Death oOooOOoOo!!

I was just remembering ways we handled death on my NWN server. What happened one first you could choose to wait for a healer to rez you.. or you could choose to respawn at the cost of some xp & goal and a small % chance of an item degrading. You would appear at a healer with debuffs.

Now if you left the healer at the time it the debuffs (mainly physical penalties) would go away slowly over time. If you stayed at the healer they would go away much faster.

 

For me:

1 - only when the game takes, at most, a couple hours to be fully beaten. Clearly not the case here. Fine for an optional mode in offline play.

2 - never. I would rather have 100% of the gear be destroyed on death than allow anyone to profit from killing me.

3 - I prefer this, and other systems with a similarly low death penalty, because I find playing safe to be too boring to even contemplate. Most of my fun comes from playing reckless, engaging enemies I'm almost guaranteed to lose against time and time again, until I finally prevail; cowering away from challenges while I slowly build up my strength, only facing the challenge when I'm certain I will prevail, removes all the challenge, and the fun, from playing.

 

There always need to be a balance.

If I lose a day of progress on dying (or worse something even more difficult to obtain) I'm simply not going to play that game very long. The game ceases to be fun because I want to log on and play, not be afraid to leave town.

If hours played translates directly to reward, the economy will crash or there will need to be some impossible grind where the end game is dominated by bots and RMT (real money transactions).

I generally favor giving players choices and decisions can be made on risk vs reward and opportunity costs. e.g.

I can make 20 gold / hour safe
I can make 10-50 gold / hr taking some risk
I can risk 50 gold worth of gear on death to make more
etc.

Some players might both enjoy the thrill of risk but also be very skilled so even with the occasional deaths they're making 5x what the riskless person makes.


I generally favor a game where it's difficult to die but death has consequences. So you can fight your way out of situations rather than the "wipe and reset" mentality you see in some games.

 

Full loot by anyone

 

It is said that a liberal is just one mugging away from becoming a conservative. When I started playing UO, I thought players should ALWAYS work together against computer generated creatures. The first time I was PK'd, I was like, "Dude, you don't understand. I'm a PLAYER." Needless to say, I died.

My education completed, I turned right around and joined up with the nearest Anti-PK guild. I joined the KGB (Knights of Glory and Beer) when Siege Perilous started, and have been a PvPer ever since.

PvE pays the bills. PvP is my duty.

 

Most definitely option 2. Live with some risk of getting killed and losing all of your things you had on you. Don't want to lose all of your possessions, don't travel with them. Only take what you need.

 

Option 2 for this type of game. But then again if nothing is really gained while in the world as far as skills go I could handle option 1. If i were to relate to another game model for option 1 it would be DayZ but it would have to mimic character creation, handling, progression, and also consider thee amount of players you encounter and how easy it is to conceal yourself inside SotA.

 

Fully open option 2 for PvP; Limited option 2 for everything else (including SPO/off)

One of the main attraction to PVP is the risk / reward and emotional highs and lows. As such, losing in that environment should have the highest cost.

For all those players not partaking in PvP, there still must be a meaningful risk and cost to <strike>being stupid</strike> poor preparation or planning. As such, they should also be loot-able by the very NPCs and other creatures that defeated them. What should be looted however should be restricted to costly but recoverable items.

I've seen how innocuous and game breaking option 3 does in too many games to even consider it.

(Edit) However, unfettered option 2 does have issues, namely the creation of the distinct class: The naked player. That is also annoying when all you see around you are players that for fear of losing their stuff run around with no stuff at all. If this option was going to be taken, how would / should the system manage this behavior?

 

I don't think permadeath works in any multiplayer games: there are too many cheap ways to die from griefers to lag. Not to mention this is a harsh penalty that can push people away. A death system should have consequences that cause death to be avoided, but not punishing as to just kick a player while they are down. I enjoy being punished and having games be hard, but I understand we have a wide audience to which this game is targeted.

We know a lot more about the game than when this was originally posted, and with the new stretch goal at 2 mil the devs mentioned in the Hangout that full loot will be an optional setting. As such it might be better to not approach this thread as option 1, 2 or 3, and instead focus on how death specifically should be handled. Most of the options presented here seem specifically around the UO death mechanic. I only played UO during the alpha and beta, but I did like the way it handled death or at least how I remembered it be. I played a lot of NWN multiplayer and the best thing about NWN was every module could be completely different and there were a lot of creative handling for death.

I like it when death is story based and completely IC and RP friendly. Whatever the world and back story of SOTA is, I hope death is an extension of that world and its history.

NWN was D&amp;D Forgotten Realms so the <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Fugue_Plane">Fugue Plane</a> was commonly used. The souls of the dead would flow into the world of the dead to await its fate. I would hate dying and going to fugue just to sit there until resurrected. There might be someway to get back to a starting point with an xp penalty, but you always would try to avoid that until your whole party showed up for a visit or told you they could not get you. Boring for me, but fun for the rest of the party who is trying to save you.

Dark Souls is another good example of death being part of the story but death was also just another part of the game. You lost all your souls and humanity which you had 1 shot to get back; otherwise you had to earn it back the hard way. It was harsh and unforgiving but it seemed fair because dying was always YOUR fault due to the precise controls. It was also thrilling trying to retrieve what you lost knowing it was gone when you died again, but you also knew all you had to do was earn more souls and humanity. Harsh but not penalizing and yet almost fun in itself.

So I think consensus is that you become a ghost, and I would agree with that. Dying and becoming a ghost that could follow your friends around and at least watch the action would be fun. I think in UO you could be seen, but I think seeing and talking to ghosts should be restricted to those skilled or talented with those sort of things. Ghosts which are enemies would be older spirits driven insane and well practiced in re-entering our world, which would not be true of your fresh soul.

On death your body drops and you can watch the scene until you are brought back. If you walk too far away from your corpse, or your body decays, you would be transported to some world of the dead where you would have to find some way to return. It would be nice if this was a game among itself: a city with mysteries to explore and tasks to complete with multiple ways to become corporeal again. I think RG would do great at this after watching his D&amp;D session. You could not have traditional combat because you are already dead, so this would be a city or world of puzzles unlocking the the gift of life or something worse than death (maybe find yourself haunting Chuckles house). However, the hard part is adding enough content where people won't just know the gambit to return as quickly as possible.

This makes dying part of the game and has sting of possibly taking you out of the living world for an extended run. It also works with single player since it really just more game. For multiplayer, you have opportunity of using skills or spirituality to pull lost players back into the world by finding their body or at a temple, and for those unskilled they can carry your limp corpse to someone who can. I think this solution would work well in all play modes and have uses and strategies in PVP. Players could cast spells to banish spirits sending all dead players to the dead city thus restricting their resurrection on the battlefield, give spirit forms the ability to possess the living, etc.

Part of the story, part of the game, fun but harsh and best to be avoided.

 

How about option 2.5? Anything you have equipped is lootable but not everything in your bag (some magical ward prevents this) or vice versa, everything in your back but not everything you had equipped. That way there is still risk but not as bad as losing EVERYTHING.

 

Also it would be cool if you decided to stay dead and make a living as a ghost. Yuck yuck.

Maybe your skills work differently dead and could build up to haunt a house, possess animals, etc.

 

How about a anti-looting skill, that goes hand in hand with a looting skill. If you don't have the ability to loot, then you can't, but if you have the anti-loot skill, you can't be either.

it would stop PKers from targeting non PvP people.

 

@motiv, PKs can't target people who have not agreed to PvP, so yours is a solution for something that is not a problem.

 

@Umbrae, in UO people frequently used ghosts as spies, particularly in PvP - ghost cams, we called them. Before heading into a dungeon, you could kill a member of your party, they'd head into the dungeon, invisible, and scout out where the enemy lay, or if they were present at all, and then come back for a quick resurrection, and the party could then head in with advance knowledge. Variations on that theme were common.

 

I think an option which would add a LOT to the roleplaying and combat is to have healers with resurrection powers have a significant role. Or maybe corpse teleporting powers - wouldn't it be cool to steal away a corpse out of the clutches of a PK'er!

Regardless of which option for death is chosen, if you have a healer with you they could bring you back to add an extra level of complexity to PvP. Healers would be in demand in all parties and PvP situations. Not a new idea - other games have this, but it seems that if there is full looting this would give another defensive strategy.

I would be for making death hard for PK'ers and how they have to have a lot of things to consider - coming up with real strategies for taking other players out rather than just having the biggest club.

 

@Owain - Which is why I recommended that the "ghost" only be able to go a certain distance from their body before getting expelled to the underworld or whatever. If the body is carried they can move further, but this should be limited to a normal range of vision. I doubt that would be exploitable too much.

If I remember in UO you could be a ghost and wander the world and yeah exploitable. But if you could only hang out close to your body with risk of getting removed from the earthly plane I am not sure how much of an advantage this would be. Also, for Career ghosts you would have limited range too. Say after doing some task or quest in the underworld, you are brought into the world to haunt someone's house. You might be able to knock over objects or make noises, but if you tried to go any where else POOF back to underworld.

 

Let the players decide, which option they want to choose. For me it's most likely option 3, since I don't PvP very much and don't like to loose everything after a death against a monster without the chance to get it back. Or when you do it, give players the chance to fully get the loot back. But items, that simply vanish from existence, is for me as immersion breaking as a complete Resurrection without any loss.

@Umbrae: Yeah, Dark Souls had a really nice death system (and a really good PvP system, too; I usually don't like PvP, since it always results in a zergfest, but in Dark Souls, it was thrilling and fun).

About Option 2: I would not support Full Loot in all PvP-content (or Zerg-content, as I like to call it), since it was indicated, that PvE player shall get an incentive to go PvP. And then, I don't want to loose everything I worked days/month for, just because a hord of PKs are going to zerg me. If players want to have that thrill and go Full-Loot, then allow it to them by an option.

Full Loot in PvP-guilds would be Okay for me, since I'll most likely never join such a guild and will most probably never see such a player online. This should be stated in some kind of Guild contract, you have to accept when entering a guild.

Suggestion: Why not include some kind of shrines in the game, where when you pray there, you activate special functions, like a Full Loot function or a Permadeath function for the hardcore players.

What I don't like to see are better items/equipment, etc. for PvE content for players with such modes turned on, since it should be the thrill of danger, that will be rewarded when you survive the content (or the ability to full loot enemies, who allow it).

Cheers,
Andreas

 

Option 2!!! with insurance system and blessing for some objects. I think that would be perfect as UO.

 

Do we only have those 3 options? How will option 2 work in singleplayer if you die in a spot with lots of monsters? I guess run back to re-equip and try again, and if you can't get to your corpse at all you lose it all eventually? or you'll go back later in the game I guess?

Here is my take on dieing in an RPG:

The penalty should vary based on how easy and frequently it is to die. A very difficult game where death lies around every corner if you aren't exceedingly careful might have very light penalties. A game where dieing is easy to avoid should have very harsh penalties.

So, you could have state loss, skill loss, exp loss, durability loss, or combinations of those. If you are resurrected from your corpse there is minimal or no loss, and your gear is auto-equipped like it was(you are back in your old body). You can also drag your corpse around to get a restoration cast on it to restore most of your lost stats/skills/exp.

If dieing is too frequent that system wont work well. There are ways to make dieing less frequent (dieing gasp, a hit can't take you below 10% of your hps if you had more than 15%, an adrenaline rush hits you and you can flee quickly away) or if you want frequent death and just an inconvenience of corpse recovery that works too.

Option 2 is my preferred choice. I do not like insurance. Blessed items are fine, all unique quest items should be (things you cant just go get again) and the very rare bless deeds are okay. Basically insurance in UO made it so most of the time you didn't even care if you got your corpse back, just a bit of wasted time.

Who should be able to loot you? Will there be a timer for corpse decay and others can loot you then? I don't know, all systems are agreeable to me. If you want a degree of realism, any equipment that was worn takes awhile to remove. (undressing a corpse).

 

You should choose to play the game with whichever option you want. Just make a flag in the option screen. If you get a thrill out of playing with perma-death, who am I to stop you?

And you should always be able to choose corpse or gy.