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Posted by: Honis Aug 1 2005, 10:48 AM

I had a brainstorm for a "new" idea for death, dying, and exp.

Do it the old-fashioned way, with save points.

Everyone remembers playing console RPG's and saving at particular points in the game. We could implement this also.

When your character dies, you respawn at the last place you saved. You lose the exp you gained, items you acquired (losing items may be a bit much), and completed quests.

This could help encourage people to save and then explore a high-risk area at little or no risk (now scouts/rangers that can sneak won't be alone). It will also discourage running through a high-risk area to finish a quest just before dying (something I have done several times in FF XI and EQ2).

Of course there should still be a revive system so that the tank in a party isn?t screwed out of hours of exp. At some point we could even add an item that is a portable save point (untradable/sellable and can only be got through an extremely difficult high-level quest). I should have a reset time on it so that someone doesn't macro saving every 5 sec's.


note: By EXP I mean, any points gained for any skills.

note2: Items that where bought or traded would not be lost due to death. Only items dropped by fallen creatures or for quests.

note3: The actual quest would not be lost due to death. (save>>get quest>>die>>still have quest in list)


This thread is to present ideas for a death, dying, and exp system. Add your own ideas as well as sage me :D.

Posted by: Minthos Dec 2 2005, 04:35 AM

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 :)

Posted by: exocrine Dec 1 2005, 04:53 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Dec 1 2005, 06:25 AM

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.

Posted by: exocrine Nov 30 2005, 09:19 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Nov 30 2005, 09:41 AM

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.

Posted by: exocrine Nov 29 2005, 01:31 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Nov 29 2005, 12:01 AM

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.

Posted by: exocrine Nov 28 2005, 04:43 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Nov 26 2005, 10:39 PM

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.

Posted by: exocrine Nov 26 2005, 08:46 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Nov 26 2005, 07:11 PM

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.

Posted by: exocrine Nov 26 2005, 01:53 PM

That probably would be handy for combat players, but how will it affect crafters? Will PCs be able to keep such a network of vendors stocked with goods? If not, how will crafters be able to make a living when there's always a fully stocked NPC merchant just a few minutes away from any player in need?

Either way, you'll end up with PCs selling to NPCs selling to PCs and that's never good for building a sense of community. You end up with the same sort of impersonal detatchment that communism causes; you're not crafting a sword for your neighbor, you're crafting a sword for "The System". Looking at it from the other side, instead of fighting with the sword that Bob the Blacksmith from down the street made for you, you're just fighting with some sword you bought from some generic NPC.

Like I was saying earlier, every design decision will have multiple effects, some of which we might not always recognize at first.

Posted by: Minthos Nov 25 2005, 11:36 PM

Very important point, and I think it would be good also for other parts of the game that all the items required for anyone to play the game are available(one way or another) within short distance from just about anywhere.

Posted by: exocrine Nov 25 2005, 09:20 PM

Well, I agree with Minthos' personal view of risk and loss. However I feel I should speak up on a few issues.


I suppose some people might look at corpse runs as just another aspect of harsh deaths, however I disagree. The way I see it, a corpse run is either what you'd be doing anyway, or an annoying waste of time. When a toon dies, the player will either continue what he was doing beforehand (fighting), or choose to do something else (crafting, log off, etc). If the player chooses to continue fighting, chances are they'll be going straight back to where they died. In this case a corpse run is totally redundant, and has no real effect on the harshness of death. On the other hand, if a player wishes to do something else, then a corpse run is

And in my opinion that's not harsh, it's just an annoying timesink.


On the other hand I can certainly understand the desire for looting in PvP. After all, the thing that draws most people to PvP is the increased risk. From that point of view looting is sort of like putting up money in a game of poker, or playing "for keeps" in a game of marbles when you were a kid. Not everyone's cup of tea to be sure, but anyone who wouldn't enjoy that much risk would probably be happier with PvE anyway.

So how do you reconcile PvP looting with not leaving your equipment behind in a PvE death? I think a good way to do it would be through priviledged looting and a minimum time between death and respawning. In the ~30-45 seconds before a player can choose to respawn, his toon is lootable by the player or group that killed him. Once a player has respawned or been rezzed he can no longer be looted (for obvious reasons). The carebear friendly aspect of this would be that NPCs never loot, so in a PvE death a player would be at no risk of being looted, and would have no corpse runs to worry about.


It's important to keep in mind the side effects of any design decision. Wanting to make combat more exciting by raising the stakes is all well and good. But how you do it will effect other areas of the game as well, and not necessarily in a good way. The main thing I would be concerned with, at least in terms of harsh death, is downtime. If items are lost and/or worn out through death, how far out of his way will a player have to go to replace a vital item that gets lost or destroyed? If toons are heavily handicapped after death, how long will a player have to sit around doing nothing while their toon recouperates? It goes without saying that doing nothing and otherwise wasting time is not as much fun as actually playing the game.

Posted by: xardy Nov 24 2005, 11:25 AM

yeah i liked the eve system verry mutch.

Posted by: Sunjit Nov 23 2005, 11:44 PM

I like minthos idea very much.

Posted by: Minthos Nov 23 2005, 12:06 AM

In eve, when you have a clone, it updates automatically with every new skill point you gain. So you don't really have to spend a fortune to avoid losing skill points if you die.

In wow, durability loss is permanent when you die. If you die in pvp, there is no loss.

It is a space game where things are a bit different, but with a bit of thinking, the death system can be ported to a fantasy setting. As you will notice, this post talks alot about eve. It is my best point of reference for this discussion, so please bear with me.

I'll explain in detail:
When you are defeated in battle, your ship is destroyed. Your ship can be insured so you only lose about 30% of its value for standard ships. The modules (weapons, armor plates, afterburners, etc etc) have a chance to be destroyed or damaged, and those who are not destroyed will be left behind in a container, free for anyone to pick up. The modules can not be insured.

Your character will be in a pod when your ship is destroyed. Warping the pod away from the battlefield is usually easy, so you don't normally lose your clone or your implants even if you are defeated. NPCs never shoot pods, but players often do if they can.

Clones are the insurance for your skill points. More expensive clones cover more skill points. As long as you have a clone that covers more skill points than you have, you are safe. You do not have to update your clone every day, only when your skill points (are about to) exceed the max capacity of the clone you have. When your pod is destroyed, you lose the clone, and you must buy a new one unless you want to risk losing skill points.

I'm not sure how much you lose if you die without a good enough clone, because I've never heard of anyone who has done it, but I've heard it was 10% of the difference between your skill points and the max capacity of your clone.

Eve's system may sound harsh to some, but I've tried it and it works real nice.


A bit of fear is good. It is easier to become attached to something and take it seriously if it affects your emotions. I'm not saying all games should aim for as much fear as possible, because not everyone likes fear, and too much fear can get tiresome for anyone.

World of warcraft has very little fear and gets boring quickly. Eve has more opportunity for fear and has been fun for many players for a longer time than wow has even existed. Still, eve has many carebears and they seem to enjoy the game alot in their peaceful existence.

What PW should aim for, and EVE pulled off well, is to create an environment where people can make an implicit choice about how much fear they want, ranging from almost none to really much.

I think losing items is a good way to penalize death. The harsher death is, the more careful players will be. Of course, risk should not be mandatory, but those who choose it should be rewarded, although not enough to give the impression of it being mandatory. Also, the game (with regards to power of items and price/availability of items) should be designed so that people can afford to die frequently and still enjoy the game.

The good thing about losing items is that it invokes fear in players, without necessarily making them useless or giving them a boring chore they have to complete before they will be able to enjoy the game again.

I cannot stress enough though: .

Is that possible? Yes it is. Is it desirable? Yes, I think it is, but it's not up to me to decide.

Death vs. NPCs. Again, eve system is great. Some of your gear is destroyed, the rest is left behind and made lootable. NPCs don't loot, so very often you can return to where you died and salvage the remains.

Then you say "EVE is a space game and PW is a medieval game, we can't use anything from eve in pw". That is wrong. All it takes is the creativity to see how the concepts and knowledge can be used without directly copying the system. I'm not saying we should try to imitate eve either, I just think eve is a good example that we can learn much from observing.

My point in the following rant is that if death is something to be avoided and the rewards for killing someone with �¼ber equipment can be awesome, pvp will be much more exciting than if death is just a 5 minutes inconvenience and a kill is just an increment to your kill counter.

Lastly, let me tell more about how the system in eve works. Note that my point of view is that of someone who has been a thrill-seeker as a noob and a pvper of "good alignment" as he became more experienced.

When ships are destroyed, they leave behind all the surviving modules that were fitted, and all the surviving cargo that was carried. Players keep most of their items in hangars where they are safe, so usually the value of what drops from a ship is fairly small, but it can sometimes be rather high, depending on the type of ship, what it's currently being used for, and the economy of its pilot.

I live in lawless area, together with my allies. We have hostile players fairly close by and we sometimes fight each other, mostly for fun. We lose some stuff when we lose and we get some back as loot when we win, but we have to earn money from time to time to cover our expenses. When players don't have much money, they fly small and inexpensive ships. They won't have as much firepower or armor, but they can still be very useful.

Some players are pirates, and they mostly live in borderline areas where they aren't as vulnerable, and have to jump through hoops if they want to kill someone. Those can sometimes be referred to as "griefers", but any player with a bit of experience can avoid them with not too much effort. They often kill careless people, and sometimes those drop very valuable loot. I don't know how profitable it is to be a pirate, but something tells me it can be very profitable if done right.

My friends and I sometimes hunt pirates, and many of them are surprisingly easy to kill compared to our regular enemies. When we kill pirates, they sometimes drop very expensive items. Of course, not always when we hunt pirates do we actually catch and kill anyone, or even find anyone to kill. You see, pirates are perhaps the most elusive and cowardly pvpers in existence :p

Carebear types and newbies sometimes pay pvpers to be allowed to hunt and/or mine in the areas the pvpers control. The ores are more valuable in the lawless areas, and the npcs drop better loot there. To hunt the npcs or mine the ore there they need quite expensive ships and equipment, so even if they are at peace with the locas they still risk some by operating there. Access to facilities is also much worse in lawless areas, so cargo runs to safer space are required. Those cargo runs are dangerous, but with the proper precautions which include at least one scout, they can be made quite safe. The money to pay the inhabitants for access can often made in a few hours of well-executed operation per week, and the rest is mostly profit. Still though, there is more money to be made in safe space, but it requires a different kind of planning and effort. More boring stuff.

Rant ends.

Posted by: Japheth Nov 22 2005, 10:27 PM

Just a few thoughts on death.
What if the items on your body stay on your body unless you have some sort of magic binding (a la UO). Items in the bank are not lost, and you are free to retrieve your body items if you wish.
I think an exp. (or skill point) loss is unrealistic, as you would still remember the events leading up to your death, so logically, you still have the "experience" though I do think temporary ressurection sickness (statistic or skill penalties ) is more logical, especially if it stacks on multiple deaths.
Finally, what if instead of being penalized for death, you simply aren't rewarded for it. For example, if there is a fame system, you don't get any fame for dying (or very little) but you wouldn't get fame if you didn't venture out either. The only way to get fame is a SUCCESSFUL adventure. Fame rewards could vary from bonuses to social-based skills, to powers based on popularity (a la deities).
just my 2 cents.
Japheth

Posted by: Hankellin Nov 16 2005, 12:47 AM

The durability loss in WoW is temporary from what I recall.

(I stopped palying it a long time ago after the repetitive nature of the game got too boring.)

Perhaps a permanet loss to durability of equipment?

Posted by: Sunjit Nov 15 2005, 11:16 AM

you don't have to walk to your corpse...you can revive in front of one of those ghosts at graveyards. But you gain death sickness and lose 25% of equipment durability.

Posted by: xardy Nov 15 2005, 10:58 AM

and you have to walk sometimes verry long times to your corpse :p

but the wow death system doesn't realy scare people off. When you play a game you should have some fear of death and should try to stay alive, not just die and run to your corpse and just go smashing at your enemy again.

Posted by: Sunjit Nov 13 2005, 03:09 PM

I like World of Warcraft's death penalty. You don't lose exp, but your equipment lose 10% of durability.

Posted by: Blacksmile Sep 5 2005, 06:47 AM

Well as I have been the person, who brought up that perma death discussion emeraven mentioned on IRC i will quickly give my thoughts about how a perma death ruleset could look an in my eyes should work.

First assume, that every character has some pool, that tells something about how heroic he is and how highly the gods are favouring him. Lets call that pool Karma for now.

So now if you go out and do things in the world your character will collect Karma slowly. The more heroic your deeds are (higher level monsters relative to your level, more dangerous quests or whatever) the faster you will obtain Karma.

Now lets look at how your character can die: If you get hit by a monster or player your HP are reduced. If this reduction lowers your HP to 0 or below, you character will loose conciousness. If your life goes down to high into negative amounts (mesaured by your max HP i assume) your charcter dies. If you die your Karma pool will be checked. If you have points in it left, you can be resurrected. I have no plan how this would work, but i could imagine spells, the automatic resurrection at a shrine of your chosen god or something like that. (I would personally prefer, that there are no ressurection spells, to make dying more uncomfortable.

So thats the system as i imagine it, now i will work out a bid, why i think this could work. First thing most people say when talking about perma death is technical issues like lag. Well if you are lagging and your character dies of that you will most probable have Karma points left and be resurrected. You wont die of lag often enough to use your karma up faster than you can obtain it.
Seond point is Player Killers... Well that is a problem, but if you have karma left and get resurrected at the shrine of your god, a player killer can only kill you once he meets you unless he kills you at your shrine. Additionallyif you set up a system that lets your character remember his murderer one could set up a bounty on characters that are PKing and those players will get hunted and die to many deaths in short time to be able to recover from all of them with their karma.
Last but not least the system with unconsciousness will not let you die to often, if you are not extremely unlucky and dont keep fighting monsters that are beyond what you are able to fight. Most monsters will not keep attacking players as they go unconscious. Only the most aggressive ones will or those who hunted the player to eat him. I can imagine, that also during PvP most players would settle on knocking out their enemy rather than really killing him if they have no reason to do so.

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 24 2005, 05:17 PM

Oh no, not at all.
I actually do not expect a quick answer either, but more of keeping discussion moving.

Posted by: emeraven Aug 24 2005, 04:46 PM

I saw your question when you posted it Hamilton, Ive asked the Project Manager to give a offical answer. I hope you didnt feel this question was ignored.

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 24 2005, 01:50 PM

Ok then that needs to figured out. So in general terms, the ideal player is one who wanted to play WISH as it was. In that sense to further discuss Perma-Death will not be productive.

Posted by: exocrine Aug 24 2005, 12:40 PM

Not really. The game server is just a machine, and as such can only operate under the rules we give it. And there is simply no way to design rules to mimc a human GM's ability to fudge dice for dramatic effect. Even if you could, the server would still just be following the rules.



There's no specific thread that I know of, but I've always been under the impression that the target audience is "us". Basically we're trying to create a game in the spirit of the original WISH, therefore our target audience should naturally be the type of people who enjoyed the beta. I'll leave the specifics, and the official statement up to someone else.



I don't think it has been completely ruled out. If you're serious about being a champion for the cause, you should start a new thread about it since it really is a different topic. It just works out better for everyone that way.

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 23 2005, 09:58 PM

So Am under the impression that the death rules have not been decided on as of yet and that Perma-Death is still a possibility, correct?

Dezwo has some good points and my impression from the thread is that Perma-Death has not been fully explored in detail (well maybe it has over voice conferences, but not on the forums). There are other items that can be tought of. Also the death system will be tied directly to the character generation system.

Overall, though not everyone will be happy with whatever system is used. Therefore the target audience needs to be defined. Once defined, then the rules should be designed towards them.

Question:
Has the target audienced been defined, and if so, where is the thread? I apologize for not being able to find it... and I apologize even more if it happens to be staring me in the face.
If this has not been defined, I suggest that this be considered a priority.

And made into some kind of sticky for those of us who weren't able to keep up, so we will know where the focus is at.

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 23 2005, 09:25 PM

Point taken and thanks for the link, I will review it.

Even if the chances of death were reduced by a GM, the possibility of death existed and most of the time people would not do "stupid things", and if they did...


On another note, can it not be said that a system can also "fudge" the results?
:wink:

Posted by: exocrine Aug 23 2005, 07:56 PM

Permadeath has been discussed previously. If you feel strongly about it, you might want to read up on the arguements for and against it that have already been made. Unfortunately the thread is a bit hard to follow as it was a multi-topic discussion, but I've done a bit of highlighting for you.





That all depends on how sadistic the GM is :twisted:

But sadly your comparison is not valid. What keeps tabletop RPG characters alive is not grouping, but a benevolent GM "fudging" dice rolls to keep players from heroicly (or stupidly?) off-ing themselves. Sure, sometimes dying a heroic death is cool, but most of the time a GM will "cheat" in the players favor in order to tell a more enjoyable story. In other words making the game more fun for the players by preventing permanent death. Sounds a lot like MMORPG ressurection to me.

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 22 2005, 10:53 AM

Indeed there are many problems with Perma-Death, which I think the hard to solve problems is PvP related.

Soloing is still possible, just riskier. If the character system allows for players to have multi-talented characters then there is less risk, such as Fighter/Healer type. Additionally creatures no longer have to be of x levels highers to be considered tough, they can be just to near equal level to be challenging.

Perma-Death enforces players to play smarter, not harder.

In a magicial realm, there could be many things which can aid a player from suffering a death or a perma-death; such as Rez's, Talesman, amulets of something, etc. A character can suffer a number of deaths before a Perma-Death occurs, whether by chance or pre-determined.


A Perma-Death rule system would need for the game to be designed around it, rather than the death system to be designed around the game or as an after-thought. Implementing a Perma-Death rule set is challenging and not an easy task. However, once accomplished I believe you would have a very unique and fun system.

Posted by: Shaidar Aug 22 2005, 10:15 AM

The problem with perma death is that there are those players that will want to solo no matter what. If we allow them to be perma dead over and over again then eventually they will quit. Perma death isnt really away from the mainstream, its just stepping back to reality. In a magical world I just dont think that perma death is needed, there are plenty of ways to explain why someone didnt really 'die.'

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 22 2005, 08:23 AM

Might I suggest to make the death system different from the main stream?
The current trend is to make death to very little negative impact. I suggest going to the other direction, such as Perma-Death.

An example is Trials of Ascension.
http://www.shadowpool.com/index.php

And with such a set of rules in place, the game will need to be done differentfully as well. People will not group just because they have to, they will do so for out of fear and to improve their chances of being successful.

Think about, when playing tabletop RPG's how many times where characters allowed to die?

Posted by: Hamilton Aug 19 2005, 04:32 PM

If there is no fear of death, then there can be no heros. :wink:

Posted by: emeraven Aug 8 2005, 03:36 PM

Although this is a thread in death, a lot of what is suggested ties into other parts, in this case the armour. If the armour was a part of the person, like their skin, then healing that person would help prevent death. If though is armour seperate from the person, perhaps spells that either keep the armour together, or make the enimy ignore the weakpoints might help better.

Though off topic armor degridation could be a form of penalty for death, but perhaps not in every case (eg poison). Perhaps the penalty should fit the death, a skill degredation is one option. Another is where a spiritual person in the party can perform a sort of quick fix to bring them back (to not hamper the party too much), their soul could aquire a debt, or karama. A similar idea was mentioned on our irc channel a few days ago, this debt may be just a challenge (even adventure) to overcome, rather than a straight forward penalty.

Dont fear the reaper.

Posted by: Shaidar Aug 8 2005, 09:14 AM

I also dont feel that armor should be 'healable' I feel that even someone that survives an attack but just barely should have severe armor damage also. A healer should not be able to heal armor, only a blacksmith, etc. should be able to do that. What I suggest is that a person's health pool not be reduced until armor is weak enough to penetrate. Thus there would be a health pool though I think it should not be near the size as other games, and only HP could be healed by a healer.

Posted by: exocrine Aug 4 2005, 05:10 PM

It's exactly the same, actually.



Well, yes and no. While getting killed should definitely leave a few holes in your armor, I don't think the armor damage should be tied directly to death. For example, if a player is killed his armor is severely damaged, but if he is just reduced to 1 hit point, gets healed, is reduced to 1 hit point, is healed, etc, his armor never takes a big durability hit. It just doesn't really make sense, theoretically the armor of someone who died once could end up in worse shape than that of someone who died ten times.

I would normally offer an alternative, but this isn't really the appropriate thread to have an armor discussion . :wink:

Posted by: Shaidar Aug 4 2005, 09:04 AM

Here are my thoughts...

I think that when a player dies and is revived magically (by the game or another player,) there would be a time of 'weakness.' This would be similar to the Wish system as I understand it, with a - to skills for a certain amount of time, the more you die in quick succession the weaker you get. With this there would be no Experience penalty, but it would be harder to get that experience off the same monster because it would take longer to kill in a weakened state. This 'weakness' is realistic and not too harsh.

Now I also think that if someone dies, most likely their armor is ruined, at least in the area where the attack penetrated and killed them. So the player would either; have to have another set of armor in their saddlebags, have a player that could patch the armor handy, switch fighting styles so that the weak area is better defended, or run all the way back to town to get it repaired. Now the other part of this is, even if a player repairs thier armor the armor wont be quite as good as it was to begin with so that eventually they will have to switch armor. This is the harshest part of death and depending on how a player deals with it, it wouldnt have to be too harsh. It also helps the economy because a player wouldnt beable to use the same armor forever and ever.

Posted by: Honis Aug 2 2005, 11:41 PM

Thank you, I forgot that skills are usually harder to regain at higher levels (been awhile since I've been one :cry: )




I agree fear is not fun, I guess what I meant was worry. There would be risk or no risk depending on how well you strategize your saving. Like the WISH experience you gave. If you saved and then ran off to fight, you would have had little risk. A party/soloist that is out leveling/questing away from a city would be taking a risk because they are out for a few hours gaining exp. A forager would take a risk of losing all of the items he's gathered (all profits).

Well, I can tell my save idea needs to have to many rules to be effective, so I think I'll stop defending it for now.

I still hold a hate for flat % and gimping though :evil: .

Here's an example of why I hate gimping.
In FF XI, there were places that where great for leveling in parties. No0b area's had nearby respawn points (at higher levels you don't need one because you have a white mage in party). An entire party could die, and then continue fighting with no down time because due to death (deleveling was rare in most circumstances.) Or, your tank could die, respawn, and finish tanking the monster. Usually, the tank would meet the party on there way to a zone (running from the mon.) and give everyone a better chance to make it out alive. As the DD and puller, I had a ton of hate left over after a tanks death, so you can understand; I have the most respect for these kinds of tankers.

There is no avoiding finding yourself in a bad party. A bad party with gimped members will only get worst and may cause people to do more soloing.

Down time. The more of it you have the less likely people are going to participate in what causes it.

Well, anymore and I'll be off topic... damn, to late...


Please continue posting ideas and opinions for a unique, modified, or current death system.

Posted by: exocrine Aug 2 2005, 05:29 PM

Huh? I don't get it. By your example, the skill level 9 newbie loses .9 skill points but the skill level 100 powergamer loses 10 points. I fail to see how a higher level character would "feel it" less, he would in fact "feel it" much more. Especially when you consider that each of those skill levels will likely be harder to regain at higher levels.




I hate to break it to you, but these two concepts don't work together. If death presents "little or no risk" of a penalty, it won't be "feared". But if death is feared, then few people would explore a "high risk area". The fact of the matter is that overly harsh "death penalties" are not fun. is not fun.

To illustrate, I'll present one of my favorite WISH moments as it would have occured had death been "feared":

(me): I heard Threnallis has been over run by goblins and wolves. Want to go free the town?
: **** no man, we might die. I'm going to stay here and fight these low level mobs instead.

Does that sound interesting to you? Since I knew that dying would not ruin my whole day, I had no reservations about running off to my seemingly certain doom (I did in fact die multiple times). If death had been harsh, that day would have been bland and uneventful, instead it has become one of my strongest memories of the game. Do you see what I'm getting at here?



Post one up, I'll be happy to argue with you about grouping too :twisted:... Seriously though, go for it, I don't think it's been discussed much at all so far.



You've asked the right person, Honis. I almost always took on the "tank" role in groups, simply by virtue of having better armor than most of my friends. And yes, dying multiple times in rapid succession would more or less put you out of commission for a while (but it was still preferable to losing a whole bunch of XP each time). Which is why mages with healing spells were so important, if any group member died too often the entire group suffered, especially if it was the main tank. In turn, mages had a vested interest in keeping teammates alive, not just to avoid attack, but to maintain the group's effectiveness. Because if a group was gimped into sitting around and waiting, nobody had any fun.

I won't even get into the nightmarish bind-point runs. Suffice it to say, mages with ressurection spells were worth their weight in gold. :wink:

Posted by: Bird Aug 2 2005, 02:46 PM

An idea just crossed my mind... I remember a topic a while back about Gods (and Divine intervention), so maybe that can influence the penalty you recieve upon death.. For example, maybe if you do a lot of things to help your God, (or a God), then your punishment would be less severe, but if you did a lot of something like theiving or backstabbing, your punishment at death would be a little more severe..

However, I like the idea of the 10% handicap for 30 minutes or something of that nature..

But wouldn't thieves have there own god? Wouldn't this thieve god reward them and give them a less severe punishment? Or are we only having one god and he is good and everything you do wrong is beeing punishd?

--- Sorry xardy, i made a little error trying to quote your message but in stead i editted it without knowing it, hopefully its as it was now :oops: ---

but on topic, i dont think thieves had there own god. they changed to become thieves more out of desparation. for example, they went more like this: "No food, no shelter, what has this god ever done for us? **** him, im gonna obay his rules no longer and are gonna make life alot easier for me"
think they believed in the general 'God' but desided to not live by his rules and accept the consequences in the afterlife

They could how ever create their own hero, for example, the thieve that founded a big thieve guild could be remebered and by his rules the game could be played, dont think that would make him a god though :P

Posted by: xardy Aug 2 2005, 12:02 PM

An idea just crossed my mind... I remember a topic a while back about Gods (and Divine intervention), so maybe that can influence the penalty you recieve upon death.. For example, maybe if you do a lot of things to help your God, (or a God), then your punishment would be less severe, but if you did a lot of something like theiving or backstabbing, your punishment at death would be a little more severe..

However, I like the idea of the 10% handicap for 30 minutes or something of that nature..

But wouldn't thieves have there own god? Wouldn't this thieve god reward them and give them a less severe punishment? Or are we only having one god and he is good and everything you do wrong is beeing punishd?

Posted by: Honis Aug 2 2005, 10:59 AM

Here is a breakdown of a flat tax system:
Low Level: Skill is at 9, lose 10%, your at 8.1
Mid Level: Skill is at 50, lose 10%, your at 45
High level: Skill is at 100, lose 10%, your at 90

As you can see, as your skills increase you have a larger pool to lose exp from, thus death is felt less by the higher level.

If the % was setup in a tiered manor (much like the USA's income tax system) then the higher levels will feel a drop in skills much like the new guy will. (Since the creators run the entire system, high levels finding loopholes will be less likely.)

I also don't like being gimped for X:XX amount of time. I would rather just be a real gimp, and work through it.




I understood, I'm just in favor of actually losing something so that death will be "feared." Even though the death system in FF XI is hated, it instills enough fear to force strategy while fighting (ie. damage dealers HAD to deal damage, the tank HAD to control hate, etc.) In EQ 2, strategy seemed to be severely lacking. As an experiment, I did nothing but basic attacks in party and nobody knew (I was a scout/predator ). I started doing my thing later and people would make comments: "Wow, that skill increase I just got is really kicking in!" This should probably be addressed in thread for determining how partying will be "forced" fun.

Note: Addressing my incompetence, when I say lost in relation to Wish, I meant temporarily lost.


Another question: In the Wish death system, what would happen to a tank in a party?

It would seem to me, that there could become a continuous spiral down for him.

Posted by: Luna#039;s Requiem Aug 2 2005, 06:25 AM

An idea just crossed my mind... I remember a topic a while back about Gods (and Divine intervention), so maybe that can influence the penalty you recieve upon death.. For example, maybe if you do a lot of things to help your God, (or a God), then your punishment would be less severe, but if you did a lot of something like theiving or backstabbing, your punishment at death would be a little more severe..

However, I like the idea of the 10% handicap for 30 minutes or something of that nature..

Posted by: exocrine Aug 2 2005, 06:14 AM

I really don't like % systems ... I have real reasons for hating a flat % system, but it is extreemly simalar to my rants about flat % income tax systems. I can get into it on request though.


What better place to explain?. Especially since I don't think I've read your opinions on income tax.

I get the feeling that I didn't exactly get my point across earlier. In WISH, nothing was actually lost, you merely played at a 10% handicap for 30 minutes. If you died again within that 30 minutes, you got an additional 10% for 30 minute handicap that stacked with the fist one. Once those 30 minutes were up, the 10% handicap went away and you were back to normal.

Posted by: xardy Aug 2 2005, 05:02 AM

saga of ryzom just had an debt system where all xp you get go inthere untill the debt is gone. Bad system if you ask me.

Eve online has an clone system, well if your ship gets shot you lose it unless you have an insurance witch cost money. But if your pod gets killed you can get a clone that you made, but you still loose all your items and xp that you gained since you made the clone, allthough you can get your ship back with the insurance company. I think you could call these clones a save system. Becaus what they do is save your current skills and xp. But they cost money so aren't overused.

In mourning they had the idea of permadeath and you playing along as your own son or daughter i beleave, sounded intresting. Good for role players to.

In wow you just become an ghost and need to run all they way back to your corpse from the graveyard. I really hate this system.

I beleave in the first beta of wish you had bind stones at towns and you could bind yourself to it and then when you die you would respawn there without your weapons. But then you could go find your corpse and get your items back or ask some1 to do a corpse recal. Allthough this system was used to get back to a town fast, like go buy something in a town across the continent, die , ask a friend to do corpse recall or do it yourself if you stored the required ingredients in the bank.

Well thats some text, but i don't like any of these systems really, allthough the eve one is pretty good it can't be used in PW i think.

Posted by: Honis Aug 1 2005, 09:33 PM

How?
All trades are final. You die with zero gold, you respawn with zero gold. If you get a friend to be a "safe" pack mule for you, then more power to you.

If you mean:

Saves>>Finishes a quest>>gives reward to friend>>dies>>Recompletes quests.

Then you bring up a good flaw in the system. I guess the best way to handle this is by taking quest loss out of the equation.








Make it so they can only save once every game day, or once every 2 hrs (true tme).


Thank you for telling me how the Wish death system worked. I had only died once in the game and didn't notice a skill difference because I was usually crafting or gathering materials.

I really don't like % systems. It was effective in FF XI because you HAD to earn the exp back and HAD to be in a party to gain exp (this is all very painful if you had gimped sub jobs or bad equipment at high levels.)
EQ 2's just seemed to make me feel like I was playing with a mild hangover until the debt was worked off.

I have real reasons for hating a flat % system, but it is extreemly simalar to my rants about flat % income tax systems. I can get into it on request though.


I actually started this thread to get people to explain what they do and don't like about death systems in MMO's.
So I ask:
How do other MMO's handle death and what do you like/hate about it?

Posted by: exocrine Aug 1 2005, 04:11 PM

I don't think "saving" in an mmo would work very well, it's just too open to abuse. An unscrupulous player could save his game, give all his gold to a friend, die, respawn, give all his freshly respawned gold to his friend, die, respawn, ad nauseum.

Of course, none of this stuff even matters if PW doesn't use XP loss as a penalty for dying. Frankly, I don't even see how it could. XP loss works fine in a class/level based advancement system such as FFXI/EQ2, there's (usually) only one pool of xp to drain. But in a skill based system like the original WISH, it just wouldn't work.

Personally instead of an xp penalty, I'd rather see something along the lines of what WISH did. They handled death by giving players a 10% (?) penalty to all their skills/attributes for a period of 30 minutes. If a player died more than once in that time, the penalties would overlap creating 20, 30, even 40% and higher penalties. Dying was still a pain in the butt, but it didn't cause anyone to stop playing for 3 days, or run back to town every 10 minutes over a obsession about not losing xp.

Posted by: Honis Aug 1 2005, 12:33 PM

Thank you for reminding me about the PvP factor that has been talked about. I'm in the grey area about it because the project is still in the brainstorm phase. If this death system is used, it should be governed based on the penalties for killing/being killed.

I see your point about death becoming less dangerous but it could be setup so that you can only save X amount of times a day or save once every X:XX. I'm just looking for ways to be different from other MMO's. As far as I know, nobody uses a save system. Also, exp rewards or item drop rate can increase the longer a PC has not saved.

I do see another problem with this system. Role players won't like the idea of waking up just as if they had been blacked out since there last save.


Here?s how FF XI and EQ2 handle death:

FF XI
- Lose 10% of your experience to next level (Current Exp ? 10% * Exp till next level) (the X% may be wrong, it has been awhile)

EQ 2
- Develop an Exp debt. You die and gain some amount of debt. You can continue gaining actual Exp but some of it goes to pay off your debt.
o In a nutshell, amount of exp gained is gimped till debt is paid.
o Debt can be paid over time while logged out (Total is dissipated over 3 RL days)

Personally, I liked EQ 2?s way, but I usually paid my debt by not playing since it was a guaranteed way of avoiding more debt.

Posted by: xardy Aug 1 2005, 11:31 AM

this wouldn't really give you a penalty for dying. People that like to gank other people would just save before ganking them and if they die they don't lose anything. It wouldn't make the world dangerous for people, they just save when doing something dangerous and when they die nothing is lost.

Posted by: GageEndal Mar 16 2006, 11:04 AM

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.

Posted by: Honis Apr 17 2006, 01:40 PM

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.)

Posted by: StaticGrazerr Apr 17 2006, 09:17 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Sep 27 2006, 11:33 PM

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.

Posted by: Jaramar Sep 27 2006, 11:48 PM

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.

Posted by: Minthos Sep 27 2006, 11:54 PM

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

Posted by: Jaramar Sep 28 2006, 12:15 AM

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..

Posted by: Pandra Sep 28 2006, 07:42 PM

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.

Posted by: joshpurple Sep 28 2006, 09:07 PM

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?

Posted by: Jerky Sep 29 2006, 12:55 AM

Well, I think PW is aiming at ourselves as the audience. The correct term is called "interstital gamer." Here is a link to explain what that means:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050809/eilers_01.shtml

Posted by: Jerky Sep 30 2006, 02:37 AM

Hmm, yet another idea I had in bed at night, I need to post it before I forget.

This one deals with permanent death and offspring together.

The idea is that we give offspring as an options when a player dies. Say, when the player dies, you get a box that asks you if you would like to go to the character creation tool and pick a possible offspring to play as. The benefit and draw here would be that the offspring would be able to start out with many of the skills the parent had. The offspring could start our grown (and maybe contain info in the player page about who was the character's parent), but would start off with stats similar (if not a little better) than the parent (but maybe limited to better in 1 skill or something). That is to be discussed, but there is a catch.

In order to be able to do this, the player has to accept that this is the main character's last resurrection from the dead. This would have to be a big warning message to players, but could be interesting. The message would explain that choosing an son/daughter to play would give a stat bonus (or something like that, which would be an incentive). Then the bold words would say Warning, by doing this, you agree that this will be the last time Parent A (the main character's name) will be able to resurrect. If he/she dies again, it is for good, and you will then have to design your plot in the graveyard. (As a side-idea, only players who died permanently would be given the ability to choose a plot, which would be memorials to stay permanently in the game world). The player would then have 2 characters to pick to play. The parent, or the child.

I give incentives to "try" the idea because, lets face it, some people hate the idea of perma-death. This is a way to ease players' thinking into the mode that allows them to even try perma-death, or even try a game that allows for it. It is a gentle temptation to get players to try thinking out of the box and trying something that they might not normally do. With incentives and bonuses, however, you have to provide drawbacks as well, otherwise the balance of the gameplay is thrown off. So, the drawback is the acceptance of perma-death, without forcing it on people.

IMO, this could be a very fun (and new) challenge to gamers and might even make some try something new for once (imagine that?!?!?). There would be players who would have many generations worth of players (still alive) because when the offspring is played, the parent is still alive. If they were able to keep the parents alive, they could make a whole house full of generations of their character's family. Some players might try it and dislike it, then never do it again. That is the beauty of it, they have the choice! (oh, and obviously we would have an option in the GUI to tell the game to stop asking if they want to create offspring, so those who dislike it, don't even have to deal with it).

Anyways, this was just another of those random thoughts I have before falling asleep at 3:30am.

Posted by: Minthos Feb 2 2008, 03:42 AM

Inheritance and permadeath could provide a solution to the issue of wiping beta characters before release, that lets the beta players keep some of the ingame benefits they've worked for, while resetting anything that's too affected by bugs/inbalance/exploits etc.

We could, when the beta ends, set the perma-death flag for all characters, and as soon as they log in after release, kill them and let them choose a heir. Most of the money and items would probably also have to be wiped, but that depends on how the game economy is. How much of a bootstrap it needs to get working if it's player-driven, and how much of an unfair advantage the beta players have over someone starting from scratch.

Things like player-built cities I envision could be left standing, as long as there's ample opportunity for new players to also found cities (i.e. not all of the good spots are taken). Again depending on how much they contribute to the game world and how much of an unfair advantage it provides.

Posted by: Jerky Feb 2 2008, 01:14 PM

Beta-wipes are interesting, at least the final wipe before going live. The imbalance is going to start as soon as the first players start playing many more hours than someone else, so why start on an even playing field? I agree that testers should be able to retain something.

Posted by: Jaramar Feb 2 2008, 01:18 PM

I was figuring one might let them keep thier old chatacters, but have them all flagged for perma-death....

Posted by: Brotoi Feb 2 2008, 06:52 PM

So... If I'm understanding this thread correctly, there will be permadeath in the game and it will be tied into descendents, but the permadeath system will be optional somehow?

Posted by: Minthos Feb 2 2008, 07:23 PM

That's what I'm hoping at least. It opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, and keeping it optional should deflect the majority of the "OMG I DIED CUZ OF LAG/CRASH/XPLOIT" whine. Nothing is of course decided yet :)