I'd still like to see friendly little warnings beforehand, though. 'This may result in permadeath' is a friendly little message that could save hurt feelings later.

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

lol yeah that too >.<

Stated three pages ago, btw.

I mean seriously, if you are going to go all Wile E. Coyote on Amia, then NOT being permakilled is the crime we should all be complaining about.

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Tark Hammerfeast - Immovable Object
True Greenspan - Bendir's Boy Wonder

... The third one is especially unsurprising. *facepalms* .. Why do I sense that one at least once has also had a meeting with a certain Seven foot tall General? *of the not so pleasant kind*

Oh, but having the remote control in your hands means it is perfectly valid to change the channel to cartoons.

I was adding that to Wonwon's post, not as a statement in general- while they may seem incredibly stupid to us, affirming to someone else that it is so helps avoid arguments.

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

People, I just worked a ten and a half hour shift. Can I get cliffnotes here?

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Not sure what cliffnotes mean, but if I understood right you want a resume or some such?

Lemme try.

#1 Forced Permadeath only if the power is in the hands of the DMs, provided there is a warning beforehand. Also, it should be meaningful.

#2 There should be other alternatives than Permadeath. Check this thread for suggestions: http://www.amiaworld.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=714356#714356.

#3 Players cannot hold the power to decide when and how to kill their fellow players' PCs. Check #1.

I think these are the main?

Guys? >_>;;

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BlackDahlya

Once Upon A Time Played
Adr'ael Ken'rahel, Auron Teken’ath, Aurora Mesodias, 'Daniel' Daoskinaxarijikkym, Eilin'ira, Helena Rios, Layla Faircurrent, May'Une Do'Ndar, Mellinda Tellus, Michael of Cliffside, Rizzen of Twilight, Valkirya d'Claddath

Ah, okay. So what I tried and got berated for. No probs.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Reposted because of "I just woke up" fail.

I was having a thought about this last night actually.

I believe that you should get one character and one character only to call a main, this character is nominated and subject to time related perma-death if he fails the perma-death roll (ie he dies in PvM, PvP, PvBoss etc) and he's out for a week. As with the current new rebuild rules, you can opt to change mains once every three months.

All your alts are played in a Hardcore fashion. They die, they are subject to a X percent chance of being gone forever. In my opinion alts of alts of alts are one of the things holding Amia back from being a truly exceptional server because of the core alty alt group of players that are fundamentally metagaming because they have so many characters, they know and are involved in everything.

Before someone throws the hypocrite card at me, when i started Taur i withdrew from the other faction I was involved in because of Conflict of Interest. All my Characters post the Creation of Taur have been in someway linked back to the Mulhorandi.

Anything that reduces the amount of faction whoring that is an Amian staple these days gets a vote in my book and I see Perma-death as being the great shining light on the path to cleaning up the server.

Also in this i include the removal of Greater Restoration, Restoration, Raise Scrolls from NPC merchants. The destruction of the Fountains of Purification (don't know if this has happened already).

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I play: Gage le Gris
Socially and recently politically Inept Knight of Xymor

Tormaks reply to my sleepy fail.

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I play: Gage le Gris
Socially and recently politically Inept Knight of Xymor

like last thread, if you add perma death to PVE then you would have to remove the OOC rules twinking,buffing lowbies to all hell,following them around out of party and all that, because IC every one would be doing that now and its only that OOC rule stoping them, people dont mind much now because if you die you just respawn and go back leveling.

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================-<Cory ShadowFlame>-================
Risenlord-Shifter(OMG a Non-Dragon Shifter that can hold his own in PvE)

Should make this topic a Poll.

Edit: Just seen the other one.

I liked this idea:

Given the other topic has 40+ "alternatives" I can't imagine a poll being very informative at all.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Personally would totally love to see Permadeath. I think the fact that so many don't isn't surprising since it is the 5-year long drama with some constantly ongoing characters that contributed to the current situation. Most would just vote to have it perpetuate.

Too many people are too hung-up about their computer characters. If permadeth was ever going to be implemented, it would be better done by just implementing it suddenly. Those against it will never be able to prepare themselves for the horrific real-life consequences of losing an NWN chgaracter and no time or discussion will ever change that.

I don't see how anyone can feel a sense of glory with a character that can never ever die. It's just what Amia needs.

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Direct Connect spamming champion two years running.
"The pointer fingers are insured"

Okay, I believe I've already highlighted Aertheca's Permadeath Warzone, for those whom wish a final outcome to a conflict, (Everywhere else on the server was temporary death with xp and gold penalties).

But another major factor that I think worked well and made Clerics invaluable, was the removal of ALL raise dead scrolls in shops. In fact, you could only get Raise Dead scrolls from one place, and it was as nasty as the Bastion is here...(equivalent).

It makes death = respawn, even in PvP cases.

I'd be happy for this approach to be implemented here. It worked well there, you learnt to use darkness, heal pots, invisibility, HIPS and other life saving measures. Its PvM environment was extremely tough, a much higher level of challenge than anything I've seen here so Death, even in PvM, was discomforting but not so bad as to make you lose a character after 4 years work, if you chose not to lose it (entering the Permadeath Warzone was voluntary and eventually, it was removed I believe).

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Illithira Frostmaiden (Snow Elf) Guardian of the Frostfell
Elithiel Issatheerin (Shadow Elf) She who Lurks
Isolia Oussea'lylth (Sun Elf) Apprentice Wizardess

Interesting idea. But you have a DC and request system in place that makes 20 DCs spent on a piece of Armor or a spell a BIG investment. If something like forced permadeath would be introduced, you would have to change the DC system to something else. Maybe scrap them altogether and just give out XP rewards for RP. I would never want to part with one of my epics who has DC bought gear. It would be hurtful.

If you want to move towards more realism, remove the parts of the Job System that don't give the player any benefits and look at Arelith for inspiration. Make every Job do something useful, even if that means strong items (for a very high job level). And in turn remove most of the loot and substitute it with furs, teeth, eyes, meat, crafting components.

Permadeath is a big plus for immersion, particularly with the mindset of immortality that is so strong here. But there are other bits that make a realistic and fun environment.

If I can remove the Mythal System first.

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Say 'no' to JSBF!

Hell no.

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

Cut it off, burn it, hit it with a stick. It is a nice system, but if we're talking about introducing a more specialized crafting system where you have to make a choice to be good at one thing and suck at a lot of others, then it's just too beefy on top of that. Could still keep it for portal rods though.

One year ago, I was drunk and led my character's faction in an attempt to remove a then unremovable NPC city leader.

I was drunk, it was ill thought out, I failed. Fair enough.

If I had been given the option of continuing, with the possibility of permadeath, I may well have done so. I was drunk, as stated above. Lots of players have played their valuable characters under the influence. I would have woken up the next day and have been devastated. Really, honestly, gutted. It was bad enough knowing I'd screwed my character over, making perhaps the first ill thought out move in almost 4 years of playing her. If I'd killed her, it would have been 10 times worse.

I then didnt play for nearly a year, largely because my character was banished. I waited until the NPC leader was finally removed. I did not simply play another character in the mean time. I dabbled with other servers. Is this because I resemble my character too closely? Nope, it is because I have a very busy and demanding job, which doesnt allow me the time I used to have to get into a character the way I once did with Veh, who I established whilst I was a skiving PhD student. I think its quite insulting to accuse people of being their characters, when those characters are often murdering sociopaths.

Why am I writing this? Because it goes completely against Ron's whole idea that people who are "too" attached to their characters will not take consequences. I think I took the consequences. It is not a valid arguement to say that if you're too attached, you wont let anything bad happen to your char, the connection isnt there. We've had lots of people in this thread saying they would allow bad things to happen to their chars, just not permadeath.

It also gives my opinion against DM controlled permadeath. Unless there is some 48 hour cooling period, it is STILL a bad idea. How many times have each of us talked to someone who will never play their character again, because they are angry about something which has just happened? How many of them actually meant it in the cold light of day? People can be drunk, they can have lost their tempers, all kinds of reasons why they make a decision they will come to regret.

No forced permadeath, no matter who is pulling the trigger.

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Harsher PvP penalties or forced permadeath in any way related to PvP:
Sooner or later, likely sooner than later, people will start griefing others to permadeath. It's just that simple, you see rage-PvP's out of OOC issues even nowadays. You see PvP where the other party isn't even given the OOC or IC way out of it. And now we discuss adding more harsh penalties or permanent loss of a character you've dedicated much time and effort for?

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In-Game: guano

Remove Dev and I've no problem with removing the Mythal System.

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I play: Gage le Gris
Socially and recently politically Inept Knight of Xymor

This may be too much to work on, but...

What if the fauge plane was a place filled with areas and monsters based on the level your character is, and they have to fight their way back to life instead of just going back. If they die in the fauge plane, it's perma-deth.

Does that sound interesting?

Indeed, It is insulting; critique often is. But keep in mind we are not targeting anyone specific, neither are we saying that everybody that is attached to their characters suck. We are saying that some players, being extremely attached to their PCs, are hurting our RP environment, because they do not distinguish between themselves and their PC, or do so in a poor manner. Something which leads to the akward situation where if I, as DM or a player, subject their PC to hardship, I get the feeling I am harassing a fellow human being, or at least interupt/disrupt someone's RL social life. This causes endless drama and angst.
But: Anyone who knows that they are capable of staying cool while beeing attached to their PC, may very well dismiss the critique as irrelevant for themselves. Of course.

While true full frontral forced permadeath seems off the table by this point, I do hope that we manage to steer our RP culture towards something where players are not this used to being in 100% control over their PCs at all times. Where we are not just a bunch of individuals freely writing our novels in the same setting, but where true interaction can happen - without consent. This level of control, I believe, leads to a boring gaming environment where stories just roll on forever: no matter how many times the Cordor Guard catches Joe Schmoe the Crook, he returns the next day. At some point, people must ask: what's the point of catching him?

There's also the element of players being used to 100% control going into shock when a DM steps in to play the environment, effectively taking a small bit of their control away from them. Some people really freak out when this happens. And it burns out DMs, as we must spend endless hours on debating whatever horrendous issue some player feel is "destroying his life!!!!".

There is no win without risk.

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To err is human; to forgive divine, but VENGEANCE IS MINE!

I know I'm repeating myself from the first page, and I'm not 100% sure off course, but I hope it's a better idea, although it will require more time to implement then permadeath:

- The big thing on amia is everyone can achieve anything, which enables every powerbuild to reach every goal without taking any flak buildwise, which in turn made amia a powerbuilder server, why not minmax completely after all, doesn't hamper your progress in any field anyways.

In itsself this (powerbuilding) is not a bad thing, but it DOES lose you some RP'ers due to the fact that it's seen as a different thing then RP'ing / they can't keep up / ... you all know what I'm talking about. THAT discussion has passed the review plenty of times before.

So I think the server would benefit more if the class distribution would be a bit deeper, and the gap between certain abilities a bit more noticeable.

- Second part is Nwn is old. A lot of people get bored of the same stuff all the time. Adding CEP for example would allow developpers as well as players a whole new array of things. And in mean time make stuff look better too. The same 5 armors get kind of dull after 7-8 years.

- Combination of repetition with no need for interaction => everybody just rush-rush-rushes to the end and that gets dull, so they move to another server. (even if they have new areas on Bmia they could explore)


----------------------
In regards to actual permadeath:
permadeath will make DC's sort of useless, who wants to spend them on a char they can lose 2 days after the payment is made etc.

harsher penalties: OK (uncap gold, 10%; delevel all way untill 1XP above previous level taken)
character downtime: OK (no coming back for x hours/resets/days)
corpse looting: not OK unless a bank is made, and even then.
permadeath in DM quests (with advanced warning off course: you join this, you know death is permanent, chars get moved to a unaccessible vault): OK

(ps: made this post at work, dont know how many ppl i repeat or how long it took to type it completely so might be that it stopped making sense because i typed on it 30 seconds at a time)

EDIT:
didn't see this but boy does it belong here too


YES for crafting systems that need specialization and focus and experience.

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Click here for the navis & lukavi portraitpacks preview & download.

What the heck? What does that have to do with anything? Removing the Mythal system is to counter how overpowered things would be if you included significent development into the Job's system.

Removing Dev to remove the Mythal System makes no sense. Removing the mythal system could even help manage Dev if the new system has no method to include Keen.

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I keels u with my axe!

"Do ye know where the Holy-Flamin' Frost-brand Gronk-slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' woundin' an' returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-out-yer-bum is?"

I believe that's his point - the mythal system is absolutely needed right now to get fortitude saves up to counter dev crit. If dev crit is removed, so would the necessity.

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

Well I thought it would be assumed that a new crafting system would allow for the ability to get fort high enough.

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I keels u with my axe!

"Do ye know where the Holy-Flamin' Frost-brand Gronk-slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' woundin' an' returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-out-yer-bum is?"

Oi! We're approaching a new record in classy forum conduct here, and that on a touchy subject. Don't spoil it!

Back on topic: DEATH!

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To err is human; to forgive divine, but VENGEANCE IS MINE!

I'm glad to see forced permadeath off the table. I also agree with the idea that your character can be influenced by things which should not be avoidable. Cori calls it "roll with the punches", I call it "suck it up" and its a great thing. I realise its a big perception change, as we have been nannied here for many years. I've personally been good at it at times, less so at others. I take on board that I could do it better and my attitude is that I really want to try, but know I sometimes make less than perfect choices. Few situations are clear cut, and there's often something about a hostile encounter, whether with players or DMs, which strikes us as unfair. I'm an advocate of "suck it up", but also acknowledge that human nature means we don't always practice what we preach.

[salespitch] BTW, the above situation with Joe Schmoe would be solved by a political system which allowed PC councillors to ban others from cities [/salespitch]

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You know, after reading the couple of topics on this, I was saying to myself "I really don't want my character to perma-die".

But then I slapped myself.

This is a really good idea, as stated I'd love to have the challenge of -keeping alive- while hunting, because I do know if I die someone's going to res me and I'll continue.

I have big plans for one of my characters which will stur up PvP, PvM and PvFactions, and hell, if he dies in the process, I won't say getting him to level 30 will be a waste, I'm sure his name will go down in the books.

But hey, I don't really mind how it's implimented, I just love a challenge is all :3

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That is where you as a player can decide to perma that PC. You don't need a system for it. If you are willing to say that on your own than don't look for someone else to say "it's time". Don't know what you're planning but I say keep screenies and I look forward to the post of a fantastic death

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Guys I play:
Finng Meras
Joshua Steel
Daniel Makie
Celub Elubmiire
Tristan
Len'ionel

Well it's not that I want a system that tells me when it's time, it's just that there's no real risk to PvM or PvP at the moment.

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Well I don't plan to do it myself anytime soon but make your own danger then. PM a DM to work with you and say "Add this to the DM forum please. The next time this PC dies I'll send you another PM to have him deleted" and stick with it. Only way that's not dangerous is if you don't stick with it.

Edit:
And if you want to live /really/ dangerous do it as a public post. I'm sure that will get people's attention. "I'm posting this cause I intend to let my guy die. Help me make it a death to be remembered".

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Guys I play:
Finng Meras
Joshua Steel
Daniel Makie
Celub Elubmiire
Tristan
Len'ionel

The notion of personally self-imposed death penalties only speak to individualistic approach to RPing which we should want to end: the notion of "my story". The arguement might seem sound at first glance, but it doesn't really work if you think of RPing in a PW as a communal project, where the fate of your PC greatly impacts the fate of other PCs, where acomplishment, tied to risk, impacts your standing in an adventurer (or whatever faction you belong to) community, and where you truly feel immersed in a world where there are greater forces than your creative self at work.

Self-imposed death penalties also does not work as a source of suspense, because "suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. (...) An audience experience suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening." - Wikipedia, on suspense.

Self-imposed death penalties is like trying to tickle or scare yourself, or like balancing on a girder on the floor imagining that if you fall off, you descend into an endless abyss. It doesn't create the desired effect. For suspense to happen, there must be a solid distance between the situation where death occurs and the decision to actually bite the bullet. The decision must be baked into the system, so that death is not experienced as imposed by oneself but by the IC environment.

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To err is human; to forgive divine, but VENGEANCE IS MINE!

Arabel has a nice system. There are DM and player factions. The DM factions need application and have a set amount of slots. Those are the ones who get to advance the story and bath in the sunlight, but ultimately risk death in the events. I believe this could work for Amia too and would give the DMs tools to advance a general plot on the server.

Still I think permadeath is the solution for the +1 faction side char issue.

I'd rather have a faction that thrives for two months with a set of dedicated players and have a hell of a time and then have a fitting end, rather than a slow death rattle of side characters occupied elsewhere.

i liked the idea ruff had here of being stuck on the fugne plane. perhaps have the fugne plane redone to be when you are sent there you speak with the woman (the one you see at your first respawn) and you make a bargan with her, she will ask the pantheon to bring you back to the living in exchange for service and some of your life force. in other words XP & gold, and you must stay on fugne for a certain amount of time.

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Eldon Strongarm, Strongheart hin

, i still like the Permadeath "Lite" as Didi suggested.

Why? Because it inspires the "fear" into players, that if they're not carefull, they might not be able to play their toon for a week.

It would prevent people from Pvp'ing abhorridly much. And on the other hand makes it a lot more intresting sinc you've got something to loose, rather than your pride?

Any suggestion regarding the loss of items upon death i say "NO" to.



I would like the option to have banks, And the risk of dropping 'all' gold upon death. Makes it much more realistic. And inspires fear upon dying yet again. (Wich i think is what we're looking for, some dynamic enviroment)

Anything that resoults in a Temporary "Negative" Level seems very reasonable. Because - i do believe a character doesn't feel to well just getting his arms and legs chopped off, and then raised. He still feel the horrible pain, and his entire body would protest, hence he would move slowers(lower saves) and not be himself for a set amount of time.

I leave the PvM and PvP Balance issues to the Dms'

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Amia Minecraft Server Ip: vps1602.directvps.nl
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On the players in opposing factions stuff, I totally agree.

On the DMs providing the main story line and players the side plot, totally disagree. I think you have it totally back to front, and I think THAT'S the big thing I'd like to see changed about Amia. I think that is where the action and consequence part should come in, by giving players the ability to shape the world, both by their successes and their failures. I don't think these changes have to be huge module shifting affairs, I think they can be built in with a bit of automation, affecting things like shop prices and player access to various cities.

I realise this is a totally personal stance though.

[new addition to last post - just throwing some ideas out there]

As a little demonstration of how I think the city thing could work, solve the problem, and NOT be artificial, here's how I see it panning out....

The goodly cities have formed an allegiance, and are at war with many of the eviil cities. The evil cities are well organised, their dictators forcing everyone who lives there to be a citizen, and every citizen to contribute to the economy (via the job system somehow). The goodly cities are more populated, but less motivated (and probably having fewer power builds!). The citizenry of each city fight often when they encounter each other. Some, small skirmishes, some perhaps DM supervised bigger battles.

Every death takes a toll, but a death in battle even more so. Because the cities are aligned, all the aligned cities feel the cost. We can assume that the proportions of PC deaths to the opposing side represent the flow of the battle, and that the sides which are doing badly feel it economically. This is represented by prices in the shop going up greatly.

The war is going badly for the good guys. Shop prices have increased by 500%! Those who are citizens of these cities cannot get into the cheaper, evil cities. They are banished, by being at war with them. What effect does this have?

There is at any point someone who is clearly winning. The good cities need to do something to break the cycle. Either they must make terms with their enemies, or shape up, making their citizenry pull together in the war effort. There might be a loss of citizens to more neutral cities, who are not involved in the war, at the same time as an attempt by the city leaders to bring the neutral states on board to assist with the war effort. Some of the alliance members might crack, and sue for their own peace. This might end up with some of the goodly cities fighting a war on two fronts against their former allies!

You might have a group of lazy rich people who don't involve themselves with their home city. This might lead to them being told to shape up or ship out by the rulers of that city. Maybe they would get banished, and this might lead to a certain city specialising in accepting the idle and neutral rich. These would basically be the players who didn't to opt in to the system, but even they wouldn't be able to escape consequences completely. Maybe the cities that had thrown them out would banish them, or even go to war with them? This would limit their travel and shopping opportunities.

All of this could hopefully be done without any DM intervention (not including the maHOOsive amount of scripting work). It would mean that the players were having a real effect, shaping things. It would give players that sense of either victory, or defeat, and have meaning. It wouldn't mean every city would need to be rebuilt every day because it had been blown up.

I see a potential problem with the cost of items to new players, if you have things tying in to the prices in the shops too much. I'd like to see some way around them feeling the pain quite so much. Maybe, you could have it so that people are "forced" to be citizens by a certain level, but until then, are free to travel as they please? I'm sure there must be a solution. Other than that, I see a system like this -adding- a lot, without doing much to frighten a lot of people off, so working within Disco's conservative/daring schema. It would also actually -remove- a lot of stress from the DMs, IF people adopt the "roll with the punches" / "suck it up" attitude, when they get banished, or their city goes to war, or the shop prices sky rocket.

Anyway, obviously this is only my personal vision, based on a very cursory experience with Arelith's system. I don't know if its very close to the one there or not, as I didn't much get into teh mechanics of it there, having only a couple of minor occassional characters. I'm not sure whether its something that would appeal to others, and I don't know how much of it even possible. I don't know whether it addresses the same problems as the permadeath idea tried to, or whether its totally off topic.

Thankyou for letting me witter on, its passing my time well and taking my mind off waiting and sitting here bored.

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Didi: DM faction just mean the DMs set a general plot and ensure the plot goes on, its of course player driven. Application basis on that really has worked out on Arabel for years.

Having read the compiled quotes in the other topic, which appears to be now locked, I'm gonna take an idea from Arelith: In addition to these alternatives to permadeath, you might introduce the choice as to whether your character is 'marked' or not upon creation, that is to say that if they choose this option then their character, after a certain amount of deaths, perhaps 10, is perma killed. However, should this option be taken, it will prove faster to level up. In this case, you might have to nerf the xp gained by monsterinos.

Take the non-permadeath slow way myself ... who cares who levelled up faster a month ago?

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

One of the things I love about Amia over Arelith is that you dont have to grind and grind and grind to get to max level here. On Arelith, I used to find myself going out hunting for about oooh, 80% of my time? I never had a high level character, and this really did seem to limit my rp opportunities there.

On Amia, the time and investment in levelling is much more to my liking. I wouldn't want to swap that just to make the 10 death XP increase meaningful. I think the XP rate on Amia is MWAH!
*makes a circle between forefinger and thumb and kisses it*

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Then maybe just keep the option there for players that want to go that route regardless, for whatever reason.

You miss the point of the original post from Kjetta.

I'm a role player, not a screen writer. I play the character, not write their story. I may write their backstory, where they came from, their dreams, asperations.. but I never forget that the DMs are the screenwriters and directors. It's my job to act and react to the situations that my role is placed into according to how I believe they would react.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.

No. Forced perma death is a stupid idea. Come up with more interesting plots instead of trying to force people to play the way you want to play. You are losing players because there is nothing to keep them interested here, and potentially forcing them to kill their PCs and thus the one thing that would keep them here is the silliest thing you could do.

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For what it is worth I'll post my thoughts and experiences here, you may just find them insightful:

Well, the bulk of my expereince with NWN, at least what I consider to be the most important of it, was from playing on, then DM'ing, and finally hossting a perma death server. This server was perma death from the day of it's creation. To boil down years of experience there in to a few words this is what I saw -

There was some of the best roll playing I ever witnessed in an online game. I believe this happened for basicly two reasons. 1- All the players that were interestd in "power builds" and "lone wolfing" found that for the most part it could not be done there and so they left. 2- The players that were left and stuck it out were the ones that were more intrested in the rewards of roll playing than they were in the rewards of looting.

Eventually though the player base shrunk to such small level that it became hard to find some one to actually RP with. Why? Because the perma death rules simply pushed to many people away. Even the people that liked perma death eventually found that it alienated them. There is a time in every characters life that you are going to roll a 1 when it really counts, and losing the connection you had to the character is a hard thing when you have what can amount to years of time put in to building that virtual life, and its just plain hard to start all over from scratch after a loss like that.

So, like I said, that is what I saw. The short version: Perma death will quickly drive away ass monkeys while keeping the better roleplayers, for the short term. Eventually though it will drive away all but the most hard core players. It's almost as if character perma death is a slow perma death for the server, which I am sure no one here wants.

So, how do you reach the ideal balance between not to light (my character is immortal and will eventually reach level 30 because it is inevitable) and to heavy (man this is the third character I've made today, I keep getting rappy rolls and dieing)? Well, I would suggest some sort of heavier penalty then currently exists. Just what that penalty is, or would be, is I am sure a debate that can rage on for years and years. After reading the two threads on this I will list a few that I think just might work.

1. When respawning (important note- this does not include being raised/ressurected) you lose 10% experience (yes this may and will at times result in a level loss). This will usually mean that one respawn will not cost you a level (unless you've just recently leveled up) but that two successive respawns would. To keep people from using server resets to get a free res... well either do not allow them in the entre area, or have character locations saved and characters are sent to the last saved location on re-entry.

2. Another idea - When respawning have the character sent to limbo, and characters can only be removed from limbo when the server resets. Some sort of temporary (undropable) token that is put in the characters inventory and removed on a server reset. This would not apply any direct concequence to the character (like ability loss or level loss) but would make dieing much more undesireable.

3. The loss of one random item with a respawn. Here I would suggest that the item is removed, but not dropped to elminate people from greifing another character to get "loot drops". Not really my favorite idea, but it might work and it is a penalty that may make people not want to die.

I would point out that with any of these three ideas I do suggest that this is only done when a character "respawns", not when a character is raised or ressurected. Those promote role play, and that after all is the point of the game is it not?

Well, I would say that that was my 2 cents, but it seems like it would be more worth a buck fifty .

Good day to you all, and I'll see you in game.