PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rakhun on December 09, 2007, 08:09:59 pm
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As many of you have noticed, respawning from DR can now result in 30 minutes of being pinned to the ground at the spawn point, unless you drop or sell your items
(because of the death penalty halving your stats, resulting in half capacity of carrying things)
The point of this was to stop miners from taking a shortcut back to melt and/or sell their ores (yes, the pinning was the actual point of the death penalty, not a bug, according to Xillix)
I find this to be the wrong way of dealing with this issue. Today I spoke to a dev who agreed that it was a bad way of doing it and he came up with a great idea for an alternative, that instead of holding people by their spawn point for 30 minutes if they carry too much1 they would respawn where they died, making it more of an out-of-body experience, and it wouldn't be a shortcut to anything, just a delay (but not a delay where you sit and do nothing at all, note that in this alternative you would not still be pinned to the ground)
1. (and keep in mind that also people that do not use it as a shortcut suffers from it if they happen to carry 50+% of what they can normally carry)
The point of this thread is that the issue needs focus so it can be brought up at the PS team meeting
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I like that idea :) Sounds more logical ...
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I thought you already talked to a dev about it.
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Problem no. 1: When people have to /die because unstick will not work.
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they would respawn where they died, making it more of an out-of-body experience, and it wouldn't be a shortcut to anything, just a delay (but not a delay where you sit and do nothing at all, note that in this alternative you would not still be pinned to the ground)
Problem no 2. this could be abused with one mining ore and the other melting. they meet at the dr then come back to their respectives position :)
Solution : make Dr a separate instance from others. in that way, that horrible situation wont appear and keep all its sens :)
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If it's possible, trading and dropping items to the ground could be disabled in DR.
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Phinehas: Nope, I haven't, not to someone who understood it was an issue at least
Parallo: That rarely ever happens anymore since there have been improvements both on unsticking and the matter of not getting stuck in the first place, and if it happens that you have no way to get out on your own then there are GMs to help you.
and yes, trading could be disabled in DR (both /trade and dropping and picking up), making it singleplayer doesn't sound like a good idea for an MMORPG :)
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GM's are busy people too, and for all i know they don't cover the full 24h.
Best suggestion I can come up with it that you respawn at the beginning of the map where you died. The DR walk is much longer then a map walk (I think, haven't been there for awhile) But hey! Death penalty isn't that bad, I mean Who goes to fight while fully loaded? A good fighter tries to be a light as possible ;)
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Now why would you disable trading and dropping in the DR? It is just another world. That makes no sense.
As for the original post, I am not quite sure what it means, but I have been suggesting a new method. 'Crawl'. On your bellies, worms. If overloaded with stuff, you are going to crawl for the next 25 minutes. In fact, I would make everyone crawl for at least five minutes, regardless of how much is being carried. Death is not a picnic.
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Socius: what if you are not going into battle, just walking from one place to another?
and let me remind you that there are yet no banks to unload our things at, so it only works if you're carrying around on worthless crap.
Under the moon: your solution is very good too, and about disabling trading, it's more for those who see it as a possibility to abuse, personally I don't mind. I just think requiring people to keep PS on but do nothing for 30 minutes is a very bad solution to it, it brings my mind to powerlevelling by standing in the clacker pit in defensive stance..
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And DR is not like another world, it could be a bit like an immaterial one, where you have just spiritual interactions, so no trade and pick up is maybe more appropriate
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No, it is exactly like another world. Your 'soul', your body, and all of your items get 'ported' there all at once. It states that clearly in ingame books. It is not a 'spirit' realm.
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Hey, I have a better idea!
It might be a bit farfetched and all but I think it has definite benefits ... well here's the idea, ready?
Don't die!
With the exception of newbies and the rare bug (which will be fixed in time) it's very, very possible to minimize risks and keep your character alive while still enjoying the game to it's full potential. Oh and no disadvantaging the Death Realm! Some people have to live down there you know.
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That's true, Esilet has never died \\o//
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You are just ignoring the issue here, perhaps because you have powerlevelled and won't possibly be killed by an ulber anymore?
and guess what, when "Esilet" does at some point die he/she might have to wait 30 minutes to continue playing.
Really it doesn't matter what you might have done, there should not be a long, forced waiting period anywhere in a game (not intentionally at least, not a lot you can do about loading times), there should be other measures to make death scary (as if having to wait 30 minutes was scary, it's just boring)
also a note for you "don't die" hippies, there are some quests (I know they are few, but they are definitely there) that require you to go to DR
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More scary? Hmmmm....
/me goes to put creatures in the DR that eat your character and cause True Death, and makes them wander randomly.
Fear.
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hmm, true death? I hope you don't mean char deletion or something.
apart from that, it sounds quite good, make people run in horror, not in excitement to do everyday stuff like selling their ores :)
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Read the books in the DR, I believe in one it stats that one of the gods came forth from the dark crystal and stated that it was unstable. And because it was unstable, the god would take energy from all that passed through the DR.
There is several other bits of lore that would be a good solution to the problem at hand.
Also, it should be the curse of the (what ever that dark gods name is).
I don't remember the books exactly, but as I understand it; the lore translates into the following.
-As you pass through the DR, you are forced to give up a portion of your being, (A slow drain on your HP, PHY STA, MEN STA, and Mana)
- You age very quickly once you exit the DR, (Your HP, PHY STA, MEN STA, and Mana will drain rather quickly, forcing you to make a run for you healing spells and items else risk dieing and going back to the DR again.)
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- You age very quickly once you exit the DR, (Your HP, PHY STA, MEN STA, and Mana will drain rather quickly, forcing you to make a run for you healing spells and items else risk dieing and going back to the DR again.)
That isn't quite true. You do not age in the DR but the time you would have aged by rapidly catches up with you when you leave.
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yes, that is Dakkru you speak of, but are you saying that is reason enough to make the game unplayable for half an hour? one suggestion I made on IRC was to keep the halvation of stats, but to never set the carrying limit lower than what one is currently carrying
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I see it as making sense that if you are carrying things and you become half as strong as before you may not be albe to continue carrying them.
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don't you think if you were able to run with those items before, then you should at least be able to crawl with your items when your stats are halved?
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If you are no longer strong enough to carry them, no.
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how about "when you are no longer strong enough to _run_ with them"?
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I thought the carrying limit was a limit of what you could carry and not a limit of what you could carry while running. Forgive my ignorance.
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You aren't disabled because of the curse .. you chose to sit still for thirty minutes because you refuse to drop some of your equipment. That is a player's choice.
Death needs to be annoying, simply because we all know this is a game and that knowledge alone prevents us from doing anything scary, it's not real how can it be scary? So scary is replaced with irritating. You may not like it and others may not like it but that is the entire point. ;D
If you don't want to sit still, train to become stronger or don't carry so much with you. Or, like I said, don't die. It has nothing to do with being a powerful character whatsoever .. it has everything to do with avoiding risks. If you don't want to die you better think twice before picking a fight with anyone, be they player or NPC. You also watch your step and avoid steep cliffs. Then you'll stay alive for as long as you want.
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Here is an idea when you are at your max capacity your movement rate is 1/8 normal. If you die and suffer the halving effect you move at 1/64th your unencumbered rate. Stamina loss can be changed similarly. Being unable to move at all is not annoying enough, moving really, really slow is better.
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Crawl, worms, crawl!
/me want's a DR curse crawl animation bad.
Coming back from the DR is like falling into feezing water for a few minutes. When you come out, you can barely move.
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yes, slow crawling is good, so people will have something to do while waiting, and apart from that it will help avoid having several characters merged into each other at the spawn points.
And another note: I think the death curse should start when you spawn into DR. Perhaps that does not fit 100% with the story of Dakkru and her curse, but that is where you are actually dead, when you respawn you are actually alive again, though still weak probably
Edit: and perhaps crawling could be special for when the affected stats are too low to carry the items but the original stats are not, for the sake of compatibility with old ideas and rules
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And another note: I think the death curse should start when you spawn into DR. Perhaps that does not fit 100% with the story of Dakkru and her curse, but that is where you are actually dead, when you re-spawn you are actually alive again, though still weak probably
I'll re-read the books, but i think Dakkru makes you pay the price as you travel through the DR and not when you leave.
So here is my idea:
When you enter the DR you will be cursed by Dakkru's curse to crawl/sneak until you do one of two things.
1. You can crawl/sneak your way out of the DR and upon exiting the DR the curse will be gone. (And because of the sneak/crawl it will take an additional 30 min to exit the DR. Players will be moving instead of going AFK to wait for the curse to be gone.)
2. You can pledge yourself to the Dark Crystal in which Dakkru resides to remove the curse; however, if you exit the DR after pledging yourself to the Dark Crystal when an eclipse is not in progress, then you will come under the current curse and have you stats halved. (You can either have the player repeat the process every time he/she visits the DR or have it be a permanent pledge or make quests to permanently pledge or de-pledge yourself to the dark crystal or all of the above.)
I think this holds more true to the games mythology.
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Perhaps there should be two portal set up when the DR is next updated. One for your racial spawn point, the other for where you died. The racial spawn point would take more out of you while respawning in the same spot would take less (but likely still some). I also believe that the DR penalty should be gradually lifted off over the half hour.
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Next-best thing to "crawling"
1) Keep a sack with you, and place as much as you can in the sack for burden's sake.
2) When you get out of the DR, drop the sack, move as far as you can from it, and grab it.
3) Repeat step 2 until you get where you're going (an inch at a time) or more likely, recover from the DR's curse and can just walk. :P
I'm with Zan and UtM on this one. If you put your character in risky situations, you deserve the consequences. If you have to die to escape a spot, learn from it and be more careful next time. And of course, don't haul around half a warehouse's worth of weaponry, armor, and misc. items.
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Kieve: I don't think Zan's ideas match with UtM's
Zan just says that you should not do anything risky, just sit on a rock all day, or die and sit at a spawn point all day.
UtM on the other hand speaks of crawling, which is far different from being pinned to the ground completely.
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I'm noticing a pattern here, and it can be related to most aspects of life.
Before Curse: The overwhelming majority complains that people exploit death and there is no punishment for dying.
During Implentation: Most say that the curse should be added, but a few say no
After Implementation: The majority hate the curse, call it unfair, and refuse to accept alternatives.
Speculative Future: The curse is removed because of overwhelming dissent to the curse. A month later there is much complaining over explotation and that there is no punishment for dying.
Back to the topic:
If you hate the curse, consider the alternatives. Nearly every game ever made has a punishment for dying. Most multiplayer online games remove items. Console games make it a game over, although you might get several lives before you are forced to reload a save or checkpoint and start over. 30 minutes of sitting aren't that bad.
Alternative ideas with the current system:
1. As it has been stated, don't die. It isn't that hard. You generally have to be fighting something, and fighting is always a risk. Glitch deaths are rare now, and gms can help you if on.
2.Carry less items. Carry what you need. Make a mule if you must.
3. So you died. You are carrying 40 gold ores and wearing full plate. What can you do? Chat with friends, guilds, or even write a blank book. I always have a few in case I get bored and no one I know is on, then I sell the books to those random people running around collecting player-written books.
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you are missing the point there, I am not against a punishment for death, I just think it should be a sensible one.
*Sitting for 30 minutes is not a sensible punishment
*People do die, not often if you're not a risktaker, but accidents do happen
*Is not mules considered a cheat and OOC? it should not be necessary
*Everyone that dies is _not_ a miner taking a shortcut, not everyone has the majority of their inventory filled with things that you can just dig up from the ground, personally I carry several items that come from people close to me, that I keep as memory of them, those are no worthless things you would just throw away
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So make sure to carry a bunch of strength potions. Sell your armor to the Death Guardian. The only reason you have to sit there for 30 minutes is because you choose to sit there for 30 minutes. If you are weak train your strength and endurance. It is hard to believe you carry more than 150 weight of stuff you cannot bear to part with. Call a guild mate or buddy to come and pick up your extra. There is lots you can do. You should be able to trade away your excess and perhaps that is something the devs can look at changing.
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Well having a bank would definitely solve having to carry it around everywhere, but I haven't seen any in-game, have you?
Selling my armor is unfortunately not enough.
Drinking lots of strength potions and powerlevelling strength is also OOC, it's simply not the right way
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There is a bank in-game, the item storage feature just isn't finished yet.
Oh and stop exaggerating, when I say you can easily avoid dying that doesn't mean all you can do is sit on a rock. You can fight but you have to know what to fight, also when to fight and when to run. Now if all that is OOC too .. then my guess is you made a weak, overconfident character that ends up dead a lot. It's a miracle he still manages to come back from the death realm every time. :P
I'm in full support of UtM's crawling idea but knowing most of my characters, They'll rather sit still for half an hour than disgrace themselves by crawling over the dirty floor like a maggot.
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I rarely die at all, but you seem to be trying to say that since it shouldn't happen often it's not a problem?
And the crawling would of course be optional, no one forces you to move, only to sit still
and don't come with an excuse that there is a bank, because there isn't one in-game, the feature only exists in the engine, and only for money so far afaik
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Ok, I'm done here .. you're hellbent on getting your right anyway. :P
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Oh, I forgot to mention that I would give a second 'debuff' on top of the curse. Only this one would last for at least an hour.
'Foul Stench' or 'Stench of decay'.
Oh ya. You read that right. Your character would smell terrible. Some NPCs would not talk to you, and your character would have an auto-greet for everyone you came into contact with.
<Player> smells of death and decay.
Mwwwahahahahaha!
/me buys stock in soap.
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/me invests in a perfume shop.
You can't wash it off but you can try to mask it. ;)
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Is there any way to keep that debuff permanent? That would actually make good roleplay. :P
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Sadly I think getting people's computers to emit odors foul or fair on command is a little beyond the projects ability right now. Textual cues would not be very immersive, would they?
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This is all too serious. You have to have a sense of humour: the death curse is funny, or at least can be made out to be. To be honest, 30 minutes isn't too bad...considering in most literary genres there's a worse curse to be had for coming back to life.
Sure it's a pain to be 'crawling' after killed carrying a heavy load, but look on the bright side, you could always do an auction and have your character storytell or something while crawling to the nearest buying npc...or always sacrifice something at the death guardian which now apparently speaks to you....
That just reminds me of something that happened to Liadan...I have no idea how many of you were around for that, but she was stuck at the Ylian spawn point....with other Ylians spawning ontop and rather unfortunately a crowd gathering as well.
Tuxide: next time you can sell tickets, I promise.
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"Sure it's a pain to be 'crawling' after killed carrying a heavy load, but look on the bright side, you could always do an auction and have your character storytell or something while crawling to the nearest buying npc...or always sacrifice something at the death guardian which now apparently speaks to you...."
yes but there is no crawling, which seems unrealistic to me since you could run as if you were carrying nothing at all when you were twice as strong
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Rakhun, when I have made an answer to you and argued at length with you I would appreciate if you would not carry the issue further in this manner. You make all kinds of noise about how little sense this makes when it makes perfect sense to the majority of players. serg had a great post. If you look back at this thread almost no one agrees that this is not such a big deal. Sell some of your items in the death realm and move on. I really don't wanna be having this conversation again.
By speaking to me and then just hopping on the next dev that gave you an ear, you have made me feel that i have wasted my time in speaking to you at all. If my answers are not sufficient for you do not waste my time asking for my opinion. You disagree, I get it, It is not changing according to your time line, now it is your turn to GET IT.
I appreciate the time you put into patches, but you are not a dev. This is the second time now that you have sued for community support behind an idea that you disagreed with ps devs about. There is nothing wrong with having a different opinion, but going around and harping on every dev who will listen to you is a bit over the top. Furthering this folly by bringing the issue to the forums to waste even more time, is not a favorable outcome to me.
Death sucks- change your play style.
You can direct whatever dev is agreeing with you to me for discussion.
Death sucks- change your play style.
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well, seems like a good place to end it then.
DR has a curse. live with it. :)