Decay has indeed been removed

I'm aware of that. See the definition of superseded. The complete removal of decay mechanics was in a standup corner note.

 

Port will now start giving out participation trophies!!

 

AKA Achievements!

 

I don't like being forced to participate, this isn't fair, this is punishing me for not logging in to play. As a QOL issue they should automate my toon and give me rewards which they email me so I don't have to log in. If they don't do this ima gonna quit 4sure.

 

I think attenuation or blocking XP gain completely for 5-10 minutes would at least be a start.

 

The funny thing is that decay wasn't applied in either of those cases.

 

Mechanisms like this only discourage players from playing until the timer has expired. Decay was different in that it encouraged you to make up for that loss.

 

Was that perhaps the worst thing about decay? That many people not only did not know how much they lost on death (as opposed to the people with 100+ GMs), but also that people didn't know it was never applied in town areas? (But if it did, it was a bug that should be reported.)

It's a reason to not repeatedly run full Leeeroy into death, while avoiding the problem of "Waah, I lost half a million XP just because I slipped off a rock!" It would be 5-10 minutes for everyone, not everyone except the 100+ GM crowd who have their recovery time limited by attenuation.

In addition to XP loss, FFXI had a 5 minute "weakness", which was much worse than merely blocking XP gain, and it was hard to avoid or reduce. Now that was a real pain in the ass if you died.

 

If you were leveled enough to loose half a million XP on the first death then you definitely knew exactly how and where that XP went.

 

I still don't understand why you have a problem with simply "blocking XP gain" for a few minutes. It doesn't take away anything you already have, nor does it take away your ability to get loot, it just pauses your XP for a few minutes. If it instead made you have half the HP/focus and half your effective skill levels for five minutes, you would really be unhappy.

 

Look at the date on that, it was from April. Clearly it was an idea that didn't go anywhere. It was "Fixed" by removing decay entirely.

 

Pretty sure if you AFK'd in the wrong location in an adventuring scene and were killed by an NPC, you lost XP. So it does seem to apply in the first case... It certainly happened to me before (I was behind an entrance gate, but something found a way to hit me there).

 

Because it discourages people from playing until the timer expires, which is the opposite of what decay did.

 

Wrecking the game? Lol, the "no punishment" isn't even off of QA yet.

And I actually disagree that there's "no punishment" - you fight your way through the dungeon to the boss, and spend time fighting that boss -and die. Not only have you wasted time which you could have spent more lucratively, your gear has taken a massive beating for absolutely no payout. At the rates gear is decaying now when monsters breathe on you, that is hardly insignificant. Learning a good strategy, and doing things efficiently is a point of pride.

Healer doesn't care? Don't group with them, get someone who does care. I reject the idea that without a severe punishment everyone will just become stupid.

If you die, you're out of the fight until rezzed and come back weak and unbuffed.
If you're alone, you have to ankh run and there is a small rez penalty associated with that.

The main objection to decay has always been that it wastes players time, forcing them to repeat boring/trivial grind content just go get back where they were before the death. The thing is, dying already wastes players time - because you don't accomplish what you've set out to do.. Now it will just waste less of it.

I don't object to there being some sort of death penalty - like, halting all xp gains, or having some sort of cash sink. I don't think most players would have a problem with a reasonable penalty. Hours of re-grind was not acceptable and was not sustainable as the average player level continued to rise. It was a bad system from the beginning because you have the level 80 player who doesn't care, whose death has no penalty whatsoever, and the level 110 player who has just negated everything they've done that day. With 'always double' and zones like UT we've just arrived much faster at the breaking point for decay. It is probably the most argued about feature of the game. The devs have made the decision, after nearly 2 years of punishing players with this, to remove it.

They have said it will be replaced with something else. I'm still very concerned about "what". Gear damage will absolutely be a worse scenario, due to the rng mechanics of craffting. Trashing a piece of gear it took weeks (not hours, WEEKS) of grinding materials to achieve? "Oh but it will help crafters." It wont, nobody will wear nice things, and since you don't lose XP anymore, no reason to wear your best. It would be quite possibly the worst thing they could do.

Don't get me wrong -I understand where the "punish me please" people are coming from, and I don't fundamentally disagree that death should sting. But that sting should sting all players equally and not punish players who've been loyal players of the game for longer, or players who take more pride in their character and take the time to farm materials for nicer gear. The only real currency in an MMO is player time, its what it all comes down to. If death needs to waste it, so be it. How much of it? I'd say absolutely not more than an hour, and I think that is already ridiculous. Its a GAME - if you wanna log on and sit in time out because you tried to do something challenging, that's fine, but I think most people have better things to do.

 

I died on QA and had no XP loss, so it seems to me the punishment is off (as far as decay goes). On equipment damage, armor seems to go down slowly. Weapons, however, take insane amounts of damage, and it doesn't appear to me that training up the passive to reduce weapon decay has any effect (nor does the obsidian potion seem to have any effect). I'm pretty sure there's a bug there, but @Chris never responded to my request to look into it in the last release cycle.

 

Difficulty is a talking point nothing more. First week of UO I had a guy spend 3 hours helping me out only to lure me outside town gut me and take everything I had and laugh at me. Back then I had 10 mins of grr then it was play smarter. I had to admire his commitment though. Then over time this changed because people couldn't move on because it requires effort. The last thing anyone wants is to put effort into something difficult because it's a game. It's a game it's meant to relax have fun. The majority will always want a more simple version the straight to go without the pitfalls of previous versions. You can complain you can cry but the number of folks who say decay is just to much will always win so wait two weeks and you will forget it was ever a problem. Heck I would wager most people won't even notice except for those super high level folks who drop millions of xp from a death. Even then I'm sure they have much bigger fish to fry. Novia will keep on spinning long after decay is an after thought.

 

You could bang your head on the desk each time you die. Leave the rest of us alone.

 

...sigh

 

I recognise that death, Ive done that one I also did the had to answer door type thing but was at entrance, died, and then had my backside camped by the nasty mobs when i auto rezed.. and died a few more times! maybe thats why Im not lvl 100 yet.. be 99 for ages..

 

They made UT [check mark done]!