On a 2D orpg I worked on (as a tile artist and scripter) with a couple friends online, we made only the currently equipped items be dropped on death, while keeping the items in your inventory mostly safe. We also choose a random non-equipped inventory item and dropped that as well, to make sure you usually drop something.

It worked out fairly well. A player could then choose to go into combat with their second-best equipment instead of their first-best, and in the worst case scenario, only lose a random one piece of their first-best equipment.

Corpse runs were never fun. But I guess it can add to the overall experience.

Corpse runs were never fun. But I guess it can add to the overall experience.

I didn't intend to have corpse runs. But I did intend for players to leave a corpse behind when they die, so other players can come across corpses of their fallen comrades.

But...that will just degenerate into corpse runs.

Current solution: players lose all items permanently when they die. No more corpse runs. (no rare items that takes a lot of effort to get, to avoid frustrating people)

Are corpse runs really a problem that need to be fixed?

In the small ORPG I worked on (no longer active) that I mentioned above, corpses could be picked up by anyone, and they completely disappeared after a "random" 0 seconds to 5 minutes, unless another player was near the corpse.

A map with no players on it had all item drops cleared every 5 minutes. If you died 25 seconds before the map was cleared, your corpse only lasted 25 seconds. If you died 10 seconds after a map was cleared, your corpse would last until the next clear in 4 minutes and 50 seconds. This was an unintentional side-effect of maps clearing monster drops that nobody wanted to pick up, but we liked it so we left it in.

Players A) were frustrated by the inconsistent timing of their corpse disappearing B) actually seemed enjoyed the scramble to get their corpse - Is it still there or isn't it? Anticipation/anxiety C) hunted with a friend so the friend standing by the corpse would keep it from disappearing, or so the friend can pick up the items and return them later.

PvPers would kill someone, stay by their corpse for them to return and kill them again. This was an understood and accepted risk of hunting in PvP zones.

You could make the corpse not be retrievable by the player who died, and fade after 3 minutes. But why stop corpse runs at all - are they really all that bad?

But why stop corpse runs at all - are they really all that bad?

It feels bad on the player's end. They will think its a deliberate death penalty and a compulsory chore. E.g. there are quite a few articles on the net about the "dreaded" Everquest corpse run.

I rather have the player get on with the game, than feel frustrated trying to retrieve his corpse over and over again.

I like the idea of all the players loot going away when they die, but my thought to help the player deal with such a lose is to have loot drop a lot more often and limit how much they can carry.

Say the player has a weapon slot, a magic slot, and an armor slot, plus 3 spaces to store things in their invintory. Well, they will fight a gang of 4 roaming bandits and they get 2 pieces of loot from each of them. Even if their inventory was completely empty and had nothing equiped, they still need to leave 2 things behind.

By getting the player used to leaving loot all over the place, they become less attached to their gear. It will make starting over a little more bearable, even if the player had nearly end-game gear and screwed up right before the big bad end boss fight.

But thats just what I think about it

Good points. This is pretty much how I am going to design it.