Decay yay or nay?

yuup... I don't get a rush from losing XP, its actually more like a cold knife in the stomach, not exactly the same type of adrenalin.

Losing all my equipment if I don't get back to my body in time before the orc clan loots me clean, now thats a rush.

 

I remember playing EverQuest (the original), where one death would wipe out literally week's worth of XP (and possibly a level).
Oh yea, then running back nekid to to get your corpse and gear (even if it is in a dungeon surrounded by critters that ate you alive when you were completely armed and armored).

I don't miss any of that at all.

 

And how did Everquest do against their competitors that did not have exp loss? Wow, UO. There are games that tried this and failed miserably for it, until they finally changed. Some changed to late and never recovered.

 

Are you really trying to tell us that EQ failed because of XP loss and not for one of the myriad of other reasons?

 

I just read that black desert online has a worse death penalty than sota, is that true?

 

Yes
http://www.blackdeserttome.com/wiki/Death-Penalty
ArcheAge has xp loss too, but you can buy it back.

 

I also heard final fantasy XI had xp decay worse than SotA as well, im not sure how popular that game was tho. This is just stuff im reading.

Eve online’s skill decay worked that way too but they were also capped.

If you could spend a gold coto per 100k lost or something in place of the actual XP loss i wouldnt be opposed to that. Thats like $3 per death for the top few people. XP insurance in the form of obsidian magic that preserves memories beyond death or somethin

 

I have played games were it took us weeks to defeat a raid boss. We would wipe over and over again from one little mistake by someone standing in fire or some random mechanic. I can assure you, every one of those deaths/failures had meaning to us. I couldn't imagine getting what it would of been like loosing XP as well.

 

Umm... no are you really saying exp loss had a positive impact on that game?

 

Imo? I hadn't time to care with all the other crap. It waa just a failed game. XP loss might have been a part of it. But it for sure wasn't the only reason.

Beside,i am beyond careing if it comes to sota. I never had an issue with the skill loss and i still think the whole fuzz about it isn't worth the efford. But if it is so painful and makes the players happy, then by all means remove it.

 

If we ever get true group content the decay will really start to stink. I'm sure lots of people here have stories about having wipefests for weeks/months before cracking raids. Experience decay has 100% no role in hard(fun) raid content.

 

Perhaps, if its possible, they could make it that the higher level you are in a skill, the faster it trains? (Less EXP requirement?) Kind of like muscle retention.

 

decay, or, drop stuff on corpse and have to retrieve it

 

If anything there should probably be more decay in unused skills to stop everyone having everything and it being mandatory to grind all skills to get all benefits.

There is no real penalty to infinitely grinding all skills up except decay from what I can see. And it does make you significantly more powerful than someone who doesn't.

This 1/4 decay in mastery seems like a step in the right direction to me as a new player.

Obviously people who have ground up all skills to at least 80 and have GMs in 5 different trees will not agree but I am sorry to tell you that the resulting meta of such a system is pure bollocks. Excuse my language. Yes I will undoubtedly do it anyway and have my decay and eat it, but I dont think its a good system.

 

Decay is the death of tanks. Standing in front, losing duration of items because of hits and losing XP on death? Nope. As archer you can run whenever an escape is useful to survive, can slow down persecutors and run for the spot where mobs are heading back. Don't missunderstand me: decay is part of the design and if so desired by the designer it's ok but it reduces the role-diversity nevertheless.

 

A lot of things killed EQ but it was mainly Sony repeatedly making massively stupid business decisions. XP loss on death wasn't really a big deal since the game had a hard cap and you could fill that cap level with XP which would offset 4-5 deaths (considerably more as long as you got a high level rez from someone, which recovered a considerable portion of the loss). You had to have a really bad week to lose a level, which was where the cost was (because you lost the ability to use the skills for that level until you got it back).

For me the key difference in EQ was that you had a decent amount of time to figure out a fight wasn't going your way and choose to run. Here you're usually committed to ending up dead before you have a chance to figure that out, mainly due to the low health points structure overall. Yes, you cared about dying, but the game gave you very decent ways to manage staying alive while still being able to go do lots of things that included the chance of death.

Not talking about raids, talking about solo or small group stuff. Raids would fall apart and everyone would die because someone sneezed during the heal rotation.

But when we were doing small group stuff in EQ, you had time to tell everyone to run several times and actually run, and not die. You had lots of skill choices at any given time, which included stuff that would immobilize mobs long enough to run.

I still vividly remember solo fights where I knew it would be really close, decided to stick it out and won the fight with only a handful of hit points left. It was exhilarating and epic.

On the flip side, there was the time I put on auto run in a very large lowbie zone and went afk while running across it, and at some point bounced off a tree or something which turned my run direction slightly to the left while I was afk running, and I ran into the ocean, drowned, and then spent hours and hours scouring the ocean floor looking for my corpse to get my gear and backpack off it. Which taught me not to be flat-out stupid.

The thing that is missing most from this game, for me, is that big gray middle where mob encounters are tough and you have to pay attention to adds and positioning and everything else, and you have time to work it, and time to realize when you can't work it. EQ outdoor zones were easier and mobs were more sparse near the entrance, and progressively harder and denser as you worked in. And they were freakin' big, big, big zones. You had to figure out how to work them, and you had time and abilities to figure that out with, and to perform "noble retreats" when you approached something wrong or that was simply too hard.

I'm having fun playing SOTA, but XP decay or no xp decay won't fix that particular want for me, so I didn't vote.

 

I hate decay with every fiber of my being. It is my biggest source of agitation with Shroud and wish it were removed for good! Especially given the reason you stated above!