Consequences of death

[Chris]

Player has HP. It is decreased during fight. After fight player can replenish it (or it is replenished automaticly?). When HP goes below 0 the fight is immediately lost, HP is restored to 1 (or full?) and a permanent injury is added. When permanent injury reaches 3 (or 5 ?) player is moved to hospital and faces harsh consequences (what kind?). Player can heal permanent injuries in certain locations (not convenient and/or costly).

The game flow will be like this then. Player faces an enemy and if it was weaker he gets his health restored immediately. When the monster was stronger player gets heavy injury, which is a warning to him. Now the player can either pursue the means of healing heavy/permanent injury or push his luck and continue adventuring. If he gambled and lost (permanent injury reached certain quota) he faces negative consequences.


How do you evaluate this concept? And try to fill the gaps (the things in parentheses). I especially look for the consequences of "death" (reaching permanent injury quota).

[133794m3r]

Hmm one thing i liked about the whole "permanent injury" thing should be made so that it's something serious that'll make them want to think next time but won't made them want to quit. A way that i'd do it is to not immediately resurrect the play with full health after death. Give them an option, they can immediately ressurect but their punishment for doing so will be greater than if they just came back with one and was forced to pay to heal or use hp potions.

Now as to the effect, i'd do something like this(this is assuming your game has stats). I'd make it so that when a player dies their stats are reduced by 10%, this includes Damage, and also their defense. Then i'd make it something like five times. Also if the player chooses to go to town(or wherever you want to move them to) and get healed that way, make it so they only have their stats reduced by 5%. Also as for the mobs that are stronger than them. Make it so that if they fight a mob stronger than them, also make sure to make their damage higher than it would be if they're a normal mob as to deter players further. By fighting this harder mob they'd have all of their stats reduced by 2% per mob they fight, and it'd last however long you wish. This effect would of course stack with the "permanent injury" you spoke of earlier.

Your next thing, if we assume that your game has areas. If you have 9 areas(this is just my example here) set up like this

Code: [Select]

1,2,3
4,5,6
7,8,9

Then i'd make it so that there are only four places you can get your permanent injuries healed. And that'd be on the lower left corner of area 7, lower right of 9, upper right of 3, and upper left of 1. And now about the cost of healing these that'd be up to you since i don't know how you're money system works. I'd make it cost them ~15 or so mob kills worth of money per percent that they are permanently injured. For the heavy ones, make it something like 7%.  And by doing it like this, you're making your death penalty harsh but not impossible for players to deal with. The players will know the consequence and avoid it at all costs. Also since you're going to have PvP in your game as i imagine, i'd make the penalties for dying a PvP match only 50-75% of the normal ones. Since it'd not make a whole lot of sense to force a pvp centric group to not be able to do so. Also i'd set it up like PVE Permanent Injuries, Heavy Injuries, and PVP permanent Injuries as far as how the values go. But all of them would add in with eachother. Then i'd make it so that the pvp death counts would have to be 2x as much as the PvE required ones.

And by the 50-75% thing i meant the injury %.

Edit:sorry about the wall of text.

[Chris]

Not exactly. I do not want them agonize over "first death" (the one when you fight monster and lose all HP). What I want is to make them not die several times without doing some "health maintenance" in the meantime.

Players will lose to monsters, no way avoiding it. There can not be harsh punishment for this or players will play cowardly way. What I want to do is to make them start being caucious when they lose too many times.

So, when you fight a monster you receive light injury which is immediately healed for free after fight.
When you lose fight (max light injuries received) then you receive 1 heavy injury. You can remove heavy injuries for a reasoanble price and inconvenience.
If you neglect tending heavy injuries and let them accumulate to 5 you face harsh negative consequences (what exactly these consequences should be?)

[gnoh]

What about time based healing?  You could have an event like: you have had your arm broken in a fight your attack strength will be reduced for the next <?> minutes.  You could then have zones in your map where healing happens at an increased rate(or items that help you heal).

[133794m3r]

Not exactly. I do not want them agonize over "first death" (the one when you fight monster and lose all HP). What I want is to make them not die several times without doing some "health maintenance" in the meantime.

Players will lose to monsters, no way avoiding it. There can not be harsh punishment for this or players will play cowardly way. What I want to do is to make them start being caucious when they lose too many times.

So, when you fight a monster you receive light injury which is immediately healed for free after fight.
When you lose fight (max light injuries received) then you receive 1 heavy injury. You can remove heavy injuries for a reasoanble price and inconvenience.
If you neglect tending heavy injuries and let them accumulate to 5 you face harsh negative consequences (what exactly these consequences should be?)

Ah but you said before that each death was going to be a permanent injury...And is that now your "harsh injury"? And the whole point of dying is that you want to make it hurt so to speak. One game i played made it so that you had 5% of your stats reduced after a death, and that lasted x amount of minutes. Each death you had during that time increased the amount of stat reduction you had.  You could make it so that they only have like let's say 1% of their stats reduced per failed attempt at fighting. Since 1% of your stats being reduced won't make/break you and it'll make your death kind of hurt. then make every 5 yield a 10% reduction of stats. Since you're talking about injuries it only makes sense to do it like this. Since your stats are all based on you being 100% healthy.  And the consequences could be that 10% stat reduction and also knowing it'll never go away. The heavy injuries could be taken away after whatever time you wish to set. And as gnoh said, you could make it so that in certain areas they auto-heal faster. And the cost to heal and remove heavy injuries should be something like 4 mobs worth of currency. It's resonable since honestly, you're not likely to die every 1/4 fights. And then the harsh ones would be as i said making them permanent, never auto-healing and the only way to get rid of them is to go the hospital areas and paying for them to be removed. And charge the person like 8+ mobs worth of currency drop for each one they get healed.

Since the player themselves HAVE to have had died atleast 5 times within your time frame and not seeked healing, during that time it makes perfect sense to make it that harsh. As you said, players will die it's a known fact. The most common consequence is losing %exp in the grindy games. And in one that i was playing, up until ~lvl 70 i died less than 10 times in total. So i can say that anyone who dies 5 times within your given span it takes to completely remove all of them is just not really ready for any game. You could make it so that each heavy injury takes 3-4hrs to auto-heal in a normal zone. So this'd mean that somone would've had to have died 5 times within 15-20 hours. If they're dying that much and that often, they're just messing around imo. And you could make it so that it's 6 times for someone to die before they recieve the permanent penalty so to speak. Make the first death they have per round or whatever free, and make it so that they only lose stats from the second one(during the process of healing the first) on actually reduce your stats. I honestly don't know what your playerbase is and since you're wanting it seems, to be harsh with your death penalty, yet at the same time not be harsh. It's goign to come down to you finally saying i want this or this.

It just seems like you really have no idea what you want to do with it. And even if you do finally decide, it'll be all about testing it. Get some closed beta testers, and have them test out the game if they die and dislike how harsh the penalty is(a majority of them that is) then reduce it. Testing, testing, testing, testing, it's the only way to really fine tune your product.

[codestryke]

With Legend of the Red Dragon (the original) and Green Dragon you go into the forest to quest and like you explained, basically get your butt kicked. In both versions of those games the administrator has a setting that they can change on when to charge for health. Normally your first 2 or 3 levels you don't get charged, after that it is based on your level or whatever evil formula the game owner came up with.  It's important though on that game you can try and run from the monsters. Even with free healing you do have to survive the fight to get to the healer.

So right away players are trained to do "health maintenance". Give beginning levels the ability to run from a fight but if they decide to push it and die then they'll learn fast not to push it so far without going to the healer.

[Sagefire135]

everyone is focusing on healing costs, which i think wont be a problem when a game becomes established. Ive never played a game where inflation didnt take its toll, the amount that you need to heal will probably be pocket change after the game is played for a while.

that being said, ive also never played a game where players dont pick up gems, gold, or even items off dead npcs. So why not reverse that? when you finally get beat down and have your 5 major injuries how about the npc loots your corpse and takes some of your resources? if i know dieing will cost me X gold, im probably not going to care much, but if i know dieing is going to cause some of my resources to be looted im going to be damn sure that i dont reach that point.

[shoespeak]

If the goal of this system is to force players to do some health-maintenance in between mob fights, then I think the best way to do that is to lower their reason for fighting in the first place. Probably the reason players fight mobs is to grind to gain experience...so why not reduce the experience gained with each heavy damage?

I would limit it to 5 points of heavy damage at first (later, players could upgrade this number.) Determining the percentage of exp to tax would require balancing, but I'd try to use a logistic scale, something like:
1 - 5% exp tax
2 - 10% exp tax
3 - 20% exp tax
4 - 35% exp tax
5 - 60% exp tax

That way, players don't really get penalized too much for having 1 or 2 heavy damage, but it builds up quickly.

Once they are on the 5, any further 'heavy damage' needs to have a pretty harsh penalty...maybe give them 0% exp and gold gains, or maybe dont' let them fight/travel at all. I also like the idea of mobs stealing resources off dead players body.

[jannesiera]

Do you have a good reason for healing? It's just that it's so boring... If you need to force players to heal on time, maybe that's an indication that yu could try something different? Healing is a an established mechanic and accepted by (almost) everyone. You can't do anything wrong with it. That doesn't change the fact that it's boring though. You are in the position to try something different so, if you don't have a good reason for healing, try something else.

I would make a suggestion if I knew more about your game but since that's not the case this will stay a very abstract statement .

[Chris]

Ah but you said before that each death was going to be a permanent injury...And is that now your "harsh injury"?

The beauty of the first post of a fresh idea The concept evolves and is clarified (and could be slightly changed) as we speak

And the whole point of dying is that you want to make it hurt so to speak.

Not exactly... The point of dying is to force players to to proper tactical decisions regarding combat difficulty they want to reach. The punishement can not be too harsh because they will go for 100% weaker targets only, it can not be too low or it will make danger assesment irrelevant.

Do you have a good reason for healing? It's just that it's so boring... If you need to force players to heal on time, maybe that's an indication that yu could try something different? Healing is a an established mechanic and accepted by (almost) everyone. You can't do anything wrong with it. That doesn't change the fact that it's boring though. You are in the position to try something different so, if you don't have a good reason for healing, try something else.

I would make a suggestion if I knew more about your game but since that's not the case this will stay a very abstract statement .

That's exactly my point and goal. I want to diminish the healing requirement but in the meantime I want to keep the danger and thrill associated with fighting.

I thought about making it the multilayered HP then.
First layer is the traditional HP which is reduced in fight. The point is to assess the danger so you win the fight within your HP limit. Healing HP is where games get boring, becuase you ALWAYS want to heal all HP before next fight, it ALWAYS have to be cheap or the game will be unbalanced. To solve this the first layer will be healed for free and auto after each fight.
Then is the old "dying" which is when HP reaches 0. This would be the second layer, each time you "die in fight" you get 1 heavy injury. You can get a few of these before getting negative consequences but not too many since we want losing fight not desirable (but still not so bad as to freeze are bold actions). So, the secondf layer would be the one that is healed the traditional way (but it is more comlex, inconvenieng and expensive than normal healing in games).
Next it is the third layer, it is when you neglect healing tier 3 and accumulate too many loses, then you face "real death" and have to pay harsh price.

Layer 1: combat HP auto replenished for free after each fight
Layer 2: accumulated when you lose fight, can be removed over time or by using money and/or visiting distant inconvenient location
Layer 3: when layer 2 wounds reach certain quota, it results in very negative consequences

Example implementation:
- Layer 1, I have several concepts here and wonder which to choose:
a) HP is auto restored after fight for free (no brainer)
b) 50% of HP is auto restored after fight for free, the rest can be quickly restored for a small price
c) 50% of HP is auto restored after fight for free, the rest can be quickly restored for a high/moderate price (adds tactical choice when if go for paid healing or hope for weak enemy in next fight so all HPO will be restored for free anyway)

- Layer 2 could also make a temporary reduction of all stats by 1%, max 5 of these injures could be accumulated. These would heal over time for free but slowly (slower than average rate of receiving them) and the main way of getting rid of them is by going to a location (which is not expensive but use plenty of movement points that could be used reaching other, more profitable, location). I wonder if such system would not make too desirable camping on the layer 2 healing locations.

- Layer 3 (consequences of death) I think it could cause some small permanent consequences (which could be removed by very rare & difficult quests to a small extend). Maybe die counter? Depending how many of these you get progressive negative consequences. After 1 no consequences at all, 2-nd -1% Hp, 3-rd -1% all stats, etc.

I would make a suggestion if I knew more about your game but since that's not the case this will stay a very abstract statement Smiley.

Moonstone but with locations on a small map (probably similar to the one we were talking about on IRC)

[Topazan]

Not knowing anything about your design or lore, some possibilities for consequences of 3-5 deaths:
-permanent character loss
-permanent (or timed) stat loss
-confined to the hospital for a long period of time.
-Loss of experience (need to be rehabilitated)
-Cannot continue to progress until a long, difficult quest is completed (need to pay back the powers that helped you survive)
-confined to the hospital until other players endeavor to bring you back, possibly at a sacrifice to themselves.
-permanent (or timed) loss of access to some features, possibly increasing with each 'hospitalization'

[Chris]

It's important though on that game you can try and run from the monsters. Even with free healing you do have to survive the fight to get to the healer.

I do not wan't to give player any bchnce of interfering during the fight because I do not want to store in DB the combat_in_progress data It is so much easier to dump a page of various maneuvers descriptions and in the end only store HP level

Ive never played a game where inflation didnt take its toll, the amount that you need to heal will probably be pocket change after the game is played for a while.

$healcost=min(0,$level*$level*10-100);

-Cannot continue to progress until a long, difficult quest is completed (need to pay back the powers that helped you survive)

What if the quest is difficult and cause further injuries?
I'm worried about snowball effect...
That's also why I hesitate to make stats loses (the more you lose the weaker you become, but the weaker you become the more you lose and then the weaker you become so you lose even more often )

[Topazan]

What if the quest is difficult and cause further injuries?
I'm worried about snowball effect...

Well, you kind of control that, don't you?  You could always make it something that isn't dangerous, just tedious.  Escaping from a maze, for instance.  It could represent the soul trying to find it's way back to the comatose body.

[133794m3r]

It's important though on that game you can try and run from the monsters. Even with free healing you do have to survive the fight to get to the healer.

I do not wan't to give player any bchnce of interfering during the fight because I do not want to store in DB the combat_in_progress data It is so much easier to dump a page of various maneuvers descriptions and in the end only store HP level

Ive never played a game where inflation didnt take its toll, the amount that you need to heal will probably be pocket change after the game is played for a while.

$healcost=min(0,$level*$level*10-100);

-Cannot continue to progress until a long, difficult quest is completed (need to pay back the powers that helped you survive)

What if the quest is difficult and cause further injuries?
I'm worried about snowball effect...
That's also why I hesitate to make stats loses (the more you lose the weaker you become, but the weaker you become the more you lose and then the weaker you become so you lose even more often )

this is why you force them to heal using an potion of some sort or to go to some town. By doing this, you force them to actually think about their actions. If a game has no death penalty, people will just blindly do whatever whenever. The whole point of death penalty's is to force the players to think about the fight. The point of making them lose stats after x fights is that i doubt anyone will lose that many and not heal. We're not talking about botters here chris. So they're real people, do you know how often someon dies at the moment in your game? As far as i can understand, a great game causes only the foolish to die, especially how you're doing it. They get auto-healed after every battle. And i'd make it a moderate fee for healing. Atleast for that first "layer" as you're calling it. So this means that they're getting 50% of their hp regenned for free after each fight. How are your fights? Are they click and see how it's done? Or is it an actual turn based combat? If it's an actual turn based combat make sure that they can use a potion, or run away from a monster. By doing this, the only one's who die are the foolish. It's common place to have to heal yourself after a few fights, the only one's who don't are tanks and they do it still but it's even less often.

[AcidicOne]

I cant believe so many post's and nobody thinking of the WoW death model, you die and and tada you get a nice debuff for -10% on your stats which will reset if you managed to get your body and died again.Mind you the debuff only lasted 10 minutes but 10 minutes can be quite a long time if say someone repeatably dies because the counter would always rest to 10.Or could always go with "Wounds" say you lose a fight and have a random script that picks a injury based on severity of your loss, say like if they had 10hp left and they got a final hit for 15, thats only a difference of -5 which would  be say a small injury aka "you have sprained your ankle,agility(insert stat here) reduced (insert percent here) for ( amount of time).The last setup I am partial to only because its realistic, if you got ya butt whooped ya would sustain some kind of injury.On the same token you could also use a similar method to slow down the hardcore grinders by establishing say "if user x does x amount of fights in x amount of time" then say "from all the vigorous fighting you have pulled a muscle" using the same formula from above,or say like you must stop for a breather or a drink whatever, would be something that ties along with the game theme.

[133794m3r]

I cant believe so many post's and nobody thinking of the WoW death model, you die and and tada you get a nice debuff for -10% on your stats which will reset if you managed to get your body and died again.Mind you the debuff only lasted 10 minutes but 10 minutes can be quite a long time if say someone repeatably dies because the counter would always rest to 10.Or could always go with "Wounds" say you lose a fight and have a random script that picks a injury based on severity of your loss, say like if they had 10hp left and they got a final hit for 15, thats only a difference of -5 which would  be say a small injury aka "you have sprained your ankle,agility(insert stat here) reduced (insert percent here) for ( amount of time).The last setup I am partial to only because its realistic, if you got ya butt whooped ya would sustain some kind of injury.On the same token you could also use a similar method to slow down the hardcore grinders by establishing say "if user x does x amount of fights in x amount of time" then say "from all the vigorous fighting you have pulled a muscle" using the same formula from above,or say like you must stop for a breather or a drink whatever, would be something that ties along with the game theme.

wow also only does that to you if you're going to be going back to the little ghost healer chick. It also harms your armor. I don't think his players will wnat to run back to their body/has armro with durability.

[Chris]

As far as i can understand, a great game causes only the foolish to die

It is the opposite in my games. Only fools take on easy prey and never die, the best players take on high value targets and die on regular basis. The game is setup the way it promotes courageous fights. The optimal solution is to select such target danger level so you die in 1-2% of cases. Of course some players can not come to terms with dying from time to time and they select lower targets so they never die, such players fall down in ranking due to lower experience (which is connected to danger level).

The game rules are set this way that these promote not only skills and persistence but also guts. Of course "guts" is a tricky thing and I do not want it turn into needless risk taking feast So on one hand I want the players to take risk and do not lose too much when "dying" on the other I want them to be smart and make them pay for "dying" too often

[Whane The Whip]

I know this thread is a few months old but I wanted to chime in. As someone that is drawn into the challenge of games, I'm very much in favor of death penalties. I think it's hard to balance it out so that the penalty presents a challenge, yet does not become too annoying. I was never keen on the WoW system... traveling to your body in ghost form or suffering from vitae, both just delay your game experience, it's not really much of a penalty, but the nag factor is high.

If you are old school like me then you may have played AC (Asheron's Call) back in the day. I don't know if AC has changed but I had a great of respect for the penalty system. Upon death, you lose your most valuable item(s). The higher your level, the more items you lost. The value of items is based on their in-game currency value and determines the buy-back value of an item if sold to a vendor. The cool thing about death items (DI's) is that they applied to both PvE and PvP... so if you really wanted to try and kill someone of significant advantage in the form of levels, there was the chance for a decent reward if you managed to pull it off (and AFK kills were popular on Darktide).

Bear in mind that value was not necessarily based on attack value, for example, a gold sword might be worth more than a steel sword, but a steel sword might do more damage. The community responded to DI's by making it a point to carry items that had values that were greater than their gear, this encouraged planning (thinking is always good).

Anyway, it's something to think about. Vitae and other stat penalties can work if balanced carefully, but it's just so common.

[incarnate]

Right now we're in the "wimpy" generation of players and I believe a lot of the pinprick death consequences really do take away from game experience. I remember old school Ultima Online, still the best MMORPG I've played to date. Die? You lose nearly EVERYTHING on you.

[Whane The Whip]

Right now we're in the "wimpy" generation of players and I believe a lot of the pinprick death consequences really do take away from game experience. I remember old school Ultima Online, still the best MMORPG I've played to date. Die? You lose nearly EVERYTHING on you.

lol, I agree with that 100%. I think the developers are trying to appeal to that crowd in order to entice new players and hence a deeper market. The more challenging games attract a smaller crowd, but that crowd tends to have greater staying power and greater loyalty.

[Marek]

lol, I agree with that 100%. I think the developers are trying to appeal to that crowd in order to entice new players and hence a deeper market. The more challenging games attract a smaller crowd, but that crowd tends to have greater staying power and greater loyalty.

Yeah, they like when the game is so hard that it abuses them and spits on them. And they they nevertheless stay, and play longer than the average player. We normally would call these people crazy.

But jokes aside, I think it's true that there are two demographics: there are the loyal competitive players who derive fun from beating hard challenges, as well as from beating other players. Then there are the non-competitive players, or "casual" players, who derive fun from the rewards a game gives them. They are more numerous, but they have a shorter attention span. They more often enjoy building, crafting accumulating and exploring, while the competitive players thrive on straightforward conquering and getting to the "top".

Since casual players like rewards, they don't deal well with penalties, such as those from failing a task or dying. UO, as well as the other paleo-MMORPGs like Everquest had harsh death penalties and they never penetrated into the casual demographic. In EQ you lost hard-earned experience, and you had to run back to your corpse without any gear (often leading to multiple deaths). Asheron's Call had gentle penalties affecting your character (the non-permanent Vitae penalty) but harsh punishment in terms of losing equipment. Then came WoW. It has no real penalty for death and keeps only the inconvenience of running back to your corpse. The game punishes you not with pain and tears, but rather with some forced boredom. That's it. No wonder the player base exploded, because it is merciful towards the more casual players.

(WoW makes further efforts to "help out" the casual player, with small details like "rested experience" which gives a little experience boost to those who don't play often, to help them catch up with the hardcore players.)

But at the very base, it's all about risk versus reward. Too harsh penalties and, like you said Chris, the players will sit around cowardly. Too little risk, and there's no reason to avoid danger and there's no challenge.

[incarnate]

Yeah, but that is just a small small factor I'd hardly attribute to the success of WoW (made by a great company). Due to a lot of these no-risk changes MMORPGs have been making, to the newer, more mainstream generation of gamers, dying has become connotated with things like "pain and tears", "punish", "harsh". For me, dying was just part of the game, which pre-AoS Ultima did so well. Though it's completely understandable why you don't see devs do this anymore or anything that deviates from the template we've come to expect; and so cookie-cutter has become the new standard.

[dsheroh]

(WoW makes further efforts to "help out" the casual player, with small details like "rested experience" which gives a little experience boost to those who don't play often, to help them catch up with the hardcore players.)

Not just those who don't play often...  It was also a great boon to us alt-o-holics.  The friend who sucked me into WoW in the first place was pissed off to no end when he saw that I was running half a dozen alts (I tend not to have a "main" in any MMO, only a ton of alts) and every single one of them was advancing faster than the single character he played on, thanks to rested xp.

Other than that, I don't quite fit into your taxonomy...  I'm a rather hardcore PVE-only player with no interest in PVP.  I mostly play for the sheer joy of kicking mob ass and don't much care about rewards or penalties beyond their direct impact on my ability to do so.  Any fear of in-game death was beaten out of me back in the days when "stay at the debt cap constantly so you can afford to buy new enhancements before you outlevel your current set" was a common strategy in City of Heroes.  Used to freak team members out to no end when I'd run off and deliberately get myself killed multiple times as fast as I could because I was running out of debt.

[AcidicOne]

I know dredging up a older post but i think this is a topic worth comming back to

The rest Xp in WoW was actually designed to keep the casual player's somewhat on par with the hardcore group, but also as the WoW loading screen states "take breaks often" to appeal to parents and other groups to give the players a reason to log off, when those of us who run multiple alts in reality just change characters use up the rest xp, and move onto the next alt.

In the game I have been revisiting now for instance largely thanks to alot of post's i have been catching up on here, I added durability to items, allowing for items to require repairs, break forcing players to rebuy,rebuild etc.

[pixlepix]

light wounds-received from dyeing. Doubled every 40 mins. You receive 1 heavy wound every 20 mins for every light wound healed at light healers
mid wounds- recieved by dyeing. Stays constant. You recieve 1 heavy wound every 20 mins for every 15 mid wounds
Heavy wounds-doubled every 40 mins. You recieve a -1% stat penalty for every heavy wound