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Post by Zuni on Jun 8, 2015 21:09:07 GMT
So I just had a thought regarding the scaling death costs.
On the one hand I agree that you don't want death to become a revolving door. On the other, people already get very upset when they wind up dead, and when you're getting up higher in those scales I can see you're looking at a potentially very significant amount of time in the Next Dimension, and nobody wants to feel like they're essentially locked out of play for ages.
My suggestion is that your effective 'prior death count' drops off by 1 for every 3 continuous months you spend alive. This means that if you're constantly bouncing between life and death, you're racking up a bigger 'cooling off period' whilst helping to encourage you to keep risking your neck on a semi-regular basis rather than having to think after your first time or two 'wow, now I need to spend hours and hours grinding out RP by myself to get back to having fun'.
Just a thought. I don't think this is even going to be relevant to anyone for a very long time but I figured it doesn't hurt to put it out there.
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Vi-Poi
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Post by Vi-Poi on Jun 8, 2015 21:33:41 GMT
Blap blap blap!
Nice compromise. I like it.
Also, I'm saying blap too often.
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Post by Vennel on Jun 13, 2015 18:29:31 GMT
The one forseeable problem is that already if someone doesn't want to die, they just stay out of DE threads, and they can essentially never die. This would be more appropriate or rather, have more meaning (staying alive for 3 months) if death were more prevalent. As it is, three months isn't really all that long, and someone who's going into that many DE threads that often (there really aren't that many significant DE threads that pop up) That, they're not only dying that often, but they're also needing something to lower the cost of their revival, to be quite honest, that character deserves it.
I personally feel as though the current death/revival system is good as is, should put more weight on death. It essentially gives a person one low cost death as a sort of wag of the finger. The character/player from that point on should then take that as a warning that they shouldn't be entering a DE thread unless they're confident they won't die, or are willing to die. If they die again then they're really doing something wrong, and that next death should signify that you can't be so careless and that it's important to really consider if it's worth putting your life on the line.
The second death is where it actually get's really pricey for the first time, so after the first death alone, a character/player needs to really weigh out if it's worth potentially dying again and paying that sort of price. (This is probably why yamcha gave up fighting)
I dunno, to me, I believe death needs to have weight, otherwise a certain villain could just recurring to the point of annoyance, or same for any hero trying to stop a villain's evil plans. And granted, three months can be a long time, I feel like the point of the system is to encourage people after they've died a lot, because death is something you must go out of your way to do, to consider making a new character, or reincarnating, or even just roleplaying more in the after life. Since the prices are larger, the amount of roleplay one must do is as well. It has it's own forum and sub forums, so why not roleplay a bit of your life in there? Maybe good things can happen *shrug*
But yeah, just my two bits on the idea.
(tl;dr) A nice idea, but I feel that death should have very serious consequences, at least after the first one.
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Post by Zuni on Jun 13, 2015 18:46:35 GMT
The thing is, what you're saying is absolutely true - if they don't want to die, they'll just stay out of DE threads.
This means that after the first death or two, annoying characters may continue to exist and be annoying - but just never give you an opportunity to get your own back. Death is essentially only ever 'by consent' and in the current system, there's no reason to give that consent more than once or twice.
This would mitigate some of that, and three months is plenty long enough - in my opinion - that dying every 3 months and working your way back won't feel THAT terrible. There's still a price - you still essentially lose a bunch of time doing other stuff and you make it more pricey to interfere in other people's plans... but I think without a dropoff, there comes a point where you are greatly rewarded if you just start deciding to thumb your nose at all consequences rather than embracing the possibility of failure.
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Post by Vennel on Jun 13, 2015 19:55:03 GMT
Well, yes I'll agree that death is only ever by consent, but there is a reasonable level at which death is a very possible, and real thing. For instance, techniques like kaioken and makaioken have very heavy consequences for their use, and they work only for one split second (in the case of 20x) that they need to be used as a finishing blow. And the way that I had it explained to me by the staff, lead me to believe that something like 20x Kaioken/makaioken would be able to accomplish lethal levels of damage in two fighters of otherwise equal power.
So, if someone were to kick and pout enough, they could have the staff intervene and say "yeah, you're dead homie, can't just take that much damage and shake it off." But I think that a more pressing issue may be to reign things in in some way on what considers death or not. Because as you say, its by personal volition that you ever will die. So right now, most people are taking that first or second death to get those tutor skills, assuming they'll all get them.
But after that first death, or it is revealed just how much it isn't a guarantee that they can learn those skills, they're likely to stop allowing themselves to die, and this system kind of becomes superfluous where they'd just take a death, find out they can't learn from a tutor, revive, and never let themselves die anyways.
So perhaps a threshhold for damage taken should be made, concerning death. Maybe not a hard limit, but certainly a "if you're taking damage X% higher than your own power level, death is a very possible outcome, and it scales upwards with more attacks/higher percentages."
I dunno, the free form system is great, but as it is, it's got competitive elements that can be completely disregarded. But I suppose that's getting off point.
To get back on point, perhaps such a system isn't so bad, but what sort of stipulations would fall onto it?
Such as, can someone spend three months dead, and have their price lowered?
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Post by Zuni on Jun 13, 2015 20:00:25 GMT
I meant death is by consent only in the sense that you don't even have to put death on the table if you just avoid DEs - but you only have to ENTER DEs if you want to change the setting in some radical way. It is quite possible to be the world's most annoying character and never do anything that needs a DE/Saga.
That will always be the case. My issue is that without some sort of falling-off period, there comes a point where it is actively harmful to your play experience to let yourself take a loss. I think losses should be encouraged, in general, and whilst death needs some consequence... I think a moderate level of downtime is enough (as is evidenced by the amount of drama it created the few times it came up, even when there were no scaling costs).
Basically, from a game design perspective you want to be encouraging people to play well rather than punishing them when they play badly - you don't encourage that behaviour by giving them long periods of 'less fun' for playing well multiple times.
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Post by Vennel on Jun 13, 2015 20:16:39 GMT
Hmm, you raise a good point from a game design aspect. But if it were purely about good game design, such a thing wouldn't be so bad, though there are currently rewards for you if you die, such as the tutors, and as long as they aren't just tossed about to anyone who shows up and saved for special occasions, that can be good. But I do agree that may not be enough.
I suppose it's not so big of a deal, all things considered.
Now all that would need to be discussed is how to monitor/track this, I suppose. Because it could be very intensive on the staff, or would require a forum where people post when they die, etc, or something that's tracked on the profile, etc. But shouldn't be that hard if theres just a thread you post in where you link the thread you died in, as a time stamp and such, in order to be sure people's death sentences are timed appropriately.
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