New Death Penalty

[Hunter548]

none of the bugs and exploits in PvP

if there's a bug or an exploit that's being abused in pvp and you're reporting it then either A) something is being done, or B) it's not a bug or an exploit

[Aftond]

I just have one question, does the pvp counter increase from the /Death/ or the /Revival/ when you use the soul gate?

[susitsu]

Death penalties don't mean you can't RP? I don't see how it makes a massive problem for people on an RP server.

i love seeing these posts

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Can't make people roleplay how you want. Arelith has some sort of perverse idea where the burden of enjoyment rests on the other players, not on yourself.

Basically this.

I haven't seen death roleplayed any differently, regardless of the consequences. I am skeptical this is actually going to do anything.

(also, we keep talking about it - but what is roleplaying death appropriately? Like what are you people expecting? Because I assure you, I have neither time nor patience to be a cripple ad nauseam ever time I get crit'd by a Bugbear Warrior.)

[Quoth]

Do you see any rules about the bugs and exploits because I don't.

The game is ancient so it's not like they are even new. A) So either nothing has been done or B) The team behind making the rules has ignored them completely and C) Most of these aren't visible from a screenshot so it's not like sending a screenshot of them helps has to be seen in game at the exact time it's happening to be proven. D) Pinging the DM channel while you're dying isn't a solution

Backstepping with S key. running in circles to avoid being hit while chugging potions. Hit and running. (attacking and fleeing within 6 seconds as an archer or caster) all those mentioned break the system exploiting the 6 second combat system the game has as well as the pathing system in place. These are bugs and exploits of the NWN game engine and not one mention about exploiting these is in the rules.

Edit: just checked the rules. No these are neither mentioned nor are bugs and exploits of this nature addressed

[RedGiant]

As yet another sign of the apocalypse, I totally agree with the OP and ICEBORN, and REALLY like the idea of the mutual XP hit and investment to PvP.

To add to his rationale, I also think any system which literally encourages players to switch characters/play even more alts, as this is bound to do, is fundamentally opposite the direction we should want to go.

i.e. this...

i have plenty of other characters to play while the sickness goes down.

[Dr_Hazard89]

Tell me more about these exploits.

For reasons.

[Trunx]

Tell me more about these exploits.

For reasons.

He already told you. Back step with the S key. This grievous exploit wins all of his PvPs for him. DMs hate him.

[Quoth]

I've won 2 out of 5 PvP events I've had in 2 years

Though DMs may possibly still hate me

[Twily]

My biggest issue with this: When bad things happen to good adventurers(tm)

I'm sure almost every one of us has at least one story of a time they were roflstomped against the rules and insta-corpse bashed. This change makes this more painful for the victim and more rewarding for the troll.
And sure, you can say report it: And I do report it when it happens, but due to "When bad things happen to good adventurers" DMs aren't able to do ANYTHING to help remedy the pain the victim feels. The victim still has to wait out the respawn timer, as well as the respawn penalties. And these just got that much worse.

If DMs were allowed to res a victim when a rule breach such as this occurs(or shorten the respawn penalties, or something), I'd have literally no issue with the changes, but making trolling more rewarding for the troll and more painful for the victim does concern me, regardless of whether or not it's "allowed" by server rules, because it happens either way.

[Quoth]

My biggest issue with this: When bad things happen to good adventurers(tm)

I'm sure almost every one of us has at least one story of a time were roflstomped against the rules and insta-corpse bashed. This change makes this more painful for the victim and more rewarding for the troll.
And sure, you can say report it: And I do report it when it happens, but due to "When bad things happen to good adventurers" DMs aren't able to do ANYTHING to help remedy the pain the victim feels. The victim still has to wait out the respawn timer, as well as the respawn penalties. And these just got that much worse.

If DMs were allowed to res a victim when a rule breach such as this occurs(or shorten the respawn penalties, or something), I'd have literally no issue with the changes, but making trolling more rewarding for the troll and more painful for the victim does concern me, regardless of whether or not it's "allowed" by server rules, because it happens either way.

This. All of This(as in I agree)

[Astral]

First, no system will ever be good enough to represent the Death aspect of the game when people always throw complaints like "losing exp or sitting in town for 2 hours or logging an alt don't contribute to RP" and the like.
For as long as people want to play the game without any lose to their precious RL time/emotional investment sometimes, death will never be taken seriously. You simply traded exp lose for time lose. That's pretty much the same thing though, at the end of the day.

From my many years of experience here, when you lose time/exp for death, you enjoy the game more. Anyone saying otherwise should go play sims (joking but you get my idea)


If you truly want the death aspect of the game to be felt, you need the death aspect to be intimidating and involve lose of resources and time. So you doubled the respawn penalty time and I'm pretty sure the problem will persist as it is now. My humble opinion, we'll see.

[Quoth]

Just a thought regarding giving death meaning

The best interaction I had with death in an RP setting is version 3 of CoA. when you died you lost -everything- your gear, your gold and depending on your level up to 2 levels and then some. if you respawned you respawned naked with not a coin on you. you could do so at your corpse but then run the risk of dying again trying to get your gear back. (the max level was 12, 13 if a DM liked you there wasn't spawn after spawn of monsters to go level back up either it could take weeks and days to gain those levels back(provided you don't get killed again))

However even getting raised cost you XP. without a cleric to do so meant needing an NPC it cost around 1k gold(1k is a lot on that server at the time) for resurrection it was around 2k gold and still a large xp loss but not as much as a raise and was the only way to raise a mangled corpse. then true resurrection which could raise you without a body costing 10k gold and a diamond gem(both impossible without DM controlled faction realistically at the time) and one of 3 NPCs across the entire server. still had an xp loss and you didn't have your gear and gold

This was a bitter and harsh approach to death, it was crippling even. it also meant PvP was tightly managed(you needed a dm to watch the event otherwise it wasn't allowed(Rather PvP where you kill over subdue) and had to have a very good reason why you were going to kill someone.(A DM had to agree with your reason) So this stopped griefing instantly also stopped rule breaking in PvP

However with this punishment in place for dying even in a dungeon, gods save you if you were alone in the wilds. you were scared of dying and thus death had a very real and impactful meaning when you died so the player felt the weight of the ultimate loss and it's consequences weren't changed from monster spawns to players. death was death.

That is one implemented system of punishing death where it had a tangle effect and thus gave meaning to PC death I've never seen anything that's done less than that work in giving death meaning.

However for such to work and not instantly drive every player away the PvP rules would need revising before it would ever be implemented. They'd need to be a lot stricter and set in stone but to work on for a case where death has meaning that's the only time I've seen it given proper meaning server wide without exception.

[Iceborn]

While that's a perfectly valid approach to death...
There are many servers with permadeath or hardcore penalties, but I don't really see the same working in Arelith.

[ArcanaFTW]

I'd recommend the change that if the loser of PVP is at least five levels behind the victor, the penalty is minimalised, with epics excluded so that 21 - 30 levelled players are treated as if they are on the same ground.

[Durvayas]

My biggest issue with this: When bad things happen to good adventurers(tm)

I'm sure almost every one of us has at least one story of a time were roflstomped against the rules and insta-corpse bashed. This change makes this more painful for the victim and more rewarding for the troll.
And sure, you can say report it: And I do report it when it happens, but due to "When bad things happen to good adventurers" DMs aren't able to do ANYTHING to help remedy the pain the victim feels. The victim still has to wait out the respawn timer, as well as the respawn penalties. And these just got that much worse.

If DMs were allowed to res a victim when a rule breach such as this occurs(or shorten the respawn penalties, or something), I'd have literally no issue with the changes, but making trolling more rewarding for the troll and more painful for the victim does concern me, regardless of whether or not it's "allowed" by server rules, because it happens either way.

This. All of This(as in I agree)

The above is the basis of my concern for this new change.

Trolls now have even more incentive to use gank squads to killbash people they don't like, and the system actively encourages this new form of griefing. Since if you can successfully organize a PvP campaign over time(easy, thanks to the 24 hour rule, and the fact this system takes 4+ days to reset), you can almost effortlessly ensure that any time your group ganks someone, they stay unable to respawn for 1 hour, and then carry the full death penalty debuff for(((lvl30)/3)*2*4)=)80 ticks( and its 10 ticks an hour)up to 8 RL hours.

Rules of engagement violations and 1 line RP before PvP are even more rewarding than they've ever been before. This is gold for toxic players.

Its never been easier to make it agony for another player to play their character after ganking them than it is today. At high level PvP, you can convince any player with a job to just hang up their PC for the day. 1 hour to respawn and then up to 8 before they can dungeon normally with stats, and god forbid they get jumped by another PC for PvP during those 8 hours.

[Nightglory]

I hope this will be reconsidered, or at least reworked. While it is an interesting mechanical system, and a lot of work was likely put into it, it doesn't seem to be a very good idea in practice. It discourages people to seek out conflict and will only breed spite when you are PvP'd without much RP or by a much stronger character.

Two reasons in particular makes me think it is a bad idea:
1: The PVP death counter refreshes every time you die, even if it is close to expiring. This is bound to be frustrating.
2: The penalties only count IG time before they expire. This means that someone who has been killed a lot will have to spend upwards to 8(!) RL hours in game, doing nothing but roleplaying in their quarter. (Unless of course they want to risk their 8 hour penalties and their 5 days being refreshed by going outside). Likely they just would not play for 5 days, which risks them losing interest in the character or even the server.

Yes, that is an extreme example, but it is a possibility. My suggestion is to keep the longer respawn time for PvP, but don't have harsher penalties for characters who have died several times. It only serves to encourage griefing. I know that the rules are still in place, but there are several borderline cases where you are PvPed with a bare minimum of RP. Normally, such instances are easy to shrug off, but I worry about the implications with this system.

[Kuma]

This feels like a change for a problem that didn't really exist, I'm not gonna lie.

Also, I'm one of those people that logs off for the duration of respawn sickness, because it makes playing utterly, prohibitively painful for me. Roleplaying being unable to walk and losing all my spell slots has never been compelling to me, at all.

EDIT

The death penalties will remain for an X ingame hours, which you really have to be online for. Offline hours won't count. Offline hours do count for the pvp counter.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA NOPE SCREW THIS

[Dunshine]

I've won 2 out of 5 PvP events I've had in 2 years

I'm sorry, but this really made me smile. You're all over the forum about this change, and you've experienced 5 PVP situations in 2 years?

Addressing some concerns, we will give DMs the tool to tweak the penalties. So in case bad things happen to good adventurers, this is covered.

From reading all posts so far you'd get the idea people are getting killbashed in PVP all over the place, but how often do you really experience it? Rest assured that we will be tracking PVP happy players, and uphold them to the be nice rule more actively.

[Irongron]

I suspect this change makes it more pressing that we make far more out of the fugue, as I've indicated I'd like to do in the past. Perhaps linking it to the shadow plane and just generally giving it more of a planescape torment flavour.

While I definitely understand the rationale behind the update, and ultimately gave it my blessing, I don't think as game designers making changes that encourage people to actually stop playing is a great direction to take.

My instinct isn't that it should be reversed, but that the death environment should be every bit as rich as the main game.

[Kuma]

I suspect this change makes it more pressing that we make far more out of the fugue, as I've indicated I'd like to do in the past. Perhaps linking it to the shadow plane and just generally giving it more of a planescape torment flavour.

While I definitely understand the rationale behind the update, and ultimately gave it my blessing, I don't think as game designers making changes that encourage people to actually stop playing is a great direction to take.

My instinct isn't that it should be reversed, but that the death environment should be every bit as rich as the main game.

Reverse it.

Make death compelling.

THEN release it.

[susitsu]

The death penalties will remain for an X ingame hours, which you really have to be online for. Offline hours won't count. Offline hours do count for the pvp counter.

im sorry what

kuma speaks for the trees.

I am one of those tREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEs

[Durvayas]

If that were the case, that'd be a bit better, but ultimately, I'm certain people aren't looking to RP with their character mechanically crippled for many hours at a time(Most already just log).

If such a change to the fugue is not ready, most of the damage to the servers playerbase in the form of people quitting is going to happen well before those changes are ready, especially if people who have limited time are forced to stay online and RP their death debuff timers, a decidedly unfun thing to do when we'd all rather be creating conflict or running dungeons with our friends.

There are other, more fun things for us to do with our limited time that is not spent sleeping or working than spending it RPing in the hub or the nomad while watching everyone else go about having a grand old time, mostly in the form of other games to play.

[Nightglory]

Addressing some concerns, we will give DMs the tool to tweak the penalties. So in case bad things happen to good adventurers, this is covered.

From reading all posts so far you'd get the idea people are getting killbashed in PVP all over the place, but how often do you really experience it? Rest assured that we will be tracking PVP happy players, and uphold them to the be nice rule more actively.

Even if it can be adjusted by DM's, I don't understand why you have to punish players who get PVP'd several times. It will make otherwise fun and meaningful PvP annoying if it happens not long after another PvP instance.
If it isn't that common to see multiple PvP fights in a few days time, why do we need this aspect of the new death system? It essentially rewards repeated attacks against a person and might serve to make it more common. We don't need to give players more motivation to play either non confrontative social characters or melee palemasters.

[Seekeepeek]

I suspect this change makes it more pressing that we make far more out of the fugue, as I've indicated I'd like to do in the past. Perhaps linking it to the shadow plane and just generally giving it more of a planescape torment flavour.

While I definitely understand the rationale behind the update, and ultimately gave it my blessing, I don't think as game designers making changes that encourage people to actually stop playing is a great direction to take.

My instinct isn't that it should be reversed, but that the death environment should be every bit as rich as the main game.

meh.. i have no interest role-playing with people in fugue if i can't remember any of the events that happened there. what's the point of making it an awesome experience if you can't remember it when your toon wake up? O.o

i kinda have enough issues remembered sometimes what and who my characters know. sometimes it blur. don't want more added to that pile.