Suggestion: Experience Debt

Ocalen

Ocalen

Dalayan Beginner
First of all, I would like to say that y’all are doing a great job! I just joined up on SoD a couple weeks ago or so and am already having a blast. I was getting tired of all the MMORPG crap out there today. Some of the more recent ones lack a sense of community. My second or third day in SoD I was grouping and having fun…my Tauren shaman in WoW is level 45 and has never grouped.

I really like the way you guys have done things here. But there is one thing that is really driving me crazy: the experience debt system you currently have implemented.

I’m not asking of a removal of experience debt or even a lessening of the experience debt you gain from dying. What I’m asking you to do is look at it, and think of ways to make it less frustrating…

For example, the best experience debt system I have ever encountered is that in Everquest 2 (don’t let this fool you, because Everquest 2 took its debt system from its little cousin, Everquest Online Adventures) In this system, you gain a debt upon dying. Well, when you venture back out to the hunting grounds, you begin to pay your debt off while you slay creatures/gain experience points. While slaying monsters for experience, some of the experience gained is paid towards your maximum debt. For example: I get killed by a king_snake_0987 and incur 100% debt. I then decide to get some dinner so I log out. When I come back on I join a group and start exp’ing again. The next enemy I kill gives me X amount of experience. Out of this X amount of exp, a percentage, we will say 10%, gets paid toward the total debt and I keep the remaining percent, 90%, of the exp for myself. This way I feel like I am actually gaining something out of the encounter.

This system is really simple and is based upon real life circumstances. For example if I go to Sears to buy a new TV and realize that I only have $200 in my pocket but want a $2000 TV I use my Sears Card (credit card). Knowing that I only have $200 in my pocket and make only $500 a month, I have to make payments. My payments are based on what I make a month. I certainly don’t want to pay $500/mo towards my debt, because that would leave me with nothing. I would probably want to set up a payment plan for at most $100/mo or so. This is about 05% of my total debt.

Basically, by taking this approach to debt, the average player will not feel like he is wasting his time while in debt. Plus, this would clear up any bugs that are currently encountered while in debt. You know the bug where it says you are at 1% (or even worse, 0%) experience debt, and then when you kill the next creature, no matter how tough the opponent is, the next message says, “You have cleared your debt.” In this case, you can slay the hardest mob while in debt and only pay that 1% off and gain no experience at all.

All I’m saying is to make this portion of your game a little less frustrating. The above-mentioned system isn’t necessarily easier, but it’s less frustrating and less frustrating = more fun.

When a character dies, using this new experience debt system, show a message: “You have been slain. You have incurred experience debt.” When paying this debt off….while slaying creatures another message will show up: “You have killed a snake. You pay off some of your experience debt. You have gained experience.”

What do you think? Is there any chance you will be updating your experience debt system in the future?

Thanks again for providing us with a great game and looking at all our thoughts/suggestions.
 
No. We WANT people to feel the sting of death, not have it be some trivial matter that you hardly even notice.
 
/edit this is in response to the OP, not wiz

But... the end result is the same....

Let us say, after dying, you have (for the sake of argument) 1000 points of debt to make up.

You get a group, and make 2000 points of experience.
In the current way the XP debt system works, you work off the 1000, then make another 1000 on top of that.

In your proposal, you get a group, and make 2000 points of experience. 1 point goes to debt, the other goes to 'regular' experience. At the end of getting that 2000 points, you've done exactly the same thing in the same amount of time. Youve paid back the 1000 in debt, plus accrued another 1000... in the same amount of time...
I don't see the issue.... No reason to change it when it comes to being the same thing?
 
It's a matter of perception. The suggestion is to make death penalty less noticeable by spreading it out over a greater time. We don't WANT death to be less noticeable so it's a moot point.
 
I find it hard to believe that the 'perception' that you are doing better under his idea actually affects people. Logic easily sees that the outcome is identical, and wouldn't make one bit of difference to me one way or the other.
I could be wrong about this perceptual (if not real) change making people less frustrated with XP debt though. I've been surprised by how well people fool themselves before.
 
I agree that the change you're suggesting does not really have any effect in the long term, and it would cause lots of changes to be necessary (e.g. if you kill some things, but die again with 50% of your debt to pay off, you'd have to get > 100% debt to balance out the normal xp you gained while paying off only 50% of your debt). Development resources could be much better spent elsewhere...

Ocalen said:
You know the bug where it says you are at 1% (or even worse, 0%) experience debt, and then when you kill the next creature, no matter how tough the opponent is, the next message says, “You have cleared your debt.” In this case, you can slay the hardest mob while in debt and only pay that 1% off and gain no experience at all.
Click to expand...

I don't believe this is true... if I remember correctly, you DO gain any xp over and above that necessary to pay off your debt. I remember getting both the paid debt off and gain experience message on the same kill. I'll try to go through some logs when I get home and provide an example.
 
I don't believe you gain both or at least I don't ever recall seeing that message. However you can gain normal XP while still under XP debt by completing quests (which don't count towards XP debt).

So kill creatures that drop quest items, turn in quest items and get normal xp plus paying off xp debt...
 
K bud, you made one crucial mistake here.

You argued with Wiz.

Never, I repeat NEVER argue with the Wiz. He's a little unstable with crap like that.

I die more than anyone I know (due to the fact that I get a rush from/have a ton of fun/prefer to be soloing yellows) and I don't find the debt annoying in the least. Just be glad it doesn't compound and go play.

- Aeillin
 
Aeillin said:
K bud, you made one crucial mistake here.

You argued with Wiz.

Never, I repeat NEVER argue with the Wiz. He's a little unstable with crap like that.

I die more than anyone I know (due to the fact that I get a rush from/have a ton of fun/prefer to be soloing yellows) and I don't find the debt annoying in the least. Just be glad it doesn't compound and go play.

- Aeillin
Click to expand...

Who argued with Wiz?
 
The guy who started the thread argued with Wiz. This is generally seen as a dumb thing. Be glad that you don't have to trudge back to your dead body before it dissapears to get your stuff back.
 
Darian Maliken said:
The guy who started the thread argued with Wiz. This is generally seen as a dumb thing. Be glad that you don't have to trudge back to your dead body before it dissapears to get your stuff back.
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That's wierd. I only see one post by the OP in this thread.. The first one.. An argument would require him to say something contrary to what Wiz posted in response to his orginal post...
Am I blind and not seeing another post by the OP?
 
A) Nobody argued with wiz
B) When it says you have 1% or 0% left and you pay off the remaining debt, does the "leftover" exp go to normal expirience or is it just lost? It never says you "Gain party expirience" when you pay off the debt completely...atleast not that I can remember.
 
The only way the OP's system of gaining 90% of your normal exp and only paying off 10% debt per kill would work is making exp debt cumulative. If i can run at 90% efficiency all the time, then I wont care about debt. Now if i die twice, and 90% goes to exp, but I have 200% debt, then the tables turn....oh wait, no they dont, i still make 90% exp. Basically wont work. Unless there are diminishing marginal returns on death, and that just sucks because it's econ.

Either way, pay the 50 plat, get a rez, or fight it off. It's not too bad.
 
Yea, the example I made was very basic. Really it would work different.

Let's say that each level consists of a certain amount of experience points to level; we will say 1000 points in this scenario to make it easy. Now let's say you die. You gain an experience debt of 200 points. This is roughly 200/1000 or 20% of the experience you need to level. When you kill a mob, that mob gives you X amount of experience; we will say 50 experience points. If in debt, instead of this mob giving you 50 experience points, it may only give you 30 experience points, as the other 20 points would be used to pay any experience debt you may have. With this system you can actually gain levels while in debt, even though you would be receiving consideribly less experience per enemy kill than not being in debt. The amount of debt you gain upon dying would be, of course, based on level.

However, as Wiz said above, he wanted death to play a more severe role in the game; he said that he didn't want the death penalty less noticeable by spreading it out over a greater period of time.

And I agree with what he says, it is a matter of perception. It's like the cars we drive. We call them ours but they aren't really because we are making monthly payments on them. If we were to miss a few payments, the chances are someone will come and take them away from us.

I understand this and have not, nor will NOT argue with him, cuz aruging with the Wiz would be like arguin with the boss - and I don't wanna get fired!

This was only a suggestion.
 
Never, I repeat NEVER argue with the Wiz. He's a little unstable with crap like that.
Click to expand...

the way Aeillin said this makes Wiz to sound like he's just a child that must have his way and arguing with him will incur his wrath because he can't handle someone with a different opinion.

and plus I never saw anyone argue with Wiz, least not the op, when this quote was made. *shrug*
 
:brow:

It's perfectly fine to argue with me. The only people I get "unstable" with are people that are arguing by the way of lying or otherwise trying to misdirect a topic with exaggerated/false information, because I like reasonable discussion and debate, and bullshit strips away reason.

I can't count the number of times I have revised or scrapped my own ideas/tweaks/implementations because someone on these forums pointed out something I missed, but it's a lot of times. As with everyone else, I am not perfect. :)
 
K i realize that this is text and sarcasm doesn't transmit very well, but go back and read my post again in all non-sincerety and as much sarcasm as you can muster, and maybe you'll see what I was saying. I thought the repetetive warning would have clued yall into that.

Wiz you're the man.

- Aeillin
 
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