I happened to stumble upon this article on MMORPG.com:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/478

It touches upon some very interesting ways to make smart (i.e. not reckless) play more appealing to players. It's not the holy grail of online gaming, but at least in my opinion, he has more than just a point.

Dear guide person, I do feel this belongs in general. If you think it doesn't, I can't tell you not to move it, but I can ask you not to. So, please let this stay in general :)

Interesting article, and well worth reading! I like most of the ideas, but I think the "extras" concept has a single hole in it: What keeps your designated extras doing what you want?

You'd end up with 4 real players doing the quest, and 20 extras, 10 of which are fighting, 6 saying "HOW U LVL", and the other four have decided to wander off and do their own thing. Needless to say, you lose the battle to your opponent, who had the luck to draw 20 extras who knew what was up.

Perhaps a counter of how many hours of play you have, or the choice to spawn as an extra into a combat or free pool would patch this.

Rather than the "main/extra" idea, I prefer an afterlife, or, in our case, a recuperation phase to death (injuries caused by the manner in which you became separated from your ship). A phase that limits you to rebuilding yourself to a point that you are physically or psychologically able to re-enter the rigors of space flight. Maybe through a series of missions in-station where you have to load out-going trade ships and/or perform exercises.
Until leveling is changed from what we know it as now, the majority of permadeath ideas are unusable but, an interim phase is definitely doable.

I haven't RTFA yet, but here's a thought I had on how permadeath could work in VO: explain the survive-ship-booming by saying the pilot (usually) isn't physically in the ship, but is controlling the ship remotely, their physical body is in their home station. Then change the "Set home station" button so that when the player is at the station interface for their home station, it says "Leave home station", and in all other stations is greyed out, unless the player has clicked "Leave home station" on their home station. When the player clicks "Leave home station" they physically board their ship, and can then choose "Set home station" at any station they dock with - but if their ship is destroyed while they don't have a home station, they die, permanently.

This would require players to plan ahead when they want to change home stations (a good thing, IMO), and while in the process of changing home stations they would have to be very careful not to die; but this introduction of permadeath wouldn't significantly impact the combat style we currently have.

Having any kind of permanet deaths in vendetta online would never ever work. It will never happen. period.

(p.s. Devs wanna back me up on this? Or am I wrong?)

In a mission tree I am compiling if you lose too much the tree will say game over and you'll have to start over.

I believe in death!

to an extent

Sure, you'll think it amusing to risk your chara until the day you roidwarp and oops, it's back to Square One. Bad bad BAD idea, Beloach. Permanent Death simply doesn't belong in MMORPGs, much less in one with pervasive PvP, such as this one. On the other hand, the "reward for living" system makes for a good idea, but it's kinda already implicit in our mission system: you die, you fail, you get no bonus XP. In order to get that XP, you have to finish the mission alive.

In the entire time I've played VO I can count the number of times I've roidwarped on the fingers of one hand. But I can't count the number of times I've died from roidwarping (ya can't count zero). It's really easy to not die if you don't want to.

I agree with Beolach, I have had the same experience (never died from roidwarping).

Lucky you, in my year and a half of play I've died from roidwarping at least five times, and with permadeath all you need is one. That would be like taking, say, Stepehen King's Dark Tower series and having Roland of Gilead slip on a sidewalk and break his neck when he first steps outside one day, halfway through the story. Totally anticlimatic, and totally wrong.

Not to mention the leading cause of newbie death is crashing against a station; Even if I'm just 2/2/2/x/x, having to suddenly do it all over again is going to make me not bother with it again. Look at it from the "new player" side, not the "new alt" one.

may be you could keep your stats and money but need to build another char... would be like reincarnation in another full build body...
That would also make PvP sectors die as ppl should care more about dying ( that is exactly the opposite of the actual PvP spirit)
Finally it's not really a good idea...

AKA Ecka Estenk.
Hmm, If you were permanantly dead you wouldn't be able to cancel your DD in favour of guild software . Which would mean that.... erm.... How do I delete this before the devs see it ... sorry , Ill shut up .

I think maybe you didn't understand what I meant as to how permadeath could work in VO, jex. The vast majority or the time dying would not be permanent, it would be exactly the way it is now. The only time you would be at risk of dying is after you moved out of your home station, and haven't moved into a new home station yet. So the only time anyone would have to worry is while moving to a new home station; and while yes, it would still be possible to die in that situation, I consider the odds to be very, very much in favor of living. But if you're not willing to risk it, you wouldn't have to, as long as you're willing to stay in the one home station.

Actually, the reason I originally thought of this was not primarily to introduce permadeath, but actually for a few reasons:
1) To answer the question "How do we survive our ships exploding?" This has been discussed several times, and IMO the best explanation is that we're not physically in the ship, but rather are controlling it remotely.
2) To somewhat counter the /explode insta-travel (semi-)exploit. It would actually still be possible, but would require more planning ahead to setup the home station, as the player would have to leave their current home station before they could set a new home station.
3) Somewhat related to number 2, it would introduce a higher level of strategy to the game, as when players decided they wanted to start flying a different ship that isn't sold at their current home station, they would have to do a bit more planning ahead to move rather than just clicking on "Make home station" whenever the impulse takes them.
4) It would give "home station" more meaning. Currently all it is is where we end up after our ship booms. With this, it would be where our body physically is while we're remotely piloting our ships, which explains why the home station is where we end up after our ship explodes.

> Not to mention the leading cause of newbie death is crashing against a station

First, even if newbie's did die that way, they wouldn't be permanently dead, unless they did it after moving out of their home station & before moving into a new home. Second, I would wager that that is NOT the leading cause of newbie death.

The only thing I'm going to say about your comparison to novels is apples & oranges.

Nope, that wouldn't work well for vendetta at all, sorry to burst your bubble beolach, but this is space quake (aka : twich combat) what if someone pirates you as you're moving from your station? what if someone blockades the sector, what if the hive attacks? what if what if...

Having something like that'd restrict the stuff the devs can put into the game. Sorryz

[big stamp of Noes11!!]

I don't think the ideas of the article can be directly applied to Vendetta. But the fact that this is SpaceQuake (which it isn't, by the way) is not the reason, at least not in my opinion. As the article said, however, maybe it would be better to reward life, instead of penalize death. This could (but doesn't have to) take the following form:

Encouragement of combat in groups, rather than solo, since you have better chances of survival. The problem with this is to find a reliable wingman (reliable both time- and skillwise).

Of course, it is far easier to penalize death, for example in the way that RelayeR suggested. Or, you could make it so that with every 100 or so deaths, your respawn time increases permanently by 10 seconds or so. These numbers are completely arbitrary and hold no relation to reality.

Hm, I still dont think pentlizing death other then the following is needed;
having equipment we gotta earn and it gets better over time (Say, it gets better everytime you killsomeone with it) that'd help, cuz' you dont want it to explode.

Or having equpment that you have to do missions for, and 'craft' that'd work pretty well too.
if you are going to add a respawn time you'd need to make it so noobs dont suffer any pentalty; make it un-effecteve until like level 5 in combat or something.

Hmm... Cunjo hasn't been around here to yell that this would only encourage running, how dare you suggest it...

Oh man, are we are really flying ships in this universe by remote control?

Hmmmm.
Check this out then.

http://www.uav.com/jobfair/

/me thinks of changing careers.

Maybe a good reward for life?

zamzx, noobs won't have 100 deaths that fast, so they wouldn't have any reload time. By the time you have 100 deaths (if you're careful), you should be well beyond combat level 5.

As for the killing for equipment... if people explode to deny you the kill, what then?

i always figured there was some sort of edjection system in place on our ships, to save the pilot in the event the ship sustains criticle damage.

anyway, i'd rather not see perma death, so much as the ability to be captured by the enemy.

i think i recomended it before but here is my thought. Every cap ship and station should have the ability to recover escape pods. on cap ships there would be a toggle that allowes them to trun on or off recovering escape pods. if it is toggled on then whenever a fighter explodes in the same sector as that ship the pilot will respawn onboard the cap ship. the pilot can then either necociate his/her own release, or play a 'break out of the brig" mini game. if he/she escapes from the brig he gets a gov-bus and has to escape to saftey (not an easy task). alternatively if he/she is let out of the brig by the cap ship owner, he/she can select an available fighter (what constitutes available is another matter) or at the very least a gov bus and be on his/her way. if a fighter explodes and there are noe cap ships recovering fighters in the sector, the pilot respawns at the closest station to where their fighter went down. when they respawn they are given the curent options if they respawn in a friendly station, or a gove-bus if they are not allowed to dock at the station where the respawned. And of coarse the buy menue and mission computers are disabled in non friendly stations. so it's a gove bus ride to freedom.