HETE Insurance Token

Kirin

We all hate HETE. Universally.

Their costs are prohibitively expensive. 

Perhaps, a new minor artifact can be introduced, HETE Insurance Token which drops randomly in-game and can be redeemed against a single cloning incidence. Potentially, they can be traded between players, until you decide to lock it towards your own redemption.

In order to avoid an abundance, perhaps once you get one, you cannot get any other, until you use it up or trade it to another (transferable only once)

Grek

I'm fine with HETE and think that the prices are a much-needed cash sink.

Soza

If you are honestly having problems with cost of recloning just get some levels. As a level 75 who's gotta pay 1800ish per reclone it takes maybe 20 mobs to make that amount. Each creature drops about 3-5 pieces of junk which sell for about 20 each and if you ever drop armor or a weaom that's instantly at the very least about 700. Gotta have in game money sinks otherwise the market gets way crazy and those credit costs skyrocket.

Matlkael

The one sticking point I do have is that it does suck for players with unreliable connections, because at some point your best bet is to just log off for the day. And it should never be that the best move for any player is to leave when they just want to play.

Maybe add in 'bulk' discounts, wherein every 10 deaths, your cloning costs would go down by 10% (maxing out at a 50% reduction in cost). This would reset at the Synch.

Cubey

Bluntly - not worth it. A single death is 1000-1900 marks, that's barely a blip in your budget unless you're below level 30 or something.

I'm exaggerating obviously But really, dying costs aren't "prohibitvely expensive". Dying 5+ times, yes. But once? That's just a temporary setback, can be recouped in minutes of pve. Especially now that hacking areas provide a source of quests and mobs that can't be overhunted by others and automatically scales with you.

Matlkael said:

Maybe add in 'bulk' discounts, wherein every 10 deaths, your cloning costs would go down by 10% (maxing out at a 50% reduction in cost). This would reset at the Synch.

Now that's a good idea. The numbers need tweaking but the general concept is solid.

Kareli

Bash in easier to kill zones. Smaller mobs = quicker kill = more xp over time= more money , will the added bonus of less death. 

Slander

I think a lot of the frustration comes from seeing the cost without perspective. I pay 1400 per clone IIRC. Last night got killed, was irritated because I thought 'damn I'm never going to make money' but then probably 10 minutes later I looked at JUNK LIST and realized I had about 1900 worth to sell. It really isn't as bad as it seems and if you go thousands into debt you need to hunt easier shit and/or pause to sell junk more regularly.

Matlkael

In a way, you aren't going to make that money again (via bashing), because it still counts against your daily junk cap.

Kirin

The frustration comes from dying multiple times to wind up attacks. If 3 mobs in an area have powerful attacks - you die 3 times trying to figure out the trigger line - so you start at a negative 3000-4000 marks level. 

So yes while it’s not frustrating in the long run, it does add up.

perhaps the solution is that if you die within one day of a recent cloning to mobs you get charged half the regular price 

Yalau

I hate wind up attacks.  They need to be much more obvious.

Matlkael

Counterpoint, but once you do know the windup lines, they actually become easier than non-windup mobs. Them doing their wind-up attack means they're not hitting you with health and subsys damage.

Arsentar

I'd rather cloning just costs less for people who die a lot in a short span of time. So, you die once, full cost. if you happen to die again in, say, less than five minutes or ten, you get half price and such. It'd be a limited, non-abusable thing for the most part that would not introduce terrible things like these tokens to the game

Qitorien

Arsentar said:

I'd rather cloning just costs less for people who die a lot in a short span of time. So, you die once, full cost. if you happen to die again in, say, less than five minutes or ten, you get half price and such. It'd be a limited, non-abusable thing for the most part that would not introduce terrible things like these tokens to the game

Rewarding people for not learning a lesson of being more careful seems counter-intuitive to me. 

Arsentar

We are not talking about rewarding people or not, we are talking about making repeated deaths less of a hole in your packet while keeping their function mostly intact.

Cubey

Qitorien said:

Arsentar said:

I'd rather cloning just costs less for people who die a lot in a short span of time. So, you die once, full cost. if you happen to die again in, say, less than five minutes or ten, you get half price and such. It'd be a limited, non-abusable thing for the most part that would not introduce terrible things like these tokens to the game

Rewarding people for not learning a lesson of being more careful seems counter-intuitive to me. 

It's not a reward, you'd still lose money - just less. Would downvote post if I could.

Slander

This would be most beneficial I think during times when you've just started hunting in a new area and are trying to figure out the windup attacks. Every ten levels or so I go into debt again because I never have a large buffer of marks to begin with and finding the line to interrupt inevitably leads to a bunch of deaths in a short time period. I'd love this.

Vaughn

What levels are we talking about here? At a certain point one should be prepared to have to learn new wind-up attacks. Is there a specific level range that the difficulty curve seems especially steep?

I think another great way to handle this would be to start a thread to collect wind-up messages. A little player collaboration is always handy.

Matlkael

What I do whenever I start hunting a new area is I'd go around and attack (not kill) one of each kind of creature. I would wait until I notice a large hit to my health (indicating the completion of a wind-up), and then grab the attack line before that one hit (the one that indicates the initiation of a wind-up).

Squeakums

Matlkael said:

The one sticking point I do have is that it does suck for players with unreliable connections, because at some point your best bet is to just log off for the day. And it should never be that the best move for any player is to leave when they just want to play.

I wanted to comment on this one. As one of those players, this wasn't as much of a problem in other IRE games because of server side curing (I keep sipping health when I DC). A possible solution like Kareli said is to bash in lower exp zones, so your passive regen can keep up a bit better. With the scaling exp changes when there's a big level discrepancy between you and what you're fighting, though, it is my understanding that the much lower exp and junk gains make this not worth it.

A possible solution is to have mobs that are at your level range, hit for less, and provide less experience. That way it won't be optimal for somebody just looking to maximize their bashing efficiency, but it makes it so we have an option other than "idk just log back in later" when our connections are unstable.

Kerek

HETE is greedy. Maybe a solution would be to have an alternative form of payment? X percent of junk earned in exchange for Y% cost reduction (maybe even 100%) in cloning fees for some period of time? Maybe it's a promotion offered to you after your first death and lasts a month?