Hi all,



here is some further background info on the death mechanic.



The main reason for the mechanic is to make "killing" somebody a two step process, the first step being the knockdown, the second being the actual kill.



For PvE, this is important in order to make sure that a group is players - running a dungeon that might take a long time - is not utterly screwed by one person getting killed and their gear breaking. As mobs only start killing knocked down players if the entire group is knocked down, this takes care of the matter while not changing the risk of a full group wipe.



For PvP, we want players to have a choice between just knocking somebody down and actually killing them. This is of critical importance for our upcoming reputation/crime system, as the reputation loss for knocking somebody down is much less than for a kill. In addition to that, a knock-down without kill is also a valid tool to get somebody to leave you alone when you are gathering resources in the world or running a nice mob camp without getting the full reputation loss of a kill.



With the recent changes to the kill action (much faster and not interrupted by damage) it is actually very easy to kill of knocked down players. It even give rise to some intererting gameplay, such as trying to use crowd-control to save an ally (though its very hard!) or using a tanky character to instantly kill knocked down players in the heat of battle to prevent a revive action.



There are some "special cases" / exceptions that could be added to the death mechanic, however, most of these create other issues. For example, if we said that in black zones - where reputation does not matter - there is insta-killing, then there is the issue that players engaged in PvP might suicide into a mob camp to get a knockdown instead of a kill. If we allowed a knocked down player to be killed by normal damage, there is the issue of accidential kills in reputation-relevant PvP and the issue of kills in PvE due to mobs using AoE spells. Of course, you could then say that AoE damage from mobs does not affect knocked down players, but at that point, you enter a slippery slope of creating a system that nobody understands any more.



Based on our observations thus far, the new death mechanic - after making the kill action faster and non interruptible - works quite well, and the benefits outweigh the downsides - and it is still very possible to actually kill opposing players even if your group is outnumbered. If you have any videos to the contrary, please share! We are always happy to make changes if something does not work well in practice.



All the best,

Korn