Genesis Forums

When he returned (briefly) to the game a year or so ago, Mechwarrior came up with an interesting idea, perhaps gleaned from games like Diablo. His suggestion was that players create self-imposed "hardcore" characters that, when killed, were treated as dead and never played again. Would the idea of hardcore characters, if officially supported by the game design, be fun for people?

The idea might be that when a hardcore character dies, they are simply deleted, and the name banished. A "true" Genesis death, as it were.

Because the challenge is so much more intense for hardcore play, it might be good design to allow hardcore characters to have special powers or abilities that non-hardcore characters do not enjoy.

Thoughts? Would this be interesting to anyone?
G.

I would never use that option.

It would take away the option to make errors.
And.. there has been other chars, writing on some of the boards, of them being or making hardcore chars.
I think we need to NOT copy too many things from visual games.

Or, alternatively, a limited credit of deaths(5) in return for extra powers and possibly unique classes/guilds or/and roles.

Perhaps the credits could be reset back to full(5) once the character hits certain size-checkpoints. Ofcourse, after a certain size, no more checkpoints will reset your remaining credits, and dying the last time could be the permanent dirtnap that is not-so sought after.

Regardless, alternate means, or extra unique options only adds possibly more flavour to the game, and not less.

Considering how easy it is for seconds to be made and abused I think this might not be a good idea.

I owuldn't try this either - wouldn't last a week. But I can see how some people might like the challenge.

I do , however, like the idea that Death should be far more common in the game. I am not sure its possible to integrate a group of characters who can't die (and continue playing) with an environment that encourages player Killing though. If people get upset now when they are P-killed....

Absolutely not.

I dont think the game is designed for hardcore players, and I dont see why we should focus on making a so fundamentally large change to a game that has far more important things that need to be fixed.

I dont see the need either. Why would we wanna change this?
If a large portion of the playerbase was asking for something, yes, but I never heard anyone ask for this. However I hear alot of people asking for balanced guilds, make quests more logical, more players, a working pfighting system, war areas that work, filled guilds, etc, etc. So personally I'd rather see our wizards working on that instead something that there appears to be no demand for.

But I suppose the point of this thread was to investigate if the players want this or not..

I dont want it.

Don't misunderstand ... this would not be something applied to all players. Rather, this is something you could "opt" for when creating a character. You could choose to be a hardcore character if you wanted to, or not.

G.

I am a hardcore player who loves to play rogue and dungeon crawlers. I love permanent death, but within a context. Genesis is a huge game, without end, while permanent death should be applied as a challenge: reach the goal or die.

If you were given a full character (say, champion size) that could live only once, it would be different. You really don't want to spend a year grooming a character to just die while idling because some player decided he wanted your equipment. However, if you didn't "suffer" the growing, then you won't miss him once he dies.

I already mentioned that we need a tower of doom, a special tower (or dungeon, it is the same) where you cannot go back, once you enter you either reach the top (or bottom) or "die":

• 40 floors to top or bottom.
• Once entered, you cannot leave.
• Once you advance to the next floor, you cannot go back.
• You enter the tower completely emptied. Think in Calia's Firedrome.
• You can enter alone or with a team.
• Anything that drops stays there until someone picks it up or Armageddon hits.
• At the entrance you are given armours and weapons of your choice (Firedrome again), plus an elixir that can heal you completely, and a lamp with oil, plus an extra oil flail.
• Inside the tower, you don't heal naturally. You don't get mana back either. However, you can use skills that require mana or health.
• Floors are randomly generated every Armageddon.
• Items are scattered randomly, armours, healing and miscellaneous items. Very few of them.
• Characters can upgrade their armours through magic scrolls, or pick new armours and weapons from chests.
• Enemies are randomly generated, but they should randomly hunt and randomly flee.
• If you run out of health, you faint, and wake up outside the tower, exactly as you were before entering, saved by a rescue team sent by the AoP.
• Armours and items from inside the tower cannot be carried outside the tower, except for the [fancy item name here], the item you are tasked to retrieve.
• You can only try only once per day. That is, you have up to seven tries to retrieve the item before the maze is reshuffled.

The deal here is that the tower resets monsters, but doesn't reset items, chests or anything on the ground. In other words, if I enter after Armageddon, find a chest near the entrance and open it, find a lamp and pick it up, the next one after me will find an empty chest. You can, however, fill the chest with something else (like a shield), and whenever someone else enters, he will find the chest with the shield. If you die, however, all what you are carrying is picked up by the "rescue team" too. Items dropped on the ground can be picked randomly by monsters, too.

• Players will have to select which battles to fight and which ones to evade, as you cannot recover mana nor health.
• Monsters may hunt or flee, alone or in team. Some may assist, some may not. Some may block, others may rescue once one gets too hurt. Some may move behind, others may heal. Some may use magic, others may be extremely tough. Others, just very easy. Completely random, so you cannot be sure what awaits you in the next room until you have entered it, when it might be too late. There are around 800 players, so you may as well fill the place with monsters created through the player files, so you may encounter a Dionysos and a Kuti teamed somewhere.
• Chests are the only place where you can secure equipment. However, each chest can contain only one item. And the item you put there can be picked by the next adventurer.
• Healing items (mana and health) should be extremely limited, or not exist at all, putting a healing bath at random floors (one every five floors on average) that will heal a portion of your health and mana.
• You don't gain experience nor money inside the tower. If you kill a monster it is because he is blocking you, or because you think he has picked something useful.
• If you manage to pick the treasure, you can use a portal to escape it from there. However, for more challenge you could be tasked to take it out (as in Rogue, where you had to go 26 floors, one for every letter, find the treasure in the last room, and then go back to the entrance). If you die while going back, a monster may pick the treasure as if it were common loot. You could also put the treasure inside a chest, but you risk someone else picking it up from there without having to go until the last floor.
• Fake treasures could be added (as in Rogue), this way someone may go 20 floors, find a monster with the treasure, and go back, but find out it wasn't the one you were needing.

If you were to implement such tower, then you could add a new option at the login screen, just like 'gameinfo': 'tower' would give you a character at the entrance of the tower (say, champion, legend or myth) with a special attack and defense move (a slash and a cover, for example). This way anyone, even people without Genesis accounts, could play anonymously should they decide they don't want to log into their characters.

Retrieving the treasure would give people a fancy title title or medal, and if an anonymous beats it, he can then choose to create a new character that will start as a newbie but will have a medal with them. To earn the title or medal, you need to retrieve the item from the original chest, if you find it somewhere else (because someone else found it but died or dropped it before taking it out) then you don't get the big reward, but a smaller one.

I can only agree with Cherek.
There are SO many things this game needs much more than this idea of a "hardcore" character.
The game is hardcore enough as it is, so there is no need to make it even more unfriendly.

With the scarce resources that are available to improve Genesis, I'd plead that this idea is way down the to-do list, if it isn't just scrapped.

I love the idea of hardcore characters, but ixnay on the special abilities/skills, you would have more complaints then Saya as a Vamp coming back to game.

I would suggest instead of skills and abilities you give hardcore players things like, special clubs/titles, the free emote 100 day olds get, more exp for Quests... alot more, more racial options, new character descriptions, a chance to save 2 items of their choice. Basically give the hardcore player more options to create their character how they want. New items only Hardcores can use ect.

I would also go as far to say that no one could go hardcore unless they have reached Rising Hero+ in which the player goes to Raumdor or something and makes a deal with the devil and it erases the character allowing them to create a new one. This would limit the abuse of seconds a bit and make it so people actually have to do some work before they could go hardcore.