Arelith

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:28 pm**

I still think the death penalties are awful. like, painfully, "i can't really think of a way to do it that's not both less fun and less interesting, even permadeath, which this server isn't balanced for."

we have several times the XP gain that we used to have back when the respawns were "painful," but now when you die from, say, a missclick, you can go ahead and shelf your character for hours because you can't do anything anymore. what we had before was an incentive to not die, and what we have now is putting you in time out because "lol."

just giving feedback. hate is a weak word for how i feel about arelith's death penalty system.

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:37 pm**

I don't mind the penalties to STR, CON, and DEX so much, it should take your character some time to recover from dying. The annoying part though is when you're playing a caster and you lose spell slots due to penalties to INT, WIS, or CHA. Then you have to prepare spells all over again and rest. If you forget to you might find yourself in the middle of another dungeon later not having prepared that spell you need against the boss you're fighting. Then you find yourself in the fugue all over again. The only thing I'd really change is removing the penalties to your mind/caster stats so it doesn't wipe our bonus spell slots every time we die.

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:25 pm**

I've noticed a growing tendency to just log after a PvE death and the consecutive respawn. Not sure if that is the intended goal.

In my opinion, there should be some incentive to continue playing, or simply a significantly shorter duration for penalties caused by a PvE death.

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:00 pm**

The hardest thing I've noticed when playing a caster is that after death, rest is set to 25%.

So even if you log out to wait out the timer, that's still a good long while when you're back (or at low levels with hardly any timer) before you can refresh spell slots.

Setting rest to 0% after death would do a lot, I think, to help with some of the slog.

Granted, I've never had issues with death timers, as I take that time to rp or work on crafting or w/e, but the rest thing is the biggest hurdle when it comes to PvE enjoyment.

Of course then there's the balance thing. Casters are already hugely powerful and I know of some people who have done the "I need to scry people so I'm going to drink a ton and rest and then die so my rest is set lower and then continue as before, rinse, repeat" and the last thing I want to do is support that.

EDIT: even if you wanted to wait out the 25% rest going lower with rp, you can't even just hang out in a tavern since rest doesn't lower in those places

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:08 pm**

Arelith has a very kind death-penalty to be honest. If you play on other servers they often have full-inventory drop on death and you can lose several levels if you respawn.

I prefer the easier death penalty, but you do find that as a result, Arelith players will always rush ahead into danger without much thought. On other servers I have seen groups wait for the scout to check ahead every time, prepare a strategy, lay traps and communicate with each other a great deal more because of the higher risk.

If you are having trouble with the difficulty, you can do your writs in a large group which tends to make it very easy. You can also take writs where you are at the highest level in the range. Finally, there are builds such as summoners which have a very easy time of the server, and can solo the vast majority of content.

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:09 pm**

Halibutthead wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:28 pm we have several times the XP gain that we used to have back when the respawns were "painful," but now when you die from, say, a missclick, you can go ahead and shelf your character for hours because you can't do anything anymore. what we had before was an incentive to not die, and what we have now is putting you in time out because "lol."

To add on to this perspective, when I get home from work, I have about 5 hours before bedtime. After about midlevel, this is an hour to an hour and a half - one full fifth of playtime in a given day where you're not really able to go dungeoning.

I'm not going to say this gently - it sucks. It sucks less than it did before Strength was exempted from the penalties, but it's still a massive drag.

Well, unless you're a wizard. Wizards can even solo just fine after a death - all they need is a GSF Conjuration water elemental, or some mummies. Or a warlock with a pit fiend. Everyone else though? No AB for you. HP drop. In a lot of cases, AC drop.

I know death isn't supposed to be fun, but this sort of not fun de incentivizes playing until the penalty is up. This is a problem for players that don't derive enjoyment from alts.

NPC Logger Number 2 wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:37 pm I don't mind the penalties to STR, CON, and DEX so much, it should take your character some time to recover from dying. The annoying part though is when you're playing a caster and you lose spell slots due to penalties to INT, WIS, or CHA. Then you have to prepare spells all over again and rest. If you forget to you might find yourself in the middle of another dungeon later not having prepared that spell you need against the boss you're fighting. Then you find yourself in the fugue all over again. The only thing I'd really change is removing the penalties to your mind/caster stats so it doesn't wipe our bonus spell slots every time we die.

In the craft menu, there is a way to mitigate this with a pre-saved spellbook. After death, go to the craft menu, saved spellbooks, and you're good after a rest.

Now, in the past, ALL stats were drained. What this meant in a practical sense though was that when you respawned, most characters ended up heavily encumbered. This meant that it'd take an extremely long time to go from the Arcane Tower respawn point from the portal, and then an even longer time to get to wherever you're going to wait out the Please Stop Playing status. It was awful. You can simulate what this was like if you're curious: next time you die, turn on detect mode and stealth mode, and see how much fun you have dragging yourself to a rest spot.

Kalopsia wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:25 pm I've noticed a growing tendency to just log after a PvE death and the consecutive respawn. Not sure if that is the intended goal.

In my opinion, there should be some incentive to continue playing, or simply a significantly shorter duration for penalties caused by a PvE death.

I don't think it's the intended goal, but it's certainly how I feel. Emoting "Ugh, I'm pale and shaky and confused" repeatedly becomes boring very quickly. There's a reason we don't emote *saws on logs* or *polishes rocks* every time we craft. It's repetitive and dull. Further incentive to, as you noted, just log out or play an alt.

Eira wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:00 pm The hardest thing I've noticed when playing a caster is that after death, rest is set to 25%.

So even if you log out to wait out the timer, that's still a good long while when you're back (or at low levels with hardly any timer) before you can refresh spell slots.

Become an alcoholic like every other caster. Death also resets sobriety, so chug four bottles of spirits, to get you down below 20 percent rest. Five, if you don't mind being drunk until you rest.

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:48 pm**

DangerDolphin wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:08 pm If you are having trouble with the difficulty, you can do your writs in a large group which tends to make it very easy. You can also take writs where you are at the highest level in the range. Finally, there are builds such as summoners which have a very easy time of the server, and can solo the vast majority of content.

it's not really a matter of difficulty (though a feedback thread just isn't complete without someone coming in to say gitgud), and i'm not in any way saying that death is unavoidable. my issue lies along the same vein as what Best Rich Face is saying.

now, we can argue about realism, or better ways to handle it, or ways to avoid it, or ways that things have been abused in the past, but I didn't intend to really throw out any suggestions, as I'm positive that you contributors have ideas. I just wanted to voice that "the current system has the tendency to remind me how much more fun other games/servers are," which is usually not the goal. don't mistake it for grabbing my torch and pitchfork, either. it's more of a sleeve tugging "hey, mister..."

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:23 pm**

Leveling is not always fun either, but I think it, and the death penalty are both important parts of the arelith ecosystem unless we decide to just let people pick what level they are going to be.

Posted: **Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:32 pm**

I guess I could see an option to 'pay off' a respawn debuff with a large amount of xp so you can get back to grinding. It is an RP server though, so you could also go do some RP, or go do an easy area while it's on.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:08 am**

I'd happily pay a level or two of xp on death to avoid the "Go sit in the corner for a few hours and think about what you have done" penalty, which is much worse as it eats into my limited game time.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:38 am**

DangerDolphin wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:32 pm I guess I could see an option to 'pay off' a respawn debuff with a large amount of xp so you can get back to grinding. It is an RP server though, so you could also go do some RP, or go do an easy area while it's on.

That's a very kind idea, but the removal of every other way to lose xp (because we as Arelithians found a way to make losing xp a way to game the system) suggests that we're not quite responsible enough to benefit from it without that getting taken away, too.

I'm not necessarily opposed, mind you, but then again, the death penalties don't bother me. I'm not losing levels, and I come from PNP land where our losses relative to that are completely laughable, imo- and I get to play about twice in two weeks, if I'm lucky.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:27 am**

I think death penalties are in a good spot considering the alternatives...but yeah, you do pretty much log off until the penalties are gone. Which...might not be the worst thing in the world, really, to have killed characters be noticeably absent for a while.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:33 am**

Wethrinea wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:08 am I'd happily pay a level or two of xp on death to avoid the "Go sit in the corner for a few hours and think about what you have done" penalty, which is much worse as it eats into my limited game time.

As someone who sometimes only had an hour or two to play before logging.
The harsher death penalty at all the exp I gained all week. I much rather log off and atttend to real life than try to grind back my exp. If i lost a level or two in epics id just quit as id lose weeks of my life lol

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:57 pm**

Ironically, we've come full circle.

1. leveling HARD, losing thousands of XP BAD, PvP is for JERKS
2. WRITS ARE GREAT, death isn't meaningful, there are no consequences!!!
3. ???
4. consequences SUCK, i just want to play, PVP IS ENDGAME CONTENT, i don't care about xp because WRITS

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:11 pm**

Once again I will offer my very unpopular opinion in this matter.

Death penalties should go. Exp lose should be increased (on respawn) and really, death should serve a slightly bigger "hit" to the mechanical progress of the character. Yeah, I get all the counter arguments I've heard to this, and I respect them and understand them. But I think ultimately, no matter how you look at it - progress = time invested in the game, and whether or not you gotta sit in town and RP/logout rather than continue adventuring after taking a bigger hit to your exp is ultimately the same factor - progress vs time.

Leveling is also way way too fast in general and characters come and go way too fast for my taste to make them memorable and make the game immersive. this also cheapens death, indirectly

For now, just make alts so you can go do a writ on your alt while your main is 'dead'.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:44 pm**

i think SSoS has a point, but i'm not sure if he's willfully ignoring that no one is arguing for "no" or "less" consequences, simply different ones (XP cost is being thrown around a lot, because that was the old default).

though i wonder how unpopular AstralUniverse's opinion is, since i pretty much agree with everything he said.

i think the dislike of XP loss by very vocal members of the community, basically boil down to loss aversion. I've been looking for a particular video about it for the past 2 hours, without any luck (it's old, and there are a lot of videos) that showcased a particular dungeon-crawler game. In this game, you would receive your "loot" at the end of the dungeon, BUT if you didn't pay (with premium currency, with real money), you would "lose" some of it. the reality was, you never had it in the first place, so you didn't have anything to lose, but the *idea* of losing something was enough to, demonstrably, increase sales of their currency. I wish i'd have found the video, because it explains the concept a lot better than i can.

in other words, earning $10 is cool! but earning $13 and immediately losing 3$ is horrifying to a person, even sometimes when they can objectively see that it's the exact same scenario.

i think the same is happening to people at the loss of XP. currently, you don't actually lose any XP if you die. i can hear you now, "but butthead! it says so on my character sheet!" but that lost XP can be regained by sitting on the server and literally doing nothing at all, other than being tabbed in and moving around, within the time it takes for your stats to return. What you do actually lose is *time,* which to anyone who can objectively look at a game where they've clocked more than 100 hours, can tell you is far, far more valuable than any number on the character sheet. This is absolutely a consequence, make no mistake, and can/will cost you far more in the game than even losing, say, 100xp/character level on respawn.

This, taken into consideration, means that death has meaning, which is ideal, right? the issue that i have is that sitting in the corner just isn't fun, which is what we're all playing video games for (well, most of us. some people do it to fullfil a power fantasy, but that's beyond the scope of this essay here. I'm focused on the people who want to play an ARPG while remaining in character, and telling a story with friends and strangers (who are also friends by merit of playing together in such a niche community)).

now, pvp deaths aren't my interest, as I don't do a lot of pvp. I did back in the earlier days, prior to the hyperspeed leveling, community explosion, and meta shift on Arelith to the point that *everyone* builds for pvp, even at the cost of pve or utility. I want to focus on PvE deaths.

in pve, you are ultimately killed (and have to respawn) by a few factors. 1.) you were unlucky. 2.) you were pushing your limits, and this time it didn't work out. or 3.) your friends aren't online, so you were soloing.

barring n00bishness and DM Titania, both of which are temporary situations, these are really the main things that are going to send you to the fugue (inb4 Titania, who has never made me respawn, but i wanted to poke at that because of how many times i've died by their hand). I don't feel a time out is really warranted for them, even as a consequence. But ultimately, this is just my opinion.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:00 pm**

10 life MoD on all PvP deaths resulting in a respawn. Just to see people squirm about having to accept the consequences of their character's actions.

Otherwise remove all death penalties.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:10 pm**

Jack Oat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:00 pm 10 life MoD on all PvP deaths resulting in a respawn. Just to see people squirm about having to accept the consequences of their character's actions.

Otherwise remove all death penalties.

Seconded, but no more corpsebashing. I am very serious.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:17 pm**

Yes, because replacing poorly executed RP with poorly executed PvP would be an improvement

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:25 pm**

-XXX- wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:17 pm Yes, because replacing poorly executed RP with poorly executed PvP would be an improvement

Yes. The difference is one lasts many years and ruins many encounters. The other has those same characters gone within 7-10 business days of crummy RP.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:36 pm**

The GrumpyCat wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2020 12:07 pm I don't think many people like to own up to being MoD, for fear (often unfounded but not always) of people picking them out - especialy if they're well known and deliberatly trying to kill them perminently.
(For the record, if I do discvoer players actually trying to do this, I will shove the ban hammer so far down their throats they'll be eating their own teeth)
To find people of a similar style to you own, I just suggest rping with a wide vareity of people, and watching how they rp death and such. That should give you an indication! As with many play styles, it's just dipping your feet in the water and seeing what happens!

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:41 pm**

What I think Jack was trying to say was that these people will be, constantly, getting themselves into stupid RP situations, where the only way out is PvP, which ends in their death. Rinse and repeat a few times and they are permadead.

I don't believe he was, at all, implying that we can (or even insinuating that anyone should be) purposefully killing characters with MoDs just to permakill them.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:50 pm**

People are getting MoDs these days just for being active roleplayers in places that the DMs don't want them to be, and the announcement of these policies means that everyone on the server knows this to be the case when they see someone who fits the auto-MoD criteria. That fact makes GrumpyCat's words of empathy towards the plight of the Marked ring a bit hollow, honestly.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 6:13 pm**

Jack Oat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:00 pm 10 life MoD on all PvP deaths resulting in a respawn. Just to see people squirm about having to accept the consequences of their character's actions.

Otherwise remove all death penalties.

I'd only agree to this if subdual 'downed' states were more common, and the action of killing a PC in PvP is super deliberate rather than a "ooops" or a "waaah what happened." Especially when it comes to the cacophony of big team battles.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 6:23 pm**

The notion that poor RP on one character won't transition into the next character is flawed. Rather than forced character deletion, a DM intervention is what might be more effective in such cases. Also it's the DMs who are the arbiters of when (and if) such intervention is needed, NOT the players.

Because that's essentially the idea behind what Jack Oat suggested - that players ought to have the power to permanently delete the characters of other players if they don't like their RP. Furthermore, it would also imply that only the true hard core number crunching PGCC munchkin "GitGud" PvP connoisseurs deserve to wield this power.

Bottom line - doing your math homework doesn't make your RP any better or more valid. Nor does it make you more competent in judging the RP quality of others.

Arelith

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