Death, Dying, and Exp Options

[Minthos]

It could be as simple as allowing players to bring an extra set of equipment to remote areas and store it at a safe location.

[exocrine]

It could be, sure. But what would these safe places be? How much work would something like that take to code? If you're going to go to all that trouble to make death more convenient, why not just make it less harsh in the first place and save yourself the trouble?.

How about looking at harsh deaths in a different way? What if items become less effective as they lose durability? That way you can just damage items rather than destroy them. If a player's gets damaged to the point that it's no better than normal plate armor, that's pretty harsh. At the same time that player isn't totally screwed.

Or perhaps the large durability hit is part of the respawning process, meaning that if a toon is rezzed his gear is only damaged by the blows it took to kill him. That way groups can keep on playing for longer.

[Minthos]

It wouldn't just be to make death more convenient, it could also make the game world more pleasant and interesting. Depends entirely on implementation and interweaves with many aspects of the game. Those safe places would of course have to serve other purposes than just providing storage for players, they could be outposts or towns or anything with a selection of other services and functions.

Wow has durability loss upon death, and frankly, that sucks. But that's just my opinion of course.

[exocrine]

Sucks as in "not a good system", or sucks as in "****!"? ;)

If you have towns and outposts everywhere that kind of limits the "untamed wilderness" aspect, and frankly takes all the fun out of exploring. It also precludes the creation of player towns. The only non-intrusive way to do something like that would be to have a hidden cache system, but that would be fairly memory intensive.

IMO harming multiple aspects of gameplay just to make up for the deficincies of another, is the wrong way to go about things.

[Minthos]

Yeah.


It doesen't necessarily have to be anything major. For example a high-level npc living alone in a hut somewhere in the utter remotest wilderness wouldn't be very intrusive or atmosphere-breaking, but sufficient to provide a safe place to store some backup gear.


Allowing players to create towns would be allowing players to create relatively safe places to store things, which would be allowing players to store things.

Not really.

What you say is true of course, but you sound like you accuse me of that. Please try to understand what I meant. Be creative; suggest solutions insted of looking for problems. Assume the best.

While we're on the subject of untamed wilderness; Yes, of course there should be places where you can wander for hours without meeting anyone else except hostile npcs. Yes, of course places like that can be devoid of safe places to store equipment. Places like that should be an exception from the rule of easy access, because their nature makes access difficult.

Places like that shouldn't be where everyone has to go to grind from level 45 to 50 though. Most players want to move only a short distance to find the right mobs, and then a short distance back to town to drop of loot or have dinner or whatever, and they shouldn't be robbed of that option.

[exocrine]

So what make's WoW's system not good? I've never played it myself.

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Something like that wouldn't be too bad, but the problem would be thinking of enough similar ideas to keep things fresh. Having hundreds perhaps thousands of NPC hermits would get kind of silly.



Sure, but for that to happen you have to start off without outposts/hermitages etc. all over the place.



I guess I kind of was, sorry. What I was trying to get at is that I don't think item loss will work. Basically it creates a situation in which a player needs to carry around spares of everything (have spares nearby) or face overly long downtime. That's neither fun nor realistic. I think that instead of trying to think of additional systems to accomodate item loss, it would be better to just start over from scratch.

On a related note, the more disposable you make items, the less people will care about losing them. If you go out hunting expecting to lose your weapons or armor (like bringing spares to leave with a hermit), is it really all that harsh when you lose them? I'd rather items be more permanent, something players can get attached to. If for nothing else, it would make PVP looting a much bigger deal.

[Minthos]

I don't really know, but I can guess at something. Even though death is boring, humiliating and later in the game fairly expensive, it doesen't really , so you end up being not as cautious as you otherwise would. It gives a feeling that death is something that doesen't really matter. That alone is a reason why I don't like it, and it also results in more deaths, which leads to more boredom, which is another reason why I don't like it.


If you go out hunting expecting to lose your weapons or armor, then you do so knowingly, and in that case you would either bring disposable equipment or have a pretty good reason to risk something that isn't disposable. People would typically have one or a few sets of their best equipment which they use when they don't expect to die, and sets of disposable equipment that they use when they expect trouble. This is a side-effect of item loss, and whether it's a desirable one is of course arguable.

[exocrine]

I think I may have found the answer, so tell me if I'm on to something here.

Ideally, the balance of effort to reward should be fairly constant from one activity to another. By extension, in the grand scheme of things, a combat profession should not be any more or less profitable due to item loss (or the lack there of).

In order for combat to remain financially worthwhile, we can assume that if an item is twice as easily lost, it needs to be twice as easy to obtain. So hypothetically, if a certain piece of armor will withstand 10 durability loss deaths, then in an item-loss system that piece of armor should take 10 times less effort to obtain.

So assuming that an item's value won't really change (in terms of usefulness vs. time invested) between the two systems, item loss is no more "harsh" than item degradation. So why does it feel that way?

I hypothesize that it is because item loss presents an immediate, tangible punishment upon death. Item degradation on the other hand presents a delayed, more abstract punishment.

Examples:

($100) has been been destroyed.
($1000) has lost 10% of it's durability.

In either case your character's total wealth (cash plus assets) has decreased by $100. You're really no worse off in either system, with item degradation your armor is still useable, just worth less if sold, and that much closer to destruction. With item loss, your armor is gone but can be replaced with pocket change (comparatively), and you likely have several spares already on hand.

The difference therefor has to come from the way this penalty is delivered. It's really just classical conditioning (Pavlov would be proud). The short version is that smaller but more frequent corrections are more effective at teaching your subconcious that death=suxxors. And in attempt to avoid suxxors, your subconcious (autonomic nervous system, actually) triggers a larger adrenaline/endorphin release. Ergo, you get more excited.

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Arguable? Yes please ;)

So, in essence, the side effect of item loss is avoiding risk when ever possible, and when it isn't, making sure that you're not really risking anything?

It occurs to me, that such a system penalizes taking risks much more than it ever really penalizes death. If losing your good armor is such a horrific thing, you won't take any risks while wearing it, because taking risks = eventually losing your stuff. When risk is unavoidable, you then choose to only risk things that you care nothing about. This means that for the most part, the only items lost through death will be the one's you don't really need. So how exactly is this harsh?

More importantly, how is this fun? If you just go around attacking mobs that don't really stand any chance of taking you out, where's the thrill? where's the excitement? where's the challenge? All you end up with is boring repetition... that's right... GRIND. Taking risks is the fun part. It's what get's your adrenalin and your endorphins pumping.

[Minthos]

I think I may have found the answer, so tell me if I'm on to something here.

Ideally, the balance of effort to reward should be fairly constant from one activity to another. By extension, in the grand scheme of things, a combat profession should not be any more or less profitable due to item loss (or the lack there of).

In order for combat to remain financially worthwhile, we can assume that if an item is twice as easily lost, it needs to be twice as easy to obtain. So hypothetically, if a certain piece of armor will withstand 10 durability loss deaths, then in an item-loss system that piece of armor should take 10 times less effort to obtain.

So assuming that an item's value won't really change (in terms of usefulness vs. time invested) between the two systems, item loss is no more "harsh" than item degradation. So why does it feel that way?

I hypothesize that it is because item loss presents an immediate, tangible punishment upon death. Item degradation on the other hand presents a delayed, more abstract punishment.

Examples:

($100) has been been destroyed.
($1000) has lost 10% of it's durability.

In either case your character's total wealth (cash plus assets) has decreased by $100. You're really no worse off in either system, with item degradation your armor is still useable, just worth less if sold, and that much closer to destruction. With item loss, your armor is gone but can be replaced with pocket change (comparatively), and you likely have several spares already on hand.

The difference therefor has to come from the way this penalty is delivered. It's really just classical conditioning (Pavlov would be proud). The short version is that smaller but more frequent corrections are more effective at teaching your subconcious that death=suxxors. And in attempt to avoid suxxors, your subconcious (autonomic nervous system, actually) triggers a larger adrenaline/endorphin release. Ergo, you get more excited.

Uhh, yes, you're almost right. If the corrections are smaller and more frequent, they are, as you said, more frequent. If you are saying that more frequent death equals more excitement; that milder punishment equals more adrenaline, I daresay you are wrong.



The first part is true, but even in the grand scheme of things you have to reward risk somehow. There can be combat without risk and it should be less profitable than combat with risk, because of the risk. I'm talking about risk though. You can't rule out risk from the balance equation. You must always have a chosen amount of reward for the corresponding amounts of risk, effort and cleverness. If the other professions don't present immediate risk like combat does, they must compensate with something else. Added effort is, as you say, not good enough. Other modifiers can be indirect risk in the form of investments, delayed reward, higher demands for something (could be in-game resources or qualities the player has), use your imagination.

With any system (item loss or whatever else), balance can be tweaked according to the realities the system presents. Item loss allows for stricter punishment without resorting to tremendous amounts of boredom.


Arguable? Yes please ;)No, I won't argue that point. It is my subjective opinion that this side effect probably is a good one.


No, that's not it. If an outfit is worth an insignificant amount, a character's usefulness while using it should be greatly reduced compared to what it would be in a normal outfit. Nobody wants to feel insignificant so players will use the best gear they feel they can risk, according to each situation.

It occurs to me, that such a system penalizes taking risks much more than it ever really penalizes death. If losing your good armor is such a horrific thing, you won't take any risks while wearing it, because taking risks = eventually losing your stuff. When risk is unavoidable, you then choose to only risk things that you care nothing about. This means that for the most part, the only items lost through death will be the one's you don't really need. So how exactly is this harsh?

How can a penalty for death become less severe than a penalty for risk, when the risk is based solely on risk of death? If chance of death is 100% then punishment for death equals punishment for risk, but for any chance of survival the punishment for death will be greater than the punishment for only taking the risk.

The risk we're talking about here has an implicit reward attached to it, and that is increased chance of success.

Imagine this: Player sees someone with a nice item(or a very rare npc which drops something nice), and thinks "I want that item, I'm going to try and kill him". Then consider what equipment that player would use, knowing that with subpar equipment worth $10, chance of success is 5%, with standard okish equipment worth $100, chance of success is 25%, and with his best equipment worth $1000, chance of success is 75%. He only gets one attempt. If he fails, he lose his gear AND his chance to get that item.

How is it harsh? I dunno, you tell me. I never claimed item loss was harsh, I just said that item loss was good and that harsh penalties were good..



You're not making a very convincing argument if you're trying to use excitement and risk as arguments item loss.

Players will usually want to perform their best in any situation. They won't willingly enter a situation where they have no chance to win. Better equipment improves their chance to win, therefore they will risk expensive equipment in dangerous situations. I don't know if you have ever tried a system where players lose items when they die, but I have and I can tell you it works. People actually go to battle with good equipment..


This post has a rather harsh tone to it, and if you really believe the world is so black-and-white that players would never risk anything even when presented by a suitable reward, or possibly that such a reward would not be presented, then I apologise for my tone and hope you will understand one day.

It is obvious that you don't like my idea, which is ok, but all your arguments seem to be based on ignorance or narrowmindedness and to be honest your tireless arguing is getting to me. I know it shouldn't, but I can't help it. For that I also apologise.

Your posts have brought up important issues, but I think you are grasping at straws now, and this is not the time for that. Not everyone can agree, and this forum is for making suggestions, not decisions. If you showed curiosity and interest I would gladly explain much, but now you seem more intent on "proving" that my opinion is wrong. I ask that you think through your motivations for posting further replies to my posts.

[exocrine]

I'm not saying that at all. My hypothesis was that reliable, consistent penalties are more effective at conditioning death-aversion in players. Having a stronger aversion to death will result in a stronger "fight or flight" reaction (more excitement) when a player is placed in a situation where death is possible.

A good real world comparison is paying for things with cash or credit cards. With cash you pay when you buy, with credit cards you don't have to pay until the end of the month. Either way you do it, it still costs the same amount of money, but with a credit card there's a disconnect between buying and paying.

In this example cash is like item loss; death, penalty... death, penalty... death, penalty. Credit cards, then, are like item degradation; death... death... death, penalty (x3). In either case you pay the same price, but item loss is more effective at teaching the brain that death=penalty.

The bulk of that paragraph was basically to help establish that in two otherwise identical games, item loss is no more harsh a penalty than item degradation. Given that, I was curious why you found item loss exciting but item degradation boring. This hypothesis is just my psuedo-scientific attempt to help explain that. Of course, given that I've never played WoW, and I don't even know what you're comparing it to, the death penalty might not even be what makes the difference. But regardless, it all makes sense in terms of classical conditioning

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I totally agree. Effort/Reward is . So basically taking bigger risks should be more profitable, even after you account for lost equipment.

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Fair enough.


Umm... oops. I meant to put a smiley after that :D
The risk we're talking about here has an implicit reward attached to it, and that is increased chance of success.

Imagine this: Player sees someone with a nice item(or a very rare npc which drops something nice), and thinks "I want that item, I'm going to try and kill him". Then consider what equipment that player would use,...

Players will usually want to perform their best in any situation. They won't willingly enter a situation where they have no chance to win. Better equipment improves their chance to win, therefore they will risk expensive equipment in dangerous situations.

Funny how much the tone of a message can change when you forget to add a smiley face. I do, in fact, realize that people go out adventuring in more than their short clothes and newbie gear. ;)

Yes, sometimes there are things worth taking big risks over, and when you do it's a huge rush, but most of the time the rewards aren't nearly that high. What ends up happening most of the time is that people only put themselves in situations where death is very unlikely, barring some horrible turn of bad luck, or running out of potions, etc. Honestly, I don't blame them for doing so. It's the best way to get ahead. It just doesn't make sense to take big risks over small rewards, nor to get yourself gimped in the first 5 minutes of hunting. But in my opinion, that's boring. Where's the fun in hours of knowing exaclty how things are going to turn out?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that taking a huge risk of a small penalty can be more fun than taking a small risk of a huge penalty. I don't deny that games with item loss can be challenging and fun, I just think that there are better ways to handle death.

[Minthos]

Ok, yeah I agree with most of that. Just thought you contradicted both yourself and me :) Sorry.

Yes, sometimes there are things worth taking big risks over, and when you do it's a huge rush, but most of the time the rewards aren't nearly that high. What ends up happening most of the time is that people only put themselves in situations where death is very unlikely, barring some horrible turn of bad luck, or running out of potions, etc. Honestly, I don't blame them for doing so. It's the best way to get ahead. It just doesn't make sense to take big risks over small rewards, nor to get yourself gimped in the first 5 minutes of hunting. But in my opinion, that's boring. Where's the fun in hours of knowing exaclty how things are going to turn out?

I'm a thrill-seeker, so I will go for high risk in most scenarios, without much regard to profitability. I simply do what is most fun. I understand there are people who do the opposite and follow the lowest risk without much regard to profitability. These types should be able to find what they seek in a system with item loss. There is a third type, those who follow the profit and calculate risk only in regards to profitability, and I assume it is those you are concerned about. Those will have to be baited into taking risks by promise of higher rewards, or they will keep doing the low-risk stuff. Either way I believe they can be pleased somehow, although I cannot tell you how.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that taking a huge risk of a small penalty can be more fun than taking a small risk of a huge penalty. I don't deny that games with item loss can be challenging and fun, I just think that there are better ways to handle death.

I agree that high chance of a small loss can be fun, and a high chance of high loss can also be fun, just as a small chance of high loss also can be fun. Item loss should enable the player to choose any of these alternatives, or even low chance of little loss for those who like that.

Thanks for showing me patience when I had "misplaced" my own :)

[GageEndal]

I think that a degrading mental state would suffice for being knocked out (I hate saying killed since you aren't dead) for a time. Right at first you would take a 50% loss to all skills that would last for 1-2 minutes and then it would be a 25% loss to all skills for about 10 minutes, then it would be a 10% loss to all skills for 10 minutes and then you are back to normal.

I've been knocked out a few times, that's about what it feels like.

[Honis]

Assuming GageEndal's setup (previous post).

Make it so that the time regulating the % you initially get is based on the what knocked you out. The stronger something is in compairison to your vitality determines times your dazzed.

For example:
I'm a little n00b gnome and I walk into l33t giants cave.
A giant doesn't just hit me, he "knockes me out" in one hit. That should cause me to stay dazzed longer once I got back up (or went back to my last "home point.") than say "baby bunny" knocking me out just outside a city.

I'd say the times that GageEndal gave would be good for getting knocked out by an even match. Add 5 -10 for each time from the giant hit. Subtract about half for getting knocked out by the bunny (assuming you had a higher skill than a newb.)

[StaticGrazerr]

Lets see, how death should be handled. Hhmm, well I'm partial to the old run to the nearist healer as a spirit and get ressurected by a healer or Ank.
But I like the idea of mabye doing so kind of Rite of Passage method. I think that would be rather interesting, if not only for the higher up levels. Where you have to preform a simple task for a spirit or god to return to your life, or just donate an item to a spirit or diety.

[Minthos]

I'm currently of the opinon that permadeath is bad, but that we should still design the game so that people don't die easily.

People have suggested going to hell or limbo when they die, and having to somehow make their way back to the world of the living.

Yellow suggested Karma based on your actions ingame.

This "idea" I propose is a sort of combination of those things.

It assumes that severely wounded characters will be incapacitated (unconscious or disabled), with the possibility of death if they recieve considerable additional damage, or if they don't recieve medical attention within a reasonable amount of time, and that resurrection will not be something one can easily do on the battlefield, even if there is no fighting going on.

When players die, they go to hell, limbo or heaven, depending on their "Karma". There could be several levels of hell (as in Dante's Inferno). Getting back to the world of the living should be a time-consuming procedure, but preferably not too boring.

Heaven should obviously be more pleasant than hell, a reward for nice and honorable characters, while the lower levels of hell should inflict increasingly harsh punishment on the cruel and wicked.

[Jaramar]

I'm currently of the opinon that permadeath is bad, but that we should still design the game so that people don't die easily.

People have suggested going to hell or limbo when they die, and having to somehow make their way back to the world of the living.

Yellow suggested Karma based on your actions ingame.

This "idea" I propose is a sort of combination of those things.

It assumes that severely wounded characters will be incapacitated (unconscious or disabled), with the possibility of death if they recieve considerable additional damage, or if they don't recieve medical attention within a reasonable amount of time, and that resurrection will not be something one can easily do on the battlefield, even if there is no fighting going on.

When players die, they go to hell, limbo or heaven, depending on their "Karma". There could be several levels of hell (as in Dante's Inferno). Getting back to the world of the living should be a time-consuming procedure, but preferably not too boring.

Heaven should obviously be more pleasant than hell, a reward for nice and honorable characters, while the lower levels of hell should inflict increasingly harsh punishment on the cruel and wicked.

Why punish evil more then good? It's a legitiment RP and has been done quite well at times.

[Minthos]

Why punish evil more then good? It's a legitiment RP and has been done quite well at times.

There should be concequences for your actions - if there were no penalties for PKing and griefing, there would be too much of it, and then it would be too difficult for non-pvpers to avoid getting griefed all the time. Thus we would have to prevent it altogether. Harsher punishments means better control, which again means we can let players have more freedom. That's what you want, isn't it?

Specifically, the idea I proposed rewards those who kills evil characters by giving them the satisfaction of literally sending them to hell. This particular point is something that can be expanded upon, for example with fancy graphics involving flames and demons coming to drag their soul down to hell and imprison it..

[Jaramar]

There should be concequences for your actions - if there were no penalties for PKing and griefing, there would be too much of it, and then it would be too difficult for non-pvpers to avoid getting griefed all the time. Thus we would have to prevent it altogether. Harsher punishments means better control, which again means we can let players have more freedom. That's what you want, isn't it?

Specifically, the idea I proposed rewards those who kills evil characters by giving them the satisfaction of literally sending them to hell. This particular point is something that can be expanded upon, for example with fancy graphics involving flames and demons coming to drag their soul down to hell and imprison it..

If you commit evil then the god of evil will want to get you up there for another round and will be cheering you on. Penalties for killing and griefing should be in the game world itself. Guards and hunting parties tracking you down and such... things that are avoidable but make being a bad guy more work then your typical griefer will want. Anyways, if we go along with the factional system then you can only "grief" those who are at war with you already.

[Pandra]

There's more then one way to grief someone though. It doesn't just involve PvP.
There's mob tagging, kill stealing, killing quest npc's, repeatedly opening trade windows, spamming duel challenges, standing on the mob's space while a player is fighting in hopes of getting them to attack you instead.... Griefers really go out of their way to annoy people, and odd as they are, I suspect they'd enjoy being sent to a hell that involved in game punishment.

Call me pessamistic, but I can already invision bragging threads involving who had to take it up the ass from a Balrog longer. Griefers do not think on a normal level. Nothing in the game is real so nothing they do in said game can have any real consiquences. Unless you do something like banning them, locking their characters or otherwise restricting them. Then they'll start screaming that they're paying for their game and they have the right to play however they want, even if it is wreaking other people's play time.

[joshpurple]

Just 'cause I'm not sure, is PW aiming for an 'All Ages' game, or '14+ years,' etc. (I'm not even sure what the rating systems are for games?).

If it's to be open to all, it might be needed to keep death, violence, gore, etc. at a min?