Don't know if this has been discussed yet, so here goes...

Being very different from other fantasy based MMO's, being 'resurrected' at some nearby location or via some spell or scroll just doesn't fit.

So I'd liketo suggest something 'similar' to the way Wasteland handled this, but adjusted for the Fallout world.

Wasteland = Damage -> unconsciousness -> seriously wounded -> mortally wounded -> DEAD (* permanently)

As a player became progressively closer to death it took a higher medic -> doctor skill to heal/revive them. Unconscious players had a chance to revive on their own provided their injuries/conditions weren't too bad.

Now, of course permanent death in an MMO would svck. It would pretty much mean character deletion and starting over. That would be lame.

Alternative: DO-OVER -vs- hardcoe modes.
hardcoe = permanent death but if you make it through the game in HC mode you get a nifty reward like a rare item or a medal/title/achievement or something.
DO-OVER = You return or 'flash back' to the last town you were in before leaving to travel, or do the quest/mission. You lose all loot/xp/money gained since leaving that town and must start the quest or mission or trip over again. The price of failure = your lost time but at least you learned a little bit from it and will be more likely to succeed next time you try.

As in Wasteland, if at least one party member survived and had decent medic or doctor skills they could revive the entire party. But once everyone in the party is beyond unconscious you're going to die.

Also...In Fallout there was the 'Mysterious Stranger' perk. Maybe this concept could become a possibility for a random caravan of travelers to find and revive you as well. If you see Metal Maniac, let him know I'm looking for 'em.

Hm...so far no replies. Maybe I totally missed the boat with this idea? If you see Metal Maniac, let him know I'm looking for 'em.

I read this a while ago. I think the way you handled death was odd.

hardcoe mode in a MMO/MMORPG? Not a good idea if PVP is an idea.

The town flash thing is nice. And I don't expect quests, to add.

That depends, if all weapons/armors are craftable then there should be either full drop on death OR x% drop for each item, otherwise everyone would just keep stocking up on weapons and armors for no good reason.

Drop on death is basically stealing. A PvP kill that causes the loser to drop items basically means you won't need to put points in the steal skill for PvP thefts. You can just focus on combat and steal after your victim drops dead. I personally don't think drop on death or player to player thefts should be implemented, unless maybe theft can only affect bottle caps and currency and drop-on-death can only affect your currently equipped weapon and some ammo for it, maybe some stimpaks or other common items...meh. Stealing from NPC's and looting NPC corpses, however, should be full access.

Anyway. Progressively getting closer to death after an initial unconsciousness phase like in Wasteland isn't so bad, but if it ultimately leads to a permanent death, it's still a bad idea for an MMO. The Flashback idea is pretty much the way to go I think. If you incorporate certain auto-save type checkpoints in certain areas, like a nomadic camp where they'll let you rest for a while and that's considered your 'last save point', when your character dies you respawn there and lose all progress made in between. With random world encounters going on regardless of what happens to you, there will still be a disconnect in that it won't feel like "reloading" if when you respawn back at the camp it's now night time and there is a ghoul on ghoul streetfight going on that wasn't there before, but I honestly don't think it'll freak players out that much. You can always just say the player never 'really died' and they were instead just scraqed up and brought back to a doctor. But honestly, I kind of get a sick masochistic satisfaction out of seeing my character explode into tiny giblets in a hail of minigun fire. Gonna take an awful lot of bandages to fix that one

Sleeper Base in Wasteland had cloning pods, where you could make a clone of your main characters in case one of them got killed. You could then go back to Sleeper Base and get your clone and be good as new. If you gain a ton of levels since you make your clone, you can go back and put on yer snazzy X-Men helmet and say "update neural profile" to copy your memory into your clone's brain. Basically keeping you from dying at level 18 but starting with a level 9 clone because you forgot to update him/her/it. This might be an oddball way to do it but, one thing I have plenty to spare is goofy ideas.

1) one should never loose an item!
2) items get dmg after death is ok (can repair em with money) - no damn destruction!
3) doctors can revive anyone - not just teammates

How it should work:
after you die, you can
a) be revived by a Player Doktor
+ stand up and go
+ go on and kill the bich, that just killed you
+ possible in a fight but can be stopped by enemies?

b) reappear in a nearby scrapyard (or town)
+ you don't need to wait for anything, just klick the option
+ possible even if your team is in a fight
- you are "far" away from your killing/questing point
- you loose XP

c) you can wait some seconds/minutes for an "Mysterious Stranger" who will revive you and (of cause) steal some of your money (the higher your perk, the faster he will come and the less money he/she will steal)
+ you don't need to run to this point on the map, cause you are healed on the spot
- you loose money
- not possible when your team is fighting

omg i can't wait for this game for 2+ years
need it now :_)

Hmmm,

How about a death playing premium pay level.

If you don't want to be dead, dead, and don't want to lose any of your characters items, you a pay X fee.
If you don't mind playing dead and losing items upon death, you pay Y fee.


X fee would be a higher cost than Y fee.

Y fee also has some other items open that X fee player does not have access to.

There could be several distint levels of pay to play subscribers.

Dave Chase

OMG pls no real money for "no death penalty"
pay for stuff ingame is OK but ONLy if the stuff is not critical for basic gameplay and fun

If the MMO has a monthly subscription it will be hard to justify something like that. Free to play MMO's like the ones the new Acclaim are doing can since they are free but give premiums to those who pay for them.

How about this:

- You wake up in an hospital bed
- Depending on certain factors while you were "out of it" there is a possibly an NPC loots your corpse or it is damaged by weather, mutants, etc
- After "coming back" you gain an optional quest to find those who looted you and get your gear back either through smooth talking, violence, etc
- Conditions are present, you have X amount of time to get your stuff back since ever X minutes/hours that pass your gear is either sold, scrapped, etc by those that took it. The gear can possibly change hands, if a gang of NPC's takes your gun for instance and are attacked by another gang of NPC's before they get back to camp and lose the battle their is a possibility the attacking gang takes your stuff.

That's all assuming it's not an actual death but maybe a near death experience or something? The looting aspects would kind of fit into the Fallout lore in my opinion.

sounds interesting but it would be a pain in the ass if you die often and have to repeat the same kind of quest every time to get your stuff back

I've been giving some thought to the idea of Lootable PVP, and i think it can work as long as there were certain safegaurds and restrictions in place. My idea is to put a "tracking device" on all the gear, and make the stolen gear nodrop/nodestroy. The person that has killed you now has the option to hold on to you stuff and use it himself, but at the same time, you'll be able to track him down at any point. If the PKer doesn't want to be tracked, then he just sells the goods in a store, allowing you to buy your stuff back from the shop. Additionally, unique stolen items disappear from your inventory when you log out and will show up in shops allowing people to get thier goods back (otherwise people will just log out with the goods until no one is looking for them)

This idea works for the Steal skill too, you can steal from other players, but those players will always be able to track you down.

It would need to take that into account, so if you die more than X amount of times within X time period for instance it wouldn't punish you every time.

Wow, bring up a thought and duck fast.

How about tying in some of your karma (good or bad). It takes certain amount of karma to keep certain items on your character.

If you are one who just plays around, you will have little karma (netural), but if you are one who is willing to take sides, stand up for or against something, then you have lots of karma.
You could spend that karma on certain items and doing so will insure that IF you die, that item (s ) will still be with you when you wake up.

Dave Chase

I love this idea

Make everything lootable.
If you die you can loose all your stuff. NPC's wont loot you but players can.
Makes the game take on a more exciting feeling and a thrill to survive the wasteland for another day.
Save on server load and rid of auto save. Make it take on the same feeling of a Single player game. Forget to save all day and get killed after you collected some realy nice item. I never saw mad max standing over a body with a bubble above it saying "you cant loot this corpse"

Punish players for the mistakes. Not Perm Death but guess what you get to keep your stats and lvl but haha your neked go do the starter nub quest again for some basic gear.
But if weight is made more costly the more your holding the slower you move so you just looted this guys corpse but now look like a mexican packmule your crawling away and hes pissed and running fast at your feet.
Instead of the blind slaughter that most games are make this one force the players to weigh the pros and cons of each encounter and play the game like the next fight could be there last.

nah ... ppl will hide in the trees all day long fearing to loose their pants .. no good

nah ... ppl will hide in the trees all day long fearing to loose their pants .. no good

noooo, that depends on how hard it is to get new equipment and it will also provide a good block for an overuse of best equipment in the game, the really good eq will only be used in important fights rather than random wandering in the waste killing poor people who doesnt have good eq.

sounds like a totally imbalanced idea to me.

This will end as usually, a gang of raiders in good armour and weapons eliminating all newcomers, taking what little they have.

Fallout 2238 has full loot, and it is epic fail in that regard. Its nice if your the one doing the looting, not nice if you're the one getting hit with a rocket so they can loot your shovel.