Topic: Gameplay... and Death

[Morgul]

So, how should we handle death, (as well as basic gameplay)?

Personally, I think that death should be permanant.... Then again.. if this is an RPG.. we need something like levels... (are they going to be visable to the user, or not?)... and at death, you should get like half your previous level that you can put into as many new characters as you choose. (aka, if my 100 lvl guy dies, and I decide I want to make two new characters, I can make them both lvl 25, or make one 10 and the other 40.)


What do you guys think?

Oh, and forgive the rambling nature of that post... I'm in a rambling mood.

[whitelynx]

Oh, and while we're talking about it.. how should we handle death?

Here's what is currently written on the Precursors site regarding in-game death:

Death also will be handled much the same as real life. Once a player's character is killed, he is dead. (barring Admin intervention) In fairness, however, should the player wish to recreate that character, they can do so with half the stats of their now dead character, or they could put those stats towards a new charcter. We believe this is fair to players, and still stays true to the form of Precursors.

Dave

[Morgul]

True... but what's on the website isn't the Holy Grail.. it's what we were thinking at the time... Now that we have 'users'... or at least forumites... I'd like to know thier thoughts... Feel like elaborating on those quotes, Dave?



--Chris

[whitelynx]

I wasn't insinuating that this was the "holy grail" or anything like that. I was just saying that this is what we have told people so far. As far as elaborating, I really haven't done any real thinking about this subject. (that's your area of expertise ;-))

Dave

[Morgul]

Too true. I mean, the real question is, how playable will permanant death really be? I've never played an MMORPG that has it... :-/

...Can we really have it be permenant? (I'd like to... but I don't want to discourage users from playing either.. and if death is too easy, then they won't play.)

[fehknt]

I'd make death hard to acheive, if you're not really stupid, yet permanant.  half-levels sounds good, maybe 3/4 would be a little more lenient.

Allow an option to have your character die permenantly, but can apply 3/4 of levels gained to new character, or die and get restored, but only at 1/2 levels, yet you get to keep some of your stuff? (only what you were wearing and money? minus what you were wearing?)

then again, I've never really played an MMORPG, with or without permanant death, so I might not be the best informed.

[whitelynx]

Another thing to consider would be adding facilities like safe deposit boxes and storage facilities... If the player decides to restore his/her character then they can get at what's been stored under their name. Another possibility would be to have multiple characters at the same time and use the one as a "backup" character, and make sure to always have that character's name co-signed on all of their assets. (then it would be transferrable to other characters in the case of the main character's demise)

Dave

[fehknt]

I don't know about being able to co-sign on all assets.  that can turn a low-level into a powerhouse if the high-level character does something really stupid, and isn't much of a penalty.  I'd suggest <reasonable value>*(min of either character level).  That way, if you wanted a backup character, you'd really have to _play_ your backup character too, for the deposit box to mean much.  People will peobably want at least some experience to be able to transfer to an existing character/towards a new one.  maybe do 1/4 to an existing or 1/2 to a new one?  Actually, those values rais another question, but that begs a new thread.  just a second.

[whitelynx]

well, hopefully material possession won't be able to imbalance gameplay too much... You may have this bigass weapon in storage that can kill legions of your enemies in one swipe, but that doesn't mean your low-level character knows how to use it. ;-) But I can see your point. I'm trying to think of a way to make this more realistic than shuffling points when you die...

Dave

[fehknt]

Ahhh.  hm.

I suppose it'd work as long as you enforced "your character is too low level to use this item" things.  or maybe only allow money to be lockboxed, possibly a small number of items?

I do appreciate the desire to make it realistic and not just number-shuffle.  I like it.  I think we should try to make it work, and stick with the realism that you're trying to put in the game.

[whitelynx]

On second thought, rather than make it "you're too low-level so you can't use this item" it would probably be better if you were either a really bad shot, or had a higher chance of misusing it in some way... Not too sure yet how it would work, but I don't want the players to need any of the "level" stuff. (what level computer programmer am i?)

Dave

[Morgul]

[...] t I don't want the players to need any of the "level" stuff. (what level computer programmer am i?)

You're a level 6 Programer, and a level 2 modeler. (I peeked at your character sheet.)

Seriously, I prefer to have it be more of a 'I don't know how to use this/I am a bad shot with this' type thing than a "Warning, you need to be level 3.141592 to use this item, and can only do so while doing the Chicken Dance to a Backstreet Boys song." (Which itself is an ultimate weapon.)

[Chii]

You could make it so that weapons were in groups and you have to have worked with certain ones before you can use certain others or you need to have worked with so many in the group to properly use this or whatever. That way, you make it so that they have a certain level of experience before they touch the big guns.

You don't even have to do this on all of them - I'm just saying some of the big guns. Otherwise you have a whole bunch of people possibly making some really fatal mistakes (possibly on other players, which isn't fair) because they're trying to use a weapon that's too big for their breaches so to speak.

[Morgul]

While that's true, and a good idea (think the 'feats' for weapons you need in D&D) I don't know about the preventing fatal mistakes on other players. No, it's not fair, and that person would get a lot of flack from thier stupidity... but that's life, and that's realistic. I dunno.. part of me likes having the community automagically weed out the stupid ones.... kinda like cyber-natural-selection... :-D

[Chii]

How can the smart ones weed out the stupid ones if most of the smart ones get killed by someone else's mistake?

[Morgul]

How can the smart ones weed out the stupid ones if most of the smart ones get killed by someone else's mistake?

Who says most of them will? The smart ones will recognise someone's an idiot, and leave the star system before the idiots blow it up :-P

[contingencyplan]

Re. weapons and such: I've tinkered with Planeshift some, haven't played it a whole lot.  However, they have magic in their game (since theirs is a fantasy MMORPG).  They plan to have a deal where if you're inexperienced, the spell can backfire on you, damaging you or whatever.  We could have something like that - if your skill level with a particular weapon is too low, you could injure yourself with it.  Thus, we should have training booths, where you can pay to learn to use a weapon or other system without having to worry about killing yourself by launching a REAL mini-nuke grenade half an inch in front of you.  It's all simulated, so no real chance of harm.  However, simulation can only take you so far, so we should have both a hard ceiling on the amount of skill you can gain through training combined with a law of diminishing returns (i.e., harder to advance in skill through simulation).  I'll post my views on experience and skills in the appropriate thread.

Cross-topic question, though: should we make skills weapon-specific, or have classes of weapons?  I would advocate as wep-specific as possible, since two kinds of pistols won't always fire the same way.  

Re. death: I would say a good possibility that I was thinking about putting in my game (and y'all are welcome to use now) is teleportation - everyone has a "personal emergency teleport device" or something.  All it does is pull the person back to a friendly point.  However, if this occurs, it just pulls you back - you leave all the stuff you're carrying there on the ground.  This still allows for looting, without having the victim die.

Another possibility is cloning.  If you're part of an organization (e.g., the Terrans or whoever), then you're automatically cloned and put back in, though for a cost (perhaps a standard tax or something).  If you're independent (e.g., merc.), and die, then you have to pay someone to cloning you.  Perhaps a black-market cloning / revival system?  You could say that the cloned body, being manufactured, is weaker, and not all the information in one's brain can be transferred.  So, this would explain why you lose levels / skills / money / stats when you are returned to the game.

Death is one aspect of MMORPGs that is difficult to figure out, mainly because permanent death, IMO, is not particularly an option, esp. if people are paying to play this game.  (Seem to remember something on Gamasutra about this; I'll see if I can find it.)  People won't want to invest money and a lot of time building up a character, only to have that investment be turned to bupkis when your idiot teammate (or, insert another term here) decides it'd be fun to try firing this new rocket launcher he found... except, he doesn't have the skill, so it blows up.  And, of course, you're standing right next to him.

Take it easy,
Brian

[Duffy]

The general problem with Death in any MMORPG is how much you lose by dying. The question that needs to be answered is "how easily can i die?". Going with a semi-realistic game means that you can probably die relatviely easily most of the time.  If you want to work perma-death into the game there must be at least some part of the game where you do not need to worry about some random person stitting in town sniping people cause he enjoys killing players off.

     The Law Enforcement suggestion is probably the best way to keep perma-death and offer some protection to new or weaker players, by giving a strong incentive NOT to kill other players in certain areas. Actual punishments aren't horribly important right now, but as long they are harsh enough to dissuade random player-killings it'll work. To take this idea one step farther, lets say someone has the ability to at least get away with an attempt on another player in a law-abiding city. Since its a city odds are good there is some sort of hospital, this could provide a chance for a player not to die from what would usually be fatal injury. Thus making it harder to actually kill a player in a city.

     Of course this would mostly be only in major organized cities, but major cities makes the most sense for starting player locations anyways, so until the player has the skills and resources to strike out into the rest of the game they are mostly safe.

Concerning weapons skills I've seen two systems:
1.) Flat skill lvl that increases with character lvl. Considering the thoughts of the devs I would discard this idea.
2.) The next most common is that you need to increase the skill from zero by successful use of the said weapon. Usually there is a skill cap for each character lvl, so then its not possible to max the skill to perfection by simple use on mundane targets (of course diminishing returns are usually included).  Since any hard lvls are going to be hidden anyways from what I've read, this system is probably the best choice. The skill lvls would affect the accuracy radius. The ability to increase precision would not necessarily be a character trait.  I would imagine this as a modification to the actual weapon, how this would affect actual in-game use would simply mean the weapon has a tendency to group shots in one area more then just anywhere in the accuracy radius. Think of the difference between a smooth-bore firearm and a rifled one.

[fehknt]

Personally, I'm against the idea of the teleporation devices.  They seem too much like a cop-out.  If people are just going to respawn like in other games, then just let them respawn, and leave it at that.

Now, I think people should have to think about the risks involved in anything that they do.  Perhaps that's not something too often needed in a game, but we're trying to make a really realistic game, right?

I'd go for making ships pretty hard to blow up, but pretty easy to badly disable, so people only get killed if other people actually want them dead.  Also, people should get a reputation as a murderer if they do so -- with serious penalities in "civilized" space.

[Rosencrantz]

I think that in addition to penalizing murderers in "civilized space" there should be some way of enforcing some of those penalties outside of "civlized space". So that, the murderer is just not sitting outside of "civilized space" waiting for people to kill.

Perhaps bounties could be used this, or special exploratory law enforcement teams.