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Ghosts - Do you think they work?


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I was going to make this a poll, but in the end I thought a discussion would probably be better.

 

The question is: Do you think ghosts - in fact the whole player death system - in DST works well? The sanity drain, haunting, forms of resurrecting etc.

 

Secondly: Can you think of a better way? 

 

 

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I quite like the way Klei set up deaths. I think a lot of frustration comes from people not knowing about the different game modes. Everyone just goes with the default of survival. Survival, I think, is best played with a group of friends. It is disastrous when you play with inexperienced players who will inevitably die over and over. 

 

Endless or wilderness are better alternatives for large, open servers. Endless is good because there is no sanity drain with ghosts, and you can just tell the noobs to respawn at the portal so you don't have to waste time and resources constantly resurrecting them (and they don't feel bad about it either). Wilderness is good because there are no ghosts at all. 

 

I'd like to see a new perma-death mode where players are banned from that world session upon death. When another world is generated the ban list can be cleaned. There can be a higher level ban list for griefers and such that is separate and persistent. 

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I quite like the way Klei set up deaths. I think a lot of frustration comes from people not knowing about the different game modes. Everyone just goes with the default of survival. Survival, I think, is best played with a group of friends. It is disastrous when you play with inexperienced players who will inevitably die over and over. 

 

Endless or wilderness are better alternatives for large, open servers. Endless is good because there is no sanity drain with ghosts, and you can just tell the noobs to respawn at the portal so you don't have to waste time and resources constantly resurrecting them (and they don't feel bad about it either). Wilderness is good because there are no ghosts at all. 

 

I'd like to see a new perma-death mode where players are banned from that world session upon death. When another world is generated the ban list can be cleaned. There can be a higher level ban list for griefers and such that is separate and persistent. 

 

 

I like the concept of deaths, just not the execution.... In survival, at least. The other modes are fine.

It ends up punishing the experienced and decent with newbs and trolls, the former which die often due to inexperience, and the latter due to... Well, being a troll. 

Of course, if we rule out the chance of lag, which has caused everyone several deaths and just go on skill, then the amount of people who die to stupid things is pretty high. Tell anyone that isn't new you've died to a single frog and well... So the skill level goes.

This is extra problematic because people come and go on an open server, of which most games take place. 4 people are dead, you say? Well, there goes my sanity. Get revived? Well, now the people who revived them are in trouble, and on the cycle goes. This almost constant if not constant on some servers of sanity loss perpetuates a downward spiral which ends up ruining a play through, regardless of how many sanity improving thing you have. I'd say the only one who could break this trend right now is Wigfrid, but she'd need to be in a very good place with all the things necessary to overcome this. Spiders, meat, more spiders, plenty of gold for gear, so on, and she'd have to keep up fighting and so forth to keep the drain down, which can be pretty annoying when there's 4-5 dead on a server with up to 12 people on, which is the average size for a large-ish server.

 

I like the idea of a mode with ban upon death. I think that mode should be implemented, however....

Perhaps another mode like that could be made as well... Except the ban is not permanent by world.

Say if a person gets killed on day two, they are banned for... I dunno, 3 days. That's still enough time to make everything for winter with the remaining days. A little countdown timer outside of game will dictate how many minutes you have until you can get back on. If a day is 8 minutes, then that person is banned for 24 minutes.

Perhaps the ban could be dictated by what caused the death, or by how many days they lasted. someone with ten days plus could only get an 8 minute ban. I'm no judge at dictating how long a ban should be, but I think it would be an interesting idea to place. It would punish deaths, but not kick the player out entirely.

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About that hardcore mode which ban you from world. What about bringing that humanity meter when you are ghost? When it's fall to 0 you die for good and get that ban for world, and then you must wait for new one to get back to the game. 

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The question is: Do you think ghosts - in fact the whole player death system - in DST works well? The sanity drain, haunting, forms of resurrecting etc.   Secondly: Can you think of a better way? 

I think it is useless. That's why I prefer the wilderness mode. There is no ghosts at all. This is the answer to both your questions.

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The problem with deaths is the multiplayer setting.

If you tie the world's life to the death of one guy, everybody will get punished.

If you don't, then the individual consequences can't be enough, because the world will remain intact and persist.

 

Individual progress can be regained, as it's just recipes, but world progress (the base) is what everybody holds dear.

 

If players had something valuable tied to their age, or something hard to gain, like levels in some mod characters, then you would have people lamenting their death on wilderness mode, instead of just going at it again.

 

What I would have liked is

1) Have a multiplayer portal spawn point

2) No ghosts

3) Resurrection items are tied to the people that touch them/build them, and are untied when these people leave the server, making it necessary to go touch them again when they rejoin.

 

4) Making it so you can only prototype one thing per day?

(Although this is only an early game difficulty, not really useful to bring age relevancy.)

 

5) Making it so you can only access certain items of science and magic tiers after certain days?

(Like only being able to craft the giants' items after 72 days?)

 

Not losing everything when dying unprepared is what removes the uncompromising element from the survival.

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I think the System will be far more useful once we get a Vote Kick functionality. Right now I only play Wilderness public.

 

I hate Survival with a passion because noobs join, die, and I'm punished for it. Then some of them salt the wound by burning down a forest or two while they are a ghost.

 

Endless removes the sanity drain from ghosts but people then complain about the health drain from revival! My advice? STOP DYING. But even then you have this wave of noobs that actually prefer to play the game as a ghost and hate when people revive them.

 

Wilderness is nearly perfect, you don't have to worry about noobs because if they die who cares? You don't have to worry about ghosts burning things down either! Happy days. But one thing I would like to see in wilderness is the addition of Meat Effigy's and such. Just instead of ghosts when a person dies they're revived at the nearest resurrection device. Just like in Singleplayer.  

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Eh, Ghosts have been working. I just wish there was a way for admins to disable the ability for ghosts catching stuff on fire.

Y'know, to prevent griefing.

 

This. I like how there are ways for them to still help as a Ghost such as starting an Evil Flower farm, making Werepigs, Treeguards etc., but there's so much paranoia about burning things down that nobody wants to even attempt doing those.

I don't mind when things break, I can just rebuild them. Fire on the other hand, it spreads like a plague.

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I always envisioned ghosts having no special powers and no sanity drain. The problem, I think, is the Telltale Heart; it's way too easy to resurrect people. I'm not sure which came first - Telltale Hearts or sanity drain - but I think all these features do is balance each other out. The sanity drain was too extreme so we needed a quick way to resurrect people; resurrecting was too easy so we needed a global consequence to players being dead. 

 

I think resurrection should be confined to meat effigies, amulets and stones; no Telltale Hearts. To balance this, the insanity should be removed, but also the ghosts ability to do anything. The penalty for dying is simply the permanent health loss, and the time spent as a ghost (only able to scout, not interact) until they either find a resurrection stone or their teammates build a meat effigy.

 

When the DST death mechanics were first  being discussed on here (before being implemented), there was talk of something a long the lines of a corporeal form generator; a structure generating an aura that would make ghosts corporeal (to an extent) while within range. This would allow ghosts to still do chores around the base but not engage to combat. This would give ghosts something to do while waiting for a meat effigy (assuming resurrection stones had been exhausted). This could even be the Shadow Manipulator, since I never find myself really wanting to build one at the moment. 

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I was going to make this a poll, but in the end I thought a discussion would probably be better.

 

The question is: Do you think ghosts - in fact the whole player death system - in DST works well? The sanity drain, haunting, forms of resurrecting etc.

 

Secondly: Can you think of a better way? 

1) Not until WX's ghost becomes a hologram instead of a ghost at least >_>

2) Still thinking...

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I think a sort of matchmaking feature would help, or like someone mentioned a player level based on factors of most survived days, giants killed/fought, number of deaths, etc. That way the host could set a minimum player level and open servers could show the average level of players on the server. Just a thought.

I like ghosts, my first time dying on dSt I haunted various things out of curiosity and of course burnt a forest to the ground. Course I was with my brothers on a closed server but I can see it both ways: annoying if a noob is testing new stuff, but Also that's what most everyone does with new content... you test it. And you don't want to spoil everything for new people...

That being said aside from just being on closed servers it would be nice if there were ways to restrict access based on player experience.

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Oh, I like ghosts for the ability to save each other and keep the game going. But I do hate the insanity drain... it would be better if it was less at first to give you a chance to revive the player.

And last thought I agree things like meat effigies should be tied to the Creator of the item Unless it is a item you can give to the player such as life amulet or tell tale heart.

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