Death and Dying Penalty

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               A age old question but since we are coming into a new area of NWN I thought I should bring it up.


Do you as a player like or hate death penaltys?

On a SP Module;

I think NOT losing a level or xp but being set back in the game is fine. To like your most recent save. That I cna understand quite easily.

On a PW Module;

Dying should suck more. You should lose xp and gold. My view as a Admin vs my view as a player are different to be honest.
     As a player; You lose everything as in a Con Point, a level, and your self respect. If alone and die  you                          are permadead.
     As a Admin, What the playerbase wants within reason. Enough to give you pause such as some xp, 
        gold or some items. Give the player a choice of which.

Anyone else have any thoughts?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par TSMDude, 08 septembre 2010 - 06:08 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_avado]

               Very admirable dude!  Most admins ive seen have a "this is my server, take it or leave it" attitude, and end up playing with themselves and 4 other "friends"!  LOL  



To me, its a Game.  I dont mind loosing gold nor xp, but stats?  Yes, in real life, if you could come back from being dead, you probably would be "weaker", but this is a GAME so im not into that.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_qaerinju]

               

TSMDude wrote...

If alone you permadead.

The only servers that should even think about enforcing permadeath for soloing are those that can gaurantee the following:

1. A high and friendly playerbase 24/7 such that anybody at any time can find a party whatever their level.
2. Absolutely no lag, disconnections, crashes or any other condition/event that the player has no control over and can cause death.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               I always thought it pretty odd that the "Very Difficult" setting didn't impart perma-death on a character.

Most games I play that provide a "true" hardcore setting means just that... start building anew character, you've been defeated.  I don't know if this has been implemented in D&D very much.  I am just beginning to sample that genre of games.

I can only relate in terms of how I play.  Unless I am testing out a new build, PC death is always permanent.  I just try to learn from my mistakes and start a new character.  So in the case of any penalty, I can't really comment since it doesn't matter.  My ID will be only be appearing under the guise of another character, regardless.  My former spirit will wave a respectful and fond farewell to those who were able to survive the challenge, in the hopes that my death enabled them to somehow get closer to attaining the team's goal.

But for those who DO enjoy picking up where they left off, I suspect any penalty that affects their basic abilities would be undesirable to them, regardless of the DM's logic behind that decision.  In theory, it's a viable option, but it could extremely involved, couldn't it?  I mean, would a PC still retain the feats that needed an ability prerequisite?  Seems like an accident waiting to happen IMO. Unless you could provide some means to regain that ability level immediately upon resurrection, like perhaps a training program or some sort of purgatory scenario.   Any other non-ability penalty seems reasonable to me depending on how the DM views it.  (Then again, losing levels could potentially involve the same problems as those described for ability changes stated above.)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               

qaerinju wrote...

TSMDude wrote...

If alone you permadead.

The only servers that should even think about enforcing permadeath for soloing are those that can gaurantee the following:

1. A high and friendly playerbase 24/7 such that anybody at any time can find a party whatever their level.
2. Absolutely no lag, disconnections, crashes or any other condition/event that the player has no control over and can cause death.

If I as a Player make that choice to go to a dungeon then that is my fault. While I disagree with you as a Player I am in full agreement with you as a Admin of a PW if that makes sense. What I like and what others like is different which is why I stated it both ways.

Most games I play that provide a "true" hardcore setting means just that... start building anew character, you've been defeated.  I don't know if this has been implemented in D&D very much.  I am just beginning to sample that genre of games.

Excatly and something I completly agree with. You die alone you have been beat. End of story if a cleric is not there to raise you.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par TSMDude, 08 septembre 2010 - 06:14 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               What is perma death? As long as someone can ressurect you, there is no perma death...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               

ShaDoOoW wrote...

What is perma death? As long as someone can ressurect you, there is no perma death...

If you go out on a PW and are alone and no one is there to raise you then your worm food. That is Perma Death.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               As a player, I quite like the idea of permadeath when the death ocurrs while roleplaying, and even when permadeath isn't enforced, I'll generally play characters on roleplay servers with one life. If I'm beating up monsters in a casual/action environment, I see no reason for a defeated solo character to be permanently lost, for reasons already stated (game bugs, lag, distraction, etc).

As an admin/designer, I'll raise you one better and feature permadeath with no possibility of resurrection. Then work around the issue completely: "dead" characters aren't dead, but down, unconscious, defeated, overlooked, captured, injured, barely escaped, shown mercy... Implement scenarios for players to work through when they go down in solo combat -- anything from a brief cutscene of the enemy leaving them for dead, to a mini-quest of the captured PC's escape -- and apply persistent (but seldom permanent) injuries or penalties based on a pre-defined table of "down but not dead" results.

Then again, I probably take things a lot more seriously than most builders. I can definitely understand both views (for and against permadeath), but for me it's mostly environment-dependent.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par B_Harrison, 08 septembre 2010 - 06:31 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               As a player as well as a builder, I adhere to the following two tenets:

1.  This is a game.  Everything should be  as fun and enjoyable as possible.

2.  Because this is a game, the player should feel constantly rewarded, and never punished.  Otherwise, they should go and play something else.

...That is why I don't believe in static penalties on dying.  Nothing is going to make me quit a server faster than spending 2 hours in a dungeon only to die, and lose all/most of the XP I just farmed up due to a stupid death.  That's just asinine and insulting.  The idea of actually experiencing permadeath due to some similarly ridiculous scenario is grounds for me giving a server a 1.0 out of 10 on the vault.  My character is a significant investment of my time - if a DM or admin decides that they can flush that time investment down the toilet because of some love of realism or whatever, they don't deserve my patronage.

That doesn't mean that death can't have an impact on the game, however.  I'll use my own server's death system as an example:

When a player dies on the server I'm building, he can elect to respawn.  If he does so, he is teleported to the afterlife, a dreary, bland expanse called Sheol, and has his appearance changed to that of an amorphous soul-blob.  In Sheol, the player can talk to other dead people, he can actually perform quests and gain XP by performing tasks for them.

Once the player has had enough of exploring and questing in Sheol, he can go to a tower standing in the middle of the otherwise vast, empty plain.  Within is a strange fellow with whom the player may bargain.  If the player has something he wants, he will agree to send the player back into the world of the living.

If the player does not have something he wants, then he will be stuck there until his friends can perform a DM-quest to get him out.  Regardless of how he gets back, he needs to beat a pretty severe will save to remember anything about his time in Sheol.

...There.  No penalties, no punishments.  The player feels like they're having fun and experiencing new game content even while dead.  They're not robbed of XP or money, and yet there's still the possibility of extended quasi-permadeath scenarios if their friends aren't quick to fetch them from the underworld.

I don't believe that dying constitutes some kind of failure that needs to be punished.  The people in this thread that do strike me as, to be quite honest, a little masochistic.  It's a game.  There's nothing fun about losing the character you've been building and the relationships you've been forging with other characters because the spawn trigger created one too many goblins for you to kill in time.  There's nothing fun about being faced with monumental XP/GP taxes on respawning.  It's just not what I want to deal with at the end of a long, hard day, when I log on to enjoy a little game time.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Eradrain, 08 septembre 2010 - 07:25 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               

Eradrain wrote...
 Nothing is going to make me quit a server faster than spending 2 hours in a dungeon only to die, and lose all/most of the XP I just farmed up due to a stupid death. 

No offense but if you just sat around farming experince then I think the type of server you are talking about is different than the ones many of the Role Playing Servers are talking about here.

Eradrain wrote...
  The idea of actually experiencing permadeath due to some similarly ridiculous scenario is grounds for me giving a server a 1.0 out of 10 on the vault.  My character is a significant investment of my time - if a DM or admin decides that they can flush that time investment down the toilet because of some love of realism or whatever, they don't deserve my patronage.

Giving it a 1 because the server has bugs, no trans, is poorly made I understand.

Giving it a 1 because you disagree with the policies that a server puts into place is kinda as you said, asinine and insulting.

Eradrain wrote...
No penalties, no punishments. The player feels like they're having fun and experiencing new game content even while dead. They're not robbed of XP or money, and yet there's still the possibility of extended quasi-permadeath scenarios if their friends aren't quick to fetch them from the underworld.

Yet they are forced to do another quest system everytime they die? After the first time around it is no longer "new" content and therefore might even been seen as a more worse penalty to go and fed ex quest things as a blob.

Eradrain wrote...
I don't believe that dying constitutes some kind of failure, that needs to be punished.  The people in this thread that do strike me as, to be quite honest, a little masochistic.  It's a game.  There's nothing fun about losing the character you've been building (by farming?) and the relationships you've been forging with other characters because the spawn trigger created one too many goblins for you to kill in time.  There's nothing fun about being faced with monumental XP/GP taxes on respawning.  It's just not what I want to deal with at the end of a long, hard day, when I log on to enjoy a little game time.

Which is fine but insulting others for thier views who enjoy just as you do, gaming thier way is not wrong. It is why if you are deciding to HOST a world and Admin it you need to elarn that your view is not the right one.

Your Player Base idea is.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par TSMDude, 08 septembre 2010 - 07:33 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Genisys]

               

avado wrote...

Very admirable dude!  Most admins ive seen have a "this is my server, take it or leave it" attitude, and end up playing with themselves and 4 other "friends"!  LOL  

To me, its a Game.  I dont mind loosing gold nor xp, but stats?  Yes, in real life, if you could come back from being dead, you probably would be "weaker", but this is a GAME so im not into that.

This is your answer, I couldn't have put it better, period!

If the game is hard, why add insult to injury?  <<The philosophical answer..
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               

TSMDude wrote...

It is why if you are deciding to HOST a world and Admin it you need to elarn that your view is not the right one.

Your Player Base idea is.

I can't speak for Valyn, but I suspect his opinion on that would be the same as mine; that a better situation would be for an admin's PW vision to attract (and keep) players who share the same vision. Perhaps some admins see themselves as simply catering to the whims of whichever players happen to remain on their servers, and I can respect that to a point, but it's certainly not how all of us design gameworlds.

And I'd much rather play with 4 friends (who happened to be excellent roleplayers) than 24 strangers who neither grasped nor cared about any degree of art or individuality.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par B_Harrison, 08 septembre 2010 - 08:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Genisys]

               

ShaDoOoW wrote...

What is perma death? As long as someone can ressurect you, there is no perma death...

Permadeath is TRUE DEATH, no comming back..

It's also the worst idea I ever heard of, especially if the server is even remotely hard, it will only ensure nobody ever makes it beyond a certain level, for any arse could spawn this impossible monsters on you and kill you off..  But hey, different strokes for different folks I guess...  Hard Core is also something that will make me leave a server and FAST!

Then of course there are those servers where one ventures around for about 30 minutes to 4 hours, because starting out tends to be easy, to learn there is this horrific death rape, where all of your gear drops on the floor, that is just stOOpid.

I think people make up these dumb rules & realisms because they are tired of making cool new adventures, so they decide to turn their frustrations and bordom toward the players..   >.>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Genisys, 08 septembre 2010 - 08:11 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Genisys]

               

B_Harrison wrote...

TSMDude wrote...

It is why if you are deciding to HOST a world and Admin it you need to elarn that your view is not the right one.

Your Player Base idea is.

I can't speak for Valyn, but I suspect his opinion on that would be the same as mine; that a better situation would be for an admin's PW vision to attract (and keep) players who share the same vision. Perhaps some admins see themselves as simply catering to the whims of whichever players happen to remain on their servers, and I can respect that to a point, but it's certainly not how all of us design gameworlds.

And I'd much rather play with 4 friends (who happened to be excellent roleplayers) than 24 strangers who neither grasped nor cared about any degree of art or individuality.

Touche!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_SHOVA]

               I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think you should get some XP for dying, rather than have some taken away. The reason is simple most players do learn something from their PCs death, even if it is a simple leason like don't do that! But they do learn some kind of tactics. In my builds, I like to give 14 XP for death. I also tend to make PCs drop all gear, and all gold, but allow them to try to get it back, or for someone else to pick it up. The main reason being, If a player wants to RP, then chances are they will RP a death as being a terrible experience. If they do not want to rp, then no ammount of scripting can force them to do so, and can, cause players to not want to play.