Permanent Item Damage and Death Penalty changes

[Serpent]

With the old system, if you died, one of the best things you can do is log off. With the new system, if you die, you repair, and then go on a quest to make some more money. If you're dying a lot, then instead of playing on Elite, why not do a run or two on Normal...

Well I was kind of looking for an answer along the lines of yes or no. This doesn't seem to be about spending money, but more about removing equipment. True, repairing will cost money but you said that you have reduced the cost to repair. So, to have us spend more money you are having us get our equipment damaged when we fight in combat. But, we are going to have more of this equipment damaged through death as well. I personally try not to die much but it does happen. So therefore the only way to avoid destroying equipment is to have it become bound, which can not be unbound later. This in turn makes it useless later on when we have outgrown it, making it only good for Steppy.

So I ask again is this to remove equipment from the game in one way of another?

[Gengulphus]

With the old system, if you died, one of the best things you can do is log off. With the new system, if you die, you repair, and then go on a quest to make some more money. If you're dying a lot, then instead of playing on Elite, why not do a run or two on Normal...

Okay, much of that makes good sense. However, I just got on Risia with my lvl 14 pally (actually 9/4/1 pally/ftr/sorc) and entered the new explorer area: The Vale. He encountered one of those new CR 17 Ogres and got incapped. So I recalled, got the death penalty (even though, technically, he didn't die), the Touch of Dollurh (don't mind that really) and item damage. When I went to repair, 2 items were permanently damaged: +4 protection necklace and my pearl of power X!!! I don't want to permanently bind either of those items, so I'll just have to watch them slowly fade away every time I die?

BTW, there is no setting in the adventure area, so it wasn't on Elite (not sure if in the quote above you're saying there's no penalty, or less harsh penalties on Normal)...

I'd suggest this: keep everything the same except either one of the two following:
a) exclude the possibility of permanent item damage
or
b) make it so that we can also unbind items when we want to give them to another character

Bottom line: it is a bad choice to make between permanently binding an item (making it permanently unavailable to any friends or alts), on the one hand, or leaving that item vulnerable to ultimate unusability (with the same result: permanently unavailable, this time, to anybody)!!!

I liked the xp hit better, all told. I understand the rationale behind the change (to get players to play, not log off), but I don't like the catch 22 it needlessly sets up!

It sounds like a lot of players feel the same...

[adamkatt]

I dont know what games peole are playing outside of DDO.. Or what games they played inthe past.... Might help to review some of the penalties in other games of our Genre'.

Heres WoW's
http://www.blizzard.com/wow/townhall/death.shtml

I can find some detail on other games if you like....

When swg was good there were wounds and item damage. Wounds would either cause the need for you to sit in the med center and heal slowly or get a good doc, who could fix ya up in no time(this was also a way to get medic and doc xp for the drs/combat medics in training).

When they went to cu/nge and got rid of all item damage and a slight cool down from death. Basically no reason to worry about death at that point. No reason to play what was once a good mmo either..

[Invalid_86]

Having no death penalty is a bad thing. There has to be something, and we considered various things that could be the "sting", and found that gold was probably one of the lighter costs that could be chosen. Everyone's got it, it's easy to acquire more, and there's literally a cost to dying.

Sorry but no, equipment should get damaged through wear and tear, not magically get dented when you die.

There is already a cost associated with dying- the 5000gp material component for a raise dead spell. Just implement a system where you either lose 5000 gold or 10% of your current gold, whichever is less, whenever you release back to the inn. Poof! Done. Simple.

If someone else raises you there was already a huge fee attached, so nothing needs changing there.

The only upside I'm seeing to this system is more binding = less twinkage.

[Kisaragi]

Having no death penalty is a bad thing. There has to be something, and we considered various things that could be the "sting", and found that gold was probably one of the lighter costs that could be chosen. Everyone's got it, it's easy to acquire more, and there's literally a cost to dying.

With the old system, if you died, one of the best things you can do is log off. With the new system, if you die, you repair, and then go on a quest to make some more money. If you're dying a lot, then instead of playing on Elite, why not do a run or two on Normal...

You might want to check out a text based game called Gemstone III/IV

They had a system that you could get Divine Favor called 'Deeds' this was given to a character for making a sacrifice to the God of death, required rituals, and money. They more you had the more they cost. The higher level you were the more they cost. They were extreme though. If you died without any 'deeds' at a high enough level, you risked dying permanently. Each time you died you used 1 deed. That includes dying, resurrecting, and instantly dying again.

I'd like to see something like this in addition to what we already have. You 'buy' deeds from your God in order for them to preserve you from the effects of death/damage. Then if you don't have any favor/deeds with your God, you're vulnerable to effects/damage. There should be preventative measures, not just reactionary ones.

[ArkoHighStar]

so I am out in the outdoor area with my rogue, and bamm trog gets me, look at all my stuff realize this is going to hurt way too much. The debuff is going to be the least of our worries. 600plat and the damage can add up way to easy.

My proposal is get rid of the level increase to damage and replace it with one basewd on quest difficulty say 4 for normal, 6 for hard 8 for elite. Outdoor areas should have the lowest say 4.
there should be repairat shrine based on repair skill the more your repair skill the more you repair. Although it should never return the weapon to max durability as they are considered field repairs.

The same with debuffs on normal go to lvl 3, hard lvl 4, elite go to 5.

If it is left like this I think I will seriously have to reconsider my play time and what characters to play if any, as it appears it will be a grind when new content comes out to keep up the plat reserves to pay for repairs.

[Alshatar]

If you're looking for a hidden agenda, it's "Make DDO more palatable to new players, try to bring back those that left after ending a night at a lower XP total than they started at, and prevent people in the future from having similar experiences."

I LOVED the idea of "have red xp, don't play for a couple days" .. only after a couple quests you're back in purple baby!

PLS PLS keep it the way it is.. it works.. you regen xp if you just don't play! Play a different toon.. who the heck plays this game with only 1 toon? My main concern is you guys state that "We got our stuff from feedback" - well hello to our feedback. I have read EVERY SINGLE POST in this thread all couple HUNDRED of them and I am getting about a 90% hatred for this new change. If you wanna loose people, you're doing a very good job at it. I have seen whole guilds leave this game for Tabula Raisa (sp?) and they'll be leaving that game for Conan set to come out this spring. I can TOTALLY understand people having suggestions. Suggestions are good, without them nothing would ever change. TURBINE LISTEN!!! I saw a LOT of people leave this game after you changed the Enhancement system. Even more left after the loot system changed (BTW 5 elite Titan raids and 1 item with 12 people in it each time????) This is only going to get worse and more and more people are going to leave. I can't even find this game to buy in the stores because the stores state they made no money and sold out for $10 each and will never carry this game again.. what does that say?

The people that are mad over loosing XP prolly don't know about the regenning of not playing or just keep playing, you can VERY quickly regain xp back at the end of the night.. at level 1 no xp loss? levels 2-5 is like less than 200 and most quests give 1000 .. at level 14 you just do loot runs and you're back in business!

The Abbot raid is a joke and no one will do the raids that are new because of the possible xp loss and damage to items. We tried the other night with 12 people 5 fighters, 4 cleris, assorted others and the xp loss was tremendous but no one cared, it was fun, but if that was to happen and my items broke, i'd cancel my subscription in a heartbeat without giving my items away and would be uninstalling waiting for Conan!

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Insight into the evolution of a death penalty change...

Thanks for this Eladrin. I still disagree with your conclusions but at least where you are coming from is more clear now.

Death has a (monetary) cost when capped now, true, but essentially having no death penalty at cap really wasn't healthy for the game.

Here's my problem...you in the first page of this thread said the cost of equipment damage was one thing you wanted to address, and in your logic said that you were reducing costs to achieve that even in your new scheme, but then you end by pretty much saying costs will be higher. I'd suggest you aren't achieving what you said in the beginning...thus my earlier confusion about your motives.

Stick with the debuf for death penalty... we don't need the loss of money and equipment. It will hurt the very players you want to keep. The new and casual players don't have the stash of cash or the equipment reserves to deal with this. They will quit, or go in larger numbers to plat sellers.

If you insist on doing damage to the equipment, consider chaning it to "each piece of equipment equiped has a chance of taking damage" equal to the number in your chart and only then apply the damage (ie - at L14 each piece has a 10% chance of 10% damage) or something like that....

Please also do continue to persue the ideas of having hardness reduce the risk of damage, having item defense protect equipment on death, providing item defense I to all classes, and having the repair skill repair non perm damage while you shrine (or giving us a repair skill button if that works better)

Thank you for providing so much feedback on what is clearly a hot topic (and one in which you probably feel under attack ).

[ArkoHighStar]

Ok some final impressions for the night. My thoughts on as follows. my initial thought is to ditch the whole lvl progression allowing the 2,3,4,5 levels of the debuff and simply use what thegame gave us to seperate casual from more hardcore players and that is quest difficulty > I say after lvl 3(lvl 1-3 max buff=1 for new characters). have it max out at 3 on normal, 4 on hard and 5 on elite. Outdoor areas should be treated as normal difficulty.

Item damage, this is way out of control. Again I think the level progressioni s broken just like you guys claimed xp debt was. The fact that you capped it at lvl 14, meant you knew that you couldn't create an equal scaling to lvl 20 and beyond. Just as xp debt would become unweildly past lvl 14. It looks like you decided some levels would rise and others would stay the same for 2 levels/ this does not look like it had a dicernable pattern and was done so you could arrive at no more than 10 points of dmg. Scrap it, it is too cumbersome. At higher levels it does the one thing you were trying to avoid punish casual players. now instead of xp debt they will leave the quest in actual debt as they struggle to sell enough items to cover potions ,scrolls, wands and the 10% min damage on all items if they died at least once. With repair bills hovering around 600pp per death, they will have to grind loot runs to keep their characters with enough plat to try out new quests. An herein lies the problem, casual players are the least likely to be able to do loot runs as their time is limited. So again the my though is again use the level difficulty inconjuction with lvls
lvls 3-10 normal 2, hard 4, elite 6
lvls 11-20 normal 4, hard 6, elite 8

This should be combined with the ability to use the repair skill at the shrines to make field repairs. If shrines can reset the death counter they should also return some of the damage wrought on your equipment, and finallythe repair skill can actually be used for its intended purpose

[Alshatar]

I vent in my prev 2 posts and I by no means tried to yell at Eladrin. TY Eladrin for posting but I hope that you are not alone in reading our thoughts and comments. Pls know people do not like this change and just to keep it the way it is. People are happy, and if you'd like to make changes to the way XP hits, just decrease the penalty for dying by a few % or something simple. This way it's not a programming nightmare n such. I know our money can go to bigger and better things like "crafting" and maybe new classes such as merchants for our guilds to sell items or a new store feature. The AH can still be upgraded, maybe if someone posts something you could send a tell or email to such person who posted it and offer them something nice or a trade.. those are better improvements than what you're proposing

I for one am not opposed to change unless it's this change you're proposing. Take a general feedback in game or through forums for improvments and go "hey we're thinking of changing #### - what do you guys think" and let us have a bit of ownership since we pay your salary. Bigger and better MMO's are coming out and if Turbine wants to keep up they need to think of what the game is going to be like at level 20 and what changes need to be implemented before that and how to get there instead of scraping along.

The in game mail system needs an upgrade so we don't get as much spam since bots are doing the posting. Maybe no mail for trial accounts.. if they REALLY wanna spam us, make them pay $30 for the game

Just some nice simple suggestions that our cash "could" go towards, instead of big nasty drastic changes.

[honkuimushi]

My complaint is that we're trade non- permanent XP loss, for permanent equipment damage. How isn't that justified?

This, and the rest of his post, sums up my feelings rather well. Right now I can log off, or log onto another character and my debt regens. It even regens while I'm running around town restocking, reparing and doing collectable runs. I can also do an eisier quest or step the difficulty down and most likely make up all or most of my debt. Yeah, if I complete the quest after a few deaths, I reduce the XP I get. But that seems like a fair penalty for dying. If I die less on my my way to completing the goal, I get more XP. There are disastrous runs where you don't get enough XP to cover yor debt. But if you keep going, you probably had another reason for running the quest-- loot, favor, learning the quest etc. The XP loss is the price you pay. There are enough quests and landscapes now so that XP is not a significantly limited resource.

You said gold was a fair price. I agree. What I'm objecting to is the permanent damage. If you got rid of permanent damage, I could live with this system. I'd even support having to pay for ressurection. You have to pay the brothers for remove curse, heals, etc. why not Raise Dead. Raise Dead has an expensive component. Why not make the recipient pay for a rez? If you don't have the cash, maybe make it 50% of current funds.

I've looked at some of the reports off Risia, most of the screenshots and reports I've seen are getting permanent damage on 1 or 2 items per death. I would not accept that penalty. I could bind all of my items, but I like the ability to trade or auction gear I replace. I can vendor it, but I can't send it to my Bard so I get more than 10%. There is also the issue of rerolling characters as 32 pt builds or in response to future changes to game mechanics. If you keep this system, I think you need to reduce the chance for permanent damage to about 1% of the current chance. Or just get rid of permanent damage. But as I mentioned before, I have a bit of a damage phobia. I don't like the system now, making it worse is a nightmare for me. Every time I see the message "xxxx has taken permanent damage", I want to (and occasionally do) curse.

This system takes a temporary penalty and makes it permanent. XP is temporary, damage is permanent. Binds are permanent. Gold is temporary, I can always make more. Finding another holy cold iron weapon is not guarenteed. I'll say again, I don't care what other MMOs do. I have never played any other MMO. I came for D&D. Smashing my items everytime I die is not D&D. I don't mind the debuff, I would even suggest making it 5 or 10 minutes per tier. I don't mind paying gold when I die. But keep your hands off my stuff.

[Nevthial]

This, and the rest of his post, sums up my feelings rather well. Right now I can log off, or log onto another character and my debt regens. It even regens while I'm running around town restocking, reparing and doing collectable runs. I can also do an eisier quest or step the difficulty down and most likely make up all or most of my debt. Yeah, if I complete the quest after a few deaths, I reduce the XP I get. But that seems like a fair penalty for dying. If I die less on my my way to completing the goal, I get more XP. There are disastrous runs where you don't get enough XP to cover yor debt. But if you keep going, you probably had another reason for running the quest-- loot, favor, learning the quest etc. The XP loss is the price you pay. There are enough quests and landscapes now so that XP is not a significantly limited resource.

You said gold was a fair price. I agree. What I'm objecting to is the permanent damage. If you got rid of permanent damage, I could live with this system. I'd even support having to pay for ressurection. You have to pay the brothers for remove curse, heals, etc. why not Raise Dead. Raise Dead has an expensive component. Why not make the recipient pay for a rez? If you don't have the cash, maybe make it 50% of current funds.

I've looked at some of the reports off Risia, most of the screenshots and reports I've seen are getting permanent damage on 1 or 2 items per death. I would not accept that penalty. I could bind all of my items, but I like the ability to trade or auction gear I replace. I can vendor it, but I can't send it to my Bard so I get more than 10%. There is also the issue of rerolling characters as 32 pt builds or in response to future changes to game mechanics. If you keep this system, I think you need to reduce the chance for permanent damage to about 1% of the current chance. Or just get rid of permanent damage. But as I mentioned before, I have a bit of a damage phobia. I don't like the system now, making it worse is a nightmare for me. Every time I see the message "xxxx has taken permanent damage", I want to (and occasionally do) curse.

This system takes a temporary penalty and makes it permanent. XP is temporary, damage is permanent. Binds are permanent. Gold is temporary, I can always make more. Finding another holy cold iron weapon is not guarenteed. I'll say again, I don't care what other MMOs do. I have never played any other MMO. I came for D&D. Smashing my items everytime I die is not D&D. I don't mind the debuff, I would even suggest making it 5 or 10 minutes per tier. I don't mind paying gold when I die. But keep your hands off my stuff.

Well said..personally if I find the damage inflicted to be too high , there is always the old PnP game to go back to.......

[xman26]

Something from the Codemasters forums that I wanted to address:

Khyber Dragonshard Fragments will be fairly common. They'll have a chance of appearing anywhere where gems appear (like chests), and an additional chance in breakables. They'll drop in large stacks (note that they stack up to 1000), and hopefully a brisk trade will develop around them, as the Sorcerers and Wizards will want to collect them for turning into bigger shards for use with Trap the Soul.

It certainly shouldn't end up with hours of grinding to collect the fragments you need to bind your stuff.


Uh, oops. I is good over grammar.


Having no death penalty is a bad thing. There has to be something, and we considered various things that could be the "sting", and found that gold was probably one of the lighter costs that could be chosen. Everyone's got it, it's easy to acquire more, and there's literally a cost to dying.

With the old system, if you died, one of the best things you can do is log off. With the new system, if you die, you repair, and then go on a quest to make some more money. If you're dying a lot, then instead of playing on Elite, why not do a run or two on Normal...

Stop nerfing the hell out of quests and this wouldn't be an issue. It took me 10 months to get to lvl14, I didn't cry, I didn't complain, I simply continued to chug along until I got there. There more you guys "tweek" the game as you have convinced yourselves your doing, what you are actually doing is driving people away from the game, not to it. Leave it alone, fix bugs, develope new content but for the love of god, [eaten by cube]

[xman26]

Really? I thought, LOSING ALL OF YOUR GEAR when you died in pools of magma, or the result of a disintegrate spell, or anything else was DnD.

Turbine wants your characters to KEEP their gear.

And just how can one do that if they go boke keeping their stuff fixed? Alot of people who play this game dont play 40+ hours a week. I'm one of them and I dont have over 100k plat, hell, I dont even have 75k. under the new system, I'll go broke within a month as I only play maybe 6-8 hours a week.

[totmacher]

For anyone talking about binding and unbinding raid loot and normal loot, I would just like to say you have to bind ALL your loot. I confirmed this messing around on Risia earlier tonight.

"Binding" and already "Bound" items are separate is what a guildie who plays on the pre-Risia test server informed me of. Although I could find no Khyber Dragonshards to test it, you need to bind all your loot using the Stone of Change whether it's bound (like a Raid item) or not (+6 charisma cloak) to get the desired effect.

And Eladrin, if this was about pure money, there would be an unbinding mechanism as well. You still take like 5-6k gold debt on each death (which is a little steep and probably will be changed) whether or not all your items are bound. They just don't take permanent damage. That is a cash component right there.

But you're also saying there's no unbinding mechanism... thus you do want to have items deteriorate permanently and basically be removed from the economy. Or in other words deteriorate faster than they normally would. Conversely, also having them bound removes them from the economy as well.

[Serpent]

For anyone talking about binding and unbinding raid loot and normal loot, I would just like to say you have to bind ALL your loot. I confirmed this messing around on Risia earlier tonight.

"Binding" and already "Bound" items are separate is what a guildie who plays on the pre-Risia test server informed me of. Although I could find no Khyber Dragonshards to test it, you need to bind all your loot using the Stone of Change whether it's bound (like a Raid item) or not (+6 charisma cloak) to get the desired effect.

And Eladrin, if this was about pure money, there would be an unbinding mechanism as well. You still take like 5-6k gold debt on each death (which is a little steep and probably will be changed) whether or not all your items are bound. They just don't take permanent damage. That is a cash component right there.

But you're also saying there's no unbinding mechanism... thus you do want to have items deteriorate permanently and basically be removed from the economy. Or in other words deteriorate faster than they normally would. Conversely, also having them bound removes them from the economy as well.

Now now tot. I have asked them six times if that is the reason they are doing this and they have avoided answering me. When El finally did reply, it skirted so far around the subject, that even I got lost. So if they are not telling us why, then either they are not even sure why they are doing this or they don't think that items will be destroyed. I mean they wouldn't not tell us the truth would they? I mean if they wanted to completely overhaul the economy and remove the items we have accrued, they would have said?


Every one that posts in this thread realizes that, right?

[totmacher]

Also, since my thread was closed down, a repair bill from one death (on Risia, clean death):



From my Cleric



From my Sorcerer

I'll see if I can cajole one of my fighter's into drinking the kool-aid later tonight..

[Ron]

And just how can one do that if they go boke keeping their stuff fixed? Alot of people who play this game dont play 40+ hours a week. I'm one of them and I dont have over 100k plat, hell, I dont even have 75k. under the new system, I'll go broke within a month as I only play maybe 6-8 hours a week.

How do you figure that? Totmacher just posted screens of a repair bill for one death for a level 15 character with level 15 equipment. 5,000 gold. Are you telling me you can't make, as a level 15 character, at least 5,000 gold between each death? That's nonsense. I think you are exaggerating a tad. You'd have to really die a LOT not to be able to handle that sort of hit.

Lowbie characters using level appropriate gear will cost a handful of gold per death (I just repaired a good deal of my stuff on a level 3 character, it cost me 15 gold, which is about 1/3 of what I make from a single typical level 1 or 2 chest).

The only way I could see this having an effect is if you are a lowbie character with uber gear from twinking. In such a case, just get the plat from your gear-daddy. That's what they are there for.

[Gornin]

Really? I thought, LOSING ALL OF YOUR GEAR when you died in pools of magma, or the result of a disintegrate spell, or anything else was DnD.

Turbine wants your characters to KEEP their gear.

Sure, in those limited instances, but not because I got Fingered, took an arrow in the eye, etc. I get a spear punched through my plate, only the plate gets damaged, not everything. And the plate gets a save to see if it's unrepairable.

[MysticTheurge]

My proposal is get rid of the level increase to damage and replace it with one basewd on quest difficulty say 4 for normal, 6 for hard 8 for elite. Outdoor areas should have the lowest say 4.

I don't have time to read the whole thread this morning (cause I testing stuff!) but I like this idea.