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I have to side with Tyhm on this one. Permadeath is just asking for trouble, in the form of whiny teenagers threatening to sue you.
There are always going to be players that whine, no matter how well the server is made.
If you say that there'll never be ways for players to die unfairly then you seriously misunderstand how big projects like this work. And when they do complain, what can you do? Sure, limited logs will help, but it's difficult to log information pertinent to a bug when you haven't even discovered the bug yet.
I didn't say there would never be ways for players to die unfairly. If a way does appear, then I will do everything I can to fix it and balance it. In the scenario that a bug appears, which kills players unfairly, I will expect the players to contact me with this info as soon as possible. I really doubt that there will be any bug that would just repeatedly kill players though, so I don't really see a big problem with it. It's not permadeath, it's semi-permadeth. There is a difference. If a player runs into a bug and dies, they will more than likely have more than one revive left, so that they can report the bug in a timely fashion, avoid the bug until it's fixed or closed off from the public, and then be given a free revive in order to compensate for the problem.
And the balance issue is important too. Weak characters need protection against strong characters, otherwise they can never become strong enough to defend themselves. Your system may discourage PKers from attacking higher-level characters, but that just makes them focus their immature griefing on newbies.
Sure, then if it comes to my attention during private group testing, that newbie players are at too much of a disadvantage to survive, I will implement something to let them survive longer. I would of course try to avoid "level limits" like high levels absolutely can't fight low levels, as that would be a disadvantage for high levels. (what if a group of newbies corners a player that can't fight back?) Maybe a protection for new players for a short length of time, I dunno, again, this isn't finalized, it can be modified.
Sure, there'll be knights in shining armor who will protect the lowbies by attacking the PKers. Except that 90% of your players will PK a newbie if they think they can get away with it. The notorious PKers might get targeted, but they're only the tip of the iceberg. Besides, the aforementioned knights aren't gonna dedicate their lives to killing them. The PKers can always just run away, or fight back if their levels are comparable.
They can't get away with it. There is justice to those who kill. I'm not just talking player justice, I'm talking justice in the form of actual laws in the game. Meaning if you want to run around killing people, you're going to pay a price if you get caught. Again, I have to bring up the fact that you're playing my game here, and in turn, it's impossible for you to be "right", so to speak. If you say "well this won't work because of this and this" I can just say "well I can change that then". Since none of this is set in stone, fighting over this is rather moot.
Personally I don't believe that permadeath will ever work as a main feature of a game where you're expected to spend hours working on your character. Nobody wants to spend hours striving if the fruits of their labors are so unstable.
Then those people should not do stupid things, like trying to fight monsters that are way over their level. If you play smart, then you can easily avoid losing your character. The fact of the matter is. This is an RPG. If dying were to mean absolutely nothing, then people would not fear it. People wouldn't care about running headfirst into a fight they can't win. People would just make suicide runs, in attempts to become stronger.
Yes, a medium death penalty could possibly work, but I want to go for a stronger approach. Whether you like it or not is up to you. But at least play it before you make your final judgements. I still feel as though you're playing it safe, and afraid to take the risk for something more enjoyable. Sure, never being able to lose your character might sound fun at first. But where is the risk? People like to gamble. That is why Las Vegas is so popular. It's just a game, and I would like to make sure people understand this. If you make mistakes and lose your character, start fresh, and learn from the mistakes that you made.
If you piss and moan because you did stupid things which caused you to lose your character, I won't feel the least bit sorry for you. If you are upset because a bug made you lose a character, I would do everything I could to fix the problem. I don't know how many times I can say this before you understand. This is not classic, 2k1, gk, or any other online rpg. This is my online rpg, and it's not like the rest, at least in certain ways. I think I'm done making my statements on this. Go ahead and continue to believe that this won't work, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to make you understand. |