Quote:anything that promotes teamwork in an MMO is a good thing.

Yes, but anything that requires that you only be with people that you trust is bad. Trust is built, but it shouldn't be required or you end up with something like UO, where if you were new to the game you were easy pickings for anyone who was anitsocial.

There's one big issue with the "Judgement" or "Hades" world after death, especially with PinFX's proposed 1 hour wait time in Judgement.

Imagine you've got a couple hours to play with your close friends tonight, so you all head out for a little adventure. Early on, you bite off more then you can chew and you unfortunately die.

Suddenly, instead of the normal grind of finding your way back to rejoin your friends, you're now in a whole new world.

If you have have a couple hours to play every night with your friends, death is going to became a real pain, everytime you die, you may end up spending so much time getting out of the afterlife and travelling back to your friends, that it just becomes not worth it.

The afterlife concept has merit don't get me wrong, but to ask a player to go through that everytime they die is a bad move imho.

One suggestion I would make, is to just not send the person to the afterlife after EVERY death. Perhaps base it on number of deaths per time period. Maybe after every death, you lose some of your Life Force (For lack of a better term), you recoup this force over time, but die too many times in a short period of time, and drop your life force to nothing, and next time you die, you're sent to the afterlife to prove yourself worthy of more.

By making this slight change it will keep some of the risk of dying, while giving you something you can fine-tune.

Another way of handling this issue is by determining whether you go to the afterlife on how badly you were injured when dieing. The more you try to bite off and lose, the more risk of entering the afterlife. The more you risk (fighting tougher creatures), the more of the reward, so afterlife would be a good risk for battling higher level creatures.

Ugh that previous poster was me, since I can't edit that post here are a few additional thoughts.


A way of combining those two ideas above would be like this. Allow players to take negative damage, so if you have say 100HP left, and get hit by a dragon for 1500 damage, you're now -1400. Your negative HP stays with you even after you are revived, and slowly diminishes over time. Just like in the first concept, if you die and go past a threshold of negative HP, you head to the afterlife.

Another way, if you had religious concepts in the game, would be to base it on how your god(s) feel about you, fail to keep up with pleasing your gods, and they'll drag you to the afterlife. Keep your god(s) happy and they'll spare you.

Their are a number of other ways to determine when people head to the afterlife, in fact, you could turn it right around and make it a bonus, not a detrement, but thats a whole other beast. The fact is, if it removes the player from normal gameplay, you can't expect to have players put up with it everytime they die, especially when it removes them from their ingame friends.

Quote:Original post by PinFX
However, the whole point of the 1 hour real-time stay in heaven/hell is making death impactful and realistic in PvP or events.

If PVP is the point of your game, then removing them from battle for 1 hour is too harsh. If you've ever played planetside, imagine after every death you couldn't play for an hour?

But, if PVP is not the main focus of the game, then why not just make the chances of entering the afterworld higher through PVP battles, and events?

Another idea would be to link it to alignment, fight someone of similar alignment and risk going to the afterlife. Fight someone of a total opposite alignment and you would have a far lower chance.

Quote:Original post by PinFX
I think to battle your problem I'd have to implement more design barriers to make dying something that does not happen often (like the -10 HP system).

Their are a number of solutions to the issue I raised, balancing it through how often people die is not in my opinion a good idea.

People will always find the quickest way to die :)

Death is inevitable in these games, you make it harder to die, people will just push themselves further.

I really think it needs to be based on something that is partially withen the players control, but is a concious decision they make. IE: Should I really risk getting my butt handed to me by that dragon and risk going to the afterlife? Yes, the treasure that dragon holds is worth it. Or No, I really don't think I have a chance, why risk it.

The afterlife is a perfect opportunity for implimenting risk/reward in death. In most MMORPG's, the punishment for death is the same regardless of whether you die by a sheep, or by the biggest baddest creature in the game.

Sure you have a higher chance of dying, but that can be overcome with group tactics, since the only risk is a little walk back to the battlefield for those that die in the process.

In fact, I would suggest raising the difficulty of exiting the underworld, make it a big challenge, something that doesn't happen often, but when it does, its a whole new experience.

Quote:Original post by PinFX
PS. The standard go out with your buddies to grind against monsters routine of 1st generation MMOs does not necessary apply anymore.

That may be the case with the design you have in mind, but I'm hoping you have something to replace it with that includes a group of friends, and something to do thats fun and can be done in a couple hours a night. And if you do, then just apply what I said to that instead.

What if there was permadeath, but the player still got some benefit from that character? Such as summoning it into battle as an allied NPC or using its powers for something... (special items?)