Help: Defeated and Meteorite event failure?

Devlog
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Boundless Comrades we’re looking for some ideas and input on failure states in Boundless.

Specifically, we’re interested to improve:

  1. The Player Defeated penalties and the associated skills to avoid them, and
  2. The a new Collective Defeated Meteorite condition, where a group of players fail to defeat a meteorite event.

There are many posts scatted around the forum and discord discussing the defeated penalties. Most recently here:

… but I wanted to create a new thread as we’re looking for something that blends together Player Defeated and Collective Defeated conditions. If there are great ideas please link them into this thread to help us have a single source.

The Meteorite events require a collective failure condition because without any failure state it’s currently possible (if pretty boring) for a single player to complete higher level Meteorites alone: enter → kill a few creatures → die → zero death penalty → sanctum → enter → repeat until victory. Even in larger groups the events shouldn’t be a case of just grinding out a win no matter how many times everyone dies. If there is a risk of failure then the satisfaction and reward for victory will be greater. But at the moment there is no doubt that on the Hunts every meteorite will eventually be completed. Where’s the drama there?

Boundless requires:

  1. Player Defeated penalty that is applied when a player is defeated.
  • The penalty can be fully mitigated by skill points.
  • Penalty can’t be avoided in the process of being defeated.
  • Penalty needs to be a concern and equal for all players: new and experienced.
  • Players need to value not being defeated.
  1. Defeated Sickness status effect that is applied to a player after they have been defeated.
  • This was introduced in Testing 187.
  • Defeated Sickness can’t be mitigated by skills.
  • It is applied after a player is defeated and reduces physical attributed for 90 seconds.
  • It can be actively removed with a cleansing brew or bomb.
  • It can be avoid by being revived by another player, instead of being defeated.
  1. Collective Defeated conditions where a group of players collectively fail a Meteorite event.
  • When a meteorite event is failed there will be no success reward for the event.
  • It needs to take into account all active players.
  • It shouldn’t encourage or be avoided by perverse play, for example, someone being nominated to hide in a hole for the entire event.

Please let us know what ideas you have…

Thanks!!

11 Likes
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You could have a set number of deaths which increases as the meteor level does, to stop people just hiding. This would apply to any players in the general area.
Maybe multiply the meteor level by 5, but that can obviously be balanced.

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I have been confused by:

The penalty can be fully mitigated by skill points.

While I understand that many players are attached to this, I thought it was a part of early access since deaths were possible for crazy reasons during development.

You intend to keep this feature?

I am curious because it makes spending skill points interesting when there is also an entire section that will be for survival…

If I may propose this concept:

Player 1: Chooses to increase armor and hit points so that they can survive more often! This allows them to survive some fights (drinking healing potions/eating food) and even fall from a greater height!

This player will still die though, and no matter how high they increase their defenses they can fall from a great enough height and die.

This player, will be impacted by the death penalty some %.

Player 2: Chooses to have no armor/hp and just removes the death penalty. They will not need healing potions, can contribute during fights and even if they fall from a height and die…no penalty.

This player will die more often, but have no penalty.

Unless something dramatically happens with the way these skills function and how they interact with the game…I cannot reconcile these two players. Player 2 is always in a better position, no matter what the death penalty is.

So why have the stats? Why get tankier? Unless you are specifically building Tank, there is no reason (other then preference).

It is mechanically better to avoid a penalty then to mitigate the risk of acquiring one.

Can you outline more about this option and why you would like to stay in this direction? It would really help me with providing feedback you are asking for! I will tailor my feedback based on your reasoning to be the most helpful!

Thanks

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As a follow-up to show why I am interested.

If what I outlined above is accurate, and every non-tank should be taking ‘death reduction’ then the feedback I would want to provide is how to impact tanks/new players.

Vs, if that is not the direction you are looking to go in, then I would want to offer more general feedback.

Thanks in advance!

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Well, the death penalty skills are pretty expensive, so it limits you in that you can’t get as many skills.

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I’ll be abrupt because I have a busy day ahead. In regards to a collective failure state, I think a timer would be a simple solution. I was really hoping @james would see the way in which we do the secondary/passive towers. Maybe you did, but the towers effectively allow us to hang and avoid all damage for as long as possible. Once we’re done with the cuttle waves we are allowed to spend all of our precious time looting and having a picnic before we start the next wave by killing some mobs in the pits. It would be fun to have some timer once the mobs start spawning which is affected by players in the immediate area. This would disincentivize people from bringing a weak bow and relying on others to take out mobs. If the timer has run up before we trigger the next wave… BOOM! AOE damage similar to the initial impact of the meteor. This would become a problem with the cuttle that always gets stuck in the meteor at the end though…

Edit: Elaborating on this, if the cuttles use the vacuum more, maybe towards the timer end the event can send message to all cuttles to use the vaccum to try to trap us closer to the center. I realize that a workaround is being far enough from the meteor, but maybe distance from meteor can affect the timer as well.

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Frenzy
So I think it would be more interesting with giving the mobs a buff that increase the attack speed, hp, DMG and so on, let’s say a frenzy. Each time a player dies all the mobs in the area get the frenzy buff for a time. This buff can be negated by a skill that lower the the frenzy mobs get when you die. That also means that a player that don’t die as often don’t need that mutch points in that skill. And it also mean we don’t want to take players die to offen. Like low level players

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I believe the creatures give themselves rage, which is working now? So that could change things

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You dont need those skills to survive if you have no penalty for death. The points you save in skipping resistances/health regen/max HP is far more than just getting the less expensive death penalty.

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I agree with Tagris. I think it is an odd approach. The only person who doesn’t run death penalty is Ashwood as far as I know. I don’t even heal because I know that I’ll come back without penalty. If the cleansing bombs have 2000 dura, they will be prioritized over healing like before.

1 Like
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Those are the skills which get rid of the penalty… So you need them TO have no penalty on death :joy:
The other skills I was talking about were mastery etc… And attributes.

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Easy, yet effective. I like that idea.

I think one good addition to the (solo-)death penalty would be, if upon dying, you couldn’t return right to where you died. (maybe automatically spawn at the nearest settlement?)
Additionally you could loose some stuff from your inventory, not gear or tools but a small percentage of the resources you gathered.

I also don’t like that skill…it’s such a “must have” skill.
If reduced death penalty is going to be a thing it should imo be something like an enchantment on the respective tool, not a general skill.

7 Likes
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From this topic it sounds like you are really trying harder to prevent solo players from getting any oortstones by preventing persistence.

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Sorry if some of these sound like other suggestions.

Player Defeated & sickness suggestions.

  1. Player receives debuffs on their damage out-put(reduce focus buff for x amount of time)

  2. Unlucky debuff - reduces luck by 50% for X amount of time affecting mob drops or even meteor upon completion.

  3. loss x amount of XP until next level.

Meteorite:

  1. Party has X amount of death, after all lives are consumed reward is cut by X amount.

  2. Overkill phase - After X amount of deaths, or X amount of time doing the meteorite event, if benchmark is not reach the meteorite goes into “supernova mode”(or something cooler) at that point either spawn harder mobs or every mob gets a massive buff. depending on the size of the meteor that is how much time they have. if the players manage to defeat the meteor they get double drops! if not they get less and the meteor goes inactive.

  3. After everyone dies the meteor goes inactive for minimum reward.

4 Likes
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My suggestion:
Gladiator Rankings
You get a badge and title by your name based on your Ranking. Your ranking goes down upon defeat and improves upon success. Then the servers should rank Gladiators much like it does for builds. Then being perfect in combat is an incentive to players so that they are the highest ranking Gladiator. Perhaps being in the top 10 list comes with certain unobtainable rewards per month.

As far as an additional penalty for defeat, how about a mark of shame badge or something like it for consecutive defeats. And for mass defeat: the meteor drops coal instead of ort for everyone.

3 Likes
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I have an acceptable idea for the defeated penalty It goes as follows:
Instead of All tools taking a % damage that is reduce-able to 0, a Number of tools take 25% damage, the better you have it, the less tools get damaged
Say at the start, 6 Random tools are damaged.(With the same tool able to take multiple hits if you aren’t carrying 6.)
Then 5 Held tools (Rolling over if you aren’t holding a full stack)
Then 4 Held tools
Then 3 Held.
2 Held.
Weakest tool.(The one with least value, so wood>stone>T1 Metal> T2 Metal> gems
No tools( If you are really determined to have the death penalty Fully mitigate-able, which I find a bad idea.)
This Should make the death penalty something more FEARED, as it makes you feel more worried that the tool you care about will get damaged, and all you can do is reduce the chance it will.

For the sickness, a stacking debuff that reduces (Bonus)stats by 20%, max 5 stacks, when cleansed, only One stack is removed.
The stacks last 1/2/3/4/5m respectively, and is called Demoralized “Your recent defeat breaks your spirit and drains your ancestors powers by 20%.”(PS, having skills be tied to align with “Your ancestors” from the sanctuary would be cool.)

For the collective defeat, instead of lives, a Time limit, because you can die as many times as you want, but that will only slow you down more and more “The meteor is threatened by your presence, and is trying to summon a portal to another world!”, when all minions are defeated, the meteor becomes breakable with the message " With its manipulative powers diminished, the confused wildlife leaves the meteor defenseless, and ripe for harvesting."

If you fail: " Suddenly, the creatures cease their plight, and you feel the meteors core has made its hasty escape."

Ill be back later to elaborate more, I have to go, Ill make a lore thread.

3 Likes
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After reading some of the comments I think I can better my idea.

Meteorite level and conditions will depend from the number of players and planet it spawns as it currently is.

Meteorites drops will be affected by number of deaths and the time it’s taken to complete. Deaths and time caps will increase with level of the meteor.

  • Perfect, no deaths incurred, will grant bonus or exclusive rewards, that don’t have really great drop chances. Like exclusive trophies, etc.
  • Normal, after a certain amount of deaths, deaths will be dependant on the level of the meteor. Will grant the same rewards as now.
  • Crumbled, after more deaths than allowed, you will get reduced rewards.
  • Failed, you get no rewards and receive a debuff on your stats.
  • Fast, after completing a meteorite faster than supposed, you get extra rewards. It combines with other buffs or debuffs on rewards.
  • Normal, completed in the standard time, get normal rewards.
  • Slow, rescued rewards.
  • Failed, no rewards, debuff applied.

This would incentive coordinated team play, as it’s been happening. Boost preference for the right weapons and skill builds, as you earn more by doing it better and more efficient.

To add to that, we can have frenzied states, after too much time or deaths have happened. Or have mobs start to target more low hp players. Obviously rage and focus skills will help with controlling mobs targeting low hp players.

That also gives more importance to healers and revivers, as they revive someone, avoiding adding to the death counter. Also they buff or eliminate debuffs.

Debuffs will be applied to players that die as well. Those players will have reduced damage and hp for the duration of the debuff.

Obviously death caps and time caps will have to be taking consideration meteor level, and possibly number of players participating.

I think level 1 meteors should be excluded from the death and time caps, to teach the benefits of completing them for players experiencing for the first time.

9 Likes
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I think it dropping gravel or mud will hurt more. I would actually not be so mad at it dropping coal. :joy:

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I prefer a timer. I just see people griefing if you did it on deaths. It will also bring a bit more urgency to finding and beating a meteorites before they expire. There doesn’t need to be a player wipe at the end of a meteorite, players just don’t get the rewards for failing it and that’s penalty enough if the rewards are awesome.

I would love to do this! If you wanted to go back there it could be on the locations menu so you have to pay to go back there.

6 Likes
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Completely agree. A timer would be fun.