Vanguard to change the death penalty

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Digo

Because you're punishing them for failure instead of just not awarding loot.

Ah according to your super logic, when you die in WoW you aren't punished for failure, because the death penalty is always 10% durability loss, RIGHT?!

You already wipe more often learning harder encounters, or did you wipe on patchwerk as often as you did on Golemagg? That already means more penalty in itself.

[holymight]

Originally Posted by LikeWow!

holymight - They have stated VG will be very "loot-centric", so high end gear won't be easy to come by.

They have also said they want people to have multiple sets of armor.

[Faille]

The reason its most likely a bad idea is that it just adds an extra variable in the risk vs reward balancing act. Not only do they have to factor in the difficulty of the encounter, spawn time, take into account unqantifiable factors such as location, balance it against the quality of the rewards, as well as desirability), they now have to assign a death penalty variable.

In theory its a good idea, anything that gives designers more tools to work with is generally good, but until they demonstrate they can balance things even remotely effectively with existing tools, they shouldn't really be looking at having more complicated ones.

[Frax]

I don't like this idea at all.

When you die in a game you should always have the same basic penalty, not a varying penalty. I'll still state that 95% of the people who want this hardcore style of CR are going to cry about it when the game actually comes out, and the other 5% are just masochistic.

[Cybsled]

A super harsh penalty at the end game just punishes the first guys in. Once spoilers become available, then everyone on the coattails doesnt eat the massive loss.

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

Ah according to your super logic, when you die in WoW you aren't punished for failure, because the death penalty is always 10% durability loss, RIGHT?!

You already wipe more often learning harder encounters, or did you wipe on patchwerk as often as you did on Golemagg? That already means more penalty in itself.

You're essentially arguing that Challenge vs. Reward is already Risk vs. Reward, or rather that Challenge vs. Reward is a subset of Risk vs. Reward. You're right.

Let's think about this for a moment without the extremist rhetoric of "ZOMG WHY U PUNISH RAIDERS MORE FUFUFUFUFUFU!!!!"

Everyone agrees with the notion that better rewards should be harder to attain, correct? That's like asking everyone here is not an idiot, right? I hope so.

Now then, how do you make it harder to attain? Well, you could make it more challenging, in which case players will wipe multiple times and therefore spend longer banging their hands on the encounter. Skilled players, naturally, will spend less - while unskilled will spend more. Sounds fair.

Or, you could make it so that the encounter WTFPWNs you when you fail. In this case, players who wipe will spend a long time recovering, which amounts to the same sort of time-lapse as wiping several times in a row. And again, skilled players will naturally spend less time (because they won't wipe as often), while unskilled will spend more. Sounds familiar?

And there you have it - TIME is the one and only risk you can have in a MMO. No one's going to come out of the monitor and slap you each time you fuck up on a raid. The only thing that you'll lose is time - either time to redo the raid, or in the case of death penalties, time to redo the raid + time to recover from the penalties. What does this amount to?

Risk vs. Reward, as Brad defines it, is simply a harsher version of Challenge vs. Reward. The two are, otherwise, basically the same. Of course, some obsessed with details will argue that failing a raid 99x is better than failing it 3x but having to spend 96x time making up for penalties, but that depends on the implementation. One of the examples given - having to recover your corpse from the belly of a great worm - is a perfect opportunity to make death penalties an adventure in and of themselves. Would you rather take a journey into the belly of the great beast to rescue your entrapped gear, or would you rather fight the great worm 2-3x more times?

Making this argument a matter of design philosophy is silly. It's all a matter of implementation.

EDIT: And as Faille said, this *does* give the developers a new variable to play around with. Think about WoW for a moment - what does endurance penalties on gear force you to do? Why, interact with the gold farmer community, of course (or otherwise pull what FoH does and run people through MC for gold, or alternatively get your own gold farmers and have'em at it). If the only penalty you ever received from failing a raid is having to retry the raid, your interaction with the rest of the community/game is MINIMAL and will remain MINIMAL, because retrying the raid is just retrying the raid and exists strictly within the narrow dimension of raiding. But by adding a penalty ontop of this, the developers can control the amount of interaction you have with the rest of the community/game. For example, if this is an exp penalty, then you have to go back and exp - which makes non-raiding content useful for raiders, as it was in EQ. If this was a gold penalty, then you have to go back and either hire gold farmers or interact with the economy - again, an extra variable that the devs can manipulate.

Course, penalties are not necessary - you can do the same thing by requiring people to farm X gold each time they wanted to fight an encounter. But is that really positive reinforcement? Even an idiot should realize that if I had to farm X gold in order to do an encounter, and I fail that encounter, I lose X gold - which is just another way of saying if I fail an encounter, I lose X gold, except now I don't even get the option of not farming if I were super skilled.

[Soygen]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

It is, you're already paying extra for dieing in Naxx, artificially amplyifing the death penalty because it's "hard" content takes an anti-genius like brad

I know you didn't quote me, but my point was that WoW already "artificially inflates" the penalty to raiders. Their higher quality items cost them more money per death. Why is it now suddenly the most retarded thing ever in Vanguard? I've pretty much lost all interest in Vanguard, but your example wasn't that great because WoW already beat them to the punch on shittier death penalties on harder content.

Originally Posted by Etadanik

Making this argument a matter of design philosophy is silly. It's all a matter of implementation.

Exactly. However, Vanguard's track-record thus far, doesn't give me much hope on the implementation end of things. It's an idea that has potential and I hope they do something cool with it. I'm just not getting my hopes up.

[Lenaldo]

I like these changes... the only thing that made me hate CRs when replaying EQ1 was when you were traveling and a SG came by and 1 hit you.. or an npc that shouldnt have been kos for some reason was...

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

(for example, perhaps a corpse cannot be dragged, or even you have to defeat the mob that killed you in order to have access to your corpse (for example, a giant worm that eats your corpses, and until it dies, there is no corpse to loot)).

Um...no.

So were #1 guild on the server heading to the last mob of the game/expansion and its some huge ass Dune type worm. In the first encounter we have no idea what to expect...we of course wipe out hardcore. Everyone now gets to run around naked until we can kill the thing.

Hello, how the hell would we kill it naked if we couldn't do it with all the uber loot we spent months leveling/farming for?

Not gonna play any game that eats my corpse and everything on it.

[Maxxius]

Does sound like a weakening of the death penalty to an extent, but at the expense of loot. So basically the more casual player won't get penalized alot exp-wise, assuming he is the one foregoing the harder stuff due to lack of time issues, but does get penalized in equipment gained, since only crap will probably drop.

I just can't see the casual player buying this.

Personally I always hated death penalties in games. All they do is discourage people from trying things and frustrates. Make the content itself challenging. I also never liked the term "risk vs reward." That is saying "you want the loot expect to pay" as opposed to "you want the loot meet the challenge."

Stop listening to the hardcores if you want to create a fun game. Hardcores want their balls crushed, the harder the better. The average person just wants to have fun.

[Turzem]

I have visions of doing Burrower naked. At level 60. I cry.

[Etadanik]

I also never liked the term "risk vs reward." That is saying "you want the loot expect to pay" as opposed to "you want the loot meet the challenge."

It's the same idea. Do you think raiders don't "pay" for the loot that they attain? That they simply walk up to it and "meet the challenge?" Bullshit. They're rewarded for their tenacity in throwing themselves at an encounter again and again for no reward until finally they beat it and receive their rightful due.

And I most definitely agree with encouraging boldness and discouraging cowardice. People like Itzena said earlier that people gravitate towards the lowest common denominator of advancement and that's absolutely correct - a developer should not reward such actions, however, because a game where cretins reign is a game not worth playing.

Of course, this says nothing about Vanguard's system, but I sincerely disagree with the notion that developers should not try to produce a sense of dread and risk within the player.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Jaytee Bushwacker

Um...no.

So were #1 guild on the server heading to the last mob of the game/expansion and its some huge ass Dune type worm. In the first encounter we have no idea what to expect...we of course wipe out hardcore. Everyone now gets to run around naked until we can kill the thing.

Hello, how the hell would we kill it naked if we couldn't do it with all the uber loot we spent months leveling/farming for?

Not gonna play any game that eats my corpse and everything on it.

Intelligent use of the "Corpse Eater" level of challenge would be something comparitively trivial for the loot it drops, but a much better reward b/c the death penalty is harsher.

If appropriately used as another metric in equations of RvR even this one (which would make me leery too) could be fit in appropriately.

Even better it would encourage different "tiers" of people together - wimpy content for the wimps, middle of the ground content for the middle ground people, and balls to the wall hardcore for the maniacs... with better gear available to each.

[gromitt]

Originally Posted by Jaytee Bushwacker

Um...no.

So were #1 guild on the server heading to the last mob of the game/expansion and its some huge ass Dune type worm. In the first encounter we have no idea what to expect...we of course wipe out hardcore. Everyone now gets to run around naked until we can kill the thing.

Hello, how the hell would we kill it naked if we couldn't do it with all the uber loot we spent months leveling/farming for?

Not gonna play any game that eats my corpse and everything on it.

Brad's response to naked corpse runs:

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

First, keep in mind that the worm would be very rare -- we're talking the exception, not the rule. Then, the people who would be taking on these kinds of mobs would have many sets of armor. They'd have them stored on the horses, in their ships, in their houses. And they would also likely have friends too, who could help them, who weren't part of the first failed attempt at defeating the mob.

If they were dying to the mob multiple times, it would wise to not attack it with your last set of armor and level up, get some better items, find some new skills, bring some extra buddies along, etc. Just going at it over and over again, not learning anything, not figuring out that the mob is simply too tough for you and your group, would be, well, dumb. One of the great aspects of having multiple sets of gear is that you can keep playing the game even if you have a corpse out there somewhere with some of you gear on it. You can keep leveling up, etc. and return to the mob later (assuming someone else hasn't killed it and released your corpses).

So basically, the scenario you described where eventually they'd be fighting naked is extremely unlikely.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

It's the same idea. Do you think raiders don't "pay" for the loot that they attain? That they simply walk up to it and "meet the challenge?" Bullshit. They're rewarded for their tenacity in throwing themselves at an encounter again and again for no reward until finally they beat it and receive their rightful due. . . . .

Of course, this says nothing about Vanguard's system, but I sincerely disagree with the notion that developers should not try to produce a sense of dread and risk within the player.

And there's the rub. They are rewarded for their "tenacity" which can only but be defined as TIME committed. I don't want games that require tons of time. I want creativity from the developer now. I want them to figure out challenging things, meaning not just time sinks. Smarten the dam AI. Make encounters randomize, instead of eventually becoming predictable and then put on "farm" status.

NEXT generation doesn't mean recycling OLD ideas. I want to get away from the same old same old, just with new faces type of games. I don't want dread and risk as defined as "waste more time." Games need to get away from this concept. WOW was a start, let's get the real next generation after this.