A redressing of the Death Penalty and Cleric Raises
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Because I totally agree with what you're saying - but still feel the "niche" of your armor falling off in Ghosts and Goblins and you die with the second point of damage you take, wasn't even a fun niche when I was growing up - it was just designed to get another quarter out of me. :)
Yes, there's a reason the more obtuse or annoying mechanics are no longer around. Remember when you dropped your entire pack when you died? However that doesn't mean everything that inconveniences a player is bad. But I recognize that these days there's less time and patience for many more ''hardcore'' mechanics in games.
Personally I prefer the older style of game, and I think many here are the same. You're still playing Neverwinter Nights after all, right?
Even if death just tossed you back to the beginning of your current level, or to 9th level if you die at 10th level. That's a lot less suck, but still with consequences. But "consequences" honestly suck when you're trying to play a casual game; so what about adding fun or interest?
Is it 'fun' to lose your progress in a Dark Souls game? No, but that game is popular because it offers a sense of achievement, it isn't afraid to be challenging. I'm really just parroting myself now, but I stand by my previous points. If there's no penalty for losing, then all challenge is meaningless.
If my character can't de-level below 9 then nothing stops me from respawning until I win. I'll just stay level 9 I don't need 10. You know those dangerous ruins with the rare lore hidden behind scary foes? It won't be rare anymore because there's nothing to give me pause.
If players won't lose their levels there need to be other failure states preventing them from 'cheesing' the game.
I could disable respawning at your corpse so you're forced to run all the way back, or lock you out of a quest when you die. I could enable a growing 'wound' debuff that makes you so weak you're forced to stop playing until it's gone.
These are also not ''fun'' alternatives, but I am of the opinion that if you can't lose you also can't win.
Beyond that, there are ways to make death "meaningful" that encourage roleplay or a character to stick around as 'marked for dead' in the Fugue rather than a "consequence" of some bad die rolls .
What follows is a some brainstorming, but many of the ideas I think came from a "what if there were things to encourage death, give it meaning, and even encourage folks to hang out in the Fugue a little".
Permanent Consequences:
Player Reflection:
Memory Preservation:
Shared Pool Consequences:
Soul Transfer/Transformation:
Fugue Raid:
Respawns Matter:
Death Powers
The Power of Mourning
There's a lot of cool stuff here, and many of them are similar to stuff that's crossed my mind before.
But I'm giving a bit of a blanket response.
They are not appropriate for our setting or narrative.
At least not the current setting of Arabel. There's a lot worth discussing for the next chapter, and we'll be looking at creative suggestions like these.
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I agree and I've been there. It sucks to lose level 9-10 especially on a caster, but not losing levels or barely losing XP isn't an alternative. There needs to be a failure state and something to add risk to attempting the most difficult content.
I am open to alternatives to flat XP loss.
Suggestions like sharing XP penalties are good, because it means the party must retreat to make it happen. Adding consumables that lessen XP penalties for respawning are also fine, because they give value to gold and trading as they're mostly relevant to high levels. In this case you are spending your gold instead of losing a lot of XP.
But you need to spend something for dying and it can't be inconsequential.
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I also like the idea of maybe high level quests having an extremely rare chance to drop raise dead consumables the are less harsh on the XP penalty. If the worry is that people will hoard them.... that is assuming the person who dies isn't the one actually hoarding them, and even if they did..... it LESSENS the pain not eliminates it and it incentivizes doing all those "NOPE" quests that people wont touch currently.
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This may fundamentally be a difference in opinion of the reason why people play this game and what they are hoping to achieve.
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To not derail the discussion (it's how we got to the current situation of death penalty being high and everyone disagreeing on how to fix it)
I just want that penalty lowered as in-between solution.
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In my opinion, the most INFURIATING thing about the whole system is the duration it takes to get back. It can take weeks or - in more extreme cases - months to get back where the character had been before the death. It's off puting. Once I was exploring a cave system and due to three wyverns spawning, my char died. Another case: the damned scorpion at the end of the DM event. I lost well over 10k exp and these two deaths set me back to 8th lvl. Sure, I could grind that back (and with luck, not die in the process), but the question is: what then? The matter is: a split of a second can waste weeks of gathering exp. It took the scorpion one round to send Ithirina to the fugue. And here's the question: why should a 10th lvl char even participate in DM quests, why should a 10th lvl char explore the world, make notes etc. if all of that can waste weeks of the player's IRL time?
I don't want death to have no consequences RP or mechanics-wise. One of the reasons Cormyr and the Dalelands didn't win me over was its absolutely no punishments for death. You woke up with I think 100exp less on your char sheet and that's it. So what CatD represents is another extreme of the spectrum. A good death system should stay away from extremes and it should be well balanced. There SHOULD be consequences for dying, but not that severe.
Ultimately, I think what truly puts people off is what the system implies. Dying on this server means that weeks of your progress are as good as gone. It's far too severe to be enjoyable. I know the premise of the server; death has to have consequences and that's something I agree with. BUT NOT THAT SEVERE. I don't want such a period of time gone due to something which may not even be my fault (for expample, I once died due to a lag on another char)
My solutions? If the system is to stay, at the very least double or even triple XP rewards for quests, don't get of exp for mobs completely or do something which accelerates getting back. Or another proposition: if someone does a quest for the first time, give them more XP for that (maybe 1k, maybe 1.5k and each and every time they do it again - it gets back to normal). It'd greatly incentivise players not to grind the same quest over and over again, but to explore.
Ultimately, players want to immerse themselves, to simply relax a bit with other players or just to have some fun. A guillotine hanging above anyone who dares to leave the Faceless is not fun.
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"Is it 'fun' to lose your progress in a Dark Souls game? No, but that game is popular because it offers a sense of achievement, it isn't afraid to be challenging. I'm really just parroting myself now, but I stand by my previous points. If there's no penalty for losing, then all challenge is meaningless." - but on the other hand, Dark Souls lets you get back on your feat relatively quickly and - more imporatantly - doesn't take what it has already given. I can guarantee that it'd not have as big a fanbase it has now if it forced to basically play all over again after a boss had killed you. I feel that what makes people angry is not the punishment itself, but the way the server is constructed, which basically makes returning to former power a boring, overtly long grind.
There should be consequensces, with that I agree. I believe everyone agrees. But not constructed like that.
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Debt system. 😏
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Only issues is at level 9 and 10 the debt system does nothing. It's a non-issue. Might as well die a 100000 times to finish a quest at level 10 if you just incur a debt.
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Yeah. Unfortunately that is one major flaw. It loses its effectiveness at max level. If we can figure out something that works though it's not a bad idea. :D
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Dark Souls systems also has mechanics in place to get you back up to speed quickly. Rather sophisticated mechanics.
The first is recovering your body. If you are able to get back to your body and recover it then you retrieve ALL of your souls back, no loss at all.
Secondly is that you are able to bank your souls at the campfire. you would NEVER venture out from the campfire with 20,000 souls in play. You would SPEND those souls at your campfire to up your base stats. Which CANNOT be taken from you on level loss.
So as much as you like to parrot the difficulty of Dark Souls, there are systems in place to make sure that it is both fair and engaging.
Yes Dark Souls is "hard", but it isnt cruel. It will not rob you of your progression for falling to its challenges. -
isnt that a single-player game where you play the main character?
arabel is a multiplayer game where no one (and everyone?) is the main character
systems that work for single-player arent going to translate to a multiplayer persistent worldthat said, the death penalty stuff is under discussion in the DM forums and we'll make an announcement when a decision is reached
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@Echo
I didnt bring up the comparisons to Dark Souls.
Voss did -
never said you did
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The DM Team appreciates all the input in this thread. We have discussed several options to make death more "fun", ways of implementing some of the "death mechanics" suggested here, and the challenge of balancing the 'consequence' of dying with the "fun" of story progression. Due to the intensive restructuring of the death system and the implementation of new features that will need more than just a "bandaid fix" that could be done in the short-term, any changes to the death system will be included in the next Chapter of the server, at such point in time that it is released.
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@Echo Considering we just lost another player to the death penalty what's the update on finally lowering it BACK to the PREVIOUS percentage of 15% so we don't look like we might as well whitelight your PC and start over for all the shit you lose?
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@Zolm Did they quit because they died, or did they quit because the exp penalty was 5% or whatever more than the desired 15% change?
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@Swifty-Willownall Mate. The respawn penalty is 25%. I am not respawning upon death anymore either.
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@Zolm Could you do me a favor and point to me where it lists the exp penalty on the forum? I did a search and all I could find was this thing back in 2019.
https://nodebb.cityofarabel.com/topic/47159/incorrect-xp-penalty-for-respawn?_=1734771627005 -
@Swifty-Willownall I honestly don't know where they actually posted it beyond possibly in the thread where the disaster happened or in the changelog in announcements.