Permanent Item Damage and Death Penalty changes

[Nevthial]

Yeah but we were talking about the proposed (possible?) system that would allow you to repair permanent damage on bound items. Eladrin mentioned it... somewhere, but I don't have a link handy.

Hmmm...that alone could change everything for the better.

[tekn0mage]

If you can repair damage (even permanent) on your items, then what in the hell is the point of the new system?

If it's a money sink they want to implement, let's come up with some NEW / FRESH and non-penalizing ideas on how to handle that.

If it's a way to SLOW the players down with new content, forget it, that's never going to happen so *STOP* trying to do that. It's an impossible vision that will always be overcome by people (such as me and MANY others) that simply don't give a hoot what penalties you put in the game. We are still going to roll the way we roll.

If it's a way to keep items from being twinked and traded around, just make everything soul bound. Stop trying to artificially "control" aspects of the game that to some of us, are INTERESTING. We enjoy oogling over someone's +1 Wounding Greater Bane weapon, or some Seeker Kurki of Smiting...

Stop trying to make things all about penalty. You suck the fun right out of the game when you do that. There are TONS of ways of making the game challenging. How about working on the AI? Start with some re-writes.

The death penalty / rez sickness is fine (its a great rip from other games, but we won't go there). I don't know where the devs got the idea that death needed to be more penalizing. It's already a major hassle for some missions if someone were to die. Time is wasted, obviously gamers get frustrated, and adding more penalty on top of penalty just makes it even worse. This kind of development really angers me because developers show how really out of touch they are with the game.

To sit back in your "high chair" (and believe me, I mean that in more ways than one) and decide that all of a sudden you're going to flip a switch and make things much more penalizing and tougher on us, is just really out of touch with what gamers want. You have to realize this game is not YOUR game. Although you have your own time and energy invested, you can't sit back and make the game a sinister joke just so you can feel good about yourself and a job well done. If you want some accolade for a job well done, why don't you go and train someone to help you push out new content instead of re-designing aspects of the game that as an earlier poster put it: You won't lose people if you keep it the way it is now, but you certainly stand to lose some if you keep making it tighter.

Just learn already Turbine, it's been a long, long road for you and you have a chance to keep this game alive. Changing Evasion cost you players, changing the raid loot cost you players, changing enhancements cost you some, keeping monks a distant dream cost you some, the Abbot Raid debacle cost you some, the days of downtime cost you some, the delays between modules cost you some... the list goes on. It's all going to keep adding up until one day there won't be any left.

Name ONE thing, just ONE that you've done that has caused GROWTH.

I'm not talking about the marketing referral program, that's not a development aspect. But seriously, name one thing the devs have done that have caused players to come BACK!

I truly believe you have the desire to make a good game. However, the proof of the desire is in the pursuit. What are you pursuing with these changes?

[honkuimushi]

Not to detract from your argument (get it right the first time) overly much since I agree with the general gist of it, but if you took any group of people used to working with something a given way and told them you were changing it, about half would probably say "It's ok" and the other half would say "I hate it." Just cause it was changing.

There are definitely some good arguments being made by the "I hate it" side in this thread, but some degree of resistance to this change is, inevitably, just a resistance to change.

First you missed the intent of his post.

The post was to state that "if you implement this system, you aren't going to gain any new customers, but if you implement it you will definitely lose customers". If this change is SO vital, that you are willing to risk losing customers over it, by all means, go forward with your plans.

If, however your plans are only to appease roughly half of the crowd (the "purists" and definitely not the "gamers") then be VERY certain its what you want to do.

Secondly, there are no good arguments made in defense of these changes. Except that a segment of the crowd seems to enjoy infringing their SLOW and BORING style of play onto the rest of us.

Let me clarify a bit. Yes, there will often be resistance to change, but many of the changes in Mod 6 are being welcomed. There is very little resistance to the debuff and only a little to paying gold as a consequence of death. Most of the objections are to the permadamage aspect, objections I share. Most of the support seems tepid-- "Maybe this will work, I support it." type answers, not "This is a great idea, I wish we had adopted this years ago!" type posts. On the other hand, some people opposing this are saying, "I will leave over this." There is a difference in passion and the passionate people seem to be opposed. In this case tekn0mage is correct, I don't really see this as something that will gain new players or get old players to re-up, but I do think people will quit over this.

Turbine has made unpopular changes before, and they have generally backtracked under pressure. The problem is that these new changes will be very hard to undo. Once this goes live, you will have to choose between vastly increased permanent damage to your items, or permanently binding your items. This is the first permanent death penalty in the game and if they realize later that it was a mistake, they would have to deal with people demanding that they fix the weapon damage that had occured or allow the unbinding of weapons.

I see a lot of down sides but very few upsides. I object to a choice between permanent damage or permanent binding. I like the freedom I have now. Already, permanent damage is my is my biggest negative experience in this game. I object to anything that increases it. Ironically, I hate zerging. I like to explore everything, smash everything, kill everything, do all the optionals and read all the text. I almost didn't buy this game because it had permadamage. I reluctantly accepted it because as a part of the MMO package. I could accept it because I didn't lose items very often. But I never liked it. I just have a bad feeling about this change.

[tekn0mage]

Let's not even talk about other people (who don't visit the forums) who would leave over this change.

Again, nobody would leave if you leave the penalty as-is. I *GUARANTEE* people will leave if you change it.

[Warrax23]

I don't know just seems stupid to me, because the people who this is aimed to hurt usually have bound raid gear anyway. I mean I don't know how much negitive feedback you need but I think this is thread should be an clue. 7/9 people don't want it. Hell I don't care personally, I'll check out the new mod, then probably be on my merry. I think I could go back to single player games for a least a year or so....

[CrazySamaritan]

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, developed new content but for the love of god, STOP CHANGING THINGS BECAUSE OF CRY BABIES!

Yay for you. Guess what? I got level 14, for the first time, last month. Some people kick around a week for the time to take leveling to cap, so there's quite a disparity, no matter how you look at it. I find it interesting, however, that you are willing to name advocates of change as 'crybabies'.

And just how can one do that if they go broke keeping their stuff fixed? Alot of people who play this game don't play 40+ hours a week. I'm one of them and I don't have over 100k plat, hell, I don't even have 75k. Under the new system, I'll go broke within a month as I only play maybe 6-8 hours a week.

I-I, I believe that's why the developers are asking for FEEDBACK on the changes. If 500 platinum per death is too much for you, explain why, give gold income rates. Heck, explain how casuals can't do the 'loot runs' that everyone talks about.

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.

Yeah, I was trying to name specific times when you'd never get back the items, but the real reason is that, hey, YOU DON'T. The party sometimes recovers the items, and if noone else in the party would use the items, they tend to be sold. Why? Because your new character (which is likely slightly lower in level) has a certain amount of gold he's expected to start with. Twinking isn't PnP, but Turbine likes giving their players some ability to do it.

First off, if you fall in magma in PnP, the first concern will be finding enough of your body to raise, unless you have True Ressurection(9th) available. Yeah, you would probably lose your gear, but hopefully you had some wealth stashed somewhere or your party would help you out. It's a situation that doesn't come up all that often and I would try not to screw over the guy too badly if I was the DM. Spells like Protection from Fire and Energy Immunity can reduce the hazard magma poses and some of your gear may actually make its saving throw if it's magical. Disintegrate no longer destroys equipment. I think it was to make players cast it more often. Why would I want to Disintegrate a high level opponent if I detroy his stuff too? I want his stuff.

heh, yeah. And when you die as a level 1, you make a new character, too. Turbine's great, I can die LOTS more in their game. I generally wouldn't place my characters (as a DM) near lava, but Turbine has some more exotic locales.

If I get killed by a weapon, that killing blow might very well damage my armor and maybe another item or 2 as well. But what if I drown? What if I catch a FoD or Destruction? What if I die from con damage from a poison spell or cloudkill? Should my items take extra damage from that? Is that very D&D?

Maybe Turbine has some rules about raising? That is, Eberron is a High-Magic environment, and Xen'Drik is a strange place. Perhaps the overuse of powerful raising mechanics has had an effect upon the physical items which are nearby the person who is restored to life? Technically, I've never seen the corpse of a dead player. all creatures seem to discorperate in Xen'drik. Possibly that is what makes the items take damage? They are being reconstituted from nothing. I don't know exactly how Raise Dead works, what laws it bypasses, or the Thaums it uses, but I do know that spells with material components tend to have slightly more powerful effects. Could it actually be, that with all the Silver Flame priests and Artifacts which Raise, there's an abnormal strain upon the physical body that you inhabit, and it is most visible as a detrimental effect upon our items?

I am all for adding a death penalty that applies a little more evenly, but I am opposed to making that penalty something that affects us permanently. XP and gold are readily available and interchangeable. The XP I got from Stormcleave is the same as the XP I get from the VONs, etc. The gold I got from Berrigan Enge is worth the same as the gold I got from selling something on the AH. Items are different. If my stat item breaks, do I have another of the same value or better? If I have a weapon that I use for overcoming DR, can I find something with the same combo? Yes, I can bind it, but that could mean a lot of money lost if I ever find something better. It also makes trades harder. With the current system on Risia, who would leave anything nice unbound? And when the cap goes up and better items become available, those items can no longer be traded or auctioned. This system will affect player behavior and the community. But I'm not sure it will be the effects the devs wanted or expected.

I wouldn't call it interchangeable. Is there a place I can gain XP infinitely?
I do know that I can go to the harbor and do every level 1 quest until ransacked, and earn more gold than I spend on repairs. If I ransack them in one day, I can go back to them in a week. So gold is definitely infinite.

If they do want to increase binding, the crafting system seems like the best way to do it. If by binding an item I can choose how to upgrade it, I would be happy to bind some of my items. I wouldn't bind everything, but I'd choose a few of the items I plan to use for awhile and bind them because I know I can upgrade them later. This seems to be the way things are headed and I approve. But instead of rolling out the carrot first, we see the stick first.(Though the stick is wrapped very nicely.) In addition to your current wear, you now get 10% damage to everything you wear per death. I usually take under 5% damage on my weapons per quest. I take a couple percent on my armor and maybe 1 or 2 other items took a little damage. There are enemies that increase the toll, but this is a good baseline. Now add 10%, 20 if you're doing a new quest. Yes, they lowered the chance of permanent damage by half, but my weapons are now taking 2-4 x the damage. My armor is taking 5-10x the damage. My other items are taking close to 100x the damage because instead of light damage to 1 or 2 all 11 are taking 10-20% damage.

As I understand it, part of the purpose in having items take damage on death is to increase the rate of removal for items in circulation. This happens three ways: 1) sold on vendor. Common enough, that's where the junk goes. 2) Permanent damage. This was made clear at the very beginning of the game, so O thought we'd never be able to repair it, but there's a third way to remove items from circulation; 3) Bound items. Are on one character, effectively removing them from circulation. Folks are complaining that bound items would eventually become useless and sold, so that's back to number 1 again, which makes sense to me.

Death is not always avoidable. I never go seeking it. But I have been Disintegrated. I have been one-shotted by ogres. I have done the vampire in house P and realized that we only have one caster. I have never used /death to get back to a tavern. Most of the time I have used it is when I stabilize near a shrine while soloing. But I'm upset that the the death penalty is going from a temporary penalty to a permanent penalty.

Heh, I've done all those things, too. (well I've also teleported with /death; "poor man's teleport" I've called it, before Word of Recall was introduced)

Temporary penalty? You mean, "I've just finished this quest with less XP than when I started, with nothing to show for it, 'cause I already had the favor."? or, "Why'd you finish the quest? I wasn't back yet! I recalled 3 times for you!"?
Meaning the best thing to do is, turn the game off and play something else? You don't see how that might be a turn-off for prospective customers? Compared to, "5 gold? No, silver? Hah, fine by me."

My feedback on the death penalty / item damage:

Death Penalty - meh. do what you wanna do here, the real problem is item damage

Item Damage - 12,000 - 15,000 gold per death (using expert repair) is EXTREMELY costly, especially if you consider the possibility of dying more than once in a mission. Also keep in mind that multiple deaths make permanent damage more likely, I just cannot see how Turbine can implement this in good conscience.

I understand the need to have SOME penalty, but for those of us who are not afraid to take a bullet for the team, this is just a bit ridiculous.

Well, item damage is the big penalty, the debuff seems more of an, "go a bit slower now...".
Here's a thought; go on another one of those 'loot runs' everyone talks about, do some nonsense level 5 quest and totally own it, just to kick some kobold arse, and earn easily twice that much money. You won't even die while doing it (most likely). Compared to something like, Prison of the Planes, where I consider it a good run if I only die twice.

If you can repair damage (even permanent) on your items, then what in the hell is the point of the new system?

As far as I can see, to make dying HURT!

Everyone is complaining about losing their items, AND THEY WON'T HAVE TO! I can't help get the feeling that this death penalty, which costs an infinitely renewable resource, is designed to make death FEEL more painful, while taking less away from us. Like an illusionist who crushes a pocketwatch; he could do the same trick with a penny, but it would hurt as much to watch as the pocketwatch does.

[gpk]

I'm reminded of how many times my parties have gone into the Abbot Raid after beating it to test the patch changes (Both of em). We went and died a crazy amount of times to provide much needed feedback to the devs about the changes, fixes and breaking changes. We're still going in there and it's gotten harder and harder to find 6 players after the 1st breaking patch to go into the raid and test it more so we can paint an accurate picture and give non trivial feedback.

I wonder how many players would go into the Abbot if we had the proposed death penalty in place. Are we to switch to bound loot only and fail more? Last time I checked Sword of Shadow isn't very good vs liches. Being exempt from item damage for "1st time" run through wouldn't help here. What kind of feedback would the devs have received from the player base then?

There are just so many reasons why guaranteed item damage is not a good thing on deaths, and the more I think about it the more adamantly opposed I am. I'm not even goign to get into what classes are more likely to be affected most cause that would only start another "debate", suffice it to say some will be hurt more than others.

[Chaoswf]

i am concerned about this new death penalty i am suicidal and will kill my self if it helps the group but this i might leave the game

[GlassCannon]

i am concerned about this new death penalty i am suicidal and will kill my self if it helps the group but this i might leave the game

Same here.

Echoed by half my guild as well.

Age of Conan is looking better and better...

The best way to change it would be a UI option, not a serverwide change.

[mgoldb2]

Is there a place I can gain XP infinitely?

That got me thinging and relize there a few inherent problems with the old system and how I would of fixed it. There a few things that I view that lead to the problem to begin with.

A)
One downside of the change to explore-able area is they use to be a place of infinitely XP. Not only was it infinite it was static how fast you could get exp from it. When I did suffer from exp lost at lower levels I would run though tangle or sorrow dusk or thernal to get the exp closer to normal between quests. One clearing of thernal could get me ~1K exp every single time. I usually only bother doing this to get rid of neg exp or if I was very close to leveling up but was an option always.


B) Playing a different char use to not be a way to loose exp. There was no such thing as exp regen. It was something I was actually against. I thought at the time it was an overreaction to all the complaints in mod 3. I thing if they did not make the death penalty so high in mod 3 at start no one would of expected or asked for a change they would of been happy how it always was. They messed up in one direction then compensated by going to far the other direction how I saw it at the time.

C) Exp even when cap could have meaning in old enhancement system because it was the only way to change enchantments by earning more AP though exp. Which mean neg exp could mean something or at the very least there was still some value too exp.

Solution I would have been behind.
A)
Exp have 0 meaning for capped players which I thing should be address in some form. My solution would be to increase value of EXP even for capped players. Either implementing it into the crafting system or something along those lines. That would also mean that getting exp would have to be a level playing field which is my next suggestion.

B)
Change how exp to work closer to what I read in early interviews which was pretty much you could ransack a quest exp but over time it would regen to be worth it full exp.

I would implement something along those lines, I would make the exp worth of a quest go down much quicker then it currently does. Maybe after running a quest 3-4 times the exp becomes capped but within a week it would be back to full exp. First time running it on each difficulty would not count toward this.

This would have a few benefits. It would even the playing field across the board. Some cap players can get 10K or more from PoP let say every single time they run it. Some get almost no exp every time. This base on what decisions they made during leveling.

People that have capped a char before a level cap increase is at a huge advantage also in current system because they much more likely to get capped and still get a ton of exp from new quests.

This change would completely even the playing field in this regard.

I thing it would also encourage using more quests to level up since who wants to wait a entire week for a quest exp to regen when there so many other quest options out there.

C) Keep the death penalty about loosing exp. If you add exp into the crafting system this would keep exp valuable at high levels if you make the cost of high end items very high. This always would cause people to spread out there loot runs because now they not only looking for loot they looking for exp which would get ransack quicker then loot does in this system.

On top of that if people feel death need additional sting I would not be totally against doing the debuff things. Item damage throe should have no part in the death system.

D)
I also personally like bind item to take no perm damage. Who wants to run dragon over and over again at level 16 to replace a item only found there. Now whether you can bind any item or not don’t matter to me but bind items should not take perm damage.

Now I realize it way to late to add anything like this but to me this would of solve many more problems instead of the system going in that I feel only make more problems and don’t address the issue of why is exp completely meaningless for over half your player life in many cases. That is a bigger problem to me then how the death penalty is now.

[Hendrik]

Let's not even talk about other people (who don't visit the forums) who would leave over this change.

Again, nobody would leave if you leave the penalty as-is. I *GUARANTEE* people will leave if you change it.

Probably the same that left over the D&G with the new Enhancement System. Even after all the doom and gloom, it still turned out to be better for the game.

[Ron]

Age of Conan is looking better and better...

Uh huh. Do you believe that AoC isn't going to have a death penalty either? I suspect you may be dissapointed.

[Spookydodger]

The long term result of the XP penalty, and how it has evolved since launch, has proven to be unhealthy to game play and how players react to it.

I always felt people way over-reacted to the death penalty. It was so trivial to get rid of in many cases. I don't really mind which way it goes, but xp penalty was like calling someone a "jerk" after you wrecked their car. Ultimately trivial, especially considering what had just happened.

I always thought it would be sort of cool to have different levels of death penalty for different level of "rewards". You know, something that could be set in the options panel. High penalty missions could yield huge xp bonuses, for example.

Maybe something for perma-deathers to really drool over, even

[Spookydodger]

Curious fact of the day: You can get a significant amount of the way to the cap without stepping into a single dungeon other than the two Old Sully's Grog quests, if you enjoy landscapes.

*laugh*

Gawd, that would take eons.

[ArkoHighStar]

I see Tekno has picked up my mantle while I slept through this cold

I have realized they will not keep xp debt, so lets try and make this system less punitive for all players, looking at my original idea and Mystic's take on take on my argument that while the debuff scales at all levels the item damage does not

Lvl 1-2 no penalty, new players will enjoy this, and older players spend about an hour at these levels anyway so they will never notice.
lvl 3-up
Normal
First death between shrines: 2%
Second death between shrines: 4%
Third death between shrines: 6%
Hard
First death between shrines: 2%
Second death between shrines: 4%
Third death between shrines: 6%
Fourth death between shrines: 8%
Elite
First death between shrines: 2%
Second death between shrines: 4%
Third death between shrines: 6%
Fourth death between shrines: 8%
Fifth or more death between shrines: 10%

I think we need to stop trying to add increasing difficulty by level, we already have a mechanism for that called quest difficulty. In my opinion a lvl 14 quest on normal should be of similiar difficulty to a lvl 2 quest being done by a group of lvl 2's. In other words as the quests get harder by level, we get more powerful to compensate. If you want it to be harder try hard and elite. This system protects casual players to an extent as they can do a quest on normal and not feel like they have to be going slow, but can do so if they choose. on elite you take a bit more damage but it drops from 50% to 20% after 5 deaths meaning you have a little more room to decide whether you need to get out or not, 10 deaths is around 60% damage, This will still encourage binding for those items that are important to you as even 2% damage can cause perm damage. the damage resets just like te debuff, so this will encourage fighters and rogues to use the shrines, that today they can pretty much ignore.

Repairing inside the quest should also occur and be like the cleric heal skill effect on healing more at a shrine. A zero repair will not repair any damage, a maxxed out repair should take the weapon to 3% of max durability, but never all way( it should still cost you something, and run the risk of perm damage)

[Aspenor]

Repairing inside the quest should also occur and be like the cleric heal skill effect on healing more at a shrine. A zero repair will not repair any damage, a maxxed out repair should take the weapon to 3% of max durability, but never all way( it should still cost you something, and run the risk of perm damage)

I like this, make the repair skill actually work the way it was originally described.

My wizard has maxxed repair. For some gold, I should be able to repair items.

[Hendrik]

Let me clarify a bit. Yes, there will often be resistance to change, but many of the changes in Mod 6 are being welcomed. There is very little resistance to the debuff and only a little to paying gold as a consequence of death. Most of the objections are to the permadamage aspect, objections I share. Most of the support seems tepid-- "Maybe this will work, I support it." type answers, not "This is a great idea, I wish we had adopted this years ago!" type posts. On the other hand, some people opposing this are saying, "I will leave over this." There is a difference in passion and the passionate people seem to be opposed. In this case tekn0mage is correct, I don't really see this as something that will gain new players or get old players to re-up, but I do think people will quit over this.

Turbine has made unpopular changes before, and they have generally backtracked under pressure. The problem is that these new changes will be very hard to undo. Once this goes live, you will have to choose between vastly increased permanent damage to your items, or permanently binding your items. This is the first permanent death penalty in the game and if they realize later that it was a mistake, they would have to deal with people demanding that they fix the weapon damage that had occured or allow the unbinding of weapons.

I see a lot of down sides but very few upsides. I object to a choice between permanent damage or permanent binding. I like the freedom I have now. Already, permanent damage is my is my biggest negative experience in this game. I object to anything that increases it. Ironically, I hate zerging. I like to explore everything, smash everything, kill everything, do all the optionals and read all the text. I almost didn't buy this game because it had permadamage. I reluctantly accepted it because as a part of the MMO package. I could accept it because I didn't lose items very often. But I never liked it. I just have a bad feeling about this change.

Incorrect.

The chance for permanent damage to be inflicted on unbound items when repaired has been halved.


"Vastly Increased" = -50%??

[Gengulphus]

As I've said before, I'm not opposed to a death penalty -- in fact, I'm in favor of one. The question is: which one? Temporary lvl loss and stat damage? Fine. Damage to equipped items? No problem. Having to make the choice between binding or permanent damage to valuable items? Not good at all.

Someone said above that the posts that defend the new system (and I think most of the new system is fine, for the record) see the bind it or loose it option as tolerable. But nobody is saying, "Wow, that's a great idea!"

I've been with DDO since beta and I've seen this several times: a change is introduced with much opposition by the player base -- all with unfortunate results (e.g., the old raid loot system, just to name one. When the dragon raid was first introduced and the raid loot system where the party leader gives the items to two party members....there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the forums. Well, they finally changed that and now everyone has a chance of getting raid loot each time).

I don't think this will doooooom the game by any means. But it introduces a brand new pain in the neck without taking an old pain in the neck away (xp debt was not widely perceived as a pain).

I do hope the devs will reconsider removing or mitigating the catch 22 choice between permanent item damage or permanent binding. Keep everything else. Just take that awful choice off the boards.

[Hendrik]

Between Arko and MT, looks like this is something to seriously bring to Eladrin's attention.

Good things do come from debate.

[Hendrik]

As I've said before, I'm not opposed to a death penalty -- in fact, I'm in favor of one. The question is: which one? Temporary lvl loss and stat damage? Fine. Damage to equipped items? No problem. Having to make the choice between binding or permanent damage to valuable items? Not good at all.

Someone said above that the posts that defend the new system (and I think most of the new system is fine, for the record) see the bind it or loose it option as tolerable. But nobody is saying, "Wow, that's a great idea!"

I've been with DDO since beta and I've seen this several times: a change is introduced with much opposition by the player base -- all with unfortunate results (e.g., the old raid loot system, just to name one).

I don't think this will doooooom the game by any means. But it introduces a brand new pain in the neck without taking an old pain in the neck away (xp debt was not widely perceived as a pain).

I do hope the devs will reconsider removing or mitigating the catch 22 choice between permanent item damage or permanent binding. Keep everything else. Just take that awful choice off the boards.

Or, give us the chance to repair perm damage.