. Go ahead and give that a try before commenting on how well designed xp decay is.

    I am a SotA well-wisher at the end of the day and I hope the Devs much success in ultimately balancing things out to a level where people find it worthwhile to compete in this game; if I am wrong about decay, great; I want more that this game succeed... but I do not see a future wherein one can no longer grow.
     
  8. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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  9. Andartianna

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    Let's just rename decay the death tax since it has nothing really to do with decaying. My skills are not decaying by just being there. They are however getting a death tax if I manage to die. Arguing for a death tax is fine. It mean's you want to put a tax on exploring harder content and the failing at it so take back the currency of experience through a tax. Death tax is a tax on failure. I personally don't support a death tax which equates to taking money from players. How does it take money you ask? It takes money in the form of more time needed to earn back the same experience the players had before. So if you support the death tax you support taking money from other players. Now if you want to tax players and give that experience to lower level players throughout the server who are online at the time that I could get behind cause that would actually raise up the lower level players and more positively normalized the so called experience gap. Otherwise you are just taking money from people and not using it to positively effect the game society.
     
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  10. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Glad y0u're back, @Budner ;)
     
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  11. Tetsu Nevara

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    Yes it should have a penalty, but losing XP is not the best way to handle it. A weakness or/and damaged gear, lose gold, remove some ankhs and only set them on scene entrance. There are so many better ways to penalice players and not to start a civil war in the community
     
  12. Ravicus Domdred

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    I guess the proof will be in the pudding. If people play this game liking the decay or if they just hate it and do not play. Lots of back and forth on this in this thread but the truth is: will people find it fun or will they just simply move on to a different game they think is fun? IMO people have already moved on and new people will treat this game like going to the dentist.
     
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  13. kaeshiva

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    All the players who are saying they have no problem with decay ...and then later I see them post that they lost 50k xp or lost 60k xp. If I lost 60k xp I wouldn't have a problem with decay either, but you need to think long term. In a year of slowly grinding your way up in levels eventually what you lose from a death is going to set you back a week, especially if you level up more slowly. If it takes you another year to get to level 100 then well, a death is going to set you back several times your daily xp intake.

    Its still a pointless system that does nothing to add to the game and only discourages players from grouping, exploring, or challenging themselves and instead forces player into repetition of trivial content.

    It makes no sense to discourage people from playing the game. Why would you develop a game and punish people for playing it? Punish those who play it more with higher penalties? What?? What kind of sense does this make? If someone puts in more time, they should be better off not worse off.

    It makes no sense to discourage people from trying new content /exploring. Learning and wiping to content, and finally achieving victory, is one of the cornerstones of any game. Adding a penalty that's going to require a player to go spend several hours (or a week) grinding trivial content JUST to afford to try something again, is absolutely idiotic.

    It makes no sense to impose a "trivial content grind" tax on absolutely everything in the game. We already have to do this to afford all the cash sinks. And even though gold generation is what, 20% of what it was at the start of persistence, there has been no reduction in rent prices, npc commodity prices, or anything. So the problem of nobody having any money is just getting worse patch after patch.

    Should death have a penalty? Absolutely. I just don't understand why this obsession with linking death to decay , and I'm still not convinced that decay adds anything meaningful to the game. The XP curve is your softcap, the exponential cost increase for microscopic gain is in place to curb player power. Once you reach a certain skill level you're looking at months or YEARS even for the hardcore player to level it up for another 0.1% bonus. If a player wants to invest those years, LET THEM HAVE THEIR 0.1 BONUS. I don't see why this is so difficult. Instead, you remove any sort of benefit to investing time in the game. If a player can no longer make meaningful progress on their character, then its just a matter of logging in and grinding cash to pay for all the cash sinks. While someone may do this for a while because of the community its not sustainable and players will, as we have seen, move on to games which are less of a job.

    In an MMO dying is part of the process, its how you learn, slapping a huge penalty on death is not going to make players "get good" its going to make players play something else that's less a waste of their time.

    There are two separate issues at play here:
    1. Make death have meaning
    2. Find some way to limit player progression

    They don't need to have anything to do with each other.

    1. Make death have meaning
    There are plenty of ways to make death meaningful without messing with a player's achievement or adding more grind. Before decay, you died, you spent a few mins finding the ankh, you rezzed, rebuffed, and went back to what you were doing. It was inconvenient without being a staggering setback. This got worse and took longer and longer to rez each time and started adding a stat penalty. Temporary debuffs (essentially time-outs if severe enough) are fine. What, not hardcore enough for you? You can start adding cash sinks to death, but bear in mind, that if you make it too bad people will still be funneled into grinding trivial content to either avoid dying or to be able to pay for it when it happens. At any rate, any penalty for death should not be PERMANENT LOSS. If you wanna inconvenience the player and slap their wrists for dying, fine - more than that isn't necessary.

    2. Find some way to limit player progression
    Already in game. Skills that would take over 2 years of 24/7 grind to reach the hardcap in a single skill (one of the 1.2m gm ones even). Exponential cost increase for microscopic benefit. Currently the halfway point to GM is level 93 in terms of xp investment. 93 levels of benefit costs the same as 7 levels of benefit and the curve ramps up even more beyond 100. This is enough of a limiter, most players will take years to get to the point where they have to decide if they want to spend 4 million xp to get 1% better at something. And if they want to invest that xp, they should be able to have that minor bonus. Playing the game and investing the time should be rewarded otherwise we may as well all quit when we get all relevant skills to level 80 as there's no further point in playing.
     
  14. SteelCore

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    +1
     
  15. Randbo

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    i have been reading all of this and i can see a way out:
    PENALIZE THE POOL, NOT THE SKILLS.
    you lose xp in your pool only. thats a penalty without losing your hard earned skills.
    if you have zero xp pool, you are deathproof. then again, why are you there, unless to gain xp for skills and have some fun too.
    as for the penalty itself. my friend in game loses HALF A MIL xp when dying the first time.

    as for the new system of softening the penalty, what it means is first death you lose 1/2 the total 24 hour penalty, second death its 1/4 of it, then 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and so on.

    again i say, JUST PENALIZE THE XP POOL. leave the skills alone. this may be something both sides can agree on.
     
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  16. Elfenwahn

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    + 1 to General Idea of Decay (else we need a hard cap and that will get us even more whining)

    +/-0 to 10.000 XP per Day (that is very good compared to grinding XP but in no relation to XP gained by standard playing the game (e.g. Quests and simple adventuring for beginners).
     
  17. kaeshiva

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    It would also encourage people to actually train/spend xp on skills instead of leaving a million+ xp "float" as death insurance or to take advantage of higher transfer tate.

    I'd be OK with this solution. XP gained -> use it, or its at risk.
    You'd have to decide when its time to spend it and would add a bit more thought behind things. At the moment I have millions just sitting there - don't spend it because it will just increase my decay and if I do die, which is usually due to the skill lock bug or lag nowadays, at least I don't have to worry about retraining crap.
     
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  18. Randbo

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    great thought kaeshiva! the concept of pool management and risk vs. using a big pool for faster gains is a good idea.
     
  19. Arkah EMPstrike

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    This has been brought up to chris directly and he's been pretty steadfast on haveing decay be the virtual softcap. We even suggested having decay build up an XP "debt" to make you have to fill that before you could start gaining in your pool again, and he didnt go for it. He seems very decided that skills will be hit

    The team did say way way early on before decay was even concieved that the more skills you trained up, the harder it would be to maintain them. The ammount of XP you lose makes progression more difficult the further you progress beyond endgame levels (lvl 80ish), but before getting to endgame, decay is a minor annoyance at best.

    Anyone who paid attention before persistance at all knew decay was comming, knew it would get exponentially more difficult to maintain skills after a point, and they raced beyond 90-100-110 anyways. It was easy for these people who took advantage early on, and they got spoiled. Its not intended to be easy to maintain a 50x+gm character, and never was.

    While Chris is obviously listening to feedback and working to resolve some issues with decay with proof evident all this first quarter of the year, I think it is important to refrain from totally false statments and discuss things within the scope of possibility.
     
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  20. Stundorn

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    we have 2 major competetive content - economy and pvp!

    What you are asking for is excluding everyone come late or hasn't got the time to spent to catch up to be competetive - with endless progression you cannot catch up.

    Only people are crying are people with dozens of GM - i loose around 3000 xp at my first death and another 3000 the second. if i then cannot manage the mobs, i go somewhere else, kill 3 Polar Bears and have my 6000 xp back.

    I am level 70, i can play in the most T5 scenes, so i am Highlevel someone mentioned to me.
    Yes i am ridiculous weak compared to the Control Point people and Dragon Soloer's , i cannot even kill a troll - but guess what - i think that is working as suggested and intended.

    We actually seem to play a game what was formed by asks of 24/7 hardcore grinders - thats by the way the cause i believe nobody want to play this game - because of this elitist show - first housing/ money wise and second because of this huge imbalance betwenn normal players and addicts.
    But anyway - i dont want to discuss - i am sure the masses will make Portalarium change everything to their will - and destroy the game completely in the end.

    Meanwhile i want a hard cap, because people i know went over to LoA or something more UO like - with hard caps, less important equip, less grind and ready to rumble in some days and not Month or Years etc...
     
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