Death, Dying, and Exp Options

[Honis]

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.

[xardy]

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.

[Honis]

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.

[exocrine]

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.

[Honis]

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?

[xardy]

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.

[exocrine]

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.

[Luna#039;s Requiem]

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..

[Honis]

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.

[xardy]

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?

[Bird]

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

[exocrine]

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:

[Honis]

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.

[Shaidar]

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.

[exocrine]

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:

[Shaidar]

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.

[emeraven]

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.

[Hamilton]

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

[Hamilton]

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?

[Shaidar]

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.'