Death Mechanic Changes – Feedback Thread

[asteldian]

I'm somewhat confused...I've not heard any convincing reason why you would change the death mechanic.

CS nightmare? No doubt it is, but that isn't because of the mechanics-EQ1 managed it for years. Its a CS nightmare because like many things it is bugged, the game is young, its not surprising, it takes time but you can fix it. So 5 reasons for getting rid of a good mechanic can be sorted through fixing it.

Essences? Lower xp loss.....sounds uncomfortably familiar to me, and Im not talking WoW. Call it a Shard and I have serious deja vu. EQ2 anyone? All your gear, go collect your shard, thats pretty damn easy so should please those that hate CRs...yet it wasnt enough was it? A bit later 'shards are gone, you just respawn with debt, now everyone will be happy' yet...they still werent were they? Even the debt was very much removed, to the point you could strain your eyes trying to see the red on your xp bar.

Currently dying and being rezzed or retrieving corpse gives you a mere 1% loss of xp, that is nothing, its insignificant. At lower lvls the death and summoning of corpse costs you 8%, ouch, thats a noticable hit. Good. I've had to use the altar many times through my chars life, duoing deep in KE was dangerous and I had no spare gear. Dangerous and fun, well worth the xp i lost for it. But the need to summon is rare especially if you have spare gear. So already death penalties are weak..though I confess I like them, they make it strong enough that I really dont like dying in a dungeon.

Secondary gear cant be good enough because we failed with our main gear....are you telling me that excuse is a reason you considered removing the death penalty, well 'replacing' it. That is a typical excuse made by the negative git you find every so often, Mr.Doom and Gloom. I can tell you now that 9/10 deaths is not because your gear wasn't good enough, its because you messed up or had bad luck-fought in the wrong area, forgot about the wanderer, used bad tactics, had someone LD or AFK. My friend and I died against 2 mobs facing us, yet later we killed 3 mobs of the same lvl and difficulty...in fact they were the EXACT same mobs plus a wanderer that we didnt pay attention to, because we wre on the ball during the fight, we played hard and won. So secondary gear not good enough is a lousy excuse.

'Some of us have jobs and dont have time to spend forever doing things like CR' - I have a full time job, plus I have to travel 2 and a half hours to get to work then that time again to get back, so essentially I am working 13 hour days. I get to play very litte during the week, does that mean I want to get rid of CRs? Does it mean I want xp to be increased even more than it already has? No, of course not, what little time I have on I enjoy, if I die I try get my body back, if I know I cant I summon and get onto it, the xp increases made in recent patches have made xp loss very quick to get back.

The people who suffer most would be soloers as xp is slow, but on the other hand its easy, and there are loads of outdoor areas to solo, and its incredibly easy to get your body back.

So, explain to me again why you want to change the death in game?

[kythen]

I've joined these forums just to respond to this thread too.

I am against changing the current death penalty. A lot of the reasons have already been stated so I won't go into them again. However, the main reason why I'm against changing the death penalty is emotional.

When you play Vanguard the way it is and face the prospect of death, you full well know that there is a hefty price tag you are going to pay if you die. It makes your palms sweat when you see that health bar get closer to 0. It gives you that little prickle in the inside. That feeling of "oh, no!" "ahhh..." "ARGHHH!"

Yep, basically the stages before you die are an emotional roller coaster - aww man, that is fun. That's what playing a game is about, it's about FEELING THINGS. So many people forget this. How do you feel when you level? How do you feel when you die (and death actually means something)? How do you feel when you buy your first mount? How do you feel when you beat your first named? HOW DO YOU FEEL??????

I love paying in xp. I love doing a painful corpse run to retrieve my corpse. I love helping a group member retrieve his hard to get to corpse. I love the feeling I get when I'm getting overpowered and am put to the test. I want to sweat knowing that I might well be able to get that Color Spray in to buy some time to evac or run out. I might be able to sleep or slow my opponent enough to trick death, this time. Maybe, maybe not. And this is relevant today ONLY because death matters. Why does it matter today? Because it has a hefty price tag! To die costs time and time is the only currency that matters. Tomorrow, you put that system live, death will lose any meaning. I'll just sit back, and smoke cigarettes during combat (which I currently cannot afford to do - cause of the xp loss not cause of cost of the pack of smokes ).

First, double XP weekend 1, then double XP weekend 2, then increase in XP per kills, now less death penalty, what's next? A "combat upgrade?" :P

Please do not go down that path, I'm too fragile to be heartbroken again. Vanguard is a great game, like SWG once was. For crying out loud, keep it great, don't settle for less like the competition. Be superior. Be above that. You have the vision. You have the game plan. You are better in a lot of respects. Why dumb the game down?

Too many bugs in the current version? Ummm, what ever happened to fixing things? Squash them!

Ky
- A fan of the Vanguard that has a real death penalty.

[Rhazes]

Originally Posted by Elrar

Can you tell us what message you're getting and the circumstances of your death? Thanks

Elrar sorry for not responding sooner. The message im getting is the invalid one. The circumstances are normal ones. This isnt just me several guild members also.

[zorbis]

Having read thru both of Sarrene's posts in full I have to agree , in concurrence with Sarrene , that there is no need to try and change the current death process to the proposed new version concerning essence . As she points out there have been various attempts to address this problem with varying degrees of success in other games ranging from Diablo through to the various games available today and there have always been arguements depending on various players points of view . These arguements have in most cases prompted the game designers to tinker with the system ending in most cases with unsatisfactory or disasterous results .

Unfortunately today , everybody is focussing on EXP as a means to develop a death process - this is the wrong approach as the EXP is also used to control level , and thus we have conflicting concepts .

The only way I can see to sort this out is to add in a 'combat effectiveness' component into the game . The combact effectiveness component could be applicable on a minute by minute basis .

FOR EXAMPLE

Under normal play the 'effectiveness component would be 100% .

damage dealt would be 100% of the calculated damge

You die once and you are given a effective component of 90%

Damage dealt would be 90% of the calculated damage

if you do a corpse recovery then the effective component could be
increased by 3% say (to max of 100%) i.e.

damage dealt would be 93 % of total damage

Finally the damge effectiveness could be increased by 1% per minute (game time or real time) until it reached 100%

advantages

you can now level as normal even tho you are inhibited each time you die

You can carry on , die and reduce your effectiveness to 80% or you can rest for 10 minutes to regain effectiveness the choice is yours

this kind of thing could also be applied to crafting, harvesting and anything else that may be relevant .

There is no need for a 'loss of equipment' penalty

This whole process could be handled as a buff .

This is my personal opinion , whether it could be implemented is another matter , but it is a simple concept and the death penalty as such could be adjusted in both severity and length of time the penalty applied according to requirements .

God help the fool who goes for a 0% effectiveness rating

[Zvorak]

Originally Posted by Elrar

Hi Everyone,

I’m sure as many of you may be starting to notice there have been a few changes to the death mechanics with our move to Build 1799, at this point we have not published patch notes for them as they are experimental, however, we still very much so appreciate your feedback on them!

The current changes are:

- You will no longer leave a corpse when you die; instead you will drop an essence.
- You no longer leave items (Soulbound or not) on your essence.
- Essences will return a large amount of experience upon retrieval.
- Your essence will decay after 70 hours.
- Altars will still allow you to summon corpses from before the patch on 3/30/07 (Build 1799), however, you are unable to summon essences.
- The amount of experience lost when you die has been decreased.

These changes are part of our ongoing plan to improve your experience while playing Vanguard without removing the risk involved. Please realize that these may be changed and modified as we continuously test them to ensure the best gameplay experience is achieved.

We welcome you to discuss your feedback, experiences, and concerns in this thread as we work together to make Vanguard even better!

See you in Telon,
- The Vanguard Team

Excuss me for asking. But, what is wrong with the current system ...?

If you can explain me this, then perhaps I can see a point of view of your change.


~Zvorak~

[FEDS-91]

Seems to me to be an overwhelming negative reaction to this change (already stated my dislike for it). Outside of the two folks flaming and inciting problems, there have only been a handful of people out of the 9 pages of this that I've seen are ok with this happening. And yet, I still have a feeling that even with the mass amount of dislike for this 'proposed' change, its going to go live regardless. I've seen the 'we'll buffalo this change down their throats, they'll simply have to get over or used to it' tactic used before in SWG. Never once did it go over well that I can remember. I hope I'm wrong, but thats the feeling I'm getting. We're given the means to voice our displeasure, but regardless of the negative reaction, just feels like we don't have a choice in anything other than making tweaks to what they have planned.

One of the lippy guys mentioned that the VG numbers were 'dropping like a brick'. How is it you have knowledge of this? Sounds like assumed rhetoric. Second, it seems to me with the appearance of negative outcry due to this issue, SGO would lose more than it gained out of this. I've never once heard 'VG is too hard, I'm quitting.' What I have heard are things like, 'The bugs are too much, I'll come check it out again in a month or two or three.' or 'I don't like the direction the way the game is going. They keep dumbing it down.'

[Isobel]

Originally Posted by Zvorak

Excuss me for asking. But, what is wrong with the current system ...?

If you can explain me this, then perhaps I can see a point of view of your change.


~Zvorak~

They answered this actually...

Originally Posted by Hasium

Fair enough.

No we are NOT "WoWifying" the game. Sadly it's gotten the point that if any change is made thats the first thing we hear. Vanguard, like many MMO's, will have some things that are similar to WOW in addition to many other games just like every other MMO on the market. If an idea works, then it works. But ultimately Vanguard needs to able to stand on it's own with it's own identity.

We want Vanguard to be more challenging than WoW. I hate the fact that in WoW i don't really care if I die. I'm one of the few it would seem that actually enjoy a corpse run. I like fearing death. It makes the game much more exciting for me. And that's the key, we need to fear death in Vanguard without frustrating the player to the point of giving up. We have put in several mechanics to work around those various issues. But at some some point it just gets too cluttered and confusing for the player.

TwilightSea asked the question "Why do you feel a change is needed?" What are the likely suspects?

While leaving items on the corpse in one way to make death mean something, it's also a customer service nightmare.
- Items get lost.
- Players think items got lost.
- Players cant get their corpse / items back and they don't want to summon their corpse because they will lose exp.
- the corpse / items are just plain lost due to a unforeseen bug.
- the player accidentally lost some items while looting.
- the player thinks is crazy that they can get their first set of gear back while wearing their second set of gear when clearly the first set wasn't good enough.

All that equates to CS getting clogged with petitions therefore making legitimate petitions take much longer.

So we are experimenting with ways to make death feared / mean something without over complicating it on the test server. This is by no means final, it's one small tweak. And I'm open to suggestions as long as it's productive and not lost in a sea of "WoWifying" the game. If we were going to do that, we should have started 4 years ago, not 2 months after we shipped. That's madness.

It seems that the current system is a CS problem. Somehow that means that rather than improving CS they should change the mechanic.

[Archaegeo]

My opinion and I do play exclusively on test....

Its a horrible change.

If binding doesnt mean anything cause it doesnt cost anything at higher levels, make the binding stones change cost at higher levels and make them single death use only, ie item becomes unsouldbound on dead and must be rebound.

If death doesnt have a penalty then not only do you have zerg situations, but you also end up cheapening accomplishments.

I have this and LOTRO to choose from right now, while LOTRO also has a weak death penalty, its has the Tolkein universe, so I need a game that will keep my attention by making the Risk vs Reward satisfactory.

If there is no risk, the the reward is meaningless.

My 0.02

[Nikisha]

Ok I tried to read this all but got to page 3 and skipped to the end. So maybe this has been brought up and maybe not.

The two camps seem to be those who mostly solo/duo and those that tend to group more.

Personally i think the xp lose is not enough, but if your solo or duo and have to summon it is a big chunk of time gone.

Why not make everyone happy and have xp lost dependant on the dot of the mob that killed you? Maybe hard to code, but if you say lose 10%(of a level worth) if it is a 1 dot, 15% to a 2 dot, 20% vs a 3dot, 25% vs a 4 dot, 30% vs a 5 dot ect. Then rez and getting your tombstone back would net you 90% return of said xp or 10% of the total lost would stay lost. These are just random numbers to make a point and not suggestions of numbers to use.

This would still have it mean something and be a lot more about risk vs reward. Right now the death penality is the same if a 1 dot kills you or a 6 dot so the who risk vs reward is a straw man argument at the moment. To make it more real you need something like the above. Then against easy stuff their is little risk but less reward, while fighting the harder stuff their is more reward but a lot more risk. I think this would make everyone happy personally.

Anyways just a idea.

[Isobel]

Originally Posted by Nikisha

Why not make everyone happy and have xp lost dependant on the dot of the mob that killed you? Maybe hard to code, but if you say lose 10%(of a level worth) if it is a 1 dot, 15% to a 2 dot, 20% vs a 3dot, 25% vs a 4 dot, 30% vs a 5 dot ect. Then rez and getting your tombstone back would net you 90% return of said xp or 10% of the total lost would stay lost. These are just random numbers to make a point and not suggestions of numbers to use.

This would still have it mean something and be a lot more about risk vs reward. Right now the death penality is the same if a 1 dot kills you or a 6 dot so the who risk vs reward is a straw man argument at the moment. To make it more real you need something like the above. Then against easy stuff their is little risk but less reward, while fighting the harder stuff their is more reward but a lot more risk. I think this would make everyone happy personally.

Anyways just a idea.

That was what Brad was originally talking about, a while back. I think they actuall tried it for a while in beta, but i'm not sure. That makes a lot more sense than lowering the XP loss on death across the board.