Character Harvest [Game Mechanics Suggestion]

[Cilla 0]

Sword Art Online is a perma-death game that kills you IRL when you die in-game.

As we are all well aware, these forums are cautiously maintaining a sense of balance and understanding of canon when it come to implementing new skills, weapons, items, and systems. One of these mechanics that are absolutely kept as a rule is the permanence of death, which means that your character is forever and ultimately dead (with the exception of threads you had active at the time of death). This is one of the most interesting and nerve-wracking points of both the series and this RP forum, making it both a fun and scary experience, knowing that anyone can die at anytime. Keeping true to this one key rule is something I do not wish to change, lest we lose the feeling of magnitude towards risk vs reward.

 

What is the point of restarting once all is said and done? I've lost everything.

With this being an RP forums, people spend a lot of time and effort investing in their characters. They create these characters and, generally, put in a lot of their soul into them, raising them from the ground up, and usually becoming attached to them. Admittedly, characters that I have heavily RPed with in the past in previous RP sites that have died off, be it for plot or battle, have left me emotionally distraught as well as others. These players were all under the same condition of having spent anywhere from one to four years on these characters and, after such a tragic event has occurred, they tend to lose all interest in picking back up from the beginning. They have virtually lost everything, from their virtual friends to their rewards.

 

How can we prevent losing loyal players and encourage long term commitment to the site?

In one of the more recent websites that I had RPed on, there was a system in place that allowed players to put themselves out in more plot-relevant that allowed their characters to further develop, even at the cost of more riskier adventures. As I've said before, throwing in so much effort and time into creating, developing, and becoming a character just to have them slayed off can be a heart wrenching encounter. To make up for such a massive loss, we had a system in place called "Character Harvesting" that allowed players to create a new character that harvested the sources of a previous character. In a much smaller scale, that is essentially what I would like to suggest to you all today.

 

Well, what sort of mechanics would such a system have?

Here, I have laid out a small, concise format of what harvesting a character would entail:

1. When your character dies, you are no longer able to make or join any new threads as mentioned in other rules.
   1. Any threads that you are currently in may and are encouraged to be completed. These can be referred to as "flashback" events as it the memory of a dead player.
   2. Any threads you complete after your character's death will still reward the appropriate SP.
2. The rewards you have earned at the time of death for a character or after having finished the flashbacks of a character, you may "harvest" their resources.
   1. The only rewards that a player may harvest is their SP earned.
   2. They will lose the following resources:
      1. Earned Skills (ie. Martial Arts, Katana, Unique Skills)
      2. Grandmastered Skills (to Grandmaster a skill, you must complete a Grandmaster thread)
      3. Quests
      4. Items
      5. Equipment
      6. Materials
      7. Col
3. You can not remake your character ever again, they are permanently dead and archived in the history of SAO.
4. You can only harvest a dead character once every three months ^{(length of time up for discussion)} in real life time. Yes, three months.
   1. If your have a character that dies within three months of a harvest, then yes, you must wait until that allotted time has passed.
5. Players caught griefing others (ie. murdering/rampages without IC reason) will be dealt with accordingly.
   1. Players also caught abusing this system in other ways will be dealt with accordingly.

 

Of course, this is all up to you, as players, to discuss. Please do discuss things you feel should be added and/or removed to create a more fair system. I feel the only thing that should be able to be reaped is the SP earned as all other items and Col (including housing and guild halls (can anyone correct me on that)?) are passed on to the player that kills them, passed on to their living partner, or are permanently removed from the game otherwise.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Cilla

[Sinful 0]

This is a great idea, we can finally get Azide back in action. Also, if we ever get bored of our characters, we could kill them off and start anew. Very very good, I like it.

[Mack 0]

Just so everyone is aware, this idea is something that is being discussed amongst the staff and (I presume) the Council (as I'm not on the Council I am not privy to their discussions). I just don't want anyone to think that we're ignoring this Support Ticket.

Personally, I'm on the fence for this.

[Ratatosk 0]

Although this would be a great idea (And bring back a lot of old players who have dead characters), it seems a bit broken. If they start out with the same amount of SP, they are basically making an equally powerful character. Maybe people who die should be able to keep 3/4 of their SP, cause if the current highest leveled player died (Calrex) and he used this system, he'd still be the highest leveled player and that would make the competition seem a bit impossible.

[Azide 0]

Barring some major reforms to the site's staffing situation, I have no current plans to return with another character- SP incentive or not. Granted, with the newly elected council, we may or may not see that level of change.

That being said, this is something that both Takao and I had proposed ages ago- back when the last major deaths had been Alkor and Rue, both of whom had been inactive for months by the time their characters' hitpoints hit zero. The fact that it took Zel and Dom's deaths, as well as my own, to spark this discussion reminds me of a certain point that Takao brought up recently: the staff has almost always taken a reactive approach, rather than a proactive one. I don't expect them to be perfect, or to have flawless foresight, but it does lend to the idea that certain higher-ranking members of the staff have given a disproportionate amount of priority to mechanics that benefit their own interest- as opposed to those that might benefit the community as a whole.

That sphiel probably sounds like a completely off-topic ramble- it sort of was. But it does support my central point; SP retainment as a mechanic is meant for the writers of the community, and not the characters themselves. Therefore, we should explore the implications of such a mechanic from an OOC perspective, rather than from the old game-design perspective of chasing some sort of "balance".

What is SP?

1) Progress - SP represents the work you've put into your character, acting as an indirect surrogate for post count. It's time spent on this site and time spent thinking, feeling and living that character. Zel's 200+ SP represents more than just his threat level in-universe- for over two years, he was Zelrius. Because of a single thread, two-hundred SP and two years of progress have been taken away from him in an instant. Sure, he could start over with a new character- but that leads into the next issue.

2) Relevance - Let's be honest- on SAO-RPG, your relevance is almost directly proportional to your SP. No matter how good your writing is, the actions of a 5 SP player are going to have almost neglible consequence, just because of the numbers-based system alone. Without the proper amount of SP, your character becomes inconsequential, especially in any larger topics. Nobody is going to take a level 10 PK-er seriously, and a player like that is limited to working outside of combat when it comes to generating drama or conflict. Unfortunately for them, this is Sword Art Online, and combat is the name of the game. SP allows you the potential for combat, whether it be against floor bosses or other players. Without it, have fun killing Frenzy Boars and walking around with people who'll one-shot all of your conflicts for you.

3) Balance - At its heart, SP is here to keep us all honest. After all, we can't have everyone walking around killing Gleam Eyes, and so we regulate how strong each of us is allowed to be in a way that's both fair and unbiased. The idea is that the more time you spend writing here (i.e., the more completed RP's you have), the stronger your character is allowed to be (i.e., the more SP your character is allotted). SP incentivizes dedication and those who practice it.

So what do we take away from all of this? 

The way I see it, a writer whose character has died has been stripped of both their progress, as well as their in-universe relevance. Not only have they lost their investment in their character  (i.e., the personality, development, relationships and stories of that character), but they've also lost their investment into the site as a player. They've lost their progress- what they've worked for, and measured their development by. They've lost the opportunities they were afforded as a high SP character, with the option of creating an alt for whatever lower-level plotlines they might've had in mind. Instead, they're relegated only to the latter road.

 Again, SP as a mechanic is convenient, because it can be acknowledge in-universe due to Sword Art Online's setting. But what it really is, is a reward for those who've dedicated themselves to this site, as well as a neutral balancing mechanic that prevents a bunch of over-powered characters from running around. So am I proposing that we get rid of player deaths?

No. Player deaths are essential to the theme and feel of SAO. But as a writing website, losing a character that we've spent so much time on is rough enough as it is, and will deter the vast majority of people from randomly discarding months of work at the drop of a hat. We should punish the character for dying, and not the writer- we want to keep those, after all. It'd be reckless and shortsighted for the staff not to implement some sort of member retainment mechanic.

It's not game-breaking, because these members have already earned the right to have all of these things. They've proven themselves dedicated, worked for it and separated themselves from all of those who've come and gone. The primary issues I've considered are these:

1) SP retainment encourages character abandonment/ character hopping. Essentially, the worry is that players might constantly kill off their characters a few months in out of boredom, since the OOC consequences have been lowered. Presumably, that'd be undesirable because it'd undermine character relationships, development and long-running plot-lines. On the other hand, I feel like much of this would be mitigated by the permanent loss of characters alone, and that subsidizing character deaths might actually breathe life into the writers who've either grown bored of their characters or outgrown them to the point of losing interest in the site altogether.
 

2) SP retainment encourages more player-killing. So basically, the worry here is that, at the moment, rampant PK-ing is being kept in check mostly because would-be PK-ers are afraid of being PK'd themselves (or, in actuality, losing all of their SP and everything that would entail). A relevant counterpoint is that SP retainment would also benefit the victims of PK-ers as well, though many might consider it undesirable to lose their characters even then. Personally, I think the best solution to this would to revise and revisit PK-ing mechanics altogether, so that a few bad apples don't spoil the bushel, so to speak.

A partial solution to both of these problems would be to enact an percentage-based transfer of SP. Personally, my preference is a combination of any arbitrary percent along with any arbitrary static penalty. For demonstrative purposes, let's say we were to choose 50% and SP -50. Under this sort of system, you'd take the SP of your deceased character and halve it, then compare that value to SP -50. You'd then be able to apply the higher of the two values to your replacement character. The reason I prefer this hybrid sort of approach is because losing 50% of your SP takes you out of the frontlines for increasingly longer periods of time as we progress further and further. Losing 50% when you have 50 SP is a lot different than losing 50% of 500 SP, for example.

tl;dr This is an RP site and a writing community, not an actual death game- don't kill off your community for no reason. Taking away SP punishes writers harder than it punishes players, and character deaths are already inherently punishing on an RP site. RP retainment isn't unbalanced or unfair, because these writers have already put in the time, and the SP transfer is 1 for 1. Don't use either a percentage-based rate or a static penalty alone. Revise PK-ing mechanics.

tl;dr tl;dr Staff is here for the community. Full SP loss is anti-community. Please revise.

 

[Ariel - The Crowned Lion 0]

I as a member of this roleplay website think that it's a great idea directed towards the actual members rather than their characters.
As a staff member have made my opinion clear and gave my suggestions in the proper place. Without adding more much, as Mack said, this proposition has been brought up and is under discussion.

[Amira 0]

23 hours ago, Ratatosk said:

Although this would be a great idea (And bring back a lot of old players who have dead characters), it seems a bit broken. If they start out with the same amount of SP, they are basically making an equally powerful character. Maybe people who die should be able to keep 3/4 of their SP, cause if the current highest leveled player died (Calrex) and he used this system, he'd still be the highest leveled player and that would make the competition seem a bit impossible.

Well, thats pretty much the point isnt it? There are thousands in the world of SAO, and there are bound to be plenty of characters the same level as Calrex that have stuck to the shadows or have been "unheard of" in our canon. The whole point of this is to keep players from quitting after their characters, who they've spent years working on and leveling up, get killed. After all they did work for that SP, its not like their getting it for free. Plus, they already lose all of their gear. Is it really fair to them, who have put so much into this community, to be killed in a single post after getting sneak attacked and lose all of that? Hard work and dedication got Cal to where he is now, and I dont think he, or anyone else, should be able to lose all of that so quickly and easily.