"So what happens when my character dies?"

[Stigmatax]

Instead of resurrection sickness, what if the med-techs had some way to "download" your memories from a saved point that could be "uploaded" into a new clone body. The problem would then be you would only have memories or skills from the last saved point so if you don't save often you can loose some critical skills learned between save points and deaths.

Also there should be a built in limit to clones, each clone looses something after each download. You can only clone so many times before the clones become "defective" and then the more after the defective stage is mutations until it would be totally worthless to keep cloning.

[Burninator]

I really like that idea about losing something with every cloning. It seems to be scientifically inevitable that a copy is never quite as good as the original. This is assuming of course the devs go with a cloning death system.

[Stanley]

Hi, first time poster! I just thought I?d add my two-cents to the discussion.

As some one who's played Mech board-games (and the HERO system for that matter) for the past 20 years, I have to say this project really excites me.  In fact, the only thing on the feature list that has me worried at all is the proposed death-system.  As some one without a huge amount of free time to play, I do put a lot of value in the time invested into a character in MMO's.  Maybe I?ve just been spoiled on a diet of modern MMOs and their often casual game-play, but the thought of a 'perma-death' or even pseudo-'perma-death' (or even the slight chance thereof!) gives me great pause.  In the heat of the moment, I would probably be the guy who, after perma-dying, would cancel my subscription and uninstall, then whine about it to my friends.  Or I might just choose to play for a month 'just to try it', because I wouldn't have as much incentive to invest in my character for a long haul.  PVP would also become less desirable for me, because there are just too many Griefers in the world, and maybe I?m just a cynic, but I think they would swarm to a game where they might even have the chance to perma-kill.  Even with massive penalties for perma-killing your enemy pilot, the delight some (many?) players will get out of doing it anyway will probably outweigh all else.  And even if just 1 Griefer is doing it, as my luck will have it, I?ll be the one that receives it!

I think there's been some good dialog and counter-proposals, the idea of an 'XP penalty' would be more palatable to my tastes.  Or even a ?debuff? of some sort, i. e. , after ejecting and waking up in the hospital, you?ll be at some skill penalties until you?ve recovered (i. e. , certain amount of time passes).  I imagine too, the penalty of having your Mech blasted out from under you (and presumably having to foot the repair bill) could be bad enough without also having to re-roll a new pilot.

Anyway, just wanted to chime in as a voice of the less-hardcore gamer.  I?m otherwise liking what I see and will be watching with much enthusiasm and have confidence you?ll find something appropriately balanced!

[Hamilton]

Welcome aboard and duly noted.

I'm personally leaning towards a player's choice for the death mater.

[Cavadus]

I like the "The 6th Day" method as laid out by Stigmatix personally.  You have to be "scanned" or whatever and the moment of that is the save point for when you're resurrected after death.  I'd make it expensive.

Also, some skill decay would be good IMO.

[Stigmatax]

lkavadas ... (shaking head while looking at the ground) ... Stigmatix?!

Yeah and save points could be before a combat or mission drop. I wouldn't make saving costly at all... thought the resurrection process should be a reasonable cost... of course the more you resurrect via a clone the cheaper it should get since your basically heading down to a drooling idiot level sooner or later

[Killian]

I like the non-lossless death system, and I think that it would help if you look at the acct as more of a household than a holding place for your characters. I mean this to say, every character is part of your house like in the mid evil times. That means that the more Fame you get so to speak, the more the characters that succeed you will be pressured to follow in your path. I.E. your dad is a famous doctor so he wants you to follow in his foot steps, and pressures you to go to med school. So when your character dies, and you go on to the next generation you have big shoes to fill in, and hence get some bonus reputation, and a portion of the skills the generation before had. If you follow the same path you get more skills, than if you go after a different path. So say your character is designed for stealth operations in a light sniper style mech, and has done high level work for his corporation in the realm of covert ops. He dies in combat, and you choose to restart. If you go down the same path you will be able to start working at a higher level for the corporation, and will gain 2/3 of the skills of your father; because he was glad to mentor his son, and have the legacy live on. But if you deiced you want to switch paths and become a heavy armored mech pilot, you get only a third of the skills your father had; because he did not have the ability to teach you himself, and had to get you educated from books, and friends. You also do not start as high in the corporation because he did not have the connections in that department to get you their.

[Kellzz]

Perhaps allow players to choose what type of system they want at character creation.

They can go the non-losless route where when they die, Their character can be entered in some sort of memorial deal with the chest beating audio or what have you.
Or they can go the classic route. No perma death, but penalties when they are cloned. Also, no recognition deal.

[Topasticus]

I think permadeath or characterdeath or whatever you call it is acceptable under a certain circumstance:
People must have the ability to avoid it permanently.   

Be it by insurance, karma or offline time. 


Well.  .   If there is this technique, of course everyone will use it (and this makes this concept just a global restriction for everyone).   So just dump the idea of permadeath (even if it is only one tiny character dying.   People IDENTIFY themselves with characters) or use it to enforce some sort of desired behaviour (honorable, fair, polite, whatever) and nothing else. 

[Culan]

The point of a game is (obviously) to have fun. Having your character permanently dead is not fun. But the fact that the permanent death is there makes things like combat more fun. I forget what game it was, but when your character died, you went to hell. You went to hell and you stayed there until you found a way out, which wasn't easy. There were no monsters, only winding hallways, weird graphics and dead ends. It was the most frustrating thing in the world, and it was terrible.

That said, I really like the idea of having to overcome a challenge when you die. In World of Warcraft, when you died, you'd either have to "Spirit Heal" and take a period of "Resurrection Sickness" (An instant resurrection that resulted in your character being alive, but useless for a period of time, usually 10 minutes)as well as equipment damage or walk back to your corpse as a ghost. Option A usually left my character sitting while I went out for a cigarette and let the ressickness expire, and Option B usually left me feeling drained, and logging off shortly after finding my body. While both of these methods of resolving death are challenges, neither of them really add more to the game experience than they take away.

On permanent death, I could see it happening if there was a permanent benefit to having played that character for X amount of time, and now being unable to play it. For instance, if you had an ace mech pilot that permadied, there would be some sort of bonus to your house's mech piloting ability. Perhaps faster growth or higher initial skills for your other characters, persumabley the new one you're going to make so you can get back to playing FoA

Also, I don't think permadeath should result from a new character getting ganked or killed by a higher level player. I think the devs said something about permadeath resulting from a player mistake, or risk, and I don't think my new character getting stepped on by a veteran mech marauder that likes to chase the nubby ants around qualifies.

[Sturm Kintaro]

I believe the chance @ permadeath was also just that, a chance.  If for example your mech blows up, your ejection seat might still work.  Maybe you'll be in a regen tank for a few days, unable to do your normal routine, but you lived.  If however you took an Autocannon round to the cockpit... well, there's always a new way to make chunky salsa 

It's been said before that if you don't push your mech to the absolute limit, odds are pretty good you can run and live to fight another day.  It's just that when you keep rolling the dice in combat, ultimately at some point snake eyes is going to come up.... unless you have a handy-dandy dicehack program

[Kellzz]

What does everyone think of this?


When you create your character, its the original, 'pristine' body. the life expectancy is around 80 years of age. (for the sake of the post, lets say the character starts at 20yrs). Each time the player dies, and needs to be cloned, the life expectancy is reduced by X% or X years since it science says a clone does not live as long as someone who was "home grown."

After so being cloned so many times, it is no longer feasible to clone the body, that character is dead and the next of kin takes over.

[Sturm Kintaro]

It's got some appeal.  My only question is: "how long is an in-game year?"  Are we going in Real time, so theoretically if someone never dies their character could live 80 years?  Or is an in-game year going to last 3-4 months, so 3-4 years go by each year?

[Hamilton]

Technically, a human can live up to about 250 years with cloning (or so that is the background story) should the deaths be age related.  Each successive clone degenerates faster than the previous.

Game to Real Time is expected to be about 4:1 (4 game hours = 1 real time hour).  So 5 years of Real Time would only equate to 20 years in game time.  Dying by living a long and uneventful life will never happen in the game.  Should the FOA universe span to 20 years of real time, that is only 100 years of game time.

We could take breaks and jump x number of years a head at times... but would make players angry with us. 

If I ever said... "I'm sorry you're character died of old age.  We had to jump 100 years into the future for the Next Generation of the game and *COUGH*, remove as many veteran characters as we could."
I think I would witness the same effect that Star Wars Galaxies had with the New Game Enhancements...

[TheWanderingJew]

Next Generation. Seems interesting.

So, do we have to "marry" someone in the game? Or simply create a new character (with the same surname and same stats as with the exitting character)?

Example:
TheWanderingJew (aged 250 years, base stats 10/10)
 to be succeeded by TheWanderingJew2 (age 19 years, base stats 10/10)