Water is unreasonably dangerous

[tyrtix]

uhmm, it's not unreasonable that water holds a very dangerous position in the dangers of the game...even a cave collapsing on your head does let you live, or better, even 2-3 collapses even at sprucecap level, while the danger of water is either get asphyxiation for a while or die.
My proposition about that could be that if you have swimming skill, you will get SHP chipped away with "fatigued", kind of asphyxiation effect, then you'll have HHP chipped away for a worse effect, and then, if you have your toon next to a shore (30 tiles?), it will drift toward it, leaving you ko'ed but with only 1 HHP; if you're farther than that after you lost all HHP, you die and that's it.

[VDZ]

and then, if you have your toon next to a shore (30 tiles?), it will drift toward it, leaving you ko'ed but with only 1 HHP; if you're farther than that after you lost all HHP, you die and that's it.

I can already see the salt:

• The griefer who broke your boat puts a single leech on you, draining you for your final HHP after some time
• You apply some yarrow to a lesser wound so you at least have some HHP left, instant death
• You (or a griefer while you're KOed) take off your CON gilding pants, instant death
• Your malaria, infection or snake bite gets worse, suddenly killing you out of nowhere while you're just walking around
• You decide to chop some wood (possibly as part of the process to heal yourself) or pick up a nettle, you get cost of doing business'd
• After hearthing home you are immediately attacked by a midge swarm that fucking kills you instantly

So many ways to die that all feel far more bullshit than simply drowning.

[Agrik]

It would make more sense if say fresh water had a KO effect, ocean water had a Permadeath effect. Because it's the same type of gradient system like boar -> bear in terms of danger.

TBH I just want to see a KO wound type for drowning, a more severe one for ocean drowning, to bring it in line with other damage types.

Just some thoughts.

Hitting some level of exhaustion may trigger the character to automatically swim to the nearest (and reachable) safe place, I mean, in an uncontrollable way. Kind of a "panic" (not sure that's the right word) when the char tries to survive instinctively. Perhaps it should happen earlier than halfway between being healthy and being dead, so that anybody would be able to return back alive if tried to cross a water too big. OTOH, if you made more than half, you'd make it to the other side, second part in "auto mode".

Maybe this level should be when the char runs out of stamina and start taking asphyxiation damage. Then asphyxiation wound can be adjusted to take a bit more time to kill the char than needed to deplete char's stamina by swimming, and ticks of asphyxiation made to auto-direct the char to a nearest safe place. For those who want to keep control (and responsibility) at all times, a new switch can be added, "Reckless Swimmer", that disables the auto-swim trigger. Maybe even not as an additional switch, but instead of the current one, if the mechanic turns out to be really fail-safe (I'm not sure yet).

Upd.: I guess a character can't swim with 0 stamina (hasn't tried), so maybe an exception can be made, to allow swimming (or at least auto-swimming) when taking asphyxiation damage.

[fedor77]

If you gonna have a ability that doesnt let you cross 5 meters of deep water safely, dont call it swimming, call it sinking.

[telum12]

If you gonna have a ability that doesnt let you cross 5 meters of deep water safely, dont call it swimming, call it sinking.

be a bigger boi

[VDZ]

If you gonna have a ability that doesnt let you cross 5 meters of deep water safely, dont call it swimming, call it sinking.

Have you actually tried crossing rivers? Even a fresh spawn can cross narrow rivers without any issue.

[The_Lich_King]

and then, if you have your toon next to a shore (30 tiles?), it will drift toward it, leaving you ko'ed but with only 1 HHP; if you're farther than that after you lost all HHP, you die and that's it.

I can already see the salt:

• The griefer who broke your boat puts a single leech on you, draining you for your final HHP after some time
• You apply some yarrow to a lesser wound so you at least have some HHP left, instant death
• You (or a griefer while you're KOed) take off your CON gilding pants, instant death
• Your malaria, infection or snake bite gets worse, suddenly killing you out of nowhere while you're just walking around
• You decide to chop some wood (possibly as part of the process to heal yourself) or pick up a nettle, you get cost of doing business'd
• After hearthing home you are immediately attacked by a midge swarm that fucking kills you instantly

So many ways to die that all feel far more bullshit than simply drowning.

Yeah i like the floating to shore aspect (With an addendum that you will just hearth out of the water after a time if you can't float to shore in order to stop people blocking you with a boat to infinitely prevent you from hearthing)

but i despise the idea of going down to 1HHP, Imagine if you were at like 300 con and had 200+ HP and had to fucking wait on 199 aspyxiation. I like the idea of punishing it based on water type in accordance with how damage types normally work in the game (I.E. River Water is less Dangerous than Ocean Water which is less dangerous than Deep Ocean Water) but all the wounds should function like Concussion or other KO wounds, not be some life ending curse that immobilizes you for days.

[Myrddin]

"Water is too dangerous!" The one who around the world has already dozens (if not already over a hundred) left his drowned characters. What disgustingly annoying in the game at the very beginning, when you are born and enjoy new views, and in every bay and lake, a fucking corpse swims. And they all almost always look the same.

Try in life to swim across a deep river with the current, having run a kilometer or two without stopping through the forest before that. I'll tell you that it's not that easy, because I've swum across the wild Siberian rivers several times (and once to find a man drowned in that river). And then come back and tell me it was easy or not.

[Myrddin]

Oh, Jorb and Loftar, you know what would be a great? Limitation for players not to produce a bunch of corpses for the sake of exploring the map. Make it so that one user cannot create more than a certain number of characters per day|week|month|in general. I mean like not more than 3 characters in a week, not more than 3-5 in one time for account. Yes, hora-map-explora can create new accs, but it could be pain in ass. This equalizes the chances of ordinary hermits and those who immediately try to find everything at once/open the entire map. Give them a riddle, give the hermits the opportunity to have resources and surprise first-day-rush-play--two-month-any-wipe-chanse players.

I mean it disgusting and ridiculous, world not even started, was 30 mins from start and corpses in every bay on my way, wtf? Sry for offtop.

[Sevenless]

Oh, Jorb and Loftar, you know what would be a great? Limitation for players not to produce a bunch of corpses for the sake of exploring the map. Make it so that one user cannot create more than a certain number of characters per day|week|month|in general. I mean like not more than 3 characters in a week, not more than 3-5 in one time for account. Yes, hora-map-explora can create new accs, but it could be pain in ass. This equalizes the chances of ordinary hermits and those who immediately try to find everything at once/open the entire map. Give them a riddle, give the hermits the opportunity to have resources and surprise first-day-rush-play--two-month-any-wipe-chanse players.

I mean it disgusting and ridiculous, world not even started, was 30 mins from start and corpses in every bay on my way, wtf? Sry for offtop.

That's actually about 1-2 characters per player. Everyone spawns an explorer, first to find a cave with useful biomes has everyone else suicide and beacon in. Your fix wouldn't change that. Also people properly exploring are running 3-5 accounts at the same time and don't suicide their characters since they need unbroken map stretches for programs to stitch.

Just trying to give perspective on what the big groups are doing. It's the manpower of having 20-50 players working together that causes the disparity.