/death = /screwed

[muffinlad]

that is how /death it will work the same as now if you are incapped no change. Only if you are a conscious will you be teleported to your bind spot.

The thing is if you have to /death then your party was not very well prepared. Death now has very little cost, rez shrines can be used over and over, and mana now does not disappear when you rez. Having to /death to get rid of feeblemind, negative levels etc just means you have an unprepared cleric. And if the cleric gets feebleminded well that is war ladies and gentleman. And besides the devs have already indicated they are not opposed to a potion or something to solve the cleric getting feebleminded, so I doubt it will be much of an issue.

If you are /death ing to get past something you otherwise would not survive(ie crucible swim) then yes in my opinion it is at worst an exploit and at very best a cheesy tactic. There were some very serious and bannable exploits using soulstones, and this is just on more way to combat this.

Not to be flippent, but that is like saying rocks will be just one more weapon to fight terrorists. The statement will be true, but it leaves out that it wont be effective.

If you want to "cheat" on the crucibal swim, for example, just dive into the water and drown. Just let the spikes kill you. The evasion toon just scoops up your stone and carry's you the chest.

If you are /deathing to stick mobs in the dragon, well that is being fixed in other ways.

The change as planned PRIOR to customer feedback was a poor one, but as you, and others have pointed out, it is improving via the Dev's seeing our concerns.

My problem is, now that those changes are made, there really seems to be NO REASON to change this at all. It could be that I can't think of why, and I am fine with that, but, seems like a waste of time. I very rarely use /Death, and I really don't want people to take a 20% hit when they are STUCK, and don't want to wait 30 min for a GM to take them out of a rock.

Perhaps if they added /stuck (much like City of Heroes) that would move you slightly in a random directon (minimal to avoid exploit) it would address my issue. However, for now, I am glad I saved up 60 beholder cookies.....

Regs,

muffinquagmire.

[Grenfell]

As a Project Lead in a multinational computer manufactering corporation, and as one that works in software and hardware development I can say with a high degree of assurance that your comparing apples to oranges!

Why do I say that?

In any project you have assets you can assign work. You have different skillsets in your team members, so are good at working on new things, others are good at ferreting out bugs and fixing them, others are good at beign given tasks (such as make this change to the /death code), others are good at doing the intense graphical work.

Your not wasting time.. or not much, if you assign some of your members to do fixs like changing how /death works. You decide "Hey /death is a lil dodgy, I think it would be good to change it" then you consider effort... MMmmm well your senior guys are working on some sticky bits with Mod5.. Mmmm Harry is assisting George, but george is busy with some graphics so Harry is idle.. Voila' "Hey Harry, I need you to make /death do this instead of what its doing.. get the code done and put it into QA asap please" is the email you send or the convo you have in the hallway.

There is very little wasted here.. its not like other content is delayed, there are tonnes of small incrimental changes that can be made while your doing other things, you 'plug' in small tasks as it were in the chinks in the huge overall project schedule. I do it just about every week where I work.

I repeat, so in your mind, there's nothing that could have used the talents of whoever fixed /death more?

I'm neutral about /death changes -- it makes some things harder, makes things more annoying (or "challenging" in some people's minds) but no big deal. What I'm not neutral about is the particular prioritization of Dev resources.

You seem to be suggesting that they had a guy sitting around eating chips and playing XBox all day and found him something useful to do. Or that there's a guy who's devoted to these kinds of changes, and on his list this, was the highest priority.

Do you really think that?

/gren

[muffinlad]

DM to roleplayers: "As you creep slowly down the hall, you get a strange feeling of danger"
Rogue: "I search *rolls d20*"
DM to roleplayers: "Your search reveals a complicated blade trap, with numerous razor sharp blades the size of tennis rackets. You see no way to get beyond the trap except for through it."
Cleric: "Oh no! A trap! What do we do now??"
Rogue: "Oh no problem. Just committ suicide, the rest of you too. I'll ress the cleric on the other side."

While, as you point out, this is QUITE absurd, and no one would do it in PnP (baring a PJ Farmer Ringworld story), it is FALSE to say that the /Death change will stop this. You can still drown (unless you are a warforge...and then it is a long time) and you can still fling yourself into a trap and die.

This game is not PnP, and never will be. It needs mechanics, as falty as they are, to help those stuck, or in a position that a GM could remedy (if there really were any GMs in this game) and I don't want to see a tool like /Death taken away.

Once they have GM's that show up in 5 min (like a Lunchtime Guarentee!) or a /stuck command, my objection fades. Until then, I see no reason to change it to stop behavior that wont really change.

muffincoroner

[Palmetto]

that is how /death it will work the same as now if you are incapped no change. Only if you are a conscious will you be teleported to your bind spot.

Again, I understand that. My post was in response to someone that stated /death is a game exploit.

The thing is if you have to /death then your party was not very well prepared.

BS. /death can be used to get yourself unstuck from dungeon geometry, rid yourself from unwanted buffs, etc.

Having to /death to get rid of feeblemind, negative levels etc just means you have an unprepared cleric.

Again, BS. Now you want to dictate the spells that you think every caster should or should not have. Also, last time I checked dispel magic can be rather annoying because of poor dice rolls.

If you are /death ing to get past something you otherwise would not survive(ie crucible swim) then yes in my opinion it is at worst an exploit and at very best a cheesy tactic. There were some very serious and bannable exploits using soulstones, and this is just on more way to combat this.

Well guess what, now you just jump into the water and drown then have someone pick up your stone. How is that different? Takes a little more time? Ouch.

Bannable soul stone exploits? You would be hard pressed to tell me that someone was definitely banned for a soul stone exploit. Don't try to explain them to me either because I know what they are and were.

Try a little harder next time.

[Gornin]

The main reason people /death is to save time. You get an xp hit either way and you dont have to make the rest of the party wait for you to get back. I don't have a lot of play time, so if my cleric is in a jam that cannot be fixed for lack of being able to cast and there are no pots or scrolls to fix it, and I can't hand the scroll to the rogue/sorc/bard to use on me because I am too ugly currently or dead, I will do it to save time. That is one game mechanic that needs to be changed. We should be able to trade regardless of our status. I search other characters bodies all the time in PnP, and we control the trade, so it shouldn't be a problem. The only other time I use it is the crucible swim. It is impossible for my cleric or wiz to make it without dying, so I just make it easier on the rogue; now he doesn't have to search for my stone underwater. The swim has to be done to get the horn, so it isn't about the chest. The chest is my reward for doing whatever it takes to keep the party together and be successful. IMO the crucible swim needs to doable by all classes not just the fighter and lots o' pots or the rogue or high level ranger/barb. The fight at the end of the swim is almost sure death for anyone trying to do it by themselves, since they can get through and half or more of the party can't. That my DAO and I am sticking by it. So I agree, it is a waste of developer time to fix it. Fix the bugs or quests so it won't be needed so often.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

I personally think it is ******** that /death can be a strategy to complete quests. Have I let others use it? Yes. Do I think it was the best solution? No.

This is probably a extremely simple change in the code of the game. So they haven't spent tons of resources on this when they could have done other things you might like.

If people quit complaining about everything. Maybe they would take more notice when there are complaints on important things.

What you dont understand is /death is NOT a tactic to do ANYTHING. Any time you /death to do something some may call cheezy or exploiting can easily be achieved by drowning/burning/getting beat to death. The changes to /death are only going to make it a little slower.

"Aww, I cant /death any more...let me jump in that lava"
"Aww, I cant /death any more...let me take off my UA"
"Aww, I cant /death any more...hey Bob, bring that ogre over here"

The changes change NOTHING and they are a waste of Dev time.
Sure you can say "but it doesn't take much to do this, so what time have they wasted"? Time it takes to, say, change lesser restore pots to act like pots, maybe? Surely thats a clickabutton fix.

What a waste of time, a change that changes nothing.

[Palmetto]

What you dont understand is /death is NOT a tactic to do ANYTHING. Any time you /death to do something some may call cheezy or exploiting can easily be achieved by drowning/burning/getting beat to death. The changes to /death are only going to make it a little slower.

"Aww, I cant /death any more...let me jump in that lava"
"Aww, I cant /death any more...let me take off my UA"
"Aww, I cant /death any more...hey Bob, bring that ogre over here"

The changes change NOTHING and they are a waste of Dev time.
Sure you can say "but it doesn't take much to do this, so what time have they wasted"? Time it takes to, say, change lesser restore pots to act like pots, maybe? Surely thats a clickabutton fix.

What a waste of time, a change that changes nothing.

100% agree.

[bobbryan2]

As far as the crucible chest... I think that's very poor design anyway.

I don't recall a pnp game ever where the DM said... ok everyone! Stop what you're doing, we're going to bust out some NES Mario Brothers. If you can beat through level 9 without losing 3 lives, then I'm going to give you treasure. If you die... oh well.

Putting a chest on the opposite side of a bunch of things you need video game reflexes for is just a dumb design. I have no problems with making *someone* in the party do everything on that side, but there should be a switch or lever that allows the rest of the party through easily.

In my experiences, people use /death to get around poorly designed quests. And if people are using it over and over, maybe GMs should look into 'why' people are doing it.

But... I also think the VON 6 "puzzle" was dumb. Dumb puzzles beget dumb solutions.

[ccheath776]

But, if they are going to "fix" /death so that it releases me when incapped, it will REALLY make my gaming experience much less enjoyable.

So, to me, it IS an important thing.

If they make it so you can't /death while alive, meh, I don't particularly care one way or the other (although Restless Isles will be a real pain). But release on incapped would be very very sucky.

It will hurt the solo players. I will reserve judgement until I see it in action. But in the meantime I am going to ask quite a few times that I believe this was not a fix that needed to be put in.

[ArkoHighStar]

As far as the crucible chest... I think that's very poor design anyway.

I don't recall a pnp game ever where the DM said... ok everyone! Stop what you're doing, we're going to bust out some NES Mario Brothers. If you can beat through level 9 without losing 3 lives, then I'm going to give you treasure. If you die... oh well.

Putting a chest on the opposite side of a bunch of things you need video game reflexes for is just a dumb design. I have no problems with making *someone* in the party do everything on that side, but there should be a switch or lever that allows the rest of the party through easily.

In my experiences, people use /death to get around poorly designed quests. And if people are using it over and over, maybe GMs should look into 'why' people are doing it.

But... I also think the VON 6 "puzzle" was dumb. Dumb puzzles beget dumb solutions.

sorry my rogue doesn't need to evade anything he runs into the spikes and takes very little or no damage, those with evasion/improved evasion or high reflex saves do not need mario skills

[Eladrin]

Any time you /death to do something some may call cheezy or exploiting can easily be achieved by drowning/burning/getting beat to death. The changes to /death are only going to make it a little slower.

"Aww, I cant /death any more...let me jump in that lava"
"Aww, I cant /death any more...let me take off my UA"
"Aww, I cant /death any more...hey Bob, bring that ogre over here"

The changes change NOTHING and they are a waste of Dev time.

I disagree.

There are certain problems - that I won't go into since I'll get infractions and have my post deleted - that are have been resolved with the change to /death. I recognize that you can simply drown yourself to get past <quest part here> or feed yourself to a fiendish gelatinous cube if you really want to die, those aren't the things that are the main priority of the /death change.

We didn't change it just for the sake of changing it, and if we didn't think of a couple of legitimate uses for /death, we'd have removed it entirely.

We left /death usable without auto-release when incapacitated to take care of the "I'm three feet from the shrine" issue. Plans for the future to address the negative gameplay experience of being permanently incapacitated include a slow auto-heal for stabilized characters to bring them back to 1 hp. (Yes, even Warforged will get to "repair up" over time.)

[miceelf88]

I agree. My main beef is with the impact on solo players, but when I think about the problem this is supposed to "solve" and whether it actually will, it makes my head hurt.

It's supposed to solve people dying to get rid of stat damage, feeblemind, and the like, or to avoid traps.

Well, duh. As noted MANY times, it's trivially easy to die (most of the time) without /death, it's just less efficient, time-wise.

So the exploiters will continue to die to get rid of stuff. And the solo player remains shafted. A fix that doesn't solve the exploit problem AND punishes solo players just seems really bad form.

[Riddikulus]

that I won't go into since I'll get infractions

Awww you can tell us. Q is off on a junket, KK and GC are MIA. There's no one around to infract you.

[Eladrin]

It's supposed to solve people dying to get rid of stat damage, feeblemind, and the like, or to avoid traps.

You're assuming that.

What's the impact you are foreseeing on solo players?

One assumes that if they're /death-ing, they're within range of a rez shrine, since otherwise they're going to be forced to release anyway. If you're unconscious, you can still /death to get to that shrine, and in the future you'll naturally heal up to consciousness. If you're conscious but debuffed with, say, Flesh to Stone, you can wait for it to go away on its own if the monster that hit you with it doesn't kill you first. (If it does, you're dead, the same as the old /death would have gotten you.) Feeblemind will be going away on rest, and that's preferable to dying, isn't it?

The main thing I can think at this time of is "I've got a bunch of negative levels". Anything else? I'm making a list of things that make solo (as well as duo or trio) play painful so we can address them in future updates.

Awww you can tell us. Q is off on a junket, KK and GC are MIA. There's no one around to infract you.

The lidless eye of Ramen and Patience is ever-watchful.

[Tenkari_Rozahas]

Awww you can tell us. Q is off on a junket, KK and GC are MIA. There's no one around to infract you.

dev's can get infraction points and baned from the forums? <.< >.> hehehe, talk about not being above the law XD

[The_Cataclysm]

The main thing I can think at this time of is "I've got a bunch of negative levels". Anything else? I'm making a list of things that make solo (as well as duo or trio) play painful so we can address them in future updates.

Only other thing I can think up is being helpless due to stat damage. I don't remember whether you can use a shrine in that state or not. If you can then it is not a problem.

P.S. Thank you for the great job you have done helping clear up the issues with the change to /death.

[narizue]

dev's can get infraction points and baned from the forums? <.< >.> hehehe, talk about not being above the law XD

I think that dev infraction points might look something like this:

1) Reemed out by the boss.
2) Seriously reemed out by the poss/suspended without pay.
3) Unemployment line.

Just a guess

[Drider]

Only other thing I can think up is being helpless due to stat damage. I don't remember whether you can use a shrine in that state or not. If you can then it is not a problem.

P.S. Thank you for the great job you have done helping clear up the issues with the change to /death.

That's probably the easiest one to fix tho, with the changes to lesser restore potions and wands being available. That is unless you are soloing.

[The_Cataclysm]

That's probably the easiest one to fix tho, with the changes to lesser restore potions and wands being available. That is unless you are soloing.

Well, the discussion at hand is /death's effects on soloing.

[ChaosTheEternal]

Only other thing I can think up is being helpless due to stat damage. I don't remember whether you can use a shrine in that state or not. If you can then it is not a problem.

Last time I had that happen, being helpless prevented me from doing everything except running around and recalling out/going through zones via doorways (I didn't test /death).

I recall, before them making town regen able to restore points, that I could not even talk to the Brother in the Wayward Lobster to ask for a Restoration (6 Str Wiz gets hit by Ray of Enfeeblement, helpless is easy to get).

It shouldn't be hard to test to see if that has changed, if you have a Halfling Wizard with a base 6 Str.