Like I said, it all relies on factors of how easy it is to die, how hard it is to get life pendants, etc. You can't just shun it away because you don't think the system would work on GK or classic. Because it's pretty clear to see that I'm not making Oasis like GK or classic. The system wouldn't work there, why should it?

There will always be jerks that want to kill you, but who is to say they will succeed? They will be low-level, and even if they do succeed in killing you, there is still a chance for you to have revives. Not only that, but the person that killed you will get a bad rap, you could hire people to kill that person, etc.

At the very least, you can run from people that are trying to kill you, until you become strong enough to kill them. As for a bug that kills you constantly... I really don't see how that big of a mistake could be made, but playeraccounts could be backed up so that it would be possible to backup the account to before they died.

Then you have the fact that you can be revived without using a life pendant, if you get people to cast a spell on you while you're dead, or to revive you through some other method. Please PLEASE do not look at this idea and try to put it into GK or Classic, as it's not going to work. In Oasis, I really am doubting that people will just get killed so many times in a row that they will lose ther character. Especially high level people. Unless you're completely idiotic, and you keep reviving and trying to fight some guy that is way stronger than you.

It also sounds like you're only thinking of a one time permadeath, like you get killed once and that's it, game over. Make sure you understand that there are ways to stay alive, and ways to come back even if you get killed.

As for adding it in last... Why? It's a totally vital part of the gameplay, and adding it last would be silly. If I add it first, then I can balance and adjust everything that I add from there on out. It would be like telling Stefan to do this system to GK right now. It would be a disaster doing it that way.

Medium Death Penalties seems enough to discourage PKing.

Last because you need absolutely everything else in place before this will be "fair". You need people who CAN cast life spells before you can have people who need it; otherwise you have a GK-like situation where All you need to do is buy a Life Potion, h'yuk, it's only 600p. Works out to mining 12,000 gold nuggets, no problem at all for a newbie! >_<

Rapidfire death happens in quests. You put in a boss - a dangerous boss - and set it so it attacks anyone who touches it. Then players stand still and let the boss touch them instead. Well that will never do! So you have the boss attack anyone on any tile it occupies. Suddenly it drains everyone in the level to 0 health within a second. Oops! So you fix that, now it only drains the person touching it to 0. D'oh! So you put in a delay, but already at least 2 people need to be "restored", probably a lot more. And that's assuming they repop somewhere safe; if they revive where they died, they get the pleasure of dying again immediately. If they repop somewhere safe with full health, they can run from anyone who attacks them; otherwise you get PKs who stab you back to 0, wait for you to get up, stab you back to 0 again...

Then there's balance issues. Surely those who have been playing longer deserve to be stronger than the newbies, but by what scale? Can an oldbie stab a newbie to death in 3 hits? 2? Then newbies hardly have a chance to run; they need some manner of protection. Noplayerkilling zone? There's still no command to clear that...

Last because you need absolutely everything else in place before this will be "fair". You need people who CAN cast life spells before you can have people who need it; otherwise you have a GK-like situation where All you need to do is buy a Life Potion, h'yuk, it's only 600p. Works out to mining 12,000 gold nuggets, no problem at all for a newbie! >_<

Again, you're putting this into GK. Oasis is NOT GK. There are no life potions to buy. I would not release Oasis without things like that completed. :|

Rapidfire death happens in quests. You put in a boss - a dangerous boss - and set it so it attacks anyone who touches it. Then players stand still and let the boss touch them instead. Well that will never do! So you have the boss attack anyone on any tile it occupies. Suddenly it drains everyone in the level to 0 health within a second. Oops! So you fix that, now it only drains the person touching it to 0. D'oh! So you put in a delay, but already at least 2 people need to be "restored", probably a lot more. And that's assuming they repop somewhere safe; if they revive where they died, they get the pleasure of dying again immediately. If they repop somewhere safe with full health, they can run from anyone who attacks them; otherwise you get PKs who stab you back to 0, wait for you to get up, stab you back to 0 again...

Um, first off, I wouldn't add such a glitchy boss without testing it privately first. Secondly, I would never script something that stupid.

Then there's balance issues. Surely those who have been playing longer deserve to be stronger than the newbies, but by what scale? Can an oldbie stab a newbie to death in 3 hits? 2? Then newbies hardly have a chance to run; they need some manner of protection. Noplayerkilling zone? There's still no command to clear that...

There are no NPK zones on Oasis. You're thinking inside the box. Which makes me feel like you're not listening to anything I say. Yes, an oldbie could stab a newbie to death in a few hits, but with the systems in place that I would have, I doubt it would happen. If it did, there would be many ways to seek justice for that person.


Again, stop putting these scenerios into GRAAL KINGDOMS. Oasis IS NOT GRAAL KINGDOMS. You won't be able to "buy" life in shops, there won't be such stupid glitches like a boss killing everything instantly. How would that even get past alpha testing? I mean don't you think I'd be testing the damage done while I was making the script? I don't just put up scripts blindly and hope that they are bug free. :rolleyes:

Thanks for missing my point in turn. While I'm not saying Graal Kingdoms is Oasis or vice versa, it is the most easily accessable example of a world on which the administration had an ambitious plan to make Deaths mean something with disasterous effects. As I speak in simile and parable primarily, that's all you get. Live with it.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that you've both said you'll be implimenting this first and last. "Things like life potions" will come before this, but you won't be putting it up last - and of course the testing of bosses comes before it - so essentially it IS the last thing you do. Everything else is tested and running perfectly first. That was actually my point in its entirety.

If you really think you can do it, go for it and best of luck. But you're wrong. I was on the fence before, but judging by your responses here alone I can tell you haven't thought it out nearly as completely as you think you have. It'll be disasterous and I'm against it, personally.

But you seem to be missing my point. It's not being implemented first, or last. You don't seem to want to think outside the box. As much as I hate using that expression, it's true. I don't have to make the death system first, nor do I have to make it last. Nor do I have to finalize anything. You act as if I'm going to make this death system, and then NEVER change it. You're wrong. Just because it would be added, doesn't mean it can't be modified while I make progress on Oasis.

Judging by my responses? What, because I don't agree with your opinions, I'm automatically wrong? You don't think it can be done? Fine. You're entitled to think that. But in the same turn, I can think that you're jumping the gun, and basing your opinion on merely what you've seen done before.

You aren't the final authority on mmorpg development. It's not like you've written books, and even if you have, you can't possibly have the correct answer for everything. MMORPGS are still in early childhood. They have a long way to develop, and for you to be talking as if you've done this all before, is pure nonsense. Maybe it doesn't play out in your mind, maybe you've had bad experiences in the past with harsh death punishment systems. But that doesn't mean it couldn't work. I personally am not going to throw away a good idea, simply to stay safe and follow along with every other run of the mill mmorpg that has been made. Someone has to break the mold eventually.

I have to side with Tyhm on this one. Permadeath is just asking for trouble, in the form of whiny teenagers threatening to sue you. If you say that there'll never be ways for players to die unfairly then you seriously misunderstand how big projects like this work. And when they do complain, what can you do? Sure, limited logs will help, but it's difficult to log information pertinent to a bug when you haven't even discovered the bug yet.

And the balance issue is important too. Weak characters need protection against strong characters, otherwise they can never become strong enough to defend themselves. Your system may discourage PKers from attacking higher-level characters, but that just makes them focus their immature griefing on newbies.

Sure, there'll be knights in shining armor who will protect the lowbies by attacking the PKers. Except that 90% of your players will PK a newbie if they think they can get away with it. The notorious PKers might get targeted, but they're only the tip of the iceberg. Besides, the aforementioned knights aren't gonna dedicate their lives to killing them. The PKers can always just run away, or fight back if their levels are comparable.

Personally I don't believe that permadeath will ever work as a main feature of a game where you're expected to spend hours working on your character. Nobody wants to spend hours striving if the fruits of their labors are so unstable.

I have to side with Tyhm on this one. Permadeath is just asking for trouble, in the form of whiny teenagers threatening to sue you.

There are always going to be players that whine, no matter how well the server is made.

If you say that there'll never be ways for players to die unfairly then you seriously misunderstand how big projects like this work. And when they do complain, what can you do? Sure, limited logs will help, but it's difficult to log information pertinent to a bug when you haven't even discovered the bug yet.

I didn't say there would never be ways for players to die unfairly. If a way does appear, then I will do everything I can to fix it and balance it. In the scenario that a bug appears, which kills players unfairly, I will expect the players to contact me with this info as soon as possible. I really doubt that there will be any bug that would just repeatedly kill players though, so I don't really see a big problem with it. It's not permadeath, it's semi-permadeth. There is a difference. If a player runs into a bug and dies, they will more than likely have more than one revive left, so that they can report the bug in a timely fashion, avoid the bug until it's fixed or closed off from the public, and then be given a free revive in order to compensate for the problem.

And the balance issue is important too. Weak characters need protection against strong characters, otherwise they can never become strong enough to defend themselves. Your system may discourage PKers from attacking higher-level characters, but that just makes them focus their immature griefing on newbies.

Sure, then if it comes to my attention during private group testing, that newbie players are at too much of a disadvantage to survive, I will implement something to let them survive longer. I would of course try to avoid "level limits" like high levels absolutely can't fight low levels, as that would be a disadvantage for high levels. (what if a group of newbies corners a player that can't fight back?) Maybe a protection for new players for a short length of time, I dunno, again, this isn't finalized, it can be modified.

Sure, there'll be knights in shining armor who will protect the lowbies by attacking the PKers. Except that 90% of your players will PK a newbie if they think they can get away with it. The notorious PKers might get targeted, but they're only the tip of the iceberg. Besides, the aforementioned knights aren't gonna dedicate their lives to killing them. The PKers can always just run away, or fight back if their levels are comparable.

They can't get away with it. There is justice to those who kill. I'm not just talking player justice, I'm talking justice in the form of actual laws in the game. Meaning if you want to run around killing people, you're going to pay a price if you get caught. Again, I have to bring up the fact that you're playing my game here, and in turn, it's impossible for you to be "right", so to speak. If you say "well this won't work because of this and this" I can just say "well I can change that then". Since none of this is set in stone, fighting over this is rather moot.

Personally I don't believe that permadeath will ever work as a main feature of a game where you're expected to spend hours working on your character. Nobody wants to spend hours striving if the fruits of their labors are so unstable.

Then those people should not do stupid things, like trying to fight monsters that are way over their level. If you play smart, then you can easily avoid losing your character. The fact of the matter is. This is an RPG. If dying were to mean absolutely nothing, then people would not fear it. People wouldn't care about running headfirst into a fight they can't win. People would just make suicide runs, in attempts to become stronger.

Yes, a medium death penalty could possibly work, but I want to go for a stronger approach. Whether you like it or not is up to you. But at least play it before you make your final judgements. I still feel as though you're playing it safe, and afraid to take the risk for something more enjoyable. Sure, never being able to lose your character might sound fun at first. But where is the risk? People like to gamble. That is why Las Vegas is so popular. It's just a game, and I would like to make sure people understand this. If you make mistakes and lose your character, start fresh, and learn from the mistakes that you made.

If you piss and moan because you did stupid things which caused you to lose your character, I won't feel the least bit sorry for you. If you are upset because a bug made you lose a character, I would do everything I could to fix the problem. I don't know how many times I can say this before you understand. This is not classic, 2k1, gk, or any other online rpg. This is my online rpg, and it's not like the rest, at least in certain ways. I think I'm done making my statements on this. Go ahead and continue to believe that this won't work, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to make you understand.

Thanks Kai, you put to words exactly what I was trying to get across.

Koni, go for it and best of luck. But I still say you're still wrong. If you don't know how a bug could appear that causes a death loop, I can guarantee that such a bug will appear because you don't even know how to look for it. If you think you can debug things before anyone gets on your server, I'm certain you don't know how to debug a MMORPG. I know it sounds harsh, but that's how it is.

Also, you expect players to be honest. That's a HUGE risk. "I just got killed by the same bug!" "Yeah, so did I!" "Me too, twice!" "I got killed three times because I thought you fixed it the first time!" "I got killed while I was just standing here, I don't even know how, gimme back my life or I'll sue you!" At the very least there should be a death log: [Account] was killed at [time] [date] by [method] - [damage] > [their health]. Even then, best of luck rooting through that 9-meg file every time something goes wrong that eventually gets past the false reports to you.

"I dunno, it's not finalized, it can be modified" - if there was ever proof that you're being overly ambitious and don't actually know what you're getting yourself into, this is it. You can't just wing it with Newbie Saint. You can't just make last second modifications to a system that's implimented because the players petitioned for it either, because there will always be at least 25% of your server (usually comprising 90% of the people on at a time) that demand a bad idea be implimented. Trust me. I worked on Classic for how long? Day/Night was a good idea, then a bad idea, then a good idea again, now it's a bad idea. Races were demanded for 2 years before I finally put them up, then rioted against for half a year after. Everyone wanted new quests, then railed against them - wanted the map fixed, then railed against the fixes - wanted Avalon and Destiny updated, then wanted them back in their hanging-off-the-world position...if it seems like I'm saying you can't win, there's a reason.

You say there's justice on PKers. That there will be a system, that in-game laws will be enforced. Somehow. But none of it's set in stone and, since it is after all your game, you can change it whenever you need to. Bad idea.

My concern was and remains that you've got an abstract idea - a good one, but an abstract one - of how this should work, and you're itching to impliment it. Don't. It'll make Oasis a lesser server for it. You're thinking out of the box - thinking in abstracts about ideas that might not even be possible - and I'm thinking inside the box. Go on and change the paradiggum if you want, and I hope you actually can, but this presentation isn't convincing me. Since that was the point of the poll - essentially, Are you convinced that [Semi-/]Permadeath will be a good idea? - that's your answer. No, I'm not. Come back when you have a perfectly outlined system on a perfectly bugfree world with perfectly honest players and we'll see, but I don't believe you when you say you can take an unfinished playerworld and give deaths permanent penalties because there will be no bugs you can't handle and your players won't be like my players because it's your world.

Indeed there are, but you can minimise that number with good game design.

Which is fine, except that it's not usually immediately obvious - in the best case you might know what the player was doing at the time, but that doesn't always narrow it down much.

Except if they're already on their last revive. What happens to such people? They lose everything because of a bug? What about bugs that griefers can purposefully use to repeatedly kill people? These are all feasible occurances.

And are you going to be hiring immature idiots for this private testing? If not then it won't be a realistic sample of players.

You could always turn it into a two-way deal. Lowbies can't fight high-bies and vice versa. Not a perfect system, but probably better than a one-way.

It can indeed, but a good designer should have most of it planned out long before implementation.

And who does the catching? How do you distinguish between griefing and self-defense? How far is too far? You can't realistically regulate these things, there are too many variables.

I think you're missing the point. All I have done is pointed out flaws in proposed systems. I am not saying that you suck or that Oasis sucks or that you'll never be able to make a system that doesn't suck. If you replace a flawed system with a good system then great! Isn't the whole point of this thread to gather ideas and constructive criticism?

Playing smart isn't the same as playing safe. People take risks, they run past dragons and then go linkdead, they get into fights with even-leveled players and then get hit by incapacitating lag. People don't want to be forever constricted by the chance that they could lose everything, they don't want to be trapped in a cage of restraint, unable to go on any risky ventures.

Of course, I wouldn't ever argue with that. But there are ways to penalise people without destroying hours of work. Almost every penalty in an online game is a time penalty. Example: You lose experience, you need to spend extra time to catch up. In a permadeath system, you're exacting a time penalty of days.

And I feel that you're not seeing this through the eyes of a player. Why would I be afraid of an event in a game that I'll probably never play for any more than an hour?

Yes, but your foolish system wouldn't achieve that effect. Either:

1) People can top up on revives easily and thus remove most of the negative effects of dying.
or
2) There's a finite number of revives, and potential loss of character dissuades anybody from taking any risks at all.

Sure, it's just a game. But your game will fail if players don't feel any attachments to their characters.

Sigh. You're an arrogant, pig-headed fool. I disagree with you, I don't misunderstand you. I don't see how anybody could fail to understand your simplistic view of game design. If you're gonna make a thread asking for opinions, don't guttersnipe at everybody who disagrees with yours.

*sigh* You're reading me all wrong. It's okay though. You can think what you want, I'm obviously not going to change your mind right now.

I will say this though. I am still going through with this. Nothing can make me change my mind. I know what I'm doing, if I didn't, I wouldn't be working in the game development industry.

I'm not just going to implement this without planning, obviously. I'm not a retard. This is just early preconception. It will go through many stages before I'm actually working with it in the game. When I meant "this isn't final, it can be modified" I'm not talking about once it's public, I'm talking about while it's in development. I won't be changing it on a whim once it's released.

I do believe that people can change. There are many reasons people decide to be jerks, pkers, untrustworthy players, irresponsible players, etc. I'm trying to erase these reasons. I believe it can be done, you don't, and that's fine. I don't really expect you to.

That was quite uncalled for. You don't see me calling you names. :\

You just don't understand that I'm NOT implementing this right away. Why do you think I made this poll. You're not giving constructive critiscm, you're flat out telling me my idea is terrible and won't work. That's not constructive, buddy.

You don't see how anybody could fail to understand my game design, yet you still don't understand it. That doesn't surprise me.

No, I see you perpetually arguing that we don't understand, as if we're incompetent simpletons. You're too arrogant to see the flaws - hell, even to see that we're not attacking you - and put all the disagreements down to our failure to understand. That seems pretty insulting to me, but perhaps your perfect impression of yourself doesn't allow you to consider that you could've acted incorrectly.

Hardly. I'm saying that your idea is flawed, sure, but that's the whole point of criticism. Your system won't work. That's not meant as an insult, it's meant as a simple piece of criticism that - if you didn't let your ego rule you - you might be able to use to your benefit. You're free to ignore my opinion, of course, but it's plain rude to say that its based on ignorance or a failure to understand you.

Konidias: I'm assuming your Beta Team will be exploring all possibilities when it comes to handling playerdeaths?

Konidias & Tyhmetsu(yes, I made this post just so I could say that): How would the use of 'unstick me' affect this debate?

If there is a bug that kills instantly, then a player would probably pause and unstick themselves so it doesn't happen again, giving a report of what level it happens in. A beta team may quarantee the area. If there is a bug, then the player gets their stuff back.

Maybe have it scripted so a person would have all the last variables from the last they died be tied to a player in strings. An example would be "prev_gold". However, a player must make sure they don't die again or the information they want to be seen will be lost forever.

Reguarding PKing, I would think maybe a possibility would be for lowbies to have optional lent gear, making their defence higher. As well, pausing and unsticking themselves might work (depends on how you work things out).

I think this is some food for thought your guys' debate.

I'm closing this for three reasons.
1) Koni just said he's doing it regardless, thus this poll and discussion is a farce (thread went off topic)
2) Koni's getting defensive and lashing out at the contributors (thread got mean)
3) Nobody's actually listening to anyone if everyone's to be believed (thread serves no purpose)

I'm also going to apply the standard rule of no thread necromancy to it. Harsh, but necessary. Koni, if you feel up to accepting comments on your death system again, contact me; I'll reopen THIS thread and you can continue where you left off.