View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0003133 | Valley 1 | Suggestion | Mar 28, 2011 3:31 pm | Jan 25, 2012 2:49 pm | |
| Reporter | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | |||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | feature for later | Resolution | open | ||
| Summary | 0003133: Funeral ceremonies. | ||||
| Description | From Erik: I just had a thought on the perma-death aspect. Have you decided where the next character is going to start from? Likely from whatever settlement has been built by the player previously, but wouldn't it be cool if the new character started the game at the old character's wake or funeral? I don't know how hard it would be, but it would be really cool if the style/size of the event and those who turn out for it are determined by what deeds the deceased had done in life. It could range anywhere from the new character lost in a crowd of people honoring the passing of a great man and looking upon his/her statue and reading the many accolades and deeds he/she's credited with etched all over their gigantic hedge-stone, to the new character standing alone over a lonely, aloof rock in the graveyard with a crude engraving on stating "here lies 'name' born on a Monday." or something innocuous/bland. Or if they're really evil or something maybe some turn out to spit on his/her grave or thank god that they're dead, etc. Anyway, just something I think that wouldn't really change much to the main part of the game, just a little added feature for those who had grown attached to their previous characters for whatever reason and would like some kind of closure -- a bookend to the character they had previously spent so many hours with. I think it could add more of that ceremonial feel for the death of the previous character that the graveyard already captures to a lesser extent. Of course the player could just lead the new character out of the ceremony (or lack thereof) at anytime they chose to if they didn't care either way, so it would just be an optional thing to be enjoyed by those players with a fondness for that kind of detail. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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My thought is that this would be a great feature for sometime in alpha or beta. It would be a good way to set up a bit of NPC interaction in a reasonably simple way, and would be a cool way to make use of the Deeds system when that's in place. |
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My intention has always been that if the new character already exists when it is chosen, the player simply takes it over in-place. No other change needed (probably set the new character to max health, but don't have to do anything else). And if it's a new character either pick a settlement or maybe the wilderness near a settlement. If necessary, good ol' world-coordinate 0,0 can always work as a last fallback if no other "this is a remotely survivable and reasonable place to respawn" options are available. But generally preferring something very near the place of death. If the character (existing or not) spawned in the middle of the funeral event, that funeral event would have to spawn instantly as well, which means that players who happened to be wandering in the area would see it "poof" into existence; or if they were walking near the NPCs that were supposed to be at the funeral they would see those NPCs vanish suddenly, etc. Which also gets into the whole issue of any single event having an effect on chunks that may or may not have any characters in them (though we can dodge the pain of that if we just keep all NPCs in memory all the time and have the load-chunk routine check if it needs to not load an NPC because it's elsewhere). Anyway, it does sound like a very cool idea, but we'll have to think through the actual way it's done a bit more. My guess is that the funeral would need to be "scheduled" upon the death of the first character (or the spawn of the new one, I guess), and it would happen near the new character's location. NPCs in loaded chunks would walk to the edge of their chunk and disappear, and then at the scheduled time they'd appear near the edge of the funeral's chunk and walk towards the proper point and stand there. The new character would be told about this or perhaps spawn in this place and have the "scheduled time" be pretty much ASAP so they don't have to wait around, etc (it could display some internal monologue or whatever and the other folks would probably be there before that was done). Now to figure out how many Tom Sawyer jokes can be wrung out of this ;) |
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Right, in terms of going to where the other character already was, I totally agree as a general concept. In terms of the funeral, perhaps that happens in a specific sort of building that is normally closed for business except when someone has just died -- like a "funeral parlor" or something. Of course, moving all the NPCs there who would be visiting is something that would be tricky, to be sure, in multiplayer. I agree with you about making it a scheduled event that players can come to, though -- that might work out so that we can incorporate this idea while maintaining the realistic flow of time. Lol on Tom Sawyer -- for sure. :) |
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I really do like the idea; won't be trivial to work out but could go a long way towards establishing an atmosphere that the game really takes it's own world "seriously". One of the recent questions we got mentioned our warning to not get too attached to a specific character... and in a sense that's true. But on the other hand it's more that we DO want people to grow attached to their character, and to care when the consequences of their actions lead that character to their demise. Not that it should even always feel like a failure, depending on what they accomplished with that life. So death should definitely be as much as an event as we can feasibly make it. Depending on how the Deeds system goes, having a sort of "your life flashing before your eyes" sequence right after getting struck down could be very interesting. There's a world of difference between "you never lose" and "you never experience loss". And hopefully that can be a motivating factor to move forward with the new character. |
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Right -- I am completely in agreement with all of that. And really, I think that a general support for these sort of "NPC-involved events" would be a good thing. Events such as mourning the loss of a hero, or celebrating the death of a bad guy, etc. If your character was really a murderer, maybe there's a celebration of his death just as their would be for a villain, along with the associated funerals for the deaths of his victims. If you go and mass-murder a whole town, maybe a neighboring town has a mass funeral for all of them, as well as sending out some sort of posse after you (that could also be another "scheduled event" of a sort -- when the posse catches up to you, wherever you are, and tries to kill you). We need the general hopes and deeds systems in place before any of this happens, and a lot more vertical development in general, but you mentioned how a lot of our current horizontal programming challenges will likely be done by June or so at this rate, and this sort of thing could extend the scope in a non-artwork/world-building affecting way. That's a plus, because then the world is feeling more alive based on work you'd be doing with this, while I'd still be able to focus on making the world in general larger with the artwork and related in my area. I think that could be a good divide on things of this nature once we hit that stage of the project, depending on what else comes up in the meantime. |
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Yea, it's a good category of thing to keep on the pile of things we could do :) |
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Indeed, for sure. I think I prefer this over the stuff like the defense events, though, because it makes for the world to seem more alive and meaningful. So that puts it close to the top of that pile for me, anyway, is what I mean. :) |
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Just catching up and I agree with everything said on both the potential benefits and issues we'll have on our hands by adding a feature like this. It's something that hasn't really been explored in too many games I can think of, and I think it could be a real eye-catcher and something that could really provide another word of mouth spark for the brand of gamer that would have interest in it. In real life, when death becomes (or threatens to become) an active presence many people tend to avoid confronting or out right ignore the situation, instead of embracing it as just another step in the process of our existence. That's usually due to the person's wish to somehow avoid dealing with the inevitable grieving process. In that way, I feel the ceremony and subsequently the game really could act as a "support group" for players who have sunk a lot of hours into a character. Even more so if the death is untimely (what death isn't?) or if it happens sort of unceremoniously or by a fumble that could have been avoided. "This character could still be alive" says the player, but they're not and the only way to cope is to appreciate what the now dead character had achieved in life by speaking with NPC's who knew of them, participating in the ceremony of passing and perhaps, if the player chooses to, continue to construct their vision of a better, safer world (if that was the kind of character they were.) MMORPG communities have held massive in-game gatherings for both fictional and actual funeral processions. I'm not sure if we're looking for anything as intense as that can get, but it does certainly add to that living, breathing world feel we're hoping to infuse in players. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 28, 2011 3:31 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | New Issue | |
| Mar 28, 2011 3:32 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0011538 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 3:32 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => feature for later |
| Mar 28, 2011 3:49 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0011540 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 4:01 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0011541 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 4:19 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0011542 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 4:27 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0011543 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 4:32 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0011544 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 5:28 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0011546 | |
| Mar 28, 2011 6:43 pm | cupogoodness | Note Added: 0011552 | |
| Jan 25, 2012 2:49 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:28 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - General Idea => Suggestion - General |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - General => Suggestion |
