Decay – Perception vs. Reality and a Recommendation

I still think that it is cool that there is so much debate going on with this topic.

I wonder if the Souls community hated the "risk" vs "reward" for losing souls to deaths...

Things that make you go hmm..

 

Factor in the bugs or broken skills that cause the death decay - and I won’t log on.

 

I don't know the specifics of your armor, your playstyle, your hours spent fighting etc. There's a lot of variables. If you blew enough chips to get all pieces exceptional with even 2 mw / 2 enchant that you actually wanted, you likely blew through a million gold or more in materials cost. Quite possibly twice that depending on how high end we're talking or how fussy with the bonuses. I've managed to stretch good armor for a few months myself, with grandmaster in all preservation skills, constantly having the maintenance blessing, and/or using the COTO potion. And I think that 'a few months' is simply not enough 'life' to invest significant monies into the gear. Not unless your entire gameplay is going to be a grind against gear degradation to get more money or mats to make more gear before your current gear is junk. I don't think that vicious cycle should be a player's all encompassing task.

For most players it isn't. They wear stuff that's "good enough" and embrace mediocrity. A high end piece of armor with specific bonuses easily costs upwards of 200, 300k to produce based on the rng probabilities. Why pay 300k for a high end piece when you can get something 'almost as good' for 5k because its someone's cast off/mistake piece? Or when you can gather mats and get someone to do custom work? I have a significant inventory of high-end-but-not-quite-right pieces that I can't unload for a fraction of the material investment. This isn't because "gear doesn't break fast enough" its because "good gear breaks too fast to invest a lot of money in." I could see someone paying a lot of money for say, a sword, if that sword was going to LAST. Back when I used swords I was shredding them from 100 dura down to 0 in just a few DAYS. A bow I made LAST NIGHT is already down 6 points on the max.

Not at all. I can't sell anything because due to the current implementation of crafting, with low exceptional chance and horrible RNG odds making it less than 1% to make the actual item someone wants, I end up with a bunch of sub-par crap that nobody will even pay material cost for. Actual nice items? Maybe I can sell at cost. Maybe even a little profit. But the significant loss from all the other things I must make to get that 1 nice item far outweigh it. 100% of the time I would have done better selling the raw ore. That's the truth of the matter. Nobody is going to pay top dollar for gear that is trash after a few weeks of hard play. Nobody is going to spend a month mining to make gear that lasts less than a month. There are a few exceptions - some people make nice gear for PvP, or gear that only comes out for special occasions, but for everyday use? Nah. Even I have my 'nice stuff' which stays in a box and my 'grind stuff' that I wear and replace.

Adding a gear durability penalty to death will just ensure that even less people bother wearing good gear. Nevermind buying or selling it.

 

Maybe you are a bit too elitist with your items. They don't have to be the absolute best in slot to work in this game, you know? None of the content is hard enough. None of my armor is exceptional, it is all only 2x MW and Enc, some of them are not desirable either, other pieces I got lucky, I build and replace pieces as I can and it has taken me a very long time as all my chips have been looted and none purchased. I don't know what you're doing with your Swords but mine that is over 3 weeks old is still 97/100. You don't need to have the best stuff. Not every item needs to have 3x MW and 3x Enchant.

I embrace mediocrity, look at me:

https://i.imgur.com/NnUBUot.jpg

 

Just in the interest of the conversation:

Why does death need a "penalty"?
How does having a penalty improve the player experience or improve game as a whole?

One example I can think of is, in games where the death penalty is completely trivial, players do things like willy nilly jump off of cliffs because its faster than running to the zone exit.
Not really relevant in Shroud, since we have 'start on world map'.
Even the "find the ankh" and "ankh resurrection penalty", small as they are, are sufficient to discourage this behavior - as that will take longer than simply "worldmapping."

So other than to avoid death being trivially used as a travel mechanic, what purpose does this penalty serve? Why is it necessary at all?
We keep seeing it said that "Death needs to have a penalty" but I've not yet seen a good explanation for why it needs this.
Does it make the game more fun? Not really - not on its own.
Does it encourage people to do group play? Nope

(To be completely clear, I do think death needs a penalty, but I'm curious what other peoples reasons are for thinking this).

Putting a pin in that...

(I personally think death needs a penalty because it means players have to think more about what they're doing instead of just willy/nilly buttonmashing. It causes more thoughtful gameplay if you know that dying is going to cause you some sort of setback. This encourages problem solving, tactical thinking, and a lot of aspects in the game that -are- fun for me.)

Assuming we establish that there is a valid reason to have a death penalty, what is this penalty meant to accomplish?
I think this is the key issue here.
Is the death penalty meant to cause players to log out in frustration? Give up on the game entirely? Of course not, or at least, it shouldn't be, as this would be incredibly counterproductive from a development standpoint.
If we can all agree death needs some sort of penalty, what remains to decide is on the severity and, fairness of said penalty.

Do I think players who have played the game longer should have a harsher penalty?
Absolutely not. I think the penalty - whatever it is - should be nondiscriminatory. Don't punish people more for being loyal, long-term players.

Should the penalty discourage group play entirely? No

Should the penalty be so severe as to completely disincentivize challenging content? Again, no.

Everything in an MMO comes down to a measure of a player's time. If the penalty is going to cost a player's time the question is, how much is too much? Remembering that this is 2018 and most modern gamers will not have the attention span for punishing early-gen hardcore systems that set them back days or even hours. This is why I like the attenuation-as-death-penalty idea, because it would penalize everyone more or less equally and its a fixed amount of time as a cost, instead of 15 mins for some and hours for another.

So what do we think the "time" penalty xp should be for a single death?
If its an hour, and someone can only play 2 hours a day, its probably too much.
If its 5 minutes, some will think its not enough.
Perhaps if we can agree on how much 'time' impact death should have, we can concstructively come up with options as to what a suitable penalty would be.

 

Yeah, you're kinda making my point. High end, perfect items, you can't sell because its simply not worth it to most people - good gear isn't necessary so most people wont pay what its worth.
Taking resources, and making them into things, and expecting to get more money than the resources are worth is a non-starter here.
I don't think making things break faster will help this situation at all - we need to fix crafting to help this situation.

 

Death need a penalty because there need to be a balance between risk and reward. People who take greater risks should have greater rewards, but ofcourse with risk comes penalty. Otherwise it isnt a risk.

There are games that does not come with Penalties , World of Warcraft. But wow also comes with very little to no reward. ( Risk vs reward ). Wow isnt sandbox, it is classed, and you cant do whatever you want whereever you want.
There are games that doesnt come with any restrictions, EVE Online. Sandbox, No limits, but therefor also have the greatest risk of any game i have ever seen ( You die, your ship is Gone. That would be equal to your house being destroyed in Sota, its punishment to the most extreme level )

There are no games that offer open sandbox without real limits but with high reward and no risk. With that said, plenty have tried. It doesnt work, because its boring. People want to achieve things, and once things are achieved, its boring and people leave.

So while removing all kind of risk in Sota would be fantastic in the short term, it would kill the game in the long term, because once you have done it all, then what?

We need something that isnt how it is now, but also the risk shouldnt be removed completely. It need to be ADJUSTED or REPLACED, which is exactly what port is doing.

 

If we end up with 0 death penalty im probly just gonna go to places that used to be too hard and suicide kill stuff 1 at a time for artifacts and blue bundles

 

If they take away(or leave it in) death decay I'm gonna play less, no I'm gonna play way less...no I'm gonna only play on mondays, no I'm gonna stop playing for a week, no I'm gonna stop!! I'm gonna uninstall the GAME, NO I'm gonna delete my account!!! no I'm gonna throw the computer that used to play the game in the trash!!! no I'm gonna remove the room of my house that I used to play that game in. No, I'm gonna literally just sell the house and buy a house without a SOTA playing room!!! No I'm gonna LEAVE the state and go live somewhere else. No I'lll literally MOVE out of the USA to a country that doesnt' have internet!!!

or I'll login and keep playing...seriously the sky isnt' falling the game will roll on just fine with or without decay. Its doing nothing to help the game today and its not needed. I predict Chris, as a reasonable person, gives in on this, sees the light and just removes it. maybe even tomorrow. I wont believe anyone that claims they left cause of decay removal any more than I believe the folks that claim they left cause of decay.....if the game is otherwise good decay just isn't a reason to stay/go. Neither decision to keep or remove is the sky falling.

 

I'll take double the xp penalty on death (maybe triple) if it means I don't take equipment damage.

Getting xp back isn't bad because killing things is fun (at least to me).

On the other hand, mining countless ore and playing the crafting lottery game isn't fun to me.

So if there's going to be a penalty, I'd rather it be doing something I like more.

 

I completely agree with this but unfortunately that is not the case in Sota
The rewards are the same no matter how much risk you have with it since all rewards are either fixed (xp) or RNG.

An adventure level 20 guy might be able to kill a troll, gain 3k xp (or whatever its worth) and 5000 value in loot and risk nothing since decay doesn't apply to low levels.
An adventure level 120 guy might kill a troll, gain the same 3k xp and only get 1,000 value in loot while risking 3m xp.

 

I don't use enchanted/masterworked gear. However, it takes a very long time to collect enough beetle carapace to make a suit of hardened leather. Magnitudes longer than it takes to recover that 30k experience. And that's only one component.

 

No its not fixed, its based on Difficulty level of the zone ( Skulls )

You take higher risk going into a 5 skull zone than you do a 3 skull zone, and the rewards are greater.

Oh, and not to mention that 3k XP is ALOT more to a level 20 than it is to a level 120 character.

Even with all this said, that was not the point i made when i said risk vs reward.

If we want to REMOVE the risk of adventuring, say fighting a dragon has ZERO risk, you will not lose anything no matter how many times you die.... You realise that the Reward need to be lowered to match the risk involved, yes?

 

Reward for boss killing is already pretty low. The risk vs. reward argument isn't really applicable when you kill 100 bosses - any of which could easily kill you - and get less to show for it than you'd have if you spent same amount of time killing mobs in one of the outskirts scenes.

The way things are currently balanced -

It isn't about risking XP for reward,
its about paying XP to play non-trivial content, which may or may not be rewarding but most likely not.

That's my issue with it.

But we can't have better rewards, because people steamrollfarm.
So gotta attack this from other side.

 

Fair enough, i see your point, i just don't agree with it.

I will continue to compare this to WoW ( Since we can call WoW many bad things, but we can't deny the success that it is )

Bare with me a little:

A raid in WoW Takes X amount of time, usually with little to no reward. Lets say it takes 4 hours ( In reality its usually much more )
In order to have a chance for a reward, you need to spend a minimum of 4 hours, but there are no other penalties for dying. Once you have completed the raid you can't do it again until next week.

Moving over to Sota, lets say we have a raid here currently.. Ehh... A massive super duper dragon. Now, we say this takes 30 minutes to complete. You can do it as many times as you wish, over and over and over for the same chance of rewards, no limits. But it has a drawback, if you die you lose XP worth of 15 minutes of farming UT. If we then say that you kill 10 dragons, but die 6 times. You will have "lost" 3 hours that it takes to farm the XP back that you lost... and the time that it took to kill the dragons, you are roughly at the same amount of time spent, just in Sota you have killed the dragon 10 times, in the same time that you could kill one boss in WoW.

NOW, here is the catch you say; what if you spend 4 hours on a wow boss and get nothing compared to trying to kill dragons in sota but failing just dying 6 times?? Yes, its still "only" time that you lose.

In the end, every game EVER, especially the most successfull ones have:
LIMITATIONS
or
MASSIVE RISKS

Anyone who think that Sota will survive having no limitations, little to no risk, but at the same time be rewarding, im sorry but you are extremely delucional. I do not say this to be aggressive, or mean, but that will not work, and i have more faith in the developers to safely say that it will not happen.

 

The point I was making was that I risked over 1m xp killing Avara the other day and got 14 gold and a shovel.
A few hours later my alt killed a bandit, risked roughly 20k xp and got 30 gold, a rusty spoon and a recall scroll.
Risk vs Reward doesn't work when you are constantly up against the RNG

 

I would argue that a shovel is much more useful than a rusty spoon, Toon A clearly got the better loot.

 

1st
-Risk: The potential to lose something of value.-

I hear people keep talking about losing real life time, this is the entire paradigm of the game, everything costs time. The whole point of the game is to give you something entertaining to do with your time, it's a time sink for life. Otherwise you would just login, open your loot chests look at your cool new gear, spend your daily 10m exp with the click of a button and then logoff becuase you're done for the day. And then people would complain that you cant get all the experience you were gonna gain over the life of the game in one sitting and that's a time sink.

2nd
Let's say people did use the more medium level of gear becuase gear decay was much faster, well then you could sell that gear instead of just throwing it in the trash or trying to salvage 10 meteoric swords for maybe 1 blade back.

 

Clearly you are more interested in arguing than having a discussion on the matter. In which case you win, I give up.