[MUD-Dev] Death and Permadeath and Corpse Retrieval

[Sean Middleditch]

On Sat, 2004-01-17 at 22:29 -0600, Spot wrote:
> Sean Middleditch wrote:

> I agree that there is a difference between evil and bad players,
> but sadly its more common to see bad players than roleplayed evil
> ones...I guess there needs to be a way to determine one from the
> other, but in game terms as far as actions a player who is
> roleplaying "evil" would seem awfully similar to some immature bad
> player.

> I missed out on the whole anarchy of ultima online in the early
> days, but it seemed even with their attempts at consquences you
> still got killed by a group of PK'ers everytime you logged in.
> Even if you were only armed with a pickaxe and standing next to
> your pile of ore...To me evil has more of a purpose behind it, and
> simply killing helpless people falls into more the bad player
> category.

Again, the rewards need to be structured properly.  Killing someone
for no reason should be punished.  Pk could perhaps not even be
possible (without a set of special preconditions - must be in a
Pk-allowed zone, must be within a certain level difference of each
other, must have opted in to Pk, etc.)

>> It would be nice to see your more-indepth ideas to comment and
>> discuss the pros/cons of them.  ^,^

> My more indepth system is similar to the system of ultima IV and
> V...where gaining virtue is similar to gaining power, thus a
> robust justice system is necessary, but I plan to have negative
> virtues as well which gain similar power...However I want the
> "Evil" players to be "Evil" more as a roleplaying choice, than
> just doing it to piss off other players.

One thing I just thought of in terms of rewards (and punishments) is
for evil virtues (not alignment) to be altered towards zero when
"petty" evils are committed, such as pointless murder.  The
character is still evil, still has many negatives racked up making
attaining virtue very difficult, but then also loses any possible
powers from being truly evil.

> And actually the rewards for being evil, will be greater than that
> of being good, but the best rewards will come from those in the
> "Falling from grace" sort of the anti-paladin approach where going
> from the most virtuest to the foulest villian will be the most
> powerful character in the game, but there will be possibly the
> worst fate to becomming this type of character and this fate would
> be permadeath...

One must be careful to keep things balanced at all points in the
game.  And also to make sure the balance is "real" to the players.
"Increased chance of permadeath" sounds like a pretty weak
punishment for greatly increased power (which should decrease chance
of death at all).

--
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev