/death = /screwed

[The_Cataclysm]

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.

Yeah, last time I was helpless I couldn't trade over restore scrolls so I had to head over to the shrine, but there was a door blocking it so I did the /death before it got fireballed.

[Montrose]

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 shall place this post into the "dubious at best" category.

1) Every project lead (we call them "program managers" here) I have ever worked with has better communication skills than displayed in this post.

2) Every project I have ever worked on has a bug backlog that is addressed in priority order, not a "Hey, Harry has free time! Whee! Glad we don't use a schedule around here or he'd have work to do!" schema.

3) Every project I have ever worked on has a triage process for bugs, not a "Hey, I had a random thought for how to make things better! Bob, go implement this and let's hope that it really is a good idea and is technically feasible and won't cause regressions and won't hork QA's test auotmation and fits into the schedule" schema.

If you are a project lead I can say with a high degree of assurance that you are not a good one.

[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.

Just did a test (on the live servers).

Yes, you can rest at a shrine while helpless.

[Chelsa]

You're assuming that.
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.

I don't even see how bunch of negitive levels is a problem. That is what a cleric is for.

[The_Cataclysm]

I don't even see how bunch of negitive levels is a problem. That is what a cleric is for.

solo

[Sojourner]

solo

Friends don't let friends solo.


I've got no problem with people that do solo, but DDO is not about soloing. Complaining that this change impacts solo players is like complaining that a change impacts PvP players.


Regardless of why the dev's decided to give this enough priority to implement it - how it affects solo players should have pretty much zero bearing on whether or not they do it.


.

[Sumac]

I have rarely used /death in the last year and a half that I have played DDO, but when I have used it it was nice that it was there. I have used it to get to the shrine when incapped and stabalized, I have used it to get rid of numerous negative levels (could not find a cleric and ran VON3 anyway), and once when I was stuck. If I did not have that option then it would have been a huge pain, but I would have managed.

I would rather the devs spend their time building new content than changing the existing gameplay. If the quests were more random then people would not be able to use exploits to solve them because the quest would not be EXACTLY the same each time. I think this is all about fixing an exploit where /death is involved.

Since I rarely have used /death in the past I don't think this will make much difference to the game except on that rare occasion.

[Shadow_Flayer]

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.


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

Stop using logic! You changed something! DOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!

[Sojourner]

Here is another way to look at it ---- If you were actually out exploring some dungeon on your own, and some caster feebleminded you before you were able to kill him -- Would you really commit suicide just to make yourself feel smarter? (The sad thing, is that in this case committing suicide does make you smarter.....)

The only real semi-legit use for /death is because DDO hasn't implemented a /stuck command (not sure why, but here we are). Every other use is just a secondary effect from the fact that death and xp loss is trivial in this game. The majority of the complaints about the change really boil down to someone saying "I would rather use /death to get out of an inconvenient situation than lose 20% from a re-entry penalty". (I've done it too, so not pointing fingers, just speaking the truth). Aren't you supposed to lose a level in PnP when you die? If they implemented that in DDO - would you use /death to get rid of a level drain or feeblemind?


.

[The_Cataclysm]

Here is another way to look at it ---- If you were actually out exploring some dungeon on your own, and some caster feebleminded you before you were able to kill him -- Would you really commit suicide just to make yourself feel smarter? (The sad thing, is that in this case committing suicide does make you smarter.....)

The only real semi-legit use for /death is because DDO hasn't implemented a /stuck command (not sure why, but here we are). Every other use is just a secondary effect from the fact that death and xp loss is trivial in this game. The majority of the complaints about the change really boil down to someone saying "I would rather use /death to get out of an inconvenient situation than lose 20% from a re-entry penalty". (I've done it too, so not pointing fingers, just speaking the truth). Aren't you supposed to lose a level in PnP when you die? If they implemented that in DDO - would you use /death to get rid of a level drain or feeblemind?


.

Yes, that is the point. To clear up the problems that can't be dealt with normally on solo. The answer isn't to remove the change to /death, but to make it so if you can make it to a shrine it removes feeblemind.

[Shamguard]

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.

In beta my halfling rogue got knocked down to 0 STR by the posion traps in the Sunken Sewers. I couldn't even /death I had to quit the game then when I logged back on I was left laying in the street and had to wait for a helpful cleric to come by and cast a lesser restore on me. At least they fixed that.

[geoffhanna]

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.)

Ummm why not wait until you can implement both sets of changes at once? the "negative gameplay experience of being permanently incapacitated" seems like a kind of significant thing to avoid.

[Maldini]

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

Don't let Ramen Noodles scare you El. And Patience is anything but...


"The name's Dave Clinger, but my friends call me Dave "Zinger", on account of my awesome, awesome zings."

[tekn0mage]

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.


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

So what you are really saying is that there's really no need to fix /death ... just for some untold reasons you feel like tinkering with it.

If all the reasons we care about are being addressed, we would not need to use it in the future. I think most of us can wait if it means you can work on something that really needs it.

[Attomic]

lol...cow either you have really bad luck or you must really like jumping into strange places.

No, no, that's me. Give me an /unstuck command and I'll be much more well disposed towards this change to /death (although it still makes no sense for a healthy, walking-around character to be able to /death, while an incapped character can't).

[Kisaragi]

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

Wow, taking hot showers or washing your hair must be painful. Do you ever creep out the other developers like that? Is it a permanent spell, or just an enchantment you cast every once in a awhile? You must have 'Kargie Baby' Eye from Potp.

Most people would ask how do you sleep....but not me!!! No sir. I want to know how you manage to keep your eyeballs from falling out.

[Dkmafia]

Doesn't really seem like that a big deal to me really, be a little better prepared, make sure you don't have all hp and dps and 0 saves, get someone to cure what ails you, or just deal with being, cursed, having neg levels or being a Pigeon roost.

/Death I have always said and always will say was/is a cheesy way out of problem.

/signed agreed and excited!

[Aladon]

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.

Ok, let's try a different take on "wasting time". This change was ordered by a designer, not a dev. The designer decided to change something that's been in the game all along. He had to figure out what to change it to then define the rules for the devs. Then there'd be a change meeting and everybody'd discuss it. The devs would go figure out how big a change it is and how to do it. Then, they'd have to actually assign somebody to make the change. That someone would make the change. Then somebody would have to check that the change works as intended. And God forbid they accidentally break something by making this 'minor' change, then there's a whole new cycle of pain.

And, let's see, this change will **** off everybody who's used to the game the way it is and make happy the sick folks who seem to feed off of the pain of the rest of us who're just trying to have some fun in an imperfect universe (and I do mean Turbine's game here). Sweet.

I took my accounts down to monthly and haven't played in over a month. I'm pretty sure I wont be back and learning all the chicken**** changes that have been made since I left sure wont help. But more importantly it's the chicken**** changes in the first place that made me bail. Some dimwit at Turbine clearly thinks there's a "right answer" to how the world's supposed to work and he'll keep screwing with the world until he gets there. But of course there is no right answer and so the screwing will go on and on with increasingly no point - as is happening before our eyes.

Aladon

PS For those who're gonna say, "So what am I doing here?", a thread in my guild lead me here and I'm kinda enjoying the train wreck, now that I'm outta it. Otherwise I'd have never seen it or cared.

[Ghoste]

Ummm why not wait until you can implement both sets of changes at once? the "negative gameplay experience of being permanently incapacitated" seems like a kind of significant thing to avoid.

Perhaps you missed the part about /death still working the old way when incapped? So "permanently incapacitated"? No, read it again.

[Cutedge]

Ok, let's try a different take on "wasting time". This change was ordered by a designer, not a dev. The designer decided to change something that's been in the game all along. He had to figure out what to change it to then define the rules for the devs. Then there'd be a change meeting and everybody'd discuss it. The devs would go figure out how big a change it is and how to do it. Then, they'd have to actually assign somebody to make the change. That someone would make the change. Then somebody would have to check that the change works as intended. And God forbid they accidentally break something by making this 'minor' change, then there's a whole new cycle of pain.

I doubt it's nearly that complicated. Developers are not incapible of changing rules regarding something or the other, especially for something as trival as this.

And, let's see, this change will **** off everybody who's used to the game the way it is and make happy the sick folks who seem to feed off of the pain of the rest of us who're just trying to have some fun in an imperfect universe (and I do mean Turbine's game here). Sweet.

There's a lot of exploits with /death, the biggest example being some of the teleporters and such like in Gianthold. They didn't just say "hey, let's change this for NO REASON".