Death Decay Poll

And I disagree with your take. But it does not matter anyway. We all know what polls look like when there is a majority and this is not one. Moreover people with a negative perspective are more likely to poll. And this poll started with all negative options. But at the same time, people too frustrated are not around anyway. Hence I have 100% certainty it not a majority and will never be one.

 

The 10k XP is a bribe for new players same as the oracle's 500gp. One month of daily rewards outweighs virtually all of the XP and many times the gold earned from questing in the entire game. New players logon and burn their adv pools out too quickly, this will counter that for long enough to hook a few, and if it doesn't work watch them introduce other means to accelerate the first 20 hours of gameplay. Claiming that this will have any meaningful impact on decay is patently ridiculous.

 

To be honest, a base gold/XP daily bonus is fine and helps people get started in the game. I'd be in favor of it whether decay existed or not. I think an even better way to clear decay for low/mid level players would simply be to bump how decay works for one tier. As I said previously :

IE, instead of 1-40 no decay 40-80 half decay 80-100 normal decay 100+ double decay. Move it to :

1-80 no decay
80-100 half decay
100-120 normal decay
120+ double decay

With this distribution plus the daily XP bonus, anyone affected by decay will be well into high level territory, exactly the target demographic. Basically, lots of tweaks can be added to the system so that the core functions stay intact, but hedge cases are addressed.

 

It is already scaled. I don't think is is a linear scale now, but I really do not know exactly how it is scaled and we should probably assume that the scaling is a dial they will change whenever needed.

On the XP incentive, it should scale as well "if" it is supposed to motivate all players to login everyday.

 

I see daily gold/XP as a way to help new players get started, not a login incentive for all levels. I guess it's a question of design philosophy at that point.

 

The numbers are in and the players have spoken. The majority of those polled want decay removed from the game.
@Chris
@DarkStarr

These results should be given due diligence.

 

can you people against death decay tell me, what sort of a cap - softcap for all i care - should we have to grant
depemdencies for interesting and challenging group play instead of soloing bosses and sieges
and to grant pvp doesn't end up in skill all and everything to the max to be competetive
and create dependencies in crafting to get a running economy?

Thank you -

 

Your response is quite interesting as you quote that you do not like to lose GMs and as far as I understand this is the case if a skill drops from lvl 100 to 99. This is (as far as I can review the mechanic) quite difficult to achieve...at least if you do not try to bring and maintain all skills at or above lvl 100.

First you have to die multiple times and not just at one day. You would need weeks if not months to empty you pool.

Next you would have to get no experience…no quests, no monsters…nothing during this whole period aside of walking in towns, decorating lots, talking with people and continuously dying.

And finally after your pool is emptied and you gained since a long time no experience your skills start to degrade. If you didn’t stopped skill advancement right after reaching GM you will have there at least some hundred thousand if not millions of experience points in each GM skill that have to disappear before your lose your GM. But as you are not losing the e.g. 200000 experience decay in one skill but rather broken up at all your skills above lvl 40 you may need even more weeks of dying without experience gaining to really lose your GM.

It really sound like losing a GM is some really hard work and thus I find your argumentation…misleading.
Decay sound to me more like one out of many mechanics that could even the endgame but at least currently it will not be (overstated said) the big punch bringing you skills below GM with one mighty blow as you describe it.
Decay will slow your progress (maybe even to a point of stagnation) and of course it is possible to lose a level at some point…

e.g. reaching "Heavy Lifter" lvl 125 with 1 exp on the way to lvl 126, nearly no experience left in your pool and now you die = -25461 experience to this skill = you are back on lvl 124 with 25460 exp needed till reaching lvl 125 but you are millions of experience points away from losing the "GM Heavy Lifter".

…but it is in my opinion unlikely that you will lose all of your GMs by this mechanic if you keep on playing normally. More or less you will reach by decay your personal point of stagnation. For one this is summarized 3000 skills for others its summarized 3572 skills but one day or another everyone will reach this point of stagnation where your avatar will stay if you take a look over a longer period of time.
Where this point is depends on your playstyle. Do you kill most effectively enemies your limit will be higher than it is for others…so to say by referring classic MMO level limits everyone’s limit is lvl 80 but with effort you can reach lvl 81 and maintain this additional level as long as you can keep on this effort.

Reading the results is indeed influenced by your personal point of view. E.g. in my point of view the results are differently valued:

38.1% against decay in general (option1)
28.4% for current decay as it is (option 4)
33.5% would like an adjustment of decay in one or another direction but are not generally against decay

(E.g. I currently voted "I'm fine with the level of loss, but would rather it be done differently." with the intend that I'm fine with decay if there is no other better option available...so I'm more in the "pro-decay-camp" while Grave Dragon and maybe you too see people chosing this option in the "against-decay-camp".)

Out of my point of view more or less just 1/3 of the participants is against decay while 2/3 could live with decay but maybe think there are some adjustments needed.
But 1/3 still sounds a lot but generally I would say this outcome can be reached by discussions about most "concerns us all"-mechanics.

 

No, this is not true. 38.1% want decay done away w/ completely; that alone is over 1/3 and come from just one, clear option. Another 11.4% feel the loss is excessive; excessive is no light indictment of decay, it is a serious one. Adding the results from just these two options one arrives at 49.5%; again, this is no light indictment of decay, it is a measure of half of those who have chosen to express themselves via the poll so far.

I could add to this the 3.4% that want the punishment lightened, but I won't. Perhaps the lightening they desire doesn't extend to disfavor decay so much; because their stance is against decay but more difficult to quantify just how much against, I leave them out of this equation. That still leaves 49.5% clearly and strongly against decay.

The above is not a picture one can split into thirds; 49.5% is not a third.

+1

 

I will take the bait.
This isn't what the poll says.

 

lol, nice try

 

Of course 38.1% isn’t 33.33333333333333%...and that’s why I choose the wording “more or less”.

Again the evaluation of this poll is strongly influenced by personal points of views and your mentioned 11.4% is the option “NEW: Some loss is fine, but the current type and level is excessive” and as you see there are some more words than just "excessive" written in this option.
This is (out of my view) no option that is strongly against decay in general and more a wish to change some values. (e.g. 0.004% loss is too much make it 0.002% and its fine)
But in the end it doesn't matter what you or I read out of this poll...it is important what the devs read out of this poll and that might be different to what you or I can see.

 

I agree stundorn about Vanguard saga of Heroes. Death was much more painful than hear and it took quite awhile to get back XP but the difference is the game was fun. We would not be so focused on this if the fun was there. Bring on the interesting alternatives like find your body (PvE) get 1/2 XP back for example

 

I agree w/ you that what matters is what the Devs make of the information... and because they realize the future of this game is riding on it, they won't make the same mistake in judgment you have in explaining away a negative result.

In any case, nearly 40% have come out for one single and clear option: do away w/ decay completely.

The writing is on the wall and it does not spell business as usual.

 

38%

Means 62% are fine with loss in one way or another.

 

39.3% have chosen through one single and clear option to have decay done away with as of this writing; this alone is enough of a wallop to serve as a wake up call for the Devs.

11.2% of the remainder you reference feel decay is excessive; that is not a ringing endorsement, it is an indictment. Adding those figures alone brings the side not favoring death decay to 50.5%.

Really? Still wet from that river in Egypt?

 

Indeed true words but as we are still in development not everything can be fun but I’m sure you know that.
The get some experience back would be an option but I think this isn’t working with current mechanics. No bodies lay on the ground as soon as you revive and our ghosts appears at our bodies so no "searching"…but maybe instead reviving by an avatars spell could work that way.

Revive by ankh/auto revive/leaving map = decay without refund
Revive by spell = refund some % of decayed experience

Maybe even the level of the revive skill could influence this value like (skill lvl * 2)/10 = percentage of refund. At skill level 100 this would be (100*2)/10 = 20% refund

Damn, there you were faster.

It would be just a mistake if someone would just accept his way of thinking as the only right one and wouldn’t accept other opinions or even disproving arguments regardless how true or logic they are.
But regarding decay I think there is no “mistake” neither on my nor on your side as we simply value information differently based on our view.

Interesting that there seems to appear out of nowhere 5 new voters for option 1…some might think there has someone more than one account and tries to influence polls by wallet into a direction he prefers…but I do not think someone would do that, no?

 

I am just throwing back at you what you are trying to do here, interpreting statistics the way i wish.

Ah, had some alts left, eh?

Feeling decay is excessive != away with decay. (not to mention you snippet "some loss is fine" out of the answer option)
You are making up numbers. And you are not even good at it.

Of course 39,3% of people that want away with decay is TOO MUCH and Port has to do something about it.
But you are not helping their cause with what you are doing here.

 

LOL this was truly rich. Reaching back in the corners of my mind I recall being a stockbroker at a time when "due diligence" pretty much meant checking something out to make sure somebody just didn't toss up a bunch of bogus numbers.

With that in mind...when I consider how many times I could have voted I conclude this poll , were it written on paper wouldn't be worth the ink on it.


I absolutely roll over with laughter thinking there are people who think there should be no decay. Lord knows though... I wish I could pull off RL w/o decay