Just noticed Decay for the first time

Yea I hadn't really even considered the *base* time to play. You can more/less avoid hitching by just shutting down the client and restarting it every few hours. Sucks donkey balls for sure and here's to praying to Raptor Jesus (Aka @Chris) that hitching will be vastly minimized on the 29th.

 

I generally do restart my client but sometimes I do it too late... I try to squeeze just a few more kills in and then get a full re spawn.

 

Considering i'm at level 102 and a death is roughly 20 minutes of grind, that's quite an assumption to begin with! And yes, if you die exactly once each day, per playing session, then obviously you'll get more decay. Again, that's quite a worse case scenario assumption. To counter that effect, only half your decay is applied on death as of R42 and starting R43, the free daily XP will also compensate most, if not all of it (and the rest is free XP) for all but the high level players. Those super worst case scenarios are what I consider hedge cases and they're tweaking it to adjust for those while still keeping the core system intact. Seems pretty balanced to me.

 

Perhaps the potential loss could be displayed differently. Take the following sample that might show up whenever the XP reserve is so low that the death penalty will take XP from skills. There is a bar that displays the XP pool relative to the death penalty. No actual numbers are even needed. It is pretty simple to understand I think. If the XP pool is sufficiently large (no red in bar), then there is no risk of losing skills.

 

This is such a great argument against Decay. The penalty for death should not be decay, as you say players do not enjoy losing their progress,or at least have an option to gain some back in some way. I played Vanguard Saga of Heroes and xp loss was sooooo extremely high at death but they did have counters for it. This is one thing missing with Decay if we must have it. Decay actually is not the funnest system death could have had for this game, but well death is not fun any time but the system could be more fun and interesting to work through for players, like finding your body would grant some xp back type of thing.

 

20 minutes to recoup half your death, in a safe zone where you obviously not risking death very often?

Again. I can easily not die as well.. But you cant deny that its a factor when deciding in doing riskier/higher end/group content. And your right. I can recoup my death decay in about 15-20 minutes in my good grind spot. But this just promotes back to the idea, that anytime i do something unique or different, and i end up dieing, it now means traveling back and farming that same old safe spot for max exp.

And that 15-20 min is no big deal for me or you. As im sure you play long sessions. That 20 min becomes quite a big deal if you putting in less time in your sessions. And that time to recoup only grows.
Meaning its hurting the casual player more then the *hardcore* as they will just play through it right? ( Trihigger explains it a lot better above.)

Like i said 100x before.
If i didnt play sota in 2-4 hour sessions, i wouldnt play it at all.

And the sheer fact that decay doesnt effect ME or YOU nearly enough to effect our actual character growth, does not change the fact that the mechanic is essentially bad for the game overall. As it quite CLEARLY turns people off from adventuring, grouping right down to playing at all, as proven by numerous posts in this forum, and i know from my own personal experiance.

I just see it as another Annoying mechanic mistaken for *complexity*

 

@Zapatos80 You're 100% correct that 2 hours, right now, is a hedge case. My question though is what about in a few months? 6 Months? A year? How many more players will fall into these currently *extreme* cases? This is also assuming we retain our current experience amounts which if we look back... well that's not the safest assumption since probably the thing nerfed most often outside of Taming has been high exp spots.

Also... dude wtf you grindin that you're getting THAT much experience?! Hook a brother up!! I'm only level 82 and it takes me about 10-15 minutes to recoup a death (usually partially due to slow ass spawn rate of the mobs I want).

 

Well, that's a big leap in conclusion there... that's not what I meant.

I know SOTA is a niche game, but there are certain things that may displease even the niche players SOTA is aiming at. I think this system may be one of those things.

By the way, I'm not entirely against it.
I'm just saying there may be alternatives. And if the system has caused so much controversy it might be worth exploring some other idea to achieve the same goal without displeasing so many people.

 

Agree with most of this. Just want to point out that the other poll shows there is no majority on this, so the majority card cannot be played as a reason.

 

One could argue that at level 150 or whatever ridiculous level you'd need to be to lose this much, the system in place is in place to curb exactly the people at your power level

I usually farm sieges chasing down cabalists. Decay never stopped me from trying to take 3 at them at once or any other difficult content, even though I die occasionally. It's a minor setback.[/user]

 

I'd just like to point out that the poll doesn't include prospective players or likely players that have already quit and moved on. Granted the same could be said for new arrivals but judging by our current population and what seems like a vast outpouring of examples of struggles to get people to play the game... I'd wager the former outweigh the latter. Do we get a majority? Who knows.

 

Assuming we both die at the same frequency (say once per 5 hours of play), whether you play in 1 hour sessions or 5 hour sessions doesn't change anything in terms of overall progression. You will only die once per 5 sessions whereas I will die every play session.

 

To be fair, every release they are tweaking it better and better. I happen to be part of the camp that thinks the base system is solid and that the polish they're putting in every release only makes it better for everyone, especially the hedge cases. I guess i'm just a general optimist

 

Exactly correct. Hence claiming to know anything about a majority is blowing smoke derailing the conversation.

 

Mmm yea takes me about 20 minutes to clear a siege if it's a lich. Most cabalists are lolnope. ~100k experience or so if I'm pvp flagged for doing it I think.

 

lol a round and a round we go.

 

They're a total waste of time for XP, but the loot pinata chance is always fun

The only one I can't kill is Avara. Nefario is usually not worth the time either. The rest of them are pretty fun though.

 

So true, but it fun to watch a sparring match. At least of the fighters tagging in and out here and there.
There are lots of great perspectives. It is just not a winnable argument for anyone.

 

Hey, at least it's a topic that invokes passion, which means there are lots of people passionate about the game. Silver lining

 

Exactly.
In no way will everyone agree on this, but it is good to get the perspectives of both groups.

Im 100% against it. Zaptos is 100% for it for example. He feels its ignorable and adds challenge. I feel it decreases group play and enjoyment, and doesnt accomplish its goal of limiting high end players anyways.

Same as every decay thread that has come up.

My main concern is im personally seeing more and more players drop out from SOTA and Decay is on their list of reasons. So for the benifit OF SOTA, i think its important for these topics to keep coming up, as long as development is still changing.