How to make death actually matter more

[Ziliphade 20]

1. Make people wait a minimum 30min-1hour time limit before they can enter the server their character died in.

2. Make it so everybody can loot their body except for them

Too many times have I pondered what I would do once I finally bit the dust, but then I just laugh and shrug the stupid thought off because I know that I can just jog back to my body and shaboom get everything back, and if I am in a group at the time it is even easier and safer, as they will guard/hold it for me.

The only time you ever need to worry about dying is if it is right when the server restarts, or if whoever killed you did it at close range, therefore meaning they can loot you quickly than leave, most of the time I have to walk in to a popular area to even get noticed and even after I have died in said area my killer is probably too terrified to stick around or go near the corpse because of the multiple people that just heard our shootout/ snipers that can see him right now.

And you do not need people for blood transfusions anymore because all you need to do is die in a discreet area and then run back to the body with full blood.

I recommend this mainly because the game is supposed to be realistic and immersive but dying and killing is such a systamatic predictable process that it still feels like any other game where you has a shootgun dat shoots bullets.

[TIC 1050]

Sounds a bit like WarZ but I think this is a good idea. I think I read somewhere that your character would have something like a 'one life' thing where if they die, you'd have to make another. Not too sure.

[rossums 2190]

Timers are totally stupid.

If you die and you're anywhere away from Cherno/Elektro you are pretty much fucked because you're stuff will be looted and/or hidden before you have time to reach it.

Dying with decent gear certainly puts you back at a sever disadvantage to other players, blocking them from playing for 30mins / 1hour serves 0 purpose. It was implemented on The WarZ so they could charge retards more money to play again earlier.

[Clumzy (DayZ) 377]

Timers are totally stupid.

If you die and you're anywhere away from Cherno/Elektro you are pretty much fucked because you're stuff will be looted and/or hidden before you have time to reach it.

Dying with decent gear certainly puts you back at a sever disadvantage to other players, blocking them from playing for 30mins / 1hour serves 0 purpose. It was implemented on The WarZ so they could charge retards more money to play again earlier.

Timers would make it so that dying is more of an inconvenience, it's not just about gear.

Yes to No. 1, but No. 2 doesn't really seem necessary if the first suggestion is implemented.

[taco241 393]

No. for the love of merciful Moses no.

My gaming time is precious. Don't make me catch up on my Bieber tweets while I wait for a countdown to log back in.

[jona (DayZ) 61]

Well i dont think the time limit on death and the not being able to loot your body would serve no purpose. Because the time limit every one would hate it and if people paid for there own server and have busy lifes and can only play a few hours a week it wouldn't work out. Not being able to loot your body wouldn't make much sense because you could just get a friend to loot it for you and give you the items. The way to combat this is to have the player spawn further away from the dead body and have a time limit on dead bodies like maybe 30-60 mins before they despawn. Lastly make the game harder so you need more supplies before you think of ventureing out and recovering your stuff.

[rossums 2190]

You shouldn't be able to loot your body, that's fair enough.

But no timers, with no self-looting they are pointless and only further punish players with limited time and/or patience.

[pmjkerr 76]

Both been mentioned before and I doubt either will ever be implemented.

The only way to make death matter is to travel back in time to the early days of the mod.

[Ziliphade 20]

No. for the love of merciful Moses no.

My gaming time is precious. Don't make me catch up on my Bieber tweets while I wait for a countdown to log back in.

This made me chuckle

[Ziliphade 20]

You shouldn't be able to loot your body, that's fair enough.

But no timers, with no self-looting they are pointless and only further punish players with limited time and/or patience.

Well if one of my options is implemented the other is obsolete, that's the point smart guy.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Here is a killing penality that is used on another games:

When you kill another player you leave a clue behind that other players can find. If they do, they can track you (for a limited amount of time), even if you logged out.

But if you do log out and your tracker finds where, he can summon your character back "ingame" to kill it.

[Ziliphade 20]

Here is a killing penality that is used on another games:

When you kill another player you leave a clue behind that other players can find. If they do, they can track you (for a limited amount of time), even if you logged out.

But if you do log out and your tracker finds where, he can summon your character back "ingame" to kill it.

Not to be rude but that is literally impossible and also does not relate to the issue I am trying to expose and hopefully fix.

[rossums 2190]

Well if one of my options is implemented the other is obsolete, that's the point smart guy.

For a start your suggestion has no formatting, there is no clear differentiation between the two ideas other than a 1 and a 2. This means nothing.

Both ideas have been suggested multiple time before, if you took time out of acting like a smartass and used the search function and apply some of that intelligence to actually reading the forums you'd realise that yourself.

Now if you look at what you yourself said in your own post about your own group guarding it, it means that implementing such a system will only harm loan-wolf type players and won't impact groups at all, counter productive if anything.

Dying in the standalone won't just be 'oh, I'm dead. Let's run back to get my stuff'. If you died from infection, your gear is infected, if you go get it back, you will get infected again.

If you were killed by a player, it will be looted. If you died from zombies, they won't immediately disappear when you die.

The game is not meant to be 'realistic' whatsoever so I have no idea why you're throwing that around either.

[-Gews- 7443]

How about once you die, your CD key is banned and you have to purchase the entire game again?

[TheDesigner 1197]

Timers would make it so that dying is more of an inconvenience, it's not just about gear.

Yes to No. 1, but No. 2 doesn't really seem necessary if the first suggestion is implemented.

What if you are spawn killed? Casual gamers don't want to wait 60 minutes to play a game (2 deaths). I don't want to wait 60 minutes either, timers are out the window, really.

[DemonGroover 8836]

Woah woah woah - steady on there peoples!!

As for the suggestion:

I don't like the idea of a timer but being able to loot your own dead body has always irked me and i just don't know the answer. Possibly one way is making you spawn as far away from your dead body as is possible? But if you have friends even this isn't sufficient.

The idea in SA where equipment will break and degrade could help matters.

[OrLoK 16186]

Hello there

Death needs to have more relevance, but IMHo so does causing death. Don't look at me for answers though. A true roguelike death is a bit much, but the spawn and get stuff back due to mates camping body also seems a little off.

A difficult one indeed.

Rgds

LoK

[TheDesigner 1197]

Woah woah woah - steady on there peoples!!

As for the suggestion:

I don't like the idea of a timer but being able to loot your own dead body has always irked me and i just don't know the answer. Possibly one way is making you spawn as far away from your dead body as is possible? But if you have friends even this isn't sufficient.

The idea in SA where equipment will break and degrade could help matters.

This is actually positive, it's a way to support teamwork. You can't pick up gear, but your friends can. It would effect those lone wolf bandits/survivors without ruining their gameplay.

If you had friends in a zombie apocalypse, you wouldn't be as worried about death compared to having no friends and having no one to watch your back. This can translate into not being scared to die as much because you've got pals to get your gear, whereas a lone wolf doesn't. A nice mechanic without making lone wolfs go crazy or some nonsense like that.

Edited March 20, 2013 by TheDesigner

[OrLoK 16186]

But what happens to us Lone wolves? I rarely play as part of a group, but as it seems there are too many advantages to being part of the herd.

Yes, grouping does and should have it's benefits, but that should be down to having more eyes and firepower.

At the mo, having buddies just guard ones corpse makes death an inconvenience rather than something to fear. The worst that happens is one has a long trek to rendezvous.

Death should be something to avoid at all costs.

L

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

how 'bout this? the longer you live the longer the cooldown is when you die

it means players who died soon after a spawn won't have to wait too long (a minute or two), but if you lived long enough to get all those gear

when you die you would have to wait longer (say 30minutes - 1 hour, like OP said). to me it kind of makes some sense, but this is more just trowing

suggestions to keep the discussion going. I'm not sure if it would really work...

also it's been said earlier, something has to be done with spawn points.

death should at least be more disorienting. so maybe spawning in the forest would be better than spawning on the beach.

or maybe to make it more realistic, when you die you have to kill yourself in real life :P

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

These aren't new suggestions, but since this is a new discussion on the topic, I thought I'd share a new idea. :lol:

It's just a skeleton of a thought, but since this topic inspired it, I suppose it's worth a mention.

Say, for instance, in conjunction with a 30 minute lockout, a mechanic for burning, burying and otherwise disposing of bodies is implemented. (sorry, I can't post links, but there are a few threads about this out there)

If a lone-wolf is killed, then a death-timer for that 1 particular server would come into effect.

No big deal, just wait it out, or join another server. Yeah, it sucks, but you're dead. It's supposed to suck.

For a team player, the same timer could be bypassed if their squad give them a funeral (bury or burn their corpse) as a "buy-in".

This would allow for team play to be beneficial to this scenario whilst not allowing players to simply regain all their gear from having a team simply camp their body.

Of course, bodies would have to be un-dig-upable and burning bodies should destroy their gear.

There are still some issues I can't really think of a solution to.

Gear could be taken from a body and dropped on the floor, for example.

I only thought of that after typing all this out.

Fuck.

As I said, it's just the bare bones of a suggestion in the "death is costly" area.

Everybody want something done about it, but nobody has any idea what.

[Ziliphade 20]

how 'bout this? the longer you live the longer the cooldown is when you die

it means players who died soon after a spawn won't have to wait too long (a minute or two), but if you lived long enough to get all those gear

when you die you would have to wait longer (say 30minutes - 1 hour, like OP said). to me it kind of makes some sense, but this is more just trowing

suggestions to keep the discussion going. I'm not sure if it would really work...

also it's been said earlier, something has to be done with spawn points.

death should at least be more disorienting. so maybe spawning in the forest would be better than spawning on the beach.

or maybe to make it more realistic, when you die you have to kill yourself in real life :P

I chuckled myself to death at the last sentence

[Ziliphade 20]

These aren't new suggestions, but since this is a new discussion on the topic, I thought I'd share a new idea. :lol:

It's just a skeleton of a thought, but since this topic inspired it, I suppose it's worth a mention.

Say, for instance, in conjunction with a 30 minute lockout, a mechanic for burning, burying and otherwise disposing of bodies is implemented. (sorry, I can't post links, but there are a few threads about this out there)

If a lone-wolf is killed, then a death-timer for that 1 particular server would come into effect.

No big deal, just wait it out, or join another server. Yeah, it sucks, but you're dead. It's supposed to suck.

For a team player, the same timer could be bypassed if their squad give them a funeral (bury or burn their corpse) as a "buy-in".

This would allow for team play to be beneficial to this scenario whilst not allowing players to simply regain all their gear from having a team simply camp their body.

Of course, bodies would have to be un-dig-upable and burning bodies should destroy their gear.

There are still some issues I can't really think of a solution to.

Gear could be taken from a body and dropped on the floor, for example.

I only thought of that after typing all this out.

Fuck.

As I said, it's just the bare bones of a suggestion in the "death is costly" area.

Everybody want something done about it, but nobody has any idea what.

The theory sounds pretty decent, as long as it makes dying more brutal to the senses then it is adding on

[Death_Dealer 3155]

Not too fond of the timer idea. I don't want this turning into WarZ.

It also doesn't make sense that everybody but you can loot your dead body.

[Very Ape 748]

It also doesn't make sense that everybody but you can loot your dead body.

Being dead tends to do that.

I hope, at the very least, a timer of five minutes or so is implemented. Spawn suicides would be reduced (Why would you kill yourself if there's a good chance you'll spawn in the same area again?) and people wouldn't have time to run back to a firefight on the coast.

Other ways to make people more attached to their character would be character creation every time you spawn, and other incentives to not getting your ass shot other than ''I'll lose all my gear.'' If I'm told to drop all of my weapons and equipment at gunpoint, I'll probably try killing my captors and die, if only out of spite. But if I've held on to this character for days, and had the scars to prove it, I would think twice, if only out of emotional attachment.

Scars, scratches, beards and tattoos (the latter is optional, and beards can be shaved) that you acquire over time would make you really love your character. Imagine befriending another survivor, while you're busy camping a roof in Elektro, you take a moment to share stories of battles fought and won, while removing your hoodie to show them the goddamn scars. Gunshot, claw marks, you name it.

ie, there need to be more things that can only be reclaimed by death.

Edited March 20, 2013 by Very Ape