Death Overhaul

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Rias
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Death Overhaul

Post by Rias »

The death system has been overhauled! See the updated wiki article here or type HELP DEATH in-game for details.

Deathknell Sensitivity Training can be found in the Twilight Eye Services shops on the second floor of either town's Town Hall. Note: Hearing the Deathknell is GLOBAL, regardless of ESP zones or even if you're not in an ESP zone at all. Apparently it's on a different frequency of sorts and didn't suffer the global coverage breakdown that affected the verbal speech broadcasting. AURA WHO will also show any recent deathknell-ringers and a proximity estimate regarding their corpse location relative to one's current location.

This system is more of an enforced time-out than the previous system, which I imagine will have a bit of a mixed reception, but let's try it out for a while and see how it feels. I think just about everyone agreed that the insta-respawn of the previous system was pretty bad, though. Rescues are dependent on other PCs helping out, and as GMs we'll try and step in when we can if it seems like nobody is available to help someone, but there will always be an eventual fallback option to rely on NPCs (of sorts ...) though that will have an additional penalty in order to discourage people simply defaulting to it every time. What the penalty is will be revealed in perfectly clear OOC terms when someone does it, and the character will be warned in more vague IC terms when they considering using it.

I'm excited to be finally getting Undm more involved in the whole idea of death! This isn't to say that PC-initiated resurrections from The Other Game won't be a thing, but for the time being it's just the NPCs doing the actual reviving.

If something goes wrong with the new system, please DO NOT PANIC, but do use the BUG command to report it, and the REPORT command if it's a game-breaking bug/situation.

We're considering incentivizing rescues with an experience reward or somesuch when a character drags a corpse to a crypt or "corpse delivery drop-off" site (greater reward for the former, lesser for the latter).

As always, feedback is appreciated! Feel free to post comments, questions, and suggestions in this thread. This was a bigger haul than I had originally planned on tackling, but as I started working on a band-aid "phase one" solution to death and sending people where they were supposed to go, I decided it would be best to just dive in completely and get the actual overhaul going. I did quite a lot of testing but it's very possible I overlooked something, or just didn't consider something thanks to my Developer Bias.
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Rias
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Rias »

P.S. I do intend to have a slightly more involved Death Zone so characters can at least wander around, explore, and have some more interactions/experiences while there. I just ran out of gas, so for the time being it's a very limited experience and pretty much just a waiting game.
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Rias »

P.P.S. The lore concept of Undying individuals acquiring a new body is still a thing in the lore, and just should be considered a significantly less frequent phenomenon (and generally is thought to take quite a long time in comparison to these new corpse/body reunions via priests of Undm). If we ever have an event where, I don't know - someone falls in a pool of lava, or gets eaten whole by the Mistral Lake Kraken, or some other circumstance where there's no believable chance of retrieving the corpse, we still have the lore fallback of Undying occasionally showing up in brand-new bodies.
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Frisbee
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Frisbee »

Thank you, Rias and team, for this change. This topic is one that I've personally been known to complain about, and I am so, so happy a new system is in place. Glad to see some old stuff returning, and excited to witness the newer additions, as well. Personally a fan of the experience insentive idea, as rescuing undying has a lot of potential to bring about lovely RP.

Now to find a way to kill my character! 🤔
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Delphine
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Delphine »

So, I accidentally left myself logged in overnight. Which means that I happened to see what this looked like when someone died overnight!
[ESP-STYGIAN]: * You hear in your mind the deep ringing toll of a death knell, accompanied by a [redacted] hue of an intensity that implies it is rather far away.
For some reason, I was expecting more feedback than this on where the body might be. Would using aura who after the ringing of the death knell give a person more information on where the corpse is or is this meant to be a game of hot and cold where you just wander around and use aura who until it tells you that you're getting closer to the body?

Is there consideration for a future command where the person who collects the corpse can signal to others with the death knell sensitivity that they have the person in hand? I remember the frustration on CLOK that would occur when, say, Blue died and White pulsed that they were looking for Blue. Then White eventually got to where Blue had been to learn that Black had already picked up Blue's corpse and hadn't indicated that they were hunting for Blue or that the corpse had been found. If this current system just gives you a vague indication of distance instead of a more precise location, I can imagine that sort of frustration being even more common here if you take time out of your day to hunt for a corpse and then eventually give up and only learn much later that someone else had already found them and been in the process of transporting them to a crypt.
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Navi »

It is a game of hot and cold, and you can only use aura who in areas with an ESP network. When not in range of the ESP networks, you only receive updates when the other side rings the bell. There's also no message when someone is returned. Might e nice to at least get a direction if that's at all possible. A system in place that sends out a message when someone begins to drag a corpse and has the training would do a lot to prevent frustrations when someone else has the body in transit. Including the ranged messages in the death help file would also be useful. I was running around a couple areas this morning convinced I was close when in actuality I was kind of far away just because I was unfamiliar with the range messaging. Somewhat close and not far at all are pretty vague, and it seems like something that might be included in the training.
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Delphine »

Navi wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:12 am It is a game of hot and cold, and you can only use aura who in areas with an ESP network. When not in range of the ESP networks, you only receive updates when the other side rings the bell. There's also no message when someone is returned. Might e nice to at least get a direction if that's at all possible. A system in place that sends out a message when someone begins to drag a corpse and has the training would do a lot to prevent frustrations when someone else has the body in transit.
This is unfortunate, in regards to the use of the aura who command in trying to hunt for the body. I definitely understand it would be spammy (and probably a bit meta) to print the entire room name and description like it did on CLOK, but maybe the general game area would be good? For example, it could be like:
[ESP-STYGIAN]: * You hear in your mind the deep ringing toll of a death knell, accompanied by a [redacted] hue of an intensity that implies it is rather far away, perhaps in the Bluestem Plains area.
That would at least give me the knowledge where I can say aight they're PROBABLY in Tarueka, the bandit camp, or Ravenwood. That's still a lot of ground to cover (and they might have randomly died out in the middle of the woods instead of a proper hunting ground), but at least I have a general direction. That, in addition to being alerted when the body is found/being moved, and the ability to check aura who outside of an ESP zone to see if you're getting closer to the body would go a long way in alleviating frustration, at least for me, though another person might have a better suggestion.
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You experience a sudden flash of insight, as though you have an increased understanding of who you are.
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by artus »

We did have a system that made it possible for someone to pulse when they found the corpse on Clok though. I don't know if it's the case here given I've never died. If it's the case, I think it solves quite a bunch of problems.
And also, old time death system actually made it possible to see the view of the entire room said person died followed by "You recognize that's in whatever area" something. I happen to like that one. It even tells you when you happen to see it in an area you don't know. That'd give someone a lot of help instead of just wandering around an entire plains searching for a corpse and burning food supplies.

P.S. Shoutout to Verel for the deathknell strings. Love you man.
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Rias
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Rias »

Aha, I knew I forgot something. I'll add in ... hm. Maybe a thing where the deathknell indicates that a corpse presence is in movement when someone knells while a corpse is being dragged. And it can let the kneller know, too. The knell response system in The Other Game was neat, but I have a sneaking suspicion it would end up being used as a global morse-code to get around the ESP zone restrictions for the regular ESP network. Plus, the lore idea is that only the deathknell itself can broadcast there, and other people can only listen in, not broadcast.

The finding of the corpse is indeed a hot-or-cold exercise, though I've been considering adding some directional guidance to it so you know which direction to go. Showing the area name seems a bit too on-the-nose.

I'll update AURA WHO so it can be used outside ESP zones solely for corpse detection. Whoops!

Might also be neat to have a an automated update while moving every so often that indicates you've become closer to aura XYZ that has recently knelled.
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Delphine
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Re: Death Overhaul

Post by Delphine »

Rias wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:38 am Might also be neat to have a an automated update while moving every so often that indicates you've become closer to aura XYZ that has recently knelled.
This sounds like a good compromise to me! Though maybe there should be a way to flag yourself as looking for the corpse in order to receive this information? (As in just a way to tell the game that you're hunting, but this doesn't necessarily print to anyone else.) If I don't have time or the inclination to search, it might be a bit spammy if I'm wandering down the road and receiving this information just because I'm attuned to the death knell.
You think to yourself, "I am surrounded by idiots and petulant children."

You experience a sudden flash of insight, as though you have an increased understanding of who you are.
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