Game Mechanics Don't remove soul points, instead change them

Changing Soul Points

Why I am Writing This​

As a player returning to Wynncraft because of the 2.0 update, I wanted to make a new character in order to experience the modern Wynncraft early game. (I had not played since the Gavel update.) About 10-15 quests in I had died a few times due to fighting bosses. I had lost my leggings and boots and just stopped playing for the day. I thought to myself, if I am losing items even after playing the game for quite a while, how are new players experiencing Wynncraft for the first time?


Currently, soul points is a mechanic designed to discourage risky behavior from players. It is an entry barrier for new players, and a minor inconvenience to older players. The most interactions older players have with soul points is through teleport scrolls otherwise, it is an obsolete mechanic. While soul points punish players by causing them to drop items, the actual punishment is when the player reaches the 5 point threshold and needs to wait in order to recover enough points to avoid losing important items.

Time is the main punishment of soul points​

How Soul Points Should Change​

Instead of soul points being a framed a negative mechanic we can change it into a positive mechanic. For example we can make it so that for each soul point the player gets +1% bonus xp.

How this will Affect New Players
Dying for new players will no longer be as punishing. Bonus xp is not as important for new players since the majority of the xp gained is from quests (for a newer player). This mechanic will also still deter new players from risky plays but at the same time allow new players to more freely gauge their preparedness for a new area. I even think new players should start with 0 soul points in order to frame soul points as bonus xp and no soul points as normal xp.

Mid game players benefit since grinding will not take as long and if they are doing quests do not need to worry about going under the 6 soul point threshold because of the more rng quests like jungle fever.

End game players benefit the least once they reach level 106 but making the time it takes to get to level 106 15% faster is always appreciated.

Why Deleting Soul Points is not optimal​

The deletion of Soul Points is very a discussed topic, user Saya wrote a post outlining the positives and negatives of deleting this mechanic.
The important positives and negatives I would like to highlight are here:
Positives for removal of soul points
+ More active playtime and player count
+ No need to constantly remind people about losing items when recommending /kill
Negatives for removal of soul points
- TP Scrolls being spammable
- Soul Point Bombs being useless
- Salted says deleting requires resources and time

Many of the positives of soul point deletion coincides with changing soul points
+ Players will have more active playtime due to the xp mechanic not being able to delete progress only slow progress.

+ There is no need to constantly remind people to avoid /killing at low soul points since the only loss is bonus xp.

Many negatives of soul point deletion does not affect changing soul points in the same way.

-TP Scrolls will be spammable for people not interested in the bonus xp, such as people who are questing

- Soul point bombs are not useless, they just serve a different purpose.

- I am not a programmer but I am assuming when salted says deleting requires resources and timing, I am imagining it is because mechanics that rely on soul points such as tp scrolls or starting guilds will have to be changed and the work spent on developing the soul point system will go to waste. If we only modify the purpose of soul points we can maintain those interdependencies. Of course if this is not the problem then this point is obsolete.

Thanks for reading my mess. Hopefully I was able to clearly explain what I think.

 

I didn't know you could lose equipped items from dying at low soul points. In that case i totally agree it needs changing, as it is really punishing for new players that aren't that good and are trying to get better.
The bonus XP gain seems like a good idea as it can also be framed as you keep dying maybe stay at this level for a bit longer.

 

I would rather have an extra inventory slot than at most 15% xp bonus. 15% xp bonus is easily attainable with other methods. Even with emerald and ingredient sacks you can still easily get a full inventory. Your solution is still way better than the status quo, it’s just that your negatives for removing them really aren’t different from your solution. No one buys soul point bombs when you can always world hop, and either solution isn’t significantly more resource intensive coding wise than the other. Plus there isn’t anything wrong with TP scrolls being spammable and you could still spam them with your solution anyway.

 

Cool idea I agree with above but if it helps a majority I like it

 

Yeah I agree, soul point bombs are probably never bought and if a player wanted it for bonus xp, double xp is a much better option. I also do not find anything wrong with tp spamming but it was regarded as something to think about in the thread I referenced. Another reason why changing might be better than removing is that Salted wants to still have a punishment for death which this system still has. Removing soul points outright might take longer if it requires the dev team to introduce a new death punishment. In my opinion it is better to recycle parts of established mechanics than outright remove them. Of course, if it is easier for the devs to just delete the system that is fine too.

 

You can still have a punishment system without soul points though. Just make it so that every time you die, you lose a set percentage of your items except for your ID’d items and horses. The biggest issues with soul points are that death punishments aren’t consistent and you can eventually drop your ID’d items and horses. The drop rates in Hardcore and Hunted can stay the same though.

 

Honestly? This is great.
Earlygame players won't have to suffer, Midgame players will get a nice buff, and Endgame players don't have to care about dying.
I fully support this idea.

 

Nice but then another issues comes when players get stuck (which is an extremely frequent issue). I personally don't want to get punished for something that's out of my control and completely unpredictable, and I don't know if there's a system that can detect whether a player died by a mob or they used /kill

 

I’m sure it can detect if you do /kill bc then otherwise Minecraft wouldn’t be able to display specific death messages. I agree that the drop rates shouldn’t apply if one does /kill.

 

(opinion of someone who calls himself a programmer)
Not just that (although that is a big part of it too). Removing them is not a matter of deleting a file, you must remove SP from the whole code structure, which can be (and likely is) giant. The main SP file, anything related to the usage, items, player files (since they contain how much SP do you have) and the database itself.
So yeah, it could take quite some time.


As for the suggestion itself, I like it. I had my share of deaths and it was not fun to wait.

They could be moved to compass' tooltip.