+- Discovery Gaming Community (https://discoverygc.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Discovery General (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Forum: Discovery RP 24/7 General Discussions (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=23)
+--- Thread: The Economy of Loss (/showthread.php?tid=75372)
The Economy of Loss - Rmorph - 02-23-2012
Hi Ukkoa,
Welcome to the board! Very insightful post!
In my limited experience:
The risk picture is already big enough.
Losing a ship that took many hours of invested time (in some cases hundreds of hours - for example the dreads with the heavy armors) would return such a negative cost/value ration that people would go elsewhere to game.
Try mining for an hour, only to lose your entire 40 million cargo to a pirate and have to start all over again. It's enough of a loss that not losing your ship as well almost seems a shallow comfort, but most roles on the server, such as mining and trading, and capital ships, are only possible because the ship stays after death. The penalties and risks of such occupations are already considered by some to be too much, and you will see lots of (heated) discussion on this board around issues like these.
Also know that there is some very hard work going on behind the scenes to keep everything balanced so that the risk side does not overwhelm the reward side of player roles, and visa versa.
Death is not a skills based event.
Most fights are finished in less than 5 minutes. Battles are very rarely balanced, and very often death can occur through a combination of accident, incompetence, carelessness, or out and out silliness. Very rarely is it a pure skill vs skill prospect. Players make use of this to be "braver" than perhaps logic should dictate: We all become heroes when we are immortal.
I would argue that this immortality improves the RP experience: Whimsical approaches to death allow for a more light hearted interaction between players, which otherwise would be deadly serious.
For example: Who dares to answer back cheekily to a pirate gunship when he can literally set you back to zero?
New players would suffer:
Full mortality would fall out onto those that already have disadvantages:
Especially new players would be penalized for lacking the skills necessary stay alive while they try to learn the tactics of more experienced pilots (turret steering, jousting, shield running).
Players that wished to play alone, or lack large groups of friends (again think new players) would be overwhelmed by packs of players. Griefing would overtake all other community issues.
The enjoyment would go right out the window, and player interactions would be reduced to gang-on-gang, never more than 50 meters away from a base of refuge.
Summary:
So, back to the first point:
Fact is: We don't want to lose our ships after all the time invested in them, and that's OK because the ships are not really the point of Discovery.
The Player experience is.. whether its in a battleship or a starflea.
That experience is improved by the logical fallacy of immortality. We can nearly justify it in rp as a combination of insurance, luck, an escape pod, and help from the gods. Just don't stare too closely :-)
I hope this perspective helps - but its only opinion of course.
See you in space!
The Economy of Loss - Rmorph - 02-23-2012
' Wrote:I know also that being shut out for four hours from the only truly profitable trading route is basically "that's it for today" for me, because by then I usually have something else to do or I'm out doing something I -have- to.
Hi, just to be clear, as far as I'm aware traders are exempt from the 4 hour cool down. You may be pirated repeatedly on the route, but you're good to go as soon as you die.
The Economy of Loss - Dratai - 02-23-2012
' Wrote:Hi, just to be clear, as far as I'm aware traders are exempt from the 4 hour cool down. You may be pirated repeatedly on the route, but you're good to go as soon as you die.
Oh, I thought any combat related death was under that rule.
Doesn't matter, it gave me the opportunity to create a trader on the other side of the blockades and warzones than what I had from the get go.
That, and some of the new systems has some pretty music and background:D
Whiiiich also currently resulted in a shorter but slightly more profitable route, too, because all of the pirates are in liberty, more specifically new york and cali.
All of them.
And those that aren't liberty 'rats are about 99% non-pewpew.
So you get to spend some quality time with handsome rogues instead of wasting ten minutes because some lord of hats decided he wants two mill from a newbie.
:3
The Economy of Loss - Kuraine - 02-23-2012
As it happens, I am in favour of some penalties, minor ones though they may be, such as having your hull and weapons massively damaged upon respawn, requiring you to repair everything. This may seem like a lot to lower level players, but it does reasonably balance out overall in the sense that lower level players generally won't have expensive equipment or ships anyway. All the stuff they do have would cost quite a bit to repair, but only compared to their level.
For example, a starting character at level 25 with a standard ship/weapon loadout for his level dying might have a repair bill of say 50-100k, whereas a player at level 60 with a fully kitted out VHF would have a repair bill in the millions. Not too crippling, but still a penalty for dying nonetheless. It is possible the devs may consider implementing something along these lines in future (the game does need some more economy credit sinks to drain cash out of the economy for starters), but for now it remains a very distant possibility.
The Economy of Loss - Chase - 02-23-2012
I think ultimately it boils down to the way interactions already happen.
If you've been here long enough, you'll notice that often times fights only happen when one side has the upper hand anyway. If it were possible to lose your entire ship, basically no one would fight, at all. I know I wouldn't risk it unless I were guaranteed victory. Even now I hate losing my ship enough, especially if I carry RP cargo that is difficult to get for said character.
However, I will echo Kuraines post in that the repair bill should remain upon death instead of spawning with a perfectly repaired ship. (Though I must say, you'll see that it can drain very quickly if you have multiple VHF's that you fight often with... The mines and CD losses often add up to 500-750k each time)
The Economy of Loss - Vladimir - 02-23-2012
We need permadeath. Died? Lost a ship.
The Economy of Loss - Ukkoa - 02-23-2012
' Wrote:As it happens, I am in favour of some penalties, minor ones though they may be, such as having your hull and weapons massively damaged upon respawn, requiring you to repair everything. This may seem like a lot to lower level players, but it does reasonably balance out overall in the sense that lower level players generally won't have expensive equipment or ships anyway. All the stuff they do have would cost quite a bit to repair, but only compared to their level.
For example, a starting character at level 25 with a standard ship/weapon loadout for his level dying might have a repair bill of say 50-100k, whereas a player at level 60 with a fully kitted out VHF would have a repair bill in the millions. Not too crippling, but still a penalty for dying nonetheless. It is possible the devs may consider implementing something along these lines in future (the game does need some more economy credit sinks to drain cash out of the economy for starters), but for now it remains a very distant possibility.
That's a really great idea! I'd like that a lot - it'd be a good compromise!
(@Rmorph: Thanks for your reply! I wouldn't have thought about it like that. I would still maintain though that if you are mining in dangerous places, or shipping cargo through systems which are known to have pirates, you should always travel together. I think higher penalties upon death would in essence 'force' people to come together for protection. More teamwork?)
The Economy of Loss - McNeo - 02-23-2012
Unlike most of the people who've voiced their opinions so far, I agree whole-heartedly with the OP.
Most of the arguments against player death revolve around specifics of cases, like the biggest trade ships being really expensive and quite defenseless, or the cost of a single fully equipped fighter costing in the region of 25 million credits not including codename cannons.
Frankly, those arguments hold no water. Each part of the economy can be changed to reflect the increased risk of actual death on death. It's as simple as changing a batch of numbers (I would vastly increase trade revenues and lower prices of most ships for example). What these arguments show is the failure by people to consider that along with an introduction of loss on death, a lot of other changes would happen as well.
You say that it would encourage people not to fight at all unless they were guaranteed victory? This is how people fight, how they will always fight. Removing this is tantamount to destroying the RP environment. All of you who say that it should be "fun" are fearful of becoming the losers in a system that neccessitates winners -and- losers. Yet, that is the system in which we live, and should therefore be reflected in any kind of gameplay atmosphere that dares to call itself a roleplaying one.
Realistic behaviour is something that this server doesn't have, both in its mechanics and its economics. In fact, this is a good thing; if earning money in an environment where death has serious penalties is too hard, you can simply insert virtual money into the economy (manually or systematically) without having to worry so much about inflation. It is the permanence of investments, such as those you make in the ships and equipment you purchase, that removes the motivation to act in a realistic way (and causes ridiculous price inflation -> 4.80 BS price with best armour = 120m, 4.86 BS price with best armour = 1500m).
The best form of regulation is one that makes the people regulate themselves on your behalf. You cannot enforce a realistic and consistent standard of RP if you perpetuate an environment in which winners and losers do not exist. After all, we don't live in that kind of world.
If it's just a game and should be treated that way, you can be a winner when you play skyrim. Hey, you can be guildmaster of the dark brotherhood, the thieves guild, the mages guild and general of the imperial legions at the same time. If you really don't want to lose, that's the kind of game for you. And even then, NPCs are going to be shooting fireballs at you in a vain attempt to make you lose.
Remember, every game in existence has a winner and a loser. Dieing in counterstrike, losing your army in red alert, coming last in F1 2011, losing to the AI in puzzle bobble. You cannot create an environment which hopes to challenge the resourcefulness and adaptability of people, as the world does, if there is no possibility to lose.
The Economy of Loss - Dab - 02-23-2012
The dev team, especially Cannon, are interested in creating some "money sinks". Events that cost the player money in some form or another where they cannot then make that money back (like they can by selling ships they pay for once they are bored of them. What these moneysinks will be though, we haven't really figured out. Destroying ships on death is not an idea we like very much. It makes us too much like EVE, and would seriously increase tensions and hate between community members. In EVE, you rarely know the guy who kills you. On Disco, we aren't a community of a couple dozen thousand, we're a community of about a thousand.
Furthermore, it'd seriously damage the ability to have PvP. Every fight would turn into a gank by whatever team can bring in more players, so as to avoid the loss of ships.
It would just be bad all-around. Think about it. If we institute a "death means death" policy, and your ship doesn't get replaced on death, it might be good roleplay, it might be more realistic, and it just might result in 90% of the playerbase moving to a server where that does not happen.
The Economy of Loss - Roberto Cofresi - 02-23-2012
Being fairly new to Discovery and RP I struggled to understand the game. I also struggled to accept Discovery rules (ship/equipment restrictions). Once I grew up... I began to develop a character and to sink him into the Discovery universe. I thought of his main profession, read the rules and related articles, and chose a faction. Slowly developing a back story to get this character as closely to my goals as RP and the rules allow. This has taken quite a bit of work and time. I am happy I did not have to start from a starflea with every mistake; and I made plenty during the past few months.
During the process I realized that RP is fun when I take it seriously. Therefore, I am careful drawing a flight plan when piloting a trader or careful where to hunt when pirating. I only engage when I know I have the upper hand because I do not want to see my name posted as: "Capt.Cofresi~Mosquito was killed by Hand.of.God (gun)". To me that is quite a consequence. :$If I get killed I leave the game for the most part. Time to leave RP and rejoin RL. :cool:
On the other hand, I have no problem letting my ship blown into pieces when encountered by an unsophisticated pirate making unreasonable demands. Then I am quite happy my ship will return almost intact. :yahoo: