An open discsusion on the consequences of death

[Nephera]

Labeling something a "Timesink" is subjective, and nothing more than a copied and inexplicit reply. Because I say, it is NOT a timesink and adds to not only immersion into the game, but also changes how everyone in the game plays. I'm a perfectionist while playing, and I like to see others at least trying.

actually losing sp on death is something that is literally engineered to waste your time, its not real difficulty, it is there to provide an obstacle that is overcome with persistence under the mantra "Well the more they die the longer they'll play" not factoring in "well they're not making progress so they just quit forever"

Here let me break it down.

A monster that is hard to beat and takes thought and strategy to overcome: Real difficulty.

Getting set back every time you die: Fake difficulty.

Dying because of somebody else and getting set back: Incredibly frustrating.

Fake difficulty works a lot better in single player games because making a mistake is usually entirely on you.

[Rentahamster]

Fake difficulty works a lot better in single player games because making a mistake is usually entirely on you.

Yep. I'd rather have real difficulty that makes me think and strategize and cooperate rather than fake difficulty that just wastes my time.

That's why I'd rather have the game lean more towards rewarding you for staying alive, rather than punishing you for dying. It's less aggravating to go from rewarded back to normal, rather than normal to weaker. Especially if the death isn't your own fault.

[darkstarpoet1]

i agree with neph and renta. i enjoy taking on tough mobs and party up with people. you go and fight a tough mob and something aggros and takes out your mage and you die because you can't heal fast enough afterwards is not the fault of either player. that's the point of fighting tougher mobs in party. you fight something strong and you may or not win. it seems like this death penalty crown would rather go solo or duo and just maul a bunch of low level mobs for the sp per hour than wanting to find a mob that requires strategy and teamwork to beat.

[Nephera]

That's why I'd rather have the game lean more towards rewarding you for staying alive, rather than punishing you for dying. It's less aggravating to go from rewarded back to normal, rather than normal to weaker. Especially if the death isn't your own fault.

I loved that proposal quite a bit actually.

[Turtle]

Sorry I havn't bothered to read 31 pages of text, so excuse my possible repeat of another post. I would like to see a penalty implemented eventually. For right now as often as server crashes occur and the error that entails your character being stuck in-game for 10-15 min's I don't see it as a fair option. We are already penalyzed with leve's in this situation. This is just my opinion by the way, agree or disagree but don't thrash.

[ARoy]

No.

There is already tons of reason not to die. I don't know about you, but holding up for 20 more minutes, or, in the case of Limsa Lominsa's ferry, simply waiting for twenty minutes, is not what makes a game fun. Back when I explored Coerthas (or whatever it's called) for the first time, there very much was a sense of fear, as all of the monsters there could one shot me. There are still such creatures in every area, and most of them are aggro monsters.

To me, wasted time is very much a deterrent and harsh consequence for dying in this game. Getting one-shot aggro-ed by something around that there corner has made me miss behest more than once. It has and will make people fail levequests.

I can understand wanting the game to feel a little dangerous, but it already has that element; you're just immune to it. Probably because you're rank 50 or something, I don't know, but to say it's not there is silly.

Also, considering there's already the weakness status, adding more penalty to what's already in the game would be redundant and pointless.

[Rentahamster]

I loved that proposal quite a bit actually.

Thanks! ^^

I've been thinking a lot lately about ideas as to how to improve this game. I only hope that somehow our ideas are able to get through for evaluation to the development team and not just lost in limbo.

[BadJoeRed]

First of all, it's pretty "immersion breaking" when the guy you just watched die is standing next you a few moments later like everything was fine. Usually dead means forever dead. So, let's not kid ourselves with what reality has to offer.

You make some very good points. I should have just copied some of the great arguments from zam onto here, but I'm being apathetic at the moment. Without going into too much detail, I just meant immersion as in the seriousness of the moment. C'mon, I don't think anyone who uses the term 'immersion' is misusing the word so much that they forget they are playing a video game. ;p I just meant immersion as in; There you are, about to take on Kirin for the first time, you read your strategies, you prepped yourself for the fight, you've talked with your LS mates about strategy beforehand, you are ready to get some, because you know it is about to be a time for glory, or a time to fail miserably and lose lots of exp while reflecting on what you could do better next time to minimize the damage. With no penalty, it loses so much. It turns into, "Hey guise, lets go kill this big horned demon thing, just zerg it, let's see what happens" not very fun =\

Also regarding your 3rd paragraph which I didn't quote, Yes, for the most part, I just need to see something that would make people take their deaths more seriously. Soloing is a bad example in this game at the moment. If anyone has problems soloing "I.T." mobs in this game, I can understand why they would not want a SP penalty. Soloing in this game is gawdawful easy.

Didnt read every post in this topic, but what was your overall opinion of how it should be?

[Seif]

When doing a leve if I seem to be dying I'm always just standing there and mashing the 1 button because if I manage to kill something before I die I'm closer to finishing the leve. In a way the game has many systems in place which actually encourage sloppy playing and frequent dying.

Because dying doesn't make me lose anything important I don't care about it. Because I don't care about dying the monsters don't feel scary at all, ever. Because the monsters don't feel scary, killing them doesn't give me any sense of accomplishment. Because my character growth doesn't feel like a result of my playing skill I don't care about my character either.

XI has NONE of these issues just because dying is meaningful.

[OmegaNovaios]

There just feels like a disctinct lack of caution to the gameplay right now. Eorzea is gorgeous in many ways (and the dev team has done a fantastic job building the world to look good, repeated elements aside), but all of the normal maps and ambient occlusion in the world can't elicit a legitimate feeling.

I'll use FINAL FANTASY XI as an example, since it bears a close resemblance. The very first time I made the run to Jeuno at level 20 to begin my chocobo quest, I was terrified to run through the higher level zones. Not only because drawing aggro meant (most likely) losing my level and setting me back another day, but because the idea of hoofing it through a zone of monsters that I knew would mean the end of me the moment they caught sight of me was thrilling -- This happened nearly 7 years ago and I can still remember the feeling! Those kind of memories stick with you, and if games like FINAL FANTASY XI are good at any one thing, it's creating memorable lasting experiences, whether good or bad.

So I'm not just indulging in my own personal feelings, there's a lot to be said about the current state of FFXIV's death penalties too. It keeps the action flowing and leaves little downtime in day-to-day activities. It also allows players the freedom to actively explore the world without feeling like they will lose all of their hard-earned progress just because of a fluke or a small mistake. I'm sure anyone playing FINAL FANTASY XI cursed the game at one point because a monster turned around right as you were running past them and with no chance to fight back, you had little choice other than to just stop and accept your fate.

My Proposal

Without a sense of caution in the world, it's easy to dismiss the game as too easy, lenient or lacking in challenge. I would like to see harsher penalties imposed on character death in some form in order to stress the importance of caution of player choices, and to create an air of fear in zones or areas that are worthy of it.

Possible solutions

There are so many ways that this could be tackled. If we die, do we take a loss to our experience points? Our rank points? What of equipment durability? It's a tough topic to cover, since there is no doubt wide and varied schools of thought beyond the two categories I mentioned at the start.

If it were up to up to me, I'd like to see the following:

• On death, impose a 5% Experience point and Rank point loss.
• the penalty will NOT, however, drop you below your current level or rank.
• The current 3-minute cooldown timer for raise sickness will continue to stay in effect, with stackable augments from gear to counteract the sickness (or expendable items?)
• Being raised by another player or NPC will award all lost rank points, but experience will remain affected
• Allow players to pay either a certain amount of guardian's aspect or anima at an Aetheryte crystal to instantly absolve their raise sickness.

I'd like to see a nice middle-ground between the harsh XP-loss system in place in FINAL FANTASY XI and the mere inconvenience of corpse-hunting (and slight hit to the wallet) in World of Warcraft.

More than anything, I'd like to see others' thoughts on this. This is one of the few cases in MMOs where I feel player consequence is worth having.

What do you all think?

Personally I agree that there needs to be some form of caution or challenge (which I find is a more effective path) needs to be implemented into FFXIV, however I completely disagree with your proposal.

All penalties you listed would be very effective at invoking caution into players, but I believe that this is more negative than positive. I too have the wonderful memory of traveling to Jeuno by foot at Lv. 20 and having the possibility of dieing at every corner, however this thrill wasn't caused by EXP loss. It was caused by having to return to my Home Point and having to run all the way back from the very start, which I feel FFXIV implemented in the same form as this but much more casually as is the way everything exists in FFXIV.

Although losing EXP to deaths did caution me in at a much higher Lv. such as 75 and losing my Lv. and having to form a party or having to solo at Cape Terrigan. I don't think these type of penalties are positive enforcers to invoke caution in the player base, because like in FFXI deaths were generally more of a frustration than a fear for veteran players.

So as a counter proposal I advise that instead FFXIV should make things more challenging to the players.

This can be done by adding more aggressive monsters to regions making it generally impossible to reach areas by just running past monsters, making monsters stronger, or implementing a very heavy penalty to character stats while in combat but not engaged (preferably facing the monster so you can't just pull out your weapon and continue running). However, I have explored most of Eorzea and I find that FFXIV made it extremely difficult to run past monsters in this fashion in higher rank areas.

Aside from just running from one area to another we can discuss combat related elements. Now I know that SE is working on adding End Game content and there are priorities to the things they are working on, but I feel that generally challenges in behests/leves are well done since you can choose the difficulty that you wish, but sometimes there is a heavy lack in a challenge in combat outside behests/leves. Which would also contribute to buffing up monster stats not only for battle, but making it harder to run past them. Yet, all you would have to do is fight higher ranked mobs to find this challenge so I feel this is generally not a flaw worth SE's time right now. So the only thing left to make in a challenge is End Game content or dungeons/events for lower-mid rank as well which I'm sure SE wants to add.

My point is that instead of forcing penalties to deaths just make deaths more prominent so that the rewards are greater and gives the players a sense of pride and accomplishment. An example would be an instanced fight and if you die your entire group is likely to die and thus your party must start the fight all over again (this isn't very detailed but I think you get the idea and can use your imagination to think of some very hard battle you have had in the past that does have a lot of detail). I think this is a much more positive enforcer for putting caution on deaths and doesn't force players to spend more time making up for penalties of death but instead spend more time having fun. After all that is what I hope this as well as any game was intended for.

But with all that said I think SE did a fairly good job with death penalties it just needs more content where people actually have a very high probability of dieing. The only thing I can really think of that would make the game more challenging in it's current state is to redo the class system and have battles require specific roles rather than just any 4+ people can easily overcome this obstacle, but that is another discussion entirely.

Other thoughts are to make missions that require groups to complete like in FFXI and I find it unfair for death penalties when comparing... let's say in FFXI a RDM/NIN or RDM/BLU to a DRK/anything. The probability of either of these dieing is heavily dependent on player skill, but given the same player plays both with equal experience in both setups which do you think has a very unfair advantage when in battle since you know one has a much higher probability of dieing?