Official Death Penalty Discussion

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

What i propose? Eliminate the spawn point set option the bed gives you. If you die, you respawn in the exact same spot you died, no magical teleporting. Technically, you haven't died, instead, you just fell unconcious. When you awake, then, some time has passed; exactly half a day, for simplicity sake. You are weak -barely 1/10 of your health-, you are hungry -your body continues to consume hunger bars when unconcious, therefore, you start with nearly 2 hunger bars-, you are slowed down by the weakness -make it so, the less health you have, the slower you move- and you can't make as much damage as you could, neither as fast. Mobs are attracted to attack you because you are weak, therefore, a easy prey for them. Your only chance is to find a refugee, rest and recover, and THEN going back home, unless you died just there. If you die in this state, the same debuffs are applied: you have 1/10 of the health you had -or 1/100 of the total health-, are very hungry and very weak. The thrid time, though, you are really dead. If you wish, you can respawn in a completely new spawn point in that world, and start from 0. Be lucky enough, and you will find your original home; however, the new spawn point can both be just aside the original spawn point, and 20000 km away. With death penalties like this, you would REALLY have a reason for being afraid of dying.

[varradami 26]

This post became longer than I intended. I put a tl;dr version at the bottom for those who don't want to read my ramblings.

GOOD IDEAS

Experience Matters

In vanilla, experience is just another resource to collect for crafting. But what if leveling up actually improved your character? Increasing their health pool, multiplying the efficiency of tools they use, holding their breath longer underwater, etc.? Death would mean losing these benefits with no easy replacement.

Challenging Item Recovery

Instead of a dead player's items dropping, put them in a corpse or create a tombstone block or something. Then put a guardian there - could be the revenant or ghost of the player, or could just be some monsters or something attracted to the corpse. Whoever can kill the guardian can get the stuff (not necessarily the dead player).

Madman2429 suggested inverting the spawn protection. While this is an interesting idea it could be very problematic on servers where players may be living in villages. How does the spawn protection of multiple players interact?

I'm not sure how you can protect against people dumping things into chests (it's common practice for me even in vanilla to try to not be carrying too much of value on my character), but not every death is premeditated. Perhaps chests left outside your spawn protection are unsafe or items might disappear from them over time. Or the chest might be destroyed - imagine the player wandering back and finding a broken chest! Be careful with this - people may be storing stuff temporarily for transport back to their base.

Need clearer safe zones! It is very risky to tie mechanics to spawn protection as it currently exists because the player has no way to tell whether their current area is protected, or for how long. Also spawn protection discourages exploration. Some rethinking of this mechanic may be useful (but off-topic for this thread).

Remove Ownership

Any ownership the player has, whatever form it takes, should be removed. Spawn protection can be reset (assuming this is tracked per-player). In vanilla there are wolves and cats, presumably TFC will allow such companions in the future - they could return to a neutral state, not recognizing the player's new life as their former master.

Of course the player should be able to recover ownership, but they'd have to work for it - and another player could come along and take ownership.

I would make an exception for beds, or simply have the player respawn within a certain distance of their old bed. Otherwise it will be really annoying (especially for people who don't use Rei's Minimap).

BAD IDEAS

Permanent Penalties

Resetting the player back to square one (or putting them closer to it) is punishment enough. If someone doesn't have anything to take away, they really don't need to be punished! Yes, death should matter more as you have more stuff.

Players Can't Play

Horrible idea. Giving server operators a hardcore option is fine (SSP already has one) but it should absolutely not be forced. Most people don't like it and I doubt many multiplayer servers would choose to adopt it.

Any Other Severe Penalty

Some people have abused the low cost of death to take advantage of it. But deaths do happen by accident, even to experienced players. Giving death enough of a bite to prevent deliberate suicides and to encourage people to avoid it is quite sufficient.

TL;DR

Death should be a reset, taking you back - or partially back - to a new character. It should never punish you beyond that. At worst, death should be the same as starting from scratch and likely doesn't even need to go that far.

Feel free to put greater punishment as an option, but remember that while some people do like hardcore mode, most people do not.

[ECC 508]

a lot of the people who are pro debuff fail to see that it causes a 'death rut' that in even simple cases can be impossible to escape. When you respawn it should be considered for the purpose of game play as 'a new player'. Even a simple debuff(weakness) can make it impossible to escape. Imagine a zed kills you while your next to your bed. Weakness makes punching impossible, and getting your blade back is impossible because... whats this? Oh yeah, the zed picked it up and is using it ON YOU. Or slowness, with a spider in the room. Can you imagine THAT? yeah, after about 5 deaths you survive the slowness, but do you REALLY want that? And dont get started on 'harmless' debuffs(nausea and blindness). Those are massively deadly under the right circumstances.

Player Debuffs of any kind=No

Now, the post above me, the one about adding buffs for the simple reason of eventually losing them(via xp) is a great idea, though should be obviously tweaked so it does not appear so 'RPG' like. I also rather like the 'no protect' ideal. Combined with my little tidbit on dead bodies, and it turns a zone into an instant(but still playable) hell on earth

[Androyed 26]

What i propose? Eliminate the spawn point set option the bed gives you. If you die, you respawn in the exact same spot you died, no magical teleporting. Technically, you haven't died, instead, you just fell unconcious. When you awake, then, some time has passed; exactly half a day, for simplicity sake. You are weak -barely 1/10 of your health-, you are hungry -your body continues to consume hunger bars when unconcious, therefore, you start with nearly 2 hunger bars-, you are slowed down by the weakness -make it so, the less health you have, the slower you move- and you can't make as much damage as you could, neither as fast. Mobs are attracted to attack you because you are weak, therefore, a easy prey for them. Your only chance is to find a refugee, rest and recover, and THEN going back home, unless you died just there. If you die in this state, the same debuffs are applied: you have 1/10 of the health you had -or 1/100 of the total health-, are very hungry and very weak. The thrid time, though, you are really dead. If you wish, you can respawn in a completely new spawn point in that world, and start from 0. Be lucky enough, and you will find your original home; however, the new spawn point can both be just aside the original spawn point, and 20000 km away. With death penalties like this, you would REALLY have a reason for being afraid of dying.

Yep, exactly what I was thinking.

I think these are the three things that are the most important:

- Hunger doesn't kill you

- The hunger bar doesn't replenish when you die

- When you die, you spawn at the exact spot you died (like you were unconscious)

There should also be effects for when you get hungry or when you have less health, like slower movement and such. And I like the idea of spawning in a random place after you've died for the third time. I think with this there should come a change to the compass though: it should point to your bed. So let's say you died for the third time, spawned in a totally random place, and you want to go home. First you have to obtain the items to make a compass, which can take quite a while, but if you have them you could walk back to your home.

[ruhl4 24]

Remove bed spawning for DW fun. The further you move from spawn, the safer it is but it is worse if you die. However, you could eventually either add spawns which are set by some amount of time being spent in the same area.

[N0body 4]

What about making the death penalty differ as per game difficulty? The harder the difficulty, the worse the effects.

For example, each difficulty could be any of the below (and more, obviously!):

Hard:

• Death spawns a corpse, which acts like a chest, can turn into a zombie etc. as suggested by ECC
• My suggestion of becoming crippled - debuffs to be precise, gained from dying that last for x time or until conditions are met.
• The DayZ style blood & blood loss with a form of being crippled suggested by legendary64
• Death ban as suggested by various (I personally disagree with this suggestion - a little too excessive I think)

Normal:

• Spawn with the food level you had when you died, starvation doesn't kill you, just makes you unhealthy as suggested by Androyed & Ryuugumo.
• Spawn after death and starting spawn point rather than bed, but after x amount of time of protection, you spawn in the same area as suggested by ruhl4

Easy:

• Spawn with the food level you had when you died, starvation doesn't kill you, just makes you unhealthy as suggested by Androyed & Ryuugumo.

Peaceful:

• No penalty for death, as normal

Obviously this would need be re-worked, but this means difficulty allows servers to have more choice, and players on SSP, to what happens on their server. If difficulty does not affect damages and all the other stuff as normal, but effects death penalty, then this could make for something more interesting.

So, that is one thing I suggest. Difficulty effects death penalty, and the harder the more serious the penalty. I'm going to throw it out there, but more difficult = more realistic, or at the least, more forboding and unforgiving world where you fear the environment.

[1SDAN 38]

Really, I'm anti-debuff, no matter how weak it is, it's still deadly under the right circumstances. But, I did see some ideas that caught my eye:

First: The Corpse Idea (ECC)

It's very original and fun.

Believable too, but the lag it'll cause for servers if it happens to every death would be horrific.

But if it only happens to a select few, it wouldn't be fair. Thus, I say maybe something else.

Not a no, just not a certain yes.

Second: The Injury Idea (Multiple)

No this is not a debuff after death.

It's that when you get hurt, you gain some debuffs while you're not dead.

While it's not really an idea for death penalty, it's still very good.

Third: Collected Health Pool (Me and Legendary)

Now, yes it's my own so it obviously caught my eye, but it may be usable.

Your health bar normally is at ten. (As usual), but when you die, your total potential hearts (TPH) goes down by 1)

For every 30 minutes you're active without dying, you regain 1 TPH.

Now, I'm thinking you can't have less than 5 hearts lost, for balance reasons.

This would be fairly simple to code and would allow you to play without a real debuff. It's more of a penalty.

Plus, if you had good armor, you'd be fine.

Maybe you'd even respawn with your armor so you won't have as bad of a chance.

Also, it's really only a debuff for players who die often.

Because if you die once every 40 minutes, you'd never have less than 9 hearts.

Fourth: Experience (Legendary)

Now, this is actually more of a buff than a debuff.

When you die you lose your experience, as usual.

But what if experience was for more than enchanting?

In real life, the more we are hurt, the tougher our skin gets.

The more we hold our breath underwater, the longer we can hold it.

And so, I think it's believable that a magical power is the source of this gain.

And when you die, you're a whole new person. So you don't have that gain.

So all in all, Experience Points = Buff

[ChrysAlice 6]

I see this idea everywhere and IT IS A TRAP.

The golden rule should always be, never punish players for playing the game as intended. If you're playing TFC, you will occasionally die. It is meant to be hard to survive. If dying confers a crazy penalty, you are less likely to keep playing when some glitch or unfair spawn kills you. If death were always the player's fault, you could consider it. But too much in Minecraft is left to chance.

Let's ignore comparing TFC to vanilla for a second and look at TFC as its own thing. In TFC, you invest a great deal of time in performing any action, be it finding metals, growing food, hunting, or exploring. You are rewarded for performing these things, and your penalty comes in the form of opportunity costs. The time you spent mining is time you did not spend getting food. This is good gameplay design. By having significant time expenditures involved in major tasks, TFC even encourages cooperation on multiplayer servers. There is a genuine basis for sharing resources and specialization because doing it all yourself would take so damn long.

At what point does TFC punish you for your choices? Never. Living on the surface and never mining a thing is a viable survival strategy. So long as you don't do anything stupid like ignore food gathering, you are always advancing, always making progress, always improving your situation.

So I say again. Death should not confer penalties. Instead, as some have suggested, survival should be rewarded. So, instead of losing max hp on death, perhaps you should always start with less, and have it grow as you survive. Maybe as you survive you get in "better shape" and need to eat less frequently, making suicide-as-food a short-term benefit for a long term cost. What you want is for players to go, "dammit, I died, and now I'm not as awesome". You don't want, "dammit, I died and now I may as well go play vanilla until debuff timer expires".

Terrafirmacraft is, after all, about surviving. So don't punish players when they fail, reward them when they succeed!

And as I said, if that means you start lower for balance, then I'm all for it.

[Androyed 26]

I see this idea everywhere and IT IS A TRAP.

The golden rule should always be, never punish players for playing the game as intended. If you're playing TFC, you will occasionally die. It is meant to be hard to survive. If dying confers a crazy penalty, you are less likely to keep playing when some glitch or unfair spawn kills you. If death were always the player's fault, you could consider it. But too much in Minecraft is left to chance.

Let's ignore comparing TFC to vanilla for a second and look at TFC as its own thing. In TFC, you invest a great deal of time in performing any action, be it finding metals, growing food, hunting, or exploring. You are rewarded for performing these things, and your penalty comes in the form of opportunity costs. The time you spent mining is time you did not spend getting food. This is good gameplay design. By having significant time expenditures involved in major tasks, TFC even encourages cooperation on multiplayer servers. There is a genuine basis for sharing resources and specialization because doing it all yourself would take so damn long.

At what point does TFC punish you for your choices? Never. Living on the surface and never mining a thing is a viable survival strategy. So long as you don't do anything stupid like ignore food gathering, you are always advancing, always making progress, always improving your situation.

So I say again. Death should not confer penalties. Instead, as some have suggested, survival should be rewarded. So, instead of losing max hp on death, perhaps you should always start with less, and have it grow as you survive. Maybe as you survive you get in "better shape" and need to eat less frequently, making suicide-as-food a short-term benefit for a long term cost. What you want is for players to go, "dammit, I died, and now I'm not as awesome". You don't want, "dammit, I died and now I may as well go play vanilla until debuff timer expires".

Terrafirmacraft is, after all, about surviving. So don't punish players when they fail, reward them when they succeed!

And as I said, if that means you start lower for balance, then I'm all for it.

Nice thinking. You are right. I like the idea of getting in better shape.

Here is something to think about though. Sometimes a reward can be the same as a penalty. Let's say that if you don't die for a while, you get in better shape. You will be able to run faster, you will break blocks faster. You will kill mobs faster. But "faster" is only relative. Should it be faster than it is now? Or is "faster" the same as how it is now, and will "normal" be slower than how it is now (can you still follow me? )? Well, let's say that "faster" is the same as how it is now. So when you just start your world, everything will be harder than it is now. Now compare this with the idea of getting punished for dying/starving. Let's say you won't be able to starve to death. And the hunger bar won't refill when you die. And the punishment for starving is that everything will go slower (running, breaking, fighting). Isn't it kind of the same as your idea?

My point is that sometimes a punishment is the same as a reward. It just depends on how you look at it.

[ChrysAlice 6]

Nice thinking. You are right. I like the idea of getting in better shape.

Here is something to think about though. Sometimes a reward can be the same as a penalty. Let's say that if you don't die for a while, you get in better shape. You will be able to run faster, you will break blocks faster. You will kill mobs faster. But "faster" is only relative. Should it be faster than it is now? Or is "faster" the same as how it is now, and will "normal" be slower than how it is now (can you still follow me? )? Well, let's say that "faster" is the same as how it is now. So when you just start your world, everything will be harder than it is now. Now compare this with the idea of getting punished for dying/starving. Let's say you won't be able to starve to death. And the hunger bar won't refill when you die. And the punishment for starving is that everything will go slower (running, breaking, fighting). Isn't it kind of the same as your idea?

My point is that sometimes a punishment is the same as a reward. It just depends on how you look at it.

False.

There's a surprising difference between a punishment and a reward on the psychology of the person receiving it. I am reminded of a study I recently read the abstract for (if I need to, I'll track it down, Extra Credits talked about it), where they took two otherwise equivalent classes of students. One group was told that they started at 100% score and every time they screwed up, their score dropped. The other was told they started at 0% and earned points each time they succeeded. Despite the same material and the same values assigned to the same projects, the class who felt they were being rewarded for succeeding vastly outstripped the class that felt they were being punished for failure. This is one of the concepts behind the new "gamification" movement.

So, even though mechanically, the two appear equivalent, in the psychology of the player, rewards and punishments are quite different, and one is clearly superior to the other in keeping people engaged and playing.

Now for some perspective. Oviously, TFC, however fun, is not critical to the future of our species, and as such, someone quitting playing a game is nowhere near as important as someone disengaging from their education, but I see no reason to use a paradigm that would make me less likely to enjoy the game over one that's more likely to.

[Androyed 26]

False.

There's a surprising difference between a punishment and a reward on the psychology of the person receiving it. I am reminded of a study I recently read the abstract for (if I need to, I'll track it down, Extra Credits talked about it), where they took two otherwise equivalent classes of students. One group was told that they started at 100% score and every time they screwed up, their score dropped. The other was told they started at 0% and earned points each time they succeeded. Despite the same material and the same values assigned to the same projects, the class who felt they were being rewarded for succeeding vastly outstripped the class that felt they were being punished for failure. This is one of the concepts behind the new "gamification" movement.

So, even though mechanically, the two appear equivalent, in the psychology of the player, rewards and punishments are quite different, and one is clearly superior to the other in keeping people engaged and playing.

Now for some perspective. Oviously, TFC, however fun, is not critical to the future of our species, and as such, someone quitting playing a game is nowhere near as important as someone disengaging from their education, but I see no reason to use a paradigm that would make me less likely to enjoy the game over one that's more likely to.

Oh, I didn't say anything about how one would perceive it. Of course there's a difference there. But like you said: TFC isn't as important as a test on which your future may depend. This means that the difference between punishment and reward isn't as big as it would normally be.

That being said, I'm not sure what I would like better myself. Some rewards that people came up with, just don't seem really believable to me. And that's what TFC is about, right? Your idea of improved shape is nice. It feels believable, and it is basically the same as my idea of, well.. the opposite.

I'd like to add to the things that seem most important to me.

- Hunger doesn't kill you

- The hunger bar doesn't replenish when you die

- When you die, you spawn at the exact spot you died (like you were unconscious).

- You should be rewarded for staying alive and not starving, by getting in better shape. This means that "normal" shape should be lowered, so that the better shape will not be too "superhuman" compared against how your shape is now. There are some disadvantages with this system. For a starting player, will the "normal" shape be too difficult? I know TFC isn't supposed to be easy, but still. A lot of things are already harder than vanilla. "Normal" shape could be the same shape as you have now, but then the "better" shape would be too superhuman.

And here lies the difference. When rewarding the player, he/she will experience both the "normal" shape and the "better" shape. When punishing the player, he/she might never experience the "worse" shape (or normal, as it would be with a rewarding system). When the player dies in the rewarding system, it might feel as a punishment because he is used to be "superhuman", thus making it the same as a punishment system.

While I am writing this, I kind of loose track of my thoughts... Sorry for that. I'm not really sure what would be better.

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

I'm really not sure if hunger shouldn't kill you. It's a survival mod, after all; and a really important part of your survival is finding food. without food, you will starve to death, too weak to look for it. Now, i wouldn't be against giving players the possibility to find food even whne starving, for gameplay sake, but death of starvation is just a must. I mean, even if Steve wasn't human -Come on, he can easily carry around 32 cubic meters of dirt, or even 36 times more, i dare anyone here to do the same...-, he is alive, and what's alive needs food to keep it's life. It's just a believability aspect. Also, death is not really as scary if you have few ways to suffer it. There should be plenty of ways to die, even more of the ones that exist right now. Poison, fire, falls, hunger, monsters, wild animals, dehidration, injuries, sickness... And in SMP, murder. And i'm probably missing something.

[nekpek 0]

I'm really not sure if hunger shouldn't kill you. It's a survival mod, after all; and a really important part of your survival is finding food. without food, you will starve to death, too weak to look for it. Now, i wouldn't be against giving players the possibility to find food even whne starving, for gameplay sake, but death of starvation is just a must. I mean, even if Steve wasn't human -Come on, he can easily carry around 32 cubic meters of dirt, or even 36 times more, i dare anyone here to do the same...-, he is alive, and what's alive needs food to keep it's life. It's just a believability aspect. Also, death is not really as scary if you have few ways to suffer it. There should be plenty of ways to die, even more of the ones that exist right now. Poison, fire, falls, hunger, monsters, wild animals, dehidration, injuries, sickness... And in SMP, murder. And i'm probably missing something.

well if for instance we say that hunder does not kill you it can still drop you heart to 1/2 heart lef.. making anything that much harder. since falling from 3-4 blocks kill you getting hit by any mob kill you. walking on grass which is floating hurt you. and all thing that can hurt you with 1/2 heart ends up killing you...

though in the end hunger killed you...

Im pro the dead body/zombie thing... and the xp = buff,

[Exelbirth 2]

So, I've seen plenty of good ideas and bad ideas on here. The number one bad idea people seem to be having though are penalties that would only affect a player on a server, as there wouldn't be spawn protection or ownership in single player. That would mean single players wouldn't be penalized for death.

One of the best ideas is a debuff after death. Now I know it's been brought up that this would harm RP servers, well I have a solution to that. If you were to make an option in a config to turn on or off the death debuff, this would allow the RP server admins to decide whether or not a death means injury or a new character.

Another good one was to give experience a use, like gaining buffs for leveling. That does add a possibility if that route was explored: character levels. You could add a skill point system where each level would give you a small amount of points to allocate to things like health, mining, archery, swordplay, etc. wouldn't even necessarily have to give a bonus per point, could be every three or something. This would give you some variety on servers as some players would be better at things than others. However, on death these bonuses go away, and the player has to re-level to become what they were, basically recovering.

Another way to give experience a use is perhaps to make some kind of medicine to remove death debuffs, or maybe remove the debuff once the player has leveled up some.

[bsb23 303]

What i propose? Eliminate the spawn point set option the bed gives you. If you die, you respawn in the exact same spot you died, no magical teleporting. Technically, you haven't died, instead, you just fell unconcious. When you awake, then, some time has passed; exactly half a day, for simplicity sake. You are weak -barely 1/10 of your health-, you are hungry -your body continues to consume hunger bars when unconcious, therefore, you start with nearly 2 hunger bars-, you are slowed down by the weakness -make it so, the less health you have, the slower you move- and you can't make as much damage as you could, neither as fast. Mobs are attracted to attack you because you are weak, therefore, a easy prey for them. Your only chance is to find a refugee, rest and recover, and THEN going back home, unless you died just there. If you die in this state, the same debuffs are applied: you have 1/10 of the health you had -or 1/100 of the total health-, are very hungry and very weak. The thrid time, though, you are really dead. If you wish, you can respawn in a completely new spawn point in that world, and start from 0. Be lucky enough, and you will find your original home; however, the new spawn point can both be just aside the original spawn point, and 20000 km away. With death penalties like this, you would REALLY have a reason for being afraid of dying.

Sounds good but you have a problem and its called SMP. A battle full of undying warriors would last until everyone logged off, no thanks. Getting rid of greifers would take way too much work as they could just sit there trolling you all day long. Sorry for the late response.

[Azdoine 218]

Every time you respawn, you could do so in a random location within X blocks of the original spawn point (X could be configurable depending on tastes).

Of course, nothing prevents people from setting X to one, so either there would be a minimum setting that the game will accept for X, or this could be combined with more severe penalties.

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

Sounds good but you have a problem and its called SMP. A battle full of undying warriors would last until everyone logged off, no thanks. Getting rid of greifers would take way too much work as they could just sit there trolling you all day long. Sorry for the late response.

You don't respawn indefinitely, you just have two chances before definitely dying. Neither you respawn exactly as you where before; Some items would actually be impossible to carry if you just died, and those who you can, would take a longer while to make effect. Battles would last until the players wish to or when only one team can keep up fighting. Movement would be restricted when you just died, as well. And, linking this to the jailing mechanic that people talked about in the kingdoms thread, a player who was rendered unconcious would be carriable by right clicking, that allowing you to knock out the griefer and carry him to a far spot so he can't bother you. Though, granted, there is in fact a problem with what i suggested and SMP, that being that it would be impossible to make players respawn half a day later without removing some fun, because if they do so, they would have to stay banned the whole time, and their items -unless they keep them- would despawn. The simple solution is having them respawn instantly with no change to the time.

well if for instance we say that hunder does not kill you it can still drop you heart to 1/2 heart lef.. making anything that much harder. since falling from 3-4 blocks kill you getting hit by any mob kill you. walking on grass which is floating hurt you. and all thing that can hurt you with 1/2 heart ends up killing you...

though in the end hunger killed you...

Im pro the dead body/zombie thing... and the xp = buff,

... Granted. I would like it to be deadly on it's own, but... well, it may be enough just with the debuffs it gives. Instead of a killer, a weakener that makes easier the job of the other menaces.

The dead body to zombie thing, though... well, it certainly sounds good, but wouldn't it be, maybe, too much of a fantasy thing?

And the XP buff just sounds like an RPG. You are getting a buff on everything for killing stuff. I'm not sure i want such a thing in the mod...

And to answer the probable question, yeah, i doubt a lot when i have to :

[bsb23 303]

I definitely like the unconcious mechanic, rather than a death mechanic if operated two seperate ways one for SMP, one for SSP. SSP would work like you described. Then rather than being banned and have to wonder what was happening when unconscious in SMP you could watch yourself be dragged/carried just to add a little bit of entertainment to it.

Now there is still one problem, what if you die in lava or a cactus pit or are trapped in a dark hole. Death should still occur but inconciousness should become frequent as well. Here is my reasoning, (Dunk will kill me if he sees this he hated this idea last time, I know Bioxx is watching but that is all the more reason to get my opinion out there) vanilla minecraft is suppose to be a dream. I just love the thought of that, a dream I can consciously control. Now with TFC the dream has become even better as the dream now includes a bit of believability, our minds do prefer for our dreams to be at least understandable rather than things that don't make sense like random floating dirt and stone blocks.

So why not make death use the same correlation? What happens when you die in a dream? You wake up. That means it would auto-exit the world. Then we would either choose to continue our dream or start a new one (new world). When we came back though where are we, honestly I'm not to sure but usually I'm where I was five to ten minutes prior to dying. So we could spawn there.

Natural deaths=respawn in spot where you were a couple minutes ago(without stuff and debuffed however necessary)

Player dealt deaths or from certain mobs=respawn after a short wait (explained above) stuff could still be with them unless someone took it from them. Possibly add a debuff.

[varradami 26]

My point is that sometimes a punishment is the same as a reward. It just depends on how you look at it.

Whatever a new player(new SSP world / first time on a SMP server) starts with is the baseline. Everything is relative to that baseline. Anything that takes the player below that baseline is a penalty, anything above is a reward.

Keep in mind we can assume the game has been balanced to give a new player a reasonable chance of survival. Taking a player below that means they will actually have a harder time suriving than when they first began playing, which will discourage continuing to play. Whereas simply taking away the rewards they had received will encourage working to get those rewards back.

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

-snip-

I'm not sure you got right what i meant with the dragging mechanic... The player being dragged is not unconcious, instead, he is just too weak to do anything about it : kind of like when a friend carries you to the car because you are too drunk to walk there by yourself. You still are concious -most of the times...-, but just can't do anything about it.

Honestly, rather than you respawning NEXT to the danger instead of in it (in the case of lava), i would prefer the death by lava to be specially coded so you won't fall unconcious but inmediatly die. As well as other special cases in which there exist no chance that you survive it -namely, a cave in leaving you trapped inside the blocks, a fall from a extremely high altitude, and so on-. It's not that i don't like or agree the minecraft-dream thing, has nothing to do with my opinion in that :. It's just that... well, it's just too forgiving. With any other kind of death, the game gives you a debuff; but falling in lava, which would be directly deathly, would instead bring you back to the past. Without your stuff, but with no debuffs -or at least no new debuffs-. It's not either believable -if that can apply to a dream-, or balanced.

-snip-

On this "give debuff or take away buff" discussion, i would like to say: BOTH. My earlier suggestion doesn't really cut off the buffs of the player entirely, now does it? What i mean is, let's say the longer you live, the more health you have. If you die, you respawn with a fraction of your full health -which, depending on how much time you have been alive, can be lower or higher than the starting health-. Knowing the players (or you) that they can, from any point, recover and even get over the buff they had before, wouldn't them (or you) try to work to get it back, even if you were just given a debuff? At least i would.

[varradami 26]

And the XP buff just sounds like an RPG. You are getting a buff on everything for killing stuff. I'm not sure i want such a thing in the mod...

This is bad because ... ?

First off, even vanilla Minecraft now gives experience for things other than killing (e.g. mining ores and smelting). TFC could do similiar. Heck, you could give the player XP every dawn just for surviving if you want!

Secondly, I think some people are envisioning skill trees, but nothing like that is necessary. There doesn't need to be any player choice. Every time you level up, your character gets marginally better at whatever is tied to levels (e.g. health, speed, time for holding breath). The values for the min and max levels can be determined, and each level you get the appropriate fraction. Each individual level might not even be a noticable increase - but over time it will add up.

The overall effect would be a subtle but consistent improvement over time as you survive (up to some max).

[varradami 26]

Also, having people who died of hunger respawn in the same condition makes no sense. It just means that someone who died of hunger is basically screwed. Likewise with respawning people in the area they just died. Lets say they were lost in a cave and eventually killed. Now you'll still be lost in a cave but without the equipment you had before - again, you're screwed.

Death shouldn't leave a player in a position where they're screwed.

Lets not forget the original motivation for this thread:

"Starving? Don't worry about it, just drop your stuff in a chest and jump off a ledge to get your hunger bar filled!"

Instead of punishing death, reward survival. When a player dies, they lose the rewards accumulated. Simple and effective.

"Starving? Try to find some food - if you don't it's going to take hours of work to recover what you lost!"

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

This is bad because ... ?

First off, even vanilla Minecraft now gives experience for things other than killing (e.g. mining ores and smelting). TFC could do similiar. Heck, you could give the player XP every dawn just for surviving if you want!

Secondly, I think some people are envisioning skill trees, but nothing like that is necessary. There doesn't need to be any player choice. Every time you level up, your character gets marginally better at whatever is tied to levels (e.g. health, speed, time for holding breath). The values for the min and max levels can be determined, and each level you get the appropriate fraction. Each individual level might not even be a noticable increase - but over time it will add up.

The overall effect would be a subtle but consistent improvement over time as you survive (up to some max).

It... seems legit. It's just that... well, it would make sense to become better at what you are actually doing, instead of getting better at everything, when you receibe experience. 'Cause... sure, i will become better at smithing by going a saturday morning to the beach and fish all day long ._.

Also, having people who died of hunger respawn in the same condition makes no sense. It just means that someone who died of hunger is basically screwed. Likewise with respawning people in the area they just died. Lets say they were lost in a cave and eventually killed. Now you'll still be lost in a cave but without the equipment you had before - again, you're screwed.

Death shouldn't leave a player in a position where they're screwed.

Lets not forget the original motivation for this thread:

Instead of punishing death, reward survival. When a player dies, they lose the rewards accumulated. Simple and effective.

"Starving? Try to find some food - if you don't it's going to take hours of work to recover what you lost!"

Sorry, i didn't see this while posting. Yeah, you respawn in the same spot. Just twice, and that's apparently what people find hard to understand -unless you weren't speaking of my suggestion :-. At the thrid time, the game goes "fuck it" and let's you die definitely. And make someone who died of starvation respawn in the same condition could not make sense gameplay wise, but, believability wise, it doesn't makes sense either to respawn with full hunger, unless you went to heaven and the angels feeded you while unconcious ._. In the second case, you won't be dropping your items, and if you did, you would respawn right next to them, where you can just take them back.

Some kinds of death are just direct death, because they logically should. You ain't gonna recover from a 20 km fall, or from drowning in lava. You are supposed to fear of death. Not to go "Ohhhhh, i just died again... -.-", but instead "OH GOD I'M GONNA DIE!"

So, death SHOULD leave players in a position where they are screwed, because they are supposed to. Take care of death, not because you will lose your buffs, but because death means the end of your freakkin life. If you don't take care about it, your life will be taken away.

EDIT: Oh, and as a final note, completely unrelated to the discussion: Varradami, next time, try to edit your post instead of double posting. It helps to keep the thread cleaner.

[varradami 26]

It... seems legit. It's just that... well, it would make sense to become better at what you are actually doing, instead of getting better at everything, when you receibe experience. 'Cause... sure, i will become better at smithing by going a saturday morning to the beach and fish all day long ._.

Certainly possible, and I'd have no objection to such a system. Just trying to point out that a levelling system doesn't need to be complex or especially RPG-ish.

A system where you improved the skills you used is similar to Oblivion (and Skyrim?). It would certainly be more realistic / believable and could be pretty cool. However it could lead to abuse if not properly implemented (such as people constantly doing that activity just to level-up faster). Also it would need to be implemented completely from scratch, whereas what I suggested can use a lot of existing functionality.

I would be happy with either.

Sorry, i didn't see this while posting. Yeah, you respawn in the same spot. Just twice, and that's apparently what people find hard to understand -unless you weren't speaking of my suggestion :-.

Sorry, I didn't mean that as a response to you particularly. Just a couple of quick things I was too lazy to find direct quotes for.

Regarding the idea of falling unconscious rather than dying straight off, I'm not convinced it is a meaningful solution. If you're in a situation where you've been knocked unconcious, what are the odds that you will manage to come back from that rather than it just being a prelude to death? Of course it may resolve a few cases but I don't see it as a good general solution.

Not that there isn't some potential in the idea of being temporarily incapacitated rather than dying straight off. But it's complex and I don't think it will be a great solution to this particular problem. Actually I think it would be more fun as part of SMP where other players might be able to revive you before you died.

[bsb23 303]

the JAG quotes...

I'm not sure you got right what i meant with the dragging mechanic... The player being dragged is not unconcious, instead, he is just too weak to do anything about it : kind of like when a friend carries you to the car because you are too drunk to walk there by yourself. You still are concious -most of the times...-, but just can't do anything about it.

Honestly, rather than you respawning NEXT to the danger instead of in it (in the case of lava), i would prefer the death by lava to be specially coded so you won't fall unconcious but inmediatly die. As well as other special cases in which there exist no chance that you survive it -namely, a cave in leaving you trapped inside the blocks, a fall from a extremely high altitude, and so on-. It's not that i don't like or agree the minecraft-dream thing, has nothing to do with my opinion in that :. It's just that... well, it's just too forgiving. With any other kind of death, the game gives you a debuff; but falling in lava, which would be directly deathly, would instead bring you back to the past. Without your stuff, but with no debuffs -or at least no new debuffs-. It's not either believable -if that can apply to a dream-, or balanced.

On this "give debuff or take away buff" discussion, i would like to say: BOTH. My earlier suggestion doesn't really cut off the buffs of the player entirely, now does it? What i mean is, let's say the longer you live, the more health you have. If you die, you respawn with a fraction of your full health -which, depending on how much time you have been alive, can be lower or higher than the starting health-. Knowing the players (or you) that they can, from any point, recover and even get over the buff they had before, wouldn't them (or you) try to work to get it back, even if you were just given a debuff? At least i would.

It... seems legit. It's just that... well, it would make sense to become better at what you are actually doing, instead of getting better at everything, when you receibe experience. 'Cause... sure, i will become better at smithing by going a saturday morning to the beach and fish all day long ._.

Sorry, i didn't see this while posting. Yeah, you respawn in the same spot. Just twice, and that's apparently what people find hard to understand -unless you weren't speaking of my suggestion :-. At the thrid time, the game goes "fuck it" and let's you die definitely. And make someone who died of starvation respawn in the same condition could not make sense gameplay wise, but, believability wise, it doesn't makes sense either to respawn with full hunger, unless you went to heaven and the angels feeded you while unconcious ._. In the second case, you won't be dropping your items, and if you did, you would respawn right next to them, where you can just take them back.

Some kinds of death are just direct death, because they logically should. You ain't gonna recover from a 20 km fall, or from drowning in lava. You are supposed to fear of death. Not to go "Ohhhhh, i just died again... -.-", but instead "OH GOD I'M GONNA DIE!"

So, death SHOULD leave players in a position where they are screwed, because they are supposed to. Take care of death, not because you will lose your buffs, but because death means the end of your freakkin life. If you don't take care about it, your life will be taken away.

EDIT: Oh, and as a final note, completely unrelated to the discussion: Varradami, next time, try to edit your post instead of double posting. It helps to keep the thread cleaner.

Okay I misunderstood you're idea about the dragging but nonetheless some unconsciousness would be nice rather than just a straight shot to death. I'm not so sure I like the idea of dying three times in the same spot. It could give us a slight feeling of unnecessary-ness we might as well just extend the health bar(Edit: Dash that you might as well just be unconscious as it makes far more sense then "I have three lives".

You have misunderstood me about the dying mechanic I didn't mean back only a couple of seconds but rather a minute or two maybe more just to get them far away from danger(maybe a last time you were at least ___ far away and on the surface mechanic). The surface mechanic would prevent people from getting lost in caverns and dying a million times although there is still always a risk of getting lost exploring at least now you can just set up a new house though.

I said that some debuffs may be necessary and could be added. And honestly no death mechanic is believable no matter what we do.

I'm for experience but only for the use in a single area (preferably enchanting or brewing or something magic-ish). We have said from the beginning we want all physical traits to be with Steve and all mental traits to be with the player therefore the "experience" should not exist in anymore than the players mind and should only exist to better teach players how to play not teach Steve how to play.

I agree with the rest of your statements. Although I'm not quite sure I understand the final paragraph.

Edit: varradami which situation are you referring to?