DTs = Opportunities for exit, supreme

[Angstrom]

Well,

I hate to sound like a petulant whiner, but I just DT'd my best equipped character.

I think I'm done morting for a while.

In the game design business, we call these things opportunities for exit. They provide incentives to leave the game. DTs are the ultimate opportunity for exit.

DTs are bad design. High on a list of recommendations for improving this game would be to remove all DTs. DTs remove players. Get rid of them if you want players.

Someone with a grasp of modern game design must rehab this mud for it to survive.

So freaking annoying.

Man, I know I sound like a jerk, but really, this is

So

Freaking

Annoying

Angstrom

[ching]

In some ways I agree. I was thinking the same thing about having to go find and loot your corpse (and fido/janitor mobs. My son's friend was learning jedimud and having fun. However one day he went past the goblin huts and died to some swamp creature. He could not 'find his corpse' and so quit in frustration.
These things make the game 'more of a challenge' but there is a line where it is only worth it after you are 'invested' and if not deep into the game (or the people in the game.) Now a brisk newbie helper corps would help in the newbie 'not finding a corpse' but there is not a way to get around the DT.

It is a subject worthy of more discussion.

[Mal]

I completely agree with Angstrom.

If you want to keep DTs, can you at least change them?

Instead of 100% loss of gear, make it a 10% chance each item is lost or even builder sets %? Probability says you lose 3 pieces of eq. Could be your best eq, could be easy eq to replace, who knows - but its enough of a deterrent not to hit a DT and it doesn't completely ruin a character.

Aaron

[Angstrom]

First of all, let me apologize for being such a baby. That was me at 4 am being really pissed off.

Yeah, if we were to keep DTs, I'd maybe do this:

All characters under age 25 are immune.
All characters under level 16 are immune.
Implement Mal's idea about losing only 10% of gear.
Purchase DT insurance of any item for 1 quest point. This protects it from being lost in a DT entirely. If it is selected to be deleted, you instead lose insurance.

Another option, QUEST flag eq cannot be lost in DT.

[Angstrom]

Oh, to extend this, I'd like to see corpses come back to temple with you, maybe along the same lines above (any characters 16 or under or age 25 or younger get their corpses back automatically)

[Mal]

I like Angstroms idea of having the corpse come back to temple with you, but I'd like to extend this a little. How about the player has the option to type "recover" which would bring their corpse to them for a fee based on their level.

This fee will be based on a combination of gold and xp. They must have enough gold otherwise the gods are not interested in helping them. This leaves them with an incentive to get their corpse.

There would have to be some coding to handle multiple corpses of a player. Perhaps bring them all back and pay a fee for each (ouch.)

[Arrakeen]

Okay this topic, I absolutely have to comment on. A while back, I was mudding and had the absolute best character I have ever had. A W30 with some high end gear such as lbolt and BOs. I had spent about a month killing quagar to load those BOs myself. Late one night I was running around north of mid and was a little tired. I went to far north and DT'd my warrior. I just sat there staring at the screen and couldn't believe what I had just done. I was so pissed off I just held down the on button on my computer and went to bed.

Well that was about 2-3 years ago. I completely quit the mud and didn't even think about starting it back up until a friend mentioned that he started playing again. I think DTs need to be either removed completely or I do like the idea of insurance and only losing 10% of your gear. Make it cost a lot of gold or QP to insure an item. When you spend days loading a couple items and then lose them in a second, it doesn't make you want to play much longer. I know people who have played for a long long time and have many great items may not feel so strongly, but when you just lost every item you owned.. why continue.

Arrakeen

[Dank]

I think the older you are as a player, the more you see the merit to a device like the "death trap" as an extension of a philosophical ideal that was best put into words by the great Mescalero American Tribal leader, Cadete.

In 1868 when asked why his people rejected cultivating fields, going to school and holding down full-time jobs -- basically the European model of existence -- he said:

"Let me tell you what we think. You begin when you are little to work hard. After you get to be men, you build big houses, big towns and everything in proportion. Then after you have got them all, you die, and you leave everything behind. Now, we call that slavery. You are slaves from the time you begin to talk until you die, but we are as free as air."

In this same way, after innumerable DTs, I have found joy in the simple possession of the method of the game, small achievements in exploration, understanding, and the ability to help newcomers.

The uber-eq BO-running, slavery part becomes less important.

[Dank]

AN ASIDE

Today, another returning player hit a DT and lost everything... nothing major, just some mid-lev non-quest EQ.

The thing that was cool, the part of the death trap experience that kinda makes up for how silly they are, is the way players come together to re-outfit the victim. That's always the coolest part. The shared empathy since *all* of us have lost EQ this way.

[Ash]

In the interest of helping new and returning players avoid these dang things until the code gets adjusted to match what seems to be a general consensus that DTs need to be tweaked to stop hampering player retention while maintaining some of the original game balance goals they exist for, here is a list of the DTs I've found so far while wandering around:

One's I've seen myself:

• The Abandoned Cathedral, A Gaping Chasm in the Spiral Stairway
  
• The Abandoned Cathedral, Burnt Alive In The Molten Lava
  
• River Island Of Minos, SMASHED against the cliff!!
  
• Star Wars, Falling to Your Imminent Death - Inside the Elevator Shaft
  
• Star Wars, Inside the Sarlaac Pit's Stomach - Digested for a Thousand Millennia
  
• NT Amusement Park, Grinding Gears (in the Carousel)
  
• the Abyss, In the Black River
  
• The Abandoned Ship and the area arround Skara Brae, Broken, On the Rocks
  
• SouthEast of Skara Brae, Inside the Jaws
  
• the Arctic Empire, Skewered on a very large and pointy stalactite!
  
• Sesame Street and Muppet Theater, In the Mud bath
  
• Sesame Street and Muppet Theater, Inside The Cookie Oven
  
• the Trog Caves and Outpost of the Kingdom of Rhyoden, An Icy Death
  
• The Bardic Colleges, Flushed Down the Toilet
  
• The Bardic Colleges, Sucked into a Vortex
  
• The Bardic Colleges, I'm a Death Trap and I'm Ok!
  
• the Great Eastern Desert, The rickety rope bridge
  
• Drow City, Sacrificial Pit
  
• Old Thalos, On the second floor
  
• The Great Pyramid, Asphyxiated
  
• the Galaxy, Too bright to tell
  
• the Galaxy, BlackHole
  
• Arachnos, Mahatma's Inescapable Trap
  
• the Dragon Sea, Caught in the Heart of a Savage Tempest
  
• The Nightmire, Wed to the Swamp
  
• Valhalla, Falling into the Infinite Abyss to your Horrifying Death
  
• the Owlery, Torn Apart By Owlets
  
• the Owlery, A Deadly Light!
  
• Floodland, Over the Cliff
  
• Ravenna, Alaric's Personal Bodyguard
  
• The Golden Pagoda, Impaled on Poisoned Spikes!
  
• The Metro in Skara Brae, Oncoming Traffic
  
• Hellas, Splattered on the Ground!
  
• Rome, The Lion Pit
  
• West of New Thalos, CRUSHED
  
• New Thalos Dungeon, Chamber of Death
  
• The Corsair Citadel, Under the murder holes
  
• Three of Swords, Pit
  
• Three of Swords, Plummeting to Your Death
  
• Three of Swords, Falling into the Volcanic Crater
  
• Refuge and Asylum, Lemmings Leap
  
• The Underworld, Lair of Death
  
• Balor's Domain, The Ultimate Maze
  
• Drake Isle, In the Lake of Fire
  
• Aralu, The Long Sleep
  
• Sanctuary, The jagged bloodstained rocks
  
• Sanctuary, Down the Well
  
• Sanctuary, Quicksand
  

Some I've heard of but haven't found yet

• Scipio Dreaming, Never To Wake
  
• The Ant Hill, The Largest Ant Pincers You Have EVER Seen!!!
  
• Dragon City, The dragons' bath
  
• Algadon's Pyramid of DOOM!, Noxious fumes...  Eek!  You're dead!
  
• Algadon's Pyramid of DOOM!, Algodon's Personal Surgery Room
  
• Algadon's Pyramid of DOOM!, Your fate is sealed!
  
• Algadon's Pyramid of DOOM!, Algadon's Personal Bodyguard
  

One's remember from many years ago but that I haven't been able to find a way into anymore:

• the Trog Caves and Outpost of the Kingdom of Rhyoden, Boarding for the Train of Death
  
• Limbo, The Fog
  
• Cliffs north of Midgaard - seem to have been modified to not allow entrance to DT anymore. Read room descrips for more info
  

I don't know how accurate that last parts are but the first part has been explored in the last year or so.

[Rox]

Why not remove DT altogether or make it such that DTs affect only chars above level 20?

[notell]

The days are long gone when DT's served their purpose. The active playerbase is now so thin it's in danger of cracking completely.

I myself have had several DT's over the years, one of those recently, and it made me consider self-deleting all chars. The amount of time a player can spend just acquiring one piece of eq is unbelievable, so it seems so unfair that through game lag, typo etc, all that can be taken away in the blink of an eye.

Instead of losing eq why not reset xp gained to 0 whilst still retaining all eq. Seems more logical to link DT's with XP. That way I'd be more inclined to explore with a char eq'd up. After all, what's the point in acquiring all that lovely quest eq if you fear wearing the stuff whilst venturing into uncharted territories.

Anyways, just my thoughts.

[Rox]

That is really a great suggestion.....almost all of us do not venture out of city with our prized quest eq.

Admins please, please, please do consider this option as a viable alternative. I hardly see more than 10 on and only 5 active chars.

DTs are real catalyst to death of Jedimud even before 6.0 comes in.

[Tiaan]

I fully support the suggestion to get rid of DT's.Even since the 1990's I've never understood why we even need those rooms. For what purpose?

If I may go as far as to suggest that NO EQUIPMENT should be lost with a death or DeathTrap, and only experience. This should greatly encourage characters to venture out with that hardly gained equipment they have accumulated over the years. And wear it without the fear of losing it. Let the loss in experience or even a level if that must appease the admin be the exhange instead. Personally, I find it bizarre to build up equipment - and let it rot in cryo or rent, out of fear not to lose it.

[gonfalon]

It would be interesting to see what people thought of the idea of losing a level when they hit a deathtrap. Seems like a "pleaase don't throw me in the briar patch!" kind of thing. Is it strange that the first thing I thought of when I read that in this thread was, "Hey, now if I get a crappy level I can just toss myself off ole rickety and take a mulligan?" Admit it. That would be quite the temptation, especially at low level when you're just starting out after a remort.

I'm not going to belabor the relative merits of dts, positive or negative. I just hope people try to think about possible outcomes of the solution before they implement something that (at least some) people might misconstrue as a reward. The idea of having something in the game to encourage some small amount of care in exploration isn't a bad thing. DTs might not be the best means to that end, but what is?

[Austinpowers]

While several ideas are being tossed around. I wont speculate which way it will go. I will just do what the consensus is, unless its ridiculously hard to code.

That all being said, Just remember, Anton does have get out of DT card. This does work on the testport. #2, I hate DT's, but they cause venturing out to get equipment back. #3 the admin will have a toggle to turn on and off DT's including random DT's.

I could even take another suggestion even further, add DT's being turned off during happy hour.

Just throwing ideas out there people

[Dank]

Perhaps another way to do this is to assign a byte of data to limited eq ... and get the Tinker back in operation for eq repair.

Normal wear and tear would remove say 1% of limited eq health per year, but DTs would randomly accelerate that, damaging limited gear between 25-50%. Keeping your eq maintained would guarantee that your limited eq would survive DTs.

Non-limited eq would not be subject to wear/tear.

The tinker would offer repairs based on the value of the eq, much like old rental costs. I think this could be a very nice layer/aspect of the new game.