Game Over Screen (Improving the ancestor system)

[burgingham]

Yes, that's right! I was thinking about this in the process of coming up with ideas to make permadeath a) a little more transparent and b) not so harsh on new players. While we won't see the permadeath mechanic going anywhere, we repeatedly read about ragequitting and such. I suspect new players often don't know that they have an ancestor or at least not what they can do with him exactly.

A screen explaining your possibilities after you die might help here. Maybe pimp it a little flavourwise, telling the heroic story of your life and death (achievement threads have been popping up alot lately as well) and the bright future your ancestor has ahead of him/her.

While the ancestor mechanic itself can use further improvement I think it is nearly as important to give players a "good" feeling about their death. A game over screen is a start, more options to bury your ancestor, different kinds of graves or tombs would be neat too. Feel free to discuss those.

[Chakravanti]

Basically, a 'hey you're dead, this isn't a bug, You died because:X" mechanic? Definately agreed.

Also +1 for shit to do with dead bodies.

[Goom]

I like the sound of this. I think a lot of people come and post on the forums saying they logged on and could no longer see their character on the loading screen. Then Loftar searches and discovers they were murdered in their sleep due to their compulsive kleptomania. Might save some time in the long run.

Perhaps on the character select screen. When a character is dead you can still see their name there and click through to some kind of summary... at least showing how they died and how to inherit what lp remains. Even better might be a summary of more stupid things, like hours played, trees chopped down, although this may be disheartening for some people to read.

[sabinati]

yeah, sounds cool

[kaka]

Basically, a 'hey you're dead, this isn't a bug, You died because:X" mechanic? Definately agreed. ...

[Onionfighter]

Yeah, I like this. Perhaps have them able to log on one last time to see a screen showing them that they are, in fact, dead.

Here's a silly idea: the ability to haunt your corpse by logging into a dead character. Drowned chars get sent to fishland.

[Zirikana]

As part of the "you died because [X]" message, if the character died at the hands of another hearthling, why not give the killer a chance to enter their own message?

* "You stole from me!"
* "Die [insert nationality here] scum!"
* "I collect the trousers of weaklings through violent means, nothing personal"
* "why you mad tho?"
etc.

It would cut down on a lot of threads in 'congress' !

[Chakravanti]

Here's a silly idea: the ability to haunt your corpse by logging into a dead character. Drowned chars get sent to fishland.

and dying shouldn't autolog you but turn you into a ghost so that you can watch a battle finish.

[jorb]

We should have put one in a long time ago.

[Gauteamus]

Maybe accompagny the character dump with a little cheer up for the summoned Bad Seeds?