[SpiffyHas]

I feel like you're coming off quite hostile to the DM team there, meatloaf. You see passive aggressiveness when I see people trying to explain their point. You see people trying to drive you off the server when they make a comparison.

You really don't need levels to be badass. Sure, they help in regards to certain things, but I believe CaptZambie became Mayor of Hadrian when he was below level 13. He achieved something cool without hitting the server apex.

[Mymothersmeatloaf]

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.

... then why do me and several other players with low level characters continue to die in events without being able to do much to contribute to begin with? 

[Mymothersmeatloaf]

I feel like you're coming off quite hostile to the DM team there, meatloaf. You see passive aggressiveness when I see people trying to explain their point. You see people trying to drive you off the server when they make a comparison.

You really don't need levels to be badass. Sure, they help in regards to certain things, but I believe CaptZambie became Mayor of Hadrian when he was below level 13. He achieved something cool without hitting the server apex.

That's a lot more than explaining a point. That's just straight up treating the player like they're stupid. I'm not the only one who can see that.

[SpiffyHas]

Sarcasm and nuance doesn't travel well over the internet. I really think you're seeing insults where their are none intended. The Man In The Mist tried to explain it as bluntly as possible without the possibility of misinterpretation- which you construed as a patronizing and condescending tone.

Can't really win for losing, can he?

[Eldwen]

I'm here for the RP that I'm able to have here, and the fact that the Neverwinter Nights engine allows for Netheril to exist in the first place.

This is firstmost a Roleplay server, I would ask that we focus on enhancing the actual ability and possibility of roleplaying.

Right now, the death system is "aw shit, I died - anyone have gold for a Resurrect? I'll refund you." From Purgatory. Then people get up, and go on their way, with less XP - a mechanical aspect.

NwN is not an MMO in the traditional sense, and because of the freedom allowing for everything from Netheril to a Bleach server.

And I would argue Netheril's death system is not the reason I'm here - none of Netheril's mechanics are why I'm here.

The way that the Man-in-the-mist came off, intentional or not, was very insulting. By claiming that this conversation was "over people's head" that insulated that anyone currently disagreeing, or offering input, is not intelligent enough to contribute to the conversation.

"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. "

This - is gas lighting. Trying to shift the blame onto me, and make me feel 'bad' for offering advice, this sort of language is intended to shut down thought, and to make it so people conform with what the poster has said, otherwise they can just 'leave', because obviously its their fault.

I want to talk about the death system, and my suggestions on how to improve it. That shouldn't be met with "you're not smart enough, go play on WoW." As a result.

"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 each other."

This is another misnomer, and putting words in my mouth, in everyone's mouth. I don't play here because my actions have consequence, I do because this server allows me to, collaboratively, tell a story with other players and DM's in order to explore the thoughts, feeling, and actions of a character. That has nothing to do with the death penalty, nothing to do with mechanics, and claiming that I play here because of both are false.

Please, I'm asking that this get back on track - and instead we talk about the actual forum topic of the Death Penalty. Without the unneeded obfuscation. I still haven't heard a reason as to "why" my suggestion is apparently invalid - besides me not being smart enough to suggest one in the first place.

[Drufice]

As an observer, and not really caring either way, it seems to me that (ironically) starving the players of levels because "the game isn't about levels" is actually making the game about levels for people.

[Swifty Willownall]

I appologize if it was laid out before, but I didn't care to look for it. So, what exactly is the argument here for people and the death penalty?

Do you feel it takes away too much exp or not enough?
Do you feel it's too expensive or cheap?
Do you feel coming back from the dead is too accesible or not accesible enough?

So far from what I did care to read about, was having to do with levels. And while the death penalty plays a role in that, player level is a whooooole other thing that incorprates a multitude of stuff. Quest exp, event exp, tick exp, monster exp, craft exp, etc.

This is one of those problems where you can't have it both ways. Either the death penalty smacks you for a large chunk of exp, but gaining exp is easy and quick. Or, dieing only takes a small bit of exp, but gaining exp is hard and sluggish.

Currently, we're actually fast exp and low to low-medium exp lost on death, which is what sparked Mortui's original post on the subject. Such a formula is why it feels like almost everyone is at least double digit levels their first week from creation.

[The Man in the Mist]

Hence my utter bewilderment.

Let me lay down just the numbers.

A majority of the active characters ig are 15+ level wise.

15 percent of xp is lost upon respawning, provided you are not raised or ressurected, which decreases it by 5 and 10 percent respectfully. With the current level range most cleric pcs can actually rez people pretty quickly, and often. I know this because I have seen it. Even if free rezzes were not readily available, the cost of a full resurrection is 6k.

Compare that to the typical adventurers cpinpurse, which is in the tens of thousands. And those are the typical ones. There is a rather large handful of people walking around with over 100k.

6000 is a drop in the bucket.

So ignore the spiel about story, ignore my self righteous rhetoric. Ignore all of that. But don't ignore the numbers.

[Eldwen]

As far as I'm aware, the issue of the death penalty isn't that it costs 6k to loose only 5% of your total XP, its that, post 15, that XP is significantly harder to get - thus its a matter of time, in real life, being gobbled up for a mechanical reason.

This is why people find it frustrating, or why people lash out - or otherwise get discouraged to play. It also doesn't enhance the roleplay aspect of the sever.

People treat, IG, death as a minor annoyance, the current death penalty doesn't change that - making it worse won't change that, and making it easier won't change that. When it comes to Roleplay it needs to be instead on the onus of people playing to show the results of coming from near death. Or - change it so no one actually "dies" unless they're perma'd, and instead are considered to be at the brink of death, or downed, or whatever terminology you use.

Death isn't scary right now because you can get back up, its just annoying, from a purely OOC perspective, that a player's time was wasted.

right now, a level 15 character will, at the minimum, loose 5,250 XP upon death, and a resurrection.

that means a character needs to amass 110,250 XP to be safe at level 15? Except, not, because 5,513 XP is now lost on death, so you really need closer to 5,700 to be "safe" from loosing you level, in the best of circumstances. This is actually 38% of the character's current XP towards their level.

Now you get 5,700 XP to be safe, either from ticks, or DM events. if the average tick is roughly 15, per 30 minutes or so, that's 190 hours of time to amass that amount from XP ticks alone. I don't know the actual time for each tick, I'm currently estimating.

Level 16, your minimum XP to not loose a level is approximately 6,500 XP, or 40% of your total XP towards your next level. Once again now your ability to get this "buffer" is reliant on ticks, or DM events, or two quests, if I recall right, that give XP for these characters. I'd ask what is the average XP a DM event will give - to the people that survived. If its 3k, you need to survive two events to be 'safe',

I'm suggesting that someone can't loose a level - you do that, and progress can be lost, but nothing that causes you're character to actually regress in their abilities as a person. lets say like, 30% of the XP needed to make it to your next level, not reducing your XP to the threshold that delevels you, as an example. then 20% for Raise, and 10% for resurrect.

If we're going to talk numbers, lets look at the numbers that effect the character directly when it comes to death, which is XP, and by extension, time.

[Shantis]

System side opinion:

I really dont care much about how much lose after dying ingame, if have ways to compensate playing later, with dm events, npc quests and tick xp crafting.

Ok, we were stressed and frustrated with the loss of XP and the time it took to recover. But if the player play and get envolved enough, end getting back the xp after a while. Take time, get stressed, hurt but is not not impossible to recover.

Lvl 17 characters lost around 7.500 xp each death.

Roleplay side opinion:

Losing xp is very less painful if the character's death was, in terms of roleplay, something striking and important to the event he or she attended, and in a way or another, this make a whole difference in the event or adventure for the character and to others too, and if the dm make the fall of a character an important moment of the adventure in an event

[GoblinLoveChild]

People treat, IG, death as a minor annoyance, the current death penalty doesn't change that - making it worse won't change that, and making it easier won't change that. When it comes to Roleplay it needs to be instead on the onus of people playing to show the results of coming from near death. Or - change it so no one actually "dies" unless they're perma'd, and instead are considered to be at the brink of death, or downed, or whatever terminology you use.

Death isn't scary right now because you can get back up, its just annoying, from a purely OOC perspective, that a player's time was wasted.

Now out of curiosity here.  What would you feel would make death more terrifying?  we want people to fear death to a certain point. so how far should we go? (in a hypothetical discussion here) because for now there is no plan to change the death penalty.  this does not mean we wont. we are always open to suggestions and ideas.

So would you fear death more if we made the XP loss greater? 
What about if we made it perma death unless you got a rez from a cleric (npc or pc)?
What if we took away the death penalty all together?

[Swifty Willownall]

Welllll, if death is just an annoyance we could make it perma with no self-respawn option.

Edit: Just thought of another option. No respawing AND raise can ONLY be done by a PC cleric, thus taking away the safety net for rich PCs.

Or we could make the hardcap level 15 or less. Since you have to devote more time to reach higher levels, the more painful it is to die the higher level you are because you had to spend more time to get there. So if we lowered the max level to something small, there wouldn't be as much annoyance when you die because you didn't have to spend a lot of time to get there.

OR

Keep the current system we have where you lose a small portion of exp on death. What sounds better? =D

[frohawk]

You really don't need levels to be badass. Sure, they help in regards to certain things, but I believe CaptZambie became Mayor of Hadrian when he was below level 13. He achieved something cool without hitting the server apex.

I disagree with this as becoming the Mayor doesn't require a power level. All you need to do is be able to hang out in Hadrian and speak with people.

Especially on a PvP server levels are important. If you are unable to maintain a high enough level then the PCs who do will be able to push you around. You are not going to be doing anything overly cool as someone less than level 15.

[Eldwen]

People treat, IG, death as a minor annoyance, the current death penalty doesn't change that - making it worse won't change that, and making it easier won't change that. When it comes to Roleplay it needs to be instead on the onus of people playing to show the results of coming from near death. Or - change it so no one actually "dies" unless they're perma'd, and instead are considered to be at the brink of death, or downed, or whatever terminology you use.

Death isn't scary right now because you can get back up, its just annoying, from a purely OOC perspective, that a player's time was wasted.

Now out of curiosity here.  What would you feel would make death more terrifying?  we want people to fear death to a certain point. so how far should we go? (in a hypothetical discussion here) because for now there is no plan to change the death penalty.  this does not mean we wont. we are always open to suggestions and ideas.

So would you fear death more if we made the XP loss greater? 
What about if we made it perma death unless you got a rez from a cleric (npc or pc)?
What if we took away the death penalty all together?

this is what I think would make death more meaningful.

The option I would suggest is: Make standard 'death' in the system instead be treated as 'near-death'. Death is /death/, i.e. you are Perma'd. People don't come back from the dead, Resurrect, Raise, etc. are when the person still is still technically 'alive', but comatose etc.

Now, when you're dead, you're dead. Death is scary, and we still have the system where characters can 'respawn'. You're not jaunting over to Purgatory, hanging out there, and then coming back with "whelp, I saw the Fugue again".

Mechanically, nothing will change how death is perceived. It's going to be interesting to some, enraging to others, an annoyance etc.

If it's changed so the standard PC death is 'near-death' you remove a cleric's ability (or plot, or NPC etc.) from actually bringing the dead back. So when you /die/, you die.

For a Mechanical change? I'm still proposing that XP loss can't cause you to drop a level - loosing XP is something that can be overcome without a significant loss in character ability - loosing an entire level adds on the issues of now being weaker than you were before, and noticing a very significant loss in your character's capacity to actually function. That form of lost progress is something that causes a lot of the heartache on the server, particularly for the higher levels when you can loose a month plus of progress, /and/ a level, in one bad outing.

[sharkinajar]

Not suggesting this or anything, just another option that might be a thing...

What if instead of "losing XP mechanically and making people waste time" etc... there was a different form of penalty? Hard to do this without focusing on mechanics, but here's a couple. A (semi?)permanent "madness/RPpenalty" for getting raised/coming back from the dead, where your characters get assigned a random new quirk. Like let's say a PC dies, when he gets raised, because something didn't quite go right when his head got bopped, he's now a kleptomaniac.

Or, if it's a mechanics thing, make it say... drain CON or all stats for some duration that can't be removed by spells and stuff.

However, 15%/10%/5% REALLY isn't much numberswise. Perhaps the server should look towards treating the cause of the high-level XP struggle than the symptom? Leveling here is kinda weird, and I personally think it needs a complete tweaking overall. But that's a different topic.