XP changes, death matters?

Jesper's ramblings on consequences.

With the lifting of the attenuation cap. Is there any player interest or desire by catnip to bring back some kind of death penalty? It wont hurt as much to grind back XP now that we aren't limited to 15 minutes an hour of grind time.

This would also allow Atos to not sweat as much about how much xp we are all getting knowing that player skill assuredly factors into XP gains. Gives the players more risk / reward feeling for their play time.

Perhaps use a vetting system for XP. XP gains would take 24 hours to lock in. if you die w/in that 24 hours you lose x% xp. Make death penalty a debuff that stacks and lasts longer. Each stack adds some factor to the x. 1% 2% 3%. for example. that would mean if you do 30m xp / day 1 death would run 300k, not terrible but enough to make you wince. especially if you get to that 1m XP range for a death.

A stacking death penalty debuff would work as a sort of reverse attenuation too. if someone suffers too many deaths they may not want to risk dying again until the debuff expires and choose to sit out of pve or go to an easier less rewarding area for the hour or two it takes to wear off.

-Jesper

*ducks and watches for aerial rotten vegetables*

 

I would say there will be never ever be a exp-death-penalty again in SotA as there are a lot of avatars against any kind of losing something.
As far as I understood the original decay mechanic it was not meant as some evil punishment…instead as some balance of avatars lvls. Every casual avatar would e.g. stay around adv. lvl 120 and just avatars with more dedication could raise and keep their lvl above that indirect border. This way all end content would have been made challenging for avatars around lvl 120. With the next episode this indirect lvl border could raise as the new content would offer more exp and by playing the new contend casuals could raise and keep a higher level before again loss and gain reach a balance.
I personally would wish too that death matters...that you should think twice and try to avoid death...but I do not see there any possibility of implementation that is not creating what @Cordelayne is showing.

 

While i thought XP decay was fine, Grinding for XP is the thing most people in shroud who fight stuff want to do the most.

There are some games that used it successfully but its presented in such a way that it can be avoided with effort.

It wont work here tho anymore if its recoverable or not mostly because of the stigma attatched to it. I think losing items you accumulated within the scene you are in would be a good death penalty but alot of people use party mechanics to transition scenes quickly to avoid respawn mechanics so that wouldnt work either. I think a great option for a death penalty would be a life limit, like old platformers used to have. 3 deaths in the same scene and you're out. You get sent back to your recall point and take gear damage and 5 min stat loss.

In PvP res killing is an issue even with the brief invulnerability so i wouldnt apply it there.

 

As a filthy casual, I will admit that any talk of an xp hit on death does make me want to pick up my torch and pitchfork.

However, I am not against a timed debuff that would stack after multiple deaths, but capped at like 4 stacked debuffs; lasting no longer than ten minutes. I wrote a whole post about this years ago somewhere deep within the forum caverns here.

Still, I like how things are now best!

 

I can help coordinate a great death penalty for those who want more of a challenge. Every time you die just mail some gold to Adam Crow. Send however much you think is fair.

If you did something really dumb and that's why you died, send a large sum of gold. If it wasn't really your fault you died, maybe just send a little bit. I'll leave it up to you to determine how much to send.

This way everyone is happy Those of you that don't want a death penalty don't lose a dime. Those of you that do, lose a fair amount of gold on each death. And I get more gold. Win for everyone

(Also if you want a death penalty and you don't like me - each time you die just go into your inventory and destroy an item of your choosing.)

 

There are many ways death could be made meaningful - setting people back hours/days of progress is not the only solution, and it was never a good one - it was only discouraging people from doing anything that wasn't trivial because there was such a significant cost to attempt it. Penalizing future gains (such as XP debt) would effectively achieve the same goal without causing the frustration of going backwards or messing about with people's skills but there has to be a limit on it - this 'scaling with adventure level' only results in punishing people who either a) grind hard or b) play casually, but have been playing for many, many years. The grind-harders probably wont be that bothered, but issuing a blanket punishment to loyal players who've stuck with game for years to get where they are, and having death cost them the equivalent of a month's active playtime, is not going to go down well. They'll simply not play. I personally don't want to go back to the days where nobody tries anything difficult, nobody helps anyone out, and you find the hardest thing you can kill with zero risk and just grind it forever. While I agree death should sting, and should be something we all try to avoid, it should inconvenience players more or less equally regardless of how long they've been playing, and shouldn't be so severe that it disincentives trying something challenging; having a maximum amount of possible xp debt, for example, would at least stop the bleeding if you decided to go try something stupid, and you'd know up front what doing so would cost you.

 

Personally, I would like death to matter as it adds a whole new dynamic to risk vs reward in games but I understand people don’t like to lose their stuff including XP so it will probably never be re-introduced.

However, I think it would be great to have a scaling system where XP loss on death is a thing depending on the scene you adventure in. A starter scene for example would get no XP loss but an endgame high level scene would, this way new and lower level players aren’t penalised, and risk vs reward is respected at higher levels.

 

Personally, if I died and was resurrected too many times in a relatively short span of time then it makes sense to me that I'll learn slower for some duration after.

But rez killing in PvP needs to be addressed somehow because I can imagine a newbie trying PvP getting repeatedly ganked, switching to PvE, learning gkacially slow - then never coming back.

 

Personally I'd hate it. I have limited play time and don't want to be held back because I either died stupidly by falling or got overwhelmed by mobs on accident.

 

I don't agree that we should give death penalty again in this game. It took forever to get it removed as it is. We don't need the punishment here. We definitely do need an achievement system implemented that covers everything like rewarded for deaths and not dying. Project Gorgon for example rewards you for dying and probably for not dying. I'm not sure of all of their achievements but as an example lets get achievements for death and living and everything to make things interesting.

 

Personally... ah, I got nothin'. I just wanted to fit in.

 

Yea my thought would be a 5-15 minute penalty depending on how many times you've died. nothing like the month of work that could be lost on one death that used to occur, hence the idea behind unvetted XP being risked on death only. But sounds like more people are against the idea of a death penalty than are for it anyway.

 

I think you're right. Nobody has sent me any gold yet.

 

lol....

might as well be suggesting increased durability damage... every item lasts only 50 hits ;p

 

Absolutely no more Death Taxes!!!!!!!

 

That's what I need in my escapist activities, more consequences.