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Death Mechanics

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Dec 29, 2014 cellsafemode link
ratios can be cheated too easily. magic barriers that pop up over a "hot" system is too corny.

If you dont like the idea that you respawn in a pocket sector and then ec89 jump into your home sector to eat up time without being forced to sit at a timer then perhaps the following suggestions are better.

1. The Page of Shame can be used to publicly humiliate players ...hosted on the official VO site. This will be split into a live list (15 min each update) of PK's (who died and who killed) and a top 10 deaths page of the players who died the most the previous day and everyone who killed them.

2. Similar to 3 strikes KOS for killing a player in NFZ, you have a 3 strikes Home limitation. If within an hour you die 2 times while homed to the same station, you are notified that if you die a 3rd time you will be re-homed to your nation's capital or dau if you are KOS there. You would then be forced to home elsewhere to avoid being deported far away. The counter is retained for an hour so trying to home back and dying a 3rd time within an hour of the 1st will still result in deportation.

3. Extra long and awesome ship explosion sequences (visible only to the dying player). At the point of death, the player who died sees a replay with a much more detailed slo mo rendering of their destruction as it actually happened from 3rd person view angles. This is not skippable. You should also see the grizzly death of the pilot as the ship tears through their body. Oh the simulated horror.

4. Homing at a station links your deaths to your standing to that station's faction. Every time you die there your standing is adversely affected if it is positive. This would also affect Corvus and be the only way you can lose Corvus standing permanently. This does not occur if your death was in violation of the NFZ (someone killed you in the NFZ) or any other regulation where your death was in guarded or monitored space and you were the defendant.
Dec 29, 2014 Death Fluffy link
Feels a nah coming on...

1. -1 I don't object to a public kill stat page. Just not in this context.

2. -1 Again, this penalizes players other than pvpers and adds burden to inexperienced players or players on mobile devices.

3. +1 to better death graphics.

4. -1 A financial penalty makes more sense, but then that still adversely affects new players far more than more experienced players.

Perhaps, and I believe this was alluded to earlier in the thread, but I'm can't be bothered to reread the whole thing just to find it, but perhaps the answer lies in a little pixie dust that I like to call SCARCITY!.
Dec 29, 2014 cellsafemode link
well, the idea is to solve the issue without requiring fixing everything else that obviously needs fixing that has absolutely no chance of getting done anytime soon (the entire economy and all the changes related to it's reworking).

isolated changes that dont affect other aspects of the game have a better chance of getting noticed i would think than those that touch all kinds of parts of the game.

edit: Also, the Page of Shame is not a kill stat page. It's a death stat page. Players who kill people aren't being ranked or listed in prominence. Maybe we dont have to note them at all. This is all about shaming players who have been killed and ranking them.
Dec 29, 2014 csgno1 link
Most importantly, whatever we dream up, we must not punish the newer or less skilled players, as most of these suggestions do except for the ones involving just delays. If the folks who explode more are punished for being exploded, they will do less pvp.
Dec 29, 2014 Pointsman link
Keller, it is your opinion that money and ships are too cheap in the current context. If VO's disparate features were bound together in some kind of endgame, then, of course, money and mining and death would each be meaningful somehow. But working in reverse by randomly lashing features together will not necessarily accomplish anything.

Everything, ultimately, would still be pointless. And VO can do much better than making combat about directly avoiding or inflicting pain.

People ultimately want to conquer and project power, so the question is how to make to make mining and trading and manufacturing about war logistics for a long/slow running first person collaborative 4X game where it's possible to conquer most or all of the galaxy.

In the absence of a big picture, if it is not intrinsically interesting to generate credits, then it is still not interesting to have generated them if they get destroyed when a ship explodes. Subsuming a fun thing into an unfun thing might just make both things unfun.

In the absence of any major changes why not let newbs learn and try to compete without having to grind and without giving vets advantages they don't need anyway.
Dec 30, 2014 Keller link
Pointsman, to be honest, I fully agree. I've been one to argue that VO needs a PURPOSE for a long time. As it stands, things are so static that we fulfill our needs through trivia without consequence, leading to discussions like this one.

* The Economy needs revamping so mining and trade have meaning.
* There needs to be more to VO than just PvP.
* PvP itself needs something to make it worthwhile, other than the "Look at my AWESOME Greatness!" we see most of the time.

I agree; giving the game a long term purpose would provide the context we all crave.
Dec 31, 2014 TheRedSpy link
Incidentally, Look at my AWESOME greatness.

Just.. look at it.
Jan 01, 2015 abortretryfail link
I like the ion storm idea Pizzasgood suggested. It even fits with the game's explanation of their existence. :)

The big problem here isn't that people respawn too quickly. It's that we're lacking (or willfully avoiding, really) PvP situations where the objective isn't just "kill the enemy lots."

- In CtC, if you die, odds are you're not catching back up with the convoy you were chasing or whoever killed you is getting the cargo.
- In Border Skirmishes, your team loses score when you die.
- In the stereotypical pirate/trader exchange, it's very likely that one of the players is not homed within a single jump from where they were killed.
- In conquerable station battles if you die, the enemy gets to claim the dock.

All of these are PvP gameplay we have right now where death matters more than just stupid ratios and kill counts, but many people try hard to avoid them.
Jan 01, 2015 biretak link
I like the idea of respawning two sectors away if you where homed within two sectors of where you were killed. Why not make part of the respawning process the ability to choose from the list of Stations two jumps away?

Another simpler automatic solution would be to have killed player respawn at the faction where they have the highest standing two systems from where they were killed in the direction of their national capitol system. We'd all be able to stock the stations we respawn at as necessary.

Edited to add that if we only respawn in the direction of our home nations capital system, we could be driven back to it by the other team or force the other team/player back to their national space..
Jan 01, 2015 cellsafemode link
i think rather than arbitrary and non-obvious changes to where a player respawns compared to where they "home" and having to change the definition of what homing is and does and having it change behavior depending on how you died or what your faction is; the intended behavior of slowing down the re-entering of battle can be done without touching any thing else in the game by simply adding in un-skippable cut scenes. Cutscenes for logging in. Cutscenes for dying and cut scenes for launching from a station.

The login scene would address dual client users who cut their connection while simultaneously logging in on the other client to attempt to bypass the death/launch cutscenes.

Anything else is going to require more invasive changes to the game and will likely not be done since they are more likely to conflict with the current plans the developers have for the game's evolution.
Jan 01, 2015 biretak link
The games evolution needs a way to drive each side to their nation space. Respawning a sector or two in the direction of your nation space if you die is the perfect way to do that. I'm sure guild could also have us set a respawning station in each grey space sector, if we choose too. But, we'd have to have Inc's input on how this would effect future plans.

edited to add, I'm not opposed to a if you're homed in odia you respawn in odia exception, or even if you are hated with your home nation. But, the homed part wouldn't work so well for pushing your enemy back.
Jan 02, 2015 cellsafemode link
I'd prefer rather than magically appearing where you "homed" and having that change depending on how you died and where your home faction is etc... that the whole feature of "Homing" is removed and you always respawn at a capital station of your home faction or if you are hated or kos, to odia corvus prime. Since these are cap systems and you aren't allowed to damage same faction, temp KOS to Odia should be removed. Only permanent faction standing will determine if you get re-routed to Odia when you die.

No complicated rules. No changing behavior. The bonus here is that an actual attempt at explaining death in the game is then possible and much more easy, since you dont have to explain all these corner case rules and varying locations of your spawning.
Jan 02, 2015 csgno1 link
Leave it the way it is, and when the universe expands have a stretch of systems with no stations but grand goodies located there to fight over.
Jan 02, 2015 biretak link
leaving it the way it is??? That's pointless. Respawning in the nearest national station would actually make more sense than that. There needs to be a way to drive momentum of the battles. Why not put some purpose in the pvp? Then those of us who just dabble in pvp would have a reason to get really good at it.

btw, the universe doesn't need to expand, please!
Jan 03, 2015 csgno1 link
Sometime in these battles you *don't* want to re-spawn at the nearest station. Consider availability of equipment and personal inventory. Players have a choice where to set home and they make decisions based on current conditions and individual preferences.

Don't worry, the universe is not going to expand any time soon, but when it does I'll argue for less stations in some contrived hot zones. The problem is that there are too many stations in grey space but I don't imagine any meaningful number will be removed. So it will stay like it is for now but we can make meaningful suggestions for when the expansion happens.