Should death have bigger consequences?

[daterxies]

It seems we have 2 extremes... one is to play hardcore and when you die game over.. that does not interest me possibly putting 20+ hours in a game just to die and all for nothing...

But then we have normal / survival where death really has no impact on you.. you lose some inventory thats it... Doesnt matter if we scan fragments, we still keep those and really those are the most important things. I cant tell you how many times i have been in my cyclops and i dive and try reaching a point knowing i wont make it back alive, such as to scan fragment and its no big deal, because i just spawn right back where i left and retain that scan.

Any thoughts on how death and penalties can be imrpoved? As of now, i honestly dont care if i ever die... it only takes a few minutes to get back whatever resources you were gathering.prior to that.

[SealieP]

I think you answered your own question. Hardcore. There are people who save so that if they die they reload and do it again. (Totally pointing at me right there.) I hate dying. I don't want to lose anything. I consider it a failure. If you add a penalty I'll just load my save and do it again. So it becomes pointless. I think the way they did it was pretty good. There's a bit of an impact, but it's not unrecoverable. Unless you lose the orange precursor key to a death. Or you can go the other end and make it horrible with the loss of a game.

[Jenn O Cide]

I personally like the system.

I agree death, more so in the beginning of the game is pretty much a free-bie. Yea, you lose items but big deal. And that's how it should be, as it gives you time to adjust, play around and see what your min/maxes are with depth, food and water......

But in the later game it does have more of an effect, at least it does on me.
About 40 hours in, when you've mined / picked / gathered all your 'normal' spots and are at the point of having to travel further and further either because the easy resources are sparse, or you've moved your base into lava zone, those deaths start to count.


It's no longer "oops, i died. let me walk out my front door and regather it."
It's "SDFDDSFSD-- ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. it took me 20 minutes to get here and find that crap to begin with...."

Anothre death is say, using the Prawn suit to get to the thermal base, dieing to stupid death (totally my fault. STOP JUMPING OUT OF MOVING PRAWNSUITS JENN), then realizing the respawn point is the cyclops ohh so very far away from that point.

^Repeat that with using the sea moth instead for a fast run, then realizing you now how to take the submarine on a loooooong ride to go recover it.


Mind you, yes, this is all avoidable stuff. Death in and of itself is avoidable. But that penalty does exist and can hurt the unintentionally reckless

[Nyello]

I always wondered if maybe a kind of weakness could be instilled in the player after a non-hardcore death.

Like for 15 mins the player swims a bit slower or something like that.

[rditto48801]

I agree with the weakness factor. Perhaps a 'respawn timer' after death, to increase penalties for someone who dies way to often? (such as scanning stuff in hard to reach places without proper gear...)

A mid point between no penalty and deleting save.
Dropping inventory on death.
The basic idea, your stuff gets dropped, as does a temporary 'container' with only 8x2 space. Your equipment (starting with what is in your hot bar) goes into the container first (excluding 'large' stuff, like Seaglide and the mobile vehicle bay). Anything in hand at time of death, any collected resources, etc, and stuff that doesn't fit into the container, gets dropped. Living fish get away.
The 'body' remains, and will soon despawn (representing nastier wildlife making a meal of it and 'destroying' it), taking any worn equipment with it. The exception will be stuff that cannot be replaced, such as the signals, and maybe also artifacts. Signals could remain in inventory (technically speaking, it is just 'data').

The environment will be the enemy. Certain creatures being a 'threat' to what is dropped. Who knows what might decide to 'sample' food items (carnivores going after fish/meat items, herbivores going after plant matter, etc) Crabsquids might eventually break open the container and start destroying stuff. Stalkers will get attracted to it and carry off metallic stuff, the shockers (or whatever they are called) could 'break' equipment that needs batteries/power cells (including or just affecting the batteries/power cells), etc. Some items, like bottled water, rations, artifacts, etc, might not interest anything, and just 'stay' where they get dropped. (scavenger types might eventually 'destroy' dropped food rations and water bottles).
After being visibly infected, the Warpers become a factor, they might start 'randomly removing' items, in effect for the purposes of teleporting them to some other location for 'proper sterilization and disposal'
The 'artifacts' might be the only thing that just sits where it is dropped until recovered (some seem to have been sitting around since forever, so it might as well sit around until recovered.)
Some equipment might just be 'damaged' by the environment/critters, and be able to be recovered for some basic components/materials.
As one could expect, dying in the kelp forest means you can kiss your metal stuff goodbye if you cannot get back to it quickly. Dying in the lava zone could result in a very short window to recover stuff before the environment itself wrecks everything.


For an alternative effect, respawning with low health, food and water, and having to 'recover'. So if you don't got some spare food and medical equipment at your respawn point, you have a tough choice. Take time to get food and water and heal up, or risk going to recover as much stuff as possible.

For a mid point, small penalties that get worse over time.
You drop anything that is not 'worn' equipment (suit, tank, etc), and signals (technically data), and whatever item was in hand at the time. A 'resppawn timer' will start, if you die again before the timer reaches zero, the timer is reset to a higher number and (ever increasing) penalties are incurred.
Also, no more 'fully refil stats on death'.
If dying due to food/water, those only refil to 20%. (humans can go for several days without water, and up to a month without food...)

For the basic (and complicated) idea of this ever increasing level of punishment penalty for taking uncessecary risks...
First death (no respawn timer in effect), drop item held in hand (if any) and gathered resources. A respawn timer of 15 minutes. Dazed on revive, 25% speed penalty for 15 seconds.
Second death (15 minute timer), drop item in hand, 1 random piece of equipment, all gathered resources. Health is only 80%, dazed on revive, 25% speed penalty for 30 seconds, food/water will be no higher than 75%. A respawn timer of 30 minutes.
Third death (30 minute respawn timer), drop all items in quick bar, 2 random pieces of equipment, all gathered items. Weakened on revival, 25% speed penalty for 5 minutes, Health is only 60%, food/water will be no higher than 50%. PDA suggests bed rest and temporarily suspendin exploration activities into dangerous areas.
Fourth death (60 minute respawn timer), drop 'everything', except for worn equipment (tank, suit, etc, and the signals). Health only 40%, very dazed, 50% speed penalty for 5 minutes, then 25% speed penalty for 5 more minutes, food and water will be no higher than 40%. Respawn timer set to 2 hours. PDA strongly recommends taking time to recover.
Fifth death + (120 minute respawn timer), drop everything except signals (they are technically data). Health only 25%. 66% speed penalty for 5 minutes, then 50% for 5 minutes and 25% for 5 minutes. Respawn timer tops out at 120 minutes, food/water will be no higher than 30%. PDA makes possibly 4th wall breaking comment, such as 'Doctor's orders, get some rest, stop commiting suicide to get hard to reach items'. PDA also suggest focusing on immediate needs, and will make a single 'complaint' if you wander father than 100m from a seabase or Cyclops while in such poor shape.
On sixth death in a row with the respawn timer active, same as fifth death, but with an easter egg type thing, to revive to get a complaint from the PDA, along with mention of intercepted transmission of unknown/alien origin, roughly translate as 'invading species is self destructive and is likely to experience a self impossed extinction event. Suggest additional obsevervation of subject for study of flawed evolutionary processes. Subject should self terminate without external assistance. Subject's predicted threat to quarantine has been greatly reduced'."
If respawn timer times out withoug dying a 7th time, intercepted alien transmission indicating 'subject self termination unlikely, restoring threat level to quarantine to previous levels.'.

(and yes, I have nothing better to do, and to much time on my hands at this moment...)

[Jenn O Cide]

Originally posted by rditto48801:

'invading species is self destructive and is likely to experience a self impossed extinction event. Suggest additional obsevervation of subject for study of flawed evolutionary processes. Subject should self terminate without external assistance. Subject's predicted threat to quarantine has been greatly reduced'."
If respawn timer times out withoug dying a 7th time, intercepted alien transmission indicating 'subject self termination unlikely, restoring threat level to quarantine to previous levels.'.

^this is my favorite thing and I demand it be added. I cannot telll you how much this made me mentally giggle.



I think you have a bit of a harsh number of penalties (especially for new players starting, first time you get into wrecks/lost in an air shaft, before you realize you can carry more oxygen tanks, etc etc. Every 'level' offers a new challenge between depth and monsters but really 6 deaths for a new player is kind of expected. (Insert first time meeting leviathan without any precursor, insert first time going into a cave and not realizing how fast your health falls if it has a small thermal vent in it, first death because of water/food, so many accidental 'i got turned around / stuck' in wreckage." before you really get the hang of it.)

That slope is pretty steep. Not against the penalties, but maybe a bit more leeway.

edit: Alternatively, these affects might not take place until a certain amount of time has been logged into the save file.

Could add a PDA message after some time played or story progression added similiar to the "swim quota" sass the computer gives you. (say if it's triggered past 600 depth or 700 depth, which means more or less you've probably built a cyclops or are familiar enough with mechanics to have learned survival)

triggering pda 'warning'

"Due to breach of contract of Alterra survival code 7324b and the intention of going deeper into the planet than nessicary rather than staying within atmospheric communication range, I regret to inform you that your Emergency Benefit and Life Insurance Coverage has been revoked. Please be advised that any physical injury, loss of appendage, or loss of life no longer is the responsibility of Alterra and compensation claims will be rejected."

[Stelar Seven]

I don't see the necessity of a harsher penalty or even the appeal. I enjoyed a game of hardcore and I work hard not to die so such a penalty may not effect me, but it does seem to be the same mindset of "clicks equals content" that nerfed the lantern fruit to decoration.

What do we gain from increased difficulty?

[MuthaF]

Nice ideas, both of you

[Jenn O Cide]

well this would obviously not affect Hard Core. Hard core is... well hard core and yea.. there is no 'death' penalty because death -is- the penalty.

This is more towards 'survivor.' or what I would call 'normal mode'. I think it would actually give more a fleshing out towards -why- you have to care about the health/food/oxygen bars rather than 'just the flavor affect' they are most of the times.

As stated before, death has no real affect right now save for at late endgame when there is just travel in the way. It's something that really can be ignored a lot of the time and has very little purpose. Thus, giving it a consequence (after a certain amount of 'free roam tutorial' has been implimented) gives more of a meaning to.. well... surviving and reasons why you might want to start caring about those bars and plan ahead.

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tldr: Purpose is to find that sweet spot between Creative mode, which has no death/consequences, and Hardcore where everything after last 'quit' / progress has been terminated.

Survivor mode death is too leniant. Can literally die 23243 times (or realistically, just die to get blue print without planning how to get back/prior thought) because you know you'll respawn right back as if nothing happened save for items dropped, which leads to purposeful death and takes away from (imo) are fair progression mechanics and challenges