Mortality and Single Character ~ Discussion

[Tom]

When a character dies, put 6 month lock on that player creating a new character on that continent.

Sorry, that idea doesn't pass the giggle test.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Sorry, that idea doesn't pass the giggle test.

God, I hate it when people use stock phrases like that, especially when "giggle test" just leaves it to subjective opinion...

[Chenier]

God, I hate it when people use stock phrases like that, especially when "giggle test" just leaves it to subjective opinion...

Preventing people from playing in the realms they love for such a long time doesn't seem like a great way to improve retention.

A week, maybe... 6 months, though? Way too harsh.

[Anaris]

Agreed. We tried mortality and it was an abysmal failure. Unless someone has a concept that goes way, way beyond "make everyone mortal", I'll not take him seriously.

I think you have to look at the context, though, Tom.

As Chénier said, part of the problem with mortality in the Fourth Invasion was that, well, it was an Invasion. Daimons and Monsters, by their nature, are vastly more likely to kill people than regular human troops.

Another part was that we just didn't tune it well enough. Adding mortality should require a lot more testing—I can even think of some good ways to gather significant data before we send it live, if we were to do anything of the sort. This would allow us to watch the mortality rate in normal play, and see if we think it's too low or too high.

Finally, yes, if we activated mortality gamewide, we would lose some players.

But guess what? The same is true of any major change we can make that we hope would push the game in a more positive direction, including closing islands. I think we really need to be past the point where we're saying, "This change would cause some old players to leave the game, therefore we shouldn't do it." We need to seriously evaluate the long-term benefits and risks of such a change, and see if we believe it would improve the gameplay for the people who remain enough that it would likely improve retention.

[Tom]

I think you have to look at the context, though, Tom.

I do. Invasion or not, all that is just details. The point is that mortality is largely random, unplanned and highly disruptive. The later can be a good thing, but here's the thing: It won't disrupt what we want to. If you think mortality would upset the power balance on any island, you are mistaken. The kings will simply hide behind their troops, send your men to die in their stead and hole up in their palaces. Real world, meet game.

Like many, many other changes we have tried over the years, here is what will really happen: The established powers will barely feel it. The small guys, the casual players, but also the small realms struggling to survive against the established power blocks will be the ones who will really feel it.


For every time the ruler of one of the power blocks we want to break up is killed, there will be five times the life of an upstart ruler who could upset the power balance and bring more dynamics into the game will be cut short.

[Geronus]

I do. Invasion or not, all that is just details. The point is that mortality is largely random, unplanned and highly disruptive. The later can be a good thing, but here's the thing: It won't disrupt what we want to. If you think mortality would upset the power balance on any island, you are mistaken. The kings will simply hide behind their troops, send your men to die in their stead and hole up in their palaces. Real world, meet game.

Like many, many other changes we have tried over the years, here is what will really happen: The established powers will barely feel it. The small guys, the casual players, but also the small realms struggling to survive against the established power blocks will be the ones who will really feel it.


For every time the ruler of one of the power blocks we want to break up is killed, there will be five times the life of an upstart ruler who could upset the power balance and bring more dynamics into the game will be cut short.

You seem to be thinking of this as primarily a battle-mechanic, the way it was in the Fourth Invasion where everyone is basically a Hero with a chance to get killed in a scrap, but other people in this thread have also tossed out the idea of age-related mortality, which would address your "hole up in the palace" problem. It obviously needs to be carefully adjusted (for example, making the chance zero until a certain reasonably old age is reached), but I think it's not an unreasonable addition to the game and will prevent characters from ruling the same realm continuously for 10 RL years. You could be right that a player whose ruler dies might just make a new character and get themselves re-elected, but it still creates an opportunity for someone else to try to seize power, and some people will accept the turnover; I did, when Rowan died while he was Vasilif of Astrum.

If the chance of dying is low enough, I think it could still add something good to the game. Too much is too disruptive, as demonstrated in the Fourth Invasion, but the occasional death could be a good thing. Plus, revenge is a great motivator for conflict.

[Perth]

Preventing people from playing in the realms they love for such a long time doesn't seem like a great way to improve retention.

A week, maybe... 6 months, though? Way too harsh.

Y'all always get hung on the minute details instead of the real point of the idea. It doesn't have to be 6 months, whatever, it can be whatever amount of time is decided would best. 5 minutes or 6 months, whatever passes "the giggle test" (whatever that is). The point was that you have a cooldown period where new people have the opportunity to take hold of the dead character's position and titles and thus when(if) replacement young character pops up it isn't so easy for him to just say "Hey I'm my father's son and he taught me everything he knew hand me all of his titles back."

[Indirik]

You could be right that a player whose ruler dies might just make a new character and get themselves re-elected, but it still creates an opportunity for someone else to try to seize power, and some people will accept the turnover; I did, when Rowan died while he was Vasilif of Astrum.

I accepted the death of a ruler character twice. My characters in both Kingdom of Alluran and Perdan both died as ruler. And my other dead hero was general of Darka. In all three cases I just started a new character somewhere else, and moved on.

In a case like this, where no exploits or abuses are involved, the fact that some people may just make a new character and move him right back where the dead one was (and I'm pretty sure we all know a few places where this has happened), there will be other cases where the player involved will just move on and let someone else take over. The fact that a few won't do that shouldn't stop us from setting up a possibility for other people to move on.

[Eduardo Almighty]

Mortality is not so terrible like being seriously wounded and have the first day without any change in the status. I will need a week to play with the character just because he's old and was attacked. He cannot die, but I cannot play with him either. He's "dead" for one week. Happily he cannot lose his titles... because one thing is die and give it away, another one is lose it because of a wound that never heals.

Mortality for old age must be enough... if another changes comes along.

[Zakilevo]

Mortality for old characters really should happen. They tend to stagnate the game and that stagnation plays a role in making people leave as the game does not provide too many ways to remove positions like dukes.

When new players start and get involved into the game, they get ideas that they want to try but most of them require powerful positions to even try. By the time they get those positions, they either forget their ideas to do something else or turn into one of those position holders.

Even if we add this 'mortality' people will find a way to avoid death if they wish. They can just sit in a city or something.

Also, I believe there was a discussion on adding a button to allow your hero to become very vulnerable to death - any wound would kill the character. Maybe we can link both somehow?

[vonGenf]

Also, I believe there was a discussion on adding a button to allow your hero to become very vulnerable to death - any wound would kill the character. Maybe we can link both somehow?

The discussion, if we remember the same, was mostly about allowing non-heroes to click a button saying they accept to die if they get wounded badly enough.

[Jaden]

http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,2793.0.html

Is it this one? Though this is for VOLUNTARY death.

[Tiridia]

Yeah, that would be very good.

[Tom]

I accepted the death of a ruler character twice. My characters in both Kingdom of Alluran and Perdan both died as ruler. And my other dead hero was general of Darka. In all three cases I just started a new character somewhere else, and moved on.

You accepted their death the moment you clicked that "hero" button. That is a HUGE difference.

People will accept character mortality if it is the norm from the go, when they know he can die when they create a character. That is why global mortality will work in M&F, because it's there from the start.

Introducing it into BM is a lot more difficult. I'm not entirely averse to the idea, or else we wouldn't have tried it on BT once, but you can't just flip a switch and tell people "tough luck". It has to be a lot more gradual then that.

Years ago, when we reworked wounding, code was added to make the duration of serious wounds less predictable. That code already uses age - older characters will heal slower. It also has code where wounds get worse instead of better, and again older characters have a higher chance of that triggering. It ALSO already has code where your wounds become so bad, you die. That code is not active, but it's there already.

Acceptance is the main reason we never activated it.

[Tiridia]

Tom,

If the code is there already, can you give me and the likes of me a box we can tick to activate it for our characters?