No. Never.
I am all for choice and consequence, harsh penalties and punishments, but a punishment should never be one where you can not repair it. Corpse decay was a side effect of technology, not a game feature.
That is not to say that such systems are bad, but they aren't good for long term cRPG development. They are better suited for Rogue like systems where the entire game is centered around that concept and tuned to provide for it.
Spending weeks to camp for an item only to have it disappear because you didn't get to your corpse in time isn't a proper balance of risk vs reward.
It depends on what remains on our corpse. If it's XP rather than gear (something VR has suggested as a consideration) then corpse decay is something I would like to see. I think it would be a fun mechanic to play around since it would create a sense of urgency for players to recover their corpse before it decays but they wouldn't be absolutely crippled if it isn't possible. Hopefully it's something we can experiment with in Beta.
oneADseven said:It depends on what remains on our corpse. If it's XP rather than gear (something VR has suggested as a consideration) then corpse decay is something I would like to see. I think it would be a fun mechanic to play around since it would create a sense of urgency for players to recover their corpse before it decays but they wouldn't be absolutely crippled if it isn't possible. Hopefully it's something we can experiment with in Beta.
the faster u can recover your body the less the exp loss will be?
If there are no items/money on a corpse I see no issue with letting it decay. As far as exp rez's I'd assume there would be a timer, so if you're not rez'd in say 2 hours you lose the exp. Time delay can be longer. Also each corpse can only be rez'd once so this prevents people from leaving corpses around the world to operate as a porting system.
Items should remain on the corpse, otherwise there is no point. EXP alone isn't enough of a penalty regardless if the corpse disappears or not. There were many a nights where I didn't have the time and I just ate the exp loss (ie it was a recovery attempt corpse that had no gear on it). EXP loss is not a good balancer alone. Forcing the player to go back to their corpse and retrieve their items is the only way to balance out the process. If you feel comfortable with never getting the corpse, then the penalty is not severe enough.
Tanix said:Items should remain on the corpse, otherwise there is no point. EXP alone isn't enough of a penalty regardless if the corpse disappears or not. There were many a nights where I didn't have the time and I just ate the exp loss (ie it was a recovery attempt corpse that had no gear on it). EXP loss is not a good balancer alone. Forcing the player to go back to their corpse and retrieve their items is the only way to balance out the process. If you feel comfortable with never getting the corpse, then the penalty is not severe enough.
Oh no I agree with that. However I know people would loot everything but their copper off a corpse and wait for a rez... it would never come and 6 weeks later you'd see a corpse on the ground with something like 10 copper on it.
EppE said:Tanix said:Items should remain on the corpse, otherwise there is no point. EXP alone isn't enough of a penalty regardless if the corpse disappears or not. There were many a nights where I didn't have the time and I just ate the exp loss (ie it was a recovery attempt corpse that had no gear on it). EXP loss is not a good balancer alone. Forcing the player to go back to their corpse and retrieve their items is the only way to balance out the process. If you feel comfortable with never getting the corpse, then the penalty is not severe enough.
Oh no I agree with that. However I know people would loot everything but their copper off a corpse and wait for a rez... it would never come and 6 weeks later you'd see a corpse on the ground with something like 10 copper on it.
Onn that point, I agree... yes, there should be a "decay" time to a corpse in those special cases. My only concern is to avoid a person losing their items through an honest situation. I am all for figuring out a way to make sure the gimmicks of "coin" tricks don't work.
something cool to see for corpses would be effects of what killed them. So if a party was wiped out from teeth and claw monsters you would see slashing wounds all over the bodies or if you enter a room where a Lich wiped out the party maybe see their body rottening from disease or burns from fireballs. Then add stages to the effects to show the passage of time. Maybe a burned body gets more blackend as time passes.
Something fun for the art department.
stellarmind said:the faster u can recover your body the less the exp loss will be?
I don't know if it should necessarily work like that. I think it would be reasonable if there is a flat amount of XP on the corpse and it's all or nothing. If you get back to your corpse before it decays you can have that XP restored. If it decays, it's gone forever. This, of course, would be in addition to non-recoverable XP loss that would occur whenever someone dies that isn't tied into a corpse at all.
Sunglare said:something cool to see for corpses would be effects of what killed them. So if a party was wiped out from teeth and claw monsters you would see slashing wounds all over the bodies or if you enter a room where a Lich wiped out the party maybe see their body rottening from disease or burns from fireballs. Then add stages to the effects to show the passage of time. Maybe a burned body gets more blackend as time passes.
Something fun for the art department.
oh my~ that's some rated r talk there you kink~
Corpse decay is inevitably tied to the larger issue of the consequences for death are handled. Like many, I want death to matter. I will be unhappy if there is no XP loss or risk to ones gear as a consequence of dying. Having said that, I do think there is way to provide mechanisms that are a fair tradeoff between risk and reward that fall between "you respawn with all your gear at a nearby spawn point" and "you spawn naked on the otherwisde of the world with no way to fight your way back to your corpse". I know Quality of Life mechanisms are unpopular, but I think there are ways to create reasonable risk vs. reward, such as hiring an NPC corpse recorvery service as a money sink. Is it worth X play hours of farming to take this quick route instead of begging for help from another group/guild? Scale cost to level or some percentage of the market replacement cost of the gear. Make the social option the preferred path but allow for alternatives.
In regards to decay itself, I would like to see a default behaviour that happens to unclaimed corpse after a period of time that adds to the normal penalty. Perhaps the corpse collectors store it and will return your belongs for a price. So, the corpose vanishes after X hours/days to avoid clutter to everyone else, but the player retains some ability to recover whatever some XP and/or items through other means.
I suppose I just had too much fun in the old EQ days doing corpse recovery. I always found shifting gears from XP grinding to help a person/group recover from a wipe paid dividends in reputation and general social health of the game. Some of my fondest memories stem from corpose recovery, be it my own, a friend, or random stranger. So, keeping the corpose around long enough eo allow for reasonable recovery is a social benefit if done correctly.
DagnyStout said:Corpse decay is inevitably tied to the larger issue of the consequences for death are handled. Like many, I want death to matter. I will be unhappy if there is no XP loss or risk to ones gear as a consequence of dying. Having said that, I do think there is way to provide mechanisms that are a fair tradeoff between risk and reward that fall between "you respawn with all your gear at a nearby spawn point" and "you spawn naked on the otherwisde of the world with no way to fight your way back to your corpse". I know Quality of Life mechanisms are unpopular, but I think there are ways to create reasonable risk vs. reward, such as hiring an NPC corpse recorvery service as a money sink. Is it worth X play hours of farming to take this quick route instead of begging for help from another group/guild? Scale cost to level or some percentage of the market replacement cost of the gear. Make the social option the preferred path but allow for alternatives.
In regards to decay itself, I would like to see a default behaviour that happens to unclaimed corpse after a period of time that adds to the normal penalty. Perhaps the corpse collectors store it and will return your belongs for a price. So, the corpose vanishes after X hours/days to avoid clutter to everyone else, but the player retains some ability to recover whatever some XP and/or items through other means.
I suppose I just had too much fun in the old EQ days doing corpse recovery. I always found shifting gears from XP grinding to help a person/group recover from a wipe paid dividends in reputation and general social health of the game. Some of my fondest memories stem from corpose recovery, be it my own, a friend, or random stranger. So, keeping the corpose around long enough eo allow for reasonable recovery is a social benefit if done correctly.
or i could rp as a corpse guide:
hello adventurer! for a small fee i can help you recover your body ^.^ it'll be 1 gold half now and half upon retrieval!
Tanix said:No. Never.
I am all for choice and consequence, harsh penalties and punishments, but a punishment should never be one where you can not repair it. Corpse decay was a side effect of technology, not a game feature.
That is not to say that such systems are bad, but they aren't good for long term cRPG development. They are better suited for Rogue like systems where the entire game is centered around that concept and tuned to provide for it.
Spending weeks to camp for an item only to have it disappear because you didn't get to your corpse in time isn't a proper balance of risk vs reward.
Not sure I agree here. Yes you work hard for items but without risk everything is trivial, just a matter of waiting in line to kill Bob the Golem with the Fire Sword or killing 222 Rat Lords until one drops the Rat Lord Tail Lasso. Corpse decay instills a bit of urgency. Call friends to help, hire mercs to help, beg the necro that can summon corpses there are many ways to lessen the pain but I do like the idea of penalties to keep things from becoming trivial. That being said I think the rate at which your corpse decays could and should vary. How you died, where you died, level of your corpse etc etc. many contributing factors.
No reason for corpse decay/item loss. It's unjust punishment for the "crime" of simply dying and being unable to return to the scene of death. It's something that would realistically only affect a tiny fraction of the playerbase and many of those cases even would be due to external circumstances, not any particular failings within the game world.
Ravirn said: This is meant to be a rebirth of the more challenging, actions have consequences, and community style MMORPG. Yes there should be full corpse runs with all items left on the body and the old standard 7 day rot. If you can’t get your corpse back in that time on your own or ask friends for help, how are you part of the community? I more that once got a PUG to help me do the run and made friends along the way, but that’s what I got for running off to new places under leveled after new expansions.
FAQ:
7.0 Will there be a ‘death penalty’?
We want the player to respect and even fear the environment, but also to be enticed by it. A big part of achieving this balance is making sure there is an incentive to avoid death. While the details of this system are not yet fleshed out (and will likely be tweaked and changed a bit during beta), you can expect death to be something you’d rather avoid. That said, if a death penalty is too severe, it can keep players away from some of the more challenging and rewarding content, and we are keeping this in mind as well. So death will sting, but it will also not involve losing an unreasonable amount of experience, or levels, or a permanent loss of items.
While anything could technically change between now and release in terms of death penalties, I wouldn't count on them adding permanent loss of items.
Personally I'd like to see a mixed of the requirements. Something along the lines of:
On death lose 10% of level and your corpse stays there with all items. If you recover your corpse you get back 25% of lost xpl. Rezzes can restore more starting at 30% and scaling up.
After 3 days if your corpse is not retreived it is moved to a "graveyard" area. Once in the graveyard it does not return any xp upon looting it, but it does have all of your items.
Finally 7 days later your corpse rots including any items left on it.
This would punish people not only with xp loss, but with an inability to progress as normal for a few days if they don't recover their corpse. Then if they don't log in for a long time, permanent item loss becomes a reality.
KatoKhan said:Tanix said:No. Never.
I am all for choice and consequence, harsh penalties and punishments, but a punishment should never be one where you can not repair it. Corpse decay was a side effect of technology, not a game feature.
That is not to say that such systems are bad, but they aren't good for long term cRPG development. They are better suited for Rogue like systems where the entire game is centered around that concept and tuned to provide for it.
Spending weeks to camp for an item only to have it disappear because you didn't get to your corpse in time isn't a proper balance of risk vs reward.
Not sure I agree here. Yes you work hard for items but without risk everything is trivial, just a matter of waiting in line to kill Bob the Golem with the Fire Sword or killing 222 Rat Lords until one drops the Rat Lord Tail Lasso. Corpse decay instills a bit of urgency. Call friends to help, hire mercs to help, beg the necro that can summon corpses there are many ways to lessen the pain but I do like the idea of penalties to keep things from becoming trivial. That being said I think the rate at which your corpse decays could and should vary. How you died, where you died, level of your corpse etc etc. many contributing factors.
I know this. If I lost all my gear after spending the enormous amounts of hours I did in EQ, I would not play the game, I would be done and I know a few who lost everything who quit because of it.
Spending hundreds of hours to obtain gear and then to lose it all is not a proper risk vs reward.
This concept works with "rogue likes" because obtaining gear and progress in the game is tailored to the fact that you can lose it all instantly. I played a perm-death mud in the past, and the reason it worked is because the time it took to obtain levels and gear was centered around the fact that you could lose it all, so that time to regain it was based on that.
I am one of the first to get on people who whine about how they have a RL and don't have time in the game, but this sort of thing, is not reasonable, it is not legitimate, it is an "iron man" gimmick and one that is imbalance due to the time investment a game like EQ requires.
There is nothing legitimate or "game play" like with such a penalty, it isn't even akin to arcade style as in those systems you at least had extra lives you save up as you played.
Admittedly, I never actually played the original EQ, or any other game with corpse runs, but if they work as I understand them, I have to throw my hat into the ring on the side of saying no to corpse decay. I think losing xp and having to retrieve your corpse to get your items back when you die is a big enough consequence to make players fear death and be cautious. Adding in the possibility that dying in a particularly bad place or at a particularly bad time might result in permanent loss of items would, to my mind, go too far to the other extreme and actually de-incentivize exploration and risk taking. It's a balance, and I'm sure VR will find it during testing, but my strong feeling is that item perma-loss would be more negative than positive.
I don't think permanent item loss is being considered. XP loss will definitely be a thing but it hasn't been confirmed whether or not it will be possible to de-level. (Joppa did confirm that de-leveling is something that will be tested and considered, though.) As far as corpse runs go there is no guarantee that our gear will be left on our corpse. Brad mentioned awhile ago that corpse runs might involve XP restoral rather than gear. If corpse decay ends up being a thing, my guess is that it only happens if gear isn't attached to our corpses. That is a very real possibility. For those who think 20% XP loss wouldn't sting, they should consider that XP could be significantly harder to gain in Pantheon than it was in EQ. Losing 5-10% XP was enough to terrify players in FFXI but that's mostly because XP was actually viewed as a precious resource. Players weren't able to run around quad-kiting challenging NPC's. The best XP could only be achieved in a full and well-rounded group that focused on even-con or higher NPC's.
If it's possible for players to earn high XP while solo/duo, or while fighting blue content, or from turning in tradeable items for repeatable quests, or from raining down mass AoE destruction on huge hordes of mobs, or from kiting challenging NPC's with relative safety -- maybe XP loss wouldn't be enough of a deterrent. Let's hope that XP is actually a precious resource in this game rather than something people place very little value on. This narrative that XP loss is inconsequential is false -- maybe that was a problem in EQ, and if that is indeed the case, I don't see why we would want to bring it here. I'm hoping for a major culture change where XP Gain/Loss is absolutely respected due to how challenging the content is, and thus how hard XP is to acquire/maintain. True group centric content and player interdependence. No easy gimmicks for cheese leveling. If players aren't worried about losing XP then that would be a huge missed opportunity, IMO. XP is an excellent resource to balance risk vs reward around but the value of the resource is relative.
Tanix said:So why is corpse decay acceptable but not perm-death?
It is the same concept. If you are going to destroy the hundreds of hours a player put into the gear aquisition, then why not start them out a level 1 again?