Persistence and Death of a Spaceman

[Garonman]

My best suggestion for this is simply that WE are part of TEST Squadron. If somebody griefs us, there's enough of us that we usually have somebody available online or can log in to help deal with the griefer to some degree. IF it's a group of griefers, then together we can TESTify by making their in game lives absolutely suck, by obliterating them in the most random, stupid & alcohol fueled chaos means possible, potentially while some of us are streaming their endless demise followed by TBagging to advertise to the Verse that those jerks aren't worth joining. We often state that we will block out a star with our Auroras, well imagine that level of numbers with dedication, combined with creativity & a bit of intoxicated frivality being used to make the griefers into giant butts of their own jokes? I'm thinking that if they are ambushed, choked out, then stuck in their own ship's cargo bay, that's filled full around them with Waste materials. If their friends arrive in time, they have to live down having been buried under a pile of manure. Biff can suck on that.

*cries* For the glory of TEST

 

[Garonman]

I need my space poo! Anything less is not acceptable.

I get what you guys are thinking. In previous games I really enjoy creating my avatar and keeping that as my main (I never create alt avatars). But, I don't think anything is set in stone and CIG appears to be giving us all kinds of flexibility to play the way we want to. They have recently allowed us to save our avatar appearance, so I would expect that if your character "dies" you could just upload your favorite saved appearance - so nothing lost on that front. For those of us who want to create a next of kin avatar, then we could do that as well.

I like the idea of giving the player the choice to earn and add cybernetics with buffs. I can only imagine that this will be the case. But, I think it would be just fine to choose to have cybernetics implanted or have a replacement appendage grafted on when serious injuries occur - I think that I heard that this was the plan. Perhaps crafted cybernetics will have better buffs than 'earned' through death cybernetics? Who knows...

Cybernetics is very intriguing but I cant help but feel it will become Space Cyberpunk. I hope they really do have a guy in the CIG offices who is persistently and probably annoyingly raising a voice at the meetings simply asking "are we sure on DoaSM?" And raising other ideas.

 

[NomadicHavoc]

View: https://youtu.be/bfiUdc4JDk8?si=J_Yjc06oSGuw5gVb


I wonder if pre-purchase drives (imprints) could be kept on person? If you die in the field, a medic could pull that drive from your mangled body or corpse, and use that to heal/revive you. Depending on the level of injury, the more imprint that is pulled from the drive (a simple heal up vs cybernetic limb vs revive from death).

The drive could hold, say 3 heals, 3 cybernetics (which give you buffs), and 3 full revives before depleted. You can refill the drive at any time at a hospital.

That way, the medic gets reimbursed from the drive for the resources and time spent to heal/revive you in the field and players can extend their intended play session in perhaps an instanced area/fleet battle.

Did you deplete your drive, didn’t buy a drive, forget to equip on your person, or don’t have the finances to buy a drive? Don’t worry, your health insurance granted to all citizens will revive you at your home base hospital for free…after scavengers have picked your pockets for consumables of course. Being revived at the hospital too many times will result in complete degradation of the source code and require a full imprint refresh where you have to create a new character (family descendant) that all your resources get handed down to. Doing so will also of course result in the loss of your battle worn cybernetic buffs (improved melee strength from cybernetic arm, better accuracy from cybernetic eye, faster speed from cybernetic leg, better haggling for prices with cybernetic brain implant, improved end urance from chem outputting cybernetic heart, higher pain threshold/damage sponge from cybernetic spinal nerve block, etc). So, death of a spaceman has real benefits and ultimate costs when over abused. Plus, those cybernetics are a fun visual way to see what you’ve gone through and what extra skill sets you bring to the table.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

View: https://youtu.be/bfiUdc4JDk8?si=J_Yjc06oSGuw5gVb


I wonder if pre-purchase drives (imprints) could be kept on person? If you die in the field, a medic could pull that drive from your mangled body or corpse, and use that to heal/revive you. Depending on the level of injury, the more imprint that is pulled from the drive (a simple heal up vs cybernetic limb vs revive from death).

The drive could hold, say 3 heals, 3 cybernetics (which give you buffs), and 3 full revives before depleted. You can refill the drive at any time at a hospital.

That way, the medic gets reimbursed from the drive for the resources and time spent to heal/revive you in the field and players can extend their intended play session in perhaps an instanced area/fleet battle.

Did you deplete your drive, didn’t buy a drive, forget to equip on your person, or don’t have the finances to buy a drive? Don’t worry, your health insurance granted to all citizens will revive you at your home base hospital for free…after scavengers have picked your pockets for consumables of course. Being revived at the hospital too many times will result in complete degradation of the source code and require a full imprint refresh where you have to create a new character (family descendant) that all your resources get handed down to. Doing so will also of course result in the loss of your battle worn cybernetic buffs (improved melee strength from cybernetic arm, better accuracy from cybernetic eye, faster speed from cybernetic leg, better haggling for prices with cybernetic brain implant, improved end urance from chem outputting cybernetic heart, higher pain threshold/damage sponge from cybernetic spinal nerve block, etc). So, death of a spaceman has real benefits and ultimate costs when over abused. Plus, those cybernetics are a fun visual way to see what you’ve gone through and what extra skill sets you bring to the table.

Reminds mean of a comic I used to read called Rouge Trooper. Supposed to be a movie based on it coming out some time in the future.

Rouge is not-dropped into a combat zone from orbit b his platoon is sold out by a Traitor General and most of them are blasted from the sky. the few who make ground are picked off, Rouge and his pals Gunnar, Helm and Bagman all have Bio-Chips which store their personalities as they die but once their dead so is their chip.

Only Rouge makes it through in on peice, harvesting his pals bio-chips and attaching them to and enhancing his equipment (hence their weird names).

I wonder if SC got a similar Drives system, if the ultimate troll/player insult would be killing and taking someone's drive as a trophy, or worse destroying it, denying them the right to regen either way...?

 

[Lorddarthvik]

TLDR.:
I don't think CIG has really any idea what to do with this. I also highly doubt they would severely limit respawns, cos even they are not that stupid. But I'm sure they will try, they will throw horrible ideas at the wall along with a couple of good ones, and see what sticks, and hopefully make the right decisions.
Ship spawning does need limitation but the rest needs to be left alone. Too much trouble for no gain. There is no point in being a unique and quirky death mechanic if you don't have any players left.
CR said time and time again that there will be a final true death after a certain amount of deaths of various magnitudes so I guess that's still happening at some point, hopefully more of an aesthetic thing with a slight goldsink than anything more serious.

Spoiler: longform waffle

It's one of if not the hardest gameplay mechanics to nail down because basically everything in the game depends on it. I've always been advocating for more serious consequences for death, because I thought it could fix a lot of issues with PVP, as in, much less people would risk it, not every single med buoy would be a trap, and it would lessen the griefing overall.
It would make every encounter more serious, maybe more predictable and grown-up.
Clearly CIG didn't think so in the past 10 years or so cos they ignored it as ahrd as they could, and with the current new direction of the past 2 years of streamlining/mainstreaming game mechanics and content, I highly doubt they would go with the above mentioned (in video), entirely baseless, hardcore restrictions and limitations.

If there is no consequence, you get the current state, lots of griefing, unserious behaviour, some may even dare to have fun while playing lol
But seriously, todays overly simplified respawn and basically zero consequence does add a lot of opportunity to have fun, it makes life so much easier. More importantly it appeals to a much much wider playerbase than the half baked system we had for the past 10 years.

On the other hand, if they add serious consequences, losing lives, getting taxed, having to respawn at a facility instead of your medship... That will fix a ton of griefeing and such, cos they will end up dying a lot too and having to deal with any consequence will defeat the purpose of it all.... and it will also filter out 80% of the current playerbase.
Lot of em because they are just about trying to get into it, came in the last couple of years and barely understand with their Fortnite riddled tiktok brain WTF is happening so having this current simplified system is the max they can handle.
The rest of us will slowly but surely get filtered because it's been TWELVE FUCKING YEARS! We've grown up, got jobs, families, real word things to get done, with real consequences. Having to deal with yet another game mechanic that was already painful before this current one, and it gets even worse? Something that can negate days or weeks of progress and will happen in a milisecond, even without player interaction cos of the server glitching or power going out? Nah bro, just no, no one has time for that.


If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Anything they add should be along the lines of keeping things as simple as they are today. Limiting respawns in vehicles to certain amount, yeah that sounds good to me too. Zerg rushing in a med gown would stop, that's a good thing for PVP.
Adding visual indication for deaths suffered, like prosthetics and scars, has been talked about by the devs every single time, so that will be coming. But as it's just visual flare, it okay.

But having to carry engrams or limiting their uses, or allowing other players to interact with them, or worse, denying transfer of respawn points or even limiting rezzing at a hospital on planet or station? Nooooo, that's not gonna fly. That's just a death sentence for an MMO. And I don't think it will happen. Not if they have 2 braincells...

What I might see them try and get away with, is time and maybe range-limit respawns that are away from your home location. As in, having to refresh your bio-code on your current respawn site in person every so often and if you wonder way too far away, you might get reset to start. After a certain number of deaths of various magnitudes (CR talked about this many times), you will have to make a new body and pay the toll.
But that should be as painless to the player as possible.
Automatically geneticated new character which you can alter if you like but looks almost exactly like your previous one, you get to keep everything, except you have to rebuy some insurance or such (goldsink), and ofc you have to start over from your home location (timesink), but you get to keep everything. It's enough of a disconnect in itself that the game takes away your character, possibly someone you have poured hundreds of hours into, and it's YOUR character. Adding substantial negative progress (losing ships, items and so on) on top will make most of the playerbase quit. I can guarantee that.

@NaffNaffBobFace What you described is awesome in book form, and would also get a 5/5 star review from every single psychotic griefer ever. Cos having a lootable or better yet, destroyable "life token" is the perfect way to ruin everyones gameplay forever.

 

[Thalstan]

The minute you take a person’s character and start making it perform worse because of deaths. Or take a person’s beloved character away from them because they hit a limit, means that people will stop seeing their characters as things to protect, but assets to throw away. Why make all the effort to run through a story if halfway through you get gamked for giggles and grins and now you need to start over. People will take their ships, “rent” them to an account with an Aurora, and then any financial death penalties are removed, leaving only faction da,age that you won’t care about anyway as it will never matter with throw away toons.

There are enough generic shooter games out there. Taking away a person’s character because they are not good at the shooting games (and everyone is worse than someone else depending on the day), just means a shrinking population, because why bother..

Death does need a penalty, but you need the right amount of punishment. Too little means zeroing, too much means empty servers.

Limited number of close-in resurrections with a small ship…okay. Resource needs, yes, Wounds (say T4) that can’t be treated any anything less than a planet side hospital or endeavor hope? Sure. Dummy being able to repair your toon at an advanced hospital…yes. Forces you to either being a hospital ship (and protect it), or it forces you to retire from the field for a decent, but still reasonable amount of time.

There are ways you can do in-game death penalties without killing the player’s character. A payable cost to use higher tier med beds (10 for t3, 250 for T2. 1k for T3. 5k for hospital grade each level requires more reagents etc.

 

[Mudhawk]

The minute you take a person’s character and start making it perform worse because of deaths. Or take a person’s beloved character away from them because they hit a limit, means that people will stop seeing their characters as things to protect, but assets to throw away.

Do you know the japanese concept of "Mono no aware"?
The sad beauty of all things perishable, or something along those lines.
Like watching Sakura petals fall to the ground in a short but gracious dance while sipping sake and enjoying some dango?
What use is an endless life (you'll probably get bored of sooner or later) if you can't find imortality in a single second?
I'd rather go through a thousand characters than have that numbing feeling of absolute lack of consequence at every death.
Do I fear grievers? Sure do.
There's a55h0l35 out there that get their kicks from the sickest sh*t.
Will they use and abuse my corpse?
Sure they will. Especially if they can fantasize about how they just ruined my day. Probably touching themselves as they face-hump my remains.
And even without them, the constant threat of elevators, floorboards suddenly becoming mere illusions and revealing the emptiness of the planet beneath, or explovive contact with hangar walls (at 1m/s) still loom over all of us.
So life is unpredictable and very, very dangerous.
Isn't that so much more exciting?
Especially if you got friends around that can actually drag you back from the brink of death at probably hardly any DNA cost for your precious original character.
Then again, a loner like me is fucked.
Better put TZAR on speed dial...

 

[Thalstan]

Thing is, I can see people purposefully adding additional injuries to a "body" just to ensure that the person wakes up in a more deteriorated state if this type of play is followed. In fact, you would be stupid not to, because it forces a person to either play in a handicapped state, or it forces them to go to a much further away spawn location so they can receive treatment.

The thing is, death is too easy in SC, and I mean it's too easy by a factor of about 300 if they are truly wanting people to preserve their toons.
Escape from predatory ships should be much easier
No "one shot" kills of even an unarmored character. No one shot complete kills of a small ship even when hit by a S7 weapon
Arming your weapons on a ship (even just powering them on) would be an aggressive action and in secure systems would provoke a security response. (unless you were shot at first...and I mean in your general direction, not just hitting you)
Drawing a weapon on your character would be the same (again, unless responding to another's provocation). Some planets would not allow any offensive weapons at all on penalty of "imprisonment"
Unfortunately, law and order mechanics are often abused or exploited by "criminal" gamers to grief "lawful" players. I've yet to see ANY game successfully implement a decent "criminality" package that doesn't cause more problems than it solves, and I've been doing online multiplayer gaming over 34 years at this point

If you create a shooter game where the character is supposed to matter, then you need to ensure that dying is hard to do. You can be defeated, but actually killing them would be hard. Hard to kill means a death can have significant consequences
Easy to kill (quake style - which is almost what we have here) means that consequences should be small or annoying. A death in an easy kill game should not set you back 6 hours of playtime.

It's all about balancing the GAME....and so far, nothing I have seen from SC says they even know the slightest thing about MMOs. CR may be good with a single player cinematic game, but he knows jack diddly about MMOs. DoaSM is just another CF waiting to happen.

 

[NomadicHavoc]

I personally really like the idea of death of a spaceman. As you’ve said, it’s about balance. If we have to create a new character every month, I can see where that might be annoying. But, if you had to create a new avatar every 1 year or so due to dying a bunch of times, that doesn’t seem harsh. Making avatars is fun!

i wouldn’t doubt it if CIG allowed players to save and reload their original avatar for those who are attached to their original creation.

I also like the thought of gaining cybernetic buffs through death/dismemberment. Kinda like Sifu…where you get stronger the more you die, until you don’t. The buffs don’t have to be huge, so their absense isn’t a huge loss. You will just regain those same buffs, or different ones that might influence your play style, the more you play the game. The system would just reward you for playing the game as you normally would.

I just hope there’s no inheritance tax though.

It’s all speculation at this point….so who knows.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

I personally really like the idea of death of a spaceman. As you’ve said, it’s about balance. If we have to create a new character every month, I can see where that might be annoying. But, if you had to create a new avatar every 1 year or so due to dying a bunch of times, that doesn’t seem harsh. Making avatars is fun!

i wouldn’t doubt it if CIG allowed players to save and reload their original avatar for those who are attached to their original creation.

I also like the thought of gaining cybernetic buffs through death/dismemberment. Kinda like Sifu…where you get stronger the more you die, until you don’t. The buffs don’t have to be huge, so their absense isn’t a huge loss. You will just regain those same buffs, or different ones that might influence your play style, the more you play the game. The system would just reward you for playing the game as you normally would.

I just hope there’s no inheritance tax though.

It’s all speculation at this point….so who knows.

Sadly I distinctly remember inheritance tax or similar being strongly hinted at by CR and other devs whenever they talked about DoaSM. So do expect a gold sink being part of the mechanic.
Also possibly having to rebuy all your insurances and such.

 

[Mudhawk]

Also possibly having to rebuy all your insurances and such.

Surely not those insurances that stem from LTI purchases.
Might be a fun time on the forums though if they tried somethin THAT stupid.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Surely not those insurances that stem from LTI purchases.
Might be a fun time on the forums though if they tried somethin THAT stupid.

Nah probably not, I'd expect them to do it for the in-game purchased ones though.