like the other couple posters said,  ya old news. like what,  all the way back from pax east old? maybe older than that.

there is no dealth penalty is basic mmo standards, so the more you die and try to use the medical probe, your armor and weapons degrade as well as a longer timer to try to insta rez. could die too many times and end up having to wait more than 5 minutes til you can insta rez again.

Originally posted by BarCrow

Originally posted by Atlan99

Originally posted by Ecoces

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

My question would be why have anyone die, knocked out, or defeated then at all? The idea / mechanic itself is to represent the consequences of failure. If there are no consequences, why even have the mechanism for failure?

 

yeah whats next players running around without the ability to lose health. god MMOs are getting pathetic. I understand people don't want to go back to the day were MMOs were a job and dying made you nearly want to delete your character and cancel your account .. but come on this is getting silly.

Guess we all have to play Guild Wars 2 instead.

Oh wait.

You don't die in Guild Wars 2 either.

Let's go play some game that only 10 other people play so we can be hardcore.

I hear they have electrical censors that zap your balls everytime you die.

 AWESOME!!! I'd play tha...?....wait..did you say it zaps my balls?...er...I...fug it...sure I'll still play. Now that's innovation!!!

rumored the new steel battalion has that kind of feature. 

the way it works is that it rez you at low health and you get a 12 second stealth that lets you move away from the mob so you won't aggro right away.  then you need to heal back up.  and everytime you use it within a certain amount of time, it takes longer to rez.

GeorgZoeller

06.07.2011 , 05:11 PM
Let's give you some details, since it's E3 and we're being generous The reason we added this system is that the worlds in The Old Republic are huge and a travel death penalty turned out to be much more punishing than initially planned. Our testers were quite vocal about that. Our testers also commented that they liked the more challenging content compared to other MMOs (no, Daniel's demo wasn't showing that, since running harder content and talking and answering interview questions is a bit much to ask of a writer ). Since we wanted to retain the latter, but also fix the death issue, we decided to go with this solution.This system was just added. Currently, in testing, it works like this: The first time you die, you have the option to summon the probe almost immediately or return to a med center. If a friend tries to restore you instead, the probe option is replaced by the 'accept help' button. The second time you die (within 30 minutes), the timer to call the probe is 20 seconds. From there on, the time increases so you'll probably want to go to a medical center instead (which will restore the initial timer). As said, we just added this system and there's quite a bit of tuning left. We may decide to attach a service fee to the droids. We may make it so you have to purchase insurance in order to call the droids. We may take them out completely. Details like how it works in World PvP are still being tuned as well.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6651415#post6651415

GeorgZoeller

06.07.2011 , 05:14 PM
We will likely put a limit on this ability when you are killed in PvP / by another player, even disallow it completely.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6651518#post6651518

GeorgZoeller

06.08.2011 , 03:52 PM
Quote: Originally Posted by ManuDragonne Amazing how all the insta-rez proponents fail to recognize how the top writer for the game is talking on the film about using 2 people to take on a 4 person instance. Running around dieing (over and over) and kiting MOB's to basically cheat his way through it. . Hehe, Daniel will be disappointed when those holes he's exploiting are gradually shut down. As mentioned, we just added this system in testing, so there some rough edges. That said, we're also not terribly concerned with people being creative about some of the heroic content. We're pretty pragmatic about it - if people have fun doing a one off heroic quest in a very creative way (like, let's say luring a bunch of enemies to a cliff and then pushing them over with a force push) and they're having fun, that's something we're potentially fine with. In fact, we find that a lot of the 'creative' ways people find around more challenging content seems to take more time than doing it the planned way anyway. As long as there's a reasonable effort vs. reward ratio here, who am I to say that you and your friend can't have fun figuring out a way to get past that 4 man heroic? This obviously doesn't apply to Operations or Flashpoints (Did I mention that you can't order a probe in instanced content like a Flashpoint or Warzone?), but for world heroics, we're definitely taking a relaxed view on these things.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6674340#post6674340

GeorgZoeller

06.08.2011 , 04:18 PM
Quote: Originally Posted by BDreason And the response from Georg is ridiculous as well. You took away corpse runs because beat testers didn't like it? Of course the beta testers didn't like corpse running... nobody does. That's why it's called a PENALTY for death. Honestly, they may as well rename this game Carebears in Space if they plan on caving to every players request. No. I'm a bit amazed (just kidding, this is the internet) that you think we would operate like that. But yes - if 95% of testers tell you that you have a problem, you listen. You don't shut your ears and sing to yourself 'they're carebears, they hate any penalty'. We added this option because the impact of the 'walk back from medcenter' penalty, in our game, is huge - worse than in comparable MMOs. Here's why: The distances in a world that is built to scale, on planets like Tatooine, are vast. A lot of the content is not instanced and is open world and you don't enjoy fighting your way back deep into the objective areas when you die. We're not talking about 1-3 minutes of walking. In some cases, we're talking about 10-15 minutes of repeating content. That's not fun. As Daniel explained, we're not shy of making challenging content that is interesting to overcome. But content does not get more challenging by giving it a harsh, repetitive death penalty - penalties just happen after the fact and do not, in any way or form, make the content more challenging, fun or even difficult. The only challenge a really harsh death penalty adds is to player's patience or tolerance to repeating the same content over and over. Most people don't find that fun, and we don't either. By adding this system, we are able to create content that kills the player once or twice until they figure out how to overcome it. We can create challenges and players are given a chance to overcome them. They can afford to fail, regroup and try again instead of spending 15 minutes sitting around while some player tries to make his way back to the group. If you are looking for hardcore and punishing death penalties that weed out the weak players (e.g. the ones that don't have infinite patience and time), The Old Republic will not be your game. That does not mean we're attempting to make an extremely easy game with no challenge.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6674889#post6674889

GeorgZoeller

06.08.2011 , 09:39 PM
Except that the medical probe isn't available in instances. So there's that

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6682273#post6682273

GeorgZoeller

06.09.2011 , 12:23 AM
Quote: Originally Posted by Andrew_Waltfeld My suggestion is first time is 10 second wait time or whatever. Every time after that is 1 minute, 3 minutes, 6 minutes, 9 minutes, 10 minutes cap. Much more giving system that can't be exploited by groups easily. Well, the first time is 10 seconds for all options, including return to medical center. We found that necessary to prevent people from quickly clicking something they later regret (e.g. go to med-center). A 10 second grace period allows players to cool down, assess the situation and gives their allies time to run over and offer a revival before people hit the button. Having some 'think about what you've just done' time built into the system isn't bad either, it avoids adrenaline rushing a medical probe without taking a good look at the surroundings and where you want to go - the time you have to move while in stealth isn't a lot, so you need to have a pretty good idea where a safe spot is when you press that button.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6684497#post6684497

GeorgZoeller

07.10.2011 , 12:12 PM
I'd just like to reiterate our stance that Death Penalty makes a game more punishing, it does not create a greater challenge to overcome. It's a mindset from the early arcade game times, when throwing barriers into the player's path ensured they would spend more quarters and time on a game. A harsh death penalty causes players to play risk averse and conservatively, which is not our goal. To resort to an overused term: It's not terribly heroic to be risk averse. Heroes take risks and reap great rewards. If Han and Luke had been risk averse... The goal for us is to offer entertainment to our players. That means reducing incidents where players quit in frustration because they have to re-run the same content over and over. (Note that they may occasionally still quit in frustration because the actual encounter was too hard for them, but at least then the frustration is directly related to the encounter, not the penalty after it.) It's not terribly heroic to rush in a dozen times and be defeated either, so we're taking care to calibrate the system where the on-the-spot medical probe isn't viable for one-man zerging through content. Let me give you an example of an encounter in the game (without spoilers) we introduced after changing to the medical probe system: At some point in the story, a Jedi character may end up on a Sith ship in a commando mission to take out a powerful Sith Lord who is said to have uncovered a powerful and deadly attack with the Force. After fighting through Imperial troops, Imperial special forces and the Lord's prospective students from the landing bay to the bridge, the player finally gets to face the Sith. As Sith Lords go, he's pretty confident in himself and makes it abundantly clear, in slightly too many villainous words, that there is no hope of standing against him, etc. As Jedi go, your character may probably say something like 'Like most of your kind, you're pretty full of it'. A battle ensues. 20 seconds into the battle, the player suddenly feels a stabbing pain in his chest, falls over and dies. Turns out that this particular Sith Lord wasn't joking about his capabilities. An attentive player may have noticed what lead to that this turn of events and, next time faced with the Sith Lord, will make sure the outcome is different. Other players will pay closer attention next time, may fail again and defeat the enemy in the 3rd attempt. Keep in mind that enemies will heal back to their previous state after the player falls, so there is no way to just rush this Sith Lord quickly and defeat him over time. This scenario was not really possible in our game before the introduction of the medical probe. Before that option, you'd have to travel through the Sith Warship from the landing bay back to the bridge. If the content is open world and not instanced (and the largest part of our game is open world), you'd also have to fight through everyone again. That's between 4-15 minutes of 'death penalty' each time you'd die. Our testers absolutely hated that. Now, with the ability to have a limited number of in-the-field revivals, this kind of scenario is one of the things we're deploying more widely through the game. BioWare has never been afraid of using failure-learn-succeess mechanics in our games. A large part of what the Baldur's Gate series successful was exactly this mechanic. By introducing the medical droid option to the game, we allow ourselves to have challenging boss battles more frequently that require the player to learn and adapt to overcome the obstacle. We're in process of updating many areas of the game now to increase the overall challenge of combat as a result. Obviously the threshold of what is acceptable is different from player to player and obviously we're aiming to hit the sweet spot that is right for most of our players, so yes, if you're ultra hardcore and wish the medical probe wasn't there or could be only used once, you're going to be disappointed ... but nobody forces you to use it. The 'revive at medcenter' (and walk up to 15 minutes back to your death location is always available. If that's not acceptable, well, to put it after Obi Wan: "This might not be the punishing experience you are looking for", because that system is not going away

GeorgZoeller

07.10.2011 , 03:16 PM
Another reminder: There is a equipment damage penalty associated with any death, so you are paying a deferred credit fee for dying.

GeorgZoeller

07.10.2011 , 03:46 PM
Quote: Originally Posted by Zruker What I feel Georg fails to address in his post is in the Open world someone who continues to try a encounter he has no business trying prevents others from accomplishing it or causing a huge line up. If you have to redo some of the content to get back to that part you are only going to do it if you have a reasonable chance. The idea that people will just team up on the open world is a bit naive also I think. Unless there is a loot system where every party member gets a copy of every piece of loot teaming in all cases doesn't make sense. Also some people want to accomplish on there own not have to team with someone who isn't capable just so they can quit waiting in line. Maybe they can develop a take a number system like at the deli. Open world content is designed to prevent individual players from bottlenecking others, so I don't think this is a concern. Furthermore, the incremental time increase for summing the medical probe with each death should mitigate this scenario quite easily, along with the fact that after 4-5 death your equipment will be totally shot and you have to go back to repair anyway. Finally, yes, when you are in a group, for the majority of quests the objectives are shared. One player completes them, it counts for any group member in the vicinity.

GeorgZoeller

07.13.2011 , 10:35 AM
Quote: Originally Posted by Rephlexie Does this just affect the Equipment on the player at the time of death or does it also hit everything in the inventory? Lastly, can you comment on the decision to use Equipment decay over say, a major stat reduction that heals over time? Ie. "Resurrection sickness" etc. What was it about Equipment decay that made it seem more feasible? Thanks GZ! Only worn equipment is damaged. We definitely discussed something along those lines before. We had something like this in Dragon Age: Origins (injury system). I think both are viable options that achieve the same goals (deferred penalty). Personally I like the injury system quite a bit (after all I implemented it) due to the linear increase in penalty with each death, but it did had some issues (linear ramping up penalty means a lot more players miss it compared to the sudden hit of your equipment being unusable). Another benefit of equipment damage is that it creates a hard stop after death. It's more predictable, which is helpful for an MMO. Plus, as a final point, the equipment damage was already in and working for a long time, and as they say, if it's not broke, don't fix it.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7369385#post7369385

hope all this helps

The more you use the self res the longer it takes to recharge. This has already been stated. Durability is the same death penalty as WoW, not sure what you wanted but this is a themepark which usually have pretty casual death penalties.

Originally posted by Khrymson

Well, it does specifically say that a 'medical droid' will ressurect you, but doesn't go into any more detail.  So maybe there will be a 1hr cooldown on its use, or maybe you have to purchase these droids and can only hold so many ~ 3 max sounds good to me?

 

Still though, I've always been one in favor of a death penalty,{including substantial XP loss} though it doesn't have to be like in the past running through multiple zones nekid as a jay bird, trying to locate where you frantically died at.  Or in more worse occasions having to call in your high level friend or a GM to drag your corpse from the bottom of the ocean or river of lava...ah those were the days...le sigh

No more EQ1 toil.  I do not enjoy spending my off hours at night trying a corpse run.

Call me whatever if you need to, I see games as vehicles for relaxed moments after work.  At this moment in life, I enjoy a game in which I can walk away anytime and come back to resume, like chess.  I find it ridiculous to play a game in which I need more uninterruptible attention, or I need to spend a few hours to recover from some stupid penalty imposed on me, and worst of all, I am paying money to be punished, to be strapped to my computer chair.

No thanks, life at work is stressful enough.

That is why I am playing solo RPG now, I can press esc anytime and talk to people, family, friends whenever they need me to, or whenever I want to.

Come to think of it, I understand why I dropped EQ1/DAoC for CoX/WoW, there are enough semi solo things to do, particularly in WoW, when I cannot afford the continuous time for a group venture.  Maybe eventually Sw:ToR will fill in the void now, if they managed to make that game diversed and fun.

This was spoken on already. If you use that self resurrect then a timed delay is added for the next time. That is also only one option when you die, if the time delay is in effect, you'll be doing a more normal resurrect.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

My question would be why have anyone die, knocked out, or defeated then at all? The idea / mechanic itself is to represent the consequences of failure. If there are no consequences, why even have the mechanism for failure?

While you might be sarcastic in your comments, I don't care to guess your intentions, I think there is an interesting question here. 

I tend to prefer a death penalty, but as you point out, if a game lacks the real sense of failure, perhaps a completely different kind of mechanic is in order. It sounds like there isn't much of a mechanic at all here to account for failure, which is unfrotunate, and makes you one ask why there is the chance of this "non-failure" failure at all. 

I'm sure with enough time and thought most of us could come up with a mechanic that would remove the death animation (as it sounds like that's really all this is) and replace it with a system that is tied into the game-play style more. Perhaps as you approach 0 health you are forced out of the action in some other method (incapcitated, covered in debris, etc) so that you cannot add to the fight until your health reaches X level. Or your character is forced to retreat and again removed from the action until X health is regenerated. 

I understand that the more you use the med droid the longer it takes to get the chance to use them again, but again that seems like adding failure into a system that doesn't really account for failure. 

It works pretty much like in Rift, you have a Soulwalk ability to ress on the same spot, but if you die again it takes some minutes to allow you to use it again. 

Theres no penalty but the armor takes some durability loss and you eventually have to repair it. Pretty much a  normal system, dont get all this fuss

Originally posted by LisXia

Originally posted by Khrymson

Well, it does specifically say that a 'medical droid' will ressurect you, but doesn't go into any more detail.  So maybe there will be a 1hr cooldown on its use, or maybe you have to purchase these droids and can only hold so many ~ 3 max sounds good to me?

 

Still though, I've always been one in favor of a death penalty,{including substantial XP loss} though it doesn't have to be like in the past running through multiple zones nekid as a jay bird, trying to locate where you frantically died at.  Or in more worse occasions having to call in your high level friend or a GM to drag your corpse from the bottom of the ocean or river of lava...ah those were the days...le sigh

No more EQ1 toil.  I do not enjoy spending my off hours at night trying a corpse run.

Call me whatever if you need to, I see games as vehicles for relaxed moments after work.  At this moment in life, I enjoy a game in which I can walk away anytime and come back to resume, like chess.  I find it ridiculous to play a game in which I need more uninterruptible attention, or I need to spend a few hours to recover from some stupid penalty imposed on me, and worst of all, I am paying money to be punished, to be strapped to my computer chair.

No thanks, life at work is stressful enough.

That is why I am playing solo RPG now, I can press esc anytime and talk to people, family, friends whenever they need me to, or whenever I want to.

Come to think of it, I understand why I dropped EQ1/DAoC for CoX/WoW, there are enough semi solo things to do, particularly in WoW, when I cannot afford the continuous time for a group venture.  Maybe eventually Sw:ToR will fill in the void now, if they managed to make that game diversed and fun.

   I really thought that bore repeating!  A great many people (myself included) do not require a ridiculous 'death penalty' for a game to be considered fun.  In fact, it's the opposite.  I don't pay to play a game for the 'honor' of spending 10 minutes running back to my corpse and hoping that my 'stuff' hasn't been eaten by the server monster.  Been through that 20 years ago thankyouverymuch, and in no way do I want to go back to that game model!

Originally posted by Khrymson

Well, it does specifically say that a 'medical droid' will ressurect you, but doesn't go into any more detail.  So maybe there will be a 1hr cooldown on its use, or maybe you have to purchase these droids and can only hold so many ~ 3 max sounds good to me?

 

Still though, I've always been one in favor of a death penalty,{including substantial XP loss} though it doesn't have to be like in the past running through multiple zones nekid as a jay bird, trying to locate where you frantically died at.  Or in more worse occasions having to call in your high level friend or a GM to drag your corpse from the bottom of the ocean or river of lava...ah those were the days...le sigh

There will be an increasing cooldown of sorts.  The more you die, the longer you will have to wait to resurrect, making it more time efficient to just return to your bind point after a while.  Just how steep the cooldown will be remains to be seen, however.  

Personally, I hate the old school uber death penalties (major loss of EXP and potentially all of your gear as well), but I definitely feel some penalty must exist.  Exploration of dangerous, potentially deadly territory or experimentation with crazy combat tactics should not be discouraged, but neither should stupid, bad play be encouraged.  

Originally posted by Mardukk

So, I was defending this game earlier today.  But NO Penalty is hilarious and freaking lame.  Even though I have RL friends playing this, my excitement is waning by the announcement (didn't know this before this post even though others knew this in june).  I'm trying understand how they thought this was a good idea??  They are clearly trying to out easy WoW.  This game is making WoW look like MO or Darkfall hahaha.

Afraid to lose even one paying customer at the expense of making the game mildly thrilling....

If you are so brave, you can impose your own death penalty.

If you are braver than brave, you can delete your own toon every time you die.

There is no need for any penalty, you can have as much penalty as you can bear by imposing them yourself.

I guess I can't really comment on it until I experience it's implementation first hand.

I'm tempted to say that it's lame, that you should at LEAST have to respawn back at the cloning point. But Bioware may surprise me and pull this off in a way that doesn't take the thrill and challenge completely out of the game.

One MMO did some serious polling of players, and found that the biggest death penalty effect was from the delay getting back into the action.   Losses of other things were of much lower concern (though granted this wasn't a raid-til-you-get-a-rare-drop game).  Their take on it was that the time spent getting back into the fight was the most serious death penalty they could impose.

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

I guess I can't really comment on it until I experience it's implementation first hand.

I'm tempted to say that it's lame, that you should at LEAST have to respawn back at the cloning point. But Bioware may surprise me and pull this off in a way that doesn't take the thrill and challenge completely out of the game.

thats how it used to be but they changed it due to tester feedback

GeorgZoeller

06.08.2011 , 04:18 PM
Quote: Originally Posted by BDreason And the response from Georg is ridiculous as well. You took away corpse runs because beat testers didn't like it? Of course the beta testers didn't like corpse running... nobody does. That's why it's called a PENALTY for death. Honestly, they may as well rename this game Carebears in Space if they plan on caving to every players request. No. I'm a bit amazed (just kidding, this is the internet) that you think we would operate like that. But yes - if 95% of testers tell you that you have a problem, you listen. You don't shut your ears and sing to yourself 'they're carebears, they hate any penalty'. We added this option because the impact of the 'walk back from medcenter' penalty, in our game, is huge - worse than in comparable MMOs. Here's why: The distances in a world that is built to scale, on planets like Tatooine, are vast. A lot of the content is not instanced and is open world and you don't enjoy fighting your way back deep into the objective areas when you die. We're not talking about 1-3 minutes of walking. In some cases, we're talking about 10-15 minutes of repeating content. That's not fun. As Daniel explained, we're not shy of making challenging content that is interesting to overcome. But content does not get more challenging by giving it a harsh, repetitive death penalty - penalties just happen after the fact and do not, in any way or form, make the content more challenging, fun or even difficult. The only challenge a really harsh death penalty adds is to player's patience or tolerance to repeating the same content over and over. Most people don't find that fun, and we don't either. By adding this system, we are able to create content that kills the player once or twice until they figure out how to overcome it. We can create challenges and players are given a chance to overcome them. They can afford to fail, regroup and try again instead of spending 15 minutes sitting around while some player tries to make his way back to the group. If you are looking for hardcore and punishing death penalties that weed out the weak players (e.g. the ones that don't have infinite patience and time), The Old Republic will not be your game. That does not mean we're attempting to make an extremely easy game with no challenge.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6674889#post6674889

so people can thank testers for it

My take on death penalty is that it should be designed to encourage and help the player finish the content.

Take chess.  When we play with a junior, after he make a mistake, we let him take back a move or 2 and figure out a better move.  We do not throw away the board and have him run around the courtyard picking up the chess pieces here and there, do 100 press ups and restart a new game.  That defeats the purpose of a game.

And I do not see how a lenient treatment and helpful "death" treatment fails to encourage enjoyment of the gaming session.  Flogging a toddler after he falls from his first few steps will not provide additional "gaming thrill".

Games are for fun.  Even as an adult, and, for those of us exploring a new content a new game, we are somehow "new" to the game, just like a learner.

Harsh death penalties have no place in themeparks anyways.   

Having lighter death penalties (or no death penalties) means they can make bosses a lot harder.   Ie, for an inexperienced group, expect to die 10+ times before failing the mission.

Like in Vindictus, where there's 0 death penalty, the newest boss that just got added was so hard for casual players that many people were unable to beat it even after 12+ attempts on the first day (each attempt usually takes 30 minutes to an hour).   Usualy these entail 4-5+ deaths per attempt.

However, after 2 weeks most people have the experience of fighting him, and even casual players could probably find a PUG that can beat it after a few failed attempts.  

That sound resonable if the world is that massive i would rather have it that way. and the more you die the longer the timer gets so it is a penalty if you die multiple times.

But games have removed to much death penalty in games, i hated corpse running in wow also. Not from instance runs as those was short but there could be a long run in the world. At the same time i do not want to not have any penalty as that make games lame.

Just like 1st person games with that god awfull inbuilt godmode comeon, for real. i dont even need to enter a code to get godmode??? >_<

There is something like to much deathpenalty but there can also be to little off it.

I will need to try Tor befor i can realy comment as it sounds reasonable, Anet actualy have a worse look on this and is boreding on what we see in 1st person games. Stil im gonna play gw2 and realy looking forward to it but i dont agree at all with theyr no death penalty opinion.

cause a corpse run that wastes 10-15 minutes is so much more challenging

Originally posted by gaou

the way it works is that it rez you at low health and you get a 12 second stealth that lets you move away from the mob so you won't aggro right away.  then you need to heal back up.  and everytime you use it within a certain amount of time, it takes longer to rez.

Then comes a huge load of information

hope all this helps

Thank you very much Gaou. That should settle the topic.

P.S.

Originally posted by LisXia

If you are so brave, you can impose your own death penalty.

If you are braver than brave, you can delete your own toon every time you die.

There is no need for any penalty, you can have as much penalty as you can bear by imposing them yourself.

BRAVO! I would love to see how many Death Penalty lovers would do this.

I recall when the emasculation of mmo's began several years ago, as convenience replaced risk, as one story goes.