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July 06, 2015

Comments

bhagpuss

That seems like a curious and rather pointless mechanic because, as you point out, it's largely avoidable in most ways that mean anything.

If you take careful note of your choices at character creation you can make an absolutely identical character in terms of what it looks like. That character then receives all the material possessions of the dead one and also nearly all of the intangible (reputation) assets. That's no different in essence to the loss of xp/levels/skills on "death" that we're all familiar with from many MMOs.

In fact the only thing that will "die" permanently appears to be your character's name. Presumably names will be unique, as they are in most MMOs - although these days it's possible to tie the identity of the customer to a log-in and allow duplicated names in game so maybe not even that.

Presumably all your friends/guild/alliance/whatever contacts will be retained or can be easily replicated so everyone will know it's still you.

It's hard to see how this device amounts to something that isn't just "immortality" with an occasional, brief hiccup. I think you'd need to lose a lot more than described above before it would feel like more than a minor, irritating convenience for most people.

Alysianah aka Saylah


I think that depends on your priorities in the SC universe. I only touched on tangible assets and reputation. Upon death you lose your achievements, as they belonged to the other character. If youre that type of player, that could be a big deal. Im not that kind of player myself but know many that are.


I agree, you can reasonably avoid death by limiting your activity and where you go in the game, much like you can in EVE Online. However, even some of the professions executed in safe space can result in death. Mining for example, which Ill be covering soon, is dangerous enough that your ship can explode if youre not careful or good at certain of the required roles.


I like and dislike the mechanic. I believe some players will be emotionally and mentally impacted by simply knowing that theres a life counter present. Enough so that it will alter their behavior. Your reputations is still aligned but youre not the other person. The mechanic of NPCs reacting to you differently based on past deeds, never fully realized in GW2, is planned in SC. We shall see, however. If that is the case, you will lose those NPC relationships upon death.

I considered but decided against including that in my blog post because it wasn't explicitly called out the article itself. However, it can be construed based on dev responses to player questions.

I believe in the forum thread there was an example of a player having reached a certain rank/position within a NPC corp dying. His beneficiary would still be looked on favorably but they do not inherit whatever the former characters rank/position was. That has to be achieved again. For that matter, player organizations might choose to adopt the same policy. If an officer dies, theyre dead. The beneficiary comes in as a recruit. Now that would be interesting to see play out. I can smell the drama from here. :-)

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