Death oOooOOoOo!!

Love of gear...

 

Only way I've seen this being overcome is by having the items be relatively easy to get but you are limited to only carrying very few, or even only one. Only lore-based reason I can recall is in the DQ series you can take a leaf of the world tree, but only one that's golden, and only one golden leaf blooms every so often...

I had this problem with things like glass swords.

 

Not necessarily. In the wiki page I linked it has more to do with not wanting to lose or waste things than to actually pursuing those same things. Aversion to loss is a strong element of human thought patterns, and according to a few articles I've read is actually fairly stronger, for most people, than the desire to obtain new things; one of the references I've seen claims that the potential gains have to be at least twice as large as the potential loses for most people to take the risk.

It's my issue with gear that can be lost; not that I love the gear, but that I really dislike losing it. To the point I typically don't value such gear that can be lost at all, and often don't even bother using it; if inventory space is at a premium I'm as likely to just delete the item, in order to not have to deal with using up a limited thing, as to actually use it (though I often tend to go after such gear for game completion reasons, even if I never intend to use that gear). I don't see how something I don't attach value to, and usually don't even bother using, can be something I "love" in a game.

I don't have that much an issue with losing gear that can be easily and cheaply replaced, but that is because I don't think about them as actual items that were lost; instead, I see replacing them as merely required character maintenance, just as if they were the kind of repair fee WoW uses. As I said in previous posts, if I start thinking about items that will be lost as actual items, if I start attaching a value to them, I'm prone to just stop playing altogether.

The typical way to solve this, and the only one that consistently works, seems to be to remove from the item it's scarcity, either by making the item permanent or by making new copies easy to obtain. Doing this typically forces the devs to make the item accordingly less powerful in order to avoid breaking the game, though.

You can see this in quite a few continuations. In Warcraft 3, a way to easily resurrect heroes was added; in Diablo 2 field repairs and recharges (which allowed specific classes to repair without returning to town, but lowered the maximum durability) were removed; in Diablo 3, Ethereal Items (which can't be repaired) don't exist anymore; in Pokémon, starting with Pokémon Black & White, TMs (items that teach moves to the pokémons) now have infinite uses (likely because most players, myself included, would before collect them all but never actually use them); Castlevania games often turn one-use items from previous games into secondary weapons, which have unlimited uses but are far less powerful than the previously limited item; and so on.

 

I personally would rather gain (in order) a weak passive, that never ends. A weak active power with a short cooldown. A moderate active power power with a moderate cooldown. A strong active power or item with a long cooldown or limited availability. An epic active power or item that was single use.

 

I generally would prefer option 3.
What works best though has a lot to de with the style of gameplay you want.

More tough consequences, such as perma death, means you have to be more cautious. Basically, avoid taking risks, do everything you can to make sure you don't die, including not doing anything even remotely dangerous.
Eve online had a very punishing dying system, not perma death, but more punushing than what I'm used to. Playing by myself and with major and minor guilds with experienced players, I found combat was always about doing things that was easy, never push yourself to do things that were hard. If it was hard, you're getting ahead of yourself. This was very boring. PvP consisted mainly of people ganking people much weaker than they are, as a fair fight is too risky. For me this is not what I consider PvP, its more like grieving. When I tried playing it, part of what I was interested in was the major battles that was advertised. Talking to the experienced players though, I found these conflicts happened maybe a few times a year, not exactly a big part of the game.
Some people might prefer steep penalties for dying for their own reasons, but I find it makes people too cautious, pve combat always feels like a grind, and pvp is mostly people ganking people much weaker than they are.

On the other hand, having consequences for dying being too light (or non existant), incurages people to be really careless with themselves as well as going as far as to not being at all worried about loosing a fight. These kind of games I've played a lot more of, and they tend to have a lot more epic battles. The amount of huge and epic battles these games experience is so large that they effectively become the norm. For me having a lot of these epic battles is a lot of fun, but I do admit that I fequently would wish that people would care a little bit more about dying.
One particular example that comes to my mind is in World of Warcraft in Cataclysm, I was in one of the new zones with my Undead Mage, tol barad I think it was called, the place where it was about daily quests but no flying mounts and ultimately there was frequent pvp. I was out doing the dailies with my mage and then these 2 alliance paladins come to attack me. They ignored all the other hord players in the area and just targeted me (later on I learned from my guild leader on Ventrillo that he would frequently go into this zone and just constantly gank people so this might of been vengance towards my guild). Anycase, I had a big fight against those 2 paladins in which I won, but before I could finish eating my mage donut (mage food, don't remember what it actually was) to recover my health and mana, the first of the 2 paladins I had killed had ressurected and was back into the fight, and then soon after so was the second one. This went on for a while where I would be killing these two paladins that keep trying to gank me, occasionally I'd die because I would just run out of health and mana since I didn't have time to eat my donut between fights, but I would basically kill each of them 3 to 5 times before I'd die. Sometimes I try moving near other hord players to get them to help me deal with these 2 pallies, which works, but they just keep coming after me and I still don't have enough time to eat my mage donuts or to progress in my dailies! Bottom line, I spent soo much time killing these paladins, and because of the way you were rewarded for whinin pvp fights, I got didly squate for it, meanwhile I couldn't finish my dailies so I basically lost an hour of my time doing nothing until I had enough and left, came back latter on that day to finish my dailies. I would of prefered that they made dying just a little more penalising while a little bit more rewarding to kill players (at least in a pvp area) so I would of been able to have a mage donut between fights and been rewarded for raking up all those kills.
Overall, having a lower penalty to dying incourages risk taking, which allows for more big and epic battles, very important for pvp too (in WoW you would not of had those battlegrounds or major pvp conflicts if you had perma death). But too little punishment can also mean abuse in the form of people just willfully dying a hundred times over just to try to bore someone to the point where they quit and leave the zone, basically not being penalising enough means people don't care at all about it.
A balance between these two extremes would be necessary, but I don't think you need to go as far as option 2 even. Having to run back to your corpse in ghost form to resurect, with an every incresing time to wait before being able to res based on how many times you've died in a short period of time, with maybe some item decay, would be fine.
PvP death should be handled differently than PvE, but it still should not be so ownerous that people would only risk fighting people that are much weaker than they are. They could make it where killing someone in pvp allows loot and renown gain, but you don't loot from their inventory, you just loot items that you can exchange for recognition (rep, renown) and gear, or use for crafting maybe, and you can only get loot/recognition for kills that matter, such as people that are within you're level range or higher, people well geared compared to you, etc. The more epic you are, the more epic a fight you need to have inorder to progress in PvP (ie, fight other people that are as epic as you are). An experienced, top geared PvP character should not be able to progress by killing a bunch of newbs all day long every day, just as a professional athleet does not progress in his sport by beating a bunch of elementary school kids all day long and every day, he has to play and win at his own level to get recognition and a higher pay (at least that's how I think it should be).
As far as making it penalising for players to die in PvP, well, I find wow battlegrounds were generally fun so not a whole lot more than that is needed. You could make it where dying a lot in a short period of time would incure item decay, but if you die once every 15 or 30 minutes, this would not affect you, this would be great for getting killed by a player in the persistent world. For battlegrounds (instanced pvp) you could make it where you have a certain amount of times per battleground where you're allowed to die, afterwards you get kicked from the BG and would have to requeue if you want back in.

 

A bit off-topic, but Tol Barad is only a PvP zone during the big battle that happens every 2 hours. Apart from that it's just a normal contested zone (and yeah, this does mean that players have to manually flag themselves for PvP in order to fight there in PvE servers, except when the big battle is ongoing).

 

Really? you still had to flag yourself for PvP on a PvE server in that zone?
I played on a PvP server so I was speaking from there.
Still, I got the impression that the normal zone was meant to be a PvP zone, since you couldn't use your flying mounts, as well as the small size of it, pretty much garanteed pvp conflict. And the rep and tokens you got was used mainly for PvP gear, so to me it made sense that you would be automatically flaged for PvP when you go there on a PvE server. Oh well, care-bares ftw!

 

It was the main place to do daily quests for a time, so Blizzard decided that forcing it to be PvP would be unduly punishing for players in PvE realms. Players that were lurking in the forums while Cataclysm was in Beta might remember the complaints between Blizzard announcing that Tol Barad would house most of the dailies at launch and the announcement that Tol Barad would be a common contested zone outside the battles. My guess is that it was either that or else finding another zone to house the dailies.

I also believe Blizzard wanted to expose PvE players to a PvP environment, and have them close enough to the Tol Barad fight that participating wouldn't require wasting time traveling, in the hope more players would take to PvP. It seems to me like Blizzard is attempting to lure PvE players into PvP ever since the fact PvE servers were more popular than PvP ones caught them by surprise at launch.

 

I'd go with 2 , But I'm not in the mood to be farming/gathering crafting and being slaughtered. Not even remotely fun.

 

Definately #2 it would get others involved by protecting your body until your rezzed, and get those others involved trying to loot you! more fighting and experience for holding the body

 

"Cast's Spirit Speak" - Oh your dead and need a rez! No problem!

 

I haven’t read through the whole eleven pages so if someone threw this out earlier, my apologies.


I think someplace between option 2 and option 3 is where the solution to the death and dying issue should be found.

Most people I would assume would hate getting killed, whether by PvP or NPC enemies, and losing all their possessions they unfortunately happen to be carrying. On the other side of the coin I would think it makes the game much too weak to have nothing at all happen to you when you die.

Here’s what I was thinking:

If you happen to die (which we all will at some point, well I might not but anyway…), you have an opportunity to leave behind in your death bag up to 3 items you had originally equipped, up to three non trash items you had in your bag and up to a certain percentage of your gold (let’s just say 80% max of what you have on you at the time of death).

So you are walking along minding your own business and some crazy warrior jumps you, smacks you around, and suddenly your world turns grey. As she’s laughing at you laying on the ground bleeding, the computations are being done…… You would have a 95% chance to lose 1 random item you had originally equipped and a 50% chance to lose a second equipped item and finally a 10% chance to lose a third equipped item. The same formula would be implemented for up to 3 non trash items in your bag as well. Lastly, you would have a 95% chance to lose 1% of your gold all the way down to a 1% chance to lose 80% of your gold you are carrying around at that time. This would be the same for death by PvP or death by any other means except guards and such, which could have their own unique penalties depending on what mischief you were up to at the time.

So as you can see you would have an ever so slight chance to lose nothing at all upon death but most likely you would lose something. Of course you would always have the opportunity to make it back to your body and recover all your items if your body had protection or you got lucky. Also this would not take place for the new adventurers for a set amount of time upon starting a character, let’s say 12 hours of in game time. You could also possibly enchant certain items which could skew those particular items to have less of a chance of dropping onto your dead corpse. Let’s say instead of 95%,50%,10% you could do three possible levels of enchants, (depending on your skill levels and reagents etc) that would lower those chances to say 90%,45%,5% for a LvL I enchant, 80%,35%,3% for a LvL II enchant, and finally 65%,25%,1% for a LvL III enchant. Maybe also have a special skill that could reduce those numbers as well.

Just something I was thinking about while lying in bed this morning….

 

There are of course many other options to consider, yet the focus seems to only be on the original 3. Of those I would be closer to 3. There is going to be a decay on gear, and there is going to be other items... So I could see here you take a particualar hit on your gear, and there is a timer of sorts if you are obviously going against something STUPID the second plus deaths within a window of X should have more penalty.

Lets not forget that this game is designed for multiple play styles. If your style is all crafting, and you are experimenting with unstable elements, and die, one has to consider that... If you are in a PVP zone then I could see some added penalty/reward... but do not focus solely on your own play style. There are three current defined play styles and maybe more before launch.

 

Or may be that can also be drawn from the deck we have to use!? what and how much is taken (with a slight chance of losing it all) One last draw of the cards (the Death Deck)

 

I always played to MMOs (not that I played to many) using the third option of course, never did any serious PvP and didn't like it for a long time... so I'm willing to have the second option.

I'm tempted by the permanent death though... it sounds exciting.

 

Option 2 please, and I'm sure I'm repeating someone here... But if you don't like full loot, then perhaps you take some penalty dying and the attacker gets to loot some resource only obtainable be killing players. Be it for crafting, quests, or just a pleasant trophy graciously given by your opponent.

 

Option 2 please, and I'm sure I'm repeating someone here... But if you don't like full loot, then perhaps you take some penalty dying and the attacker gets to loot some resource only obtainable be killing players. Be it for crafting, quests, or just a pleasant trophy graciously given by your opponent.

 

The person you are most recently repeating is yourself with a double post.

 

Definitely would prefer option 2, and that they get really creative with ways to rez in an instance.


Full loot for sure, atleast in full PvP mode in the open world.

 

It should be completely dependant on what you are doing. If you elect to pvp then someone killing you should he able to loot you. There should be unique gear only rewarded to pvpers though to create an incentive to to this though. In a PvE situation I see no reason to lose anything more than a certain % of xp and some item durability.

Being as it appears that PvE and PvP will be mutually exclusive in this game I dont see why the death penalties for each cant be.

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