Amorana wrote:Question for my very geeky roleplaying / d&d type friends (trying to get opinions from non-Genesis friends here, so you guys please keep out):
If you were to try out an RP game as a newbie and were to die and then had to make up that death via a 4 hour mandatory recovery wait period during which you could only make up two hours per day (so bare minimum 2 day recovery time) would you stick around?
What about if at the max level it was 14 hours and 7 days?
Let me add to that, as I feel it factors in... This theorhetical game is text based, and during death recovery your stats are capped at 75% of your total before death.
Going to tag a few of you. Don't be offended by the very geeky notation - I say that as a badge of honor.
I understand that playing text based may be foreign to some of you, but given that the game is trying to go through a growth campaign that is what makes your opinion on the death issue great feedback.
<I tag people here>
Responder 1 wrote: two days at jump and a week for an experienced character? What makes it mandatory? Can you not RP during that timeframe? Also..its an RP game, who cares about mechanical stats anyways?
Amorana wrote:Well, RP to an extent. There is still the ability to grind for stats, gather gear, etc. It is an RP focused Multi User Dungeon (MUD). RP primarily shapes the world around you through enriching the guild (class) system with political treaties, conflicts, etc as well as enriching your character to character relationships. RP is not mandatory just strived for.
In terms of what makes the recovery mandatory, just that it is coded into the game. You cannot gain your full strength back until you have been logged in four hours over a minimum (could be more days depending on how much you play at a time) of two days.
And yes, you can rp. Just questing, killing mobs, etc becomes more difficult. And you get no xp for good RP (different from d&d where a GM could reward such.)
Responder 1 wrote:I've been on (and hosted) a couple MUDs that offer XP for good RP - it just requires decent coders and admins who support RP recording and posting. One system in particular used a magical series of formulae to detect "real" RPing based off of emotes/poses by length and frequency while factoring response emotes/poses from other PC and NPCS in the room (not basic say/yell/etc garbage) that was backed up by a shared email box that would accept cleaned up recordings from RP sessions where the admins would grant XP based off the encounter through character modification (adding exp, granting special weapons, etc). If it just affects grinding and whatnot, I don't see a problem with it, as it forces people to RP more. And since you know what your stats "should be" a code-based death shouldn't change any of the RP.
Amorana wrote:Fair enough. And I agree, it shouldn't affect RP, and might encourage a bit of it. One of the things I've been trying to weigh in on via the forums currently though, is whether such a death system can be attractive to new players who in this day and age largely plays MMOs and video games that have little to no death penalty (either a run back to your corpse, or a slight loss of play time in the current level.) My argument has been that a lot of people, on their first death might easily say "Eh, I don't want to have to be stuck like this through 2+ more play sessions" and peace out.
Responder 1 wrote:true. You can give people an opportunity to make up for it by sacrificing other things -- maybe they can get a "faster" cooldown by sacrificing XP or having merchants not interact with them - options help.
Responder 2 wrote:Nope
Amorana wrote:If anyone else has opinions, even a simple yes or no, let me know! Hoping to give some outside-party feedback about a game design proposal.
Responder 3 wrote:I would probably say no, but I don't play a lot of RP. To me I want to have a good time and waiting 2 days to play again doesn't really make me want to play as often. But I imagine for seriously role players it would be pretty awesome
Responder 4 wrote:Yes and no. It would depend how invested I was within the game. If it was the first day. Probably but after a couple weeks maybe not. 2 days is too long IMO.
Amorana wrote:What about the upper one, "Responder 4"? When at max level it would take 7 days? Still feel that way?
Then Responder 4 wrote me some PMs:Responder 4 wrote:Do you respawn? Do you lie in wait or do you create a new character entirely. Respawn, essentially YES. Die forever and have to wait for respawn with a new character I don't think I could. I love getting into RPs so hard but I can't see it viable for me as a character to invest so much time unless we were playing more then 1x a week, 2-3x a week then yeah it would be worth it.
Responder 4 wrote:yeah dude I am always down to play I just like seeing respawns essentially in 2x a week games not 1x, it gets frustrating for a new player to sit an wait at all but to learn.
Here I did some explaining that we didn't have respawns, and reiterated the stats part. Then his last message:
Responder 4 wrote: as a new player entirely no one wants to sit on the sidelines for any amount of time,. I play 2 fb games that are essiantially point click wait 15min, then do it again and it's hard to even do that.
So that's what I have so far. Out of 4, 3 seem opposed (to varying levels) and one thinks that it could work if there were differing options on the death penalty.
I'll post again if I get more answers. I know 4 isn't a huge sample size, however I wanted to try and give some feedback from outside of the community. These people who responded:
Responder 1: D&D / MUD player
Responder 2: RPG / FPS player
Responder 3: WoW player
Responder 4: D&D, WoW, FPS player
Which to me, I feel like sort of echoes what I've been saying, so far (again, more samples needed) that people who are used to playing these latter 3 types of games wouldn't find this type of death system attractive.