Of the various things people point to as big problems with the current game design, one issue that comes up again and again is the harshness of the death penalty (1/5 of your non-quest experience lost.) For advanced players (especially those with myth++ stats), PvP is frequently not considered to be worth the risk of needing to spend weeks or even months (depending on your level of activity) to recover. This leads to a dominant culture of people in the game who choose to almost always avoid fighting one another, even when roleplay or guild interaction would be better served by the opposite.
With this in mind, I thought I'd share a bit of a brainstorm I had today to get some reactions and discussion on how such a change might effect the game.
What would it be like if a feature were introduced that allowed players to use money to purchase something that would provide an instant full-recovery of all deaths? I am imagining a scale such as this:
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Platinum Cost: Player Level:
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1 novice
2 greenhorne
3 beginner
5 apprentice
10 wanderer
20 adventurer
50 adept
100 great adventurer
200 veteran
500 expert
1,000 rising hero
2,000 hero
5,000 titan
10,000 champion
15,000 legend
20,000 myth
- Money becomes profoundly meaningful.
- The sliding scale works for both the wealthy myth and the adventurer of small means.
- Players who have collected enough money could become quite daring, leading to wonderful PvP interactions.
- Gearing up for war might also mean building up bank accounts.
- If you end up killing a player you wish you hadn't, money can fix the situation - easily so if the player was small (the sliding scale.)
- Killing a player still hurts them, but now that could either mean their stats or their bank account, depending on their situation.
- Low-level players who are given vast sums of money could die with reckless abandon.
- Guilds could begin to use money as a part of their regular operations, pooling funds to bankroll recovery for any members who die, further building value into the support and membership of a well-managed and active guild.
G.