Age of Conan

I've been playing the open beta and I'm not sure if there is a death penalty or if I'm missing it.  It seems to me that when you die you just respawn at your bind point.  I'm not seeing anything negative happening at all?  Is that true or is there something I'm missing happening?  Also if there is no death penalty will there be something at some point?

It's just wierd and kinda makes death just a free teleport.... I'm starting to use it as a form of transport.  All that lacking is a /killme command.  Anyone else see this as a problem?

Unless i'm mistaken, i think the first few levels, (10 or 20) are like a big tutorial, you really just start playing the game after that.   Maybe the death penalty dont apply during this time.

This is just a guess, i'm not in beta.

Is this true?  When you hit lvl 10 or 20 does death take on a penalty?

You drop a headstone and lose 2 attack rating, and 2 magic rating for 30 minutes each time you die.  They stack.  You can click it to take away the debuff.  Haven't noticed an effect on XP.

oh that was soo funny I saw a tombstone and thought it was a graphic bug...  It is this little rectangle of stone standing up that you can't click on unless it is yours.  They really need to improve the graphic for this I'd have never guessed what it was if I didn't see this message.  I'm assuming when it's your tomb you will be able to use it.

Where do you see this attack rating debuf?  I dont' see any icon other then the one that says i'm invulnerable for 1 minute.

death penalty doesn't come into effect until...10? 15?

you will get an icon right above your health bar that looks like a little skull. It will penalise your attack and defense ratings. If you keep dying, you will get multiple ones that stack.

They last for 30 minutes.

I think the death thing starts at lvl 12.  I started getting them today.  I don't think I saw them at lvl 11.  I'm not sure how much impact that debuf has but I found it to be rather a non issue since you are invulnerable for a minute after respawning.  So you just run to your tomb and click it then run to safety.  Still pretty simple but maybe they will change that before they release.  You shouldn't be able to loot or interact with things while you are invulnerable...

Now on the flip side I don't like the death penalty very much.  Problem wtih these systems is that if you die a couple times you might be impacted significantly enough that you can't play.  That really just encourages people to log off and quit.  AC had a system like this but at least you could work it off killing easier mobs and it wasn't a straight timer.  I think a lot of people are going to be frustrated by this death penalty.  I'd say straight xp loss or if you are going with a performance penalty shorten the time to maybe 10 minutes or make it so killing decreases it like in AC.

I can just see new players chain killing themselves trying to get tombs and ending up with a character that is unplayable for 30 minutes.

Also change the color or size of these tombstones.  They are so tiny and the gray kinda blends in so they are hardly noticable.  And based on my time in the mausoleum we need to be able to turn off other players tombstones.  In that place there were areas that had maybe a dozen tombs and you had to pick yours out of all of them looking for the gear that only seems to show up when you are pretty close to it. 

Wonder if all the tombs could be causing the lag problems?!

On a plus note the current system is great for a soloer.  The mausoleum is a group oriented area where the mobs are all in groups of 3 being level 12-14.  I was able to solo in there with my lvl 12 guy pretty well.  Although when I'd pull a group of 3 I'd end up dying but I'd usally be able to kill 1 or 2 of them then die in a convenient place and come back and finish them off :P  Yeah it ain't pretty but it works.