Death Penalty

IMO the death penalty is too long.

First we die and wait a long time to res.
Then we have 1.5 minute death penalty with -20 Str/Int/Dex

So we have the frustration of dying.
Then the frustration of waiting to res.
Then the frustration of having a weak character for another 90 seconds.

I understand why these features are in the game. But it's too punitive, too long IMO.

Especially new, weak players in this game will be frustrated with these mechanics.

I'd lower the penalty and/or the timer.

 

Have they fixed the bug/feature of leaving a scene removing the timer? In R13, if you were close enough to the entrance of a scene, you could leave as a ghost, get magically resurrected, and not have to worry about the penalty at all.

 

Not sure. I'm at the top of the lich hill in Deep Ravenswood, far from any exit.

 

I was just about to write a post in harder death penalties. Well not harder really but longer but diminishing over time.

Something like:
-20 Str/Int/Dex upon death then lower the penalty 1 every minute so after 20 minutes it completely gone.

As things is right now we have no real death penalty.

 

If we're going for realism, we could make it super realistic and when your character dies, he dies forever and you have to start over with a new character.

 

Well, when you respawn, you should be near a scene exit unless they changed it... give it a try?

 

Yeah it puts me near a scene exit, timer's still there. But I'm not dying near the exit, if that makes a difference (from reading your previous post).

 

Right... when you respawn, try leaving the scene and coming back in. During R13, changing scenes removed the death penalty.

 

OK thanks. Although leaving the scene and coming back in, with the load times, takes almost as much time as the death penalty.

 

True... something to keep in mind for the moment, if you happen to die close enough to the entrance to head back as a ghost

 

How would you set the penalty up if you were on the dev team?

 

Good question. I would remove the death penalty entirely, and I would shorten the timer on the death screen as well. When you res, you should be close to zero health and focus. You can heal up with potions or spells, and/or wait until you're at fuller strength/focus. Adding a penalty on top of that is punitive.

 

For those that read this and don't know it, when you die go find the Ankh (glowing cross with loop on top) while you are a ghost. If you find it, penalties can be avoided and you are returned on the spot with full health.

 

Those ankhs aren't easily found, in my experience.

 

So, rez over and over, the only penalty is the fact that you have close to zero HP?

 

Yep. It worked in UO, did you ever play?

I'm an anti-penalty guy. It's a game, not a prison.

 

Captain Jack played UO not long ago but retrospectivly.

The system was harsh in UO because often Captain Jack couldn't find a healer in time to return to his body and collect things, losing them. That isn't a problem here though, Captain Jack was hoping for more after death. Not really a penalty, but something interesting you've got to do to come back to the land of the living, like sail to the edge of the world or something

 

Budner and Morkul -- I agree with you both, in a sense. A lot of doing nothing but waiting around when you die, but at the same, death is not much of consequence after a minute. So on the one hand, less short term penalty, more long term penalty.

Also personally I just always liked the idea of being kicked out of the scene when you die, at the nearest shrine, so a big part of the penalty in a sense would just be to make you start over. I guess they're not doing this for several reasons, including parts of the story where you need to do things as a ghost. They could always make it so you could carry an amulet that affects what happen when you die.

I don't find it bad as it is, just not ideal. I think having some heavy short term penalty on stats makes sense, but then I would also want to be able to exit ghost mode pretty quick if I'm assured resurrection anyway.

UO was actually pretty harsh because you had to do a corpse run.

 

On the other side it's called death penalty not teath inconvenience. I'm the type of person that always play ironman (permanent death) in games like Diablo, PoE and so on. In a MMORPG (ish) game permanent death are not functional.

Well.. *thinking hard* I'm a roleplayer and I haven't read thru the back story yet so it's hard to pick something right away that would fit the crotty. I would not mind some kind of XP penalty, in UO there was loss of skill which is the same thing. I have played a lot of MUDs long before UO and there it was normal to get a helf level of exp in penalty (even with level loss) in a non PvP death and about half that penalty in PvP. There was thousands of players on the most popular MUDs long before internet was something everyone had and that kind of penalty was nothing anyone thought was strange.

To the point a penalty should be a penalty and not something that are gone under a bathroom break.

Ps: I played a MUD call MUME and one of my characters have over 5 month online time, that is effective playing time.

 

I'm of the opinion that the death penalty is a first pass at just making death "work". I don't think we've seen the full death penalty yet, and so I think if someone is crying about this....they're going to be in for a BIG surprise when the actually "penalty" is unveiled.

I personally want death to matter (a lot) so I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. Also, I think it's worth noting that in the RISK vs. REWARD model that SOTA is using, it's going to be hard to argue that death should have no real penalty when life is so protected (consensual pvp only).

If death doesn't have significant meaning then where's the risk?