Player death.

[Scrote]

How do you plan on handling death? What happens to a PC when he or she dies? What happens to their items? Their stats?

S'right,
Scrote

[Lordosis]

The death system is pretty much the only "grey area" left in the Arcanity design. We're still kicking around a few systems and we're open for suggestions. EQ kicked your ass when you died. You lost a bub of exp, which set you back a few hours. That was too harsh. And you had to haul ass back to your corpse that was 4 zones away if you weren't a caster.

There are other issues of corse, since Arcanity is PvP. Yep, I'm talking about LOOTING. No, not looting your local businesses for a new VCR in the next riot, I'm talking about corpses here. I can tell you that it will NOT be full loot. That's about all I can tell you right now. The thing of it is, we feel that this is one area that really needs to be worked out during beta. We will try a few systems and see which system works out the best. In the meantime, we're willing to discuss it since we don't have some "revolutionary" system we're trying to push on people.

[joe]

I think death should have harsh punishments, I have the most fun when alot is at stake. When I go to foxwoods casino and they would give me almost all my money back after I lost it all making a stupid bet on pia-gow poker it would loss A) all the exitment of the bet. B) my great frastration, sorrow, and suicidal thoughts C) my disapionment and self loathing on making such a stupid bet and not saving atleast a 25$ chip to atleast get shitty drunk and wallow in my misery and plan the demise of the casino and the whole tribe, and how happy I will be when I dance on there graves after I win all the money those bastards have. And when I win, the exitment, come on? Thats when I'm most alive, you know? But seeing I never left with more than 3 dollars in my pocket, Oh well. Me and 7 bazzilion people stile go there and blow all there cash repeatedly. But if the high risk, high gain factor wasnt there I'm sure most of the people wouldnt. Why do people invest there money into stocks instead of savings bonds? Even if you bearish or bullish theres still the exitment of the higher risk higher gain. Sbonds are a sure fire investment, it doubles every 7 years. Nice and safe, but low risk low gain. No exitment. Ill be damned if im going to waste my money on something safe. The exitment of the bet is what keeps everyone buying scratch tickets, lotto tickets, trifecta tickets, stocks, ext. I know way to much about pro football teams when the only team I care about is the Patsies, because it helps me loose my money betting every sunday. You havent lived unless youll starve to death unless 2 of your bets go through. Thats exitment. Of course if you play smart you either always come out ahead or loose so little it doesnt effect you. Same with a game. If you play your game smart, you shouldnt worry about dieing, or avoid it. Or you could be like me and run around with negitive expierience and naked. And before you decide, remember that gaming was around thousands of years before computer and video gaming. As was combat, and nothing is as high a risk as combat. Exitment=fun. High risk=exitement. I should be punished for playing stupid and dieing. Not a slap on the wrist either.

[Scrote]

I fully agree with you there Joe. Bear in mind that such a system would be (and is) crap in something like EQ simply because of the way the game is designed. You can get stomped by a hill giant without even knowing the bastard was there. In that case having harsh penalties for death can be a source of frustration.

But if a game is designed so there's no such thing as an 'unfair death' then you can freely assign all sorts of penalties to dying because the times a player dies he or she would be fully aware of the risks involved in what they're doing and it would be a conscious decision and choice on their part.

Death is a tough subject to tackle though. I think the most important thing to establish is that whatever system is used it should make sense in-game. In EQ when you die you somehow mysteriously get resurrected without any explanation at any point about how and why this happens. The entire world seems to follow this pattern, what kind of a sick world is that where no one really dies? It doesn't make sense. (Why is it so easy to bash EQ?)

I'm all for permanent death and full item looting. In other words - as realistic as possible. This is an extreme position and I can fully understand why games don't use this. If a game were designed from the ground up to incorporate this I think it'd be truly badass, but as far as I know only Middle Earth had plans for this and that was before Sierra (boo hiss!) canned that dev team and put other people on the project.

I digress, yet again. I dunno what a good death system would be. I'd campaign for making death a harsh penalty - as long as the game is designed to incorporate this. I'd campaign for making the resurrection scenario a sensible one that fit into the world. I'd campaign for being able to loot someone's goodies - unless the resurrection system took that factor into account as well.

Apart from that I don't have any suggestions, good luck with that!

S'right,
Scrote

[joe]

I agree with you scrote, your o.k. in my book. I think harsh death penalties would fit well in this game. I really dont think EQ was a RPG, stats ment nothing, its crazy. I guess it is a good game since so many people like it, I liked AC better but not alot of people feel the same. I didnt like AC enough to play more than the free month though. I liked UO but also not enough to play for more than a couple weeks. But after about 2 days a gave up on EQ. Why am I telling this, I dont know. I'll move on. I hate how mmorpgs put more of a value on equipment than life. How can you expect people not to do the things people hate, like not role-play, not powergame, or whatever when people are not scared of dieing, but are only scared of loosing there valcan armor and sword of 5 daisies. And AC and EQ made this almost imposible to do, theres hardly any risk in dieing, you get your corpse and you have your life, all your equipment and only lost alittle exp. or have a vitea penalty. Thats pretty lame. How are you suposed to have any heroics? Everything you do is basically meaningless, if you throw your life away to save your friends and all you have to do is run to your corpse and continue the good fight, your act was basically like giving 1 quarter and 3 nickels to a bum when you have your whole paycheck in your pocket. Its apreciated, but didnt help him much and you didnt loose nothing. (note: I dont advocate giving money to any homeless unless you get a little dance or something in return) Im not against non-rpers or powergamers because the desighners set the stage for them. Thats human nature, if you can exploit something your going to. Im not saying a harsh death penaltie will make people say thee and though and that shit, but when someone throws there life away for there friends it will make the dead worth something, you know. And power gamers will not rush head first into any fight against everything if they are risking all they have. Am I making sence? Can I spell or what? I think I lost a y chromisone last night at the bar. Alright, later.

[Slitherrr]

Death is an extremely touchy subject in any MMORPG. Any way you put it, people will complain, and it's even worse because most of the people playing don't even have an idea of what they want to happen when death comes along. On the permadeath extreme of the scale, it is extremely un-good to work for hours and hours developing this character's personality, then suddenly lose it all to a freak circumstance, or a single uncalculated risk, or one of the above-mentioned "unfair deaths". After, heroes don't generally die in books (there are exceptions) because it takes a while to develop a character the reader will want to follow the experiences of. Then again, it is much for satisfying to, for instance, rush into a single battle to the death against five ogres to save a damsel in distress and have the damsel say, "Oh, you risked so much to save me, marry me!" than have her say "Hey, thanks bud, it really is annoying to walk that far just to get my stuff back." I would go for substantial death penalties short of permadeath personally, but ONLY if the game was designed from the ground up to keep people from dying for stupid reasons, and to give people some sort of opportunity to get away if they started something they can't finish (I mean, for crying out loud, whoever heard of a gelatinous cube outrunning and outswimming a full-grown human, for crying out loud ::CoughcoughEQCough:: ), just like a person has in real life. Joe, I see your example, and I generally agree, except that attacking things would be more a part of the heroic character's life than going to a casino would be a part of our lives, say weekly/daily as opposed to monthly/yearly/every once in a while, so having a good balance between not-so-hard and really devastating is important.

[Lordosis]

I understand your reasons that you think there need to be serious penalties for death. Let me provide some counter arguments, just so we can make sure we end up with a balanced system.

1) You say EQ's penalty is not harsh, but I disagree. It's true that you don't lose any items, since EQ is no loot. BUT you lose a boatload of experience. Well, you lose close to a bubble at higher levels, which doesn't sound like much to the casual player. But someone who has played a character about level 20 or so knows that a bubble of experience is equivalent to between one and ten hours of camping a spawn, depending on your level. So the penalty for death in EQ is between one and ten hours of YOUR LIFE!!! YOUR life, not your characters. That's what made me so mad in EQ. My character wasn't affected at all by death, but it hurt ME in a big way. I want to avoid that situation at all costs; regardless of the severtiy of the penalty, it has to penalize the character and not the real life player (i.e. the paying customer).

2) A good argument against severe penalties is: if my isp burps while I'm running from a hill giant and I die, should I be penalized? Well of course I shouldn't. BUT the server cannot tell the difference between an isp meltdown and a player yanking the cord out of his modem to avoid death. Therefore the server has to assume the worst and assign a penalty for every such death. This is the main reason I don't want extremely severe death penalties. The internet is anything but rock solid, I've died in other games many times due to internet issues. If I would have lost all my stuff on top of the bub of exp I lost, I wouldn't have kept playing the game. So that's why I'm weary of severe penalties, although I'm not ruling it out.

I guess when it comes down to it, there are four types of penalties (let me know if you think of others):
1) temporary stat penalties (ala AC)
2) permanent stat/skill/exp loss (ala EQ, UO)
3) item loss (moderate ala AC, or severe ala Meridian 59)
4) geographical displacement. (corpse retrievals ala EQ and others, respawning in the "Underworld" ala M59).

So I guess the question is, which types of penalties should we impose to be "firm but fair", a good compromise. I'm going to think about this before I answer that question. And no matter what we decide, only beta will tell for sure....

[Gratto]

OK i'm not gonna make to many friends on this one. O i''ll cut to the chase. I disagree with about everything so far on this thread. Ok you can throw stuff at me later but let me explain.

I do see some sort of death penalties, that i'm not going to argue about. But as far as 100% loot rights I totally disagree. (unless eq. doesn't effect gameplay that much) I've played PVP on EQ, and AC, and I see numerious players just running around PKing vastly lower lvl players, players already in a fight, next to death players, just soo they can loot some junky stuff or to harrass other players. (sorry its late and i'm not spelling very good) Granted you will see some totally twinked out characters that will be PK'ed just for thier stuff. All in all I think its a breeding ground for the "assholes" to come out. You all know were i'm coming from. In a perfect world this wouldn't happen, but its not. I can see one or two item looting rights but thats about it.

As far as death, I can see exp. loss only to NPC deaths, or somesort of skill loss type thing also. I myself prefer the AC method much more then EQ.(boo hiss EQ) I also have to disagree with eq's method of exp loss. For example: At any one of the hell levels, (30,35,40,45) When you die you lose a bub of exp. Well in those lvls that can be a days worth of work, and to toss it all down the drain because someone trained a Giant on ya its completly insane.

On perminate death:
People like to group with friends and such. Matter of fact I have numerious friends I like to group and hunt with. Now lets say we all hit lvl 10, and I die. This now makes it so I can no longer group with them. To me this would make or break a game. If I can no longer have fun playing then i'll go elseware, prob. with my friends also. You have to see it from other peoples propective. Some people like to play with people they know from other games, in real life and such. If all of a sudden I lose one of my friends due to perminate death, I might be inclined to choose a game were this doens't happen. Brickhouse needs to think about the many not just a few. Theres alot of overhead to running a game of this scale. ESP. when they are planing on not selling it retail. I'm not saying that perminate death can't be done correctly, but also keep in mind that a game has to be designed from the ground up this way. Monsters have to be retuned, lvl's need to be gained quicker, more lower lvl material then mid and high lvl and such.


ok thats all I have to say so far so let the flames begin... But all keep in mind that this is a open dissucion and i'm just relaying my thoughts.

___Rich___________
Is there a way we can come up with something differnt for death? I mean we do have numerious people on here and I think maybe we can work something new and improved on how to deal with death. I mean if your up to it and all. but if your asking us to choose from one of the four. I would have to vote on the AC temp stat loss, and UO/EQ method of displacment.(corpse run)

[Edited by Gratto on 09-10-2000 at 02:31 AM]

[joe]

Before I begine my conterargument, let me say this. Your game looks very good, I like alot of your ideas, how you justify things, and your goals, and I'm sure I'll like your game. Now, saying that, haha, you fell into my trap. Everyone on these boards have been bashing EQ, and you guys just made an argument supporting one of the games biggest flaws. I just got home and I'm pretty messed up right now so I hope I can get my piont across good. In your interview with the vault or ign, whichever one, you said you would like to recreat the paper and pencil game feel, you go on to the example about the old man at the bar talking to young adventurers about destiny blah blah blah. Thats (forgive my spelling, I wont blam it on being drunk, I'll blame it on the Y chromisone I lost the other night) enginuity, thats seeing a problem and fixing it, thinking, coming up with new ideas and new was to do things. If you look back at your favorite games, for me at least, I think of games that did things totally different. These games usually came from indapendent companies like yours that could do things the way they wanted, not just improve on already sucsessfull formulas. I think of Darklands, Realms of Arkania, Elderscrolls ext. But if you look at any catorgory you can see the best games were the ones that did it different. Half-life, tribes, System shock, Command and conquer, Warcraft, Dungeon Master, Ultima 7, Ultima Underworld, Privateer, Boulders gate, UO, EQ-blah blah blah yakkity smakkity.
Every mmorpg coming out is basically EQ with some changes. Why? EQ is safe, you know theres an adience for it. Its a sucsefful formula so instead of making a totally diferent game, you change or improve on a already existing one. Look at the games out or coming out, there influenced alot more by EQ than UO, Dark ages of Camalot, Shadowbane, Horizons, even UO2, HJ looked alittle different but the main concept would be the same. AC is just an improved version of EQ. What kills me is everyone says EQ sucks, but the cant wait to play the next spin off. I know you guys know alot more about EQ than me because I stoped playing at lvl 7, but I know this for sure, what paper and pencil system has you running around all day killing a certain thing repeatedly untill you can move to a different area and kill something alittle harder to kill repetedly? I've never played paper and pencil, but I'm sure the answer is none. That is very very very boring. But every game coming out (besides atriarch, which confuses the hell out of me, I just dont understand it, but god bless them for doing something totally different) has that as there core principals the same but might focus on a certain aspect more (ie PvP in in DAoC, and Shadowbane). Archeon looks like there trying to redo the whole thing but I almost garantee it will almost be the same. It kills me. No one is trying to actually make an mmorg that will actually have the core elements be different. Neverwinter Nights looks like it will be close to paper and pencil but its not an mmorpg. It can Be done, I have a slew of ideas, and if a big moron like me can do it, I'm sure people whose job it is to do it can.
Death penallty will have to be light if the game is based around just killing what you can while you can, untill you can kill something better and then move to next, dungeon-camp-area-zone-hill, and do it over again. Thats a terrible system, and no one tries to change it. Thats what they'll all be like, even the PvP games. In my opinion you will never be able to recreate a paper and pencil expieriance like this. Am I crazy for thinking this? Will this be the system 10 years in the futere. No, some one will do something different, but it dosnt have to be 2 or 5 or 7 or 10 years from now it could be now. You could change it.
And for the last guy who posted (sorry I forgot your name, I'm terrible with names, the guy who posted right before this one) you say that you enjoy playing with your friends, and if you died and couldnt play with them than you wouldnt play. This is another thing that I thing RPGs have totally wrong. Why cant a young warrior adventure with an expiereinced one? I obviosly havent been in any sword fights as they lost there popularity a while ago. So I cant speak as a warrior. But for over 4 yrs I was an Airborne Infantryman in The 82nd Airborne Division. So I can speak as a modern day, rifle toting soldier. When I was a cherry I knew shit (cherry is a new soldier, Or a FNG) when I whent to the field I would make alot of mistakes, I was an Assistant gunner/ ammo bearer which is a very hard job, especially when it is a two man job and I did both. I had to carry the spear barrel, tripod and most of the rounds for the M-60 machine gun, which is alot of stuff to carry and is a very heavy load. My gunner was a big dick, and if I messed up feeding the rounds, sitting targets, leading him in to targets, connecting links to the rounds, or tightening the gas tube I would get yelled at, slapped and when smaked (smoked is doing exercises like push-ups, mountain climbers, flutter-kicks, or grass drills, high crawl ext.) It was very terrible but you learn quickly. After 8 months I became a gunner for the M-60, then it got replaced by M-240b machine gun. Then I moved to the line, and had to learn how to become a fire team leader, while filling in as squad leader often. You have to learn ALL the manuals like FM 7-8, 7-6, 23-67. After a while what was hard comes natural, you have done everything repetedly, and know what to do in almost every situation, and if you find your self in a knew one you can BS your way through it if your smart and compatent enough. So the more experiance I got from field problems, FTX's, Live fires, Firing ranges, classes, schools and doing battle drills== the better, more compatent, and more sure of my abilties grew. Like gaining lvls or skills in a RPG. We got deployed to albania in april of 99 and from there whent into Kosovo. We were much better soldiers with much better equipment than the mupps or VJ's. But the KLA (UCK) the kosovo liberation army. These guys had shit for equipment, hardly any training (besides actual combat) and they where amazing soldiers. One for one, even with our high-speed equipment they where hands down much better soldiers than us. The best gorilla fighters I've seen. I'm not talking about the pluthera of people that joined the KLA after we kicked the Mupps and VJ's out and it was safe to join the KLA, I'm talking about the hard core gorilas that had been fighting for years. I could tell some stories about them but this is turning into a novel, so I'll say this. There was this one kid that was 17, he had only been fighting for not even for a year, i was in the army for over 3 years, i had a M-4 with a 203 granade launcher and paq-4 lasers on it, plus night vision goggles, and a dead on zero for my rifle and I'm a damn good shot, all this an im 22 hes 17. He had an AK that wasnt zeroed, he used kentucky windige, and thats it. If we went head to head against each other he would of destroyed me. His field craft, everything was better than mine, or any American Infantryman.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that a young soilder can be better than older soldiers. There where soldiers in my unit that had been in for 10 years and I was a better soldier than them, but all new soldiers dont know shit, you have to teach them, and they have to learn. But in no situation could I not see a new soldier (or player charecter) not being able to go out with expierienced ones. When A squad goes out on patrol, or a mission, you have expierance lvls raging from squad leader with around 6-10 years and a cherry rifleman or SAW gunner with like a couple weeks or months not counting basic and AIT. Thats how you learn and get expierance. I really think this game should think out side the norm for most aspects like you have done with the attrabutes (5 physical and 5 mental). Think that way for character creation and Death and every aspect of the game. Take chances, make new systems and do new things. Heres some examples that no one has gotten right, look at full plate mail. The best armor a warrior in all rpgs can have. But in real life it was called tornament armor and only used in tornaments, because it was to bulky, heavy, exhausting, and restricted movement to much to wear in battle. The great sword was not a slashing weapon, it was used to crush armor, or dent armor, or break bones under chainmail. The pike was a great weapon, and in the 1400s a company of pikeman called a phalanx was thought unstopable besides by better pikeman. The short sword was used by the roman infantry with devistating effects, but the short sword is a newbie weapon that is to be traded for basically anything else in all rpgs.
You can easily make a system that is totally new and works. In order to recreate the paper and pencil feel, I think you will have to make a totaly new system. With death having great penalties, and lose of life being much worse than lose of equipment. Of course I'm probably one of the only people that feels this way, and if me and three other guys are the only ones who play this game you probably wouldnt be able to eat much, or live anywhere but the corner, so I understand that you have to please the many, I just wish those bastards would figure out what they want. If you dont like everquest or are not happy with the mmorgs out there, why wait for the next one to come out that has most of the things you dont like about EQ in it? I dont get it. But of course I'll still try those games because I'm a big looser, but I can always want more, right? Well thanks for listening, I gotta get some sleep.
B-bye
Joe

[Slitherrr]

Having provisions for unexperienced guys being able to reasonably hang out with experienced ones is great, and not a bad idea at all, in my opinion. One thing I know from my pen and paper experience is that you will NOT be able to pull it off definitively in any MMORPG... Even if the staff works its ass off day and night to pull it off, there are many players out there that don't give too much crap about story and just want to kill people (The type of players I don't care for, and I've got plenty of experience with them, thanks to friends I have. Like this one guy I know that plays EQ, has a level 30-something character, a level 20-something, a couple of guys in the teens... And only started playing at the beginning of the summer). Well-designed permadeath MAY be a good way to not attract that type of person, because no decent powergamer would want to be able to lose all their l337 eqp and exp to some death. Of course, if you expect to make any kind of living from this game, you'll have to attract as many types of people as possible, because believe me, the number of hardcore RPers out there is limited in the extreme. Another thing, Joe mentioned this, skills should definitely definitely DEFINITELY be better than equipment, hands down. Any swordsman can swing a magical sword to devestating effect, but its more impressive to see a warrior using his skills to cut down enemies with completely normal equipment. Cons to this; people like the images of the magical weapons all the book characters carry (Drizzt's Twinkle, Bilbo and Frodo's Sting, etc.). In other words, taking all this stuff into consideration is going to be hard work, and beta testers for this game will have the right to be respected in many areas of life (not to mention the staff itself!).

[Cynycal]

i actually like the permanent death idea...i mean perhaps make it like AD&D..you could have some nice old fashioned resurrection scrolls or something...i dont really know, but i dont like the idea of hardly anything happening when u die...plus when i kill somebody thats a player i want em to feel it (not that i'd do that any... ::looks around nervously::) but you get what i mean, there should be some harshness to it..

[joe]

Hey,
Had to get up to watch the games. Stupid gaints are screwing me two weeks in a row, they just wont do what there suposed to, bastards. Well I reread my posts and I sounded harsh. I'm not knocking your game at all, I think its great what your doing, and reading the reasons why your making this game and all the arguments you guys make about how other games are lacking, and how it was not lack of technology but was just lack of enginuity and all that stuff, made me all exited and get a warm and fuzzy. But just as you have ideas so to do I, and I think the best way to have my ideas heard is through a company like yours, indepentant and as you said, do to a lack of a 2 million dollar advertisment campaign, a small, target group (with, hopefully, the new reviews and interviews going up, will become a large group and you guys can make some good cash, and since your partly in Vegas you wont have to go far to blow it), and I apologize if I came across harsh, or like I knew what I was talking about. And thank you for actually taking a big involvement in the boards, its great to know that the people making the game are actually reading and giving actual answers instead of avoiding the questions, or only responding when it suiits them or makes them sound better, you know?
I'm praying to finally have a game I can get into alot. The only game I think I actually got into fully, and never get board with was the first RPG I played, Heroes Quest. I was probably 11 so I dont know if that was part of it, but since then I've enjoyed a couple games but never really "get into them" and I'm hoping to find that game you know? I know Heroes Quest is an Action/rpg but i think it is hands down the most submersive game I played to date. I still play about every couple years or every year.
Well just wanted to apologize and say thank you. Have to go watch the games and watch my wallet do its amazing shrinking act. Later
joe

[Scrote]

Man, reading through this thread again there are some excellent ideas sprinkled throughout its entirety.

Rich:
I guess when it comes down to it, there are four types of penalties (let me know if you think of others):
1) temporary stat penalties (ala AC)
2) permanent stat/skill/exp loss (ala EQ, UO)
3) item loss (moderate ala AC, or severe ala Meridian 59)
4) geographical displacement. (corpse retrievals ala EQ and others, respawning in the "Underworld" ala M59).

So you played M59 too eh? Those were the days!

Actually they weren't the days, but it does bring back some amusing memories.

Anyways, Rich... there might be something you could add to that list. Bear in mind I'm working on little information here, but let me quickly propose a quick vision and then list my addition.

The vision - a game where your social standing has an impact on your life. Depending where you are, who knows you, where you're from, what/who you are and what you've done different NPCs will react to you in different ways. And I don't mean "It's xxxx's like you who pissed in my cornflakes, time to die!". That - as we've established many times on these boards - is utter ass.

What I'm talking about is politics, reputation, standing, notoriety, fame, charisma. What you do SHOULD affect how the world reacts to you. Hell, it'd be amazing to approach a group of goblin scouts and have them run away in fear gibbering "IT'S SKROT! HE KILLED 3 OF US THE OTHER DAY! RUN AIIIEEEE!" or something along those lines. But I'm also referring to more mundane situations. Like how a shopkeeper or a mayor of a hamlet will treat you. Their reactions could range from buying you dinner to refusing to let you rent a room in the inn in the hamlet, to offering you their virgin daughter (mmm... ), to attacking you on sight, to refusing to serve as mercenaries in your ragtag bandit army.

Now this might not seem particularly relevant to "death", but it is, it is! Assuming you think like me. And what I'm thinking is this:

5) Social standing

Odd? Well, yeah. But - think of it like this. Whatever system you design for death & resurrection, I really hope it MAKES SENSE in-game. I've said it before but I feel strongly about this. Think about it - if it's a routine and automatic thing then the whole pyschology of the world would be altered. Why should a gaggle of goblins fear you when they know that if you kill them all that'll happen is they'll appear somewhere else not too flustered by what's happened to them. Bad example, cuz I know it's not gonna be as simplistic as that but it's an example.

So regardless of the details of the system, I think you should pay attention to how death affects your social standing. What do I mean by this? Well, let's use another example - if someone dies, let's say they get resurrected somewhere, they go back and get their items and then carry on. But who resurrects them? How exactly does it happen? Who witnesses this? Who hears about this?

If the residents of a hamlet see a group of adventurers saunter into town, buy equipment, then head out to the goblin ghetto over the nearest hill... and then see them waltz out of the temple and head out again... and then see them waltz out of the temple and head out again... they're gonna think "What a bunch of loser adventurers. Why, those are the sort of people who bet on the Giants!"

In other words they're going to lose respect for the adventurers cuz they're constantly dying at the hands of some hoodlum goblins. In game terms I guess this could affect whatever stats you're using to reflect your PCs social standing with his or her peer-group as well as the other inhabitants of the world.

And it's not necessarily limited to something like the residents of a hamlet. We could be talking about trainers, or guild leaders, or city guards... who might have a stake in how an adventurer performs (cuz of race or class issues) and are embarassed if a character performs badly (ie keeps dying stupidly). Or even the priest who keeps resurrecting you, what might start as patronizing snickers might turn to genuine disrespect if the priest has to keep resurrecting the same idiot over and over. This - of course - is me assuming that death won't be as silly and prevalent and patently unfair and unreasonable as it is in THAT OTHER GAME (can't bring myself to say the name any more ;). If that were the case then no matter what you decide for death will be pretty irrelevant cuz everyone will be dying all over the place for really frustrating reasons and having any repercussions happen to you for dying would just add insult to injury. But if your game is designed so that death is relatively rare and only as a result of the player screwing up then you can do wonderful things with your death system.

I fully agree with joe in that you should offer the opportunity for people to perform heroic deeds that might lead to their death. I've read in other posts how you've got ideas for performing 'desperate moves', and I think that's a fabulous idea. That - and the heroics idea - could affect the results of dying too. If you die valiantly, it might even be a good thing for your PC. If you expend your final energies on some mighty deathblow that will leave you weak and vulnerable but will allow someone the chance to escape certain death, then you get ganked, people will go "man, that guy is badass, I dig him!" (or words to that effect).

This is difficult to conceptualize in-game, but I think it's a grand idea that might benefit from some additional thinking and input.

S'right,
Scrote

ps Joe, I wanna go gambling with you, you have the right attitude about it.

[Edited by Scrote on 09-10-2000 at 05:04 PM]

[Stafir]

Well this time I can bring in the game I've been thinkng about.


The idea I had for how to handle death.


Each player starts off with a frailty meter. The meter starts off at a predetermined level depending on character stats.

Whenever a player dies a roll is made against this meter. If the roll comes out bad...the player dies for good. If it comes out ok...the player may be resurrected.

Each time the player is resurrected the meter is added too (thereby each death increases the chance of permanent death). However how they are resurrected changes how much is added to the meter. Being resurrected by an NPC (say some wandering adventurers save your body from whatever killed you) will provide a greater increase than being resurrected by a player.

Also a character gets the meter added to over time. After all, as a person gets older IRL..they do get a bit more frail right?


Now of course..it'd suck to die and loose all your good stuff (which will happen for almost everybody some day with this system). So I have the idea of leaving a heir behind. Basically the heir is your new character, during the life of your previous char..you may invest in the heir...buy training for them, leave them money behind...etc. Basically invest in the abilities of their new character.


Of course this also considered that a person could die of old age also...but hey :).

[Slitherrr]

Hey, that's a heck of an idea, somewhat similar to Gemstone's deed system, only better. I like the invest in an heir touch, that way you can come back and you don't HAVE to be a newbie again if you die permanently. Coming back as a newbie and having to go through basically the same stuff again is pretty much the only big problem I have with permadeath, and if the game's designed well enough that it's hard to die unless you're a moron, and not through disconnects/spawning giants/mother-in-law's shoe, whatever. Starfir's frailty system actually looks like a decent implementation of the permadeath idea.

[Lordosis]

1) Joe, don't sweat it, man. We all have to be free with our ideas if we're going to have worthwhile discussions here. As long as we can avoid the flame-game like some other boards, we'll be in good shape. So far, all our visitors have been posting well thought out ideas and responses, you included. Even better than I had hoped. The idea is that we can make a better game by getting the opinions of experienced gamers (which we all are). I think if we all work together, Arcanity will be the game that we can all "get into". I haven't had that for a long time, either. We really have more hopes for Arcanity than "a little better than EQ".

2) We definitely want people of different skill levels to be able to adventure with each other. We hated the level cap when we played EQ, so there will be NO grouping level cap in Arcanity.

3) I'm liking the social standing idea. I'll have to think about how that is going to work with the design we have so far. But we were planning a similar system before we even thought about the death problem. You may have noticed that there is no "charisma" stat in Arcanity. That's because your charisma is determined by your actions, just like in real life, not by a number. I think your proposed system here will fit in well with that idea.

4) No matter what system we end up going with, I can assure you that it will make sense in the context of the game. You won't just "spawn" for no reason. Mostl likely it will be tied in to the god system. In short, worshipping different gods will provide different benefits. Some of these benefits may have to do with what happens to you when you die.

5) I really doubt we are going to have any form of permadeath. I just can't picture it in a game where you can play the same character for months on end. I have thought of the possiblility of a temporary period where you couldn't play a character after he/she died (again, it would have to make sense in-game). You could still play another one of your characters, so your account wouldn't be useless during this period. But this is still up in the air.

6) When it comes time to decide on a death system (we'll need one to test in beta) I'll be using this thread as a reference. Lots of good ideas here.

[toray]

I don't like the idea of harsh death penalties myself. It's enough for me to have to say, "damn, I just got whacked by a goblin?" I like AC's method of death penalties. Being weakened from the resurrection without actually suffering any permanent loss of anything. Leaving items on corpses is rather silly.. either everything gets left behind (Except perhaps some few soul-bonded items), or nothing gets left behind.

Tying death penalties into the religions would be an effective way of allowing the developers to try more than one approach. Some gods teleport your corpse to the temple, and re-insert your soul, but charge you an hour of your time (ie, an xp loss). Others create you a new body, with no items at all save those you had bonded to you, with no other loss (go find your old corpse, which isn't locked and unlootable). And other variants are possible.

I am utterly opposed to perma-death. I invest a lot in my characters, and I have no desire to see them permanently removed from the game. A good pen and paper GM kills off PC's only when it's truly crucial to the storyline or for utter stupidity, or at the player's request. A good CRPG should similarly respect the characters of its players.

[Rolfe]

That's a great idea as far as the possibilities it leaves open. I've heard the explanation of attributing resurection to the gods, but I'm still not sure I like it. It makes me think, "why are the players so special? Why don't the gods resurect a goblin when you kill him? Why wouldn't the world population become too large for the planet in no time if everyone is constantly being resurected?"

[toray]

Perhaps the goblin god blesses them with increased fertility, so that they may live on in their descendants, whilst enjoying valhalla?

[Slitherrr]

Posted by Ruadin:
I like Lamont's idea about fighting your way out of undead land! It would certainly be a different way of dealing with death than most MMOGs do.

The trick is to try to mesh realism and fantasy without making the process a tedious one. As Wrentia said, it would have to fit within the overall history, or at least make sense within the context of the game - which I'm sure won't be an issue.

The idea of defeating the Undead Lord is rather ambitious for low level characters... but perhaps their goal should be to elude him! That way, he force their spirits into a life of servitude. This could be an idea for some huge recurring conflict between the forces of good and evil...

The Undead Lord and his army of darkness are constantly trying to cross over into the real world, while the forces of light are constantly trying to stop them. When a character dies, its soul ends up Limbo-land which is somewhere between the living world and the land of the dead.
Then it becomes a race for 3 parties;
1) the soul must escape the clutches of the dead lord and return to the living...
2) the forces of light must find the dead soul before the lord of the undead does
3) the lord of the undead is trying to recruit this new soul before it escapes his grasp

Perhaps at the higher levels the dead souls can choose to stand and fight against the undead lord and be rewarded for defeating him.


Anyhow, I was just letting my imagination run rampant for a while back there. I will save my thoughts on death for another thread. However I like the idea of having an old and constant struggle between the forces of good and those of evil.
<<End Quote>>

Think about it, a great death system, when a character dies, he goes into this limbo state and has to fight back or be forced into servitude! Higher level characters have a better chance of surviving, which means all those that have spend a good long time developing a character have less to fear. Then there's the roleplaying aspects of those who willingly die, then attempt to defeat the Undead Lord, and either become that Lord or reap the rewards from the forces of Light!

[Wrentia]

OK, I like the idea about not being able to play the freshly dead character for a period of time. The question about this is how to handle looting. Binding a limited number of items to the soul is good. Perhaps when a character dies by an NPC the character loses nothing, but you are unable to play that character for 1 hour of log in time for your account. If the same character dies by a PC then the God of Strife comes down for the corpse but allows the victor to take 1 item (armor piece/weapon/important piece of equipment....call these itmes Important Items) plus all general items on the corpse (cash/spell components/food...etc....call these general items). Then the 1 hour time limit is imposed.

hmmm, also lets say a city has offered a bounty for a PC that has killed several PC's....the reward then could be 2 important items and all general items....plus the bounty of course.

After your 1 hour time limit has passed you can then log back in....the question here is to what...some kind of underworld? A council of the God's? Return to the point where you died? Return to your homepoint? Return to your guildhouse?

The point here with the 1 hour thingie is that it stops the "I just died and need to get exp back....oops I just died again syndrome" It gets you to play another character hopefully keeping burnout syndrome away. It can be explained in the game storyline in a multitude of ways. Plus, it penalizes the Character WITHOUT penalizing the player....There's risk involved.....and more risk if you become an evil PKer...

Perma death sounds good on paper but sucks when you are paying 10 bucks a month....The EQ model penalizes the player and not the character. The AC model isin't the best...I hate the idea of the little blue balls on pedastals every square mile....Plus if you are being resurrected, you should be resurected whole....not minus some stats that you remember training.....

I'm also not a fan of the underworld idea....but thats just me.....Anyway, I've rambled on enough

-Wrentia

[Ruadin]

I see alot of excellent ideas expressed in this post. I figured I might as well toss in my 2 cents.

The issue of death, in my opinion, is beyond the mere dying experience and/or the loss of experience points. You'll often see issues of looting and inconvience being brought up right along with it.

I feel that alot of our modern PvP, death-related or annoyance-by-other-players problems can be traced back to one common factor - lack of accountability. Remove yourself from the game environment for a moment and imagine what our society would be like if anyone could do whatever they want and not get caught. Ugly isn't it? Actually its kind of scary when you think about it, but that's not the issue at hand.

So to solve these problems, you must always implement some type of deterrant factors. Cities and their vicinities should be full of guards, patrolling. These guards can imprison people for corpse looting, stealing, attacking other people, etc - obviously with some other values factored in, such as factions. Futhermore, the victimized party can opt to place a bounty as Arcanity plans to support. Double whammy on the perpetrators of crimes!

To address the corpse looting issue specifically... at the lower levels, you don't have much to lose and don't care. Futhermore, you're typically going to be within the vicinity of some major city and with patroling guards, you don't have much to worry about. If indeed you do get looted, some local organization should be responsible for providing beginner's equipment. In my mudding days there were always places known as "donation rooms". These places carried very basic equipment and made it easy to get right back on your feet after dying.
At the higher levels, chances are players will have access to more protection measures to keep their corpses from being looted. Maybe we can have players aquire pets which become more powerful as they advance. So a mid-level character can perhaps aquire a wolf or panther that would protect their body until they returned. Obviously this wouldn't be fool-proof as these creatures could be killed, but at least the body wouldn't be completely defenseless. Perhaps these creatures can be imbued with spells by their owner, or special items that made them even more fearsome.
Perhaps at the highest levels you can have some really powerful creature, like a manticore, or a demon.
Another approach would be using spells to protect your body. Maybe you can cast an binding-shield which prevents items to be separated from your body until the spell wears off. Again its not fool-proof as a powerful wizard maybe able to dispel the shield - however again your body is not left defenseless and your average player cannot loot your body. This shield spell can be even provided by means of a special or quest item, making it even more valuable.

The other issue I want to address is the act of dying. Most games portray death very unrealistically by popping you back into your starting location without any sort of transition. In an earlier post it was mentioned that perhaps dying can take you into the death world and you would have to find your way out OR if you have good faction standings, the clerics could summon you out of the death world. The benefits of this method is two-fold.
1) It would encourage good behaviour so that you can have good faction standings. So no Pkilling, looting, stealing etc that could have massive faction hits.
2) It would institute a believable way for you to return from the dead.

The punishment in this is you lose playing time. That in itself is a punishment factor. Losing say 5-10 minutes in the process of death will make ANYONE much more careful.
Another punishment could be in the form of cash. As you advance higher, the clerics charge more for their services and require a mandatory church donation - immediately deductible from your bank account.

It may be even possible to have high level player clerics summon you back from the dead lands but at a high price. Maybe sacrificing a very expensive component or a jewel and taking a serious health punishment that would leave them vulnerable for a brief time.

These are things that can be explained within the confines of the game. It makes little sense to introduce a limitation, such as a PvP switch, and then try to explain it in the game world. How do you explain something like that???

[Lordosis]

Wrentia, I hate the idea of blue balls, too. hehe. I'm surprised you are so adverse to them though.

BUT ANYWAY, lots of good ideas in this thread. As to the issue of what items you take with you when you die. This is how I look at it: In real life, when you die, you're dead. Even if you believe in some higher power, your body is still dead any way you look at it. Your body doesn't respawn on Earth somewhere else. But in an RPG, it pretty much has to repspawn somehow, since we don't want permadeath. But here's the thing: who's to say your stuff has to stay on your corpse? If your body can magically appear somewhere else, why can't your stuff? It almost as if other game designers think it's more "realistic" to have your stuff stay on your corpse, but it can't be more "realistic" there is abolutely nothing in "real life" you can compare it to. So what I'm trying to say is this: we have complete leeway to design whatever kind of system we want, there's no point in worrying about "realism". All I DO want to worry about is that the system must make sense within the in-game setting, culture, and traditions.

I somewhat like the idea of it costing you money to be resurrected by the church/temple. That's how many single player RPGs handle it. Of course, you usually control a full group of characters in those games, so your other 5 characters are actually carrying the dead character'd body back to the temple for ressurection, which acutally makes a lot of sense. I don't want to put that restriction on it in Arcanity, because I don't want to penalize soloers.

As to where you should spawn, let's not forget Meridian 59. In that game, you respawned in the underworld. You then had to get back to the surface and then go get your stuff, which was actually almost guaranteed to be looted by that time. But it was a pretty good system.

I am actually starting to like the idea of the underworld. I especially like that it might fit well with our explanation of how undead work and how/why they exist. We also might be able to tie it in with the god system nicely. So everything having to do with death, resurrection, and the gods would nicely fit together in terms of the world background.

I don't want to concentrate too much on what happens to the "stuff" on your corpse until we have the rest of the death system relatively well laid out. But as I've said before, you will NOT lose ALL your stuff when you die. But that's the most I can say, because that's all I know for sure right now.

[Dyson]

Rich, I don't know if you've figured on something for sure by this time, but I figure I'll throw this out-
How about a small menu with several "stay" slots? Ie, each player is entitled to...well, for now lets say 5 "blessed" items. These items stay with them when they die, and everything else on their corpse is up for grabs. So, if I had a Knight/Wizard/Thief character, I could could designate my Spellbook, Two-handed sword, Lockpick Set, Amulet of Protection from Unhappiness, and lucky magic dagger to all stay with me. Five is pretty wide ranging- there's really not that many "treasured" possession everyone carries around (and if you're that attached to a load of things, put them in your house and designate your HouseKey as "stay.")

How's this system sound? It's a little raw, I know, but it seems pretty versital and easy-to-tweak.

[Lordosis]

I'm not sure we want to go the "blessed/binded/etc" items route. I know that a lot of new MMORPG message boards are talking about this method. I just don't see how it makes sense realistically. And by realistically, I mean in-game, not present day Earth realism. If it was a purely high tech game, I could see having devices you could place on your items. I suppose similar effects could be done with spells. I'm just not sure on the items yet, we'll have to wait until the death system is done to decide.

[Wrentia]

don't have to go searching for it...:)

-Wrentia

[fredrick]

LOL.. there's a lot of text in this section :)

Anyway, I played an online RPG back before The Realm and UO came out called Legends of Kesmai... that game had mediocre graphics, and a pretty basic game, but it had me hooked! The community rocked, and that was about all it took for me to like it. (It was overhead viewing with no moving icons.. like the old ultimas where the land moves around you instead of you actualy moving)

What's that have to do with death? Just a suggestion:
They had a magical item called a "recall ring". You could buy them for 150 gp which in EQ is the equivilant of about 1gp. If you took this ring off your finger, you were insantly teleported to wherevery you put it on.. and you could wear as many as you wanted.

This allowed for the game to have harsh death penalties (not only could players loot your corpse, but monsters also looted your corpse, then walked around with your stuff) The skill/exp penalty was there, but not huge. Also, you could do special quests (in the underworld) to recover any lost skill and experience.

And, if you died you would go to a set 'safe' place based on your class in that zone... the problem with recovering your corpse then being that you're naked.

I think a method like that might work nicely. The recall rings were used as both a great means of transportation (you could set as many as you wanted), as well as saving you from danger. They let lower lvl characters drop into high lvl dungeons to look around.. then just zap out when anything sees them. (Of course, if it's big enough to kill you in one shot... you shouldn't have been in that dungeon :-)

Anyway, that's my 2 cents... I liked that system fairly well.

As a solution to people being really upset when they lose their corpse, maybe you could make 'lore' items which would be items aquired through mega-quests, or which were only released during a certain event.. those items stay on your body when you are ressurected, but all other items are fair game. This would also serve to increase the value of lore items vs. just enchanting stuff.

Another thing the game did was make it so after you died you were a ghost which could then be resurrected by players or the priest for little/no exp/skill loss... or you could let the 'gods' ressurect you where you would take exp/skill loss. (The body needed to be resurrected, not the ghost :-)

Anyway, they discontinued that game.. otherwise despite the awful graphics I'd still be playing it... but if any of the above looks useful, I think that was a system that if not winning, was at least pretty good. (And works best in a PvP setting as well I think.)

[BelDragos]

When a player looses consciousness why not let him be ransomed instead of outright death? It would let the character continue after a recovery period and be a social stygma to overcome later in the game. The monster might gain more from capture than from killing the player.

[Wrentia]

Penalty for death is a problem, but this might be an answer to a part of the problem....

Ok, you are dead, and go through whatever system to get back to the living. The penalty could be this: You basically have an imposed penalty of "Combat Time": Basically this means that you have to spend time in combat without gaining experience. You don't lose any at death, but after a death you spend time not gaining exp. However combat skills could still rise since you are using them.

As you become more powerful, the "Combat Time" would rise.

Nothing totally drastic. But it does need to be penalizing. Also, this "combat time" timer would keep track even if the character logs.

This allows you to get back in your group right away, while still being a penalty without going totally overboard with the penalty...

-Wrentia

[Thirty]

Weeeeelll, I had an idea.
First, it starts like this. When you die, you go to afterlife, and your god(s) take it from there. The thing is, different gods do it different ways. This allows you to have different ways to handle death in the same game, player chooses.

There could be basically 2-3 god camps, the good ones, who are against PKing (except in some wars, and killing evil caracters or players running an evil race), neutral ones who are mostly against it, and evil ones who are all for it. So if you go around killing newbies, forget having the good gods raise you back, aint gonna happen. And the evil gods are, after all, evil, so they usually take a part of your soul, and possibly items, from you if you wanna be raised.

The good gods often ask for things like church contributions, killing specific evil stuff, a quest, or such. Neutral (and some good or good allied) gods want specific things, like say Vulcan, god of smithing, asks for you to smith something, or contribute somehow to that sort of thing ("buy Joe the smith a new bellows"). There could be others as well, like say a god who wants great works of art, or a large city built, or to conquer a certain area to raise animals because they are a god of husbandry.

Evil gods are into sucking the energy out of the world, they will want part of your soul to raise you. You might be able to give them some magic items instead, they can eat the magic. Result, if you are evil, as seen by your randomly killing players, expect that if you die it will be a lot costlier (in many ways) to get back than the good (non PKing) player. Note also, if you pick a non evil god, but do evil actions, expect to go to afterlife and see whichever evil god can grab you as you die (better to pick an evil god first), the good gods wont do it.

The basic idea is, good gods are into creation, althought they can also destroy (like creating fire) or alter. This means they need less, they don't have to eat your soul or anything. Evil gods can only destroy, so they need some 'food' if they are going to resurect you. God magic could reflect this also, evil caracters could find it difficult to use spells that create.

The idea of many gods, in basically two camps, means the player gets to pick beforehand what method of resurrection they want. That way you dont have some complaining death is too tough or too easy, since you get to pick before hand what type of death penalty you want. It also serves to help control the greif player population, since the PKers will suffer when they die a lot more than the non PKers.

Lastly, the gods may also be influenced by your pre death actions, if you do what they like a lot, it will cost less to get back. They also take what they expect they can get, so low level types get charged less. Evil gods are less likely to give any sort of break for doing suitably evil actions, since they need energy. Certain actions may still get some sort of favors from them (usually while you are alive), but its still gonna cost you when you die since they need to feed off your energy if they are going to raise you.

[Wrentia]

So, my group and I have been fighting some nasties somewhere, and I die.....Before I can get back to my group I "repop" in the land of the dead in front of my God for a quick conversation, then I have to buy a new bellows for some smith somewhere, then I have to run back to my group before they get bored waiting for me?

I think thats a bit cumbersome.....

-Wrentia

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Ok here goes.
1) Perma-Death. I know this would be the truily realistic way to go, but as others have already pointed out would not work well in the game. Not many would stick around and pay $10 a month to have 3 months of playing time go down the drain because they made a stupid mistake.

2) EQ style exp. loss. Your right that sucked. Didn't penalize the charactor, but the player. I made it through more than one HELL level and that is one of the reasons I quit. Get trained out of nowhere or a mega badie spawns next to you and WHAM you're dead and there goes your exp.

3)Have to agree with Wrentia on the doing some time consuming quest. If your in a group with friends their only going to be so patient waiting for you to come back and play with them.

UO had a system that was interesting. When you died, you became a ghost at the site of your death and then had to 1) have a friend nearby who could resurrect you, 2) find a wandering healer nearby that would take pity and resurrect you, or third run all the way to the nearest town and the healers there would resurrect you.
There was some skill lost each time your resurrected so the more often you died the greater the penilty was, but if you didn't die often it was not a overwhelming process to gain back the skills you lost. Also if you were a PKer the healers wouldn't resurrect you for a certin set period of time.
Now in UO your body started to decay after you died and could be looted by anyone as soon as you died, but if looted before it went to bones that person was a criminal and could freely be attacked, killed and looted without penilty. If you were fast enough you could make it back in time and you could get your stuff back.
The changes that I would have liked to see with this system was that if you were grouped with someone they could loot your body save your stuff. Also, that the time it took for your body to decay increases as your skill level goes up.
As to looting, I don't have a great objection to this in a game where more importance is going to be placed on skills than on items/equiment. Quote "A grandmaster warrior should beat a newbie even if he has Thors Hammer of Might" or something along those lines. In UO there were magic swords and armor thay improved your skills, but a good grandmaster blade or gm suit of armor was just about as good. So if this game has trade skills where I can make a great suit of armor/weapon or buy it from my friend the gm amorer, then looting is a set back not a disaster. I do like the idea of perhaps a few items being unable to be looted. Maybe I am realy fond of that bright purple/yellow/green tunic that I made with my own two hands and don't want anyone else looting it and wearing it :eek: So being able to tag say 5 items of my choosing would be nice.

[Thirty]

It doesnt have to be combersome, the bellows or whatever the god wants could have been taken care of before you even die (sorta like buying insurance), or $ can just be subtracted from you and you are immidiatly poped back to some temple somwhere (or even a shrine, they could be all over), usually near where you died.

The whole idea of this is MULTIPLE DEATH SYSTEMS. If you dont like the death system, just choose another god. This way, you can have a god who does any of the sytems you see in this thread.

The two basic death systems are for evil caracters (takes part of your soul, ie experience or levels or attributes or such) so as to help discourage random massive PKing, and the non evil caracter systems, which are different for different gods. basically, you pick a god who matches your playing sytle, then play that style and the god is happy. Of course, you will probably have to pay the "insurance" the same way its done today, before you die. If you do, die, pop right back to shrine immediatly, if dont, hafta do something before you can get back, or possibly after you get back, possibly with some sort of penalty till you do. Some of the non evil death sytems may be harsher than others to, for those who like death to be worse, usually these gods will compensate with something in life to make up for the harsher death. So some of the non evil gods may also take experience or something (some gods may do this instead of money).

Basically, think of a death system you'd like, assign it to a god(s). Think of another death system, assign yet another god, etc. Then the hard part, balancing the systems out so everyone doenst take the same god. Or alternatly, just two basic systems (if needed for simplicity of programming), the good, and the evil, evil being there to discourage random PKing, so if you PK you will lose a lot more when they come back for revenge (which is ok on the person who killed you and who is thus flagged enemy).

Another thing could be, the quick pop back after death could be for those who havent died a lot lately. If they die a lot in a short time, they might hafta go to underworld and pay up, or lose exp, or some other penalty, or come back to death spot as ghost and have friends help. Alternatly, if they are dying a lot and running low on cash, is do a quest to help pay your death insurance. The death insurance is usually done before dying.

Another possibility, for those who like the Ghost sytem,
pick a god who does that, you get to rejoin your party immediatly, but as a ghost, and it wont cost you anything, although it might cost your party $ (possibly from your body) and time. Another possibility, a check box for ghost or no ghost (evil players may not get this option). If you ghost, you could keep your corpse there, and open it to allow others to loot it, if you are non ghosting, all your stuff could go with you when you die.

BTW, rejoining a party isnt easy in any current game, in AC it can take a while to get back, in EQ its worse since you may be nekkid, many zones away, and navigation in EQ is quite difficult.

[fredrick]

It would be interesting if you could arrange a conference with your god, and the two of you could draw up a contract as to how your death is handled. This would allow much harsher options.. but work would have to be put into balancing them.

Example:
Option A) upon death you lose all of your items, and no experience.. you respawn in a given spawn location. (Default based on where you die)

Option B) upon death, you lose all items and some exp. You gain exp slightly faster when playing than other systems however.

Option C) upon death you lose no items and no exp; but have to undergo some quest before you can re-enter the real world.

Option D) Upon death you are completely dead.. must start a new character. The Gods will occasionaly intervien immediatly prior to death with life-saving acts (destroying your enemies; or healing you).. and you gain divine assistance of other types.

Anyway, while option A-D may not be those chosen, I kinda like the idea of entering into a contract with your god.

BTW, exp is used to mean skill.... as there won't be exp in this game I believe.

[efz88]

I like the idea of Real World. You die you are dead forever.
Maybe some exceptions. Like:
A)You have say 10 mins to have one of your friends revive you seeing how your "spirit" dosent have to go directly to hell.
B)Your God or Gods depending on your Devine Fath level can help you in some way like killing your enemy or healing you or enev giving you phyco buffs. Such as if you are a evil Necromancer and practice the evil arts by killing all the good you see and scarficing at your "alter" your Devine Favor is higher so your god helps you kill what your fighting.
C)Go on concious!

[BelDragos]

You could always haunt your corpse until your friend gets back with the revive.

[Zeldecar]

Hi, I'm new here. Have I reached Beldrago's Brickhouse Trading Message Board? :)

A few comments on death and looting:

Loosing experience, stats, or skills when your charactor dies simply sucks, and makes most games monotonous. Looting is a fun part of most PvP MMORPG's. In UO my charactor was the only GM Looter I ever met, but having said that, I think it's an excellent idea to have items that it is impossible for others to loot.

[BelDragos]

I only lease the space.

Ha Ha

It seems that the general concensus is that some items should be unlootable. What items should these be?

[Zeldecar]

A good death system is extremely important. Perma-death is problematic: lag-out in a bad situation and you lose all that you have worked for!. And solutions that involve making it hard to become perma-dead would seem to defeat the main reason behind the concept of having perma-death in the first place, which is to make a game seem more thrilling because of the constant exposure/threat that your character could perma-die at any moment. What's the point of playing a rpg where it's almost impossible for your character to die. For that matter, what's the point of playing an rpg if there are no consequences to dying? A balance must be struck. Also, what's point of playing an rpg where everyone is a murderer and/or looter. Balance must exist around issues PKing and Looting too. One idea might involve the concept of death counts, much like UO's idea of murder counts. If you accumulate too many death counts, perhaps 3 would be a good number, your character perma-dies. One interesting aspect of such a system is that decay rate for death counts could differ between law-abiding or "nonPK" characters and PK characters, making perma-death a riskier proposition for those who like to ingulge in murder.

[BelDragos]

Sounds like an idea. It would keep the players who exist to kill others tempted towards a more honest path. The only thing that shouldn't be counted against the hunter is if he is sanctioned to be a bounty hunter and there is a legal contract out on the hunted.

[gilgamesh]

To pitch in a couple of suggestions to Bel Dragos' question on lootable items here are two possible systems.

1) Everything is lootable until that item has been specifically enchanted to -not- be lost upon death. The spell that would be required to bind an item should be middling in level (ie not immediately available) and/or an expensive purchase from npcs. Furthermore, the spell can only be cast so many times depending upon your level (whether or not you want to look at this as you can only have x items protected at any one time, or as you can only have cast this spell x times is up to you... both are decent options).

2) A certain amount of xp can be assigned to make an item "Usable only by [name of character]" similar to Xan's moonblade in Baldur's Gate (for those who remember). Anyone could lift this item off a corpse, but would not be able to sell it for anything(what smith is going to buy a blade usable only by one person? maybe he/she'd pay a token sum and then melt it down, but it wouldn't be worth very much). The xp cost to do this would vary by character level and value of the item. The only real problem with this method is that it doesn't necessarily fit into the story. You could always say that the bonding can only be done at a temple and the xp must be spent there (ie. blessing the blade). Imagine the reaction of "npcs" if someone walked into town wearing Indiana Jones' hat... they'd hate the guy who bumped off great Indy.

3) As an alternate to #2, the looters reputation drops substantially while they have someone elses bonded item on their person, and merchants will not buy it.

Just a couple of suggestions Bel... and they're more geared to pvp unless monsters also loot for value. Hope they spark some ideas.

gilgamesh

[IceStorm]

A couple of thoughts from a female on a permanent death system. I agree with a lot of what has been posted above. It would be a terrible shame to loose a character because of a bad ISP connection and I am not sure how to handle that. I do know that if I had an heir, I may at some point choose death. My first character, would by no means, me my ultimate character. My first character would be the builder of the family name and fortune. At some time I may wish to pass on this fortune to an heir by choosing a quest that I know I may well die accomplishing.

In a world that death is permanent it should not be easy. But as many have stated before that played M59, EQ and AC and others, death penalties carry different severities. I have played all the above games and most times when I died I chose to take the risk to fight and not flee. In all cases I took the risk because I knew I would not die permanently. I may have a vitae or lessened skill for a period of time, but I was not dead. If I knew I was going to die permanently I would run a lot sooner or not engaged the enemy at all. In fact I would prolly not attack something that had half a chance of killing me. The next thought in my mind is twinking, but I will not bring that up here.

IceStorm
The Gentle Warrior

[Edited by IceStorm on 11-20-2000 at 04:19 PM]

[Crestfallen]

Forgive me for posting after having read only about half of the the posts on the board but I beleive I can offer a few reasons why death should be permanent and why it would easily work...

First for why there should be perma death.

1) Drama, heroes don't risk losing a bubble of experience, they risk losing everything. That's simply part of the definition of heroism.

2) Realism, Death isn't supposed to be inconvenient. It's supposed to be the end. The only characters who should suffer exp penalties or whatever are the one's who have managed to deify themselves somehow. All others should just prepare for the next life.

Now how is this going to jive with PCs you ask?

When a hero attacks a mob what does the mob want out of the fight?

Most mobs will not be actively seeking the death of the PC, but will be fighting for self preservation , to capture a hostage/location, or to loot valuables.

First it would want to survive, that would be first and foremost in its mind even if it has to flee somehow. If the mob manages to get away maybe it should get a bit of exp for surviving the conflict and regardless of whether it got away or not the PC should get full experience for winning the fight.

Now here comes the part I don't think anyone has mentioned yet... Not all fights should end in the death of either side.

Game developers have long overlooked what DMs from AD&D never did, fights can end with participants being rendered Unconscious or incapacitated. A fight ends when one side is no longer able to resist the other, that doesn't always mean death.

Being dragged off to a goblin camp as a hostage would be inconvenient, yes, but escaping from it later would be that much more exciting. Besides if all the goblins want is a randsome, perhaps freinds could deliver the randsome on your behalf... Not particularly heroic, but better than death and it would separate the heroes from the charlatans. In response to posts I have seen elsewhere about PC capture and real life implications (oh no I got captured, and i have a meeting in 30 minutes... now I have to stick around and see if I can get out of this mess.) If I can let my characters corpse sit in the Plains of Karana for days while I calm down after a particularly nasty run in with Grimfeather and a couple of HGs, then why can't I just sit there, alive mind you, in my little goblin cage and hope some brave hero comes along and extricates me from my situation while I'm gone, knowing if no one else does, I must.

Not to mention the fact that a Mob may have no interest in killing a PC whatsoever. If I get knocked out or incapacitated from pain, then why should a mob waste it's energy making absolutely sure I am dead. Why wouldn't it just ramble through my belongings take what it wanted and move on, or if it was attempting to secure some location, drag me off and throw me in some stream, hole, etc...

Meanwhile I can't play the game, because my character is incapacitated right? Wrong again, think dreams... you're unconscious and in trauma these dreams will probably be vivid, and possibly quite terrifying. Here's where one might get thrust into a dream world and have to wander around searching for answers and facing one's fears. Perhaps each character has an avatar that appears in a dreamworld whenever a fight goes badly and wanders around gaining maybe a quarter normal exp (people do learn from dreams) and also gaining exp for the avatar, perhaps there would be things to discover in the dreamworld that could be important enough for players to quest after potions to send them there for a period of time, so that they could learn a new skill available only there.

Anyway I'm getting off center so I'll hit my last point now...

But what if for some reason the Mob does seek the PCs death?
Perhaps it is a hired assassin sent to take care of a threat to it's master. Well, two things might save a PC still. First even a blow meant to kill not always will, People in RL have fallen miles and live (World record is a 6 mile fall over Russia, after surviving a mid-flight DC-9 explosion!) so even without further aid there would be some chance of survival, and we all know heroes bond together for mutual protection when is that more needed than when the jugular is exposed...

Finally even if death does occur, there are some options in a RPG... I remember carrying a fallen friend 4 miles in a campaign in AD&D to the nearest temple and swearing an oath of service to the monastic order there so that my friend could return to the living lands... and when the called in my favor, whew we really had our hands full.

Well there are some Permadeath options... remember also the mobs aren't the only ones who can run away if necessary. Please feel welcome to point out any flaws I may have missed, and thank you again for any input.

[Terram]

Ok, I am going to post this after only the first page before my thinking gets corrupted any more.

Items saved after death: Items that persoify you will be kept. A fighters favotire sword, a thieves dark leathers, a smiths hammer. Basically items that if you had a dream you would have. Items that you have had longer are more likely to stay than newer items. You might even end up with an item you no longer have. Die with a brand new sword and wake up with the old familiar sword.

Death and dying: There should be a longer period of death and dying. If you have a stomach wound you might be out of the fight but it might take a while for you to actually die. During the dying period you could be carried away or healed. If you are healed you still might be weak because you where so close to death.

Underworld: The grand competition. You die and appear in the underworld. The race bvetween the servitors of the god to catch you is on. Who ever catches you gains a benefit. A god of undeath catches you and (depending on your level) and new skeleton rises from the ground. Goblin's deity catches you and there is a burst of fertility or strenth for a clan. A neutral god catches you and a new natural creature (sprite) is born. A good deity catches you and a new guard or merchant is born. Depending on how you acted during you previous existance could affect how close you appear to a particual deity. All the deities could raise you but with a penalty dependant on their relation ship with your deity. Making it to your deity will allow you to be raised with no penatly. This death penalizes the player with lost time yet he is affecting how the world changes.

Terram

[Schadow]

There have been alot of good posts on this thread. The death system is probably be one of the most important aspects in a game.

Should Death be a final ending?
In a game I believe it shouldn't. We play games for enjoyment, and working a character up to a high level is a huge indevour, and losing this character to a ISP problem, and running off a cliff is definately not an option.

Should Death be common?
I believe no. I believe being rendered unconsious for a time should be though. Most Monsters will probally fight until your rendered unconsious. Only few monsters will still attack you once your fallen. Mostly monsters that are trying to eat you.

Should a Resurection be automatic?
I would hope not. If a resurection was automatic, what is the fear in death? If you die you should have to make a new character, and find someone to resurect you fallen character, or possibly someone you were adventuring with could take care of that for you. A church would possibly resurrect a paladin free of charge if they were in good standing with the church for example. Or they might charge a donation for an average warrior. Also when ressurected the process might carry a stat penalty for several days. After all the process is pretty taxing. These penalties might seem harsh, but after all death shouldn't be that common.

Should Items be binded to you, and not be able to be captured?
Heck no, Easy come easy go. If you are rendered unconscious, someone should be able to take your stuff. Should you honestly be caring around thousands of gp's of stuff in the Badlands??? I would think not, unless you are well accompanied.

And please, oh please. Do not have a conning system.

That's just my 2.5 cents

Schadow

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

There are so many good suggestions, Icestorm, very interesting suggestions. Crestfallen, good points on perma death. So here goes my 2 cents worth.
I agree with Schadow on this one, realism in a game can go to far and I believe perma death is one. I do believe that death should have penalties. AC's system is too light and EQ's penalized the player, not the charactor. UO's was more balanced. When you died you became a ghost and had 4 options. If you were in a group and one of your companions had the ability to resurrect they could, you could find a wandering healer who could resurrect you, run to the nearest temple, which might not be all that near and a preist would resurrect you, or you could choose to play as a ghost. When you resurrected you aquired some skill loss, but it was not overwhelmingly so. Their system also penalized you if you were a criminal or a pker. If you were a criminal from looting or attacking a innocent you would have to spend a certain set time as a ghost as no NPC would resurrect you until you paid for your sins. A PC could resurrect you though. If you were a murder no NPC would resurrect you no matter what and PC took a certain amount of Reputation loss if they resurrected a murderer. I do believe that many rpg's have overlooked the aspects of unconsiousness and there are some good suggestions here for how to use it. Until there is a internet system that no one need worry about disconnects and lag time or that a bug might end up taking one out, I feel perma death would be very risky.
Looting I have no great like or dislike of it, if the oppurtunity to loot someone came up, and I felt I could risk it I did so. Many times I ended up giving it back or most of it(sometimes I'm too nice for my own good). Although I wouldn't mind being able to make a few items that I own unlootable. It should be a fairly low number though, somewhere between 3 and 5, I would say.

[Edited by Kymeri mac An Iolar on 11-25-2000 at 12:37 AM]

[Thirty]

There is one problem with the 3-5 unlootable options, and that is armor. Fighter types rely heavily on this stuff, and if it counts as many individual peices of armor, you could end up practically unarmored and useless for a while.

I do have one lil idea. A system where things you are currently wearing or using at the time are not lost, but things that are just in the ol backpack may be. That way, you dont end up suddenly useless due to loss of weapons, armor, etc, but you may end up broke.

[Schadow]

What about if looting took different amounts of time for each different item.

For example, a wielded sword would be a fairly quick loot, while armor pieces would take a long time. (you would have to basically undress your victim in essence)

Also will equipment break? or wear out? That would be cool, and would put less of an importance on equipment.

Schadow.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Yes Thirty, I have not overlooked that armor is many pieces, but if its not a unique piece it would not be all that difficult to replace. Once the trade skills get going well and if they are going to be as important as brickhouse says then it would not be all that hard to replace a good suit of armor. In UO GM armor was almost as good and sometimes better than some of the magic armor available. I always kept a extra suit or two in the bank for those nasty days when it seemed like I was dieing all the time or the pk's were out in strength. If its more realistic play we are looking for than wandering into heavily monster infested areas and or an area where its known the criminal elements like to ambush, then the risk of loosing what your wearing and whats in your back as well as your life is the risk your taking in traveling there. Life is always full of choices and sometimes the decisions we make come with a risk.

[Thirty]

Depends on how long it takes to replace that armor, and how common it is. The thing is, warriors depend on armor, mages and such dont, so a mage can lose almost everything and keep on going, a warrior cant. Mages depend on what they know, which they can keep past death, warriors depend on physical stuff like weapons and armor, which they cant.

One thing is certain, if you lose armor, it will take time to replace it, possibly a fair amount of time if it is a rare peice.

One thing that could help is, in other games, magic armor (and spells that do the same thing) is so much better than normal armor that losing that special peice of armor is a really big deal, and makes you a lot weaker (in AC my magic armor is about 3-4 times better than store bought). If normal armor is real close to the magic stuff here, than this wont happen at least, and armor can be replaced. Same with weapons, those other games, special or magic weapons are way better than normal.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

What you say about other games, such as AC adn EQ is very true Thirty. Brickhouse has told us that they plan on magic items being truly unique and rare, so hopefully you will only have a few pieces which you can make unlootable. They are even toying with the idea of the players being able to make/enchant weapons ourselves. Also, while its true warriors are more dependent on what they wear than casters, they also are dependent on armor. True they can not wear what warriors where, but they have robes and other pieces as well. In EQ casters had just as many armor slots as warriors and had a greater risk than a warrior if lost, because at higher levels almost all of their armor was magical.

[BelDragos]

Also in this game the casters can take a Wear Armor skill and they can use armor like everyone else. The same goes for weapons. I understand, it's so easy th think in classes like the other systems and forget that this one is based on skills. I had that beat into my head a few times when I started posting.

[The Other Joe]

Hey, this is my first post here, and Ive just skimmed through this thread, so sory if this has been stated allready. Rich had mentioned relating death with your religon/god of choice. This could be used to give players a choice of how they would like to handel death. This way, most of the ideas brought up here could be used. Quest could be used by some gods, such as a healer requireing you to heal X amount of damage, or X number of people before gaining lost stats/ or getting certain items back. A lawful/paladin type god could require you to kill X number of evil creatures. A Zen/monk god might require a few hours of "meditaion" during which that charcter could not be used. The follower of a necromatic/evil god might be forced into the under world where he/she would have to fight their way out, or stay. This system woudl allow players to have the game they want. The idea of perminent stat loss kills me, but I think its the best system out there. this type of system would allow me to pick a god where I woudl just have to play for a few min, or an hour doing some good dead, or what ever, to get my stats back.
So what do y'all think?

Joe

[Thirty]

I had a similar idea, different gods, different ways to come back (if at all). The only real problem is the developers having to make them all. I suppose they could start one god and ressurection style at a time, and add more later.

That looks like one good thing here, not only do the monsters move and change, even the gods may change.

[Zeldecar]

Many of the posts here have discussed ressurection after death. Some posts have discussed a process, involving interaction with gods in order to get rezzed after a player has died. I must say I do have my reservations about such ideas. Simply put, if my corpse can be looted, I am going to want to get back to my bod as quikly as possible. The same would be true if I had other players waiting on me to rejoin them. Any system that deals with gettting rezzed should keep these things in mind and should avoid being cumbersome or mundane. Do you really want to have a chat with your diety every time you die? How many "hail marys" does it take earn a rez for carelessly falling off a cliff or for getting toasted by the same group of pks that slaughtered ya 3 times this week? Chatting with supreme beings in the netherworld might be somewhat of a novelty the first couple of times you die, but I think it could get old quick.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

I haven't said much regarding the God/Netherworld ideas yet, so here goes. I have to pretty much agree with Zeldecar on this one. While it would be neat the first couple of times it would soon become annoying downtime. This is specially true as Zeldecar stated if your body is going to be looted or you have friends who are waiting on you to return. I understand that everyone is looking for more realism hence logical explainations/good background story for why things happen in game and the way they happen. I stated in another post that although this is wonderful it is not always practical, ie if you want truily realistic play then everything in game should permanently die, but this concept does not sit well with people who worked months on a charactor only to see it die to unforseen hazards. So trying to explain away why we ressurrect is silly. Also, making the death/resurrection too complicated will again drive players away, I know that I will not be a happy player and might not play Arcanity if this system is too cumbersome. I understand the need for improvements upon the system over current ones which are either too light in penalties or to heavy in them. As I have posted above UO had a system that is based on skill not levels and their death system is not a bad one, it could be tweaked a bit to be better. Ok that is my 2 cents worth.

[Edited by Kymeri mac An Iolar on 11-28-2000 at 03:41 AM]

[The Other Joe]

I agree, I like the UO system, I think its probably the best I have seen discussed. But that is just my opinion, and a lot of people would rather have a different system. That was the point of my post, that the god/deity dependent system would give each player a choice as to how death is handeled. Now, it might not be possible to make a game play like that, but I think it would be cool. I think that giving the players as much control over the game as possible is they way to go.

Joe

[Dyson]

Actually, I'm proud to say I did read the ENTIRE thread...dammit, my eyes are tired. :)

Kymeri, I think I'll agree with you that UO has the best death system of the current MMRPGs. Actually, it's the system I based my idea off of- I figured the "underworld" would be more interesting then running around saying "OOO" to everyone... Actually, my Dyson character in UO was a GrandMaster Medium. I made it my buiness to Speak with Dead on every occasion. Though it made for some good role-playing opportunities, the dead usually weren't interested in saying anything but "res me," so...that kind of didn't work out. It was fun being one of the few GrandMaster Mediums, though. Just wasn't a skill many people explored.

Anyway, I digress. I've altered my suggested Death System to fit with what's been said here (I especially like the idea of Gods competing, etc). When you die, you're given 3 immediate options:

1. Attempting to re-join your body. A portion of XP is taken (to represent the will you expend re-connecting), and you're raised to 1 HP. You are still unconscious, but friends can heal you normally, or you can wait for HP to recover (though you'll be waiting for a long time, probably) To everyone around you, it won't seem much different from when you were unconscious- "he's staying alive through mere will alone.." etc.

2. "Giving up the ghost," but not fully accepting death. In this form, you wander the overworld as an intangible spirit. You can only be seen by animals (who react with fear), certain supernatural creatures (who may react any number of different ways), and possibly magic-using characters employing certain spells (ie, a Diviner with 'True Seeing' or a Necromancer currently using 'Listen to the Dirge of the Dead'). Certain characters (priests, most likely, and certain wizards) may be able to resurrect you, although they could demand anything from money to quests. Being ressurrected this way takes a *very* minor chunk of XP, based on how long you were dead (ie, how much you forget).

3. Accepting Death for now, but vowing to return. In this option, you get sent to the underworld. There, you may meet and converse with the rest of the Dead, and possibly the Gods themselves (under certain circumstances). In the Underworld, you can just sort of "chill" until your guild/friends/whoever get it together and resurrect you themselves, or (if you don't have a guild, or don't want to wait) you can choose to re-assign your God and get re-incarnated somewhere else, or possibly undertake a quest for your own God to take back your former body. This quest could be something post-resurrection (ie, 'I'll put you back in the World of the Living, but you must retrieve the Chalice of Night's Wine within three weeks, or dust you will be again') or something that has to be done in the Underworld ('a wizard of our sect will be coming here by means of magic- show him the way to the River of Dreams so he can finish construction of a powerful wand'). With this sort of system, quests between living players and dead players (in the previous example, a wizard constructing an item and Shade of the same religion) could be assigned to the same quests. It's this sort of interaction that helps to tie a gameworld together. Such systems probably wouldn't be hard to implement (ie, the game engine just cross-referances who's waiting to be assigned what sorts of quests, and links them up), and it would certainly go a long way towards encoraging interaction between players who don't know one another yet.

[IceStorm]

One other possibility is a sacrafice of another character of at least your level. Possibly the person who killed you? And, I really like the idea of being able to have at least 3 items bound to you so they are unlootable.

[The Other Joe]

Ok, yall can stop coming up with better ideas than me :) I like where your going Dyson. The system you have outlined gives players the choices I was discussing. I think thats the big thing, is giving the players as much flexibilty as possible. What you have looks a good bit more do-able from a programming side.

Joe

[Dyson]

Thanks for your support, guys. I also like the idea of 3 or so unlootable items. Everyone has at least one favorite item- if I spent months forging a magic staff of Nifty Whatever, I'd hate to lose it to the first orc who scores a critical hit. Yes, realism in games is good, but not THAT much... ;)

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Now me I'm a clothes horse and I don't want to see some orc wearing my favorite purple/yellow/green tunic. :eek:

[Wrentia]

With a purple/yellow/green robe, the orc's red eyes would just sparkle!

-Wrentia

[fredrick]

LOL... I can see it now... Wrentia's going to be cruising around with a full wardrobe dressing the orcs to color coordinate!
Hahaha... wonder if a pink dress would offset their green skin nicely :-) Guess it depends on the shades involved.

[BelDragos]

Something red would be rather Christmas like.

[Verin'Ilhan]

Well as usual, I have to jump into this most contriversial subject in gaming... "DEATH". First of all, I didn't bother to read all the post yet, so.. this is not to rip anyone.

Death?? First you must decide what player base you want to target. As we all know there are several types of players.

I enjoy role playing and yes real "role play", not sit at a spawn spot and kill the same monster over and over ect.... So to me the perma death is appealing. If I am a King of an empire and I die, I dont not expect to be sitting on the same throne 30 seconds later. As Rich says, this may affect my real life, I still receive the same bills, still have to got to work, and yes, will still play the same games. Okie, lets follow the same examples everyone else has.

AC = No negative affects. If you die in AC, first off you have 5 minutes per lvl of your character to retrieve your body... lvl 60 = 300 mins to get back to your body. When you die in AC you gain Vitae, Viate = 5 percent of your skills. You can lose your vitae by killing monsters. Lets say you are lvl 8 mage and die, kill ONE sandstone golem, and your vitae is gone. So, not really any punishment. If there was not a PK swith (shrines), and was open PVP this would be an ideal game for grief players.

UO = No negative affect unless your character is marked as a pk. As a "blue" player, you drop items on your corpse as a punishment. With UO's new world where there is no pk's, corpses are not lootable. So again, you lose nothing. If you are a PK, then you lose skill points based on the amount of kills you have. For some of the players that means creating a new character upon death... 100+ kills. This was, and really still is the ideal game for grief players.

EQ = Not much of a negative affect. Yes, you may have to travel a long ways to get your items back, and yes you lose some exp, but whooopy. Again the switch saves a lot of the killing of players, "just to kill". If you are a camper, then yes, you swear that you have to do that boring stuff for a few hours again. If you are a "mmoRPg," then you thank the gods that you have been given another chance. Lvl 30 dies, loses portion of buble = nothing. Lvl 30 dies, and character is gone, now that's a punishment.

In the above 3 games I still have atleat one active account in each.

In all if the punishment is not severe enough, then you end up with a ramped killing session. 10 pks attack a band of 10 peacefulls, one pk dies, poof resurected, runes back to scene of battle, and resumes fighting... ect. Early UO. In the case of perma death, at say lvl 30, you will think twice about attacking someone or something.

Dawn = Perma death, with a switch. Upon reaching a certain lvl of HP's the person is knocked out, then the attacker must use a command to finish off the person.

Adellion = 3 strikes you are out. Die 2 times, no or very little punishment, 3rd time, you are gone.

I think these systems favor the role player, and not the die, run to battle, die... run to battle, die... run to battle type of player. A good example is AC, heck yeah, try to kill the tuskers at lvl 20, bah if you die, you just recall back, pick up your stuff and wash... rinse... repeat. Even if not perma, the death system should cause people to stop, think, and consider the options before attacking.

At the bare minimum, "spawn" re-birth is just crazy, and there should be a temple you have to walk to, or find someone to cast a res spell.

I have taken enough of everyones time. Thank you for reading this.

Verin'Ilhan

[UBIK]

aaaaH!!! to much text... cant absorb anymore, head hurt from read aaaaah!!!!

[Verin'Ilhan]

Sorry about that. Didn't know it was that long untill I posted it. :) It's just that death in a game such as this is soooooo interesting. It's seems to me the people that want fewer punishments for death, are the people that like the quake style games. :) Shhhhh, enough.

[UBIK]

its all good.....

[Thirty]

"If you are a PK, then you lose skill points based on the amount of kills you have. For some of the players that means creating a new character upon death... 100+ kills. This was, and really still is the ideal game for grief players. "

Uh, that doesnt sound so ideal for a grief player, having to create a whole new caracter from scratch. Actually, that sounds like the sort of thing that would limit grief players, since they suffer more if they PK.

[Verin'Ilhan]

Ahhhh but grief players are not always, and not as often pk's. You don't have to pk to steal, to be rude, to try to interupt someone else role playing. But you are right, that did stop a lot of the mass killing, the more penalties OSI put on PK's the less killings there were. It made some of them stop and think before they attack. Now... think of perma death, you would really stop and think first, and chances are decide not to. How ever it in no way slowed down the thieves, or people that would kill your mount, or pet. Pack horses became prey for lots of grief players. Now those type of players took no sort of punishment other then have to wait 2.5 mins to res. Your blacksmith buys a packy, starts to mine, naked mage walks buy, poisons packy. You kill the mage, 2.5 mins mage res again, mage show up ebolts packy to finish it off. You buy another packy wash rinse repeat :)

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

I played UO and yes they have alot of grief that can come down on the innocent/newbies. I do have to say one thing there was alot of greif in real life for people who were peasant/trade classes. The nobility had life or death control of you and not all nobility were all that noble when it came to the lower classes.

[Dyson]

That's so true... I remember one of the surest indicators of whether someone was a PK in the 2nd Age was whether they had "Great Lord" in front of their name. At least on Great Lakes. :)

[Dyson]

For those of you newcomers who are starting up with player death, it might be interesting to sift through here- this was the main thread where we trying to "work it out."

We ended up with "this should be tweaked at Beta." :)

[Slitherrr]

Think that as soon as I get the time I'll sort and compile this mess, see what we can come up with... Wrentia's FAQ has inspired me to new heights of involvement. After all, this is THE hot topic of the century, and understandably so, because it affects people in a wide variety of ways, ways that must be explored so that a happy medium can be generated.

[Dyson]

Sounds like a great idea. I'd compile it myself, but as I said before, I think I'm too biased on the topic. If you want any help, though, e-mail me.

[Arkim]

Okay, this is the same post I stupidly put up as a stand-alone before realizing how the boards worked, so if you read that one, don't bother reading this, and vice-versa. Oh yeah, and this version does have slightly better grammar, and much better parentheses usage.

I'm all in favor of the Gemstone system. I think that a set of gods should be open for worship, and then the player could buy a "deed" for a resurrection. In gemstone, the price was paid in silver, and a ritual had to be completed. (The ritual involved ringing a bell three times, dropping coins or gems, and ringing it again.) There was a formula for this, which was widely known. I believe it was your current number of deeds * 100 + your level * 100 + 101 silver pieces (gems are worth 3x their original value, a 34 sp gem counted as 102). Each deed was good for one resurrection. The deed was used whether you needed it or not. If you remained as a corpse (your body could be dragged by a comrade) for more than 10 minutes, your body would decay, the god would spare you, and you'd lose a deed and exp. If resurrected before that, you lost the deed, but no exp. (PLUG - Gemstone is a great system! Everyone should play at least once!)

Anyway, since levels don't exist in Arcanity, I suggest that the "cost" of the deed should depend solely on how many deeds the player has at the moment. For example, (using some EQ names, but just for explanation) I have (had) a 35th level ranger named Treebranch Swiftarrow, who worshipped Tunare. Let's say to avoid permadeath, I wanted to get a deed. If I had no deeds at the time, the task would be simple, such as collecting berries (from within the ranger grove) to be blessed. This is a simple task, but it would allow a character of any level to have something to fall back on. (why would a character risk permadeath to get a necessary deed?) However, other deeds might be things such as killing poachers, or tracking sacred animals to ensure their safety. This system allows higher powered and more experienced characters to collect more deeds, but they will no doubt have a fair share of risk in their adventures. A new adventurer would not be able to do all of these reasonably, but they will most likely not venture too far from the grove (grove interchangable with haven) I also propose a time limit such as 10 minutes for the decay of a body (but the player could talk as a spirit) If this occurs, then the god(dess) revives the character at the nearest haven (could be a long way). If the character has no deeds left, then they could do a quick quest (berries, etc.) so they would not be left deedless. Since resurrection "in the field" would be possible, I suggest not losing a deed in the god(dess) does not have to intervene. (ie. being resurrected, losing the deed anyway...then recovering from a temporary "drain" and getting run over by a goblin horde, causing a perma-death, (remember, no deeds left if they are always taken) and would not be cool)

And again, this does not necessarily limit itself to nature gods. I tried to incorporate everyone's wishes into this idea, such as Gemstone (beautiful system), quests done to counter death (only they're done in advance), a possible perma-death (if ya wanna live risky), and the first one or two quests would not take much time. Oh yeah, one more thing I'd like to add now. I like the undead thing somewhat, and a land of the dead would be cool. Okay, I'll also incorporate the "good, neutral, and evil" gods, and even show how some conflict can occur. Let's say a simple task for an evil god would giving blood on an altar (small hp loss, and a bit of dizziness, while a task for a higher deed (like if you had 8 already) would be something like (a random quest table could be made, right) relieving oneself in the holy waters of the temple of a rival (good) god. On the other hand, a follower of a good god may have to, for the first deed, take a holy symbol or message to a paladin (or cleric, or monk, etc.) who is standing at the city gates. (the contents of the message could be announced by the NPC too (if it is an important message), and allow for story development. Keeping with the whole conflict (and water violation), a more difficult deed could be pouring holy water into the blood pool of an evil god's shrine. (obviously, the guards will get pissed and a half) Or, for insane deeds (come on, a few people will try), the holy water could be poured into the river of the underworld (I know, the River Styx is overused, but whatever..) Also, for something crazy like this (maybe more than 10 deeds), the deeds could be used not just for resurrection, but for divine intervention in battles or assistance with whatever (creating a spell, etc.) This would actually motivate people to try for those deeds when they are more powerful, and admit it, in a clash between good and evil, divine intervention (we'd need awesome graphics here people) would be great. Also, participating in a crusade for a god may allow for a "free" resurrection if killed in battle. (assuming one is taking part in the crusade)

Well, I know that I said I'd throw my 2 cents in, but I'm over my limit, and I've thrown a $20 at you guys. Hopefully, you'll catch it =) And I realize the title of my post is "My ideas on death and "special items.", but I admit that if I wrote more on special items, this post would rival my english papers. (Though personally, this is easily worth 2 posts) Anyway, feel free to fling comments at me. (AIM KingLemming CoFH or CFZeroCool@aol.com)Eventually, I'll take all my suggestions that may or may not happen, and compile 'em into a book for future reference. (But at this rate, it'll be a big book =P)

Anyway, Arkim out.

[Dyson]

Okay, after reading through, here's my take:

I like the ideas of rituals and basing resurrection on how you "stand with your god." The way you use the term "deed" is somewhat confusing; I'm guessing this is how your system breaks down:

1. Complete one or more quests for your god
2. Die

3. Get resurrected by a friend; if the deed you completed was major enough, you don't lose XP.

or

3. Get left to rot; after rotting, you get resurrected by your god, but you lose XP

Is that how it works?

Anyway, I like the idea of questing for your next life.

Here's a version of the system I'd like to see:

1. Character dies, you go to the Land of the Dead (ie, everyone's a dis-incorperated spirit).

2. You wander around the land of the dead until you find your god's place of power (ie, HQ in the Land of the Dead).
There, you petition to be resurrected. If you've already completed a quest or several quests that befit your level (ie, easy to moderate tasks for newbies, a hard task or several easy to moderate tasks for more advanced players), your god resurrects you then and there. If you've been lacking in your worship (ie, haven't done much for the temple lately), your god can assign you a quest which you must complete upon being resurrected.

2. (alternative): You hang around in the land of the dead until a high-level priest or wizard resurrects you. Though they may demand services of your own, they'll most likely be PCs, so that's between you and them. Certain spells (like Speak with Dead) allow communication between people- ie, "Don't sign up for a quest, Bill. We've got a priest on the way."

3. If you're resurrected by your god with an "assigned quest," but you die before it's completed, you're in trouble. You can either sign on to complete this quest AND whatever else your god assigns you, or you can choose to go to another god (certain gods are more likely than others to take you in; the spirit of a Liche is going to have a hard time getting the gods of good to listen to him if he falls "out of favor" with the evil gods).

4. If you consistently fail in your quests to get resurrected, or you don't want to sign on for a quest in the first place, you can hang around the Land of the Dead until you recover enough psychic "energy" to manifest in the waking world. As a manifested shade, you look like a translucent version of your former self, but you can't effect anything (ie, can't attack, cast spells, move objects, etc). Priests or wizards can talk to you through spells, as well as resurrect you.

A note on Undead: For purposes of undead, I consider them to deal with spirits and the Land of the Dead in the same way, save that they've traded their living bodies for undead forms. Though they can die and become effectively resurrected (through favors of dark gods, or more likely, rituals by mortal necromancers), they can never re-inhabit living bodies, always returning to the Living world as undead creatures. This makes it especially dangerous for a high-level undead to fall out of favor with its god; very few good gods are going to give a ghoul's spirit a "second chance," no matter how good he claims to be. On the other hand, a necromancer of middling level can probably resurrect you by transferring your spirit into a rotting body, as opposed to true resurrection, where a high-level priest has to bring you back.

One could even go so far as to make an "animate list" that necromancers could "turn on" for their spells; ie, if you're a mortal necromancer going dungeon crawling with Jon, Jake, and Jim the PC zombies, you could link their names to your "Animate Dead" spell. If, say, Jake gets killed, you cast animate dead on the nearest pile of corpses- they rise up as your NPC drones, as per normal, minus one, which rises up as Jake. You resume your dungeon crawling. This could be especially useful in hero-vs-undead frays; if a bastion of undead are fighting a group of paladins, the necromancers could animate the dead paladins, imbuing them with the spirits of the slain undead. Not only does this evilly rob the paladins of an easy raise, it allows for true PC controlled "horde tactics" on the evil side. Yes, it makes undead very powerful, but remember: they can also be turned or blasted out of existance by priests, or hurt by holy water, or any number of things. Also, fantasy lit. is full of heroic frays- it's perfect for the thematic scoring of Arcanity.

I figured as long as we're on a long-winded trend, there's no reason I can't get in on it. :)

What do you guys think of these ideas?

[Thirty]

Well, I sorta proposed soemthing along these lines (its in here somewhere), that is, quests before death not after, but it wasnt this detailed.

It might work, only problem I see is making up all the quests. Another problem,to some extent, is if the quests take a lot of tedious time and people dont want to do them. I mean, we are trying to avoid the tedium of the experience loss system, tedium before death is as bad as tedium after it.

I did have a sorta seperate idea, what if the loss from death was stat loss for a time, not experience? Here, we dont really have experience anyway, its skills. There are two ways to get death loss back I know of, at least from AC, the first used was just time (at first real time, later changed to game time), later it was gain experience to avoid the penalty. The game time idea might work, although you might want to have some provision to avoid people leaving their caracter on overnight, say, there must be some keyboard input, or better some travel every once in a while (cant travel with a macro Im thinking).
I would think any penalty would be short duration for just one death, duration could go up for multi deaths in a short time.

This could ty into my idea from before, that we adventureres came into this world because the NPCs prayed for heroes to save them from the evil horrible monsters, and poof we appear (log on). Naturally, if we do too much dying, we will get less prayers ;) not to mention less charisma to the townsfolk and such, cuz we woudnt be doing what they need, protecting them.

Hmmm, another idea, what if one of the main, or the main, penalty for death was the NPCs didnt like us as much, prices got worse, etc. So if we have a lousy kill to death ratio (killing monsters that threaten NPCs that is) we could find prices double, if real bad some places wont let us in ("we dont serve your kind here"), that sort of thing.

[Dyson]

I don't think quests would be as difficult to come up with, and they're the sort of thing that can be easily switched around even after the game is released. Personally, I wasn't looking as Quests as the main form of how to get ressed, but sort of a backup.

The most common form of resurrection would probably entail having a friend res you or hire somebody; the quests are there if you're seperated from a guild, are a loner (or a fanatic of the god) and have lots of quests completed anyway, or simply don't want to owe any favors to anybody.

Thirty, I like your temporary stat loss idea; overall, I'm against serious knocking people back because they die. For this reason, I happen to disagree with the kill-to-death ratio thing- what if the player isn't a fighter? A priest of a healing god isn't going to spend much time bashing in heads; he gains his XP through patching people up. Naturally, if he's on the battlefield a lot (that's where the wounded are), he'll get killed as much as any knight, but will have hardly any "kills" of his own. I'd like to stay away from Judgement systems on the part of NPCs, aside from alignment.

[Arkim]

Okay, the term "deed" is what was used in Gemstone III. Basically, you paid for these by giving donations to the church. I've gone through the formula, but if you did donate enough, the high priestess would say that Lorminstra, the goddess of death, is pleased. (And you'd get a deed, which showed up on your status screen)

Also, to clarify, I suggested that the quests for the first or second deed be simple to complete, and is the same (taken from a random 10 or so) for any player. A simple quest that is completed within the haven so that the player does not have to risk death trying to get the deed. Based on the number of deeds a player has (and not their power), the quests get harder, allowing more powerful characters to have more, which as I mentioned, could be used for purposes other than resurrection.

Okay, last part, I promise. I'll explain what a "deed" is. A deed is a protection from death, which is granted by one's god. If they remain dead for over 10 minutes (unless there is some sort of spirit preservation spell which extends this time) Either way, if the corpse decays, the god(dess) will revive the character, who will lose one deed. If the character is revived before the god(dess) must intervene, a deed is not lost.

If you need anything else clarified, just let me know. Feel free to e-mail or AIM.

[Slitherrr]

When we last left our heroes, there were several ideas for death.

Permadeath. When you die, you die. Subscribers to this say that death should mean something, and permadeath would make heroics actually heroic. Some variations to this are:

Escape from death. Before death, a god has a chance to intervene and save the player, dependent on the player's standing with the god.

Leave an heir. One idea was that a PC could spend a certain amount of effort training an "heir," a character that the player would assume control of upon the death of the current character. The player could give the heir training or equipment, and thus have his legacy survive with the family name.

Explorations into unconsciousness. This idea states basically that not all monsters would waste the effort to kill a PC. They may merely fight until the PC passes out, root through their stuff, then toss the unconscious body aside, or take it back to camp as a prisoner, where he would have to escape or be "sprung."

Adventures in the "Other World". When one dies, one's spirit remains to wreak havoc. Basic gist of this is that you spend some time in another world and attempt to get back to the land of the living. There are a couple of major variations to this idea.

Go to the Underworld. Upon death, the player is transported to a land inhabited by dead souls. The player must then spend some time in this world, either fighting his way out, talking with his god, or merely conversing until his time is up.

Stay as a ghost. Upon death, a player's soul is manifested as a ghost in the world. Most versions of this allow the ghost to only be seen or heard by magical "medium" abilities and spells. The ghost must then persuade someone to resurrect him or travel in ghost-form to a temple to beg mercy from a god. This is sometimes combined with a favor system, where if a person has no favor with his god, he suffers permadeath unless he can be resurrected by a player. Another variation may force the ghost to stay with his body and instead have his body dragged about by PC's that are alive to a place where he may be resurrected.

Ability Loss. This means either loss of skills, loss of exp, or loss of abilities. The loss may be either permanent (ala the EQ exp loss), or temporary (ala the AC "vitae penalty"). Another version of this is a system in which a player does not gain experience or skills for a set time, instead of losing said abilities upon death.

Temporary Character Unplayability. Upon death, the player is unable to play that character for a specified amount of time. Other characters can be played to prevent the account from being useless. This could possibly be combined with the Underworld idea.

Other Things to consider:

Staff has already stated pretty certainly that there will be no straight permadeath. The reasoning is simply that noone wants to spend months building up a character, then dying to an ISP hiccup or a freak monster train. Proponents of permadeath bring up how a game may be instead designed to prevent such freak accidents from either occurring or having such a severe effect.

Also, staff has said there will be no full looting rights. Reasoning is that noone wants to work to get a Self-Flinging Javelin of Pikachu(tm) Summoning, then have it lotted by the next ear-toting PK that comes along.

Most players don't want to have to run fifty bazillion miles to get their equipment back.

Several of these systems may be combined, possibly by having different gods serve as patrons of different death systems.

The devs have hinted that the monsters will more likely loot the players just as often as the PK's will. This could lead to such things has monster hoards that are built up over time, which could be a very good reason for the character to avenge his death.

Item loss is a big issue to be resolved with this. Some ideas involve allowing items to be "bound" to a person, so they can either not be looted or are worthless to anyone but that person. Also, item loss is worse for armor-dependent classes, such as fighters, than mages.

Personal notes:
Being unconscious is a path that isn't explored enough by MMORPG's. You could be unconscious in EQ, but the monster kept attacking until you died, and it was generally a non-issue. (There are exceptions, for instance, the time when I was diseased and unconscious, and had to sit there for thirty minutes without even being able to type /quit.)

Also, a big thing I liked that was introduced in this thread was the idea that the NPC's in the world prayed to the gods for the PC's to save them from the evil monsters in the world. This gives reason for the players to just be popping up and coming back, and it also gives openings for Anti-PC's, NPC's that return from death just like PC's, as well as explaining why critters don't return. It also gives rise to such things as ratings by NPC's; if a PC dies, his chance of returning is based on how much the NPC's that prayed for him want him to return. Hey, if you went this far, particularly unliked PC may return as a computer-controlled Anti-PC that future PC's would have to deal with ("Hey, Jolly the Grand, is that you? What's with the evil glint in your eye?"), but that's merely fancy on my part.

Item loss can be resolved in a big way by making items not nearly as important as skill. After all, the choice to fight with plate mail and broadsword or leather cuirass and rapier should be a personal choice, and not a choice of necessity brought upon by a question of effectiveness (e.g. having a "Super Duper Plate Mail" that is the best armor a fighter can get is a bad idea). This way, PC's can lose items and not be hindered overmuch in effectiveness.

Well, that's what I gleaned from this thread, kids. Let's see where this adventure takes us next.

[BelDragos]

That's a pretty acurate summary. Has any decision been made yet?

[Black Adder]

There are some great ideas, and both ends of the spectrum from perma-death ala Dawn to pop back up with all your gear and no problem ala Quake.

This has been hit on, but let me just add my perspective as a former 52 Cleric in EQ. Resses undo *almost* all the grief of death. At higher levels, people almost always get resses: Boom you are at your corpse, all your stuff is there and 80% or even 95% (for level 56 clerics) is back.

Making your death a minor nuisance (even though some people WHINE about their deaths well after their 5% exp loss has been recouped).

I found that EQ was harshest on the first time level 30- something people playing the game honestly (ie not buying a cleric off ebay to PL them). These people would lose hours and hours of work because they had little or no access to convienient resses.

Side Personal Note: There is nothing wrong with twinking or PLing even, if you have earned your way up once then good for you, people that complain about it are just jealous...
(throw your rotten vegetebles NOW).

Check out my Player V Player thread on this board for some of my lousy ideas.

This is a hard topic :)

[Black Adder]

One quick thing - You want to match the penalty with the ease of dying.

If there are one or three hit kills commonplace then ressurecting should be cake.

If dying is hard to do then make the penalties harsh.

I am the master of the obvious :)

This idea, I REALLY like (and the pink dresses on orcs would rule):

"
The devs have hinted that the monsters will more likely loot the players just as often as the PK's will. This could lead to such things has monster hoards that are built up over time, which could be a very good reason for the character to avenge his death.
"

Sorry to make 2 replies in a row, but I was bubbling over with the need to type ;)

[CorellianKnight]

hey everyone. ive been thowing this idea around internally here at BH. now that the player death thread has started back up again i thought id give a post.

what do u people think about a heaven and hell system where u go to one or the other based on how many player kills u have commited in your current lifetime? if uve killed a lot of players and u finally get killed u will end up in hell in the afterlife (some set number of player kills). tho its absolutely 100% possible to return to the real world its a real pain (more time consuming) in the butt. after all its punishment, u went to hell.

if, however, you havent commited very many human player killings then if u are finally killed, u go to heaven and can easily return/get resurrected to the real world with minimal pain.

this also gives a consequence to pking, making people think 2wice about random killing.

its also based on the idea that killing a player is a sin regardless of whether it was an act of defense or not (even if u were defending u had the opportunity to spare an individuals life just like in the real world).

those who have commited large numbers of kills have sinned greatly against society and when they finally get killed they have the greater punishment for death.

also once the player dies and reenters the real world his kill counter gets reset. he/she would get a fresh start on life.

pvp would still thrive in such a system since u only get a mark towards hell if u perform the final act of killing your opponent. an individual would have the choice of sparing the opponents life (some sort of player animation like having him/her stagger or kneel down gasping for air in fatigue would let the player know that he has defeated the opponent. he now has the choice to take his/her life. the choice is his/hers. do the consequences outweigh the benefits (if any; quenching your thirst for revenge would be an example of a benefit, or monetary reward, etc).

[The Other Joe]

Sounds good. There is one hole though. A PK group can go killing. Bob kills 4 people, then has his buddy kill him. He goes to heaven, comes back, and his counter is reset, or deos the reset counter only work for hell? Also, can the number be scaleable for level. This way, if I have a 50th level charcter that I have been playing for 2 years, and have killed 10 pk'ers, or whatever the number is, I woudl not go to hell. Also, how about having the kill not count against you if the person you killed was an avid PK'er, so that we could go on PK hunts. Just some ideas.

Joe

[Thirty]

Hmm, a thought, about the super duper plate mail. One problem with medieval armor scarcity and cost was the cost of the metal itself. Well, here that will be less of a problem. Armor will tend to be originally from old automobiles, steel girders, that sort of thing, plenty of fairly good quality usable metal around, much easier to find and use, even rusty, than smelting it from ore.

I suspect metal wont be a problem for most people, all that is needed is skill to know what metal to use, and how to shape and treat it. Armor could be a lot easier to get here, weapons a bit harder because the steal has to be a lot better for those, so a lot more skill is needed, even some resmelting. But ocasionally youll wander into the wrong neihborhood and get beat to death by goblins weilding old tire irons and monkey wrenches :eek:

There may also be other differences to medieval type stuff here because it started as a high tech society that was destroyed. Might look a bit Mad Max-ish at times, just without the vehicles since its a lot past feul time.

And oh yea, somewhere, in some secret cave, put a volkswagen bug covered in dust that starts right up when you turn the key.

[Thirty]

Hmm, how am I going to get those people to pray especially hard especially for ME :D

Bring in kill trophies (even if you have to buy them off someone else).
Tell Tall Tales.
Hire a bard to tell, or make up, my exploits.
Wear impressive armor/clothing, the more heroic and mean looking, the better.
If I actually see the need to kill something, make sure there are witnesses.
If I kill something with lotsa loot, spread a little around town.
Hire an ad agency, or better a political campiagn manager.
Take some acting lessons so I can act heroic, and voice lessons for heroic sounds. Opera anyone? Shakspear?
Public speaking lessons to, nothing like a rousing speach now and then, and I'll need a speechwriter.
Hmm, Ill need an impressive sounding name.
And a white horse, gotta be white, preferably trained as a showhorse.
Gaudy weapons, might not be all that practical, but must look MEAN.

you get the idea

[Dyson]

Okay, let's try and get some basic ideas either out of the way or set in stone so we can move on to the more specifics.
Once we whittle the "obvious choices" away, then we can really dig into the meat of the matter. We're still floundering, guys.

First Issue:

Topic: Permadeath- When you die, your character gets deleted. They are gone forever and cannot be brought back.

Am I correct in assuming nobody wants this? Anyone who does, speak up NOW. Let's get this one settled.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Some realy good ideas coming in here. I like the idea of the deeds. Being able to do the quests before had therefore limiting the amount of downtime when you die. Being able to agree to do a quest after a resurrection if you have no deeds on you. Its already been stated in the faq section that there won't be permadeath.
The heaven and hell concept sounds interesting. Increased penalies with death for pvp's sounds interesting
Just remember that whatever system is instituted needs to not be too time cosuming. If players are grouped hunting and die, their group not going to want and hang around for long periods waiting for your return. Also if there is going to be a system of corpse decay and looting then you will also want to get back to your corpse as quickly as possible to mayhap save your stuff.
Any system will need to have somewhat of a penalty for dieing, even if its just a temporary one.

[BelDragos]

I agree. The delay should be kept to a minimum. The same reason for not allowing mind control of PCs applies here also.

It would be no fun for the player and the game being fun is the formost concideration.

[Wrentia]

As has been mentioned, far too much time is invested in a character. To make perma-death viable, the world would be a pretty non-violent place, monsters would generally be easy, and grief players would have a field day. Perma-death is a generally bad idea for a MMOG.

-Wrentia

[Katz]

Ok, I'm new, but this really looks like a great game here. Alot of thought has been put into the concept and implementation. I just wanted to weigh in on my preferences for death. I realize everyone has their own ideas, but this is what I would like based on other games I've played:
1. no permadeath, too much time and thought is put in on developing just the character you want and learning how to play that character correctly, permadeath would frustrate the player and I think ppl would soon give up restarting. Even if there was just a 1 in 100 chance of perma death, if it happened to me, especially after being in the world for 30 days or so, I'd just move on.
2. don't make us run back to the corpse to get our stuff back. In other games, many times when I died I had no idea where I even was, and if I did manage to find my corpse, I'd usually get killed again by whatever killed me in the first place.
3. I'd recommend that we lose experience, maybe even a good bit of experience, and that we lose one good (not the best, but close) item.
4. Another possibility is to have us become a corpse, or ghost after dying and we would have to complete a quest to become resurrected again. We could still operate as a corpse or ghost, but some things would not work the same. For example, if we were a ghost, we could move through walls, but maybe not be able to pick things up or push buttons. The quest could be something along the lines of begging from strangers to obtain money or items for the church/guild/town hall, etc. or spending a certain period of time praying for resurrection, which could be a random amount of time, then requesting resurrection, which could be randomly granted. Corpses could do more than ghosts, since they could actually pick things up and retrieve quest items. So, death could result in ghosthood or corpsehood. If you ended up as a ghost, you could resurrect to a corpse, complete a quest for that and then be resurrected to fully human/or whatever race again.

I like a mmorpg with alot of quests, so this could be a chance to add some in.

Anyway, this may be too long, but I just thought I'd get it out there once and not have to go into it again.

Glad to be here and very glad this community is so active!

^-^ Katz

[BelDragos]

Welcome to the boards Katz. No post is too long if it is constructive.

The promlem with what you propose is if the persin who died is hunting with a group. They would have to wait for you return to your body.

[Katz]

Well, if the person who died is hunting with the group, it could work this way:
The person dies, the group sees his body lying dead, the dead person immediately becomes a ghost/corpse and receives the message of his/her quest or what is required to fully resurrect, the group sees the person then as a ghost or walking corpse. And the ghost/corpse could continue along with the group.

I think that might work. Of course, the dead person wouldn't be of much help with fighting at that point and the group might decide to let them go to follow their own path to resurrection.

I recall in other games, the dead person would message their group members to pick up their stuff and hike it back to the group, nekkid as a jaybird. ;) So either way the group loses time waiting for the dead person to return. This way, if the dead immediately became a ghost/corpse, losing experience and one major item permanently (permanent only for the item lost), then the group could continue on, with or without the dead person. Additionally, it might be possible for there to be a spell available to an extremely high level priest-type character that would be resurrection. That person could actually resurrect the ghost/corpse, at a cost.

I don't know, I'm just sort of free thinking here about making being dead a useful component, rather than just a delay or game stopper.

^-^ Katz

[BelDragos]

When you say ghost, do you mean the body loses it's material form or do you mean the spirit/soul of the character leaves the body?

[Dyson]

Okay, it seems we're in agreement about Permadeath- ie, none.

Since Ghosts seem to be the next topic: Is there anyone who is really against having ghosts of any sort?

Personally, I think there should be multiple ways to get ressed, and manifesting as a ghost would be one option (though not a requirement).

So, to repeat: Anyone who is completely against Ghosts in the death system, speak NOW.

[The Other Joe]

I like the idea of multiple ways of ressing.

Joe

[Katz]

I meant the character lost it's material form, causing the problems of not being able to physically manipulate things, but able to talk and interact with others, and perhaps "frighten" monsters. The next step to a corpse (like a walking dead) would allow physical manipulation, but the character was restricted in doing some things, I don't know what, but some kind of a restriction or negative to being a walking dead. Souls would exist forever, no matter what form the corporeal body was in.

^-^ Katz

[Slitherrr]

Well, I don't really see waiting for a guy to get back from popping up as being very adventure-like in any case. Since noone is going to be camping spawns, the hunters will have to move around in a more adventure-like fashion, and if someone in the party dies, that should force the party into reconsidering their course, not sitting there and waiting to get back their full compliment. Personally, I agree with the basicness of the Heaven/Hell system, although maybe it should be based on the karma system, not the number of players a person has killed. Allows for more involvement with the system, and it keeps away those issues such as the "scaling for level" mentioned earlier.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

I have to agree with Slitherr on this one if a member of a group can't fully contribute then their just going to get cut loose and that's the same thing as if it took you too long to get back in the first place

[Dyson]

I'm back- had to take a final.

So... death is still unresolved. :)
It's kind of funny that we're having so much trouble with it, though I'm glad we all agree that's its an important issue.

[kenny_geeze]

If it comes down to a choice in game design of how much gold, items, and xp the player loses when dying, why not make it up to the character. You could have a certain choice of gods at the beginning that you can chose from for your character to worship or pray to. Upon dying, depending on who your god is will depend on your fate. Such as if you worship the god of merchants, then you may have to buy your way out of death with gold. Another god might force you to cast off a certain value of material things(items) in order to continue living. Another god might offer new life for past memories (xp) or another might even make you escape his underworld. Failure to do so would result in heavy skill stat deductions that way if someone dies too many times in a row then their character is permantely dead or completely useless by the very end.
I like the idea of a successor too and the re-incarnation thing. Some would be fun to do only a few times. Such as being re-incarnated and having to go through some big plot to regain your memories from the past life. I think by about the tenth time of trying to get your memories and skills back, you might be getting sick of it. And there are other times when you just want to get back in the action with your friends and not go through hours of death plot.
Just my two cents.

[kenny_geeze]

No matter how you do the death system lag is also a big issue. Anyone who's played Diablo 2 will definitely know what I'm talking about, where gibberliings can kill you from two screens over.
I would love to have really really bad consequences when it comes to death. In a perfect world it would work fine because it would be your own fault for dying.
However maybe you guys should lighten up for serious consequences just because of lag. Even if brick house has no congestion at their end, our internet service providers aren't that amazing sometimes and bandwidth can be really bad too. Even my cable modem provider acts up sometimes. I'd hate to be in the middle of a battle and then get a lag spike, to log back on only to find my level 20 mage just lost a bucket load of xp... again. It could get to a point where it's nearly impossible to progress because you'd lose more than you gain. Sorry about all the examples of diablo 2, but it's quite a lag monster.
I remember a time when I got to level 43, trying to make 45, but I couldn't. Every day I played there's be some huge lag spike that would kill my character and the xp I had been working up for the past day and half. Frustrating stuff. All i ask is that when designing the death system, consider lag as a big impact and treat LAG as the most powerful monster a game can spawn on anyone.

[joe]

I just want to address something real quick. People are talking about things like waiting to long for someone to rejoin there group when they die. We'll this is unfair, I think when you die you should respawn with your group with full health and all items right away ready to fight the good fight. Friends waiting for you to long when you die is way to harsh a penalty to pay. I'll just quite. And if I cant have all my items back on my new body after I die. I'll quite. And this is not just my opinion, I represent all the quiters out there. We might be sissies, but we're sissies with money, so you better listen to us whine. Wah wah wah. Thank you for listening but I have to go help my mommy with the dishes. B-bye
joe
(p.s. when I wrote heroes quest in my earlier posts I ment quest for glory, it says heroes quest on my box, then those bastards changed the name and confused me, sorry about the mix up)

[Macros]

I have been reading about all kinds of ideas relating to death. My personal philosophy is that death is bad any way you look at it.

I read a previous post in which the poster said going back to recover items from a corpse is one of the worst parts of dying. I can't agree more...How much fun is it to go back to your corpse in most games? In my Diablo II playing I remember doing naked kamikaze runs past groups of monsters baby sitting my corpse just so I could lead them away. Everquest had corpse summoning but that required a "hook-up" with a necro friend of high enough level (who had done an over 24 hour camp to gain the spell). I think dying should cost you something but not require naked suicide runs to accomplish this.

Ghosts are an interesting idea but again this adds a lot of downtime to the playing (I mean you DO want to get back and fight more don't you?). I would like to see people brought back to life in the nearest temple to where they died (their religion most likely). Items would be handled a different way...I believe it was Rolfe who said they were thinking about a 4 permanent item system so you don't loose your favorite +5 backscratcher. This would give the person a chance to earn more money, or continue adventuring (plus newbies probably only have 4 items so they would be fully protected).

I think the army/town guard should handle the corpse situation as they would be the most likely to find it after you died. Perhaps the remaining items after the first 4 would then be recovered and you would have to pay the town for recovery? Maybe the God/Goddess collected your body and soul and the temple would own these items...whichever the case may be I think having a central area where you could buy back lost items would be great. Having 4 of your favorites could mean money or not you could get back to your friends, adventure more, or go earn some coppers to pay for the blessing of new life (and get your remaining items back). That way the costs go up as you gain in superior weaponry and fill more item slots.

I really don't want to be a ghost walking through walls or begging in the streets. Please let me lick my wounds and go back to bashing asap. Just like hunting rabbits I don't want to sit around hoping I get a rez or my God likes me today. Perhaps the temple selection could be based on distance so evil/good people killed near the opposed temple would pay a huge sum to get items back (or may not be able to at all).

My reading here on the boards leads me to believe the game designers and players all want 0 (zero) downtime. Let's hope there is an ability to get close to this ideal.

Macros

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Its not so much that we want zero downtime, but that we don't want it to all time comsuming that some other games(cough, EQ, cough)where you were running forever to retrieve your corpse and sometimes it took hours to get everything settled. I don't mind being resurrected and being naked. If I have a way to get back to my corpse quickly. Everyone takes a risk when they decide to go fight in a area that heavily infested. Being able to tag your corpse and drag it as EQ did was better at least than Diablo's crazy Kamikazee run cirles and lead them away rountine.
Eveyone agrees that there should be someway to resurrect once dead. Its the method everyone is debating. Everyone agrees that there should be a player based resurrect spell. So if your lucky enough to have a friend along that has it they can resurrect you and your set. I think everyone agrees that you should be able to choose your god and set up some kind of agreement with him as to a resurrection and the cost and penalty of it, but again in a manor not overly time consuming so you can get back to what you were doing and that the penalty won't take hours to work off. I think everyone on the ideas, just have their own ideas on the methods, based on the previous games we have all played.

[Schadow]

How about a Ressurection potion?

This potion is rather inexpensive, and brings the fallen character back from the dead with 1hp, and no mana, plus a stat reduction for a short time, possibly a little exp penalty. You have roughly 1 week game time to be ressurected or you body decomposses to badly for the process to take effect. You can also be ressed while offline, but you will not rise until you logon.(This will let you bring another character on to rez you fallen chr. If need be)

When you die, you become a ghost. As being a ghost you are bound to your body, and can't wonder farther then a short distance from this body. Also you cannot communicate with anyone else in game. (Unless someone has a speak with dead spell active.)

How does that sound?

Schadow Walker

[Rend]

I glad people don't like the amount of downtime in other games. Lets face it experince, money and items equals real life time in online RPG's. Nobody wants to play a game where just because their party got jumped by mobs or other players that they have to spend 20 + min. to get there body back. Just to find xp and items you've spent your real life time to get have been taken from you. I think that there should be a penalty for death but, it is still a game and should be fun not frustrating. I really like the idea of making a deal with your god. You can give people a choice, maybe something like picking between losing xp or money or an item.

[Edited by Rend on 12-27-2000 at 08:46 PM]

[Xavier]

It seems to me that if you want to talk about death you have to talk about Religion. In most religions around the world death is followed by some kind of divine Judgement. This would increase the role of Relgions becuase each one will ahve a different system of Judgement. Appearently EQ is a dirty word around here but I'll envoke for our purposes anyway. In EQ Religion is present but after the character is created you never hear abou it again. That sucks. BOO!! HISS!!

I propse a system(apologze if this has already been disccused but this is a damn long post), wherby upon death a character is respawn at the death site as a dead entity. Good Character would be Spirits and Evil one could comeback as Poltergiests(sp?). The would then need to find the nearest oracle or temple of the diety the believe in, where they would be judged. The judgement could be based on seperate faction you have for your church. The better then faction the lower the penalty. Logically a G-d would be much more willing to resurect a devout follower rather than one who has wondered from the religion. Also Players would have to watch their faction doesn't go neg. If that happened the would have to find a nother G-d that would resurect them. then the would become a convert to the new religion. Or if your faction went negative with your god perhaps the could be aquest you could perfom as a ghost that would increase it) the judgement could also on be Overall Karma.
The penalty could come in the form of:
1. $$.(I like the idea of the G-d kindly "requesting" a donation to show your commitment to the faith)
2. XP. (kinda unrealistic cuase if G-d can bring you back from the dead he can probably do it perfectly)
3. A loss of faction with your G-d.(G-d would tend to get annoyed with those need resurection on a regular basis)
4. One or two items looted(perhaps a player could select one item that could not be looted and the killer could choose 1 or 2 of the other items)
5. A combination of all of these.
Most importantly the system should make sense. Everbody knows that when a person dies IRL the automatically return to the point of origin and then need to find their body to get their stuff back?? Right? Wrong. The ONLY reason that one should be able to rise from the dead is divine intervention. anything else is just plain silly.

[jnjapex]

Death!

Give the player a choice!

I am on the side the death must punish the character,
not the real world player's time (ala EQ).

So I would be in favor of a system that when a player
dies he can be looted of 1 item (by choise of player if
a pvp kill) or 1 random item if an NPC. That item would
then be destroyed (see my other post on the economy) if
looted by an NPC.

Also the player is then given the choice of immediate ressurection at their "bind" pt with an hour or so of
severe stat penalties (the hangover so to speak). OR player
can choose NOT to return to the game until say after 2hrs
with no penalties.

So you never loose any time invested in your character,
only an item and then maybe only a random item.

Maybe even have it so even if you are killed by another player they can't pick the item but get a random item but
unlike a monster they can keep the item.

[Rend]

I like the gist of the last two posts here. There should obviously be a penalty for death. Strong or light. I just don't want it to be stupid. I don't care if it takes me a full day to get my body in to working order again, as long as it makes sense. The idea of having to goto the nearest temple as a "ghost" to work out some deal with your god is pretty good. Stays well in the RPG aspect. The only problem could be if the temple is and hour RL time away. Thats what i never liked about dieing in EQ. The damn long run back to my body. I would just hit the num lock and go make a drink. That stupid run was boring as a hell. Thats the kind of stuff a don't want to see. If i'm going to be penalized have it be involved. Or just deduct my stats a little or take an item. At least with the deduction I get to play the game to get them back and I'm not running around looking for my body only to get killed by a PC that thinks its funny.

[Jeff Walters]

Just thought I'd throw in my two cents on death :)

I used to totally and utterly loathe death in Asheron's Call. The 5% vitae penalty on each death was fair enough in my opinion, but as you increased in levels you would begin to leave a staggering amount of items on corpses....not good since AC had lots of little bugs like making your character continue running in a certain direction for a long time if you got disconnected so that finding your corpse was a nightmare.

By the time I reached level 40 my backpack was filled to the brim with useless but expensive "death items" just to avoid losing everything.

AC's system made excellent armor/weapons with a high value more trouble than it's worth a lot of the time.

[Arkim]

Okay, just a quick question, for those of you who read the "deed"/favor system, what did you think? From the last tidbits of player input, I think it sounds pretty good (yes, it's my idea, but anyway =P) Here's a short list of pros and cons that I can think of, please feel free to add any others.

Oh yeah, I'll change the word "deed" to "favor" from here on out.

Pros:
-Religion is used and is indeed a factor.
-Permadeath is a choice made by the player (Don't want to come back? Don't get a favor!)
-Higher amounts of favors could be used for more than just death (would make Crusades and the like interesting)
-Since the first favor would be a rather simple task, permadeath is not a threat (revival by the god(dess) transports the character to the shrine, using a favor, while revival in the field would not use a favor)
-The player could exist as a ghost (implementing ghost idea here) after they died, and could try to persuade someone to revive them (or wait for a group member to do it), or they could just let the god(dess)


Cons:
-No integration of karma (not yet anyway)
-No instant revival (unless done in the field)
-Some time is required to attain favors (but not a whole lot, unless you're shooting for a lot of them)
-No ideas on items or PvP yet

So...there ya go, lemme know what you think, and for those who haven't read this idea yet, check page 3 of this thread (at least I think it's page 3). And one thing I'll gladly admit, I took the main idea from the Gemstone III system, but I've expanded upon it a bit.

[kenny_geeze]

I like the idea of as little downtime as possible. Some of the other stuff I'm still kind of deciding what side I'm on, but here's my idea...
Death could have two different stages. In D&D if your HP went below -10 or something like that then you were dead forever. If it didn't, one of your cleric pals could ressurect you.
Shouldn't it make a difference how you die? Let's say you're level 2 and you get beat to death by a bunch of goblins wielding sticks... maybe you just fall to the ground wounded. Possibly there could be 45-60 seconds of knockout time which you could after duration get up again and then beat up some goblins. I believe something to this effect was mentioned before, but i'll expand.
Now, let's say you're level 25 and you and you're friends all get incinerated by a dragon's breath. Your party gets reduced to little piles of black ash on the ground. Then maybe you could bargain with your god for a res and face the penalties of true death. I think this might work better because goblins would most likely only knock you out or wound you. In diablo 2 high level players died much more often than low levels because of the dangers they face. It would sorta balance things a little better, that way unless the worst happened you would still be able to get up and continue the fight. But if you want just forget all that I said. All I wanted to stand out of all this rambling is it should matter how the player dies. Whether it be by tree branch or incineration and all that's in between.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Arkim, again I like the idea your suggesting and adding the ghost aspect is nice touch.

[Rend]

Getting killed by NPC's is going to be og little concern to all of us on the issue of death. How many times have you been killed over and over by a bunch of goblins. Very rarely I hope. The big issue with the death system as i see it is in the PvP aspect. I know i have said this before but I haven't read any post concerning it yet (if i missed them, sorry) Down time and item loss is going to be a concern at all "levels" because of PvP. Obviously not in beta and probably not for a month or two. I would just like to see remedys in place at the start. As opposed to in a couple months from release the powers that be having to change the whole system of deah because of people that say " HAha just introducing you to the game." Especialy since anyone can attack anyone else. (if i'm wrong on that, sorry again) My whole point of this is to try to avoid what happend to Rallos Zek on EQ. Its probably the stupidist game ever on that server. Level twos getting corpse camped because some 16 year old thinks its real funny. Just my two cents.

[Slitherrr]

Well, Rend, what BHT is trying to do is make it so PKing people for fun isn't very productive, and frowned on in the game pretty much as it is in real life... Camping newbies is going to get you a pretty bad karma hit, thanks to the BHT report system, so soon you'll have guards on your ass, and eventually, bounty hunters (both NPC and PC). It's not like the newbie's possessions would be worth PKing for... And if they were, I guess that's the newbie's problem for being either twinked or uncareful. So that probably doesn't have to be worried about overmuch.

[gilgamesh]

Wow... it's been a while since I last logged in and this thread is -still- going. Poor Brickhouse is actually going to have to make a decision on this at somepoint :-)

I think that it was kenny_geeze on page four of this thread (sorry if I'm not giving credit where it's due, this is one -long- thread) who first proposed the idea of making the death system dependent upon what god a PC follows (not involving the underworld idea put up earlier).

I like the idea behind this: it gives someone an important choice to make, and gives religion a very important role in -how- we are going to play our PCs.

It also has some potentially big problems tacked onto it.

The Good (as I see it... I'd like to hear other ppls ideas) revolves around two main points:

1) Play Style: While the penalties of death attatched to each religion should be roughly equivalent, having a choice in the exact nature of those penatlies would be excellent. I personally hate downtime, and would rather lose bucketloads of coinage to prevent it. Others may disagree. In this system, though, we can both be happy.

2) It makes our social/religious affiliattions in the game have an affect. I like this.. it gets me into the game.


The Bad?

1) BH would have to be -really- careful that the penalties of death are balanced relative to each other. This can probably only be done through play testing, and who knows how higher levels will change the original playtesting results established with lower level characters in beta? (The AC ppl found this out the hard way with 'character class' balance. it worked at low levels, but broke down later on) otherwise everyone will restart to have a character following the 'ideal' religion for when they reach high levels...

2) BH would have to be careful to balance the death punishments with the 'resources' in the game: if it's impossible to gain levels once your are getting to high level, but you are wallowing in a sea of coinage, then following the mercantile god of money/trade may be easier/more enjoyable/more efficient than following a power of life/death who will want some of your hard earned xp. If they don't balance it almost perfecetly, for characters of all levels (which is hard to forsee), you'll end up with alot of unhappy people restarting new characters because one religion's resurrection costs were simply too high while they were in a certain level range. Hmm. this is similar to point 1, but I hope I made the difference clear. Sorry if I didn't.

I like the idea of selecting our religions, and having that selection have a tangible impact on how we play. I like the idea of having our characters rooted in the society of the game world with something like religion. And I think that a multiple death system idea would be really enjoyable.

I just wanted to point out the two big balance hazards we'd have to deal with, probably with our favourite characters as tehy creep up to high levels.

I love that this debate is still going on... Is BH going to run several death ideas in the beta, or are you guys close to settling on something?

gilgamesh (waiting to get piled on :-)

[Dyson]

I like your idea, but unfortunately, you're right in that we probably won't be able balance out death systems until beta. However, the situation isn't that bleak- if it does end up that people follow one religion as "ideal" for some level range or another, this can be tweaked subtley, either by upping the requirements for one religion or making others less harsh (there're no rules that say balancing gameplay stops when the beta closes).

Here's a few ideas for "religion based quick resurrection" I'd like to see:

God of... ...Penalty for "Quickie Res"

War, Good XP hit: 10%-40% of XP gained since last death

War, Evil XP hit: 1%-4% of total XP since character creation

Nature Temporary Stat Loss: 50% HP and -30% to all stats for 1 game week

Magic Temporary Imbalance: Inability to cast spells for 1 game day, 50% stamina for 3 game days; 1 major magic item can be sacrificed to gain spells sooner

Merchant Lump Cash Sum: Dependant on Level; 20%-50% of non-liquid assets, or 70%-90% of liquid assets

These are just sample examples; I think they make sense; a good War God is more likely to hit their subjects hard at first, but encorage continued efforts. An evil War God is more likely to let their subjects "get back on their feet" very fast, but repeated failures quickly reduce the fighter to a useless wreck.

The Nature God would require a tribute of strength to the aid in keeping the land healthy. A Magic God requires some of the mage's personal magic to aid in keeping the "static force" in good working order, and the Merchant Church wants money...well, because money makes the world go 'round, and that's the way things are. :)

[Kintoun]

Whoa whoa. Lets us all not lose sight of why we are so looking forward to playing this game. For pure unadulterated fun. I love the ideas here but when I start investing huge quantities of time into this game ( and won't we all :) ) it's not going to be much fun when we start losing some of that invested fun from character death. I'm the type who enjoys the fast paced 0 penalty death of Quake, but at the same time I like the ever present, fear enducing death from EverQuest, Asherons Call, Cosrin, Terris. But the latter is what I fear will make me feel like I've "wasted" the past few days trying to bring my character back up to the position he was before character death. Death penalties are a very senitive subject and I look forward to see how Arcanity touches these issues.

[Dyson]

Um... I think we're all pretty much on the same page, Kitoun: 'Death shouldn't be blameless, but shouldn't be game-stopping either.' Everyone agrees on this; that's why we're tossing around ideas on how death SHOULD be done.

Could you point out which part of the Death Thread caused you the most problems, so we could talk about it? At this point, "death should be handled carefully" doesn't really help solve anything.

[Kintoun]

To be honest, I'd rather stay hands-off on this topic. The reason for this is as I explained above... I like either side of the coin. Hrm I guess I'm saying I'm nuetral on this topic.

[Su'ulMorda]

I don't know exactly how the losses mentioned above would hinder a charater, but they seem most severe. In AC, death was a pretty light thing for me, the "vitae penalty" was easy enough to get around, recovering the corpse was tougher. But, still, I always got excited when getting close to death. It was less the stats of it than seeing my character fall then hurtle back to the last lifestone. The fact that I got beat was plenty annoying. Still I must say that some form of penalty should be levied, it does not need be strong, only to serve as a reminder that, yes, you got the Haggas kicked out of you. Can't see much need for anything more, it's a game, not a true to life recreation with all the absolute details in place.
Or, something like that, anyways... 8)

[ME]

I only really ever played on one MUD, but I liked the way it handled death, when you died you were a ghost, and you respawned in a graveyard, you then had to search the graveyard to find your grave, at which time you could loot your grave and re-unite with your body...you didn't really loose anything but the time it took you to find your grave...you could take this a few steps further by forcing the player to pay a toll to leave the grave yard, there could be several different options...

Maybe there's a hole in the fence you could sneak out of, but sneaking out through this hole could lead to a very dangerous area from which there is only one escape, but its possible you'll die repeatedlly trying to escape this way a guantlet of sorts...this would be the time/challenge alternative...

Maybe a grave keeper there will let you out if you pay him a huge sum of money it must be money you had with you at time of death though, because he doesnt trust you to run to the bank...He may accept an item instead...this would be an item/money alternative...

Maybe there could be a necro type there who will let you go on a quest and return something to him, but until you return with the something he holds a portion of your xp...because he's magical and can do things like that...you can choose to never return to him with his item, but then the xp loss would be permanent and he may not be willing to help you again...this would be an xp/challenge alternative...

Maybe there is a cleric there who would be willing to help for a donation of time/money/items to his church, he will allow you to leave and obtain these things, but he will hold a portion of your life or xp or something...

Other things to consider would be upon leaving the grave yard you have very little health and mana in reserve like 10 of each just enough to walk out...so you'll have to sit and chill for a bit before venturing forth...this may encourage pk'rs to hang out by the grave yard, but there should be guards posted there to protect the people who are smart enough to sit and chill for a moment...possible problems could be eventual graveyard overcrowding as the server becomes popular, you may have to wait in line to deal with one of the ways out of the graveyard...

just an idea...

[Wrentia]

The ole reptile mentioned he couldn't find this thread. I think he's lazy and just wants to make more work for me.

-Wrentia

[Slitherrr]

Ahh, you're a lovely person Wrentia. Best Warrior Goddess I've ever known.

[BelDragos]

The only Warrior Goddess you have.

[Dyson]

On the topic of gods & goddesses, have any threads come up lately on the various deities?

It might be a good idea to resurrect the Gods thread and see what the board's newest members have to say.

[Rend]

yeah the gods thread never did get figured out. I would also like to see a new idea on that subject. i like the graveyard idea on death. Seems like it could get abused though.

[BelDragos]

Unless somebody beats me to it I'll dig it up.

[BelDragos]

I cant seem to back past 30 days although I'm using the box at the top right. I hope I didn't break it. I don't have enough to pay for it.

[Morte]

I think I found the Deity thread you mean. I'll just move it to the front so that even BelDragos can reach it.

[Kintoun]

Dang Morte, you were serious about being a floating skull...

[Morte]

Of course I was. I am always dead serious. Everything I say must be analyzed for hidden meaning. I have a very complex personality. I have many layers. I float. I have been dead for aeons. I'm mentally slightly unhinged. Must stop rambling now. Must stop. Must.

[Slitherrr]

I am Murray, the world's most Evil Talking Skull!! Come with me mortal and we will rule the five realms!!

Ahem.

(www.lucasarts.com)

[Kintoun]

Heh I pointed that out too, but I think it was Sul who said that Morte was from something else... I can't quite remember tho.

[Morte]

I was partially inspired by Planescape Torment, and that's where the picture's from. I was using a nick very similar to this one when the game came out, so I changed it a bit and am now a floating skull.

[BelDragos]

Look out for Cerebus!

He might mistake you for one of his chew toys.

EEEW! Hellhound Slobber.


8)

[Morte]

He tried to. Stupid dog. He should've knows I was toxic. He turned purple and keeps coughing up his intestines. Maybe Kintoun can heal him?

[BelDragos]

Don't worry, He's immortal. He will recover after he gets it through all three heads that you aren't his favorite chewtoy. Be patient.

[Morte]

Still, he does have duties to attend to, so maybe he should be healed. And I think he has that figured out by now. He should do something about his breath, though.

[BelDragos]

Unfortunately being Immortal he never grew out of the puppydumbs, at least not yet. I hear they have been trying those doggie treat things for his breath but apparently it hasn't worked.

Good luck with your new friend. Remember to say NO in a firm voice.

[Kintoun]

/emote reads from the scriptures of a holy scroll.
/emote reaches out to touch Cerebus with a glowing hand.

Why would I NOT want to heal the creature thats trying to eat Morte!? Sick em boy!

[BelDragos]

You're in trouble!
Better run.

[Morte]

/emote raises a skull mob to beat Cerebus to death. Skull mob feasts on Cerebus bones.
/emote scorns Cerebus' alledged immortality.

Bad doggie.

[Dravlon]

Quit playing with your doggie Morte.

[Morte]

It's not MY doggie. And it's a heap of flesh now, not a doggie. If you want some Cerebuswurst, I could get you some. I happen to have some Cerebus available.

[Dravlon]

you better watch out when that doggie wakes up he'll use you as a chew toy again.

[Morte]

I don't think he'll be waking up anytime soon. I just shipped a crate full of Cerebuswurst to Germany. Hellhoundwurst is a delicacy, apparently.

[Dravlon]

Isn't he immortal?
That won't stop him.

[Morte]

Supposedly he was immortal, and to tell the truth, he didn't die as easily as a normal hellhound, but he is quite dead now. Immortality has it's bounderies, usually. Very few are truly immortal.

[Dravlon]

your dead right?
your boss the lord of the dead/undead aint gonna like it when he finds out what you did to his alarm system.
you better fix it before he finds out or we know where you will be for the rest of eternity.
better start practicing.

(WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!)

[BelDragos]

HEY!!

Be nice to him!!

He's handicapped!

[Dravlon]

i know he's handicapped he's a floating skull for christ's sake.

[Morte]

Boss? What boss? I am the boss. I am actually the Elder God of Entropy, but I prefer using Harbinger of Entropy, because it has a more ominous ring to it. And BelDragos gets annoyed when I do, which actually substites a very good reason to do it. Oh well, maybe some other time.

[Morte]

I'm not handicapped. I could form a permanent body if I wanted. I just dont want to. I have to maintain my image as a floating skull.

[Dravlon]

I thought you couldn't have a body.

[Morte]

I'm an Elder God. Of course I can have a body. I just choose not to, except when I really need one. It's a fashion statement. People have different hairstyles, right.
And I do have to look Entropic. A floating skull seemed obvious.

[Dravlon]

well duh!!
that don't make you an elder god.
now BelDragos on the other hand is.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Morte]

Of course taht doesn't make me an elder god. Being an Elder God makes me an Elder God.

/emote stuffs a Cerebuswurst into Dravlon's mouth to shut him up.

[Dravlon]

i thought you sent all of the cerebuswurst to Germany.

but i am german so i liked it any ways.

MMMM doggie taste good.

[Morte]

I kept a few, for special occasions. But I'm glad you like them. I really should make a few more. Now where do I find another supposedly immortal, three-headed hellhound with a bad breath? They're hard to come by these days. Well, I'm sure one will cross my path soon.

[Dravlon]

/emote dravlon turns morte into a three headed doggie with bad breath

[Morte]

Mere mortals can't turn an Elder God into anything.

/emote wallops Dravlon on the head, to try and restore at least a bit of his sanity.

[Dravlon]

well they can kill gods here so poof your dead.
Now i'm the new god of entropy.

HEHEHEHEHEHEHE

[Morte]

You? Kill me? Elder God's are immortal, you know. Truly immortal. Ask BelDragos if you don't believe me.

/emote smacks Dravlon for being absurd

[Dravlon]

isn't the nature of entropy to distroy yourself?
i just stepped in after you poofed yourself.

[BelDragos]

Hey, Leave me out of this.

It's between you two.

[Morte]

No, it isn't.

/emote is surprised by so much ignorance

[Dravlon]

ok

[BelDragos]

I refuse to step in a dispute for your "title" no matter how rediculous it is.

[Morte]

See how he gets annoyed when I use that? I don't know why. It has been that way for a very long time. Well, everyone has his faults...

[Dravlon]

I know Beldragos just isnt that much fun to pick on when he's not here.

[Indigo]

Wow this is such a long thread.

Death is one of the hardest things to work out in a rp game. For one if you were dead why are you alive again. Suppose when you died you did get taken to the underworld.. where your gods could judge you based on your actions and devotion to them. They could give you a task or quest to perform to "pay" for your death. Until this task is completed, you suffer penaltys to stats, skills or hps. Once your bargain is struck you are returned to your body, barely alive in the temple of your god. The medalion of your task is placed around your neck.. and off you go. Maybe if ya die enough.. you should get really ugly:) I heard variations of this theme earlier in this thread but thought I would bring it up again. I think that this form of death is more realistic then any online rp game I have ever been in.
I too played M59, ya lost a hp and all of your stuff, usually to someone who practice their freeze touch till expert and knew nothing else. Eq was the evercorpse run,In AC I thought vitae was pretty nasty to work off (never played past beta though) and I was always a ghost in UO.. heh.. Which is why I strongly plead that you do not feed ooc random killers by giving them items or xp off the corpses. There will be enough killing to go around and if you want you can adopt a system to where if players agree to duel or war that they can have an item for their victory. At least that way if you lose your favorite sword you know why the guy killed ya. Trouble with that is it makes life hard for murderers, even though most rarely rp. Without profit, you would really have to love what you were doing:).. However if there were a way to disable your opponent without killing them.. you could ransom them for one of their items, or if they were important enough you could ransom them to their group. In that way the player could choose between an item or a death:)

Just my two cents.

[Slitherrr]

One of the explanations I particularly liked for the PC's coming back was mentioned some time ago. The premise was that the people prayed for heroes to come and keep back the tides of darkness. This gives a reason for heroes to come back when regular NPC's don't... And opens up a whole slew of possibilities, I.E., anti-Heroes, which may be NPC's that come back or PC's with a twist toward darkness.

[Morte]

But how does the resurrection of a murdere or hated tyrant into that concept?

[Romulus]

death- i wouldnt mind death, it comes naturally in most RPG games (of course resurection) its the fact that u lose all that hard earned gold(what ever the currencie(s) will be..) there should be a place to store it like diablo 2, but no limit, god that was annoying.

[Slitherrr]

Well, that's the thing Romulus, death won't necessarily be "we take your money and put you on your feet." That's why this thread is approaching its seventh page. Believe me, this is a hell of a hot topic.

[Dyson]

Indeed it is. I'd thank Scrote for bringing it up, but he seems to have disappeared.

I'm still in favor of the "resurrected by your god" system; since different gods will have different things they want, this allows for different resurrection options. I touched on this in the God thread; a Merchant power may take lots of your money and wealth, a Magic power might require you to take a temporary mana penalty, or a Warrior power might dock your XP since your last death, etc

[Morte]

It will also effectively force people to follow a god, or they lose the ability to be resurrected. That way, since every player will follow a god, the power of a god can shift more easily as he/she gains or loses followers. Of course a large part would still depend on NPC, but it would be nice to have the gods be a larger part of the game. It seems to me that in a fantasy/medieval world, almost everyone will follow a god. Another element which I'd like to see incorporated, is that people can fall out of grace of a particular god when they don't act as a typical follower should, say the follower of the God of Nature deliberately burning down a forest. They would effectively lose all benefits following that particular god would yield. They would have to either repent their sins, or follow another god, if that other god will have that player as a follower. They may not want that player because of his/her actions or because they followed a god that god opposes.

[Dyson]

*nods* This is the sort of direction I'm leaning towards when it comes to Powers, though I do think there should be a way for hard-core aetheists to get resurrected (it just doesn't have to be easy). I'd like to see certain Priests and high-level wizards (probably Necromancers) have access to spells that would Ressurrect characters; these could inflict an XP hit on the casting player. This leaves a good bit of "deciding what Life costs" up to the player base; one might be perfectly willing to resurrect a guildmate for free, but then charge a stranger a hefty sum of money.

I also like the idea of characters "falling out of favor" with their patron. Depending on the circumstances under which you "fall," another god might welcome your service. Example: If you were a general of a Dark Paladin Legion in the service of an Evil diety, but have a change of heart and save a village from certain destruction, a power of Good might be willing to give you a chance. For Morte's example of a Nature Priest who burns down a forest, a god of Elemental Fire might be thrilled to resurrect such a character.