AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Making death mean something and gold sinks (Discussion)

Murex wrote:

The economy is fine in my opinion, now that there are merchant caps.

*Rolls will to resist urge to scoff*

The economy is not fine. We have characters of the same level with gold that range from three digits to above seven. We don't have a balance in economical terms. The people who powerhunt get massive amounts of gold, and the people who don't has to beg for the coin. Gold, in RP, literally means nothing since we understand the principle that not everybody has the time or the patience to sit at least a twenty minutes every day to rush the snowbeast killing everything in the way.

We don't have standard prices. We don't have services that we need to pay. Taxes. Mechanically, the players are barely encouraged to even have gold. The only real encouragement is the auction sub-forum, and the prices that the players set there are absurd, and I say so without being afraid of sounding like an hypocrite, because I am. I play a character that goes around hunting and sells epics for above five millions.

I'm going to repeat possibly what was written above and in the last three pages one more time, and I am also going to assume that it is written, since those are the obvious steps to take to fix the economy in Amia:

Step one: Butcher the damn price limitation. No more than 5k, 7.5 in the gauntlets!
Step two: Add constant system that kick you in the groin sucking the little gold that you may muster. This would go along better with the job system overhaul.
Step three: ?????
Step four: Profit! Ironically.

No, I'm not joking. Gold in Amia is the joke.

Ice wrote:

The economy is not fine. We have characters of the same level with gold that range from three digits to above seven. We don't have a balance in economical terms. The people who powerhunt get massive amounts of gold, and the people who don't has to beg for the coin. Gold, in RP, literally means nothing since we understand the principle that not everybody has the time or the patience to sit at least a twenty minutes every day to rush the snowbeast killing everything in the way.

It's fine because prices adapt to reflect supply and demand.

My characters sometimes have millions of gold, or none. Sometimes you need to spend your millions, and there is a benefit to being broke at L30.

Those players/characters who complain that they spend all their gold on potions are players/characters that are not very smart, because they are doing something very inefficient.

If you role-play for dream coins, you can get better than epic items this way. No need to boss hunt. This keeps coming up when it comes to these discussions, and I'm quite sure some sort of socialized system won't be implemented to make people who don't put the time and effort into gaining gold for the sake of making everything 'fair'. Also, a typical Fighter/Weapon Master can grind out bosses pretty easily, and I wouldn't say that that build is very powerbuild-ish. It is true that fighter-types are best for most bosses, but that another topic.

Also, semi-epic items can be purchased for characters who aren't millionaires when those Djin make an appearance. No boss hunting is needed. You want powerful things to become more powerful, yet your build is only for rp? I don't get that.

If you don't have the time to put the effort in, you don't get any benefit, just like anything else. No free ride, because that obviously isn't fair to everyone.

I fail to see the logic in your arguments.

Remember this is the IA forum. This discussion is nearing hijacking. Stay on topic.

Last edited by Elorathall on Fri, Dec 05 2014, 14:16 PM, edited 1 time in total.

This whole discussion is about making death more meaningful, but how can that be possible when there's not even a hit of permanent loss? Where is the genuine sense of true risk (and by extension, of true reward)? Implementing temporary debuffs isn't going to change that. Hasn't this whole notion been discussed far too many times, but never genuinely been implemented?

I'm still going to stick with my "equipment-drop-on-death" suggestion. Is it going to encourage griefing? Potentially, but our community tends to police itself pretty alright. Is it going to encourage pvp/banditry? I damn well hope so. Amia feels far too safe for being such a frontier environment. But you'll ragequit if you'll lose that epic item? Tough, don't carry what you can't afford to lose. But the server crash/reset? That will only be an issue if you happen to be dead at the time. So take measures to ensure you don't happen to be dead at the time.

Plus, I think (mature) conflict over the possession of a rare/powerful item can and should exist - which it doesn't today, since you can pretty much just grind or buy your own copy of any item.

The point is that gold stops being meaningful the very second that you realize that it only matters for the people who keep an eye in the auction sub-forum. Gold is more than that. Gold should be a constant, influential aspect; not something reserved for lowbies trying to scrap enough in the purse to buy some +1 boots and epics vulturing around cloaks and tomes of Mystra, or to be used in massive chunks for some plot because the situation allowed it.

I stand by my four-steps list. Bosshunting should take a hit (see: Double suplex), and there should be more ways to make gold.
Or are we trying to encourage people to roll Weapon Master/Rogue/Fighter builds for the sake of soloing bosses?

Silkelock wrote:

Remember this is the IA forum. This discussion is nearing hijacking. Stay on topic.

Split the most recent chunk of discussion from the original topic in AI and moved to GD. Carry on.

Elorathall wrote:

But the server crash/reset? That will only be an issue if you happen to be dead at the time. So take measures to ensure you don't happen to be dead at the time.

Plus, I think (mature) conflict over the possession of a rare/powerful item can and should exist - which it doesn't today, since you can pretty much just grind or buy your own copy of any item.

First part..... are you trolling? Ensure you don't happen to be dead on a crash that you have no control over when it will happen and no warning?

So your idea is lets make it so when you gank people they drop their items.... so now before what would be viewed as "No valid RP reason for PVP" will now always become "I was robbing him IC because he might have epic loot and gold" And then you have classes who are more effected by gear like fighters...ect or classes who could run around in the nude with zero anything on them like a caster who just runs in and hell balls,G-ruin then spam IGMS and flame arrows.

The gold problem will never be fixed the people who are rich hunt... the people who are not, don't. You could reduce the sell value of everything by 90% and delete all the gold but it will just happen again because hunters do, and other don't.

corypx wrote:

First part..... are you trolling? Ensure you don't happen to be dead on a crash that you have no control over when it will happen and no warning?

I think we'd all like death to be convenient, but it rarely is.

Quote:

So your idea is lets make it so when you gank people they drop their items.... so now before what would be viewed as "No valid RP reason for PVP" will now always become "I was robbing him IC because he might have epic loot and gold" And then you have classes who are more effected by gear like fighters...ect or classes who could run around in the nude with zero anything on them like a caster who just runs in and hell balls,G-ruin then spam IGMS and flame arrows.

Yes for the robbery. Why not? Alongside with thieves, highwayman/bandit is a basic concept that is almost impossible to play straight for a longer duration - the payout is simply too low. Don't travel alone. Make sure you have spotters and other ways to see ambushers before they come. Take other measures to avoid getting ganked. And even if it happens, rampant banditry will see you banished from most places rather quickly.

As for the mages, the problem is not that they can toss around vast amounts of damage, the problem is that they can do so with zero investment. Until a system of spell components comes into use, this is always going to be an issue.

The real question, Elorathall:

Do we want to turn Amia into Eve Online?
I'll consult it with the pillow.

Elorathall wrote:

Yes for the robbery. Why not? Alongside with thieves, highwayman/bandit is a basic concept that is almost impossible to play straight for a longer duration - the payout is simply too low. Don't travel alone. Make sure you have spotters and other ways to see ambushers before they come. Take other measures to avoid getting ganked. And even if it happens, rampant banditry will see you banished from most places rather quickly.

Being banished from any place means nothing with how many alts everyone has they just make a new person, if we limited people to only having 1 character it would be a punishment because they could not log off said person and play on alts till things cool down or only let themselves be hunted on their terms.

Its the problem with letting people have alts.... I could go right now power level a wizard to 30 in a day or so, be total shit hell balling groups and what ever, then log off and not play him till I want to be a dick again and repeat, and no one can do anything about it IC because I vanished into thin air(to log on a main or a different alt) you cant follow me to a home and catch me sleeping or something. The aggressor has full control over the situation.

If I were to have supreme power over Amia a few years ago, I would have made some drastic changes, but today, I wouldn't. The reason is that the course has been set a while ago, and we have been continuing on this path for some time now. New changes are often built upon old changes. The playerbase has been established, and things have evolved as they did.

Nobody likes griefers, and yet many players I've encountered in the past seem to be very reactionary and easily offended- The two sides of the coin I suppose. If there is a middleground, I think we are more or less there now.

Death is essentially meaningless on Amia at this time, unless the individual players want to somehow reflect the meaningfulness of death. It's not mechanically enforced beyond some gold loss and xp loss. Harsher penalties would help- particularly ones that actually reflect the shock of being killed and coming back to life. Here is where we start: attribute penalties upon death.

What should be implemented after the implementation of attribute penalties upon death? Not sure yet, but if characters were to loose inventory items upon death, nobody would bother with trying to get ahold of epic gear, because it's hard enough as it is to obtain. Is that a good thing? To some, it is of course, but at the same time, it makes others feel like their time and effort has been wasted. A boon to some players can be a fuck you to other players, and I don't want that.

Some general advise to everyone in this discussion: Try not to think of how new changes can only benefit you as a player or just your characters. We are a community here with some differences still, and there isn't always an easy solution that benefits everyone.

Speaking as someone who plays a broke epic character... I can see why people would say the in game economy is broken. Prices for a lot of things are ridiculously inflated because they're sold back and forth between people that have huge piles of gold. I'm tempted to say it's all unfair because I want the good loot too...but.. The sad truth is my character is broke because he hates killing things without a good reason and I OOCly get really bored grinding for loot. The people that do play the characters with all the epic loot tend to enjoy the grind for gear. It's like Destiny. Some people love that game and they love grinding for weapons that look slightly different and do five points more damage. I don't. I got bored of that game in like three days. If I put the time and effort in, I'd eventually have all the pretty guns too...but.. I don't, so I don't get them. Boo. Hiss.

That's how it is on Amia. If someone has the patience to grind for hours at a time, they're going to pile up the gold and catch epic loot eventually. If you don't do it, you won't get it. That's not really broken or unfair. They just put in time and effort that people like me don't. There's really no way to change it at this point, so it is what it is.

Having characters drop their items on death is just a really bad idea. Sure, it promotes hardcore bandit RP...but.. our characters are played by real people that put real time and effort into gathering their loot. It'll turn into an OOC shitstorm when people start losing items they've spent years gathering because the server crashed. How many times do people die over and over and over again during DM events? They'd need to gather their entire inventories and equip everything all over again every single time they were raised. Or worse, lose everything in the middle of an event because the server crashed. It's not practical, it's not fair to the players or the DMs, and it would create a very negative environment.

Amia isn't a hardcore server. It's certainly more hardcore now than it was five years ago, but it's still nowhere near as hardcore as other servers that exist/existed and I don't think it ever should be.

I agree with you, Krin... to a point.

This can be solved with a few systems, without necessarily turning the server into a hardcore mess.
Money is ought to flow through the realms, not magically pop out of merchants eternally buying the same useless double-bladed swords over and over again.

Epic loot is one thing. There are characters that grind for it, and if it is their choice, that is fine... but that should be a choice, and there's no alternative for it. The only real alternative is crafting your own epics, and no one would make requests with the sole purpose to sell those. In this server, there are two sorts of characters: Those who builded to solo bosses and can be filthy rich if they wish to spend their time doing so, and those who simply didn't have to tag in parties if they wish to have a minimal chance of getting lucky with the damn 5 in 100. And in the case they do get lucky, then they have to eyeball the rest of the party.

OOCly, it's not fair because we are encouraging players powerbuild in a bloody RP server with these systems. The build of your character equates what it is. Those lines of text up there in the character sheet aren't OOC info to disregard and play as if they didn't even exist. Dump stats are the stuff of campsite horror stories for me.

If we want to make epic drops feel truly epic, lower it to 1 in 100 and make it party-friendly like the rest of the drops.
Goldsinks? The first step is reducing all income of gold. Smack the traders to no more than 5k per item.
The next step? Make the job system actually generate gold. Mechanically in one side, and by RP in the other with systems that actually matter for the characters. Get rid of mindblanks and healing potions, and see how the population of brewers rocket to high heavens. Hells, I'd even push it as far as saying that gear should have an endurance system. Blacksmiths and tailors galore. The job system is largely unimportant and only for flavor in the RP level as it is, but the truth is that our game is composed by the duality of the mechanics AND the RP. Not one, nor the other: The two together, and everything should follow the same rule of equal benefit.

This topic is about the meaning, the importance of simple factors in the server, but we cannot address these without looking at what is wrong with the entire system.

Ice wrote:

Epic loot is one thing. There are characters that grind for it, and if it is their choice, that is fine... but that should be a choice, and there's no alternative for it.

In this server, there are two sorts of characters: Those who builded to solo bosses and can be filthy rich if they wish to spend their time doing so, and those who simply didn't have to tag in parties if they wish to have a minimal chance of getting lucky with the damn 5 in 100. And in the case they do get lucky, then they have to eyeball the rest of the party.

OOCly, it's not fair because we are encouraging players powerbuild in a bloody RP server with these systems. The build of your character equates what it is. Those lines of text up there in the character sheet aren't OOC info to disregard and play as if they didn't even exist. Dump stats are the stuff of campsite horror stories for me.

The choice is if you don't want to hunt epic bosses or collect a large sum of gold to buy said loot off another person, you don't have to.... Why should their be a alternative?

Ice wrote:

If we want to make epic drops feel truly epic, lower it to 1 in 100 and make it party-friendly like the rest of the drops.

Your logic was its to hard for people to get epic loot because crazy prices or not wanting to farm....so you want to make it harder....... all that would do would increase the value so people will have a even harder time, so how would that help at all?

Ice wrote:

Goldsinks? The first step is reducing all income of gold. Smack the traders to no more than 5k per item.

Wont do anything as they would logically have to reduce the sell value of all the other items, so if T4 items are max value-ish at 25k? and your saying cap it at 5k that means reduce all the lower tiers by X percent.... so in the end people will still be just as poor percent wise but the number does not look as large.
Unless you leave the values the same and then in that case we might as well just sprint around level 10 zones 1shotting trash for the same amount of cash as if we were to fight monsters 20 levels higher with 4x the HP.

Ice wrote:

The next step? Make the job system actually generate gold. Mechanically in one side, and by RP in the other with systems that actually matter for the characters. Get rid of mindblanks and healing potions, and see how the population of brewers rocket to high heavens. Hells, I'd even push it as far as saying that gear should have an endurance system. Blacksmiths and tailors galore. The job system is largely unimportant and only for flavor in the RP level as it is, but the truth is that our game is composed by the duality of the mechanics AND the RP. Not one, nor the other: The two together, and everything should follow the same rule of equal benefit.

Without Disco I don't think anyone can touch the job system, but lets assume we could alter the total number of jobs need to be reduced by like 75% as I said in another thread
1.WoW has 10 million people we have 100-200.... they have 11 jobs and each person can max 2.... we have like 75 and we can only max 1.
2.WoW also has nodes spawning all over the map and once one is gone it spawns someplace else on the map so a person who rather wander around collecting ore,gems,herbs...ect for hours can, ours only reset once the server does and it has a 2min cooldown making it kind of dull standing for 20mins or so in the same spot clicking.
3.WoW crafting cant fail, unlike ours causing you to fail to collect or fail to craft.

The reason why the job system plays a such a little role in the over all scale of playing the game is because that's how it was meant to be, they did not want it to be used to alter the power of the game because one side has a army of PCs to farm job system, if it as you wanted evil/monster/hated people would never get their hands on heal potions... never get the armor fixed...ect

Quote:

The choice is if you don't want to hunt epic bosses or collect a large sum of gold to buy said loot off another person, you don't have to.... Why should their be a alternative?

Because it's unrealistic that every character is forced to hunt to get a single coin in the game. Not everybody is ought to be a combatant in our server, and gold is not ought to be used to buy epic items.

Quote:

Your logic was its to hard for people to get epic loot because crazy prices or not wanting to farm....so you want to make it harder....... all that would do would increase the value so people will have a even harder time, so how would that help at all?

I want to discourage Bard/Blackguards/Palemasters solo-rushing Pirate, Snowbeast and maybe Maxi.

Quote:

Wont do anything as they would logically have to reduce the sell value of all the other items, so if T4 items are max value-ish at 25k? and your saying cap it at 5k that means reduce all the lower tiers by X percent.... so in the end people will still be just as poor percent wise but the number does not look as large.
Unless you leave the values the same and then in that case we might as well just sprint around level 10 zones 1shotting trash for the same amount of cash as if we were to fight monsters 20 levels higher with 4x the HP.

And that's a damn tragedy, really. Cry to the gods that the merchant is not willing to pay a single gold coin more for that Vindicator. But feel free to join the line in the gnoll cave for your turn to clean them if you want to make some meager 30k of gold the easy way.

Quote:

Without Disco I don't think anyone can touch the job system, but lets assume we could alter the total number of jobs need to be reduced by like 75% as I said in another thread
1.WoW has 10 million people we have 100-200.... they have 11 jobs and each person can max 2.... we have like 75 and we can only max 1.
2.WoW also has nodes spawning all over the map and once one is gone it spawns someplace else on the map so a person who rather wander around collecting ore,gems,herbs...ect for hours can, ours only reset once the server does and it has a 2min cooldown making it kind of dull standing for 20mins or so in the same spot clicking.
3.WoW crafting cant fail, unlike ours causing you to fail to collect or fail to craft.

I actually agree with you here. The job system is printed in the base of the server, and modifying it in any aspect, even completely removing it to replace with another, may feel like chopping with a huge hatchet. But unless you wanna fish the job system topic back...

Quote:

The reason why the job system plays a such a little role in the over all scale of playing the game is because that's how it was meant to be, they did not want it to be used to alter the power of the game because one side has a army of PCs to farm job system, if it as you wanted evil/monster/hated people would never get their hands on heal potions... never get the armor fixed...ect

And is that wrong?

Ice wrote:

Quote:

The choice is if you don't want to hunt epic bosses or collect a large sum of gold to buy said loot off another person, you don't have to.... Why should their be a alternative?

Because it's unrealistic that every character is forced to hunt to get a single coin in the game. Not everybody is ought to be a combatant in our server, and gold is not ought to be used to buy epic items.

You can use the job system and sell the stuff to NPCs or PC, the gold is nothing to what you can make hunting but that's how the real world works, most jobs in the job system are simple things (IRL "would you like fries with that") and hunting is the more high end jobs that fewer people can do... hence earn more money, and the rare cases of the very few who can solo farm epic bosses or other wise are bad ass are the top tier of the pay scale. (celebrity ,professional athlete...ect)

Ice wrote:

Quote:

The reason why the job system plays a such a little role in the over all scale of playing the game is because that's how it was meant to be, they did not want it to be used to alter the power of the game because one side has a army of PCs to farm job system, if it as you wanted evil/monster/hated people would never get their hands on heal potions... never get the armor fixed...ect

And is that wrong?

Yes the staff made that clear when they started the job system thing. They did not want to it to over all effect normal gameplay having all your gear fall apart being unable to fix it, or not being able to buy heal potions (something Amia monsters power is based on you being able to have/use) it would be wrong.

A fundamental aspect of an economy- It doesn't matter if there are large, or even small numbers of currency- the most valued things will adapt to whatever a lot of the currency equals. In other words, if you took all the gold all players had and what merchants pay for items by X%, that does nothing, because the 'problem' as you see it will still exist. Manipulating it really won't do much of anything, because a new economy will just adapt to the supply and demand. If a million gold now equates to 1,000 gold, and a 4th tier item sells for 25 gold, epic items will still be worth a lot of gold. All that altering amounts of gold would do is just that, and it wouldn't change anything.

Also, you don't have to fight bosses to gain lots of gold. Lower-level areas exist, and a weak L30 character can still grind in such areas for gold.

Making epic items harder to get by lowering the percent chance to 1% only makes them several times more valuable.

The job system does have faults, given the number of jobs and the number of players on average on the server. It does need to be fixed if it is to be a more pronounced means of trade.

I am for ability penalties upon death, but no item loss. That's basically all I have to say about death penalties at this time.

corypx wrote:

Ice wrote:

Quote:

The choice is if you don't want to hunt epic bosses or collect a large sum of gold to buy said loot off another person, you don't have to.... Why should their be a alternative?

Because it's unrealistic that every character is forced to hunt to get a single coin in the game. Not everybody is ought to be a combatant in our server, and gold is not ought to be used to buy epic items.

You can use the job system and sell the stuff to NPCs or PC, the gold is nothing to what you can make hunting but that's how the real world works, most jobs in the job system are simple things (IRL "would you like fries with that") and hunting is the more high end jobs that fewer people can do... hence earn more money, and the rare cases of the very few who can solo farm epic bosses or other wise are bad ass are the top tier of the pay scale. (celebrity ,professional athlete...ect)

Compare the salary of a soldier with a proper engineer.
The same way characters are epic casters and epic rogues and epic palemasters, why can't they be epic inventors, epic trappers, epic farmer, yo!

corypx wrote:

Ice wrote:

Quote:

The reason why the job system plays a such a little role in the over all scale of playing the game is because that's how it was meant to be, they did not want it to be used to alter the power of the game because one side has a army of PCs to farm job system, if it as you wanted evil/monster/hated people would never get their hands on heal potions... never get the armor fixed...ect

And is that wrong?

Yes the staff made that clear when they started the job system thing. They did not want to it to over all effect normal gameplay having all your gear fall apart being unable to fix it, or not being able to buy heal potions (something Amia monsters power is based on you being able to have/use) it would be wrong.

I'm going to abscond from making pointy analogies here.
Why should we permanently use an [Insert derogatory adjective here] system? We have the ability to upgrade and modify these things. The only real problem is that Glim is going to be like #ThanksIce when he has to code twenty five thousand lines.

I think things are fine as they are.

Fennewald! wrote:

I think things are fine as they are.

I feel the same. Amia has adapted to what may have previously been considered problematic. With the exception of a few things that are already known about.

Fennewald! wrote:

I think things are fine as they are.

Mechanically I agree with you. Don't go stirring the pot now, this is what everyone, by and large, is used to. RP-wise, I do agree with OP's original point that it'd be nice for there to be some extra flavour to death, though. Having more cues will generally net you more RP about those cues. I think you're on the right path, because I think everyone is fine with this much. At the same time, I'd kind of rather the developers we have spend their very limited time on mechanical things rather than flavour things. I'd call this a low priority.

Also, Mana's original fugue plane idea is very clever. +1 support from me!

I dont think mechanic changes would change the sentiment of most people that death simply dosnt matter...

now.. that being said, dm's could use the threat of permadeath more often, that would force some atleast to come to terms with thier mortality.

Kraniumbrud wrote:

I dont think mechanic changes would change the sentiment of most people that death simply dosnt matter...

now.. that being said, dm's could use the threat of permadeath more often, that would force some atleast to come to terms with thier mortality.

Mechanical changes to death would make characters want to avoid it more.

The threat of permadeath should be taken into consideration in DM events- sure, but it should require some extraordinary circumstances even in those events. Just because a character rolls a 1 or something shouldn't equate to permadeath IMO, but a series of bad decisions should.

I wouldn't want to spend years honing my character only to have it get permakilled because a DM is too aggressive in combat. I recall one DM event where the DM just kept throwing everything at the group until everyone was dead. In that instance, there seemed to be no alternative besides death.

Honestly, I don't think death should require much more than attribute penalties for a set duration after being raised. Maybe more loss of gold would be fair beyond this if anything else is added.

I honerstly dont see how a temporary penalty does anything to change the attitude of the server, people would just wait until it was gone.

and gold sinks does nothing for those who are never full of gold, it is not only the farmers that should fear death after all.

A threat must be permanent in some form to carry any weight behind it, that being said, changing an attitude is near impossible I would say, level drain would scare the hell out of me, but that would be impossible due to classes like RDD

And no, I dont think any dm would recklessly permakill anyone just because they failed a 1, there is no evidence this has been done in the past, nor do I mistrust our dm team enough to think they would be so cruel.
Im merely suggesting that the threat of a possible permadeath in a extreme case of failure would force people to face the possibility that death is not just something you can ignore, and it would send a shiver down their spines if they die in combat, and a looming threat of a possible permadeath is there...did we fail bad enough?..

Kraniumbrud wrote:

I honerstly dont see how a temporary penalty does anything to change the attitude of the server, people would just wait until it was gone.

I just want to speak to this. Yes, people can wait until the penalties are gone, but that itself makes people not take stupid chances. It doesn't make death meaningful in a long-term sense, but it's a start, and I think it makes sense to have a character penalized for a while after being killed. Attribute penalties are a short-term measure. Permadeath is another issue that can tie in to this discussion, but I think it should remain a separate aspect of making death more meaningful.

Murex wrote:

Kraniumbrud wrote:

I honerstly dont see how a temporary penalty does anything to change the attitude of the server, people would just wait until it was gone.

I just want to speak to this. Yes, people can wait until the penalties are gone, but that itself makes people not take stupid chances. It doesn't make death meaningful in a long-term sense, but it's a start, and I think it makes sense to have a character penalized for a while after being killed. Attribute penalties are a short-term measure. Permadeath is another issue that can tie in to this discussion, but I think it should remain a separate aspect of making death more meaningful.

and I never said that permadeath was the only solution, im saying that a temporary penalty means nothing as people will just continue to ignore death as they have in all the years past..if they just have to wait then its not a fear of death that will be inspired in them, but a fear of not being able to hunt for x amount of hours, a mechanical temporary penalty will have no effect on rp, especially considering that people rarely rp thier stats, why would they start now?

Mechanical penalties are a nuisance. Nor is there any real reason to make people want to avoid PvM death more. Amia is not designed as a survival server, and it would require more than some death penalties to turn it into one. The server vibe is all about reckless, high-fantasy adventure, so death (or "knocked out" as I RP it) is a natural part of it. It is a matter of genre, and Amia's genre does not (and need not) encourage stressful planning to survive a giant lair.

It is clear that the problem is purely in terms of PvP (and DM plots), and the only elegant and efficient solution is to disable the respawn button in those instances. If you get killed by someone else, you need to actually be raised IC. That means potential permadeath to those whose bodies are disposed of and who have no powerful friends who care enough. That's fine with me, but that's not something Amians are willing to accept. So the status quo is the second best thing.

IronAngel wrote:

It is clear that the problem is purely in terms of PvP (and DM plots),

I have to disagree with you here, there is a lot of RP value in consequences of death, raising and healing regardless of pvp or pve and as a healer pc I regret and resent that death and injury are such banal topics ooc and ic in Amia.
I do not agree that making players think more and risk more in pve need turn the server into Arelith II Or some "survival" mode or whatever and I do not accept that whilst many veteran players here are completely bored with the "grind" and "looting" and all the rest of it, that its therefore not worth considering beefing up death and healing concerns for the rest of us trying to immerse ourselves in roles around death and healing.

If all we consider are the "mechanics" of it then of course we end up with lots of strawman arguments about the drag of it and the grind of it, but lets look at the RP implications. Death is not just a paper cut that hurts for an instant and is then forgotten about just like all of the paper cuts that have been endured before it. Loosing a limb is not just about a phantom itch but otherwise just soldier on without a second thought. Being deathly ill from disease or illness is not something easily forgotten.

We have an entire homebrew faith centred around healing and care and yet we dismiss out of hand dying as being KO'd, (yes because those Fire Giants are only swinging 10ft axes to wound...

) out of convenience as we do not want to interrupt the exp grind, well isn't that sort of meta gaming?

Yes Yes I know that mindless grinding ~is~ part of the exp grind of Amia because DM events are always lvl 30 based and so everything lvl 29 or less is irrelevant and the ~real~ rp doesn't start until lvl 30 at Bendir...

Yes Yes I know that its unlikely that veterans will see a need or benefit to changing their mindset and the old "Arelith" defence or similar will be held up as a biblical shield to ward off new fangled faiths, but it would be nice to think it was possible.

I can see your point, Vital, but I really think it all comes down to convenience. People will play up death RP when the circumstances surrounding a death warrant it. Sure, a character would probably be severely shaken up after dying the first five times.. but what about the next two hundred? Eventually, I think any player and/or character would get jaded about it.

It's kind of meta to say that dying when out hunting while solo or in a group is just your character getting knocked out. But isn't it also meta for characters to kill the same bosses in the same locations over and over and over again? How can anyone justify their character visiting the fire giant royalty, Windy, Maxi, Kraven, etc etc. for the thousandth time?

I don't think anyone really can. We just accept these things OOC and IC because it's convenient for us. Death and healing are the same way. When there's a big DM plot battle, characters will die 10 times in an hour. Nobody wants to go through long, drawn out death and revival RP when the DM is going to spawn another mob, so people just use a healing potion and run back into the fight. It's a little meta, sure, but it's convenient for everyone. If people want to have long term RP surrounding the death and/or revival of a character... why can't they? People can impose restrictions on their characters as they see fit, but I don't think trying to impose RP preferences on other players is the way to go.

My personal feelings is that death should be taken more seriously during DM stuff or serious-RP stuff (aka assassinations). While hunting it's a bit more loosely played because it's a huge PITA, but you should still take some note of it.

When it comes to lag-death though I tell death to shove it and hardly make that serious, unless the people I'm with want to. Because, really, lagdeath is worst death.

Krin wrote:

but I don't think trying to impose RP preferences on other players is the way to go.

I never mentioned once about "imposing" RP preferences on other players...but I do support a culture change of reigning in the more absurd habits of the server like getting actually killed stone dead then a very powerful spell being cast by a non-caster and the person returns from the dead like he or she just took a hypernap for 30 seconds.

There seems to be a little trend this way already with things like dragon disciples no longer behind able to hide 15ft wings under a cloak and yet a bunch of players whined so much the thread was locked. But to many of us it was like duh we knew that already but nice of the DMs to make it "official" along the lines of posting that water is in fact wet.

I do not for a moment think that this server will ever take its collective thumb out and step up to death being something of note but as a Healer I can at least hope that death will have some damn inconvenient repercussions that will need some intervention of others to solve.

Removing raise dead scrolls would be a start and render a fallen player into a pick up able object (with a good weight for that encumbrance) that has to be taken to a priest where gold will be paid for a ress (assuming the party wasnt smart enough to bring a priest)

Sorry but death should be an inconvenience, and people should have to learn how to deal with it or preferably avoid it in the first place, I would hate to be in Kelemvors office these days with all these souls coming, then going then turning up five minutes later then going again...

VitalTouch wrote:

Removing raise dead scrolls would be a start and render a fallen player into a pick up able object (with a good weight for that encumbrance) that has to be taken to a priest where gold will be paid for a ress (assuming the party wasnt smart enough to bring a priest)

If this is possible, I would want it.

By the way, saying people weren't smart enough to bring a priest is erroneous. You don't always find X character in range (mage, cleric, melee, etc).

I want a system of some sort, but not one that unnecessarily penalizes people. Make grinding a PITA and lots of people (myself included) will be pissed.

I left Ravenloft for the reason you are attempting to offer, while yes i agree death should be hard to get rid of, but making it near impossible to go to any high level area's would require near every enemy being fixed, places like the abyss shop and the brog terror shop both being significantly less harsh. it would require so much scripting and changed to make it fair on death that it isnt even funny.
You already die and can come back for a large penalty which for many high levels is devastating. Unless you plan on adding a gold bank system as well, i cant condone or willingly play in another ravenloft-esk server as you lose too much for such little to no gain. near everyone would be afraid to do anything.

Adding extra penalties, or making people jump through hoops before they can resurrect, isn't going to make death more serious, it's going to make death more of an annoyance. Death is serious because it's permanent. Death in D&D isn't the same as death in our world, it's merely a severe medical condition (usually caused by a battleaxe through the chest, or standing too close to a hellball, or trying to hug a fire elemental) that is cured via magically enhanced health care. Adding complications to that procedure isn't going to do much because if it can be fixed then it's just not death. Not really.

Death death death.

To be fair, in D&D, while death can be circumvented, it's not simply just curing a disease or something. The loss of level on the dead characters part generally represents that they lose a part of themselves to the death. Not to mention the requirement of different spells for different deaths. Raise Dead, for instance, can't bring back someone with a severed head without trying to re-attach the head, first. It doesn't regrow lost limbs, either. Resurrection can do a lot more than Raise Dead, of course, but that level drop is still there. True Resurrection, however, can bring someone back without the level drop. But it's, instead, extremely taxing on the user of the spell. Obviously death isn't an end to all things in D&D as it is in the real world, but it's definitely not nearly as easy-going as that. Haha. Then you look at stuff like a Wish spell. Can bring someone back from the dead as normal, but is even MORE taxing on the user of the spell.

Probably not relevant to the thread as a whole, but more just felt I needed to explain stuff relating to how death works in PnP, at least.

While true, Terallis, The issue with NWN compaired to normal D&D is the simple fact it isnt D&D. it might have the base of D&D but on many servers it has its own life. Specially on an MMO like NWN. To put those penalties could result in a lot of issues. But you did bring up a decent point!: why not just add a 1d4 level/stat drain on death? it would ruin spells on casters, and fighting capabilities on fighters, making people either prepare for it or be forced to back out of they die too much.

You missed my point about genre, though. I think it is not considered enough in these kind of topics. You cannot say what consequences death "should have" or how characters "should react" to it without taking into account the genre you're going for.

Marvel comics aren't any less valuable or entertaining than A Song of Ice and Fire. The way the former treat the occasional death and the more frequent devastating beat-downs is not applicable to the latter, and vice versa, because superhero comics and gritty political fantasy are two different genres.

Death in The Walking Dead (video game) is a dramatic and irreversible consequence of player choice and the story is built around it. Death in Unreal Tournament is an increase of the frag count and some downtime. It would be absurd to say one is better than the other, let alone implement the system of one game in the other. Or in the RPG field, imagine if you implemented some hardcore roguelike system into Mass Effect.

Similarly, there are survival (horror) servers out there where adventuring is an uninviting and high-risk, done only for bragging rights, serious plot purposes or material necessity. Escape from Underdark, Ravenloft, and the old Zombie Survival servers come to mind. They were great severs, I played them and loved them. But they were designed around that genre from the ground up, with the atmosphere, the level-up speed and level cap, game systems like hunger, small maps, DM stories with a very different focus from ours.

I think it's fair to say Amia can be loosely described as a high-fantasy adventure server. The module, the setting, the stories, the items and level caps all encourage people to head out, have fun bashing monsters like the reckless adventurers they are, and not worry over-much about preparations, backup plans, rations, lasting consequences etc. And that's not "bad" or "RP-lite"; it's in line with our genre of choice and what players expect when they head out there. If everything about Amia remained the same, except hefty PvM penalties, you would still be encouraged to head out on high adventure and then you'd get an unpleasant kick in the balls when you died doing what you were expected to do. That's not fun, that's not good design. You could remake Amia as a hardcore survival server and I'd be cool with that, but you cannot just take one piece and twist it out-of-sync with the rest of the server hoping to change the culture.

If you compare Amia to the single-player RPGs that our playerbase mostly play and which it most resembles, you'd have stuff like Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls - all games where fun, adventure and story feature prominently, and all with free quicksaving! You don't see many boasting how they play The Binding of Isaac or FTL or XCOM or Crusader Kings II on Ironman, or whatever. Yes, some of us do that too, but it's not very close to the Amia experience. All single-player games that most resemble Amia are very soft with death penalties and saving. Why would it be a good idea to break the genre?

One big problem is, D&D is designed around the players acting as a group that will stick together no matter what, which allows for harsher penalties ('cause the group will pool their resources). Amia consists of individuals. If characters don't cooperate on Amia they'll just go their own way. If characters don't cooperate in PnP someone probably isn't getting invited to the next session.

IronAngel wrote:

Alla dat stuff.

Seconding this. So many events here are rife with both accidental and intentional deaths, and it would be so, so disruptive if they were all treated like tragedies (just the typing time alone). Can you imagine how the arena tournament in Cordor West would have looked if some of the suggestions here were implemented?

Naivatkal wrote:

By the way, saying people weren't smart enough to bring a priest is erroneous. You don't always find X character in range (mage, cleric, melee, etc).

Tongue in cheek comment, ironically I would suggest part of the reason its hard to find people in range is that its generally hard to find people, at all.

Naivatkal wrote:

I want a system of some sort, but not one that unnecessarily penalizes people.

Erm, dying should be somewhat inconvenient at the moment being dead is easier to cure than certain silvery blood plagues and magic tree curses...

Naivatkal wrote:

Make grinding a PITA and lots of people (myself included) will be pissed.

And here is the nub of it we have an empty server but we must satisfy the atavistic grinders before we look at ways in which we could ~potentially~ improve the server.
Have you considered the possibility that the server is empty because a grind without risks is well....just a grind not to mention that grinding as you call it is death to RP, personally I find it a "PITA" that we have a careless attitude to death.

It's completely counter intuitive whatever "genre" you are playing in because death always comes with some drawbacks, yes this is a computerised version of a pnp game and so there are limits to it, no I am not suggesting adding some over laborious mechanism simply to irritate the grinder clique, yes I want actual death to have a meaning to a character and those around the character, no this does not automatically mean every time you fall in a hunt a Yoda death scene needs to be acted out.

But surely there is some middle ground between could not give a fook and Yoda that will allow actual death to have some sort of impact on the characters, the NPCs and the world?

Engaging and believable RP being more important here than mere grind right?

Larsaan wrote:

Seconding this. So many events here are rife with both accidental and intentional deaths, and it would be so, so disruptive if they were all treated like tragedies

And yet that is exactly what some people want, a methodology where only deaths in events really happen or really matter, and surely an accidental death is still a death? And possibly worthy of RP? As for intentional deaths are they not certainly RP material?

I'm afraid to say that I do not subscribe to the concept that an event is (or rather ~should be~) linear but organic in that if something is done by a PC or group of PCs then it should be worked into the narrative. What you seem to be suggesting is that nothing not even accidental or intentional murder should prevent the event from panning out as dictated by the DM/DMs

Larsaan wrote:

Seconding this. So many events here are rife with both accidental and intentional deaths, and it would be so, so disruptive if they were all treated like tragedies

VitalTouch wrote:

And yet that is exactly what some people want, a methodology where only deaths in events really happen or really matter, and surely an accidental death is still a death? And possibly worthy of RP? As for intentional deaths are they not certainly RP material?

I'm afraid to say that I do not subscribe to the concept that an event is (or rather ~should be~) linear but organic in that if something is done by a PC or group of PCs then it should be worked into the narrative. What you seem to be suggesting is that nothing not even accidental or intentional murder should prevent the event from panning out as dictated by the DM/DMs

Death should definitely worked into the narrative of events.. but that gets a little hard when people die four or five times in one event. I don't know if your character was there during the big battles in Cordor or against the super-wizard Reyes, but I can't imagine what that would've been like without Raise scrolls or with people transitioning in and out because they're being turned into corpse objects every time they die. Some events are just too big for death to be anything but a bump in the road between mobs. Maybe that's bad RP, but it makes the server more fun to play on.

Like Iron said, Amia has always been all about wild adventures and high fantasy. I poked into Arelith a long time ago and, before being banned for badmouthing a DM that was lecturing me about running everywhere, I was bored to tears because everything was taken so seriously in character and out. I came to Amia to troll people and intrigued by RP because I'd never done it before....but I fell in love with the server because the player base was open to the idea of fun. Even if that 'fun' meant their characters kicking my character in the crotch repeatedly.

When I started playing in Amia, it was like a high-fantasy version of the wild west. It wasn't uncommon for people to have running battles all over Cordor, drop hellballs in the middle of the city, and have high fashion pose-offs in front of the temple. Gods and avatars regularly peeked in to cause trouble, play pranks, and fight it out with adventurers.

One of my fondest memories in Amia was totally nonsense. My character decided to play a prank on people by polymorphing into a zombie then wandering around the old Cordor graveyard....which was right down the road from East Cordor and the temple. As he waited in there and fought off the real undead he was hiding with...I had him shouting at the other zombies that he was one of them. It was already stupid, but it got even worse when a wild DM appeared. The undead started following him as their new leader and he led a parade of chanting, protesting zombies right through Cordor. They were all destroyed by surprised adventurers and he was killed then raised and put in jail for an hour. Total nonsense! But it was goddamn hilarious.

The culture on the server has grown much more serious over the years, probably because the player base is older now, but that spark of wild and reckless adventure is still there beneath the surface. I think that's what makes Amia special.

I can understand being frustrated by the way death is treated on the server, but at this point I don't think there's much that can or should be done because tossing more consequences at players is only going to suck more fun out of the server.

Yes I was involved in the Reynes plot and was involved in many of the large battles and several other large battles to do with Wiltun and stuff, and as a healer character yes I am quite put out that death, dying, and injury are so easy to be cured by those not actually skilled in healing and casting simply by chugging potions and "all better" or some half wit illiterate character suddenly able to cast a very power raise dead spell.

Contrary to the event clique there are others on the server to whom death and mortality are part of their RP so whilst I understand the need for the olde guard to quake in fear at the mention of change and hold out Arelith as the one size fits all argument why things should remain ever stale. I do not agree with their position.

Krin wrote:

The culture on the server has grown much more serious over the years, probably because the player base is older now

Or perhaps because the absurd has peaked and people are naturally trying to make the server a bit more rational and believable again?

Krin wrote:

but that spark of wild and reckless adventure is still there beneath the surface. I think that's what makes Amia special.

I don't see anything here that would preclude death being made relevant.

Krin wrote:

I can understand being frustrated by the way death is treated on the server, but at this point I don't think there's much that can or should be done because tossing more consequences at players is only going to suck more fun out of the server.

Or could it not possibly inject some fun into the "grind" by adding some tiny minuscule element of risk to the mundanery of butchering hundreds of giants, thousands of orcs followed by some bf/gf rp at the Dale....

Sorry am I missing something here but isn't this thread to discuss ways death could mean something and also gold sinks? Not to freeze in fear at the specter of Arelith at the mention of some ideas for improving?

If you expect that a "tiny miniscule element of risk" will dramatically change server culture regarding narratives of death, you expect too much. If, on the other hand, you have other goals or other methods in mind, say it directly. We should be honest and clear: in all probability, any tweaks to the death system will have very little impact on RP culture. The two aren't entirely distinct, but anything short of a complete redesign isn't going to have drastic effects. So you should probably keep the two separate in your argumentation. If you want mechanical penalties for mechanical, game-design reasons (i.e. making the pure gameplay aspect more fun and balanced), that's fine. If you want mechanical penalties because you want to affect how people RP, you are not being realistic.

I can feel your pain as a healer, but you must understand that not every story calls for an elaborate healing scene, and not every scene deserves the same emphasis. You should not think of RP as a game where the same situation calls for the same solution and has the same consequences every time, as per the rules of the game. You should think of it more as writing a book or directing a film. You usually make an emotional impact when you adhere to the conventions of your chosen genre and go along with audience expectations to a certain point, and then break convention somehow to throw them off balance. Your healing RP is much more meaningful and memorable if, against all expectations, somebody really does get hurt on an adventure and requires serious care, as opposed to going through the same necessary, mundane procedures every single time. If anything, a PvE death system that requires players to jump through hoops for RP's sake cheapens that RP by making it necessary and repetitive rather than spontaneous and unique. (I assume you support some kind of a system that enforces certain steps in raising etc.) And a PvE death system that works like the one we have now, only with harsher penalties, will continue to exert very little influence on RP.

VitalTouch wrote:

What you seem to be suggesting is that nothing not even accidental or intentional murder should prevent the event from panning out as dictated by the DM/DMs

What I'm actually suggesting is that if every death on Amia was treated with the gravitas of real death, the setting would be an intolerable hellhole.

Larsaan wrote:

VitalTouch wrote:

What you seem to be suggesting is that nothing not even accidental or intentional murder should prevent the event from panning out as dictated by the DM/DMs

What I'm actually suggesting is that if every death on Amia was treated with the gravitas of real death, the setting would be an intolerable hellhole.

I don't think anyone is saying this, I certainly am not but people assuming this is right up there with the Arelith defence because we can carry on the way we are and ok there is an element that is find with that. However there seems to be a definate element of players who want to see some improvements in certain things. Ergo this thread.

IronAngel wrote:

If you expect that a "tiny miniscule element of risk" will dramatically change server culture regarding narratives of death, you expect too much. If, on the other hand, you have other goals or other methods in mind, say it directly. We should be honest and clear: in all probability, any tweaks to the death system will have very little impact on RP culture. The two aren't entirely distinct, but anything short of a complete redesign isn't going to have drastic effects. So you should probably keep the two separate in your argumentation. If you want mechanical penalties for mechanical, game-design reasons (i.e. making the pure gameplay aspect more fun and balanced), that's fine. If you want mechanical penalties because you want to affect how people RP, you are not being realistic.

My argument if you want to put it that way is that death is utterly meaningless as things stand at the moment, which is absurd on a role play server.

OBVIOUSLY I am not advocating as I have stated a whole Yoda death scene every time someone dies hunting monster spawns in <insert name> area. However dying should not be something that' is completely meh and an irritant more from the fact of buying a scroll than you know suffering horrendous mortal injury and for a time sitting in the lands of the dead chatting with Kelemvor.

There have been some very good suggestions on how to make death and dying and serious injury something to actually care about preventing, somewhere there is a post by Pony that lays out some very interesting ideas on wounds and death penalties.

I have no idea where you get the idea I am trying to change peoples RP directly, this is not the case but I think that things would change of their own accord and find a new settling point if death and injury were made to have an impact on our characters.

IronAngel wrote:

I can feel your pain as a healer, but you must understand that not every story calls for an elaborate healing scene, and not every scene deserves the same emphasis.

I refer you to my comments earlier in this thread and this reply regarding Yoda death scenes because I have already clearly stated this is not my desire.

IronAngel wrote:

You should not think of RP as a game where the same situation calls for the same solution and has the same consequences every time, as per the rules of the game.

What? No idea where you are going with this one.

IronAngel wrote:

If anything, a PvE death system that requires players to jump through hoops for RP's sake cheapens that RP by making it necessary and repetitive rather than spontaneous and unique.

Why should a player dying be exempt from that player and/or the player's party from making some effort to resolve the incident. It's not like anyone is asking for anything as banal as weapons breaking and needing fixing or blades going blunt and needing sharpening or armour beaking and needing repairing. But a player taking wounds sufficient to lay him or her low in battle ~should~ require some effort to get over, and it certainly should not come down to a cheap and cheerful spell scroll that anyone can read.

IronAngel wrote:

(I assume you support some kind of a system that enforces certain steps in raising etc.) And a PvE death system that works like the one we have now, only with harsher penalties, will continue to exert very little influence on RP.

You are free to assume all you want, but it doesn't mean you are correct, I support making death and injury relevant somehow, Pony put forward some good ideas about it, I will search out the link later.

Thinking out loud here

I would like to see raise dead scrolls removed from NPC vendors.

I would like to see an interact able item which can be picked up when a player dies. This item to be taken to a priest NPC or PC in order to have a prepared raise dead type spell cast upon it to revive the player. Costs if any to be dealt with IC if a PC or else a steep fee from the NPC.

Alternatively the player can respawn with all commensurate penalties.

If this interrupts folk grinding their epics and got careless and died, oh well. Don't get careless because to your character death actually hurts and is kinda of scary still...unless they are a psychopath...oh wait its Amia.

Now I don't for a moment think anything will actually change here in Amia, there is simply to much desire for the status quo for the cliques to go on cliquing and how dare anyone suggest something that might impact on ~their~ grind. But I can live in a little sliver of hope and pretend.

As far as we have reason to expect, none of the things you mention will have any effect on the way death is role-played. And more importantly, there isn't necessary anything wrong with the way death is (not) role-played right now. The system as it stands leaves plenty of room for people to turn it into a traumatic experience when it suits the story, or shrug it off. The part you did not understand was my central argument: any death system that imposes a "right" way to RP about it undermines story at the expense of gameplay. Scenes in a story are supposed to have meaning, they advance logically from one to the other within the conventions of the genre. A collaborative RP experience is never fully planned, of course, but adding an obtrusive element of mechanically randomness ("oops I rolled 1, let's interrupt the coherent light-hearted adventure parody for a forced paramedic scene") does not improve storytelling. Death can only be meaningful when it needs to happen, or when it happens when you least expect it. If death becomes a routine inconvenience that you kind of expected but that will be annoying when it happens (which any harsher system will cause), it becomes even more banal and meaningless than it is now. What you want and how you propose to achieve it are not in line.

This has nothing to do with cliques, the old guard, the Arelith-scare or anything like that. It is simply a matter of good, consistent game design and honest argumentation. If the method you propose simply does not have the consequences you aspire to and, as far as we can see, would only have undesirable side effects, it is a bad method and we are better off not implementing it.

I have and will continue to play PvE death not as death, but as getting knocked out or otherwise injured so that one can't fight further without first-aid. I pretend Raise Dead scrolls are emergency scrolls that can fix a body and restore its functions but cannot return a departed soul. If you want to RP being dead for real, then, I probably won't raise you with a scroll. Tough luck, get a cleric.

I fully support potential permadeath in PvP and DM stories, though.

IronAngel wrote:

The part you did not understand was my central argument:

I understood it perfectly, I just disagreed with it.

IronAngel wrote:

What you want and how you propose to achieve it are not in line.

I don't see how, I simply agree with what Pony and others have suggested in regards to making death and injury relevant and to have consequences. I do not see what is so hard to understand about this desire because you are wandering off on all sorts of tangents based on arguments you are attributing to me which are not actually mine. I am not trying to change the way people RP death and injury I am simply wanted death an injury to have some actual meaning. If death an injury were to be so improved as myself and others have suggest in this thread then I have no doubt the RP around such things would be impacted as a matter of course. But is not my goal in and off itself.

IronAngel wrote:

This has nothing to do with cliques, the old guard, the Arelith-scare or anything like that. It is simply a matter of good, consistent game design and honest argumentation.

And yet the Arelith defence is one that is seen often everytime there is a suggestion of adding some consequences to certain actions, and yet it it long time players fearful of their grind for epix being turned from faceroll into something they may have to pay attention to or suffer an actual loss. So sorry I have to disagree with you on again. I feel the Arelith / clique is very much a relevant factor in naysaying out of hand.

Also I have played on the Arelith server and found the server itself to be perfectly ok, the players and the DMs there are another matter altogether. Interestingly enough Arelith has no death penalties over and above the default nwn, but a body is dropped and must be carried to a priest or else a player cast raise dead type spell.
What is interesting is that in general hunting parties are a lot more entertaining because there is a very real risk of being killed and of that death being inconvenient and expensive not just to the dead character but to the party and suddenly its quiet important to pick your fights and maneuver and use neurons to a degree simply not required in Amia. All of this adds an extra level of risk and so excitement I feel that Amia could profit from at the ~possible~ expense of the grinders and those without a vested interest in the server changing/improving for whatever reason who might have to make some effort to what is essentially an effortless task.

IronAngel wrote:

If the method you propose simply does not have the consequences you aspire to and, as far as we can see, would only have undesirable side effects, it is a bad method and we are better off not implementing it.

Pure supposition as nothing has been implemented or tested and this thread is for airing of ideas, a few old clique and grinders naysaying because suggested ideas might force them to make some effort and/or be in some risk is not really disproving an idea is potentially sound. Quite the contrary in my opinion, it just means that those who have ~maybe~ lazy and/ complacent fear having to raise with the bar. Don't get me wrong they are as entitled to their opinion as I am to mine but its strange to me that certain players want to to oppose general concept that this thread indicates is close to a lot of peoples interest simply on the basis that their game is so boring it has been reduced to a "grind" it is odd that these ideas are intended to spice up the "grind" to make it less "grindy" and in a way to bring people back to the concept that this is a role player server first and a diablowowepixgrindmusthave server a very distant last.

IronAngel wrote:

I have and will continue to play PvE death not as death, but as getting knocked out or otherwise injured so that one can't fight further without first-aid. I pretend Raise Dead scrolls are emergency scrolls that can fix a body and restore its functions but cannot return a departed soul. If you want to RP being dead for real, then, I probably won't raise you with a scroll. Tough luck, get a cleric.

Another tangent, the idea is that regardless of how your character "dies" or is severely wounded that there is some sort of imposition imposed on your character until such time as the character receives the proper attention. There are and have been several and varying suggestions as to how such a thing would be implemented. And none of it relies on how you decided to role play that it wasn't a fire giant ax that felled your character it was in fact the wrong leaves on the snow... The idea being that a character will then take appropriate steps in future to better prepare for dealing with those leaves so as not to be "knocked out" again.

IronAngel wrote:

I fully support potential permadeath in PvP and DM stories, though.

I don't think this is strictly relevant to this thread as its not about permadeath but more about introducing consequences for the day to day "knocked out, leaves on the snow, ups I fell" kinds of death.

No, you literally just said you did not understand my central argument about genre.

Quote:

You should not think of RP as a game where the same situation calls for the same solution and has the same consequences every time, as per the rules of the game.

What? No idea where you are going with this one.

The point is that conventions of genre are much more important than the rules of a game in determining the best course of events on Amia. We are, as far as the text-based RP aspect of the server is concerned, writing a story rather than playing a game. If mechanical events in the game (like death) force you to drastically deviate from the tone and coherence of your story to deal with a tragic and costly death, your RP isn't improved - it's being invaded by elements external to the narrative. This is not unequivocally bad: the interaction between freeform writing and game rules is what defines D&D, but there is a balance to everything.

You will note that there is no "majority" of players who want the same thing - and even if there was, that's no guarantee they're thinking clearly and can be trusted to form their own opinion. Thank god Amia's not a democracy. What seems evident based on this topic is that there's a bunch of loosely related concerns and motives that hint in the general direction of "people must RP better" or "Amia must be more difficult" but aren't all coherent with each other and don't allow for a single solution. There are people who want penalties in PvP and DM plots; there are people who want them specifically for PvM; some want the penalties to be time- and RP-based, others think there should be a mechanical cost (like gold or XP); there's no consensus on whether it is a matter of making the gameplay more challenging or of encouraging better RP; some support optional penalties, others believe it must be all or nothing; Pony's system, which I thought was sort of neat but doesn't really add any value, will remain irrelevant if it isn't enforced on everyone (and if it is, I'm not sure what we'll gain). Some of these opinions may be justified, but there is no consistent solution that will answer all of them. Whatever solution you implement (of those suggested), a great many will be unhappy.

You need to be specific, identify exact concerns and motives, and try to clarify the goals and consequences of the suggested options. You can't placate some "general sentiment" because there isn't one. What you want (insofar as I can interpret it from your posts) is not what other supporters of the "more penalties" school want.

I am going to stop here on this argument, though. If you're still not convinced, clearly my methods aren't up to the task.

I really don't see the point of enforcing penalties on anyone dying in pve.

We are on Amia to have fun, penalties when dying while hunting is ussually not fun for many playing here. Therefore it's not something we need to have enforced on every pve death.
I never saw anyone dying in pve applying a penalty to themselves after dying (By removing an item for instance to lower stats) so why some people are calling to stick penalties on everyone while they don't apply any to themselves now is completely beyond me.

DM events and pvp are another matter entirely though.

As it has come up in this topic and I was asked about giving a status update on the PvP and PvM Standard and Advanced Consequences Toggle System that I intended to start working on in January, here it is:

For the time being, I stepped back from all my own initiatives as a designer. This includes this project. At this time I am only going to handle the headpack updates, hak updates, coordination with the volunteer custom content makers and area design I am specifically sought out to handle by DMs. If this is temporary, and hence may be picking up this project some time in the future, is not something I am able to say.

Making death mean something and gold sinks (Discussion)

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