Death on Sundren

[Saulus]

The purpose of this thread is for me to get a general idea on the difficulty players find with death with the current system. To be clear this is not an opportunity to discuss what you think should be changed on the death system.

I want to know if players feel that death has little or no penalty and if you see other players exhibiting this kind of behaviour. Keep in mind that Sundren sacrifices some hardcore rulesets in order to appeal to a wider audience but I have been considering making some changes to make things a bit more difficult, but at the same time help you avoid it happening often.

[Xanderleo]

I voted B...only because most people rp it off well. Any other circumstance and I'd have voted for A, because the penalties are comparitively light.

[undeadsteak]

Do you mean PvP Wise or fighting monsters? I think fighting monsters is fine enough.. PvP, i'd love to see some harsher penaties, like a limited amount of lives... It'd make players think twice before rushing off to do battle with everyone. Also, i'd love to see some DM events also have like, life loosing penalties. I remember this on another server before.

[rustediron]

I agree with dude Xanderloo... the penalties are comparatively light, but they work well with the players here.

Apart from that, I think that the word 'loosing' should be censored. :P
But that's just me being picky.

[Blue_Wyrm]

Several points could be talked about here:
I have used the respawn option from the essence of the night with a level 5 character, taking me a smallish 250 XP penalty, which in my opinion is way easier to get back than 1000 stags at that level (heck mossclaw meet critters give me 12/20 xp a kill, but ~10 stags), not even taking into account that someone has to take you as luggage back to Sundren City for resurection, which usually takes a while.

Now I have no idea how this scales up with levels, but if the formula is linear with something like (250 * (Level - 4)) it's not enough of a penalty in my opinion for a quick OOC rez. On the other side, I appreciate the fact that you cannot go lower than the minimum XP for that level.

PvP, i'd love to see some harsher penaties, like a limited amount of lives...

I'd just simply go for no respawning options for the PvP deaths; it seems silly enough to me that two players can cross each other again on the same day and "ignore" each other just after brutal murder has occured, it should be required in my opinion that at least a friend of the deceased has to fetch the corpse and pay for resurection regents. I think it would encourage characters to plan their murders more carefully, or agree with their opponent for usage of the wonderful Subdual mode. At the same time, effortless players slain in PvP shouldn't be punished if they tried to run, but you can't always have a DM around to watch fireball-happy crazy evil mages... Hmm...

[Machiavelli]

At low levels the xp loss is pretty light... this is true. At higher levels it starts to look alot heavier as xp is hard to come by (which is in no way a bad thing). As for the PvP thing, and steak's suggestion about limited lives, this could be an issue if people are getting inadvertantly killed by others or taken out when seriously overpowered/outlevelled (as for the second one, of course there are times when this is going to happen for legitimate RP reasons, but giving it too harsh a penalty is likely to cause frustration for players who might get stomped through no fault of their own; eg; just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Anways, just some thoughts.

Peace y'all!

[Rhifox]

I'd have to agree that PvP deaths are were penalties need to be harsher. But then, I'm one who believes that death in PvP should be perma, none of this resurrection stuff. Of course, that would require more policing in case people are attempting to abuse it and randomly off players for no IC reason.

As far as regular death goes... the penalty for me, personally, is the RP issues that arise. As stated above, I agree with perma death, and have always hated the idea of resurrection and coming back from death. My biggest fear with death is dying and having other people see my corpse, or dying while in a group and having the party RP as if I died (I prefer 'got hit too hard and desperately needed medical attention' rather than 'lol you died and we brought you back to life!'). That serves to cheapen the concept of dying and death, and I prefer to play characters that are fearful of death--a major problem when death is as light and unproblematic as it is. I'd sooner take the exp loss than the resulting RP, even double if I could resurrect immediately after dying instead of waiting 3 minutes.

Overall, I do not fear the exp penalty itself, as generally it's my own fault when I die because I tend to take stupid risks in order to explore.

[Raksha]

As far as XP loss when fighting monsters go, I have found it to be appropriate. At low levels, it's really not such a big deal, but as you increase in level, the amount of available XP decreases even as the amount you lose increases. It's almost to the point where a level 14 or 15 character would prefer to wait a very long time rather than take the hit from respawn, which I think is just right.

When it comes to PvP, I could see stricter penalties being possible if and only if subdual was the way such battles were normally fought, even going so far as to make subdual damage the default, and having to turn on lethal. I don't think that flat-out player-induced permadeath should be an option, because if it is necessary to make the final fight Epic and Have Consequences, that can be worked out OOCly just as easily, and one party will agree to stay dead or be crippled. There's no need for the engine to do it.

[Poor_Otis]

I think the death penalties are VERY light, compared to other servers and NWN I servers that I frequented. I do think that until some tech issues are resolved by OE with the multiplayer stability that you may want to hold off increasing the penalty. I do think they should be increased though, eventually.

[Blue_Wyrm]

When it comes to PvP, I could see stricter penalties being possible if and only if subdual was the way such battles were normally fought, even going so far as to make subdual damage the default, and having to turn on lethal. I don't think that flat-out player-induced permadeath should be an option, because if it is necessary to make the final fight Epic and Have Consequences, that can be worked out OOCly just as easily, and one party will agree to stay dead or be crippled. There's no need for the engine to do it.

I very much agree with this. Having Subdual On by default sounds like a great idea, and I've seen it done on other servers, so that "colleteral damage" in battles where effortless players are present has not so much of an impact for them. And yeah... permadeath in the "not even a Resurrection spell will bring you back" sense is quite too hardcore for me. Also, I believe permadeath encourages to a certain extent the min-maxing of characters to "win" in PvP. Roleplayers who prefer playing social or unoptimized builds will feel cheated by the server rules since all their quirky traits, friends and political power can get wiped forever by a Bigby or a Harm. Finally, it enforces a certain form of meta-tyranny across the server, in the "if you're not with me I remove your character from the server" sense... I'd really vote against it.

[Infernal_Havok]

This is always an interesting topic on PWs. It has alot of potential problems with penalizing for PVP such as player griefing and or exploiting. In the past, I have seen many instances of players not only unafraid of their own PVP death but for others as well. Some players do have a view point that borders metagaming when it involves death. In which, they tend to disregard its seriousness in a given "Life threatening" situation simply because they know that ressurection is an easy and available option in this setting.

I personally believe in harsher penalties for PVP death IMHO, but also have seen it reduce player base in other servers as well since there are not many "hardcore perma death players" that have adopted NWN2 as of late. At the same time, direct PVP can be handled now with the long awaited Sub-Dual mode which means that there is very little reason to actually "Kill" someone in combat unless it is sanctioned by a DM or Admin. However, there are the off chances that you get struck by a stray AoE from a would be ally.

The best way to look at this, might be to evaluate this as how players react to this IC. Encourage them to play out death with the thought of it being permanent. One system I have seen, that is palettable, is to have permanent death randomized by adding an unmodifed roll to your resurrection (getting a nat 1 usually meant permanent death for the character) which is still an "extremely" low probability but the threat is always present. I think someone in the above posts had suggested a number of ressurection lives given to players, which also seems a fair way to settle permanent death with little grief. I mean if your character dies more than 20 times (now that we have subdual) there something definately wrong with him/her or the player... period.

In the end, its up to the players too ultimately Rp the way they perceive Death. Making the rules harsher will not usually change their ways, from my experience it will cause a slight migration of the player base at worst case scenario.

The Xp penalties system by encounter death is really nicely done. Its fair without stripping away all progress a player has done, all because of a lucky hit from some goblin. I've been in servers that strip you of all xp from a level and 50% of your gold if you died in an encounter, which was imposed to stop grinding, but instead lost 90% of its players. I think Sundren's codes are made to counteract grinding xp with a curve and level cap which is a very advance solution to that problem without making ridiculous rules.

[Fajitaduke]

I haven't been affected by the non-newbie death rules enough yet to have a solid opinion, but I do have two different thoughts based on my experience in NWN1 servers.

First, I don't believe taking XP and gold should be the primary deterrent to reckles behavior leading to death. It has been my experience that this actually leads to more grinding, as players feel compelled to "restore" their character to the point they were at before death as quickly as possible, and also engenders resentment in the player who now spends garbage time retreading prior experiences to get back those points. Players can become despondant in circumstances where they die again in pursuit of restoring their character, and "XP hole" seems even deeper.

I'm not saying that there is no use for docking XP and gold, I just don't think it should be the primary driver of the discussion if alternatives are available. Certainly, it can make a great deal of sense in DM adventures, where there has been some positive play experience to trade off for damage done to a character, and to a limited extent in non-DM circumstances.

One of the things I do like about Sundren is the respawn delay. It has a few things going for it: (i) it forestalls reckless behavior because it can end your play time for a period; (ii) there is no compulsion for a player to work his way out of an "xp hole" after dying; (ii) it discourages griefing since a player cannot rapidly return to the scene of a fight; (iv) it provides the biggest penalty of all in an RP-based server by cutting a dead player off from his group, while at the same time (v) creates an even greater incentive for RP to ressurect. What I mean on (v) is that, with rapid respawn and xp penalties, only the dead player suffers (assuming he can transition areas to rejoin the group), but without rapid respawn, the entire group loses that player's services until he is restored, so the group has a greater incentive to restore the dead player. As an additional benefit, delayed respawn also creates an incentive both to group and to make friends to restore your character if you happen to be out solo'ing.

With this in mind, in response to the question I theoretically find the system a bit harsh on XP and gold, but far, far too relaxed on delaying respawns. It would be my position that the XP/gold penalty be dropped out for respawns, and be replaced by longer period in the shadow plane. Resurrections could impose a gold/xp penalty as a tradeoff to spending the time in the shadow plane. DM events would naturally break from the mold on all fronts as appropriate to reflect the relative risks and benefits of participating.

[Xanderleo]

Maybe everyone who winds up in the Forest of Eternal Night gets a free kick in the nuts on the way in. It'll slow your land speed for 24 hours.


Eh..I'm in complete agreement with Blue Wyrm.

Have we crossed Saulus' bolded boundary yet?

[deepshades]

Okay I've seen all these incredibly beautiful long long looong posts..

So in an effort to get mine actually read I'm going to make it short and sweet.

XP death penalties.. low levels not harsh enough.. higher levels when xp and groups are harder to come by its too harsh.

Losing 2k xp for one death at lvl 11 or something when you're getting 8 or 0 for most monsters and you have to kill the harder ones chances for death is higher, group mates harder to come by... well you see where I'm going..

RP Xp... saved it up for a week solid.. had about 3k into my level... died once... respawned a whole week of RP xp shot to hell. Higher level deaths are too harsh, lower levels not harsh where people can run out and say ""OH well I can be wreckless well because if I respawn I can make this XP up in 30min of grinding" I think it promotes grinding at lower levels and not RP.

PVP... let me explain to you what happens if you give people a certain number of LIVEs.

Evil will rule, the good players will leave the server. I'm promising that now. Once a collection of evil players start running around and assassinating good plays it will snowball downhill. Good players will die or be really really weak. Server social infrastructure will collapse the end.

I'm just saying as kindly as I can.. you can't base the server RP and good/evil balance on PVP lives. DMs should control balance. It will RUIN the server to bring permadeath pvp into Sundren.

Thats all I think Have to say.

I still think murdering someone and having the law find out, and getting executed by DMs a much cleaner, less player aggravating indisputable method of finality.

YES that vote on too hardcore is mine. I didn't see the (Good in some places, not in others) Choice. So... I went with what the fact that towards the higher levels it is too harsh. Since that is where players linger longer and play more than lower levels its what I based my vote on.

[Blue_Wyrm]

Wow, great post Fajitaduke! I guess I never thought about it, but yes, a wonderful way to make people take less risk would be greatly increasing the time it takes before you can respawn. While time is the most precious of all resources, it does not affect the character per se but YOU as a player because of your bad decision that led the character to his demise. After let's say 15-20-30-60 minutes, you are allowed to resume your play since obviously during all that time nobody wanted or could resurect you, encouraging having allies and discouraging soloing. Because you did not take a XP hit, as mentionned Fajitaduke above, you don't feel like your character got a huge setback and you don't need to "work it out". Now the actual amount of time you are locked inside the Forest of Eternal Night is very arguable, the point is that keeping you in there for a good while unless you get resurected by a spell or money at a temple seems like a great way to discourage daredevilish attitudes.

Brilliant. A rep for you. ^_^