When I talk about the possiblity of death, does it have to be this elaborate? After all, near the end of the game, when I fought members of the Black Ring such as Josephina, they never really died. Once their hitpoints went down to zero, they just told the Divine One something along the lines of "you may have won this battle, but you have not won the war against evil." If members of the Black Ring can't be killed no matter how hard you hit them with physical force or magical spells, shouldn't it be the same for the Divine One? Maybe, we can create a contingency spell where once you go down a certain number of hitpoints, you're teleported to an area where you can rest and heal yourself...That would be interesting...
In
Dungeon Keeper, when a characters hit points reached zero, that character fell unconsious. You then had a few minutes to get your Imps to drag the body back to it's bed to heal -- or to a prison cell to rot -- or they would die. Perhaps in RiftRunner, the Divine One pulls you out of combat at the last moment before your death and dumps you in the city (with 5 hit-points remaining).
Hey...My point is that if you're the Divine One, it shouldn't be so easy for you to die just because you lose a certain number of hitpoints.
Of course you should! Your hit-points are you total life-span. I see what you're saying though: that it shouldn't be so black and white. Perhaps the inclusion of injury penalties should be included. Once you reach 25% health, your character cannot run, loses some Offence and Defence, and your maximum weight is reduced to the
Encumbered level (as opposed to
Overweight).
Another alternative: I'd be interested in seeing your character's vitality rise back completely after their hitpoints go down to zero. So, here's the monster jumping around thinking he's killed you and then to his utter surprise and dismay, divine intervention takes over. Your dead body is hit with a flash of brilliant light as your hit points are restored completely and you find yourself whole and complete with no loss in experience or attributes. This will makes the game more like a can't lose proposition but since many players use save games to offset their character's death, it might not be a big deal to include this feature.
So what would be the point of hit-points then?
It would seem frustrating if for some reason a player works hard in creating a level 52 character and then dies without saving. Then, he'd have to start from scratch. Is it possible to create a game where a player doesn't have to create save games in case his/her character dies?...Ideas? Comments?
Yes,
Diablo II. I can only see a few solutions here:
- When you die, you're dead. You can re-load.
- When you die, you're dead. You can go back to the last continue-point with everything the same as when you got there (ie. lose all experience and items since the continue-point). The continue-point could be a shrine or temple or fountain or other key feature in a town or safe-haven. You can touch it as often and frequently as you want.
- When you die, you're resurected. You are penalised in some way to make death have meaning and to make players want to not die.
Death needs to be meaningful and something worth avoiding. Death is a big deal, hence the game urges you
to not die, just as you would urge yourself in real life (I hope!).
