Death Penalty

We had a pretty substantial discussion about this a while back.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ences-of-death

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Originally Posted by geniusprime

First don't ever talk about realism in a fantasy game or any game as a matter of fact. Its a game. Games are not real and the purpose of games are for fun not to simulate reality. When they begin to simulate reality they become a simulation and not a game.

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You cannot have fantasy without reality. Realism serves as the basis from which you can then expand on. Without any sort of reflection to real life, there'd be absolutely no way of comprehending anything, let alone this game. To simply put it, you expressing that we cannot suggest something related to life is just irrational.

I disagree with your opinion that the death penalty is "Bit steep," and would say the complete opposite as it is rather lenient.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

We had a pretty substantial discussion about this a while back.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ences-of-death

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WOW thats 51 pages. Will read.

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Originally Posted by geniusprime

WOW thats 51 pages. Will read.

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Yeah. There were a lot of good points made.

I think I came up with a fairly good compromise between reward/punishment.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

Upon some more reflection, I agree that rewarding people with the "staying alive" bonus for being AFK or just for not playing in a while is a bad idea. My initial outline was also a tad too complex. It could use some simplifying.

As far as it being too easy to die and being really hard to achieve the "still alive" buff, that's sort of what I was going for. I wanted to make it relatively rare to have, so that you don't see everyone and their mother running around with the buff active. I also wanted the buff to not be that strong, so that it's not so bad when you lose it, but I still wanted the player to feel the sting of the loss of all that invested time.

I've rethought my idea and think that a hybrid of mine(http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post21748) and Stilla's (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/2097-An-open-discsusion-on-the-consequences-of-death?p=21796#post21796)idea would be interesting.

New Take on Death Penalty:

All SP that you gain as a battle class also contributes to fill up a separate rank up bar that has 5 tiers: rank 1 - 5.

Each rank takes 20,000 SP to reach, so to reach Rank 5, you'd need to accumulate 100,000 SP as any combination of battle classes without dying.

There are six bonus buffs that you can choose from: +5% atk, +5% def, +5% m.atk, +5% m.def, +5% eva, +5% acc, -10%MP cost, +10%TP gain, +2%SP gain

At Rank 4, you can choose one. At Rank 5, you can choose two, and you also get some sort of visual enhancement to your character to indicate your lack of dying. You can change your buffs around at anytime, but there is a 30 min cooldown.

If you die:
You lose 2 ranks
You lose 3 anima
You are inflicted with Weakness

If you die and get Raised:
You lose 1 rank
You are inflicted with Weakness

Again, I want the number of Rank 5 status people to be rare, and to actually be an indicator of skill, because it's hard to earn, and takes the same amount of effort to reach as going from class rank 49 to 50. That way, losing your rank 5 status is also a bit of a sting.

I also realize that some classes like tanks and mages are going to be more susceptible to death than other classes, but hey, those are the inherent risks that come with those classes, so you just grin and bear it.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

I fleshed out a few more ideas about this on my blog.
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...entry?e=155429

Some additional points:

Here's a quick summary of what I'm trying to achieve here - I want a system that rewards players (but not too much) for staying alive, rather than punishes players for dying. I believe that the bias should be towards positive reinforcement as that makes for a more enjoyable gameplay experience. I believe that the method below gives hardcore players (who usually want a death penalty) a reason to care more about not dying, mainly by stroking their egos, while also having death have a real impact on time invested. At the same time, casual players can continue going along throwing themselves at whatever enemy they want no differently than they do now (almost).


Let me put the anima loss into further context. I had envisioned this change along with other changes to the game so that anima wouldn't be such a scarce resource as it is now.

What I wanted to do was to punish the player for dying only a little, and taking away SP is out of the question. That would be too harsh, so the next best thing would be anima.

Now, about my other changes to the anima system so that this would not be as terrible as some have suggested:

I would have all returns done while still alive cost 0 anima. Yoshi-P mentioned that he wants a solution to death porting, so this would be the easiest way.

Also, I would expand the number of favorite locations to 5. Perhaps make a quest that grants you more favorite locations, or something.

Reduce the anima cost of a teleport into a different region from 6 to 5.

Implement other modes of transportation like Chocobos and airships.

This way, the loss of anima still stings a little, but it's not really that bad. It's also not as soul-crushing as losing SP and ranking down.

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Originally Posted by Xandre

You cannot have fantasy without reality. Realism serves as the basis from which you can then expand on. Without any sort of reflection to real life, there'd be absolutely no way of comprehending anything, let alone this game. To simply put it, you expressing that we cannot suggest something related to life is just irrational.

I disagree with your opinion that the death penalty is "Bit steep," and would say the complete opposite as it is rather lenient.

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I failed at effectively conveying my point with regards to that. I was specifically responding to "They add some bit of realism in lieu of permanent death." However, death penalty does not add realism in any shape of form. The link to reality is that you do "die" and adding an additional penalty does not make it more realistic.

With regards to the use of realism for allowing the audience to relate to the subject,it is more along the lines of making it believable but not necessarily realistic.

Play Spiral Knights then you can complain about Death Penalty.

Rentahamster I like the direction or the train of thought. I am not in full agreement with the execution. However, while talking to my friend I came up with a concept that would make death penalty effective yet not intrusive but just for Leves though. For example, Leves are timed and because of this, gamers that die should have 3 minutes removed from the timer everytime they die. This removes the downtime while maintaining the consequences of dying. I am more for penalties that does not waste the gamer's time while offering suitable consequences.

I like the idea you propose of rewarding players for not dying versus the alternative.

Hi geniusprime,

From a perspective of all types of games, having a "Death Penalty" definitely seems a bit excessive (if you're used to playing Mario Bros. or any platformer, you die, and respawn and continue on your way).

Does FF XIV (or any MMORPG) *need* a Death Penalty? It's an interesting question.

I would say that right now, in FF XIV, it truly is very "light" and "easy" in its Death Penalty compared to many other MMORPGS as Caerith mentions, and IMHO, the game lacks any sense of real danger. Even in light of Non-MMOs, having the current penalty of just 3 minutes where you are Weakened (Less HP, Slowed Timers for Weaponskills and Spells) doesn't feel that penalizing in this fantasy world.

If you see a Rank 99 Goblin Headman, you can rush headlong into battle and if you get killed? It doesn't matter. You just "Return" and are slightly Weakened for 3 minutes. See a Rank 79 Inferno Drake (that looks quite dangerous)? You can just rush right up to it, try to kill it, or laugh as you get destroyed by its Weaponskill in 1 hit. :) The only penalty is a Weakened State for 3 minutes.

Even the 5 big Notorious Monsters in the game (already quite easy)... you don't feel a sense of danger or nervousness. You know the worst that can happen is that you just respawn and wait 3 minutes to be fully 100% again.

There is something that's taken away from you (as a gamer) when you don't have to worry about repercussions very much.

I'm not advocating anything like FF XI - where you lose XP and can De-Level (that's horrible) - but if you're asking them to make it easier than it currently is (removing any Death Penalty), I think it would then completely remove any sense of trepidation or feeling of "excitement" or "nervousness."

When they add End Game Bosses, something super hard, and if you have No Death Penalty, what Caerith means by "zombie-ing" is you can just die, respawn, do a little more damage on the Boss, die, respawn, repeat non-stop until the Boss is dead. This requires very little skill from the Player, and is a rush tactic that's used even now in FF XIV with the light Death Penalty you're talking about.

I think that's the part that would be hard to balance for the FF Team. If you can just die and respawn and keep trying with zero penalty is that fun?

To be fair, they could probably just reset the Boss' HP each time your party wipes, but then, what about if only *some* of the Party Members die? As long as someone's alive, the Boss doesn't reset HP and you can have an infinite respawn and do slight damage and rush the Boss to death.

I remember reading about Prince of Persia having No Game Over. If you "died," you just respawned immediately to try again.

Ideally, it should just be about figuring out tactics and strategies, and the fun and challenge should be about that aspect, and not Death Penalties, sure. But I think without some Penalty, you lose any sense of thrill and excitement (you know you just respawn immediately and can continue).

I can't tell if it's me or this thread, but keep getting errors when I try to"like" :( in any case, after coming from corpse runs and de levelling I agree the current penalty is quite light, and there is no sense of danger.

I like it when games have a severe death penalty.

I think Yoshida is right that this game doesn't require something like that giving everyone headaches. I still however would like to feel more afraid of dying. It makes games more exciting to have that thrill when you live with 1 hp left. There's a reason why people enjoy gambling and it's not just the fact that you might win something, it's also the thrill that there's a chance you might lose something.

As for the argument that games aren't supposed to imitate reality only provide fun. I think this is an incredibly general statement and not all games live by these standards. I know games like Tetris don't hold a lot to realism and still manage to be fun, but who decided things would fall down and not up. Whether this was truly inspired by reality or not I would say games like MMORGPs or RPGs like oblivion that try to create a real world environment do try to come off as realistic. Immersiveness is a strong part of a good story, something that Final Fantasy does well. If things don't make sense then neither does the story. This goes hand in hand with developing a character in a video game. In order to feel attached to the character you're creating you want the world to have some sort of realism to make that connection with your character a little easier. Yes games still need to be fun however, and we do sacrifice realism for that. This comes in the nature of the world, the fact that you can cast spells and you get to fight giant beasts and fight for a country. You don't get to do those things in real life and that's why you play mmos. Objectives based on a fantastical reality.