There are many ways death could work in MMOs...

Wow. What a hot topic, eh?

Anyway, one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post, and perhaps the most important thing of all when considering death penalties (especially for me)....

It sucks to be penalized when the death is beyond your control. (bold just because it's the tl;dr version...I'm not yelling. )

I have little kids. Sometimes, I have to drop the game to deal with them. Heck, I live in Japan currently and sometimes my connection goes wonky for a minute or two. I've had power outages. Sometimes the phone rings just as combat starts. When I was living with my parents, these were not issues. The game could be all consuming. Even as a young, single guy, it could be most of the time. Now? Well, I just have a lot of things that can get in the way, and getting a hefty penalty because you were more concerned about keeping your child's hand out of a light socket kinda sucks.

Just something to consider since nowadays many of the EQ fanbase is a bit older than yesteryears....and even those who aren't right now will be...SOON *queue lightning strike and cackles*

Well thats when you have your oldest child take over for you , or your spouse , or your brother/friend.
LOL , this certainly has been discussed at length ... even before EQN was thought of.

The short awnser is , there is no pause button for a mmorpg. Either you figure it out with the available options there allready have been for years , or you suffer the death penalties that all are subject to. Your argument has so many rabbit holes in it , one not even need tread 3 steps before falling down one of them.

Are deaths suppose to now be under control , and to what level?

I think that casual players would whine about some imagined inequality because they would need to try to be comparable to other players. I'm certain that we need multiple servers.

Explain the lore of this to me, if you will?

You're out fighting. You kill a few thousand Goblins within the outskirts of High Pass Hold, learning a great deal of experience and becoming a better [insert class name here].
A friend asks that you meet him back in Qeynos. You start on the long trek back to that city. You aren't paying attention/ have a lag spike, and you fall down a massive cliff in the Eastern Karanas. Your body takes a massive amount of damage, and the breath of life leaves you.
Moments later, you find yourself alive and well, thankful that you bound your spirit in Qeynos.
Yet you find that the experience you gained from killing those Goblins has been reduced. Amnesia? You still remember fighting all of them. You look over the weapon you gained from killing the last one.

I don't think that exp loss is a viable mechanic in a modern MMORPG. The possibility that your character could, in the midst of combat, black out, be brought back, and suddenly not know how to equip his armor doesn't make for a fun experience for most players. If instead, you create experience debt (where you have to pay x2 the experience to level up) the mathematical implications in terms of time cost are the same, but players aren't punished as heavily for failure which may or may not have been their fault.

I'm all for options though. If players were given an option to select exp loss rather than another mechanic, then perhaps it could co-exist with a slew of options to pay for death.

The lore is that every death depletes your soul , and to gain it back you must embark on a quest into the under world to regain it. That simple nothing extravagant here.

The double or nothin is just the basic betting mechanic ... why not? surely the god of underworld needs some extra sport.

Im not sure about corpse drags , spirit runs , or just plain depleting your character? Either way ... you should have to do something when death occurrs .... and not just click "revive"

Without seeing them in action, these ideas are something I can say "Well, it could work!" but I until I see them I can't say much more than that! I do like what you're saying, though!
The point I can easily surge to open agreement with is Player resurrection. I think that was a huge part of the "magic" of EQ1 and other games. Specific people in the world had the amazing ability to bring you back to life on the spot: they became invaluable as friends and party members! I think that is something I would really like to see!

If someone isn't willing to take risks or join pickup groups because they might die, I am perfectly happy with that, it means I will have a better chance of grouping with like minded people and getting to goals before them because I take risks.

Psychology has proven positive reinforcement works better and has a slower decay rate than negative.

My previous ideas were examples, not precisely what I thought should be done. I even mentioned perhaps a mix of both could be used.

Thanks. I'd truly like to show you in action, but i wouldn't know how.
That idea really got me, could go on and on about it. Wish I had an extra thread for that, where they wouldn't talk about death penalties again and again.

So, no penalties for resurrection by a player?
Yep, that was what I was hinting at.

As I said a few pages back, in-fight it shouldn't be to easy to manage the resurrection. One would have to distract the enemies. (That super duper AI might even be aware of an ongoing resurrection attempt.) Then maybe first healing the body by whatever means available (class skill, body repair lotion, ...). And eventually something like rebinding spirit to body. That last step could also come in several ways - some working perfect, some introducing side effects.

So, no penalties by by-player resurrection? Iff the player doing the rebinding thingy has a side-effect-free way to do so, yes. Would that be the common case? Maybe not.

But then you came up with mean questions like "Would I be the perfect scout, while in spirit form?". ;P

I don't think we're thinking of combat working at the same...framerate here.

Time, in Seconds
00:01 Your group enters combat when the Scout pops out of stealth, executing an Orc
00:02 The Fighter barrels through the other orcs, disorienting them. The Mage starts to cast
00:04 The Mage completes their spell, killing two orcs in one shot.
00:05 The remaining orcs charge the Mage
00:08 Your Mage is killed
00:09 Your Priest realizes that the Mage has been one-shotted. Begins casting resurrection spell
00:12 Priest completes resurrection spell. Mage recieves offer to be resurrected
00:13 Your Mage is alive again
00:14 The scout takes out another orc
00:15 The fighter throws one orc across the room, and away from the Priest
00:17 The Mage unleashes a final attack, killing the remaining orcs except for one runner.
00:18 The Scout snares the runner. The Fighter chases after it, and kills it.
00:20 Combat ends

That fight was a minor fight, involving minor enemies, executed by a well-oiled team that knew how to play.
It started and ended in about 20 seconds.

Whatever in-combat resurrection mechanic you have, it has to work around that fast.
Otherwise, combat for even simple fights has to take longer.
You also need to include balance in your PvE combat, or else you'll have to have special PvP gear.
PvP players do NOT want PvP specific gear.
If you reduce NPC damage-per-second, you should also reduce player damage-per-second.
If you increase player health, you should also increase mob health.
If you want every fight to be an epic fight, then experience per fight needs to be increased, as well as loot rewards.

There's a lot of stuff to balance here, so the best thing to do is have players able to get up and back into the fray quickly.
That Mage died in about 3 seconds, and was rezzed by a Priest on his A game.
If that death happened in 3 seconds, and it takes 20 seconds or MORE to get that Mage back up, your group just died, and now you need to rethink a lot of balance issues.

Hey, how could you kill the mage? That could have been me.

I disagree. It's death we are talking about, not an itch.

And I wouldn't talk about explicit in-combat res-mechanics. But when done in combat it should easily be disturbed. So in minor fights one may prefer to end the fight first.

I'd agree with having the resurrection spell easily disturbed. In EQ2, the rez takes about 2-3 seconds to cast, sometimes longer if it's a better rez. It can be easily interrupted. It's also got a very distinct animation, and easy to spot.
I'd assume that intelligent creatures would see that, and hone in on the player performing the resurrection.

As for death taking a while to get back into the fray, consider that the harder you make in combat rez, the harder you have to make it to die in general.
If it takes 4 seconds to kill a player, and the group takes 3 minutes to jump through some mini-game to resurrect the player, any class that dies often will have a very hard time finding a group.

So your vision of death is more like tumbling and helping up?

No, never 3 min. That would just be annoying.
I'm still suggesting two steps - healing the body, reattaching/rebinding the spirit. One player could do the former, then another the latter if it pleases so. And whichever tool or class skill is used for the latter step determines how long it takes, what side effects it brings if any...
And what about a fast fading debuff for the resurrected on speed (movement, attack, cast) like one is comming to ones senses - might fade out in 5 or 10s max and also be determined by the means used for reattaching the spirit. Or instead of the quality of the heal? Whatever, I'm brainstorming.

Just not tumbling and helping up, pretty please.

I don't think in-combat rez should be available, period. Personally, I think encounters should be tuned tighter to account for each player getting only one single life. If you mess it up and die, you're out of the fight. I just don't like the bucket-brigade of people rushing back into the fight when in-combat rezzing is allowed.

Now, if they wanted to put in a system where you're incapacitated before you actually die, and a teammate has a small window of time to revive you from your incapacitated state, similar to the Battlefield medic revive mechanic, that idea I could get behind. OTOH, if you continue taking damage while incapacitate, that window of time gets smaller and smaller.

I wouldn't say that, no.
You can make death a pretty graphically dramatic experience.
Your character goes through the death animation, and you fall to the ground.
Your world fades to grey, and you can no longer move your camera much.
A giant screen pops up in front of you, giving you options (and limiting your view! Very important facet!)

No, never 3 min. That would just be annoying.
I'm still suggesting two steps - healing the body, reattaching/rebinding the spirit. One player could do the former, then another the latter if it pleases so. And whichever tool or class skill is used for the latter step determines how long it takes, what side effects it brings if any...
So the main point of the rez is to get you up and back into the fight. The group NEEDS your help during the fight. If they didn't, they wouldn't in-combat rez you.

So there's a few parts to that.

1. You're alive again
2. You're healed to full health
3. Your rez sickness is removed. Rez sickness can include:
   1. reduction in damage output
   2. slowed movement speed
   3. reduced base stats (which affect everything)
   4. slower skill refresh timers
   5. etc.
4. Your experience debt (if any) is removed

Resurrection need not do anything other than #1. The others can be bonuses. Just remember: We only have 4 abilities. We have 4 combat attacks, and possibly 4 other things we can hotbar (like potions, trinkets, etc).
So if ONE button rezzes, and another one heals and another one removes rez sickness...then your character has two abilities which do nothing outside of dealing with a rez.
With that kind of a restriction, and in light of the fast-paced combat that playing on the PS4 will encourage, I think a single button should do it all. (You do know that EQNext will be available on console, right?)

Reminds me of bleeding to death in EQ1.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea.
I think it would depend on the enemy AI. Have you ever played PvP and been ganged up on? It isn't really a "mess up".
When NPCs move like players...ganging up on the healer...turning to face the backstabbing scout...kicking the tank off a cliff...
When that happens, suddenly the old concepts of combat get thrown out the window.
It really hinges on how smart the AI is, how long the fights are, and how realistic it is to get back to said player in time.

If death is a common thing that could happen in an instant, then being "out of the fight" means that group wipes will be a bit more common. Maybe that's a good thing.
It would certainly make ME extremely picky about who I group with.
Not meaning to be arrogant or cruel, just...if the group's success is on the line, I'm not going to invite people who don't know how to play.
I think that's the wrong mentality to have, honestly.

Ouch, thanks for that reminder.
It's hard to feel more helpless than lying there...bleeding to death...unable to help yourself...no one around...the corpse of your enemy slowly rotting...

I'm not sure if you're referring to what I suggested or speaking more generally.

I'd assume that in most groups at least one player has a heal ready.
- checked (most of the times)

My recently suggested fading out debuff wears off on its own.
- checked

The side effects I'd like to see, wouldn't affect combat.
- checked

As side effects I imagine funny things like visually decaying or stink, maybe when resurrected by a necromancer. You're alive and fit again, but in a unnatural manner. You might wanna see a docter sooner or later.
When a mage or wizard would rebind your spirit to your body, he also wouldn't be able to do it in a natural way. He would rather force the binding and that wouldn't hold forever. Maybe a few RT hours at most.
And fully skilled priests or shamans may do a perfect job in this regard.

I mostly want to see diversity, not the ever same routine like instead of casting a heal, casting a rez.

I do know. But do I also have to respect that? (But you're right. I haven't thought of that.)