I think the way SWG originally did player death was intresting , but people complained and it was changed. The way WOW does player death may deal less complaining from the players.
The reason SWG changed their death was because sometimes you couldn't acess your corpse, and other times it just wouldn't appear, so you'd lose all your stuff.
Waiting For: something good Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
The slap-on-the-wrist penalties of WoW were pretty lame imho.
It lead to just running through dangerous zones thinking "Whatever, all im loosing is some chump change (or i can just take off my armor and run) and some time."
I dislike corpse running because of the associated problems with it. There is the potential for PvP camping, or being forced to abandon your equipment because there was some really nasty creature there that 1 hit killed you, perhaps a bugged random spawn. Introducing safe-timers etc. may be a solution however may cause some to feel cheated, especially if it was PvP related.
I would prefer too see pure and simple cloning. If any technology had been preserved, cloning, communications and conventional weaponry would proberbly some of important ones. As a game mechanic, simple revival and teleportation back to somewhere where it is safe and
A penalties for death could possibly be a small XP loss as described on the website, however I do not like having penalties for death. If there is a penalty, it should be small and convieient. The penalty in Guildwars I enjoyed however I don't envisage a similar mechanism being implemented in FE.
Death penalties serve to frustrate players and cause negative gaming experiences. Most deaths are attributed to minor mistakes or misfortunes, and elements outside the player's control which they were unable to evade (ie. power-gamer gankers, bottom feeders, large unexpected spawn of mobs etc.)
Originally posted by adrir Most deaths are attributed to minor mistakes or misfortunes, and elements outside the player's control which they were unable to evade (ie. power-gamer gankers, bottom feeders, large unexpected spawn of mobs etc.)
I don't mean to be picking on just you Adrir because this is a recurring statement, but every time it is mentioned it strikes me wrong. True, most player deaths are due to something unexpected happening such as a high level ganker or spawn of mobs. But wait... aren't ALL player deaths due to something unexpected? I mean honestly, what else is there? Don't baby the player because it happened by accident.
I think we've all been babied by games such as WoW that eliminate corpse runs. So, how do we make death suck without corpse runs or extended penalities?
I think that PVP camping is easily delt with as long as you add in a retreival option. Just charge a nominal fee (5-10%) to have all your items on you shipped to your location. You just need to go to a bank or delivery company or something similar and pay them to retrieve everything. Possiblly have to pay more for longer distances, more dangerous areas, etc.
Waiting For: something good Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
Cloning works for me. but I DO want a pretty harsh penalty for dying. XP loss, if the xp system allows it, x% chance of losing items on death[perhaps you can insure the items you care about the most, like your hightec EVO kevlar body suit that everyone else awe about]
or perhaps you systain wounds on death that will heal over playtime.. like, wound that is affecting you for 25 ingamehours that prevents you from running or using 2hand weapons...
Either way I want the death to really hurt a player, and that will make people think twice about taking stupid actions, like running into a room filled with baddies just to ninja-loot the chest at the center.
(somewhat like the old Anarchy-Online system where you lost your entire XP-stack upon death. That made the crew motivated, and if you get a clown in your party, the rest of the team won't think twice about kicking his ass out of the team and get him on the ignorelist. and that will also motivate players to "play nice" since noone wants to be on the "hatelist" and be unable to team in the future.)
Originally posted by chromdom Conversely, there's a very experienced character (are they using levels? Anyone know?) who is killed deep in a mine far from the town where he's being cloned. He can either hike through the wastelands nekkid, and hope to make it back to his corpse and grab his gear, or pay 10% of his cash to have all his stuff brought to him. If he's managed to save up $1,000,000, then 10% would be $100,000. That may be worth it, to not have to try to cross the world weaponless. Or, if he's got that much money, he can choose to forget about that equipment, and just buy new stuff.Just kinda thinking out loud here. What do you think?
I see an opportunity for more player cooperation here: Hire a few guys as bodyguards for $50,000, payable when they get you to your gear alive. I think it would add a bit ov variety to the game
What I think would be the best system, taking the full pvp into account, is corpse running, with a corpse timer. (ie you are the only one who can loot your corpse for a couple hours, then its open game) People complain about corpse camping, but you can just buy a gun in town and go kill the guy camping your corpse. It becomes a game of capture the flag, how is that something thats not fun? If you can't handle the guy on your own, get some people in town to help you out.
Following this thought, a neat little feature would be being able to make some kind of hiring contract with people. For instance; you give them the contract, and it makes it so that if you recover your corpse in time before it becomes public, they automatically recieve a predetermined amount of money from you.
This would add another layer of depth to the game, allowing people to play as "corpse mercenaries" and make money by escorting people to their corpses.
Originally posted by Atheraal What I think would be the best system, taking the full pvp into account, is corpse running, with a corpse timer.
Corpse running is a solution however it does bring up alot of issues while also lacking innovation. The mechanism has utilised in several other games, sometimes with a good implementation, however terrible in alot of others!
There are alot of problems associated with this:
Inability to find body
Bugs causing body to be invisible, trapped in terrain or otherwise unreachable
Bugs causing loss of items
Corpse getting camped
Long distance to traverse in order to reach corpse
Forced to log off or disconnect before death occurs
Death in dungeon or dangerous area of the wilderness making corpse somewhat unreachable
A touch-of-death MOB (1 hit killer) is sitting on your corpse
Recurring cycle of deaths in a small ammount of time
Death should be quick, painless and present as little negative effect as possible. These harsh penalties only serve to anger and frustrate the player.
Originally posted by Sinoth But wait... aren't ALL player deaths due to something unexpected? I mean honestly, what else is there? Don't baby the player because it happened by accident.
Depends on how frequently the unexpected and unavoidable occurs. As a Jedi Padawan on SWG, during the CU transition periods I was repeatedly 1-shot killed by numerous BHs, forcing me to endure the loss of an hours grinding each time.
Having to spent 20 minutes getting to your corpse, only to be killed again 5 minutes later or during the process, you will become very angry and frustrated with the game...
Originally posted by Xilanxiv The game randomly picks a skill or set of skills to be damaged, not permanently, but you'll have to do some work to get back to the level you were at.
I would place my backing behind this concept! Temporary amnesia and stat-loss is a great idea
When a character dies, it is teleported to the nearest binding location where it is revivied. However, as part of this process, some of the special abilities it possessed are surpressed. Hence, theses abilities cannot be used until a timer has expired! In addition to this some stat loss should be applied for the duration of the timer.
This represents the corpse being discovered by a local, subsequently recovered and cloned. Consequently, the character awakens in a new body, however is unable to fully control and utilise it. Hence the temporary amnesia and temporary stat-loss.
This inconvieniences the player, giving the character a handicap. It does not frustrate the player as much and it does not force them to complete a tiedious task in order to enjoy the game again.
However, if this penalty is made too harsh, the player would simply logout or sit in a corner until their "down-time" expires.
With regards to the inventory, I think a selective item loss and recovery system would be better than the corpse running:
There game differentiates between several types of inventory contents:
Items -- Standard equipment that can be procured easily
Equipment -- Weapons and armor
Loot -- Special items like loot and technology
Items are stripped from the inventory. They are dropped around your corpse. This is unrecoverable.
Equipment remains in the inventory, however experiences some damage and decay. Needs to be taken for repair if neccessary.
Loot is stripped from the inventory. It can be either randomly dropped, or taken by the outpost. If it is dropped, it must be reobtained, however it may have been taken by the locals in which case it can be bought back.
*Inability to find body -Have an arrow at the top of the screen, pointing at your corpse.
*Bugs causing body to be invisible, trapped in terrain or otherwise unreachable -(invisibility) That's a major game-breaking bug, and is handled by GMs. (terrain) Remember, the terrain is deformable
*Bugs causing loss of items -Again, a game-breaking bug, handled by GMs.
*Corpse getting camped -The contract system I talked about addresses that.
*Long distance to traverse in order to reach corpse -Awwe, poor baby. Hitch a ride.
*Forced to log off or disconnect before death occurs -IF this is an issue in FE, don't log off in unsafe areas.
*Death in dungeon or dangerous area of the wilderness making corpse somewhat unreachable -Contract system.
*A touch-of-death MOB (1 hit killer) is sitting on your corpse -Is there an echo in here? Contract system.
*Recurring cycle of deaths in a small ammount of time -There'll be lots of corpses to get back. Pretty simple.
You make some fair points, however you misunderstood the fundemenatal reasoning behind my post. Icarus aim to include casual and interstitial markets. Hence the playerbase will not be restricted to the 'hardcore' and 'uber-leet'. Consequently the the game is required to conform to their demands. How is this achieved? Through equipping Fallen Earth with a set of desirable features and appealing, fun-enhancing mechanisms!
Fans of the post-apocalyse genre will find this title attractive. On examination of recent demographics, would you be shocked to discover that players whom enjoy these games are much more likely to inclined to roleplay, questing and problem solving?
While your opinions and proposed solutions are perfectly valid, I still disagree that this mechanism is suitable for Fallen Earth. Within the wider context, it is a step in the wrong direction. It is a tiedious and annoying death penalty. It consumes their limited playing time. It absorbs resources. It serves only to frustrate and disillusion.
Why should you walk for ten-twenty minutes in a vain attempt to recover some items? Veihcles are an option but are rare and wont be available until later in the game. How do you propose to survive in the wilderness without your weapons and armor? That creature camping your corpse doesn't look to friendly!
In the morning you login. You have been cloned! Having found your corpse you discover that your equipment has been stolen! Whining to customer services is an option but they will claim it was perfectly legit!
Enjoy your evening of corpse running after you get killed a dozen times! This task becomes so frequent for our less talented friends that we should rename the game Fallen Corpses!
These, and those in my previous posts, are simply examples of some of the issues I find unattractive about this system. Why risk resources on customer services? Why disrupt gameplay to this extent? To punish someone for having fun?
On the other hand, I do understand the need for Risk Vs Reward. It is critical to success in an MMOG! As expected, the death penalty must also aquiest to this law. However, harsh risks and little reward is equally gamebreaking to large rewards with little risk.
I have offered my alternative and subscribe to Xil's concept as the compromise.
Wow, what a mixture of opinions on the death system. I didn't realize how many people favored such serious death penatlies until I read this post! As for me, I want to see a death penalty, but it should in no way result in the player experiencing massive amounts of down-time, losing skills, losing control of their ability to weild wepons for extended periods of time( see massive amounts of downtime;p).
I mean, after all, we are playing this game, I hope, to have fun. Having to wait an hour or two, or longer before you can even play because you were killed (for whatever reason), is definitely not conducive to being a happy gamer.
The more you take away from the gamer, the more discouraged they become. Most people will not attempt to kill anything beyond the scope of their skills, since it is not conducive to "leveling" their character in an effective manner. Now, this assumes that Fallen Earth will operate on an experience based system. Experience debt seems to be a common tool for managing character deaths, and I like this idea, although it is definitely not innovative.
All of the ideas in this thread are creative, but from the sounds of some of them, if you get killed, you may as well log off for the rest of the day. It no longer becomes fun to play, because you'll have to worry about going anywhere, since 5 minutes after you log in, you could get killed(for whatever reason) and so much for playing that day! Doesn't sound like much fun..
While the ideas are creative, anything that will deduct significantly from the amount of time a player can expect to spend enjoying the game, imo, are not reasonable alternatives for a death penalty system. I don't know anyone that liked that system in EQ, hence the change in EQ2. No more corpse running involving possibly many hours or more of time. Especially if you died during a raid on another plane! Could be days. Plus, you lost experience that could possibly reduce you a level. Not that EQ2 is any better.. but the experience debt system and the elimination of the corpse run was refreshing in comparison.
Anyway, if Icarus expects gamers to pay 50$ to purchase the game( or whatever the retail price may be), and pay 15$ a month to play, I don't know anyone at all that would be willing to play, other than the handful of people here that are expressing their desire to play that way(and of course whatever majority or minority they may represent).
I'm betting that Icarus will take the middle road and go with some form of experience debt system. But, I suppose we will know when they release more information to us as they flesh out and fine tune the systems.
Originally posted by adrir While your opinions and proposed solutions are perfectly valid, I still disagree that this mechanism is suitable for Fallen Earth. Within the wider context, it is a step in the wrong direction. It is a tiedious and annoying death penalty. It consumes their limited playing time. It absorbs resources. It serves only to frustrate and disillusion. Why should you walk for ten-twenty minutes in a vain attempt to recover some items? Veihcles are an option but are rare and wont be available until later in the game. How do you propose to survive in the wilderness without your weapons and armor? That creature camping your corpse doesn't look to friendly!In the morning you login. You have been cloned! Having found your corpse you discover that your equipment has been stolen! Whining to customer services is an option but they will claim it was perfectly legit!Enjoy your evening of corpse running after you get killed a dozen times! This task becomes so frequent for our less talented friends that we should rename the game Fallen Corpses!
Why should you walk for ten-twenty minutes in a vain attempt to recover some items? A valid point. Maybe this could be alleviated by some public transportation that can drop you off near most popular hunting grounds. Be careful keep this balanced, however, else player vehicles will become unattractive.
In the morning you login. You have been cloned! Having found your corpse you discover that your equipment has been stolen! Death should not happen without the player knowing it. And unless you log of in the midst of battle, it will not happen (frequently) with most MMORPGs. A good design would be to keep the player vulnerable for, say, 15 seconds after logoff but then remove him from the map. That would discourage logging off to escape a losing battle, but make logging off in normal situations reasonably secure.
Enjoy your evening of corpse running after you get killed a dozen times! Don't take on too powerful enemies Also, a healer skill that allows you to revive people could remove the problem for groups. Take a medic along, and you will be much safer.
I think you've got some good ideas here Rabiator. You could have caravans leaving/going to major towns and areas every 10 minutes or so. From there you could just hire people (NPC or PC) to protect you out to your corpse.
Definately agree with the log off idea.
They did mention the ability to revive people, though they didn't mention whether everyone would get it or just those in the healing field.
Waiting For: something good Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
If I had to pick a player death system ill take the waking up in local medi-bay or village idea i posted way back in the thread somewhere i think.
But yeh, looks like its cloning and im happy with that too, probably wont include cloning ability in my RP tho as it takes the fear of death out of roleplay.
How about a mix of the two schools of thought? A heavy stat reduction, which lasts a couple minutes per level, plus you drop all the items you don't have equipped, including money. Then, you also have the chance to go find your corpse, which triggers the stat reduction to turn off. On the same timer, your corpse has that set amount of time before it becomes available to loot by other players.
Originally posted by Cthulhuvong I think you've got some good ideas here Rabiator. You could have caravans leaving/going to major towns and areas every 10 minutes or so. From there you could just hire people (NPC or PC) to protect you out to your corpse.Definately agree with the log off idea.They did mention the ability to revive people, though they didn't mention whether everyone would get it or just those in the healing field.
<modest mode> All of those exist in various MMORPGs or RPGs. I'm just collecting </modest mode>
Public travel: Morrowind (Siltstrider), Project Entropia (Teleporters), Neocron (Teleport aka Genrep, in some cases with access privileges, those can be captured by clans)
LogOff: Project Entopia. In that case, it was 30 seconds vulnerability IIRC after logout. Adjust for speed of combat in your MMORPG (logout whoring should fail in PVP)
See, thats the best idea though, if you're a dev and you're not sure what to do, always make a list of whats good thats already out there, and then choose whatever fits your game.
Waiting For: something good Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
I agree, I like the caravan idea actually. Maybe an alternative to soem of the stricter penatlies suggested for dying would be the location of your "death". Such as, if you were killed/knocked unconcious/etc.. far from a routinely traversed path or caravan route, there would be an increased chance of your losing items. While death along a much travelled route would result in a much smaller chance of losing items.
Another method of item loss at death may depend on what you were fighting as well. If you were killed by, let's say a group of bandits or any intelligent humanoid capable of using your equipment, then you would find yourself "rolled" upon death. Whereas if it was something like a giant, mutated monitor I would think you would most certainly find that all of your equipment remains intact.
I'm not sure how plausible it would be in the case of some wasteland raiders killing you and taking some portion of your carried equipment, that the stolen equipment could remain in the inventory of the bandits therefor giving you an opportunity, or anyone else an opportunity of recovering whatever items you lost.
But, that could be a little discomfiting if you were in battle with a group of bandits, and instead of helping, players just watch, waiting for the bandits to kill you so they may have the opportunity of recovering something that was potentially valuable that the bandits looted from your body hehe
I am definitely not fond of a player losing everything, but I wouldn't see that it should be out of the question that a gang of wasteland, scum wouldn't roll your body and take whatever they could get their hands on once they did you in. Maybe this could be just a small amount of whatever you were carrying, like x# of items out of total# carried and %x of the currency you had on your person.
This would appease the dune scavengers among us, and those of us that are not fond of losing everything when we die. This would definitely give someone pause before they attacked a particulary rough looking group of desert thugs if they had an inventory full of items(maybe some that are very valuable as well) and a purse full of currency, knowing that they will lose a number of those items(randomly chosen items at death) and a % of their currency if they should be killed.
But, I do like the idea that a caravan might find your body along their route and transport you to the next closest settlement along their route, or if you were killed in the wastes off the travelled path, a group of nomads might come across your corpse and drag you to the closest settlement to treat your wounds. Kind of funny thinking about a treatment for death, but it is the future after-all hehe
Sorry to necro this, but thought I would look over a different topic. Perma death is completely a bad idea. Mainly because not everyone has a T3 connection that is 100yards from the server and a 100% guarentee no connection or power outage. SWG tried to have perma death after 3 deaths (back with the origonal Jedi code) and that was quickly removed because of that simple fact. You can't screw over the poor saps with dial-ups
I do agree completely with some sort of penality that goes along with death, OR after so many deaths to prevent people from zerging in PvP or NPC combat. Some possible solutions without knowing the exact way they will have the profession trees set up:
1) After 3 deaths (or whatever) you lose a random experiance box. Or if it is straight EXP, then you lose so much EXP per death and have it esculate per death within a certain amount of time. ie: Single death in 1 week is 10000 exp loss at a certain level....but you die 10 times in 1 week, your exp loss becomes 100K a death. And you will have to work yourself out of a hole. Only problem with that is vet maxed chars wont have a problem unless they respec back to another profession type.
2) Body is left out where you die along with all your crap. This makes you go back either smarter or with backup to get your stuff back. After a period of time (30mins lets say), your corpse becomes lootable and anyone stumbling along can gank your stuff and call it a day.
3) Item Decay. If you die, whatever you have on you starts to lose condition. If you are carrying around the uber leet rifle of insta death and chaos.....and die 10times in a row....your once uber leet rifle now hits like a bee-bee gun. Etc....
4) Death should be clonable. Whatever region of the server / city you are by, you go there and are pretty much naked. Except maybe a thong. Then you either re-equip yourself and get your items back, or say screw it and go buy new stuff.
Just some ideas that have worked in the passed before the nerf bat came a wacking and made life for the carebears easier.
Item decay should exist, and this will hoepfully tie in with a crafting proffession.
As to item loss, here is where i am stuck, while i think it would make for a more realistic game, and will help to prevent "uber gun of one button winning" it would also make the game too frustrating i fear. instead, Maybe there could be 2 inventories, one with say only 10 slots but not lootable, and another with many more slots (30ish ) that is lootable. And then once you get a mount (vehicle or animal mount) you get some more secured slots.
Likewise i am against banks, this is an apocalytpic wasteland, choosing to carry another round of ammo, versus food, versus a furry plush puppy, should be a choice not to be taken lightly
Originally posted by ajmstilt As to item loss, here is where i am stuck, while i think it would make for a more realistic game, and will help to prevent "uber gun of one button winning" it would also make the game too frustrating i fear.
I have to agree with this, item loss is a sensitive subject. Some players may feel that not having harsh penalties such as inventory loss would baby the playerbase encouraging the "carebear" approach to game progression as it violated the philosophy of "risk versus reward". Others such as myself may argue that item loss is too harsh and frustrating for the player, creating negative game experiences which would discourage casual players.
A fair middleground I would propose is a quasi-implementation of such a system where the items that are lost are restricted by conditions. For example, weapons and armour would not be lost but replaceables such as rations, ammunition or equivlent would be lost.
Concider the following scenario:
I have a few can of gasoline but I need some more in order to run a machine to salvage some new technology I found at an excavation site. I could go on a quest by a local man to aquire a few more cans of gasoline, but I risk losing some of my current stock should I be defeated!
Another suggestion would be the incorporation of a risk-timer. This being a timer that would be set on a component that has just be aquired, for example a rare mineral or piece of technology found at the local PvP spot.
Originally posted by ajmstilt Item decay should exist, and this will hoepfully tie in with a crafting proffession.
Item decay is a good idea but I think there are other opportunities to explore. Instead of item decay, why not have an "item break" system?
For example, a weapon may jam resulting in damage reduced, a piece of armor may become exposed applying an increase in PvP damage taken, or some equipment may become faulty and have its effectivness reduced!
Perhaps only have these penalties apply in PvP as a kind of drive for the economy where as the casual PvE'ers dont have to worry. Or if there is repairer around they can still enjoy PvE content.
The player takes it to a repairer who may need some specialist item or skill to do this, and resets the weapon back to normal. This being repeatable for either a limited or infite number of cycles.
In my opinion, crafting good weapons, armor and equipment should be a notoriously difficult process. There will hopefully be alot of customisation in items so players will grow accustomed to their unique individual arms. It will also help the PvP scene be more diverse with greater customisation instead of "standards".
Item decay is good if it is handled the right way. A good way to implement it that ties in crafters is to let each item have a durability rating depending on the level of the crafter that made it. So lets say I buy a pistol from a novice crafter that has 400 durability. As you use it, it lowers in durability (higher pistol skill would lower durability less). Also, when you die it goes down in durability (if it was in one of your 'active' weapon slots). If it ever reaches 0, the item is unusable and must be repaired.
Repairing isn't a very simple process though. Depending on the crafters skill in repairing that particular object class, like pistols, the repair process will lower the maximum durability. So my pistol, after being repaired by a novice crafter, now has maximum of 350 durability. This makes it so all weapons, even uber ones, will eventually decay to a point they are unrepairable. Which forces you to get another gun from a crafter. The decay wouldn't be terribly fast... if you had an uber gun, and a good person to repair it, it should at least last a few months of heavy use. (SWG had a system like this didn't it? And a few other games... its not unique, but it works well.)
When you die, item decay ONLY for 'active' items such as armor and guns seems like a good way to have death sting but not be terribly annoying. Not saying it should be the only mechanism for player death, just one of them. Item dropping will be needed for PvP, or dropping an entire corpse of items, but that is such a touchy subject and has been discussed before.
Comments
The reason SWG changed their death was because sometimes you couldn't acess your corpse, and other times it just wouldn't appear, so you'd lose all your stuff.
Waiting For: something good
Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth
Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
The slap-on-the-wrist penalties of WoW were pretty lame imho.
It lead to just running through dangerous zones thinking "Whatever, all im loosing is some chump change (or i can just take off my armor and run) and some time."
That should never happen i think...
I dislike corpse running because of the associated problems with it. There is the potential for PvP camping, or being forced to abandon your equipment because there was some really nasty creature there that 1 hit killed you, perhaps a bugged random spawn. Introducing safe-timers etc. may be a solution however may cause some to feel cheated, especially if it was PvP related.
I would prefer too see pure and simple cloning. If any technology had been preserved, cloning, communications and conventional weaponry would proberbly some of important ones. As a game mechanic, simple revival and teleportation back to somewhere where it is safe and
A penalties for death could possibly be a small XP loss as described on the website, however I do not like having penalties for death. If there is a penalty, it should be small and convieient. The penalty in Guildwars I enjoyed however I don't envisage a similar mechanism being implemented in FE.
Death penalties serve to frustrate players and cause negative gaming experiences. Most deaths are attributed to minor mistakes or misfortunes, and elements outside the player's control which they were unable to evade (ie. power-gamer gankers, bottom feeders, large unexpected spawn of mobs etc.)
I don't mean to be picking on just you Adrir because this is a recurring statement, but every time it is mentioned it strikes me wrong. True, most player deaths are due to something unexpected happening such as a high level ganker or spawn of mobs. But wait... aren't ALL player deaths due to something unexpected? I mean honestly, what else is there? Don't baby the player because it happened by accident.
I think we've all been babied by games such as WoW that eliminate corpse runs. So, how do we make death suck without corpse runs or extended penalities?
http://www.fallenearth.se - Your source for Fallen Earth information
I think that PVP camping is easily delt with as long as you add in a retreival option. Just charge a nominal fee (5-10%) to have all your items on you shipped to your location. You just need to go to a bank or delivery company or something similar and pay them to retrieve everything. Possiblly have to pay more for longer distances, more dangerous areas, etc.
Waiting For: something good
Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth
Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
Cloning works for me. but I DO want a pretty harsh penalty for dying. XP loss, if the xp system allows it, x% chance of losing items on death[perhaps you can insure the items you care about the most, like your hightec EVO kevlar body suit that everyone else awe about]
or perhaps you systain wounds on death that will heal over playtime.. like, wound that is affecting you for 25 ingamehours that prevents you from running or using 2hand weapons...
Either way I want the death to really hurt a player, and that will make people think twice about taking stupid actions, like running into a room filled with baddies just to ninja-loot the chest at the center.
(somewhat like the old Anarchy-Online system where you lost your entire XP-stack upon death. That made the crew motivated, and if you get a clown in your party, the rest of the team won't think twice about kicking his ass out of the team and get him on the ignorelist. and that will also motivate players to "play nice" since noone wants to be on the "hatelist" and be unable to team in the future.)
I see an opportunity for more player cooperation here:
Hire a few guys as bodyguards for $50,000, payable when they get you to your gear alive. I think it would add a bit ov variety to the game
What I think would be the best system, taking the full pvp into account, is corpse running, with a corpse timer. (ie you are the only one who can loot your corpse for a couple hours, then its open game) People complain about corpse camping, but you can just buy a gun in town and go kill the guy camping your corpse. It becomes a game of capture the flag, how is that something thats not fun? If you can't handle the guy on your own, get some people in town to help you out.
Following this thought, a neat little feature would be being able to make some kind of hiring contract with people. For instance; you give them the contract, and it makes it so that if you recover your corpse in time before it becomes public, they automatically recieve a predetermined amount of money from you.
This would add another layer of depth to the game, allowing people to play as "corpse mercenaries" and make money by escorting people to their corpses.
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Corpse running is a solution however it does bring up alot of issues while also lacking innovation. The mechanism has utilised in several other games, sometimes with a good implementation, however terrible in alot of others!
There are alot of problems associated with this:
Death should be quick, painless and present as little negative effect as possible. These harsh penalties only serve to anger and frustrate the player.
Depends on how frequently the unexpected and unavoidable occurs. As a Jedi Padawan on SWG, during the CU transition periods I was repeatedly 1-shot killed by numerous BHs, forcing me to endure the loss of an hours grinding each time.
Having to spent 20 minutes getting to your corpse, only to be killed again 5 minutes later or during the process, you will become very angry and frustrated with the game...
I would place my backing behind this concept! Temporary amnesia and stat-loss is a great idea
When a character dies, it is teleported to the nearest binding location where it is revivied. However, as part of this process, some of the special abilities it possessed are surpressed. Hence, theses abilities cannot be used until a timer has expired! In addition to this some stat loss should be applied for the duration of the timer.
This represents the corpse being discovered by a local, subsequently recovered and cloned. Consequently, the character awakens in a new body, however is unable to fully control and utilise it. Hence the temporary amnesia and temporary stat-loss.
This inconvieniences the player, giving the character a handicap. It does not frustrate the player as much and it does not force them to complete a tiedious task in order to enjoy the game again.
However, if this penalty is made too harsh, the player would simply logout or sit in a corner until their "down-time" expires.
With regards to the inventory, I think a selective item loss and recovery system would be better than the corpse running:
There game differentiates between several types of inventory contents:
Items are stripped from the inventory. They are dropped around your corpse. This is unrecoverable.
Equipment remains in the inventory, however experiences some damage and decay. Needs to be taken for repair if neccessary.
Loot is stripped from the inventory. It can be either randomly dropped, or taken by the outpost. If it is dropped, it must be reobtained, however it may have been taken by the locals in which case it can be bought back.
Adrir:
*Inability to find body
-Have an arrow at the top of the screen, pointing at your corpse.
*Bugs causing body to be invisible, trapped in terrain or otherwise unreachable
-(invisibility) That's a major game-breaking bug, and is handled by GMs. (terrain) Remember, the terrain is deformable
*Bugs causing loss of items
-Again, a game-breaking bug, handled by GMs.
*Corpse getting camped
-The contract system I talked about addresses that.
*Long distance to traverse in order to reach corpse
-Awwe, poor baby. Hitch a ride.
*Forced to log off or disconnect before death occurs
-IF this is an issue in FE, don't log off in unsafe areas.
*Death in dungeon or dangerous area of the wilderness making corpse somewhat unreachable
-Contract system.
*A touch-of-death MOB (1 hit killer) is sitting on your corpse
-Is there an echo in here? Contract system.
*Recurring cycle of deaths in a small ammount of time
-There'll be lots of corpses to get back. Pretty simple.
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You make some fair points, however you misunderstood the fundemenatal reasoning behind my post. Icarus aim to include casual and interstitial markets. Hence the playerbase will not be restricted to the 'hardcore' and 'uber-leet'. Consequently the the game is required to conform to their demands. How is this achieved? Through equipping Fallen Earth with a set of desirable features and appealing, fun-enhancing mechanisms!
Fans of the post-apocalyse genre will find this title attractive. On examination of recent demographics, would you be shocked to discover that players whom enjoy these games are much more likely to inclined to roleplay, questing and problem solving?
While your opinions and proposed solutions are perfectly valid, I still disagree that this mechanism is suitable for Fallen Earth. Within the wider context, it is a step in the wrong direction. It is a tiedious and annoying death penalty. It consumes their limited playing time. It absorbs resources. It serves only to frustrate and disillusion.
These, and those in my previous posts, are simply examples of some of the issues I find unattractive about this system. Why risk resources on customer services? Why disrupt gameplay to this extent? To punish someone for having fun?
On the other hand, I do understand the need for Risk Vs Reward. It is critical to success in an MMOG! As expected, the death penalty must also aquiest to this law. However, harsh risks and little reward is equally gamebreaking to large rewards with little risk.
I have offered my alternative and subscribe to Xil's concept as the compromise.
Wow, what a mixture of opinions on the death system. I didn't realize how many people favored such serious death penatlies until I read this post! As for me, I want to see a death penalty, but it should in no way result in the player experiencing massive amounts of down-time, losing skills, losing control of their ability to weild wepons for extended periods of time( see massive amounts of downtime;p).
I mean, after all, we are playing this game, I hope, to have fun. Having to wait an hour or two, or longer before you can even play because you were killed (for whatever reason), is definitely not conducive to being a happy gamer.
The more you take away from the gamer, the more discouraged they become. Most people will not attempt to kill anything beyond the scope of their skills, since it is not conducive to "leveling" their character in an effective manner. Now, this assumes that Fallen Earth will operate on an experience based system. Experience debt seems to be a common tool for managing character deaths, and I like this idea, although it is definitely not innovative.
All of the ideas in this thread are creative, but from the sounds of some of them, if you get killed, you may as well log off for the rest of the day. It no longer becomes fun to play, because you'll have to worry about going anywhere, since 5 minutes after you log in, you could get killed(for whatever reason) and so much for playing that day! Doesn't sound like much fun..
While the ideas are creative, anything that will deduct significantly from the amount of time a player can expect to spend enjoying the game, imo, are not reasonable alternatives for a death penalty system. I don't know anyone that liked that system in EQ, hence the change in EQ2. No more corpse running involving possibly many hours or more of time. Especially if you died during a raid on another plane! Could be days. Plus, you lost experience that could possibly reduce you a level. Not that EQ2 is any better.. but the experience debt system and the elimination of the corpse run was refreshing in comparison.
Anyway, if Icarus expects gamers to pay 50$ to purchase the game( or whatever the retail price may be), and pay 15$ a month to play, I don't know anyone at all that would be willing to play, other than the handful of people here that are expressing their desire to play that way(and of course whatever majority or minority they may represent).
I'm betting that Icarus will take the middle road and go with some form of experience debt system. But, I suppose we will know when they release more information to us as they flesh out and fine tune the systems.
I think you've got some good ideas here Rabiator. You could have caravans leaving/going to major towns and areas every 10 minutes or so. From there you could just hire people (NPC or PC) to protect you out to your corpse.
Definately agree with the log off idea.
They did mention the ability to revive people, though they didn't mention whether everyone would get it or just those in the healing field.
Waiting For: something good
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revive = awesome
If I had to pick a player death system ill take the waking up in local medi-bay or village idea i posted way back in the thread somewhere i think.
But yeh, looks like its cloning and im happy with that too, probably wont include cloning ability in my RP tho as it takes the fear of death out of roleplay.
How about a mix of the two schools of thought? A heavy stat reduction, which lasts a couple minutes per level, plus you drop all the items you don't have equipped, including money. Then, you also have the chance to go find your corpse, which triggers the stat reduction to turn off. On the same timer, your corpse has that set amount of time before it becomes available to loot by other players.
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<modest mode> All of those exist in various MMORPGs or RPGs. I'm just collecting
</modest mode>
See, thats the best idea though, if you're a dev and you're not sure what to do, always make a list of whats good thats already out there, and then choose whatever fits your game.
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Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
I agree, I like the caravan idea actually. Maybe an alternative to soem of the stricter penatlies suggested for dying would be the location of your "death". Such as, if you were killed/knocked unconcious/etc.. far from a routinely traversed path or caravan route, there would be an increased chance of your losing items. While death along a much travelled route would result in a much smaller chance of losing items.
Another method of item loss at death may depend on what you were fighting as well. If you were killed by, let's say a group of bandits or any intelligent humanoid capable of using your equipment, then you would find yourself "rolled" upon death. Whereas if it was something like a giant, mutated monitor I would think you would most certainly find that all of your equipment remains intact.
I'm not sure how plausible it would be in the case of some wasteland raiders killing you and taking some portion of your carried equipment, that the stolen equipment could remain in the inventory of the bandits therefor giving you an opportunity, or anyone else an opportunity of recovering whatever items you lost.
But, that could be a little discomfiting if you were in battle with a group of bandits, and instead of helping, players just watch, waiting for the bandits to kill you so they may have the opportunity of recovering something that was potentially valuable that the bandits looted from your body hehe
I am definitely not fond of a player losing everything, but I wouldn't see that it should be out of the question that a gang of wasteland, scum wouldn't roll your body and take whatever they could get their hands on once they did you in. Maybe this could be just a small amount of whatever you were carrying, like x# of items out of total# carried and %x of the currency you had on your person.
This would appease the dune scavengers among us, and those of us that are not fond of losing everything when we die. This would definitely give someone pause before they attacked a particulary rough looking group of desert thugs if they had an inventory full of items(maybe some that are very valuable as well) and a purse full of currency, knowing that they will lose a number of those items(randomly chosen items at death) and a % of their currency if they should be killed.
But, I do like the idea that a caravan might find your body along their route and transport you to the next closest settlement along their route, or if you were killed in the wastes off the travelled path, a group of nomads might come across your corpse and drag you to the closest settlement to treat your wounds. Kind of funny thinking about a treatment for death, but it is the future after-all hehe
Sorry to necro this, but thought I would look over a different topic. Perma death is completely a bad idea. Mainly because not everyone has a T3 connection that is 100yards from the server and a 100% guarentee no connection or power outage. SWG tried to have perma death after 3 deaths (back with the origonal Jedi code) and that was quickly removed because of that simple fact. You can't screw over the poor saps with dial-ups
I do agree completely with some sort of penality that goes along with death, OR after so many deaths to prevent people from zerging in PvP or NPC combat. Some possible solutions without knowing the exact way they will have the profession trees set up:
1) After 3 deaths (or whatever) you lose a random experiance box. Or if it is straight EXP, then you lose so much EXP per death and have it esculate per death within a certain amount of time. ie: Single death in 1 week is 10000 exp loss at a certain level....but you die 10 times in 1 week, your exp loss becomes 100K a death. And you will have to work yourself out of a hole. Only problem with that is vet maxed chars wont have a problem unless they respec back to another profession type.
2) Body is left out where you die along with all your crap. This makes you go back either smarter or with backup to get your stuff back. After a period of time (30mins lets say), your corpse becomes lootable and anyone stumbling along can gank your stuff and call it a day.
3) Item Decay. If you die, whatever you have on you starts to lose condition. If you are carrying around the uber leet rifle of insta death and chaos.....and die 10times in a row....your once uber leet rifle now hits like a bee-bee gun. Etc....
4) Death should be clonable. Whatever region of the server / city you are by, you go there and are pretty much naked. Except maybe a thong. Then you either re-equip yourself and get your items back, or say screw it and go buy new stuff.
Just some ideas that have worked in the passed before the nerf bat came a wacking and made life for the carebears easier.
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After some more thought perma death is too harsh.
Item decay should exist, and this will hoepfully tie in with a crafting proffession.
As to item loss, here is where i am stuck, while i think it would make for a more realistic game, and will help to prevent "uber gun of one button winning" it would also make the game too frustrating i fear. instead, Maybe there could be 2 inventories, one with say only 10 slots but not lootable, and another with many more slots (30ish ) that is lootable. And then once you get a mount (vehicle or animal mount) you get some more secured slots.
Likewise i am against banks, this is an apocalytpic wasteland, choosing to carry another round of ammo, versus food, versus a furry plush puppy, should be a choice not to be taken lightly
I have to agree with this, item loss is a sensitive subject. Some players may feel that not having harsh penalties such as inventory loss would baby the playerbase encouraging the "carebear" approach to game progression as it violated the philosophy of "risk versus reward". Others such as myself may argue that item loss is too harsh and frustrating for the player, creating negative game experiences which would discourage casual players.
A fair middleground I would propose is a quasi-implementation of such a system where the items that are lost are restricted by conditions. For example, weapons and armour would not be lost but replaceables such as rations, ammunition or equivlent would be lost.
Concider the following scenario:
I have a few can of gasoline but I need some more in order to run a machine to salvage some new technology I found at an excavation site. I could go on a quest by a local man to aquire a few more cans of gasoline, but I risk losing some of my current stock should I be defeated!
Another suggestion would be the incorporation of a risk-timer. This being a timer that would be set on a component that has just be aquired, for example a rare mineral or piece of technology found at the local PvP spot.
Item decay is a good idea but I think there are other opportunities to explore. Instead of item decay, why not have an "item break" system?
For example, a weapon may jam resulting in damage reduced, a piece of armor may become exposed applying an increase in PvP damage taken, or some equipment may become faulty and have its effectivness reduced!
Perhaps only have these penalties apply in PvP as a kind of drive for the economy where as the casual PvE'ers dont have to worry. Or if there is repairer around they can still enjoy PvE content.
The player takes it to a repairer who may need some specialist item or skill to do this, and resets the weapon back to normal. This being repeatable for either a limited or infite number of cycles.
In my opinion, crafting good weapons, armor and equipment should be a notoriously difficult process. There will hopefully be alot of customisation in items so players will grow accustomed to their unique individual arms. It will also help the PvP scene be more diverse with greater customisation instead of "standards".
Item decay is good if it is handled the right way. A good way to implement it that ties in crafters is to let each item have a durability rating depending on the level of the crafter that made it. So lets say I buy a pistol from a novice crafter that has 400 durability. As you use it, it lowers in durability (higher pistol skill would lower durability less). Also, when you die it goes down in durability (if it was in one of your 'active' weapon slots). If it ever reaches 0, the item is unusable and must be repaired.
Repairing isn't a very simple process though. Depending on the crafters skill in repairing that particular object class, like pistols, the repair process will lower the maximum durability. So my pistol, after being repaired by a novice crafter, now has maximum of 350 durability. This makes it so all weapons, even uber ones, will eventually decay to a point they are unrepairable. Which forces you to get another gun from a crafter. The decay wouldn't be terribly fast... if you had an uber gun, and a good person to repair it, it should at least last a few months of heavy use. (SWG had a system like this didn't it? And a few other games... its not unique, but it works well.)
When you die, item decay ONLY for 'active' items such as armor and guns seems like a good way to have death sting but not be terribly annoying. Not saying it should be the only mechanism for player death, just one of them. Item dropping will be needed for PvP, or dropping an entire corpse of items, but that is such a touchy subject and has been discussed before.
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