is the death penalty crippling casual gamers?

[mikeloeven]

a game needs to have a penalty for dying. loss of gold, loss of level, loss of corpse and all your belongings. but at the same time a death penalty needs to be ballanced and not game breaking. as it is now the game curse timer is set to 30 minutes realtime. the average casual gamer will at most be logged on for 1 or 2 hours at the most. can you see how losing half of your stats for 30 minutes can significantly eat away at the average person's enjoyment of the game. the death penalty needs to be ballanced by either becomming much less severe or having the timer reduced to somthing more reasionable such as 5 - 10 minutes.

as it stands with all the ballance issues and bugs that plague the alpha version of a game there are too many ways to end up in the death realm through no fault of your own.

a ai bug or stat error allows a innocent looking creature to kill you in one hit

falling off a cliff because of lag or a hole in the map


dying from a creature  that is listed as not as strong as you but can splatter you across the walls.



a penalty of this nature effects new players far more than it effects a skilled player with a high level. while they  still lose half their status they can still cast magic and preform their daily routine .

new or casual gamers can have all sorts of nasty effects. unable to move because they are too weak

unable to cast simple spells because they no longer have a mana pool.

the death curse is game breaking to anyone who doesent spend more than half their day logged on.




i have a new idea for a death penalty which is self ballancing and not as destructive.

when you train a skill you need practice points
when you buy a skill you need progression points

my idea is to make both practice points and progression points temporary when you first earn them. every hour you stay alive those temporary progression points and practice points become perminant.

when you die you lose all skill progress and progression points earned since the last hourley save.

of course you can make it shorter or longer if you wish but at least consider the idea



anodther idea to reduce the sting would be to apply the curse when you enter the death realm not when you exit

[Sarva]

Read through several threads here and you will see lots of complaints from people about how hard it is to earn PPs for beginning players. We have lots more complaints about how hard it is to get PPs vs the death penalty. New players now skip the Death realm, and the death penalty, for their first 15 hours in game. Before we had NPC storage and most players had to carry everything they own the curse often meant sitting for 1/2 hour. Now with NPC storage most players travel light and aren't forced to sit still for a 1/2 hour due to the curse.

Heck some players actually like the curse since you can earn double the PPs when fighting mobs while cursed, assuming you can still kill the mob with the lowered stats. Based on the complaints about how hard it is to earn PPs vs the curse I'd say the PP issue is the more important one for most newer players.

[Koios]

I agree with Sarva. And if you'll search abit more around the threads, you will find some that complain about the curse being too nice on people.
If you want it to change, I'd suggest leaning towards an idea for how it can be more uniform all the way through making it more bearable for newcomers, but worse as you progress your training.

[Vakachehk]

I do agree with Sarva, PPs are far more of an annoyance than the curse.

I have a few idea on how they can make the curse better
for someone under 100 max carrying they get 25%, somone 200 max carrying get 50% and someone 300kgs max carrying gets 75%
Percentage of states removed temporarily while cursed.

To stop with people using the death realm to get from BD to Hydlaa, I suggest the game automatically re-spawns them on the same map they died on.
e.g. they die in Ojaveda they re-spawn outside Brado's
They die in Gug they re-spawn by the smithy
They die on the BD map they re-spawn by Dark Wanderer 
They die on BD road2 they re-spawn by the explorers outpost...

[verden]

Or we could just leave it as it is and work on things like optimizing the memory usage in the client, which I find to be the most annoying thing about the game. Dakkru's Curse is doing its job, its making people think twice about journeying through the Death Realm. Reviewing how the curse impacts new characters once they have gotten past their introductory period is a must of course, if it actually unreasonable, then the period should be extended. The current state of portals to and from the Death Realm is still not finalized. I rather favor the Bind Stone method, allowing a player to choose a position to bind to, that they will then respawn at.

[Geoni]

There is a very long curse that lowers stats if THAT bothers you, but hopefully in the future there will be a way that your character is forced to stay in the death realm for a very long time.

[Minks]

During the week, I'm one of those 1-2 hours people. And no, it doesn't cripple me. After the first surprising-death-by-odd-strength-evaluation, I got careful and am always ready to run.

[mikeloeven]

I do agree with Sarva, PPs are far more of an annoyance than the curse.

I have a few idea on how they can make the curse better
for someone under 100 max carrying they get 25%, somone 200 max carrying get 50% and someone 300kgs max carrying gets 75%
Percentage of states removed temporarily while cursed.

To stop with people using the death realm to get from BD to Hydlaa, I suggest the game automatically re-spawns them on the same map they died on.
e.g. they die in Ojaveda they re-spawn outside Brado's
They die in Gug they re-spawn by the smithy
They die on the BD map they re-spawn by Dark Wanderer  
They die on BD road2 they re-spawn by the explorers outpost...

this is exactly what i mean instead of lazley slamming some crippling curse on the players simply take the time to fix the death respawn to remove the exploit.


what i think should happen is a 5 minute debuf that sets your strength to 0 that way you are stuck in hydlaa you are gaurenteed to be inconvienanced and you can get back to the game within a reasionable ammount of time

or at the very least give the death guardian storage ability. move him back to the spawn point in the death realm. remove the penalty that prevents you from accessing storage while over encumbered, and apply the curse upon arrival in the death realm not when you leave

[novacadian]

Rather than repeat myself....

[Vakachehk]

By what most players are saying here. It is obviously, no one thinks it is a problem.

[Knightspark9]

There is a very long curse that lowers stats if THAT bothers you, but hopefully in the future there will be a way that your character is forced to stay in the death realm for a very long time.

Just have to rp it right Geoni, Ardoin's last visit to the death realm was hell to him.

[Vakachehk]

Lol.
Well I think in the future Death Realm is meant to be far more larger than it is now. My idea is that, if it is larger they could probably have 10 different portals but only 1 will take you back and it will be shuffled around the 10 different places.