The Mana World Forums

We could have the potions and such drop players to 1 HP instead of kill them if they're HC. That will at least mean they'll only be used in safe areas.

GARRETTtheGREAT wrote:some aspects of the game are designed with unlimited player deaths in mind. monster oil, grimoire, resist poison, and dementia potion all have a good chance of instant death regardless of player skill or level. the game should still be playable for hardcore, but just much harder.

That's an important point. Game balance currently assumes there is little penalty to dying.

Hard Core characters probably shouldn't go afk in town, either.

Any ideas on what the "afterlife" would look like?

Ideally, there will be pretty minimal (zero) new tiles, since there will never be many players here. I was thinking maybe an endless sandstorm desert (when you reach one extreme end of the map, you're warped to the other side) for sort of a purgatory/neutral themed afterlife. The concept of good and evil isn't really used in the game, so I don't think there should be a separate "heaven" and "hell" for characters, but maybe down the road if there are more choices it could be interesting. I think PVP should always be on to allow "dead" players at least something to do. Spawns would be forbidden to prevent dead players from gaining more exp.

I think it would also be interesting if there could be an adjacent map where living players could see the dead, but not interact with (ie casting spells from living to dead characters). Perhaps a map "below" the graveyard?

Grayscale woodland village, with no npcs and no music, attempting to leave the town just ends with you entering the opposite end of the town. Eventually we can make a proper tileset for it, but this would be a simple way to get the idea across for now. I remember Fother experimenting with replacing the player sprites with skeletons (might be useful here)

Jaxad0127 wrote:We could have the potions and such drop players to 1 HP instead of kill them if they're HC. That will at least mean they'll only be used in safe areas.

Some of the deaths like in Blue sage or Sagatha are conceived as a kind of random penalty, there is a long way back. if it is only a HP reduction the effect is broken. If there is a flag to say player is hard core, these quests have to be modified to take it into account and replace death with 50% HP reduction and a warp to the nearest soul menhir for example

Nard wrote:]
Some of the deaths like in Blue sage or Sagatha are conceived as a kind of random penalty, there is a long way back. if it is only a HP reduction the effect is broken. If there is a flag to say player is hard core, these quests have to be modified to take it into account and replace death with 50% HP reduction and a warp to the nearest soul menhir for example

That's actually a nice solution, simulate normal player death without the hardcore character actually dying in auto death situations.

GARRETTtheGREAT wrote:Any ideas on what the "afterlife" would look like?

Ideally, there will be pretty minimal (zero) new tiles, since there will never be many players here.

Currently the bot checking map is used as a stand-in. Maybe use that map, but replace "BOT CHECK AREA" with "GAME OVER"?

Crush wrote:

GARRETTtheGREAT wrote:Any ideas on what the "afterlife" would look like?

Ideally, there will be pretty minimal (zero) new tiles, since there will never be many players here.

Currently the bot checking map is used as a stand-in. Maybe use that map, but replace "BOT CHECK AREA" with "GAME OVER"?

Not a bad idea.

I think there should be some, however small, amount of new content after death as a reward to the players that even attempt hardcore mode. Whether it's a new area made of existing tiles, an NPC to talk to, etc. it would be a nice touch for the players that die at level 2 from lag or a PK while AFK in town. I still think there should be PvP in the afterlife. Since the respawn point is on the same map and there will (after a while) be a ton of dead characters in the afterlife, it would be like a Hurnscald PvP event 24/7.

If there is life after life, the place for it should be the graveyard, the crypt or their image in a parallel (or perpendicular) world; Unless you want the newly unded players fight as skels, ladyskels, zombies, fallens or even spectres, poltergeists or wisps, depending on the level they reached, with actual mobs until a kind non-HC character delivers them from their last link from the "real" mana world.

Any particular reason hardcore mode wasn't developed further?

Len wrote:Any particular reason hardcore mode wasn't developed further?

Just the usual.

I can alter what I have a little bit and bring it onto the testing server. I still got the code and adding a game over map isn't hard.

Though I got more promising projects to take care of first ...