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Re: Death

#16
Interesting ideas! :) I'll be sure that it affords lots of customization in terms of how you want death to be handled! I imagine that there will be a whole load of options that you can configure before jumping into the game.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Death

#17
Personally I'd love to have the Eve Online mechanic for death be part of one of the difficulty levels.

For those who don't know when your ship dies in Eve you get kicked out of your ship in an escape pod. This can then be navigated back to a nearby station where you can begin amassing fortune / ships again.

In a game where you can control multiple ships, it seems crazy that you can't jump into your escape pod upon a ship being destroyed, and have another one of your ships come pick you up.This would also allow players to switch ships in game using the same mechanic, but allow an element of danger to be present in this action, due to the highly restricted abilities of the escape pod.
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Re: Death

#18
With FTL communication and galaxy-wide instant control over all your ships it doesn't make any sense at all to be physically flying a ship.

"Your" ship is simply the one you control directly. Your current avatar.
If it is destroyed, you lose the ship but it's effectively only another drone.

On "death" you would instantly pop into the closest asset of yours.

A death penalty is a good motivation for watching where you step, though, so I suggest adding a calibration period.
Yes, you can instantly control your "new" ship but you start with a malus of maybe 15% steering and laser accuracy which declines over the course of 30 seconds.
HUD or instruments may flicker for a bit while you "log into" the new ship.

The ability to switch direct control to every single ship of yours all across the galaxy would be the obvious result.
That's not a cheat. It keeps the player busy and entertained because he can jump to all the hot spots and have a good time instead of having to do boring "patrols" to find any action. =)


If you run out of ships you respawn in some sort of safe haven in a dinky rust bucket, If you had cash at the time, the cost of said bucket is deducted.
If you had a little empire you would always have another private yacht somewhere because puttering around in a flying dumpster would be inconvenient! The chance of this being exploited is minimal. =)
Game Over screens are sooooo last millennium. They are just not necessary!
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Death

#19
I massively agree with you with the concept that the destruction of your ship should not cause a game over screen, however game over is necessary as without failure you don't appreciate the value of success.

Kinda want to send Josh a copy of Dark Souls to reitterate this point, without failure, (in this example the constant fear of death and loss of accumulated souls) you don't feel like you succeed when something goes well. In the same vein if you are encouraged to simply revert back to a save game at the point of losing a ship, the significance of any success in a battle / trade / development has also gone.
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Re: Death

#20
That's why I suggested a deterrence in form of an annoyance rather than any harsh penalty that costs the player lots of playtime - like flying around in some useless emergency pod that can't do anything interesting.
I'd just reload rather than endure all that unfun time that the game takes out of my free time.

X3 is medieval in that regard. It's over 13 years old and the core gameplay hasn't changed since. It just had a jumble of stuff added on top of it.
It's also full of completely random and out of the blue instakill situations that add no gameplay whatsoever. You just reload and accept the loss of playtime. Because.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Death

#21
Surely you can identify that people that want to reload upon a bad thing happening can just reload on modes that allow it.

In my mind however, all games that allow this mechanic are automatically made really really easy, as you can repeat a sequence almost frame by frame to complete a task.

Personally having to deal with the consequences of failure ensures that immersion does not break down, as well as not forcing the player to be constantly saving and reloading the game trying to force their way through situations.
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Re: Death

#22
Keep in mind that this is still a sandbox-like game.

You can still appreciate the value of success without failure. It just depends on the type of person you are. That being said, I still like the idea of death options being independent of difficulty. You know, get the feeling of what to expect when playing on gentle before being tossed into a maelstrom.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Death

#24
Gazz wrote:That's why I suggested a deterrence in form of an annoyance rather than any harsh penalty that costs the player lots of playtime - like flying around in some useless emergency pod that can't do anything interesting.
I'd just reload rather than endure all that unfun time that the game takes out of my free time.

X3 is medieval in that regard. It's over 13 years old and the core gameplay hasn't changed since. It just had a jumble of stuff added on top of it.
It's also full of completely random and out of the blue instakill situations that add no gameplay whatsoever. You just reload and accept the loss of playtime. Because.
Well I am not that kind of player, I actually was about to suggest precisely such a 'eject and maybe have a chance to make it' system, where you could fly in your space suit. Also the idea of bailing pilots (when their ship hull gets too damaged) and ships you can then claim and humans you can then pick up and being able to spacewalk to your next ship are things I now consider practically as the basis of a good spacegame, simply because it's so cool.

Guessing options are really the way to go, indeed independently of game difficulty.
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Re: Death

#25
A good way to do death in sand box games (in my opinion) is to do it mount and blade style. You never die per se but you do get captured, and maybe you escape or maybe you get "bought" by a good friend at a slave market type thing
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Re: Death

#26
Dadalos wrote:
JoshParnell wrote:It's single player, so death is just classic death, unless perhaps I implement cloning. Reload a savegame (or start over, if you were playing in hardcore mode)!
thanks for clarifying. i figured such would be the case i know there were more than one way to handle death afterall and am happy knowing which one to expect. Clones bring up an interesting idea for me though. i know they will be expensive but i see a possible clone war in my future...but wait i wanted to begin the BORG Empire... oh dear...so many options and ideas and i dont even have the game yet...
Borg vs Empire... Problem solved ;)
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Re: Death

#27
I like the concept of being a drone controller for the ships I own. This would allow death to be an event that punishes a person financially but does not end the game. While I like the idea a lot I do see that issues could arise when killing NPCs. How do we know if a NPC is actually dead as opposed to only the drone being controlled dying?

Perhaps we can take a page from Avatar and put operators in mobile control units (MCU) which would house the actual character behind the ship. This would make defeating factions a possibility by removing the head. The MCU could be anywhere, from onboard a ship, to sitting on an asteroid where no one would notice.
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