A cure for surplus.... kinda..

[Abriael]

And yet they still make tons of money while you sit at home complaining about wasting time on a game.

They make tons of money because their games are evolving. And part of that evolution has been the removal of xp based death penalties. It's one of the most antiquated and surpassed concept in MMORPGs (actually even before,since it comes from MUDs), and there's a reason why everyone is doing away with it.

Every game has it, mmo or not and its worked for a very long time so you sir are the one failing.

Quite obviously it's not seen as working anymore, considering that everyone is doing away with it. It's an antiquated concept. That's all there's to it.

I never said I was right or that OP is right but the ammount of times I've seen you complain about timesinks in multiple threads over the past few days just drives me to the conclusion that you don't listen.

And you have been going around talking in favor of xp based death penalty in multiple threads while the majority is quite obviously against it. Does that mean that you don't listen?

I never said penalties = challenge, neither did the OP. It is simply a mental deterence to make players work harder to stay alive instead of accepting death because they can still fight weakened without worry. That alone is silly and needs to be done away with.

Work harder to stay alive? That's achieved by making staying alive harder, not by giving silly mental deterrences based on wasting people's playing time. Not everyone has the time to "sit at home" playing all day, you know?

If you need a "mental deterrence" in order to try and stay alive in a game the objective of which is winning and progressing, then I'm afraid you're doing it wrong.

[Spuffin]

Death Penalties ARE needed. W/O a death penalty people can do what ever they want with no fear or limitations to exploring places you shouldnt easily get to also with no death penalties this leads to ZERGS. Which is current in FF14 atm, ZERG. Everyone and there mom on leve links ZERGS the hell out of all the monsters and when they die they just instantly respawn with a minor sickness and CHARGE right back over do as much DPS as possible and die again. Rinse and repeate.

This is broken and boring.. Players need boundries. We need a death penalty and the surplus sounds like a great idea for the death penalty. Every MMO has one for a REASON.

WOW - Run back to your body/exp loss when rezed?
FF11 - Lose exp (even at 75) gives you a reason to go exp again; possible down level
EVE ONLINE - Go spend milions of ISK buying a new ship and recovering your goods
TERA - Lose all your stamina resorting in a very small HP/MP pool also losing crystal attachments to gear and weapons
AION - EXP surplus that you had to pay to remove or level it off as well as a 30sec-5min movement speed health and mp reduction
Etc.

FF14 - 3 min sickness lowering your HP/MP pool that you can heal intantaniously at any crystal and continue on with your zerg/grind losing nothing but 3 min of game time.

[Akumu]

Not disagreeing with you, but why do you stop leveling the current job when you hit surplus? It's only a -10% loss. How is not earning an additional 10k making the game so unfun for you that you stop all together on that job? I'm confused.

My bad should have detailed it a bit more. I don't stop soon as I hit surplus but about 4/5 ranks in and I notice the big difference. As of now I started leveling lancer and in 1 day hit rank 5 surplus. I can grind through it but its like adding a grind on top of a grind.

[Abriael]

Death Penalties ARE needed. W/O a death penalty people can do what ever they want with no fear or limitations to exploring places you shouldnt easily get to also with no death penalties this leads to ZERGS. Which is current in FF14 atm, ZERG. Everyone and there mom on leve links ZERGS the hell out of all the monsters and when they die they just instantly respawn with a minor sickness and CHARGE right back over do as much DPS as possible and die again. Rinse and repeate.

Again, wrong target. To remove zerging, you make the mobs not zergable, instead of applying artificial limitations. Exploring areas you shouldn't easily get to? Try "trying to explore", because mobs are still there, and WILL send you back to the bind especially whenn they are placed in small bottlenecks (and they are). With the distances we have to run that's PLENTY disincentive to go into dangerous places.

This is broken and boring.. Players need boundries. We need a death penalty and the surplus sounds like a great idea for the death penalty. Every MMO has one for a REASON.

Oh really? "every" MMO? Every MMO has a "death penalty", even FFXIV has a "death penalty". Most definitely not every MMO has an *harsh* death penalty, or much harsher than in FFXIV. Actually almost every MMO is doing away with harsh death penalties.

WOW - Run back to your body/exp loss when rezed?

You don't lose experience in wow.

TERA - Lose all your stamina resorting in a very small HP/MP pool also losing crystal attachments to gear and weapons

And no xp losses. Also, the chance of breaking enchantments is very small, and the damage is very limited if it happens (and can be only on chest and weapons), cost wise is no different than damaged equipment.

AION - EXP surplus that you had to pay to remove or level it off as well as a 30sec-5min movement speed health and mp reduction

There's a reason why Aion is considered nothing more than a korean grindfest.

FF14 - 3 min sickness lowering your HP/MP pool that you can heal intantaniously at any crystal and continue on with your zerg/grind losing nothing but 3 min of game time.

Are you even playing the game? You can't remove rez sickness in FFXIV.

Also you conveniently forgot to mention Warhammer and AoC, whose death penalty is pretty much the same to that of FFXIV.

[Kazimir]

So, basically you want to remove a timesink made to give casual players an advantage, to add one to put them at a disadvantage? It doesn't really have anything to do with the reasons why surplus was implemented, and it doesn't add any challenge or real thrill to the game.

Nah. I'd rather them remove the timesink altogether, without adding any. Timesinks don't add any challenge, they're just there to waste people's time. And we waste plenty time already in many areas of the game (like running).

Surplus was not added as a timesink, it was to get people to level more classes to utilize the action & traits system, instead of just rushing to 50 on one. Even with surplus you can hit 50 in a month so it's not like it's much of a penalty anyway.

The only reason why people complain about it is they want to hit the cap as soon as possible. But I guess I can understand why, the process of leveling in this game is so boring right now you can't really stop to enjoy it.

[Galamantyl]

I am strongly against surplus

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I think...

[Jinko]

Surplus will be removed when the game has more content no doubt, right now the dev's want to keep us from obtaining level 50 as long as they can, at least until there is more to do end game or they increase the level cap.

[Abriael]

Surplus was not added as a timesink, it was to get people to level more classes to utilize the action & traits system, instead of just rushing to 50 on one. Even with surplus you can hit 50 in a month so it's not like it's much of a penalty anyway.

The only reason why people complain about it is they want to hit the cap as soon as possible. But I guess I can understand why, the process of leveling in this game is so boring right now you can't really stop to enjoy it.

You actually described a timesink pretty much perfectly. Timesinks are mechanics in place, between other things, to make people take more time to reach the endgame. The fact that it also encourages people to play different classes (I would say almost forces) is more of a consequence than a cause, and so it was described both by Tanaka and Komoto.

[Rokien]

Let me clear one thing up. I don't like the idea of surplus in the form it is now, but I like the idea of it being a death penalty. I don't like how I can fail it up, and try again and again and again, with out any thing to stop me. And no matter what you do or don't do there is always going to be a time-sync in everything you do. Sooo just shut up with the time-sync thing already, god.

[Gun_Anam]

People would argue that this is exactly what the surplus system is, that "normal" SP is actually "bonus" SP, and in surplus mode you're earning "normal" SP.

If you give people the choice of the carrot or the stick people will choose the carrot. If they called normal SP 'bonus SP' and called heavy surplus 'normal SP' with varying reduction in 'bonus SP' in between then people wouldn't have a problem with it at all. It's all in the mind.


On topic, I like the death penalty suggestion however I wouldn't say it has anything to do with surplus. I would like to see something like this added into changes to the current death weakness and ending when the weakness ends.

My wishlist for the current death weakness changes (in addition to the gear damage introduction):
Death Weakness increased to 5 minutes, non-stacking, but refreshing timer on each death.
Removal of stamina regen burden while in death weakened mode.
Reduction of SP gain while in death weakened mode by 50%.


This gives people the choice to still fight while under the death weakness effect while receiving reduced SP and lower effectiveness without slowing down combat, or wait for the 5 minutes.