Why is there permadeath in this game?

[rayzes]

I personally am not a fan of permadeath in a game where there is little to no dodging. Please tell me a good reason for why permadeath was added to this game. It's nothing like RotMG, why you do dis

[rob]

Hi Rayzes,

We had a very small death penalty for a long time, but it just made the game boring. People would use suicide runs as a fighting tactic and there were no consequences for careless play, and thus no real need for skill or practice. By increasing the death penalty, we've made the game better.

Rob

[Crunch]

Jan 26, 2015 12:17:53 GMT -5 rob said:

Hi Rayzes,

We had a very small death penalty for a long time, but it just made the game boring. People would use suicide runs as a fighting tactic and there were no consequences for careless play, and thus no real need for skill or practice. By increasing the death penalty, we've made the game better.

Rob

Spot on. 

[amitp]

It's the opposite of Mario Kart — instead of taking the players who are doing the worst and trying to bring them up so that they're near their friends, death penalties take the players who are doing the worst and push them farther back. That'll show them. :-/

[rob]

If your concern Amit is that newbies will get frustrated and quit, I think the way to address it is to penalize pros more than newbs. We do a little of that already by killing off advanced equipment like extra shield items when you die, and making the augment penalty proportional to your existing augment levels. I think in the future we'd like to make death even easier on newbies and even harder on pros.

One thing to keep in mind is that unlike Realm and pretty much every other RPG, Grid12 doesn't allow even the most tricked-out pro tank to be more than about twice as powerful as a newbie tank. Most of the "I'm separated from my friends" feeling comes from differences in player knowledge and skill, and this I'm ok with. Additionally, there are non-front-line support tanks (Paladin, Hurricane, Guardian) that let you assist a group without putting yourself at as much risk.

I'm interested to hear what you and others think of this. This topic is important to me!

[sven]

What would I like to know is how long does it take to recover from such a penalty? I'm in no condition to figure that out myself due to low connection and slow performance unfortunately.

I think there should be minor support tank as a starter like Silver, why not make Trailblazer as one of them as well? While support tanks are unpopular choices than a necessity depending on the situation such as events, I can see why they seem obsolete where tanks can recover at steady rate or with a trigger. The progression of obtaining greater tanks seems discouraging to continue if the improvement shown is slow. I can't say for certain if it still occurs now.

[rob]

Sven,

I'm not sure what the game was like when you used to play a lot, but these days you lose tanks at death and you need a level 1-4 tank item to get your tank back. If you drive a level 1 tank like Hurricane, this is no problem. If you prefer a level 4 beast like Thunderbolt, the death penalty is much more severe. In a sense, you choose your own death penalty. Loss of equipment can be harsh, if you have a lot of installed shields. But the EVE Online maxim "don't drive what you can't afford to lose" applies. And with no character-slot limitations, you can choose on a minute-to-minute basis whether to drive a cheap stock tank or an expensive, tricked out tank that would be costly to lose.

[lordmyron]

Uh, isn't Thunderbolt level 5? Not that it's important or anything