In-game death reflections -- Poll

I vote for an hour of reflecting max at one reflection per level.

A proposal in the other thread: http://forums.layonara.com/1265352-post31.html

Resting: I like it how it is.

Reflections: Yep, too long. Needs to cap around an hour; though I am one of those nuts who's spent several hours all ghosty and RPing, it gets fairly ridiculous after the first hour or two.

And the out-of-game time? Sheesh! A whole in-game week to pass, and you STILL have a reflection to sit out, once your get back in-game.

Personally, while I am around a bit it is generally in specific times and for a specific limited period. If my char dies...unless the grave is easy to get....there goes all the time I had put aside to play in and that is not fun..

Make it an hour max to reflect on and leave it at that...that long would pretty much encourage me to stay around and may not end my evening of fun prematurely and its better than having to wait 24 hours, before I can log in again and then wait yet another 10 minutes to rest and recooup for that last reflection!

Nope, whether you are in a group or not, you must still fight the beasties first before you find out if you can take them second.

Knowledge of the result comes after the action that determines the result. You can then use that knowledge the next time you meet the beasties.

The "different mode of play" being that you, rather naturally and unconsciously, are metagaming.

Your PC, heading north out of Krandor on the presumably safe roads, doesn't take the road north across the well-maintained bridge to run straight into a group of Ogres. Your character, likely having grown up hundreds or thousands of miles away from that place, doesn't know that's dangerous. But you do.

When walking into the Hallowlight forest, you naturally hug the treeline - it's second nature to you. Everyone does it - except for players who are new to the game, and play their characters with actual ignorance. So of course your PC doesn't get killed.

I'm not scolding you for metagaming. I think it's past reasonable for someone to deliberately walk into a deathtrap because it would be in-character for them to do so. (And, for instance in the Hallowlight forest, I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that the townsfolk of Fort Wayfare might give instructions on how to avoid getting killed.) But have a little heart for people who are actually new to Layonara, seeing it with new eyes, who don't have every single map, danger, flag location (or even knowing what a flag IS), and CNR location memorized, and don't feel it's particularly correct via RP to use Tells to try to find out.

By the way, I'm not asking this for myself. My PC is 8th level, has died 4 times (once to lag, once to a sleep bug, once to the batteries running out on my keyboard, and one actual legit death), and hasn't lost a SoulStrand either. Of course I also RP her as the supergenius she is, and so use her SS-loss-immune familiar to scout, invisibility, and tons of RP, to keep her safe, because that's what she would do.

Maybe what should really happen is that really new players (not PCs) to Layonara should have a 3 month grace period on SS loss, to make up for everything you know and their characters have to literally die to find out.

I voted to long. I think the in game and out of game death timers should be the same and they should not scale with levels. After around level 10, the wait timers should be the same.

At the lower levels it is ok for the timers to scale up to level 10.

I voted for the "much too long"... but that's not completely accurate. At lower levels, they're fine... but they scale upwards too much. I think if it were more like the resting timer, where it gradually increases and then caps off might be better than just slashing times across the board.

I'm a relative newcomer here, so I may have a fresher perspective on this.

The problem Layonara has, so far as I'm concerned, isn't "reflections". It's that accidental death is way too easy. It's all fine and dandy to put in serious penalties, including perming if you want, but if you're going to do that, you've got to make it so that people can actually trade a lower degree of level gain for at least some kind of safety.

My PC has invisibility, and that helps a lot, but even when running away, I've been chased through screens - often into public spaces, by spawns that clearly wouldn't be doing in a PnP situation. And more often than not, monsters will be attracted to attack when you stray even a tile off the road. (At first level, my PC said "Look at the pretty deer" and was almost killed by it.)

For example, my first exploration walking around the edges of Hlint, when D. was 5th level, drew the attentions of the Red Light scout on the hill. She ran into the city gates (which I thought was quite realistic), but was chased there, which was plain silly. And because of the way the server engine currently works, the lead you have on a pursuing monster vanishes.

This makes death not a "I had it coming" sort of experience, but more of a "WTF? That wasn't realistic!" type of one. Even with the soul mother attracted to PCs of higher level, I can't imagine how difficult it is to play a mid-level character without some sort of Stealth option. Chances are, they'd perm very quickly.

So - what do do? If I was coding for Layonara, these would be the changes I'd make:

1] Have the server track player transitions to pursuing monster transitions, and spawn the monster in the new screen only after the delay. That would get rid of the "Don't run away you fool! - You'll die!" bug.

2] Have certain places monsters won't chase you, like guarded cities.

3] Give DMs the power to move grave markers, so they can keep continuity of a quest. (D. died when my wireless keyboard's battery did, and I spent the whole time as a ghost.)

4] Actually, I think Soul Strands and all the "reimbursements" are a total PITA for the administrators. Maybe a better penalty (that would be appropriately painful), would be booting the PC for 1 minute times the character level squared. A 2nd level PC would come back after 4 minutes, a 3rd after 9 minutes, a 20th after 400 minutes (that's 6 1/2 hours). Resurrection would bring back the PC instantly, but (unless authorized by a DM because of a server issue) brings in a chance vs the Soul Mother. That would also make it so that if someone died on a party expedition, they would actually seem like they, well, died. Right now it's kind of - "hang on! let me run back invisibly from the soul stone" - which doesn't seem like death at all, more like a pebble in the shoe type of problem.

I'd be fine with longer reflections if we increased standard soul count from 10 to to say, 30.

[lore]resting[/lore]

Well, but it changes to a slower linear progression at level 15..

It was perhaps a poor comparison, I would prefer a non-linear increase, but anything that doesn't become quite so harsh for higher level characters would be nice.

Death timers can not be fully considered without considering the Death System as a whole. For example, if corpses were draggable and raiseable at a temple then having long death timers may be appropriate. The death timer is a 'punishment' for death. However, there is also perm-a-death as a punishment for dying.

If rest of the Death System stay the same, then I think that the current death timers are too long. I think both the logged in and logged out death timer should be the same.

About 1 hour would be a reasonable time. It is likely that the after dying a player would stick around logged in for an hour and roleplay, or wait for the rest of the party return from adventure and then continue with their previous plans. If they took the death particularly badly -and needed a break- then logging out for 1 hour would also be reasonable.

At two hours only the addicted or die hards would stick around. At five hours VERY VERY few people would wait that out in-game roleplaying. Most would role-play for a bit then log. Or log out straight away if the party, and the rest of the server was off in the deep of Belinara.

So I voted too long.

Doesn't really belong here, but all this chat about reflections? Reflect on this...

What really bites is a new character, level 5, killed for the first time ever (and while saving a fellow adventurer with a potion), and loses a soul strand!

Beat that one.

Travel in groups , study the monsters and try to see if you can take them on ?

Reflections: I personally believe that the reflections shouldn't allow the soul mother to take strands until at least level 10, to give new players time to really get acquainted and be able to stand up if taken alone by a creature or group of creatures that they did not expect. If that were made so, I'd be more forgiving about the time it takes to deal with them.

Resting: I think that resting times are too long once they get over 6 minutes. Personally, I think resting times shouldn't go over four minutes. It just seems like that would aid players more and then we would have less deaths period, worrying less about reflection time.

What are ATs? To me, that's just another Layonym. Presumably screen transitions?

I did find out later when reading the website that you weren't supposed to run away into cities, and I don't do it anymore. But it's a pretty silly band aid on the issue, which is monsters chasing you there in the first place.

And if you can't run through screens, then screen sizes need to be bigger - or something. I mean, thinking that you can actually run away from anything in Layo is pretty clearly a sign of a newbie who isn't aware of the oddities of the game engine. It's the most natural thing to do, and you can't do it.