Death Decay Poll

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by oplek, Jun 21, 2017.

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What's your opinion on skill/death decay?

  1. It's way too punishing, and all loss should be removed from death.

    38.6%
  2. I'm generally fine with the system, but perhaps lighten up on the punishment.

    4.6%
  3. I'm fine with the level of loss, but would rather it be done differently.

    5.0%
  4. I'm fine with the system.

    28.9%
  5. It isn't punishing enough. The loss should be greater.

    5.4%
  6. Crank it up! I am death incarnate.

    6.8%
  7. NEW: Some loss is fine, but the current type and level is excessive

    10.7%
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  1. Grave Dragon

    Grave Dragon Avatar

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    Yes, because decay to a point where you can lose GMs (which are another measurable benchmark in-game) is not a norm in the current MMO landscape.

    The maintenance feature is broken as it sucks up way more xp than if you locked the skill and raised it back up after decay occured.

    Not many games take punitive action against death... so yes, i would care when I lost GMs.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2017
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  2. Zapatos80

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    Everytime I asked for real numbers from the doomsayers, no one brought any up. That should be an indicator that the opposition to this, as always, is based on principle, not actual game experience or numbers.
     
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  3. Lord Ravnos

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    Well that's not 100% fair, just not the majority of actual game experiences.
     
  4. Zapatos80

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    The vast majority of people who are against it are reacting more out of principle than actual game experience. Low level players (below lvl 40) receive no decay. Mid-level players receive extremely little, and for the casual player, the free 10k daily XP will be way more than any little decay they might get. For high to very high level, you are very powerful so you will not die often and get a lot of XP fighting high level stuff, so it's not that significant either. This coming from a lvl 102, and I don't even lose 100k XP on death, which is a fairly insignificant amount at my level.

    Again, this is a dead horse argument because as I said, the vast majority of people against the system are against it by principle, not by any logical argument based on real cases and numbers.
     
  5. Grave Dragon

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    So youre judging the validity of peoples feelings on a topic because they cant provide numbers to disprove what? That its "too" punative? According to whose opinion? Yours? Because it sounds to me like they feel 'any' decay is bad. That at its core makes numbers irrelivant from their perspective, does it not?

    There is nothing wrong with holding opposition against something due to principal. If you feel its best for the game not to have a specific feature, they deserve to be heard like anyome else.

    The fact is, games with punitive mechanics built in have traditionally not done as well as games that dont. Thats likely measurable, but not by us.
     
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  6. Burzmali

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    Lots of people have posted numbers, just go hunting in all the locked threads. If you haven't noticed, Port only barely tolerates disagreement on this topic. This thread would likely already be locked if OP wasn't a supporter of the concept.
     
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  7. Zapatos80

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    If you're going to argue against a well thought out system that serves a purpose, you should have numbers and facts to back up your claims. If the only argument you have is "I don't like it", then the discussion is pretty much over because there's not much to debate there.

    Without numbers, all the claims of "catastrophic XP loss" are

    Hence why threads like these end up dead horses, always. Any system worth its salt that puts in a penalty for death will have people dislike it. That's just the way it is.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2017
  8. Zapatos80

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    Example? The only people posting numbers are the high levels; and incidentally, almost all of them, myself included, think the system is working perfectly fine.
     
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  9. Burzmali

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    Go hunt locks on the forum, go back a few pages, they aren't hard to find. I'm not the one claiming I could take Mike Tyson because he isn't returning my calls.
    Edit
    I'm around level 80 and I only have 2 skills over 80, my weapon skill and my most used attack. I lose around 60k on death. In my normal play, that's around half an hour. Conversely I have branched into virtually all schools of magic and tactics to pick up benefits because I can do the math and dumping XP into skills over 80 isn't worth the decay.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2017
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  10. Zapatos80

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    Look up this thread, plenty of people have posted numbers, and not a single delete. So i'd be highly surprised if that was the case.
     
  11. Grave Dragon

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    I dont see it as arguing against the system, but rather expressing displeasure in the form of passionate feedback. Its not the community's job to provide a comprehensive and documented replacement for systems that are viewed as unpopular by the majority.

    Im betting most would be perfectly fine if Portalarium said, "We understand the majority of the community dislikes skill decay, so we have a plan B we will try, here are some details."
     
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  12. Burzmali

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    Chris seems to disagree with you on that, our inability to design and agree on a replacement for decay is one of his stated reasons for keeping the current system.
     
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  13. Zapatos80

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    No meaningful death penalty makes a game stale and boring, exactly the kind of mainstream WoW'ness SotA stands against. The fact that 37% of people want that does not make it a good decision. I don't like my skills being nerfed, but when its for the greater good of game balance, I don't mind. Same thing with death being meaningful. Any system that gives death a sting will have people opposed to it
     
  14. Scraps MacMutt

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    I agree! If you've read any of my other posts about it you'd see that I've been pushing for combat & crafting specialization as well, although I've got my doubts whether the current combat skill trees are balanced enough to support specialization...but that's another issue.
     
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  15. Zapatos80

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    For what it's worth, i'm for decay because it's a system that curbs the highest level (which helps the lower level players in a way), brings meaning to death and allows exactly the kind of open-ended, free to develop as you wish skill system, which is unique and awesome to SotA. It also rewards player skill, which is something that should always be encouraged. Plus, all the latest tweaks are steps in the right direction while still maintaining all the core functions of the system intact. Kudos to that :)
     
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  16. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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  18. Grave Dragon

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    Thats because its a big redesign job with a looming launch, but the fact remains, it is ultimately up to them what goes in, they can choose to ignore the majority and face unpopular repercussions or change it and have a smaller but just as important group potentially unhappy.

    Its a hard reality, but i have faith they could come up with something much better for the longevity of the game if they put their minds to it. Chris is a brilliant guy, many of them are.

    Once again, im a firm believer that the current perception that decay is necessary is to set soft caps for the most active players in the game, but soft caps arent necessary with opposing skill tree restrictions.
     
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  19. Grave Dragon

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    Its the best and most logical option on the table, which is why I support it. It promotes realism and eliminates the need for decay which is a big win.

    Thats just my (our) opinion.

    Its technically already in game with light/heavy armor trees. There is a physical "what armor you wearing" restriction.

    We just need something aimilar applied across the board.
     
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  20. Burzmali

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    I don't think a redesign of the systems involved would be possible at this point. Not only has Port invested too much time in tweaking and balancing the existing system, too many players have invested thousands of hours into the system and it's too late to simply take that away with the wave of a wand. Port pulled the cake out of the oven too soon and is trying to fix it with a sun lamp and blowtorch.
     
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