Game Mechanics Remove Soul Points (v2)

I think you're arguing in an "extremes" point of view. What about builds that are barely enough but still overall weak and underlevelled? Not to mention being carried in raids, where dying doesn't necessarily impact the raid's outcome. It still does, but not necessarily. Allowing players to scrape by despite being holistically underprepared will only encourage the behavior, which can lead to more scraping by in the future, which can lead to you carrying someone inexperienced in tna.

Again, the penalty doesn't have to be harsh! See my other response.

It's definitely counterproductive to take away loot or money from players who are failing successively since it's exactly what they need in order to get better chances at beating whatever objective they have.

An xp debt penalty discourages you from completing big objectives for the sake of progressing through the game, but you can still complete other big objectives for the sake of getting better gear.

 

It will also delay the rate in which you get more high-level content, which allows players to learn and understand the game more without the pressure of in-game progression.

 

Xp debt is literally worse than SP, "Yeah you can still play, but you won't gain any progress lolol" Aside from being an infuriating progress barrier, an xp debt would do literally nothing to max level players and exclusively punish newer players, making leveling up much more agonizing, especially on a first playthrough. Imagine grinding scrapyard, lagging like crazy and suddenly "welp, I guess I have to stop playing now!" Or even just grinding in general, it's incredibly easy to die, and thus not be able to grind anymore.

Raids are a perfect example of why we don't need a "true" death punishment, beacuse raids don't fucking have one. The punishment is that you have -1 player for the rest of the challenge. If players get so encouraged to not get better gear or hone their skills, then after a while people won't have anyone to carry them, and thus many will decide to inprove their chances on their own anyway.

I know not everyone thinks the way I do, but personally I hate dying in a raid. I hate having to spectate a challenge hoping that my team doesn't lose thst 1 extra player to really screw them over and thus lose the raid. I like being able to be the player that can carry a whole challenge if my party bites the dust. So when I enter a raid and I die too easily, I make it a personal goal to get better, or improve my build. All of this can be accomplished perfectly well without a death penalty, and it shows why we don't need one.

People that repeatedly die without trying to improve their chances on their own are going to get bored with the game and quit, this is true with or without a death punishment. The only difference is that the forced barrier of progress will deter people that ARE willing to better themselves before they get to the point that they realise what they need to do to improve. Noone's going to know how to strafe around a one-shotting meteor on their first try, or second or third for that matter, but that's all you get with 10-12 SP!



tl:dr. People who aren't willing to learn won't learn with or without an extra death penalty, and people that are willing to learn might lose patience before they begin to learn. Also, Xp debt is literally worse than SP.

 

If you’re weak or underleveled and you beat the boss, then you relied more on your skills. That’s rewarding the player for improving their skills and memorizing the boss’s attacks instead of just over leveling or using mythics. I don’t see what the issue with that is.

People already get carried in raids, and dying in raids isn’t even meant to have a death penalty anyway. And it’s designed to be this way because having the whole party be practically unable to win the raid because 1 person died in the boss fight would be extremely frustrating and unfun.

An xp debt would be even worse than the current system because it would incentivize people to stop playing and wait for the timer to go down. But it would be for every death instead of just after too many in a row. Because no one wants to play without gaining xp. Except for endgame players, whom don’t need xp to begin with.

Again, you really don’t need the best of the best gear to win most challenges in the game. Especially in the early to mid game. And you shouldn’t need to either because that discourages build diversity and limits how much the game can reward you for skill. Of course you are always incentivized to get a better build, so that wouldn’t be changed. As such it’s okay to take a small portion of a player’s loot for dying. Unlike an xp debt, it’s also manageable to circumvent by just stopping at your bank and not carry too much loot all the time. You get teleported to the nearest town when you die anyway, so it’s not even inconvenient after the first time you die to deposit your loot.

 

Have you considered that maybe beginners don't play the game to grind xp and level up as fast as possible, and instead play to enjoy the challenges it provides and learn how to overcome those challenges? or experience the lore and the story around it? or literally anything else?

Sure, it will punish newer players who are trying to grind scrapyard at LvL80, but literally the reason CT didn't add grind spots to the content book is because it encourages players to skip nearly everything the game has to offer. Literally Salted is against the idea of new players just xp grinding through the game and skipping content. An xp debt penalty encourages players to look for something else to do, and to help them appreciate other aspects of the game outside of just "leveling up" like how to fight or how to make a proper build. Sure it might bar veteran players off of speeding through the game again, but if you're a veteran player then you need to know better than to die unwittingly.

Uh this is basically you saying that your argument is just a personal preference and not something objective. Not everyone shares the same perspective nor experience on games as you. So uhh, I don't see the point in arguing with this, sorry.

The point of xp debt is to make you improve in other ways, like combat skills or picking the right gear. Again, it releases the pressure of more incoming content that comes with levelling up, which can and will feel overwhelming for newer players who can't keep up with the game; it's the game's attempt to go with the pace of the player instead who appears to be biting more than they can chew in terms of content.

Just because you succeeded, it doesn't mean you did because of your skills; that's a huge jump to a conclusion. I can't list every possible circumstance that allows players to beat something because of a fluke, but it definitely happens. You can't just discount that out of some unconditional belief towards player skill.

I agree with that. Does that argue against my points in any way?

Not at all. There are plenty of other things to do in the game other than level up and do more high-level content. "No one wants to play without gaining xp" this, particularly, is an overgeneralized statement that is practically a logical fallacy.

The way I see it, it discourages build creativity. I know a lot of veterans recommend morph to players because it's an all-rounder and makes you level up quickly.

I also agree that players should feel rewarded for being skillful, doing high-level content despite being underprepared, but that's a challenge the player took on themself. They shouldn't be excluded off of punishment out of merit that they're "challenging themselves," that defeats the purpose of a challenge.

And if the death punishment is easily circumventable, then what's the point of that punishment at all? To punish everyone except rich players who can just pay for what they lost? Is that a fair system? Does that encourage anything good? or does it encourage players to believe that mindless money grinding solves all your problems and is the ideal way to play the game?

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Seeing your arguments, I feel like the reason you're against an xp debt penalty is because of how much you value speeding through the game. Most of the time, this is not what new players value; it's not what the new players came to Wynncraft for.

Being experienced enough in the game, the penalty for death should hardly be of any concern for veterans, but instead should be designed for newer players who will find themselves familiar with the idea of "dying a lot". And to appease what appears to be the common fear between you: you can still play the game even if you have xp debt. That's literally what the xp debt is making you do. Earn off your debt.

Besides, who said the xp debt should stack indefinitely? You can just hard cap it based on your level.

 

Looking back, I really didn't clarify the part where you can pay off your debt here, so uhh mb

Xp debt is something you gain whenever you die, up to a limit. While you have xp debt, all xp you gain will not be contributed towards your level progression, but will instead be used to pay off the debt (yk, like regular debt). This kind of penalty can encourage players to pay off that debt by doing quests, caves, dungeons, or raids, which can help them learn about game mechanics more. Since it won't add to your level, you won't be pressured by more high-level content whenever you succeed in doing these side contents.

That's the idea. So uh yeah I get why y'all feel iffy towards the idea at first. Just flat out not making you gain xp at all for a certain amount of time feels like one of those low-stamina-can't-play bs in mobile games. I hate those too.

 

or they'll die more and get put into worse debt, thus becoming a discouraging spiral

 

it has a CAPPPP like you can reach that cap when you die twice in a row or smth. or maybe it doesn't increase at all

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as long as it's still encouraging to players. like despite arguing for the "add death punishment" side I still want players to have fun, even those who die a lot

 

Well I assume it would reset the debt at least? Like say every time you die you gain 1000 xp debt and you max out at 3000 xp debt. If I gain 2000 xp and then die again, my total xp debt would be 2000 xp and I still wouldn’t have gained any actual xp to my leveling.

 

Ah yeah that makes sense.

 

As for the rest of your posts:

How good morph is, especially compared to other items, has nothing to do with the death penalty. For the same reason a weapon that does 1 billion damage in one hit would be OP even if we dropped all of our items on death. The death penalty doesn’t affect the actual stats of items and enemies.

The real question is do we need to have bosses that require a weapon to do 1 billion damage? Because that by definition locks out builds that don’t meet that threshold despite having other notable attributes like more health or mobility. It’s part of why bosses no longer have massive health regeneration and instead have large HP pools. Because even if you don’t have the highest DPS build, at least you could still tough it out using your skills to survive longer. Using weaker builds is already a penalty in terms requiring more skill to use and time to kill each boss, and having a higher risk of failure.

Having said that, I would say your xp debt system would be better than the current sp system. My biggest issue is that if death is going to have a penalty, it should still have a punishment regardless if you’re level 1 or level 100. That’s why I still prefer my system.

The point is to incur risk when accumulating wealth. You can either play it safe and go back to your bank every single time you loot a chest or obtain an item, OR you can save yourself some trips and time by loot running as much as you can. It’s similar how the current system works except the drop rate is constant and always includes all loot. For comparison, you only initially drop mats/ingredients when you die, and don’t start dropping emeralds until after 4 sp.

This penalty applies to all players, not just the rich. Money is nice to have, but Wynncraft isn’t like Monopoly where if you run out of cash you die. You can get through all the quests, boss altars, dungeons, raids, and LI without having to buy perfect gear or mythics.

As I said before my whole point is that I don’t want to people to solely rely on their gear to overcome challenges. And grinding money is… literally apart of the game. It always has been. We just had an entire update centered around it. But again, you don’t need to be the richest person either to beat the game. And it doesn’t make sense to me that someone is as rich as someone who dies more often. It’s similar as to why Tier 3 and Tier 4 chests are now locked until you can complete a challenge because people used to just skip all of the combat and get the loot anyway. Having a death penalty based on loot rewards players for playing well without having to lock progress behind xp grinding or waiting.

TL;DR You can still play through the game, just don’t expect to be as rich as the player that played better and died less.

 

I'm... still going with a previous statement I went with before: it's counterproductive to take away loot or money from players who are failing successively since it's exactly what they need in order to get better chances at beating whatever objective they have.

Besides, the punishment system that guarantees you losing items on death is just like the current soul point system but you're always on low points. It's the main counterargument against the idea of having a punishment on death at all: it will only make it much harder for the player to progress through the game.

And yes, rich players will still be affected. But the thing is, they can just render the punishment ineffective by paying what is practically a fine. Players without much money or gear will find it much harder to cope with this system, and it's them that's suffering the most with soul points to begin with.

I understand your point of endgame players needing to be worried about dying as well. However, the system you're proposing does it at the cost of making it even worse for newer players.

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Also if that's the underlying idea behind the death punishment system you're making, then uhh, you're practically making Wynncraft exclusive-only to who you believe are "good players" which is... a weird motivation. I want you to think about how average, or even below-average, players are affected by the system you're creating. They also deserve to have fun playing the game, you know.

 

Again, that's why you can just put your items in your bank if you don't want to run the risk.

What players need to do is get better at the game if they are struggling through practice. It's what most games demand of the player, and most also punish your death by making you lose money, regardless of difficulty or genre. The Dark Souls trilogy, Hollow Knight, Sonic, Shovel Knight, Super Mario Odyssey, etc. Even the base vanilla game has a much worse death penalty, and yet it's literally the best selling game of all time by a wide margin. So this isn't some sort of extreme or unreasonable demand. Thinking that progression is only and should only be about gear misses the entire skill aspect. It also causes scenarios where players are carried by their gear until they hit a difficulty spike where they actually have to show off their skills, but because they never developed them, some get frustrated and quit.

Newer players can still deposit their items just as other players can. It's not hard to do so; most enemies on the map are cannon fodder and easily outran with a single movement spell. You naturally find more towns as you explore, and you have access to the Seaskipper and tp scrolls. And in the early game, having less money also means you have less money to lose. Losing 25% of your 3 emerald blocks is extremely easy to recuperate and is nowhere near as bad as losing 25% of a stack or 2. Not to mention that players still have other sources of gear that aren't directly tied to money like dungeon items, which will never drop because the items are ID'd and the tokens are untradeable.

Consider also that any death penalty system is inherently going to be worse for players that... die more often. There is no way around it even if you cap the downsides because they can just reset. And I'd say your system is even worse in that respect because players could get into a loop where they can never gain enough xp to offset the debt before dying again.

I'm not trying to make it exclusive to elite players or whatever. While I am a veteran, I'm not the best at the game; I still haven't solo'd Qira or even beaten LI at all. I don't think Wynncraft can or should be as hard as Dark Souls. But it's frankly overdramatic to say that losing 25% of your loot in your inventory upon death is the end of the world or makes the game unplayable for new players. Because again, that's already how it is; from level 1 to 14 you only start with 10 sp and your mats/ingredients drop rate is initially 40% at 10 sp. And unless you're a proffer (which most new players aren't), then mats/ingredients are just extra money to you.

What makes the current system ass isn't that it deducts mats/ingredients from your inventory; it's that the death penalty becomes harsher as you die repeatedly to the point that you could lose your gear. And you should never lose your gear because that actively disrupts your ability to keep playing. And because you have to wait to regen soul points, it actively disrupts the gameplay loop.

 

With the way you choose your words, I see that you believe that the game is easy and players basically just need to git gud. Even the part where you say "they can just put they stuff in they bank" expects players to play a certain way in order to enjoy the game. This is not how majority of the players see the game, nor is this is what they play the game for. I think you've grown too comfortable with the game that your perspective on what is and isn't frustrating to deal with is skewed.

I understand that having to face against difficult odds and progressing through the game just by scraping by helps players develop game sense that thoroughly improves the way they play games as a whole. I personally like giving myself a good challenge like soloing LI with Morph The Specialist Shadestepper, or soloing Qira with Full Thanos Set Trickster, both of which I have succeeded in. However, this is not what most players play games for. Most players play for fun, and to enjoy what the game has to offer. Hardcore punishments that develop character can be safely reserved to optional challenges, like Hardcore, Ironman, or Hunted. This way, the game can truly be for everyone, casuals and elites alike.

With that in mind, let's look at your other arguments.

Open world MMORPG's have a lot of things to offer, and comparing them to games as one-dimensional as Hollow Knight, Sonic, or Shovel Knight doesn't make a lot of sense. The value the resources you carry between games like these and games like Wynncraft are incredibly different, and so is the effort it requires to reacquire these resources. That is to say, the difference between the resource diversity in open-world MMORPG's such as Wynncraft compared to simpler single-player games with a linear game progression is simply too significant, and is an absurd comparison to make. Even the Minecraft base game argument falls flat because a lot of players can and do choose to play in peaceful/creative mode, and a lot of players that do die and lose their items resort to quitting and starting another world. Seeing the way most players react to these game systems, do you think a similar system would benefit Wynncraft? Would it invite more players to play and enjoy the game?

"So this isn't some sort of extreme or unreasonable demand." It's not. It's just bad.
"Thinking that progression is only and should only be about gear misses the entire skill aspect." I don't recall anyone saying anything like that.

Putting a cap to a death penalty system dampens its effects on outliers who die more often.

"players could get into a loop where they can never gain enough xp to offset the debt before dying again" That argument can only really make sense if I have provided anything concrete about the xp debt system, like the amount of xp debt you need to pay off when dying in a certain level, or whether or not the debt stacks at all. The xp debt resetting isn't a big deal at all with how abundant xp is in Wynncraft, especially when doing raids or dungeons. The system can always be balanced around the nuances of the game, and if it ultimately doesn't work then I'm fine with it being totally scrapped.

Besides, losing your items on death has already proven to do more harm than good to the game. That's why this thread exists in the first place.

uh no one has said anything about your system making wynncraft as hard as dark souls, or that losing 25% of your loot in your inventory is the end of the world, and uh yeah it does make the game unplayable for new players. Sure you might not quit if you were in their situation, but they ain't you. This game is not just for people like you, like us, nor should it be.

ok now i'm just confused

Having to wait for your soul points to regenerate before playing the game is actively because of the threat of losing your items. If the threat was less severe, it won't be as disruptive, if at all.


Again, I want you to look at Wynncraft in someone else's perspective (literally anyone else's). I want you to think of what benefits the collective by listening to what they want, not just what you want for them.

 

I swear I'm not likebombing you guys just have good points

I don't know what precisely to reply to here; @ChrisWildfire.
I agree with not quite everything but most of what you've said, in that an xp debt wouldn't be a crippling loss and the game can be played sans xp - hell, I know people (@strikeflame5356) who play with guild xp 90 for the entire Wynncraft playthrough, not to donate xp to their guild, but just so that they get to enjoy the content without speedlevelling through it.
However.

Despite the fact that an xp debt is one of the best punishments I've heard of, I still don't think I'm convinced that it's better than none. Sure, it's not that bad, but neither is stubbing your toe. Like, yes, an xp debt is better than items being ripped from your inventory, but it's still something that punishes players for trying new styles and builds.

Playing with less xp is a choice, and should not be forced upon players. I despise grinding myself, but, hey, some people like it, and ya also do gotta consider their perspective. Those who want to take it slow certainly can, but those who don't shouldn't be forced to.

 

hollow knight

 

I’m not that far into it, and I am a bit irritated with its death penalty, although it’s certainly not that bad, as far as death penalties go.
Like, all that its death penalty does is set me back a bit in terms of gear if I die without killing the evil spirit thing first. It certainly hasn’t taught me anything, and I just don’t think there’s any upside to it.

 

uh kinda freaked out with uh the 6 notifications but no biggie dw about it lol

That's an excellent point! Some players die a lot because they're actively trying something new, and see failing or even dying as something expected instead of something you're trying to avoid. Forcing that xp delay on them would only be frustrating since it's basically a helping hand they didn't really ask for.

From that perspective I'm seeing that as much as an xp debt would help some newer players slow down in the game, other newer players wouldn't mind a lot of deaths since they just see it as a part of discovering the game and xp debt will only make them feel like they're being punished for that mindset.

I agree with your statement that it should be a choice, but I gotta say that would be quite an unconventional system. And as much as I'd love to see it in action, I don't think a lot of newer players would like choosing the notion of "less of something," even if it would benefit them in a way.

However I still want to advocate for the players who do tend to get overwhelmed quickly. Honestly I think a lot of solutions to uh, personalizing your Wynncraft experience per se, can be implemented with Content Book changes. There has been statements saying the Content Book is overwhelming af even just to look at, and yeah I agree. The Content Book is the one thing new players can rely on to guide them in a world as massive as Wynncraft. I just want them to know that they can choose to take it slow.

 

Ok I stopped looking at this thread for 3 weeks and THIS happened. WOW
Isn't the whole point of this thread that players shouldn't be punished outside of walking and losing their progress in content?
There are like, 10 pages of reasons why there are issues with both emerald loss and xp debts/xp loss.
*clears throat
PLAYERS SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHED FOR NOT BEING "GOOD" ENOUGH. THEY SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHED FOR TRYING OUT NEW BUILDS OR STYLES. ALL CONTENT HAS A PUNISHMENT REGARDLESS OF SOUL POINTS/EXTRA DEATH PUNISHMENT.
I'm being forceful here because no one else is or is going to (probably.) If you don't think I'm right, read every single page of this thread besides the last few.

The loss of items is counterintuitive, and so is the loss of potential xp. Here's why: You're doing the Mummy battle at lvl 36. You die.

• If the loss of items is in place, the legendary you picked up is now gone. You couldn't have put it in the bank anyway, you haven't done that quest. So now, the death system has just put you 5 steps backward from your goal.
• If the xp debt system is put in place, you can't level up to that lvl 37 item that would be really useful. Again, the death system has just put you 5 steps backward from your goal.

Now imagine you can only spend 30 min a day on wynn. How many days will it take you to beat the mummy?
The answer is in both scenarios: A LOT
BOTH systems are flawed.

Also, staff has confirmed soul points are being removed, at some point.

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I had been writing that for like 12 minutes, had no idea there was a new response. LOL
Edit: THERE WERE 2

 

horrible take. for that alone im ignoring all your opinions