Now that I have your attention,
Before you start flaming:
- no, I did not (recently) die, neither is this a "I died now I'm quitting" thread
- yes, I still love the permadeath system
Now just try to read through it all before you start shitposting.
What would cause my handsome face to suggest a no permadeath system?
Because the game is getting boring. I really like the permadeath system, but it is of no use if people sit on their asses behind their brickwalls all the time and quality grind. In my opinion, the death system is not getting used enough.
Yes, many will fanatically defend the permadeath system while idling behind walls playing farmville, because they are too scared to lose their char and all they have worked for. I count myself amongst these - why? Because I know I'm subpar, stat and skill-wise and just don't feel like mindlessly charging some dude who's going to disintegrate me in a second.
I know there are some, who actually do use murder once in a while, but look at the In Congress Assembled - it is sad, boring and full of empty words and threats. And ofcourse an occasional bug-abuse raid.
And I doubt it is because people can't be arsed to take screenshots and post threads about raids. It's because they either:
- idle behind the brickwall
- kill newbie players
There are ofcourse exceptions, but still.
This should not be Sim City, it should be Age of Empires.
Taking away permadeath is bad, I know, but I don't see any other option.
What do I hope to achieve with this system?
- More action and drama
Taking away permadeath is taking away the worst consequence of being a criminal. With the worst consequence taken away, people would have more guts to go out and cause havoc, loot and pillage, burn houses and beat on people. Hopefully, more stuff would happen.
Because of no death, people would be able to continuously exchange attacks and revenge attacks which would cause more hatred and therefore more drama.
- More players
No, I don't want this to become the next WoW-killer. But 500-700 players at peak is really bad. With taking away permadeath, the game would be more attractive to general public, hopefully bringing a load of new players. It is SUCH a shame that this game doesn't have more players, simply because it is one of the awesomest sandboxes I played, ever. It should have more players. It MUST have more players.
With more players also comes more action.
- Less death-quits
With permadeath taken away, hopefully less would quit. Bad in a sense, if you take a look at all those "I died, now I quit" rage posters, but I'm sure those will find another reason to rage-quit.
- Less bug-abuse
Like I said before, people are afraid of losing their characters, therefore would do *anything* to keep the the odds in their favor. Including bug-abusing and cheating. Hopefully this would reduce and actually motivate people to try and raid fairly.
- More online battles
Less offline kills, more real, online fights.
How would the new system work?
1. Keep the theft, trespass and vandalism intact
The main point of raids would now be the loot and destroying the entire villages.
2. Remove permadeath, introduce knock-out and recovery system:
You can still knockout players, full loot them and leave them naked on the floor. After the knockout, players would have to go through a period of time, let's call that recovery (I'm thinking one real life day or something like that), when their skills and attributes would be 10/1 (just like a starting player) and they would move with crawl speed. This would enable them to chat with friends and tell on people who did that to them, but not be particularly effective in anything else till the recovery period wears off.
3. Introduce the new raiding system
The new raid (village siege) system
No more camping the ram for 12 hours. Instead, you craft an item (let's call that the "raid pack" for now) and place it on another villages claimed wall (claimed wall - in connection to village idol you are able to claim a village wall for an authority cost - much like banners, but it's only 1 tile wide and goes along the whole wall).
The "raid pack" would then idle on that part of the wall for 12 hours (unbreakable) and after 12 hours it would automatically build a ram there.
With placing the "raid pack" on village wall, the villagers of the village that is being raided will see on their village idol a raised (red) flag as a notice, that their claimed wall is being attacked. They will also see the time left until the ram is built and therefore making it possible, to have a fair fight with both sides online.
The part of the claimed village wall, that has the "raid pack" placed on it would also be noticable so that the defenders know where the ram will be built.
Ok, thats about it.
As an alternative I suggest increased LP gain and hard caps on stats and skills.
Flame away