You are probably here because you have read the common board post about the upcoming changes to the death recovery system. This post contains more details about the change, and I have also tried to guess some questions/complaints that might arise and address them as well. Feel free to use this forum thread for more questions and any feedback you have. However, first of all, in case you have not read the common board yet:
THE CHANGE
In short, it will go much faster for most players to recover from XP-loss, and the new system will also take your size into consideration. Smaller players will still recover faster in the new system, but the difference in recovery time between small and big players will be reduced considerably. Today, it can take many months, or years, for larger players to recover. That won't be the case anymore after this change goes live. Also, there will be a system in place that helps more casual players to recover within a reasonable time, simply by logging in briefly once a day.
WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN?
The new system will go live after the next Armageddon, which is scheduled to happen around 13:00 GT (Gametime) on February 10.
THE DETAILS
First of all, I need to mention that the sign at Death that states Death takes 1/5 of your combat experience is WRONG. I always thought it was 1/5, and so did Ckrik, but as we have discovered, it is actually 1/4. We don't know for sure if it was 1/5 and some point and someone forgot to update the sign when it changed to 1/4, OR if it simply always was 1/4 and the sign was always wrong. Not even Cotillion can remember a time when it actually was 1/5, though, so the sign may have been fooling players, wizards, and at least two keepers for decades. It's amazing nobody has discovered this until now, though. Classic Genesis!
Anyway, we'll update the sign of course, but the actual penalty for dying, which is 1/4 of your combat AND general experience, will NOT be changing.
So, this is the new reality you will wake up to after next Armageddon:
The old death recovery system will be gone, and the entire concept of "death recovery assistance" will no longer exist. So, forget all about that. Instead, the new logic is simply that relearning things you once knew obviously is easier than learning something from scratch, so therefore you will always recover lost experience at a faster rate. That will be the new default functionality, and there won't be a name for it. That's just how it is from now on.
But, isn't that just rebranding the current death recovery assistance system? No, because the current death recovery system 'artificially' reduces your brutality, which in turn makes you gain experience faster. However, as you know, things slow down more and more until you are fully recovered, since your brutality goes up. The new system will not reduce your brutality in any artifical way. You will of course become a bit less brutal when you lose experience, since you become smaller, but that is just a natural reduction.
To speed up your recovery you will instead simply gain more experience for every NPC you kill, every herb you find, etc. How much more XP you gain will depend on your size. The increased rate of XP-recovery will be most noticable for the biggest players, since they of course have the most XP to recover, and have suffered the most in the current system. Smaller players will still recover faster, though, as they always have, but the difference will be much smaller.
Also, the increased XP-recovery rate will be the same all the way until you are fully recovered, which is another big difference compared to the current system.
Whenever you are missing XP, your <stats> will show these two new lines:
'You are currently recovering your lost experience at an increased rate.'
'You are very far from fully recovered.'
So, you will always know when your XP-rate is increased, and you will get an idea of how far you are to fully recovering as well. There will also be a message when you are fully recovered, similar to the messages you get when your mortal level or stats increase.
The <levels recovery> command will show the new levels after Armageddon. They will simply be 'very far', 'far', 'halfway', 'close', and 'very close'.
Now, as I mentioned above, we also want to make it easier for more casual players to recover from XP-loss. Therefore, there will also be a more passive way to recover your experience. Ckrik has built a statue of Lars that will be placed in Sparkle, and players can visit this statue and offer Lars something to eat or drink. Lars will then be kind enough to restore a percentage of your lost experience. He will only do this once every 24 hours, though, so this is a much slower way of recovering than grinding, and since it is a percentage of your lost experience that Lars gives you, you will never be able to fully recover with only Lars' help. You need to put in some work yourself too.
The fastest way to recover from XP-loss will always be to grind as much as you can, which means you likely only will need a couple of gifts from Lars (depending on your size). However, it will also be possible to collect your daily gifts from Lars and just do a little grinding to recover. It'll be slower of course, but it's a good option if you don't have that much time to play.
These are the new help files that will be introduced when the new systmem goes live:
Code: Select all
NAME
Death
SYNOPSIS
This is not a command, simply information.
DESCRIPTION
The world of Genesis is quite dangerous and at some point you will
most likely find yourself face to face with Death himself. When you
die in Genesis, Death wants to collect your soul, however, Lars, the
founder of the game, always manages to convince Death that you are
worthy of reincarnation. This process does mean that you lose quite
a big chunk of your experience. Luckily, recovering lost experience
is considerably easier than earning it in the first place, and Lars
also has another little trick up his sleeve that will help you recover
quicker. For more information about losing and recovering experience,
please see <help xp-loss>.
Being reincarnated is not all bad, though. When you die you will get
the choice to either be reborn in your old body or to select a new
body. If you keep your body you do not suffer any additional penalties
other than loss of experience, as described in <help xp-loss>. If you
decide to select a new body, you will be able to reselect your race,
gender, short-description, racial abilities, etc. It's like going
through the player creation sequence again. However, selecting a
new body does come with an additional penalty, because you will
unfortunately forget many of the skills your old body had learned.
SEE ALSO
experience, xp-lossCode: Select all
NAME
XP-loss
SYNOPSIS
This is not a command, simply information.
DESCRIPTION
Losing experience
As described in <help experience>, there are three different
types of experience that a player can earn in Genesis. Quest,
combat, and general experience. Quest experience can never be
lost, however, it is possible to lose both combat experience and
general experience.
You can lose experience either by dying or by leaving guilds.
When you die, you always lose 1/4 of your combat experience and
1/4 of your general experience. Penalties for leaving guilds
varies. Some guilds are free to leave without any penalty at all,
some guilds punish traitors with death, and some guilds use
other means to remove a portion of your experience.
Recovering experience
Most of the penalties described above are quite severe, but it
is, thankfully, much easier to recover lost experience than
it is to gain new. As long as you are missing experience there
will be a message visible in your <stats> indicating that you
are recovering experience at an increased rate. You will also be
able to see roughly how far you are from fully recovering. See
<levels recovery> for details.
Note that you don't have to recover the same type of experience
as you lost, all that matters is that you recover the total
amount you lost. Be that in quest, combat, or general experience.
You will of course not gain quest experience at a faster rate,
though, since you never lost any.
Lars' gift
Not only does Lars, the founder of the game, save your soul from
Death, he will also offer you a gift if you are missing some of
your hard-earned experience. All you have to do is visit his
statue in Sparkle and <offer> him a drink or something to eat,
and he will restore a portion of your lost experience. He will
only do so once every 24 hours, though. He, obviously, has other
things to do as well.
The amount of experience restored is a percentage of your
missing experience. This means that the closer you get to fully
recovering the smaller Lars' gift will be. So, whenever you lose
experience, make sure to always start your path to recovering it
by visiting Lars' statue.
Note: Lars' gift is not available for you if you are still in
the tutorial area. This is because at your mortal level, you will
likely recover any lost experience very quickly anyway.
SEE ALSO
experience, deathOUR REASONING
This project has been a collaboration between me and Ckrik from the start. I mainly wanted to make death hurt less, in order to make players a bit more interested in taking some risks. I also did not want the path to recovery to be impossibly long once you grow really big. Ckrik wanted a way for casual players to recover from death without it taking many months, or years. After discussing many ideas (both our own and ideas presented by players), we eventually decided on this idea, which includes everything that both me and Ckrik originally wanted.
Early on, we decided that we should keep the current penalty for dying. Both because we still think you should really notice your stats and/or mortal level drop when you die, but also because changing the actual penalty for dying would have been quite messy. Had we changed that, we would have had to go through all the different penalties for leaving guilds as well, and updating their help files. Now, there is no need for that.
We also wanted death to be something to avoid, but if you do die, there is no reason recovering couldn't be fun. For me as a player, the only fun part about dying was always the first hours and days of recovering, because it's when your progress meter moves quickly and you get a lot of fantas. Then it slows down, and recovering gets more and more boring. That's why we decided it will be a lot more enjoyable if your progress meter moves pretty fast all the way until you are fully recovered, and not super fast at the start and super slow at the end.
Now, the biggest challenge with this project was to figure out the speed of recovery, and also make it reasonable for players of all sizes. Losing 1/4 of your experience as a greenhorne and as a super-myth is, of course, two very different things. Death should be something that stings, so the game still feels dangerous, but it shouldn't be so bad that you lose the will to play either. Also, how do we make the penalty reasonable for someone who plays a few hours a week AND someone who plays 8+ hours a day? Well, that's the million-platinum question.
I suspect some of you will feel the new recovery system is too 'soft', that death has lost meaning, and you might worry that people will guild-hop like crazy now. However, please remember that there are many different players in Genesis. If you play many hours every day and your super-myth friend normally drags you around to help you recover from death, then yes, recovering in the new system will be very quick for you, and death may not be so much to fear. Good for you! But you are not the only player in the game. We're trying to find something that feels -acceptable- for all types of players, regardless if they play now and then, if they play a lot, if they play solo, if they have big friends, and regardless of their mortal level.
Ckrik has spent several months creating and then running a script that collects data about how much XP per hour players of different sizes actually gain when they are grinding. We have used this data to adjust the XP-recovery rate for players of different stat averages. I have also spent time actually grinding on the test server in order to get a feel for it. Now, obviously, we can't test every mortal size in the most optimal setting, so we do of course welcome feedback from players of all sizes. Please let us know how quickly you recover and if you think you're recovering too slowly or too quickly. It's possible tweaks are needed.
Personally, for my test-mortal, which was close to legend size when it died, it took me 4 days of grinding 3 hours per day, which included collecting four gifts from Lars as well. I used as good EQ as I can realistically get in the real game. I was grinding solo, in the best solo-grinding area for my size and guild, with no competition from other players and using a good grinding script. I felt that the time it took to recover was of course MUCH faster than it would have taken using the old/current system, but I did not feel it was too quick. I definitely would have preferred to NOT die, and spend that time on growing instead of recovering, although it did not feel like it hurt so bad I didn't want to play for a while, which is usually how it goes for me when I die as a mortal.
Let us know what YOU think and how fast YOU recover!
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q: Will the new way of recovering apply to XP lost from leaving a guild as well?
A: Yes. No matter how you lose XP, you will recover it in the same way.
Q: So, I can finally leave the guild I have been stuck in for years, without it taking many months to recover?
A: Yup!
Q: Won't this make people guild-hop a lot?
A: Maybe. But is that so bad? If your only reason for staying in a guild was to avoid the penalty for leaving, perhaps it's best for both you and the guild if you leave?
Q: I am currently recovering from a death/leaving a guild, how will I be affected?
A: Your progress from the old death recovery system will remain and you will automatically start using the new system for the rest of your recovery.
Q: How much faster will I actually recover in the new system, compared to the old?
A: That is hard to say, as it depends on your size. If you are a greenhorne you probably might not notice much difference at all since it was very quick for you before as well. On the other hand, if you're a big myth you will notice a massive difference, and recovery will be considerably faster for all non-newbie players. Based on our calculations we believe a fairly new myth should be able to recover in about 10-16 hours, depending on how many Lars' gifts they collect. This is of course 10-16 hours of non-stop grinding in a more or less optimal way, so in reality it likely takes a bit longer unless you do everything by the book and nothing distracts you. As I mentioned above I tried it out with a close to legend character (before death) and it took me about 12 hours of non-stop grinding. Obviously there are players who are better at it than me, but I do think our calculations are fairly correct.
Q: How will the racial ability that makes you recover from xp-loss quicker be affected?
A: Since that ability makes you recover X percent faster, it will work the same way in the new system. You will still recover X percent faster than players who do not have that ability.
Q: But, but, how can I now kill someone I really dislike and make them leave the game because it'll hurt so bad for them to die?
A: I am sure they will still be sad since if you PVP-kill someone you'll steal all their equipment and herbs and stuff, but hopefully you will not succeed in driving them away from the game. Try something else! Or better yet, sort out your issue with them and try to have fun instead. Now when death hurts less people may actually WANT to PVP with you. Which is what you really want, right?
FEEDBACK
As always, we welcome constructive feedback. I have created this thread on the forums for that purpose. So, please share your feedback there. Or, if you don't want to share your feedback in public, please mail me and Ckrik in-game. I would kindly like to ask you to NOT PM me on Discord with Feedback. It's simply hard to keep track of feedback receieved that way. The forum thread or in-game mail is easier for us, and your feedback will also be stored and (hopefully) remembered that way.
Finally, a big WELL DONE to Ckrik who did the heavy code-lifting on this big change.
Cherek, Keeper of Genesis
