As many others have pointed out, and as most people discover quite quickly, Vendetta is a pretty soft game when it comes to death. You just appear somewhere, and all you've lost is a trading mission's worth of credits and the time it takes you to get back into the fight.

Back in Alpha, I made a couple characters and only played them until they died. It was a ton of fun and made for real RP oppurtunities (which I ignored, preferring to see how many tri-flare battles I could win :P)

Anyway, I've been thinking about making a couple wacky characters to draw myself back into the game. Too annoying to level at the moment, but when missions make a comeback I was wondering if the devs could make an option for a new character called "Life Mode" or "Story Character" or something. The only effect of setting this flag would be to render the character unplayable on its first death. Any of its items would be deleted (or in an interesting twist, added to the inventory of the station).

Anyone playing in this mode would obviously fear death much more than the average joe. While I admit the possibility of death due to lag may make this too annoying to actually play, I for one would enjoy it. I liked really sweating when I launched from a station, wondering if I would make it back. I liked getting into a fight and knowing that if I lost, I was dead. I loved winning a fight, because it meant I would survive to fight another day, and when I inevitably died I felt sad for the characters I left behind.

On the technical side, I'd envision a simple flag in the character file that would lock (or just erase) the character on death. A cool bonus would be to have an obituary in the newpspaper saying: "Pilot X died today in Sedina B-8, at the hands of (player or hive or he had issues). X was a dedicated citizen of Y / a feared killer (if a high pk count) / respected trader (if a lot of trade missions complete) ... etc."

The newspaper part is extraneous to the central suggestion: Add the option to erase a character on its first death to allow willing players to have a ton more tension ingame.

I'd do a permadeath character.

It'd be extra-cool if they got double the xp. :D

In fact, I'll go do one right now!

Double xp and force powers! :D

Well I don't know about anyone else but I treat my character's life with respect. I've been doing it since day one. I try not to die whenever I can. And I don't use the stupid /explode teleport trick either. Because even though it's a fast way of getting around the universe, it's just plain ridiculous and stupid to do something like that where you're supposed to be pretending some level of realism here.

I mean space is supposed to be a big place. Not some zip-bang waterslide where you can teleport all around wherever you please. Long distance travel helps make the environment more believable. I mean sure it's boring now, but as the game develops there'll be plenty of interactions to keep your mind stimulated in long voyages.

Anyway, getting back to my point, I've had people argue with me that it's annoying and not considered RPing to avoid death. Oh well. It doesn't bother me. Survival has always been the biggest part of human instinct, as with any other living creature. So I don't see why it should be any different in the game. Although you respawn a lot and may have a lot of money to burn, it's still quite a challenge to have the willpower to fight and yet try to stay alive at the same time. For me it makes the game more exciting to make that conscious decision of fight or flight during the heat of battle.

If other people don't have the drive or motivation to do that, well I'm sorry. But I think it's something which should be respected and allowed. I really don't think there needs to be any special mode or feature to enforce it or anything. If you have a strong mind to role play something like that, it can be a very enjoyable experience.

I do however think that maybe things in the universe should cost much more. For example ships. Let's assume that in-game credits are equivalent to US dollars. Typical new cars cost how much, $12-32k nowadays? I think a new ship with a battery should cost just about the same in terms of price range, if not more. Same with weapons. Rockets and missiles in particular are not cheap either. I mean if you look at today's real figures, you might be shocked at how much money is placed into each and every bomb and missile in today's military. But I think the effectiveness of some of the weapons could use a boost before the price goes up.

So in the end I think money can be used as a huge factor for players wanting to stay alive. Not so much a special career mode or anything. It would also motivate players to keep a good reputation with important factions, because those cheaper prices will make their lives much easier during times of war. So you can hit two birds with one stone in that respect.

Well, I think making missiles cost more than the ships they're mounted is a bit extreme. A case of carrying the real-life analogy too far if you like, but yea, equipment prices certainly should go up. Shrugging off a death just strikes me as being rather silly. So there.

Okay, true. True. Yeah, missiles shouldn't cost more than the ships. But it was more of an example to show that missiles don't cost 20 bucks each in real life. Heheh.

yea but if we're gonna use the missiles are expensive in real life, than we cant compare the ships to our cars.. try pricing one of the planes that is designed to actually fire those missiles.
You cant just strap them to a luggage rack and stick a lighter out the window near the engine to launch them you know. =P

Uhh, how about just resetting your inventory (unless you saved money elsewhere in some other form) if you bought an escape pod. How about, to make matters tougher, the escape pod would be a TINY ship with no warp capability. It's built in distress beacon will give them high standing with all nations, unless they were hated (-600) or worse in the first place. It also gives you all 0 stats, giving you the advantage of penalty. Of course, it shouldn't die in the ships explosion, so it will be launched out at a high speed (due to it's light weight). It might seem pointless now, not being able to warp, but it will be in the future. When people have large enough ships with docking bays. A rescue would give you standing points to the stranded persons nation and some cash if the person was important enough to that nation.

my personal favorite is exiting a dock, ramming a guard trying to dock in the outgoing dock, being set temp kos, and dying before I actually clear the dock enough to do anything. :-)

nothing quite like feeling loved. all I wanted was a bit of cuddles!

(besides, I treat my life with respect, but death doesn't mean anything in VO so I try to treat other people with respect too.)

If this was an option, I'd like to use it, but I don't think I would. It's just way too easy to die. Accidental KOS like terjekv describes, chat-ramming 'roids or stations, botting with your fingers on the wrong keys, many many ways you can die quickly.

How about making it so in "Life Mode" if your character dies, it's dead forever, but it's somewhat less easy to die. Say, once your ship reaches 0% hull, rather than exploding immediately, you have X amount of time (1 minute? 3 minutes?) to get back to station before you actually die. Whoever dropped you down to 0% would get the kill count, and once you're down to 0% you can't fire any weapons, all you can do is run back to the station & hope you get there soon enough. Maybe also make it so after you reach 0% hull, if your enemies continue to damage you, it takes time off the timer, so you'll explode sooner.

Just face it.
VO is not one of those games where you have ONE ship.
Dieing does not make your equipment lose quality.
Dieing does not make you lose items.
Dieing has very few negative effects.

VO is a deathmatch arena.
This isn't just my twist on it. It's just what VO is at the moment. This will change later on I hope.

/givemoney Devs 2c

I agree, KixKizzle. And to be honest I'd hate to have to make a new character after each death. I mean you have to draw the line somewhere. So I don't think a "life mode" is the answer. I just think there needs to be something that would make players more reluctant to die. Failing missions is currently one of those things. But when you're flying around freely you'll also need another thing. And I think boosting costs and making money a valuable resource is the answer to that (but of course making it easier on newbies by making the earlier equipment very cheap).

That's why its optional. If you want to have the added tension, you do it. If you don't, you don't.

I've always thought that death was treated too lightly, though it really is hard to change the minds of those who've been playing VO for 2+ years, I really do think that something needs to be done. Personally my favorite idea is the escape pod. Make each ship come with a stock one, kind of like air bags in cars or ejection seats in fighter jets. BUT, if you want to pay for upgrade versions you can. What the escape pod does is allows you to return to a station to get a new ship. They should be fast, invulnerable, but no turbo and can't make a system jump, so no wormholes.

What it does for game play is that it takes you out of the battle for a few minutes as a consiquence for death. There by removing the death match feel of game play. I know some will hate that but that's what corvus station sectors are for, just fight past the NFZ and you can have DM's all you want. It's just not realistic AT ALL to materialize at your home station upon death. It's not like we have some kind of acended beings saving us at the last minute like in SG-1 or something. =o)~

I also agree that the prices of everything should be increase, and repairs should cost money again as well. Those are too great driving forces to keep people mining or trading in the current state of the game, since trading for money is only good if you have something to spend it on.

Yeah but Starfisher, what benefits would you get out of this optional mode? That's why I'm going with the all or nothing approach. Everyone and everything should be on a level playing field. I just don't think it's a good idea to divide the community up into different categories like that.

I understand some people are frustrated that death is taken so lightly. While others don't want to be hassled by restarting all the time. I think it's best to find a compromise between the two. There are ways of making both types of players happy, even with short term development.

or "CLONES" (insert weird music)

other sci-fi MMOG's have used it to give the "reappearing character syndrome" an explanation, and also gives death some weight (you have to buy your own clones, and if you don't have any left, your character is dead forever).

Don't ships have escape pods already? Granted, they don't fly out when the ship explodes, but what's the little red thing on the weapons pannel?

That's the engine, Seraph. In earlier versions of Vendetta you could swap out different engines for your ship. But that ability was taken out and simplified. So all that remains is a little icon in your inventory.

It sounds exciting but you really didn't miss much, since everyone equipped their ship with a heavy engine. And there really was no point in buying a light or medium engine either. So thankfully they were taken out.

It IS A level playing field. The Life mode guys are just people playing Vendetta, except they go away permanantly when they die. There's nothing special about them at all.

Hehe, well okay. I have no objection then. Though I'm not sure how popular this would be. Imagine working up to level 13 combat and dying from a bot because of lag. Wow that would really suck. But I guess some people are masochistic.

=P

Playing in "Life Mode" would certainly spawn more spammers & runners.

Plus, I think it would destroy the "middle-class" of players.
The really good and really aggressive PvPers would never die: there would be this elite class of players that would be REALLY hard to kill, and then there would be a constantly renewing lower class of players who died frequently, and never got anywhere, and would most likely quit out of frustration.

I like the escape pod idea (like EV) much better. Escape Pods can warp in-system but not out-of-system. You're stuck in whatever system you're in until you buy a new ship at a local station and make your way back elsewhere to get the rest of your stuff.