Voice your suggestions here!

[Jocularity]

Well, when (Or knowing me, If) i make one, i can just stick it in my signiture that it exists, and PM it to whoever asks. That's no spoiler like that.

Additionally/Alternatively, we could stick up more of those "Beware" Signs that everyone ignores. They're a good indicator of a dungeon.

Oh! And how about subtle hints like "Number of skeletons outside cave = Recomended level"...

[AelrynBloodmoon]

One thing I've noticed is that some dungeons have descriptive text that triggers in the system messages section when you walk into them. Perhaps when running across these triggers the game could check the PC's level and if they're more than X amount of levels under there could be some message about dread filling the player's very soul and an urge to flee filling them.

As an aside- Banking system. It's been discussed before, and if I recall, one of the reasons behind it not gaining too much support is that our penalty for death revolves around losing gold.

Perhaps a banking system could be implemented, and as a gold sink it would charge a small percentage on withdrawls. On death, you'd drop all gold you're carrying. This would function as a gold sink and encourage people to use the bank to keep from losing their gold, as well.

[Sakes]

A banking system for gold doesn't make sense given how our server rules are in place.

If the transaction fees for withdrawals are more then the player would tend to lose dying, then players won't use the system.  If its less, then thats not a sink, its reducing a sink we already have in place.

I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't make sense.

[AelrynBloodmoon]

The sink would be in a percentage charged to withdraw money from the bank. Yes, you're guaranteed not to lose 10% of your 1.5 million gold, but paying a 2-3% fee every time you take out 10-20k gold for that extra security eventually adds up- certainly more so than if you rarely die in the first place.

[Sakes]

The whole point of a bank would be to protect people from losing gold when the died.  We don't WANT people to be protected from losing gold when they die.  So your solution to that is make it so it costs you even more gold?

Ok, so then why are we making a bank?

I don't see how I can make this simplier.

Doing A causes B.
We don't want B.
So lets make A not cause B.
So why are we doing A again?

[AelrynBloodmoon]

Well, let's take an example. This example is not based on me, although it hypothetically could be, or it could be any other player. I'm carrying oh, say, 300,000 gold. I'm 20k away from being able to afford a 4x4 player house made with castle interior. Maybe I'm carrying 140,000 and 20k away from a city interior of the same size instead.

I can carry all 140k or all 300k at all times, and risk losing 10% (14-30K, a fairly significant setback to my goal in either event) to a respawn or not logging in until the server resets.

Or I can deposit it all, and when I want to withdraw it to pay for the player housing, and pay a 2-3% transaction fee.

More importantly, let's assume the player has already bought housing, and is steadily accumulating gold without dying. They're carrying a million and a half gold around.

They can persistently risk dropping over 100K gold on death unless they log out for the server reset, OR, they can deposit it all.

The next time they decide they want to go shopping, they withdraw 100K gold, and pay a 3K gold transaction fee.

Players will use the system because it means they no longer have to log their character out until a reset to avoid dropping ungodly amounts of gold (otherwise known as technically cheating the death system penalty that the idea of a bank is meeting an opposition for.) In exchange for this convenience, they pay a gold sink of 3k- which is absolutely more than they would pay if they just logged out until the server reset.

There's been talk of making death persistent over resets, but realistically even if that happens players will find another way to preserve their gold from the penalty, because it's silly that you'd carry over a million gold into a dangerous dungeon for your enemies to loot in the first place.

The system would be used as a gold sink to provide security and convenience in exchange for gold, and I think players like convenience enough to pay a gold surcharge per transaction. I would, particularly if the death system was changed so that all gold I carried dropped to the ground instantly upon my death. I can't really name any player off the top of my head that wouldn't for any good reason.

[fealhach2008]

Nightmares for high level blackguards.  :evil:

[Sakes]

The idea of charging gold on death is to make death risky and thus make players be careful to avoid it.  What your proposing is essentially death insurance, you pay a premium to be protected from the potential of a larger loss.    

Death insurance would defeat the purpose of the gold loss, which is to prevent people from doing things they know are dangerous because death doesn't matter.  Even if the amount of gold lost in the long run was the same to the average player as the amount lost to death, it would still be bad because it would have the effect of trivializing death.  

So in short, yes it would be good for the player, but bad for the server because we WANT death to suck.

[dylan_the_rabbit]

Death insurance would defeat the purpose of the gold loss, which is to prevent people from doing things they know are dangerous because death doesn't matter.

So in short, yes it would be good for the player, but bad for the server because we WANT death to suck.

I'll be brutally honest, the loss of gold due to death has never once come into my head as a reason to not go on a run. Our characters are adventurers - risk taking heroes, its inherent in them to have a 'damn the torpedoes' attitude and routinely attempt to do the impossible. Most of the time they fail, but that isn't going to stop them. Especially if they think that they have the slimmest of chances of succeeding. Granted, after death the loss of some gold bites for a moment or two, but you know you're going make it back and more in your next couple of runs. What really hurts is the negative level and loss of xp gain.

Putting all that to one side for a moment:

On a more practical note, exactly how much does a million and a half in GP weigh? If you want the death to be a realistic situation that the players have to think about and that should influence their characters decisions, then surely other practicalities should be taken into account also?

Like how is my character walking around with a tonne of precious metals on their back? When you look at it from this point of view a bank becomes a valid and simply practical proposal.

So circling back to my earlier remarks. The loss of gold doesn't influence me- I'm not going to speak for anyone else- in my decisions to risk death for my character or not, the neg level is the real kicker. If you want make death suck, I do have a suggestion. Dump the gold sink and up the neg level limit-people are really going to think about the remifications of their action if they gotta carry a neg level and no xp gain for a few hours or so-and institute a banking policy similar to what Bloodmoon suggested to prevent the impracticalities of people walking around with half of Fort Knox in their backpack.

Before anyone starts a lynching party, i'm not trying to say anyone is right or wrong.At the end of the day these are just my opinions, take 'em or leave 'em.

[AelrynBloodmoon]

I absolutely agree with Dylan's general assessment. The gold penalty is ineffective. Anytime it adds up to a sum to be worth anything, all you achieve is that player logging the character out until the next reset. To speak honestly, I think the gold penalty is almost completely pointless- it does not achieve its objective of making people fear death in any way, shape, or form, because the gold penalty is not inflicted unless you respawn.

For me, the negative level has -always- bothered me more than the gold loss, and when it doesn't, well, I have 5 other characters to tide myself over with until the reset.

Making a player drop all gold they carry on the ground on death and giving them a banking system to store what they don't want to risk losing, with a modest transaction fee, will achieve the purpose of gold sinks without causing people to log their character out every time they die. If you feel that this detracts from the fear of death, then increase the part that players actually fear- the level drain and lack of combat XP.

I honestly believe that's the biggest and best way you have to instill fear of death- because the gold penalty certainly doesn't ever give me pause.

[fealhach2008]

As for carrying a million in gold, I prefer to think my characters have at least some kind of secure living area that they store their loot in and a place where they can change heavy bags of gold for almost weightless gems at almost the same price. I don't imagine any of them running into a dungeon with their entire fortune in their backpack for the duergar or whatever to loot. Our characters must have a lot of mediocre real-life running around to do when we haven't logged onto them for an adventure, you just don't see it.

Logging out while your character is dead is illegal on a number of servers, maybe we can try that. I also log off when I'm dead, but if it's against the rules I wouldn't.

[Torin]

Logging out while your character is dead is illegal on a number of servers, maybe we can try that. I also log off when I'm dead, but if it's against the rules I wouldn't.

Not a chance i'd support this. At the end of the day the person is still losing the playtime on that character, taking away their freedom to make that decision doesn't sound healthy at all for the server.

As for the bank thing, i personally don't see the point. 10% of gold is nothing when you have little, and when you have alot, you don't need it anyway. Most items you can buy on the server are nothing compared to what you can find. You only need to pay once for a house out of all your characters and restocking heal kits isn't too costly. It would probably just clog the server with unnecessary scripts for something that isn't of much benefit.

I think i've only ever gone over 100k with one or two characters for a short time and i've a handful of epics, i've never found a need to go any higher as gold just isn't useful on the server. The whole banking system seems completely unneeded.

[AelrynBloodmoon]

Well, yeah, it's unneeded, in the same way that any other new merchant is unneeded. But it doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit the server.

Creating a bank system is easy enough I imagine for most builders. You just create a merchant that sells stackable (or even unstackable) tokens inside a bank building. When you sell it back, you sell it back for slightly less than you bought it for. You'd have a few different denominations of tokens. Of course, the only merchant that would buy it would be the bank- so if the store you wanted to go to was half-way across the server there's still the risk of you losing gold on the way there.

In this way you could apply the transaction fee without ever having to set up a script (do NPC merchant conversations count as scripts?) and you definitely wouldn't need to create a complex database or anything like that.

A bank would also provide another central hub for players to meet at besides a camp in the middle of the forest, and could also encourage some RP, not to mention provide an easy in for several different events that would naturally happen around a bank.

The only real arguments against this seem to be a mechanical one, and the "we don't need this," sentiment. But the mechanical argument seems to fall apart under the fact that whether people support or don't support the bank, they do seem to agree that the gold penalty isn't functioning as a deterrent. Even from a player who doesn't see the point in a bank, "10% gold is nothing when you have little, and when you have a lot you don't need it anyway."  

Taking the bank discussion and setting it aside for a moment, it's pretty clear that this is not the mentality of someone who thinks that 10% gold loss on respawn is a death deterrent.

Is a bank necessary? No, but neither are all the little specialized vendors we have running around on the server. It doesn't mean people wouldn't use it, it doesn't mean fun couldn't be had as a result of it, and it most certainly doesn't seem to trivialize death, since the penalty it would get you around is already viewed as trivial anyway. Since my suggestion also involves instantly dropping all your gold on the ground next to your corpse when you die, rather than when you respawn, I would even go so far as to say my suggestion makes death more to be feared than the current system- especially if your character doesn't trust his traveling buddies.

I'd also like to point out, that whether or not a bank goes in, I'm still looking for a change here. I'm not going to be happy as long as the server's idea of a death deterrent remains "encourage players to log out when we have a hard time getting more than 10-15 players to log in."

[Sakes]

I personally would never support not allowing people to log out if they die... people have to log out sometime.

The DMs have already passed a vote to make death persist over resets.  The problem is finding a builder willing to do that, as our death system is rather unique.

If you want to debate the gold loss on death penalty thats another story.  Banking doesn't work with the current death system.  If we change that system, then that might change.  I've already suggested numerous changes for that in previous posts.

My ultimate goal would be a death system that doesn't encourage people to log off, which the current one unfortunitely does.   I would want it strict enough to make death respected without being too harsh for our server, which is not hardcore by any means.

[AelrynBloodmoon]

Then I'd absolutely encourage you to take the opinion of your player-base into consideration- a 10% exploitable gold penalty shouldn't be the focus of your penalty- it isn't working. At all. Making death persistent over resets will fix this penalty being exploitable, but it won't solve the problem of people logging out until/unless someone can raise them- if they even care about the gold penalty at all, which no one seems to.

Ordering people not to have people find them and raise them is tantamount to enforcing perma-kills for dungeon runs once you have persistent deaths, and that will kill your player population faster than you can sneeze. (Edit: In retrospect, this is faulty- I wasn't considering respawn when I wrote this part.)

You could modify the script so that after X amount of time being dead the gold penalty is inflicted automatically, but wouldn't that require some pretty intensive heart-beat scripting? (And as a selfish aside if the main way you're looking to make players fear death is with gold, isn't dropping all your gold instantly and adding an NPC merchant easier to do than re-scripting the death system?)

As things are right now, the best way you could make dying and respawning suck would be to cause the negative levels to persist longer (and maybe increase the number of them from 1 per death to 1d4 per death, to make up for the fact that they're temporary.)

The no combat XP penalty is an innovative idea to keep people from running back out the second they respawn, but it also has a drawback similar to the gold penalty- it's pretty common for people to go afk in in the safe haven for a half hour after dying, which again isn't really helping RP or encouraging players to stay logged in.

Personally, I wouldn't mind losing a permanent level on respawn after level 8 or 10. THAT would put the fear of death in me and most other players, and it wouldn't be an unreasonable penalty in my eyes, either- at worst, it set me back a little bit and gave me that much more reason to stay logged in to make up for it some.