An open discsusion on the consequences of death

[Choc]

What am I reading

FFXIII didn't have a DP whatsoever and surprisingly I had my fair share of challenging encounters in that game. How odd!

And the same somehow applies to Dissidia Duodecim I am playing currently, how peculiar!

If this wasnt a joke im really scared....

[Nephera]

Why would they make players "really dislike" dying?
Actually, why would a developer in his right mind want players to "really dislike" anything in their game?
The golden rule should (and normally is) "If it isn't fun, it has no place in the game". They already broke this rule enough at release, and the team is trying to adress it now. Not a good idea to go back to square one.



The fact that there's zergable content has to be solved by making the content not zergable (changing position, ability to fight immediately after death and so forth), not by uselessly adding to the grind, and implementing "features" that actually are detrimental to the enjoyment of the game.

You don't break a nut by running it over with a truck. You get a nutbreaker.

Well i was about to say something about how silly this is in regards to dying but I have to consider what just happened in the behest i was in not 5 minutes ago.

we finally clear out the first wave and the boss wave spawns, I mention that we should probably attack a specific mob first (Because it has a righteous aoe) nearly all of us do it but the mob still gets its aoe off just as it dies, obliterating 9-10 people and then...

we laughed and said "thats why you attack that mob first", no screaming matches about "OH THANKS JACKHOLE NOW I LOST AN HOURS WORTH OF WORK BECAUSE OF YOU" etc etc.

so yeah I kind of agree, death should be a set back of course, but not one that'll ruin your night.

Armor damage is harsher than what we have now but its not likely to ruin someone's day in one wipe (several successive ones maybe).

[solracht]

Well, there has to be a deterrent for dying (otherwise you can just zerg content), so what do you suggest? The current penalty is not enough to discourage zerging content and using death to save Anima.

It doesn't help if you shoot down options and don't add an alternative yourself.

Did you play FFXI? Do you honestly think it was the exp loss that made people want to stay alive during events?

Picture a hard guildleve, a 30min event:

Assuming they make it so the boss regens to full HP after wipes, and using Yoshida's death penalties, how many wipes do you think the party can take before the event ends in failure? (which could mean not being able to try the boss again for the day or the week) .

Whenever you wipe, you either use Raise III on everyone (which makes you waste a lot of time, as the cooldown is supposed to be high) or you use lower Raises on everyone, and although you save time, your following attempts at the boss will have you in worse conditions than at the start (due to the stat debuff).

The suggested changes are enough penalties for endgame events, especially if they're timed like in FFXI.

Also, what made zombie-ing possible was being able to have mid-combat recovery. Make Raise either unusable during combat or make it have a 200% MP cost and cast time during battle, and there will be no throwing bodies at events. No Return while the party is engaged in a boss battle, either.

The deterrent to bullshitting events should be making events can't be done that way. There's no need to piss everyone off to accomplish that.

[Lienn]

Death penalty right now is a bit too light. I'm 100% against exp/sp loss. This is just terrible to have in a MMO. But i believe that death penalty should be a bit harsher.

I'd put death penalty this way:

Halves all attibutes, HP and MP (since MP now can regen it should be affected by death) while weakened. Dying while weakened doubles this penalty.
+100% on all casting and recast timers
-50% of equipment's current durability (if its at 100%, it goes down to 50%. If its at 20% it goes down to 10%).

This would make death more expressive, even though it won't touch exp/sp.

About return:

When a player return he will have no weakened effect, but will receive full armor durability depletion.

About raises:

Raise should be a skill at several ranks. It is important but right now its rarely seen. Also, as a spell, it should have MP cost. Right now raise is just like a skill, not a spell. Also, as a spell, it does need MP cost and being under "area of effect" effect. I'd make raises like this:

Raise: Rank 15, MP cost 50, revives the target. He will be under a 5 minutes weakened penalty and the equipment damage from death will be lessened by 25% (so it will still receive 25% of currend durability damage)

Raise II: Rank 30, MP cost 100, revives the target. He will be under a 3 minutes weakened penalty and the equipment damage from death will be lessened by 37.5% (so it will still receive 12.5% of current durability damage)

Raise III: Rank 45, MP cost 200, revives the target. He will be under a 1 minute weakened penalty and the equipment damage from death will be fully restored (no durability damage)

However, CON should have only raise. Since we seens to be having classic classes as advanced classes someday, raise II and III should be White Mage only spells (class exclusive spells). About ressurect, it should be similar to raise in all aspects, but not having higher tier ones...this way we will have a starting raise spell at both starting mage classes that can also be used by other classes, but only the white mage, who is supposed to be the healing specialist class, will be able to cast higher tier raises.

About reraise:

Oh, yeah...i didn't forgot this one. Reraise should work the same way as raise, but being 5 ranks higher (reraise rank 20, reraise II rank 35, reraise III rank 50), have doubled MP cost (100, 200 and 400 MP respectively), Effect duration of 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 1hour respectivelly and only reraise not being class exclusive (reraise II and III should be exclusive of white mage).

I believe this way death, return, raise and reraise would be perfectly balanced in this game.

[Kaedan]

What am I reading

FFXIII didn't have a DP whatsoever and surprisingly I had my fair share of challenging encounters in that game. How odd!

And the same somehow applies to Dissidia Duodecim I am playing currently, how peculiar!

You can't compare a single player game with an MMO in this way. Your comparison is invalid.

Not really. Challenging content cannot be zerged, especially if it's at a reasonable distance from respawn points. Why? Because if the group loses it's integrity too much (if it doesn't, then it isn't zerging), it's a wipe way before anyone makes it back. If the content can be zerged, it means that it isn't challenging enough, and that's what needs adressing.

Again, death penalty is just a lopsided placebo in order to avoid adressing the real issue. Not to mention, a nostalgic's delusion of challenge where no actual challenge exists.

People will find a way to zerg. People will kite it, turtle against it, ping pong it... any number of things to stall until members who died get back from spawn point. Hell, they will even just keep dying and raising and not care since there is no penalty.

And if you try to design your content so none of this is possible, then it becomes so hard that it's nearly impossible to complete without performing perfectly or being overgeared for it. And that is NOT fun for casuals.

[JayvirDeforte]

I still think that just adding in destroyed gear at 0% and boosting gear damage on death would be good in a way. If every death equaled a 10-20% durability loss on gear, and said gear could be destroyed if reaching 0, that's deterrant in itself to make sure you don't die. Could you imagine losing a Mosshorn Scalemail +3 because you decided to die too many times? I would think twice. Not to mention that could get rid of a lot of surplus items in the economy if they were all breaking

[Alise]

Hey all,

Hvinire here with an update from Yoshida on this very topic. Sorry for the delay in responding but please check out the comment that Yoshi-P himself made regarding the community concerns over the current death penalty in Eorzea.



There you have it, now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

I think it is better to cost anima upon the death return. Everybody scare to lose their anima anyway.

Normal return = cost 1
Death return = cost 2 (so people will scare when they die. If he always stays at 0 anima, then he will never be able to teleport anywhere)
Teleport cost 3-6.

this will also fix the problem of trying to die to warp, because die cost more anima!

[Nephera]

Did you play FFXI? Do you honestly think it was the exp loss that made people want to stay alive during events?

Picture a hard guildleve, a 30min event:

Assuming they make it so the boss regens to full HP after wipes, and using Yoshida's death penalties, how many wipes do you think the party can take before the event ends in failure? (which could mean not being able to try the boss again for the day or the week) .

Whenever you wipe, you either use Raise III on everyone (which makes you waste a lot of time, as the cooldown is supposed to be high) or you use lower Raises on everyone, and although you save time, your following attempts at the boss will have you in worse conditions than at the start (due to the stat debuff).

The suggested changes are enough penalties for endgame events, especially if they're timed like in FFXI.

Also, what made zombie-ing possible was being able to have mid-combat recovery. Make Raise either unusable during combat or make it have a 200% MP cost and cast time during battle, and there will be no throwing bodies at events. No Return while the party is engaged in a boss battle, either.

The deterrent to bullshitting events should be making events can't be done that way. There's no need to piss everyone off to accomplish that.

^also this

[Lionheart]

Equip damage system is already frustrating enough, there's absolutely no need to use it as death penalty and even less usefull is a "destroyed gear at 0%". I think players should feel a sense of challenge... not frustration.
That being said the only sensed penalty would be something that compromise the whole battle outcome... For example a time penalty on levequest/mission timer.

[Betelgeuzah]

You can't compare a single player game with an MMO in this way. Your comparison is invalid.

Why couldn't I? If you can't even name a reason why this comparison doesn't apply, that doesn't make it invalid. I can see that you are out of logic's reach however.