how about this for death?

So after watching a dev chat about death - http://tinyurl.com/kqknzw5.
Which made me think about this video - http://tinyurl.com/lg5xcqw.

How about your body disappears from where you died and appears at a grave site.
You as a ghost has to go back to the grave site to reclaim your body.

Before your body does go to the grave it does sit there for like 10 minutes or so.
why
1. for pvp-loot mode - time for people to loot your stuff
2. for resurrection - for this to work in this game you as a ghost can lead the resurrector back to your body. You have to be with your body to be raised which would then bring you back with all the stuff left on your body.

If you don't get resurrected in time then your body and anything left on your body would be back at the grave site.

Also in a pvp-loot mode other players can rob things off your dead body at the graves sites.
So you need to hurry back to your body.
Of course they will need to dig your body up.

Once you do get your body back maybe you have to dig your way out of the grave.
Enough to freak out the citizens of this new world.

Also I posted somewhere else that maybe your tombstone can keep track of how many times you have died.

 

I like the UO system where you are exactly where you were, but as a ghost. So you saw your corpse being looted (ha-ha) and then you had to run your ass around looking for a player or NPC to resurrect you. This was good too since sometimes a player on premises would resurrect you right there.

In SotA you should have like a newly resurrected status where your skills are gimped for a minute or so but that also means no one can attack you, maybe a few minutes. Shadowbane worked kinda like that.

 

There are already some good threads about the death system. I think it might be better for the Devs to have consolidated information for review, and many get alerts from the existing threads.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/death-ooooooooo.1585/page-7#post-36416
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/death.849

Dev+
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/death-in-new-britannia.116

Also remember the Death system has to work for single player too.

 

Yea I like the UO way, but for storywise it's hard to find a reason to have 10 bodies laying around the place.
If your ghost and body had to be together to be resurrected it would make things harder but make more sense.
Maybe someone could drag your body (I think I heard Everquest did that) to safety to resurrect you.

As for single player I hope you can have NPC companions and maybe they can rez you.

But the thing I like most about this is having your dead body go into a grave.
And then having your ghost go back to your old body so you can dig yourself out of your grave.

I could see some good story lines going around that.
And it opens up a new profession - grave robbers

Just a thought
I'm still good with UO death if that is the method they are using.

 

I like the idea of bodies ending up in graves. Love it, in fact. However, allowing looting in the graveyard will lead to many problems. There will be lots of scavengers hanging out in the GY waiting for bodies to come in so they can pick up free loot. There will be many different groups, in fact, meaning that the GY will be a constant war zone. Whichever group has control of the GY will be stripping down every body that comes through. In fact, it seems that the GY would be the most profitable PK spot in the game.

If there is full loot (and I don't think there should, but assuming), it seems mighty unfair that if a person manages to avoid losing their gear on death to automatically dump their body in a spot that's guaranteed to have looters waiting, and where they're very likely to be rekilled. This will also make corpse-camping trivially easy, and when you make griefing easy you make it inevitable.

Great idea, though, Just fill the place with guards.

 

I kinda like the idea of graves.... but not draggin of bodies or whatever. How about after you resurrect, wherever that is, your body turns into a small cross and lump of soil (looks kinda like a grave). Shadowbane did something like that too. Once you resurrected your corpse turned into a cross, so a places of great battles (or a tough boss) didn't have a hundred of the same naked body laying around, but had a ton of little grave-marker crosses.

 

I think it would be great to crawl out of the grave.
http://tinyurl.com/nno5wx5

Yea I'm not sure how to limit it.
Maybe some kind of stealth game to get past the guards.
And of course I'm only talking about a mode that allows pk's, looting, stealing etc.
Every other mode would not allow it.

A grave wherever you died would work, but thats a lot of graves.

Giving everyone their own tomb might mean you could even get a nice stone and decorate it.
Maybe upgrade from a small stone to a large mausoleum.
And a good reason to have cemeteries in the game.

 

@jondavis

I think you misunderstood me (or i explained it poorly!). It is a temporary marker, a small cross or a small cross over a fresh patch of soil. It is just to signify someone died there, it disappears after a while but it just looks better than a bunch of corpses of the same character everywhere.
But yeah, if there was a battle, or if someone kept dying over and over in short period of time, you would end up with a ton of little markers. It looked kinda cool actually after a big battle/siege in Shadowbane.

I dont think it would be logistically plausible to create crypts and mausoleums for player characters (or make them lootable, for that matter).

A lot of these ideas are interesting but I feel would take away from the focus of the game. The actual process of dying and coming back should not be an adventure. Focus is to keep you playing the game itself, not to create additional levels to keep you away from 'the action'.

 

I think side adventures are good, it's not like your forced into them.
You could just crawl out of your grave and be on your way.
Someone else might want to compete for the best stone in the graveyard.

I'm not sure why not, all you would need is some space and some stones.
Maybe some graveyards would need their own instance but others could be in town.

For loot all a player needs to do is use a shovel a few times, open the tomb, and then open the loot like you would anywhere else.
Again that is only for a loot mode.
I know most players don't want this.
But for those of us who do I think it could work.

 

@jondavis

It sounds interesting in concept but I wouldn't want to take part of it. (remember there will be at least 30000 players/graves). Keeping the loot on the body makes more sense to me. I am pro [mostly] open loot but looking for graves where loot gets moved to just seems exhausting.

Typing that gave me an idea:
[In an] Open loot system
Unclaimed loot would be teleported (after lets say 15-20minutes?) to a random grave in a graveyard.
Players don't get their own graves but each town would have a graveyard
You can dig/loot the graves but you would lose significant karma, maybe even turn criminal

I am still against any teleportation of my ghost. I'd rather turn into a ghost wherever I died, it adds to the effort of finding a healer and running back and it also adds strategy to PvP.

 

@postulio
Yea I could go for some unclaimed loot appearing in some graves to dig up. - sounds good

And I never meant to teleport your ghost, just your body and that is only after a timer I'd say 10-2o minutes.
After your ghost found the healer he would have to take the healer back to your body. Once your ghost and body are together then you could be rezed.
If you can't find someone to rez then after that 10-20 minutes your body teleports to the graveyard.
You are still a ghost, and maybe a ghost on the top map can just walk over everything without getting slowed down.
Then once your back to your tomb - you double click on that, then crawl out of the grave.

So what does this do.
1. Unlike UO if your body decayed you lost everything
This way if you don't get your stuff back in time you can still get your loot back at your grave.
2. Yes it could give work to grave robbers - if someone thought of a good system for that.
3. You would get to decorate your own tomb which sounds fun to me
4. Creates some content of people crawling out of their graves that might scare the locals

Problems:
1. Yes just like houses, how much land do we want to use up for something like this.
I could see like 10-20 stones in parts of towns
The rest I'm not sure, it may need its own map.
2. Trying to get back to your body with a healer may turn out to hard to do.
That is why I was thinking of other players dragging your body.
Maybe even your ghost could drag it.

 

The UO system seems more natural and intuitive. Your body lies where you died. Otherwise, how did you suddenly wind up in a graveyard somewhere? It would be one thing if you were in a party, and there was a mechanism for the party to pack your body out somehow, but otherwise this is one of those immersion breaking, "how in the heck is THAT supposed to work" things for me.

 

I would rather there were cemeteries that your body would goto. And if you didn't make it in time then an evil wizard could raise you from the dead and use your body for his/her own evil purposes. The cemeteries should be located in areas you are welcome...so if you're a lowlife that has no friends and you're just trying to bother people in an area that you are not welcome...well guess what, you're going to be walking a long time before you ever get back to this area again.

Should give the player the option to stay there...if they stay too long they open themselves up to looting...the longer the wait, the more you leave open to looting.

Or you could just opt out of the whole thing and go back to the grave. But it doesn't make sense to respawn in a cemetery so once you run out of time you should respawn in your house or a substitute house - like an Inn or some place you're bound to (we can do better than this).

Ok, but then the new favorite hunting ground is dead player land (or cemeteries) so what's the balancing factor that makes this mechanic fun for everyone and not just the ganking jerks that camp your dead body?

I like the counter idea. I also like mechanics that give incentive to players not to die over and over again.

 

How does any body wind up in the grave?
Do we really need to see the whole process?

 

Well, if you want to delay your resurrection by a week or so, it might make sense. I don't think most players would find that fun.

 

My point was body + spirit = life. If a wizard ran off your body then that means you have to get a new body. I was trying to make it more real then having a different body everyday. And I agree maybe based on how good you are you can have your grave in better towns.

UO did something like this in towns. After you turned to bones anyone could loot you. And maybe something like this will have to work to please both sides.

How does spawning in a house make sense vs a cemetery?
If you die, most of the time people come get your body and bury it.
They don't sit you in a chair back home at your house.

Like anything you have to balance things, I'm not advocating grave robbers as the best profession in the game.

 

You die, they take your body and bury it (if you don't get a rez first), your ghost goes back to the body, you live
Why does that take a week or two?

 

I'm down with "more real" but I'm really down with "functional and balanced".

Many games have tried something like this...but few have really made it functional. The big problem I also see in PVP games is that you get killed and there are like 3 dudes standing over your corpse and this leaves you with but a few options that generally come down to this: 1) Stay and listen to them taunt you until you respawn. 2) Leave early and imagine what they're doing with all your stuff/know that if you return for whatever reason they will still be there happy to kill you again. This is just a bad system.

The respawn in a house is better cause you're not just coming out of the ground. People in the town don't know if you just died or you decided to log on to the game and go shopping in the center of town - it's more immersive.

As for burying your body, I don't know that this works when you're out in the middle of the woods by yourself. Does a dead person bury themselves when no one is around?

I think grave robbers in the game would be AWESOME...but as we both agree this would require an undefined balance.

 

As long as I can hack apart bodies and put them in bags I'am happy.

 

I should also mention that any good death mechanics will allow the dead player the opportunity for justice (whatever that means in this game).