Death Penalty

Yes, I've played games where there's really no death penalty except a timer and you're dumped in the same scene. You just go back in and in again until you win. You never learn anything, or become better at playing, or figuring out how to win. Its just a time sink, not a challenge.

 

I would have a really hard time play a game like that even Diablo have XP penalties for crying out loud and is not even a proper role playing game.

 

I'm ok with a death penalty, prevents insta-spawning which is a good thing.

Kind of miss the ability to speak to people while dead though like in Ultima Online through the spirit speak skill though.

Would be fun to be able to haunt people to0, but I have no clue how this would be implemented

 

Death currently is a penalty for the player, not the character. Being a ghost is like a temp ban from the game. I was just idling in front of the PC, waiting to be rezz'd. And worst of all: I wasn't even able to chat with my party or my guild mates whilst waiting.

The current formula is: Death = temp ban = no fun.

I don't mind if my char (!) dies and my char (!) gets penalties. That's perfectly alright. But currently, I as a player (!!) get literally locked out of the game whilst being dead.
Isnogood.

 

ooo! this again...

death should have meaning? yes. it should. but i'd do it differently.

i'd like to see several things:

1. the 60 second/ankh thing simply go away, but add that time to the actual debuff penalty you already get.
2. if you die again with penalty time still up, the new penalty length/amount is added to the existing one. making the second death penalty that much longer.
3. i also think the debuff pentalty itself should get "lower" as the timer wears down, so when you hit like 1 second remaining you are already at -1.. your corpse is warming up, after all...
4. i do like that you respawn close to an entrance/exit spot in the zone.
5. if you die a third time with a debuff timer still going, stop decaying the armor with subsequent deaths after 3, till the timer is completely gone this time around. then, let it decay again next time you die.

low level players will still get frustrated, yes. but in retrospect, it will teach them to play more carefully. here's an example:

last night myself and seven others did the hat quest. was great fun, but in one spot i died like seven times because there was no way to get past the lich on one side, and all the skellies on the other, that were quite higher level than us lowbies. by death five, i was tempted to ragequit.. they were also respawning VERY QUICKLY, the mobs there.

ok, i admit that i'm at least halfway to blame there, i put all my existing skill points into earth magic instead of actual damage skills or low-level heals, too. those deaths taught me to spread the wealth early, not focus on one thing only. there was not a death7 because i quickly remedied that.

one thing that would have helped that, is making the link colors of the locations when you speak to the clockwork tour guides be different colors based on general level/skill/armor requirements in the zone, comparable to your toons "level". -
i'd do it like this:
green easy,
yellow not too bad,
orange need a friend,
red need a group.

that would have helped becasue we'd have instinctually known that the red ones are tough, and we need solid group cohesion and no "random wandering" techniques to find the npc more effeciently. i know that is a big step towards an easy button, but how about offering no description/reason why they are that color, and once complete, they revert back to normal text color..so when you are helping others, you don't see that. *evil grin*

 

Death should have a penalty, and numerous games over the years have made attempts at doing this in a way that balances outraging players vs actually imposing a risk:reward feeling in actually playing the game. The way it is currently I actually agree with both camps; it's not enough of a penalty to feel like facing the consequences of dying, but for what it is it's just too long and annoying.

Firstly they obviously intend for there to be a death state since there are resurrection spells. If you could just immediately rez with zero penalties and rush right back into the fray there would be no need for such a spell. So ignoring the mechanical numbers involved in the current death state and said spell, it's very inclusion tells us that much.

I could see keeping with the stat penalty if it could be negated by perhaps eating a meal, or drinking a specific potion made via alchemy (in fact, making it longer in that case). But personally I'd rather see something like a longer penalty on XP you gain while suffering it each time you die. Say a 10min -10% XP debuff each time you rez on your own without someone else doing it. No penalty if they do.

Of course being able to float around as a ghost is neat and all, and I loled at what you say becoming OooOOooOO, but perhaps there should be a way to make yourself visible and have some way to train people back to your body?

I've never really understood why in other games your gear takes damage when you rez. Makes no damn sense.

The biggest issue of course is that the instancing nature of scenes means you're very likely going to be alone in a scene, or if with other people the odds of them being able to rez you is slim. I think an XP gain penalty would be the kind of thing that while annoying, won't screw you TOO bad if you're out farming or what have you. But if you chump it 10 times in a row will probably make you want to rethink your approach.

 

For roleplay purposes i would say you do not die but become so incapacitatet that mobs do not care anymore to "finnish you off"
For some reason you are found by an samaritan and dragged of to next town and patched up in an guardhouse or so.
Stuff (gear) as is (damage)

That would be my compromis

No arenainsta respawn.

And be glad it is not EQ with epic hour long dyeing 20 times corpse run events through high level one hit kill mob areas where an dragon camps your corpse.

I want to hear the people here whining about THAT!

 

i had a tank friend of mine, in EQ, drag my corpse around for me at least five times a flipping day. he would call me on my cell phone laughing the whole time...

 

Could we compromise on the issue so that death penalties reflect where a player is on the learning curve? It may not be the most coherent RP. I'm not personally aware of what ghosts have to do with the storyline but comments in this thread suggest there is a strong connection. Could it be that fresh Outlanders recover faster than Outlanders that have assimilated to New Britannia?

 

Man, if we're complaining about the minimal death penalty now, this is going to be a rage quit thread when they put in equipment damage and XP debt as well as item loss to MOBs.

Re-read the Death Megapost on current thinking:

...and...

Having said that, I tend to agree that the death penalty -- as currently implemented -- isn't all that interesting of an experience. Looking forward to future iterations on making death more meaningful, interesting, perhaps more interactive and with more varied experiences based on how/where you died.

 

Sorry, Budner, but I think you're in a huge minority here.

What's the point of dying if there are no consequences. People feel good when they take a risk and get a reward. This is the spiritual successor to Ultima Online (Richard Garriot has said that numerous times). If there is absolutely no risk, people will get bored and move on.

 

yeah, that was where rogues where shining!
dragging the corpses.. there was even moving guilds dead through dungeons, go in, die, and be dragged, revive in front of the bossmob...

 

I'm rather disappointed about the lack of a real death penalty. Gameplay becomes way more exciting if a player has something to lose and needs to deliberately plan his actions. Anybody remember how terrific invis moves in dangerous zones like lower Guk and Sebilis have been?

I vote for

a) loss of 10% level experience
b) corpse run for recovering gear

The 2 min. stats debuff and small durability hit on equipment are a joke.

 

I hate losing experience... it doesn't feel right to me. If anything I should gain experience (in the real meaning, not pts in game) because I died. I should have learned a lesson and be wiser somehow, lol.

Anyway, here I would like to see the penalty similar to what it is now, but then made longer if you die more often. For instance, if you die twice in 5 minutes the 2nd penalty is worse... and worse yet if you die 3 times in 10 minutes, etc.. So start it off with a minimum penalty but if you've not become smarter and keep dying, then you're penalized more. (in pve, not pvp)

And like someone said, we'll soon be losing items... I can't wait.

 

I don't know. Equipment damage is going to be annoying unless they open up better avenues for maintain it but XP debt and an item loss (although it would be cool that if we kill the same monster that killed us, we can get it back) would actually be fine because at least it's not "sit there and do nothing until the penalty disappears" kind of penalty...

 

the way repair is right now item decay is rather harsh lol

 

Odd, I was under the impression "equipment damage" was already in place on death.

My weapon has reached the "yellow warning icon" level of damage many times immediately after respawning from a death, where-as it was not such prior to death.

 

yes, right now dieing is an "gold penalty:

 

Strictly speaking, death has (or will have) multiple forms of time penalties.

1. The time spent waiting to respawn (or be resurrected by a friendly)
2. The time spent to acquire the gold necessary to pay for repairs
3. The time spent replacing a looted item, and reacquiring the gold used to pay the ransom
4. The additional time spent acquiring experience due to the experience slowdown penalty

How much of an effort it takes to pay off that time penalty is up for debate.

 

Personally not a fan of a stat based death penalty, it doesn't teach you anything, all this, if you just die you don't learn anything or you need consequences just doesn't sit right with me. Being dead and waiting to res is enough of an inconvenience for me, its how I've played nearly every game ever, when did this sudden urge to penalise people with stat debuffs come in, sure wow did it if you we're being lazy and didn't want the hassle of finding your corpse, UO if you weren't quick enough you'd lose gear etc but dying and having to wait to res AND a 90 second debuff to your main stats, what does that teach you?

Doesn't help that its alpha and mob spawn rate and pull radius seems really all over the shop, keep finding myself 1 on 1 then 3 on 1.