An open discsusion on the consequences of death

[trinta]

What is the point of playing a game that has no consequences?

I guess Baseball, Football, Soccer, Basketball... these games are stupid because they have consequences to failure. It can't possibly be fun to play the game, since they're punished when they lose. I know, let's just make it so that every team gets to put tickets in a hat to enter the Superbowl, World Cup, etc. Then every time you win, you get to put another ticket in. Then at the end of the season, they draw two tickets at random for which teams are in it.

Afterall, we can't allow for anything that might discourage the teams, like losing. Gotta use Positive reinforcement, baby! This way, everyone has a chance!

How are they punished when they lose? The championship series are positive reinforcement for winning.

[Kaedan]

How are they punished when they lose? The championship series are positive reinforcement for winning.

Hmm... let's see. They can lose their jobs, they can get salary reductions... I'd say loss of one's livelihood is quite a punishment.

[wind]

Its amazing that people are actually WANTING sp loss because this game 'needs' a consequence? If I to recall how many hrs spent on senseless buffer grinding because of preparation or aftermath of AV I'd rather shoot myself rofl. Maybe I don't have a high masochistic personality as some of you other people >.< but wanting SP loss seems retarded on so many levels.
*main reason I say this is from the already overwhelming posts / cries / threads / opinions that all this game is atm is a grind fest.. so seeing some advocating the creation of yet another reason to grind confuses me *

I'm not saying we shouldn't have consequences(just not sp loss) but I'm not all gun-ho for it either.

[Buttons]

I also can't understand why people are getting this worked up about something I can consider to be good. EXP Loss at Death in FFXI was a giant pain in the butt. Just getting your buffer up again after a Dynamis or two was horrible and just a waste of time.

I understand that people do not want people zombie'ing down mobs but harsh death penalties are not the way to go. It's just an extra time sink that I do not really approve of. :/

I find it a bit silly that so much attention is being given to these "minor" issues when the devs have way more important stuff they should be working on, like actual content. Bug fixes and balancing is fine and all, but after 6 months of the game being out some of us would like some more content please. :3

[Reika]

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.

There you have it ^%^. No plans on SP/EXP loss, but equipment damage if you fail to get raised. simple and clean.

[Aion]

Hmm... let's see. They can lose their jobs, they can get salary reductions... I'd say loss of one's livelihood is quite a punishment.

huh?? is such competition exist?? what kind of competition you talking??

[Rentahamster]

1 Anima = 4 hours. You can get a LOT of SP in 4 hours.

No, they won't.

1 Anima = 4 hours. You can gain a lot of SP in 4 hours.

You are making the false assumption that everyone will always buy it back. It's still a choice.

I'm not sure why you're making 1 anima the equivalent of 4 hours' worth of SP grinding. It's totally not the same at all. A chunk of SP is waaaay more valuable than 1 anima since SP represents actual effort put into the game, whereas anima doesn't mean anything since it regenerates automatically without any effort.

If you had a choice of either A. Losing 40000 SP, or B. losing 1 anima (which in your view could be considered equivalent, given a 10k/hour grind rate), no one in their right mind would choose the SP loss over the anima loss.

SP is so much more valuable than anima that it's hardly equivalent. Why would anyone choose to loose their invested time and effort over anima, which regens automatically? Everyone would always choose to loose gil or anima instead of SP (probably gil, since gil is even more worthless than anima). Again, if everyone is always going to choose the same way, it's effectively the same as not giving them a choice in the first place and doesn't help to change anything.

Exactly. Your system is actually HARSHER than my system. At least with a SP loss/buyback system, you can choose between losing SP and losing Anima.

No it's not. Let's compare my system to the two "choices" of your system.

Scenario A: player dies
my system- loses anima
your system - loses SP and buys it back with anima

Both systems have equivalent harshness.


Scenario B: player dies
my system- loses anima
your system - loses SP and decides not to buy it back.

Your system is harsher than mine in Scenario B because losing SP is a harsher penalty than losing anima, since SP is a direct representation of a quantity of effort and time put into the game.

-When someone's Anima drops to 0, we are back in the same boat we're in now.

What boat? The casuals are fine with the current system. It's only the hardcore players who want more challenge. If anima drops to 0, casual players don't care. As for hardcore players, they're skillfull enough not to have 0 anima all the time. That's also why I implemented the bonuses as a performance and visual impact booster to give the hardcore players a reward for being good, and to give them a better reason not to die.

[Nephera]

I was going to make a huge post about games i've played in the past but when i went back to look i've found a lot of them have a softened version of the death penalty they had at launch.

[Peregrine]

No death penalty is necessary. Regaining buffers is poor gameplay for angry elitists who can't stand to see others having fun without jumping through their brand of hoops. Argument that they add incentive not to die is a bunch of bologne, because no one dies on purpose in this game while they're trying to fight and never will because.... The current system is perfect. At death 1 you're semi-functional. At death 2 you're nearly worthless. At death 3 your abilities are locked, because you obviously are trying to zombie rush something and that stops you dead.

[solracht]

While a valid idea when the party's goal is leveling, it does nothing to discourage death when farming for items or completing boss/mission content. When your goal isn't SP, then the "loss of bonus" becomes meaningless.

I am neither for or against his idea but people have addressed this in the last pages.

There's a worse penalty than losing experience points when doing missions or events: it's called failing the event. It's what happens when you lose too many times and your group either gets tired or runs out of time, or when the event is actually timed and you run out of time to keep on trying.

The penalty is not getting that cutscene, not getting deeper into the dungeon, nor getting items. Whatever your motivation was for doing the event in the first place is not accomplished.

Nobody cares about EXP loss during events/missions, especially since there are usually people who have Raise spells. In FFXI there were events where you had to sacrifice people in order to win (kite adds or suicide pulls) and it was done without hesitation. What's your answer to that? Perhaps they cared about something else beyond avoiding the death penalty? Perhaps losing the event was indeed worse than losing exp?

Do you honestly think that the reason people didn't try some events in FFXI was because they would lose some exp upon death? No, it was usually because most hard fights required some pre-reqs that couldn't be reobtained overnight, or because you could only do them a few times per week, or because the events were annoying enough to end up in failure without the right people (which translates into a waste of time, which is also a penalty).

A harsh death penalty is also not enough to make death matter during an encounter. Even with a death penalty, people were raised mid-battle in XI. Even with a death penalty, you saw zombie attacks. Don't you realize exp loss failed as a death deterrent in endgame events in FFXI? In XIV, do you really think linkshells wouldn't make people Return midfight if they died and their contribution for rejoining the fight could net them the win? (even with an exp penalty).

What you need to do is to make death matter by limiting how much you can recover during an encounter. What Yoshida suggested works for this, with some slight adjustments to Raise and encounter mechanics.