I know everyone keeps going back to the lost items, but in EQ I was never worried I wouldn't get my corpse and items back. It was just how long it was going to take and if I would get the exp back. A necro could always summon it and assuming you weren't black listed you could find someone willing to summon it on credit. I'm not advocating for loot to NOT stay on your corpse, just from personal experience it wasn't something I was ever concerned about.
@ Dorotea:
Here is another quote from Brad:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty/view/post_id/59612
"Whew, awesome thread, great ideas, etc.
As I've stated before, the 'severity' of Pantheon's death penalty will likely lie inbetween two 'extremes': Vanilla EQ and Vanilla VG. We need to find that sweet spot in-between the two. Totally naked corpse runs are probably too extreme. But, on the other end of the pendulum, trivializing death penalties leads to all sorts of problems. Players don't respect the environment, aren't encouraged to play seriously and with forethought, etc. At the same time, if we go too far the other way, many players will want to avoid death to such a great degree that exploration, trying new tactics, taking on that formidable boss-mob, etc. will suffer.
The goal, of course, is to come up with a death penalty that is desired by our target audience. That's easier said than done, though, because even though you all are more often on the same page than not when it comes to design and mechanics, there are a few categories where there is not an obvious or clear mandate from our community. The death penalty, of course, is one of these.
So when it comes to situations like this, here is our general approach:
Define the two extremes. Set up the system where it's relatively easy to 'tune' between these two extremes. Implement during alpha and beta the system and adjust the 'tuning'. Watch the players, listen to the community, etc. Adjust accordingly and, hopefully, narrow things down.
This is, of course, a great example of why a long beta is so important to MMORPG development. Opinions and plans are great, but often until players are actually experiencing these critical mechanics and systems we developers need to wait and watch (and not commit to specifics)."
The key takeaway for me is that they want a system that is easy to tweak. XP percentages accomplish that. (It probably shouldn't be possible to recover more than 50% of what is lost at death, either. I'm sure 97% rezzes went a long way toward trivializing the XP component of the penalty in EQ.) It was also stated that they are shooting for an area in-between the two extremes and totally naked corpse runs appears to be one of them. I'm not saying that this totally rules out naked corpse runs but when I follow the logic that has been shared, they don't objectively meet the desired criteria. If anything, they seem to satisfy the "undesired" criteria since they qualify as an extreme. The other extreme appears to be a "trivial death penalty" which is obviously subjective. XP Debt is trivial at max level so hopefully de-leveling makes the cut. They want players to respect the environment, to play seriously and with forethought. As long as XP is considered a meaningful resource in this game, and players stand to lose a significant amount of it if they fail to recover their corpse, that falls well within those lines, IMO. I know that some people want the death penalty to be terrifying ... to discourage people from taking risks, yada yada yada. Again ... just my opinion here, but that seems to be an established extreme that will be intentionally avoided. I guess we'll see how things shake out in Alpha/Beta.
oneADseven said:This is, of course, a great example of why a long beta is so important to MMORPG development. Opinions and plans are great, but often until players are actually experiencing these critical mechanics and systems we developers need to wait and watch (and not commit to specifics)."
I would like to point out its not just about a long beta. Beta testers are often your loyal fans. They play the game how you intended for it. They will target test things at request but they play for the enjoyment of the ride typically. Live isn't the same. It's about min/max to the top. A long beta doesn't mean anything if people aren't playing the game how it's going to be played at launch, and thus looking for the same short cuts. This is a trap almost every online game falls into, not just MMO's.
Ravirn said: A little lose of xp don’t sting. Oh wow I lost 20% of my xp no level lost no items lost I’ll just go grind back up. It’s risk vs reward. And that is the exact opposite of respect and fearing the environment and wanting to avoid death.
I disagree. If that 20% took you a week of steady grinding to accumulate losing that all in one death is a significant loss.
On a related note: I hope VR scales the experience loss according to your level, not your present experience into that level. By that I mean that 20% is 20% of max for the level, not 20% of current exp in the level. In some games you could go nuts right after dinging with basically no risk. If you died you'd lose 10% of however much exp you have into your current level. If that was 0 then there was zero exp loss, zero risk. The landscape was littered with tombstones that weren't worth recovering as a result.
Ravirn said: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
Most of my town lost power for 2 weeks 2 years ago and some were without power for almost a month, and I live in the most populated town in the state.
To respond to the original post, I think item loss is a bit much unless items are made trivial; so if I had to choose between trivial items with a more harsh death penalty or items that give a sense of accomplishment and a lesser death penalty, I'll take the satisfaction of the hard earned item.
Ravirn said: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
Maybe you need to assume that not being able to play a video equates to rage quitting or breaking your parents computer but I have personally and have known others to play to the best of their ability from Iraq and Afghanistan and power, internet or communications will get blocked intermittently for reasons of OPSEC.
Additionally, I would leave for months at a time where internet was just not possible for me. So your saying if comms go down while Im doing X...I go linkdead and die and cant get back on for a few weeks or a month I deserve to lose all gear on my character?
Maybe you are capable of prioritizing a video game above all else, but Im a grown man, single dad of 4 kids and have had plenty of circumstances in life both personally and professionally that have forced me to walk away from a mmorpg immediately for a little while for whatever reason. I am sure there are other people who could list reasons for having to do the same.
Its a video game in the end, and its meant to be enjoyable. Im not looking for a high maintenance girlfriend of a video game where I need to meet time sensitive demands or get permenantly penalized for it lmao.
My concern with corpse decay is the potential to exploit corpses as unlimited, extra storage space. I understand my concern assumes a light or mildly punitive death penalty. However if the death penealty is severe enough where the penalty is a significant deterrent to the benefit of extra storage space on a corpse, then there is no need for a corpse timer. Even a corpse timer that is pegged to a real time calendar where the clock starts and stops when the player logs in and out. So if a 7 day corpse timer. the player can log out, and 10 years later log back in to pantheon and have 6 days 23 hours and 59min left to get their corpse.
Not haveing corpse decay is recipe for abuse by trolls and other folks that have no intention playing the game as we all would like to, but rather get their rocks off by ruining other peoples experiance. Atlas an Ark like mmo that dropped only a few months ago was plaqued at small groups of players that crashed and made zones unplayable simply by creating so many corpses it made the servers that hosted those zones unusable until devs had to actively go in remove all the corpses from the zone info and make dying in those areas not drop a corpse, you simply lost everything. As for getting a corpse lost there should be means to summon a corpse either through a npc transaction or crafted scroll or ritual requiring certain crafted components. Moderately expensive, and requires player work to originally produce, but allows a player to basically buy back his gear. Getting your corpse back through these means should forfeit the xp lost but at least a player can get his gear back in a pinch.
Before someone jumps in and says xp loss is nothing but time and thus meaningless, then you are admitting your time is meaningless. I have a much different viewpoint.
I feel differently than some. For many, EQ was their first online 3d mmo. Players were still learning the genre. It was definitely many peoples first experience as far as raiding as we know it today (which includes dying repeatedly over an extended period of time as a large group of players).
To think that the penalty should be lesser than that ^...when players are now so much more familiar with how these type of games work, seems like a poor analysis of what the penalty should be.
If anything we should be erring on the side of harshness. Anyone with experience developing games knows it is easier to lessen the penalties later than to increase them.
Dissolution said:Ravirn said: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
Maybe you need to assume that not being able to play a video equates to rage quitting or breaking your parents computer but I have personally and have known others to play to the best of their ability from Iraq and Afghanistan and power, internet or communications will get blocked intermittently for reasons of OPSEC.
Additionally, I would leave for months at a time where internet was just not possible for me. So your saying if comms go down while Im doing X...I go linkdead and die and cant get back on for a few weeks or a month I deserve to lose all gear on my character?
Maybe you are capable of prioritizing a video game above all else, but Im a grown man, single dad of 4 kids and have had plenty of circumstances in life both personally and professionally that have forced me to walk away from a mmorpg immediately for a little while for whatever reason. I am sure there are other people who could list reasons for having to do the same.
Its a video game in the end, and its meant to be enjoyable. Im not looking for a high maintenance girlfriend of a video game where I need to meet time sensitive demands or get permenantly penalized for it lmao.
This is a hard truth I had to learn last deployment. The amount of game developers that assume everyone has unlimited uninterrupted bandwidth is staggering. Every game that needed to be online all the time ended up being a hard no for me. I was able to convince a local to get me a 3G USB for internet but I was using the 10GB card on that in about 3 weeks, which cost around $80 after the exchange rate. That was just playing Borderlands a few hours in the morning with a buddy. Good luck getting any update, there goes you're entire card.
I see no reason for items to ever permanetly be removed. After an exteremly long time you could have them mailed to the player. Say 30 days. I see no issue with that. You're not exploiting a system by waiting 30 days to get your gear back. You're making sure people don't quit over things that happen outside of their control, or even in there control.
philo said:I feel differently than some. For many, EQ was their first online 3d mmo. Players were still learning the genre. It was definitely many peoples first experience as far as raiding as we know it today (which includes dying repeatedly over an extended period of time as a large group of players).
To think that the penalty should be lesser than that ^...when players are now so much more familiar with how these type of games work, seems like a poor analysis of what the penalty should be.
If anything we should be erring on the side of harshness. Anyone with experience developing games knows it is easier to lessen the penalties later than to increase them.
I agree. I agree with corpse runs. Harsh experience penalties. Im down for all of the original hardships of death consequences. As long as there is a system in place to ensure the loss of gear is not a part of that. Ill run around in my jammy jams looking for my gear even but if there is some reason I cannot get to it within a reasonable amount of time then at least destroy the corpse and have some sort of lost and found system for me to take both the experience and monetary hit if necessary at the time where the corpse must be erased... because one must keep a tidy dungeon, I get it. I also get that loss of gear after a certain point is more or less a forced reroll.
1) I'd like to see the corpse decay and sacrificing items (there was some mention of an altar?) concepts combined. I would be fine with my items being dragged to the underworld with my corpse when it rots if I could pay for its return by sacrificing an item of similar quality/rarity.
2) It would be cool if there was an environment of "decay" where your corpse's memories are destroyed instantaneously and you can't recover any experience from your death.
This is what an ideal penalty would look like for me:
1) Upon death, players lose 3 bubbles (15%) of XP. 1 bubble is lost permanently while the other 2 bubbles are attached to their corpse.
2) Corpses last X hours. If players return to their corpse before it decays, they have 2 XP bubbles restored.
3) No-Rent items will disappear from inventories upon death. (I would like to see this kind of item tag used a bit more frequently.)
It's not that I want to see the penalty reduced, but rather restructured. There are some serious and unwarranted issues with tying gear to corpses while considering the "goal" of the death penalty. When these issues are brought up, the typical response is "That's risk vs reward!" Bologna. Pantheon is not Everquest -- there are new challenges, new tools, and new considerations in play. A super basic example is the acclimation feature. There are going to be areas that players can only survive in when they surpass certain acclimation thresholds. When you consider that gear will have acclimation bonuses, and resistance stats (that can also contribute toward acclimation scores) -- this creates a situation where a player needs a full set of situational gear to get past an environmental challenge in a given zone. It's possible that they need more than that, even. Maybe they need a full set of situational gear and a range of class buffs that get them over a hump. Overcoming acclimation is an obvious obstacle in the game and it should likely lead to a feeling of adventure and exploration. Not just anybody can explore these regions after all! All of this gets really complicated when you attach gear to corpses. So you made it through the blizzard in Amberfaet, and across the wind-blown and ice-covered bridge. Now what? You needed both your gear and a range of buffs just to get here. Now imagine ... if you die ... your gear is going to be held hostage in this area that is otherwise inaccessible without it. That isn't going to encourage players to explore or take risks and we don't need to see this "in action" to predict how it would make players feel.
There are other similar layers to the above when you get into player abilities or artifacts that are supposed to help players navigate and interact with the environment. Instead of rogue ropes, grappling hooks and summoner rafts being viewed as tools that help players adventure into dangerous areas, they will be viewed as "gating mechanisms" toward recovering their gear in the event of an untimely death. Those are the stakes in play. I totally get that some people feel that the death penalty absolutely should pigeonhole players. If you die somewhere, you must be able to return there if you want your gear. In all honesty, it sounds like a gimmick to me. The emphasis on attaching gear to corpses seems to be a by-product of XP not being valuable in the first place. When I consider that mindset, it makes sense. If people are truly convinced that XP loss doesn't really matter then I can understand why they would desire or even demand more. It reminds me of EQ2. The XP component of the death penalty at max level was completely trivial in that game. They used a debt system and it wasn't possible to de-level -- once you got to max, XP Debt was essentially irrelevant. I was not a fan of that one bit and it's a big reason why I have advocated for de-leveling in this game over a debt system.
With the way FFXI was designed, players were forced to respect the environment at all times because any amount of XP loss would sting pretty bad. You had a buffer you could work with, up to a full level, but XP acquisition was difficult in that game. It wasn't possible to quad kite. Solo/Duo play was nowhere near the efficiency of playing in a full group. There was no such thing as an AoE composition that could burn down hordes of blue enemies for huge chunks of XP. XP was hard to gain and easy to lose, and the game was "balanced" to be challenging. You couldn't take a massive zerg army and go kill a dragon. Raid sizes were structured (like they appear to be in Pantheon, at the size of 24) which meant that every person in the raid was responsible for carrying their weight and contributing toward an encounter that specifically factored in their presence. If your main tank de-leveled that would basically mean that raid content would be off the table until they got that level back. In other words, XP loss was always a critical component of the death penalty. There was no such thing as a mindset of "Meh, I lost 7% XP, no big deal!" It was always a big deal because of the emphasis on player interdependence. Your comrades needed you at your best because the game was designed and balanced to be challenging for people at their best.
If Pantheon ends up being a cheesy game where players can trivialize content with zerg armies, achieve high XP gain while solo/duo or fighting blue-con NPC's, or exploit bad AI that allows solo players to tackle content that is deemed "challenging" for a full group of players at the same level -- I can see more merit in this notion of tying gear to corpses. In other words, the game would need to be "easy" in many ways that I want it to be "challenging" -- if those things don't materialize then I could see loot loss being used as a crutch to inflate the sense of loss. In the end, I know that isn't necessary. I know for a fact that XP can be a truly precious resource and one that would qualify as a "shared goal" for groups all around the world. The game can be designed to be challenging in the sense where it's difficult to earn XP and easy to lose it, and collectively, players make the best of their potential synergy to overcome obstacles and stay ahead of that persistent and merciless curve. It works great in a group-centric game, especially when players are reliant on full groups to get the best XP. It's a constant driving force that unites all players toward a common goal -- earn more than you lose ... and good luck! If the world isn't dangerous enough for that mindset (good luck!) to exist ... where it's basically taken for granted, where gaining XP requires little effort and losing it is inconsequential ... that would be a missed opportunity, in my eyes.
I only like challenge when its not a chore.
Gear being removed or broken beyond repair on death is a chore.
If something seems like a fun challenge ask yourself if it will still be fun 10 years from now.
Simple xp loss and even some gold loss upon death is perfect, not that big a deal, but enough that you really dont want to die.
Grimseethe said:I only like challenge when its not a chore.
Gear being removed or broken beyond repair on death is a chore.
If something seems like a fun challenge ask yourself if it will still be fun 10 years from now.
Simple xp loss and even some gold loss upon death is perfect, not that big a deal, but enough that you really dont want to die.
I would say it is a chore with gear..makes it easier. If you have to retrieve your corpse with your gear then it becomes a bit more challenging than with gear. But I digress.
Very few are arguing for corpse rotting like in EQ. The main two sides I think people are discussing right now is if the gear should remain on the corpse until you retrieve the corpse, and/or after several days the gear gets returned to you somehow and your corpse rots, and the other one being just hit to the exp penalty. One side is saying that is enough, like you, others are saying the immersion, enviroment, and fear of the world will be taken away with just an exp and possible gold lost. So no, simple exp loss and some gold loss isn't perfect to most of us I assume.
I still find it cute that if your gear won't disappear like it did in EQ, and you will get it back somehow, people still complain about it being on your corpse and having to go back and get it. If this is the case, and no gear is lost, then I think this is a good penalty since there is enough people complaining about it.
I'm ok with gear being broken as this can be a money sink along with a punishment that can promote crafting. Having to have things like repair kits crafted by players would be a bonus for the player economy. I know some people don't like the idea of losing a level from death, and some people feel that exp debt becomes trivial at max level, but it would be detrimental to allow yourself to go too far into debt knowing that there will eventually be expansions/level raises... the exp debt could also be attached to the account, so that xp penalties would transfer to alternate characters on a 1:1 ratio, so if you die at lvl 50 and go negative in exp, your alt will basically never level beause the amount of xp being received at low levels will take years to get enough to recover what was say 15-30% of a loss at lvl 50. Alternatively, xp debt for a low level alt if you have a level 50 character would be insignificant to recover killing high level NPCs, but that could be a benefit of having a high level character that stays out of XP debt.
add: Progeny system on a whole new level... inheriting debt LOL.
dorotea said:
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).
Dorotea,
I am saying an exp penalty alone is not enough, for reasons I have explained.
Now rather than go into the details of those points over again, I think you are missing my entire position here.
I want there to be a heavy exp penalty and I want it to be harsh.
I want there to be a chance to lose your level.
I want your gear to be left on the corpse where you are required to go back and retrieve it.
I don't want the corpse to decay, I want the body though to stay where it is (no grave yards or easy return spots).
My points over exp as a penalty wasn’t to say I didn’t want it, but to point out that an exp penalty ALONE is not enough to provide fear in play.
I used examples where during playing EQ where the death penalty was exactly as I outlined above, but I still did not go retrieve the corpse. The reason was that exp as a punishment was not enough to encourage me to go back and get my other corpses that had no gear on them to regain my exp. Exp as a penalty was not a motivation enough for me to do that because it wasn’t much of a penalty. I could exp anywhere, anytime at my leisure to regain my exp.
With gear being left on the corpse, that choice was not available to me. In your example of how a player could have “poor gear” and so would be willing to not pick up their corpse, well… this is another area where you aren’t familiar with what EQ play was like. Gear was precious, even a starting player had nothing and had to spend time and effort to gain items. As a monk, in EQ, I was a class that was more than likely to have less items on me due to the class not being gear dependent. Even so, every item I did have was important because it wasn’t like I could easily run around and replace it.
So the idea that a player will have garbage gear (ie akin to them have green gear in some modern MMO where it drops like rain and is found everywhere) and be perfectly ok with just not going back to gain their corpse is not very likely. I mean it is possible, but it would be an extreme position to take to claim this would be a choice people would make. Gear in EQ was precious, not common, and even the non-magical stuff took time to collect. So your scenario is unlikely to occur to any relevance to be a viable argument to the issue.
So again, to reiterate…
I want there to be an exp penalty, and I want it to be harsh.
I wan there to be a chance to lose your level.
I want the items to be left on the corpse so the player must return to the corpse to retrieve them.
I don't want the corpse to decay, I want the body though to stay where it is (no grave yards or easy return spots).
So not only do I want the penalties you advocate for, but I also want the penalties I do.
As I said, this was the EQ penalty, and it was the corpse recovery requirement to get gear that was the most daunting.
Now so I can be clear to people here, I am NOT advocating corpse decay. As I have said, this was a technical limitation of the times, not a design decision in EQ. It is not a proper risk vs reward balance.
Gear in EQ was not like WoW or other modern MMOs. It is not even like modern EQ where you can go to the AH and buy a bunch of replacement gear for pennies on the dollar. The gear in the game was hard to come by, even the lower gear, which took time, and the better the gear, the more time it took, to the point where spending days and weeks to get the gear. A long CR to recover a corpse was NOTHING compared to the time it took to get the gear originally. So a CR forced people to get their items as there was no reasonable alternative. You either spent the hours to recover your corpse, or you spent days, weeks, months to get your gear back.
A corpse decay system is not a reasonable balance to a game like this. As I said, it works fine in a rogue like system where gear acquisition is fast, levels are fast, everything is fast because the penalty of death is loss of everything. That is risk vs reward balance.
EppE said:I know everyone keeps going back to the lost items, but in EQ I was never worried I wouldn't get my corpse and items back. It was just how long it was going to take and if I would get the exp back. A necro could always summon it and assuming you weren't black listed you could find someone willing to summon it on credit. I'm not advocating for loot to NOT stay on your corpse, just from personal experience it wasn't something I was ever concerned about.
Only a very very small minority are arguing for corpse decay where you lose your items.
Even those in EQ during the time, I knew of nobody who thought that was a good mechanic.
I don't think it is a reasonable position that considers risk vs reward balance.
Grimseethe said:I only like challenge when its not a chore.
Gear being removed or broken beyond repair on death is a chore.
If something seems like a fun challenge ask yourself if it will still be fun 10 years from now.
Simple xp loss and even some gold loss upon death is perfect, not that big a deal, but enough that you really dont want to die.
I played EQ for 5 years straight.
I stopped playing when I could no longer take the extreme dumbing down of the game.
So yes, I would still enjoy the game if it were like EQ at release, in fact that is the only reason I am considering this game. If this game is like what you are asking for, I won't be playing it. There are tons of MMOs designed around the idealogy you are arguing for.
Belzavior said:Not haveing corpse decay is recipe for abuse by trolls and other folks that have no intention playing the game as we all would like to, but rather get their rocks off by ruining other peoples experiance. Atlas an Ark like mmo that dropped only a few months ago was plaqued at small groups of players that crashed and made zones unplayable simply by creating so many corpses it made the servers that hosted those zones unusable until devs had to actively go in remove all the corpses from the zone info and make dying in those areas not drop a corpse, you simply lost everything. As for getting a corpse lost there should be means to summon a corpse either through a npc transaction or crafted scroll or ritual requiring certain crafted components. Moderately expensive, and requires player work to originally produce, but allows a player to basically buy back his gear. Getting your corpse back through these means should forfeit the xp lost but at least a player can get his gear back in a pinch.
Before someone jumps in and says xp loss is nothing but time and thus meaningless, then you are admitting your time is meaningless. I have a much different viewpoint.
Corpse recovery takes time, so does all the time to gain that gear you would lose if you did not go to retrive it.
I am saying exp alone is meaningless when compared to the need to recover your corpse.
When you are looking at a 5+ hour corpse recovery because your body is deep in a dungeon, you too will see exp as not worth the effort and not worth your time. Again, exping is time, but it is indirect and able to be made in many ways, many locations, etc... coipse recovery time is specific where you have to take the time to go back to the place you died and recover it. All are time spent, but the exp penalty alone is generic, requires no specifics and can easily be dismissed in a difficult situation.
I can promise you that you will let your exp corpses rot quite often if that is the only penalty.
The reason people argue for no corpse recovery for items is because they know it is a very difficult penalty and they can't circumvent it. Exp they know the can dimiss.
Tanix said:
So again, to reiterate…
I want there to be an exp penalty, and I want it to be harsh.
I wan there to be a chance to lose your level.
I want the items to be left on the corpse so the player must return to the corpse to retrieve them.
I don't want the corpse to decay, I want the body though to stay where it is (no grave yards or easy return spots).
A corpse decay system is not a reasonable balance to a game like this. As I said, it works fine in a rogue like system where gear acquisition is fast, levels are fast, everything is fast because the penalty of death is loss of everything. That is risk vs reward balance.
@Tanix
I'm with you on all but your last item, the corpse decay. A system with harsh penalties are going to have players that rage quit. Players that run their trial levels and decide this game just isn't for them. Players that die and have to log off and them mommy grounds them from the network for a month for B-slapping their sister or whatever. I personally don't want all these abandoned corpses cluttering the noob zones or the bottom of dungons. Can you just imagine it after a few months or even years.
One possible resolution would be the corpse disappear if the player logged off. But that eliminates the ability I seen used often in EQ where we /consent our friendly guild Necro or monk then sent him an email of the situation, then logged off. And when he got on he would have us all fixed up.
I feel the corpse MUST rot after a given time, (my thoughts...1 week) but gear loss is unacceptable per Brad. There is no reason the corpse couldn't Rot and the gear be returned to the player in a inventory overflow tab. So I'm talking not loss of gear, but 7 (14, or 30...whatever) day denial of gear unless you recovered your corpse.
Zorkon said:Tanix said:
So again, to reiterate…
I want there to be an exp penalty, and I want it to be harsh.
I wan there to be a chance to lose your level.
I want the items to be left on the corpse so the player must return to the corpse to retrieve them.
I don't want the corpse to decay, I want the body though to stay where it is (no grave yards or easy return spots).
A corpse decay system is not a reasonable balance to a game like this. As I said, it works fine in a rogue like system where gear acquisition is fast, levels are fast, everything is fast because the penalty of death is loss of everything. That is risk vs reward balance.
@Tanix
I'm with you on all but your last item, the corpse decay. A system with harsh penalties are going to have players that rage quit. Players that run their trial levels and decide this game just isn't for them. Players that die and have to log off and them mommy grounds them from the network for a month for B-slapping their sister or whatever. I personally don't want all these abandoned corpses cluttering the noob zones or the bottom of dungons. Can you just imagine it after a few months or even years.
One possible resolution would be the corpse disappear if the player logged off. But that eliminates the ability I seen used often in EQ where we /consent our friendly guild Necro or monk then sent him an email of the situation, then logged off. And when he got on he would have us all fixed up.
I feel the corpse MUST rot after a given time, (my thoughts...1 week) but gear loss is unacceptable per Brad. There is no reason the corpse couldn't Rot and the gear be returned to the player in a inventory overflow tab. So I'm talking not loss of gear, but 7 (14, or 30...whatever) day denial of gear unless you recovered your corpse.
The visual display of corpses and such issues are a non-issue really.
You are already on to the solution.
People worried about the lag such would cause is a client issue (the client processes the graphics and the overload of corpses is on the client side). This is solved with corpse view toggles. I mentioned it before but you could have random levels of corpse view toggles to see your own, your group, raid, friend, etc... and it would be entirely up to the client to decide on that.
As for the server side, it is a simply coordinate location for where the corpse is and then a link to an inventory list of the items on the corpse which would be very small if the player has tons of corpses. Point is, the server would not have an issue with this, nor would the client with a toggle (which I think EQ even has this very feature already, that or it is another game I am thinking about, point is... the solution already exists and works well).
As for recovering a corpse. I really think a person should have to recover their corpse regardless and not be handed their gear simply because they got mad, quit for a week/month and came back.
There will be classes who can summon corpses for people. People can go find them and get their corpse back when they come back.
I really dislike the GY/item return thing. I mean, I guess I could be ok with it, but it would have to be a 30+ feature where it can't be abused by people gimmicking or being lazy.