Death penalty disparity across players

[Jaide]

While I believe there needs to be a consequential death penalty, the new addition of gear damage upon return has me frustrated. The reason is because of the simple fact that the more crafting jobs a person has leveled, the less of an impact the new death penalty is to them. People who don't enjoy crafting are penalized more by death than those who do.

Personally I find crafting to be incredibly boring. This leaves me with the option of paying six or seven times the cost of the dark matter at the repair NPC for a 70% fix, or waiting often for hours in town hoping someone else will do it. A high level crafter, on the other hand, can 100% fix up all their stuff in a few minutes and be ready to play again. Even when offering the appropriate dark matter or a gil reward higher than the vendor price of it, my average time to get a set of gear repaired is still 4-8 hours.

The penalty should be equal for all players, no matter what their play time is or what classes they play. SP loss is one way to equalize things, and I'd actually prefer that to what we have now. Before you flame me, consider these two things: One, earning back SP is significantly more fun than waiting for hours in town for repairs. Two, everyone would have an equal ability to recover from a death on their own without the help from a specific class or paying significantly more gil than others. I know crafters are going to dump all over this idea, but really that just reinforces my point. Those who are at an advantage rarely want to lose it.

Controversial I know, so please try to be civil and constructive if you disagree.

[Griss]

People wanted a k.o penalty yoshi is adamant about not adding sp loss. we got what we got.

[mysterytaru]

The death penalty *is* equal across the board. Everyone has the same options for dealing with it. The only disparity comes in the option one chooses for handling it. Some level crafting. Some just say 'meh' and pay the NPC/other people. Some complain that it's not fair.

You say that the penalty for dying shouldn't be affected by how much time one puts into the game, yet you suggest SP loss. The person who plays 1-2hrs a day is more adversely affected by SP loss than the person who puts in 5-6hrs a day. How is this in any way equal? It's not. There is no penalty they could introduce that can't be mitigated by time investment.

[zaviermhigo]

If you didn't level up a craft, who cares?! that's you, its not the devs fault you don't have crafts. i have two crafts high enough to repair most of my gear except my sceptre, the rest of that stuff i'm shouting in uldah for a repair. Its the game. In xi if you didn't level up a craft, or you didn't level up synergy there were things you couldn't get. This game, you have to pay gil if you don't want to level up a craft to repair your shit, its fair.

[Dubont]

Careful, OP, you're thread may end up with 43pages of trolls...I think there needs to be a penalty on death, but gear dmg shouldn't be it UNLESS they remove the dmg that is acquired over time through battle.

[Rentahamster]

The death penalty *is* equal across the board. Everyone has the same options for dealing with it. The only disparity comes in the option one chooses for handling it.

Yep.

I don't have much of an issue regarding the current death penalty. One of the good things it has done is become more of a gilsink and also allow more economic stimulation. I just wish people would be able to repair stuff more quickly and more conveniently.

I would like to see this mechanic added, however:

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.

Hey guys, thanks for repping my idea <3

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.

[Leyza]

Rentahamster, that is a fantastic suggestion. I'd like to see that implemented and remove the damage thing. Grrr. >.<

I hate the damage penalty. >.>

[OJtheLIONKing]

I quite like rentahamster's idea, with the caveat that it has to happen after anima either fills up much faster and/or there are faster modes of transportation as you mentioned. I don't much like the durability loss as it is. it's basically random chance whether your gear gets fixed unless you blow a huge amount of cash on a partial fix, or you're lucky and have a crafter see it. I've gone days without a repair before and then had one 5 minutes after I put it up--that much random chance isn't a good game mechanic.

On the other hand, SP loss is a nonstarter, both for the dev team and for anyone thinking about coming in from an MMO made after 2002 who doesn't like losing their xp. Put it out of your minds, it was never a great design and it's not going to appear in this game. So the solution is either something like rentahamster suggested, or make repairs much less painful to get--like removing reagents entirely and letting the npc repair to 100%, so you can choose between a quick fix and a cheap fix from a player. Even with this the npc repairs should probably be cheaper, paying upwards of 50k to fix one item is obscene even if you're trying to stimulate the economy and remove gil from the system.

[TonyMontana]

Pretty much all I do is craft and fix peoples gear now. If you need stuff repaired offer like 8k-15k gil and it will(should) get repaired quick!

[Jaide]

The death penalty *is* equal across the board. Everyone has the same options for dealing with it. The only disparity comes in the option one chooses for handling it. Some level crafting. Some just say 'meh' and pay the NPC/other people. Some complain that it's not fair.

You say that the penalty for dying shouldn't be affected by how much time one puts into the game, yet you suggest SP loss. The person who plays 1-2hrs a day is more adversely affected by SP loss than the person who puts in 5-6hrs a day. How is this in any way equal? It's not. There is no penalty they could introduce that can't be mitigated by time investment.

My point is that the current death penalty requires more of a time investment from some players than others. Someone who players 1-2 hours a day will likely not have time to level up multiple crafting classes concurrently with a battle class, so they'll be paying 6-7 times more than other players for repairs or face using up several days of their limited play time AFK in town. SP loss is equal across the board as it takes the approximately the same amount of play time to recover regardless of how long you have to play. Not to mention the fact that fighting enemies is a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around in town.