[DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

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WildX
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[DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by WildX »

We have been discussing ways of improving the mechanics for respawning after death and for fast-travelling long distances. This is my idea:

Respawn
After dying, the player enteres the "spirit world" from a Soul Menhir that anchors their life and prevents it from passing permanently. The player is now in spirit form, they can walk faster, are immune to damage and cannot cast or attack anything. Their entire purpse is to walk back to the location in which they died and recover their body, so that they may respawn and continue their lives. Should they choose not to do this, because the walk back would be too tedious or unnecessary, they can also choose to respawn directly at the Soul Menhir, taking heavy damage to their equipment (which will eventually need reparations) and an attack/defense malus which makes it inconvenient to get straight back into a fight.

This mechanic prevents the player from using death as a means of fast travel, unless they wish to incour in an undesirable penalty. However, it is necessary, in order to make death something the player wishes to avoid, to make sure that a certain walking distance is there after they die; otherwise dying would be meaningless. Therefore the player still has to walk a certain distance, depending on where they died and how far the nearest Soul Menhir is. The fact that they walk in the spirit world opens up endless possibilities; not just increasing walking speed, but also possible side-quests and new content to be had in the spirit world which in truth would be nothing but a version of the current maps in greyscale with a fog effect.

Fast-travel
Note: for lore purposes, I would love to replace Towels with a shard of stone (akin to a Hearthstone) that is related to the Soul Menhir and can be explained within the story.

The stone can be bound to a bed, which the player can then fast travel to when they wish. Using the stone triggers a cooldown, and changing which bed it is bound to costs a price which depends on the location of the bed. The stone is a commodity and it is not imperative to have it from the beginning, therefore there could also be a low-level questline to obtain this stone in the early stages of the game.

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tomminator
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by tomminator »

I like this idea and the dead as travel problem it tries to solve. At first i tought, the players will hate this. When players die all they want is to play again as fast as possible. but I guess the second option will solve this. As long as they can re spawn a few times before they need repairs i think it will be okay.
Also maybe dying can also be discouraged by reducing the health to only 1 instead of half so the players need to use more potions or need to sit and heal longer. This is probably easier to implement than your proposal, but also less fancy i guess.

about the stones instead of the towels, it sounds good to me, i never really use them anyways.
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by wushin »

+1
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Micksha
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by Micksha »

I really like the respawn concept, go for it! Will the hotel beds then be useless?
I will miss the towels as they are great homage to Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy - they also may fit to the hotel beds maybe? But I wouldnt mind replacing them with something more related to the Soul Menhirs if they will still be present.
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WildX
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by WildX »

The Micksha wrote:I really like the respawn concept, go for it! Will the hotel beds then be useless?
I will miss the towels as they are great homage to Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy - they also may fit to the hotel beds maybe? But I wouldnt mind replacing them with something more related to the Soul Menhirs if they will still be present.
Beds will still be used for fast travel. The towels should stay, it's silly to not use the icon. We could repurpose them for a quest or something.

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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by Amarynthus »

I'd worry that this might discourage players from taking on challenging battles - especially Crypt battles, Candor, Cindy and the like. If a player dies early in the battle they have to walk as a "spirit" all the way back to the chamber, but wait outside until the battle is done before they can retrieve their body, only to again find themselves in a dangerous area that they might not be able to get out from.

With this, taking on a challenge and finding you aren't ready for it could make it very impractical to continue playing the game at all.

I two possible results: rage quit, or drastically overly cautious play.
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by 4144 »

Very bad idea.
Player will lost too many time in each respawn.
Players will try avoid useless games like this.
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by WildX »

4144 wrote:Very bad idea.
Player will lost too many time in each respawn.
Players will try avoid useless games like this.
Players have had to walk back to their locations for years when the Soul Menhir was the respawn point. They still have to walk from the random locations in which they respawn now. Downtime after dying is already a thing. This would not increase the time, it would just make it more interesting.

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wushin
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by wushin »

4144 wrote:Very bad idea.
Player will lost too many time in each respawn.
Players will try avoid useless games like this.
Its a World of Warcraft mechanic. You are clearly in the wrong players would avoid games like that. WoW still has millions of people.
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by amaranth »

That thing with the spirit world is a compelling idea, but I second Amarynthus's concerns.

If you die during cindy or candor, you won't be able to respawn, but locked in the spirit world, and unless this is in fact a whole new world, you probably run out of things to do in there pretty soon. Because you need to get to your dead body, you probably wouldn't want to go very far because then you have to walk back the entire way (or is there gonna be a travel system in spirit world? Because that would kinda defeat the purpose). A candor can take quite some time, so what are you gonna do while you are stuck outside the cave, but inside the spirit world?

If in fact the spirit world offers enough things to do for you to happily stay there, imagine you forget where your dead body is located. I can totally see myself forgetting that in like 30 seconds. Another scenario: while you hang out in spirit world, a server update changes the map or one of its warp points and you can't get to your dead body anymore.

On further notice, I just hate the idea of equipment being able to break, let alone it breaking as a penalty. The GUI handling of anything inventory-related is annoyingly painful, and I don't see myself going to some dumb NPC just to perform the same repetitive drag'n'drop moves after every time I went farming, just in order to get them in usable condition again. There is not a lot of weapons in the game, and even in RPGs with lots of weapons, like Elder Scrolls or whatever, that was the part I enjoyed the least.

What does 'using death as a means of fast travel' even mean and why does it have to be prohibited? Tbh I don't really get the point here. Could somebody explain? I still like the spirit world idea, tho.
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Re: [DIS] Respawn and fast-travel mechanincs

Post by wushin »

Amarynthus wrote:I'd worry that this might discourage players from taking on challenging battles - especially Crypt battles, Candor, Cindy and the like. If a player dies early in the battle they have to walk as a "spirit" all the way back to the chamber, but wait outside until the battle is done before they can retrieve their body, only to again find themselves in a dangerous area that they might not be able to get out from.

With this, taking on a challenge and finding you aren't ready for it could make it very impractical to continue playing the game at all.

I two possible results: rage quit, or drastically overly cautious play.
We could plan content to allow ghost players to respawn into a combat instance at the door.
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