Help: Defeated and Meteorite event failure?

Devlog
61

It currently seems most of the discussion is around soft/hard timer on meteor events, here are my thoughts.
(I’ll try not to be but I will probably be biased towards tanking.)

Soft timer
Pro/Con’s

  • More engaging for Tanks / Healers
  • More easily abused (bringing in friends, keeping one player alive, etc.)

Summoning in boss mob after x minutes.
Increasing levels of AOE damage around meteor.
Waves getting stronger over time.

Hard timer
Pro/Con’s

  • Discourages team work (Pure DPS is more effective than a tank)
  • Much harder to abuse

After x minutes the meteor warps out (maybe with nuke affect?)

Overall I like soft caps more but I am fairly biased. A possibility is that meteor’s can have a random (or multiple :scream:) soft caps on them which could lead to some interesting battles.

3 Likes
62

All Bombs across the board have 99 durability currently…

Pick your Pain

I love this idea… particularly a “pick you pain” type system where you have choices ranging from free to expensive on how you want to come back to life:

Free = return to your home / highest prestigious build
Mid = nearest Settlement / town
Expensive = come right back to where you died at

This allows new players to have 0 death penalty right from the start!

I also like the exp penalty idea… the durability penalty makes more since in games that have a repair mechanic which translates into a coin sink (usually)

couldnt have said it better myself!

i feel it’s lame to have a skill that is so universally required by just about everyone (death penalty reduction) If everyone needs it… and everyone takes it… then its only purpose is to burn up skill points… so why not just remove the penalty and the skill and give us less points to spend?

I would love to NOT take the penalty reduction but the current penalty is too oppressive… esp with how many tools/weapons i carry… i would gladly take a exp or coin penalty over durability… only problem with coin is that players would find ways to hide it =/

I also feel the the death sickness should be the main penalty for death… currently i feel it’s just a minor annoyance. i think it should ether last longer or be stronger… and should not be cleansable… otherwise why take the revive skills and use an item when you could just use an item???.. at least until we have encounters that lock players out that aren’t revived =)

I like the idea of stacking debuff for multiple deaths… but those can be a bit too painful and potentially lead to a chain death feedback loop >< maybe a stacking duration?

Time Restraint (Meteors)

makes sence and simple to understand for open group events as long as we have a time indicator =)

it also makes avoiding death sickness and the new buff system more important esp if the sickness lasts longer

one main concern with a time limit is the loot… not a very fun mechanic if we have to pick between:

  1. completing the event

or

  1. picking up our hard earned loot…

also trying to convince others that it’s more important to go faster than it is to thoroughly loot would be annoying. One solution would be to remove all loot from Meteor mobs and dramatically up the reward for completing them… it would be nice to not have to worry about loot despawning during the heat of battle =)

a flashy dramatic ending/explosion sounds cool but as @luke-turbulenz mentioned it’s not really needed… the meteor simply going dormant / no reward is enough

Hunters would just beacon them =P necessitating making beacon fuel more expensive =(

9 Likes
63

Good to note! I’m assuming 1 durability per throw correct?

2 Likes
64

yes…

but the durability reduction skills / food buff “should” affect them like any other tool/weapon… but further testing is needed to verify this assumption

1 Like
65

couldn’t agree more
these meteor mobs having loot is a huge distractor (especially now when they drop gems and its all too tempting; if at least they dropped just common meat bone blah blah, people wouldn’t care that much to disengage in the middle of fight to collect their goodies)

5 Likes
66

So true lol… but you just reminded me that the importance of animals drops is getting a huge boost in Release 188… particularly for the elemental animals O.o… another solution that “may” be better would be an auto loot system:

creature dies… loot goes strait to bags…

only problem with that would be the vacuum cleaner getting clogged after one Meteor :dizzy_face:

2 Likes
67

Meteorites give so much themselves that mobs you get there could really do without loot. It would make normal hunting more important. Now when you go for meteors you are covered for both portal fuel and other drops so you can basically focus on meteorite hunts. If meteors covered one aspect of game and creature drops were limited to normal wildlife of a planet, people would have to maintain a few different types of activities. Now a lot of players just hunt meteorites as it covers mining as well as typical creature hunting.

3 Likes
68

Or, adjust the rewards according to the player’s contribution.
Depends on damage to enemy(50%), absorbed damage(30%), dodge attack times(10%), and death times(10%).
just effecting when 2 or more players join one battle.
150% reward for ranking 10%
130% reward for ranking 20%
110% reward for ranking 40%
100% reward for ranking 70%
90% reward for ranking 90%
50% reward for ranking 100%
Viewers only have the lowest reword.

1 Like
69

True about the death debuffs stacking up.

I originally thought of it like this:

  • Death debuffs stacking up would only be produced on the alloted time frame. After the debuff is gone, a new death would not count as a stack, but another new death debuff.
  • Death debuffs would only stack up, if you die before your current death debuff is gone.
  • To prevent players from spamming debuff reduction or debuff removers, people will have cooldowns on the usage of those as well. Meaning you can’t die too fast as well, limiting your suicide warrior aspirations.
  • Higher level brews and debuff reduction/remover effects will have lower cooldowns on application, and thus can heal more times in the same amount of time as lower level counterparts, but it also means they’re harder to craft or harder maintenance.
  • To prevent new players from getting on a loop they’re not able to get out of and basically stuck them on their progress the first time they encounter a spitter, death debuffs stacking up, will essentially start on moon planets and progressively stack up higher on ring planets. Starter planets will only have death debuffs, and not stack them up, but if he dies a second time while still having the debuff, he’ll receive a tooltip giving him information about the stacks. Will be given the same reminder once it happens to the player for the first few times.
5 Likes
70

I’ve despised Death Penalty Reduction skill ever since and I’m happy to see that we’re seeing some solutions now that would put me to peace with it thanks to Havok’s and Nevir’s out of the box approach!

If I may add something, It’s really great that it is achievable early on your progression but I would not prefer it to be a skill that would give “less agro to mobs, lower damage, etc.”

My added suggestion: Move the perks of the said proposed skill of “non-combat” vs “combat” trait to Traps and Lures.

Advantages:

  1. Introduces the said mechanic early on in the game (I believe traps and lures are already planned)
  2. No overlapping mechanic of the said skill’s purpose vs the planned traps and lures
  3. No weird instances of spotting a low level player on dangerous worlds mining/exploring just because they opted to be “non-combat” character
  4. Adding on point 3, we could introduce scaling of traps and lures via tiers to address the said issue (i.e. more expensive lures for higher tiered mobs)
  5. A player could enjoy fighting cuttletrunks but despise fighting wildstocks specifically. At least they could have options rather than negating all combat activities.
  6. No extreme choices for people wanting to be a generalist or experts on multiple professions. (i.e. I enjoy hunting and mining BUT people opting to be miners only have significantly higher potential due to the said skill; hence, I might just stick to hunters or miners only to maximize effectivity

IMO, this would be a more simpler implementation and at the same time, provides more content to players instead of directly tweaking some numbers on the stats.

2 Likes
71

If the idea here is to provide a fail state and sense of drama, attach this to what insentivises players in the first place: LOOT.
The Death Penalty already in place (damn you, little purple icon) lasts 90 secs currently. This could stack with concurrent deaths.

  • First Death: loss of stats (already in place)

  • 2nd Death: same + 33% drop in loot quality. Lasts 100 secs.

  • 3rd Death: same + 66% drop in quality. Lasts 110 secs.

  • 4th Death: same + 99% drop. Lasts… Etc
    This may solve some Looting-in-the-field-incase-of-despawning instead of Fighting as a player with 4 stacks of penalty knows they will get crappy drops when all they have to do is wait out the penalty (and don’t die in the meantime) for a higher return. Perhaps a defeated body on the ground could have a stack reminder when viewed, an ugly icon with a ‘-3’ in red in the middle of it. Something similar to Viewed Machines which give info in white/light text when just looked at (what’s being made, time left etc) which I find very useful.
    When the Timed Meteroite goes boom/dormant the persisting stacks also affect final Loot.
    Perhaps 1 highest-tier food/brew type is able to cleanse death debuff stacks? Won’t that be an expensive commodity in the marketplace! Also there is the dedicated Reviver/s in your party, they will be very popular.
    I don’t think dropping players into neighbouring towns/builds after death is a good idea - this may decimate the numbers of players when needed most with everyone running back/ getting lost/ giving up or the group moves on. Doesn’t provide a sense of group spirit. Perhaps drop returning players into the next chunk or ‘further and further’ away (say by 5 plots each time) so that we can see the action and feel the urgency to get back there!
    I do think a Zerg wave or Frenzy wave of stronger mobs released close to the timer countdown (if the standard mobs aren’t dealt with by a set time) is a good idea, maybe for the higher lvl meteroites or just found on the Ring Planets.
    I realise all this can lead to a bit of chaos and sloppy playing, but who has or hasn’t enjoyed a well-run group through a dungeon vs a random assortment just out for lols.
    If a party wants to get clever and build towers/pits I think that is just great, let them. These are the groups that will have the resourses to run portals or sell gems off cheap for the rest of Us. Maybe high-tier Hoppers can cause block destruction as already mentioned.
    Of Course all of this (completely) sucks for Solo players like myself that may require a few deaths just to complete a meteroite for sweet, sweet Oortstone! Maybe I can specialize in penalty-wiping potions and just buy some.
    Happy Hunting in Boundless!!

6 Likes
72

I thought about ‘loss of loot chance’ and wonder how that would work with the current system.

You have x amount of time to loot a creature, can you just wait out the debuff, and then hit it and get the max loot?

1 Like
73

What if the meteor had a radius that acted like a plot. That way they couldn’t beacon inside of it and the towers would either have to be built away from the meteor, reducing their effectiveness, or they would have to manage this enemy type?

4 Likes
74

So after arguing against a timer earlier, I do see that a better solution has not presented itself, and honestly there may not be a better solution. So here are my compromising thoughts about a timer: One of the things that feels very outdated about a timer is that ticking clock on the UI. Therefore, I would really like to see, instead of a ticking clock, the phases of battle as has been mentioned, with respites to collect the loot in between, where the timer is more of a soft timer with the phases being triggered by an animation of the meteorite (I am thinking coloration.) That way for instance an unprovoked meteorite is default orange, a provoked stage 1 meteorite is green for example, a resting meteorite for loot collection phase is yellow, a phase 2 is blue, a phase 3 is red, etc etc. Then we will get a feel for the timing of the phases and adjust accordingly. This tends to be so much more exciting than watching a clock tick in the corner of the screen. One of my favorite elements to MMO’s is phased battle with soft/hard timing which is implied through the animation sequence of the event.

5 Likes
75

Yes. Just YES.
Genius.

4 Likes