HOW TO HANDLE PLAYER DEATH – DISCUSSION

[mosheh]

So here it is, this line of discussion will be about how to handle player death. No holding back, express passionately what you can not stand, and what you can not live without here!

[mosheh]

Our current system is very simple, death is VIRTUALLY no penalty, a minor xp hit and that’s about it.

So that’s the first suggestion for consideration: JUST AN EXP PENALTY

It can be of various levels, etc… thoughts ideas criticism?

[mosheh]

The system I was “raised on” back when I was a MUDder was: DEATH LEAVES YOUR CORPSE WITH YOUR GEAR

Basically in that system, your corpse remained where you died. You had basically 3 options:
1) Get a resurrection of your corpse at place of death, or drag corpse to a different place and get resurrected – which resulted in minor/no xp loss and all your gear back
2) Get the corpse, which means getting your gear back, but major xp loss without ressurection
3) Leave your corpse, take the xp loss and lose all your gear

Positives of this system is the challenge it takes to get your corpse at times and incentive for resurrection and not dying.
Negatives of this system is the problem if you can’t get your corpse for whatever reason (busy RL or whatnot)… This can somewhat be alleviated by having insane corpse-decay times. Which creates the negative of having tons of player corpses laying across the world for large amounts of time. Kinda messy 😛

Thoughts? Ideas? Criticism?

[Shadorn]

Can have 4th options:

4) A npc who can summon your corpse for cost. (The cost increase as higher level you are). Or some specific tokens for it?

That way, can alleviate hardships for more casual players or for those who don’t have time to retrieve the corpse.

Shadorn
May your arrow be swift and true!

[Ornir Elunari]

This whole discussion hinges on something rather fundamental – How hardcore do we want to be and at what point will it actually become *dangerous* to take a fight you might lose?

On the MUDs I have frequented, death is a pretty major thing. Dying to a mob results in the loss of an entire experience level. This becomes very significant at higher levels. You still need to retrieve your corpse or else it may decay, leaving your equipment strewn on the ground. Occasionally your corpse may spawn a ‘shadow’ – a mob with strength based on your level that will protect your corpse from looting until it decays. Neither friends nor foes can take any of your gear or molest your remains unless they kill the shadow first.

In PK, death is a little less traumatic, except for the fact that your gear is pretty much forfeit. All of it, unless your opponent does not want any of it or is too low to carry it away. A PK death results in significantly less XP loss, although it is still about 1-2 hours of mob grinding at higher levels. Killing someone in PK effectively transfers this XP to the killer, so PK against powerful characters is one way to gain some levels. There is a cap on the amount of XP a single player can gain for a single kill.

Now, this being explained, I don’t think this is a really good solution for Luminari. Luminari is a bit more of a casual game, although I do think there should be some risk of loss upon death. I am leaning towards corpse retrieval and an xp penalty on death, but the ability to pay (either with gold, tokens, qps, whatever) for a resurrection by a mob. Additionally, a player who is in the vicinity should be able to use ‘Raise Dead’ or ‘True Ressurection’ or even something like ‘Wish’ on the corpse during a timer (maybe 5 mins?) after death. This would be ONLY if the player remains logged in during that time, and the player would still get an XP penalty, although reduced.

@Shadorn wrote:

4) A npc who can summon your corpse for cost. (The cost increase as higher level you are). Or some specific tokens for it?
That way, can alleviate hardships for more casual players or for those who don’t have time to retrieve the corpse.

This is a workable idea. It should be quite expensive for higher level characters.

– Ornir Elunari

[Treyorn]

I come from a MUD that had corpse retrieval, corpse decay(items drop to ground), completely lootable but nobody would because it was a good community, and 15% exp loss based on current level.

My recommendation:

-No penalty or corpse until level 7. When they reach level 7 and warning comes up that death is no different and they should “HELP DEATH” to learn more about it.
-Offer corpse retrieval that is based upon player level.
-10% exp loss.

[Author]

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