Why should I be scared of death?

Edric

Maybe there is some HELP DEATH file that explains this, but I'm not currently in-game and the wiki post doesn't mention this at all.

I'm speaking strictly in an IC perspective here, the lack of stats/exp/whatever (or lack thereof) has no importance here. Your character dies. Charon is there. He brings you back. Not much else changes.and your character proceeds with whatever they were doing.

Are we all playing characters that are effectively immortal? Why would death be anything more than a minor setback (lol Kael'thas)? Seems this kind of status would provoke much more reckless and aggressive behavior between enemy factions.

Is it that every time you die, you're actually not sure if you're making it back to Charon? Do we all just get lucky time and time again, and the next time we die could be for real?

Jeremy Saunders

As fun as that would be, people would get tired of it. Especially is they died from someone killing them for no reason. I would like it, but most players (99.9%) would not. But then, I only play Diablo 3 on hardcore.

Edric

Oh god, that would be terrifying. I guess in a game where hitting max level quickly that would be a bit more feasible (eg Realm of the Mad God). But here permadeath would be devastating.

I was thinking more from just a roleplay perspective. Edric doesn't *know* he's just going to get a free pass back, does he? He's still scared that he might die to that pack of 6 locusts, and die for good?

Jules

A player over on Achaea summed up the actual nature of adventurers on IRE games (and probably most games period, really):

Nim said:

This was probably a bad example, because while Achaea is the perfect set up for roleplaying immortals that just build up grudges, opinions, and political stances, most people play their adventurers as mortals rather than functional immortals (even though adventurers are basically the latter - they're like freaking vampires, stealing life energy from others to bolster their own, and sometimes going to sleep for centuries). Even if this was a roleplay about immortals that build up grudges, only a fool fails to adapt.

Jules

(so er, basically, we're all playing Lusternia - that is the one with vampires, right?)

Edric

I hadn't thought about it like that, and it makes a lot of sense. Both styles are perfectly valid in the context of this game.

Now I guess I'm wondering what's the "convention" here--are we mortals or Daedra Lords? Which way do most people sway?

Jules

We're mortals who live indefinitely, can die (quite regularly even) and be resurrected.  We also never age, of course, other than counting the actual number of years we've existed.  I have no idea how people play it over here, being rather new myself, but the mechanics pretty much describe what Nim rather hilariously stated.  As for death itself, glorious lowbie-hood is the time to enjoy not being afraid of it.  Once you've done enough soul crushing bashing to reach really high levels, people tend to be more cautious and you really can't fault them.  Your "expee" is very directly a source of power for your adventurer, too, so they should care to some degree.  But in the way that someone who is pretty much immortal would care.  That said, I had a ball figuring out how to open a strange door and promptly dying to enormous crabs with my IG fiance over on Achaea last night... mhmm.  

Eoghan

You no longer lose experience upon death in Imperian.

Editing for clarity: Death to guards in cities does cause experience loss, and death to a player causes a loss of PK xp (but not overall xp).

Jules

Interesting.  For player deaths only I take it (because I've done a lot of dying to mobs lately)?  I think that's pretty neat.  This place has been described by some as "almost a beta server" and that frankly only piqued my interest even more.  From an RP standpoint, I guess it still has the effect of taking someone out of a battle for dominance/tangible power (like the shard things), so it's not like it should be totally irrelevant.   

Eoghan

Death to mobs (other than guards in affiliated territories) does not cause XP loss. Death to players causes a loss of PK xp, but not overall xp.

Edric

Yeah, I understand the mechanics perfectly. It's the roleplay aspect that I'm trying to figure out. Jules's Achaea description makes a lot of sense, and even the lack of xp loss might encourage more IC action given the lack of OOC consequences.

Khizan

You don't fear death because you're afraid of what happens when you die; you fear dying in embarrassing ways. This is why Khizan/Juran will fearlessly charge guards or enormous teams, and yet we will coordinate fights against Menoch and such with military precision. There is no shame in dying to the big side of a 9v4, but there is shame in losing a 3v3 to Menoch/Kryss/etc.

This is my OOC view on the matter, but it's also Khizan's IC view on things, which is how he justifies battle plans like "We're going to go in there and kill guards until we die, then we're going to come back and do it again." Death is a temporary setback; war stories are forever.

Ahkan

The min-maxing population of the game figured out that death was meaningless and had been gaming it for years. Given the span of time(weeks, months, years) your net xp change was almost always positive if you played the game. These people alwaysfigured that death never mattered (and it didn't) so they played accordingly. Fear of dying held back a large population of the game for years because of that short term net loss per death. When  the game is heavily reliant on player involvement, death avoidance led to a lot of bland interactions. Paired with autocuring, meaningless death really opened up the game for a lot of people and made the game more interesting. 

Jeremy Saunders

Khizan said:

You don't fear death because you're afraid of what happens when you die; you fear dying in embarrassing ways. 

I guess we need to invent more embarassing ways to die.

Khizan

You're welcome to try, but it'll be awfully hard to top losing to Menoch

Edric

Ahkan said:

Paired with autocuring, meaningless death really opened up the game for a lot of people and made the game more interesting. 

I agree. Without Autocuring and the lack of death experience loss, I'd have a low chance of getting involved in pvp. This is probably good for the veterans too.

Iniar

Ahkan said:

Fear of dying held back a large population of the game for years because of that short term net loss per death.

Fear of dying still holds back a large chunk of the population:
Therian (waddup @Khizan)
Alvetta
Celidon
Raksha band

Sarrius

Yeah, most of Magick still seems to be convinced that death sucks. It might have something to do with the 20k essence chunks they lose - two of three active sects in the circle desperately need all the essence they can get for different reasons. Who knows. If they would just show up and give as good as they got, they would see it isn't such an issue.

Khizan

Iniar said:

Alvetta

I got Alvetta today

Ahkan

Khizan said:

Iniar said:

Alvetta

I got Alvetta today

Khizan

Sarrius said:

Yeah, most of Magick still seems to be convinced that death sucks. It might have something to do with the 20k essence chunks they lose - two of three active sects in the circle desperately need all the essence they can get for different reasons. Who knows. If they would just show up and give as good as they got, they would see it isn't such an issue.

From what Bellentine had been saying, a lot of their sect leaders were being really anal retentive about belief. I can see it in the early days, because I lost my temper with a few members of the Jackals. I'd bash 500k essence up in a day and they'd go lose 200k+ to PvP deaths each day every day without ever trying to bash anything back up.

After you gain all your ritual groups, though, there's really no reason to care and anybody who does care about this excessively is being awful.

Veratyr

On that same topic Khizan, I remember getting yelled at from somebody (Sarrius? no.) when I got in the sect of the Hunt because I was using too much belief on favours. Specifically, I was using more than I was putting in.

I lol'd.