We've had about three different systems for this…

It started out to where when you died, your corpse dropped with all of your EQ in it and you were a ghost. The only penalty was the annoyance of having to get resurrected (every healer, some spells and items by other players could do this) and retrieve your corpse. If you weren't with a party and far away from the healer, this was pretty annoying.

I changed it to where when you died, you suffered exp loss and was stricken with "death fatigue" for an hour. If you died again while suffering from death fatigue, there would be a roll chance of 5 different penalties… 1) further exp loss, 2) a random item disappearing, 3) 1 point permanent reduction of a single stat, 4) don't remember, 5) no further penalty. The idea was to give players one freebie death, but continued death to suck. PK deaths would not incur any permanent damage (for fear of players abusing this to nerf someone else's character). The basis of corpse/ghost remained the same, except I added an expensive option to 'heal revive' at the healer, which would put the player back in their corpse with all of their eq and them being alive again. The regular and free 'heal ghost' would bring them back to life at the healer, but would rot their corpse and drop all of their stuff on the ground, which made it fair game for looters. I was annoying at being "alive" and having a "corpse" of yourself on the ground, so I corrected this by making it to where you either woke up in your corpse, or your corpse faded from where it was and was basically brought back to you and you were alive again (minus your belongings). I also added a timer to where you had to wait 1 or 2 minutes to revive after dying, as to prevent people from risking multiple deaths to take out a mob or another player. Lord knows how many times I would be PKing someone, die, and then revive, have all of my stuff, and be back to full health, fully equipped, and back in the fight in under 30 seconds, so I adjusted that. I can't count how many of my old cheap tactics I used to employ I nerfed after I started coding on the game.

The current incarnation is the same as far as ghost/corpse/revive and the initial exp loss, but death fatigue works different. Now, death fatigue gives you an affect that harms your core stats for a temporary amount of time, but harms them pretty significantly. Subsequent deaths increase the penalty and duration. This was done because there was a significant displeasure across the board of both my staff and players about any permanent stat loss on dying, and they eventually talked me into changing it. Originally this change was for an hour, but I came to realize how much that was stopping gameplay for a lot of people, so I changed it to a random timer between 10 and 20 minutes. So, that's where we are… severe but temporary penalties with exp loss.

my current system is now different for pk and npk, but all in all even if no one on, only a crash can make you lose anything (and thats because I did not have the will to code persistance for ground objet yet)

npk and pk: you die, end up at recall, corpse is where you die, all your belongings in it

npk: get back to it by your own naked mean and get everything by yourself
use a special mob that will get it for you (for a fee, free for newbie)
wait like 20min and it will get back to a temple
if it is not picked in the temple in the next 24 hours, corpse rot and every belonging go to donation room

pk: you are protected from harm, and have to get back to your corpse by yourself
if another pk loot your corpse (thing he only have the right to do if he logged at least 5 minutes before your death)
'stock items' are duplicated, and you can 'claim' them in order to get back in the game soon enough
every items that has been involved in looting is now flagged and cannot be transferred to a npk
special items will have to be dealt with by immortals (rules are made so you have the choice to give back the item. keep it for yourself, or even 'destroy it') And you have to give
a way to the victim to get back his items (if an item is no logged enough after that it will be 'stolen' from the char and put to auction)
corpse will go back to temple after 20 mins (ie, if a pk dies in a very dangerous place, the corpse is not lost)
the corpse owner can loot his corpse in a single command, and get everything at once, other people have a 'round lag' between each items.

Death is basically mostly a loss of time for npk. And it shows in their rating :)

Personally, I like permanent death systems. It makes the game much more exciting to me. There are issues with grieving when too much time is put into a character and then death to lag spikes, but I'm considering designing a game around a very short progression system with permanent death and having certain persisting stats across characters. In fact, I like the idea that to progress your character must die at some point. Like to collect a glory or fame stat for your exploits to spend on future characters, the currency isn't awarded until the character that earns it dies. The currency could then be spent to unlock advanced or interesting classes, but more character slots on your account, or start characters at a significantly higher level or with perks that make advancing even easier. I imagine in such a game that reaching hte maximum level should only take an hour or so. And that all of the "heroic tasks" worth attempting at that point, well, they should be extremely dangerous.

I like them as well and always played hardcore in Diablo 2 as an example. But it is a game where you can pretty much avoid insta death by being careful enough.
I think I will eventually give a hardcore mode, where a player will progress a little faster if he is harcore, but in case of death gets to recreate a char with a pool of points calculated from his previous char. Of course lower than it was and with a different set of class. To prevent a char to recreate the same exact char and call it his little brother. And every death making the pool of points % lower than the previous one.

I toyed around with the idea of a quasi-permadeath system whereby your body dies permanently (along with any "physical" stats you've trained, equipment, etc.), but your spirit lives on (any "mental" or "spiritual" stats carry over) and inhabits your new character when you reincarnate. I never went forward with the idea because it really favors players who play mages/clerics/etc. and hits warrior classes much harder. So, it's been on the back burner waiting for inspiration.

As a player and avid PKer, I always favored systems with little-to-no death penalty for obvious reasons. In hindsight, I think that was mostly because I never came across a system that differentiated between a "fair fight" death and a "gank". To elaborate, I wouldn't have a problem with a signifcant death penalty if the fight was 1v1 of approximately same level players, same starting stat percentages, etc. However, getting jumped 3v1 while you're already at only 10% health would very likely make me rage quit if the death penalty for it is anything non-trivial.

One way you could partially avoid the gank issue is to have suggested level ranges on the areas/zones of your game. If a player is above the upper level limit, they can't initiate PK (although they can fight back if attacked). That way, high level people can still visit lower level areas, but they can't grief lowbies unless the lowbies wander into the scary high level areas.

You could make it strictly player vs. zone level, or player vs. max(zone level, victim level), depending on if you want two high levels to be able to fight in the newbie areas or not.

Well, generally speaking, lowbie/newbie griefing wasn't a big deal in the games I played. More prevalent and irritating were same-level (approximately) ganking incidents where a single player was either jumped while at very low health, or jumped by multiple PKers grouped, or both. Level-restricting wouldn't resolv this issue, and I really haven't seen systems that addressed it without leaving the game feeling "artificial" (FWIW, I get the same artificial feeling with arbitrary level restrictions as well - I think it completely ruins immersion to be told "You're too high level to do that" or similar).

.. I get the artificial feeling from death having no finality. :p

Some people in real life already have this artificial feeling :)

IMHO, that isn't ganking. That's called YOU not paying attention and being careful. Knowing that you are vulnerable after a fight, and making sure you know who's nearby and have a way to recover safely is part of the PvP game. If you think there are enemies nearby, maybe you shouldn't start attacking that dragon when you know you'll be beaten to a pulp by it.

Also:

I recently got into Bioshock (The first one. The sequel I'm not getting so much into.) and it has a game mechanic that took a while for me to get used to…death has no practical penalty. You reappear in a regeneration pod with your health and mana bar not-all-the-way-up, and you might haveto walk a bit to where you died, but other than that, no penalty. You keep your weapons, equipment, special powers, etc. You're just slightly inconvenienced for the period of time it takes to get to the the guy who killed you to finish him off.

I'm still chewing over what I think of that. I do know I enjoyed the game a lot.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

With regards to death in the mud; I am currently working on a new take on combat.

You don't 'die' you become unconcious. Then it becomes a concious act of the attacker to 'murder' you. Which only certain flagged monsters will do, or players (in the case of PVP) Murder is not a good thing to do, as it flags you as a murderer (if witnessed) and then guards will look for you and eventually catch you, and if they do, you will be put on the chopping block (unless you can escape the dungeon)

For those who just get knocked out, they will awake in their hometown's hospital once combat is absolved. (or woken by their team-mates)

I think it will be a unique little way to deal with combat. So you don't die, unless murdered, and again, only certain monsters will do it, (or players in PvP)

Players who murder will be hunted (for a limited time of course)

Anyways, thats what I suggest, its a nice take on death.

Darien, please get rid of that signature… it's rude, obnoxious, and wasting people's screen space.

To resolve differences within pk I made a system that gives pk a huge hp/mana/moves bonus once they reach legend.
(the mud I am on you have gain till you are level 1k (basically 1150 level with gain)
this bonus decrease every level till you are 1k.meaning some classes can even 'lose' hp till they are level 600. (6k hp bonus, decreasing by 10 every level)
It makes then buff enough to sustain a fight even at 'low level'
I did that because otherwise you can not make so a high level one kill a low level one in one shot, without putting level limits. and level limits wil prevent interactions, and that is bad. ( only have two brackets, and it is mortal/legend) and you can choose to be pk just before going legend)
Generaly speaking I try to make so very old people cannot get that much of an advantage. Even looted items that are loaded by the game are given back, so you dont run naked gathering items you already gathered on mobiles. (special items is another thing).
More than the penalties of death, it is how 'fair' it was that matters. If you cannot avoid it whatever you do, then you wont accept the penalties, whatever they are.

And darien, the only thing you trigger with that signature, is an Adblock on your image…

This is how Fable 3 operates. I played through it on PC and definitely enjoyed it; it's a fun series for me and I liked the first two games. However the only penalty to "death" (being knocked out) is to lose any partial progress you had made towards your next "seal" used to buy new skills. You fall down in-place, mid-fight, and after a brief moment are right back up at full life going at it again. You lose the equivalent of a few pennies toward completing a whole dollar that take no effort to get back by talking to a few more NPCs or beating some more enemies.

My wife loves it for how casual she is. She's not "an amazing gamer" and dies a lot in most games, but still enjoys playing them. So she truly enjoys systems with little to no penalty that don't remove you fully from the action.

@quix: I can understand that point of view, to an extent, but you aren't taking into account the huge number of scenarios which are impossible to avoid without standing still in a safe zone, doing nothing. One prime example is snaring. On a game I used to play, rogues could set snares (traps that, when triggered by another player, would prevent him/her from moving for a duration). How then is it not ganking to be unexpectedly snared and killed by a group of players? There was no way to detect the presence of a snare. You simply took a risk every time you moved from room to room. Anyway, this is off topic.

@Crat: I also enjoyed BioShock's system. I think it would do well in a MUD, provided the upper end game areas and loot was significantly time consuming to get to (enough to dissuade kamikaze playing, anyway).

It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of behavior the game designers want if they put in game mechanics that allow it. I think that's pretty crappy and wouldn't want to play on such a game, but that's a separate question.


For certain player types, at least. There are plenty of gamers or potential gamers for whom this would basically stop them from playing the game.

Yep, exactly. The problem isn't the "ganking", it's the fact that the snare is undetectable. Now, if you lack the skill to see such things, it may not be detectable by YOU, but a system should be in place that lets you find them and trigger/disarm them.

What I don't understand is the idea that PvP should be a safe playroom where battles only happen on your terms. That's not open world PvP, that's dueling, and such things should be limited to an arena-type environment. What makes open world PvP fun and exciting is the fact that you are NEVER safe, and you have only your own skills to use against other players.

In games that have levels, I think it would be reasonable to prevent high level people from slaughtering low level people in their own areas, as a small team of gankers can effectively keep the rest of the game from progressing that way. Beyond that though, the more you take away the risk, the less point there is to bothering.

There are PVP games that don't allow multiple engagement of players and gives everyone escape mechanisms. It seems like a design problem if something unintended is going on. I.e. should players be allowed to "gank"? Some people say yes. There's combat mechanisms that can help if implemented. Stuff like being able to do superior total damage to multiple targets than single. This evens the playing field in a 2v3 match, etc. It's also possible to implement problems with melee attacking the same target. Such as your attack can be impeded by friendlies occupying the same space. In any event, if you don't want multiple combat then design around it. It sounds like you do want it, you just want to enforce your own morals about when it's allowed and when it's not. I don't particularly like that too much. I think administrators should be neutral arbitrators when it comes to two citizens of your game both playing within the bounds of the rules.

This is thread creep, but there's nothing worse to me than seeing ambiguous rules on games that add up to "play unto others" rules. When I see these I typically immediately leave. It's a symptom of a biased administrative model.

Ya know, I feel the same way about your posts 99% of the time…..