Permanent Item Damage and Death Penalty changes

[xman26]

Excellent example of how XP debt is harmful and a negative impact on lower levels.

Emphasized Eladrin thoughts;

"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."

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

1. Someone should point it out to El that nothing they do will bring people back who have left and its because they have nerfed the game and dragged feet raising level caps.
2. New players are propably from WOW and should go back to playing WOW.

[tekn0mage]

XP loss still affects capped characters. Besides if so many people are just racking up debt without any concern, wouldn't they have a MUCH bigger hole to dig out of at cap-raise time?

Too many of these rules are decided based on the "exception" and not the rule.

Turbine has GOT to stop making decisions that way. It's top-killer in business.

[CSFurious]

it will also encourage people to cancel their subscriptions & stop playing the game

The proposed new system will slow down players, force recalls, and discourage playing of capped characters, all of which, I believe, are not good paths to pursue.

[Hendrik]

1. Someone should point it out to El that nothing they do will bring people back who have left and its because they have nerfed the game and dragged feet raising level caps.
2. New players are propably from WOW and should go back to playing WOW.

Again, more constructive feedback.

Thx

[Jaywade]

The main problem with people arguing here over the death penalty is the difference between being CAPPED and NOT CAPPED. You have to remember that the death penalty system was being re-evaluated mainly because at CAPPED it made no difference and at NOT CAPPED it hurt a hell of a lot. This re-balancing is trying to make it more even over the whole.

Some people are evaluating this at cap, where item durability means a lot more since XP is irrelevant. There arguments tend to be in the form, that 10% durability is a big pain in the butt, we wanna trade our items when we've outgrown that str +6 ring on our fighter when we got the dragon belt, etc.

Some people are evaluating this when leveling, when items are temporary things. These things will be outgrown the same but in different ways and "faster" as well. Items are not as important when leveling because the next better thing is around the corner.

This is where people are slamming into brick walls with each other here and it might be good to take into consideration that there are two different games at stake here.

Honestly I think you may be missing the point.....death was being used for a lot exploits...a ton of them, or to bypass things in quests ....done it a lot, also it had no effect at all to capped players (IMO the death pen didn't effect anyone casue XP is so easy to come by but some seemed bummed out by xp debt...makes no sense to me but whatever) ....I think 2 things were intended in this change ....1. it makes using these "death exploits" costly...you want to use cheese to get to the titan well it's going to cost you your gear (I don't know why you don't just fix the quest but whatever) 2. it makes a death matter to a capped player...

now I understand what they might of been thinking....I do ...still think they are wrong...the damage to gear is not cool welcomed or IMO warrented....I like the neg lvl thing casue it might force a grp to slow down....slowing down will not be popluar so that will change the way people look at deaths but that much damage to gear w/ no way to repair in quest it's bad ...... I mean I could see folks having all items broken in certian quests (invaders, Dreams of insanity, von 3 (for that lvl of toons), scale runs, X ciper (again for that lvl)..... I mena you get zapped a couple times by a beholder and chaos balls it's not going to be cool for a lot of folks...

Dev's don't let this go live ...it needs some tweaking....a death should matter but breaking stuff is not cool...we just can;t afforf to CAUSE any neg play exp.....which is why you said you were changing this in the first place ...neg xp + neg exp

[Ciaran]

Excellent example of how XP debt is harmful and a negative impact on lower levels.

Emphasized Eladrin thoughts;

"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."

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

No offense against Eladrin as he's been great to interact with and has done a lot of good for the game, but just because he said it doesn't mean it's right.

If you log for the night with less XP than you started with, that's just how it goes. Sorry if that sounds callous or whatever but that's the way it works. Is the answer to have people risk losing their favorite items? At lower levels, especially if you are new and don't have people giving you hand-me-downs you treasure that +2 pure good longsword you pulled or scrimped and saved for. Now you're telling me I have to go do something else to bind it this item to me so it doesn't take permanent damage?

Sorry, I just have a lot of trouble understanding how the meager XP debt at lower levels could've been such a limiting factor in progression. My first character died ALOT. He attracted more purple party hats than any other character I've seen. I'd log with XP debt from time to time and be a little disappointed, but still satisfied from playing the game. Keep in mind, I got him halfway through level 8 before they reduced the amount of XP it took to level.

[jmelanie7]

And the debuff does that nicely... but I still don't want them to break my equipment.

Then you should bind all your stuff, then no death damage to it, i think that damage is not that bad, it's discouraging, as long with the neg levels, capped toons to not be careful about their deaths, how many times did you hear, i don't care about dying, i'm capped, maybe you said it yourself!! This is a PLAYSTYLE right now, that should be changed, and the mods applied to death does it.

[xman26]

Again, more constructive feedback.

Thx

If we wanted to be playing WOW, why would we be paying for DDO? Seriously, why are they trying to turn the game into WOW? Also, see post 858, I address much easier fixes for the XP deb then this whole sae change for the game that will drive people away and not to it.

[muffinlad]

Maybe a change of a random item equipped will take 10% damage on death would be better instead of all equipment.

This sums it up for me. You die, one random equiped item takes 10% damage. Simple. Keep the binding options for people who hate item perm damage. Leave the perm damage chance alone (do not reduce it from Live), as it is fine if this is just one random item.

The debuff would stay, and combined with a more simple damage model, you have a fine solution.


muffinwacker

[xman26]

Then you should bind all your stuff, then no death damage to it, i think that damage is not that bad, it's discouraging, as long with the neg levels, capped toons to not be careful about their deaths, how many times did you hear, i don't care about dying, i'm capped, maybe you said it yourself!! This is a PLAYSTYLE right now, that should be changed, and the mods applied to death does it.

Binding items is fine, if and only if they give us a way to unbind them aswell. I hate having bound stuff as I can't sell it(AH), give it away, trade it or trickle it down to my lower lvl characters. They need to give us a way to unbind items aswell as bind, or do neither and leave the dam idea where it belongs, a trash can.

[ccheath776]

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.

Not sure if this is the best way to state that opinion.
People will go to AOC because they feel it is a better game not because of some death penalty mechanic change.
The grass aint so much greener on the other side.

[Ciaran]

The arguments over the semantics involving permanent and temporary are ridiculous.

If you consider these things (items, XP) as traits to be gained by characters, then they are comparable.

Well how do we go about comparing them? We use traits that they have in common as a basis of comparison.

One of these traits is time invested. XP is a constant, linear investment. You gain a set amount of XP for time accrued in a quest. This XP can be modified upwards and downwards due to various factors but it is mostly constant and doesn't vary too much over or under a norm.

Items, on the other hand, are a very random time investment. Given an infinite timeline, you will acquire every type of item in the loot tables due to the randomness of things. But due to the extreme randomness of item drops, their variation is very, very large compared to XP.

Therefore it can be said that XP gain and loss is more steady than items.

However you can also say that since XP doesn't deteriorate like items do (in the sense that you can never PERMANENTLY lose XP you've gained), you can also say that items have less permanence than XP.

There are a lot of basis for comparison and you can muck with them based on your opinion. But comparing them on your own basis' and then assigning "temporary" and "permanent" to them is in the eye of the beholder.

Excellent point, but that doesn't really give us anything we can work with. The devs had to make the decision to revamp the XP system (we could argue that they didn't have to, but they have and it seems to be a matter of trying to change the changes rather than avoid them altogether).

I agree with your assessment that XP is a linear time investment with much less fluctuation. In fact, when I told a guildie who has rarely ever pulled anything nice and doesn't have a lot of nice gear (he doesn't play quite as often as some of us) about the item damage changes in details, he wasn't happy at all...people are protective of their gear when they don't have a lot of nice gear.

Given the reasons Turbine has given us over the last year to reroll our characters, bidning our favorite items is a double edged sword. People say it might help the economy, I say it will make no significant change and will cause people to be more stingy with their gear.

[totmacher]

Excellent point, but that doesn't really give us anything we can work with. The devs had to make the decision to revamp the XP system (we could argue that they didn't have to, but they have and it seems to be a matter of trying to change the changes rather than avoid them altogether).

I agree with your assessment that XP is a linear time investment with much less fluctuation. In fact, when I told a guildie who has rarely ever pulled anything nice and doesn't have a lot of nice gear (he doesn't play quite as often as some of us) about the item damage changes in details, he wasn't happy at all...people are protective of their gear when they don't have a lot of nice gear.

Given the reasons Turbine has given us over the last year to reroll our characters, bidning our favorite items is a double edged sword. People say it might help the economy, I say it will make no significant change and will cause people to be more stingy with their gear.

It's because I'm not arguing a point, rather pointing out a very large flaw in everyone's discussion here. The same thing with people arguing from a capped or non-capped perspective... people aren't considering both ends of the spectrum here.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

In PnP, the only use for True resurrection is that only a piece of the corpse is used to resurrect, like a hair, a nail, a leg, etc. The other use is that you can rez a person who died as long as one year ago, raise dead is no more than one day i think, both still gives you a negative level, or if you're level one, a point of charisma penalty.

Actually that's not the current rules.

Raise dead gives a negative level, and 2 points of con dam instead if they were level 1 or 1 HD. A body is needed.

Ressurection only needs a piece of the body (even dust from disintegrated bodies is sufficient) and gives a negative level, and 2 points of con dam instead if they were level 1 or 1 HD

True Res can raise somoene dead for up to 200 years with no body and no negative effects.

Then you should bind all your stuff, then no death damage to it, i think that damage is not that bad, it's discouraging, as long with the neg levels, capped toons to not be careful about their deaths, how many times did you hear, i don't care about dying, i'm capped, maybe you said it yourself!! This is a PLAYSTYLE right now, that should be changed, and the mods applied to death does it.

I don't want to bind my stuff. I enjoy the PnP like mechanic where when my guildie pulls a +1 vorpal WF only on his non UMD human I can trade him for the unrestricted vorpal I have on my WF or UMD build. I don't like bound items, and for the last year I have seen repeated discussion on this board about ppl who wanted to unbind things so I'm not alone.

And if people don't care about death when capped...so what. I mean really what does it matter? If they want to keep dying its no skin off me.

[MysticTheurge]

XP debt stopped being permanent when they allowed regen. If I have a bad day playing A I can just play B for a while (unless I'm the "I only play 1 char" type)

This is still only true if you drop out of the game as soon as you die and don't finish the quest you're on. Otherwise, you're down XP that you would've otherwise had.

I apparently also don't have as much nice stuff as you because if my vorpal, +5 holy ghost touch etc dies I'm not as confident that I can find a good replacement so easily.

You actually probably have more. I don't tend to have a lot of "uber loot" and so that makes it easier to replace if need be.

But like I said, if you don't want a system that has any permanent penalties, the new system allows you to do that. Bind your stuff and you're permanent-penalty free.

[Hendrik]

XP loss still affects capped characters. Besides if so many people are just racking up debt without any concern, wouldn't they have a MUCH bigger hole to dig out of at cap-raise time?

Too many of these rules are decided based on the "exception" and not the rule.

Turbine has GOT to stop making decisions that way. It's top-killer in business.

Nope. Not when you log back in a huge chunk of it is gone.

Remember the huge outcry against offline regen? Maybe we should have gone that route instead and we might not be looking at another revisit to death....

But the XP hit was to much to take and had to have offline regen as well.

What once was a serious hit was lessened to the point where it was a slight annoyance at best. Became comfortable knowing that the punishment for death would go away and we didn't even have to play. This became unhealthy for the game as a whole for all players of all playstyles.

Now to heal the game, we are back to where we started at, again. Revisiting death. Maybe we can get it right this time and will not have to revisit this topic again late next year.

Be interesting to read that old death thread - bet there are a TON of similar posts.

Lets not let history repeat itself this time?

[Dariun]

Why would this matter unless you were fast-tracking your character to the next level (at which point you are going to be capped and then XP doesn't matter). Don't many people decry this as powergaming?
...
The fact is you can make up that XP easily. Go solo WW, go do the explorer areas...stop dying so much in quests to the best of your ability.

The XP loss punished marginal players. By "marginal" players I mean players who, for whatever reason, do not find getting XP to be "easy". They might be new, they might be inexperienced, they might like soloing, they might suck.

In my case, I've had problems with XP for a variety of reasons: (1) not enough time so I avoid long chain quests (STK, TR, Deleras, CO6, Threnal), (2) don't PUG often because I'm often not sure if I have 20 minutes to play or 3 hours to play, (3) like to explore and solo a lot of stuff, which is risky and leads to deaths, and (4) most serious questing done with a static group of 4 who avoid having pre-knowledge of the quests.

#3 and #4 lead to more deaths, and this is where XP debt hurts. My first and primary character is a rogue, so, over time he has died much more than the rest of the group (fighter and cleric have much better survivability, wizard is smarter with aggro and a better twitch player).

BTW, soloing explorer areas (Atraxia, Desert, GH) to make up for lost XP has turned out to be a great way to rack up additional XP debt for me.

My rogue is over 50,000 XP behind the other 3 members of my static group, and he has definitely done more quests than one of the members.

[xman26]

This is still only true if you drop out of the game as soon as you die and don't finish the quest you're on. Otherwise, you're down XP that you would've otherwise had.



You actually probably have more. I don't tend to have a lot of "uber loot" and so that makes it easier to replace if need be.

But like I said, if you don't want a system that has any permanent penalties, the new system allows you to do that. Bind your stuff and you're permanent-penalty free.

Not true, I've done the reaver raid before and even after finishing it, was still 60k in the hole.

[Ciaran]

But like I said, if you don't want a system that has any permanent penalties, the new system allows you to do that. Bind your stuff and you're permanent-penalty free.

This isn't an option if a player is concerned with more than just themselves.

Case in point, I have the old ML2 Star of Irian. It's still in good condition, only about 5% redlined. Sure, if I wanted to be sure only one character could ever use it (and as a character advances the weapon becomes less desireable in favor of more powerful items) I could bind it, but that'd be both pointless and greedy.

[Hendrik]

Not true, I've done the reaver raid before and even after finishing it, was still 60k in the hole.

What were you doing to gain that much debt?!?!