Death in Imperian

Jeremy Saunders

I would like to make considerable changes to death in Imperian. Of course, I am not going to do that without talking to players about it, as I am not a fan of hate mail and death threats.

The biggest complaint I get from players, especially new players, it how we do death in Imperian. While it is a fun concept, people hate it, are confused by it, etc.

In short, dying in a game (any game) is not fun. The Underworld tends to make it even less fun.

The tentative plan is this:

1. Disconnect Dis from the death sequence. 
   
2. Dis will come back. We are putting a HUGE effort into finishing some new underworld areas right now. All of the cities will have UW versions. Dis will connect those 6 areas. They will all be high level bashing, spawnwaves, bossmobs, and questing. Their will be some ways to motivate PK as well.
   
3. Create a new death sequence.

Here are my starting thoughts for a new death sequence.

Idea One

1. Player dies
   
2. Player enjoys several messages about death while waiting to respawn.
   

• 10 seconds if killed in their city
  
• 20 seconds if killed anywhere outside a city
  
• 30 seconds if killed in an enemy city
  

Player is moved (still dead) to a portal room based on their city.

Portal room has exits to their city and townes.

Player leaves the portal room and is resurrected as they leave.

Pros

• People are back to the game quickly. Playing the game instead of waiting around doing nothing.
  

Cons

• Players will continually throw themselves at each other in heated PvP moments. Not sure this is a problem, but it might be.
  

Idea Two

1. Same thing as above
   
2. After a player comes back to life their max HP is set to 25%. After 1 minutes it is 50%. After 2 minutes it is 75%. After 3 minutes it is 100%.
   

Pros

• People can get right back to playing, but will think twice about running back to PvP.
  
• They can run back into PvP, but at a risk.
  

Cons

• Takes longer to be able to get back to bashing or other non PvP activities.
  

So in both of these, the idea is to get players back into the game quickly. I think that in all cases this is a good idea. Players want to play the game, not watch the game (or get stuck, lost, or confused in the UW). The only exception may be PvP. Personally, I would love getting right back into PvP, and people coming right back at me in PvP. However, I know that I am generally the exception to the rule when it comes to that.

At any rate. Please add your comments here. I am MORE then open to other ideas as well. Although I am pretty decided on changing up how death works as very few people like it. 

Don't worry about the RP behind all these changes (should they happen). We will plan events, RP, and story for all of it. Let's not make that part of the conversation right now. What I would like is a mechanic that people would enjoy.

Also remember this is not set in stone. These are my initial thoughts to stimulate the discussion

Ahkan

Problems:

-Gossamer anchors (token item): I can buy my way out of your negatives. I shouldn't be able to. I should get a SMALL buff, not a huge one for my pittance of tokens.
-Aryana obelisk. This is broken anyways, but it's still a factor. Whoever has the Aryana obelisk side steps a lot of death penalties now. 

You should also plan on a separate death mechanic for everyone below level x who dies outside of pk. All newbies should get a guardian angel or a baby entity that runs in and bunny foo foos them back to life with words of wisdom. "Hey, you died to a fat woodling. Don't you think you should set your sights a bit lower? Go kill Jesse instead."

If a novice dies to pk, you should have the rescue bunny say, "Whelp. What did you think would happen with 250 health and a novice sword built as cheap as possible."

As for the rest of the game, I'm ok with stiffer penalties. If you're going to make a whole underworld mechanic, I'd make death take an annoying amount of time that I have to interact with the underworld to reduce to something manageable. This forces players, all players, to get off their ass and go get involved in the world to get non-annoying death times. This is something that Imperian is and has always been missing. There's nothing to stop me from being Ahkan-afk-bot, wait shardfall.

Jeremy Saunders

We would remove/change all existing items that adjust or change death. Like the obelisk. So don't worry about those.

Ahkan

FYI: Khizan is going to scream refund. (You've been warned)

Jeremy Saunders

One thing I considered is basing the "respawn" time on quests and other things that people can do for their city in the underworld. That may be annoying though. And annoying is something I want to get away from in a "fun" game.

Selthis

A couple of ideas.  Rather than just being specific city portal rooms, make it circle rooms.  So Antioch/Ithaqua willl have their exists connected.  Same with Magick and demonic.  You get dropped off at a portal room with 2 exists North of Ithaqua exits, South for Antioch exits.  Those open up into a separate room with exits for the specific org.  Sometimes  it makes more sense to rally at specific spots (Shardfall in redwood cottons I'd be screwed rallying at Stavenn, but  counterpoint shardfall in  Barren wastelands I'd be screwed rallying in Khandava.)

Ahkan brings up good ideas to make novice death better.   I really do think that anyone in the newbie levels should be autorezzed  at their circle's portal room.  

I do like the stiffer penalties as far as max hp since that  somewhat reduces huge repeated zerg rush advantage that aryana potentially provides  and rewards people for annihilating the other team.   

Anchor: No clue what you would do with that in this situation except I guess maybe reduce the times  on option 1 by 1/3 before you're "no longer dead" so it would be 7, 14, 20. 

Aryana obelisk: I have no clue how this would be fixed at all.  maybe make people come back at 50%, get 75% at 1 minute and 100% at 2 minutes?

Edit:  Just to be clear, I'm supporting a combination of option 1 and 2.  Just have me start coming back as soon as I die and be done with it. Please don't make me quest or focus aryana to get no longer dead.  This still gives you a window to be rezzed.

One other thing, I assume resurrection skills will bypass penalties if you include that?

Cadeyrn

I don't like the idea of the health restriction on respawning being the length that is mentioned in the post, but I'm not against the idea if it were a shorter window or different figures. 

30s of death + applying defences + catching up on the situation above (presuming death removes all forms of communication with the outside world, similar to FOCUS ARYANA now) + moving back to the action seems long enough of a penalty. This has the upside of allowing teams that work together better to be more efficient than mobs of players. And this doesn't really effect people who were just out hunting.

Gurn

I like the idea of option 2, but I'd say to reduce those times significantly for those who have died hunting or other things, and to have the longer restrictions for PK deaths.

Jeremy Saunders

Gurn said:

I like the idea of option 2, but I'd say to reduce those times significantly for those who have died hunting or other things, and to have the longer restrictions for PK deaths.

We did bat around an idea with different times based on PvP vs PvE death.

Ahkan

Death is death. With xp loss being gone, PVE death and PVP death both have the same loss mechanic, time. Why differentiate? (outside of obvious raid scenarios)

Ahkan

While we're at it, can we get cooldowns on player rezzes? (Poor Shayor)

Also works with PvP.

Iluv

I like the current death mechanic. I'm personally not for the idea of being immediately respawned into a portal room at death. It would make the game feel too much like an FPS. It is the raft mechanic that might be frustrating to other players in my mind. The idea of expanding Dis to include Underworld cities is exciting though and perhaps with that there is a way to solve the issue of single raft. Have multiple raft/elevators to the world of the living at each corresponding Underworld city that go to different rooms the player can choose. ((That is essentially the portal room but just more thematically fitting)).

Selthis

There is a difference between spawning instantly, and waiting a set number of seconds and coming back with a penalty to rush back in.  For the record, I only support instant respawn for newbies, to make the early experience less painful.

I think a combination of 1 and 2 is workable and provides incentives to  not die without making me set up a script to autorun Dillinger to accumulate x*2 coins for my team if we get wiped.  

Edit: note the rest  of the IRE games are basically wait x second and respawn outside of cave or  something similar.  A lot of our traffic also comes from cross pollination so why not make the  experience largely similar rather than forcing someone from Achaea to run 3 quests with no real insight in how to run them down in Dis in the first place?

Lionas

Rather than reduced health, just increase damage from players. That way you can get back into PVE without a delay, but you have to think twice about PVP.

Ambrose

Ahkan said:

Death is death. With xp loss being gone, PVE death and PVP death both have the same loss mechanic, time. Why differentiate? (outside of obvious raid scenarios)

To help speed up the poor saps like me that are still trying to bash their way up the levels?

I think I approve of all of this... I think the other option you could take is to make death fun... have quests, bashing grounds (of course then you have to deal with death within death... Inception-y), or something like that you can actually do and make advancements for your character in instead of "quest, coin, quest, coin, buy passage outta here... or almost as likely 'Focus Aryana'" ... it strikes me there are some good possibilities when you have a circle devoted to demons and death and other emo stuffs that making death something that could be appealing on occasion could have interesting possibilities. The whole Odysseus questing through the Underworld sort of thing... but eh, that's just my thoughts. I'm not opposed to the FPS mechanic, but that is largely a matter of preference.

Khizan

The biggest problem with Death in Imperian, and what is probably the source of all the complaints from experienced players, is the huge bottleneck at the ferry. This leads to things like sitting there while dead waiting for the rest of your group to get their crap together so you don't leave somebody behind, and it leads to things like having an extra long wait time because somebody took the ferry just as you got there.

Any system you come up with that doesn't have those restrictions is going to be an improvement, really. The only real thing of importance with a change like that is that it doesn't let people graveyard zerg.

EDIT: And the graveyard zerg is problematic because the death/respawn timer can easily be lower than the amount of time required to capture a PvP objective, making the objective be resolved by a game of "who will get tired of this first?".

Mathiaus

I actually like the health reduction. 1-2 minutes isn't that long of a time to me, but I guess other people are far more impatient than I am. Otherwise I agree with Lionas' suggestion for damage increase.

Ahkan

Mathiaus said:

I actually like the health reduction. 1-2 minutes isn't that long of a time to me, but I guess other people are far more impatient than I am. Otherwise I agree with Lionas' suggestion for damage increase.

Your favorite class to pk with is "Hurry up and wait for me to kill you in a manner you can't stop." We're not surprised.

(I couldn't resist.)

Jeremy Saunders

@Khizan Yeah, I forgot to mention that one. That is a common complaint. Especially when we are running events and so on.

Khizan

My problem with the health reduction thing is that if you're going to give me a penalty that's so harsh that it makes the game all but unplayable, there's no real point in letting me out of Dis that early.

That's why I'd prefer the +PvP_damage idea. It prevents graveyard zerging, since that's the problem with fast rez timers, but doesn't otherwise interfere with playing the game.

Jeremy Saunders

Well. Would you rather sit in Dis with nothing to do. Or in your city defing up and getting ready to fight?

It seems like people are against really fast rezzing (10 to 30 seconds) with no negatives. (zerging)

Are people more for a fast rez with a damage or health malus over a couple minutes? Or maybe a rez with no malus, but a longer time. Maybe 30 seconds to a minute? Or do you hate it all?

Jeremy Saunders

Another option is a period of forced grace too. I get killed, I come back quick, but I have 60 seconds of forced grace until I can jump back in.

Azefel

inb4 grace abuse scouting issues

(as if anyone actually cares about that)

Ahkan

Eh, the problem you run into is there's a certain breed of people who feel graced and become the vulgar, poor trash talking idiots we've come to know and despise. People who are emotionally compromised because they died can't be trusted with 2-5-10-30 minutes of enforced grace. As a sad kick in the pants, they usually issue you after the fact.

Jeremy Saunders

Yeah, not sure why grace does that. I was thinking 60 seconds tops probably. But whatever. Lots of options.

Dicene

Yeah, I don't like the sounds of 10-30 second rezzing, regardless of health malus. Health malus is only a concern when you're the target, and if you're just running into combat after dying once, you're not the target. Shorter rez times in team combat only really help large teams. Personally, I find that with an Anchor and utilizing Nyrroth, my time dead feels exactly long enough. And with the occasional use of an instant-rez, I can get back in fast enough to be useful if it's a particularly important conflict. I think a small tweak like slightly lowering the Dis fall time for people without Anchors would be a good place to start, without having a big influence on how team conflict goes.

Edit: I can grammar.

Sarrius

Dis is dumb, remove it and give us either option. I would prefer 2 in some capacity to prevent megazerging.

Selthis

My ideal situation: 

Instarez at circle portal room for those  under level 30.

30 second flat autoout of dis for everyone else

sliding scale of negatives in pvp  based on time. Either take more damage or have less health for  with breakdowns at 1 minute, 1 minute 30 seconds  and 2 minutes.

Beyond that, I don't think you need anything too crazy, but it adds some cost to death, which is what we need and 2 minutes is honestly pretty short since I normally focus aryana and go get a drink when I die anyway.

Aulani

Jeremy said:

Yeah, not sure why grace does that. I was thinking 60 seconds tops probably. But whatever. Lots of options.

I do not like the idea of in forced grace because it is annoying when you're trying to def back up. So many of Druid's 'defenses' or preparations, like summoning roots, are aggressive actions. So I'm forced to wait through grace before I can even begin to start getting set again. (This is also why I avoid bloodbaths completely. Having to resummon roots each time after waiting for your grace to drop.) Where, in Hunter for example, while taking Nyrroth out, I can summon my basilisk to me and nearly completely def back up before I hit Caanae.

I like the idea of some variation of option two and as Selthis said, make it easy on the newbies.

Khizan

Jeremy said:

Well. Would you rather sit in Dis with nothing to do. Or in your city defing up and getting ready to fight?

What I would prefer is a penalty that prevents people from graveyard zerging PvP conflicts, but which doesn't have an effect on other areas of the game. If I lag out while I'm bashing, I'd rather not end up having to wait to go back out. 

The length of time it takes to go from dead to combat effective is hugely important for PvP. On the other hand, it's basically irrelevant outside of PvP scenarios, and so I don't see a reason to give those people a penalty which is basically "tab out for a few minutes and go do something else", which is what any real penalty will end up being. 

That's why I'd like to make the penalty increased damage taken from PvP. It has the same general effect as the reduced health, in that it makes you far less tanky and a squishier target in PvP, but it doesn't have an effect outside of PvP. 

Dicene said:

Yeah, I don't like the sounds of 10-30 second rezzing, regardless of health malus. Health malus is only a concern when you're the target, and if you're just running into combat after dying once, you're not the target. 

Go ahead. Run back into my fight at 25% of your max health and see how low of a target priority you are. 

Garryn

As a random thought, how about a 2-3 minute 'forced PK-only pacifism' which would prevent you from attacking other players and loyals, but would still permit bashing and everything else?