An open discsusion on the consequences of death

[Anathiel]

lol akumu, seriously I forgot it was called that...man, I miss those days those. but I don't miss being a dark knight. took me 2 years to max it out. Butttttttt nobody was able to stun a sickle scythe from a bark spider except for me, the trick was to time it every 45 seconds....lol, I miss those times. I hope they can fix this game to be as great as ff:xi without being a direct rip off.

[Aelphais]

About Rentai's Life Points: I feel the current state of the battle system is too rapid and it is very easy to die, with a 10 point penalty I can't see anyone having many points ever unless they just sat AFK for a few days, but that shouldn't count and should such a system be implemented, I'm sure Square would have some sort of check for that.

I do feel that there needs to be additional punishment for death. Perhaps some sort of delayed durability loss on armor. So you die, and it puts a debuff on you that lasts X hours, when it runs out your character notices additional damage on the armor and drops the durability by 15% or so. That lets you keep going without having to rush back to repair, but still puts a cost on death other than a minute or so wait.

Or maybe a system like Guild Wars. You die and take 15% hit to HP, MP, TP and damage dealth for 30 minutes. Die again and it is 30%, 45%, 60%. Killing monsters successfully will reduce the % based on EXP gained, say 1000 EXP per 1%. At 60% it should be pretty difficult to accomplish anything. But this might lead to frustration with players repeatedly dying, so maybe the 30 minutes doesn't change with extra deaths. Worked better in Guild Wars due to the instanced design, but I think it could work with some modification.

[Rentahamster]

About Rentai's Life Points: I feel the current state of the battle system is too rapid and it is very easy to die, with a 10 point penalty I can't see anyone having many points ever unless they just sat AFK for a few days, but that shouldn't count and should such a system be implemented, I'm sure Square would have some sort of check for that.

Upon some more reflection, I agree that rewarding people with the "staying alive" bonus for being AFK or just for not playing in a while is a bad idea. My initial outline was also a tad too complex. It could use some simplifying.

As far as it being too easy to die and being really hard to achieve the "still alive" buff, that's sort of what I was going for. I wanted to make it relatively rare to have, so that you don't see everyone and their mother running around with the buff active. I also wanted the buff to not be that strong, so that it's not so bad when you lose it, but I still wanted the player to feel the sting of the loss of all that invested time.

I've rethought my idea and think that a hybrid of mine(http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post21748) and Stilla's (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/2097-An-open-discsusion-on-the-consequences-of-death?p=21796#post21796)idea would be interesting.

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.

[darkstarpoet1]

i am 100%against the death penalty being increased. it is sickening to hear take this from xi and that in xi. this is not xi-2 so please stop. this has nothing to do with the type of fixes that this game needs at this point. this game needs tweaks to the battle regimen system, the way leveling and points are given and alotted, in game content, more abilities to make each class more unique, and a few others. we are looking at tiny things that really have no relevance to what it will take to make this game successful.

this game was made for casual players as well as the hardcore gamers. the casual gamers are going to die alot more than we are plain and simple and the game was meant as a way those people could play and enjoy a mmo that was not like every other mmo. penalizing them on each death is not going to do that and will actually push more of that base away.

[Aelphais]

That revised system makes a lot more sense than the original, although instead of the anima loss, it might as well just be a cost on return for death. If you get raised then you don't have to return. If you have 0 anima you can still return on death though.

This will also solve Yoshi-P's issue with death-teleporting, making it cost more anima to die and return than simply to return.

I do like how positive you are though. Both my suggestions were all about punishing people for dying rather than rewarding them for living, although Guild Wars did have the moral boost system which was opposite of death penalty, but that wasn't mentioned.

[Seikninkuru]

PEP from Chronicles of Spellborn would be perfect. There hasn't been a game that I hated dying in more than that one =/

[RichardButte]

Running back from the bind and waiting for the resurrection sickness to expire is a time sink.

An experience/skill points loss is nothing else than another time sink (you lose the time you spent to earn that experience/skill).

It's exactly the same, in an apparently different form. The system can stay as it is.

PS: How is this related to 1020? There's no dev thread related to changes to death penalty.

This. One is just a steeper time sink than the other.

Gear durability loss would make more sense, as that's not time but money.

You'd literally "pay" for dying.

[BadJoeRed]

I spoke on this topic several times on zam, I feel I must say something here as well, in case they are keeping score.

YES, there should be some kind of SP penalty when dying. This keeps the bad players trying a little harder than they normally would, while at the same time, possibly lessening the likelihood that you bad players will get me killed during group events. The only people that are against any kind of penalty can probably be grouped up into 1 of 2 categories. 1, You struggle at games for the most part and expect to die a lot. (You may be in group 1, with denial) or 2, You view losing SP as a "Timesink." and also view many aspects of an MMO a "Timesink." As a matter of fact, there are certain elements and characteristics of a game that give it a specific genre. MMOs in general are role playing games. Activities, quests, and virtually every aspect of the games seem to take a little more time to complete in MMOs VS let's say, a FPS. These are the very differences of what defines a game as a MMO.

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.

If you want to die, then hit "restart" or "Load," a MMORRP may not be the ideal game for your mentality.
Not to mention the fundamentals of the game would be drastically altered if they imposed a Skill Point penalty for dying. This reason is for another time though.

Remember, It's okay to have an opinion and say "I don't want a SP penalty because I don't want to have to get the SP back." Just don't try to say that it is a "Timesink" and doesn't affect nearly every aspect of how people play the game.

[darkstarpoet1]

I spoke on this topic several times on zam, I feel I must say something here as well, in case they are keeping score.

YES, there should be some kind of SP penalty when dying. This keeps the bad players trying a little harder than they normally would, while at the same time, possibly lessening the likelihood that you bad players will get me killed during group events. The only people that are against any kind of penalty can probably be grouped up into 1 of 2 categories. 1, You struggle at games for the most part and expect to die a lot. (You may be in group 1, with denial) or 2, You view losing SP as a "Timesink." and also view many aspects of an MMO a "Timesink." As a matter of fact, there are certain elements and characteristics of a game that give it a specific genre. MMOs in general are role playing games. Activities, quests, and virtually every aspect of the games seem to take a little more time to complete in MMOs VS let's say, a FPS. These are the very differences of what defines a game as a MMO.

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.

If you want to die, then hit "restart" or "Load," a MMORRP may not be the ideal game for your mentality.
Not to mention the fundamentals of the game would be drastically altered if they imposed a Skill Point penalty for dying. This reason is for another time though.

Remember, It's okay to have an opinion and say "I don't want a SP penalty because I don't want to have to get the SP back." Just don't try to say that is doesn't affect nearly every aspect of how people play the game.

i am actually in group 3. the group that understands that se said itself this game would be hard enough for the hardcore gamers, but easy enough for the casual players. by saying screw the people that only come on an hr a day if possible and a few hours on the weekend it will cause that member base to leave. i see you are a 29 bsm and a 39 arm, but do you bother to ask who buys the items from you? mostly it's these people that do not play enough to have time to level crafts and only want to go kill a few things and call it a day. if we put a sp loss on those people that play in that way it may take them a week to get that little sp back. if you do that they will likely leave and then it will be even more damage to an already weak game economy. i personally do not mind the death penalty idea, but i do mind it for the casual gamers that xiv was supposedly going to bring in, but due to lack of story and mainly grinding they have pushed away.

[AmyRae]

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.

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.

Second of all, the penalty for death in an MMO is always time. Always. Even if it's something like XP or damaged gear, it always takes time to recover what you lost (leveling back up, or coming up with gil for the damages, etc.). If the time penalty for dying is too light, you don't fear death as much.

Now, would it be nice if people took their character's death more seriously? You may be able to make a case for that. But you have to account for the people who do like to solo in this game, and there was really nothing quite so frustrating in FFXI like having a half-hour's worth of solo XP wiped away from an untimely death. Putting in an SP penalty would add a frustration to this game that doesn't exist and those who play solo don't miss.