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Bioxx

Official Death Penalty Discussion

262 posts in this topic

As a newcomer with a technology background let me point out another point for your consideration: Whatever is decided has to be programmable. Some things are easy to implement (any kind of respawn debuff), some are hard (an RPG experience system), some are frustrating (any kind of ban), and some are ludicrously impossible (see below). I'm of course not saying that a more difficult solution shouldn't be implemented over a simple one, but Occam's Razor can apply.

One idea that is impossible to program - impossible! - is the idea of the player losing their items. Think it through. On single player it's fairly easy to implement: the player loses their inventory. A more extreme version: empty all chests and tool racks and erase all entities from the game world. Either way, simple and done. On SMP however, is it fair for a player's items to just disappear? What if they were part of a community and they had the community pickaxe on their person at the time of death? Is that fair? In the extreme version, what constitutes ownership? The last chest that player opened? Griefers will abuse it. All the chests that player created? Then community chests created by the player will be emptied and the community punished. Plus, since community members can move items to their personal inventory, you'd have to erase all of *their* inventories to be "fair". And this sort of tit-for-tat keeps going on. The ways to abuse this are nearly endless. Again, this is just impossible to program. Not technically impossible, but *ethically* impossible. It can never be "fair".

Here's the best question to ask:

Q: Why are we having this discussion?

A: Because player death is being abused.

Q: How is this being abused? What benefit or trade-off does the player incur?

A: Fast travel. The players put their items in a chest and die to teleport back to spawn or their bed.

So eliminate this benefit - the fast travel - and the problem disappears. Simply have players respawn within a few blocks of their death (just in case it's in lava). No debuff required.

Now, while the above should eliminate the abuse it doesn't make death undesirable. So, I rather like the idea of the player respawning with half health and half hunger or some other temporary inconvenience. Three seconds of blindness followed by three more seconds of nausea seems fitting. It's a weakened restart position and that's probably enough. Any more gets into the realm of frustration.

As a consequence, beds lose one of their only functions in-game: setting a new respawn location. So, give them a new one: How about when players sleep in a bed they gain a few seconds of regeneration, basically the equivalent of eating a lesser golden apple in vanilla. And since it can only be done once per night it can't be abused.

So, obviously, my vote would be for the previously mentioned Unconsciousness suggestion or something similar to end the abuse *and* make death undesirable.

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A death penalty is a generally bad approach. Instead remove the death benifits like full health, full hunger, teleport home. Make respawn happen with 2 hearts of hp and 1 meat worth of hunger. Also a configurable death spawn location that is within 100-200 blocks of the death, or at a set graveyard location on servers.

As I believe has been pointed out in this thread already, this leaves a player who died in a position where they're very likely to end up dying repeatedly.

Similarly, I think the punishment should be to the world that made the player strong. The player losing all of their items is a good example of a punishment following this idea.

As dsmith77 pointed out, this is impossible to implement in SMP, making it a non-option. However, even if it was an option, it's a bad idea because most people don't want to start over just because they died (6% solo hardcore players in Bioxx's poll).

Here's the best question to ask:

Q: Why are we having this discussion?

A: Because player death is being abused.

Q: How is this being abused? What benefit does the player incur?

A: Fast travel. The players put their items in a chest and die to teleport back to spawn or their bed.

Since players can't transport items this way, I do not believe this is the primary motivation for abusing death. Bioxx's example was of players ignoring hunger, since if death doesn't matter hunger doesn't really matter either.

In general, lack of a death penalty allows players (a) to take risks with impunity, knowing their is little risk for poor judgement; as well as ( b ) being able to essentially ignore various game challenges.

A Few More Thoughts

Essentially all progress in Minecraft comes in the form of the resources obtained. This is a key source of the problem with death. It is very difficult to address this problem in a way that covers all loopholes while not being too extreme.

An experience system can address this easily because it is not a resource the player can store (in vanilla Minecraft this isn't really true, but vanilla's "XP" are mis-named). Since it is tied to Steve - and to an individual player - it is easy to remove on death. By making it non-essential and of significantly less importance than other resources, you can make death hurt without it being very frustrating.

However, lets suppose we don't have such a system, so we must address resources. In that case we will probably needs several pieces to fully address the problem. Here are a few things which might help (all of which I've mentioned before):

1. When you die, instead of your stuff simply dropping on the ground it ends up in your corpse, or in some tombstone block or something. It would then be guarded by some creature (unless in a spawn-protected zone). This would force you to work to recover your items. (The better items you had, the tougher the guardian could be.)

2. Lose ownership of pets, possibly other things as well. They will still be there, so they could be re-acquired (assuming some other player doesn't acquire them first), but it will require some work.

3. Chests which are outside of spawn protection may have some chance to be destroyed / raided, or perhaps mobs will simply take a liking to them. In any case, this can address the issue of players dropping their items into chests when they know they're about to die.

None of these is especially severe - they will make death inconvenient, but fully recoverable with some work.

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As I believe has been pointed out in this thread already, this leaves a player who died in a position where they're very likely to end up dying repeatedly.

As the mod currently stands maybe, maybe at night; however skeletons zombies and so on are foretold to soon not be spawning in the world other than in random crypts, in which case the only entity threats to be concerned of will be wolves/bears/whatever other devious predator that gets added.

To put it simply minecraft isn't an adventure game, it isn't an MMO; sure steps can be made to some degree to make it more adventurous but it will never be a true adventure game. What i got from the OP is how do we stop or deter people from putting their items into a chest and killing themselves to get all their health and hunger back, not how to we make it a PITA to die.

Making a deadly creature spawn at the corpse/chest/whatever is left behind to "haunt" it or whatnot first off is in the exact opposite direction that has been indicated of TFC as far as steering clear if mythical things such as zombies and such. I suppose an animal could take a "liking" to the location, but that's not how animals work, an animal would maybe eat at the body but in the end they will move on looking for more prey. The other side of this, whats to prevent someone from griefing your house by dieing all over it several times and getting little corpse stalking things to spawn all over.

Also, placing a loot-able chest/corpse/whatever that you can come back and loot later is actually removing the one and only penalty that actually exists currently.

As i said above, punishing death is just a bad game mechanic. The best way to handle the situation is to remove the benefit of killing yourself intentionally to bypass portions of the game that are soon to become a more necessary part of the mod. If you don't spawn with full hunger and such after death there is no reason to kill yourself to get hunger back, because you don't. If you don't teleport back to the safety of your bed when you die there's no reason even in the odd and rare occasion to kill yourself to get back home.

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"punishing death is a bad game mechanic".

I'm sorry, but that's just not the direction the mod is going. Thank goodness it isn't too, because I am totally against that opinion. You just DIED, thats not something you take lightly. You don't just get up and walk away without anything remotely consequential after you DIE.

Here is the problem with death as it stands:

1: easily exploitable. Restore hunger, TP, ecetera. Everyone has gone over this a million times though.

2: puts no stress on you just DIED. I know having your progress deleted sucks, but have you ever played hardcore mode? Once you get it into your head that YOU REALLY DO NOT WANT TO DIE, the game becomes many many times more enjoyable in a multitude of ways. I can't explain the feeling, it's glorious.

Now the only problem with hardcore for me is your metal tools and buildings are gone. Not believable!

All I want out of this is a game where you fear death intensly, your fucked up majorly and profoundly of you die, but all your metals (metal of all kinds, tools, anvils, bars, unshaped ECT) and other non perishable items (stone, dirt, ore, non organic material) are fine. Of course the world is not deleted so any mines, buildings, changes to the world are still there.

As far as actually creating this environment, I don't have a god dam clue. Help is appreciated.

TL;DR: Death should fuck you up. Hardcore as is gives a magnificent caution and increased enjoyment to your playstyle in reaction to the consequences of death. Deletion of world upon death is too extreme however. IMO, death should stop short at taking away any non perishable items (metal, stone, ore, ECT) and player changes to the world such as mines and building. The closer the death penalty can get to that without actually crossing the line, the better.

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Perhaps... Instead of making ANY(and I mean ANY) of this part of the TerraFirmaCraft mod, this should be entirely separate and even stand alone capable, an addon if you will. Why? Because of choice and customization. I personally do not want any form of debuff system on death. I strongly feel that it would end in a rut of death. On paper a lot of these SOUND good, but in practice they fail .its hard enough with how I play going back for my gear(I die often 2000 blocks away from my bed while looking for stuff or just generally exploring). However if presented with a mod that changes death to what I feel is appropriate, then i would jump on it.

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To add on to that thought ECC, I think this would be a great oportunity to give the difficulty levels a actual use. Different death consequences (peaceful: no penalty) up to hard (highest penalty, something like I suggested in my previous post). Obviously this would create the need for locked difficulties in order to prevent exploit. (which should have been done ling ago)

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Hm... let's expand our view for a moment. The other things Bioxx said he was focusing on was an expanded health pool, and injuries/ailments. Let's build death on those grounds for a bit, and see what we come up with. One of the first things several people seem to have been jumping to is depleting your health pool. A fair idea, but it would have to go back to normal after some time has passed. If you take injuries/ailments into consideration though, you've got a few more things you can work with. Perhaps after dying, you're more susceptible to these. Not directly a debuff, but can leave you roughed up a bit. You could also stop looking at death as dying, and look at it as being near-fatally injured.

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IF any of these ideas get implemented, I hope there is configs for all of them

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"punishing death is a bad game mechanic".

Not completely, because people that continue suiciding to restore the hunger bar need something that stops them doing this. This ability of killing yourself is overpowered and being it, it needs to be deleted. Also you don't need to punish every death, for example only when you die and have the food level below 6. Not the fall damage death, but also the mobs death, apart creeper because it punish you damaging the terrain.
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As the mod currently stands maybe, maybe at night; however skeletons zombies and so on are foretold to soon not be spawning in the world other than in random crypts, in which case the only entity threats to be concerned of will be wolves/bears/whatever other devious predator that gets added.

Where's the fun of Minecraft if you don't fear the night? Anyway, that's a different discussion, and actually irrelevant. Suppose you starved to death? Well, respawning you in the much the same condition but without even the benefit of your things isn't likely to get you very far.

All I want out of this is a game where you fear death intensly ...

TL;DR: Death should fuck you up. Hardcore as is gives a magnificent caution and increased enjoyment to your playstyle in reaction to the consequences of death. ...

Most players do not like hardcore (as demonstrated by Bioxx's own poll). Most players do not want to fear death intensely. The goal is to make the cost of death sufficient to discourage it. To encourage you to actually try to survival (that being the goal, after all). People put many hours into this game and undoing too much of their work will make it not fun for most.

I understand you enjoy this but most of us do not, so if you want to recommend a "severe death" option that is fine, but please stop pushing this as the default.

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But if people aren't scared of the death, you can make it more scary with penalities, BUT you need to make some ways to save you from that death ,for example when you're dying because your food bar reached 0 you need to find a quick food to survive for some additional time that you can use to get home and eat something. This quick food doesn't restore your normal food bar, but instead it restores an additional food bar that depletes over time, not over distance walked. Consider the idea of this additional food bar, because it can solve more problems.

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Agreed with above statements. Death should have no reward, yet no penalty. On the topic of teleporting vs waking up, if you remove the safeguard-teleporting, then you invite the "death rut" circumstance where the death point is over-run; however, if you allow players to teleport to safety, then more considerations must be had (I.E. is my safe house stocked with food and well lit so I can recover from my recent death?)

In short, death penalties are a very bad idea. The bonuses you recieve for dying should be removed except for a safeguard to prevent "death ruts."

Options:

1. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with full health (possible abuse here but nothing lasting), keep teleporting (safeguard.)

2. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with half health, keep teleporting (safeguard.)

3. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with minimal health (possible death rut if safehouse isn't well lit/made), keep teleporting (safeguard.)

4. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with full health (safeguard), remove teleporting (not a possible death rut because the safeguard is from max health.)

5. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with half health, remove teleporting (possible death rut if death point is overrun.)

6. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with minimal health (death rut), remove teleporting (death rut.)

Next we remove options with either two safeguards or confirmed death ruts and we have:

1. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with half health, keep teleporting (safeguard.)

2. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with minimal health (possible death rut if safehouse isn't well lit/made), keep teleporting (safeguard.)

3. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with full health (safeguard), remove teleporting (not a possible death rut because the safeguard is from max health.)

4. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with half health, remove teleporting (possible death rut if death point is overrun.)

Personally I'm voting for "2. Revive with the same hunger as when you died, revive with minimal health (possible death rut if safehouse isn't well lit/made), keep teleporting (safeguard.)" It creates a need for a shelter early on and a source of food (guys it's not too hard to get enough food to last until a farm is built) as well as preventing death ruts by removing you from the area that caused your death.

I don't think teleporting is in need of changing as you would still have to retrieve your items reguardless. Why would anybody abuse teleporting? If they are stuck and must reset their position, but I don't really think that's abuse.

P.S. I don't think anybody should die from hunger. Instead, it should bring them down to half-a-heart.

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Most players do not like hardcore (as demonstrated by Bioxx's own poll). Most players do not want to fear death intensely. The goal is to make the cost of death sufficient to discourage it. To encourage you to actually try to survival (that being the goal, after all). People put many hours into this game and undoing too much of their work will make it not fun for most.

I understand you enjoy this but most of us do not, so if you want to recommend a "severe death" option that is fine, but please stop pushing this as the default.

Please, go back and read the following sentences in my TL;DR. I go on to say that while hardcore creates a wonderful playstyle it is too harsh. I then explain a good general area for death penalty, without destroying much progress. And of course I meant this as the hardest option, in my next post I talked about difficulty levels.

Instead of hardcore deleting your world, maybe it could create a passage of time. So everything perishable is rotted in your chests, food and plant matter, log piles. But your non organics, like metal in all forms, ore, stone, tools, anvil, dirt, ECT is still fine, if a bit dusty. An then of course, your buildings are fine, as is any changes you have made by placing/breaking blocks in the world (buildings and mines). Of course I'm not sure how hardcore singleplayer would work.

My main point is this is a good thing to tie to difficulty levels.

And at every one who is saying "no death penalty", Why? The title of the thread is about enforcing death penalties... This mod will have death penalties, that is the direction it is going.

Edit: your post title was misleading Ruyuu, but well written. You meant no rebuffs not no consequnces.

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What about a short "invisible to mobs" effect, after being knocked unconscious? This would be for the system that spawns you in the same place you died, with an injury debuff. Should at least prevent the death rut problem of mobs simply killing you again after you wake up. It's semi-believable that mobs would lose interest after they thought you died.

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"punishing death is a bad game mechanic".

I'm sorry, but that's just not the direction the mod is going. Thank goodness it isn't too, because I am totally against that opinion. You just DIED, that's not something you take lightly. You don't just get up and walk away without anything remotely consequential after you DIE.

What makes you think you are the definitive last word on the direction the mod is going? Even Bioxx, who by the way is the definitive last word on the direction the mod is going, is subject to his own thoughts and designs on the mod changing when he receives feedback or new ideas or such.

It is silly to just sit here and interpret the title of the op as meaning that the goal is to punish death, without reading that his main motive in the post is to discourage people from committing suicide to avoid things like having to feed yourself.

Maybe things could be tied to the difficulty scale as far as possible penalties, but telling everyone that they have to deal with harsh penalties in their game because you say so and because you think its more enjoyable is kinda totalitarian.

As i say in pretty much all my posts lately on loaded subjects, in the end we are just feeding ideas to Bioxx, it is up to him to decide how to use those ideas and how they best suit or don't suit TFC, and then up to us to decide if the mod still suits us. However it is still strongly my opinion that punishing death in a game like minecraft, especially on an even scale, is a bad game mechanic. Especially when getting rid of the benefits of death gets rid of the problem outlined in the OP.

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We just need to discourage people from killing themselves because it is the easier way out. For that we need some new game mechanics, but I don't think death penalties are necessary. The solutions that people here come up with sound really fun, and they are a nice idea, but I think it can be solved much simpler.

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What makes you think you are the definitive last word on the direction the mod is going? Even Bioxx, who by the way is the definitive last word on the direction the mod is going, is subject to his own thoughts and designs on the mod changing when he receives feedback or new ideas or such.

It is silly to just sit here and interpret the title of the op as meaning that the goal is to punish death, without reading that his main motive in the post is to discourage people from committing suicide to avoid things like having to feed yourself.

Maybe things could be tied to the difficulty scale as far as possible penalties, but telling everyone that they have to deal with harsh penalties in their game because you say so and because you think its more enjoyable is kinda totalitarian.

As i say in pretty much all my posts lately on loaded subjects, in the end we are just feeding ideas to Bioxx, it is up to him to decide how to use those ideas and how they best suit or don't suit TFC, and then up to us to decide if the mod still suits us. However it is still strongly my opinion that punishing death in a game like minecraft, especially on an even scale, is a bad game mechanic. Especially when getting rid of the benefits of death gets rid of the problem outlined in the OP.

I wasn't saying it's my idea, I wasn't trying to be totalitarian. If that is what came across, im sorry. But I really don't understand how im forcing any ideas on anyone when I am proposing varied degrees of punishment tied to the difficulty setting. That way, it actually does it's job of allowing people to play the way the want in a organic way. Why is this such a bad thing?

I will repeat so there can be no misunderstanding: all I am proposing is a organic death penalty system that is believable and is customizable by choosing your difficulty.

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I wasn't saying it's my idea, I wasn't trying to be totalitarian. If that is what came across, im sorry. But I really don't understand how im forcing any ideas on anyone when I am proposing varied degrees of punishment tied to the difficulty setting. That way, it actually does it's job of allowing people to play the way the want in a organic way. Why is this such a bad thing?

I will repeat so there can be no misunderstanding: all I am proposing is a organic death penalty system that is believable and is customizable by choosing your difficulty.

"...believable and customizable by choosing your difficulty". That would be great!

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Awesome, we have lots of ideas now that Bioxx can pick and choose from. I like the idea of your difficulty changing how death works.

Question though is ... is it possible? (game difficulty [peaceful, easy, normal, hard] is different than game mode[creative, survival, hardcore, adventure]) I understand that you don't die in creative but how will it effect the rest? (just survival or survival and adventure[leaving hardcore out of it since you die there and it's all over])

One thing is for sure, whatever Bioxx does it'll be interesting. :)

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My idea Is based on what others said about the health pool. you could have it where you start with a lower health limit at the very beginning of the game and you have it increase by time (lots of it) or by finding rare artifacts/potions or making special food that decreases the amount of time needed to get a new heart (maximum health) so now to the death penalty... when you would die I think #1 ecc's idea about the loot-able bodys should happen including the player zombies etc. but you would also lose 2 full hearts also and if you are playing in hardcore mode and die with only 1 heart for maximum you would perma-die.

Another thing to add to the loot-able bodys is depending on the players level bottle'o'enchanting would be in the corpse, so for example if you die at level 7 there would be 7 bottles of enchanting inside the corpse.

The last thing I could think of would be a de-buff for being reanimated kinda like summoning sickness in magic the gathering so you would be weaker, hungry (eating rotten flesh is a good example of this), dazed etc. for around 5min. also going along with this you would not only be hungry but your hunger bar's max would be cut in half for that same amount of time.

This is all I could think of so far and I think the whole idea of this mod is AWESOME so keep up the good work.

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another idea would mean including water, because if anyone here has seen some of those shows on discovery where people fall and get a crippled leg and can't move so they slowly get more and more thirsty, this whole is for multiplayer so when you would fall they would have to pick you up and bring you to your bed where you can put a splint on, but if you get too thirsty before someone gets to you you will die and become a corpse... a dry one.

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I have an opinion on the teleporting thing. To me, teleporting to home in minecraft signifies you being barely able to drag your wounded starving self home, and the fact that you lost all your stuff is due to your weakened condition. That said, I agree with the whole waking up in the same hunger state, but at half life.

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Instead of hardcore deleting your world, maybe it could create a passage of time. So everything perishable is rotted in your chests, food and plant matter, log piles. But your non organics, like metal in all forms, ore, stone, tools, anvil, dirt, ECT is still fine, if a bit dusty. An then of course, your buildings are fine, as is any changes you have made by placing/breaking blocks in the world (buildings and mines). Of course I'm not sure how hardcore singleplayer would work.

I am very not fond of this idea, as it punishes players based on the choices they make on how to survive. Those who focus on agriculture will have little to no food available to recover; if seeds are included as perishables there would be an almost guaranteed force restart in gaining supplies. Those who focus on animal husbandry and hunting will have plenty of food and ways to regrow food, as long as they're responsible with their stocks.

This method also pushes for chance based on seasons. Those who grow fruit trees might have plenty of food to gather in spring and summer, but death while fruit is out of season would force the player to choose another method to solve their hunger... assuming that they store their food on the trees.

Logs are used to make charcoal (as we all know). Logs rotting would remove all fuel for those who use logs and charcoal as their primary fuels. This would give those who mine an advantage, as coal can be used in place of charcoal in most situations.

If logs rot, it implies supports and other wood products would also rot (if they don't rot it would be potentially jarring and ruin the realism/consistency of the game). I can't imagine those with large homes would want to gather enough wood just to make enough supports to prevent their house being griefed. It would also cause issues with supports in mines.

If preserving foods (for example drying, canning, jarring, salting/spicing) is made an option, as well as only having exposed wood products rot, I would be all for this in single player; it allows players to plan ahead for disaster. However, this still raises issues with SMP; dsmith77 covered a good deal of SMP issues in this section:

On SMP however, is it fair for a player's items to just disappear? What if they were part of a community and they had the community pickaxe on their person at the time of death? Is that fair? In the extreme version, what constitutes ownership? The last chest that player opened? Griefers will abuse it. All the chests that player created? Then community chests created by the player will be emptied and the community punished. Plus, since community members can move items to their personal inventory, you'd have to erase all of *their* inventories to be "fair". And this sort of tit-for-tat keeps going on.

Destroying the inventory of all chests a player has created or touched can be seen as part of the balance, forcing the community to focus on the survival of all players. (I wouldn't mind this on the server I play on with my close friends.) This is fine on small private servers, but no matter the size of the server there's no guarantee a player won't "turn" and betray the group by dying intentionally. (The only deterrent I've noticed for this kind of behavior is having an irl social consequence, but even that isn't absolute.)

I'm all for having food rot if preserving is made an option, but having it rot based on time rather than death count would be a necessity for me. That way it's fair in both coop and pvp. This bit isn't really on topic though sooo

My only suggestion for death penalties involves a bit more stuff than is probably realistic, but I'll have a go anyway.

I suggest having locks and keys, with locks working in doors/chests/etc and keys being held on the player. (I don't know how they'd be held, but the most practical in terms of inventory space would be a key box that would allow a player to store more than one key in the box; otherwise the keys would function as normal items. Functionally, it would allow one inventory space to count as X number of spaces, but only in terms of keys. A way around the storage limit in the key box would be to hold one or two keys that unlock a chest or chests used for storing keys.)

Keys could be crafted using a locksmith's box block, which would allow the shape of the key to be customized. Think similar to the knapping interface, but mimicking the teeth of a key. Although less realistic, gems, metals/alloys, wood, etc could be included in forming a specific key, allowing more combinations and therefore more codes. If a player can remember the code for the key, they can create however many they want and share these keys with other members of their community... or they can make only one and never share the "password" with another player.

(Key data would probably have to be stored in a manner similar to tool damage in vanilla MC. It would be a lot of data for an item with limited use, which is one of the reasons I think this idea is a little over the top for this dilemma. It does have extended use though.)

Locks could be "picked" by other players by guessing the key's code, allowing looting. However, as most players would probably use top tier materials to protect their most prized possessions, there would be the risk of creating a key that doesn't have any use while trying to lockpick. (Difficulty would change based on how many different materials were required, which would be decided on by the modder; it would be less difficult to break in if the only variable was tooth pattern, but if a gem, wood, metal/alloy, AND tooth pattern were required there could be thousands of potential combinations.)

Upon death, all keys in a player's inventory are destroyed. If they've used a high tier metal to create their key, they'd have to be ready to "waste" more to get back into their stuff. This would likely force them back to lower tier materials, as their best stuff would be locked away to prevent theft. If the materials they use are difficult to get, they might even have to rebuild from scratch if they aren't prepared. The punishment of death, being locked out of your good items (and possibly even your house, vault, village, or kingdom), would be balanced against the penalty of leaving your items unlocked and unguarded, allowing for theft and griefing. This also rewards players who are willing to keep track of their keys.

This doesn't really solve the specific problem presented in the OP, haha. Oops! I'm with the people who are for motivation to work through starvation rather than punish those who die. Then again I usually play on peaceful and farm sooo my vote doesn't really matter. I think this one is my favourite though:

A new underlying stat (sort of like saturation for hunger) would be "general health" versus the visible "health points". This has been suggested before, but always with other things added on that aren't that needed for a simple system.

General health is a pool that can be capped out at 1000, starting a fresh game with a new character starts you at 500 general health.

At maxed points you would receive 25% faster heal rate, 20% faster sprint, and 3 extra breath bubbles.

At at 90-100% you have max current stats. each 10% threshold below that removes half a heart/drumstick/air bubble, till you effectively have half stats at 0% general health. This means even after starving for a crazy long time and dying several times, the game is still playable, there's just a penalty for consistently playing badly. On the flipside, those who prepare, keep healthy and survive well will get a nice bonus.

General health would be promoted in several ways:

- Keeping fatigue above a certain point by eating food, like > 80%, would promote a gradual addition to general health. +1 per minute

- Eating high content food (3 or more drumsticks) would give a slight boost to general health. (aka bonus for meats and, hopefully eventually, prepared foods) +5 each

- Don't get injured for extended periods of time, kicks in after 5 minutes of not getting injured, but isn't turned off until taking at least 1 heart of damage so you're not punished for walking over floating dirt or a single small jump that's just a bit too far. +1 per minute

- Sleeping in a bed at night would give either a flat bonus if you fastforward to day or a gradual bonus if you just hang in bed like on SMP. +10 for fast forward, +1 per minute for simply "resting" at night while on SMP.

General health would be detracted from by the following:

- Taking damage also damages your general health, at 1 point per half heart lost. This means consistently going out and getting your body torn apart will gradually harm your health.

- Having < 20% of your hunger bar left will start to decrease your general health. -1 per minute

- Starving (no hunger bar left) will only take you to half of your max health, but your general health will start decreasing rapidly. -10 per minute.

- Drowning, poison, and fire causes you to lose 1 point of general health per half heart lost in addition to the point lost due to loss of health.

- Death cuts your general health in half. Meaning you technically start from ground zero in regards to general health if you die while at max general health. If you just started and you die, you're general health would be 250, still livable but not game over. This would mean the initial death would always suck the worst and subsequent deaths, while bad, won't cause you to become exponentially worse.

I think this gives a viable reason to live a healthy life, survive well, be cautious, eat good and prepared food, and in general avoid setting yourself on fire.

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Final idea for a while just occurred to me "dyeing from malnutrition!" if you only eat bread or steak you would not get things like vitamin C etc. so you need to eat a diverse amount of foods or you will die.

The effect malnutrition looks like a cracked food pyramid and comes in 3 forms

malnutrition 3: this is the first form of the effect it gives an effect like hunger only very slight and toned down plus you are very slightly weaker to fix this you need to eat very little of the nutrient/nutrients you are missing.

malnutrition 2: this is a more severe form of malnutrition it acts exactly like the hunger effect makes you slightly weaker and if thirst is in the game you get thirsty faster PLUS you can't wear any armor except for leather (if you are wearing iron armor at the time the armor becomes transparent and useless)

or anything that weighs the same also if you add a maximum weight that the character can have on him he carries less. to fix this you need quite a bit of the nutrient you are missing

Malnutrition 3: worst form of malnutrition after this is death, you are effected by a severe form of hunger and weakness can't carry any armor thirst is effected a lot too just like the hunger again if weight is added you can carry almost nothing and doing anything like mining takes longer crafting takes time and you have only 5min till you DIE.

I hope you like this input and I know it seems like a lot of work to add so If its too hard too work with then ignore this post.

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Awesome, we have lots of ideas now that Bioxx can pick and choose from. I like the idea of your difficulty changing how death works.

Question though is ... is it possible? (game difficulty [peaceful, easy, normal, hard] is different than game mode[creative, survival, hardcore, adventure]) I understand that you don't die in creative but how will it effect the rest? (just survival or survival and adventure[leaving hardcore out of it since you die there and it's all over])

One thing is for sure, whatever Bioxx does it'll be interesting. :)

As long as it is done in a organic way. The vanilla difficulty system is so artificial. The increased mob spawns and damage is such a clumsy way to increase difficulty. Things like zombies breaking down doors in hard is more towards actuall organic difficulty.

Obviously you would have to make it locked, a separate game mode like hardcore. Both for balence and coding reasons.

I would give some more in depth suggestions, but I don't have the time right now.

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