There are many ways death could work in MMOs...

I thought his idea was pretty good, until reading your rebuttal. Unfortunately, you're probably right. People would just have one bag for whatever material they need for their particular armor, and never need to go back to town.

I think corpse runs should absolutely be in the game, but (like my post earlier) maybe have another option with a heavier penalty?

I went for option three, as I'm thinking something a little toned-down from what EQ1 had, but a step up from the modern standard. I'd go with something along the following:

-either exp debt or exp loss without de-leveling. Without the de-leveling, the difference between the two is largely academic.
-when you die, you leave a corpse with your gear (and perhaps some of your lost exp) on it.
-if you can't retrieve your corpse before it decays (perhaps a day or two), then you can retrieve your gear from a grave keeper npc, but you can't go that route until the corpse decays naturally.
-maybe allow you to bind a couple pieces of your gear to yourself, so that you'll respawn with those pieces; that way you're at least not completely naked for your corpse run.
-when you respawn, you appear at the last town you bound yourself to; no random respawn points out in the wilderness
-if you want to toss in some repair costs, then sure, why not? Maybe you only get them if you need to get gear back from the grave keeper, to add extra incentive to corpse run.

Some of my best memories are corpse runs. Meeting new people bc you need their help or just laughing at how your corpse ended up in the worst possible place...Trying to figure out how to recover it...
And yea, a penalty makes your palms sweat and your heart thump and makes you second guess yourself before you go rushing into a situation...

A touchy subject. I am in the same position as several people, going from hours a day of free time in EQ to having a family and job now. I do want to see the death penalty attach meaning to it however it is done. The whole point is to have something in game that prevents an actual risk should you slip up. It makes you think about what you are doing. Perhaps there can be ways to implement this in a way that effects "hardcore" and "casual" gamers in an equivalent but different way. For those of us who have little time to run in groups for corpse recovery, we select an option to take a greater exp loss and also lose an item i your inventory randomly and have a res to bind location with the remaining items, some lost EXP and damage to equipment plus a debuff. For those that can spend time on corpse recoveries, allow them to go after their corpses and if successful, eliminate the loss of an item and a debuff but include loss of EXP and damage to equipment. That would seem like the easiest way to "give everyone what they want." Another ways is to just have different servers with different rules sets. I know this is not always easy to implement but create them with different death rules and no ability to transfer characters or sell items between different rule set servers.

maybe. If your gear is made out of dragon scales, you may have to travel somewhere with drakes or wurms and such to gather the materials.

That should keep them somewhat pricey depending on your armor. If you are in tier 2 armor obviously the penalty won't be as bad as tier 10 or whatever.

I just find corpse runs tedious and stupid. There are other ways to have time sinks and penalties than that mess.

Voted Option 3. I really loved the loss of xp from Vanilla EQ as a punishment but wouldn't stick my nose up about armor repair or reduced stats either. It forces people to play smart (with guilds and friends on hard content) and will directly hinder people trying to troll, train, or disrupt (mind you I am an advocate for pvp) the players with good intentions from enjoying the game. I remember having to do corpse runs which were painful at best by myself. I don't think this was ever a great option for an MMO with any great amount of difficulty. EQ was great because it was difficult, however, people still like to solo and requiring corpse runs from people with few friends seems illogical.

Also, permadeath, really? This is pretty much a joke term, when it comes to MMOs.

Sure, in a hardcore mode in a single player game, knock yourself out, but if there is any kind of long term meaningful character development, such as in an MMO, then permadeath I believe is just too much.

A game has yet to offer substantial enough motivation for me to consider permadeath.

How would you feel about this mechanic if someone trained a dungeon on you, and you cannot get your corpse?

That's precisely my thoughts. Corpse runs were always a way to build the community. In EQ1, almost EVERYTHING was a way of building the community. That's why it was so great.

It always seems to come back to different rulesets, doesn't it. *grin* Might as well add it to the list of things we want in a throwback server.

Have to agree with Niccoli - I think a combination of high personal-only and corps run is the right move on this.

Could just make it to where the xp loss part of the death penalty is waived for raids.

There needs to be some sort of death penalty for sure though, to discourage players using it to their benefit to progress. A corpse run and an xp penalty for sure. Adding in a stat debuff wouldn't be a bad idea either. Anything aside from that might be a bit much. You could have it to where if a certain class resurrects the player that died, they can recover a small portion of the experience loss automatically. Maybe even with higher ranks of that spell regain even more of the experience lost.

Can we make the corpse run optional.

High experience loss for death - UNLESS you get your corpse back.

But no loss of items for a failed corpse retrieval.

This way we can still have the corpse retrieval memories re-created, but without as much of the pain and frustration since all our gear is not on the line.

There is obviously experience for the "points" we will spend in the "tiers".

Corpse runs all the way! Take the XP, damage our armor. Make rezzes important again. Have different levels of skill. Same with any fast travel druid or wiz fast travel skills. Make that stuff high up in the tier tree since we can swap out multiclasses out of battle.

Crafting is supposed to be legit. Make some kind of phoenix feather tears of life consumable stuff at varying levels of potency.

Slow down our progression!

Death is a tough one in new games. If you really have time and want to mess with people, set up a sort of spirit world thing, where every time you die to have a chance to get back to your body, you have to do an arbitrary task of gathering things, or hunting down demonic spirits. Something that doesn't gain you experience, and just wastes your time for getting yourself killed. I would really enjoy seeing Death be something everyone hates. Where you really try to work to not end up there. The more tedious the better. To an extent of course. It would make no sense to make it perma-death unless the game is extremely easy.

Corpse runs, please. It was infuriating at times to have to retrieve my corpse in EQ1, but I believe it made me a smarter/better player as a result. I really did not want to die in EQ1, so I was forced to play more intelligently or face the possibility of a lengthy corpse run.

An excellent point. I would do what I did in EverQuest. Get my friends, my guild, nearby people that have been in similar situations and are willing to help, etc etc etc. Also, as we can multiclass in this game.. I might be able to make some sort of sneaky rogue + feign death monk type specifically for corpse retrieval, and get my own easily as well as help others. *shrug* Either way, you build community.

You level up your skills apparently.

And having to replace gear is a horrible idea. I spend 4 months to get Dragon BP of Awesome but it breaks in a week? Seems like a useless system.

Rather just have it take huge amount of damage so you don't run around dying 50 times. If you have to repair it each time thats cool or if you have to die twice for it to break is cool also.

this is 2013 and not 1999. The people playing are much different. back then someone would help. Now you get "l2play noob" as they run off.

Well, probably an extremely unpopular one.

The only real penalty that any game can give you is a time penalty (or in some cases, RL money penalty--I'll speak to that, as well). No matter what penalty they give, it all returns to that.

Corpse recovery: time penalty is the time it takes to recover your corpse

Exp loss: time penalty is the time it took you to gain that exp (thus you must spend more time to recover it)

Now, here's one of my primary concerns about "repair costs":

If they make it so that you can gain in-game currency by using RL currency, then this breaks the game. It delevels the playing field. Those who can afford in RL to buy their way out of this penalty will do so. Those who cannot use RL funds to purchase cash will be at a disadvantage. This brings RL mechanics into the game, which I find to be unappealing and decidedly undesirable.

Thus, I am strongly against repair penalties.



Now, what does this have to do with de-leveling?

Two things speak to us about our time and our return on investment of our time... levels (or ability skill ups/tiers)... and gear.

When you lose either of those things, it's a blow to the gut. It feels real. It's hard, it's harsh, and it's breathtaking. Ouch, omg! *beat head on wall*

When you can't get your corpse back and get it rezed, that should feel just like that. A punch to the gut. Oh dear god, I've lost something really valuable. That inability to get that exp back and that you de-leveled should have very real emotional impact.

That's what makes triumph so REAL. That's what makes you jump around your house scaring your pets, worrying your spouse, and over-exciting your kids. YEEE-HAW, I got my corpse back! YEAH BABY YEAH! These kinds of triumphs come only in the presence of something that feels real. That emotionally engages you on a profound level.

Gear and levels do that. They're visual markers. They're goals that you completed and losing them feels profoundly real... just as does getting them back against mighty odds.

Little death penalties--or worse, ones that can be paid off in money--are not emotionally engaging beyond irritation. Like an itch, not like a stubbed toe.


Just my personal point of view.