Idea: Dropping Wealth upon Death?

@wolfmanbush I can see how a poorly implemented mechanic could to that. Perhaps there needs to be a cap on how much one could dinged in a certain time frame, especially to mitigate loss due to behaviors like spawn-camping.

@wolfmanbush I do partially question the point of the penalty being time, because in reality, everyone and their ancestor will just tell every other player that they can do what they tried and failed at, another time. Treating these "wasted efforts" as a learning experience. You won't get the 2 hours you spent tucking on the boat for a Chest of Legends back, but you sure as hell are gonna do it again if given the chance. Even for PvE players they can easily do the same voyage or world event they completed on another server in case they lose the items they wanted to turn in related to that event.

How valuable is losing time when most of the PvP portion of the playerbase have far too much time on their hands that they spend 8-12 hours attempting to steal as much treasure as they can before they either play something else, or stop playing video games for the day/night.

That idea suck.

Pure PvP only player don’t care about losing or earning gold, they are only there for a fight.

This would be even more punishing for the lesser skill or the casual player when put up against a skilled pirate.

@butterfinger750 @amybun I did offer a trivial fix for this earlier in the thread: rate limit how often this can happen, e.g. once an hour (and, sidebar - why not address the issue of spawn camping directly, not as a given?). If combined with the other dynamics I mentioned, and taking in account the other game mechanics that already exist, you end up with playable engagements opportunities that both sides of an encounter (as well as third parties) would enjoy playing.

Many other decision points arise too, including the idea that if I suspect my killer has more wealth than me, I, the weaker player, have more incentives not to simply scuttle my ship. If I think I can kill my killer, I have a new incentive to play in a space that forces the dominant player in a self-reflexive way to reassess her own risk. One aspect of the game in place now is the ability to roughly determine how much time or wealth one wants to risk. That is a very nice facet of the game logic. By extension, the losing player still would have many options for disengagement to limit loss.

However I recognize that I have less time in than other players, and regardless of that each player has their own point of view. But I do believe something like this would lengthen the lifespan of the paying Rare customer, especially in light of the logic of these responses which indicate people hunt for the hunt and not for the loot. This idea offers more of those opportunities while challenging the status quo that can lead to player drop off. A given business maxim here is that it is cheaper for a company to keep an existing customer happy than it is to acquire a new customer.

I think Rare could evaluate this in a quantitative way and measure the life span of inactive players relative to their game wealth on hand. There is probably a median range of wealth relative to play time in which the player customer is logging the most time and spending the most real world money and generating the most content. Players who left the game or claim the game is dead, probably have a higher degree of game wealth relative to the set of inactive players with less cumulative play time and less game wealth on hand. Controlled chaos that isn't arbitrary to the point of demotivating players would sustain the revenue generating life span of a happy customer. This is an important distinction about why this idea is not simply a "death tax."

This might also reinvigor arena play style and enhance the value (and units sold) of private servers (which I mention only because it feels like that is coming up soon). Thanks for reading!

This will exasperate red sea running. Because when you hit the despawn wall it doesn't count as a death so no money lost. Reapers will find servers even more empty...

And we won't bring up spawn camping trolls again.

Bad idea is 👎

I feel like the intentions are good, but the result would be the opposite of what you're looking for in a LOT of cases.

Introducing a penalty mechanic of any kind would likely impact the new and less-skilled players disproportionately.

Rewarding players for actual activity in game is a better alternative. Seasons does a great job of that, however I do think there could be another mechanism that rewarded players instantaneously with gold for completing activities. Nothing crazy...but as an example, completing a chapter of a voyage could net you 500 gold...or completing a Skull Fort could net you a certain amount of gold based on how much damage you did to the boss. Something instantly gratifying that rewards players for production on the server regardless of whether or not the get the loot sold at an outpost.

I don't love that option..but I think that's the best alternative to a penalty system that would be impossible to get right.

This sounds like one of the most un-fun mechanics I've seen suggested here

Thank you, Rare!

Caleb Greer  /  Nov 27, 2021

Sea of Thieves will soon let players bury their treasure

Store it away for the winter.