If you could change anything about death in Aetolia, what would it be?

Alissandra

I like what @Ishin said about pre-99/100 dying sucks really, really bad. Post endgame it's like "Oh, I died. Darn. I guess I can get that coffee refill now."

Things I HATE about dying: Can't read HELP files, can't listen to webs, can't do ANYTHING. If you're going to make me sit there unable to do anything for 160 seconds or whatever, at LEAST let me read a help file so I can expand my knowledge of Aetolian lore. Or drool over artifacts that I'll never be able to afford. Something. Anything. Please.

Things I ABHOR about dying: There is little to no consequence. Unfortunately I don't know a good way to introduce a meaningful consequence. Some ideas I had were:

- Lifers couldn't all approach the mirror simultaneously. They'd have to wait their turn. All this does though is become annoying, pisses off people with spirit anchor, and gives a HUGE advantage to the Undead

- "Death Sickness" much like shapeshifting where you'll have reduced stats or something for a period of time. If you die again it'll get worse and longer, so you have to decide if you're going to risk it. The huge downside here is that you're going to do a one and done when it comes to player conflict because if it is insignificant than there is no point in having it at all, and if it is significant than people won't go unless numbers are even, won't re-engage if they wipe, etc. which will all deter conflict. We want to promote conflict.

- Increasing death timers with subsequent deaths in a period of time. First time it's 160 seconds. Next death within 5 minutes it's 320 seconds. Next death within 10 minutes it's 640 seconds. But again, you're going to kill conflict because nobody will want to re-engage after a wipe (or possibly even engage in the first place).

I don't really think there is a good way to make death have more of a sting to it without completely nerfing "promote conflict" thing you're all striving for so hard. Part of what is a draw for ylem conflict is the fact I don't lose exp, so if I die I'm out 80 seconds or whatever to approach the mirror.

Aryanne

Of your ideas, @alissandra, I like the death sickness idea the best. While I don't do any PK, I feel like the idea that others would actually have consequences if I killed them to be a big motivator toward learning some!

I can't PK anyone as it is unless they're some unfortunate nooblet that thinks they can noobie-kick me to death (and if I'm AFK, they might succeed), but I feel no benefit to learning or trying to engage in combat because there is no net-deficit if I do. Anyone Aryanne would kill can just brush it off as "Mildly annoying, I'll just go on a 5 minute bashing run later and make up for that". To encourage people like me to care about conflict, you've got to make our investment into learning actually produce something on the other end.

Moirean

I think most of us who PK have an entirely opposite take on it. We PK because it's fun. We like being able to hop on for the night, find some conflict, dive in and then be done when it's over. Having to sit around afk or bash a ton after conflict makes it less fun, at least for me, to participate in.

Imagine if your emote balance got longer and longer the more you RPd? That wouldn't be very fun at all.

Ezalor

Longer death sounds awful! PK is its own fun IMO, you do it to test your ability and earn bragging rights. I don't find lack of death consequence any sort of hindrance to my desire to PK, it's about the feeling of accomplishment for yourself moreso than putting down whomever you killed.

Moirean

I've noticed that I've become much more content being a casual fighter lately, so I don't really fight for ego or ranking. A system to reward overall PK participation would be appealing to me, and maybe it could incorporate in PvE too, for us higher level people who don't see any motivation to keep bashing anymore.

For example, some sort of system where you collect "trophies" from things you slay.

- NPCs have a small % chance give them out.
- Players have a 100% chance to give out one.
- Every x mobs or y players you kill without dying (kill streak) increases the payout you get from drops. So someone who's gotten 10 kills in a row gets a higher drop rate of trophies (incentive not to die)
- Chilling in protected spots (cities, wings, havens, guildhalls) slowly eats away at any kill-streak bonus (incentive not to hide)

Trade trophies in for minipets, mounts, minor artifacts, perks (grimstim, chalices, a temp arti that lets you access clouds for a day) etc. Rewards could be rotated to keep content feeling fresh with very little redesign needed.

Rashar

I like all of what you said above, @moirean, except I can only think that if people are going for killstreaks it would just encourage running instantly, waiting for numbers / ganks, and ultimately just leading to more inclinations to win by numbers rather than strategies that may/may not work.

I'm not really sure how you'd solve that, though.

Moirean

You could make it based on a win/loss ratio instead of killstreaks, perhaps. That stuff is already tracked via KILLSTATS and DEATHSTATS, and that would encourage a longer sort of progress as well. You could also include basic participation to encourage people to grind/keep at it, even if they lose.

If you included arena and sect in this (extra killscore for kills earned in arena, ranked spars and sect fights) it would also encourage combat in those areas.

You could also easily fold in other stuff via the umbrella of this:
- Big boost to your killscore for participating in a brawl
- Big boost to your killscore based on how you end the combat ranks each season
- Short term contracts you could complete to boost your killscore (eg everyone who gets a kill on the elder daemon this week) to encourage PvE challenges
- PK challenges (kill someone with x ability, etc)

I'm just throwing out some general ideas, and it's fairly off-topic, I guess. It just seems like we often see new stuff implemented to the game, and it's often awesome, but also scattered and rarely unified - the Legendary hunter, Giovelli's, etc - and some kind of overarching system would encourage us to go do everything there is out there, while also working towards stuff. Often a lot of the things in the game don't feel super compelling to do beyond the initial fun factor, because they are side-stuff, versus things that make me feel like I'm growing and strengthening my character (which is also fun as it feeds my little Skinner box yay progress gameplay outlook).

Aryanne

I agree that making death take longer the more often you died would suck unicorns, but to have negative mechanical effects after dying that get worse each time you die is a totally different notion.

Also, by making arena deaths, etc. not count toward "recently dead sickness"(or whatever) might encourage people to actually use the sparring system more often, or just the arenas in general when they feel like Pkin' for fun (or I'm wrong about that, how would I know, just a guess). Additionally, could add a gold-sink to it, have somewhere you can go to get "healed" from the sickness if you don't feel like duking it out in safe-arena-land, but don't want the negative affects.
Aetolia can always use more goldsinks.

I'm sure also having some "Achievement unlocked!" for participations would be fun, but we also need more consequences to death, not merely more benefits for being in a place we might.

Moirean

Aryanne said:

we also need more consequences to death, not merely more benefits for being in a place we might.

Why? From a PK perspective, the death sequence serves as a necessary break to ensure skirmishes can have a winner and we get punctuated breaks for objectives to be cleared (controlling the lesser, moving the troops).

The game used to penalize people more for death - essence lost, xp loss, items being looted - but that's been something we've moved away from a lot, and the PK scene overall has seen MORE people involved.

I think you're coming at it from a "RP wise, death means nothing" standpoint (and I could be misreading, sorry if so), and that's a valid one - but I'd argue that the change should come in somewhere else then. Divorce mechanical death from RP death entirely, because, let's be honest, it's always been weird and wonky. The concept of death clearly has different meanings based on what situation we're in. At a lesser, we just go ok rez, whereas in most RP and events we act fearful and try to avoid death, which always seems a bit of a silly dichotomy - so why not build on that? Make bashing and PK deaths (or at the least deaths from bashing mobs and in PK zones like lessers/sect arena/raiding/etc) do something else entirely from deaths you get as divine punishment or an epic RP fight or from some event or whatever, so, even if we can't do permadeath here, there is a lot more gravity and meaning to those types of pain/punishment/character strife, without making bashing and PK tiring.

Mephistoles

Alissandra said:

- "Death Sickness" much like shapeshifting where you'll have reduced stats or something for a period of time. If you die again it'll get worse and longer, so you have to decide if you're going to risk it. The huge downside here is that you're going to do a one and done when it comes to player conflict because if it is insignificant than there is no point in having it at all, and if it is significant than people won't go unless numbers are even, won't re-engage if they wipe, etc. which will all deter conflict. We want to promote conflict.

I think this is a really good idea. Additionally, you could actually build on this idea of 'death sickness' to make it a double edged sword. Lets say that you die and come back. Perhaps for a certain time after coming back, you not only have reduced stats, but you also gain significantly more experience (triple, double, some amount, whatever), so you're more fragile but you also have some incentive to either bash or PK before the timer is up. Perhaps if you actually manage to kill someone while you have death sickness, you can inflict it upon them without their getting any of the benefits, giving added penalty to being killed by someone who is in a weakened state. It's also possible to get the 'revive' mechanic involved in this, having it cure or perhaps reduce the timer for the sickness.

@Moirean, I think a lot of your responses have more to do with 'how do we encourage people to PK' than it does with 'how can we improve the death mechanic'. The two are slightly linked, but they're separate questions.

Aryanne

Moirean said:

Aryanne said:

we also need more consequences to death, not merely more benefits for being in a place we might.

Why?

Because as humans and players, you value something finite and/or consequential. Especially as endgamers (as several people have pointed out) death is merely an annoying inconvenience of -waiting- and a nominal XP fee.

You know what's boring and frustrating? Waiting. No one says "Oooh! I was so excited and tense at the DMV the other day cause they made me WAIT to get my license, and it was only 20 bucks!" No. They said "Goddamn DMV! I'm just mailing in my payment next time."

Having to wait through the death sequence and "pay" a nominal fee in XP isn't fun, doesn't create tension or player interest. (I think just about everyone agrees with this, I don't think there's opposition anywhere, but it's leading up to what IS fun)

However, consequences create value to a thing. As it is, in aetolia, death is an infinite resource with an already established pittance of an effect. Although we can not change the infinity, we can change the consequences. Lets pretend, in Skyrim, if you died you could immediately return to where you died from with a little less XP, no story progression lost, everything is the same, expect you had to wait through an annoying cut scene before you came back. You wouldn't play the game the same. You no longer have a good reason to be careful, or cautious, there isn't tension, it is a completely different game now. Is it more fun because of less consequences? Maybe to some people - people play on God Mode all the time on games. But games don't have God Mode as the default, because it isn't as fun. Consequences are fun.

As was pointed out, we have a very lop-sided dichotomy of death in aetolia. We're supposed to care about it in RP-type scenerios, but our characters are also supposed to through care to the wind for resource collection? It makes perfect sense for us to be blaize about being killed when in a battle - humans are like than anyway, soldiers put in the front lines fight a lot when it comes down to it, yet they might still squeal like a baby when they are confronted unprepared, see a bigass spider on their arm or get tortured.

However, the answer to this dichotomy shouldn't be "Lets create FEWER consequences to dying in battle vs elsewhere, that'll make it make more sense that we're scared here and not there!"

Amberlea

Your character has no obligation to care about death in RP situations, to be honest. After hundreds of years of Varian dumping you back out into a cave, having died an innumerable amount of times in one's life, I think it would be pretty reasonable if most characters were entirely jaded about death. Inconvenient? Sure, but nobody is worried that this time is the one where the creator is going to turn down their application for an appeal!

For undead and vampires the concern for death would be even less.

Changing how much XP you lose isn't going to change that fact, and the administration seems to have shown inclination in moving away from that with things like no-xp-loss lessers. Extending the amount of time you have to wait in line isn't going to do it either, I don't think.

Giving people things to do during death would be the best way to improve the experience. Keep them at their keyboard. I really like a lot of the ideas that've been given so far, like listening to clans/webs, read HELP, perhaps some optional instanced quest to give people something interesting to do.

Haven

PK would get more involvement if it were fairer truthfully. But that's a different discussion all together.

I think the only issue with the death sequence is that interaction with it is near if not outright at 0%. I'm against certain aspects of the game where in order to play you're expected to do nothing for the duration.  (See shrine defiling as an example). I'd like to see the death sequence made to be interactive and engaging. Either a mini-game of sorts or quest with an XP loss opt out option that'd plop you in the default death sequence we got now.

Areka

My concern with death penalties is how they're tuned. It's easy enough for a team to wipe in conflict as is, and if the penalties are too harsh, it will deter groups from going back in to the fray, so I'm side-eyeing stat reduction and such.

I like the ideas of alternative choices for the death sequence (and could see them being used administratively as well as warnings for watching behaviour, maybe having to wait a bit longer while your heart is weighed and measured and such, or you're having a bit more trouble finding your body). Imperian has this - different tasks to return to the living - which are interesting but also a bit overwhelming if you don't already know the system.

The other side that needs to be addressed with consequences of death IS our roleplay world - there currently are none for the Undead, that's the whole point of Undeath. It would need to be something that evenly impacts both sides but addresses different aspects as to WHY.

Ishin

I don't want to go PK, come back with -1 all stats, even if I get bonus xp. That would suck ass.

Moirean

Aryanne said:

Moirean said:

Aryanne said:

we also need more consequences to death, not merely more benefits for being in a place we might.

Why?

Because as humans and players, you value something finite and/or consequential. Especially as endgamers (as several people have pointed out) death is merely an annoying inconvenience of -waiting- and a nominal XP fee....

...Having to wait through the death sequence and "pay" a nominal fee in XP isn't fun, doesn't create tension or player interest. (I think just about everyone agrees with this, I don't think there's opposition anywhere, but it's leading up to what IS fun).

That's the thing. In a PK situation, it's not just an inconvenience. Your team has wiped and lost the objective. You need to regroup and get your ducks in a row again, all while the objective is ticking down. There IS already a tangible cost in a PK scenario. There IS tension - if I have a brooch, I'm sitting there at my computer watching deathsights and fidgeting in my chair, reviewing what happened and typing out stuff in my command line to give the group new orders for when I pop back up. During the war system, my heart would literally be racing during death sequence, urging the process on as I worried about my troops.

Aryanne said:

However, the answer to this dichotomy shouldn't be "Lets create FEWER consequences to dying in battle vs elsewhere, that'll make it make more sense that we're scared here and not there!"

My suggestion wasn't to make fewer consequences. It was to divorce the concept of death in PK from actual death of our characters. Like, some handwave thing where a battlegod knits us back together by ylem magic or some others retcon explanation, so we can continue dying all the time in that regard, while having actual death from RP and whatever be far more dangerous and painful for the character.

We don't need more consequences for death, imo. Very few of the people posting here asking for death to be harsher are very active PKers, and I think that's important to note. PKers die multiple times an hour as part of combat mechanics. Our view of how the death sequence works and how it factors into gameplay is going to be very different from people who aren't as involved in PK. Making death more tedious and punishing would really make stuff like lessers or a big night of bashing feel unfun.

Ishin

Maybe we could have a PK flag or something, since you crazy ass noncoms seem insistent that death has to have some kind of SUPEROMGHEAVY PENALTY. I'll turn my PK flag on, and it'll be same ol' death sequence for me. Then when I kill you, while you're out bashing, you'll get -1 to all stats, and -5% audit. Additively. Then when you come back and try to bash again, I'll do it again. Now you have -2 and -10%.

That would, basically, mean lessers become one-and-done affairs. Even more-so than they already are. Look at what happened to Lesser participation when they took the XP loss away from it. Teams grew in size. That's what you WANT to happen. I've had newbs come to a lesser(Here's looking at you, @Olli ), and gain like 10 levels and be able to be like I'M HELPIIIIIING, because of the xp bonus you get.

That's a GOOD thing. That's what makes big credit sales where people buy +3 str and +3 con and +3 dex and all the little sip bonuses and web boots and all that crap. It's also FUN.

Maybe it's because some of you weren't around back during the DA wars. Where it was Eno+Loch+@Slyphe's militia against RL. Where when you logged in if you weren't quick enough with the touch cloak, you got ganked, and you lost SEVERAL % worth of xp. At least a half hour PER DEATH.

Maybe we should go back to it for a few months, see how people feel about it. First hand experience, and all that.

Xenia

I'm just gonna chime up and say I don't think there's a need for anything to be changed about the death sequence. Maybe some color for Undead, but I'm not undead so honestly, am fine as is.

For those of you who think death doesn't have its penalties as is, I disagree. I am soo annoyed when I die bashing cus usually this means that I've lost my orb buffs which are a pain enough to keep up. I hate when I'm bashing and a lesser happens because I sit there seriously contemplating if I want to lose my orb buff or not cus I tend to be a first target (not a complaint, I'm honored realy!). Add with that any other buffs, things that deplete my soulstone and require me to sit for about 15 minutes refilling it and yeah. Death, as is, has a decent enough penalty without deterring me from wanting to get out and get involved with a risk of my life. (Edit for further expansion of thought) In fact, I think the fact that you lose these buffs is a good thing, I've seen arguments asking that they be removed for ease of life. I argue against this because it would certainly detract from the penalties of dying, and I do agree that there should be a penalty to this; I just don't see the need to increase it beyond what they currently are.


Honestly if you're arguing that death has no penalty then I'm lead to believe that probably there aren't any mechanical goals you're really working towards anyway, and your issue isn't how 'real' death is in the game.

Kendri

Areka said:

Imperian has this - different tasks to return to the living - which are interesting but also a bit overwhelming if you don't already know the system.

I have to point out that Imperian moved away from this.. probably nearly a year ago. The quests would get clogged up with waves of shardfall (their version of lessers) deaths, people were getting newbies to stay dead and just feed tokens to the fighters on their side, effectively blocking people from the other side getting out. There was a mob eventually that allowed you to pay xp to escape and that became a necessity.

Now they have a short death sequence and the stacking death sickness. I think the death sickness lasts 120s. But while waiting for it to fall off, it allows planning with your team, grouping and putting up defences. And you do have the option of running back in if you judge the risk worth it.

I'm not saying this would be ideal here, but the quest style definitely has it's flaws when it comes to team wipes.

Zsadist

I'd like to point out that alot of the people asking for this so called "death sickness" are either a) non-coms or b) people who only fight in lessers. Here's the thing, there is no need to change the death sequence for anyone. Because when you die, the penalty is already relatively there. Like @Xenia said, if you're bashing with orbs, you lose the orb defenses, you lose xp, you lose soul, you lose your area, and you lose all your corpses.... because now that you're dead, I can be a dick and go "So and so died in Tiyen. Lemme go steal their corpses, steal their body, and then completely take over bashing that area." So now, you've lost the entire area to me all because you died and couldn't stand up to the mobs.

Secondly, if you die during PK, guess what, that means you lost. Now, for those of us who PK alot, this means one of two things. 1) We need to get better or 2) We get taunted that X person kicked our ass (usually in play, but its still there). Now when you die during PK, you get the negative effect of X now knows he can beat you in 1v1 combat, so he/she is more likely to target you in group combat, again, you lose xp, and you lose whatever slices you had precached out to heal better. Now, lets go to lesser/major foci losses...... when you die, thats one less person to fight the enemy with, which tends to mean your party will wipe... and the negative effect with that... is that your party fucking wiped. Now, lessers take approximately 15 minutes. So... lets do a little math....

Approximately 2min to come back to life after being killed
Approximately 2min to redef
Approximately 1-3 min to regroup
Approximately 1 min to get to aura'd area..... Now, that alone is a 6 minute minimum with a 9 minute maximum. Thats all due to a single party wipe. Again, one lesser is approximately 15 minutes.... so we now have only 6-9 minutes to go back to that lesser and try for round 2, considering people even WANT to go back for round 2.

So, to me, there is nothing wrong with the death sequence, and there is nothing that needs to be changed. The ONLY thing I'd ask to be changed, is let me look at CHELP/GHELP/HELP files, but thats if you want to. Its not going to deter me one way or the other if its changed or not, because I sit there in death sequence for 90s, no big deal. During that 90s, I can go grab a vodka shot or something. Or rage because I died to such newbish measures.

I don't need to be given a -1 stat to anything, because if that was the case, I'd likely never PK again... or I'd go out and target those who thought it was a great idea and just PK you over and over until you felt the same pain I did. Dying already has negative affects, you just need to stop thinking about the small picture shit and focus on how it affects you when you die.

TLDR: Death sequence is fine as is. No change needed.

Rashar

I'm with Ishin and Moirean in that I don't think a death sickness or some heavy malus to people who are dying would be good. I'm not sure it's even worth arguing, as I'm fairly certain the administration already knows that.

That said, I'd really like to see some sort of legitimate consequence for people that shout insults and taunts at Gods. If they could zap and have it send someone to death sequence for a longer duration, or make it so the player actually has to do some kind of little quest to get back out, that'd be neat. Though, even as I write this, I suppose they could just transport you to a mini area and make you do the quest without -dying-.

Also cosmetically.. change the sequence for evil people, or heck for everybody. Right now it's like.. Well, I don't know if I've ever sat and read it, but something something Varian comes and hominus dominus you get another chance. Nothing about Dhar, and I/Rashar have never really understood what his purpose even is. He's supposed to be a lifer God but either way you look at it.. either he is letting everyone back out, in which case he's not really a good dude, or Varian is doing it all, in which case Dhar is a glorified gate guard. That doesn't do a very good job? Idk. I'm sure there's some lore somewhere about the other things he does, but ICly I find it very, very hard to place any credence in a God of Death that doesn't have anything to do with death, or at least demonstrates very little control/concern for it. So that'd be neat. Then maybe Rashar would have to have a come to Jesus (come to Dhar?) moment, which could be neat, too.

Amberlea

ASCII art of topless @Rashar could spice things up as well

Aishia

I think maybe it's a little telling, how different the outlook on this issue is between pkers and nonpkers. I'm only about half convinced on the living/undead time gulf but the one thing I'm sure of is spirit anchor working with entomb and etc way OP.

Butttt I have a lot more fun being able to jump right back into a fight faster rather than slower, the usual downside of rushing back FAST AS POSSIBLE is skipping defs, stat maluses would be pretty unfun. I Don't think I would enjoy extra complications to get out of the death sequence either.

Ishin

@Aishia - Disagree with first half of post, agree with second half of post. Did not want to click disagree just because of that.

Lim

Yeah, I'm generally with the 'death is currently fine' camp. For the reasons cited by Z and Xenia.

That said, there is legitimacy to the 'death lacks consequence' point, albeit only with respect to Gods using it as a punishment. I detest the snottiness that is shown to Gods because death seems to be the worse that can be done to us. Death isn't the problem per se, more that there must be a better, more creative punishment than death.

Only thing I would change about death sequence right now is to give it more spice. The ideas mentioned above about letting us chat on web, read helpfiles, hang out with other people in the Halls, decide to wander rather than return, etc. All that would hit the spot.

Moirean

Well, from a RP standpoint, I do think it would be nice for there to be some meat to death. I don't think it needs to be death, per se, not death as the mechanic, but death the concept. Death in Aetolia has a weird meh rinse repeat connotation and there are times where it feels like nothing really threatens our characters. I have moments in RP where I'm like "really, if I think about this, it's silly that I'm afraid of so-and-so hurting me, given what I see as a PKer" and you have to kinda twist stuff and justify to make sense of why death is scary.

The Shadowplague stuff was SO enthralling because we got to act scared and weak - we weren't going to die, we were going to be consumed. I even had fleeting thoughts of "will they delete my character if we don't fix this?!" and that was SO immersive and engaging.

Aishia

Maybe gods just need more options for punishments/consequences as KNOWN things they can do, rather than the potential things they can pull out their butts.

Obyn

Keep in mind that in a lot of cases we're expected, as volunteers, to keep the proverbial kid gloves on.

Zsadist

@Obyn, this is just me, but ask around. You might find some of us would have alot of fun with the gods if they took off the proverbial kid gloves.... In the words of the famous Bruce Almighty:

"SMITE ME, O MIGHTY SMITER!!!"

Ishin

Obyn said:

Keep in mind that in a lot of cases we're expected, as volunteers, to keep the proverbial kid gloves on.

The kid gloves aren't really necessary, tbh. We(I think I can say 'we', can't I?) don't want to be treated like rich tits. What we want is for you to act within the scope of your character without being griefy. That's a general 'you' directed at the divine, not you in particular.

For example, when Slyphe did that collar thing on Moirean, it was okay for a while. Week or so, week and half maybe. That's not too bad. But two weeks, three weeks? Too long. Point's long-since been made at that point. Sometimes it's not about laying the smackdown on someone repeatedly every second of every day, but more the reminder of 'Hey. I'm bigger and stronger. Watch yo ass, foo.'

Like, me'n a couple of other Spireans had a lot of fun due to Slyphe putting the collar on Moirean, but if you ask me as a player, it was on for a little too long, you know? You guys don't need the kid gloves so long as you know when and how long to apply pressure to someone. It changes with the individual, though, and even that can change over time.