Experience Penalty - What Is The Benefit?

Taking a spin on Asura.Authority's thread "Abyssea Time Limit - What is the Benefit?", I had a thought on a different topic that I believed was unnecessary to the game: the penalty to experience points when you are KO'ed in combat.

Should it even be in the game? Do the pros outweigh the cons? Are there any pros at all? Well, to all of these answers I'd have to say "no". See, the point of having a penalty in the game is to deter people from dying, to make being defeated actually have a point.

Being KO'ed in Final Fantasy XI, as you know comes with two penalties: a loss of experience points and Weakness. This means that even if we drop the experience penalty, we would still have a penalty for dying.

Weakness - When your party wipes to a notorious monster, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it that you lost 1200 experience points, or that now your party is out of commission for 5 minutes? Chances are, it's the latter. Weakness exists because it makes it more challenging to keep going, to the point that you may have to come to a complete stop until it expires. It also exists because it prevents people from just accepting a Raise and running straight back into combat at full power and letting zombie strategies run amok. Weakness is a great penalty, possibly the best penalty in MMORPG's. The only adjustment I think needs to be in place is to lower every stat, because currently melee fighters are still perfectly well-off to zombie it up. In smaller parties, having one person with Weakness is in and of itself an experience penalty, because that's 5 minutes fewer that the party could be killing monsters.

Experience Loss - Now this is pretty much a no-brainer, because losing between 240 and 1200 experience isn't even noticeable when you gain 2000-4000 exp from 5 mobs doing a quest in Abyssea. But even before that I always thought it was a negative effect, and here's why. Experience loss penalizes only one player, the player who was defeated. In Final Fantasy XI, a good majority of deaths occur because of another person's mistake or negligence. The Paladin accidentally used Flash on the wrong mob, the Thief linked 10 bats when he pulled, the White Mage went afk to watch Austin Powers without telling anyone. More often than not, the person at fault survives the ordeal while someone else takes the penalty as a result. This causes anger ("why didn't the WHM cure??") and selfishness ("if I don't cure the tank and let him die, I have a better chance of surviving"). Plus, it's also frustrating having to keep yourself buffered with a little bit of experience at any given time. The penalty is also a great hindrance to the game itself. People are scared to explore because they don't want to be penalized for it. And how many people chose to avoid this game because of the penalty? I actually have a number of friends who chose to not play this game solely for that reason.

What can be done? - Completely eliminate the loss of experience from dying. With a new permanent level cap at Lv.99 coming up, I see this as the perfect opportunity to shove the penalty out the door. Weakness needs to be increased a small amount to be more of a penalty especially to melee characters. Raise and Reraise could be changed to reduce the duration or potency of the Weakness. Raise I could leave a Weakness of 7 minutes, Raise II could leave a Weakness of 5 minutes, and Raise III could leave a Weakness of 3 minutes, perhaps.

What are your thoughts? Maybe I'm not thinking this through and maybe the experience penalty is actually beneficial to the game in one way or another.

TL;DR - The exp penalty is pointless and tedious to players, while Weakness could easily work as a standalone penalty. I think it should be removed. What are your thoughts?

I lose under 1000 exp every time I die. NMs in abyssea give at least 800. What's the problem?

Pro: Seeing your peer delevel cause they think having a buffer is hard is very funny.

better than armor having to be repaired or SE making some other rnadom penalty for dying.

Well that's half my point. If the penalty is virtually nonexistent then what's the point of even having it?

It's lost any significant relevance it once had. And any traces of that relevance are just annoying and tedious.

I think SE has already thought about this. That may be the reason they haven't increased the exp loss since 75. They don't think its needed anymore.

Welcome to a MMO.

and exp penalty on death is for obvious reasons. It used to be more relevant, and it still is just not as much. but what are they gonna do? "oh ppl get exp too fast, no more loss!"

And another big reason is zombie'ing. If you wipe and RR and just keep tossing dia at ***while your pt recovers, thats cheap. You still can zombie easily, but your gonna pay lots of exp.

Originally, the XP penalty was a strong incentive to do your job right, and injected some player risk v. reward stake to battles. This was the original design, and in my opinion, a good call that weeded out a lot of the early newfags to FFXI. However, with Abyssea, an XP penalty is pointless, as 20 deaths can be recouped in under 10minutes, still, with all 3 Abyssea Expansions accounted for, there's no telling where the Lv.95-99 patches are going to take the FFXI community (if anywhere at all)

to OP
- don't melee's attack slower, less accurate?
- all caster's spells have extra delay time, and in case of debuffs/nukes acc is also inaccurate or resisted?

not to mention Double Weakness status....

Ummm, leave it how it is. You know if SE pulls the exp loss on death they'll make it something worse.

Exp penalty makes R1 R2 R3 worthwhile.

Unless, they made it so...
R1=weakened for 5min
R2=weakened for 3min
R3=weakened for 1min 30sec.

Lol this is also true. I do like hearing people squirm when your talking on vent/skype when everyone gives them crap for not getting a buffer during events.

When i used to play (i plan on coming back though just no funds) it was required for my members to have a 10k buffer at least because we can die at anytime. We all had this random moments when NMs go on roid rage and kill a couple peeps even though you have owned him a dozen times. But yes it was very funny to watch and laugh and we still would joke with it too.

As for my opinion on the penalty, it can stay i dont think it would make a huge difference if it had left, i mean dont get me wrong the R spells that lowers down weaken status is useful but R2 and R3 should be already doing that anyways.

Yeah they might want to give us the Repair feature

Stimulating the economy for crafters would be unacceptable.

I would rather they leave the penalty. I think that something they should *need* to change is the AH system. Don't have a Bastok/Windy/Sandy AH anymore, just make it all connected to Jeuno/Aht Urghan.

That's a good idea

Well, EXP Penalty makes player be more careful and value their life a bit more. Although it's a tedious design for a game, it's actually a good way to show the good side and dark side of human nature, and works much like real life.

Can't remember how many times drama occured within pt or LS events because of not getting R3, sac pull, or die too many times or even lotting right on EXP scrolls before Abyssea update. IMO it actually makes this game more interesting. OP mentioned selfishness because of EXP Penalty, on the other hand it's also a good way to identify ppl who is not selfish. That's why we all respect those who doesn't *** about EXP lose and willing to sacrifice for the benefit of whole pt. This design force the player to work together, and be more careful about mistakes which may waste your pt member/lsmate's EXP.

Removing EXp penalty may make the game easier, so you can make more mistake and be more reckless without worrying about others. But ppl would no longer value the life of their character, which would change the core value of this game IMO.

I played other MMOs with little to no EXP lose, and they all feel very different from FFXI....I don't really care if my character, or other ppl's character die, and they have very little emotional connection between character and player. Now that getting EXP is easier, so EXP penalty should no longer be a burden. I'd say the balance is just right. You still lose EXP so the emotional connection still exists, but not to a point to make this game frustrating.

so you can't become invincible with twilight mail and reraise forever >_>

run outta exp eventually amirite :o

I like everything the way it is. if no one lost exp when they died, this game would be no fun. its already getting "too easy". no need to make it easier. ppl are getting spoiled from abyssea and still complaining because they lose 1000 exp when they die. ive seen 600k exp in a few hours of exping, wtf is the problem. if i had it my way, id make it whenever you die, u lose a random piece or gear or something. that would prolly take the lazyness out of some ppl and make them actually try when at battle instead of just auto attking and afking. i want the old ffxi back

They should just increase the exp loss, 5k a death!

one good feature was that people would delevel sync mules to reuse (pointless now unless you refuse to take a useless job to abyssea to leech)

Abyssea made me not care about death warping anymore, it saves buying Warp sticks all the time.

i grind up so i have an exp buffer.
life is hard.

Exp. loss sucks when it actually meant something. I had a time (2005) when another party [in Cape Teriggan] asked for a Raise 3 for the PLD60s that died. I said no, because I was in friggen Kuftal Tunnel all the way in the bottom exp'ing, and was promptly called a selfish jerk and was blisted.

Understandably, back then people were barely getting 3-4k/hr and a 1-2k exp loss made it seem like you lost 30 min. of your time. Now with abyssea people can make 50k-200k?/hr, so with some minor adjustment... a loss of 30-100k per death should par things up.

It could be worse...

/satire

Its to encourage team work and coordination. Help each other, communicate with each other to ensure success. Losing exp is just another way to make sure you plan things and communicate with each other. I like it.

People die in abyssea still? After the third lunar, I figured that wouldn't happen anymore.

i have 1 job at 90 thf...this is main job and my favorite job to play...thanks to abyssea i have no need for merits, (litterlly have nothing i can put merits in) so a exp loss when i die at ls events gives me a real reason go to abyssea attowa and continue to exp for so yeah exp loose is a good thing in a way.

Death in abyssea: 800 exp
exp for 5 mobs quest in new zones: ~3000
Exp for a good boss: ~5000
Watching ppl rage about exp-penalty: exp-less

Exp means so little to me, I honestly wouldn't care if they doubled exp loss.

I can literally walk in to abyssea, kill 5 weak mobs and get 3k exp + whatever the mobs dropped and maybe a bonus seal while I'm at it.

The only thing that stops me from dying everytime I need to warp is that it is a recorded stat and plus, the moogle gives you free warp scrolls.