Huckleberry wrote:

For the people who think there should be no death penalty let me ask a few questions and let's see what the answers are:

Question #1: You are in the final boss fight of a long dungeon. You accidentally stand still too long to get off a powerful attack and don't manage to get out of the fire in time and you die. Should you be able to pop back up instantly at full health? If not, what sort of penalty would you provide if it was your game to design?

My character should be returned to the mission entrance, or to a safe zone approximately 2 minutes away from the Boss Room. My character should either be at full health, or at a percentage that can achieve full health by the time I reach the Boss Room. The Boss should not rejuvenate more than the damage I could do in those same 2 minutes. Better if not at all. Next time I will stand a bit farther away when I begin my "powerful attack", keeping in my mind that even with the best programming in the world, space positioning in every online game is subject to vagaries of lag, monitor type, CPU speed, and math. Better yet, the boss should not have eyes in the back of their head. It should be possible (assuming I have already eliminated all the minions in the room) to approach the boss and set up outside of the boss' line of sight, perhaps by anticipating the movements of the boss around the room.

It's a computer-controlled NPC enemy battle. Not a PvP death match. Not a master level chess tournament. I don't play to prove myself. I have nothing left to prove. I play to escape the real world for a little while.

Naturally, I realize others have different motivations and expectations.

Huckleberry wrote:

Question #2: The only way to get across section X of the city is to run past a bunch of really tough mobs. You could go around the long way, which is safer, but with your superspeed you can probably make it through section X and only have to die once or twice along the way. What penalty, if any, would you award to the people who choose this route? Or can they pop up after death instantly, and continue with full health and stamina as if they weren't just defeated?

When they are defeated, they should be shuttled to a local rejuvenation point and restored to full health with no penalty. Keep in mind, actual positioning in any online game is inherently imprecise. I could move past the bad guys multiple times with my computer showing the same apparent space between myself and the enemies but on some passes the computer has me close enough to aggro the entire group, on other passes I only aggro an outlier, and in some passes I aggro nothing. It does no good to punish players with slower CPUs, slower connection speeds, smaller monitors, etc. Any death penalty of the kind you are implying would improve fair play and introduce risk is automatically punishing for players with a different computer than you are using.

Huckleberry wrote:

Question #3: You are in a really tough fight. You have a potion of health you could pop that you know will give you enough health to win, or you could just die and try over without wasting the potion. Which do you choose and why?

It depends. How much is the potion worth vs. how much is the potential reward for the fight? How much time do I have left to play? Did my wife suddenly call me into the next room to answer the phone, answer her question, reprimand one of the kids, have dinner, etc.? This is not a simple cut and dried proposition limited only to your proposed scenario. There is a real world out here that sometimes demands my attention at the most inopportune times. I might be in a hurry to end the fight, regardless of the outcome. The potion might be inexpensive enough that the reward would more than cover the cost, or it might be my last top of the line, best in the game, requires completing a special task force to achieve wonder rejuvenation potion that heals, restores, and grants an XP bonus for the next 90 seconds.

Too many unstated variables in all three of your questions. We're talking about a superhero MMORPG with (hopefully!) an active community and a diverse open world. Things are different in MMORPGs than in standard, single-player console-based RPGs. Dying might take me back to my base/lair where I have a hundred more potions waiting, allies I can call for assistance, etc. Dying might result in a corpse run (which I hate, but some players love!) or might cause my character to be rejuvenated on an entirely different server instance. There is no simple, "take the penalty/avoid the penalty" scenario when playing a MMORPG. None, never. In addition to all the ingame possibilities, there is real world interference and different player priorities that deserve just as much recognition by developers as your own or my own.

You are not the only player in the game. Neither am I. The designers make their choices. I give my money to the designers whose choices come closest to my own.
I'm sure you do the same.

Huckleberry wrote:

Also, "it depends" is a no-answer answer. If you want to say "it depends" give us an example or two to get your idea across so we know about how you weigh things. So if it was a cheap readily available potion, what then? What about that top rail potion? Give us a couple points on your "it depends" scale. But showing us all the reasons why "it depends" doesn't answer the question at all.

Actually, it answers the question perfectly. Simple, plain English presentation of the multiple variables that impact the decision. The exact answer is: your question is invalid and meaningless because it presupposes a single, simple tactical scenario. In short, a classic straw man argument pretending to be a survey question.

If the potion is cheap and I know the reward will more than cover the cost, then naturally I drink the potion and win the battle. This is the answer your question assumes everyone will agree with. Your question then presupposes that naturally, anyone who chooses to die deserves to be punished for giving the wrong answer. These assumptions are built into the way you worded and presented the question regardless of whether or not you consciously put them there.

If it is my one and only rare potion, acquired through completion of an arduous task force, and this particular boss is simply a stepping stone to a deeper understanding of the storyline, then dying is a strategically superior choice. However, your question contains the assumption I outlined above. The question itself presupposes that dying is tactically incorrect and deserving of a death penalty. This is part of the risk/reward structure your question assumes every "normal" player would agree with. The question itself accuses my widely divergent variable scenario of being false and irrelevant to the discussion. Your question assumes that if a death penalty is strong enough, then most players will use the potion anyway in order to avoid the death penalty. There is nothing in your question which opens the possibility for a particular potion to have a higher value than any death penalty. Whether this omission is deliberate or accidental does not change the invalid nature of the question itself.

My "it depends" questions are the presentation of multiple assumptions divergent from your own that your question contains absolutely no reference to. Your question does not allow for differences between games that offer a base/lair where additional potions are stored and those which don't. Your question assumes every game is a simple walkthrough from beginning to end with a story tagged on top of a much more critical "gameplay" ruleset, a ruleset your question has already provided the answer for. If this boss is a simple stepping stone in a story-driven game where learning the reasons for the boss to be in this dungeon at this time are far more important than simply defeating the boss, and if I have a base/lair with additional potions stored or where I can summon help to assist in overcoming this boss and death is the fastest way to reach my base/lair, then dying is strategically the best option, but your question assumes that dying contains a penalty which would punish anyone who takes this option. If the penalty is severe enough, it changes the strategic values of the boss encounter irrespective of the position in the storyline. Do I lose my base/lair as a result of defeat? Do I lose progress made in the storyline through defeat? Your death penalty assumption is undefined, making this strategic question unanswerable, rendering the question itself invalid.

You want a death penalty to punish players who are not afraid to use death as a strategic advantage because you cannot conceive of such an advantage. The question is limited to a single tactical scenario with absolutely no reference to the underlying strategic situation, rendering the deeper considerations of story advancement, cooperative gameplay, resource allocation, and encounter value irrelevant. The question is too simplistic, assuming as it does that death must be punished because defeat is bad.

Sometimes defeat is good. Sometimes defeat can be used to set up a stronger tactical advantage. Death penalties in MMORPGs assume no one should ever use defeat to gain a strategic advantage, therefore, voluntary defeat is nothing more than lazy gameplay. This assumption is what I am arguing against, not the tactical relevance of a single potion in a single boss encounter.

Gettin' jiggle with it

Perhaps they could be punished by losing their jiggle physics...or getting jiggle physics depending on what they like and don't like. And that "depending" clause indicates a real issue.

If someone speeds into the monsters to teleport home, then maybe death merits a penalty. If someone speeds into the monsters to see if they can make it, why penalize them? So much of this is dependent on the player intent when all the system knows is some version of the player action. When a player is trying to win and dies, a death penalty just makes a bad day worse. When a player is "gaming" the system, a death penalty may be an advantage.

I suspect that there should be some sort of death penalty, but it should be balanced with a focus on improving fun. I think COX did a pretty good job after a few tweaks a few years in. "Need a purple. Nope? [sigh] brb hospital run."

"THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"

dreamcatcher wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
For the people who think there should be no death penalty let me ask a few questions and let's see what the answers are:
Question #1: You are in the final boss fight of a long dungeon. You accidentally stand still too long to get off a powerful attack and don't manage to get out of the fire in time and you die. Should you be able to pop back up instantly at full health? If not, what sort of penalty would you provide if it was your game to design?
Question #2: The only way to get across section X of the city is to run past a bunch of really tough mobs. You could go around the long way, which is safer, but with your superspeed you can probably make it through section X and only have to die once or twice along the way. What penalty, if any, would you award to the people who choose this route? Or can they pop up after death instantly, and continue with full health and stamina as if they weren't just defeated?
Question #3: You are in a really tough fight. You have a potion of health you could pop that you know will give you enough health to win, or you could just die and try over without wasting the potion. Which do you choose and why?
I look forward to the answers.
I think Greyhawk addressed these questions in their entirety, but I will answer anyway, and I will take them at face value, ignoring all the issues he pointed out.
#1: I wouldn't stand in the fire too long, unless there was lag, or my keyboard batteries suddenly died, or I disconnected, but assuming I did, then no, I should not be at full health but that's not a penalty of the nature being discussed in this thread. As for being able to get back up immediately? Why not? If I can somehow do so without immediately dying again, then is that not some level of skill? Am I not overcoming a challenge? Are you saying a teammate should not be able to resurrect me? What about a self-res? I spent a power slot on that; it should be usable -without penalty- in this scenario.
#2: An interesting question: be a coward or do the heroic thing and rush straight to the mission even though your way is barred by foes. Again, no, I should not be able to stand right back up with full everything unless I have powers or 'things' that do that for me. Again, though, how is that a penalty? That's just recovery. I'm a little beaten up, but I press on. The orphans! Must save the orphans! I think the player who plays it safe should be punished, though. There's definitely no valid playstyle where avoiding delays caused by death could be more tactical and therefore such play should be punished. A pox on the lot of them, I say.
#3: To die. If I can't defeat the boss without a potion, I need to become a better player. Potions are for teaming situations, or when I have real-life time pressures, or when the mission is timed and it's down to the wire. Otherwise, using a potion is the easy way out. I don't care if the boss is at full health when I come back after dying, either; all the better in fact. However, I understand that some players aren't as masochistic as me, and that they would not like that.

Awesome Answers!

I really like the take you had on #2. I hadn't thought of the roleplaying reasons why you would want to run across Section X, so that made your answer even better! I also like your personal reason in your answer #3. That's one more example of one-size does not fit all, I suppose. I myself am a hoarder and will usually end up dying with plenty of unused potions, enhancements and uneaten food that I could have used. Silly me.

I have an even simpler question/scenario than Huckleberry's, which can illustrate the issue even more starkly.

In Star Trek Online, there's a place called Starfleet Academy. As you can see, it's got lots of pretty landscaping going on, complete with paved and gravel paths going to different places, park benches here and there, and even bridges over water with fountains and so on ...

[img]https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/sto.gamepedia.com/9/92/Starfleet_Academy.png[/img]

But here's the thing ... most of that pretty landscaping you see has no collision detection. Spindly little tree trunks will have collision detection, because they're geo objects, but all the leafy green stuff doesn't have any collision detection whatsoever ... meaning you can just walk (or run) right through hedgerows as if they weren't there (because they "aren't" as far as the collision detection is concerned).

So what does this mean in actual practice? It means that nearly all of the foliage ISN'T A BARRIER when going from Here To There. And if it isn't a barrier, people (like me) are just going to run right through it, because The Game Isn't Stopping You™ from doing that. According to the game's "rules" it is perfectly fine to move through what ostensibly ought to be "solid" objects, but which aren't as far as collision detection is concerned.

Net effect being ... [b]Go Straight. Nevermind The Road, Just Go Straight.[/b]

Everything just becomes straight lines/bee lines between points of interest, with Players feeling "learned contempt" for the actual setting because it doesn't behave the way it ostensibly "ought to" (by preventing you from "phasing" through hedges and shrubbery along your way). Indeed, the only "penalty" for doing this is what amounts to Breaking Immersion. The only "reason" to adhere to the provided pathing of the setting is pure Roleplay. But come on ... we KNOW what the adopted behavior of Players is going to be! Waste the least amount of time going from Point A to Point B. It's simple optimization! And so what happens when the "optimization" turns into [b]Go Straight. Nevermind The Road, Just Go Straight.[/b] just because there's [i]nothing preventing you from doing that[/i]?

It basically boils down to this ... [b]Stupid But Works Is Still Stupid ... And Still Works[/b].

When there's nothing telling you "You Made A Mistake" because there's no PENALTY for making the mistake in the first place ... then was it really a mistake?

My contention is that it is the "duty" of the game's developers to define not only what should be rewarded, but also what should be penalized, so as to "guide" (without forcing) the necessary behaviors and conventional wisdom of the Players via both Positive AND Negative Reinforcement. Being able to move through "solid objects as if they weren't there" (because as far as collision detection is concerned, they AREN'T THERE) is an easy example of a missing negative reinforcement that would appropriately guide Player assumptions of pathing/navigation through an environment.

Same deal with Death Penalties. If you aren't Penalized for being Defeated, then being Defeated ISN'T A BAD THING™ to either do or have happen to you. Why? No Negative Reinforcement.

And what happens when you've got no negative reinforcement going on to help "guide" Learned Behaviors? You get children sticking their hands in fires and burning their hands off ... because it doesn't hurt ... metaphorically speaking.

What you get, without Negative Reinforcement is [b][i]LEARNED STUPIDITY[/i][/b] ... because Stupid But Works Still Works (but is still Stupid!). I would argue that Learned Stupidity, and the contempt for the game it breeds, is more of a hazard than anything else, because it leads directly into This Kind Of Dumb™ ...

[img]http://www.sjgames.com/murphys/img/new7.jpg[/img]

dreamcatcher wrote:

Those aren't the same thing at all. You've just jammed a round peg in a square hole, and said "See! Perfect fit!"

Yes, yes, you completely destroyed Redlynn's argument, there. Except you missed the point.

He's trying to say that, if a behavior has no penalty, then people will do it. Corollary of that is, unless the Devs want 'Death', or 'Defeat', to be meaningless and to encourage players to use 'Death' in a tactical or strategic manner, which the Devs did not intend when designing the game, then there must be a penalty for the circumstance. Also, of course, the penalty ought to be strong enough that the players Do Notice it.

The trick, of course, is to find a balanced metric to penalize.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Stalker wrote:

So there seems to be a lot of vocalization against death penalties, but what if we flipped the system? If a stick treatment for poor play is undesirable, why not a carrot for effective play? Every bubble of experience earned gives a player 1% more rewards, up to a maximum of 10%, making a full level without death allow a player to build up to the maximum. Defeat is flagged to manner of resuscitation rather than faceplant, allowing players to pull an attack chain of Rain of fire > Nuke > Self Destruct > Rise of the phoenix, And not suffer from their bonus being taken away. Thoughts? Variants?

Said it above for something similar, this will rather encourage hit-and-run tactics making players play it safe to keep the buff rather than loose it. Besides I'm pretty sure that having the buff will be so "normal" that loosing it will be seen as a penalty rather than gaining it being seen as a boon.

Stalker wrote:

Barring the actual mechanical suggestion: Would it be preferable to reinforce positive behaviors, versus punishing unwanted behaviors? I failed to ask that question directly. Apologies. More directed at player opposing death penalties. Would catering a system to reward behavior be preferable, or should there only exist a baseline, and wasted time in death exist as the punishment?

This.

The idea of not getting something you would otherwise get is a very attractive death penalty to me.

Redlynne came up with a counter idea similar to yours that resets upon death. I also like the idea of a minigame to self-revive in place, but I appear to be in the minority on that.

I asked some questions a few posts back directed at people who don't want death penalties. I thought of three examples for which I thought made a good case for a death penalty and I wanted to see what people who think differently than I do had to say about those cases. (Always have to keep an open mind, ya know, because someone else is always thinking of things differently than I am) While it only got two people to respond, if those two people represent the population who are opposed to death penalties, then even the people who don't want death penalties still want death penalties, they just don't want penalties that persist after the resurrection has been done. That's why hospital runs are frowned upon, but grudgingly accepted. Even using a 'wakie' inspiration (I know that's CoH talk) is a death penalty too, because the time and effort spent to collect it is the collateral for the decision to use it. In their eyes, the only non-penalty for death would be when a teammate uses a power to resurrect. I find it hard to disagree with them.

However, I still personally like to see a death penalty that causes players to adjust their playstyle to avoid death. I have heard the opinions of others and I have been swayed to agree that sometimes its more fun to keep getting up and slugging on. But without the fear of death, the thrill is gone too. I can't deny it. Sure we can have fun without a hurtful death penalty, and I have; I'm not arguing that we can't. But we actually have more fun when the fear of death exists. And I want that 'more fun' alternative. (some people have said they want to play the sacrificial character who dies on purpose. If such a poweset exists that includes abilities that don't reach fruition until a character dies then I would recommend death is not penalized for that powerset since it is a viable win strategy for it. If such a powerset exists.)

@Stalker in your earlier post and this one you hit on something else. Death will frustrate players, especially when there is a penalty. The key is to talk more about the rewards and the reason to keep trying rather than how much it hurt to die. Because if the reason to succeed is high enough, then the player just might think it is worth dying for. And THAT is the essence of heroism!

dreamcatcher wrote:

Those aren't the same thing at all. You've just jammed a round peg in a square hole, and said "See! Perfect fit!".

Fireheart wrote:

Yes, yes, you completely destroyed Redlynne's argument, there. Except you missed the point.

He's trying to say that, if a behavior has no penalty, then people will do it. Corollary of that is, unless the Devs want 'Death', or 'Defeat', to be meaningless and to encourage players to use 'Death' in a tactical or strategic manner, which the Devs did not intend when designing the game, then there must be a penalty for the circumstance. Also, of course, the penalty ought to be strong enough that the players Do Notice it.

The trick, of course, is to find a balanced metric to penalize.

/em points at dreamcatcher and just LAUGHS ...

[img]https://cdn.meme.am/instances/62098804.jpg[/img]

In Guild Wars 2, they have stats for combat and some stats for how fast you might accumulate wealth. You can get items and so forth that increase your chances of finding better items upon monster kills, and there are ways to up your effective IGC income rate for when that drops on you from monster kills as well. One of the stats that can be modified with items etc in GW2 is "Luck" which affects such things.

You COULD give people some sort of effective Luck bonus that increases over time spent logged into a toon and then resets to a base value when that toon is defeated. So while you're "on a roll" and not getting defeated, your Luck increases monotonically, then when defeated, it goes back to "zero" or whatever your locked-in Luck value might be, based on gear you have or other bonuses you might be getting for whatever. You could even make the increases to Luck only kick in when you successfully complete something like a mission or TF, just to discourage people from only farming easy content.

For the record, having posed this idea, I don't like it myself. I think it will lead to more farming anyway, and also it still doesn't really discourage anyone from getting killed repeatedly in rapid succession to finish a mission faster. I mean, the first death breaks the streak, and from that point on, unless you lose Luck on every successive defeat, you're going to cut your losses and just die your way through the rest of the TF or whatever and just write it off and move on. What the heck, you can always grind some easier stuff to get your Luck back up later anyway, right?

I still think just forcing people to have to do the walk/fly/superleap of shame to return to the action from the Hospital/SG base is probably enough to discourage getting defeated. That way you don't really "lose" anything when you get defeated, except time. It makes it take LONGER to get through a mission by allowing yourself to get killed repeatedly, and thus makes that option worse than trying to avoid defeat. I'm not against XP debt or IGC debt either. Theoretically, the Hospital SHOULD charge you IGC for the treatment you are receiving as a flavor-immersion thing (and where the rubber meets the road, it sinks IGC, so thats good), and your SG base Medi-Evac rig probably doesn't run on thank-yous either. Instead of charging people IGC for getting Hospitaled each time they get defeated, I would just do it like debt. The SG base/personal lair medical bay should cost IGC to maintain and should go off-line when you don't pay to keep it going for the month or whatever.

In order to discourage people from using self-defeat as a Preferred Play Style (TM) or valid strategy to get through content, you need to introduce some sort of negative aspect to what happens when you get defeated, that is, there needs to be a drawback to the whole "getting defeated" process for it to be something you're going to try to avoid, for the most part. I think the game has to be predicated on the idea that players will try to avoid defeat wherever possible, with the OCCASIONAL self-sacrifice in big heroic situations, rarely.

When American football players commit penalties and get called for it, they cause their team to lose yards, etc. In pro ice hockey, players committing penalties get carded and end up in the penalty box for 2 minutes and their team has to try to survive with one less player on the ice for those 2 minutes, etc. They don't give the player that committed the penalty something fun to do to occupy their time while they're in the penalty box, and that's for a reason. So the whole "walk of shame" that you have to do when defeated to get back into the mission or whatever from the Hospital is time consuming and not terribly entertaining by design. That aspect of it is a big part of why players would try to avoid getting defeated.

That said, I may have mentioned on other threads that GW2 has a "down but not out yet" mechanic that I really like. When you get reduced to zero HP, you are on the ground, the game goes black and white to you and you have a bar of temp hit points that slowly runs out unless you do something or someone tries to revive you. All players can revive each other, it's not like you have to have a power that does that. That said, there are powers that revive people faster and with more hit points when they get back up, etc. While "down" you can either let your temp hit points run out as you continue to attack, using the one and only "while down" attack you have, or you can try to lick your wounds and make your temp hit points go to the maximum, which if successful means you get back up. That is interruptible though and not a good idea when there are still baddies around. If you keep attacking and you actually defeat a badguy, you get a surge of healing and get back up.

I'm fine with all of this, and with other players on your team helping you, but the problem persists of "Okay, but what happens when you're right and truly defeated and unconscious?" which brings us back to the hospital evac, debt, etc questions. In GW2, every time you get defeated "for real", you take damage to your armor, and if you accumulate enough armor damage, you end up with non-functioning pieces of armor, so you lose their combat stat bonuses until you can get it repaired, for IGC. This is more of an inconvenience than a real IGC sink, as the cost to repair armor is really low. The hardest part is finding a repair NPC and making the side-trip to go do it. I'm pretty sure the devs don't like the "gear damage upon death" mechanic, so that's probably not going to happen.

If you're not going to give people the long return to the fight as a deterrent against getting defeated, you need some other deterrent, and as a deterrent, it shouldn't be a fun and entertaining thing to get to do. People shouldn't be volunteering to die all the time to be able to do that fun thing you get to do while dead. If it's not a long return trip to the fight, then maybe a damage debuff upon death would be good. Like "get defeated, and wham, you're now fighting as if you were one level lower than you really are, in terms of combat potential. Your attacks do the base damage of a toon one level lower than you actually are for like 20 seconds" Of course, once you nerf people's combat stats, it leads to an avalanche breakdown where you tend to get defeated MORE in your weakened state and you end up with cascading debuffs until you have to just take like a minute to rest and shake the debuffs off and carry on. If you didn't like the walk of shame, you're probably going to HATE that.

I feel like both of you are being a bit hyperbolic on this issue. No hospital runs weren't "fun," but they weren't absolutely tragic either. I don't think most people felt that running to the hospital was that awful. I think most conversations went, "does anyone have a res or wakie? how about a yellow I can combine? couple of Blues? okay, I'll brb." The exception being zones that didn't have a hospital, or exceedingly large zones, like the Shard. In which case the conversation ended in "I'll be back in a minute or two." And these zones were designated challenge zones so the stakes were a little higher. It made sense in COH. Considering we should have a travel power from the start even a location like perez park and the hollows wouldn't be such a terrible place to die if it did happen.

We also have to consider that the devs are looking at ways to make reserves useful for this. Unless you are using reserves all the time you'll probably have something you can use to avoid the hospital run. And then you may be able to transfer some of those reserves to res another player. Based on that, I'd say it would be very unlikely for a person on a team to ever have to do the hosp run. Perhaps if you are really tanking on a task. In which case a dev might want to force the player to take that time running to think of a better strategy. Or the team can use that downtime while their fellow returns to recruit someone else to help out. No it isn't "fun" but that's all the more motivation to not do it.

I agree with Grimfox. My impression is that most people that have problems with something akin to the hospital run are, in fact, against corpse runs. Similar, and yet a very different approach.

Also, who is to say that some people might not consider the hospital run a type of minigame? How quickly can you get back to resume your mission or help your team? Perhaps you'll even encounter something interesting along the way (i.e. an event) in which you can participate before you get back to the mission. I might even enjoy the hospital run more than whatever other type of minigame I might have to get through.

The "revival drone" type of thing is an idea I've toyed with as well, although it presents some challenges. The most obvious is that it could have a significant impact on any self-revival powers. But that's a question of mechanics and balance.

Fireheart wrote:

Yes, yes, you completely destroyed Redlynn's argument, there. Except you missed the point.
He's trying to say that, if a behavior has no penalty, then people will do it. Corollary of that is, unless the Devs want 'Death', or 'Defeat', to be meaningless and to encourage players to use 'Death' in a tactical or strategic manner, which the Devs did not intend when designing the game, then there must be a penalty for the circumstance. Also, of course, the penalty ought to be strong enough that the players Do Notice it.
The trick, of course, is to find a balanced metric to penalize.
Be Well!
Fireheart

No, I didn't. It is an easy concept to grasp. *My* point, however, was clearly lost in translation. To whit, I disagree with him. There is nothing enshrined in the heavens that says there *must* be a death penalty. I entertain the idea that something must be in place; the jury is out on what that should be.

Some people have touched on this, but I thought it bears repeating the opinion that there should be no death penalty if you are revived in battle by a teammate or with your own reserves. In those cases the only penalty is the time and effort spent on the revival itself.

Reviving yourself after a battle with your own reserves or by a teammate COULD include some penalty, but only if the enemy you were fighting survives to tell the tale. It would depend on the penalty. In this case a counter-reset or loss of bonus would be an appropriate penalty.

Having to use an outside revival resource would need to provide the most severe death penalty. It could be expressed as [i]IGC[/i] for an in-place revival, [i]time[/i] for a hospital or corpse run, [i]xp debt or other timed or persistent penalty[/i] for quickly successive deaths.

Huckleberry wrote:

Some people have touched on this, but I thought it bears repeating the opinion that there should be no death penalty if you are revived in battle by a teammate or with your own reserves. In those cases the only penalty is the time and effort spent on the revival itself.

An exception to this might be the difference between using a primary res power and its secondary and tertiary counterparts. The primary res brings you back to full health, and momentum and reserves either where they were when you dropped or where they would be when you started a new fight after resting a bit. (Is such an equilibrium point going to be a thing in this game?) The secondary would bring you back with some health missing and lower momentum and reserves. The tertiary would bring you back, barely, and if the fight's not over, be careful!

Radiac wrote:

I could see having rez powers that give you a buff to one thing and debuff to another, in fact. Or maybe you get rezzed and debuffed, and the enemies around you also get debuffed, damaged, etc or maybe your allies get a buff, like how Vengeance worked in the old CoX Leadership pool.

That reminds me of Howling Twilight, which rezzed every ally in the caster's AoE, plus dropped a major debuff on the opponents in the target AoE. It was a colossal Aggro Generator.
(https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Miasma#Howling_Twilight)

Be Well!
Fireheart

The fact that Howling Twilight did rez to an AoE along with other stuff and didn't require a dead body to actually fire it off was a good design, I think. Radiac, the toon, had Mutate (or was it called Mutation...) which only rezzed one toon, required a dead body to target to even cast it, and even then had a built-in drawback that you got stunned when you came down from the buffs it gave when they wore off. That debuff come-down was totally unnecessary, if you ask me. If your game discourages getting defeated enough to begin with (XP and INF debt), then you don't need that rez power to have a drawback like that. It could be argued that since people would volunteer to die on purpose for Vengeance (and in some cases, just to keep their Enhancements from becoming useless upon level up) that the death penalties weren't severe enough, but the fix for that is not to make a single-target rez power have more drawbacks.

This brings up the point that getting defeated ought to cost something even when you get rezzed by someone, or else people use intentional self defeat as a tactic in groups too much. I still like XP and IGC debt for that, if you throw enough of it at people for getting defeated. People HATED getting defeated in early CoX. If you fix the problem of needing to die to prevent yourself from outleveling your gear, then I think it would be better.

It seems like most of the discussion has focused primarily on the mechanics of defeat. I do not recall if anyone has mentioned the potential consequences of defeat on the outcome of the mission. Referencing back to the Kickstarter and the manner in which the Devs are planning on designing multi-branching story arcs, perhaps it would be appropriate to fail whatever mission you are currently working if you are defeated in mission and have to resort to a form of rez that requires you to exit the mission. The adversary succeeds at whatever goal they were attempting to accomplish and bugs out. Auto failure for the mission; now you must follow branch of story associated with that failure.

This would be more punitive to solo players than large teams since team wipes are more rare (especially since most times someone will have the capacity to rez).

The one thing I hated more than being defeated in CoX, was actually failing a mission.

Nyxz wrote:

Referencing back to the Kickstarter and the manner in which the Devs are planning on designing multi-branching story arcs, perhaps it would be appropriate to fail whatever mission you are currently working if you are defeated in mission and have to resort to a form of rez that requires you to exit the mission. The adversary succeeds at whatever goal they were attempting to accomplish and bugs out. Auto failure for the mission; now you must follow branch of story associated with that failure.

That is deliciously paradigm-shifting for an MMO. I love it.

Perhaps not auto-failure, but certainly not best-case success. It could be that your raid stopped the boss's plans and he had to bug out, so that would be a partial mission success. But I love the idea that your subsequent story arcs are dependent upon how successful your mission was, not just what moral decisions you make.

Huckleberry wrote:

The key is to talk more about the rewards and the reason to keep trying rather than how much it hurt to die. Because if the reason to succeed is high enough, then the player just might think it is worth dying for. And THAT is the essence of heroism!

This reflects my current position on the topic. I haven't yet seen a suggestion for it in this thread that I think would work particularly well, but anything that provides an incentive for me to 'get stuck in', whether I've died or not, goes into the win column.

I'm not a huge fan of Guild Wars these days but one thing they did reasonably well was a stacking buff when you killed elites. It wasn't all good in terms of sponsored behaviour, but it had some things going for it, and iirc, WildStar did something similar, although the specifics elude me.

Looking into what these games did and others like them, and considering them as part of a design process, would -I think- help MWM choose a design that works for them, whether that ends up being a penalty or something else.

I would at least like to be able to say that they considered alternatives, rather than simply going with the safe and well-tread ground of a death penalty because that's all they know.

Foradain wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:
Some people have touched on this, but I thought it bears repeating the opinion that there should be no death penalty if you are revived in battle by a teammate or with your own reserves. In those cases the only penalty is the time and effort spent on the revival itself.
An exception to this might be the difference between using a primary res power and its secondary and tertiary counterparts. The primary res brings you back to full health, and momentum and reserves either where they were when you dropped or where they would be when you started a new fight after resting a bit. (Is such an equilibrium point going to be a thing in this game?) The secondary would bring you back with some health missing and lower momentum and reserves. The tertiary would bring you back, barely, and if the fight's not over, be careful!

The distinction you're dancing around is one I tried to highlight before ... namely that WHEN the penalty ought to be applied has some important implications.

If the penalty gets applied [i]when you go down[/i] then that's going to be rather limiting (game mechanically speaking) since that's going to ultimately wind up being something of a One Size Fits All sort of deal and then if you want to apply any conditionals and/or rebates for circumstantial actions (or Self Rez Powers) things start getting mucky for the game mechanics pretty quickly. This is the sort of thing I would expect Cryptic Studios to do, and then spend years developing a crapton of Special Snowflake ways to avoid/mitigate it retroactively. Not recommended.

If the penalty gets applied [i]when you get up[/i] then that opens up a wide range of possibilities for all kinds of penalty avoidance/mitigation based on all kinds of circumstantials that you can't necessarily anticipate in the initial game design. It makes possible different [i]degrees of penalty[/i] based on the Rez Method chosen/selected from the available options, which then gets towards the "minigame" of deciding HOW or in what WAY your character will "get up" after having been "put down" by the opposition. I means you can do a Many Sizes Fit Lots style of implementation, rather than a One Size Fits All.

In a nutshell, my basic ideas on this reflect my basic ideas on the game in general, make it limiting and a little harsh in the base rules for what happen when you get defeated, then add in exceptions, options, and shortcuts that can overcome a lot of that by spending IGC or having the right powers or items, etc.

Radiac wrote:

In order to discourage people from using self-defeat as a Preferred Play Style (TM) or valid strategy to get through content, ...

All of these beautiful, logical, rational discussions are awe-inspiring to behold, but I still have not bought into this fundamental premise. I still see no reason to discourage people from using self-defeat as either a preferred playstyle or valid strategy.

Of course people will do it. So? It makes no difference to me whatsoever and does not detract from my enjoyment of the game. I understand not everyone agrees, but this is still my position and I have yet to see any realistic reason to change.

But hey! Nice discussion, mostly.

I will say I agree with dreamcatcher: Redlynne used a meaningless, unrelated analogy to demonstrate a point, lessening the importance of the point itself and rendering that particular portion of the discussion mute. Running through shrubbery vs. self-inflicted defeat as one element of a larger strategy? Nope. Not seeing any the connection to Redlynne's main point of "enforcing preferred behavior through penalties".

If the MWM team wants death to be painful then it will be painful. I get that. But that does not mean I have to like it or agree with it. The degree to which this imposition interferes with my ability to enjoy the game will determine how much time I spend in-world and how much money I spent at the ingame store. Simple premise. I have no intention of forcing anyone to agree with my premise. I just enjoy hearing myself talk (or in this case, reading my own words).

Just my own never humble opinion.

Radiac wrote:

Here's an idea, what if the "self rez" you get from using Reserves always burns all of your remaining Reserves, and the quality of the rez you get is dependent on how much reserves you had when you get defeated? I think people might try to save up reserves for the "good" self rez in that case, and in any case, you get back up with no reserves left and no momentum. This would seem to me that it encourages and rewards judicious use of reserves and self-preservation, both of which I like.

This is a very simple idea that bears a lot of merit.

If Reserves works on a "0 to 10 points" kind of scale, when using Reserves to perform a "Wakie" action, you could be confronted with a choice of "how much of your Reserves do you want to spend?" in order to get back up. And as Radiac says, the more you spend, the greater the mitigation ... just like the differences between using Small, Medium or Large "Wakie" in City of Heroes, since the larger Inspirations offered greater mitigation of side effects.

When structuring things with that in mind, it would probably be best then to apply the Death/Debt Penalty [b]upon Defeat[/b] ... but then allow the various Resurrection methods to mitigate that penalty. Self-Rez by Power? 90% Debt Reduction upon Self-Rez (for example). Rez Other by Power? 80% Debt Reduction upon Rez (for example). You can then have a whole spectrum of options, including "Hospital" which offers a 0% Debt Reduction upon Rez (meaning you're "paying" full price).

Fireheart wrote:

Alright, Redlynne, I basically agree, but how is that superior to applying the penalty upon Revive? That seems to simplify the equation, to me, by applying the penalty directly, rather than figuring penalty-forgiveness. It seems to me that the User Experience would be the same, either way.
Be Well!
Fireheart

It's a matter of perception. As essentially said above, there will most likely be some people who will think that it's not the act of dieing that gives the penalty but rather the act of reviving and thus complain about it from that PoV. Example used was, I assume, drive-by revives.

Though depending on if we still get XP when dead, like in CoH, then then we have another thing to consider.

Fireheart wrote:

Alright, Redlynne, I basically agree, but how is that superior to applying the penalty upon Revive? That seems to simplify the equation, to me, by applying the penalty directly, rather than figuring penalty-forgiveness. It seems to me that the User Experience would be the same, either way.

Taken in isolation, without regard to other circumstantial factors ... [i]there is no difference[/i] ... to a soloist.

But as soon as you get into a Team 2-8 situation, the calculus changes.

Let's say, just for the sake of example, that the Debt Penalty applies upon Revive, rather than upon Defeat. What happens in a multi-player context?

Duh ... FREELOADING.
In other words, if you get Defeated [i]and stay faceplanted[/i] while the rest of your Team keeps defeating mobs ... well ... you'll still keep drawing "full" XP and IGC rewards the entire time [i]until you Revive[/i].

Which means Powerleveling WHILE DEFEATED becomes a perfectly valid strategy which isn't "discouraged" by the game mechanics in any way (quite the contrary, actually). AND ... as if that wasn't enough, if taken to some pretty logical extremes, the method and timing of Revival itself could become a point of contention, since it would interfere with the "free leeching" that would be possible if Debt was levied upon Revival, rather than upon Defeat. Why? Because then, as pointed out above, the "pain point" isn't the DEFEAT itself, it's the Revival, making it possible to mismatch the incentive structure away from the desired behavioral assumption (of Don't Take Defeat Lightly).

Radiac wrote:

Here's an idea, what if the "self rez" you get from using Reserves always burns all of your remaining Reserves, and the quality of the rez you get is dependent on how much reserves you had when you get defeated? I think people might try to save up reserves for the "good" self rez in that case, and in any case, you get back up with no reserves left and no momentum. This would seem to me that it encourages and rewards judicious use of reserves and self-preservation, both of which I like.

Hmmm... this might lead to behavior where someone prefers to die for the better revival sure thing, then try to survive uncertainly by using resources while still alive. If a character is down to her last resources, choosing death knowing she has the minimum needed to revive becomes a more attractive option than using her last resources to survive by the skin of her teeth. The hair's breadth victories are the type of things we brag about to our friends or just to our cats, and this could do away with such elated bragging.

Stalker wrote:

Thematically, I never understood experience gain while defeated. What does being unconscious teach you about being a hero? Nothing! Would it really be too harsh to remove enemy EXP while downed ((allowing mission exp to still be earned on missions complete)) or reducing enemy defeat EXP by a significant margin? While not directly a penalty for death, it would do something to discourage players from actively choosing to stay down.

I agree completely with this. Give players a reason to get back into the fight.

However, I do think players should get experience pro-rated by how much they contributed. For instance, if your Gladiator peeled off the main crowd to protect your Hunter who had accidentally aggro'd some adds. But since your Sentinel was so busy keeping your bulwark alive against the big boss, she couldn't help out your gladiator, so he died. By the time your Sentinel revives your Gladiator, the big boss has been defeated. Should your Gladiator get no XP for it? That wouldn't be fair. So does everyone get equal xp? if not, how would you divvy up the XP knowing that all of the roles in the group did different things? Add on the additional complexity of who was unconsious for how long and when. Sure computers can do all this math faster than we can think about it, but someone still has to figure out what the calculations are.

In GW2 people don't compete against each other for looting corpses or for mining resource nodes. You do have to have gotten some damage in on the corpse to have any chance of getting anything from it though, as far as I know, otherwise that corpse disappears almost as soon as the monster dies, as far as your perception of it is concerned, I believe. Corpses that might have loot for you have a graphic way of showing that (they have this sort of steamy bubbly sparkly stuff rising up off them until you loot and then all that sparkle rushes towards you like you're vacuuming it up).

I could see making players have to actively press a button to loot corpses in CoT. It's not ideal and its not what I would want for a hero game per se, but if it solves problems revolving around loot gain and death, it could be done and I wouldn't really complain.

I'm also for the idea of every mob I did some damage to gettig me XP and possible loot drops whether or not I was up and conscious when it got defeated. This includes end-of-mission bonuses too, but not kills of stuff that I never touched. I could see being on a team and getting XP and loot while still alive and whatever, but not while down or dead.

Radiac wrote:

Also, to Huck's point, if the base rule is "when you die, you come back with baseline zero Momentum and Reserves, regardless of how you died and how you rezzed" then your concern about people taking the death over the will to fight on is no longer a problem, right? Can we do that?

I was under the impression that reserves were preserved so that we could use them as a 'wakie'.

Let me use numbers to represent what I meant. Let's say you have 15 reserves remaining. It costs you 10 reserves to buff yourself and 10 reserves to revive once down, so you can't do both. Do you choose to buff yourself and risk not being able to revive, or do you just take the hit and allow yourself to be defeated so that you can revive on the spot?

If we lose reserves with death as you suggest, it would certainly make that scenario moot such that the most attractive option would be to buff yourself and try to win. And I think it would be a significant deterrent to voluntary defeat.

Good one, Radiac.

Depending on class, Masteries, Tertiaries, gear, etc, you might have different options while "down, but not out". Like, one of them would always be "Spend Remaining Reserves to Self-Rez" which would be greyed out if you don't have enough Reserves to do it.

You could also have things like "Self Destruct" where you do some big AoE (damage dependent on Reserves spent, and it always uses up whatever you've got left, or maybe it's only usable when you have at least 80% Reserves saved, etc) and go straight to "really dead now, and un-rezzable for a cool down timer" in the process. Or "Martyrdom" where you similarly go from "down" to "dead" and give an AoE ally buff in the process. You could have "Disappear" where you go invisible while deciding your next move, having spent Reserves to do so, and considering the option of self-rezzing using more Reserves or going to the Hopsital, or getting an ally to rez you, or using a self rez power you might have, or using a piece of gear, like a temp power or Wakie, etc to do it, if those exist. You could also have the "Exact Revenge" option for some classes where you keep attacking and spend Reserves to do so until you either pass out or defeat the target, thus giving you a surge of HP and getting you back up. You'd either pass out when Reserves are exhausted or when your "downed hitpoints" bar dwindles to zero (if there is one), or which ever comes first, etc. You could have an "Evacuation" thing where you can spend Reserves to teleport yourself to a safer location (either by targeting an area or going back to the last "save point" in the mission, etc).

You might give players a huge bunch of options to choose from while "Down" based on everything in their build, but only allow them to have a small number of them active and able to be used when defeated at any given time. Like if you have Invisibility as a Tertiary and Teleportation as a travel power, you might have unlocked both "Disappear" and "Evacuation", but not have both on the option list at the same time, or maybe you can and they both cost different amounts of Reserves when used. Maybe the base rules usually afford you like 3 different "while down" powers to use, in addition to the one everyone gets (spend Reserves to self rez), but your current build unlocks the option of using like 6 different ones you've unlocked, so you have to decide in the build phase which 3 you're going to put in the "While Down" tray, which is locked until you respec again.

Just ideas.

Notice how the more limiting the base rules are the more fun you can have with powers etc to offset those limits.

I like the non-competitive looting, for the record. I think that actively having to loot a corpse is a little out of character, at least for heroes, but I wouldn't object to it, if it had desirable mechanics that the devs felt were necessary. Like if the solution to gaining loot while dead is "you can't loot a corpse while dead, so don't die" In GW2, auto-looting is possible, but has to be unlocked, so you could maybe do that. In fact that game has a fairly complicated system. You defeat a monster, and assuming it's not like a big dragon or world-level boss, you would then have to go to the corpse and hit "F" to loot it, at which point it brings up a small window showing you what items the corpse has, you then have to click each one individually to take the ones you want. In the Options menu, you can set it to "always take everything after hitting F" and it will do that unless your inventory is full, at which point it will go back to giving you a window with items to get, but you have to make room for them before you can get them. Then if you want to automatically press F every time you're near a monster that has loot for you, there's an in-game way to unlock that, or you can pay money for it I think.

There is a potential fix for the "fifty people protecting the caravan" problem: spawn new shards and invite existing teams to shift to the new shards. Now the escort is thinned out a bit from the perspective of the original shard. Not sure if it would work in GW2, but with the server architecture MWM was planning on using it should be fairly simple, as long as it is possible to count the number of PCs near the caravan.

Even if you do have a "down but not out" mechanic, it doesn't necessarily have to be used in PVP. You could just run that without it and just use it in PVE, in theory. I think PVP builds for toons are going to be different from PVE builds no matter what, as I think they generally are in most games, so it doesn't really create any more work for players to have to fold into their builds the idea that they won't have the "down" attacks or whatever.

I don't know how hard it is to code or how much computing power it takes for the game to keep track of the amounts of damage and/or debuff I've dealt to monsters that are currently still alive, but if that could be done for every toon in the game, you would have the option of awarding or not awarding XP and other stuff upon the defeat of those monsters as a choice the game makes based on how much damage you did. You could even have different levels of rewards for different amounts of "work" done by the player, and for different levels of success. Did you attack the giant robot and do significant damage, based on expectations? Did the giant robot get brought down before the timer ran out and it self-repaired? If so, you get "Best" rewards because of your apparent "full" level of participation and the resulting "full success" that the event ended in. If the robot got to do it's self-repair and had to be attacked and defeated after that, then maybe everyone that helped bring it down got less rewards for only a "second best" result, but still got "full" participation. You could have a cache of IGC and other rewards that you get for full marks in both categories and then modulate how much of that stuff you get based on your participation and the results of the event or mission, etc. Or you could have different reward packages possible based on success rate and then either award full, partial, or zero of that package to players based on participation. All of this could be treasure or whatever that you get while "dead" because it was the end reward for a long fight that you fought in and happened to die at the very end.

On the other hand, if you're in a team and the team is clearing a mission map and you're standing outside doing inventory or in the mission by the front door goofing off, you ought to get a "zero" rating for lack of participation and thus get zero, or lowest possible rewards when and if the team finishes despite your goldbricking. In theory it's easier to just give everyone the XP and IGC drops, if there are going to be drops. This might be where actively having to loot corpses becomes the standard and easiest way to handle it. Nobody goldbricks their way through a fight in GW2 because you have to actively loot the corpses in that game. Even if you have all the auto-loot functionality unlocked, you still have to actually get close enough to the defeated monsters to get their loot when they drop, so you have to at least follow the team through the map, and you'll get no loot from anything you didn't do damage to. If you coded it like a combination of CoX and GW2, you could still have the active looting and the "everyone get's credit for a team win" rule for individual mob defeats, such that you can still loot even if you deal no damage, but you have to be physically located near the mob when it drops in order to get that loot. If you apply that to XP as well, or make the XP gain a part of the loot that has to be actively looted, then you can probably all but eliminate goldbricking. If you add in sidekick/exemplaring then you can all but eliminate powerleveling too, in the sense that you as a low level toon aren't necessarily going to get better rewards for fighting level 50 badguys with a level 50 group then you otherwise would for fighting level 5 badguys with a level 5 group, which is, I think , as it should be.

The game could also monitor the buff effects you throw onto other toons and award participation based on that, damage, debuffs applied to mobs maybe.

I have to say I disagree with the idea that the "down but not out" mechanic is somehow not a flavorful, immersive, appropriate thing for a superhero game. That mechanic, to me, SCREAMS "Must..... reach.....utility....belt...AAAAARRRRGH!" which is a huge superhero meme, to me. Just because CoX didn't have it doesn't mean CoT can't or shouldn't. If the devs don't feel like they have the time and resources to devote to doing it now, or in the future, fine. If doing it infringes on other games copyrights or something, fine avoid it for that reason, but I can't look at that mechanic objectively and say, with a straight face, "Yeah, I get it, but not in a superhero game. Doesn't fit the genre." l think it 100% fits the genre. Even for villains, it's a sort of Khan from Star Trek "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!" kind of thing. You're down, but you're fighting to the last because you have to prove to the do-gooders that you're superior to the last, so you keep using your "Exact Revenge" mechanic until you either defeat the opponent from the prone position or pass out trying. Or the hero downs you and then you vanish, making them go "Where did he...?" etc.

Even if you want to give an example of a character who 100% would not use the downed mechanic, then fine, just ignore it and go to the hospital or rez yourself using powers or something if you want to. That doesn't rule it out or prove it's bad just because SOME specific toon(s) might not really want to use it. If you were going to do that, you could rule almost everything else about the game out on that same basis as well. You could rule out character levels on the basis of "My toon is an eternal who has always lived and will live forever." nice concept, but the game is still going to make that toon start at level 1 like everyone else, as far as I know.

On the downed but not out concept, I find myself thinking "what else could the devs be doing?" While I agree that it would be thematic, and in my opinion inarguably so, I don't see enough gameplay value in the mechanic to justify putting it in. Ultimately that's an MWM decision, of course, but if I try to put myself in their shoes, I see a list of things much more important scrolling before my eyes. Maybe they can put a mini-demo of it in the alpha/beta and see how people respond *shrug*

As for the death penalty versus living reward system, we've given them plenty of food for thought, and I still stand by my earlier assertion.

The only new input I have at this point in time, is to touch on the contribution = reward sub-topic that's surfaced, which probably deserves it's own thread.

If MWM go the route of choosing to reward players by how much they did while alive only, then I implore them to design it carefully and to test it thoroughly. When determining contribution, do not base it solely on damage dealt or even aggro (depending on how you work your aggro system).

I normally play damage dealers so this issue has seldom affected me personally, with the notable exception of CO, but my MMO history is littered with complaints by healers and buffers about not getting loot or experience from bosses, especially world or event bosses, because they didn't do any or enough damage to the mob in question. This also affects DPS classes in events with no AoE, or AoE that takes so long to cast the enemy dies before it goes off. Games where I know this was an issue: CO (in everything during the early days when they introduced their first healing-themed powerset); Star Wars ToR (world and raids); FFXIV (fates); GW2 (dynamic events).

In short, base any contribution=reward mechanic on all types of contribution, including healing, buffing, and locking down adds (etc.) while someone else wails on the boss. I suspect part of the reason CoT gave rewards even when dead was because this is a lot more complex than it seems.

One of the things that frustrated me the most with The Elder Scrolls Online was just what you mention, Radiac. In fact, it frustrated me so much it was what caused me to quit playing the game.

To wit, being close enough for an event to get credit for it without participating in it. I can't tell you how many times I would do the five prerequisite quests in the story chain and then go into the instance to fight the boss and I get into the instance right when a group of players defeat it. I got credit and I never even saw the damned boss. For those of you who haven't played TESO, the instances are not private, they are public for everyone meeting the criteria for it.

That made me so angry and frustrated and unsatisfied.

So, if we are going to give credit to players for being 'near' an event, I would like to see it be done smarter than was done for TESO. Some of the suggestions you gave, Radiac, make sense. If you actually get affected by the monsters, or get aggro somehow by some of the participants in it, then I can see getting credit. And I am of the mind that unless the devs can flawlessly calculate the amount of participation it is better for all concerned to give full credit to all participants.

Is there gonna be a CoT version of Rest?

Rest? [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer]The Rest I'm thinking of[/url] is probably not what you meant, though I for one would love to see it in the game just for all the support-tool opportunities it opens up.

Fireheart wrote:

That's an excellent question! Perhaps you should put in the Q&A thread?
Be Well!
Fireheart

Done!

:p

I'd like my character to just fall out of combat on a timer (that can be lowered with player action or teammate action) thus giving characters differing rez patterns in combat. If there's a complete wipe your character can rez in place (where they fell) with some temporary agro-stealth, resetting the enemies.

I'm jumping into this discussion a little late, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the rolling counter and defeat. While fighting someone who has killed 100 or 1000 of your compatriots can be terrifying it is just as terrifying to think you have defeated him and then have him explode into a firewall torching everyone around him. For this reason I think if you do use a self heal power, such as Rise of the Phoenix, you shouldn't reset the counter or if you use the method Lin suggested:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Regarding the defeat-count mechanism mentioned by Redlynne and Huckleberry, rather than making it an overly simplistic counter with two events:

defeat a mob: count = count + 1
defeated by mob: count = 0
count ≥ threshold: get reward or access
instead use a sliding reputation scale, where the "counter" can be bumped in either direction by various things:

defeat a minion: count = count + 1
defeat a lieutenant: count = count + 4
defeat a boss: count = count + 10
defeat an elite boss: count = count + 40
defeated by a minion: count = count - 1000
defeated by a lieutenant: count = count - 500
defeated by a boss: count = count - 150
defeated by an elite boss: count = count - 40
part of a team: scale credit or penalty by team size
count ≥ 1000: mobs fear you, what they say changes, more eager to attack (He killed Kenny!)
count ≥ 20000: content unlocked, mobs less eager to attack without overwhelming advantage
count = 50000 (cap): title unlocked
count ≤ -1000: mobs mock you, extra eager to attack (I'm bored; let's mess him up. He's easy!)
count ≤ -20000: mobs pity you, less eager to attack you if they outnumber you (Yeah, we tag Goodwill stores and club baby seals, but we're not that evil)
count = -50000 (cap): mobs bump into you and knock you down for jollies but otherwise ignore you unless you attack
This totally puts the hurt on pride, like Huckleberry pointed out.

You should loose less rep than if you rezzed a different way.

Part of the problem with having a binary yes/no defeat counter is that it discourages certain types of play styles. In COH I saw people who would run into a room over flowing with minions, self-destruct, and then Rise of the Phoenix. This effectively cleared the room of most if not all of the minions which allowed the group to kill the boss or progress on with the mission. This was particularly effective in the mission where the demon gate kept summoning demons until you closed it. If your group wiped, by the time you got back to the room, it was completely full of minions which made it exceeding difficult to close the gate without resetting the mission. By doing the self-destruct and Rise of the Phoenix, it allowed you to clear the room enough you could actually close the gate and continue on with the mission.

The only reason anyone used getting defeated, on purpose, as a play style was because there were powers that required you to die to use them, or required dead bodies of allies to work (like Vengeance). If you made Fire AoE powers and team buff powers like those, but without the need for someone to get defeated, then there's no longer any need to commit suicide as part of your win strategy. Since there's no really pressing reason to tie defeat to the ability to activate a power, there's no really pressing need for using defeat as a strategy, is there? If the devs simply don't make powers that require you or a friend to be defeated to be able to activate them, then you won't have any reason to get defeated on purpose as a part of your strategy, right?

Nyxz wrote:

But then I would have lost all reasons to create Susie Sital - The Suicide Queen.

Haha brilliant name.

I like the idea of having powers that require death. Vengeance was awesome. And in an RP sense, a lot of dark gloomy players would love to have abilities that require or depend on the concept of being dead.