DOWNED! And other ways of making death !!FUN!!

Downed is something we're seeing in a few games now, and it can be good if it's done right.

Obviously downed should only be a feature in multiplayer. And Imo should have some hefty caveats to prevent it making the game too easymode. It's already difficult to balance a game without throwing another variable like this into the mix. However, dying in Starbound multiplayer is an issue, and perhaps being able to port to party members would make downed not actually necessary. Since the issue with dying right now is rejoining your buddies quickly.

Downed caveats: no downed from fall damage. It's already really difficult now to die from falling anyway. No downed from drowning or poison. 10 minute cooldown on downed, if you run out of health again you die normally.

I feel like making features expensive to craft doesn't balance them, since they typically become trivial to produce at a certain point of progression, or if that's not the case, are too hard to obtain early on. Cooldowns manage item balance far better than cost of creation does.

 

Or maybe instead of a cooldown we could have several different defibrillators. Early game one could be made of the most basic crafting materials (copper) and then there would be silver, iron, gold, etc just like pickaxes. The early-game ones would not revive at a 100% rate and if you tried to revive someone and it failed, they died permanently and couldn't be revived again THAT LIFE.

 

I would love to see more equipment follow the ore progression.

 

I know this is only tangentally related, but another thought I had is that we really need some kind of animation for things dying. Just make them topple backwards a bit before disappearing, or increase the amount of smoke maybe, anything but an intrusive sprite freeze-n-vanish. It'd be way more satisfying.

 

That's actually very much apart of this, Downed would also mean new animations in general.

 

I'd agree with the tangentially related bit. This deserves its own thread if it doesn't have one already.

I am going to repeat what I believe the idea here is and if I am wrong, correct me. It sounds like the idea of upgrading is purely for a higher success rate of rezzing. This inconsistency would result in a lot of rage. More health for a higher tier would make sense. Nothing in the game currently feels like you're rolling a die, and I would prefer that it was kept that way.

 

I think this may be one of the best ideas yet. I'd like it if we could create a auto defib for single player characters. Sometime I don't pay attention to my health.