World Remove Soul Points.

Soul points are a dated system that doesn't fit the game. Remove them.


Why Soul Points are a problem:
So now that the tutorial is "fixed", one of the biggest issues plaguing new players is Soul Points. More importantly, the loss of items that comes from them. New players don't know that it's best to keep them at 6+, or to take a break after dying. New players don't see the game like older players do. Many get frustrated by losing items or talk about it in such a natural way in #questions that it's honestly really scary. The main negative, though, is that soul points just add way too much counterproductive waiting to the game.

Many people have expressed that the soul point system adds cheapness to the game, comparing it to a mobile game stamina system and a "halfassed attempt at making a permadeath game".

Now the removal of item loss wouldn't only be good for new players. Not losing items would be a massive QoL change for people looking to do challenge runs, not having to fear a loss of items when repeating EO would be huge.


Benefits:
+ Additional hotbar slot
+ Less abuse of /class to unstuck now that /kill doesn't have to be waited for
+ New players who keep trying something don't lose everything and quit
+ More playtime that isn't gated by waiting for regen
+ Challenge runs can be retried more

Issues (with attempted counterpoints):
- Hunted becomes lopsided (but you can just make hunted have fixed item droprates, or better yet, remove the xp bonus and make it the casual open-world pvp mode it should be)
- /kill abuse (but you still have to walk back, and /kill having no cost is BY FAR a lesser issue than the current issues with soul points)
- scrolls being spammable (they still have the emerald cost, you know~)
- soul point bombs are useless (do I even have to argue this one)
- free skill point resets (you could easily have an emerald cost or just... make them free? No real reason not to.)


I kinda exaggerated in my rant against profs, soul points are probably the #1 reason for player loss while profs feeling mandatory is #2.

Quotes:

• "the reduced player loss leading from the removal of soul points will likely end up generating more revenue than current soul point bombs do"
• "personally I'd much rather see like gradual xp bonuses... for staying alive long than seeing ppl get punished for dying"
  
• "honestly the game sometimes assumes u to swap builds with stuff like hive that heavily punishes focusing on one or two elements, so being able to reset (skillpoints) for free should probably be a given. Or alternatively, for cheap from anywhere. not just elkurn"

 

I don't think they should be removed completely, but maybe they shouldn't be there until lvl ~50.

 

"sp bombs are useless?"
"always has been"
the main concern i have with soul points is the fact that when you start off, you can have a max of 10 soul points, and at level 75 you get 15. which never made sense to me since at level 1 you're gonna have little to no experience with the game and are gonna die a lot more than at level 75

 

Name one valid reason why they are a system that absolutely should exist, or why they're better than just not having soul points.

Having some kind of survival benefit/death penalty is great and all, but current soul point system is beyond awful and not having them is way better

 

i agree

 

Then you just delay the issues they already have, while not having the benefits of challenge run enabling :/

 

errrr idk then lol

 

+1, Totally agree

The reduced player loss leading from the removal of soul points will likely end up generating more revenue for Wynncraft than current soul point bombs do.

 

bUt HoW wIlL yOu EnAbLe HuNtEd If ThErEs No SoUl pOiNt To ClIcK iN yOuR hOtBaR

 

not being able to enable hunted is fine for me /s

 

I really do not think sp should be removed, it's one of the only ways to facilitate penalties for dying REPEATEDLY, so it definitely needs to stay, perhaps with lesser penalties.

A few things that can be improved upon are:
-Formally informing players in the tutorial that hey, dying repeatedly is going to have some consequences, better try to not do that, in case some people didn't already get the message
-Having more base SP like 12, or even remove scaling entirely and give them 15 sp at the start so that they have a good buffer where they can die 3-4 times no big deal, but if you keep being stupid, sorry you're gonna have consequences
-More scrolls like forgery which don't cost sp?
-Maybe lower skill point resetting cost to 1 sp for convenience or just remove the sp cost
-Lower /kill sp cost to 1 so that people who are actually stuck don't have to pay too much to get unstuck, and people who intend to use /kill for convenience still get some penalty. Don't really know how important this is in hunted so uh maybe raise the cost for /kill in hunted if needed.

Basically, players still need to be punished for dying repeatedly, this will encourage them to get better gear or whatever to do what they were trying to do, having no penalty would be too lenient, allowing them to try to brute force stuff and dying many times.

 

drop chances arent as bad at level 1. im not sure about the exact numbers but you dont drop ided items till super low, not at 5 like at higher levels.

 

Good idea!

 

How is it that none of us seem to be aware of this? I've never seen the tiniest mention of this before.

 

The issue with soul points is that:

everyone agrees they're a pretty bad system
but
no one agrees on how to improve/replace them

 

I dislike the system, which punishes you for trying and failing (that is, learning from your mistakes).

I was going to say that they should add some other, less awful system to keep deaths slightly punishing, just to keep players careful about exploring, but they really shouldn't be. Death doesn't need to be any more punishing than losing progress in whatever you do.

I recently played a game (Remnant: From the Ashes, it is/was free on the Epic Games Store earlier this week, I highly recommend it), which has no punishment for death besides being returned to the latest checkpoint. I went into it thinking that was kind of stupid; pretty much all similar games have punishments on death, and not having one would make death less of a thing you avoid at all costs. In truth, I found it to be nice. Death was still annoying: you still lose your progress, but a slip-up or bad luck won't cost you anything besides a bit of time.

I think this would work fine for Wynncraft. Right now, the system punishes you for having trouble with the game (Most likely because you're new), punishes you for trying to learn from your mistakes and try again, punishes you in ways that make it harder to finally do well and can entirely ruin your build, punishes you in a way that definitely will deter people who are having trouble from playing more, punishes you in a way that encourages you to stop playing if you're having trouble--no actually, it actively punishes you for continuing to play! Not even Dark Souls is that hardcore and cruel with its punishments. The only two things the system right now really encourages are either to get a meta build or get carried so that you can breeze through the game, or to quit. That's a pretty terrible system.

 

Although I agree that having to wait on a class that I lost too many soul points on is annoying, your solution of completely removing any penalty for dying seems a bit too radical. There should still be some kind of punishment for dying; otherwise, dying becomes nothing more than a few minutes of inconvenience and people lose the incentive to be too careful about dying because they can run back with no cost (unless it's a dungeon, but that's literally the only exception), not to mention /kill abuse. I don't have a suggestion myself, but maybe someone else does.

 

Yeah but my point is that currently it's more minutes of inconvenience, so that's not really valid.

 

I'm in agreement with @Highmore. You still need to make there be a risk to dying over and over again but they should lessen the risk.

 

Why though? You're already given an incentive not to die: you lose progress. The system of punishing death does nothing more than screw over people who are having trouble.