David Eckelberry replies to outcry over DDO death penalty

Even since the recent Module 3 update, a lot of people have been up in arms over the whole death penalty issue in Dungeons and Dragons Online. No, not “death penalty” like the one where you get sentenced to fry, we’re talking about the penalties that you can incur whenever you die in-game.

See, it’s like this. Let’s say you’re running a quest and run into some pretty bad nasties – a Beholder that just decided to spamcast Enervation, for example, and you’re running the quest on elite – and then you end up as dead as Aeris. What happens is that you’ll get an XP penalty which increases the higher your level is. This is a big thing, especially for those at level 12+ (12th level characters get hit with a whopping 4000XP penalty every time they die).

The outcry in the forums have come to a point where David Eckelberry, one of the DDO developers from Turbine, finally decided to explain a few things to the players. No, they’re not going to have a kneejerk reaction and magically remove the penalties from the game. In fact, it’s pretty much there to stay until the next update. Here’s an excerpt from his post on the official DDO forums:

I’m not surprised that many of you don’t like the death penalty. It’s not a feature you’re supposed to “like.” Or put another way, it’s a penalty for a reason – it represents a serious reason to avoid dying as much as you can. So donÂ’t charge ahead blindly. Plan. Scout. Use your new abilities to set traps for your foes instead of the other way around. Debuff your enemies. Trip them, slow them, and reduce their ability to hurt you as much as you can. There’s always endless enemies to fight, so you need to protect yourselves more than you need to kill the neverending horde of villains. Don’t fight beholders or flensers on elite if youÂ’re trying to get XP. Do kill them as fast as you can when you run into them.

Good point, Dave. Those who oppose the penalty system, however, have pointed towards server lag and other causes of player death that are not the fault of the players themselves. Regarding that, the devs haven’t had any replies yet. On the other hand, quite a few players gave also given the penalty system a thumbs up, so it still remains to be seen whether or not DDO‘s playerbase will finally come to terms with this issue in the coming weeks.

Even since the recent Module 3 update, a lot of people have been up in arms over the whole death penalty issue in Dungeons and Dragons Online. No, not “death penalty” like the one where you get sentenced to fry, we’re talking about the penalties that you can incur whenever you die in-game.

See, it’s like this. Let’s say you’re running a quest and run into some pretty bad nasties – a Beholder that just decided to spamcast Enervation, for example, and you’re running the quest on elite – and then you end up as dead as Aeris. What happens is that you’ll get an XP penalty which increases the higher your level is. This is a big thing, especially for those at level 12+ (12th level characters get hit with a whopping 4000XP penalty every time they die).

The outcry in the forums have come to a point where David Eckelberry, one of the DDO developers from Turbine, finally decided to explain a few things to the players. No, they’re not going to have a kneejerk reaction and magically remove the penalties from the game. In fact, it’s pretty much there to stay until the next update. Here’s an excerpt from his post on the official DDO forums:

I’m not surprised that many of you don’t like the death penalty. It’s not a feature you’re supposed to “like.” Or put another way, it’s a penalty for a reason – it represents a serious reason to avoid dying as much as you can. So donÂ’t charge ahead blindly. Plan. Scout. Use your new abilities to set traps for your foes instead of the other way around. Debuff your enemies. Trip them, slow them, and reduce their ability to hurt you as much as you can. There’s always endless enemies to fight, so you need to protect yourselves more than you need to kill the neverending horde of villains. Don’t fight beholders or flensers on elite if youÂ’re trying to get XP. Do kill them as fast as you can when you run into them.

Good point, Dave. Those who oppose the penalty system, however, have pointed towards server lag and other causes of player death that are not the fault of the players themselves. Regarding that, the devs haven’t had any replies yet. On the other hand, quite a few players gave also given the penalty system a thumbs up, so it still remains to be seen whether or not DDO‘s playerbase will finally come to terms with this issue in the coming weeks.