Why no perma-death?

[Lyllyth]

Originally Posted by Mats Persson

I think a PD server sounds like a great idea in theory, if there's enough players wanting one when the game (and economy ) is properly up-and-running.

Having a PD server as an option, would be cool. =)

Originally Posted by OMGPIE

I think there should be caps and if we used Lyllyth's idea I would make it so hard that it mine as well be a cap...like have it be around 2 months of hardcore play for it to go up 1 after you get into like the really high parts.

Yes, at some point in skill progression, it would feel like a cap, but the ability to continue to further your skill is still there.
WoW is a perfect example of why I'm for a system like this. In WoW, everyone's a 375 crafter. The guy that crafts all the time, constantly making stuff for people left and right, is more more skilled than the guy who raised his skill just to craft that one epic item, way back in the day.
The guy that likes to sit and work the AH over all day is just as skilled with a sword as the guys out there constantly fighting. (yes, there are a few out there that play the AH game and little else)

Originally Posted by Necromantic

Please no, there should be some skill restrictions or one day everyone can do everything on his on, no matter how long this takes, that's the death of the ingame society.

But I'm all in for higher skill = smaller chance for skill gain.

I think you overlooked the "Skill Deterioration" bit. This would mean that people would have to focus on a specific skill set, and would not be able to do everything.
Crafters would be Crafters, Fighters would be Fighters, etc.

Now, there's a couple ways to implement Skill-Gain, the most popular is the random chance of a skill gain. So, one could think of it as an ever decreasing % to gain the next skill point, eventually it would be like a 0.001% chance (1:100,000). But Skill Deterioration would just lob off a single point that could've taken someone months to gain.
Another way is "Skill XP", where each skill has it's own XP amount with an ever increasing value and something akin to a challenge rating, meaning someone would have to challenge themselves in that skill to gain XP in it. Skill Deterioration with this would drain XP. A smoother transition.

First, the combat front;
If each weapon type is it's own skill, each attack type is it's own skill, Each armor type for each body part is a skill. Then you wind up with a massive amount of skills, a Fighter type would have to specialize in specific combat styles and armor to really get up there in skill.
Every individual Spell would be a skill, so spell-slingers would be focused on specific magical studies.

Secondly, crafting;
Simply make every crafted item (finished or unfinished) a skill. So crafters would focus on a certain set of items they make. Increase in crafting skill per item, would yield higher and higher quality versions of that item.
But this would also limit crafters to a specialization (if they didn't want to be a lesser quality jack-of-all-trades), allowing further expansion on a Player-based economy.

[Necromantic]

Originally Posted by Lyllyth

WoW is a perfect example of why I'm for a system like this. In WoW, everyone's a 375 crafter. The guy that crafts all the time, constantly making stuff for people left and right, is more more skilled than the guy who raised his skill just to craft that one epic item, way back in the day.
The guy that likes to sit and work the AH over all day is just as skilled with a sword as the guys out there constantly fighting. (yes, there are a few out there that play the AH game and little else)
I think you overlooked the "Skill Deterioration" bit. This would mean that people would have to focus on a specific skill set, and would not be able to do everything.
Crafters would be Crafters, Fighters would be Fighters, etc.

So you don't ever get to a cap? And where will it end? How will you always get better? One day you'll be near invincible because of your forever gaining armor skills, even if it takes a pretty damn long time. That's pretty hard to accomplish.

Originally Posted by Lyllyth

First, the combat front;
If each weapon type is it's own skill, each attack type is it's own skill, Each armor type for each body part is a skill. Then you wind up with a massive amount of skills, a Fighter type would have to specialize in specific combat styles and armor to really get up there in skill.
Every individual Spell would be a skill, so spell-slingers would be focused on specific magical studies.

I don't like it to be a skill for every ability. Maybe if you add some categories and sub-categories. I'll do an example for black magic:

Category: Black Magic
- Sub-Category: Summoning
-- Summon Undead
-- Summon Hellspawn
- Sub-Category: Damage Affliction
-- Boneshards
-- Dran Life
- Sub-Category: Dark Ritual
-- Ritual of the Old
-- Ritual of utter Destruction

So when you successfully summon an undead, you have a chance of gaining a point in Summon Undead, you also gain a point in Summoning, slightly making you better at all the summoning spells and you get a point in Black Magic in general, so you are better in that whole field of magic but for a very small factor.

Because you always learn something about similar things while learning about a precise one.

[Lyllyth]

Originally Posted by Necromantic

So you don't ever get to a cap? And where will it end? How will you always get better? One day you'll be near invincible because of your forever gaining armor skills, even if it takes a pretty damn long time. That's pretty hard to accomplish.



I don't like it to be a skill for every ability. Maybe if you add some categories and sub-categories. I'll do an example for black magic:

Category: Black Magic
- Sub-Category: Summoning
-- Summon Undead
-- Summon Hellspawn
- Sub-Category: Damage Affliction
-- Boneshards
-- Dran Life
- Sub-Category: Dark Ritual
-- Ritual of the Old
-- Ritual of utter Destruction

So when you successfully summon an undead, you have a chance of gaining a point in Summon Undead, you also gain a point in Summoning, slightly making you better at all the summoning spells and you get a point in Black Magic in general, so you are better in that whole field of magic but for a very small factor.

Because you always learn something about similar things while learning about a precise one.

I have a .xls list of features I was compiling for a game... I'm still no where near complete as I keep getting distracted... On one page I have started a list of skills. Here's just a snippet of the Smelting skill...

Base Skill   Sub Skill  Sub Sub Skill   Skill             Notes
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Al-Li       *Aluminum(9), Lithium(1)
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Alnico      *Aluminum(1), Nickel(2), Cobalt(2)
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Brass       *Copper(1), Zinc(1)
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Bronze      *Copper(3), Tin(1)
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Duralumin   *Aluminum(3), Magnesium(1)
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Stellite    *Cobalt(1), Chromium(3), Carbon(1)
Metallurgy   Smelting   Craft Alloy     Smelt Vitallium   *Cobalt(12), Chromium(4), Molybdenum(1)
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Amluminum    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Beryllium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Bismuth    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Chromium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Cobalt    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Copper    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Gallium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Gold    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Indium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Iron    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Lead    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Lithium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Magnesium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Molybdenum    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Nickel    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Potassium    
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Silver
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Tin
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Titanium
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Uranium
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Zinc
Metallurgy   Smelting                   Smelt Zirconium

*Edit* Obviously some would have to be removed for practical purposes, but I thought that starting with a relatively complete list would be good.

[Necromantic]

Hm yeah, but the main point I wanted to get at was, when you do something and get better at it you should also get slightly better in similar actions of the same category. So you get better in the skill and better in the category of the skill in general, no matter how many skills or categories there are.

But wow you have a lot of metals there.

[Sorjak]

Back to what Mats was saying, he brought up a really good point at the end of the post there.

My only problem with non PD is the immersion destruction that it entails. It ruins sieges, you can't ever roleplay or just regular play a pure assassin, since your target will just revive within hours or less. There's no reason besides Full Loot to pick your fights, and if you're walking around with nothing on you, you really have nothing to fear from anything. It's just not immersive.

However, the complete loss of your character is too much, I can agree on that. Losing something that i'd work so hard to achieve is plain depressing, no matter how good it looks on paper.

This is why I really liked Mats' suggestion of a timing system; I think the best compromise we can come up with would be a combination of that with Traceur's number of lives. An example would be giving players three lives per week, after which they could no longer play that character in the real world. (perhaps still in the Etherworld?).

[Traceur]

i don't know, i can see people min/max their gameplay time:
"just for two hours, stop after 3-4 deaths"...

you might also get people who'd switch characters after each death to not reach the daily cap, etc'... i just don't know if that would do any good.

[Belblind]

Maybe you can decide on your own if you make a "hardcore" character or not. It will just be a little box you can mark and *puff* when your char dies, he'll be dead forever.

There could even be a server for that kind of players.

[Traceur]

Originally Posted by Belblind

There could even be a server for that kind of players.

that's what we're hoping for