The Death Penalty

By Martuk

 

Experience loss or experience debt, with level loss or without? This is one of the debated hot topics on the OVF. How would you prefer to see these penalties associated with death implemented? Is loss or debt a better route, or in the end is there no real difference in the two?

 

Experience debt is acquired when a character dies in game. When a character dies a percentage of debt is added to the character’s experience bar. A portion of experience is taken as they gain it until the difference is made up. For example, when a player dies they gain X amount of debt. 20% of any experience gained from that moment on goes first to repaying the debt. This continues until the amount of debt earned has been paid off. In the end this allows the player to continue forward, but never face the possibility of losing progress as could occur with experience loss/level loss.

 

Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online, posted about this on the OVF. He said:

 

“Things that I will hold firm on:  I really don't like losing levels -- I think that's too extreme.  I'm also not fond of the opposite, allowing you to level if you have outstanding debt.  The exception to this is if you are at the game's current maximum level, in which case you *do* need to lose a level otherwise you can abuse things by just racking up debt.  In fact, you can screw yourself, because you could rack up all of this debt and then we could later increase the level limit, and there you are earning back crazy amounts of debt. That or we clear this debt when the expansion comes out, but IMHO that's cheezy and rewards people callously racking up debt at max level.”

 

EverQuest 2 is a good example of an experience debt system. It had a shared experience debt in which when one person died in a group the whole group shared the penalty. This was widely unpopular among a large portion of the EverQuest 2 community. Some will be happy to know that it has been stated with 100% commitment that there will be no shared death penalty in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Brad McQuaid stated he did not like the shared penalty since it made pick up groups and players more of a liability, and may make players less tolerant of newer people.

 

Some games make use of rested experience bonus as well as offline debt recovery. Rested bonus is awarded to players while offline. It adds a 100% bonus to experience gain. So a player will gain 200% experience so long as they have a rested bonus. Offline debt recovery slowly erases debt accumulated from a death penalty over time. These two systems are both liked and disliked throughout the community. Brad McQuaid has stated that there are no plans for any type of offline recovery or rested bonus to be added to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. His statement of “No free lunches.” sums this up well. 

 

Experience loss works a bit differently that the systems above. When someone dies using this method a portion of the players experience is removed. This penalty in games, such as EverQuest, brought the added possibility of losing a hard earned level. This usually only occurred if you had just recently leveled and had not gained a good deal of experience into your next level, or you managed to die enough times to reduce your experience bar down significantly. I personally loved this system.

 

Another part of the death penalty comes from the corpse run or CR for short. A corpse run is when a character dies they leave a corpse at the spot of death. Some games when you die your items will stay on your corpse making it all the more important for you to retrieve it. This however, is not always an easy task.

 

In a lot of cases, people die deep inside a dungeon, or in other perilous locations. Getting to the corpse can be tricky. In Vanguard: Saga of Heroes it is stated that people will have multiple sets of gear at a given time. This should make the corpse runs a little less tedious, but don’t let your guard down. At times I remember, becoming very frustrated at this in Everquest. In the end, I realized I truly enjoyed every corpse run I ever had to delve deep for. The system did its job well. It made you want revenge, and you would stop at nothing to get it. When you feel like that in a game the developers did their job, and did it well.

 

The two systems of debt and loss, while very different, are also very similar in that they both provide a sting that is needed for death in MMOs to encourage players to avoid death, and better learn their class. After all, if there was no penalty why avoid it? The death penalty is a good feature as well as an additional challenge for players to overcome.

 

The current system set to appear in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Beta is the experience debt system. This could, however, change before the end of beta, and we could very well be looking at loss. Corpse runs are also in, but in what form they will take has yet to be revealed. There has been no official word on whether level loss will be in or not. Brad McQuaid’s words in his post allow for speculation that he is truly against the idea of losing levels. He has also stated that he does not like the idea of a person who has accumulated debt to be allowed to progress until that debt is paid. Experience debt with the block of advancement to the next level until the debt is paid may be the current system for death at the moment. This all of course is subject to change.

 

In the end debt is truly not that different from loss. With loss you take a direct hard hit to your experience. With debt you have that lingering payoff hanging over you for a given time. The difference in my opinion is partly psychological. In either case, these two systems have been hotly debated, and will continue to be most likely until the launch of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and beyond.

 

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Karen is H.D.i.C. (Head Druid in Charge) at EQHammer. She likes chocolate chip pancakes, warm hugs, gaming so late that it's early, and rooting things and covering them with bees. Don't read her Ten Ton Hammer column every Tuesday. Or the EQHammer one every Thursday, either.

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