Vanguard to change the death penalty

[Soygen]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

when the hard cold facts are those people didn't give a shit about that before, so why should they now?

I don't think it's fair to say they didn't give a shit about it. I think, if anything, they completely underestimated the player base and thought that the content would buy them time in getting things up to speed before players got to the broken and incomplete shit.

[Oloh]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Those developers are now in charge of YOUR company.

Just to set the record straight for folks following along. "My company" is a law firm. In that capacity, I do work for quite a few video game companies, including Sigil.

I do not work for Sigil. I play Sigil's game a lot, as I do Blizzard's games and SOE's games and NCSoft's games, and a ton of other company's games. To say that I work for Sigil is a gross overstatement.

[Wodin]

Originally Posted by ilian

So you couldnt kill it the first time, but now with your best loot gone, you can!

You kill it with vendor gear you don't care about losing, and break out the raid loot for special occasions or content you don't have to worry about.

The confusion I'm currently having is that almost every encounter that they've described(things like hacking your way to the bottom of the dungeon and getting an Advanced Encounter Path to summon the Lich King and fight it) have sounded like situations where you would not be able to control the physical environment where you encounter the mob. If you can pull Onyxia from her lair into the middle of Dustwallow Marsh, then no, the CR penalty isn't a big deal. But I think it's a reasonable assumption that you won't be able to do that with VG raid mobs, so I guess I fail to see how melee are ever going to retrieve their corpses.

Are there rogue or monk corpse retrieval capabilities that nobody has mentioned yet? I know EQ used /consent and /drag as the way out.

[Etadanik]

You kill it with vendor gear you don't care about losing, and break out the raid loot for special occasions or content you don't have to worry about.

Actually, the better strategy is to test the mob with vendor gear you don't care about losing, then break out the raid loot when you're confident of victory.

People would probably do the same in WoW if they had the slots to carry several full sets of gear and the repair cost scaling ramped up even higher than it is now. High-penalty games, the extreme of which are wars in real life, are dealt with by significant planning, strategizing, and training sessions. Low-penalty games, the extreme of which is the single-player game with infinite saves, are dealt with by trial and error.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

I think this is just brads confession that he can't design raid encounters possibly as fun, challenging and innovative as Tigole, so he will just resort to artifically amplified penalties on mobs that just hit for 1k more than the easier ones =P

Adding another metric gives less room for creativity rather than more? More factors give more room to be creative with, and more creative room allows for more possibilities of fun - period. Whether or not they do well with the extra room is a question, but its the only valid one.

You're completely off the radar for batshit crazy, son.

And considering Brad is an old "D&D" sort you do realize that this concept has precidence already, right? Purple Worms were relatively weak for the amount of XP and loot they generally had - but they had the possibility of swallowing someone gear and all.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Then you, like the guy I quoted, are not talking about the point of this thread, which is a particular death mechanic and how it is tied to risk reward.

His point is very valid. Alot of people, including Ut, are saying, "This could work, but only if they do it right" but it's painfully obvious to anyone who lived through the content that the people in charge don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to doing things right. Broad storkes Mr. Bond. Think outside the bun.

Anyways...

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

People will play hard mode until they notice that they have to spend more time in the game sustaining the current status instead of progressing, they'll quit. This is the problem with such a penalty system. When you spend a week pre-farming gear for your next progression raid something is fucked up.

But yet spending the entire previous week farming gold to pay for repair costs is no big deal - gotcha, hypocrite.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Cad

You guys need to get a job, go outside now and then, and stop trying to make every game tailor only to the small college student unlimited free time market. It's Okay if WoW or Vanguard has a limited-time mode (this isn't casual log in twice a week, but it isn't raid 5 days a week 7 hours a day either) that still gives pretty nice rewards. You guys act like if the game developer is doing anything but making super-hardcore raids that electrocute your nuts when you die the game is going to the casuals.

Where has it been stated that EVERY raid would have inflated penalties?

You could have incredibly hard balls to the wall omfg this raid is tough difficulty level raids with the penalty metric set way down because it's expected to be tough for people.

People on these boards think far too linearly with things - its an entire seperate metric, not "Harder => Worse CR".

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Oloh

Then you, like the guy I quoted, are not talking about the point of this thread, which is a particular death mechanic and how it is tied to risk reward.

But don't let that stop you...

I won't. Because like I previously said, it goes exactly to what reward will come out this risk. The reward for the risk of going into sleeper's was 1 month of cloth caps and having a QA lead say it was intended of all things. The end reward for the risk of going into Plane of Mischief was a non working zone for 4 months. What's the reward going to be for risking everything to kill the worm? 4 months of wooden shields until they finish the script/itemization because they shipped another incomplete game?

[Oloh]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

His point is very valid. Alot of people, including Ut, are saying, "This could work, but only if they do it right" but it's painfully obvious to anyone who lived through the content that the people in charge don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to doing things right.

If you look at what I have wrote above, this is exactly my point. The system is fine (you could go as far as say eloquent) on paper. It comes down to implimentation. I fancy myself an armchair designer, so when a system (for any game) is announced, I look at it on paper and see if it even makes sense in that form. This one does. It makes alot of sense. That is pretty much as far as I will go because, to go any further, you have to play it (for a while) to know if it is actually fun.

Anyone can overachieve or underachieve with implimentation, but that shouldn't stop intelligent conversation about a particular mechanic's design. Feel free to quote the part where Ut is saying "this could work" about the system.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

Maybe to you, but alot of strange things seem to interest you. If you want to have your nuts stepped on then go for all the death penalty games out there. WOW has none except a gold penalty, and they have 6 million subscribers. Sorry I'm just not going to waste my time on timesink games anymore with death penalties to punish me for trying to play. And VGs response to dumb down areas with no penalties or virtually none does not interest me either since that is like saying here go play in the kiddies' sandbox. Nah, I'll pass thank you.

So lets be honest....

It's something that you couldn't handle dealing with occasionally - but you want to be able to be the biggest dog on the block at the same time.

Thus it holds no interest for you.

Personally, for me in my more older state now - I'd probably avoid that sort of content as well - but it looks great to me for one primary reason - with uninstanced content it will encourage people to spread out and form guilds based around the difficulty they're comfortable with.

You'd have the true "uber guilds" tossing themselves at huge imposing content where every fight can end with a huge boon or a huge loss to the guild in question. But unlike many games, not everyone and their mother would be attracted to that sort of guild here.

Kinda like how in reality - everyone wants to pretend to be a gungho, ballsy person - but when they really have to put something on the line, most would rather sit back and have a desk job and just watch TV but there's some out there, that put their life in serious risk to do their job - Fire fighting and other such careers, and more often than not they don't do it because its good money (because it's really not great) - they do it because they find it fun. Who's to say that style of fun doesn't have it's place?

"Fun" is subjective - and for some people, a harsh penalty makes things funner for them.

PS - I thought most people on here though the funnest EQ1 raids took place in NToV for the mostpart, for some reason I remember wipes there involving multiple hours of CR - which made the perceived risk of the rather simple content there much higher.

[Rezz]

It's freedom, and any type of freedom during game development is good for the game. Fact. How they use the freedom is one thing, but the purpose behind the mechanic is a good thing.

[Nazbuk]

Originally Posted by Oloh

If you look at what I have wrote above, this is exactly my point. The system is fine (you could go as far as say eloquent) on paper. It comes down to implimentation. I fancy myself an armchair designer, so when a system (for any game) is announced, I look at it on paper and see if it even makes sense in that form. This one does. It makes alot of sense. That is pretty much as far as I will go because, to go any further, you have to play it (for a while) to know if it is actually fun.

Anyone can overachieve or underachieve with implimentation, but that shouldn't stop intelligent conversation about a particular mechanic's design. Feel free to quote the part where Ut is saying "this could work" about the system.

I completely agree with you here. This could be the next best thing to sliced bread. Hell if i'm wrong about this game being a complete failure then I'll be the first to say I was wrong.

I just have a feeling that Brad thinks the next best thing to sliced bread is really old moldy bread that taste like crap and has a change to infect you with flesh eating bacteria.

And then there are those people who like to say they ate the moldy bread and never once got the flesh eating batcteria on them, and if they ever did they would deal with it because it's what comes with the next best thing since sliced bread.

[Oloh]

Originally Posted by Rezz

It's freedom, and any type of freedom during game development is good for the game. Fact. How they use the freedom is one thing, but the purpose behind the mechanic is a good thing.

Quoted because it's said nicely.

[Rezz]

Originally Posted by Vaclav

PS - I thought most people on here though the funnest EQ1 raids took place in NToV for the mostpart, for some reason I remember wipes there involving multiple hours of CR - which made the perceived risk of the rather simple content there much higher.

There's a decidely sandy-vagina carebear crew slipping in through the cracks. I blame WoW =/

I game for challenge, and this adds a new level of challenge to a (in theory.) challenging game. How exactly it ends up getting implimented is one thing, but the fact that they have considered far harsher penalties than WoW for sucking ass is an automatic plus in my books.