Commando Archive
Thread: Thoughts on TC 20% item decay when incap/death
I am always suprised when i hear commando's say things that indicate the belief that the class needs another"weakness" to balance the game and make it more challenging but that is another subject....
That is all well and good if this was a trully balanced game as far as the AI was concerned. This game has more situations where the AI through warping mobs "cheats". It is for this reason alone that i am vehemently opposed to the decay on incap and death. Bring back insurance and corpse runs. I have played games where there was a real penalty like xp loss as in Diablo II but the system rarely if ever "cheated" to put the player at risk. You can be as quiet and careful as a church mouse in SWG and still have the AI drop a mob of flaming red aggro death on you and incap or kill you in an instant. That is why this idea of a item decay after incap and death and the 2.5x melee damage on the commando is the wrong way to go.
Bring on a reasonable insurance rate that is global and persistent like cloning and that would be fine. As long as the AI glitches and can suddenly bring instant death through no fault of the player there is no way IMHO item decay at incap or death isgoing to get support from the player community.
Actually that's the other situation I could see that would make sense - have players lose combat and weapons experience if they get incapped or killed. Don't have it take away existing skills, but have it take away from the excess points at the time. That would slow levelling from people that took too great a risk, and would keep people that became masters and switched professions from having tons of left over experience if they switch professions later.
Combine that with the loss of credits, and you'd have a system that would punish idiots or unlucky fighters, but not penalize those that are fighting within their limits.
EcadMistflier wrote:
I am always suprised when i hear commando's say things that indicate the belief that the class needs another"weakness" to balance the game and make it more challenging but that is another subject....
{snip} Bring back insurance and corpse runs. I have played games where there was a real penalty like xp loss as in Diablo II {snip}
/craziestIIDEAEVER
I would not even do any combat if they instituted this.
In fact I would seriously consider quiting.
With all the nerfing going on and making it harder in PvE death is inevitable.
Especially for professions where there are high costing heavy weaponry (or special Krayt weapons) this is absurd.
So you go LD and lose 20% cause you couldn't properly defend yourself in combat? Or even if you didn't go LD and just lagged and creatures warped 80m on top of you and you died?
Who is thinking up these nutty ideas?
Since when does dying effect equipment?
Dying affect your stats and wounds which you can reduce by cloning... DON'T MESS WITH THE SYSTEM!
We already have enough decay on equipment without this garbage thank you very much!
Tofeity
Expert Commando
Tarquinas
Buzby you are a board Troll...
notice how he says... I was a MASTER weaponsmith.. and Carbineer something or another....( awwww who cares).. THIS IS A COMMANDO BOARD.. MASTER weaponsmiths make lots and lots and lots of money.. all the ones on my server do... ALL of them.. one even went so far as to quit his profession and go into smuggling and BH full time because he had all of the money / guns / armor / everything he will need for a VERY long time to play and play.. and he simply got "tired" of everyone needing more and better weapons... wonder why? current decay rates weren't sufficient I suppose?? HA! 
Not everyone wants or can be the ever omnipresent creature handler that is every where in this game now.... gee what a novel idea.. wonder why Qui gon Gin.. Obi won.. or Anakin never used Graul Maulers or Rancors to take with them on their adventures... If Qui gon would have had say a Graul with him when fighting with Darth Maul he might have still been with us... and who knows now in some lonsome spot on some planet.. giving us stupid advice on a some goofy quest, where upon completeion we get a mediocre sword.. a clunky LP or a cumbersome marine armor backpack fo our troubles..
biwan:
We are sorry that it is so EASY for you... we all wish we possessed your skill and expertiese in CH and Commando.. Not.. balance comes from fixing other things that are CURRENTLY broke, NOT breaking things that are already fixed.. and with the new 20% damage modifier I will tell SOE to stick this game ( after i have shattered all 3 disks into small pieces and mailed the remains back to them in their special edition box ) where the sun dosent shine. 
Not everyone wants to be UBER.. not everyone wants to be a JEDI ... all we want, is to have fun, Knock the he11 out of the bad guys ( whoever they may be) and the critters as needed, harvest some resources, (if it is possible) shop for new goodies, and gear.. see new places and things.. wait for mounts and space expansion.. .. and have fun.
NOTICE the last sentence.. HAVE FUN.. which this game is quickly NOT(especially if they introduce this new goofy nerf) becoming.
Araido
Commando, Teras Kasi... Intrepid server
"The force is strong with this one" 
I haven't personally tested this on TC yet, but Ive heard now that the decay rate for dieing is more in linme with 17% than 20%, still too high
Besides armour and such, if they don't reduce insurance costs...I wouldn't recomend carrying lots of Special Heavy Weapons around..EACH one costs around 46-520 cr a piece and can rack up one hefty bill.
Also, many have been proposing that the Death decay ONLY be in effect once you clone..which makes alot more sense than just dieing. However, with this death decay, there are still a large gap: Loot
What happens..for once in your playing life, you actually loot a rare and cool item? What if, 5 minutes later you die and that item gets destroyed or at least badly beaten up (lets say one of those special guns which have DoT effects) thats not good, and we can't do anything about it since we're out in the woods and dont have access to an insurance terminal (maybe why that FP base has an insurance terminal..but no cloning terminal?)
Also, this is will greatly effect friendly PvP and will increase griefing both intentionally and unintentionally with the current decay rates. The devs must seriously reconsider the incap decay, but I am starting to agree somewhat with the death decay -granted it being reduced and insurance rates (mainly for hvy weapons..and swoop helms [My swoop helm costs 177 cr to insure..my pistol costs 117 cr....go figure!]), and as I said above, add some sort of auto insure to newly looted items
btw, as a reply to the post above my last one:
Decay rates for guns are good atm, but there are no decay rates for clothing - which the tailors have been trying to get for some time. And I do hardly believe this is a death issue, and more of a item decay since by decaying items more...people have to buy more, creating a money sink (which the devs LOVE to make) Now with this system, it will either put a drain on Mws's OR we'll see hvy weapon sales plummet as we wont buy anymore (if insurance stays the same)..but the tailors wont see any business, they'll see less primarily since we're going to be seeing alot of naked people (or at least partially, just pants) running about
also, i forgot to mention a banking idea i have:
if everything comes to ruin, insurance rates are high, these high decay rates stay...the devs should consider making the deposit box accessable to ALL planets (so we wont have to lug everything around and insure it), but the catch is..it has to be transfered to the home planet's deposit box, and this would be done by charging a small fee per item (like 20 cr..like bazaar). If the devs get their way on this new decay system, at least this will provide some relief (and shuttle waits)
It's nice to know that almost every player in the game agrees that this would be the "nail in the coffen", but I just have so little faith in the devs and SOE now that I fear this will still go in effect.
well, its not entirely a nail in the coffin...
but it will be if the devs don't properly configure this new system out, just a few simple changes and this system would work for all, i would think (people would not mind a whole lot if insurance was revamped with insurance on multiple deaths + alot lower rates, and only a decay penality on deaths at much lower percent than it is now; in fact, this would be the best money sink the devs could possible put into place and with the least headaches...since everything revolves around insurance rates)
Of course, how many times have we seen Soe mess up thing that only require the simplest of changes?
This would really suck considering Commando's get incapped every other minute in this game becuase all our attacks are sucide attacks. Let us at least use our specials at a reasonable rate and or let us use them at range like every other profession. It's just a tad unfair that we have to wait 8-10 seconds or more per special and have to be <16 meters away, while any other class(except melee, poor buggers) can spam high speed high damage specials from long range.
Even using a CH tank to control agro I get incapped 5 or 6 times an hour. They should have decay on DB, but not incap. Either that or insurance should have 5-10 uses before it needs to be redone. I don't want to have to run 50 miles back to a outpost every 10 minutes to reinsure.
I have lost faith in the ability of the Developers to impliment well thought out changes. Either they are idiots, the systems are too complex, or they lack adequate resources. I dont know which it is and quite frankly I dont care. There is every chance this poorly thought out change will go through too. In that case I will just run around naked with the minimum equipment I need to play. I will also consider quiting which most of my friends have already done.
The active population on most servers is steadily dropping. It doesnt take a genius to notice this. Vendors sit empty and people lack any passion for the game. This change, if it goes live, will just accelerate the population decline which is already evident.
A game which is not fun is a game in trouble.