Dying: XP vs Game Immersion

[Stybb]

As a casual PG player over the past 5-6 years with over 1500 hours on the clock, there has been one thing that annoys me about this otherwise highly innovative, and brilliant game. The dying XP mechanism although is an original concept, personally it clashes with my sense of RPG immersion.

How can one role play a swashbuckling swordsman, magician, pig healer or heroic rabbit if players all around Alharth are dying for fun or just using it as an easy means of teleportation back to town? As a player commented on Global a few days ago, how can you give your characters life value when players are dying so easily and frivolously?

I enjoy playing on hardcore as it does make the game more realistic and challenging but found deathcore mode a bit more brutal. Assuming the Dev's bought in both these player mechanisms for players like myself who want a more realistic gaming experience.

So the point of this post, is not just for me to complain. It would be interesting to hear other peoples opinion, I would assume most players prefer the current dying XP system and would be against change? But I think there are some other players out there who feel similar to me?

So looking forward, and making PG more player immersive and balanced; I would like to suggest to Citan, Srand and the Dev team and the player community to keep the existing dying XP system but make it more balanced and maybe include a random negative XP penalty to an assigned skill?

anyway look forward to hearing everyone's opinion
Ste

[ShieldBreaker]

I find this a difficult subject to discuss. I'm got my own game world in my head, and RP quietly, probably making people wonder what in the world I am doing most of the time. But RP all the time is hard. I basically have a never die intentionally rule, I mostly follow. I kind of bend it, when I send my fairy into tough challenges knowing the odds are against me but I'm okay getting sent to the Fae Realm. Most of the other times my fairy screams when seeing the Life Crystal again. I got one Alt that has never died, come close a few times recently and it was rather exciting to survive, but the longer I go without dying the more likely I'll be upset if they do die. I also have to self-revive with an item rule on that alt. But this is all self imposed rules.

Even if you had a negative XP penalty, if it was effective enough to actually change player behavior, you would end up with situations where you get killed when you have built up in limited time buffs and have it wrecked by a death penalty ruining your plans. You then still have people who could still be frivolous cause they don't care about XP or don't even need XP anymore. So the fact that our immortality is built into world lore is good, because others are acting in a way actually consistent with the game world that they are living. Now for a couple of impossible solutions, the most likely to work would be different servers with different levels of RP, from all Meta to Only RP. The Only RP would have to have a rule that you have to at least consider that you might not actually revive before deciding to kill yourself. This would hopefully reduce the signs of frivolous dying. My other impossible solution, would be some sort of long running in-game RP contest, where once a year you could get some reward like a title for not breaking the forth wall or generally adding to the RP of the world. No more blurting out random words beside Lakrea. This might help increase the overall RPness of the game world, however, increased RP will annoy other players in some cases, might reduce people helping with Tech Support questions or other real world stuff, and some people aren't good at RP. Not to mention the extra work to setup and run it.

I'm probably overthinking this, someone else probably has some better, easier solutions.

[Stybb]

Hi ShieldBreaker

Thanks for the reply, it was interesting reading your perspective.

So what is the highest level you have got an alt without dying?

[ShieldBreaker]

Level 25/25 is the highest I have ever managed.

[Stybb]

Level 25/25 is the highest I have ever managed.

nice, that's respectable.

[Tanner L. Callahan]

Level 25/25 is the highest I have ever managed.

It's a high echelon, it's pretty good.

basketball legends