Death in online games

[mroedesigns]

So me and one of my developers were talking the other day about player death and how to handle it. I figured Id stop by and see what you guys thought, or like/dislike from online games youve played?

I was thinking either an instant death or timed death (delayed or stopped by a healer), followed by some sort of ghost area or minigame. Just an idea.

[Blizzard]

I kind of preferred the simplest type. You die and respawn in a town. Now if you're quick, you can teleport back to the place where you died and rejoin your party in battle or at least get some crap back if you lost any. But I haven't played too many MMOs to be able to actually compare how good different methods of death handling are.

[mroedesigns]

Speaking of which.. I was pretty sure it was possible but I cant find it, is there a way to trigger a common event on death?

[Wizered67]

If you use Blizz-ABS, (which you do  ) turn auto game over off and create a common event that constantly checks if the player's HP if 0.

[thephantom]

In one online game, when you die you go to the nearest grave yard and have to run back to your dead body as a ghost.  Once you reach your body you come back to life with low health and mana.  The trick is to get your body back without triggering what killed you the first time!

In another game, when you die you get sent back to town completely naked and have to run back to your body to retrieve your gear.  Sometimes the way back is full of monsters and without your gear makes it very hard to get back!

Although traditionally, in RPG's when you die its game over, the idea is, you should have saved and that is your check point you return to.  I kind of like the simplicity and requirement on the player to do that.

But no matter what way you go, it seems there must be a penalty to death and require the player to jump through some kind of hoop.   And with your suggestion of a mini-game, it could be just that, make them jump through hoops, haha, jk.

[Starrodkirby86]

The only online games I've ever played are ones that send you to a certain respawn point upon death with lessened experience points as the punishment. It's probably done with very good reason - especially if players are dying commonly within the game. That way it'll be a quick way back to whatever the player was doing, or an instant change of strategy starting from said respawn point.

A mini-game may be totally unnecessary and annoying, and if the only point of the mini-game is to prolong that instant transition to safety, then some impatient players may get alienated from it. It'll probably be fun and enjoyable the first few times, but if you have a player who's a risk taker or where parties must always stay together, seeing that mini-game (especially numerous times) would only present a backache to them. You could say the best thing against that would be, "Tough luck, stop dying so much," or something, but that won't really solve much of anything.

I'm probably a bit bias or uninformed here because I haven't ever played an online game with a different death scene, so my opinion may not be as strong.