There has to be some cost associated with the gear itself if we are to instantly reappear with it somewhere else upon death. Reduced durability raiting and a resulting reduction in stats from the gear should be sufficient.
Trasak said:Syrif said:Perhaps it's better if we are in the same world with balance and compromise instead. ;)
Compromise leaves everyone a little unhappy by definition. Different toggles will allow more people to be +95% satisfied. We will already need multiple servers (hopefully dozens) as each server may only be able to support 3k users at one time. There could be a range of servers from FTP, Challenge lite (faster leveling, lower death penalty, lots of group finder tools), "Normal servers", RP servers, Hardcore Servers, faction pvp, free for all pvp, GM guided servers, and even one life servers.
If every time one server type becomes filed a new one of the same type opens then players will get to decide with their play time what type of server they want. If hardcore is most popular then it will have the most servers.
RP and PvP servers make sense. But when you start changing the game for QoL tiers and toggles is where you lose me. That's where we all need to be in the same world that VR has designed and it's up to VR to find the balance and compromise while also upholding the tenets. Thank you for your input, but I won't respond on this again because I'd like to keep thread on topic.
Jabir said:Generally speaking, though, harsher penalty means fewer deaths, and vice versa! Worth to remember, when arguing about this essential mechanic.
Riight. Pantheon can be designed for lots of mindless deaths like in WoW or death in Pantheon can be designed on riskVSreward (tenet). Lol.
Syrif said:Trasak said:Syrif said:Perhaps it's better if we are in the same world with balance and compromise instead. ;)
Compromise leaves everyone a little unhappy by definition. Different toggles will allow more people to be +95% satisfied. We will already need multiple servers (hopefully dozens) as each server may only be able to support 3k users at one time. There could be a range of servers from FTP, Challenge lite (faster leveling, lower death penalty, lots of group finder tools), "Normal servers", RP servers, Hardcore Servers, faction pvp, free for all pvp, GM guided servers, and even one life servers.
If every time one server type becomes filed a new one of the same type opens then players will get to decide with their play time what type of server they want. If hardcore is most popular then it will havethe most servers.
RP and PvP servers make sense. But when you start changing the game for QoL tiers and toggles is where you lose me. That's where we all need to be in the same world that VR has designed and it's up to VR to find the balance and compromise while also upholding the tenets. Thank you for your input, but I won't respond on this again because I'd like to keep thread on topic.
Death penalty is exactly one of those QoL features that can vary from one server type to another. The game tenets are guide lines that are ultimately goals to strive for but through testing and experience they may prove infeasible or undesirable in practice.
What will you do if VR decides to do away with corpse recovery entirely because 75% of the Beta testers detest it? Would you as a business owner choose to sell to 25 people rather than selling to 75 people, of course you wouldn’t. If you could instead set up 4 servers, three without corpse recovery and one with then you could sell to all 100 people then that would be a business success. You might loose one or two people simply because the servers without corpse recovery exist but that is not a significant number of people from a business sense.
@Trasak Again, thanks for your feedback at me. Pantheon is not just being made for only what a small group of testers want. They are making one world called Terminus. Now back on topic - This thread isn't about all the different types of gameplay that could be on different servers lol.
Syrif said:@Trasak Again, thanks for your feedback at me. Pantheon is not just being made for only what a small group of testers want. They are making one world called Terminus. Now back on topic - This thread isn't about all the different types of gameplay that could be on different servers lol.
I have been responding to you but my feedback is to VR. Consider including death penalty to be one of those sliding features in alternative rule set servers.
arazons said:There has to be some cost associated with the gear itself if we are to instantly reappear with it somewhere else upon death. Reduced durability raiting and a resulting reduction in stats from the gear should be sufficient.
While I somewhat agree, the problem appears to be that the death penalty of durability is minor in comparison to the major benefit of respawning with your full set of gear and weapons. I agree with Joppa that risk of deleveling and exp-loss are necessary to help with balance and compromise. I'd also favor player-crafters over npc especially in Pantheon. Of great importance for death would probably be riskVSreward, balance/compromise, class- interdependency, and non-npc crafters.
Trasak said:Syrif said:Trasak said:Syrif said:Perhaps it's better if we are in the same world with balance and compromise instead. ;)
Compromise leaves everyone a little unhappy by definition. Different toggles will allow more people to be +95% satisfied. We will already need multiple servers (hopefully dozens) as each server may only be able to support 3k users at one time. There could be a range of servers from FTP, Challenge lite (faster leveling, lower death penalty, lots of group finder tools), "Normal servers", RP servers, Hardcore Servers, faction pvp, free for all pvp, GM guided servers, and even one life servers.
If every time one server type becomes filed a new one of the same type opens then players will get to decide with their play time what type of server they want. If hardcore is most popular then it will havethe most servers.
RP and PvP servers make sense. But when you start changing the game for QoL tiers and toggles is where you lose me. That's where we all need to be in the same world that VR has designed and it's up to VR to find the balance and compromise while also upholding the tenets. Thank you for your input, but I won't respond on this again because I'd like to keep thread on topic.
Death penalty is exactly one of those QoL features that can vary from one server type to another. The game tenets are guide lines that are ultimately goals to strive for but through testing and experience they may prove infeasible or undesirable in practice.
What will you do if VR decides to do away with corpse recovery entirely because 75% of the Beta testers detest it? Would you as a business owner choose to sell to 25 people rather than selling to 75 people, of course you wouldn’t. If you could instead set up 4 servers, three without corpse recovery and one with then you could sell to all 100 people then that would be a business success. You might loose one or two people simply because the servers without corpse recovery exist but that is not a significant number of people from a business sense.
Well I would HOPE that 100% of the players detest dieing in Pantheon... Obviously you've never read or at least didn't understand the Wolfshead Online blog intitled "The Death Penalty Mechanic and Loss Aversion in MMO Design"
From a link in that same artical to "www.behavioraleconomics.com"
"Loss aversion is an important concept associated with prospect theory and is encapsulated in the expression “losses loom larger than gains” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). It is thought that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. "
If ANYBODY playing Pantheon doesen't detest dieing, then VR has Failed.
Playing SWGEmu recently has reminded about how death worked in that game. There isn't deleveling OR experience loss, but death still sucked. The SWG solution was an elegant one if you ask me. Two reasons: 1) Cloning centers and 2) wounds. For those not familiar, when you died in SWG you spawned at the nearest cloning center (which were only located in major cities) and generally far (and I mean far) away from where you probably died. The worlds were huge and open, and if you died way out in the wilderness... well, it's going to be a while before you got back to business. Not only did it take a while to get back to where you died, but you respawn with wounds which were permanent reductions in your total health/mana bars that made it so you could never be "full health". The wounds would stack up death after death until pretty quickly you could be walking around with virtually no health to speak of and totally worthless in a fight. The only way to heal these wounds was to visit a doctor (non-NPC) and have your wounds healed.
In my opinion this was brilliant because inevitable death also facilitated player interaction and economy by visiting doctors and entertainers and getting your wounds healed, and usually paying for some buffs before you went back out into the world. Death stung, it took a lot of time to visit doctors/entertainers and get back to your corpse, you didn't want to die repeatedly in any scenario due to stacking wounds, and you interacted with other players. I really did not want to die AND I didn't need losing levels to do enforce that. Was SWG perfect? Hell no (but nearly! :) but this was a pretty good system I think.
I think Panthon could be similar in that if you die then you probably have a long ways to go before you get back to your corpse, seeing as how big this world is going to be compared to the old days like EQ. Furthermore, if durability acts similar to wounds in that it is not only a hit on your coin purse but also as the items take death hits they lose their stats... perhaps this is how both Brad's statement about spare armor sets AND Joppas proposed system could sync up. When you die, your armor gets worse and worse. Not just the durability score, but the stats also. Until within a few deaths, you are practically naked. Now you have to visit a player crafter to have your armor repaired. Maybe players can only repair armor with a full blacksmith shop around them that are only found in major cities. Now that takes a lot of time to go have your armor repaired, and money. Imagine you are in the middle of a bad raid when everyone has eaten few deaths and their dps/healing/tanking is starting to feel it. I'll bet you are really focused on staying alive so that you don't have to spend the time to port everyone out, run to a major city, find an armorsmith and repair everyone's items.
Add on top of that the XP loss the we know is coming, and I say you have a system that highly discourages repeated deaths. Even moreso than EQ. In EQ, with the clickie rez and everyone being very well buffered into max level... let's not kid ourselves, dying in a raid really didn't mean anything other than 10 minutes for the clerics to rez and everyone get buffed back up. The threat of deleveling really didn't mean much of anything. If the tank was bad and deleveled, you just threw him in the "xp group" for a little bit and boom he's back to max level. EQ really wasn't that bad except for when you were a noobie at level 32 venturing into LGuk.
Zorkon said:Well I would HOPE that 100% of the players detest dieing in Pantheon... Obviously you've never read or at least didn't understand the Wolfshead Online blog intitled "The Death Penalty Mechanic and Loss Aversion in MMO Design"
From a link in that same artical to "www.behavioraleconomics.com"
"Loss aversion is an important concept associated with prospect theory and is encapsulated in the expression “losses loom larger than gains” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). It is thought that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. "
If ANYBODY playing Pantheon doesen't detest dieing, then VR has Failed.
Agreed in general. The key is finding the death penalty that gives the best dopamine vs RageQuitSubscriptionCancel. I suspect that will be a wide range of settings knowing the wide range of humans. Those ranges could be broken down into a couple tiers. If the death penalty is picked to be the middle of all feedback then on average everyone will be 25% unhappy. If there are three options then there will be an average of 8.3% unhappiness with at least one of the options assuming they are evenly distributed across the scale. VR could then go back an look at their total population to see where the mean is an one or more of the options may fall away as an insignificant number of players are interested in said rule set.
PS I looked at Wolfshead Online once, the other stuff on his site makes me uninterested in anything he has to say and do not recommend anyone goes to his site in order to stop him from getting add revenue.
Eq was the only game that death actually meant something that i have played. I hated dying cause it was a pain in the ass...it made me be more careful and selective of my targets.
WoW, SWTOR, DDO, Vanguard i did not care if i died it was no big deal.
Something to be said for how EQ handled death.
I think 2 things made eq death painful....naked crs and de-levelling. Plus god knows how many people i met because i had to ask for help getting a corpse back...nothing like forced socializing lol....and then not finding anyone and having to do it the hard way or wait for graveyard (that was way to long to wait lol so i always tried it myself)
Anyone can eaisly wipe out xp debt, everyone has money to repair ****, these are things that are no big deal and can really be ignored.
I would second the different server option....they way it is being described currently is not threatening at all...
I want to realize i died and screwed myself...maybe next time i will think things through better....or maybe not who knows lol...
I think the only way it would work as currently described was for the xp debt to be HUGE and when in xp debt you have MASSIVE combat negatives.
If it does not hurt don't bother adding something fluffy, put resources to better use as people will just ignore death penalties.
My 2 cents, or maybe 1 cent who knows...
Kridak
Zorkon said:If ANYBODY playing Pantheon doesen't detest dieing, then VR has Failed.
Yep, exactly! We need more clarification and hopefully soon. Joppa and many others have mentioned the risk of deleveling and exp-loss to help counter this major benefit revelation of respawning with your full set of gear and weapons (and of course bank items are completely safe from death too). Deleveling/exp-loss seems quite necessary now for death to be meaningful. And more may be needed to move death back in that direction via compromise. The compromise and balance of riskVSreward is just so important for this tenet and the others in Pantheon Rise of the Fallen.
Yeah, I kinda liked that idea too. Let's say you lose 20% of your exp upon death, maybe you can get back 75% of that loss with a rez or 50% of that loss by doing a corpse retrieval. That would give several options and all three still have a penalty (as long as de-leveling at all levels, including max level, is in the game anyway).
Edit for clarification (de-leveling at all levels).
Interesting numbers and a good concept. Perhaps it could bite a bit more. Also, since we will most likely respawn with our full set of gear and weapons at all levels then I think the risk of deleveling should be applicable to the same levels as well.
I must be remembering corpse recovery differently than others in EQ.
While originally death hurt (especially if you were above the curve in levels or if the server crashed and you where running through a new area) after the level curve started to reach level 40+ corpse recoveries where a joke (even naked). Since there where no instanced dungeons SOL B and Lower Guk were empty of enemies during primetime and off-hours to an extent (Did not play much off-hours that I can remember). You had parties camped at each named camp and pulling anything they could for XP (or to nab a named that does not have a party sitting on the spawn). The worst part about dying at this point was another group taking your spot or pulling all the mobs in your "camp" while the party headed back to regroup.
Raiding was a different issue with corpse recovery; however, there were enough classes (Monk/Rogue) to gather corpses not sitting under the boss to get enough people geared to distract the boss so the remaining corpses could be recovered. This method changed after summon corpse was introduced (and of course as more people reached level 50 the raid mobs did not stay alive for long anyway).
As to the argument, the death penalty is weak sauce because people start with their worn gear after dying... How many classes were affected by this all the time?
While Monk and Rogue where the best at corpse recovery, other classes had the ability to get their corpse back, without help, to some degree (excluding Warriors). Having all non-equipped items stay on your corpse is an incentive to make you want to retrieve your corpse.
As to the XP and losing a level Will have to wait until I see it in action. XP loss (with or without losing a level) affects people differently and I am OK with either because the kind of XP loss that would scare me from dying would make everybody else leave the game. I play the game to have fun: grouping and killing the enemy is fun for me. So having to spend an extra 30 hours of killing stuff is not a punishment if I die 1 time (and got a rez) to recoup the XP lost from that death. To others, that might make them quit the game.
Chogar said:the kind of XP loss that would scare me from dying would make everybody else leave the game. I play the game to have fun: grouping and killing the enemy is fun for me. So having to spend an extra 30 hours of killing stuff is not a punishment if I die 1 time (and got a rez) to recoup the XP lost from that death. To others, that might make them quit the game.
And others on the other end might quit because you respawn with your full set of gear and weapons with no naked CR. Either perspective won't be satisfied, so the only solution is the compromise of death. Many people have expressed the death penalty does not do that in the announcement. That's why we need more clarification from VR on death, which we likely will. Plus, the people you mention who may quit because of losing experience at least have an mmorpg (like WoW) to choose from where there is no exp-loss and deleveling. The others don't.
I agree as to what you say about the classes being so different from each other and some being better at corpse retrieval than others, that's the WHOLE POINT. It's called class-interdependency, a tenet. It's true: corpse retrieval with these abilities was not very difficult in Classic EQ. I thought Brad said decisions weren't being made just for the sake of 'appealing to the masses.' I thought the tenets that made people pledge in the first place (like riskVSreward) were to be upheld.
Zuljan said: ... The money for crafters argument is going to be absolutely useless endgame as well unless repairs scale with gear quality, which often calls for needing to implement dailies or something for players to upkeep without grinding the same mob for money every day. ...
I'm not certain that I get what you're saying here.
Are you saying that because the durability/repair mechanic would involve consumption of coin through crafters, this mechanic wouldn't hold value at end game?
You're already speaking of one of several possible solutions: scaling repair cost with gear quality.
Do you mean to say that, when repair costs scale with gear quality and thus when more coin is consumed through crafters doing the repairs, you need dailies? This in order that player can maintain an abundance of coin? Is that even a game's goal, to have end players with bags of coin sitting around? Sure, the higher level a player is, the more coin they might have. But if the costs increase equally, the coin balance wouldn't be as severely skewed, would it? But dailies would ...facilitate the coin overflow on players? Again, why is this needed? If dailies enable players to regain their coinloss in increased speed, aren't you undermining the impact of your coinloss on death (or the possible repaircosts) in the first place?
The longer you can prevent the scenario where end players have stupendous amounts of cash, the better for the overall economy, community, longlevity of the server's population and thus the game as a whole.
Risk vs Reward. Can you imagine a scenario where end players are not swimming in gold and platina reserve. But instead think twice before mindlessly rushing into a challenge? Where failure remains impactful? (the coinsink here being only one factor in the entire design)
dorotea said:((I believe that if any level were to be free form de-leveling penalties it would need to max level.))
And I feel precisely the opposite way. Up to level 5 or 10 it makes perfect sense to have reduced death penalties so as not to unduly discourage new players. First we suck them in - then when they love the game we gradually introduce a few things that are essential to long-term enjoyment but may be a discouragement to the uninitiated.
But why in the name of all the Gods would we want to take players that have become more than used to a death penalty and suddenly remove it. Obviously if you cannot lose a level at maximum level there *is* no death penalty. As least insofar as experience loss goes.
I agree, from a marketing stand point. It makes more sense to warm up the crowd before taking it up a notch.
I would consider a design where you allow more death's to be less impactfull at lower levels. Death penalty should still be a thing from level 1, but it's less severe. (for example from the Joppa's summary only several aspects of death penalty are in effect at starting levels) After you managed to make your way to level 10, the amount of deaths without (or with decreased) impact is decreasing gradually (or in other words, the impact of a deathpenalty is increasing). Where several levels later (for sake of things let's say level 15-20), you get into the full design of death penalties. From there on, the penalties remain the same, the costs however continu to scale with level, quality or other.
Syrif said:Interesting numbers and a good concept. Perhaps it could bite a bit more. Also, since we will most likely respawn with our full set of gear and weapons at all levels then I think the risk of deleveling should be applicable to the same levels as well.
Do we really want to delevel a new low level player? Perhaps the full penalty of death can be introduced gradually? (quickly and fully at some point but not from the start?)
Ranarius said:Also (not sure if it's been said, but I tried to skim through everything) without the posibility of losing levels you could simply do a naked run into any zone you feel like exploring. If you die, so what? Just leave your corpse there and no loss because nothing was on it. If you're level 50 and you want to see how this certain mob starts off a fight just get naked, go start the fight and last 5 seconds, see how it goes, no loss.
A naked exploration run wouldn't get you far. That should obviously be a bad consideration. A dungeoncrawl would be progressing one inch at at time using this strategy.
I don't see that as a loophole. It's more likely to see dunkey's parked at bind points. So they can trade off a 2nd or 3th set before having to go repair and thereby continuing their dungeoncrawl.
I am definately disapointed. I'd like it better if at least 1 piece of worn gear dropped on the corpse. The game would be so much the poorer without the risk of losing hard won gear when one's corpse expires, and so much less sweet without the moments of recovering from such. D=
Barin999 said:Syrif said:Interesting numbers and a good concept. Perhaps it could bite a bit more. Also, since we will most likely respawn with our full set of gear and weapons at all levels then I think the risk of deleveling should be applicable to the same levels as well.
Do we really want to delevel a new low level player? Perhaps the full penalty of death can be introduced gradually? (quickly and fully at some point but not from the start?)
Yep. If you read back, I mentioned that perhaps the first few beginner levels would be immune from risk of deleveling. The risk factors to death should be learned sooner than later though, especially in the lower levels where content is not as difficult yet.
Zuljan said: Sorry I wasn’t very clear last post. There are a lot of variables at play with this rollout of cr, possible gear repairs etc but I think chogar hit the nail on the head. is our brand still catering to the hardcore player? CRs were not typically very difficult, especially with invis. Honestly I cant think of a time I couldn’t get to my corpse beside when I ventured into the hole solo for my ranger Epic piece and got my corpse stuck after the drop off (and for the record I loved that design. Perfect example of the hard core design elements I want to see. I got a spanking for not talking to people and researching the zone before entering; this makes you respect your environment and gives you a constant, static feeling of mystery and wonder, knowing you could cross any terrain outside or inside and perhaps not be able to venture back. This is how the real world/topography is; variable and uncompromising. More and more recent implementations are eschewing the aforementioned and legitimately streamlining the experience (LAS introduction (which I’m ok with) but then the cleric races increased, all rezzes are equal, now spawning with full gear and there are a handful of other examples I could name here). Again, I see some people talking business numbers and satisfying the masses (mmo consumer) which is specifically what I thought we were not aiming to do? I understand they are trying to find a Happy medium (in my opinion much more than Brad attempted to). This is absolutely fine if they can somehow re invent the wheeland not make these newly implemented features feel like a cater to the theme park mmo player. It’s not the end of the world and all of this is “subject to testing” but you can clearly see the recent changes and direction is going 110% toward the casual, more forgiving style of gameplay which is not what the genre needs imo. I’ve seen Joppa reference WoW and it’s financial success via LAS and compare that to pantheon, which gave me a little glimpse of some of his underlying thoughts which is centric or at least in part on money/catering to that casual player to achieve it (of course money is on any devs mind, but not at the cost of the brand of our game). And no I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here, just saying that’s where this ship has been headed the past 6 months. My two cents (I’ve played every mainstream mmo the past 15 years and the ones I raided in were always top world guilds) is casual players WILL be ok with the hardcore nature of things and keep subscribing as long as they are WITH friends and feel they’re accomplishing something (even if that’s a successful CR). It’s not dying that kills people from playing hardcore eq, vg, swtor, Wild Star etc it’s dying ALONE and not being able to play the game the way others are, whether that means not being able to get your corpse back until a GM logs on or have to run back to get your corpse naked after the group rage quit disbanded and you don’t have a way to get through the see invis Skellies. The key is making sure they’re not alone. A vast majority of WoW players were at one time lower level casuals. I would talk to so many random people who played back then. Most were just messing around in Uldaman type level ranges, hovering there for weeks or months, just casually playing with friends thoroughly enjoying their low level experience, some military friends across the world. I could not understand how they were able to have fun. They would constantly wipe and try again. My competitive nature was myopic; I felt if you weren’t making significant leveling or gear progress then how could you possible be enjoying the game, because the game is beating you. But it’s the friendship, the experiences together and how easy it was for casuals to master that game (which was also the downfall of WoW to a lot of people). All I’m trying to say it what ever you decide to do here, make it ABOUT THE PLAYERS. Make a class summon people’s corpses back from anywhere, so long as they’re at some shrine in some city and use a super saiyan coffin, or something anything just make sure the CR and everything else that may be considered to be trivialized or made less difficult; instead consider how the issue can be circumnavigated through P2P interaction. Again old school CRs forced you to meet up together, get that group invis and Spirit of the wolf, talk it out shake off the dust etc, these full gear corpse runs is gojng to turn into silent, inducing rage build up with less communication and more groups ninja disbanding because why not, I’ll just get my **** when I log back on. So this will also reinforce a loser mentality when a lot of times after a CR, I’m like screw it i wanted to log off but we came this far let’s just try one more time type deal. Anyway just thinking outloud but I assure the dev team there are very few things to push casuals away that can’t be remedied by designing a system/world sustained by P2P interaction. If you want casual subs, don’t rush to make everything geared corpse runs, no de level, every Rez the same, all races can be cleric now etc; my Honesr opinion is that it’s about the companionship not the button pounding and clearing through content like a breeze that made WoW accessible. It was just the fact that anyone’s grandpa could learn to play WoW, so people tried it so it caught on and became a fad. I knew girls that logged on just to freakin chat! And I knew retired hardcore raiders who we would never disband from guild and they’d log in just to chat. Mmos are about friendship more than anything. Sorry my last post was opaque. So many moving parts, all interconnected. Bottom line I don’t think these changes are going to keep or rope in casual players any more than designing it a little differently will. We were never out to kill the WoW subs, we were out to design a hardcore, challenging mmo world we’ve been bereft of.
Thank you for bringing up much of these concerns. They are my concerns as well. I'd expect there to be a decent follow-up on these concerns about the 110% revelation from Joppa in the stream later today, but even that's not a certainty here.. The need for risk of deleveling and exp-loss as a part of death is obviously relative now. I agree more clarification is needed on the tenets that brought us here in the first place. Anyway, I suppose we'll have a better idea of which direction the development of this mmorpg is actually headed soon.