11 Apr, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
My project is trundling along, making progress, and I was chatting with a
fellow admin about what we would have in terms of penalty for being killed.

It wound up being a pretty spirited debate involving accusations of player hating
and player coddling…and it made me realize it's worth getting a sense of
what it is people are used to these days. I don't spend time going to muds to
play and know what is typically expected in terms of a penalty for dying.

What do you guys do? XP loss? XP and skill loss? How much? XP debt? Nothing-just-respawn?

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
11 Apr, 2011, sankoachaea wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
My ongoing side-project treats it thusly: Don't die, or you're dead. Most likely permanently.

This is one of those really tough decisions to make because no matter which way you handle it, someone is going to complain. Are you trying to find out what people like overall or trying to pick what is right for/fits your MUD?

In mine, murder is a serious crime in most places and you'd be stupid to go somewhere where you're likely to be murdered (unless you want to die). So I've effectively implemented natural selection. If someone('s character) is old, chances are they are a smart/skilled player, or very lucky, or both. People who can't figure out how to play… die off.

This isn't ideal for attracting a large player-base, but that's not my goal. So, what kind of experience do you want your players to have? Do you care more about providing a certain experience or do you care more about numbers? Interesting enough, you can't guarantee that reducing the death-penalty (odd wording) will attract more players. Personally, I like games with some challenge or risk involved.
11 Apr, 2011, Kayle wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Sith Wars has a semi-permanent death system that is partially in place.

Basically depending on how removed from Civilization you are, your chances of being Permanently dead rise exponentially. However, if you're on say, Coruscant, you'll like be saved by an EMT like Mob and moved to a Hospital or something. But if you're on a remote place like Dxun, the jungle moon of Onderon, You die… you're dead. Character deleted, roll a new one. But as it's going to end up being an RP Intensive environment, the perm death thing makes sense.
11 Apr, 2011, Kalinash wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Kayle said:
But as it's going to end up being an RP Intensive environment, the perm death thing makes sense.


What if you want it to be fun?
11 Apr, 2011, plamzi wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Kalinash said:
Kayle said:
But as it's going to end up being an RP Intensive environment, the perm death thing makes sense.


What if you want it to be fun?


In my semi-casual game, levels under 6 incur no penalty, levels 6-16 lose experience but respawn with their full eq set, levels 16 and over get exp penalty + have to retrieve their corpse.

While I don't know what kind of game you're building, one thing that I think will always help is to ease people into whatever system you come up with. The goal is to engage people first, only then teach them what kind of harsh mistress they've grown addicted to.
11 Apr, 2011, sankoachaea wrote in the 6th comment:
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Killing other people permanently is fun.
11 Apr, 2011, RoFAdmin wrote in the 7th comment:
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Ive seen all range of the spectrum from your typical you die and you lose some exp, to some that include gear loss all the way up to perma death.


My personal favorite system i saw in place was on the game DragonRealms.
You had to get favors, favors cost exp. The higher your level the more a favor cost.
If you died without a favor you were dead permanently.

Things that happened.

1) You get killed, your not dead yet. You can still be resurrected. Real death only occurred after you were dead for a period of time. Pretty much your stuck like a lump of potatoes on the ground in the room where you were killed unless someone helps you.

2) Upon actual dying, assuming you had favors. There was some exp loss, and everything you were carrying was left in a grave in the room where you died.

3) There was also a "death sickness" of sorts that made you weaker for awhile after you come back to life. How much weaker and for how long depends on how you came back to life.

Yup that about sums it up. It allowed people to avoid permanent death if they were careful and put some effort into it, but also allowed for it to happen if you let things get out of control or forgot.



As a side note, after having this system for a very very long time, DragonRealms has changed their system to remove permanent death, and instead GREATLY increased the exp loss for dying if you had no favors.
11 Apr, 2011, Chris Bailey wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
In my current project, any dead characters require ressurection through an ability or item if outside of a safe location. Inside town, players may rest at an inn to revive all of their characters.
11 Apr, 2011, Lyanic wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
My game incurs no penalty for dying, but that's just a consequence of the way the game is designed. There are 80+ different ways to die and many of them are quite difficult to avoid, except by the most careful and skilled players. As such, it would be unfair of me to penalize them. Instead, there have evolved meta-games where players try to find the most unique ways of dying.

As for what players these days expect - it really depends on if you're running a game that's more RP, more PvP or more PvE. It seems that RP'ers are the only ones who will readily accept a perma-death system or one that deals extremely harsh penalties for dying. PvP'ers expect minimal penalties for dying and will complain endlessly and/or possibly rage quit if they deem the penalty too harsh. PvE'ers are somewhere in between. This is just based on my experience over the years.
11 Apr, 2011, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
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My penalty was stats and time. Each time you died you'd lose 3 HP permanently, and we had minigames to recover one point at a time. For example, one game we had portals you had to enter which randomly spawned anywhere in the game. (3 at any given time). To find the locations there was an NPC, or you could just stumble upon them during your adventures. For skilled or lucky players this wasn't a difficult task. We also had resource sinks for recovering these points if a player didn't want to spend the time. Some players would just accept the stat loss since it was relatively small compared to the pool. Additionally, players who recently died stayed in their corpse for 60 seconds before being able to respawn.
12 Apr, 2011, Tyche wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm working on a game that implements GURPS Fantasy.
There are wish, resurrection, and reanimation spells, but they are quite costly.
So low-level characters will be subject to permadeath, while very high-level characters might acquire the means to avoid it.
12 Apr, 2011, Runter wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
I'm working on a game that implements GURPS Fantasy.
There are wish, resurrection, and reanimation spells, but they are quite costly.
So low-level characters will be subject to permadeath, while very high-level characters might acquire the means to avoid it.


That's very interesting. It's sort of opposite as to what is intuitive. I've played games where low level characters, for example, couldn't die at all and were especially protected.
12 Apr, 2011, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
For Pk the penalties is loss of 'fame' and possibility to get looted.

For other I have a mob that can recover corspses for a fee (free for low levels), as when you die, you are sent to a place naked. Up to you to get your corpse by your own means or pay.

Both have exp loss, but not that a problem as I made it so it is realtively easy to level.
And for pk, it is not a necessity to level as they are given a hp/mana/moves pillow to be able to compete with older players without sinking time in leveling.

I thought about implementing perma death, but if I did, I would basically give a way to use the point gain to create another character (ie you die at level 1000, you can create a character level 900)
12 Apr, 2011, Kline wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
I utilize 50% exp loss and your corpse stays in the room with all your things (non-lootable; unless you have some PVP flags). You are turned into a ghost and left in the room. Your options are to either hope a friend or kind player is nearby who can (will?) resurrect you or to wait for about 10 minutes for the auto-rez to kick in; teleporting you back to the recall healer and forcing you to trek back to collect your crap from wherever you died.

If you receive a player rez you regain half of the exp you lost during death and obviously saved yourself the run back to your corpse if the player was close by it. Ghosts are also unable to communicate with the living and can go invis to them at will.

edit: Forgot to note; there is also a corpse retrieval system for quest points should you truly get your body stuck in an unfortunate location.
12 Apr, 2011, Chris Bailey wrote in the 15th comment:
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I am considering adding in a "Hardcore" trait for characters that will provide some small in-game benefit in exchange for permadeath. Or perhaps a slightly more powerful race or class that cannot be revived/ressurected.
12 Apr, 2011, Runter wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Chris Bailey said:
I am considering adding in a "Hardcore" trait for characters that will provide some small in-game benefit in exchange for permadeath. Or perhaps a slightly more powerful race or class that cannot be revived/ressurected.


Make the hardcore race human.
12 Apr, 2011, Scandum wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Most first person shooters have a complete character reset on death. MUDs that want permanent death should probably focus on requiring more player skill than character skill. Most muds however engage in what they call 'bug fixing', which implies the total elimination of player skill in the name of fairness.
12 Apr, 2011, sankoachaea wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Most first person shooters have a complete character reset on death. MUDs that want permanent death should probably focus on requiring more player skill than character skill. Most muds however engage in what they call 'bug fixing', which implies the total elimination of player skill in the name of fairness.

Win!

Classes aren't really a concept implemented in my MUD but death – and the penalties associated with it – vary from player to player. (Not by level, necessarily.) The game is focused around affinity with divinity (rhyme, ha) and the effects of a person's relation to their divinity are extremely diverse. Some players might suffer from permadeath, other players might not even have bodies to die in.

edit: affect/effect
12 Apr, 2011, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Most muds however engage in what they call 'bug fixing', which implies the total elimination of player skill in the name of fairness.

Huh ?
12 Apr, 2011, Scandum wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva.Riendf said:
Scandum said:
Most muds however engage in what they call 'bug fixing', which implies the total elimination of player skill in the name of fairness.

Huh ?

Most muds avoid synergy between game aspects and if synergy occurs accidentally it's generally considered a design error and fixed. The direct result of this is that the game is relatively easy to script, and most importantly to the developer, easy to balance. Balance in turn appeals to achievers as the direct relationship between result and effort makes it easier to compare player achievements.

Worlds with a high level of synergy are more complex, creating a much longer learning curve, increasing the advantage of player skill and explorer personality types, and making scripting much more difficult.
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