Feedback on the newer Death System

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Gods_Kill_People
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Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Thu Aug 10, 2017 12:14 pm

So, I have been playing a Mage in the Underdark for some time now, getting rather settled into how the RP down there works, when today I was talking with another player oocly how I kept getting pushed aside for runs. Even ones I suggested doing. Their answer to me, was that being level 12 on a mage, my gear should all be optimized by now to have con bonuses on everything. Now that said being an enchanter, I need to optimize all of my gear as it is to have enough spells to go around, the gold to afford such costly enchantments and of course, gold comes from hunting in groups since soloing can be dangerous. Now, just for note, I am not complaining about the player. What I am complaining about is why she stated that I need my gear to be optimized.

The update to the raise script killed the availability to get raise dead scrolls at reasonable costs, the cheapest I have seen is 7500 gold. Or if your lucky to find them in chests or the books. But as they told me, " No one wants to stop their hunt and walk you back, because a leaf can blow you over". This update has forced the ideals that unless your optimized, we don't want to party with a weaker lowbie that we might have to raise. This honestly upset me as my Mage tries very hard to keep out of the way in combat and allow the other players to lead. To be cut out of rp and hunting because I am not optimized enough sucks.

Nitro
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Nitro » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:22 pm

This sounds like the players are rude cheesebags who would rather run around in a silent grind than RP going on an expedition, I find it's more fun not to go on adventures with those kinds of characters personally, especially when they unerringly coordinate all their actions without saying a word IC.

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Giftstoff
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Giftstoff » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:27 pm

Sounds like the people you're with that are talking like that don't really care for rp, (or they hate you IC maybe?)

That being said, if you do die several times a day on hunts, its unrealistic for you to expect them to stop and drag you back multiple times.

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:30 pm

As I said, I dont want this to be an attack on the player, while it is saddening and honestly crude to cut people out because your not optimized, the point of this post was regarding the death system.

Also generally, no I don't die several times a day, I already know as a mage, my place is in the background not up front.

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Ork
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Ork » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:34 pm

I think my experiences have been counter to this idea. It is very easy to find a shrine & these shrines offer opportunity for RP in the interim. Most groups in the UD haven't had issue with this.

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Giftstoff
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Giftstoff » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:37 pm

I've also used the new death system to great rp effect, and found many other players who also treat death as a lot more than the slap on the wrist it is. Overall a good change.

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:40 pm

I am in agreement the changes have had good effects too, but this is something of a downside that has occurred. The ideals that you must be optimized to be worth the effort of bringing along is not really a good theme for a RP server.

Cerk Evermoore
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Cerk Evermoore » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:45 pm

Lack of Underdark shrines complicate the issue, could really use more road side shrines.

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Yma23
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Yma23 » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:45 pm

Honestly this is what worried me when the new system came in. I've not adventured much since it's introduction, and to be fair a lot of that is down to timing, but it's also just put me off adventuring a lot to start with, and there really is less incentive than ever to travel with a group.
I know some people are saying it's 'realistic' but honestly using the term 'realistic' in any death system that isn't, 'One kill then you'er permadead' is fairly odd. More to the point, this system just doesn't occur to me as fun.
Like you I don't make optimal characters, and I'm not that good at pve either. These things, and a fear of 'letting down the side,' have really been a huge downer on my adventuring (what little I get of it), since the system.

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Giftstoff
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Giftstoff » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:46 pm

You don't need to be "optimized" like a lot of a certain group of players here say, but taking a few minor efforts will help you a lot in staying alive. Keeping up stoneskin helps a lot, and a few more points of Con would indeed keep you from dying to a stray enemy or small mistake.

You don't need full epic enchanted gear to do well here, just play smart and focus on having fun.

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Lorkas
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Lorkas » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:51 pm

I could see people learning not to travel with you if you've travelled with them before and died a lot, but if not, that sounds like some junk.

A wizard with no gear can be an asset to the party as long as the wizard plays carefully so as not to get thrashed. People who leave you out of groups are suboptimized for RP and fun.

Also everyone please play as though your character actually fears death and your death count is bound to go down.

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:52 pm

Yma23 wrote:Honestly this is what worried me when the new system came in. I've not adventured much since it's introduction, and to be fair a lot of that is down to timing, but it's also just put me off adventuring a lot to start with, and there really is less incentive than ever to travel with a group.
I know some people are saying it's 'realistic' but honestly using the term 'realistic' in any death system that isn't, 'One kill then you'er permadead' is fairly odd. More to the point, this system just doesn't occur to me as fun.
Like you I don't make optimal characters, and I'm not that good at pve either. These things, and a fear of 'letting down the side,' have really been a huge downer on my adventuring (what little I get of it), since the system.
Its an interesting system that has made priests more valuable then ever and has some merits. That said, mages are not meant to generally be 700+ hp, yes I need to get some more con on my gear, but when I do add it, its nearly 3000 gold a shot on a 40% chance of success due to how his gear already is, and I already need to wait till level 15 so I can put +2's on his gear so I will need to do it again. That's fairly expensive when people don't wanna include you and the strongest thing you can hope to fight at this level is Driders if your lucky and theres no female driders in there which will mess you up. Stoneskin I do add, as well as Maximized Strength, grace and a few other spells I offer to the party rather then to myself as well as just being the looter.

JediMindTrix
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by JediMindTrix » Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:10 pm

Are you getting one-shotted/two-shotted?

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:41 pm

I generally stay back as much as possible, if I do get killed its usually by freak accident.

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Sockss
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Sockss » Thu Aug 10, 2017 6:52 pm

Sadly, the only things I've seen coming from this change is frustration.

Frustration from people in a group, when someone dies.
Frustration from people dying in a group, not because of the XP loss, but because they know they've frustrated everyone else.

Does this change /make/ clerics useful? No
Does it make them slightly more useful? Sure.

A 'feature' could have easily been added to make cleric raises more useful, but scroll raises less so, by adding a small CON penalty for X hours on use of a scroll, for example.

Does it foster more RP? No. To elaborate:

It limits peoples creativity and willingness to interact - making them an annoyance if they are sub-par mechanically, or have a sub par build. (As you're experiencing)
People, IMO, RP more when they're not frustrated. I saw more roleplay occur both from the user and the target as a result of scroll use, than being forced to encumber drag someone back, or pop a lense and drag. It is boring and tedious.
People will and have RP'd death and raising with or without raise limitations.

Does it make people fear death more? No.

TLDR; I'm not sure what this change was designed to achieve, so I'm not sure how to judge it. I haven't seen anything good come from it though.
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

Sockss#5567 for nwn mechanics questions.

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susitsu
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by susitsu » Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:31 pm

Every dealing with the new death system has been rather annoying to me. Even before the old death system, I hated leaving players waiting in the Wall. Now, the moment someone dies early levels, because either shit happens or they're not that great, the run ends instantly to go revive them and every single time despite all the time Ive spent on this server, exploring every little nook and cranny I can, this is something that usually ends grinding for the night.

Because I have this thing called a full-time job. I'm not going to be that Snuggybear to leave players out just because they need to git gud. I used to carry a big bundle of scrolls, because I didn't want anyone left out of the rp or EXP! It's a literally stressful thing. I don't like leaving people to just AFK when they could be playing.

Ive only dealt with waiting to be rezzed once, and wow, I had to AFK for twenty minutes, leaving the game running on my crappy laptop, which made me UNABLE TO DO ANYTHING ELSE.

Just for the sake of the RP afterwards. Because it would be cheesy to just go gate rez and say "k look i'm fine now hi welcome back to town, lets go back now, oh hey got my gold?"

But that RP could have also been obtained after the person carrying us got to a safe enough area to use two scrolls.

It's literally anti-fun, and it generally screws over...
>More casual players
>New players
>Anyone not too great at the game
>People who are busy working a lot
>Oh, and anybody who dies ever. Because shit happens. Ive accidentally double-killed my own teammates in the middle of a boss fight.

Really lucky we had the PIETY TO SPLIT between two people just to revive two people. You know, while using three raise scrolls just to do it because we weren't all four read up enough on the update.

Certainly, a shrine was actually very close in that specific grinding area, but if I didn't have a skilled and prepared crew like I was running with, it's just end trip right then and there, because you're casual, and Arelith is built against casuals even before this death system. Just slightly too casual for the Arelith standard.

Stop trying to make death harder on people. There's no good enough reason for any of that. The death system, a MECHANIC, not a really appealing medium of roleplay, shouldn't make the game unfun. It's still a game, and a lot of us only get lots of time to play once in a blue moon, every few months.

Nitro
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Nitro » Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:41 pm

On the flip side, actually dying and respawning is probably the most lenient that it's ever been, I like this a lot more than the cancer-inducing XP penalties of old.

Hallibutthead
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Hallibutthead » Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:42 pm

this isn't about the OP (which sounds more like douchewaffles than a problem with mechanics, no offense to the people involved. i only have the one side of the story), but since we're taking cracks at it, i'll give my two cents.

it's a great idea, with perhaps heavy-handed implementation. from what i understand, there was a shift in arelith's ideals, where we didn't want people dying and immediately getting rezzed every time. we (as a community led by the devs) wanted to make death a more meaningful experience than "ok, combat's over. read a scroll. rest. ok, let's go again." to this end, we've enacted HARSH penalties to making and using rez scrolls, and made them harder to get. this alone would have been bad. so we added the ability to rez people for free at an altar, which is great, especially for low level characters!

but what we've done is the incredible nerf+buff.

1 rez scrolls no longer at NPC shops (nerf)
2 rez scrolls exorbitantly expensive for PCs to make (nerf)
3 rez scrolls cost insane amounts of piety (useful to save yourself from death) to use (nerf)
4 rez allies at altars instead (buff)

balance-wise, this can work, but usually doesn't. it's almost always messy (sorry, this is one of those cases in my opinion), and is almost exclusively used as a way to deter a playstyle, rather than enhance gameplay. we're basically saying "we don't want you to use raise dead scrolls. ever. but we're not taking them from the game, so we're going to make them the single most inefficient use of resources imaginable."

options 1, 3, or 4 could have had a softer effect in the same way (option 2 requires option 1 in order to have any effect at all), and option 1 and 4 together could have a less painful implementation of what appears to be the desired effect.

if the idea was to make death more meaningful and less of a speedbump, it worked, kind of. i mean, it's certainly more meaningful, since everyone either has to stop playing and fix their friend or keep going without them (this is only a mild hyperbole. rez scrolls still exist. i don't know if many people carry them, or are willing to spend a minimum 10k to use it, but they're out there). i understand that this was supposed to make clerics more useful, but making them useful didn't seem to make them that much more common (in my limited experience). in effect, clerics are better, but i still can't afford to rez my friends in a dungeon, nor am i running into random clerics to party up with. (fortunately for me, i bring my own, so that's not an issue)

even then, it doesn't address OP's issue, which seems to be "how evil characters deal with a liability." some people think we were a bit overhanded, but maybe in (more) time things will get figured out.

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Fri Aug 11, 2017 12:39 am

My suggestions since it would be good to actually give some feedback.

1. Remove the piety costs of using scrolls - Since really I don't see a point to this.
2. Put "True Resurrection" scrolls back in shop, they are expensive still, but not to the point that characters will literally break the bank to do so.
3. Add a lot more shrines in the UD areas, such as the Driders area, the slime caves, The Heights, the Ice Road, even deeper in the Stinger caves.
4. Bring Enchanting down from lvl 15 to level 10 requirement for +2 stats for the demanded optimizing.

Astral
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Astral » Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:17 am

I find it hard to describe myself here without sounding like a jerk but I'll give it a try. it's on you and on your character to try and recognize which character are actually friends and which aren't. That's, I think, is intentional in how the system works. It gives death a meaning and costs your party RL time to get you back up, or an absurd amount of gold which is also, indirectly, time.
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susitsu
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by susitsu » Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:38 am

Or, some people just can't afford scrolls, don't have the piety, never ever found any in any shops, never found a book of souls, and never like to leave people out.

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:51 am

Astral wrote:I find it hard to describe myself here without sounding like a jerk but I'll give it a try. it's on you and on your character to try and recognize which character are actually friends and which aren't. That's, I think, is intentional in how the system works. It gives death a meaning and costs your party RL time to get you back up, or an absurd amount of gold which is also, indirectly, time.
That would be great if that were the problem, but its not. The problem is standing at get optimized or get lost. Its OOC not IC. We don't want your dead weight with us unless your fully optimized. This is where the problem lies.

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High Primate
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by High Primate » Fri Aug 11, 2017 3:14 am

I love it. Being able to take corpses through portals and raise them for free is vastly preferable to the alternative.
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Giftstoff
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Giftstoff » Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:13 pm

susitsu wrote:Or, some people just can't afford scrolls, don't have the piety, never ever found any in any shops, never found a book of souls, and never like to leave people out.
So respawn.

If you're a lower level character the respawn penalty is equal to a single spawn of rats, and you have no ability penalties. If you're worried about xp and ability penalties, then you're high enough level to dish out some gold.

Nitro
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Re: Feedback on the newer Death System

Post by Nitro » Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:26 pm

Gods_Kill_People wrote:
Astral wrote:I find it hard to describe myself here without sounding like a jerk but I'll give it a try. it's on you and on your character to try and recognize which character are actually friends and which aren't. That's, I think, is intentional in how the system works. It gives death a meaning and costs your party RL time to get you back up, or an absurd amount of gold which is also, indirectly, time.
That would be great if that were the problem, but its not. The problem is standing at get optimized or get lost. Its OOC not IC. We don't want your dead weight with us unless your fully optimized. This is where the problem lies.
That's not a problem of the system, that's a problem of some people. Presumably who don't want any interruptions in their circlegrind trip.

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