An open discsusion on the consequences of death

[Coombah]

Leave it the way it is. That's my vote

[Kaedan]

Well you probably shouldnt be buffing before behests. The are insanely easy to do solo, having 8 people on those people are unlikely to even fall below 80% hp, so its kind of a waste of time also the buffs dont help all that much and only last 5 mins.

But the death "penalty" currently is nowhere near enough. You get reduced stats and hp for a couple minutes, not really anything to worry about unless you have everyone weakened, which still doesnt matter too much since it may already be almost off by the time you get back to where you died. Yoshi mentioned "death porting" as a big reason he wants to change this, as people should not be intentionally dying. Weaknesses or status reductions dont do anything for that although he mentioned they might make return cost 0 anima. Still it proves the fact that nobody cares at all about dying.

SP penalty doesnt need to be anything drastic, something like 1,000 sp would encourage people not to die as every little bit helps, but thats really only a few kills anyway. Unless your chain dying I dont see how that would handicap anyone. If they fixed our economy I could see some sort of money sink as another viable option though.

I mostly agree with the rest of your post, but the bolded line is ridiculous. It is always more beneficial to have buffs than to not have buffs. And if I'm telling people I'm buffing (and it's not useless, especially when you're fighting in behests that are equal to or greater than your level), there is no excuse for people to rush in like an idiot. I've got a level 27 Conjurer that's been doing Behests at Nanawa Mines. It's quite common for people to lose 25% of their HP in one hit (or one set of hits from a group of mobs), and I find myself having to heal quite a bit. But none of that changes the fact that even when I tell people I'm going to buff, they run in stupidly anyway... which they shouldn't be doing.

[Choc]

I mostly agree with the rest of your post, but the bolded line is ridiculous. It is always more beneficial to have buffs than to not have buffs. And if I'm telling people I'm buffing (and it's not useless, especially when you're fighting in behests that are equal to or greater than your level), there is no excuse for people to rush in like an idiot. I've got a level 27 Conjurer that's been doing Behests at Nanawa Mines. It's quite common for people to lose 25% of their HP in one hit (or one set of hits from a group of mobs), and I find myself having to heal quite a bit. But none of that changes the fact that even when I tell people I'm going to buff, they run in stupidly anyway... which they shouldn't be doing.

If buffs lasted longer than 5 minutes max I would agree, but behest mobs usually die in 2 seconds. I dont think ive ever been in a group that had trouble with one except for the first month the game was out. On something like 4-5 star leves that are very difficult then I buff but behests....no.

[SquintyB]

as per Yoshi-p's request {this penalty is weak}. The death penalty is pretty non-existent, ill often go back into battle with the death penalty active, if it hasn't gone away by the time ive run back from the crystal. And to be honest i have not had to repair an item in the past 23 ranks with my new character. At launch i was repairing every few hours. The game has gone from one extreme(very tough) to the other (too weak). Balancing still required.

[Neogohan1]

I Like Rentahamster's post:

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.

I think this is a good way of trying to get people to not die, although maybe play around with some of those SP rank requirements a bit.

[Tahlia]

Perhaps the penalties could scale in severity so the first death is very lenient on the player. However the more a player dies in a fixed amount of time (hours or days) the higher the penalty cost until it reaches a very harsh maximum. Would scale somewhat like fatigue though it should warn the player what level of penalty they are currently on.

And like fatigue this could slowly decrease in level over time or be cured by paying npcs to remove the various levels of penalty with costs scaled to match.

In regards to raise tiers perhaps they could be scaled like in FFXI:

Raise I (Reduces stat down duration and weapon damage by 50%)
Raise II (Reduces stat down duration and weapon damage by 75%)
Raise III (Reduces stat down duration and weapon damage by 90%)

To me there shouldn't be a "perfect" raise as everyone will demand it over other raise tiers which could cause some issues in certain situations.

Free "Return" with a decent cooldown timer sounds good. Maybe as some incentive for using it over death warps, players could be rewarded with a tiny amount of anima per use.

As for wanting to see more people tossing out raises there's a few issues that also need fixed that was a bother in FFXI. Searching for someone to raise you, people not being able to find you, and people who tend to ignore you.

I don't have suggestions for those but I feel they do need to be looked at in order to make helping raise people in the game much easier.

[Kaedan]

Perhaps the penalties could scale in severity so the first death is very lenient on the player. However the more a player dies in a fixed amount of time (hours or days) the higher the penalty cost until it reaches a very harsh maximum. Would scale somewhat like fatigue though it should warn the player what level of penalty they are currently on.

And like fatigue this could slowly decrease in level over time or be cured by paying npcs to remove the various levels of penalty with costs scaled to match.

In regards to raise tiers perhaps they could be scaled like in FFXI:

Raise I (Reduces stat down duration and weapon damage by 50%)
Raise II (Reduces stat down duration and weapon damage by 75%)
Raise III (Reduces stat down duration and weapon damage by 90%)

To me there shouldn't be a "perfect" raise as everyone will demand it over other raise tiers which could cause some issues in certain situations.

Free "Return" with a decent cooldown timer sounds good. Maybe as some incentive for using it over death warps, players could be rewarded with a tiny amount of anima per use.

As for wanting to see more people tossing out raises there's a few issues that also need fixed that was a bother in FFXI. Searching for someone to raise you, people not being able to find you, and people who tend to ignore you.

I don't have suggestions for those but I feel they do need to be looked at in order to make helping raise people in the game much easier.

Actually, I kinda like the idea of lenient penalties for your first death and getting progressively strict. Though I would go about it a little differently.

Ok, so let's say:
-First death you get Weakness and lose a small amount of SP that can be bought back.
-Second death while still under weakness, you get double weakness, plus you lose more SP and can't buyback the original SP you lost.
-Third death while under weakness, you lose the ability to buyback any of the lost SP and you lose a portion of your Anima.

Thoughts?

EDIT: As for Raises:

-Raise I: Shortens Weakness and reduces SP and Anima loss by 50%
-Raise II: Shortens weakness and reduces SP and Anima loss by 75%
-Raise III: No weakness, eliminates Anima loss, but only reduces SP loss by 90% (I like the idea that even R3 doesn't completely negate death)

[Jinrya-Geki]

I am against the sp loss as a penalty. I'd rather have all my equipment be severely damaged from dying. This is Everquest Online Adventures reference, not WOW.

Once I hit max rank I'd like to stay there, not have to rank up again.

Weakness is fine enough for me being Con/Thm. Casting a spell is bad when stamina is low, add that with double weakness the mob will probably be dead, or the tank might might be dead. I am not a healing Con, so if the tank dies it's not my fault anyway.

If you all want sp loss then it should be an option to chose when you die. Do you want SP loss or Armor reduction/stat reduction. You just pick the one when you hit return.

[Kaedan]

I am against the sp loss as a penalty. I'd rather have all my equipment be severely damaged from dying. This is Everquest Online Adventures reference, not WOW.

Once I hit max rank I'd like to stay there, not have to rank up again.

No one is suggesting you lose ranks. In fact, I think almost everyone who has said they'd like to see SP loss has made the exception that they don't want to lose ranks... just go down to 0 SP for that rank.

If you all want sp loss then it should be an option to chose when you die. Do you want SP loss or Armor reduction/stat reduction. You just pick the one when you hit return.

Having it an "option" would defeat the purpose entirely. The purpose is to have a deterrent from dying and "zerging" game content. Also a deterrent from dying to save Anima. It's not a deterrent if you can turn it off... >.>

[Abriael]

Experience based "death penalties" are nothing else than a timesink. They don't add challenge, they don't add fun. They simply are a (quite antiquated) way to add more time to the grind.
No thanks, really.