Disruption of Death

[Best Rich Face]

This is another thread about death on Arelith. This is not a thread to whine about xp loss or stat drain, nor is it a prompt to bicker and argue over 'oo killed 'oo, or whinge over PvP rules and habits.

This is a thread where I hope folks can bring up suggestions to help improve the mechanical process of death and dying on Arelith to better facilitate fun roleplay for all involved, while preventing frustrating technical issues and oversights that actually hurt the ability of people to continue plots.

There is a specific situation that occurred last night that prompted me to start this thread. Last night, my character went on a trip to the death area after a tense scene with some enemies. I have nothing but good feelings about that interaction and those players; they acted as paragons of what I feel a good "winning" party should be like.

When I died, I was told right away these guys were offering captive RP. I was excited to get involved and waived my right to the 24 hour rule. Sadly, some of the folks who worked hard to make this play happen couldn't see it to its end or even middle. Why? Well to be blunt, I'm an idiot and didn't know that the Distant Shores death area apparently lacks a server transition node in the maze.

I had to run around Kelemvor's maze for close to an IRL hour while dealing with the legendarily poor FPS in an attempt to find a server transition so I could be raised on Cities and Planes as a captive. Meanwhile, it'd getting late for people in different timezones.
I won't lie, when I realized there wasn't a server transition, I was so frustrated by this design I nearly logged off. See, they'd transitioned over to Cities and Planes with my corpse as discussed in the immediate aftermath of the death, so I couldn't communicate with them OOC to let them know I was having problems getting there due to area design. Fortunately, Discord is a thing and I was able to inform them I wasn't blowing them off, and they were willing to come up with a different approach that worked out for most folks.

We were able to have great communication, and succeeded in an evening long interaction of fun conflict. But this was in spite of Arelith's death area, not because of it.

So how can we make this better? Can we add a transition on Distant Shores so people that die in Sibayad aren't locked out of being raised cross server like Surface/C&P settlements are able to? Can we shrink the death area maze size so players don't have to waste hours of leisure time trying to determine if they can transition if needed? Can we reduce the graphical effects in the area in a way that keeps the atmosphere gloomy but doesn't make our CPUs and GPUs take a dump?

Those would be my suggestions, at least. What are your thoughts on those? What experiences have you had with the death area that have prevented otherwise good RP from continuing, and how can improvements be made to make Death less of a frustrating Time Out, and more of a springboard for more roleplay engagement?

tl;dr: Sometimes creating roleplay is possible in spite of the death area, not because of it. How can we improve this?

[Dreams]

One idea I had recently was making a few changes that work together.
- More severe PvP death penalty (keep reading).
- Less severe PvE death penalty (what we currently have).
- The more severe can become the less severe through seeking out healing from other PCs, maybe through worship from a cleric or a craftable item.

Death has consequences, but it leads to RP as those revived try to find a way to become whole again.

[AstralUniverse]

One problem that comes to mind when considering a server transition in the DS server's death area is that people will be able to enter/exit Skal by dying, then respawning on a different server. That would be bad. It can be done if it's also made to not bother with your current location on the servers when respawning, so no matter where you respawn, you will transition back your initial 'soul crystal' (or the default location you've been granted on Arelith Entry after character creation). That way you can add a server transition to DS without making it a high traffic route in/out Skal and it would be great.

One idea I had recently was making a few changes that work together.
- More severe PvP death penalty (keep reading).
- Less severe PvE death penalty (what we currently have).
- The more severe can become the less severe through seeking out healing from other PCs, maybe through worship from a cleric or a craftable item.

Death has consequences, but it leads to RP as those revived try to find a way to become whole again.

An interesting line of thought with that idea. I dont know what I think about it still but one thing I know for sure is that I dont like the current consequences and I miss the old death system with the high exp loses because this playerbase in general still doesnt take death seriously enough in my opinion, but wants to powerbuild anyway.

[Nitro]

An interesting line of thought with that idea. I dont know what I think about it still but one thing I know for sure is that I dont like the current consequences and I miss the old death system with the high exp loses because this playerbase in general still doesnt take death seriously enough in my opinion, but wants to powerbuild anyway.

People didn't respect death more when there was a steep XP penalty, that's for sure. All that it caused was people ganking their opponents repeatedly (within the rules) to slow down their leveling or even delevel them if the conflict went on long enough.

[Liareth]

So how can we make this better? Can we add a transition on Distant Shores so people that die in Sibayad aren't locked out of being raised cross server like Surface/C&P settlements are able to? Can we shrink the death area maze size so players don't have to waste hours of leisure time trying to determine if they can transition if needed? Can we reduce the graphical effects in the area in a way that keeps the atmosphere gloomy but doesn't make our CPUs and GPUs take a dump?

Seems to me like the solution to this problem is to support cross-server raising.

[Best Rich Face]

So how can we make this better? Can we add a transition on Distant Shores so people that die in Sibayad aren't locked out of being raised cross server like Surface/C&P settlements are able to? Can we shrink the death area maze size so players don't have to waste hours of leisure time trying to determine if they can transition if needed? Can we reduce the graphical effects in the area in a way that keeps the atmosphere gloomy but doesn't make our CPUs and GPUs take a dump?

Seems to me like the solution to this problem is to support cross-server raising.

Well, yes, that sounds like a really good way to fix the problem entirely.

[Nobs]

Would be even better to expand on the subdual so we dont need to rais folks after pvp where we dont want to kill some one.

[Irongron]

I had to remove that server transition as new players to Skal didn't really understand it, and kept standing themselves on the other servers.

If cross server raising were possible though, that would be ideal.

[AstralUniverse]

I had to remove that server transition as new players to Skal didn't really understand it, and kept standing themselves on the other servers.

If cross server raising were possible though, that would be ideal.

I think better, and probably more simple to code, is that respawning will only send you to the soul crystal you're attuned to (or the default one you've had upon crossing Arelith Entry) so you can cross server all you want and respawn to the same location.

[Best Rich Face]

I had to remove that server transition as new players to Skal didn't really understand it, and kept standing themselves on the other servers.

If cross server raising were possible though, that would be ideal.

I think better, and probably more simple to code, is that respawning will only send you to the soul crystal you're attuned to (or the default one you've had upon crossing Arelith Entry) so you can cross server all you want and respawn to the same location.

While that would work fine for respawning, it doesn't address the issue of having to cross servers if your corpse is moved, as often happens in surface/underdark captures. This is especially problematic when you consider that both surface and underdark players regularly use Sibayad and the Orc Lands, which have an isolated death area.

[Wuthering]

I've been playing Arelith and NWN a long time and I'm firmly of the opinion that changing the mechanics to be more punishing won't do much to change how death is RPed. If the player doesn't feel the death is "earned" in PVP or that it's their time to go in PVE they won't give it more gravity than they story deserves. Of course there are exceptions and some players are better about it than others but I don't think a severe hardcore penalty is the way to go especially in PVP where fights tend to be picked by the side who knows they will win. It's really hard to make someone treat a character "death" as seriously as they probably should if they feel the PVP fight that caused it was unfair, random or shouldn't have happened.

I do wonder if there's something to the idea of adding an "incapacitated" or "gravely wounded" stage before death, where the player can't do anything but in the tradition of every fantasy or action movie are somehow still clinging on to a scrap of life. The character's not dead but effective still have to go through the current process to be revived.. And maybe to actually kill a character would take much more effort somehow. Just a thought.. It wouldn't solve all of the problems but at least might ease the feeling that death isn't properly RPed.

[garrbear758]

I've been playing Arelith and NWN a long time and I'm firmly of the opinion that changing the mechanics to be more punishing won't do much to change how death is RPed. If the player doesn't feel the death is "earned" in PVP or that it's their time to go in PVP they won't give it more gravity than they story deserves. Of course there are exceptions and some players are better about it than others but I don't think a severe hardcore penalty is the way to go especially in PVP where fights tend to be picked by the side who knows they will win. It's really hard to make someone treat a character "death" as seriously as they probably should if they feel the PVP fight that caused it was unfair, random or shouldn't have happened.

I do wonder if there's something to the idea of adding an "incapacitated" or "gravely wounded" stage before death, where the player can't do anything but in the tradition of every fantasy or action movie are somehow still clinging on to a scrap of life. The character's not dead but effective still have to go through the current process to be revived.. And maybe to actually kill a character would take much more effort somehow. Just a thought.. It wouldn't solve all of the problems but at least might ease the feeling that death isn't properly RPed.

Could make all death blows in pvp put the opponent at -1 HP and bleeding out. The biggest downside of this I see is clerics could use heal/mass heal to drag fights out for a long time by constantly reviving their party from the -1, which could be partially mitigated by stripping all buffs when at -1, and/or adding a significant debuff when returned to consciousness until resting.

[AstralUniverse]

I had to remove that server transition as new players to Skal didn't really understand it, and kept standing themselves on the other servers.

If cross server raising were possible though, that would be ideal.

I think better, and probably more simple to code, is that respawning will only send you to the soul crystal you're attuned to (or the default one you've had upon crossing Arelith Entry) so you can cross server all you want and respawn to the same location.

While that would work fine for respawning, it doesn't address the issue of having to cross servers if your corpse is moved, as often happens in surface/underdark captures. This is especially problematic when you consider that both surface and underdark players regularly use Sibayad and the Orc Lands, which have an isolated death area.

If you you execute my suggestion then you can just put the server transition in DS back where it was?