Option to choose your death "penalty"? Thread - 3079

Would it be possible to have some kind of option to exchange the 'random item lost upon death' with maybe a harsher money penalty? Since this game uses what is essentially a real-time auto-save function, it is so easy to completely mess up badly and lose an extremely rare and/or essential piece of equipment. Right now, I'm having to just back up my save file perodically before I attempt something risky because I don't want to lose anything valuable when I fail.

It would be nice to instead choose between the loss of a random item OR additional money (e.g. 20% rather than just 10%) instead as you can replace money MUCH quicker than a rare item and losing it won't leave your potentially crippled. Another idea is to have your equipped items be the LAST thing you lose in your inventory.

Edited by: djnforce9

I get this request from time to time, e.g. the "nerf death" request.

1. You have to fear death for the game to remain balanced & interesting. If you don't fear death, you'd play carelessly and incentive to play skillfully would be lost.
2. You said it yourself -- you can replace money relatively easily. So, if you could choose a "harsher" penalty of a 20% money loss, well, it isn't really all that harsh of a penalty, and you'd choose it all the time.
3. If you have a character that very strongly relies on a single, rare item: you have to accept the risk that entails. I suggest creating a character that has a wider range of decent items, so losing one won't cripple you.
4. If your equipped items were the last items you lost, you could simply abuse this fact by stocking up on cheap, light items like keys and building blocks. Then, when you die, you'd know you would never lose your prized items, and likely only lose a few storage blocks.

I believe 3079 has a balanced death penalty system that keeps players afraid of death, but doesn't destroy the character entirely (e.g. permadeath). I'm considering adding more difficulty levels, but knowing players can join up (and even fight each other) in multiplayer -- it is nice to know that each player built up their character while facing roughly the same challenges.

I suppose that makes sense. You don't want people approaching this game like they would say "Bioshock". However, I do find there are times where death is completely unavoidable. For example, if you're still early in the game and you get ambushed by a gunship. There is absolutely no way to survive it unless you happen to be lucky enough to find cover in a nearby building somewhere (which may not necessarily be the case especially if you are air-bound and heading towards one).

I just thought that having to lose a very "hard to get" item as a result of what could potentially be a 'cheap death' (rather than sheer carelessness) seems rather cruel in my opinion. Since there is no way to quick save and load, any actions you take are irreversable (unless of course you ALT+TAB and back up your save once in a while). Perhaps 20% isn't high enough then. What if it was 50% of your money (Dragon Warrior Style)? If you were saving up for something expensive, that would be quite a hit but without leaving you completely stranded. It's also really hard to carry more than two weapons on you because you'll very easily go over the weight limit of your anti-gravity suit or grapple hook should you also have a full set of armour as well (until you are able to purchase better ones of course but that's not until later).

Edited by: djnforce9

Hrm.. I'd rather try and address "cheap" deaths. For example, it might make sense to remove capital ships from spawning in the newbie city.

Each level of the hook supports an addition 40 weight points. Each level of an item counts as 2 weight points, so that is 20 items at the same level as your hook. If you have 4 weapons and 4 armor pieces (fully stocked), you still have room for 12 items in your inventory. Anyway, if you are having trouble carrying around a second weapon, you should seek out a higher level grappling hook!

The main issues I've seen with this are a "snowball" effect if you get hit early on, and what happens if you lose your only demon smiter. The demon smiter issue seems to come up due to it rarely being available during quests, leaving you with no defense against demons for quite a while if you're not lucky. You could probably remedy this though by simply giving out demon smiter quests more often if the player doesn't have one in inventory.

The other problem I've had come up with newer characters, where they'll lose their only weapon and mobility item, as well as a credit penalty, which leaves them vulnerable. Then they get killed again, have even less, and no credits to buy anything, making them that much more likely to die in the next combat situation... Eventually the character ends up in a death spiral where they have nothing and have to go around punching things and getting constantly killed, to the point where there's no longer any reason to play them. I'm not sure how to remedy that - maybe if you have only one weapon and your level is below 3 or 4, you don't lose it? Or maybe an allied trader takes pity on your weaponless state and tosses you a cheap one or something, enough to get you back into the game?

I don't think having nothing leaves you stranded. It basicly just starts you over, but with higher stats then you started with. There are tons of items to be found on the floors of the various buildings. So getting a free weapon and some items to sell for money isn't all that hard. And if you can get your hands on a mining tool then money is guarenteed to come as it is fairly simple to get gems to sell.

What I would like though is, as was mentioned, some remedy to the cheap deaths issue. I don't mind dieing so long as I know that had I been more careful I could have survived. But when you have no chance due to the capital ship shooting at you or a miniship getting you from behind then theres no lack of skill causing those deaths, (unless of course you are in a higher level area then you should be).

Edited by: Vimp

ztrauq summed up what I was getting at perfectly as this has happened to me before. I never thought to then toss my character into a new world though so I will have to keep that one in mind. The heightened stats will certainly help.

Phr00t wrote: Hrm.. I'd rather try and address "cheap" deaths. For example, it might make sense to remove capital ships from spawning in the newbie city.

I actually like that idea even better than my "choosing your penalty" one. I have no trouble with all the regular enemies and the tiny ships aren't too bad but the capital gunships are a huge problem ESPECIALLY when they spawn in (and continues to hover over) the starting city (I've even seen two of these things at once before). I had a really hard time getting away because they kept following me and of course it moves a lot faster than I can with the anti-gravity suit.

Is it possible to only start spawning them when you are quite a ways from the spawn point/starting city so that if you hit the higher level areas, you SHOULD be geared well enough to fight them? I suppose keeping the demon around makes sense as they are only a threat if you wander too close but the gunships can spot you from quite a distance and still hit you just as hard.

Edited by: djnforce9

Phr00t wrote:
1. You have to fear death for the game to remain balanced & interesting. If you don't fear death, you'd play carelessly and incentive to play skillfully would be lost.

I actually disagree, I like to have to option to just mess around sometimes when I'm bored and want something to do without the risk of losing something good. Maybe just an option to not lose items but to lose 50% of your money?

Flametrace wrote:

Phr00t wrote:
1. You have to fear death for the game to remain balanced & interesting. If you don't fear death, you'd play carelessly and incentive to play skillfully would be lost.

I actually disagree, I like to have to option to just mess around sometimes when I'm bored and want something to do without the risk of losing something good. Maybe just an option to not lose items but to lose 50% of your money?

I don't really want to encourage the ability to mess around with no consequences (e.g. cheating). If that option was available, you could just turn it on & get massive loot without any worry. However, if you really want to do this now, you could back up your saved game before attempting something crazy.

Could there be a hotkey to backup your save (kind of like a quick save function)? It'll simply be a more convenient alternative to ALT+TABBING out of the game and manually doing it. Maybe quickly zip the files on save and then restore the directory on load or something to that effect? Naturally if you quick save just before death or in some other impossible situation, that would obviously be the player's fault.

If not, I would be satisfied if the deadliest of foes were moved farther away from the starting areas since like I said, if I wander out that far, I'm likely prepared to face them at that point. I just hate being one-shot killed out of complete nowhere.

Edited by: djnforce9

I am going to move the capital ships away from the starting town in the next release, which should help.

I don't really mind having people ALT+TAB out to backup saved games, since I kinda consider it cheating.

Well I guess to be honest, once you move those capital ships farther away, I probably won't need to back up my saves any longer. There isn't anything else I can think of that could one-shot you except for the red demons but only if you carelessly wander too close to one and get sucked in.

I've already got the capital ships moved farther away, and it is a good change. Thank you for the idea

I see there was an update released recently. does it contain this change in it or will that come later?

v2.16 has the change that keeps capital ships away from the starting city -- it is in the version changelog!

Thanks. Only reason why I asked is that I didn't see it listed when I right clicked and selected "view changelog" but I figured I would ask in case it is a simplified changelog with just major changes.

Edited by: djnforce9

You know.... a hardcore mode with permadeath would be a cool option.

Phr00t wrote: v2.16 has the change that keeps capital ships away from the starting city -- it is in the version changelog!

umm if thats so why did i get owned by a capital ship when i went out the gate (p.s i hate those things do you think you can make a special weapon like demon smiter but its a gun to destroy those shis in 1-3 hits or would that be to easy)

In new games, they shouldn't spawn near the starting city. There is a rare chance of one spawning outside the city (depending on where you are standing), and slowly making its way into the city. I do think making a weapon to take them down in 1-3 hits would be too easy -- like Demons, capital ships are meant to temporarily change your gameplay style to respond to a different, stronger threat.

i still want a gun to destroy those annoying capitol ships heres my idea for it (well new one) i thought of in a dream
ok how about you having to find the pieces and it be a 5-10 hits to destroy those ships

1. how to get first piece do a quest have to explore a dark cave filled with neanders or humoids
2. how to get second piece colloect 5 lvl 15 demon heads
3. how to get third piece kill 30 demons and get 10 lvl 15+ demon heads
4. how to get last piece kill demon king or lord or whatever its called(sorry i dont know its name never seen it yet)
5. this would add more of a reason to get demon heads and more reason to do quests and people will want to get to demon king or lord or whatever its called even more than they do now

Phr00t can't you make it that you don't lose your Antigrav unit/Grappling Hook when you die?....And how about adding a neutral faction called the demon hunters that obviously attack only demons.

I'm not going to reduce the penalty of death. You may want to keep a grappling hook, while someone else wants to save their "main" weapon on death... anyway, death has to feared by everyone equally, and the best way to do that is to lose one item randomly on death.

Adding more factions was considered... but there are already a handful (Demons, Neanders, Humoids & Capital Ships), so I decided against it.

Less demons, seriously.

During the initial parts of the game you don't see them much at all, and then demons are in virtually every fight you see.

They're pretty much the cliff racers of your game, if you get my drift.