Death Penalty

Adamantine

From the official Forum, subforum General Pantheon Discussion:

[email protected] said at October 13, 2015 6:25 AM PDT in "How much should devs worry about your emotions?":

It's all about finding the right balance. Most of the people on the forums are old school EQ/VG players and want a chanllenge, but that won't be true for everyone. If you make it too punishing you risk running off part of the player base. "Good, this game isn't for them" isn't really the best attitude in that regard. Even a great game sucks when there is no one around to play it with.

So - it seems that the death penalty isnt what some people here still think. Apparently its still a matter of discussion how exactly it will look like.

I agree with the initial assertion of the post - that death penalty is about the right balance.

I do not agree that the problem is people leaving the game.

I think the real problem is that if death penalty is too strict, people will never take risks.

I played Lineage 2 once, when that game was still relatively new, before Vanguard came out. Back then, at high level a single death could result in people needing to kill mobs for SIX HOURS just to get their xp back. Thats TOO harsh. Nobody wanted to die, ever. Everyone attempted to avoid death at all costs. Everyone played it safe. Everyone farmed mobs that would be light green - i.e. substantly below ones level, right before turning gray and not giving xp or items anymore at all, and not a challenge at all. Mind, Lineage 2 also has deleveling, too.

I think Vanguard had a pretty good balance. Death mattered, but it wasnt the end of the world. There was no deleveling. There was a good incentive for doing a corpse run - you would get xp back. But you could also summon your gear. It would take a damage hit and require repairs.

The main issue with Vanguard was that everything you would wear was soulbound, so there was no such thing as a "naked corpserun" in the first place. I hope they come up with a better solution to that with Pantheon.

Sinist

His argument isn't new though. I have seen this same argument in every game that purposed a harsh death penalty. They end up catering to this argument and then the old school base moves on. I have seen it with every game.

The key here to this game is that there are no games out there that serve the old school market. There are numerous games out there that serve that posters wants. If we appeal to him, again, as we have in the past, we end up with yet another game designed for him to which none of the old schoolers want to play. I have seen it over and over again. They claim the game won't work unless it caters to his demands, but here is the thing, we don't know because there hasn't been any games out there trying to hold to the old EQ style of play.

EQ had a great system and it worked well for many years.

1. Lose your corpse (all items on the corpse).
2. An exp penalty that was roughly 1/4 -1/3 of the level.

This was a problem, but... it provided game play solutions.

For number (1), you had necromancers who could summon the corpse. You had monks/SKs/Necromancers who could FD flop the corpses back to the player. You had rogues who could sneak and recover the corpses. You has classes who with invis could also recover the corpses. You even had warriors who would throw on a couple buffs and train back to get the corpses in some cases.

So, there were options for play. This was an element that promoted social play and class interdependence.

As for (2), making the Exp wasn't too bad as again, you had tools. If you had to make that much exp back without any help, it might be a bit rough, it might take your a few hours or more. Some classes did better than others because they could solo easier, so they got a lot of exp from it. The tools you had were classes that could rez you with exp reduction spells. The early levels the rez spells gave less return than the higher level spells. You might for instance only get a 90% back on your lower levels, but up to a 97% on your high level spells. Making back the exp on a 97% took maybe 30 mins or so. It wasn't bad at all.

Two simple things that provide many subtle elements of player and class reliance. When you add conveniences, you remove these elements of social play and game depth. This is what is missing in today's games. If they are going to keep appealing to mainstream features, then there is no point to this game, might as well not bother with it, we already have a plethora of "convenience" games on the market already that apparently people aren't interested in playing, but hey... if we don't make yet another one like them, it will fail. /boggle

Sinist

Keep in mind this as well. Games today are consumed in a matter of weeks. This is the failure of the current MMO market. Every element of convenience you put into the game so people can speed up their journey to the end is an element that harms the long term play of the game, invalidates the effort and time spent in producing that content. EQ took many months to get to cap and it was because EXP was extremely slow and too many losses resulted in a lot of work to make up the loss.

As for people not taking risks because of the penalties? Welcome to EQ. There was always people willing to take the risk, why? Because the rewards were worth it. We are talking about games where just being able to get back into a deep dungeon was a feat, being able to hold a camp, etc... The name of the game was Risk/Reward and the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.

Sure, there were some who would only do easy content, only camp easy mobs and only group with the "perfect" group or require a "rez" class. I knew many of those players in EQ, they were often found sitting at the zone line LFG while the rest of us were taking big risks, and sometimes having those pay off big time. A hundred fails are made up with a single great success (I played a monk in EQ, I died more than any other class exponentially AND I couldn't solo worth a darn). This is what made EQ such an addictive game and this is why games today are just mundane activities for the bored.