Game Mechanics Soul Points Rework

Hello, this is my first suggestion.
Don't hold back.

So, I've seen that it's a relatively popular suggestion to remove Soul Points. They seem so useless, causing you to have to wait an arbitrary amount of time before you can continue questing, taking unnecessary space that you could have totally crammed your sixth secondary wand into, causing players to give up because they assume foolish things like towns full of blue-name NPCs are safe zones to AFK in only to find that they lost all their items... The list goes on.

But instead of immediately pulling the plug on Soul Points, I'm making a suggestion that may change them to be somewhat useful. The CT can handle this, right?

To start, add 1 to the soul point cap at levels 90 and 105.

Spoiler: First of all, what are soul points?

Trying not to be condescending here, but
Soul points are the player's "lives" mechanic. You regenerate one every 20 minutes in game at dawn or every hour while offline. You have a chance to regenerate a second based off your soul point regeneration identification. They fuel your ability to use teleport scrolls (1), reset skill points (2), or create/leave a guild (3); or are otherwise extracted as a toll for dying (2).

In this suggestion I want to cover:
Soul Point Regeneration
Deaths
What else they could be used for
Lore

Here we go
Regeneration:
It's easy to say Soul Point Regeneration is a fairly useless stat. It appears most on WA or WF gear, and only does something when it's between -100% and +100%. Granted, this is better than thorns and reflection, but I'm not talking about them. Sorry, Sunstar mains. My proposition for the ID itself is that it regenerates Soul Points at every benchmark over 100.
Wearing https://wynnbuilder.github.io/#4_02s09-0Jl0FP0F-0F-0aM0ZN0A4-Y-Y140j1f1g00000, at 371% Soul Point Regen, should regenerate 4 points and have a 71% chance to recover a fifth.
If you so desired, you should be able to regenerate 15 points in one sitting using crafteds to comedic effect.
https://wynnbuilder.github.io/#4_-1...C9C9c91-14G4G4G4G9C9C9n910A400000-0j001g00000 (676)
https://wynnbuilder.github.io/crafter.html#16N8z6N8z6N8z9j91 (450)
https://wynnbuilder.github.io/crafter.html#14I4I4I4I9c9c9o91 (264)
For 1390% Soul Point Regen
Conversely, wearing items with -soul point regen that accumulates to below -100% should reduce your current soul point stock. This makes items like Bete Noire and Drain have interesting downsides.

Deaths:
Most people die. And prior to 1.19 this was a problem for those trying to get into profs. You die once and half of your inventory gets deleted.
And then it gets worse if you're low on soul points, losing increasing amounts of your inventory as you die again and again. I lost a Statue this way. I liked that Statue. Max hp min walk speed.
My proposition here is that Soul Point Death Penalties are scaled to the percentage of soul points you have divided by your maximum soul point count. This way, lower-leveled players do not have 2 chances to complete content before they have to switch to another character or log off.
You lose soul points on a percent of a cap basis. If you die at 17/17 it should be the same as dying at 10/10.
Ironman characters lose no emeralds. Crafty characters take lose half of mats/ings penalty (10% instead of 20%). Still doesn't radically change the game but offers small compensations. Otherwise, these resources are lost even through pouches. Hunted Mode becomes the only way to lose items, identified or not.
Percentiles checks are applied at the time of death (if they aren't already, they certainly didn't feel like it).
90-100% = no loss of anything
70-90% = 20% of emeralds pool. (I haven't died in large amounts questing in a year since 1.18 so idk if it's been fixed. Last time I lost 6eb of 6eb.)
50-70% = 20% of mats, ings. 40% of emeralds.
30-50% = 40% of mats, ings. 60% of emeralds.
10-30% = 60% of mats, ings. 80% of emeralds.
10% or less = all mats, ings, and emeralds.

Additional Uses:
Dying repeatedly makes people more desperate (if not angry) so instead of ungearing them make them more vicious.
Lower sp means less health (and mana?) sustain but additional damage (added to end of damage calc).
On that same scale you have [sp/max sp]% health sustain (100% at 16 or 17 sp and 0% at 1 sp, all rounded down) and [sp/2*max sp + 50]% mana sustain (100% at 16 or 17 and 50% at 1sp, all rounded down). Heal skills are also affected. Heal, Totem, and Rally lose self heal at the health sustain rate.
And you gain [1 - sp/max sp]*100% additional damage (0% at 90%+ and 100% at 10%-).
This ties into the first suggestion concerning -% Soul Point Regen on items. You cannot carry money, ingredients, or materials, but you deal damage at a flat damage increase. (Item loss on death would work really well here but so many items are irreplaceable that it would do more harm than good, and a timed item unusability lock makes no sense in- or out-of-game)

Lore:
And as always, I'm looking for lore tie-ins.
...
I don't know what to put here. It's a great system, the first time you as a player die you see
YOU HAVE DIED... Two soul points have been lost.
which tells you exactly what these things are and what they do. If you haven't already you'd then mouse over the lower soul point count and see that "having less soul points increases the chance of dropping items on death." Nice and informative.

It would be nice if someone like Death (the Beyond the Grave one) mentions he sends you back because you're entertaining, or maybe your soul isn't exactly all there and continuously seeks out its other fragments in the land of the living. Anything to explain why you can respawn but other characters (sans CoW) cannot.

 

As much as id love to play 1 soul point divzer, buffs/nerfs for dying seems like a scuffed idea.
I dont see merit in making content relatively harder every time you die, and i also dont see merit in making it easier after every death.
Great thread otherwise, I literally just said like an hour ago how i want more people to propose changes, so we dont have to push the agenda to removing sp entirely.
my opinion is to just remove the possibility of dropping ID'd items entirely, and make ems drop from em pouch while making em pouch itself impossible to drop (if it isnt this way already)

 

yeah gotta agree with carrut here about the sp-based buffs being scuffed



honestly both "remove equip drops and other minor changes" and "remove sp" don't have major issues, just slightly different minor downsides/upsides so I'm fine with either

One thing's for sure though, both are far better than current sp. Not even close.

 

Alternate suggestion: remove soul points entirely. There is no actual gameplay purpose to punishing people for skill issues in Wynncraft.

 

I mean punishing people who are bad isn't a issue, it's something to get people to improve.

 

ironman btw characters already dont lose emeralds because you can just put them in your pouch

 

Ok this has been debunked at least 200 times now and you were there for at least 10 of them

 

What I was trying to do here was make a case for pity. Increasing damage at the cost of sustain emphasizes the desperation of continuously throwing yourself at a certain boss.
At the same time, you don’t need to die repeatedly to get that alternate playstyle. If you stack -spr items like bete noire or pandemonium you lose sp at dawn instead of gaining it. Hence why it’s polled as “rage abuse” because it’s so similar to rage gma (albeit much slower to get up and running). Like hp, it regenerates naturally, is lost in contact with mobs, and can otherwise be influenced by id’s. Low sp builds become similar to perfect play ones.
I mention the problem with a proper low sp risk because rage does that by virtue of putting you so close to death. But what does having so little of your soul do in the same scenario?

 

I'd love to know how removing players' items when they fail is going to get them to improve.

 

This suggestion doesn’t solve any of the problems with the current soul points and instead just adds new ones like dying decreasing your health in exchange for increased damage (yet mana would also be decreased…).

Making struggling players more glassy each time they die isn’t improving them.

This suggestion just further proves that sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.

 

I mean just some sort of punishment for deaths in general, I agree removing items isnt a good way to do it though

 

How so? You lose your held emeralds. You lose your held ingredients. You lose your held materials. Your equipment remains untouched.

Sustain is decreased. If you have 14k hp at 17sp you have 14k hp at 1 sp. Your health regen raw, health regen %, life steal, and healing spells go down to zero. Your mana regen and mana steal go down to half.
You can still use health pots.

The reason for this suggestion is to also give soul points a use at all amounts. On top of punishing newer players, soul points mean very little to veteran players. This rework seeks to change that.
Plus, if low-leveled players are dying constantly while trying to complete their quest or bossfight then what does it matter if they no longer regen hp. It couldn't save them then, it won't save them now.

________________________________

What I see coming out of the halved mana is that 1sp builds need to build more mana than usual, but the increased damage due to low sp noticeably outweighs the damage loss due to stacking more mana.

Example: 1sp1hp GMA build
https://wynnbuilder.github.io/#4_0X...0Qe1z001k0e0t1g100036100036100036100036100nZ6
WynnBuilder build:
> Pisces
> Aquarius
> Chain Rule
> Silt of the Seafloor
> Olive
> Olive
> Dragon's Eye Bracelet
> Amanuensis
> Grandmother [e6e6e6e6]

 

The equipment remaining untouched is fine, it's the other features such as the lower sustain and mana that are the issue and are worse than the status quo. Having lower sustain and mana is objectively worse because it still makes you more glassy. While sustain may not be as good in the early game than the late game, it still is a significant downside and only serves to punish players. Having increased damage doesn't necessarily make up for lower mana because spells are also used for mobility and escaping. And if you're struggling with a boss, more often than not it's because you're not dodging fast enough (*cough* CoW *cough*), not because you don't do enough damage. Thus it ultimately has the same major fault of the current sp system; it discourages players from playing the game when they need to play the game more to actually improve. No game should make retrying the boss harder each time, and Wynncraft is no exception.

And this isn't even mentioning the balancing nightmare of lowering sustain and mana in exchange for increasing damage and how it would disproportionally affect builds differently. Sustain builds in general would be screwed by this feature. Hence why it's just an overcomplicated solution that can lead to broken builds. So rather than deal with endless balancing, let's just not punish players for dying to begin with.