[1 dismissal] Introduce permadeath

[legitimatespaceperson]

Death is cheap.

With the introduction of penalties for cloning (mental traumas), it's clear that the developers' direction is to make death less cheap.

It still is awfully cheap, though - what does death mean if you just get kicked out of one round? There's no incentive for doctors to go ahead with working through the traumas, and no real penalty for being stupid and getting yourself killed in the first place.

I therefore propose that if a character is dead at round end, they are deleted from their player's character list.

Synthetic characters would be exempt due to not occupying character slots as we know them (for borgs and AIs) and being relatively easy to restore lorewise (IPCs). However, they would be subject to a week ban (from that specific character) to account for repair time.

Barring people from ignoring their characters' IC death through game mechanics would finally put some weight behind death meaning something in the game.

[AmoryBlaine]

This doesn't really make much sense, given this is a game based around majority non-canon events. Does this mean if I die to a traitor, I can't play my character anymore? If the mercs nuke the station, does that mean everyone has their characters deleted? This suggestion doesn't really seem to fit in with how the game operates. Why would we want people to have to constantly cycle through new characters? How does that help develop characters and further roleplay?

This is an HRP server, it doesn't really make much sense then for the focus of 'fear' to be OOC, rather than roleplayed ICly. It's a total misconception as to what HRP is about. It's about feeling fear, it's about being able to roleplay out fear, and get your kicks that way. You shouldn't be forced to make decisions ICly, because OOCly your character will be erased.

I suggest you play more on the server, to get a better grasp on how HRP works, in comparison to other servers.

[legitimatespaceperson]

3 minutes ago, AmoryBlaine said:

Does this mean if I die to a traitor, I can't play my character anymore?

Correct. It would make the antagonists so much more powerful if people actually died when they are killed. However, they would not need to cycle characters if they manage to get cloned during the round.

3 minutes ago, AmoryBlaine said:

If the mercs nuke the station, does that mean everyone has their characters deleted?

I acknowledge this as severe, but it's a logical consequence of the station being nuked. Way in the past, on the Exodus, you could survive the nuke by moving off the station z-level. Perhaps this could be reintroduced (we do have the Research awayshuttle now, which could serve the purpose).

4 minutes ago, AmoryBlaine said:

Why would we want people to have to constantly cycle through new characters? How does that help develop characters and further roleplay?

I started thinking about the topic after your thread, actually. Forcing people to make new characters after their old ones get killed (and murder happens often enough as it stands) would increase roleplay diversity significantly.

I'll ignore your "you don't even play" meme.

[AmoryBlaine]

Just now, legitimatespaceperson said:

Correct. It would make the antagonists so much more powerful if people actually died when they are killed. However, they would not need to cycle characters if they manage to get cloned during the round.

I acknowledge this as severe, but it's a logical consequence of the station being nuked. Way in the past, on the Exodus, you could survive the nuke by moving off the station z-level. Perhaps this could be reintroduced (we do have the Research awayshuttle now, which could serve the purpose).

I started thinking about the topic after your thread, actually. Forcing people to make new characters after their old ones get killed (and murder happens often enough as it stands) would increase roleplay diversity significantly.

I'll ignore your "you don't even play" meme.

Antagonists are non-canonical, it makes little sense to try and enforce a persistent fear from them, that transcends the round they are in.

Again, this is a non-canonical occurrence. The station isn't actually nuked. So why then are people being punished due to a non-canonical occurrence.

Forcing people to make new characters breeds shallow characters, as they are expected to be lost. The weight of a death is only something felt, when you have a connection. Something only useful for the first death, after-which you are going in with the expectation of losing the character. LRP servers enforce an RNG name system that forces players to lose their character names in order to help kill meta, which would work the same for us, but for RP. You'd not have the incentive of RP'ing past a very basic level, considering the lack of a guarantee that your character will actually be able to build inter-personal relationships. The suggested mechanic would detract from RP, in favour of OOC fear.

Your account is new. Whom are you, if not a new player, inexperienced? The suggestion seems to point towards this.

 

[legitimatespaceperson]

19 minutes ago, AmoryBlaine said:

Antagonists are non-canonical, it makes little sense to try and enforce a persistent fear from them, that transcends the round they are in.

Again, this is a non-canonical occurrence. The station isn't actually nuked. So why then are people being punished due to a non-canonical occurrence.

Forcing people to make new characters breeds shallow characters, as they are expected to be lost. The weight of a death is only something felt, when you have a connection. Something only useful for the first death, after-which you are going in with the expectation of losing the character. LRP servers enforce an RNG name system that forces players to lose their character names in order to help kill meta, which would work the same for us, but for RP. You'd not have the incentive of RP'ing past a very basic level, considering the lack of a guarantee that your character will actually be able to build inter-personal relationships. The suggested mechanic would detract from RP, in favour of OOC fear.

Your account is new. Whom are you, if not a new player, inexperienced? The suggestion seems to point towards this.

 

That antagonists exist is canon. The actual antagonists, and the consequences of their actions aren't. Your actions, as a player and character, should have consequences. Did you decide that the best course of action is to tenno heika banzai the heavily armed antag? That's your action, and death is your consequence. Did you fall into a hole as a miner without a GPS? That medical can't find and clone you is a consequence of your IC decisions. Did you hear the sirens blaring for code delta and decide not to evacuate from the station by any means possible? Why, might as well noose yourself.

During a mercenary round, the mercenaries appear out of thin air - lorewise, there does not exist a reason for the mercenary to be on the Aurora or its vicinity, so fair enough. But does this give the antagonist a free pass for bad RP? Why do you think new characters would get a free pass for bad RP, then?

Finally, the NanoTrasen employee should fear a terrorist attack, as the Syndicate are a known force - the wiki's your friend on this one. A nuclear attack, a wizard, changeling or vampire, not so much. Our own aversity towards OOC danger has candy coated the hard and unforgiving world of SS13, and if anything, this is what makes characters shallower. You wouldn't waste your character's time sitting in your cubicle all round if there's no guarantee that your character will still exist next week and can rely on your existing network of friends for interaction, and if you would, that's you choosing not to participate. In which case yes, a LRP server would be best suited for you.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Make it an option in character selection to play iron man mode. Otherwise no thank you.

[AmoryBlaine]

7 minutes ago, legitimatespaceperson said:

That antagonists exist is canon. The actual antagonists, and the consequences of their actions aren't. Your actions, as a player and character, should have consequences. Did you decide that the best course of action is to tenno heika banzai the heavily armed antag? That's your action, and death is your consequence. Did you fall into a hole as a miner without a GPS? That medical can't find and clone you is a consequence of your IC decisions. Did you hear the sirens blaring for code delta and decide not to evacuate from the station by any means possible? Why, might as well noose yourself.

During a mercenary round, the mercenaries appear out of thin air - lorewise, there does not exist a reason for the mercenary to be on the Aurora or its vicinity, so fair enough. But does this give the antagonist a free pass for bad RP? Why do you think new characters would get a free pass for bad RP, then?

Finally, the NanoTrasen employee should fear a terrorist attack, as the Syndicate are a known force - the wiki's your friend on this one. A nuclear attack, a wizard, changeling or vampire, not so much. Our own aversity towards OOC danger has candy coated the hard and unforgiving world of SS13, and if anything, this is what makes characters shallower. You wouldn't waste your character's time sitting in your cubicle all round if there's no guarantee that your character will still exist next week and can rely on your existing network of friends for interaction, and if you would, that's you choosing not to participate. In which case yes, a LRP server would be best suited for you.

Your have a warped understanding as to what roleplay is. This suggestion has a heavy focus on OOC/player driven actions, rather than that of the characters. I really can't put any support behind this when it shows a very large disconnect with what roleplay is. It's the character's reactions that matter. Not our's. The interest in an action should not stem from OOC pressures. Like I said, gain a better understanding of how rounds go, and how people play, then consider how this strips away at RP.

[LorenLuke]

If I die to a griefer, am I dead for good? While there exists a non-zero chance of my life being ended in real life by a deranged lunatic with a heavy chunk of metal (or more likely, a smaller chunk of metal that's very sharp, or one that can properly even smaller chunks of metal really, really fast), the amount of spontaneously homicidal psychopaths per capita, antags even excluded, is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than the common populace.

So this proposal states, that it is obligatory that should such a fate befall me by a bad actor, that my character should disappear forever, even if that person gets punted from the server so hard, the time space continuum breaks and causes the film 'Das Boot' to retroactively become a blockbuster documentary about how hard that person was kicked from play.

Hard pass on that one, and that's not even addressing the myriad of issues of things like, 'you're on the asteroid with no air and in hard crit, but alive when the server resets, so what happens to you then?', etc.

[Skull132]

3 hours ago, legitimatespaceperson said:

Barring people from ignoring their characters' IC death through game mechanics would finally put some weight behind death meaning something in the game.

So the aim is to put more weight on being dead.

Counter-point. As Coalf pointed out in Discord, considering the nature of the game, people still die regularly or for no reason, and having to wail over a deceased comrade who's perma-gone each round will get draining for the player base. So the death of the character gets minimized through that process alone: the abundance of death cheapens it.

From this. A counter-proposal. Make cloning an off-station off-round thing. The thought process is pretty simply. If we cannot change death being cheap, then let's still make it a bit more punishing than it is now, in order to get folks to dislike it. You're basically removed from the round if you die, which will hopefully want to make you die a wee bit less. And it mitigates some of the RP shenanigans around, "Oh hey. You're back up again. Here you, right where you left off."

[TheOrleans]

3 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Make it an option in character selection to play iron man mode. Otherwise no thank you.

This is the only possible option, that's all.

I spend A YEAR making my character, developing his story and his background to die cause someone pushed me once in the pool and my lungs popped cause the server likes popping lungs? Everyone loses their character for a nuke?

 

If this only applied in canon rounds, maybe, MAYBE (but with many doubts).

[Fortport]

I agree with Skull and have said multiple times that cloning should be an off-station thing. It's a very expensive process and we really need an alternative in-station way of dealing with death.

I say add defib and after someone dies, you get five minutes to revive them. They will get mental traumas and therefore the psychiatrist will still have its role regardless of the change.

This way death has a big impact in the game, for the player and in Roleplay. It sets in that yes, there's nothing you could do for this guy. He's gone. Unless you act fast.

[AmoryBlaine]

Cloning on station is already tedious and typically not done by the more experienced players, due to the limitations it puts on RP. (IE; being retarded for 35 minutes, needing brain surgery, needing a shrink on staff, that isn't also retarded, trying to justify ICly, why your recently dead character is willing to get back to work in under an hour.) As I see it, cloning as it is, is fine. If you're already willing to shrug off your character's death, the cloning-related RP, ect-- you really shouldn't be the focus of the server. The rest of us shouldn't have to suffer an inane mechanic that deletes our characters to make us fear death just because some people don't actually RP.

[StationCrab]

No thanks. A character's permanent death should be something the player decides, not something incidents beyond their control in a round dictate.

[Ornias]

12 hours ago, Skull132 said:

the abundance of death cheapens it.

wtf i love horseshoe theory now

14 hours ago, AmoryBlaine said:

Your have a warped understanding as to what roleplay is

why you gotta call him out like this. roleplay is invariably tied to OOC action and belief. the removal of this connection is impossible, so regulation may or may not be the best course of action. this doesn't show a warped view of roleplay but an extreme opinion on the correct course of action.

14 hours ago, AmoryBlaine said:

Whom are you

Who are you* lol

 

I support this wholeheartedly for canon events, but OOC events mean that we will:

A. No longer have long-form characters

B. Need to explain the absurd mortality rate on a station where death is quite rare

C. Lose our playerbase very, very quickly.

D. Lose inspiration to create truly deep and meaningful characters as they will be absurdly short-lived.

E. Have people consistently acting in ways focused SOLELY around self-preservation, rather than self-preservation being yet another part of a well-rounded character.

F. Encourage people to powergame. I'd rather take a warning from staff than lose a character that I've worked genuinely hard on for something entirely beyond my control and undeserved in-character, and I'd consider myself particularly willing to make sacrifice of my characters.

 

This is a pretty good discussion to have though. Consequences for actions are necessary, but there's a logical extreme where it's taken too far, to the point where it no longer reflects the IC reality of the station.

[Scheveningen]

18 hours ago, Skull132 said:

From this. A counter-proposal. Make cloning an off-station off-round thing. The thought process is pretty simply. If we cannot change death being cheap, then let's still make it a bit more punishing than it is now, in order to get folks to dislike it. You're basically removed from the round if you die, which will hopefully want to make you die a wee bit less. And it mitigates some of the RP shenanigans around, "Oh hey. You're back up again. Here you, right where you left off."

Yes. Only good resolution to this issue.

[geeves]

you see the way we usually roll it, if a character dies to bullshit circumstances, we slap a major injury on them related to the cause of death and have them be out of commission for a while. i think that's a fine self-regulatory method to have consequences to actions but still keep your well-loved characters alive and shitposting

[TheSleepyCatmom]

Just a general comment to @Fortport, a defib wouldn't mess with your brain. Or give you traumas, or, anything. Fibrillation isn't just stopping the heart, thereby a defibrillator doesn't just reboot the heart. Bay uses this like this and it makes a very small amount of sense, and a lot of things that don't. Like being defibbed out of 30 gunshot wounds. This would not work realistically in any meaning of the word. ?‍♀️

 

I do agree with Skull, however, about the offstation cloning thing.

[KingOfThePing]

odin/other installations not cloning is a stupid policy anyway

[Sytic]

Here's the deal with this complaint and/or suggestion: It makes absolutely no sense.

Counterpoint A : The Butterfly Effect

Say John Doe, Detective Man of Intergalactic Mystery, decides to go and do his job today and do some detective things. He finds a crime scene, in which someone has been done a big 'ol murdered on. So he chooses to investigate and chases this dastardly deed up the chain, going further and further to whomst did this action. Turns out, surprise, it's nukies! That's kinda bad.

The HoS is a dumbass and decides "WE DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS". So they don't. Gunfights escalate, both sides of an encounter die. The nukies die, or most of them do anyway, because they are not attached to their character that was thought into existence about an hour ago. People's characters that they lost forever is kinda sad. But one of the nukies got away.

This nukie ahelps, and is given the O.K. to Dr Strangelove the damn Aurora. So he does. Through miscommunications and failure of search parties, the Aurora is utterly exploded. Nuclear weapons decimate the Aurora.

Canonically, this means NanoTrasen essentially kicks everything into high gear. Their defense teams get outfitted with heavy protection gear and with the looming threat over Biesel now being turned to the Syndicate, NanoTrasen uses it as an excuse to sink its claws deeper into Biesel. Biesel becomes almost like a corporate state due to the proliferation NanoTrasen gets as it arms its private military company to go to war with the smaller but secretive Syndicate. Special ops teams are sent out to track down Syndicate bases, before all-out battlefronts are engaged. As corporate entity grows in the Tau Ceti sector, SolGov gains more beef with them, and ATLAS begins to march down. Another Invasion occurs, this time backed by Sol government and parliamentary forces as Mars rebels utterly,

See what I mean?

If you make all antag rounds canon, it also makes shit like Wizards and Changelings and Vampires canon. So are we supposed to introduce them to canon, as well? As deaths caused by them are.

Counterpoint B : The Revival Schema

As several other people have mentioned, the fact that death would become permanent would increase the amount of cloning, even borging, and other methods of revival and make them more relevant. They would become increasingly popular.

On top of this, it also is plausible that there would be revival methods outside of the cloning bays and the like on the Aurora, potentially even on the Odin or Icarus. Remember this, I'm coming back to this in time.

Counterpoint C : The Powergame Melodrama

It is no secret that at this current time, I think IPCs are overpowered. It is also no secret that they probably are. Most of the community seems to think so and there's a lot of reasons which agree with them. Making them the only species capable of ignoring permanent death would be increasing this gap hundredfold. It would be so incredibly insulting to literally every other species.

As well, wouldn't this worsen the powergaming issues within our community? Players would play to win, knowing the stakes above all else. Reasonable action will be always taken. The buddy system, always used, manipulated.

Antagonists would barely have a chance, and this is supposed to be O.K. because now people are taking it seriously? It's a goddamn video game and a living story that we're trying to create round-by-round. Shooting first and asking questions later as a sec team fearing death is somewhat reasonable, but boring as hell.

Counterpoint D : The Antagonist Rush

You are one guy that now also has the power to ignore permadeath for one round. Everyone you kill will be permanently killed from the server.

You now have an immense amount of power equivalent to a soft ban to someone's character, which might reflect on a part of their own personality or playing style, ripping that to shreds in front of them just to flex.

How is this good? How is this ever a good thing? Antagonists will be driven by power to seek out crew members (also giving metagrudgers fuel to kill targets) so they can just execute them and run away. That's not fun, that's an abuse of power.

Plausible Conclusion : The Revival Rework

If you want to make death more meaningful, remove all attempts of revival. Remove cloning. Remove IPC revival. Done and dusted. This increases the stakes on a per-round basis. There's merits and demerits for going with this option, but I'd have to say it'd remain somewhat interesting.

I prefer revival, though.

[Snakebittenn]

3 hours ago, KingOfThePing said:

odin/other installations not cloning is a stupid policy anyway

The purpose is to both avoid.
'don't worry man i can get cloned at the odin if i die. i have a backup at the odin. death is meaningless to me!!'
as well as
'we have a hostage!'
'yeah we bet you do go ahead and kill them we can clone them at the odin!'

[Fortport]

8 hours ago, TheSleepyCatmom said:

Just a general comment to @Fortport, a defib wouldn't mess with your brain. Or give you traumas, or, anything. Fibrillation isn't just stopping the heart, thereby a defibrillator doesn't just reboot the heart. Bay uses this like this and it makes a very small amount of sense, and a lot of things that don't. Like being defibbed out of 30 gunshot wounds. This would not work realistically in any meaning of the word. ?‍♀️

 

I do agree with Skull, however, about the offstation cloning thing.

Dying and having no oxygen to the brain for a few minutes wouldn't cause any problems?

[KingOfThePing]

3 hours ago, ParadoxSpace said:

The purpose is to both avoid.
'don't worry man i can get cloned at the odin if i die. i have a backup at the odin. death is meaningless to me!!'
as well as
'we have a hostage!'
'yeah we bet you do go ahead and kill them we can clone them at the odin!'

Yeah, I know, if one says it like that it makes sense, but since there are no rules to enforce any permadeath (which is good) the policy just makes little sense, ICly. Even with cloning existing the mere act of cloning is still terrible. It's not like death is no obstacle anymore. Call it my headcanon but can one be really sure that whatever comes out of the cloner is really the same person you talked to yesterday? No one knows and its ambiguous (which again, is good). If you try to think yourself into such a situation, I'd still rather have my friend not die as a hostage than take a risk and have a clone of him running around. Don't you agree?

 

tl;dr: Even with cloning existing its still a pretty terrifying thing and I dont think anyone wants someone they know or work with to be cloned since it's scary

[Resilynn]

Lmao I’ve played my character for three years. I have countless art pieces of him. I have built up this insane reputation through three years of effort. I RP realistically and responsibility and act afraid of death.

 

I’m not throwing that away because a malf stealth nuked the station. -100.

[Arrow768]

Voting for dismissal. 

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