VGOEmulator.net

community staff told us lots of things on the forums in the past, but we know what really went on and how it pans out

While I understand the idea that being sick after rez may be logical, and I also believe that death should be painful ( at least more painful than it was in late-stage Vanguard), I still want to see rez sickness go. The problem with rez sickness is that it makes you stop playing. This is hugely bad. Once when soloing I tried to play through rez sickness. After a few frustrating minutes, I was at max rez penalty. Ever after that bad experience, I simply found a safe place, set a timer, and walked away from the game.

I play a game to, well, play the game, not periodically walk away and do something else. Getting your corpse/tombstone back is playing. Fighting to regain lost XPs is playing. Sitting at an alter in game while I go wash dishes in RL isn't.

Whatever is decided about death penalties, please make it so the remedy for the penalty involves playing the game. Also, I'm convinced the only reason rez sickness went in the game is so that SOE could sell you potions that removed it.

I would love to see tombstones come back. They went out very late in VG, long after F2P. I had taken a few weeks off from the game because of holiday commitments in during the 2013-2014 holiday season, and the first time I played after coming back, I died in a group and reflexively released my corpse so the group could drag my tombstone. I immediately got "what did you do that for?" from the group. I wasn't aware that tombstones were gone. That was in January.

As for the TS graphic, I suspect that was introduced just to lighten the graphics load on the client. Instead of rendering every dead body individually, a single simple graphic image can be used for every corpse. Given the likely EMU server populations, we can could probably dispense with the graphics optimization and use the actual corpse graphic if that makes things easier. Of course, it doesn't solve the packet problem. You still need to know how handle dragging the corpse plus other things I am probably not thinking of.

How about introducing a buff npc in capitols and/or a food item to remove death sickness (goldsink) could be a craftebal item too ? Istaria does it that way by using dishes to remove death points, pretty neat system actually . Also eating in a "bar" would increase the effect

Getting rezed never had a penality did it?

Getting rezzed could give you rez sick, up until, I think they changed it so anyone could get it. I think after they did that, then if you were rezzed (not releasing) that you wouldn't get it.

I know there were many times that we died in APW, went to get diplos and lost the rez sick, then got rezzed and the rez sick started over.

Rez sick was there for the anti zerging of a mob, probably won't be an issue on an emulated server; so it probably serves no purpose.

Now for penalty for death, I believe there should be one, I feel that EQs at launch was good (with some negatives) and it promoted group cohesion and player reputation like no other. Dying in EQ at launch with a character in the 30's-40's meant about 3-5 hours of Experience Gain (XP) was lost. This harsh penalty made you want to play better (self), made you look out for your groups safety (promoted team work), brought a certain tension about staying alive that no other MMORPG has given me and made the community value good players; which in turn made good players tend to only group with good players and casuals to group with casuals (casuals are not interested in pressing the limit on XP gain per hour usually).

I think that a once an hour death without XP loss would be excellent. There should be a XP penalty for dying more than once per hour; dying more than once per hour gives you debuff which is not affected by time logged off. Until you shed that debuff (one hour timer from your last death) you will continue to have XP deaths. This sort of system above while having a harsh penalty, grants a "I know stuff happens" clause once per hour that hopefully puts the player in a mode of being extra specially careful for an hour after a death; they could go craft, or help out a newbie or something else that won't put them in harms way.

I'm skeptical about any death penalty that has a defined cut off or threshold value. In EQ, for example, I had people refuse to group because they had just dinged and needed to "pad their level" in case they died again. I also had people leave my group after dinging so they could go pad their level. I had people leave after dying because another death would cost them a level. I'm afraid that anything with a timer on it is just going to encourage people to go off and craft or diplo for a while, thus discouraging grouping, just like EQ's de-leveling discouraged grouping.

IMO, a good healthy XP loss combined with XP debt (and tombstone recovery) is the best mechanism I've seen. It still hurts. It still takes enough time to make up for a death that you try not to die. But it doesn't discourage you from playing the game or from grouping in dangerous environments. I thought original Vanguard did it just about right (though XP loss may have been a bit on the light side): if you die, release, and recover your tombstone, you lose a moderate amount of XP; if you die and are rezzed, you lose a little less; if you die, release, and summon your TS to an altar, you lose a lot.

The beauty of XP loss is that the remedy for XP loss is to play the game. The horror of rez sickness (as an example) is that the remedy is to sit around with your thumb up your butt.

I want to echo what Shargash said. And also with VG's system, it encouraged grouping, because you got the best XP while grouping in a dungeon, so if you wanted to make up that XP, you're probably going to look for a dungeon group.

I, like many others, want a challenging and difficult game, but we don't want it to be frustrating or self-defeating.

[quote="shargash"]The horror of rez sickness (as an example) is that the remedy is to sit around with your thumb up your butt.[/quote]
Even with all the brilliant conversation on this topic, this statement here really makes the most sense to me I agree, I dislike "not playing the game to play the game", and will support any effort to curb this horrible timesink tactic. As Ily said, we probably won't experience the Zerg mentality on the emulator, so we'll make a definitive decision before we switch over to a Live game environment.

I actually liked the de-level of EQ, but I know VG didn't work that way so I wouldn't impose that on this player base. An exponential XP Debt Curve might be good enough to make people "play smarter" and not sac their toons for any number of reasons to do so. By exponential, I mean that you die once, you gain 100 debt. You die again within a certain time, you gain 200 debt, and so on.

Lastly, since we're covering a couple of topics here, I would love to promote Grouping and Socialization on VGOEmu, too. Offering XP bonuses to grouped players (above and beyond the normal group-kill-xp-split) might encourage this. I cannot see it hurting the game at all, and far as I know VG may have already done this (??)

[quote="John Adams"][quote="shargash"]The horror of rez sickness (as an example) is that the remedy is to sit around with your thumb up your butt.[/quote]
Even with all the brilliant conversation on this topic, this statement here really makes the most sense to me I agree, I dislike "not playing the game to play the game", and will support any effort to curb this horrible timesink tactic. As Ily said, we probably won't experience the Zerg mentality on the emulator, so we'll make a definitive decision before we switch over to a Live game environment.

I actually liked the de-level of EQ, but I know VG didn't work that way so I wouldn't impose that on this player base. An exponential XP Debt Curve might be good enough to make people "play smarter" and not sac their toons for any number of reasons to do so. By exponential, I mean that you die once, you gain 100 debt. You die again within a certain time, you gain 200 debt, and so on.

Lastly, since we're covering a couple of topics here, I would love to promote Grouping and Socialization on VGOEmu, too. Offering XP bonuses to grouped players (above and beyond the normal group-kill-xp-split) might encourage this. I cannot see it hurting the game at all, and far as I know VG may have already done this (??)[/quote]

VG did not offer extra Exp for groups but the way groups worked meant it didn't matter, groups were more efficient because they could clear harder targets/dungeons worth more experience more quickly, therefore it was the best way to gain experience even over kiting, a group could kill faster and more efficiently and gain exp per hour at a much higher rate.

The death penalty didn't actually make us sit around though, that was an exaggeration, not unless you were max level, fully raid geared and about to hit a really tough mob needing every single stat you had (there was only 3-4 of them in game) but it didn't stop a dungeon run or group or even soloing...it just gave you a 10% stat hit per death (with a cap of 5x) and at low levels was stuff all.

After 4-5 deaths it would start to hurt but that was the intention, if you are stupid enough to die 5 times to something and not learn, then you got a 50% stat reduction for a measly 5 mins, not game breaking by any means nor did it stop you playing, it just slowed you down and made you think about your error(s).

Nothing to rage about or cancel a group, just meant you had to be careful and actually pay attention for 5 mins until it wore off.

I like people being responsible for their actions, running around in God-mode with no penalty for stupidity or lack of skill takes away from the relationship with your character, they become a throw away test dummy instead of something you want to protect and progress with.

Anyway, just my thoughts.