Online Vore game respawning question and poll

[Superblah]

Words words words words words

I've been secretely tinkering with my own inane vore project, but I tend to keep things under wraps mostly unless Its really vague or i need help on something specific, this is more of the later, Overall, Vore has an interesting aspect when you make it for both predators and prey, Because when your prey, Success in a combat or hiding or other words avoiding a monster, keeps you from your prize, the vore scene on your character, obviously then, Players are going to lose, and many of them on purpose, I've decided that this is just going to have to be an aspect of the game, but MMORPGs do offer one more ingredient that screws all this up, the mystical respawn ability, which in this case, is defined as any system that lets a person come back with memories in tact, and the monster and the player would recognize eachother later. the problem is the game isnt supposed to be tongue in cheek vore playland, Its set in a world where most people really dont want to get eaten, and unless your crazy in their eyes, you shouldn't either, The damaged part of this whole thing is respawning pretty much lets you get eaten over and over and over again with no penalties, and since everyone can do this it begs the big old question why anyone is afraid of being eaten when you just respawn 15 feet away smiling and healthy.

In order to amelearate this problem I've tried thinking of several things, Of course there will be your standard D2 style hardcore mode, but The standard way I allow you to come back after death is, instead of being brang back to life you roll a new character, and you an equal ammount of experience to as your last character and some stock starting treasure, usually the amount you lost unless you wanted it to go to someone else when you died like insurance or something. and you can choose to pick a completely different character or a very mind boggling similar one.

Overall I cant think of anything wrong with this system in game, characters get eaten are digested up, Predators and prey get to have an experiance that isnt cheapened by saying "lol but that never really happened" and it allows for the progress made by making a character and having him or her eaten not be lost spectacularly.

There is one problem though, and thats with the community. there are alot of people who like their characters, enough that making an exact copy with all the stats on a reroll isnt good enough as a big old respawn button.

As eka seems to be the largest community of vore loving individuals i want to give you the question. is the above respawn method good enough? would any of you feel cheapened that you have to technically start a character that looks behaves and thinks exactly like the original but isn't instead of respawning normally? The only other way I've been able to think of Is having a race of organic matter posessing souls that can and do respawn normaly, but shoehorning them into the world setting hasnt been easy.

[Halcyon]

It's definetly an interesting idea, I think it's a good one.

[empatheticapathy]

What I would do is allow respawning of the same character, but with some penalties. Something like... you lose whatever you had equipped at the time, a few other random items, and an experience loss, including level regression, if you lose that much.
In this way, a player can keep his same character going, but there is a noticeable and inconvenient penalty for it. And yes, I know level regressing might be a little extreme, but again, the idea is to make the penalty for being digested actually BAD, instead of academic.
I imagine you could explain it in-universe as some sort of divine intervention, like partway through your souls entry to the afterlife (which is why you lose experience, some of your soul passed on), your deity resurrected you.

[Superblah]

What I would do is allow respawning of the same character, but with some penalties. Something like... you lose whatever you had equipped at the time, a few other random items, and an experience loss, including level regression, if you lose that much.
In this way, a player can keep his same character going, but there is a noticeable and inconvenient penalty for it. And yes, I know level regressing might be a little extreme, but again, the idea is to make the penalty for being digested actually BAD, instead of academic.
I imagine you could explain it in-universe as some sort of divine intervention, like partway through your souls entry to the afterlife (which is why you lose experience, some of your soul passed on), your deity resurrected you.

but this, is faulty, because I need a system that supports a world in which no one wants to get eaten because its a finality, if suddenly worshiping a deity gives you ressurection even at a price, Every npc would do it and no longer be as fearful of winding up in a tummy. It does give me the idea of resurrection spells in D&D, making it possible to come back in say a party, but it would certainly have some problems associated like you said. the soul system is silly and I'm not 100% fond of it, but it works because only the soul race has this immunity, so it still makes sense for the natives to be afraid.

[Voreavon]

It adds variety to the game and allows you to change what you are without having to start all over again.

[Houyo]

Here's an idea.

Have more than one respawn system, and let people choose which one they want.

It's twice as much work though...

[Superblah]

I dont think you listened very well to what i said houyo, its entirely easy to set up both respawn systems, but I want to make them work with the setting.

[Rayen]

Your system, to me, works perfectly well. There will always be people who will try to make the character exactly the same, but that should be fine. You could, in theory, explain that by saying the original character had an identical twin.

Also, for anyone who cares about MMO stats, losing experience will usually deter them from jumping down the throat of something.

Also, if you wanted a change of character, you could just send your character on a suicide run, and with a minor loss, you'd be able to change your character.

[Aleph-Null]

Well we are missing information about the world which makes it a little bit hard to come up with a solution. But I would suggest an option outside of the "hardcore" mode where you can choose pred or prey. Perhaps prey can't eat people but when a pred is digested it looses all EQ and has to re-roll with it's current(or near) XP? Perhaps prey tend to come from large families and the re-roll represents your sibling and the EQ represents that siblings inheritance?

I'm sorry if my suggestion doesn't help but I don't have much to go on. I don't know what additions/explanations clash with your world.

In any case I tend to think that a re-roll on death's only possible limitation is that you will allow people to change class for free. If you don't care about that than I think your solution works. Some people may prefer to use their characters and not want them to die, however I think it is evident that not all characters would be able to exist in your world. I mean people play everything from towering giants to gods/demi-gods to amorphous tentacle things to species of their own creation, all with skills/powers that may not be in your game.

[Mokaria]

I know one thing if a game ever expected me to go back to the character creation every time I died I probably wouldn't play it. Most people aren't going to want to become prey at all if there is some sort of heavy penalty especially such as equipment loss and xp loss. Also in something with levels and the like I would never want to have vore in it atleast not in an MMO sense. But just to be helpful rather then just go on about that.

Ok so you want some sort of respawn to be available but you at the same time sort of seems like you don't want it like a reroll. Why not have some kind of rebirth then? Your character dies and so if we want to go totally dog eat dog nature but somewhat mystical you are brought to a spirit of rebirth where you can re alocate any of your points (but here is where you make it not so free) Getting another chance as just what you were would be without loss of stats or anything of the like. However lets say you decided you want to recreate so to speak your character. Simply make it cost stat points and in the beginning if you can't meet the mininum stat points required it would just take what you have if you recreate your character. (So another words you would get a refund for all your stats or whatever but you might lose like 5 of them that you would have to regain) This would have to be done however in a setting where stat points aren't gained on level or maybe you would just lose a level dunno? This would gives those who want a choice to reroll but at a cost. That's just my thoughts on it.

[Amberain]

Whether or not I would care about my characters death would, to me, almost solely depend on the ease or difficultly of the character creation system. I am very meticulous about making my characters, and I'm also not very good at MMORPGs (I tend to die allot). So if I have to remake a new character, totally from scratch, repeatedly, I'm going to lose interest with the game very quickly.
My suggestion, if you use a recreate not respawn type system, would be you offer a quick spawn button that would automatically create a character with the same class / abilities as the previous but have some random minor changes to their appearance.
Just as a quick note, some players of MMORPGs don't have any sort of attachment to their character beyond it's ability within the game, so my suggestion above wouldn't instill a fear of death for those players, if you want them to fear their characters dying, you will almost certainly need to take something away that they have earned (gear, exp, etc.).

[Houyo]

Honestly, your kinda going for the impossible if you try to make everyone happy. Your trying to make a game where death is bad and you want to avoid it, but you need to give prey a reason to get eaten, which will end up punishing them. Or your going to make getting eaten meaningless by having respawning. I really think making two versions of the game is the only option beside alienating prey lovers.

[Superblah]

Honestly, your kinda going for the impossible if you try to make everyone happy. Your trying to make a game where death is bad and you want to avoid it, but you need to give prey a reason to get eaten, which will end up punishing them. Or your going to make getting eaten meaningless by having respawning. I really think making two versions of the game is the only option beside alienating prey lovers.

I missed the part where i was punishing them fore it.
I just want the in-game world to make sense.

In any case I tend to think that a re-roll on death's only possible limitation is that you will allow people to change class for free. If you don't care about that than I think your solution works. Some people may prefer to use their characters and not want them to die, however I think it is evident that not all characters would be able to exist in your world. I mean people play everything from towering giants to gods/demi-gods to amorphous tentacle things to species of their own creation, all with skills/powers that may not be in your game.

of course its free, this is for all intents and purposes a new character, we just arent taking away your experiance and forcing you to start at level 1 if you dont want to.

Just as a quick note, some players of MMORPGs don't have any sort of attachment to their character beyond it's ability within the game, so my suggestion above wouldn't instill a fear of death for those players, if you want them to fear their characters dying, you will almost certainly need to take something away that they have earned (gear, exp, etc.).

this is pretty much like most of the other most recent comments, and while i appreciate every line of feedback i get, useful or not, because it may give me better new or different ideas anyway, I thought i made myself pretty clear when I said I'm not trying to scare players, I'm trying to justify the NPC's fears, the players, ones who will be playing Prey especially, are, or are played by, a voreaphile, they are going to want to get eaten, and thats crazy, Being vored in this world tends on the bad side of things and if you eat a unique NPC its going to be gone, the reason this does not happen to the player is simple, It gets in the way of the fun if you have to lose every copper you've alloted and start from scratch just for one measly vore scene, But for the NPCs its tough luck,

the first two modes of play I've put in because they are consistent with keeping the natives of the world fearful of a maw. one is permanent death, the other is permanent death where you get to start where you left off of a character of your levels choosing, (which can and probably will be, a copy of your old character, sans Memories.), And while both these ideas seem solid to nearly everyone I've asked, I would still like to if possible appeal to the crown who chose options 3 and 4, and come up with a way to respawn Like a true resurrection spell and still have it make sense for NPCs to fear death. just remember, what works for you has to work for them. Your brand spanking new character fresh from a re roll after death doesn't descend from the heavens, s/hes been living life and adventuring, just like your first character, her stories just beginning a little bit later thats all, a mechanic perfectly inconspicuous in the eyes of the Computer controlled characters and its something that needs to happen with any respawn mechanic, like the race of soul people, If anyone have any ideas involving respawn mechanics please keep that in mind.

[martyr]

This is actually remarkably similar to an idea I've posted on some other MMO boards when the subject of permadeath has come up. I dig it. Also, with regard to your last paragraph there, you might be able to just implement some kind of res spell if they really, really want their old character back, but just make it prohibitively expensive/difficult/tedious (it could even be any of the 3 if it's some usable item that could then become a commodity).

[Liz]

This style of MMORPG I would def stick to being a Pred, I like my characters im MMORPGs and tend to get attached them.

Not too mention i have a hard time customising and making the charact look how I want it. This is why I'd dislike a permadeath tbh.

[ryanshowseason3]

Alright I've got some unique ideas feel free to use any or none in any combination.

How about if everytime you're vored respawning puts ridiculous amounts of stress on the characters body. So that when vored and respawned the character ages say ten years? You could simulate this by changing body size and hair color to give the effect. Then say after character age 60 you can't reform anymore and are permanently digested.

Permanent digestion could consist of this. First give the character a bank of some sort to deposit loot they want to save for later then when permanently digested destroy all their loot they had on them, then will as in a will you write in case of your death to the newly rolled character saying they are a friend or relative. You might want to take a percentage of the money stored to add in another disadvantage to being vored.

Also another idea I have is temporary stat decreases. Much in the same way buffs work over time start the char after digestion with 70% of their stats. Then you can make a choice on what system you'd like to implement to get them back, perhaps paying a doctor a fee to get them back, or simply waiting a minute for every percent, Or my personal fave for a system have the character choose (endurance/10) stats to recover at an accelerated rate say 5% per minute while the rest recover at the normal 1%.

Also the age progression could be controlled by stats say depending on how brutal the voring was say a plants digestion accounts for 20 but a dragons digestion counts for 50. Then subtract from that number the characters endurance plus their highest stat, so as to say a character with high intelligence may know potions or spells to keep themselves healthy in older age, or a character with high agility keeps themselves particularly limber through training.

So say a character gets eaten by a plant with 20 vore points they have a 10 in endurance and an 18 in strength. That totals to more than the plants digestion but still give them a minimum penalty of a years age regression. But say they're dumb and go to an overleveled area and fight something twice their level like a giantess who has 100 vore points(heck you could make vore points based off what level they are) and with the same stats the char ages to age 72. They're now old and the next time they get vored by anything its game over and they have to re roll with 80% exp or something like that.

This makes a plausible reason why people wouldn't want to get vored since you will eventually die if it keeps happening. But if a character stays in areas where they're on par with the monsters they would still have to be vored 60 times before re rolling. You could always make the age limit higher too. Or say have different age limits for different classes but have increased stat growth for classes with short life spans.

Perhaps preds have longer life spans while prey have measly life spans but high stat growths in defense and agility. If you dont like these give me some idea of what you want and I'll see what I can think of.

[Superblah]

this is an interesting concept but it wont work, its no different than offering a lives system and age will have effects on your characters,
in addition to that, 60 times is QUITE alot.

[Mazodin]

So the base stats are re-rolled and gear is randomized but you keep your level-ups? I think that would be good if you can hunt down the monster that ate you to get your gear back. (this is a game play thing not a world thing.)

[Superblah]

its not randomized at all.

[ryanshowseason3]

Yah its kindve a lives system. but it has a really pretty bow on top so it doesnt look like one. You could also add in quests or items to age regress. And you can change the age to die to whatever you want or make age progress as fast as you want. doesnt have to be 60 times.

Fact of the matter is that people who want to lose are going to and theres not many ways you're going to deter them save maybe one I just thought of.

What if hitting the big lol respawn me button required you to go through the full digestion process ie you need to wait 11 hours real time before your char is fully digested and is back again. Or insert other really long time wait.

You might even make it an option: wait an hour to respawn or age progress 5 years.

What do you really want though, can't help if I don't know what YOU want.

edit: I dunno I really like the idea I said before. It allows people to keep their character reasonably easily by taking quests to regress their age, or buying items etc. But also presents consequences for getting vored, that yah end up with your character being lost if you get vored too often.