Death and other things

[Toady]

New to the boards, and when I read the faq I saw the death factor is still being worked on. Just a thought or two on the subject. I don't know how easy this would be implemented but... anyway here it goes.....

Most games have a cleric type class that provide resurrections etc. If going to have the ability to resurrect I suggest player to player resurrects give back all but 5% exp or so. Then have an item resurrect. The item could be received by completing a quest for a god or something. Nothing extremely hard but hard enough so everyone doesn't have one. You die with the item it goes poof and you pop back with all your exp except 15% or so. You die without and choose to not be resurrected you lose 30%. You could also change the amount of exp loss and add in skill % loss.

Now for the other things.

Every game I have played has humanoid monsters that hate players like crazy. They hardly ever show up in a town. They are always outside of the town! Occasionaly it would be nice to see a couple in town causing chaos! I mean come on, they have to know there is a pub somewhere in the town! Who can resist a nice tasty ale like that!!! *Clears throat* What I'm trying to say is please think about a small invasion of a town now and then to liven things up. Nothing like a small invasion to bring players together and to catch newbies off guard.

Sorry if I made no sense or if I missed something in the Faq. It's late and I'm tired. :)

[z_man93]

I like the ideas of monsters raiding towns but there is a problem with that. We would have to get players to have a vested interested in that town. Otherwise why should I risk my neck to protect the town from the raiders.

Maybe we need to build homes for ourselves. Those homes will be our spawning points or bind points incase we die. Then if a town is getting attacked our homes are in jeapordy so we will have an interest in the towns security.

Also, with our homes we should have to pay taxes to the local lord because he is funding the militia that protects our home. Otherwise wee can have a home in the frontier but there would be no one to protect it.

[soth]

I like the idea of player build towns. I think it would build up a good community and give players a sense of home. But as for taxes I pay enough of em in RL if i had to pay them in a game I think id rebel and go on a killing spree of all tax collectors.

[Morte]

Ideally there should be a fully persistent (ie. it keeps going unless the world server itself goes offline) and preferably more diverse and realistic game world, but as I don't expect any such thing to happen anytime soon, something like this would be useful to spice things up. I think that rather than letting the PC's do all the defending, have the NPC's do it, giving the PC's the ability to help, and possibly players who have attained a military rank the ability to command troops.
In this scenario the enemy shouldn't just spawn in the middle of the town. If possible, make it a real battle or siege, and if they win, let them rape, pillage and burn (in that order), destroying a whole town or wreaking havoc in a larger city. Let it go on for a more realistic span of time, for example if a city's walls are breached have the enemy spread out over the city fighting skirmishes (such a situation can very well last for days, with the possibility of reinforcements relieving the embattled defenders. Anyway, you get the picture, something like that would if done properly make a very interesting event.

[Kintoun]

OMG why has noone given this guys first idea merit? I LOVE IT! A death system which can have a character practically fully restored if he so wishes, but under normal circustances, they avg player willl choose to not quest. Basically allow players to quest for their lost item(s) back. But make the quest so difficult that no avg player would choose to do this. The quest could be a solo quest which is different for every class. However the quest changes in difficulty depending on the "level" of the player. I for one LOVE this idea. It allows both sides of the death discussion to be happy. Those wanting a severe death puishment and those wanting a lax punishment. Severe in that only ppl who REALLY friggen wanted those items would quest for them. And in some circumstances not be able to retrieve them (however AT LEAST they have a chance). Lax in that players always know they will have a shot at attaining their lost items if they so wish. Now why has noone else thought of this? I'm convinced that this idea started elsewhere LOL! I sure am gonna get Rolfe and Rich to take a look at this.

[Scarab]

i would vote for your body lays there till u get resed and people can take ur stuff if u dont get back in time if if u wait so long it will just disappear so that way u can lose ur stuff but if ur quick enough or smart enough to travel with a healer ull get ur stuff back

[z_man93]

OK, I was thinking that this quest should be done in the afterlife. Your body would lay dead in the real world until you complete the quest in the afterworld to regain your equipment, money, exp, etc. Or you just choose to come back to life but then lose your body, equipment, and stuff if you do not complete the quest.

So I was thinking about what the quest should be and I had an interesting idea, but you might not like it, I'm not sure if i like it but it's interesting. The problem is that you need a quest that is challenging to people of all skill levels, will take a fair amount of time, and not be too repetative and boring as everyone will probably die a few times. And of course we can't have the devs have to program 100 different quests to appease people of various skill levels.

So here's my idea. The quest can be one based on knowledge. You start in the afterlife and ultimately you want to reach some special temple of resurrection. But to get to that temple you need to pass through three gates, and at each there is a gate keeper that will ask you a question. And each gatekeeper would have a different specialty. The first would ask a question regarding the history of Novus, the second a question about religion, and maybe the third would ask about modern events. If you don't know the answer you can go to the library of knowledge in the afterlife, where you can find answers to every question. Once you've correctly answered each question you will be resurrected.

I think this will be challenging, so that you may fear death, as it would take either a great deal of game knowedge or a good deal of time to pass this quest. And primarily it's a great way to promote interest in the history of the game world.

[soth]

I like z_man93's idea sounds very intresting and original. I personally like reading a games history. But on another note I like a looting system after all in reality if you came upon a suit case full of cash you'd take it. There would'nt be some unseen force stopping you picking it up.

[BelDragos]

One problem with undergoing a quest while in the spirit realm in order to get back to your body is what will the rest of the group do while you are out having fun? It would work with solo players but it would really suck for the group players.

[Morte]

A party member dying will always have an impact on the party as a whole unless there is little or no death penalty. It seems to me that there needs to be sufficient incentive to attempt to stay alive and refrain from taking foolish risks you would never take in real life. In the flipside it shouldn't be too severe, which is the problem with almost all perma-death systems, where the player doesn't dare take any risks for fear of losing everything.

Regardless, I think modern MMORPG's should depart from the traditional adventure model inherited from DnD. Most adventuring parties don't have a clear goal, a clear reason to become a party. They just form parties to become stronger, get good items and most important because there are few alternatives. Adventuring is the main activity in those games, it's what the world revolves around, so to speak. I must say that the find a dungeon - slay the evil monsters - kill the big dungeon boss - collect the loot - lather - rinse - repeat -- routine loses its edge after, say, 5 minutes. Add a bit of the 'Eternal struggle of Good against Evil' - bullshit which I personally think is completely ridiculous, although the average gamer is probably too braindead to see that. The statement that those worlds are persistent, while technically true, doesn't deliver as much as one might expect. It's not all that different from playing a game like Diablo 2 online with the exception that the maps are connected and get updated more often. How refreshing. An innovation, indeed.

In the ideal situation, the game world exists independant of the PC's, and although that is not going to happen for some time to come, it wouldn't be a bad thing if developers would start making real attempts to put down an actual world, instead of a very big multiplayer map. And while they are at it, they might as well make it a roleplaying game.

[Scarab]

Zmans idea is interesting but i woould prefer a looting system to the game for a few reasons
1. it creates a niche for baddies to fill so goodies can hunt them down
2. it allows for a more stable game economy where people are always losing stuff therefore needing to replace it
3. it is more realistic (we are talking about a rpg)
4. the game allows for pvp but if there is no looting system why would anybody ever fight each other
5. just becuase
6. it creates a sense of urgency when u die not just oh well i get all my stuff back anyway
7. its alot better than losing stats
8.the rice krispies told me it was a good idea
9. it also allows for people to meet each other by gathering a slain warriors belongings to return them upon his return to the living
10. i most likely missed some reasons too

[z_man93]

I to think looting is important. So maybe we do this. Instead of having to complete afterlife quest for looting privleges. You lose x amount of exp or skill points when you die and quest is to get that back. So your option is do I res quickly and run to my corpse before people can loot it, or do i do quest to get my exp back. As far as the party concern goes, I think Morte is right, the point of this is to make death very unappealing, so the party should be inconvenienced, and maybe then shouldn't have let the guy die so easily. Also, then there can be a spell like "seal" or something that can make a corpse unlootable, so you have time to do quest and still get your loot. This would of course be a service that you would have to pay someone for since you would be dead.

[Nakhn]

what if you become a zombie like thing and you have to quest to get out of this state but you can hold your stuff, its just you need some one/thing/event to get to this state, and while you are this zombie thing you can not gain exp or anything but you can continue what you were doing but just for no reward (character strengthening wise) this way you can pick your stuff up, but before becoming fully whole again you must do something to truly live again...

this was a quick think up so i can understand if you loathe my idea... but that what this place is for... atleast maybe i can inspire a better idea on top of this...

but besides that yes that other stuff sounds cool...

[Christina]

The zombie thing could be entertaining, but could easily be abused. If group experience works like most where everyone in the party gets experience for killing stuff. Then some higher level friends could die and turn into zombies and take their lower level friend to the higher level areas. Easily killing the monsters, but since they are zombies and they get no experience that low level gets lots of experience and can start to level up very quickly.

If you are in a group though and die, your hunting partners should be able take the items off your corpse. If you trust them enough to hunt with them, you should trust them enough with your items. Though there are those who could abuse this also get one guy to group and have his pack of pk friends kill the rest of your group and then he just picks up all your stuff.

Pretty much though, any way death looting gets implemented there are going to be ways around it. It's either trust people and deal with the few unhonorable thieves, or have noone able to loot anything in which case it could turn into a EQ corpse recovery. Yippie I get to run through 5 high level zones for 30 minutes while I'm naked and have no items so I could die easily just so I can get back my corpse! YES! What fun! And I lost that bauble of experience that took me a week to get in 2 minutes! (err ok that turned into a EQ rant I do apologize)

[z_man93]

If someone gets a few people in a group and takes em off into the wilderness where his bandit friends jump the group and loot all their stuff, then I say good. That's what I like to see, people being inventive. If it happened to me i may be upset, so I may hire a bounty hunter to track em down, kill em, and get my stuff back. Or at least hunt em and kill em.