vbGore Free Online RPG Engine

i had a few methods i've been considering. to fit with the scifi aspect im going for, one is a cloning facility. you have to buy a voucher so to speak, when you die you are brought back to the clone center. anything you had on you is lost but you keep eveything in your bank. if you dont have a voucher it's game over.
the other one is pretty much what you mentioned with descendents. same deal with losing what ever items you have on you, but the new char has access to everything in the previous ones bank. since i also have no character or skill levels it's not really that much of a loss.
also considering just straight up permadeath. when you die you die. game over. of course everything would need to be well balanced so players arent just getting one shotted, but i also want to force the player to really consider the risks before rushing in to an encounter, as i touched on in my first reply above.

Permadeath is a no. Some people may be slaughtered by other players or simply be unlucky. You want them to create new accounts or even stop playing? Hell no.

The descendants idea is old but unused, and I like it, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out how it would work without character creation right when you die, which decides what your child looks like. That'd be interesting, yeah.

I think I would have players simply lose their bodies and go to a distant land (like Heaven) to be reincarnated as new characters with beginner levels but some small advantages. I'm not sure what those advantages would be. Maybe banks would finally serve a purpose? Heck, people could commit mass suicide to have a party in Heaven. "Hey, mister 105 strength, kill me real quick!" "Some Soul: Thanks, mister 105 strength. Thanks a bunch. Feel free to take that money I left behind."

whats so bad about that? we're not talking about super mario here, i want something with a real challenge to it. as long as you can keep the game as balanced as possible, its not as bad as everyone assumes.

people quiting because of it is debatable. yes, the standard power leveling, phat lootz, epeen strokers will have a fit when their precious toons go bye bye, but every game out there is designed for them. i, along with a ton of other non typical gamers want something drastically different.

you can also argue that by not designing for that player base you are losing out on customers. well really you're going to lose them anyway amonth or two down the line when the next carbon copy flavor of the month game comes out. taking everything in such a different direction would mean a smaller player base, but it'd be a loyal player base.

interesting.

I'm thinking of a whole new different way.
Once I get the game going, you'll all be able to see what I'm talking about....

until then it's a secret

oh, and yah, I prefer emotion than all the cheap little baby players trying to be the best.

So, my game, I'm going to try to make it so it's not how much you play the game, but how you play it that makes you good.

My idea was having like descendants as ArchKnight said, you start out with all your characters possessions as you inherited them.
But with skills my idea was your skills start again pretty low but since you have "learnt them all your life" you can eventually train them to be higher and higher as you descend through generations - Obviously starting almost again through each generation.

I liked the idea of character generations as it gives a more realistic feel, I was going to have old age also to go along with it in a game plan I made.
Just my idea for it, I like the idea of permadeath in that project.

If your thinking of the descendants thing there's a few more options to add. Lets say the next generation would start out with 10% of each of there parents stats/skills, combined (at the time of conception or death, your call). Plus the player can choose one stat/skill to start at 50% with because a parent trained that stat. Players do die but part of those players lives on.

[rant]Yeah I remember back in the pen/paper days, thinking of this. I had a special female NPC in mind for a player who had exceptionaly high morality. If they could be more LawfulGood then the daughter of the greatest Paladin, then their next character would start with 18/00 strength.[/rant]

The hard part here is finding a NPC or PC Mate. Unless your playing as an A-sexual or Hermaphraditic (a real word) alien race. Players could have many children & marry off their females to other characters sorta like kings marry off there princesses to have piece between kingdoms. To keep the piece, lets say You do less damage to someone who shares you blood. The stronger the link, the less damage. You don't want to just share blood lines with just anyone. -Or- Someone with the same blood does more damage to you, especialy if your a younger generation.

Adding More ?:
If you want.... There's a time line to consider. Well not really but, kids don't just grow up when you die & need them too (not unless there clones). So you might want another account to switch back & forth between player growths. I can see players over breeding. So it could be made harder to have children. Maybe they have to collect a rare magic egg, or the region asks a heavey 10% tax on all your families money.

I guess you could allways add that whole, see them get older thing. That's a simple paper doll thing. Believe it or not you might want to add something so the players don't want to die. Like a respect gage. They can earn perks just for being around a long time, like all stores give a bigger discount as you grow older or you get permium seats at events.

More ?
There's that whole family honor thing. In Japanese culture it's pasted from father to son. The whole "family Honor". If you watch Star Trek, then it's the Klingons. If your Father was a coward then you are a coward !

[rant2]Reminds me of Chocobo racing in FF7. You got a chocobo, raced it, breed it, it lays eggs & hatch. Sometimes you get a green chocobo that walks on water. After a lot of breading & racing you get a black one that flies.[/rant2]

*chuckles* this is where cloning comes useful. They have to pay a sum to back up their current person, if they die a clone is made - but only once, they have to pay the sum again.... *EDIT* Oh... I see Gutterpunk mentioned it already -.- *grumbles* oh well


well... I dont know that can be majorly flawed in the fact it would get annoying to do the same things. If permadeath was involved then the game would have to be set easier imo. Why not just give a time limit? LOL

Clones, Robots, Descendants... all pretty much the same thing from the point of veiw of this topic. The point is there has to be a price for death so players won't shrug off death like rain.

[rant]The price of death really doesn't have to be death itself (*Hands the bowl of drugs to the next posters*). No I'm serious. All it really has to be is a penalty for players making stupid or costly choices. "WHY" you ask ??? Well..... It's a part of life. Game makers are trying to make a living breathing world, that is full of real emotions & story. Nothing more defines human history like Death, Religion, Sex. If you didn't have those 3 then human history would be slightly different. That's where you get joke games like WoW. [/rant] That rant was to bump this topic, & maybe inspire new thoughts.

Here's one: How about Avatars ? Not the icons used in forums. The the incarnation of a higher being. In this example of a game; The players character never interacts in combat but a lesser representative does for him/her. Sorta like that old game Actraiser. The cost of death would be the loss of an avatar or a follower. Creating quality avatars or the followers to make them or be them can be costly or time consuming. Players may have to settle for lower quality avatars for a time.

Well Here are my two cents. You let the Player decide if they want permadeath. If they do select they want Permadeath then you give them a bonus that does make them better then other players, something like a bonus to stats, special skills, or even quicker exp. That way the casual gamer is allowed to progress at their own pace, and the gamer who likes the challenge gets bragging rights... but if they so much as make a wrong turn *poof* they become the skeliton on the floor that lets you know you're about to die.
Permadeath would really change the dynamic of groups.

In a world of Permadeath if the healer lags out and you die, that would create some serious issues between players. So a possible switch at certain parts of the game (a church perhaps) would let the player switch from permadeath to re-spawn. This would balance the permadeath healer issue "you shouldn't have been on permadeath" They would of course lose their bonus if they turned off permadeath.

I'm all about letting the player decide how they want their adventure to progress. There could even be a way to unlock a special class if they do a certain quest in permadeath.

Here is another big issue with permadeath: new character names. When you die does your new character have the same name, or to they get a number attached to it? (Othar the 35th) This might be fun to see some of the characters whos deaths have entered the 100s, and would be a status symbol if you're still the 1st. Besides if you where Othar, and you died, how would your friends contact you? now that your dead you lose all your friends on your list, and that's just not cool. Also guilds would take a new dynamic if the leader dies... does their new character become leader, or does next in line take over? that might be fun for a rouge guild always trying to kill the leader to move up in the chain.

afraid to die in games such as these, where saving is not aviable and your progress is far beyond amazing

I kinda like that idea of toggling perma-death. Not sure how it'll play out in the real world, though. The advantage of perma-death is that it is more of a bragging right. If anyone can toggle it off an on, you remove that bragging right, and the bragging goes straight back to what level you are.

-Insert offtopic post that I couldnt resist-
Heh, you are joking? Every single wow player can qq about something, you dont have to read the forums long to see every 2nd thread is a QQ.

Also saying that wow players are all lil kids that dont have the skill or maturity to play 'real' mmorpgs is a big generilisation (spell much). I played tibia for 2 years before wow, where a death would cost about a week's worth of work (depending on ur gear/lvl/skills at the time I geuss).

Perm-death = no one ever gets above lvl 20 imo
Tibia-death = lots of qq when dieing
Ideal-Death IMO = Theres a decent punishment, but not enough to make one cry irl (ok I never cried in tibia, but tbh a death did make me depressed for the rest of the day), maybe something that can be recovered with a few hours work.
wow-death = "We tried X boss and wiped 10 times tonight, but dont worry, we will try again tomorrow night"

Problem I have with WoW deaths are its just mostly time. You either wait 30 minutes or you run to your body which is often far away. Just traveling or waiting is a stupid, and boring punishment. Taking away exp is a bit better in my opinion since you can get back into action quicker, but then all you lose is exp, the most redundant thing to get besides maybe certain items from specific mobs.

*shrugs* I got no good ideas...

Cloning is excellent for futuristic games, have you ever played EVE Online?
i'm playing the trial, and taking a LOT of ideas from there, especially from the economy (which I think it owns like... everything)

Perma death is a great touch of reality.. maybe too much, everyone dies in a game, either by accident or not... it would be very frustrating... but otherwise if they only get a loss of exp or so, yes they would be pissed, but at least not enough to quit playing...
for example, a great war between 2 guilds taking place.. there would be so much casualties, just think of how the players would get...
instead, there could be no death.. the player HP reaches 0, and he collapse, and has a recovery time.. in this time he might be taken to an hospital, it some stats and some expo decreased, and is only allowed to get out when the recovery time is completed.. there could be an alternative way, like paying an operation, then the recovery time would be gone..

this is what I think that could work in medieval games, the family thing could be annoying.. imagine we die twice in a day, we'll be playing as the son of the son of our character.. that's what I call a fast breeding =\


ps: i'm portuguese, sorry if my english sucks

i never got far enough into EVE to actually die so i dont know how they handle it, but if you like that you may want to try vendetta online. in my opinion it's a far better game anyway even if it does have a much smaller player base. the way they handle death is if your ship gets blown up its gone and you lose everything that was in it. you start off again at whatever your home station is. if you happen to have another ship stored there, great, otherwise you have to buy a new one. if you had an expensive ship with top end weapons and full of cargo its a huge loss. plus if our home station was on the other side of the galaxy you have a good 30min of ahead of you to just get back to where you were. i died like 5 times in a row, lost just about everything, and was stuck in an area where i was getting spanked by everything. it was frustrating as hell but it was my own fault. i had rushed off to an area i was no where near equipped to be in just so i could buy better gear without needing high licenses (kinda like levels) and paid the price for being impatient.
that's why i feel there needs to be a major penalty for death, just so the player is forced to really consider their actions instead of blindly rushing into things. i cant count the number of times i tried to solo world raid bosses in WoW just for shits and giggles because i knew the most i had to lose was a few gold in repair costs. though one of those stupid moments lead to me setting a game wide record which i believe i still hold.