Death Penalty

Kei

@Sena‌ brushes with what City of Heroes did, as another direction. You never lost XP there, just gained it at half rate until you paid off your XP debt from dying, which maxed out at 50% of the level you were on.

I do kind of like the ability to lose levels anyway, but I understand I'm in the minority on that opinion, I think.

Sena

I don't really like an xp gain penalty any more than permanent xp loss. It's effectively the same thing (extra grinding, wasted time), just without the loss of levels (which is only a tiny penalty unless you lose level 80 or 99).

Tharvis

Santar said:

I'm not convinced that removing xp-loss is a good idea, but I can see some merit in it - Still forming an opinion on that.

<snip>

Main problem I would see surfacing in the event Xp-loss is removed, is a cycle of people killing each other because "lol, we get exp but lose nothing by letting ourselves get killed in turns". Of course this would be nearly instantly handled by the Admin, but yeah.

Seftin

can we not just make perma-death for players, voted for by the public?

Nim

Who says EXP gain would have to stay as it is (or at all)? Could limit people to gaining EXP from people to obviously (or likely) legitimate cases, like once every X days or if they had a contract or whatever.

Mishgul

When i think of setback, I think, having one of those "life choice" conversations with my mother.

However everyone feels different re: what a punishment for them would be. You can't balance around the subjective which makes coming up with realistic punishments for death quite difficult.

Wasting time seems like a decent one at the moment.

Klendathu

Seftin said:

can we not just make perma-death for players, voted for by the public?

I vote for permadeath for (insert forum-victim tous jour here)

Aepas

I'm still all for XP loss, Though I think there could be a bit more of a balance to it.

Those of us that have hunted up well into the 90's suddenly realize how easy it is to get past 80, and we lose about 2-5% per death.

At the lower levels however, you're loosing around 30+% which is amazingly discouraging to the newer players. The time spent regaining it might be the same, but it's about numbers and perception.  I vote for lesser XP loss at lower levels, high levels are fine. (honestly the only people that complain about XP loss are the lvl 80's and Daeir)

As far as changing all this goes? Well, if anyone has played fallen enchantress, when your heroes die from battle they gain small debuffs that are very annoying to get, but allow you to keep fighting. Some of these things are strictly flavor as well like "Lost an ear" with the subtext saying "well it could have been worse!" The lost ear gives you no statistical debuffs.

So, as far as dying goes, you wake up from the cave and you now have a sprained ankle. This sprained ankle is terribly annoying and causes you to have a slower overall movement speed. maybe down to 1 room every .75 seconds rather than 2 rooms a second or whatever the current thing is. Oh, maybe you got head trauma, you'll hear random people's "says" as stuttering for awhile, or maybe you'll just have partial stuttering or slurring. Maybe you're just generally weakend internally and your bleeding damage will be up by 10% for the next day or two.

There are a lot of creative things you can do with death and debuffs, with many that can be flavorful and fun and still detremental to your gameplay. Just as well, someone had suggested a "Visceral apperance" in an earlier thread, which would look good on battle weary travelers after dying 2 or 3 times.

So, after those debuffs, what do you do about that? well maybe we have wandering merchants like Dr. Kortaxian that just so happen to sell an expensive balm that can cure your random sprained ankle or slurred speech? Hello money sink.

And let's talk about excessive deaths. Not too long ago bonko died about 25 times to mhaldorus in about a 10 minute period trying to kill him. (I think the starburst changes addressed this issue.) But, taking that into account, if you die that much that fast, you might as well be completely laid up in bed completely unable to move. (I do think that starbursts could give smaller debuffs as well)

TLDR:

Keep XP loss

Add small flavor debuffs for deaths:
Starbursts=minor debuffs (new character descriptions, lost ear, swollen eyes. Minor adjustments like hearing loss/stuttering)
Praying= major debuffs (sprained ankles, weakened grip, wheezing, bleeding)
Excessive deaths=grevious debuffs (Great warrior, you've been fighting so much let's just give you a break before you cainrage)
rez=no debuffs

Rip

Hindering players that die is the wrong way to look at this.  (Why punish those already feeling crappy?)

 Turn this upside down and give perks and rewards to players that die.

I realize the "Death Penalty" sounds incredibly cooler then the "Life Reward" however...

Killed during PvP...(If you "embrace death")

- Keep XP loss and redo it, balance it for Dragons, whatever...

- When you die, you gain 1% health bonus per death for one day

- You gain the ability to locate player that killed you for 15 mins.

- Hired contracts are half off for an Achaean day...(Could even have a Denizen Mark that strolls up to players later on and asks if they would like to seek revenge using the Mark system.)

- after 3 deaths, a non-Mark/Infamous player will have the option to become a PK pacifist for the remainder of the month. (Hunting ONLY being allowed to reach the HIGHEST point of last experience.)

---

Personally, I am used to death, I have lost a level and half just last week (thank you all for killing me, it's been fun) and could care less about hunting my way to get it back, OTHER then the fact that my last "trait" is on the line...

---

I like the idea of battle wounds, or some type of trauma that doesn't really mean much but adds flavor.

---

For you Dragons, 3 deaths...no more dragon for the month?

*I love anything that involves more people enjoying PKing as a game form.  It's human vs. human the best kind of interaction.

Another Idea I had,

  Leave everything the way it is but during Night Time.  Open PK 100%, no XP loss.  Try it for a year, see what the outcome is.

Isaiah

Rip said:

Hindering players that die is the wrong way to look at this.  (Why punish those already feeling crappy?)

 Turn this upside down and give perks and rewards to players that die.

I realize the "Death Penalty" sounds incredibly cooler then the "Life Reward" however...

Killed during PvP...(If you "embrace death")

- Keep XP loss and redo it, balance it for Dragons, whatever...

- When you die, you gain 1% health bonus per death for one day

- You gain the ability to locate player that killed you for 15 mins.

- Hired contracts are half off for an Achaean day...(Could even have a Denizen Mark that strolls up to players later on and asks if they would like to seek revenge using the Mark system.)

- after 3 deaths, a non-Mark/Infamous player will have the option to become a PK pacifist for the remainder of the month. (Hunting ONLY being allowed to reach the HIGHEST point of last experience.)

---

Personally, I am used to death, I have lost a level and half just last week (thank you all for killing me, it's been fun) and could care less about hunting my way to get it back, OTHER then the fact that my last "trait" is on the line...

---

I like the idea of battle wounds, or some type of trauma that doesn't really mean much but adds flavor.

---

For you Dragons, 3 deaths...no more dragon for the month?

*I love anything that involves more people enjoying PKing as a game form.  It's human vs. human the best kind of interaction.

Another Idea I had,

  Leave everything the way it is but during Night Time.  Open PK 100%, no XP loss.  Try it for a year, see what the outcome is.

If OpenPK == 100 and time >= 2130 and time < 0400 and noTextploss then

Return less players at night and most people stay in a safe city

End

@rip I ran the equation for you... It doesn't look good.

Strata

Isaiah said:

If OpenPK == 100 and time >= 2130 and time < 0400 and noTextploss then

Return less players at night and most people stay in a safe city

End

@rip I ran the equation for you... It doesn't look good.

If OpenPK == 100 and time >= 2130 and time < 0400 and noTextploss then

AdminIssuesInbox.issuesCount *= 9000

forums.immediateOverload(Subject="I know I'm not losing experience but all this dying is screwing up my autobashing bots. Please do something about these... GRIEFERS.")

Return less players at night and most people stay in a safe city

End

Nim

It'd be a fun experiment, but I think if people use it as an excuse to PK whoever/whenever, it'd still get tiring for non-coms, because it'd still be a forced interruption. Still need restraint for exactly the same reason it's always needed - so people can enjoy the game instead of go ugh why do I even log in.