Afterlife?
Afterlife?
I've thought about changing around what the negative for death is on NM. One thought is an afterlife. Not sure I think it really fits for NM. What does everyone think about having an Afterlife and/or changing the negatives of death?
Gatz Seijuro,
Owner of NarutoMUD
Owner of NarutoMUD
Re: Afterlife?
I wouldn't mind seeing a change to the way death works, but I don't know necessarily about an afterlife, it just doesn't seem to fit the theme of it a bit. But it could work. ^.^
Re: Afterlife?
While I like the system as it is, there isn't a seriously bad punishment for dying. While at low levels it is fairly well balanced, at higher levels there isn't a big downside as gaining levels takes so much more experience than early in the game. For me, all my deaths since level 50 or so have been fairly routine and there isn't really a big push in my methods to avoid death, especially since reincarnation happens instantaneously. If there were some sort of afterlife that had to be waded through in order to return to the land of the living, there would be more incentive in avoiding death altogether.
Re: Afterlife?
I think that the amount of xp required to level at higher levels is kind of an incentive in and of itself. If I'm 4 million away from leveling up, and I die.....I lose a lot of xp. On the other hand, if you just gained a level and you die...there's not really any penalty. I do think it would be pretty cool to get something new and fancy for death...but I see a couple of potential problems. First, death shouldn't be so rough that it discourages people from getting back up and going back at something. Second, if we have an afterlife of some sort, and someone spent too much time there....his or her stuff would probably be gone by the time they got back (the way things are right now). Other than those two things though, I like the idea a lot.
Re: Afterlife?
How would people feel that if instead of losing your equipment, you just get some sort of temporary penalty? Like, for X minutes you gain half experience.
Gatz Seijuro,
Owner of NarutoMUD
Owner of NarutoMUD
Re: Afterlife?
Gatz wrote:How would people feel that if instead of losing your equipment, you just get some sort of temporary penalty? Like, for X minutes you gain half experience.
That would certainly be a good deterrent that wouldn't adversely affect the ability to recover your stuff. It would be nice if the time with half exp. were dependent upon the stuff you have claimed, as with the exp. loss.
Re: Afterlife?
All villages currently have the option of completely forgoing every penalty of dying except losing Ryo video Claim bundled with Kisei Jouyaku.
Re: Afterlife?
I would have to say everything would depend on how much of a deterrent that you want death to be. I've played some games where death had no penalty aside from respawning halfway across the world, and others where death could set you back a significant amount of work (really, any game that removes levels upon death). It would also depend on whether you want to override previous coding (such as the corpse troll jutsu or claim).
As far as the experience penalty for dying goes, that would be of no deterrent to me, personally. I'm already looking at a half hour downtime just for chakra regeneration (whether that is through death or just spamming jutsu, there is no difference). I'm not sure that would deter anything past taijutsu specialists who are good to go after a few ticks. Perhaps its two separate issues, but I think a lot of debuff (whether it be statistic or experience) would fluctuate a lot between jutsu types. I myself was going to recommend a general debuff that left the player a bit weakened (damage reduction on all abilities) or disoriented (high chance of abilities missing or getting interrupted), but even then, the specialties have independent recovery times regardless.
As far as an "afterlife" system goes, I think that could be perfectly feasible, however, I would personally skew away from death itself (its a bit dark and gritty), however, perhaps a trip to the subconcious in a similar manner?
For example, instead of "dying" in any manner, once the player drops below -10, they're restored and teleported to a different zone where they have to find the willpower to "snap out of it". Upon doing so, they'd wake up in a hospital, rescued by medic-nins. Of course, a system like this would override the need for claim and corpse troll jutsu, unless reworked to a more fitting manner (such as, instead of a corpse being left behind, it leaves a bag of your belongs, minus what you have claimed, and corpse fetching retrieves the bag instead).
As far as afterlife systems go, a prior defunct MUD* I played on had a very interesting system. On death, the player would be taken back to their hometown, but they would be given a (GHOST) flag. Ghosts and non-ghosts couldn't interact (unless they had the ability to speak to the dead, which in a setting like this, it would provide an interesting outlet for medical jutsu, the ability to talk to people who were dead). While in ghost form, you'd be restricted to your hometown, and you'd have to collect shards of your soul. After collecting enough, you could come back to life at your hometown, gear intact.
At first, the system is just a mild nuisance (home areas were around 50-100 rooms), and you'd only have to find one or two shards, but the more you died, the more shards you'd need. Its not a huge deterrent at first, but the more you die, the more irritating it gets.
Branching back to the concept of just fighting through your own concious, a system like that could work, but instead of being a ghost, you simply have to run around an area (whether its a special "death" area or just a (GHOST) flag type situation in Time Village/the area you died) and collect a few random items as you try to willpower yourself through unconciousness.
Short version: Perhaps instead of an afterlife, use a concept similar but not nearly as gritty, and force players to harvest some sort of token before they can "snap out of it" in a hospital bed.
On a food for thought level, a "simple" question like this would be a great time to analyze some long-term goals on player interaction and new abilities, because that could sway the kind of system you choose to implement. For example, the whole death concept is a good time to look into medical abilities, like resurrection and such. With the current "die and you go poof back to a bindspot" there's really no need for anything of that nature past the corpse fetching. Same as if you choose to go the debuff/penalty route, that could open up abilities for other players to remove them. (Don't mind me, I've played a lot of healers in games so I'm naturally biased for the "awww, let me make it better" and "I rolled a healer so I could laugh at you when you asked for a rez" tangents).
One last potential idea, you could rework the broken bone code, so on death, they can suffer a random break (or five), with longer lasting penalties then them healing after a few ticks. I suppose that could work as another "LSC" idea, where broken bones have phases of healing. Such as, on death, a broken rib could possible start as shattered and give a HEAVY stamina regeneration penalty, but the penalty lessened as the rib went through phases of healing. Similarly, a broken arm would be completely unusable (as it is now, perhaps even more so) for so long, denying the use of any jutsu requiring handseals (well, any jutsu that requires both hands) or the ability to wield a weapon or held item. As the arm heals, the penalty would be just be a chance to get a flash of pain that interrupted (or delayed the cast time of) a jutsu.
Such a thing could be randomized (number of breaks, location of breaks, and severity of breaks), so a player could get lucky with a mild penalty or be completely wrecked for period of time where they are unable to do anything.
Alright, that ended up far longer then I intended, so my apologies for that.
*And to give credit where credit is due, the defunct MUD in question is AuricMUD, though I'm unsure if that was a snippet that came from somewhere else or if it was Eos's original idea
As far as the experience penalty for dying goes, that would be of no deterrent to me, personally. I'm already looking at a half hour downtime just for chakra regeneration (whether that is through death or just spamming jutsu, there is no difference). I'm not sure that would deter anything past taijutsu specialists who are good to go after a few ticks. Perhaps its two separate issues, but I think a lot of debuff (whether it be statistic or experience) would fluctuate a lot between jutsu types. I myself was going to recommend a general debuff that left the player a bit weakened (damage reduction on all abilities) or disoriented (high chance of abilities missing or getting interrupted), but even then, the specialties have independent recovery times regardless.
As far as an "afterlife" system goes, I think that could be perfectly feasible, however, I would personally skew away from death itself (its a bit dark and gritty), however, perhaps a trip to the subconcious in a similar manner?
For example, instead of "dying" in any manner, once the player drops below -10, they're restored and teleported to a different zone where they have to find the willpower to "snap out of it". Upon doing so, they'd wake up in a hospital, rescued by medic-nins. Of course, a system like this would override the need for claim and corpse troll jutsu, unless reworked to a more fitting manner (such as, instead of a corpse being left behind, it leaves a bag of your belongs, minus what you have claimed, and corpse fetching retrieves the bag instead).
As far as afterlife systems go, a prior defunct MUD* I played on had a very interesting system. On death, the player would be taken back to their hometown, but they would be given a (GHOST) flag. Ghosts and non-ghosts couldn't interact (unless they had the ability to speak to the dead, which in a setting like this, it would provide an interesting outlet for medical jutsu, the ability to talk to people who were dead). While in ghost form, you'd be restricted to your hometown, and you'd have to collect shards of your soul. After collecting enough, you could come back to life at your hometown, gear intact.
At first, the system is just a mild nuisance (home areas were around 50-100 rooms), and you'd only have to find one or two shards, but the more you died, the more shards you'd need. Its not a huge deterrent at first, but the more you die, the more irritating it gets.
Branching back to the concept of just fighting through your own concious, a system like that could work, but instead of being a ghost, you simply have to run around an area (whether its a special "death" area or just a (GHOST) flag type situation in Time Village/the area you died) and collect a few random items as you try to willpower yourself through unconciousness.
Short version: Perhaps instead of an afterlife, use a concept similar but not nearly as gritty, and force players to harvest some sort of token before they can "snap out of it" in a hospital bed.
On a food for thought level, a "simple" question like this would be a great time to analyze some long-term goals on player interaction and new abilities, because that could sway the kind of system you choose to implement. For example, the whole death concept is a good time to look into medical abilities, like resurrection and such. With the current "die and you go poof back to a bindspot" there's really no need for anything of that nature past the corpse fetching. Same as if you choose to go the debuff/penalty route, that could open up abilities for other players to remove them. (Don't mind me, I've played a lot of healers in games so I'm naturally biased for the "awww, let me make it better" and "I rolled a healer so I could laugh at you when you asked for a rez" tangents).
One last potential idea, you could rework the broken bone code, so on death, they can suffer a random break (or five), with longer lasting penalties then them healing after a few ticks. I suppose that could work as another "LSC" idea, where broken bones have phases of healing. Such as, on death, a broken rib could possible start as shattered and give a HEAVY stamina regeneration penalty, but the penalty lessened as the rib went through phases of healing. Similarly, a broken arm would be completely unusable (as it is now, perhaps even more so) for so long, denying the use of any jutsu requiring handseals (well, any jutsu that requires both hands) or the ability to wield a weapon or held item. As the arm heals, the penalty would be just be a chance to get a flash of pain that interrupted (or delayed the cast time of) a jutsu.
Such a thing could be randomized (number of breaks, location of breaks, and severity of breaks), so a player could get lucky with a mild penalty or be completely wrecked for period of time where they are unable to do anything.
Alright, that ended up far longer then I intended, so my apologies for that.
*And to give credit where credit is due, the defunct MUD in question is AuricMUD, though I'm unsure if that was a snippet that came from somewhere else or if it was Eos's original idea
Re: Afterlife?
I really like the idea of going through your subconscious.
I'm not sure how much I can expand upon the idea, though, Kotani seems fairly thorough...
I'm not sure how much I can expand upon the idea, though, Kotani seems fairly thorough...