Been a nagging annoyance for a long time, so time to have a mild rant

More and more, the tendency has been for bigger boss monsters and 'events' that are suicide runs - and often multiple suicide runs - for characters who try them. Eventually the monsters get beaten down, usually after multiple deaths and general mayhem for the players while they figure out workable tactics.

But it's a mmoRPG, where you are meant to have some connection, however remote, to the character you're playing. I can't see any way that gets strengthened when in order to just be present at important events in the life of the shard, your character becomes a masochistic lemming.

I'd not advocate drastic things like perma-death (if you want that, you can have it - just don't res your character!) or crippling of long-developed warriors, mages or tamers, but there is a limit to the scope to get people to relate to characters who then merrily get dismembered on a regular basis, leap up as good as new and then die horribly yet again a few seconds later.

Surely it's not impossible to get some sort of importance to a character death, rather than it's utter lack of meaning in the game now? Can't we have new and serious things to do where repeatedly dying isn't the only way to figure it out?

Or is that in the 'too hard' category? Easier to just stick a few hundred more resists on the monster, let it hit for a few hundred more points damage and blow up in a massive fireball, and have an apparently random 'weakness' that makes no sense in any way, so people can injure it - whilst still dying multiple times.

Challenging, yes, but involving and immersive in a game world? Pretty much the opposite.

Couldn't agree more.

Sadly, the only thing that matters in death now is insurance (items). I don't know what they could add in game (death mechanics, events, pixel crack, etc.) to make death something other than a minor annoyance, but I do know the only thing that would make people think twice about running off the edge lemming style is the possibility of losing their "stuffs".

I am sorry to say this, but I tend to agree.

I like to think though when I die, and I really do try to make it as least often as possible, everyone between the dungeon and Heartwood can hear me screaming as I fall off my charger!

Maybe like a 1 hour timer or something after you die?

Either way, people would be upset about either choice. hehe

rofl @ masochistic lemming

It would make it more interesting if there was some sort of repercussion. Maybe not an hour long, that's a bit of a wait. Maybe instead, not being able to be rezzed until the creature which killed you is dead. Or not being able to be rezzed during battle. Perhaps even if someone tried to throw a rez, they would become the instant target of everything around.

Either way, if it were changed, it would give UO players the screaming meemies.

For my part....Death usually has major consequences for me. I have a very hard time getting back "in the game" after a death. Even in PvM I'm often looted, to say nothing of PvP.

Also my UOA dress macro always seems to not work or be delayed, and in PvM on a big monster I have a habit of rarely being back in time to get looting rights.

And that's to say nothing of the great meanings death often has in RolePlaying contexts.

*shrugs*

-Galen's player

In PvM you can still loot the corpse of the creature which looted you and get your items back, unless it was gold that was taken. But I've retrieved bandages and a quiver from something I did not have a chance to kill. I don't carry a regs bag, but I've heard they've been found and returned as well.

True, character death can get 'meaning' in a RP setting, and it can be quite painful for the player involved when their character dies - I really, really don't like my characters getting killed - but the point I'm trying to make is that repeated character deaths are becoming expected in almost any event or occasion that is part of the game as controlled by EA/Mythic, be it the current cycle, or past events, or the peerless bosses (until people had the hang of them).

There's almost an expectation now that to take part means multiple character deaths, which surely makes the 'character' more of a playing piece than a 'character'. Seems to me to be a slide away from what the point of the 'rpg' bit of mmorpg means towards something much more mechanical and distanced from the player.

Think purist.

You die ... you are dead.

Remove all the extra character slots also down to one to minimize twinking yourself.

You could hold mock funerals

Housing would become more plentiful. If you die with one character I would imagine your house going IDOC.

The economy may become less item based. People would no longer have gimp templates relying on those items.

Banksitting will quickly become more popular

Yes, you CAN have self-imposed restrictions/disabilities/penalties/etc. to dieing, but that's it.

The point Aurelius is making is there is nothing the game does to you when you die (chance of losing items aside, as that's easily avoided).