lani
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This weekend, the servers are abuzz with the rumors about a pending removal of the Tombstones.
The test server is now running, and testing for issues, a new system that does not have the Tombstones / Bodies anymore but "Essences". In these will be stored some Experience you lost, less than in Tombstones apparently. You will no longer be able to summon them from a resurrection point.
Read the post by Elrar SGO at Silky Venom here
So will Corpse crawls most likely be a thing of the past or "compulsive neurotics" as the XP hit becomes less and less, we gain more and more per hit and your gear travels with your revitalized body. So what point does Soulbinding have now?
These questions and others, even a few conspiracy theories are what's in the thread.
My question is, how do you feel about the pending removal of the Tombstones. Would you still corpse-crawl for a small bit of XP? Do you think this reduces the impact of dieing in this game?
My own feelings are that overall this might be best.
The Tombstone and corpse-crawl concept weren't bad in themselves, but they do depend on a few things that VG is sadly lacking in atm. Things like stable chunks, causes of death being gameplay ones and not bugs. Map design that doesn't put you at the other side of a mountain range when you revive so you don't have to travel by another, more convenient revival point in order to get to your corpse.
When I look at my most common causes of Death they're:
- Stepping on a 4 dot mob because I'm trying to make a scenery screenshot.
- Making a screenshot in combat and
- My screen going black in the middle of a fight due to Dynamic Lighting bugs.
- Berserk NPC's who are on a "KOS league of their own".
- Spatial / temporal or vital distortion when crossing a chunk-line.
- Surprise respawn / returning train.
Now, the top and bottom ones are acceptable to me and if those were the only ones, I would love the Tombstone & corpse-crawl system. Sadly, this is not the case.
And then there's all the Customer Support queries about people who lost gear in the process, think they lost gear in the process or even think they can convince CS they lost gear in the process. Tickets by people who keep not reading the bit about the experience hit on summoning your stone e.t.c.
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| 04/01/07 04:00 |
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MikesterBrau
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Great post and thanks for the news. I like the idea of being penalized for dying as it keeps players from becoming reckless and putting some thought into what they do but given how many times I have died due to things like falling through what appeared to be solid rock, sea monsters attacking through the bottom of boats, and other situations where retrieving ones corpse is close to impossible I do favor either improving the tombstone system or fixing some of the more persistant problems in the game. Now I am not singling Vg out on this one. In WOW it was the waterfall in the elven lands where you could not get your corpse back, and a few places in Stormhold were bad in EQ2's early days with corpse crawls.
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| 04/01/07 08:19 |
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blackphoenix
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I believe that it will make pickup groups that much worse if they remove it. I was in a not so bad one yesterday that ended better than it started. Half way through, the sorcerer got the bright idea to just invis us all and run half way down the cave. After dying about 5 times and losing about as much xp as I had earned that day, I was saved by the dinner bell.
I expect if they remove corpses and all that, we'll be seeing a lot more people that just want to try to brute force it. And we all know that throwing patience and strategy out the window = more deaths for everyone and no progress on the goal.
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| 04/02/07 09:30 |
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Rigamortus
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I'm not so sure I like the idea. I know there are bugs in the game that cause unavoidable death through no fault of your own right now, but hopefully those are fairly high priority to be fixed. I hear about people dying constantly due to bugs, I've got to wonder what they are doing... Granted, I'm only level 22 and spend a lot of my time crafting, but I've not once died from a bug *knocks on wood*, although I can understand the frustration.
My main concern is for the future of the game, not so much what is happening at this very second. If sweeping changes like this are made in these early stages mainly to appease those complaining about bug-deaths, I fear that once those bugs are fixed, the game will be worse off in general because of the changes.
There is just no way to get that feeling (in RL) of actually being scared or apprehensive about attempting some task in the game if you know you can just come back and try as many times as you want with no real risk involved.
Nothing ruins an immersive dungeon crawl more than when half your group just runs headlong into whatever as fast as they feel like because they don't feel like it matters if they, and in turn their group, dies since there's no real penalty for being so careless. (Eg. pretty much every pick-up group in WoW) I do not want to see this in Vanguard.
In my opinion, if they are going to take away the need to recover lost items, they need to increase the amount of XP loss from not recovering your essence.
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| 04/03/07 09:13 |
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lani
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If I'm completely honest, I fear that for a lot of those folks we know and 'love' that act like they suffer acute physical pain if not fighting in a dungeon for 20 seconds will not be deterred at all by the presence of a large XP hit and / or Item loss. I've seen enough of that type of person on Hilsbury, Gelenia, Infineum and, to a much lesser extend thankfully, Florendyl with the hefty XP debt and summon-corpse to greater debt in full swang.
But as Brad McQuaid (Sigil CEO) posts here it's apparently also an issue for the "hardcore" players who, presumably have more brains than the average "Dungeon Berserker" that gets groups wiped. They're not venturing into the deepest darkest dungeons enough. I'm not sure if that's purely due to Tombstone fear. It may have to do with a preoccupation with itemization and economy thereof.
Anyway, it's being tested. Elgar can be seen to repeatedly state it's a test for technical issues, not a feedback request on the design. I'm not sure whether to infer from this that it will or will not come to live servers. I do think that this isn't the biggest problem Sigil and vanguard face. Brad confessed to that problem here, underpopulation of the servers. Sadly put at the number 2 slot.
MMORPG (Roleplaying): Mostly Men Online Role-Playing Girls
MMORPG (Acheivement): Miserable Malcontents Online Rehashing Past Glories
MMORPG (PvP): Macho Men Obviously Really Prefer Griefing
MMORPG (itemization): Misers May Obfuscate Recently Purchased Gold
MMORPG (Social): Virtual Worlds with Virtual Wealth and achievements, but with Real People with Real Feelings.
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| 04/03/07 17:46 |
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