Permanent death (good or bad)

[Robben_DuMarsch]

I've repeatedly championed mechanics changes to make it easier to retaliate against gankers. If we could force people to put their characters at more than minor risk when they commit murder, I think it would open up a lot more endgame gameplay.

As it is now, the attacker is always at the advantage in PvP, and there is little meaningful obligation to defense of your belongings once you have finished your bwall. There isn't even much meaningful retaliation once you make your vault.

[Procne]

I've repeatedly championed mechanics changes to make it easier to retaliate against gankers. If we could force people to put their characters at more than minor risk when they commit murder, I think it would open up a lot more endgame gameplay.

And that's how Trial By Combat is born ^^

[Gensokyo]

I enjoy it.
Despite not being a big PvP warrior and really lacking in actual combat outside of a few battles in older worlds, the permadeath aspect of the game brings me closer to my characters, and as such makes risky chances always a new and strange experience for both me and the opposite opposition.

[GladiatoR]

Before starting quoting all previous answers I'll I will share my thoughts of "how it can be better".

First of all I liked mechanics of punishment and im only playing games where full loot is on and always at top level of this games (Ultima Online, Darkfall Online, Albion Online).

But current system is too much complicated because there is too low % of players that can handle repeating character progressing and doing same things that they did already. Also this system is unbalanced because some players making alts and prepared for such ruleset, but others (most players) are lvling only main (mostly because they lack of playtime to get everything for many chars).

And also combat that is totally unbalanced (wont even describe it...).

I have 2 ideas of how to improve this system to make it more friendly and earthier leave hardcore:

1. If player died he can get his skills & stats after a certain time (few ways -bring it back all after x amount of time -bringing it back each day(12h or so) by some %). So players will know that after X amount of time they can get their skills/stats back. And while they are waiting they can progress too and it will be additional bonus to what they have before.
2. While players is playing they can make a "Clone" (similar to alt), but they can't play it, but can lvl it. This will be another way of progress for players that dont like to play with alts.

[Sevenless]

I've repeatedly championed mechanics changes to make it easier to retaliate against gankers. If we could force people to put their characters at more than minor risk when they commit murder, I think it would open up a lot more endgame gameplay.

As it is now, the attacker is always at the advantage in PvP, and there is little meaningful obligation to defense of your belongings once you have finished your bwall. There isn't even much meaningful retaliation once you make your vault.

Be that as it may rob, it doesn't address the concept of Permadeath itself. But on such a tangent:

Overall though, I agree. This game favours raiders/griefers in that if the shell defense of a wall setup is broken they have relatively little disincentive from going hogwild with everything/everyone inside.

The sheer fact that if you find a guy in a merch robe and KO him you're better off murdering him when you take his stuff is a problem. It's far too profitable to end the lives of anyone you annoy just to prevent their ability to retaliate against you. I don't know how to handle this concept without massively penalizing pvp itself. A simple example that would massively hurt pvp: You lose permanently 10hhp for every murder. People would never kill haphazardly with a system like that, you'd see people knocked out for their gear far more often.

But is it too much? Wouldn't that make true warrior characters pretty disposable long run? You'd see titans (botted, built and hidden to be used rarely) pop up in pvp and only the largest factions would be able to wield those. All middle level factions would be crippled in the pvp game due to being unable to churn out enough fighters.

It's a real pickle.

[MightySheep]

I doubt I or the people I play with would even be here if it wasn't a permadeath game, I mean, it's kind of the main selling point.

So far in Haven 2 I feel like they've dialed down the extremity of it, where animals are much less likely to murder you, rivers are a bit easier to swim across and animal aggro radius feels smaller.

However, the thing that annoys me is that you would think with a mechanic like permanent death that there would be some sense of recognition/perspective of how big of a deal it is. I mean this is a char that you have spend weeks/months grinding up and progressing. Think of how pissed off you got when you were younger and you lose your save on a game and lose hours of progress or back when word processors sucked and something causes you to lose all your work and have to restart. It would make you rage so hard and that was just a couple of hours of lost time. The reason I feel like there's no recognition of the enormity of permadeath is the way PvP is currently so lackadaisical and flimsy like people can just lose their account in a split second with the click of 1 button and there's no feeling of an actual 'fight', it's more like a quickdraw shootout which doesn't really feel fitting at all to a permadeath game.

The other thing that makes me think permadeath is treated lightly by devs is the way they just dump you in spawn with no delay, no death screen or sad music or condolences or anything really

[Sevenless]

I doubt I or the people I play with would even be here if it wasn't a permadeath game, I mean, it's kind of the main selling point.

Not in the slightest. Almost the entire crafting population plays this game despite permadeath, not because of it. This game's crafting mechanics, food use mechanics, and item degradation make this an incredibly amazing game for people who enjoy creating things and having others want them and use them.

The marriage between swords and plows is impeccable, and I've played EVERY other game on the market of this genre hoping one of them could compete when I couldn't play legacy due to my wrist issues.

Bah shoot. Mighty I misread your first sentence and thought you meant the entire game population. You meant your village, and my reply probably sounded pompous as a result. Sincere apologies ><

[Robben_DuMarsch]

@Sevenless

Instead of a penalty that is assessed, I think simply changing the risk/reward equation is enough.

Make murder scents more potent in allowing players that would retaliate do so effectively. Either give them a "travel to" option (complete with the same collision detection limitations of current cross-roads), or give murder scents some ability to force conflict with the murderer at a "defense time and day of the week" that they need to set.

Rather than an arbitrary penalty, some ability to retaliate without spending hours/days camping someone's home, hoping you can catch them out in the open.

[venatorvenator]

The fact that discussions like this always turn permadeath into a pvp issue is a symptom of what's wrong. Permadeath forces us to make decisions and in the end that's what matters to me. I can't load a saved game if things go wrong, and I can't just wait 10 seconds and spawn a new and fully equipped character If my tactics were not well-though. When the possibility of losing everything you have exists, the things you create are much more meaningful, and the decisions you make with your char have much more weigth. It reminds of the old school iron man modes.

This is awesome from a game theory point of view. Crime is a problem and I do believe consequences for black skills should be harsher, but just very inconvenient instead of penalizing for perfectly valid playstyle.

Because if my main will died to continue my progress (village, craft and etc) Ill need at least 2 weeks just for renew what I have (not fun play just routine).

The problem is right here. If you treat this game as an endless race for higher stats of course it won't be fun and of course permadeath will be seen negatively. But then the question is : was that ever fun for you? You will make a lot of effort micromanaging food and grind; you will never reach an acceptable level and you will keep grinding forever, but as your stats go up you will also grow more and more scared that your char will die at a server crash or by random raiders, who grind less than you and have lower stats but roam in groups while you don't.
An alternative is enjoying every bit of the game as you progress and welcoming stat development as a side-effect of your gameplay. I think this is much more fun.

[Sevenless]

@Sevenless

Instead of a penalty that is assessed, I think simply changing the risk/reward equation is enough.

Make murder scents more potent in allowing players that would retaliate do so effectively. Either give them a "travel to" option (complete with the same collision detection limitations of current cross-roads), or give murder scents some ability to force conflict with the murderer at a "defense time and day of the week" that they need to set.

Rather than an arbitrary penalty, some ability to retaliate without spending hours/days camping someone's home, hoping you can catch them out in the open.

That only solves a small portion of the worlds murder woes though, lets be honest. The majority of killing is done against players who cannot defend or avenge themselves even given the chance. Griefing of defenseless players is bad for long term game population. I'd rather see hermits getting stolen from regularly but left alive type thing if they're living near big baddies. Not dead and gone from the game for good.

Also just to be clear to anyone reading this: I was not giving that suggestion I made in earnest however, it was a half assed example about how trying to put in more serious penalties could really shift how pvp works in unexpected ways.