Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Friday Feature Errata: PvP Insurance Yes, 1% decay, not gone.
The PLEASkeep coming, theTHREAD keeps growing.
DEVS This is going to be the longest thread you've ever seen until you either lock it or remove the DECAY!
PLEASE stop ignoring us, REMOVE THE DECAY!
Racius wrote:
Unbelievable. Decay is RUINING PVP and overwhelming Armorsmiths.
Overwhelming is an understatement. The removal of the PVP decay would help Armorsmiths infinitely.
gordeye wrote:Insurance = No DecayNo Insurance = Some DecayEnough said, just do it!!!
I concur!
Padre
still not doing pvp since 7-16-03
I want to see all decay on death removed completely and replaced with a much better penalty.
First, I'll talk about why decay is not a even a good penalty for death. Let's look at what decays. Clothing, armor, crafting tools, survey tools, and camps.
On clothing, includes jewelry as well, when it gets to 0/1000 it can still be worn. Any stat bonuses on the clothing is lost. Some might say that is good enough, but what of the many people that don't wear stat enhancing clothing? They have no penalty. One might think that the cloths should disappear, but then, if that were to happen, we would see many people running around in their underwear. Cloths are optional.
Armor already hasa use decay in addition to the death decay. Armor is very helpful in that it allows you to attack large creatures with few people. Also, it makes up for the games poor HAM system. You can do more damage, fight mobs with larger HAM pools, yet your HAM pool doesn't increase as you advance your character. A newbie will have the same HAM as a triple master. Armor is optional though and some classes don't need armor. Over HALF of the classes don't need armor, only 7, even then some of those do better without armor. Anyone not involved in combat doesn't need armor. Again, Armor is optional.
Tools that artisans use and a few other classes are meaningless to decay. Artisans can make the tool themselves with just a handful of resources. As for the rest, the tools are not required when out in the field where they can be killed at. 1 tool left in a safty deposit box or home is enough. Factories are normally placed near the house, so if you want to make a schematic, you must return home anyway. 1 tool carried on you while out isn't very significant. After 20 deaths, you toss that one and get a new one. Again, they only cost a handful of resources. Cost to insure them 100 times far exceeds the cost of buying 5 tools off the market. The ones doing most dying, aren't the ones using tools. The ones using tools, can leave them at home when they expect to die. Artisans can make their own tools, so survey tools are easily replaced by them. Contributing nothing as a money sink and serves very little in the way of a resource sink considering their extremely low cost.
Then finally, there's camps. What's the point in having camps decay? You can make them on the spot. No decay there except on the cheap 100 cred tool. If you carry a crate of them around, more than likely, you would use them up before they all decayed. If not, again, they're cheap to make. Only thing you'll see from people dying alot is to not carry a crate of camps around.
So, to sum the above up, death decay does not effect everyone the same way. If you play a class that does not need armor (as that is the only thing majorly hit because of 2 decay systems on it), there is no penalty on death. Certain classes can fight without armor, also, certain classes are more effective without armor. When was the last time you saw a TKA fighting in armor? As a master fencer, armor just added to my special move costs. Defense was high enough to avoid most damage.
What we need is not 0% decay because you paid 20k to insure. What we need is a new system to penalize death. Why do we need to penalize death? One good reason is to keep people from clone rushing. Whether it is clone rushing a PvP fight, or doing it against a Krayt dragon. Some people feel that using death as a means to get back to their bind point is another reason. The current system prevents none of that. As far as the death train goes, there is no system other than permament death that would stop it.
There are 2 systems that would work to prevent clone rushing. Both systems stings, but aren't clumsy like death decay and will affect everyone. Not just the few that choose to wear armor or carry their crafting tools with them.
First system is to givea 5-10 minute timer when cloning, much like the timer when being revived by a doctor. You make it so you can't fight, craft, entertain or generate anything from the datapad (no pets, mounts or vehicles) during that time of cloning sickness. It keeps people from immediately jumping back into the fight. Also prevents them from getting back to the fight if it isn't in walking distance of the cloning center.
The second system involves wounds. A insured death would give 25% wounds, while an uninsured death gives 50% wounds. This would lower the effectiveness of someone in a fight though it can be worked around by the use of buffs, food and spices. Though even then, that will take time to get. So it does prevent people from jumping right back into the fight when you have to find a doc to buff you, or if a doc, buff yourself. Even with doc buffs, the mind is still gone. Spices can help with that, but the downer will eventually kick in and leave you with no mind left. This would also be a good way to give entertainers and medics XP since they would have more wounds to heal.
Both systems are better than the decay penalty which is not much of a penalty if you can work around not wearing armor.
To address the tailor and weaponsmith, er armorsmith issue. Weapons and Armor already have a decay on it. Neither need more decay. Armor decays based on damage absorbtion. I remember from the original decay discussion that people felt armor didn't decay fast enough. I can only guess they were basing their opinion on bone armor or a type of armor with little to no resists. Composite armor will decay faster than anything else due to higher resists. Ubese is next IF you are fighting something that does kinetic damage. The others, I'm not too familiar with, except that they have no resistances to certain types of damage and their resists are lower. Low resists makes the armor last longer.
Tailors need a use decay on their clothing. Right now though, they have no repeat business because of decay though. Cloths can still be worn at 0/1000. The best idea I like so far is a 1% decay per day. At 0 condition, you can no longer equip it. Time based decay does have issues where someone could come back and find their equipment useless. I have played games using this type of method. It doesn't cause problems. In fact, I say go with this type or do without any decay.
Those are my solutions. They all address the problems. They are both fair and give some edge to death. They all affect everyone equally which is the most important aspect of a death penalty. If it doesn't affect everyone equally, it is just a griefing tool.
26 PAGES SINCE YOU POSTED ON THIS SUBJECT!
I think it is more than obvious that we all think your excuses are halfhearted and completely illogical. WE DARE YOU to come up with an equitable reason as to your CONSISTENT punishment of the people who play this game! In 20+ years of gaming I havenever seen a game that was so out to hurt the playerbase.
Or have you, which is my thought, gotten all the money from us you need and most of the people that were working on this have hightailed it to EQ2, LOL. I know that SOE will not get a dime from me once I depart this place. You people have done nothing but lie and piss us off for 6 months.