So, I am going to start this post by recognizing that yes, it is being written in rant-mode because I just had to pray for salvation during what has already been a really bad day (and my birthday, too...). However, this is also something that has been tumbling through my head for some time.

WHY is praying for salvation so expensive? From testing the amounts with my fancy new mostly demoralizing xp tracking script, it seems as if praying for salvation costs experience roughly equivalent to ten times a normal death, in addition to the regular loss from dying (which still carries its regular modifiers for enemy territory and the like).

I understand that there is supposed to be a clear benefit to having someone use one of the forms of resurrection, but doesn't it seem a little... excessive? Already, praying for salvation has the large inconvenience of being a two minute and thirty-six second "timeout" while you wait for the script to play out. For people who suck at bashing like me, it takes fifteen to twenty minutes to make back the loss on a regular death, and with prayer this means that that one random clot of aggressive enemies in an area I'm exploring for the first time just cost me three hours and forty minutes of mind-numbing keyboard tapping.

Having prayer be so crushingly expensive is a policy that is most damaging to new players, while leaving the more experienced players who can afford conglute/vitae/a personal cadre of resurrection-ready citymates relatively untouched. These new players are often missed on deathsight simply because their names are not known, and so they pay the unpopularity tax in hours of work. It also unduely affects those who play primarily in off-prime hours; Because most of the forms of resurrection require a second player to perform the act, people who can only play when few others are on are at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to the cost of a death.

I often get accused of writing at length about problems without providing solutions, so I'll throw out a few suggestions here and see if any strike your fancy:

- When people die with vitae up, either force them to be revived at their conglutination spot, or give them the option of appearing there or where their soul is with additional syntax post-death. (In other words, say I die. I then have 5 seconds to type RETURN HOME or walk around in soul-form to get out of the room I died before automatically reviving). The way vitae works right now more often than not causes someone with the defence up to just die twice within seconds, rather than avoiding death. This solution would take vitae, an already existing skill, and move it from "nearly without use and a waste of code" to "a staple that will again be used by everyone".

- Allow people to IMMOLATE themselves while dead in addition to keeping the current option to PRAY FOR SALVATION, with an ACCEPT prompt which reminds them that it is incredibly costly in power. To prevent abuse, disallow those who are powerblocked from doing it. This would give people a second avenue with it's own separate set of disadvantages, but would at least be another option and make it so the decision to pray didn't feel as "forced".

- Make praying for salvation cost only as much as one extra death. This would still provide a strong impetus for people to seek resurrection, but it wouldn't carry the same "just give up now because everything you did today and part of yesterday has been erased" effect.

- Give all organizations resurrection skills like Glomdoring's DarkRebirth, which, to my understanding, is cast once on an individual and then lies dormant, automatically activating and bringing the target back to the nest on their next death. This is probably the least desirable of my propositions, as it does not address the problem of newbies being forced to pray for lack of preparation, but at least it displaces vitae with a defence that isn't likely to get you killed twice. If I misunderstood DarkRebirth, the argument still stands that a set of such defences could be introduced.


If you have a problem with any of the above solutions or with the arguments I made, feel free to point them out, but please do not focus so fully on it that you become blinded to the other three solutions. Remember, only one of the four has to be a "good idea", they don't all need to be (and probably shouldn't be) implemented together.

All organizations have resurrection skills. Moon Resurgem, Crow Darkrebirth, Nihilism Lich are examples of these. They are differently executed, but are considered equal all the same.

With all the methods one can utilize to avoid a pray-death, changing it is unnecessary. There are also many ways one can gain experience quite easily (aetherhunt, influence, regular hunting, even questing).

Lower levels are easier to gain than higher levels, and by the time you're a higher level, you really should have conglutinate already. In the past this was in Transcendant Planar, and it's been lowered since. It's very possible to get it without buying OOC credits for lessons.

TL;DR version: pray-death is fine. Death is fine.

EDIT:

Since you think DarkRebirth is all that snazzy: only Crow-users get resurrected at their nest. Everyone else is resurrected at the same area they die in (specifically, the room one sets his/her egg in). It's not a guaranteed safety net. It also works on the same plane only (I am not sure about same continent). It also costs a lot of carrion to put up. It also decays after 10 days. DarkRebirth, I conclude, is not a set-and-forget death mitigation method.

With all due respect, it seems as if you did not actually read my post beyond the title and perhaps the first paragraph. As I already stated, all of the current resurrection skills (with the exception of yours) require an "other" be waiting at the ready, or in the case of resurgem, three. This means that, though they exist, they are not available to those who are forced to play in off-prime hours and those who remain relatively obscure to their city.

Again, it is not an argument of whether or not pray-death is common, but rather, in those instances where pray death IS needed, whether it is an inordinately crippling punishment for what amounts to bad luck.

And, since you seem to have forgotten, conglutination does not work on Prime, which is where most bashing areas are located.

EDIT because of above edit:



As I stated in that suggestion, my representation or misrepresentation of DarkRebirth is not actually an argument against what I am proposing in that idea, which is a set of skills for every organization which can be prepared before-death and which activate on death, in a matter similar to vitae. Really, for all intents and purposes this idea is the same as the vitae one with an appendage which reads: "but make the mechanic superficially different for every org."

Death ia an unfortunate after-effect of life. If you think things are expensive now, just wait until you hit demi. Without analyzing your problem/solution in depth, lowbie death and vitae aren't expensive comparably speaking.

Edit: in retrospect, let me give you this sage advice: don't die.

Well, that's just one of the perks to playing a multi-player game: you have to work with other players. I'm sure even the most offpeak of hours has at least someone else online in your organization (granted, there are exceptions such as exam weeks and Tuesday nights), who can run to the corpse and immolate at the Nexus if needed.

Pray-death is also not a 'crippling' set back, again, because there are literally loads of methods to gain experience from. It's sad when you're forced to pray, yes, but pick up your athame (or mandolin, or whatever) and bash up again. Or influence. Or go on an aetherhunt. You get the picture.

I stand by my statement: pray-death is fine. Wait until you hit demigod and have to worry about essence.

For the moment, I'll not argue that death is too expensive when praying (nor am I saying it is), but rather the ideas you posted.

An idea like this was already brought up somewhere, and would allow you to tether yourself to your nexus. When you died (or upon command), you'd be flung back to your nexus. It was, I believe, ultimately dismissed because it would either have too many restrictions or be too powerful.

Considering the power reserves of most orgs, this might work. It would also likely lead to a whole host of powerblockings, but that's neither here nor there.

Again, I'll not discuss if it's too expensive or not to pray.

As has been pointed out by Alacardael, Darkrebirth is far from the perfect death-escape ability you make it out to be. It's too limited in duration and effect to be widely used (in fact, I think it's barely used at all for non-Crow users). If you want to point one out, point instead to Mag's Lich, which I believe can be given to all Mags, and resurrects them after a short delay (unless I've misunderstood it).

This.

The crux of your argument, Rathan, seems to be that it's too difficult to find someone willing to resurrect you in your organization; I refute this. Given playerbase activity (and the comparative compassion of your average Lusternian player, compared to, say, a WoW or LoL player), it's hardly a tall order to get a rez on command. You talk about being an "unpopularity tax" - maybe that's the real issue? You should try building up a reputation and a rapport with your citymates to ensure they have a greater impetus to rescue you. Past a certain level, you really shouldn't be praying at all. That's why the disincentive is so harsh.

EDIT: Also, I'm strongly against your suggestion to homogenise resurrection skills. The distinct differences in Lusternian skills (even when comparing skills which are obvious analogues to each other) is one of the things that makes the game unique. I'm also not fond of buffing vitae; vitae, as I see it, is only one step removed from prayer - something comparatively cheap that everyone has access to shouldn't have any clear advantage over mythical/transcendent level skills.

What really is the game balance or game design consideration for XP loss after death?

The reason I ask is this seems to be an antiquated mechanic from the early RPG days. I heard that one of the reasons World of Warcraft became so popular is that they eliminated the XP loss after death or something like that, and most modern games don't have this penalty anymore. So, is there any game balance reason to keep it other than tradition? (Serious question, I'm really curious).

I died at 9:30 EDT when I walked into a clot of aggressive, hindering enemies in the first room of an area on Prime I decided to explore because I had already died twice today and decided I was going to "take a break" from levelling to not risk dying again.

At the time, there were three Moondancers online, including myself. One was afk in a manse, one was "too busy reading news" and didn't even see the death, and the third was me. I waited four minutes for someone to at least announce the death on CT as is customary (because Serenwilde's method of resurrection requires not one, but three people who have to be organized in the same room), and finally prayed when my mana was about to run out.

So, please, wise one, tell me who was supposed to resurrect me, and how this death is my fault.

TELL NEWSREADER Hello, I died, would you mind grabbing my corpse and immolating me? I'll pay back the power cost.

EDIT:

If they refuse, I guess it's time to build that e-reputation up! No one refuses the respected and well-liked (see: Xiran)!

You're correct on the history of the mechanic, yes. It's something you rarely see anymore because players hate having their time taken away from them like that, and even a large proportion of the people that will put up with a long-arse grind to begin with feel much, much worse if they're reclaiming ground they've already trodden. So there are three main reasons it's still here in Lusternia:
#1, tradition (IRE games predate world of warcraft and other games that popularised the paradigm shift)
#2, people making a fuss about it because they're used to it (and like the satisfying feeling of screwing people over, in some cases)
#3, the more legitimate concern that whatever it was replaced with wouldn't be an organic-feeling deterrent to just doing suicidal annoyance raids over and over and not even caring if you get killed.

Resurrection skills aren't equally the same. Gaudiguch has immolation using flesh and Hallifax has the never-useable-when-you-need-it heartstone.

That being said, are there any actual reasons for why the heavy xp-loss of praying should be kept? If you're gonna pray, you'll only be using it because there's nothing else you can do. You're not gonna get revived cause the body is destroyed or it's on a bubble or nobody in your org cares.

I think you need to draw lines and be more distinct here. Prayer death tends to eat up approximately equal % of exp at a given level, which slowly peels back as you go higher and higher in levels. At the same time, the work you need to make for those %s goes up significantly, so despite the reduced % cost, prayer death is significantly more painful once you go beyond level 80+.

If you are going to try to build on empathy for your argument in regard to new players, you must realise a level 50 character is likely to make back all losses from a prayer death in the 15-20 minutes it takes you to make up for a "regular" death. How new are the players we are trying to save stress for here, and how much is enough at what tier of experience/difficulty? Etc.

I'll be the first to jump on any eliminating exp-loss bandwagon. In fact, here I am, jumping on it now..

Exp loss on death is pointless, and I agree it needs to be removed! I vehemently approve any petition for such a cause! This is in no way related to me praying 3 times for walking into adoraths 2 months ago! At the same time, please retroactively refund me all the exp I've lost in this manner!

Jokes aside, however, there really IS no compelling reason for huge losses on praying sequence. XP-loss on death is an antiquated mechanic that serves no specific reason in the PvE aspect of the game other than to undo time investment that cannot be earned from gold or cash. I cannot think of any reason to instill exp-loss on death for PvE balance, can you?

I am unsure about this, and would appreciate admin clarification, but my impression of the lusternian praying sequence is that it is percentage based. Ie. you lose 10% (example) exp whether you're at level 96 or level 50. This makes the praying sequence more and more debilitating the higher you go in levels. There is, again, no compelling reason why people who worked harder than others should incur a bigger penalty upon the same mistake too.

Having said all that, however, I don't actually agree with making death inconsequential. There was a similar argument about this in Aetolia a couple of years back (we're 2 years late to the game, but hey, better late than never) and here's a post, pasted verbatim which gives a compelling reason why exp loss on death should remain "painful".



While Lusternia =/= Aetolia, and a straight comparison is not relevant, it remains true that death is meant to have a negative impact - or the admins would have changed exp loss a long time ago. Whether or not you ultimately agree that this should take the form of exp-loss, it is also true that making death inconsequential will only encourage griefing activity even more than it currently exists. Already lusternia is pretty much a text based Call of Duty. We ask for participation for raids with little more than the adrenaline rush as the goal. There is no meaningful RP in Lusternian death. The people who DO make a big deal out of it ICly are labelled as newbies and annoying once the novelty wears off, or even before. Post-raid/duel/combat interaction between opposing sides consist of immature game-wide name calling, sniggers, and private insults.

You might as well change the game's name into "Counter-Strike: Basin of Life" and have a line saying "You will respawn in 10 seconds." upon death, if you're intent on removing all penalties to dying. That's basically what conglutination and off-prime mechanics are: free-for-all battlegrounds where people can engage in PK and respawn after dying with minimal loss.

Maintaining the status quo won't improve the situation, but neither will removing (or drastically lowering) exp loss on death. If anything, the possible negative effects are a very real concern.

One idea I had was to release an artifact that prevents XP loss from praying.

I for one hate the xp loss. When I have to spend hours to get back the experience I lost from dying I get really frustrated. It's actually why I refuse to bash and only influence now. It is possible to add other death penalties...a 10 minute grace where you can't really do anything...or be turned into a maggot for 10 minutes after each time you pray (kinda going off WOW for those ideas). I just feel the XP loss penalty is antiquated and that IRE would have more players if they got rid of it. I have seen many newbies get upset and quit merely because of the XP loss.

No.

Heheheh...money to me is cheaper than my time. I'd rather spend $200 on an artifact than grind for 2 hours to get the experience back.

I rather like the exp loss myself. I mean it gives people a reason to not die, and is a big enough of a drawback so people wont go throwing themselves into suicidal situations. Imagine a novice or other lowbie that kept throwing his or herself at you because he or she doesn't worry about dying. No thanks.

There's virtue to XP loss in PVE. It adds a consequence to exploring poorly: I'm sure, absolutely sure, that there were and are ways to avoid the vast majority of deaths during exploration and PVE. They just take a little more time, a little more preparation.

The disincentive to ignoring that prep time is death. That's why RPGs had that XP loss in the first place.

On the other hand, I do agree that you could easily halve the XP loss from praying and that disincentive would remain firmly in place.