Death

[Vi'Aed]

I was thinking about this yesterday, death in the game. Might it not be worth considering some changes?

THOUGHT 1 - Wouldn't it make sense for the dead to not be able to communicate with the living? There are a BUNCH of .... oh lets call them "tactics".... that revolve around characters, their ghost, and their ability to communicate with the living party members.

What I would envision is this.
- When a character dies, or heck, goes incap, all of his communication channels are blocked.
- His Ghost is NOT visible to the party.
- resurrections should be cast on the soul stone, not the ghost.

While this would definitely hinder many folks, and create new and annoying difficulties, it would also open up new lines. Clairvoyance and Clairaudience for starters.

THOUGHT 2 - I would also suggest, and maybe this is a bad idea, but worth tossing around, handling death differently.

- Raise Dead spell could leave you all weak and kitten-like for, say 2 min.
- Ressurrect spell could leave you all weak and kitten-like for, say 30 sec.
- Shrine blah blah blah 1 min.
- But maybe your buffs don't go away now from a rezz/raise.

that would seem to me to be more in keeping with the spells as written. Although i understand your (Turbine's) desire to keep the pace moving and gimping players would be a concern.

THOUGHT 3 - It would be REALLY nice if there was an active way to burn off XP debt that was solo-able. I am thinking of a solo quest or two that
A) Would only give you XP in the range of your debt, and
B) Was not affected by repetition penalties, and
C) Had absolutely no loot. Not even from breakables.

All I would want is some way of working off XP debt (especially as my Wizzy is oh so squishy) when I am just on kicking around, or waiting for my friends to coordinate, or LFG, or such.

As Bogenbroom (my wizzy) is pretty much doing favor runs these days, XP debt is a constant for him. He isn't capped, so debt still irks me. I have taken to just logging in and leaving him sitting in the tavern while I'm doing other things... like my job

Just some idle thoughts I'd toss out there.

[Ananvil]

#2 has no purpose other than to punish for death even more. Death is already fairly punishing. You gain XP Debt AND if you have to respawn, you get the reentry penalty.

#1 would be irritating too, as it would lead to situations where the party would be unable to ask where the player died if he wasn't in sight when it occurred. Also, things like AIM and Ventrillo bypass this.

#3 is good.

[Vi'Aed]

#2 has no purpose other than to punish for death even more. Death is already fairly punishing. You gain XP Debt AND if you have to respawn, you get the reentry penalty.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily mind minimizing one of the other forms of penalty, and I did suggest having buffs remain. Releasing is a whole different ball of wax, what was really making me think about this is a tendency for players to get rezzed in the middle of a battle and leap back in. That, to me, seems very very wrong.

#1 would be irritating too, as it would lead to situations where the party would be unable to ask where the player died if he wasn't in sight when it occurred. Also, things like AIM and Ventrillo bypass this.

Excellent point about 3rd party products. Hadn't thought of that. Otherwise dead characters could show up on the map in another fashion.

[VirieSquichie]

IMO death penalties in DDO are laughably minimal already. And one of my favorite characters of all time is an oh-so-squishy, so I get dead more often than many I group with - usually when the 3 or 4 melee types let a big troll with a bigger club saunter by them and bash me one because they're not paying attention to anything other than the sight of their own weapon's arc-trails.

I'd like to see the game treat death as being a bit more serious, but more limited in penalty to the current dungeon. -10% to XP for that dungeon and -1 level of loot (cumulative) seems like it would be a much stiffer penalty than the global-effect subtraction of experience points. Especially the loot part.

Resurrection shrines used to be a bit of an annoyance in that you could play sloppy and just res in a few minutes. Now that so many ways of getting raised exist and res shrines can be reused, it's become ludicrous. It's almost insulting to the role-playing types that the PUG zerger in the group can keep getting raised and suffers nothing but an XP hit - and if he's capped, it's not like that matters one whit to him. Guild-only groups, of course, suffer from this less. Can't design the game with the assumption that everyone will always be in guild-only groups though, it breaks the whole open LFM/LFG model to assume that.

[Morgoth_the_Enemy]

#2 has no purpose other than to punish for death even more. Death is already fairly punishing. You gain XP Debt AND if you have to respawn, you get the reentry penalty.

At end level, there essentially is no penalty for death. Tacking on anything like this might help some, since it is debilitating neither for lowbies or capped characters, they just have to wait a bit.

IMO death penalties in DDO are laughably minimal already. And one of my favorite characters of all time is an oh-so-squishy, so I get dead more often than many I group with - usually when the 3 or 4 melee types let a big troll with a bigger club saunter by them and bash me one because they're not paying attention to anything other than the sight of their own weapon's arc-trails.

Or in other words, when the caster pulls more aggro than he can deal with

I'd like to see the game treat death as being a bit more serious, but more limited in penalty to the current dungeon. -10% to XP for that dungeon and -1 level of loot (cumulative) seems like it would be a much stiffer penalty than the global-effect subtraction of experience points. Especially the loot part.

This is a pretty interesting idea.

[Dark_Vengeance]

THOUGHT 1

It's generally a bad idea to block communication between players. All you do is encourage them to communicate with other applications.

THOUGHT 2

Death is both annoying and frustrating, even if the player doesn't actually suffer a significant XP debt. I've recently watched level 1 characters get ticked off about dying, and death at level 1 carries no penalties at all. Make it harder to recover from a death, and you just deepen the aggravation.

THOUGHT 3

Wilderness areas. Low-level quests. Quests with solo options. Favor runs on quests that still award XP. Some of the few encounter areas that still have not been converted to wilderness areas yet (e.g. Steam Tunnels). Or just hang in a tavern, or log off for a while. There are already more than enough options to deal with XP debt.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............