Death Mechanic Changes – Feedback Thread

[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

[Scarcius]

Need to lose the loot window when clicking your essence.

edit:

I think the PR mistake here may have been introducing two major controversial changes at the same time. The cost of death and corpse recovery. Might have better to try one out then the other or just lose the XP change altogether.

I'm not sure the XP loss needs to be played with. Nobody is really talking about it anymore. It hasn't been a big issue for awhile. Well, until now that is. It so rare you have to summon your TS that XP loss from death always seemed too trivial already. You're almost always rezed or somewhere you can get to it without it taking all night.

The essence doesn't bother me much. It will just make CR a little faster but, not night and day. It isn't even going to speed it up that much as most people had backup gear in their saddlebag or bank. They'll just be less downtime before you start the actual CR.

The 72 hour thing is going to need to be defined a little more clearly. Is it online or offline ? Is it based on account time or character ?

[Darkmoore]

I personally like these changes. However, are you truly prepared for the insane amount of backlash this is going to generate with the so called "hardcore" radicals out there? It will truly be insane. Just want to make sure that everyone over there at Sigil has taken their skin thickening pills and put on their flame retardent suits.

[Isobel]

Originally Posted by Darkmoore

I personally like these changes. However, are you truly prepared for the insane amount of backlash this is going to generate with the so called "hardcore" radicals out there? It will truly be insane. Just want to make sure that everyone over there at Sigil has taken their skin thickening pills and put on their flame retardent suits.

Hardcore does't really have anything to do with it. I'm not what one would define as a hardcore player and i'm fine with the way the death penalty is now. I understand that others find it too difficult but i very much feel it should stay as it is. Eliminating corpse runs will ruin one of the things that brought me to this game. I like them. I find the challange of them to be a large part of what makes for a more careful and in the end a better player. Eliminating them will lead to the type of comments i have heard in far too many other games. "What's the worst thing that can happen? We die. lol"

Given this change i would be far better served to go back to EQ2 and play my higher level character, since the death penalty won't be fundamentally more stringent here than it is there.

[Ysharros]

On the face of it and without having tried these changes out yet, I agree with Isobel. I'm about as un-hardcore as you can get but I have discovered that, given the choice of corpse-run vs no corpse-run, I prefer the former. Many of my best (and worst, but certainly most memorable!) game memories involve runs to get corpses - mine, my friends', guildies, total strangers whose messy remains I tripped over in an AC dungeon, etc etc.

Conversely, EQ2 had no penalty whatsoever after a while and, predictably, the most common response to "shall we try this?" became "sure, it's not like there's any consequences for dying." That's a shame. What happened to the risk/reward continuum? I was under the impression that meaningful death (even if it's only meaningful to the extent of having to get your gear) was part of that continuum.

That being said, I was fonder of the AC death system which had you drop a semi-randomly determined number of items on death. How many depended on your level. It was somewhat flawed in that the value of an item factored heavily into whether it would drop on death or not, so people started carrying around "death items" -- but in the absence of being able to summon corpses to altars like in Vanguard, it was nice to sometimes have the option of just biting that item loss bullet, if what you'd dropped wasn't vital to you. Corpses decayed after a while there too (also dependent on level). All in all one of the best death systems I've seen, even though it probably made me yell at my screen more than once.

Memories require extremes, good or bad. If nothing of interest ever happens, you're not going to make many memories. That goes for games too. (Or, in old-speak: "Sheesh, the youth of today have forgotten what it's like to WORK for something. All they want is the good stuff, right now, no waiting no effort, and none of the hard stuff that makes the good stuff valuable." Yeah, I'm old-school.)

But hey, we'll see. This is not the first iteration of death in Vanguard. Sooner or later we'll find the perfect system.

[Devyn]

So with this change, what makes this game fundamentally different from almost every other MMO out there, especially EQ2. Are diplomacy, and a larger and emptier world supposed to be the Vanguard legacy? Obviously the death penalty by itself doesn't fundamentally change the game, however with the other changes and "tweaks" you've made, it is a far different game than what described to us up till release and even after release.

With this change, will you be implementing what Brad said before about this only being the case with certain MOB difficulties? Meaning that 1-4 dot mobs allow you to go grab your shard (your gear stays on you), 5 dot MOBs leave your gear on your corpse but you can summon, and 6 dot MOBs requiring a full corpse run?

[Iendan]

this reminds me alot of eq2's death mechanic at launch and i didnt like that one much, i think that the current (former now, the corpse one) was very good, a good mix of fearing death and it not being completely day ruining, while this new one is "easier" in that it doesnt require you to get your gear back, it seems like it makes it pointless to even try to get some back, i mean if you were gonna summon your remains now, you just dont bother even trying with this new one, but if you were to get it back now you would have less penalty then getting it back now (assuming it does the durability hit all the time, dunno this for sure). So ya, in conclusion i like the corpse one.

EDIT: o ya and about the hardcore-ness of ppl who dont like this new one, im not hardcore at all, my highest adv lvl is 13, highest crafting is 11, highest dip is 60.

[Mudman41]

I saw no reason to change the death system. Just lowers the risk. Thought you had a good balance as it was. Not a hardcore player either.

Mudman

[prencher]

I've not tested it yet; But this means there will be a pretty significant XP loss if you don't run back, doesn't it?

At max level though, I suppose this completely remove any penalty, which is silly.. Then we're back to 'wowified' raiding, where you just keep chain wiping until you get it right.

[TwilightSea]

Death Penalty Changes

The first question that comes to my mind is "Why do you feel a change is needed?" Elrar, could you please elaborate on the motivation driving these changes so that we might fully grasp the situation? My likely suspects are:

• You see an increasing ammount of players citing "Death Penalties" as their reason for leaving.
• There is an issue with rants and scathing reviews driving down much-needed subscriber numbers.
• You are finding yourself short on manpower because of the volume of petitions filed regarding lost corpses.

This is all my personal speculation, of course, but i'm curious. Having said that, now I'd like to address your topic:

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.
If the motivation here is to eliminate the need to recover items lost, then this is good. I say this from the perspective that every player already has the ability to soul-bind (almost) every item. Considering that doing so costs money - you have inadvertantly put lower level players at a financial disadvantage, as the costs become trivial at higher levels.
However, by removing the need (or desire) to bind items to oneself, you generate an influx of items into the economy that would have otherwise been lost due to binding. The economic impact should be weighed. Lastly, can essences be targeted by a priest and *resurrected*?

Essences will return a large amount of experience upon retrieval.
Is this equal to or greater than the current percentage that is returned when one recovers their corpse? Changing the ammount will likely incite hatred from either side, so my suggestion is to keep it the same.

Your essence will decay after 70 hours.
Haha! A sense of real loss! Wow, my inclination is to say yes, yes, yes. But by adding this, you probably need to *increase* the ammount of XP returned by recovering corpses (above.) This would probably appease both sides.

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.
So be it! Just a question though, can essences be corpse-dragged like existing corpses?

The amount of experience lost when you die has been decreased.
This move makes sense consider the above changes.

So all in all, I like it. I own, and have played extensively, 14 different MMOs and I see nothing unfair, extreme, or unusual in this system.