[.11] Poll : Reworking Resurrection

Should Permanent Death be removed from the game?


  • Total voters
    54
So, for the record, I also play a one death and you're dead forever game out here in the PNW and it's IMO the best non Alliance LARP out here. So, I know that my opinions may not be the same as others'.

I permed my first character in a year. The permanent death to this day goes down as the best Roleplay I have EVER witnessed. I have gotten to watch rippling effects of it for coming up on four years now. I should argue not for less permanent death, but more, with the removal of mitigation rituals.

Now I know that's not for everyone. It's why I'm content with the system we have, because I know it's a compromise. We have a number of 20 year players who if they lost their character would just stop coming. I get it, that's a lot of investment to mourn, and it's hard to swallow.

At the end of the day, Alliance caters to its players, staff and PC alike. I'd rather Alliance with this middle road approach, than having Alliance basically disappear.
 
Having only one PC with 0 Resurrections but watching several Resurrections and at least two black pulls, I agree that permanent death is A Good Thing in many ways, and that removing it would be detrimental to the game as a whole. Any issues I have with the current system stem from the element of chance involved, but those are minor and removing them would make it a bad system in my eyes.
 
Simple solution. Remove the bag of chance and permanent death. A character who dies loses their level in build. It helps the game with level bloat and therefore damage bloat, and allows characters to continue their stories, keep their friends, and doesnt force unlucky individuals to have to purschase a whole new wardrobe.

So a level 5 character would half a level in build, while a level 40 character would lose 4 levels. Death is meaningful, and but doesnt force people out of the game.
 
Simple solution. Remove the bag of chance. A character who dies loses their level in build. It helps the game with level bloat and therefore damage bloat, and allows characters to continue their stories, keep their friends, and doesnt force unlucky individuals to have to purschase a whole new wardrobe.

So a level 5 character would half a level in build, while a level 40 character would lose 4 levels.

You are talking years of progression on the high end. Seems a bit extreme. 1 level would be punishing enough at high level.
 
You are talking years of progression on the high end. Seems a bit extreme. 1 level would be punishing enough at high level.
Correct, thats by design. The game would come to a rough level equilibrium. Likely in the 20s, depending on how aggressive the chapters the character plays at are.
 
I'm fully against death costing characters XP, and would leave a highly negative review of that change should it ever be proposed. I'm only newly level 18, so I'm not at the upper echelons of level that would be severely impacted by that change, but it creates an immediate problem in that most characters I know of only have free XP because they're saving up for skills they can't afford yet, and slashing 5-10 XP means they might not be able to afford everything on their battleboard anymore.
 
I'm fully against death costing characters XP, and would leave a highly negative review of that change should it ever be proposed. I'm only newly level 18, so I'm not at the upper echelons of level that would be severely impacted by that change, but it creates an immediate problem in that most characters I know of only have free XP because they're saving up for skills they can't afford yet, and slashing 5-10 XP means they might not be able to afford everything on their battleboard anymore.
Correct. A character would lose access to a skill/skills depending on level. However the same character wouldnt have a chance of being erased after dying. I'd say that's a pretty reasonable tradeoff. If your character died, youd lose 18 build under what I am proposing. Per current rules you could draw a black stone and lose 17 levels of build. Not to mention your current stories, friends and gear and garb you spent money on.
 
If a story has no chance of tragic ending, I’m out.
 
Personally? I'd rather watch the aftermath of the death of my character and would never consider the end of him any sort of OOG loss of investment, because the stories he was part of live on past his death and the effect he's had on people IG is worth every penny I'd "lose" in garb. I could start over with a new character, make new friends, and hear stories about my old character. If you think that's a failure of the death system, you're free to think that, but I wouldn't trade that RP for any amount of XP loss.
 
You are talking years of progression on the high end. Seems a bit extreme. 1 level would be punishing enough at high level.

And a permanent loss of a character is less lost progression?

Your response outlines another problem nicely. High end characters generally don't perm unless they opt to retire.
 
Losing levels for dying would be a kick in the bag. People save up to buy skills for months or years...

Sure, you lose more when you perm...but when you perm, you get a story to tell out of game, your friends get a story to tell in game.
 
And a permanent loss of a character is less lost progression?

Your response outlines another problem nicely. High end characters generally don't perm unless they opt to retire.

You are comparing losing something every death that sets you back years of progression vs a random 1 time final death. I would take the final death eventually over losing years of game play time for every death.
 
IMO, compared to other game systems out there, it is very hard for an Alliance character to even reach the point where they need to resurrect let alone permanently die. But that is the style of a high fantasy game. I don't think the permanent death should be removed. But I also feel that resurrection should have more of an impact than just gaining an additional 10% chance of permanently dying (unless you buy back deaths).

A thought I had come up with a while ago was one where people recently resurrected were too weak to do anything. Characters couldn't use IG skills for either a set period of time or perhaps having some IG 'restoration' ability. In my musings, I imagined something like a "clone recording" where you purchase a memory stone. Then, with expenditure of money and/or resources you can put your current skills you know into the stone. When you die, you come out. Your skills would return normally within 24 hours or at the next logistics period or some other time variable OR you could simply activate the memory stone and gain back your skills immediately, and destroying the stone in the process. It's another money sink possible for the game.

This was just a kernel of a thought that could be further developed but I also know such an idea would never pass so not worth it. :)
 
I think permanent death is important. I don't think it should be an every day occurrence, but the threat should be there. Permanent Death shouldn't be looked at as a punishment.

I permed a character, and it actually ended up meaning a lot to me (and the friends my character had in game). It shaped a whole lot of role play and the way people fought some battles in the war that was going on at the time. It was touching and while it sucks to lose a character that you love, it's important to know that you can create a brand new character that you can try new things with, hang out with a different group and just start fresh. You get to become involved in different plot lines your old character never would.

Death is important. Not just permanent death but resurrection too. Some deaths in game shouldn't happen, sometimes your character/group/town messes up and you should die. It makes the times you win all the more sweet.
 
I’m not going to lie. There’s a part of me that wants to get rid of Regeneration, purely because once you have it, you don’t have that threat. It’s a character goal for me to get one, because survival is important, but I think that once I have it, it’s going to take away some of the thrill of the game.
 
I haven’t resurrected in 6 years, largely because of Rebirth(or would of been at least 4), but I’ve made it a goal of not putting a Regen or CSS because of Evans reasons above. I personally would not enjoy the game if I felt my actions or others meant nothing in our survival.

Think of a big town fight with zero stakes. Oh darn, we TPK’d guess we will reset and try again. Or oh, 2 PCs are left behind, let’s ignore them and not try to save them because they will respawn good as new. No risk, no threat, no conflict. No hard choices. I’m sure there are games where it works and is enjoyable, but that isn’t Alliance. Let Alliance have its risk, that’s one of the things we signed up for.
 
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I’m not going to lie. There’s a part of me that wants to get rid of Regeneration, purely because once you have it, you don’t have that threat. It’s a character goal for me to get one, because survival is important, but I think that once I have it, it’s going to take away some of the thrill of the game.

I echo those feelings. I understand that this is a high fantasy game but for me the fact that the standard response to a hostage situation is to kill everyone then cure light the hostages takes a lot of the thrill out of the game. When my idea to deal with the big bad guy about to come into the town was for me to sit upon 600 points worth of armed explosive traps, take him out with me then have someone feed me a potion to make me better was the height of that.

It's why I suggest having weapons with the 'shatter spirit' carrier. Changes combat tactics in a terrifying heartbeat. :)

Any type of death should have some negative consequence to help make it something people fear instead of it just being a 15 minute time out. In Drachenfest where characters cannot perm unless they want to, people after a battle have to stand in line while a single person takes a few pieces of information about your death, spins a wheel for you to have to do some sort of penance (mine was saying some sort of religious greeting to everyone I met for 10 minutes) and then you're back to full strength. Now imagine a line in the hundreds waiting in line for their turn. Gave you a lot of encouragement NOT to die.
 
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I'm perfectly fine with Death having a penalty attached. I simply don't think that 'whoops, you're out your character' is a good penalty to attach, in a game where replacing that character may take years if it is practical at all. Especially on a random pull.

It also makes PvP a huge looming potential customer service issue, especially once the new rules strip out the vast majority of item based defenses. I haven't had to see it happen for a few years thankfully, because mostly players metagame to avoid it, but what exactly stops someone from deciding that someone else doesn't get to play anymore and simply killing their character under ingame pretenses until it perms?
 
Gonna second this.

The new rules have almost no tools to mitigate pvp.

If somebody wants to be a ****, it's really easy to ruin a 20+ level character on a lowbie.
 
If someone wanted to do that in 1.3, it’s called Alchemy, the God of PvP.

It hasn’t been a problem yet, I don’t see why it would be a problem in the future, because that’s a culture issue, not a system issue.
 
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