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Good Deathpenalty

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Now before you think im out to ruin your day, i dont just want a deathpenalty for deathpenalties sake. I want a DP so we can buff some other things and make the game more fun, and maybe even a little more like the series.


This is how i envision a deathpenalty:

1. Crew loss. Yeah we have been through this before, but i add a twist to it. You see this is playing in the future, and ALL starship ships are equipped with holographic emitters these days(so says a loading screen). So simply put i want to exploit this by complicating the underlying crew mechanic, without making it more complex for players.

In addition to wounded and dead crew, we get holographic crew(lets make them light blue or something). Holographic crew replaces wounded, which take alot longer to heal now without help by BO abilities or other players, and dead crew members(which you now have to replace at stardocks). Holographic crew is worse than normal crew, and susceptible to abilities that mess with your aux energy, they also detract/benefit from your aux setting.

On the flip side the benifits of a healthy and full crew should be magnified, and they shouldnt die/get woudned as easily as before.

2. Hull gets buffed. Maybe in relation to aux energy, which gets after all used for strutural integrity fields and stuff. On the flip side, you cant competly repair hull(maybe even subsystems?) anymore by any means while in space, you can only do temporary fixes, lets make them yellow like wounded crew. This temporary fixed hull is less resilent than a real hulljob at a starbase, also it will visually look like the hack it is.

Also there should be an outer hull, and lets say and inner hull representing the inner part of a ship that really shouldnt be exposed to vacuum and phasers and stuff. For example a ship at 50% hull(outer hull is breached) and no shields takes alot more damage(lets say 100% of the actual weapon damage) by a an attack than a ship at 95% hull(outer hull is still up, even a torpedo hit, while still bad would be bearable). Also lets have attacks give some random subsystem damage if your hull is below 75%, which would actually give your crew something to do.

Might aswell also use this as an excuse to get some more variation between shipclasses in, for example escorts like the defiant should have innately stronger hull, not just more HP, i.e. they actually take less damage to their hull at any stage. Cruisers could not only fix subsystem damage(which would get more common, and take longer to fix) faster, but they also would have more redundant systems, i.e. they dont loose all shields if a shieldemitter goes down, but only on one side or not all beam weapons but only 1-2 arrays, this should represent not only redundant systems, but also the physical distance between those due to the ships size. Could even put variations in between ships in the same class but different tier, to make ships a little bit more canon.

3. Not supposed to turn into a chore. Steps need to be taken to ensure that your not having to look for a drydock after every mission, ideally the frequency of needing to restock crew/repair hull with casual play(i.e. not an min/maxxer, but not totally fail at fitting/skills either) should coincide with a full inventory, so your going there anyway to sell stuf. Obviously bad players will get punished more, which will encourage them to get better i hope.

Crew has their holographic crewmembers to prevent and unlucky moment turning into a chore, but what has hull? A outer hardened shell that has no effect on your starships performance(well apart from not blowing up as fast should your shields drop) and stronger shields. Hull shouldnt just be another healthbar that needs different abilities to heal, and likewise shields should be more meaningful.

Currently you can put a mark X blue shield on a miranda class light cruiser and its shields are just as strong as on a sovereign class with the same blue shield. I would like to see that changed. Every ship tier needs its own base shield, shields as in the items we know and trade on the exchange, should act as a modifier on these base shields. They would affect things like bleedthrough, resists, regeneration, hp, or maybe have procs like a change to convert a beam into shield energy or a damagepulse(like the BO skills, but with a low % chance). But they wouldnt contain a flatout number of HP like they do now, they would be based on percentage modifiers of your base shields.

Shields also would need less bleedthrough, the kind of damage that needs a drydock to repair shouldnt happen while your shields hold, unless maybe with special weapons(give transphasic and maybe the higher tier energy stuff a point). Make shields scale just as much with skills as weapons do, not saying it has to be the same %, but you should be able to affect them just like you do affect weapons with your skills. Breaching of shields should be harder, routing energy to them more meaningful(% based damage reduction/less bleedthrough etc maybe) simply for no other reason that real/full hullreps only happen in starbases now and should be more rare to keep it from getting a chore.

4. Out of Combat/In Combat changes. Yes it makes alot of sense that certain activities go alot faster while not in combat, but not to the extent we have now. Its even ok to have certain things that wont be fixed while under fire at all, or only extremely slowly. But who says whats incombat and what not? Who decides if now is a good time to fix that broken holodeck, or rather focus on the aft shield emitters? The captain does. I dont want to go into the details of red alert, yellow alert etc, but for my ideas i need some different combat states that are set manually by the captain(i.e. you).
  1. Normal state. Crew is busy minding their own buisness, general maintenance running at 100%. Crew healing amplified.
  2. Ready for battle. Crew is ready. Lesser risk of crew casulties by surprise attacks, general maintenance running at 50%, combat related maintanance running at 150%. Crew healing normal. Holographic crewmembers assist.
  3. Battle stations. Crew is on Battlestations. Low risk of casulties or getting wounded without prior hullbreach, general maintanace stopped, only combat related maintenance happening at 200%. Crew healing stopped the medical station is only stabilizing wounded(stasis fields etc), dead/wounded get replaced by holographic crewmembers.

Also one state not set by the captain:
  1. Under fire. This implies your actually in the progress of being attacked. It might automatically imply some conditions of the combat states above. Think of it being your first officer shouting orders if your captain is ... incapacitated(read: too stupid to go to red alert). This is the automated mechanic we have now to determine wether your in combat.
Changing between combat states takes time. The more crew you have the more time it takes. Im thinking of something like 20 seconds for the bigger ships.


5. Enemy Strength calculations. Enemies would stop scaling with level, and instead scale with itemlevel. Your ship and every mod on it will get assigned a level(doesnt need to be visual to the player), enemies will be based on the cumulative level of those(ship and items, this is important). You can fly your mark X fitted miranda and will meet apropiate enemies, or you fly your mark VII fitted Galaxy and meet apropiate enemies. In groups the cumulative itemlevel of all players would decide the enemies strength, so bringing a defiant might not benefit your group as much as a T5, but it will also raise the difficulty not as much.


What is the purpose/result of these ideas?

Less dieing and respawning. It will still happen, but it wont be as common. It will be punishing to carelessly charge into bad odds, the stronger hull though will also make it more viable to put energy to engines and leg it, which would actually make sense now to safe crew and hull damage(which wouldnt be restored on death anymore). The safety of your ship/crew should be of some consideration to you, if not for RP reasons then because dieing all the time would make it a chore getting your ship up to 100% efficency again.

Introducing a proper money sink into the game, which imho is helpful to keep inflation in check.

Reward good gameplay, be it in teams or solo, by either making your ship perform better(your flying with real crew, no hack jobs at subsystems/hull) or by saving you money and time(alot? a bit?). This would encourage and reward teamplay even in PuGs.

Stronger shields would give people more time to help each other. In the series it usually took time to take down shields, it was usually 80%, 70%, 50% even while getting hammered by weapons. Also the stronger hull would allow us to nerf abilities like engineering team without actually diminishing their value(i want this to prevent the whack-a-mole button mashing that healing is in other games, it might be ok for magic to restore a nearly dead to full health, not so much for technology restoring a starship, shields are obviously ok since they are energy).

For example lets say a ET II now reps away a full torpedo to the hull hit, it would still do that(albeit rather over time instead of instantanious), but it would take alot less HP bouncing now. Also there could be distinctions between hull abilities that help more the inner hull and subsystems like engineering team, and others like hazard emitters that focus on the outer hull, which is the tougher part, maybe giving it its own visual in the UI, a border between shields and the current hull hp that would then be representing the interior stuff.

Changing the Enemy Strength calculations hopefully gets us a step into the direction where people can fly the ship they want, instead of being forced by the game to fly the "best" ship in their class. Though there still needs to be a change to the threat perception of ships by npcs, a borg cube really should have no inclination to attack a miranda class if its currently hammered by a sovereign and a fleet escort.

Though i go a step further, a borg cube, getting shot at by only this miranda, should still have no inclination to attack it if his fellow borg cube is hammered by said other ships. Maybe throw a beam at it here and there simply to keep it entertaining for the players, but the focus should be on the real threats.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    PVP. This would completely TRIBBLE with pvp, which is why the crew/hull loss upon dieing wont apply there. infact dieing would make your ship and crew as good as new. The whole point of pvp is dieing and racing towards the enemy to die again(or hopefully have him die this time), so this gameplay should still be possible. Hulls would still be stronger, but that would apply to everyone. Also half killing a enemy would do some good now, as he has no hope to repair up before he is in battle again(selfdestructing his ship to get full crew/hull would obviously count as a point towards the other side).

    Oh, using a quick pvp queue to repair your pve damages wont work, the state of your ship upon entering a pvp battle will be safed(and then set to full), and it will be restored to its old value upon leaving. Lets hammer down the exploits before we mess with the features :D.


    I dont want this to end up as a nerf to escorts or anything of the sort, and this is only a rough idea, so obviously changes would have to be made to make sure all shipclasses stay fun to fly if necessary.

    Also all the changes would have to be properly documentated ingame i.e. the tooltips, status page of your ship, or the holographic info thingies in starship requisitions. I want a flood of information, thats per default turned off per some option maybe, lets call it advanced tooltips or somesuch.


    Edit: I guess this goes a tad bit beyond a mere deathpenalty, but i feel that a deathpenalty alone wouldnt add much to the game. Its a bit of give and take, implementing a deathpenalty should allow us to make things a bit more epic, cause there is a greater risk involved as well.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I like the holographic crew idea, really, but it shouldnt make you weaker unless you get below like 10% real crew, cause it doesnt make sense to die at something and go back there weaker and try again.

    Still, we do need the same mechanics we have in ground combat also in space....

    When you are close to 0% hull, you should become incapacitated, waiting for someone to repair your ship instead of blowing up and respawning. If you DO choose to "respawn", it should be named auto-destruct, destroy your ship and make you float in an escape pod for 30 seconds before you respawn OUTSIDE the mission area.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I was thinking of making the holographic crew only available on red/yellow alert, maybe with a hefty auxilery penalty though im not sure about that. They need a strong drawback, otherwise they would already have replaced normal crew.

    Advantage of them obviously would be that they are available pretty much instantly and cant die again(unless their holographic emitters go boom, hmm maybe a subsubsystem?)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Arshes_Nei wrote:
    I was thinking of making the holographic crew only available on red/yellow alert, maybe with a hefty auxilery penalty though im not sure about that. They need a strong drawback, otherwise they would already have replaced normal crew.
    Advantage of them obviously would be that they are available pretty much instantly and cant die again(unless their holographic emitters go boom, hmm maybe a subsubsystem?)

    Sounds like a nice idea, but its not.
    If its an aux penalty, it will affect science ships much stronger than cruisers or escorts as they rely on aux.

    Also, it doesnt help if your ship becomes weaker on death, you will just die again. Its a death spiral, and something like this shouldnt exist in a game.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I don't want a death penalty. I understand that there are people that do, but I don't.

    Everyone plays differently and in a battle, either ground or space, I try everything I can to stay alive. The penalty for me is seeing the re-spawn message. It means I failed, I was bettered by my opponent. I swear and shout at the screen just as much as in games that have a death penalty, but for different reasons.

    A few of my mates were playing Wow over the weekend and as I still had some game time left I joined them. Within minutes of starting to play I was reminded of the downers in wow. We all died several times, sometimes it was bad luck, sometimes a random add that we hadn't seen and a couple of times because one of the group was a numpty. It took 5-8 mins to run back each time and re-buff. So what should have been a 20 minute run became 1 hour. What should have been a quick bit of fun with a few friends became a chore and just to round it all off it cost me 28 Gold for repairs. I logged off.

    Perhaps, if there really has to be a death penalty it should be optional. Then those who need it can have their punishment and those who don't as the disappointment of losing is enough, can all live in perfect harmony :-)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Ace-Rimmer wrote:
    Perhaps, if there really has to be a death penalty it should be optional. Then those who need it can have their punishment and those who don't as the disappointment of losing is enough, can all live in perfect harmony :-)

    Optional also sounds like a nice idea, but again its not.

    If its optional, no one will activate it, even people that want DPs.

    Why? Cause they will end up weaker than people without a DP, which means you have to separate those two groups in game, which means its all a developer nightmare and not really feasible.

    If you make a DP optional, you would have to give incentives to activate it, like better loot, and then the people without a DP will start complaining.... its TRIBBLE, I know.

    It's a complicated issue.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    To be honest ive not chimed into the whole DP debate as Im not a fan of penalties. However a little something is required to keep the game interesting and not a zerg fest. The whole death penalty idea is getting way too complicated, it should be simple, easy to understand and not too harsh. Here is my idea:

    1) Dont add respawn points to instances (one must fly / run back into battle)
    2) Each wave of enemy ships that you destroy dissapears, however if your entire team dies the wave respawns at full health.
    3) When you die you have 2 choices. Accept the death, let the mobs respwn and try again OR continue from where you left off with a small reduction in stats for say 10 mins.
    4) The above debuff will stack whilst you are in the instance but as soon as you leave the instance its reduced to one stack again.



    This then allows players to choose if they want a death penalty with the option of maybe to continue killing that half dead cruiser and get a debuff or starting again on a wave of bird of prey if you misjudged it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    We need a moderate death penalty to put fun back into pvp.

    It doesnt have to be overly complicated...


    Crew loss (every time you die you have a small chance to lose crew based on a % system)

    Durablity loss (items need to be either destroyed and or damaged so they can be repaired in starbases

    PVP stats : reward those that have great combat records and punish those that suxx... Do it by a UO system of "titles" that show up for all to see when they scroll your name... put some pride and shame in pvp players.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Romulan78 wrote: »
    Crew loss (every time you die you have a small chance to lose crew based on a % system)
    Durablity loss (items need to be either destroyed and or damaged so they can be repaired in starbases
    PVP stats : reward those that have great combat records and punish those that suxx... Do it by a UO system of "titles" that show up for all to see when they scroll your name... put some pride and shame in pvp players.

    PvP titles - hell yeah.

    A penalty that makes you weaker on death makes sense on PvP, cause that way one side will work its way towards superiority until the enemy is chanceless and has to give up.

    It doesnt work for PvE though, see above.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I'm going to have to chalk up a vote for a survival bonus...seems like a nice compromise.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Aux penalty doesnt affect Science ships that much more, first because they have better aux to start with, and second cause they have the best shields, so they should see the least dead crewmembers. If you say holographic crewmembers need to be as good as normal, and incur no penalty ontop we might aswell keep the current system.

    Also I didnt say your ship gets weaker on death, multiple death yes, that would harm you(and even then only after your shields break down, which would become rarer with my changes). Hulltanking is simply not a startrek thing imho. But even then, if you keep heading into a fight thats so much over your head that you keep dieing again and again any deathpenalty would hurt you bad. One of the points of a deathpenalty is to stop people from flying into a spawn way over their head, kill a single ship, die and then rinse repeat till done. If you actually change your tactics to prevent your previous error those penaltys wouldnt matter much.

    I understand some people want no deathpenalty, but it is my belief that such a system will hurt STO in the long run, since it not only spawns alot of other bad behavior that turns people away like lack of teamplay or slighting the importance of healing/support. But if dieing doesnt matter, helping others doesnt matter either, people already dont care/notice if you safe their hide. I have yet to see a single player actually acknowledge i helped him, why should he? At most i saved him 20 secs of flying back, at worst he now has to wait far longer till his hull/shields/crew are good again.

    Just think about the implication no deathpenalty has for groups and later raids. The way back to the fight is usually always short enough to make dieing meaningless, it will just become a mindless zerg till every enemy is dead. And the difference between a good group and a bad group will be that the former safes a couple mins due to not running back and forth from the next spawnpoint.

    The CE encounter showcases the opposite of the coin nicely, players have no intention actually working together or even just communicating, cause there is zero risk. They just zerg the the thing and shoot whatever they feel like because they have no incentive to acutally use their brains. In the end a encounter that is trivial for a even somewhat organized group needs to be nerfed because its unbeatable by the masses.

    If 95% of the content is can be solved by zerging the enemies from the spawnpoint, you cant suddenly introduce content that requires Teamwork. You wont have the playerbase to appreciate it(cause those that stayed will be those that appreciate the current 95% of content).

    Deathpenalty is so much more than just punishing players for failing. Its imho the singular driving force behind teamwork in mmorpgs. You can make a direct relation between harshness of deathpenalty and the amount and quality of teamwork going on in a game.

    Edit: Just for a second, if you know any other mmorpg, think how it would be in groups/instances/raids there if you could simply run back into the fight within 20 secs without any drawback to your team at all. We havent even seen the tip of the iceberg that is no deathpenalty yet, it will make creating proper groupcontent as we know it almost impossible.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Well, everything you say is true, its just HOW we want a DP implemented.

    For me, the "respawning on the map" option definitely has to go away.

    Yeah, people dont even understand what implications it has on the whole content design if there is the possibility of zerging.

    I have written it in like every DP post.... without a DP, this game will never have any meaningful endgame.

    For proof, just visit the crystalline entity.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Scay wrote:
    Well, everything you say is true, its just HOW we want a DP implemented.

    For me, the "respawning on the map" option definitely has to go away.

    Yeah, people dont even understand what implications it has on the whole content design if there is the possibility of zerging.

    I have written it in like every DP post.... without a DP, this game will never have any meaningful endgame.

    For proof, just visit the crystalline entity.

    Im not hellbend on my ideas getting implented, they are just that, ideas, maybe even as inspiration for something completly different. But something has to be done, i actually like the game alot, but i really believe that some of the core mechanics need to be changed.

    I would love it if all it took was rewarding good teamplay, but thats not enough, because players would just try again and again and again till it worked. We actually need to punish bad gameplay/teamplay, to force players to think about their actions and learn from their mistakes. If we do that we can have a nice progression of content for years to come, if we dont every challange will become a regen/heal based big boss like the CE. Cause those are the only ones you cant just zerg down by rushing them from the spawnpoint. Without that mechanic the CE would be trivial even if it hat 10x as many hp and did 10x as much damage.

    But yeah, how we do that is up for grabs.
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