Ok, so here's another quick rant of mine. The penalty of death isn't as fun as it could be. You might be thinking "No shit? Losing 1/3 of your total exp isn't fun enough for you Vendy?", but hear me out. Understandably the penalty is to keep players from acting... stupid. Without a penalty for death it's hard to get players to roleplay risks realistically, because they simply don't feel like risks anymore.

Let me show you where the roleplay stops though...

Idiot 1: "Hey want to go fight an illithid necromancer about to summon his legion of doom, though reportedly has not done so yet?" Idiot 2: "Hell no! That's suicide!" Idiot 1: "Ok, how about a legion of doom which came from an unknown source and is about to invade the city. If we do or don't it doesn't really matter though. They're going to blow up some stairs to stop them anyway and if we take to long it'll all come down on our heads." Idiot 2: "See, now you're being a bit more reasonable."

Instead they choose gnolls though. The well balanced threat/reward quest. After gathering a party of 6 lvl 6 characters this is what happens...

The whole party, having done this quest before and knowing how easy it is with a simple Circle vs Evil to start it off go charging into the dungeon. Nobody needs to stop and discuss the mission as they've all done it a hundred times before. 2 or 3 tanks a healer a rogue and maybe some party padding such as a mage or another rogue will get the job done without a hitch 90% of the time. This time it goes bad though. Priest forgets the mind wards we'll say.

5 minutes into the quest, all but 1 of the tanks fail a save (from the spell usually cast by the gnolls) and a veteran gets past the line to kill off a rogue while the mage throws up a quick invisibility to save himself rather than attempting a spell which could have saved the rogue. Mage be damned if he'd suffer an exp penalty for someone else's ass.

Rogue's pissed, but he get's up and dusts himself off and figures L5 isn't so horrible. All players gracefully spend 2 seconds typing out a quick "Look he breathes" then they shrug and head in further. They reach the room wherein many players often die if they're in a hurry. You know the one with the long bridge with all of the *spoiler threats* and the many gnoll *spoiler profession* off to the *spoiler direction*. In this room one of the tanks charge in while the others stand back yelling "No! Don't!".

Tank dies. Perhaps the healer dies also simply from getting spotted as he took 2 steps out to help. They both drop to L5 then stand up again after the dusts settles. The party marches on slightly demoralized, but still determined that after 3 deaths, they are going to get that stupid reward. 3 people go home upset, and 3 people (including the mage who was sucking down invisibility potions everytime things got remotely sticky) go home feeling confidant thinking "Wow, I must have done something right if I didn't die."

Let's spice the story up a bit by making it so that players cannot respawn in quest areas! Now when the rogue dies, the players are short handed and begin to rethink their strategy. A death to one is a blow to the whole party. The mage who let him die, now has a slight feeling of guilt because not only is the rogue out of the end reward, but the whole party will suffer from chests not being opened at the end. Still being slightly careless though the tank charges into the room of inevitable death. The priest follows him and they both die. Quest is over. No accomplishments for the party which refused to discuss their strategy. The rogue, tank and healer are required to wait until they are outside the quest area to make their "miraculous recoveries".

2 -huge- differences in this. First everyone has to lookout for themselves as well as the others, because if your party dies, your chances of survival get that much smaller. Talking and figuring out one anothers strengths and weaknesses is vital. As well as designing careful plans of action and contingencies. Nobody wants to let someone die (unless they have another agenda).

Second is that death might then not have to have such an extreme exp penalty. Players are out of the quest exp reward, out of any future exp for killing the baddies along the way and are forced to sit in the fugue plane until they either respawn at a safe location or wait for the quest to end. They may or may not also be out of the end cash and prizes as well if they opt to go for the safe respawn (which should be scripted to fail the quest in their journal at that point and players would be encouraged to RP as though the character had in fact managed to survive, but opted to make a run for it and default the job.) By spreading the penalty for a death across the party by making a death to one be a loss for all. The exp hit for a single character,such as the rogue betrayed by the mage, might not to be so hefty to encourage players to think with their heads and not their trigger happy left finger.

I know this hasn't a chance in hell of being implemented as the current system is so widely accepted already, but I offer the idea as a suggestion anyway if not simply food for thought.

As it is currently implemented, you have the best of both worlds. If you're willing to wait until after the quest, you can get ressurected for -vastly less XP loss-, and a relatively small amount of gold (if you're high level. If you're low level, respawning may be your best option, which is intentional - we like to be nice to our new folk). If your concern isn't XP, just having fun and persevering, then you can respawn.

All your implementation does is force a dead player to be bored. This is a game - we don't want to force boredom upon anybody.

-Cross

I am not too worried about the XP loss. Hard to come by, easy go. I believe that folk would not last long if they had to sit out in the fugue on long quests though.

I do totally agree that party members should consider talking about how they are going to achieve something. A little planning would be grand. Once entering a quest area, mages/clerics start buffing, then we run for it, take a breather to heal, then rush on ahead again. Repeat. Let's hear it for th mages who must prepare in advance!

Many times I find myself asking who in the group is on the front line, who can heal, who will pay attention to those in the front line? If the front line goes, then all you can do it run away. Who will the archers attack, those fighting the front line or the mages in the back? How about focussing on one brute then another. Or have one parry with the boss while the others go after the grunts.

I cannot recall how many times I would be on the front line to see 2 or 3 folk run back to heal while I get surrounded by a horde and die.

Perhaps I get on late and everyone is tired and wants to get in one more quest before they call it lights out.

Oh and playing with a laptop with touchpads doesn't help either. They suck.

=========================== Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions. George Washington

The reasons for your suggestion are self-defeating, Vendayan, because you cite another player's mistake as the source of demise for your own character, yet also use said mistakes as the basis for the implementation of non-quest-only respawning.

Which begs the question of how you'd enjoy your own suggestion, were you to die (as you will) because of another player's actions mid-quest. :)

This thread makes me sad. EfU is HARD! Scratch that. EfU is VERY HARD. THAT IS WHY IT IS FUN! If I could recover from a fatal error in a matter of a few quests, I would be level 15 and so would everyone else.

I was (and still am, in many respects) a complete noob to online NWN when I found EfU. What caught my interest was the level of difficulty AND the insane interaction of the DMs.

I hate to sound silly, but if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Pup, keep in mind that never was I stating that the exp penalty should be removed. I simply said that perhaps it could be lessened slightly do to the fact that each player is somewhat more responsible now for his fellows, so their deaths (if they played an essential role in the party) would likely cause the quest to become a failure. If you're playing an Ilmateri who only heals his or herself 90% of the time, you're going to fail enough quests due to your party members dying off in order to make up for the exp you'd have otherwise lost by dying once or twice yourself.

And to answer MC's question. I would enjoy it everytime the whole party has to stop and rediscuss a situation because a character came close to dying instead of simply shrugging it off and charging down the next corridor into potentially certain death. I think even with all the added complexity EfU offers above the OC, this engine is still completely tied down to nothing but mindless hack and slash when players refuse to strategize. The added problem of players being forced out of a quest upon dying requires players to not only think about how they can help themselves, but how they can help the group as a whole also.

This isn't a rant about how I think the current exp penalty sucks. We all know it sucks, but that's a serious factor which keeps EfU as interesting as it is. This is a rant about how players interact when doing scripted quests. Everyone is only out for themselves and it often ends up being a competition as to who can survive the longest more than who can contribute their efforts towards the party's goals. I simply think that semi-perma-dying for the duration of a quest would help with this a bit because even if a plan sounds bad for your teamates, all the potions of invisibility you could suck down to save yourself will all go to waste if your members die off and you can't complete the quest you came to do anyway. Perhaps this semi-permanent death isn't the best answer, but relying on many of the players in this server for good cooperation without further influence surely isn't.

90% of the fun is RP, with 10 % being PvP (For me, anyway). And they often times go hand in hand.

Sometimes the most fun you have on quests is -when- the frontline abandons you. This is something I encountered with my numerous rogues.

Yell at them, curse them, call their mothers a whore, then chug a Blur potions and whoop some ass.

(Or, to turn the tides, run, use KD on them, then chug an invis potion laughing manically :twisted: )

In all seriousness, Quest death is something that shouldn't be altered. I enjoy the respawn at corpse function, simply beacuse it gives you a chance to explain what happened...

"Ugh. I got knocked the hell out again, didn't I?" As opposed to "BY THE GODS I HAVE RETURNED!" which I Always thought was a horrible thing to say, because people would think you're nucking futs.

Death is as traumatizing as -you- want it to be. You can't force people to RP, and other people won't change their RP because you're trapped outside of the quest system to respawn, they'd just go "Poor him." And then in tells be like "More XP for us :D".

If you want death to be traumatic, don't simply get up and brush yourself off, try to get them to stop. Throw on Detectmode and Stealth mode and emote you're limping from a grievous injury. Perhaps even try to convince them to leave?

Remember: Every front liner isn't a stalwalt paladin defender! Most of my rogue characters feel they're dirty cowards hiding behind a foot of steel, so I pack retreat and invisibility potions religiously.