Cleaning up permadeath: Edgecases that feel wrong

[Sevenless]

Right now these situations are unusual in that they don't work how permadeath does otherwise. The game's "permadeath mechanic" is almost entirely "if you get below X%, you're risking permadeath and should sit inside as punishment for making a mistake". The system should be consistent, a noob getting KOed to a boar should teach them the same lesson as getting KOed elsewhere (If you're getting stomped by a giant mammoth it's intuitive for players that you can full die I guess?).

Drowning:
Hermit on a rowboat means instant death? That's not intuitive at all. Drowning should TP you home with an extra % asphyxiation wound instead of accumulating while you swim without stamina (if the asphyxiation is enough to kill, corpse remains of course).

Dungeons:
There have been, to my knowledge, extremely few instances where dungeons have mattered in terms of pvp between "actual pvpers". Them locking you from tping out really only threatens people who don't understand the system. Beaver dungeons both TP locking and water KOing are amusingly nasty.

B12 cleaves for instant kills:
Death protection code doesn't work the way it should. PvPers have been open for multiple worlds that you can full to zero someone if you know their HP value and hit really hard when they aren't wearing a lot of armor. This is especially easy on hermits who have a predictable and low HP pool overall and little to no armour.

Starvation: (mightysheep reminded me)
Losing a character to inattention, almost entirely by newbies, doesn't add anything positive to the game. Low energy forcing you to crawl only is plenty enough punishment that people would want to eat.

Bum Burn:
Should really just be a set yes/no wound that stops you eating peppered foods when you have it. It's dangerous enough when it comes to people not paying attention that people often avoid having it in the village at all.

Side note: With roots being spammable, pvpers from factions can "undo" the actual punishing parts of the injury system which has almost entirely replaced permadeath as the "risk" for pvp. Limiting root usage to once per day would make skipping the actually bad injuries much harder for rich groups.


Spicy final take: We've been slowly eliminating permadeath from the game for years now. Just get it over with and give us an experimental no permadeath wound only world. The vast majority of players play the game despite permadeath, not because of it.

[MightySheep]

Yeah perma death has been mostly pushed into weird edge cases which mostly just feel like bullshit. Losing your whole char shouldn't feel like some weird bs edge case thing. 2 ppl in my village last world lost their char to not paying attention while running in open world and they accidentally drowned themselves lol.

Another thing that's bs is the hunger inherit. I campaigned for that because suicide to boost your char was dumb but now you inherit 100% hunger and %45 of ur stats now its the exact opposite problem. If you die in early game you need to start a new character. Why tf does it not inherit the same % of hunger as it does stats??

Even the pvp deaths are more often just crash kills than proper kills

[vatas]

Side note: With roots being spammable, pvpers from factions can "undo" the actual punishing parts of the injury system which has almost entirely replaced permadeath as the "risk" for pvp. Limiting root usage to once per day would make skipping the actually bad injuries much harder for rich groups.

+1

Also consider an accompanying change of making Roots not decay anymore. This would make them more useful for the "intended" purpose of getting rid of wounds that don't otherwise heal (Nasty Wart, Quicksilver Poisoning*) and make it easier to craft Druid's Rings.

*Might need re-balancing because currently the wound is a trade-off from studying a strong(?) curio.

[Dawidio123]

+1

[SnuggleSnail]

Return 60% baseline HHP damage on weapons if ur gonna nerf other avenues for dying
You don't have to be very experienced at all to feel no fear ever it'd be nice to get some of that back
World is so boring when nobody important dies for months at a time

[pagsiu]

+1

[Sevenless]

Yeah perma death has been mostly pushed into weird edge cases which mostly just feel like bullshit. Losing your whole char shouldn't feel like some weird bs edge case thing. 2 ppl in my village last world lost their char to not paying attention while running in open world and they accidentally drowned themselves lol.

Another thing that's bs is the hunger inherit. I campaigned for that because suicide to boost your char was dumb but now you inherit 100% hunger and %45 of ur stats now its the exact opposite problem. If you die in early game you need to start a new character. Why tf does it not inherit the same % of hunger as it does stats??

Even the pvp deaths are more often just crash kills than proper kills

I thought they fixed that recently, like last world or something? Reminded me that dying to starvation is silly and has basically only ever happened to new players.

Return 60% baseline HHP damage on weapons if ur gonna nerf other avenues for dying

How do you do this without making 100 newbies die per 1 fighter? I have no issues with fighters killing each other, but the cost of having the rest of the playerbase slaughtered to kill one notable figure isn't worth it. "No death" pvp has definitely gotten a few more players into haven pvp in recent worlds, but established pvpers seem to feel that's a bad thing somehow? I figured more people to fight would be fun personally.

[Zaeri]

Just throwing this idea out here but if we want less hermit deaths and more actual fighter deaths, what if there was some sort of mechanic where HHP damage was based on stat difference between two characters? The more equal your stats are the more HHP damage you deal/receive.

And to prevent "unkillable alts blocking bases" a debuff could be added on concussion wound which makes you receive normal HHP damage no matter the stat difference.

[Dawidio123]

How do you do this without making 100 newbies die per 1 fighter? I have no issues with fighters killing each other, but the cost of having the rest of the playerbase slaughtered to kill one notable figure isn't worth it. "No death" pvp has definitely gotten a few more players into haven pvp in recent worlds, but established pvpers seem to feel that's a bad thing somehow? I figured more people to fight would be fun personally.

That's the usual issue isn't it, how do we make pvp fun and punishing for high-end players without fucking everyone average or below. In the end i don't care about people dying or not, but the devs should pick a lane, either do it actual permadeath where you usually die, or the opposite without dumb edgecases that allow you to die.

[Sevenless]

How do you do this without making 100 newbies die per 1 fighter? I have no issues with fighters killing each other, but the cost of having the rest of the playerbase slaughtered to kill one notable figure isn't worth it. "No death" pvp has definitely gotten a few more players into haven pvp in recent worlds, but established pvpers seem to feel that's a bad thing somehow? I figured more people to fight would be fun personally.

That's the usual issue isn't it, how do we make pvp fun and punishing for high-end players without fucking everyone average or below. In the end i don't care about people dying or not, but the devs should pick a lane, either do it actual permadeath where you usually die, or the opposite without dumb edgecases that allow you to die.

Agreed, this weird "sort of inbetween" point feels bad. We've been moving towards wound system for many years now, time to finish it off properly imo. The game hasn't gotten worse despite the doomsdayers, if anything total population has been climbing slowly during these changes.

The issue of pvp only being fun if you kill people is another one. I agree that the pvp mechanics themselves aren't exactly a riot.