Hi, In Diablo 2 I really like the system of hardcore characters. I think that this adds a lot to the game. Pretty much anyone can complete the game normally if they are willing to spend a couple of weeks dieing and running back to their corpse, but completing the game in hardcore is not so easy. However, I think that instead of offering hardcore as a reward once you have finished the game the choice should be available from the start. Let me explain how I plan on implementing player combat/death in my game. When you create your character you will have two choices. Normal mode, where you can''t actually die, or Hardcore mode, where you can die. If you are playing with a normal character and your health points reach zero you will be knocked out. You will wake up either in a nearby settlement''s hospital or another designated safezone a few minutes later. In game you will be told that an NPC found you and brought you here. You will have lost any equiptment you had on you (it was too heavy for the NPC to carry). If you are playing hardcore its simple. If you get to zero hit points you are dead. Ideally I want to make it slightly harder to die as a hardcore character. I was thinking that maybe you get knocked out and have to be healed by someone (player or NPC) within a certain time (maybe 5 minutes). However if you were out adventuring by yourself, this means laying on the floor waiting for five minutes to see if a friendly NPC comes past :-) What do you think? Is letting people chose normal/hardcore a good idea? What advantages can I give to hardcore players (other than peer respect in game) to make more appealing? What do you think about the way I plan on dealing with combat with normal players? Thanks for your time, Alan

This is crazy hardcore Silvermyst talking...

If I were to design a battle system for a CRPG that involves permanent death, I would think I''d do it like this:

When you start out, it''s easy to die.
Gaining in power, it becomes harder and harder to really die.

What this does, is force players to be VERY careful initially, but become a little more reckless later on. Still, you can never get to reckless because even hardened veterans can die.

Basically, I would make it so that veteran characters can take a few more hits, so that they have longer to decide if they want to run away or not (I personally think that escaping should be a much bigger factor in games)

Well, I''m sticking to my own system of permanent dead. When you are killed, the light goes out. End of story... Well, since my game is taking place in the future, others might have a while to revive you, but after that, you are a goner...

However, the game will not end... In stead of just respawning somewhere, you will get a ''new'' character. New in the sense that you haven''t played as him/her. But you will allready know this character... It might be an NPC whom you encountered once, someone whom lives in your town, perhaps someone whom saw you die...

And the game goes on and on However, it isn''t smart to die, because you cant continue your quest... Heck, none of your old friends are likely to even know you...

Ronin..... what if the person playing your game saves all the time? So when they die, they can just reload their game and get their old character back.

IMO, that makes for bad game play. You''ve definately gotta do something about the save thing. Your game sounds cool, though.

-Forcas

"Elvis is alive. He is Barney the purple dinosaur. He is the pied piper that leads our children into the wages of sin and eternal damnation."

I personally wouldn''t allow free saves in my game. You can save at sertain times or at certain places. Or, you can have an inteligent autosave system, that saves at some preset time/event. That way you can achieve the thrill of fear of dying, or at least get near that feeling.

Also, I don''t quite like the "restart-in-the-town-naked-afted-death" system. There should be a script that checks if you are dead for sure, or just knocked out and robbed. I.e. you duel a cat-folk, who, by chance, slips his poison dagger by your defense and scratches you on the shoulder. Then you are stunned, robbed by the catfolk, who won''t have the courage to kill you, so you wake up later with no money/weapon, but armor still on and you have some time to take care of the poison wound or your stamina drops to 0 (zero) and this time you WILL see that dead can dance.

But if you are dueling a Walking Stone, he has no use for your money/armor/weapon so he smashesh you to bits just because he''s dumb enough not to see you died 5 minutes ago...

Just ideas...


Boby Dimitrov
boby@azholding.com