Dying Really Sucks... [Updated]

This is a major update over the original OP. So comments may be a liiiiiittle off.

Same principle as original, death is more laid out as something to recover from. Instead of springing back to life as a fully aware, fully capable clone. Your character has to get back on its feet after being [almost] killed.

You were killed... That was unfortunate.

But that isn't the end, you wake up in a medical facility in orbit. You've been resuscitated, you're in bandages, bandage armor. Oh, a debuff too. "Injured". You're max health, max jump height, max speed, and accuracy, etc. Reduced. 10%, 20%, 30%. For 30, 60, or 90. Depending on you're difficulty setting, number of times you've died, whatever. It's cumulative. If you die consecutively, it stacks.

All that's left in the room with you (conveniently) is the weapon you had equipped when you blacked out. You can grab it and go... the rest of your inventory didn't make it. Great. Don't worry, you can chance going back to get your loot and pixels, (it's all still lying there where you kicked the bucket). It would probably be better to go to your ship/base/whatever and resupply. To be safe.

Whenever you make it back to your gravesite. You see your gear bag laying on the floor, right where you died. Sure your stuff is still in there. Well, 99% of it is. Looters and all. So you take it and you're on your way, the rebuff has almost timed out. Back where you left off. Maybe light an item or two. But its better than nothing.

With this approach, you had the choice of recovering your things or not. Optional, self imposed difficulty level. Also, the planet is marked as a location where you've died/blacked out. So you could always return. Your choice. Maybe add some NPC's and story elements through out the process and make it integrated more deeply into the storyline? Better than being "cloned", well at least to me.

 

I like it. It makes deaths a lot deeper and more dramatic. But personally I'd rather stick with the character I made from the start. I don't have the time to spend making new vibrant and original looking characters.

So I'm probably going to lean towards the prospect of cloning, like in good old Star Wars Galaxies.

 

Return the bones to that same research facility that had initially given you the quest, and have them resurrect that previous adventurer. Possibly at an expense. Or develop the tech yourself on your ship. I would still follow most of my suggestion, this time have that new adventurer perform the procedure on board your ship, in its lab, after recovering your belongings . Hell, they can even join your crew as an NPC afterwards, when you resume control of you resurrected toon. It's more of a compromise than I would prefer, but not overly so. And with this all the cloning assets the team has created wouldn't go to waste. I would make the research facility's fees be high, or the research itself, complex to do on your own so it would be available after a lot of progression in game. After you've really built up an attachment to your character, and not immediately available to someone starting out.

 

I also like that idea. I love games that have you progressing from the ground up with your efforts increasing as you go.

 

The Dev wanted "consequence" for dying... somehow cloning doesn't seem to fit that bill for me. Much of the community felt the same way... Super Mario had clones back in NES days. I hope they come up with something more substantial.

 

Yeah, it makes you really regret dying. But you can definitely recover from it. I believe it's softcore AND hardcore, depending on how you handle it, and how you choose to solve the quest. Honestly you could use it to start over if you weren't happy with your toon. If you wanted to. It puts the choice in the players hands. Which is always great. Well, last I heard Tiy and the Dev team hadn't set anything in stone yet, and were still weighing options to please the community. Here's hoping they see this thread and consider it.

 

It's a pretty cool idea, but I can't see it being anything but optional. Having to go and recover your body every time you die (especially if you were doing something with a friend at the time) would be incredibly jarring, and not in the fun and challenging kind of way.

 

Maybe it could be a Minecraft-esque death where when you die, you lose all items you had on you and go back to your spawn point. You can either go back and try to retrieve your items (make them not despawn.. or at least take a very long time) or choose to continue with what you've got stored.

 

You know honestly, I hadn't fleshed out the multiplayer aspect of it to fully. That's sort of why I'm enlisting the community, hopefully some brilliant mind will help elaborate on this basic idea. How about... well, since your in multiplayer anyways have your friend, should they still be alive, take you/your things back to the ship. This would make the quest easier for you to finish. Or better yet, if your ship or base (or theirs) has the capabilities, they can cut out the middle man and resurrect you there. And you of course would do the same for them. If both of you died, you both have a new mission to accomplish together and a new story to tell. No? My whole train of thought is that death should really be an inconvenience, maybe borderline annoyance, but able to be recovered from.

 

I love this idea, Cruellyricisti!

Perhaps this could be implemented post-release, hm? Also as an option, since it can cause player frustration.

Stick with this, even if the devs do not pick it up, perhaps the community would. You could post this again on a modding sub-forum if it ever forms.

 

That's not a terrible idea but it's sort of where much of the community uproar is coming from. Some people think that's a cop-out. Kinda like, what's stopping someone from making a small shack with a bed (spawn point) on a level 100 planet. And spamming the creatures there for rare loot. Its not enough punishment for being careless or overly confident. Tiy wants to slow down the pace of the game tremendously compared to other platformers. (I wish I had the link to the post where I've read that at). And making players leery (sp?) of death is one way of doing that effectively. In the same post he said he wanted combat to be substantial and methodical. All that can be achieved by making death, um... well, painful.

 

Thank you, your sentiments are appreciated. Now I've done my research into this, and it's almost clear the Devs are going for frustration. Tiy's words were something like 'if you don't want to deal with it, don't die'. Oh I'm definitely sticking with it thanks for the encouragement also. It's a work in progress.

 

Perhaps you can only set your spawn point on your home planet.

 

That would be great for an "easy" gameplay mode. But what would you do about items and things?

 

I agree with all of this. The whole permadeath thing is already something me and my small team planned on modding in along with some roleplay features and such. Have to be good at using the tools to use them effectively and make them effectively and such.

So we planned on a whole slew of things, including a permadeath feature to be used in our server when we get it launched. You basically just made our goal a whole lot clearer ad we were finding it to be a hard time to come up with and efficient and fitting way to do all this. But here you made it easy and laid it out.

 

No problem, my campaign is to get it included in the main game. Either way, you can count on a download from me. Skill level with tools is ingenious.

 

This concept looks pretty on paper, but I think it can be trimmed down a little. Instead of having to travel back to the place of your death with a rather repetitive story, why not just have your character drop a loot sack when they die, and have another character re-spawn inside of your ship, with basic weapons? I understand that having a story and a mission might be nice the first time around, but I think being able to quickly go back to where you've died might have more appeal to certain people, as they dies over and over and over again.

 

Would be nice if the dev team could make it an Option on universe generation, that way it would make both sides happy.

 

Well, I guess yeah, it is hard to argue with you on that. It may become repetitive. From my stand point, my response would be well quit dying already! But from a more neutral ground, if your ship had a crew, maybe they would be able to return your remains to the ship, and bring the ship to the research facility to await your new character. As a perk for being further along in the game and actually having a crew. But if you don't then you would be stuck with handling the mission in its full repetitiveness.