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The death penalty destroys fun.

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Aetrion:
I have gotten XP back a couple times, but I caught myself yesterday trying to think of any reason this was a bug to get an XP refund and I realized that that didn't make the system any better, it just temped me into lying to DMs about why my character died. I've played out the scenario a dozen times in my head and ultimately I died because I made a mistake. It was a tiny mistake that shouldn't cause that much destruction, but everything still came down to just that one thing. I did get a partial refund from Gmork, but even that kind of makes me think it isn't a good system because someone who just took the loss and moved on wouldn't have gotten XP back, I got vocal about it and that translated into a significant benefit to my character. While I appreciate that a lot, I'm not convinced refunds will ever be fair. They encourage people to call every death a bug, and benefit people who raise a stink instead of just moving on.

Draekus:
The biggest issue I still have with the XP penalty is the learning curve, that is learning the world of Netheril. The vast majority of my deaths come from going to a new area and having a creature wipe me out that is vastly more powerful than anything on the adjoining map or even in the adjoining rooms.

For example I was off exploring and ended up in some Elemental cave in found in the Dark Forest. The first two rooms where a breeze and I only even had 2 buffs on. I entered some transition, and on the other side found I could not return! Well this really sucks, would have been nice to know that it was one way!  Since it was getting late for me, I decided to buff fully up and try to find a way out. Fully buffed I was cutting down elemental's like a hot knife in butter and quickly killed all on my way to the exit of the big room. Then a greater fire elemental attacked me and almost killed me in a few rounds, by comparison the other 10+ elemental's in the room did only a few points of damage total! Realizing this elemental was vastly more powerful than the others, I ran, went invisible, healed a bit and logged out. I and am currently waiting for a server restart so I dont lose a ton of exp because of a very unbalanced area. So now I basically cant play, I could try to escape, but if I died that would be a level loss and one more reason to never explore again.  I like RP, bit I also like to do quest and explore, and with the imbalance in some quests and areas the rewards is all too often death. I have nearly 400 hours playing on this server and it seems the best option is to just craft all day and/or just leave your character logged in to get the tick exp.

GoblinLoveChild:
all I can say to all of these posts is "invest in invisibility potions. and learn when its time to use them."
While I personally would welcome the changes that made you perma dead if you died within 24 hours of a previous death. AS this would encourage a greater turnover of new characters and concepts. It is not a widely popular position as many people are invested in their characters and their stories and would be more upset about having their stories cut short. 

The other issue touched on here is how hard it is to grind your way back upto where you were. (XP wise)
We are currently looking at every quest and reveiwing rewards and balanace etc. However all of this takes time.

Aetrion:
Well, the idea of a system where you can perma-die wouldn't be that it's supposed to kill off tons of characters, it's supposed to make people treat getting downed as an RP reason to take it easy for a while. The system should basically "forgive" dying once, because dying once can happen for stupid and unpredictable reasons. Dying twice in a row on the other hand means you were courting disaster or had made some serious enemies. Whether that disaster is permadeath or a significant XP penalty or whatever doesn't really matter. I just think the game should be lenient when you die to something stupid and just say "Ok, I'll treat this as an RP cue and withdraw my character to a safe area for the time being", but it should be dangerous when you double down and push further.

I tend to be one of those players who like to just build a single character and transition that character to some kind of institution or mentor when he gets older rather than retiring it and starting over, so I'm really not necessarily in favor of perma-death being all that easy.

Dagonlives:
Death penalty is fine. its' actually fairly hard to die.  5 to 10%% xp?  I haven't seen one example of a death without a raise or a resurrection, so 15% is rare.  That's such a small penalty, and means players legitmately flee or run from trouble. 

Nope, Keep the penalty.  Make players fight on their toes.  Level 15 is the softcap.  Being level 16+ is a luxury, not an expectation and most players frankly shouldn't reach it. 

If anything, the penalty could be increased.  Players tend to reach fifteen and never drop below it.  If need be, increase xp gain and penalty to create a treadmill effect.  This is how other servers with variable levels have kept it going. 

As for claiming it encourages powerbuilds?  Of course it does.  Players should built optimized characters.  There is no inherent virtue in making a shitty character in terms of mechanics then somehow expecting to perform equally to someone who acknowledges this is a videogame and chose accordingly.  Yes, that means your spellsword will probably suck.

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