Death Toll

[Grimoire]

What will the death toll be?

I know in Minecraft when you die, your character drops armor/inventory.
And I know some games when you die you lose a % of your money.
There are also games that break your equipment when you die or use them.

If not, what will you do to punish those who die so they avoid things, like fall damage or just recklessly charge into battle without thought?

[Dasachi]

Id recommend something along the lines of losing a percentage of your items, like 10 or 20% and having items with durability take a percentage of damage same 10-20%

So if you had a stack of say 100 stone and died, youd respawn and have only 80 or 90.

I think it adds a toll, but not a large enough one to where Im like, well Im done with this game for a while. Everyone knows that feel, you are playing minecraft and youve got a ton of resources, then boom a creeper kills you. Well there goes my 8 diamonds, 32 iron ore, and loads of coal and stone i needed. *Rage quit*

Id prefer not losing anything, just needing to run back to where you were before is enough for me. Unless Im fine with just going another way.

[Rob]

This is one of those BIG design questions and different players have varying views.

At one end of the spectrum, if you lose everything then you feel bad, frustrated and feel like all of the hard work you put in to gathering those resources was wasted.

At the other end, if you never lose anything then some of the tension and threat from the environment and creatures is gone. If there’s never a penalty for death then it becomes meaningless and all of your achievements feel less fulfilling.

So, we need to find the right balance between the two. We have some ideas of what we would like to do. We might not get it right for everyone first time, but if you keep giving us feedback we’ll get to the best answer.

Rob – Wonderstruck Designer

[Grimoire]

Well put! Well whatever you decide to go with I’m sure we will come to polish it up so it can be reasonable/fair.

[Camer]

Some ideas I have:
– Being able to choose 5 things that you want to keep when you die
– Losing everything except from tools, weapons, armor
– Only losing armor
– Losing a percentage of all blocks

[Rob]

Thanks Camer. Like to get more people involved in this one as it’s a particularly ‘sensitive’ topic 😉

Rob – Wonderstruck Designer

[Grimoire]

You could give players a debuff like 50% HP and attributes/stats for 5 minutes so they avoid any battle for a bit?

[Dasachi]

I still like the idea of losing a percentage of blocks you have and health to your tools and weapons.

Debuff is a good idea.

But I do think when deciding we need to look at the big picture. Essentially there are two types of players.

Those you like the adventure aspect and hunting mobs, and those you prefer to just build and craft and dont want anything to do with mobs.

[Grimoire]

I think mobs are a part of every citizen be them builder/crafter or explorer/fighter. Mobs need to be everywhere but ya lol

[Tweekzor]

Personally I would prefer to have it like Minecraft and Rust, lose everything you have on you. Give death a meaning and make sure players get a feeling of achievement when they accomplish something. I am getting tired of the games these days that cater to people that complain when they die and lose something, so they just make the game easier.

Perhaps you can create a system like Runescape used to have: you lose all your stuff but you (or another player) are able to pick the lost stuff up again. This way a single error doesn’t have to be a few hours lost.

What you could let players is their basic tools, and maybe some default blocks you get after death: some dirt, some stone, …
What I wouldn’t let players keep: weapons, armour, gathered blocks.

It would be great if you create banks, or player-controlled chests to store you stuff safely to prevent you from losing it.

[Zouls]

i think you should keep tools, armor and weapon and then lose everything else in your inventory including gold. and let people be able to store gold in a bank for a small fee, that way if people dont want to lose their gold they will use banks, and those who refuse to use it will have to be very careful.

[Zouls]

everything with combat is probably going to be for farming mats or for getting gold. i would like this because if i used 1 hour to mine metal then i’d still be like ”AH F*CK” if i die but i wont lose the armor i may have used 20 hours on getting, if you force people to lose armor and weapon then that would mean for anybody to care it would have to be waaay too easy to craft weapons and armor.

[Tweekzor]

In my opinion armour and weapons are the first thing you should lose. If you have the best weapon and armour in the game and you can not lose it there is little incentive to keep working hard. You should always be on edge to survive and it keeps the in-game economy running if people can lose their expensive stuff.

@Havok40k: that sounds like a great idea to me, have some friendly “building” zones where people who do not want much combat can feel safe.

[Zouls]

If you make people work hard to get the best gear most people will refuse to leave because of fear for death and that way titans would never be slain because people cant trust eachother enough

[Thorbjorn]

I agree in that the players shouldn’t be punished too severely. Maybe let the players choose 1 or 2 things from their inventory which will not be dropped, when the players die then the players will drop a percentage of their inventory where these 2 items are protected. The more times a player dies in a set time-span the higher percentage of their inventory they drop. This way we hinders just running in and dying then coming back and doing it again. second time you die in the time-span (1 hour?) you will start getting debuff’s too.

Does this sound as something that could work?

[Guy]

This is the mindset i’m going for here;

TL;DR:
The potential causes for death simply don’t measure up to the work needed to gain the loot it takes away;
as the player fights so hard for their loot and they can lose it just like that.

Nitty Gritty;

-This is an RPG, essentially, and having Gold is a kind of a big deal. So unless you are suggesting there is a way to have somewhere where you may come back to all the time to store your gold (which might be something some players wouldn’t want doing), then my argument still stands.

-With gold off the list, let’s look at armor and weapons. I think that this is essential for most players since they would be dealing with aggressive and non-aggressive mobs. Overall, this is very important to one of the key aspects of the game; and there of fore you shouldn’t be stripped away of that piece of yourself that makes your character- your character.

-Well, what’s left to take? How about this: Everything else either than Armor, your Weapons/Equipped item, and gold is dice. Including resources, special consumables or items you’ve found. Those would drop on death to be scattered and picked up the next person (or yourself), or stay on your body for players to look at individually.

-I do, however, believe in a time-claim system. Checkpoint kind of thing. Something like; if you got an item and went back home for a while or it’s been on you for long enough, then it’s “yours”

If an item is “yours” then you must be killed 2-3 times with it in order for it to be dropped. This could be either in a certain time period, or in general. If you trade it over- the receiving person would gain the effect of gaining it, and would have to have it for a while for the item to stop being “yours” and start being “their’s”.

This means that in PVP-Allowed worlds (If that would be a thing of it’s own), you could trade someone an item of yours, and since it’s not “their’s” yet, you could kill them while their back is turned and grab it back off their corpses. If they had had items which were theirs, like a potion they’ve been saving up for a while or a weapon or armor then you would probably not get a share, but immediate items are up for grabs.

You might say, “Well, why wouldn’t their armor or weapons drop?”. Think about it in an RPG aspect. If you find a badass wizard who gathered high-level crafting materials he was passionately seeking to make his staff and trinkets and such, took hours of raiding and searching for a titan and defeating it, taking the loot in the temple, and selling and buying the rest; wouldn’t you think it’d be dumb to lose all that by falling off of a cliff by accident? wouldn’t it anger the player beyond himself, and drop him from a high level ‘wizard’ to a high level ‘guy with no gear’. Think about it, he wouldn’t even be a ‘wizard’ per say anymore without his staff and armor. And now he needs to climb up the ladder again to try and find more, lesser armor to even get a chance to do the whole questing and adventuring worth of loot over again.

EXTRA:
Would be nice for a system to allow you to name some items if you had had them for a certain period and they were “yours”, because it would
1. Signify that that item is yours, “yours”, and you’ve had it as a weapon that is a part of your character and you.
2. You can be creative with this! Give it a goofy or sophisticated name! Maybe change the color of the text, the font, boldness, etc! Imagine the possibilities.

[Havok40k]

What if the consequence for death was different depending on where you die? For example, let’s say there are four different types of zones, sanctuary, friendly, wilderness and hostile. Dying in a sanctuary either has no consequence or is impossible. Death in a friendly zone, like a friends town only drops a percent of your money on your character at the time. Death in wilderness drops all your inventory. Death in hostile territory like an enemies city or an Oort temple drops all your inventory and places a rebuff on you for a short duration.

[Zouls]

that would be cool.

[Kuma]

This kind of reminds me of SAO and I think this is the fairest methode so far.

[Havok40k]

Thanks, I’m not familiar with SAO, though. Then again, it depends on how the dev’s split up the worlds, if at all. I’ve not seen any mention of zones besides beacon zones so far. We should push for this to be a feature, as I think it would provide for A LOT of fun and tension.

[Kuma]

You should definately watch SAO it’s great.
If we keep advertising this idea it might make it into the game. I would really like that.

[Master_Chill]

I hadn’t seen this part of the forum yet, but covered my opinion on this topic for the most part here over here: http://oortonline.com/forums/topic/death-world/

I was a big fan in GW2 of the cracked armor and would like to see this return here. But it raises the question what would happen if one doesn’t have armor on? Perhaps it be best to pay a small fee for the fairy-man? I’d like to see that happen, as it’s quite original in my opinion.

[Sorrow]

I personally like the 10-20% of your items at random. You never know which item(s) you’re going to lose! It could be the epic sword you have or the pile of dirt you have in your pocket.

[Vincher]

My suggestions:

1.) Nothing will drop when you die, but you either be a (a)LOST SOUL – which means you will be restricted from chatting, opening anything in your UI pretty much everything when you stay in the world where you died. To re-spawn you have to choose an option:

-to either wait for a certain time *must be online time* (Where you will be transported to another world/server and be trapped inside , this world will be like a small-to-medium hall of some sort where you can hang out with other lost souls from all universe, or it can also be called the soul-world, basically another world where you can choose to live there and be a soul forever but this will have a downside, since the soul world will be a pre-made world which only has less resources or limited things can be done)

-or you can travel to the nearest temple and let your spirit go back to your corpse. But when you go to the nearest temple, you have to give an offering to the doctor/healer/spiritualist *of some sort*. Either you offer an equipment matched to your tier, or amount of treasure(valuable blocks), or livestock, or even money (this method must have reasonable cost for offerings).

1.5) This is pretty much the same as no.1 but you can have a possibility to drop an equipment (only one piece>>> coz i think its reasonable) and this is where the next suggestion go:

2.) Possibility (%) of dropping a certain equipment (only one piece) but you can craft a non-drop potion which enables your set item to get absorbed by your skin making it part of your body, in this state it can never be unequipped. In order for it to be unequipped you also have to craft potion to unbind it. Both potions would be pretty hard to craft so they will be used only on highest tier items/equipment.

3.)As for items such as blocks, materials, etc.. these kinds of item will drop upon death…. *or not if you dont want*…. But you can have a magically sealed pouch/bag, everything you store in this pouch can’t be obtained by other players when you die since it is sealed by great magic or somthn like it. But of course this bag( only 1-2 slots maybe?) must be given on earliest stages of gameplay either from a quest reward or alike. You can also craft higher tiers of this quest given bag but the difficulty for crafting this will be exponential as the number of slots increases (I think 8-10 slots would be preferred maximum slots, and each level will have an increment of 1 so there are 3-slots bag, 4-slots bag, 5-slots bag… so on and forth.. Another way to increase the difficulty for crafting this bag is to require the previous tier bag in order to increase 1 more slot so if you want to craft a 4-slot bag you must have a 3 slot bag… in order to craft a 5 slot bag you must have a 4-slot bag, and same goes for the next tiers…)

EDIT: So someone already had the same suggestion *Death World* which is pretty much similar to mine. Sorry i just read that suggestion soo ughh, we had same idea XD

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Vincher.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Vincher. Reason: added some more details
• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Vincher. Reason: more added
• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Vincher.

[Kuma]

somehow this were the best suggestions I’ve read till now for this particular and very important piece of game mechanic.

[Vincher]

@Kuma Hello, thank you!

[Frogfang]

I would like if there be some sort of consequence for dying, like the idea of losing 10-20% of your items including your better items. I would like if maybe there is a 5-10 second cooldown before you can respawn. Also, maybe you have all of your items on respawn, aside from the death toll. One idea is that you could have a client side beacon in the sky to lead you to your items after respawn, or maybe some sort of compass, maybe even a magical mist that point you towards the region of your death. These are all just ideas that I think might be cool if they were implemented, however I will be fine with whatever you guys add to the game.

[Umajianu]

I agree with the random 10-20%, and really like the magical mist that leads back to your body.

On that note, is there an idea on how death works lore wise in this universe? How do people come back from the dead?

I was thinking Oortian reconstructors.

[/.-]

I also agree with the 10-20% quantity/durability penalty, but maybe more than that in money can be dropped, like 40% of what you are carrying to punish the foolhardiness of not returning home every now and then and make pvp battles pay off.

[Patfor333]

There are so many things you have to consider for this.

Where do you spawn after you die? Do you spawn at a random location, your initial spawn, or a set spawn point? With option number three, you have to worry about changing your spawn. Is it only at beacons, can you change it any time, or is there some item you use? I would like for there to be some item.. I would say a bed, but on a server you can’t control the day/night cycle for all the players with just your item. Maybe you can set your spawn anywhere but there’s a cool down. Again, so many, many things to consider.

I would want it so you can choose a spawn, but not just any spawn. You have a few options listed under “You have died.” Option 1: Spawn at a random location. This would be great if you spawned at a world you didn’t like. (There could be a problem with how random the location is, like should this option be able to spawn you on a world with other players, on an uninhabited world, or should it make an entirely new world for you to spawn on? I like option 1 with the added ability to make an entirely new world.) Option 2: Spawn at your current spawn point. This way if you had never set your spawn, but you liked the world you were on, you can spawn there again. You can also change your spawn point (somehow, I would want a place-able item for this. You would have to use resources to place the item, and it couldn’t be used in the heat of a battle. Even if you did use it in battle, your opponent could break the spawn item, resetting your spawn location to your original.). Say you found a nice new world and you made yourself a productive mine. You can set your spawn there so if you die, you wouldn’t have to travel however far you did to find it. Option 3: spawn at your/your clan beacon. If you have several beacons, you can choose from them. Beacons shouldn’t be cheap and should take time to erect. This is useful, but could be exploited if not balanced well. One would be if an opposing guild was attacking you at your beacon, and your whole clan continuously respawned there. Maybe there should be a cooldown. Would the cooldown be across spawning in any beacon, any beacon in that world, or all beacon spawn points? I like a cooldown for specific beacons, if beacons were costly enough to make. Also, people could travel across worlds between their beacons without the use of portals just by killing themselves. However, death could be costly and that is the point of this discussion.

Now when you die, you might take into consideration the circumstances of your death. Did you die from a fall, from a monster, or from a player? What about where you died, was it in your beacon, out in unclaimed territory, or in an enemy beacon? Would you lose nothing, some things, or everything? What does it mean to “lose” something, does it just fall out of your body, does it render a chest, or is it deleted from the game?

I think regardless of where or how you die, you should lose all of your items. I think they should just spill out on the floor like your guts, and stay there for 20-30 minutes before disappearing. This way if you fall a bit away from home, you can run there and still get your stuff. This also adds incentive for 1: not dying, and 2: making spawn points. If you kill someone, you can immediately loot their still warm lifeless body.

Now what about currency? Say there is a money that’s set aside from your items, what happens to it when you die? Here I just want to say that if there is a currency, it shouldn’t occupy your inventory. I think it should have absolutely no in-game use, and that the only thing you can do with it is trade it. Also, there should definitely not be any NPCs you can trade with, all trade should be purely player to player. I think when you die, none of your money should drop.

Hmm… Say we do drop all our items, is there any way to store it? Should there be storage items (like chests), private ownership, and expansions to inventory? If there are storage items and you can set ownership, can’t they then just be broken and looted that way? If they are invincible then you can end up with some ugly messes and annoyances. If you can expand your inventory, is it permanent, until death, or through a wearable item?

I say there should be storage items, with higher tiers having a larger inventory and the ability to set ownership. They should be breakable even without ownership, unless under the influence of a beacon. If a storage item is within a beacon it can only be destroyed by an owner of the storage item or the beacon owner. I think in addition to armor slots, there should be a backpack slot. Without any backpack equipped, you should still be able to carry a considerable amount. However, there are those who wish to be their own pack mule, and their cries should be answered. Backpacks should be craftable, or found, and with different tiers. There shouldn’t be a separate backpack inventory, just an expansion of the already existing one.

Too many things to consider… Like player skills. If there are player skills/leveling, on death this could result in two things. 1: If player skills are obtained by performing a specific action, no levels or experience should be lost. 2: If player skills are like attributes (such as strength and dexterity, where you simply gain experience towards one level then spend skill points on attributes), you should only lose experience towards the next level, you shouldn’t lose any spent/unspent skill points or levels.

Last thing that crosses my mind is permanent death. On death you would lose your money, items, spawn, and even your character. I think this game shouldn’t have perma death. Maybe you can delete your character if you’re a fan of this idea. If a character is deleted/banned, ownership of their beacons and storage items would either go to the first person they shared it with, or no one.

Well, now that we’ve mentioned perma death, I may as well go ahead and talk about having several characters. Can you have an unlimited amount, a set number, or one per account? I like having more than one character, but I wouldn’t want an infinite amount because then other people could exploit that. Maybe just 5 character slots. Whichever way, you should be able to delete your character(s). Nothing should be shared between characters, not money, items, ownership, or spawns. This would make it hard for people to exploit the ability to make several characters.

TL;DR: Yeah, this is a lot to read, sorry. These are all of the issues I could think of and my ideas on them. I hope that you’ll like my ideas, and even if you hate them all, I think that if you take the time to read this you will have a wider view of the subject. If you did read this, thank you, and please comment on any ideas you had 🙂

[/.-]

I personally still think that only 20% of each of your items should be dropped on death (spilled out) and 20% of your tools durability (or whatever is equal to durability) should be dropped. If not tool durability, then maybe you would lose a few of your skill points (if that’s a thing, which I hope it is in the future). I’m against the idea of spilling ALL your loot, because this ISNT minecraft, there are going to be much more dangerous things trying to kill you besides just an occasional creeper, so I think a “lose all” approach would just be too harsh, especially when fighting Titans and protectors. I don’t really know about what a good spawning idea is, but I probably support a bed, or just the “set home location” they already have. I think a dev said something about skill points, so I am hoping for non durability (or at least more durable than minecraft) tool system, and think that skill point loss would be a good compromise for no durability, and likely constant death against titans. I also feel that although death should be a punishment, it shouldn’t be a massive, and potentially irreversible loss such as a full inventory drop in a dangerous, and player infested world (at least more player infested than minecraft) and as such a 20% drop (from each item category) would still: 1.punish a player by taking away resources 2.reward pvp winners and others for killing players, or to help recover a friends loot 3.set the player back physically (depending on spawn) and experience wise (assuming skills are implemented) 4.offer a reasonable buffer that would still allow players to learn and make mistakes without losing ALL their progress 5.make it feel like the risk-reward of things like Titan fights and temple raids is worth it for decently equipped players.

I’m notating saying this is the best way to go about things, but I do think it would be a fair way to handle deaths, or at least start to do so.

[/.-]

Also more money dropped (40%) along with skill loss would be a good way to encourage player to store things at home and not abuse the 20% only drop rate by carelessly dying.

[Duckieh]

The idea of ‘% of durability loose of tools’ seems to me an unrealistic idea. Durabillity has nothing to do with death, unless when you fall to death and especially fall on your pickaxe wich you dropped while falling but that seems a bit unlucky:P

Losing some percentage of items, money and exp would be fine.

[Drakoto]

I had this idea that when you die a Grim reaper will appear over your body. He will then say some funny retort about your death. After that he will then take a random item from you inventory as payment for being brought back from the dead.

Now if you die 3-5 times in a row he would place a debuff on you called The Last Laugh which would last like 5 minutes. This effect of said debuff would be random depending what you are doing when he starts laughing. If you are fighting/mining/chopping trees, He would say “Oh dear are you arms getting tired?” and then you wouldn’t be able to use the tool for a period of time. If you were swinging with the grappling hook he would be like “Oh dear what was that noise?” and your grappling hook would be unusable. If you were swinging at the time it would automatically release causing you to fall. If you were running cause your legs to get tired causing your speed to decrease or turn your legs to stone thus being unable to move. If swimming your legs would get turned to stone and then you would sink to the bottom. If you were standing still to avoid any of those he would say something along the lines. “is that bacon I smell?” Then he would place lava/fire at your feet which would only hurt you if you are standing still. SO you would have to keep moving in order to not get burned/lose hp. If you die while debuffed he will then take 2 items randomly.

Now if you die and you have no items on you, he wont bring you back and you are stuck as a ghost for a certain amount of ingame time. While as a ghost you will be unable to interact with anything.

[Riggnanimous]

Borrowing from different MMOs already out there:

When you die, your soul appears at the closest waystone/ temple to your corpse and you must run to where you died (WoW, ESO, etc). All your non-equipment items are dropped next to your corpse for anyone to collect (Minecraft), but you can get them back if you get back to your body before anyone else does, or a friend can collect them for you. Still some risk of permanent loss if they fall into lava, or down a bottomless pit or something. Maybe they also vanish after a set time (2 minutes or something). You rez at half health and half energy. Your weapons and armor stay on you but suffer 20-25% dmg (WoW). A friend can rez you to avoid certain penalties. Perhaps there are different staffs, spells, stones that rez you at full health or give you a buff on rez, or reduce equipment damage.

I think combining elements like this would make death risky enough to be avoided, but not kill your game entirely. It would also encourage grouping because you’d have friends to collect your stuff or rez you.

[Zouls]

I would say keep all your weapons, armor and tools, but lose all blocks, materials and gold that you currently have on you, lose in a sense that when you die your corpse will stay on the ground until somebody loots it dry, that way it would encourage people to never walk around with more mats and money than they really need, it would make it much more profitable for pk’ers to go around and killing people, it would also increase the dangers of playing the game, meaning that people will need to keep a higher security level in the sense that if you have a dangerous dungeon you dont just go ”eh, doenst matter if i die” but really thinks about what you are doing, and maybe even hires mercenaries if you have to move a big amount of money through a longer area on a pvp server. also if you have been using maybe 1 hour farming mats you would really care when walking back, since a minor step might make you fall to your death or you might get too close to a mob you cant handle.

this also encourage actually having a house/safezone where you could store your items so they would be safe.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Zouls.

[Birne]

I would dislike any permanent drops of Items (next to gold, durability of items or xp), but Like the idea of a temporary debuff (like -25% on all stats till a counter (time, xp or “work”) is over). Losing more then only gold/durability/xp will cause “easy playing” people like my wife not play this game. I would like if there would be some kind of a lootable grave for the player, so if he gets back he can pick up (a part of) the stuff he lost (at least some gold and xp).

May be, if the “hardliners” still want their permanent-lose-system, it can be diffenent between worlds (for example: You only lose some xp/dur./gold on “save worlds” but more on “hardcore” worlds. On Soft-PvP-Worlds you lose a percentage of your stuff and others can pick it up, but on Hard-PvP-Worlds you lose everything except what you have in your hands and belt (and ppl can loot your grave).

[Psychomind]

Out of what was mentioned above, I like the debuff and money penalty.

As of item loss, I believe a feature could be added to protect a limited amount of items you are carrying. Say a certain stone you find could be applied to certain items to protect them from loss. It sounds a bit better than just keeping certain items, and would add a new item to the game.

Another idea I’ve been thinking over is having a portal to a locker/storage, which you could activate practically anywhere. If you die with valuables, it would be partially your fault for not storing them.

**Final idea (and my favorite) is that when you die a monster comes and seizes the dropped items. You would have to defeat the monster to retrieve your items. The more valuable the items and the higher your level, the stronger your monster. If someone else were to kill this monster for you it would restore the items back to you and *possibly* give a small benefit to your rescuer.

[Thorbjorn]

I Mostly agree with @Birne that loosing everything when you die would be a very hard hit on the casual and soft players. Especially as there is going to be a lot more time consuming items than Minecraft.

De-buffs, item damage, xp an money loose is the best ways to put a not too damaging penalty in the more softcore worlds.

[Author]

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