[Mega Thread] - Death Cost

I'm not sure I understand the benefits of this, PvE or otherwise.

Dying in PvE is already kind of frustrating, because you don't have that many tools to fight against stronger skeletons, and it can sometimes feel quite unfair. If I have to make sure I don't die, I'll constantly be going back to my ship for ammo and bananas, and that's not going to be fun.

And, what exactly defines a death from PvE? An explosive barrel can kill me in PvP or in PvE. Am I going to be charged in both scenarios?

I've been looking around, and I can't seem to find the reason behind these changes. It honestly feels like it's happening because a vocal part of the community blindly demands it, and nobody thought it through...

"Rates are dependant on the cause of death, so the more avoidable the death, the less patience the Captain will have when we enable this feature!"

To add to my prevous comment : The more avoidable the death, the more hilarious and fun it is! This will 100% go away if I see myself losing gold when it happens.

I feel like the reason behind this change is to penalize the players more for doing stupid stuff. But that's half the fun of the game! Maybe there could be an alternative to paying the ferryman? For example, instead of paying him, I could repair the ferry of the damned, scrub the deck, or other silly things to "earn my life" back, without paying a cent? The penalty would then become a time-based one, for players who are not in a hurry and want to keep their gold.

@khaleesibot more all @Rare-Employee

Don't just go blindly forward with implementation of this feature. There is a lot of feedback good and bad to this announcement. Lets us know why you think a death cost is needed. Tells more about it what does this "more avoidable" even mean. Embrace some of the communities ideas as people have put forward some great ideas as an alternative to the death tax, would they work instead?

Now, don't you go all quiet on us... Have a conversation with the community!

I would definitely love to hear the design decision behind this upcoming change. It doesn't make much sense at all, only thing I can see is it adds more weight to death. Really only newer players to the game will feel it especially in terms of PVE only.

It somewhat effects skull forts, but I'd have to know the exact price to see to what extent. Like I mentioned before, it just makes taking things more serious and less fooling around.

Won't be seeing my friends run into a crowd of skeletons holding an explosive barrel anymore ;)

@dreadbeard-dave said in [Mega Thread] - Death Cost:

@courteous-crook said in [Mega Thread] - Death Cost:

To add to my prevous comment : The more avoidable the death, the more hilarious and fun it is! This will 100% go away if I see myself losing gold when it happens.

Not only that, but what about exploring underwater? What if a new player wants to see just how deep the ocean really goes? He dives and keeps going down, maybe he spots something interesting and he's checking it out, but he's never drowned before and he's spinning in circles on the ocean floor trying to see what's attacking him. He never thinks to swim up and inhale bananas because he is new...

When he arrives on the ferry of the damned, perhaps for his very first death in the game, he is greeted with the loss of all of the gold he earned off his first and only successful voyage. Since the game never instructs him on the mechanics, he can only assume every death will set him back to zero. How will he ever afford that way-cool, 6000G, golden sword? Instead of walking through the door back to the land of the living, he shuts off his xbox and his drowned pirate is never again seen sailing the seven seas, captive forever to the ferryman of the new...

Great write-up. As someone else said, this will mostly affect new players who don't yet have a mastery of the game, nor the cosmetics that they want.

Another point of view about this issue : I believe it is the team's intention to add potions down the road. I believe that while most potions will be there for fun, some might provide combat advantages against skeletons. These potions, by definitions, would clearly have no impact on PvP.

But while in a challenging PvE situation, you might want to c**g some of those potions. Once that's done, you want to avoid dying : you just paid for these. This would mean that subconsciously, players would have two modes of playing :

• The "silly" play, the one we have right now, with no penalty to death.
• The "serious" play, where you're "trying for real". This is when you plan ahead, buy potions, and don't intend to die. Here, dying bears the penalty of causing you to lose the potion's effect; the one you paid for, essentially a gold penalty.

I feel like this would be a much more elegant way to implement a death penalty exactly in the situation you want.

I believe that putting a cost to death is wrong
You have always firmly argued that players can create content. You would lose players in this way and then content

Please @Rare-Employee get back on your feet don't implement this thing
Sincerely your satisfied Consumer,
Alberto

I'll say the same thing I said in the other thread before this one was created: It's a horrible idea. But even if the majority thinks so as well you'll just do the same thing as you did with the character creation thread and take the easy way out by adding a "favorite button" to the IPG. Really? I'm pretty sure people wanted customization... But you obviously forgot your glasses that day. I don't even know why I bother posting my opinion anymore if RARE is just going to do what they want to do anyway.

Player shsouldn't be penalized for dying, especially if its in PvP and they just lost all there gold.
Instead there should be a bounty system. If you kill a player/crew/sink a ship you get money on your head. Players would then be insertivies to try and hunt down the bounties and you could even have a leader board to show who's the most wanted. This may also encourage players who don't PVP to try it and get a hefty bounty.
This way no-one loses money and PvP players have something to show off for all there piracy.

Wholeheartedly against this. Have I missed what this is supposed to remedy?
Aside from the other responses, (most notably skull forts) two places where this will hurt me: I have no interest in griefing, but if I get bested, now there's a threat of losing even more gold if I go back and at least try to recoup some of my losses? That would make it more inviting for a well oiled crew to attack on sight- it's a safe zone of sorts for them. Also, I tend to spend alot of time solo, trying things out and sometimes dying in the process. Like diving for cave systems. That's completely "avoidable." Why should I get penalized for dying while exploring?
Whatever you are trying to detur by this, there must be another solution. It seems to go against the grain of the entire premise of the game.
If there's a mechanic in the game causing some kind of disfavored gameplay loop, fix the mechanic; don't penalize people for playing how they see fit.

@khaleesibot I don't like the idea of limiting the ridiculous behaviors we are allowed. Make the ship loss the penalty. The ship should be the center of the game. Make it a percentage of your gold hoard or perhaps a function of your combined merchant levels, so that risk for more experienced players increases. But this game seriously needs the freedom to blast your friends with a gunpowder barrel or set snake traps for them on your ship. It's a buddy game, and a lot of us like F-ing with each other.

@khaleesibot This community from my first post has lifted my spirits in how well people come together here. I've never seen a community with such passion and wanting to preserve sea of thieves the way so many have and will remain doing. This is the time for good views and to celebrate what a nice experience the game is to play when following the pirate code there and here in the forums. Together we can all shape the features that will take this experience solidly from its launch to many great new features and many years onwards with new adventures and pirate stories.