Dying is too easy
This issue title a double entendre:
- Dying is too easy: as a new player it's too easy to get killed
- Dying is too easy: there is no penalty for dying.
OK, so feel free to ignore this issue & close or whatever! I just had some thoughts being a "new player" and playing through Veloren for a few hours on the weekend. I fully understand that this is a pre-alpha & I did do a bit of a search around any open issues but couldn't find anything specifically addressing this subject.
However, I think the "new player" experience could be much better & death should not be part of the main game loop, like it is now.
It's too easy to get killed
In other games I have played, death is treated like hitting a fuse, it teaches the player that the actions you were doing you weren't ready for, or isn't the right thing. In Veloren, it feels like death is part of the main game loop, something expected and common place.
There is the concept of "Principle of least astonishment" in which the design of a system should follow how most users would expect it to behave. When I first jumped into the official server, I walked out into the woods and a pirate smacked me a couple of times & I died, respawning back to the start. I didn't have an opportunity to learn anything from this engagement, it just felt like I had done something wrong by walking out of the town to explore. However, unbeknownst to me, this is actually a common thing that happens to beginners. They go out, get smacked & die. I wonder how many don't pursue past that point?
What I would have expected to happen is that, I would have a "safer" place to explore without the spectre of death hanging so easily close. In some games, the difficulty of enemies scales up the further out from towns. In others: it's even gated, you can't even get to them until you meet a threshold.
However, this is not to say that you shouldn't die, i.e, if you walked into a dragon's den as a beginner player that would be a pretty bad choice to make. But, taking that example: if I had a number of positive interactions with enemies, where I am able to defeat them mostly easily, followed by a run in with a dragon in which I die, I would learn that there are some enemies that are easy to kill & others I may need to come back to later on. Death in this scenario would be a teaching experience, rather than par-for-course.
Now, having said that death can be an interesting mechanic and part of the main core loop, i.e, in dead cells & other rogue likes you're expected to die, etc.. but it more feels like a stop-gap in Veloren, rather than an action that provides value to the player.
There is no penalty for dying
To completely contrast what I've just written: death has no penalty besides wasting a little time. You can, as a solo player, with enough effort and patience, cheese your way through most enemies & dungeons. Campfires are normally pretty close by, enemies health doesn't recover & you don't lose anything as a player. So then it makes it quite easy to waltz into anywhere and just keep attacking & dying, until you beat things.
Death should have a penalty, something that the player should be avoiding, not some annoyance like a fly you flick away. There should be weight to it & it should have long-lasting, even permanent effects, so players avoid dying or at least don't think "I can just a die a few times to beat this boss".
In other games I have played, death has consequences. In single player RPGs, death means game over, you have to start again from your last save: death prevents progress. In rogue likes it's game over, forever, much more permanent! In Ultima Online, an old MMO, when you died you dropped all of your gear on your corpse, giving others the opportunity to steal it, then turned into a ghost needing to be resurrected by a Player/NPC. Then, even after being resurrected, you had to run back to your corpse, which was where you died, hoping that the enemies had cleared & you still had all of your stuff!
In Veloren: you die, and then keep doing the same thing you were doing. Well, at least I did, to clear out a level 2 dungeon. It didn't feel permanent & did not feel like death had any "negative feedback". It's too easy to cheese your way through life.
Conclusions & Suggestions
Now, I know that both of the sections seem to contradict eachother, saying it's too easy to die & that death doesn't have a penalty & you're right. They actually work against each other. For instance if you gave some more permanence to death then it would actually be far too hard for new players. But, I still found that they way death works currently was something that instantly bugged me as a player. I didn't expect to die as much as I did, and even though I did die nothing bad ever came of it except some wasted time.
Here are a few suggestions that I could think of that should be relatively easy to make changes for
I can help with MRs if there is buy-in, but as I said at the beginning definitely take this with a grain of salt & feel free to ignore/close this if there are other plans in this space.
Rebalance enemies
This, I'm sure has had a lot of deep thought put into it already. Enemies should be easy to kill and get progressively harder towards the end game. I feel like it's quite a flat slope on the difficulty, i.e, it starts off "pretty hard" then goes to "mostly hard" but the scaling could use some thought. Same with weapons, crappier weapons are only incrementally better than shinier ones.
Regardless: I shouldn't walk out of town & get smacked down in a handful shots by an enemy. I should be evenly matched against them at the beginning, or even slightly better than them to build up a bit of confidence.
XP Penalty for Death
I thought about what a good "initial" penalty could be. I don't know if this is something that makes sense long term, but having a little bit of XP loss every time you die will reinforce that dying is not a good thing. Any skill points you earn would stay, but that progress bar to the next SP would diminish each time you die
Enemy health regeneration
I guess this applies to dungeons, but some other areas as well. If you die & are spawned back at a campfire, the enemies could regenerate a little of their health. This could be implemented in the same way players heal, i.e, they eat mushrooms or whatever. But it would go some lengths to prevent "cheesing".