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My death penalty
Followthislogic
Member UncommonPosts: 28
Looking for some feedback the MMO I am working on you start with 2 skills and you use xp to purchase a higher level of one of them skills or to buy another skill, costs go up.
Anyway right now I have it set where you lose 1% for any xp that wasn't spent already also the cleric rez gives some xp back depending on level.
Do you guys think it should be higher or lower?
Comments
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Once upon a time....
How would we know? We're not psychic, so your points system remains a mystery known only to you.
It should be zero.
Most of the old games took away a certain percentage of the XP you had got since last level whenever you have died. Nothing new there even if your skill system is different (and can be rather interesting).
The problem with death penalties like this is that they just add some grinding, the only thing you loose is some time.
My favorite death penalty was a thing old Lineage got. It had a similar XP loss as well but the brilliant thing was that there was a chance (something around 10%) that you lost one of the items you had on you. If it wasn't a wipe your group could hopefully take care of it for you (even though we saw plenty of people who logged out after ninja looting the item). Otherwise it was lying there until a player or a mob passed by. Any close mob would loot it and add it to it's loot list.
That was perfect, it sent just the right amount of fear into the players, no suicidal run in good gear but if you lost something it wasn't enough to make you ragequit the game.
But XP losses is rather worthless, if you want people to grind for XP you might as well just add some XP to gain next level or skill. Dying in games like that is just annoying, you don't fear it but it adds to the grind.
It also can add some silly effects, like when a buddy jumped to his death at least 20 times in EQ2 to lower his XP so some quests still would give rewards (this was before you could lock your XP or lowering your level).
"cough" Perma death "cough" LOL
It's not really impossible without playing the game. You can set the parameters for the death penalty based on how challenging the gameplay is. Factor in your combat mechanics versus mob's combat mechanics. Then tweek it during testing. If a dev is aiming for a more challenging gameplay experience the death penalty will be harsh. If they're going for more of a hand holding gameplay experience it wouldn't be worth anything if they die.
For me more stricter death penalty creates "better" players per say. Because you're trying not to die because you know it will become a tedious endeavor when you do. For an example in Old EQ. CR's could be a royal pain in the backside because you could still die while on your CR. You'd loose XP and potentially loose levels. If you didn't rez your corpse in time you loose all of your inventory. So wiping on games like that made the players a bit more serious versus games that don't have a harsh death penalty at all.
I also want to give an example for the death penalty I have decided to use more or less for the mmo I am designing as well. I don't want a hand holding death penalty nor do I want an extreme one. I am aiming for a middle ground where it's just enough to take it serious to actually care about not wiping.
MY DEATH PENALTY MECHANIC
Loss of experience should be scaled within the level of the character and the mob they are fighting or environmental death. Here is an example of character to mob scaling.
- If you die from a target that is within the same level from 1-3 levels of you, you will loose 7% experience.
- If you die from target that is within 3-6 levels of you, you will loose 5% experience
- If you die from a target that is 7-10+ levels of you, you will loose 3% experience.
- If you die from environment, you will loose a static of 5% experience.
- Loss of experience happens after you reach level 15.
As you can see, you will loose more experience for mobs that are within your level range. Why? Because your at their correspond discipline level. The fights are balanced. You loose less experience when you die from higher levels mobs. This is to because your "level of discipline" is not equal to their discipline. It's like saying you are on the discipline level of Bruce Lee in which you have an equal chance at a victory? Absolutely not. I believe if experience loss is valued as a death penalty it needs to be fair in a pve standpoint.
Another attribute that is taken into consideration is a cap of experience loss.
- Loss of experience will cease once you accumulate 100% death experience lost.
- To accumulate to that 100% interval, the percentage will add every time you die based on the character to mob scaling ratio.
- Example: You die from a mob that is within 2 levels of you, then 1 level of you, then 6 levels of you, then 10 levels of you all in a row. How much experience have you accumulated? To figure this out, the computer will add the static amount of xp loss per level of mob which will equal to the sum.
2 levels within you = 7% xp loss -- 1 level of you = 7% xp loss -- 6 levels from you = 5% xp loss -- 10 levels from you = 3% xp loss. By this process a player has accumulated 22% death experience lost. This means you have 78% experience to loose until it's capped.
- Also, once you have capped out with 100% death experience lost, that would probably equal out to loosing one level. Essentially this means you can't loose more than one level.
I also think item durability should also play a role into a death penalty, but only in a minute form.
So what happens when you have capped to 100%? I would propose the last line of penalties should increase the value of durability taken from hits by double. Meaning your armor will break twice as fast.
As you can see the death penalty I have proposed is somewhere in the middle of the road to a harsh death penalty. With this in mind it will encourage players to take the game seriously as well as others in the group. I took the game seriously when playing EQ and wanted the same mind set for players in my game as well.
Asheron's Call death penalty.
Lost experience upon death. Loss of a number of items depending on level of avatar. The higher your level the greater the loss in XP and items. Lost experience is put into a pool and is earned back while also gaining XP by the normal methods. Lost XP can't de-level your skills. The game money (pyreal) value weighed heavily on which items were lost upon death but it was still possible to lose any unbound equipment. People carried high value low weight death items and hoped they didn't die too often to run out of death items.
Corpse runs. Corpses decay with items if not recovered in time. The higher your level the more time you have to recover your bodies. Lost items recovered from corpse.
It all depends on where/how you die.
Death due to falling off a cliff shouldn't result in a loss of XP.
Death due to rushing into a pack of mobs should result in a loss of XP.
Death due to being ganked by a high level player should result in the loss of XP to the higher level player.
Death due to being ganked by a low level player should result in the gain of XP to the lower level player.
Death due to a dungeon/raid/world boss encounter should result in a resurrection timer. The more times you die in the encounter, the longer you have to wait to resurrect, eventually reaching the point of a lockout. Healers cannot resurrect the dead, they can only prevent death through heals. If the player dies, the resurrection timer kicks in. In other words, dying makes you a liability and also makes the role of the healer that much more important if you wish to continue with a full group/raid compliment. Note that groups that are not in a dungeon/raid/world boss encounter are subject to XP loss. Groups within a dungeon/raid/world boss encounter are not subject to XP loss, just a resurrection timer, but they do gain XP for killing mobs et al.
The loss of XP due to death should be severe enough as to make you think twice about going all rambo. It should encourage them to only do mobs that are within the realm of their level and to form groups for mobs that are tightly packed together or use some strategy. If you gain 5000 XP from killing a rat but only lose 2% of that if you die trying, it's not much of a deterrent now is it? There should be a very real possibility that you can revert back to level one in short order if you don't get your head out of your ass. Remember, you will be a liability if you die in dungeons/raids/world bosses if you die... this should be pounded into their skulls from level 1 onward with a friendly reminder that in the real world, death is not a good thing.
I think the % relies on how much time it takes between levels. For example:
If 1% = killing 1 MOB at level....well, then that 1% seems rather pointless.
If 1% = killing 100 MOBs at level, then its obviously more of time sink.
There needs to be some kind of time/work/relative factor to measure the % against to understand.
~I am Many~
I disagree to a point. With Anarchy Online experience went into a pool when I played. I know they messed with the death system some before that. I am not sure how it worked before anymore. Anyway. The xp pool would then trickle back in through normal leveling. Up to a certain point/level range it would actually feel like it made the leveling process faster because of the slow trickle. It added a decent experience bonus in a sense. Then you had crat buffs experience buffs and all that jaz. While it was a grind it definitely wasn't any worse in that system. One could say death was beneficial once in awhile.
I have it set now where mobs give 1 to 100xp depending on difficulty.
Starts with 2 free skills and then the first skill costs 100xp and to level that skill or get a new skill it keeps going up 50% but once it's leveled you can't lose the skill and the penalty is on what you have saved up. Each skill is capped at 50 You can get xp for turn in items to certain NPCs and you can buy xp through training with in game gold to help people that only want to craft level skills.
But I like a lot of these posts and going to think more about it.
I never played AC but I think my system sounds most like that so will check into exactly what they did
Assuming that the xp loss when dying isn't small enough to be irrelevant and actually has some affect on how player play, won't it cause your players to take large risks when they have just bought a new skill (= very little xp lost on death), and then avoid risks when they are close to getting new skill level (= large number of xp lost on death).
Combined to turning in certain items or gold in exchange for xp, won't it cause player to manage their resources and xp in order to minimize xp lost on death.
I think your way of building up xp loss mechanism is stupid. EDIT: Except possibly if you give players some bonus power when they have a lot of xp unspent. That way they could play risk vs. reward. /EDIT
Good point thinking about just doing debt xp something like 10 times the xp of the mob that kills you. From what other people in this thread said.
You can get rid of ninjaing by using the wow LFR loot system or the D3 loot system where each player rolls their own loot and other players cannot even see the loot, not to mention ninja-ing it.
Yeah I was talking about not letting people loot one item off your corpse when you die since my game has no pvp