Ladder

[Ace]

Hi there!

Question + possible suggestion.

Q: If someone dies and becomes a ghost he appears in the ladder. If he dies again will he appear in the ladder again?

Suggestion:
1) Only put a ladder entry for the first time a character died - if that is possible.
2) Separate "ironman", "brave" characters from the "normal" characters

Let's discuss :)

[PowerWyrm]

Already discussed... see my post.

[Jug]

I think it's useful to get a character dump every time a character dies, not just the first time. Each death is really a distinct event, often with the character having different equipment and stats. If you die first after 10 minutes of playing at character level 15 and then die again a month later at level 50, the dumps from these deaths both tell a different story. If you only want one dump for your character on the ladder, play in "no ghost" mode :)

I like the idea of separating or highlighting "brave" (no ghost) characters on the ladder. Something will no doubt happen with this in the future.

[Ace]

How is it done in Angband? Can you resurrect there too? (honest question - i never played it, don't like the tiles :))

Maybe also the score should be reduced, as dying should have some kind of penalty or?

So maybe each resurection costs you a permanent reduction of your score by, X %. So someone who reached level 50 without dying once has full score, while someone who died 100 times during the process, has a much less score.

[Jug]

The new "brave" (no ghost) mode is essentially the standard Angband behaviour. In Angband, when you die your character is totally destroyed.

I agree your score should be reduced when you die, and in fact this is the current behaviour. In MAngband when you die you have a chance to lose your equipment and when you resurrect you take a 50% score (exp) penalty.

In the past various alternative death penalty mechanisms were looked into, but no single solution pleased everyone. This is why we now have the optional "no ghost" mode. Leaving those who prefer to play in "easy mode" with infinite lives free to do so. ;-)

[Ace]

Ah, I think we are talking about two slightly different things. Today the following formular is used (i guess):

Score = (Exp*factor) + (gold*factor) + (depth*factor) + (noghost)

Now what I am talking about is adding a new algorithm to the formula that takes the number of resurrections into account.

Score = (Exp*factor) + (gold*factor) + (depth*factor) + (noghost) - (number of resurrections*factor)-

But since this is completely non - game relevant it's a low priority issue... But what do you think :)

[Jug]

I think your suggestion is good, you're thinking along the same lines as the project team did. What you suggest was tried in the past, but later removed. Some felt that being stripped of 50% of your exp and losing your equipment was far harsh enough a penalty already. We even went further as can be seen here for example. We withdrew these changes here, Warrior and I examined a years worth of server logs looking at player resurrection behaviour and concluded that creating a harsher exp penalty based on number of resurrections would effect only a handful of players, and would punish these players for no overall purpose or benefit to the game.

Basically I think we came to understand that those who die most, need more help, not more punishment. :)

[Ace]

Since it's a Score penalty and not an exp penalty. It would not have any impact on the player except his/her position in the ladder.

But as this was already discussed extensively within the project team I will let go now :D

[Jug]

It is actually an exp penalty. In actual fact there's no separate "score", so any adjustment to score is really an adjustment to exp (for the most part).

Specifically when we say "score" we mean simply: max_exp + (100 * max_dungeon_level)
and for no ghost characters: (max_exp * 1.5) + (100 * max_dungeon_level)

You can see that max dungeon level has a (trivial) effect on the "score" too. There's a popular myth that gold has an effect on score, but it doesn't.

So 50% penalty does have a large effect on the player, you can see the living player with the highest exp is currently Turin with 20 million exp. Turin would lose 10 million exp if he resurrected, quite a lot I'm sure you'll agree! :) In fact, he'd lose more than most players will ever get.

[Ace]

you convinced me now :)

[grisu]

I would also prefer to only see alive and ghostdead chars in the ladder.
To keep an eye on the char dumps, I would prefer an archive of the news messages, so you can see all previous deads from >=lvl20.
I am heavily against a ladder seperation from brave and non brave chars. Non ghost chars already hurt the multiplayerpart of resurrections, even further
players seems to tend to choose brave, just to not show weakness or overestimating themselves. With a seperate ladder everyone will play brave and the problems will increase. I think anyway that just winners should get the brave option for the next char and noone else.
Additional ideas:
- link to the ladder from the home
- show last login for alive chars instead <today>
- show max depth
- show deepest killed unique
- the ladder should be case sensitive for chars (no alive DidyHood in it).

[Ace]

What is the "problem" of people playing brave?