Death looms!

[Acarin]

Since this system currently severely penalizes those who are widely hated, making being an evil character even harder, I would appreciate some sort of way to get an npc to track us down and rescue our corpse.

I think the current system also penalizes stronger players who travel to areas with mobs that they are unlikely to be rescued from. I don't know if there will be a solution after depart is removed (I haven't died in a while so excuse my ignorance if it has), but assuming severe penalties for not getting raised, I really do think there needs to be some sort of automated system on a timer for raising so that we don't remain dead indefinitely. I know something like this is planned, but I really hope it won't carry stiff penalties. Waiting for a long period is bad enough (and I assume there will be a steep fee at the very least as well)...

My suggestion: Multidimensional beings shaped like dolphins (with incredible healing powers). I don't know why it works but it just does.

[Rias]

Here's how I envisioned communication working between the dead and non.

Dead person: Golly, I'm dead. I'll trigger the Deathknell!
Living person: Oh dear, the Deathknell! Someone must have died. I'll send a rescue pulse so they know I'm on the job!
Dead person: Huzzah, a rescue pulse! Someone's coming to find my corpse and save my soul!

(2 minutes later)

Dead: I'm still dead. I'll trigger the Deathknell again so people know I'm still waiting for a rescue.
Living: There's another Deathknell, they're still dead. I'll send a rescue pulse again so they know I'm still working on it.
Dead: Another resscue pulse in response! Cool, they're still trying to save me.

(2 minutes later)

Dead: Still dead. Deathknell again!
Living: Oh no, I'm not actually living anymore, I'm dead too now. I died trying to rescue the person, so I can't send a rescue pulse.
Dead: Darn! It's been a few minutes now and nobody sent a pulse in response to my last deathknell. I guess nobody's coming to rescue me, so I'll just depart.

In an alternate scenario which I'm not going to write out as the one above, if the Deathknelling suddenly stops (a dead person can ring it once every 2 minutes), you're probably safe to assume they departed.

Avedri has a super suggestion: If you're going out somewhere where it's likely you could end up a corpse, let people know. "Heading out to the infested logging camp." "About to blast some nethrim in the Thaelsh sewers." "Hunting bears in the old forest trail for pelts." Or even a franctic "brigand in brittlebranch" as you're waiting out the roundtime of your desperate FLEE command. When somone hears that Deathknell a few seconds after your broadcast and sees a generic wilderness forest, they'll know they should probably check Brittlebranch first.

Not that I'm happy with generic wildernesses; I know they're an issue. I've been slowly adding descriptions that reference nearby landmarks when at all possible.

One thing I forgot to do was make it so that even living people with Deathknell tuners get the flicker of color when someone does an ESP rescue. That way you know if other people are also trying to rescue. Because people refuse to communicate on ESP. I just don't get that, but it seems several people are very resistant to communicating via ESP. I get the whole "everyone is listening so I don't broadcast private/personal stuff" but if you're going out to do a rescue, or you know where someone's corpse is, or you're part of a search that has been talked about on ESP and you've found the quarry, or whatever ... be a decent human being and let people know on ESP? You don't have to be BFFs with everyone on ESP to share info like that - it seems like people are more than happy to CHAT this info, but ESP seems to be shunned.

Since this system currently severely penalizes those who are widely hated

I think I can live with people who earn a nasty reputation reaping the reward of their hard-earned reputation.

[Collins]

The issue with letting everyone know where you are hunting is that sometimes (not as often anymore) when you have certain people with certain tendencies and talents that lean toward making other people deader than they were before, you may not want said certain people knowing where you are, or where you may be.

I may or may not still have a few icky ears in Collins backpack as proof of this concept from back in the day. (But I'm a trader, so probably not, right?) :-D

That said, death may be a natural part of the game, and resurrection in any form meant to be an unnatural occurrence, but it'd be nice if those capable of helping had a more solid way of locating a corpse, and knowing when someone still needs to be rescued.

The suggestion of some messaging when someone chooses to depart is a very solid one. When I died recently, I had no idea what I was doing, and when I did manage to accidentally ring the bell, I didn't continue to do so because I felt like I was spamming it if I kept it up

The suggestion on a way to more accurately locate a body is also an excellent one.

I'm sad to see both ideas seemingly brushed off as both would do wonders to improve the gaming experience. I'd hope there to be a balance between interesting lore, reasonable in-game consequences for death, and making a player themselves frustrated and miserable when their character dies, or when they try to help someone who died.

[qinweiqi]

I like the idea of perma-death and resurrection alternatives. I also think it'd be cool to add a Major Taint (http://wiki.contrarium.net/index.php/Major_Taint) alternative that allows wandering around as a wraith (which once destroyed is perma-dead or something?).

[TwistedAkai]

I like the idea of perma-death and resurrection alternatives. I also think it'd be cool to add a Major Taint (http://wiki.contrarium.net/index.php/Major_Taint) alternative that allows wandering around as a wraith (which once destroyed is perma-dead or something?).

I like the idea of being able to haunt around near where I died. I like it alot. I'll wait for a better understanding of where death is going, though, before trying to push the idea.

[Acarin]

So is that a no on the dolphins?

[Rias]

Still considering dolphins.

[Rias]

Thrice now people have departed as my NPCs were dragging them to a resurrection point. :'(

[Kiyaani]

Time to turn off depart ;)

[Elystole]

If resurrection is rare and the people who can come back from the dead are feared, why are random NPCs dragging random bodies to churches?

[Rias]

The Shadgard crypt and Mistral Lake mortuary are both resurrection points. Pretty typical for people to take a body to those places rather than leave it rotting in the streets.

When it comes to the occasional corpse outside town that I take pity on, I don't use any old random NPC, I use a do-gooding templar who takes the body someplace where it can hopefully be identified and the families notified, after which the body can be given a proper burial. See above crypt and mortuary.

As for the Rook Parlour ... what self-respecting Rook -wouldn't- see a convenient fresh corpse and think, "I wonder if I can bring that back to life, or, failing that, at least the closest thing to it." Waste not!

[Rias]

"Why do monks check corpses to see if they're raisable?" A number of reasons, probably. Some no doubt feel it's the compassionate thing to do, bringing someone back to life after a grisly, untimely death. Others might do so because of the theorized tendency for "lost souls" incapable of moving on to end up as wraiths after being stuck in limbo for too long. Better to give them a second chance at life in their own body than to let their soul fester until it becomes a wraith. Besides, sometimes the Undying will stay dead and their soul will seemingly move on after so many deaths and resurrections. So in a way, it's an effort to help their soul eventually find peace.

[Drayla]

I'm curious, since the thing about souls being unable to move on is a theory, does that mean people that are broight back to life remember nothing of the time when they were a spirit? Should we RP that we don't remember anything, or would we remember the "bell of death"?

[Rias]

That some peoples' souls don't move on isn't the theory part, that's pretty much known. I was actually thinking last night of how I might make it clear that a person shouldn't remember everything about the death experience, or at least make it all seem sketchy and confusing at best to simulate not remembering every detail when they come back, but it'd be kind of hard to do. I could either make it really confusing, but I'm not sure I want to do that, or I could put in some OOC note that says "Your character shouldn't remember everything about this experience, only foggy bits and pieces, etc. etc." which players can of course ignore. Not really an easy way to do it that I can see. At least right now, in its unfinished state, characters really do remember nothing except for an empty void and some weird bell, since that's all that's implemented!

Anyway, the theory part from my previous post is that those souls that don't move on become wraiths after being stuck in limbo for too long. So, you can see why monks would want to check corpses whenever they could for any traces of a lingering soul - they don't want to leave the soul in limbo, which is bad enough itself, only to go through whatever nasty process there might be that turns it into a hostile nether-tainted wraith and come back to haunt/torment/kill other people as wraiths are wont to do. Better to use Soul Beacon to draw their soul back to their body, let them live again, and hope that the next time the soul and body are separated, the soul will be able to move on.

[Drayla]

Something that has annoyed me lately is IC conversation of how the OOC mechanics of the deathknell and being revived by rooks ar confusing. For example, saying that you or someone else "didn't know how to follow the familiar" is not only 1) remembering a bit more about being raised than I think we should and 2) making characters sound like idiots. Since the familiar beckons to you, obvioisly you'd just follow it IC. Just because it is hard to figure out OOCly doesn't mean it is even remotely difficult ICly.

Another example: When someone dies in a room with the description "You are out in the wilderness." In all reality, I think most most deathknell messages should say "you are in a forest with [insert forest's defining feature here]" or "You are in the middle of some [defining feature] plains." I heard someone talking tonight over ESP about how they didn't remember a road that was so little "descript" of defining features. Not only did I want to rip my hair out with how OOC it sounded, I also really wanted to point out that this is the WILDERNESS we are talking about. Chances are that unless you were near a landmark of some kind, one stretch of wilderness would look just about the same as any other.

Tl;dr: Please refrain from referring to how confusing or frustrating any death mechanics are in an IC manner. If you can't help but talk about how that familiar was so hard to follow, either come up with some convincing IC explanation (it kept wavering and fading, and I eventually lost it altogether!) or just don't provide input.

Personally, this is right up there with "sarcastic IC replies to accidental ESP mischans" on the "things I hate to see on CLOK" list.

[faylen]

Ok, on one hand I can see why this stuff would frustrate you. I was the one who did these things, and it seemed ooc even to me.

On the other hand, some of this stuff is just weird anyway and it's very hard not to go there. With the familiar one, people were saying things like well perhaps the person doesn't want to be raised by a rook? While this is possible, it's also possible that the person is sitting there going wtf do I do! When I brought this up, I tried to keep it as a vague memory, like all I remember is this sense of confusion... If there could be some ooc messaging that you need to depart at that point, that particular problem would be solved.

As for the wilderness thing, the point of that conversation was to try to narrow down areas that still had vague wilderness descriptions. I was trying to play it off as perhaps the vision gave more detail than it really did, or at least some kind of clue... Kinds of trees, a particular bush, whatever. Things that could exist elsewhere too, and were very bland, but even bland can be a hint if other places have more to focus on...

Again, this will be a nonissue once the wilderness descriptions are redone or perhaps if something else is put in to help out with corpse locating. And yes, I admit things could have been said better and I'm trying to do better with that.

On another note, one thing I thought of is what if we could see the room titles as well as the descriptions? That would help narrow things down, too. In the wilderness road example, we'd at least have known it was a road even if not where. In other situations, even if all it said was, you're in the wilderness, the room name would tell us if we were dealing with plains or forests or what.

[Drayla]

I'm not singling you out Faylen, though I admit your examples are the ones that came to mind as I was typing. lol A lot of people do this, and this is far from the worst thing that bothers me (don't get me started on the people mispelling Mistral). I just get frustrated because in this situation, yes, it feels OOC but I can't even come up with an alternative. So ignore my little rant if you want, because the only real solution I can give is "Don't even bring it up! EVAR!"

[Rias]

The familiar messaging was buggy, by the way. The familiar shows up for a specific person only, but the messaging was saying it was there for whoever was receiving the messaging. So if it was showing up for Bob, but Stan and Alice were also there, each one of them would think it was coming specifically for them.

Oops.

Anyway, that messaging should be fixed now. The person who it is specifically showing up for is the only one who would get the OOC syntax example, so I can see why everyone else would be super confused.

[Isiaa]

Well. The moment of death could be particularly clear. So you have general idea of what your area looks like but that's it. Mountains, forest, cold, hot, river or lake side. That sort of thing.

[Kiyaani]

Can there be a message something to the effect of: you no longer sense the location of the fallen? This would happen if someone departs or logs out until that mechanic is removed. That way we know if we need to keep looking or if someone might be afk and just not looking at the bell again.

[Zoiya]

Told some players to post ideas and feedback on death in its current state (since it will be updated again soon), since there is a lot of chat about it, but chat doesn't always get seen by the GM's, so I'll start the ball rolling!


How about when someone departs you get messaging on the deathknell thing that says "The thrumming of the deathknell ceases in your mind, leaving only an echoing silence".




You'll know that the person departed and you no longer have to search for them.

Now who else wants to post some fun ideas?!?!

Was told that this wasn't possible. :(

[Kiyaani]

Aw, thanks anyway =) I didn't have time to read back through the thread so sorry I missed that.