[Rainman]

This was just a discussion on your feelings about Death Penalties.

We are not currently looking to make any changes at this time but we are always interested in players and the communities feedback around these matters.

[Mymothersmeatloaf]

Personally I feel like the death penalties have actually deterred me from wanting to interact more in events and most party gatherings because I quite literally fear that my character might lose a huge chunk of XP that I spent an entire week getting, especially when I hit level 15, and especially when I realized I could actually lose an entire LEVEL if I died. When I first started, I ignorantly stepped into the underdark, completely unaware of it's dangers, saw something, ran for the transition, couldn't get through, and before I knew it I died. I don't know, maybe I'm just too used to servers with lighter penalties, but I've found that when the penalty was light I never had to fear getting involved, and not having to coward in the back all the time.

[GoblinLoveChild]

so you are deciding not to adventure because you fear death...

Is this not how you view real life?

I want to honestly know why people have the conception that their characters SHOULDN'T fear death?
Death should be a terrifying experience. The fact that you are getting hacked to pieces by blood thirsty Orcs or your innards chewed into mush by ravenous zombies
is supposed to be terrifying.

[Autarch]

You ignored an important part of what Meatloaf said here. The high level character has an apparent fear of death, the low level character does not. Why is that and how does that make any sense?

It has nothing to do with an in-character perspective or how real life works. High level characters don't have to fear death so much because resurrections are a thing they can afford. Low level characters might fear death because of their lack of experience or resources to pay for resurrections.

This fear of death has less to do with being an accurate portrayal (because some characters have reason to fear dying and others somehow don't) and more to do with just being purely economical. Level 15 characters have a limited ways of earning experience, level 16+ characters are even more severely limited. As far as I know, level 16+ characters have two quest options available and one of them is apparently very difficult.

My own character doesn't joined other people on adventures because the game arbitrarily decides for him that he sees no reason to go pick a fight with ogres/trolls/kuo-toa/fire orcs/giants and doesn't let him enter the quest area, even if it would make perfect sense for him to want to help these guys out.

I also question whether I should participate in events. One of the reasons beings because the rewards just don't justify the risks involved and adventurers generally go do risky business because the rewards are worth it, which I'm going to say is rarely the case around here.

So high level characters don't want to die because it wastes a lot of the player's time. It's entirely out of character and it has absolutely nothing to do with realistically portraying the fear of death.

[The Man in the Mist]

This game has consequences. Stakes. The lack of these cheapens the game. Dying sucks, losing xp sucks. But if the game is more about xp and the grind, I'm worried you're missing the point of the game.

Your character should not solely be the time you've invested in them. If your characters efforts are reduced to nothing just because you lost a week's worth of xp, something's wrong, chums.

[Walrus Warwagon]

Sometimes it's month or two worth of exp. Of course loss of exp sucks regardless of your character coolness and involvement in current plots. It would suck less if 16+ character could restore previously achieved as effectively as 10+. Ultimately, the peak has already been reached by them. Yes, this is a role-playing game. But it is also a computer game. Both of these parts are important, both should bring fun, and neither diminishes the value of the other.
In addition, the DnD is a system in which you control the "super-humans" with an unhealthy amount of heroism. Is realism appropriate here?

[The Man in the Mist]

Ideally, a higher level character will die to higher stakes, as opposed to a level 10. Its not a perfect system but the alternative leads to something that I personally consider unhealthy; the level gap. How can a new character hope to keep up with or even interact with characters drastically higher level than them? The answer lies in solo grinding until 10 or higher and then hoping others take you along on things so you can leech xp. I don't find that particularly fun at all. I suppose some people might, and that's their prerogative.

That said so far the only arguments I've heard equate to little more than it would be nice if the game was easier or that it's not fun for bad things to happen. Both things I think have been addressed fairly well.

The power that comes with being high level will lose all meaning when it becomes easily achievable by everyone.

It's the struggle that is what keeps things interesting, and if losing two months of xp invalidates those two months for you, then I insist you have a serious misconception on what this game is about.

I digress. I hope this doesn't come off as condescending or even rude. I only mean to throw in my own thought on the matter. I only ask that anyone who doesn't like the death system to consider rolling up a new character who doesn't focus on xp grind at all, and rather on telling a good story. I think in doing so you will enjoy the aspects I speak of much more.

[Eldwen]

One of the things I've noticed is that the death penalty is very, very hard to overcome - particularly as a higher level character.

The thought of loosing months of progress from a lag-spike, a dumb move, or just bad luck could really drive many people up the wall.

This might be mitigated if there was a way to return the XP loss in a reasonable way. You died and get raised? 10% XP gone, but...maybe 5% of that XP is stored as a sort of "pool" that doubles the amount of XP ticks you get. Yeah - it still sucks, but now its not as much of a loss.

Resurrection is made to 2.5% of the XP recoverable, or maybe even 3%, with a total of your 5% XP lost, that would also be a reasonable option?

Last, I could see making Death be more harsh, but not drop levels? Maybe death of a level 16 character causes them to loose up to 50% of the total XP to make the next level, but never drop back down to 15.

Losing XP sucks, loosing levels sucks way, way worse. I think having ways to mitigate the loss of levels, the real progress people see, would make it less painful.

In my examples, I used 15+ just because that's where death hurts the worst, I would propose the changes I suggested be applied to all levels.

[GoblinLoveChild]

If you die from a mechanical bug like a lag spike. That's totally out of your control,
I do not think there is a single DM that won't give you a free rez. A polite request on the DM channel or on discord should see you sorted out.

we are talking about when you make choices to go into dangerous situations and it backfires and you end up dead.

[Surfing_Turnip]

This is another one of those situations where the design doesn't really match the intention. I understand how it can feel that having a death penalty like this will encourage role playing the risks associated with adventure. However, since the primary focus of the game play and all the events is adventure, making partaking them essential, and the personality (IE, the lack of risk aversion) of your character is the wish-fulfilment target of the game, then the end effect of this mechanic will actually be to encourage safe and repetitive grinding in down time at the expense of general social role play or other core immersion experiences. Thus, leading to running more adventuring of stuff you know your character isn't threatened by, which gets repetitive, leading to content burn out and stopping people from role playing any risk aversion around the thirtieth time the dungeon has been run. Characters then bring this general attitude that they develop in quote unquote safe content into higher level content or into DM events, ultimately defeating the entire intention of the death penalty.

Sadness.

It's fixable though. If you want people to act more carefully, relax the death penalty penalties on GP and XP, and ask players to role play the risks associated with going on murder-death sprees for profit.

[The Man in the Mist]

What you describe is actually what we have currently. The xp hit isn't nearly as high as folks make it out to be, and while yes, it is much more steep at higher levels, that is simply because we don't want to see a whole server of max level folks. Reaching max level shouldn't be the end all be all anyway, but again, I think this argument is going over a lot of heads.

Despite this I will try again one last time.

What you are asking for is what is practiced on many popular MMOs. World of Warcraft is actually free to play now from what I hear, as are many others.

But you're not there, even though these games have better graphics, crafting systems, and player count.

You're here.

Because this game we play offers something different; consequences. Actual tangible ones. If everyone can hit level 20 easier than they do now the accomplishment means nothing. The struggle is what brings the reward. This is what makes the stories we tell feel tangible. Without risk we are just a bunch of nerds behind screens talking at eachother.

[Mymothersmeatloaf]

so you are deciding not to adventure because you fear death...

Is this not how you view real life?

I want to honestly know why people have the conception that their characters SHOULDN'T fear death?
Death should be a terrifying experience. The fact that you are getting hacked to pieces by blood thirsty Orcs or your innards chewed into mush by ravenous zombies
is supposed to be terrifying.

I'm sorry. But how can we even equate a VIDEO GAME to real life here?

I spend time playing this game. I spend time leveling my character. Once my character hits level 15+ And the only way I can gain XP is through 2 quests and the piddly DM XP we've been getting lately. Getting to level 16 and above can take as long as several weeks to achieve, and then when suddenly you lose it in a single DM event, it becomes this nonsensical chore and hassle to get back to where you were at. If I want my game to be a chore, or a hassle. I'll go grind in an MMORPG or something similar.

[Mymothersmeatloaf]

What you describe is actually what we have currently. The xp hit isn't nearly as high as folks make it out to be, and while yes, it is much more steep at higher levels, that is simply because we don't want to see a whole server of max level folks. Reaching max level shouldn't be the end all be all anyway, but again, I think this argument is going over a lot of heads.

Despite this I will try again one last time.

What you are asking for is what is practiced on many popular MMOs. World of Warcraft is actually free to play now from what I hear, as are many others.

But you're not there, even though these games have better graphics, crafting systems, and player count.

You're here.

Because this game we play offers something different; consequences. Actual tangible ones. If everyone can hit level 20 easier than they do now the accomplishment means nothing. The struggle is what brings the reward. This is what makes the stories we tell feel tangible. Without risk we are just a bunch of nerds behind screens talking at eachother.

I think the player is well aware of where they're at by the way, so I don't think there's any need for the patronizing, condescending, and passive aggressive attitude.

Also. Why do we encourage our players to leave and play other games just because of constructive criticism? Isn't the entire point of this thread? Isn't that the entire thing you guys have been wanting us to do here? The point is, we DON'T want to play on other servers or other games, because we have RP, and people that we enjoy playing with here, and some of us actually care about the server and wish to see it improved instead of going through this down-ward spiral it has been going down lately.

If there's no place for that here, and you guys can't accept constructive criticsm, and don't even want to take what we say into consideration without jumping on us like a pack of rabbid animals, then maybe you're right, and this server isn't for us.

[Mortui]

Unlike an MMO, levels have no bearing on what you are allowed to do on this server.

Players may feel like they need the levels, but I assure you, you can manage without them.

[SpiffyHas]

I think the point The Man In The Mist wanted to make was that adventuring means risk. Sometimes, shit happens, and you suffer the consequences for it. However, when you overcome risk and adversity, you're left with a sensation of accomplishment. Accomplishment is only achieved if you overcome something that can potentially set you back.

So surviving hard DM events? Accomplishment! Forging the sword of ruin, where you had to escape the lair of a red dragon that permaed 2 other PCs? Accomplishment! Achievement! Wow, what an experience, I could've lost my character!

For their to be a meaningful reward, there needs to be risk.

If you don't want risk, then there really isn't a reward.

I mean, you could just sit in the square in front of the Coin and just gain Xp that way. No risk, and if you do it long enough, you can get level 20. That'll just take longer than the 'riskier' way of doing it.