As 187 described, there has been mention of a possibility of there being no gear left on corpse (no naked corpse runs), no deleveling, no corpse decay/item loss etc.
These ^ are examples of a design shift that has been leaning toward leniency the last couple years. It is a bit concerning and I hope the penalties end up being harsh as was originally advertised.
look With a 4 hour rez timer and a 7 day rot timer if you don’t loot your rotting corpse in that time you probably deserve to lose all your items. as you have all but quit or probably cant play any more because you rage quit and broke your parents computer or monitor.
Your telling me in 7 days if you can’t get it on your own, get your group/guild to help, ask a rouge type to drag your corpse to a safe spot, pay a necro type to summon it, or find a pug to help. That they should waist server resources on every dead body for every player for all eternity Get real
philo said:As 187 described, there has been mention of a possibility of there being no gear left on corpse (no naked corpse runs), no deleveling, no corpse decay/item loss etc.
These ^ are examples of a design shift that has been leaning toward leniency the last couple years. It is a bit concerning and I hope the penalties end up being harsh as was originally advertised.
if that’s true I want my money back. If I wanted a lenient game where the devs hold your hand all the way through I can get that anywhere next your going to tell me they are adding markers over the NPC’s heads and auto run
I hope to see items stay on your corpse and harsh XP loss if you can't get a good solid rez but certainly not permanent item loss.
If you for some reason you can't get to your corpse within a reasonable amount of time (4 days, 7 days, whatever) then your items should go to a graveyard type place for reocvery but all XP should be unrecoverable. This still makes corpse runs extremely important but not game ending if you die somewhere and are unable to get help.
Maybe I lay it on to thick but I did it try to make a point.
1) they have shown repeatedly on stream naked corpse runs so I don’t think they will remove them
2) 187 is not VR staff and as ever where else VR seams to be moving away from hand holding I don’t think in just this one topic they will
3) even with no corpse rot every corpse will be deleted with every update and sever maintenance downtime so not doing the corpse run early in the games life (first 2 years probably) is likely to delete all the items left unclaimed anyway
Im cool with corpse runs etc, but there should always be an option to be able to opt out and retrieve with an even bigger penalty. Maybe a very significant xp (more than the death itself to summon corpse) penalty instead of loss of gear. Ive played games up to the last minute before leaving out where I knew I wouldnt be able to play for a month or more. Work trips, deployments etc. If I died at a ridiculous moment and knew I couldnt spend an hour getting my corpse back from some crazy spot I would take the hit and just eat the xp loss for a full death recovery. Sometimes real life can make cool hard mode gaming ideas unfeasible. Im a grown up now, I cant guarantee that I can stop shop to get my corpse if something happens. I need a get out of jail card if I need it but dont expect it to be free.
The FAQ indicates the devs position on the matter (with the caveat that it is subject to 'tweaking') in that they are looking purely at XP penalties with no permanent item loss. Whilst I can understand that a lot of the people who have currently bought into this game want a 'challenging' MMO, I'm personally not sure that putting harsh penalties on dying is the best idea in a game that is being designed to make encounters challenging (with death being a likely consequence of that). Sure, you can bemoan it as pandering to the casual element, but fundamentally I think the developers have a sense of realism on the matter. They have to balance 'challenge' against reducing the appeal of the game to the point that further content development cannot be financially sustained because the player base is too small.
Tigersin said: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?
Because I can ask others to help me retrieve my corpse. I cannot ask players to help me restore my perm-death.
In six years I never lost everything to a decay. Though I understand other players have. It's scary. Perhaps it is too scary to even consider for those who have.
At any rate, based on what we have been told, I don't see them adding corpse decay (or any permanent item loss) as part of the death penalty. No stress.
Ok, fair enough... better yet... this would be in line with your reasoning. If you fail to get your corpse back, it is perm-death and you have to start over again. I can't see why anyone who would advocate corpse decay (and the loss of all items) would be against this idea as it falls perfectly in line with that reasoning.
Don't you think?
I am not worried about them doing corpse decay, in fact I know they will not. My concern is more that they will just have an exp loss mechanic with "optional" CR for recovering the exp. which will make death meaningless. I know there were many situations in EQ where I would have gladly ate the exp hit if I didn't have to go back and get my corpse. Those advocating for exp penalty only I think make the case for why a naked CR should exist.
Dissolution said:Im cool with corpse runs etc, but there should always be an option to be able to opt out and retrieve with an even bigger penalty. Maybe a very significant xp (more than the death itself to summon corpse) penalty instead of loss of gear. Ive played games up to the last minute before leaving out where I knew I wouldnt be able to play for a month or more. Work trips, deployments etc. If I died at a ridiculous moment and knew I couldnt spend an hour getting my corpse back from some crazy spot I would take the hit and just eat the xp loss for a full death recovery. Sometimes real life can make cool hard mode gaming ideas unfeasible. Im a grown up now, I cant guarantee that I can stop shop to get my corpse if something happens. I need a get out of jail card if I need it but dont expect it to be free.
There is.
You can "opt out" and not go pick up your corpse leaving your items on it.
That is the "bigger penalty". So, you can go back, get your gear... or... leave it there and go try to collect more gear.
XP alone is not a real penalty. XP is time, and some corpse recoveries can be real nightmares in both difficulty and time, so much that people will gladly eat the exp penalty in order to not have to go recover the corpse (I have spent an entire night of 5-6 hours just doing a CR only to have it fail and then have to go back the next day and spend another several hours to finally get it back).
RL is irrelevant. You can always come back when you finish your trip or responsibility, and then recover your corpse. We shouldjn't be able to make RL cases as to why the penalties should be lessened in a game. If people don't like the penalties, don't play the game, but asking the game to be designed so you can cheat it (which is exactly what asking for penalties to be lessened is) when you have some RL excuse is not a good design focus imo. In fact, that is again what got us 15 min dungeon runs, dailies, dungeon finders, etc... which were ALL argued as needed because people had RL commitments and didn't want to waste the time with such in the game.
Psytek said:The FAQ indicates the devs position on the matter (with the caveat that it is subject to 'tweaking') in that they are looking purely at XP penalties with no permanent item loss. Whilst I can understand that a lot of the people who have currently bought into this game want a 'challenging' MMO, I'm personally not sure that putting harsh penalties on dying is the best idea in a game that is being designed to make encounters challenging (with death being a likely consequence of that). Sure, you can bemoan it as pandering to the casual element, but fundamentally I think the developers have a sense of realism on the matter. They have to balance 'challenge' against reducing the appeal of the game to the point that further content development cannot be financially sustained because the player base is too small.
You should be careful with being so reasonable! There are several factors in play here. Pantheon will likely be much more mechanically challenging and demanding than Everquest was. XP as a resource could be significantly more valuable based on that change alone, but it doesn't stop there. The reality is that VR does not want to terrify players with the death penalty. There is indeed a "balance" that needs to be struck where they want players to respect the environment but they do not want to discourage them from exploring or taking risks. This isn't a recent design shift toward leniency. Here is a quote from Brad back in 2016:
Aradune said:So I've said in the past that the death penalty will be somewhere in-between vanillia EQ and vanilla VG. So there will be a corpse. What is undecided is whether you just need to get to your corpse to lose less experience or whether it will have your items on it (and then is it all items or a subset?). And some other details.
The reason we've not made these decisions yet is that something like the severity of a death penalty needs to be determined during beta so we can tune it such that people respect the environment but aren't discouraged to explore and take risks. Something like this and the details of several other systems really require a decent population of people playing the game, listening to them, watching them, etc.
Emphasis on somewhere "in-between" EQ and VG. For a while there, de-leveling was ruled out. That was later changed which actually serves as a design shift toward being a bit more hardcore. If people are going to base their expectations on a smooth transition of EQ features/penalties then they probably aren't managing them properly because it's already been stated that there will be compromises. Someone could make the argument that "Dying in Contra was inconsequential" -- sure it was, because everybody knew about Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start. The concept of "limited lives" wasn't the issue -- it was the execution for that particular game, and the easy workaround that allowed players to circumvent it. Again, the narrative that XP loss couldn't be severe enough of a penalty ... that's completely biased and based on EQ-like expectations. You don't hear former FFXI players saying that XP loss is lenient and that's because XP was significantly more valuable in that game. It's all relative.
I try to imagine scenarios where players gain entry to areas that require enhanced acclimation, player abilities, access keys, or a combination of each. Death in these areas are extra punitive if players don't have a reliable way of returning to their corpse. So imagine you have the summoner who builds a raft or bridge … or the rogue that drops rope, the warrior that bashes a wall, the ranger that helps you fly over a chasm, the druid that grants acclimation bonuses or calms a storm. If you die after navigating past these obstacles you're at least semi-reliant on having those people in your group to return to that same location. Add in access keys (they won't all be as simple as the first key in HC) as an additional layer and now there are a bunch of situations where people can die in an area that could be extremely difficult to return to. This sounds like a really stressful situation to be in … whether you are the player relying on others, or the player that others are relying on. Player interdependence is a beautiful thing but I think we're pushing it too far if someone can end up being naked for an extended period of time because they can't recreate the exact set of variables that allowed them access to a given area.
To be clear, I'm okay with the idea of "Death in these areas are extra punitive if players don't have a reliable way of returning to their corpse." If players can't get back to their corpse then they suffer additional XP loss. That's fine. You adventured deep into a dungeon, bashed a few walls, took a raft down the stream filled with piranhas, and explored an area that is usually locked. The stakes are high in this situation because if you end up wiping there is a chance you'll lose a significantly higher chunk of XP than you would in an area where you could reliably return to your corpse. That seems fair and I think most players would be willing to push through in this scenario despite the added risk. Attaching item loss to corpse recovery changes things, though, as it feels like the ultimate "artificial limiter." What happens when our gear has acclimation bonuses on it? We meet the cold threshold with our situational gear but then we die and lose it … how are we supposed to get back to our gear? I'm sure this aspect of the death penalty resonates with former EQ players but we need to remember that Terminus is going to be much more dangerous than Norrath ever was. Penalty or not, the current iteration of "corpse run" doesn't sit well with me. There are too many implications that will need to be compensated for with this kind of penalty and it really gets in the way of:
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.
I would rather see the penalty shift toward increased experience loss (that can cause you to de-level) and maybe gold / deity favor loss than forcing players to return to the scene of the crime which feels linear, artificial, and limiting. Maybe it doesn't seem like any of those things if you have a ton of experience playing EQ but as an MMO veteran who has never dealt with this exact type of penalty I can tell you that I think it will feel like all of those. I think about the world being designed with this type of penalty in mind and it really inhibits the potential of what I think is possible. There is a balance that needs to be struck when it comes to creating truly challenging content and punishing people for mistakes. My understanding is that EQ focused way more on the latter than the former. I hope we can achieve a healthy middle ground but it's going to require give and take. I consider the following excerpt from "What is Pantheon?" and can't help but think that there is a better way to go about this.
"Because Pantheon values the paradigm of great risk vs. great reward, the player will always be encouraged to push themselves out the door and to embrace exploration, adventure, danger and the community of players alongside them."
oneADseven said:You should be careful with being so reasonable!...
Ultimately, perhaps I am less inclined towards histrionics as I am not as heavily invested in this game as some other people possibly are. There are aspects of this game that interest me (notably a realistic and worthwhile crafting system, and encounters where you can't just blast everything down in a haze of AoE), and there are other aspects of the game that concern me (death penalties, lack of solo play, etc). At the moment I am watching the direction the game is taking, and if I think it is something where the positives outweigh the things that I am less sure about then I may increase my level of investment, otherwise I will just shrug and walk away. It's no big deal.
Tanix said:Dissolution said:Im cool with corpse runs etc, but there should always be an option to be able to opt out and retrieve with an even bigger penalty. Maybe a very significant xp (more than the death itself to summon corpse) penalty instead of loss of gear. Ive played games up to the last minute before leaving out where I knew I wouldnt be able to play for a month or more. Work trips, deployments etc. If I died at a ridiculous moment and knew I couldnt spend an hour getting my corpse back from some crazy spot I would take the hit and just eat the xp loss for a full death recovery. Sometimes real life can make cool hard mode gaming ideas unfeasible. Im a grown up now, I cant guarantee that I can stop shop to get my corpse if something happens. I need a get out of jail card if I need it but dont expect it to be free.
There is.
You can "opt out" and not go pick up your corpse leaving your items on it.
That is the "bigger penalty". So, you can go back, get your gear... or... leave it there and go try to collect more gear.
XP alone is not a real penalty. XP is time, and some corpse recoveries can be real nightmares in both difficulty and time, so much that people will gladly eat the exp penalty in order to not have to go recover the corpse (I have spent an entire night of 5-6 hours just doing a CR only to have it fail and then have to go back the next day and spend another several hours to finally get it back).
RL is irrelevant. You can always come back when you finish your trip or responsibility, and then recover your corpse. We shouldjn't be able to make RL cases as to why the penalties should be lessened in a game. If people don't like the penalties, don't play the game, but asking the game to be designed so you can cheat it (which is exactly what asking for penalties to be lessened is) when you have some RL excuse is not a good design focus imo. In fact, that is again what got us 15 min dungeon runs, dailies, dungeon finders, etc... which were ALL argued as needed because people had RL commitments and didn't want to waste the time with such in the game.
Im not arguing the concept of corpse running, Im arguing the concept of corpse decay allowing the chance of permenant item loss.
After that point we will need to agree to disagree. RL is relevant, because this is a game and some of us our grown ups with responsibilities. Those personal responsibilities can sometimes cost a stiff penalty, however, being forced to essentially reroll a character because of them is ridiculous. If I cannot log back in for a month after a death on an account I am paying for and continue with my character without starting over thats an issue. If you want hardcore to that extent then make those decisions for yourself. Refuse to loot your corpse, cut off a toe to penalize yourself for a video game death, whatever your flavor is. I'm quite sure not everyone, even those who enjoy the concept of a penalty and consequence system for death require all of that.
Im also quite sure that (Example, no idea the logistics on how it would/could work) if there was an npc in game you spoke to that would summon your corpse with items on it as an alternative to the corpse run at an XP hit of half a level or more you would be hard pressed to find someone who would use it unless in the most dire of circumstances.
I enjoy the roots of mmo's with stiffer penalties, consequences and risk vs reward being a legitimate aspect of the game. I like the concept of a corpse run. I also like to know if I put months or years of time into a character and cant loot my corpse for some unforeseen reason I haven't just wasted those months or years of time.
Anyway, I highly doubt that VR would implement something to that extent. Its ultimately up to them, but I doubt that even if it was implemented it is something that would stand the test of time.
Dissolution said:Tanix said:Dissolution said:Im cool with corpse runs etc, but there should always be an option to be able to opt out and retrieve with an even bigger penalty. Maybe a very significant xp (more than the death itself to summon corpse) penalty instead of loss of gear. Ive played games up to the last minute before leaving out where I knew I wouldnt be able to play for a month or more. Work trips, deployments etc. If I died at a ridiculous moment and knew I couldnt spend an hour getting my corpse back from some crazy spot I would take the hit and just eat the xp loss for a full death recovery. Sometimes real life can make cool hard mode gaming ideas unfeasible. Im a grown up now, I cant guarantee that I can stop shop to get my corpse if something happens. I need a get out of jail card if I need it but dont expect it to be free.
There is.
You can "opt out" and not go pick up your corpse leaving your items on it.
That is the "bigger penalty". So, you can go back, get your gear... or... leave it there and go try to collect more gear.
XP alone is not a real penalty. XP is time, and some corpse recoveries can be real nightmares in both difficulty and time, so much that people will gladly eat the exp penalty in order to not have to go recover the corpse (I have spent an entire night of 5-6 hours just doing a CR only to have it fail and then have to go back the next day and spend another several hours to finally get it back).
RL is irrelevant. You can always come back when you finish your trip or responsibility, and then recover your corpse. We shouldjn't be able to make RL cases as to why the penalties should be lessened in a game. If people don't like the penalties, don't play the game, but asking the game to be designed so you can cheat it (which is exactly what asking for penalties to be lessened is) when you have some RL excuse is not a good design focus imo. In fact, that is again what got us 15 min dungeon runs, dailies, dungeon finders, etc... which were ALL argued as needed because people had RL commitments and didn't want to waste the time with such in the game.
Im not arguing the concept of corpse running, Im arguing the concept of corpse decay allowing the chance of permenant item loss.
After that point we will need to agree to disagree. RL is relevant, because this is a game and some of us our grown ups with responsibilities. Those personal responsibilities can sometimes cost a stiff penalty, however, being forced to essentially reroll a character because of them is ridiculous. If I cannot log back in for a month after a death on an account I am paying for and continue with my character without starting over thats an issue. If you want hardcore to that extent then make those decisions for yourself. Refuse to loot your corpse, cut off a toe to penalize yourself for a video game death, whatever your flavor is. I'm quite sure not everyone, even those who enjoy the concept of a penalty and consequence system for death require all of that.
Im also quite sure that (Example, no idea the logistics on how it would/could work) if there was an npc in game you spoke to that would summon your corpse with items on it as an alternative to the corpse run at an XP hit of half a level or more you would be hard pressed to find someone who would use it unless in the most dire of circumstances.
I enjoy the roots of mmo's with stiffer penalties, consequences and risk vs reward being a legitimate aspect of the game. I like the concept of a corpse run. I also like to know if I put months or years of time into a character and cant loot my corpse for some unforeseen reason I haven't just wasted those months or years of time.
Anyway, I highly doubt that VR would implement something to that extent. Its ultimately up to them, but I doubt that even if it was implemented it is something that would stand the test of time.
I wans't arguing for decay. Item decay in a game of this nature does not have a proper risk vs reward balance.
I thought you were saying that you wanted an option where you could choose to take an exp penalty instead of needing to go back and pick up your corpse.
The corpse should not decay and it should still be where you died when you come back a month later. I think you should still have to go back and recover it at that point to gain your items, but you should not be penalized because you could't get there in time.
My point about RL is this, if you dont' have time to play, don't play. Some of us were adults when EQ was released, worked overtime, had families and responsibilities. I don't think that is a valid argument to demand special treatment in a game though. I am not advocating for corpse decay though, in EQ it existed not as a feature but as a technological limitation of the times. Few thought your corpse rotting in EQ was a good thing, especially considering how long it took to gain gear in the game. That is, corpse decay is not a good risk vs reward balance in a game like this.
That said, RL should not dictate game design as RL varies from person to person. The adult thing for us to do is evaluate what a game requires in play and then decide if it fits our lifestyle. If it does not, we either change to meet it, or we find something else that fits us better.
I am cool with no corpse decay, or after 7 days you have to go pick your stuff up at a gravekeeper or something. 7 days without any gear is a pretty big penalty in of itself, if you only have one set of gear. I assume people won't be completly stupid and have only one set of gear. That tacked on with an exp lose and money sink into getting your stuff from the gravekeeper is fine for me. The corpse decay with items is everyones problem...so if you still have to retrieve your corpse because you need your items, but you won't lose your items on your corpse, then the only people who should complain after that are people that want convience...which sadly is a loud minority on this forum.
I always had a backup set of gear for corpse retrieving in the bank if I had to adventure to get the corpse. But even with the corpse decay I never lost my gear. Only time I lost my gear was when I was trying to be cheeky and drop my gear on the ground to log onto an alt and pick it up and twink grind a little on an alt and didn't know NPCs could pick stuff up and so some NPC picked my bags up and all my gear was gone. However, higher end content I never lost my corpse. There was always a way in every zone...except Plane of Fear. With any nasty zone you could always get a corpse summon, which cost your life savings, to get your corpse back, but Plane of Fear was a zone where even the zone line was chaos and death. So I never had a problem with the corspe decay, as i always got my corpse back, but I also see if someone has a vacation for a week or 2 and died in a bad spot when he has to leave with his family/friends in 30 mins or so.
From a different perspective corpse decay is nice simply from the perspective of keeping the trash off the floor.
Ignoring the gear loss discussion it would be nice if corpses “decayed” once they would no longer rezable for experience. The player would still be able to find their corpse but it would no longer render for anyone else, perhaps this could be extended to group members for corpse recovery expeditions.
This is purely an ascetic reason but it’s worth considering. The corpses will be there for a little while so there will still be evidence of carnage, but otherwise abandoned corpses will fade from view once nothing can be done with them.
Trasak said:From a different perspective corpse decay is nice simply from the perspective of keeping the trash off the floor.
Ignoring the gear loss discussion it would be nice if corpses “decayed” once they would no longer rezable for experience. The player would still be able to find their corpse but it would no longer render for anyone else, perhaps this could be extended to group members for corpse recovery expeditions.
This is purely an ascetic reason but it’s worth considering. The corpses will be there for a little while so there will still be evidence of carnage, but otherwise abandoned corpses will fade from view once nothing can be done with them.
Putting in user option toggles would solve this.
Toggles to see:
1) Your corpse
2) Group corpses
3) Raid corpses
4) Friend corpses
5) All corpses
Something along those lines, or even additional options based on time, location, etc...
Tanix said:Putting in user option toggles would solve this.
Toggles to see:
1) Your corpse
2) Group corpses
3) Raid corpses
4) Friend corpses
5) All corpses
Something along those lines, or even additional options based on time, location, etc...
Fair enough, that might actualy be a better option to handle it on a client level rather than a server level. Not sure how Unity handels rendering individual objects. That might be a useful concept to consider when/if player housing is implemented. Some form of objects smaller than X size doesnt render unless you are within Y distance. Should cut way down on over rendering small objects.
Let us not say - as some have - that if Pantheon does not penalize death the *precise* way we envision that it is an overly simplistic hand-holding abandonment of basic principles.
There are many ways to have a death penalty much harsher than almost any game since the original EQ. Even if they take the most lenient possible approach (within the basic parameters already established) there will be an xp penalty for dying and this penalty will be *significantly* increased if you do not recover your corpse. Many of us will and should have differing opinions on how much further they should go. Loss of items is a debatable point - far from irrational but reasonable fans of a harsh death penalty can disagree. Loss of levels is a debatable point - far from irrational but reasonable fans of a harsh death penalty can disagree. Mandating corpse recovery with no option to get the corpse back simply by accepting a harsher penalty is a debatable point - far from irrational but fans of a harsh death penalty can disagree.
So let us not accuse VR of suppinely caving in and placing "quality of life" above basic game design parameters if *their* harsh penalty is not quite the same as *your* harsh penalty. With that said my opinion on the details is:
1. Coprses should poof reasonably quickly. Too much strain on systems to keep them for long periods. If you cannot get your corpse within a few days (a week at the most) you just accept a larger penalty.
2. No item loss. This is implicit in my first point - item loss would require that corpses be kept available much longer. It is blatantly unfair to have items poof if you cannot get the corpse within a few days.
3. Corpses should be recoverable without a corpse run. From a NPC or graveyard. Does this make classes with corpse retrieval abilities useless - no. Does this make the death penalty trivial and meaningless - no. Let us assume there is the loss of 1/10 of a level for a death if you get your corpse back normally. Or some other percentage that will make death sting but not prevent us from being willing to try difficult encounters. I would rather not debate the percentage here and get this thread derailed - I just find that using specific numbers helps to make the point. Now assume that you can take the lazy man's or woman's approach - snap your fingers and get the corpse back. But it costs *half* a level. Only the most extreme sadist/masocist would say half a level is a trivial penalty or one that a normal player wouldn't go to considerable effort to avoid. Ignoring for the moment issues of whether half a level is meaningful at very low level or at level-cap. Like the precise percentage those details are distractions from the basic point.
Why do I want the corpse run to be optional? Because it often is simply not feasible in a game where the world is large, travel is slow, exploration is encouraged and the design goal is to *not* have large percentages of the player base always in the same place doing the same things (as is common in modern MMOs).
Why do I want the corpse run to be optional? Because if it is not optional we will have more than a few players that will be unable to play - not for minutes but for hours or perhaps even *days* other than to try and find people to get their corpse back for them. With no guarantee that they will be able to find people if the corpse is in a very remote spot or a very dangerous spot that may be unreachable except for a powerful group. Maybe a spot that very few groups go to at that stage of the game. A harsh penalty is one thing - being totally unable to play for long periods other than begging for help is a very different thing.
For the record - in other threads I have supported deleveling - and I still do. I have supported a higher xp loss penalty than many - and I still do. I do not speak here as an opponant of harsh death penalties in general.
A while back I brought up the idea of item insurance.
Basics are you can prepay to insure your items ahead of time at a location near many bind points.
If you die and respawn at a bind point then you have two basic options.
Option 1: Standard corpse and Exp retrieval.
Option 2: Have your insured items restored and your corpse destroyed.
Consequences of Option 2:
1) Loss of any method of recovering lost exp from death (this could represent many hours of grinding)
2) All items on the corpse that were not insured would be destroyed along with the corpse.
The insurance concepts acts as both a cash sink and some way to give you a bottom line of how much you will lose when you die in a terrible place. Both accidents and bugs happen, had a corpse in the lava in SolB that took around 8 deaths to get to a summon able location that got there by falling through the bridge. The insurance should be more painful than all but the worst situations.
There was a side idea that included logging out in an inn also sets your XP save point. Any XP gained between save points is lost with a minimum of a % to level which would be the base death penalty. This actually can make death penalties really brutal and encourages players getting to an Inn at the end of their session.
dorotea said:Let us not say - as some have - that if Pantheon does not penalize death the *precise* way we envision that it is an overly simplistic hand-holding abandonment of basic principles.
It is overly simplistic because it is not a meaningful penalty. Exp as a penalty alone is meaningless and this has been shown to be so even in EQ where many times players easily dismissed getting their corpses back that had no items on them (ie they died several times trying to do a CR). There were countless times I specifically chose to avoid getting my exp back because it was too much of a hassle, that the exp loss was a penalty that really didn't have any meaning and I was perfectly ok with not bothering because getting EXP wasn't that hard, I could do it anywhere and on my own schedule.
dorotea said:Why do I want the corpse run to be optional? Because it often is simply not feasible in a game where the world is large, travel is slow, exploration is encouraged and the design goal is to *not* have large percentages of the player base always in the same place doing the same things (as is common in modern MMOs).
Worked great in EQ and a lot of people here really do like the idea of having that penalty that existed in EQ because they believe it worked as a legitimate risk and gave meaning to death.
dorotea said:Why do I want the corpse run to be optional? Because if it is not optional we will have more than a few players that will be unable to play - not for minutes but for hours or perhaps even *days* other than to try and find people to get their corpse back for them. With no guarantee that they will be able to find people if the corpse is in a very remote spot or a very dangerous spot that may be unreachable except for a powerful group. Maybe a spot that very few groups go to at that stage of the game. A harsh penalty is one thing - being totally unable to play for long periods other than begging for help is a very different thing.
Welcome to risk vs reward. You make the exact argument as to why they should exist. Do you think I like corpse runs? I hate them! In hard to get areas they can take hours or more to recover. They are a major pain, but... that is the thing... they aren't supposed to be fun, they aren't supposed to be something we "are ok with", they are supposed to be dreaded, that is why death means something.
As I said, there is nothign harsh about a penalty you are completely ok with. You aren't ok with a naked corpse run, neither am I, but that is why we should have it because it is only something we dread havign to deal with that will bring about real fear in play, the very fear many of us missed in EQ and what NO game provides today because it is too busy making sure people are comfortable with the penalties.
Want to avoid having really hard corpse runs? Then play it safe, only do dungeons/camps where you have easy access to the zone lines to recover. That is risk vs reward balance. You choose the easier camps, the easier areas to recover and because of that, you only gain the rewards that are equivilent to that risk.
The rest of us can take chances to go deep into those dungeons, with all the fear and excitement knowing that if we mess up, it could mean a difficult recovery. That is risk vs reward, that is game play, that is a meaningful penalty.
dorotea said:For the record - in other threads I have supported deleveling - and I still do. I have supported a higher xp loss penalty than many - and I still do. I do not speak here as an opponant of harsh death penalties in general.
Exp as a penalty alone is not enough as there is no responsibilty in the process, no real risk in ventuing deep into a dungeon. I think back to doing Veeshans Temple and how I would have gladly paid any amount of exp loss if I didn't have to go get my corpse. Heck, I died so much as a monk, that EXP loss meant NOTHING, it was just a basic part of play. Exp alone is not a penalty, it is a minor annoyance at worst.
The primary difference between Trasak's suggestion and what I said is that I would allow full corpse recovery so that you could immediately play again and with no loss of items in return for a much larger death penalty, and Trasak would allow the same thing but only if you had bought insurance. An interesting thought to someone like me whose entire working life was spent with a large life insurance company. The cost of property insurance is typically tied to the value of what the insurance covers, of course, as well as to the likelihood of loss. Determining either of those in Pantheon would be non-trivial - perhaps impossible. Then again there would be no insrance company needing to make a profit to survive.
I definitely prefer it to *not* being able to skip corpse recovery at all - for the reasons I gave.
While I was thinking solely of xp loss as the only part of the pain of dying - having a cash loss makes sense but I'm not sure it is feasible.
If we have a cash penalty (for buying insurance or even without the insurance concept - just part of the payment to get your corpse back the easy way) how can we make it fair?
It cannot be a percentage of your wealth - too easy to game that by giving money to other characters or other accounts before buying the insurance or buying the corpse recovery. Do we want the gamne to look at your maximum wealth over the last 6 months the way some governmental assistance programs do - to limit this type of gaming the system. I don't think so. Also unfair if you got some large amount and spent it, to hold that against you for 6 months (or any other longish period).
It could be an amount based on level - but that means that the cost would be trivial to any character that had a rich older brother or sister. Unfair to those who don't play multiple characters and an undue encouragement to speed-level one up to fund the life assurance needs of a whole family of toonlings.
It could be a cost tied to the value of the items being insured - or being recovered if payment at the time of recovery is allowed with no need for prepayment. But how does the game value an item when there are so many different items and the item level (if Pantheon even has item levels) may have nothing to do with value. Level 10 boots (yes I am thinking of a certain set of boots) may be far more valuable than a routine level 50 helmet.
dorotea said:Let us not say - as some have - that if Pantheon does not penalize death the *precise* way we envision that it is an overly simplistic hand-holding abandonment of basic principles.
There are many ways to have a death penalty much harsher than almost any game since the original EQ. Even if they take the most lenient possible approach (within the basic parameters already established) there will be an xp penalty for dying and this penalty will be *significantly* increased if you do not recover your corpse.
So let us not accuse VR of suppinely caving in and placing "quality of life" above basic game design parameters if *their* harsh penalty is not quite the same as *your* harsh penalty.
I think a more accurate way to look at things is that VR understands the difference between concept and implementation. Even if XP felt extremely trivial in EQ, that sounds like a great source of motivation to ensure that Pantheon doesn't suffer the same fate. Any suggestion that XP will be inconsequential in Pantheon is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, delusions of EQ nostalgia and an unwillingness to consider how things may end up working differently here. People can huff and puff all they want about how additional XP being tied to corpses wouldn't be true risk vs reward -- who should we believe? Here is a message from Brad McQuaid when that exact argument was made back in 2016:
Aradune said:Dullahan said:I think it's very important that it be mandatory we retrieve our corpse to preserve the tension and risk aspect of gameplay. If we don't have to go back and get our stuff (at least some of it), it will directly impact the sense of danger which should accompany combat, as well as the sense of accomplishment that comes with success.
That may mean that only unequipped items remain on our corpse. I can see how that might being necessary, especially if we have to return to environments that would be too troublesome to endure without equipment. Either way, it's imperative that the time sink surrounding corpse retrieval be in place.
I hear you loud and clear. I would add that significant exp loss at death, most of which can be recovered when you return to your corpse, can be pretty compelling as well.
There you have it. Recovering significant XP from our corpse can be pretty compelling. That isn't coming from a perspective of how things worked in EQ (which is irrelevant to this discussion) -- it's coming from the Chief Creative Officer of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen -- if he is convinced that XP will be meaningful in this game, and that players will feel compelled to retrieve their corpses in order to recover a portion of what is lost, that is good enough for me! There is no diving into specifics here on why XP will be more of a treasured/precious resource in this game than it was in EQ and there really doesn't need to be. There were lessons learned in EQ and Vanguard and with those lessons, there is obvious room for improvement. If anybody at VR has been reading these threads I hope they take a good long look at the amount of people who considered XP negligible in EQ. That speaks volumes. It's not an issue of concept, it's an issue with implementation. Make XP matter in this game and while you're at it, please consider corpse decay as I think it would add a very interesting layer of flavor and urgency to corpse runs.
I would much rather play a game where I have to fight my way back to my corpse before it decays to alleviate a portion of the loss rather than rely on corpse summons or begging for people to sneak/invis/FD-flop-drag my corpse back to me at the zone line. Naked corpse runs sound absolutely dreadful in a game where situational gear is supposed to be important not only for overcoming encounters (that respawn), but also the environment itself. We have seen newsletters that discuss artifact items that allow you to traverse areas with boots that levitate or grappling hooks that help you get into otherwise inaccessible areas. If you lose those items how are you supposed to get back there? Rather than pigeonholing people into being useless, add options -- how is that not considered layers of risk vs reward? If you lose a corpse in a really dangerous area and aren't able to recover it before it decays, you suffer an increased penalty. That qualifies as risk vs reward in the traditional sense of the words and adds a sense of urgency that will motivate people rather than a sense of fear or brickwall that will discourage people from taking risks or exploring into areas that require certain abilities/keys/gear.
Tanix - I think we are saying much the same thing about monetary penalties. Unless they are so extreme that only the wealthiest level-cap can pay them, they will become far less than "harsh".
I think the only reason our opinions differ so much on corpse retrieval is that they are based on diametrically different assumptions. Mine is that an xp penalty without more can range from making death painful to being outright harsh. Especially with deleveling. Your opinion is that no xp penalty within reason can be sufficient and item loss is required. Item loss that cannot be avoided by sacrificing xp or cash to get your corpse back without making a corpse run.
Given your basic assumption your disagreement with my conclusions is cogently and logically put. Which leaves two points to consider if the goal is not to win an argument but rather to consider what is the best way to make a death painful.
Point one - manifestly - is to consider whose assumption is closer to the truth. Clearly that depends on playstyle and where in the game one is. To someone halfway to maximum level struggling for every point of xp and with no really valuable gear I think you might agree that an xp penalty will hurt worse than loss of gear. Yet if that same character did have valuable gear and routinely did high-xp runs of raids or dungeons I in turn will agree that the loss of even half a level would be far less threatening than the loss of gear that had taken many days of effort to get. Since different people play differently there can *be* no global agreement, in other words. For some playstyles my assumption is fully valid. For others, yours is.
Therefore we turn to point two. Given *your* assumption not my own, is there a way to make "easy" corpse recovery possible while keeping the basic concept that death must be painful?
The obvious possibility is to impose a risk of item loss when you do it the easy way. A risk that cannot be avoided by paying coin or buying insurance or having a higher xp penalty.
Thus - any time you "cheat" and summon your corpse to a NPC or graveyard you lose a randomly determined item which just may be the most valuable thing you own. Or, if you prefer, there is a percentage chance of such loss determined item by item.
Do you think that would be sufficient to make the penalty harsh enough or is your opinion that forcing every player under any circumstance to make a corpse run or get the corpse back in some other traditional way (such as recovery by a class with that ability) is *necessary*?
oneADseven - I basically agree and suspect there is no common ground with what Tanix says but my basic mindset is usually to try and parse through the differences of opinion and see if there *is* any agreement that perhaps can be worked with to produce a compromise unsatisfactory to all sides (the classic definition of a good compromise).