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Permadeath? Please make this optional, not compulsory


Yakkus_The_Kub

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14 hours ago, Porcupine said:

Or the biggest dealbreaker, for some of the people who aren't you. It's not like either side gets listened to at any rate, regardless of how much we may cheer or decry it - it just so happens that roguelike-fans get their wish on this one while everybody else's options are reduced to acquiring CR-shaped voodoo pincushions and/or not playing.

I fail to see how this is a rogue-like, or much of a major personal setback in any way. The only thing that could be considered a loss would be the destruction or loss of materials on your person or ship when you die. But that's just a consequence of dying, not permadeath.

The problem is people hear "permadeath" and instantly associate that with shitty early access survival games where death is the end of progress setting you back to zero. Star Citizen's death system (as it has so far been described) is not resetting your progress so much as it's loading that progress onto a new avatar. If that still ruffles someone's feathers, they're probably too fragile to be playing Multiplayer games to begin with.

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Permadeath was there right from the beginning... if somebody cannot bear that then this might not be the right game for him. Period.

 

btw - I've not heard a long time a thing about additional character slots.

A long time ago there was the intention from CIG that you could purchase additional characters and get additional charcters slots by owning more than one game package.

Any news on that? Because by that you could generate different 'classes' of PC ... some more disposable than others.

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On 02/09/2017 at 2:56 PM, J. Coren said:

I fail to see how this is a rogue-like, or much of a major personal setback in any way. The only thing that could be considered a loss would be the destruction or loss of materials on your person or ship when you die. But that's just a consequence of dying, not permadeath.

The problem is people hear "permadeath" and instantly associate that with shitty early access survival games where death is the end of progress setting you back to zero. Star Citizen's death system (as it has so far been described) is not resetting your progress so much as it's loading that progress onto a new avatar. If that still ruffles someone's feathers, they're probably too fragile to be playing Multiplayer games to begin with.

Fair enough, it's not _really_ a rogue-like in that sense. Those whose focus is on material assets should only be mildly affected I suppose. This mostly matters for those who intend to RP - or, in my case, simply get strongly attached to each specific "incarnation" of their avatar and can't bring themselves to just call them all the same (or worse, "John Doe Junior the LXXVIIIrd"). Anyway, it's not an _actual_ dealbreaker; I do avoid permadeath games but hey, SC is in a class of its own, and as you said: progress is not completely lost.

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I actually think this is in place specifically for RPers, or at least it helps their gameplay. You should care what happens to a character you invest time in. It should matter, and the death - or the risk of death to your character should dissuade you from making poorly thought out or risky decisions.

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On 07/09/2017 at 1:59 AM, GeraldEvans said:

I actually think this is in place specifically for RPers, or at least it helps their gameplay. You should care what happens to a character you invest time in. It should matter, and the death - or the risk of death to your character should dissuade you from making poorly thought out or risky decisions.

That's partly true, but there's a _very_ fine line on the balance of mortality and consequences between too lenient and too harsh. The problem is CIG seems to strive for utmost realism in every aspect that isn't inconvenient (let nobody mention the flight model... oops.) while seemingly failing to appreciate that actually doing the sort of things we all play SC for in _real life_ would get you killed at least once each day. RP isn't about sitting in your EZ-hab having a panic attack too afraid to come out for fear of not living to see another day; there needs to be some room for grandstanding and drama that the cold reality of real life doesn't allow for - just see "Hollywood vs. RL about basically everything" for a crash course. So approaching that with CIG's brand of aggressive realism is arguably not that great of an idea - I certainly have zero trust in them getting it anywhere near "right". Anyway, there's that whole "several lives unless you splat really badly" thing and all that so against all odds the balance might end up okay-ish - we'll just have to wait and see...

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Just because you die doesn't mean its permadeath as said above. Being saved and brought to a med facility for a few "lives" is made for and talked about for just that reason. But that does have me wondering about death and spawn options. Like if you crash and burn, do you have to wait for someone to find and recover you before you can respawn as that character in the hospital or have the choice of just restarting a new character? I could see the permadeath system working for those wanting to work in search and rescue job on the cutlass red or blue or whatever color it was that is a rescue ship.

Also I feel like your opinion of what mattered when this decision was made should be brought up. @Porcupine, if you were around when this decision came out, back towards the beginning us backers have had a lot more input. We as a community created the sports, directed the workflow on ships and even created some of our own during that time. This feature was very well accepted and praised during that time when there was but a quarter of the backers there are now. I have seen how the input we give as a community has started to fall on deaf ears in comparison to the past but this was not something pushed that the community didn't want and is a key feature of the gameplay at this point.

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I actually wonder if they'll make the rep and/or money that you lose significant enough or add more substantial losses.
If you just inherit everything on your next-in-line character and do a tiny bit of repgrinding to get yourself back up to snuff I doubt losing a character will mean anything. If you get to customize your new character after your first one dies I guess you could make him/her look exactly like the previous one and there you go, good as new.

I don't think they should be too hard on people though, sometimes a death is a accident or simply unavoidable. I think there's a fine line CIG will have to balance on, where it's tough enough to dissuade people from taking advantage of it but not so tough that people won't leave high-sec space.

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I prefer to call the permadeath system the New Life System. Reason for this is when chris talked about it back in 2013 it seemed to be that its not a system to punish players, rather a system that gives players a chance to tell a story with their character. Remember that characters will not just "permadie" the first time you get shot, as chris described you will wake up in a medbay with a scar on your arm or u now have a bionic leg, congrats! (which brings me to something interesting, how will CIG handle players with bionic replacements when it comes to player stamina? but i digress). This waking up in the medbay can happen say, 5-10 times depending on the severity of the damage to the player in question, it is only then that your character will permanently die. He even said (if i remember correctly) that the losses will not be substantial, but enough for you to consider. I took this to mean that lets say your a pirate, there might be some risks you just choose not to take because of that little fear of losing your character and being set back a little, or you as a trader decides to cut into your profits a little and hire 1 or 2 players as escorts in fear of your characters life.

The rep loss also means a player can decide to do something new, so for example a pirate player decides he finally had it dealing with those anti-pirate imperium fellas, and decides maybe he will try the trader route. So he dies and he takes control of his new character, and because his new character isn't considered a pirate he can access areas he otherwise could not on his pirate father. However, he will still finds it hard to perhaps trade with certain people due to the "pirate rep his father had" however, overtime of trading he will make a better name for the character he is playing. Just an example, but i find the dynamics the new life system adds to the game has a lot of potential.

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