Permanent Item Damage and Death Penalty changes

[tekn0mage]

Notice what you don't hear from people? You don't hear talk about WHY damage to items are vital to the games success.

No, I don't care to hear HOW item damage is supposed to occur in some lame, role-playing context of "well you got hit with 320 points of damage so your items should take damage"... leave all the D&D talk outside the discussion. Talk a moment about the brass-tacks of this change. What is the real driving factor for item damage?

Tell me how item damage is going to benefit DDO and turn the game around and bring subs. If you can't do that, then it's just a big thumb in your bum and wasted development time on changes with little benefit but huge disadvantage. This seems to be the one thing Turbine specializes in. Who are we to stand in their way? The fans would have you believe that because WE didn't write DDO, we have no right to criticize.

Well on that note, you didn't write it either, so you have no right to say what's best for the game. Now that we're on equal footing, go ahead... tell us how this change is vital to the game.

[Serpent]

I believe an important element of this proposed system is the amount of raids completed. Raids often require the most out of a player and regularly challenge him or her to rise above.

Raids are also the arguably the most difficult to complete with the amount of possible death involved. I personally have died many times while learning and then playing raids.

My raid count between 6 capped characters is this

Vault of the Night: 62
Against the Demon Queen: 63
The Twilight Forge: 74
The Reaver's Fate: 94
Accursed Ascension: 2

Not all of these runs were flawless. I don't think anyone can say that about any run. Some involve 2 or 3 deaths or more even. Some were trail blazing as Tek likes to say. I know one of those Reaver raids involved 11 deaths because of itchy rez lever fingers. Some of them also involved no death at all.

I ask Arko, Ron, Polsih, MysticTheurge, GeneralDiomedes, Tek, Raithe, Gpk, and anyone else to give your numbers. Tell us your experience. Would the new system help you? or would it hurt you. I am proud of these of numbers. With new system they are all in the past.

[Polsih]

I would venture to guess that if this Death Penalty (and, I don't think anyone is protesting the Temporary Debuff in any near the numbers that the Equipment Damage is being objected to) was this way from the beginning ... it would be palatable, albeit painful to watch on an item by item basis at times.

But, that's not how it happened. And, I'd rather we gained in population. If the game is being advertised ... I'm not seeing them. And, I think for a lot of folks ... they just aren't going to suffer having their items getting broken. And, given the slow-down in development (we used to get updates quite often) the pattern of just rerolling gets a little tougher if you just can't pass down items that once were not bound and now hands are being forced to utilize the Binding Mechanism.

Many of us aren't going anywhere until we're forced off the servers. (Or, Crom Forbid ... The Server!) I hope this one move doesn't push things in that direction. I, and my guild, would like to head in the other direction.

For an ad campaign we could try, "Come to DDO ... We've got damaged goods!" (But, not your stackables ... they're invincible!)

Any effort to make the damage thing a little less arbitrary would go a long way ... if the whole thing is simply inevitable.

[tekn0mage]

I have 174 raids across my 6 capped toons. I just counted the other day, the number is low because of how many months I've been on hiatus from the game. Since June, I've rarely played more than 4 hours per week.

I can't even count how many times we died on the Titan and the Reaver. The DQ and the Dragon also. My guild brought you screenshots of the Reaver on Risia (which the thread ended up "pruned" hours after it was posted) before anyone and let me tell you, death was a part of life, for a while there. But we enjoy that side of the game.

When we paid the price, enough times in plat, XP loss, consumables, time, frustration and dedication, we pressed on to achieve victories eventually. Adding more price on top of the dedication we already exercise is beyond unreasonable. Go ahead and slap us in the face and tell us that on top of all the dedication we put into the game, now you're going to siphon away the tools we use to forge ahead. It's your right, but we certainly have ours too. I would just hate to see each side "exercise" their rights and forget the fact that we should be playing nicely together. You may think that without the dev's we'd have no game to play, but it's a two-way street. Without us, they would have nothing to work on.

This doesn't mean we hold our subscriptions over their head, but there had better be some mutual understanding that both groups should be working together. And they'd better freakin' communicate with us about a change instead of just put it in the game, and say that because Mystic Theurge and Hendrik approve of the solution, then it must be palatable for the rest of us...

I assure you, their style of play and mine are vastly different.

[Polsih]

My raid count between 6 capped characters is this

Vault of the Night: 62
Against the Demon Queen: 63
The Twilight Forge: 74
The Reaver's Fate: 94
Accursed Ascension: 2


I ask Arko, Ron, Polsih, MT, GeneralDiomedes, Tek, and anyone else to give your numbers. Tell us your experience. Would the new system help you? or would it hurt you. I am proud of these of numbers. With new system they are all in the past.

Not many for my chars, Serpent. Between 'em all, I've run VoN about 15 times. And, DQ about 5 times. My guild consists of 8 rl friends and we tend to make Velah angry and the DQ ****ed! Most of my successful runs are in PUGs. But, I do have more fun running with the gang. We rule TS & PoP! And, I think the vast majority would never like to go in Ghost of Perdition ever again ... at least not with each other.

And, the new system will likely hurt all of us. Of the 8 guildies, 4-5 play fairly regularly and try to help out the rest with equipment and consumables. (Props to QWIJYMART!) Less good items will make it tougher to share the wealth. I suspect. If the damage factor is taken down from the original proposal, it may make it a non-issue. Hard to say. The future will come ...

[ArkoHighStar]

I believe an important element of this proposed system is the amount of raids completed. Raids often require the most out of a player and regularly challenge him or her to rise above.

Raids are also the arguably the most difficult to complete with the amount of possible death involved. I personally have died many times while learning and then playing raids.

My raid count between 6 capped characters is this

Vault of the Night: 62
Against the Demon Queen: 63
The Twilight Forge: 74
The Reaver's Fate: 94
Accursed Ascension: 2

Not all of these runs were flawless. I don't think anyone can say that about any run. Some involve 2 or 3 deaths or more even. Some were trail blazing as Tek likes to say. I know one of those Reaver raids involved 11 deaths because of itchy rez lever fingers. Some of them also involved no death at all.

I ask Arko, Ron, Polsih, MysticTheurge, GeneralDiomedes, Tek, and anyone else to give your numbers. Tell us your experience. Would the new system help you? or would it hurt you. I am proud of these of numbers. With new system they are all in the past.

I got into raiding a little later in the game than some, and have gone from 2 capped char to 5 in the last 5 months, however that being said my numbers aren't horrible as we have been raiding heavily lately, and I can say that I have beaten all the raids fairly early in their life cycle, with the exception of the Titan, which was post nerf, but then again only one group did it pre nerf. I am sure there are others in my guild who will put up numbers that compare to yours as they live for raids and do them every day(Vinney I'm talking to you)

Vault of the Night: 30
Against the Demon Queen: 25 (beaten all 3 versions)
The Twilight Forge: 15 (only had 1 char flagged till recently, now I have 3)
The Reaver's Fate: 45 (4 chars flagged)
Accursed Ascension: 0 ( I would say 5 attempts personally, some in guild are still trying him, but I will wait till he is fixed)

[Cyndder]

Ok,

EL....

After almost 60 pages worth of posts; suggestions, gripes, complaints, etc..... How are the Dev's leaning on this issue? Has enough information been provided to give the community a glimpse as to where these PID and DP changes are going? Will there be changes, removal of PID changes, will they be kept as is?

A lot of people have read this thread and we almost have a 25 to 1 read ratio on this topic besides the 1100+ and growing posts. If you need more data; what types of specific data are you wanting/looking for?

[gpk]

The Vault of Night : 16
Against the Demon Queen : 24 (all versions)
The Twilight Forge : 28
The Reaver's Fate : 41
Accursed Ascension : 2 (other toon, prepatch)

These are my numbers on just 1 character

[Justicesar]

As I have been leveling up another toon on a second server, a cleric no less, I had forgotten how much people at mid and low levels really hate the xp loss for dieing. I don't gripe about it cause I know in the back of my mind wich quests to run to hit max level fairly quick but to the new guy....they have not hit the wall yet so to them its a bottomless pit of content with many uber items to be had. Time will tell but as the switch goes from xp debt to item damage I believe the ranks of the irked will swell to the point where Pug parties will be no more. I'm normally an easy going guy but the 1st time some guy gripes to me abot his toon loosing 2 points off his equipment the gloves are coming off.....he's on his on and I'll let him know it. I deal with enough real life idiots to have to put up with a few jerks on my off "Fun" off time. This shift to equipment damage might indirectly affect my "Fun" with the social DDO world so the question is......How much can I take before looking elsewhere???? Time will tell but as I see how many hits this thread has seen....this is change that will have a huge impact on the "FUN" factor for alot folks out there. Choose your path wisely Tubine because no matter how this pans out.....this thread is nothing compared to the thread you wont get when people finally say enough is enough and just bail.

[GlassCannon]

As I have been leveling up another toon on a second server, a cleric no less, I had forgotten how much people at mid and low levels really hate the xp loss for dieing.

The XP loss is MINISCULE.

If you lost an entire rank per death I would stop playing and go play Eve Online, as my playstyle involves a lot of tactics, strategy, and is impeded by bugs and server side melee errors regularly.

The current death penalty is very lenient. The new one is easy on powergamers and hard on newbies and casual gamers.

Oh, and do take Beginners English in college, would you please? It's difficult to read that brick of text(my eyes glaze over... it's late).

[ArkoHighStar]

Ok,

EL....

After almost 60 pages worth of posts; suggestions, gripes, complaints, etc..... How are the Dev's leaning on this issue? Has enough information been provided to give the community a glimpse as to where these PID and DP changes are going? Will there be changes, removal of PID changes, will they be kept as is?

A lot of people have read this thread and we almost have a 25 to 1 read ratio on this topic besides the 1100+ and growing posts. If you need more data; what types of specific data are you wanting/looking for?

they have indicated they like the sliding scale approach

which is

1st death 2%
2nd death 4%
3rd death 6%
4th death 8%
5th death 10%

There are 2 methods which have been proposed to have this work, one is increasin the max penalty from 3-5 by level as Trbine has it now, or do it by quest difficulty normal level 3, hard level 4, and elite level 5.

this is in conjunction with added in quest repair whi the devs like, but di not think will make it into mod 6 as it is a whole new system, but would work something like this, when shrining weapons would get repaired a certain amount based on highest repair skill close to the shrine, very similiar to how heal affects how many hps you regain now. the repairs will never bring you equipment ack to max duraility like a vendor would, but would lessen the amount of damage to your equi[ment such that when you went to the vendir there would be less to repair, thus less chance ast perm damage and money saved

[Hakushi]

Here's my results amongst 6 characters: (mostly 4, my cleric only did 3 raids so far, and my fighter 17)

The Vault of Night : 61
Against the Demon Queen : 39
The Twilight Forge : 104
The Reaver's Fate : 109
Accursed Ascension : 3



Amazing the /quest completions still lists mod 3 raid before mod 2 raid.

[Justicesar]

Quote: Glass Cannaon

"The XP loss is MINISCULE."

I agree on "Miniscule" but having ran mostly lv 14's on another server for the past year or so...it was a shock that anyone was complaining about the current DP.

[honkuimushi]

No offense to Mystic or Arko, but the most polite way I can describe my feelings anout the compromise is "putting lipstick on a pig." I believe this new system is fataly flawed. The compromises might make things just endurable enough to slow the exodus if this is introduced, but I see it remaining a low level annoyance and a constant drain. Some people have said that only those who have tested this on Risia can comment on this. I disagree. There have been posts with data from those who are testing, not everyone has to do it. Also, this is a large enough change that I think it is possible to devolp a solid argument based on the principles involved.

What people are seeing on Risia is 1 or 2 points of permadamage per death, in addition to half the current rate. That is a pretty significant increase. Also remember that permadamage is not a linear progression. Once you reach a certain threshold, the amount of permadamage taken increases. I remember threads with people complaining that they took one point of damage, repaired, then took 3 or 4 points of permadamage. I don't think Eladrin's last post really addressed the issue. People are not up in arms over permadamage per se, but only the vast increse in damage connected to death. I support adding binding to the game. I think some people will bind items to that they don't take permadamage from normal use. The removal of permadamage from things like raid loot is also a good idea. But when you introduce binding along with a massive increse in damage inflicted, it feels punitive.

I do think that XP debt was actually a pretty good translation from the level loss of PnP as applied to a much deadlier world. But I also see where it may prove impossible to scale. Earlier, Eladrin pointed out that the system adds a monetary cost to death. Let's run with that. Everyone has a use for money. Some have a lot, some have a little , but it is always useful. You use it to repair, buy consumables, buy things from the auction house, etc. So start making people pay for their rezes. I mentioned this before. No need to deal with all the hassle over items, if you die, pay the cost. If you die alot you may find yourself running out of gold, but gold is infinate. Do some easier quests to make some more cash. There are a few things to be worked out. I do think that the cost should scale by level to some extent, maybe by difficulty as well. Also, maybe make shrines and spells cheaper than recalling. You could also vary the cost per spell. True Ressuection should cost more than Raise Dead. Now there's the issue of what to do if people don't have the cash. Either charge them a percentage of current funds, or institute monetary debt. If that's not painful enough, make each level of the debuff last 5 minutes. You could also increase the rez cost in conjuction to the severity of the debuff. People pay a cost, but don't have to obsess that they're going to have massive damage to their weapons or are going to be naked soon.

XP and gold could both be considered commodities. Only the amount matters, not any individuality or source they might have. Items on the other hand are very different. As people have pointed out, there is no telling when or if you can replace an item that breaks. You may never find one. That is why I am opposed to any death penalty that is guaranteed to inflict item wear. If we have to replace the XP debt system, Gold is the most nearly analogous replacement.

People have also asked whe those opposed to this system will go if we cancel. I personally have lots of options. I bought Mask of the Betrayer recently, but I haven't had time to play it. I also have a Torment game I'm in the middle of. I picked up the Command and Conquer and Star Wars compilation's too. Then there's my DS. I play this game because i enjoy it and I will continue to play is so long as it's fun. This change makes playing less fun for me. I'm trying to let the devs know why and convince them to introduce a sytem that is more palatable to me, and it appears, several other people as well.

[ArkoHighStar]

Quote: Glass Cannaon

"The XP loss is MINISCULE."

I agree on "Miniscule" but having ran mostly lv 14's on another server for the past year or so...it was a shock that anyone was complaining about the current DP.

This is where the great divide occurs, to you, tekno and myself xp debt has a simple solution simpy play more and it is gone, so it is an acceptable price to be pay for death to us, as the solution is simple, and we would be playing anyway, so who cares if we have to do it over again to regain some xp. We generally play most days at an average of 3-4 hours at a time, so gaining back lost xp is trivial, and of course when we hit cap it is meaningless.

There is obviously another group of people out there that play less often, and generally with a small group of friends, in eother a small guild, or a static group. Believe it or not I a sure they make a sizable portion of the ddo community. But their average play time is measured in increments of 2 or 3 times a week not in hours per day, for them xp debt can mean a weeks worth of progress lost.

This was probably bolstered by the exit interviews of many players who echoed the same sentiment, so are they totally without foundation in this change no, but I think they are realizing as this thread progresses, that they are dealing with 2 types of players, one who will take anything over xp det, and the other who is happy with xp debt, and either dislike any change, or will acept xp debt's demise but think the proposed solution is just not a good one.

I think what a lot of us who prefer xp debt have to realize is that eventually sooner or later xp debt will become unbearable at a certain level, we saw this happen with the mod 3 fiasco, and eventually we would see it happen again as we hit lvl 18 or 20. The goal is to find that middle ground where all of us will be unhappy but we will all be satisfied, if that makes any sense.

So instead of simply railing against Turbine as some are doing I have tried to push the penalties to a place that will be less punitive for trailblazers but satisfies the devs urge to put some control into the item decay process, in other words dilute the original intent enough that it is a shadow of its former self, bu that shadow is at least big enough to cover everyone.

I think in quest repair is the solution to many of those opposing item damage, as it will mitigate most damage even if you haven't died leading to lower repair bills, and less overall perm damage in the long run.

I think the optional binding is still a great idea as it will alow people to ensure some of those coveted items stay in pristine shape, or do not get any worse(retribution anyone)

[MysticTheurge]

Eladrin,

I had another thought that might help make this change more palatable for people. Could you guys (i.e. Graal) finally go take a look at some of the random treasure generation mechanics and reduce the amount of just plain useless stuff that drops. Put caps and perhaps more importantly floors on what can and can't show up on stuff and various levels.

For example:

I'd much rather have +4 strength gloves than +4 strength gloves of Open Lock +3.
I'd much rather have a +5 heavy mace than a +5 heavy mace of Power I
I'd much rather have goggles of search +11 than +1 intelligence goggles Search +11.

Small skill bonuses, small power bonuses, small stat bonuses and a few other such item modifiers currently just serve to dilute the high-level items (and increase their MLs for no reason). They should be eliminated from the loot tables. I'd honestly rather have a "cheaper" item that just had the other modifier on it.

As the new system does appear that it will help move things out of circulation faster, this additional method of preventing them from entering circulation in the first place should be able to be toned down a bit.

[Yaga_Nub]

I guess I don't mind this idea of binding as a way to reduce the number of items and amount of money in the game.

But I hand stuff down a lot.

On one of the characters, I have a End-loot generated +4 Wisdom Necklace ML 2 that I got from STK. This made me start thinking of a bunch of different items that I have received as end loot rewards from those quests that have static loot associated with them. My necklace should be a ML 9 item. TR has the ability to give you +3 STR and DEX items that are ML 5 (possibly lower). The list goes on and on about bound end reward or Raid loot breaking the normal rules because it is a bound item.

I would like to propose that if I bind an item the ML on the item drops by 2. Yes we will be able to twink our characters more but if I'm binding an item to a character, I'm giving up a lot to do so. Having no permanent damage on a bound item is nice, sort of, but not worth what you give up IMHO.

[Eladrin]

Well I dont agree as I average around 30k gold each repair session

Can you post a complete list of the gear you're wearing? You're taking ten times the amount of repair costs as expected. Most level 16 characters have repair costs from one death at around 2.5k - 4k gold. (250-400 platinum.)

[Lorien_the_First_One]

EL....

After almost 60 pages worth of posts; suggestions, gripes, complaints, etc..... How are the Dev's leaning on this issue?

From the Risia thread:

With Mod 6, the odds of implementing many of the changes I would want to make are close to 100%. Wouldn't be very good gathering feedback if I couldn't do anything about it.

Larger systems, like Player-Repair, those are probably on a slightly longer timeline.

I'll let you know what will be changing once it's more concrete.

I thought my posts throughout the threads have been pretty clear at what I'm looking at as initial modifications, but I'm not ready to yet give specifics.

[bellack]

You don't loose XP - there is no Permanent loss of ANYTHING. Just a little time and some looted-coin will fix it all. And you can spend that time in-game.

With XP loss, those who are not capped and actually care about XP, permanently loose hours of gameplay. Either you run another quest and erase the debt with that, thereby actually loosing that xp forever, or you log out and don't play for 1 hour per 100 xp (or so, that is about what it seems like the recovery rate is, but not sure) and 'heal' the debt - and if you are higher level, healing 2,800 XP takes 28 Hours... loosing game time.
Either way, XP loss is something you NEVER really get back.

With the new system, you get it all back and loose maybe 5 min and a little coinage. Mabye 8 min if you count repair time.

Equipment is sturdy, they've decreased repair costs, decreased permanent damage possibilities, so unless you die on purpose a lot, just be a bit more careful and play better teamwork and don't die so much. You can always pick up more equipment. You can always pick up more coin from looting. Plus, if you are really worried about that one item taking enough (decreased chance) permanent damage that it is destroyed in six months, bind it and you don't run that risk.

Old system the Death Penalty was Permanent and non-recoverable. New system the Death Penalty is easily recoverable and 'wears off' a lot quicker.
(I would be fine with the debuff lasting longer even)

New Death Penalty is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better than loosing XP.

I prefer that death have a sting to it instead of the carebear 'penalty' that you seem to favor in the new system. XP is a good penalty. What would be nice is if they had the XP penalty with a debuff as well. Death should not be meaningless. Also I am against not having permanent equipment damage. Especially if this damage was the result of a slime or a rust monster hitting it. Repair cost should be affected by the haggling skill and bind equipment should be rare. (Quest rewards ONLY.)