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First, hi to anyone who remembers me and if you just want the conclusion of all this, skip to the last 2 paragraphs. If you don't want to read my history, skip to the next paragraph now. Second, I'm not playing and haven't played in a long time but every once in a while something reminds me of SK and I'll check the website and forums, maybe create a character to check the who list and delete. I just love seeing who's still around that I might know and how active the game is. I started playing SK when the population was usually 40 people online at it's lowest points and as high as 130+, this was back in the late 90's. I had a miscreant rogue as my first character which I got burned out and quit because I had such a difficult time trying to get mithril weapons so I could level from Master to GM in the wastelands,let alone finding a group to take me out there that wouldn't die. I came back after 6 months or so and made a miscreant swashbuckler. The same thing happened to me again resulting in me deleting and leaving for many years. I got bored with whatever other games I was playing and one of my friends that originally brought me to SK had started playing it again and talked me into it. The population had dropped a little from what it was when I last played, but there were still 30-50 people with peaks pushing 100 to interact with. I rolled a Principled Priest(Tukahl) and reached Mentor status before I was finally able to catch up with the high follower of Dulrik's faith(which most players I was talking to at the time felt was completely ridiculous) and then GM status by simply perfecting my spells and healing other leveling groups. I joined The Hammer and eventually became the leader by default. I really didn't know jack about the MUD and I got pk'd and jlooted into the dirt and felt utterly hopeless. I completely stopped liking the game, it stressed me out to no end that I had made enemies I simply couldn't contend against that refused to show me mercy as I hadn't shown them any when I had the numbers on my side. I deleted and left the game for several years again. Inevitably, I was bit by the bug and returned, this time as a Miscreant Priest. The numbers declined even more and the same thing happened except I had joined the Adepts and my relic got taken so I lost all my abilities and was once again left feeling utterly hopeless, defeated and depressed so I deleted again. Then I returned a year later with a miscreant sorceror, joined the Harlequins and the same thing happened again where I once again ended up leading, my relic was taken, I lost all my powers, I made enemies with the wrong people and got pk'd into hopelessness. I haven't returned since and I'm not sure I ever will. I have always loved the mandatory RP environment on SK and that's what got me to come back so many times. I learned a little more about the game each time I played as well, but I'm still a big noob.
I couldn't agree more with Konrin about Death. Death is so unforgiving on SK. As a new player, it's so easy to die and with lower player numbers right now, I can only imagine how hard it must be for some players to return to life, let alone reclaim their belongings. I was never one to play more than one character at a time, so if I died, I'd rot in the afterlife and keep checking the game, hoping a priest would log on so I wouldn't get an xp penalty. I'd rather rot in the afterlife and lose my gear than suffer reincarnation penalties if I failed the death quest or had died too many times. Most of the time I died while leveling, it wouldn't be until veteran/expert/mentor/master status and I wouldn't be able to get my body back without help from a group or higher level player which was a problem even back then. Now I had to re-equip myself or get help with that before I could return to leveling. Easy if you're a knowledgeable veteran player but I found the whole process to be quite the endeavor most of the time and I'm sure the same goes for a lot of new/casual players.
Often times(definitely not all the time) while I was leveling my characters unless someone had to talk to me about joining a religion, I had a hard time just getting the attention of a Grandmaster level player. They had their own priorities and problems to deal with and until I became a viable ally or threat, most wouldn't pay me any attention unless they were bored. Now once I reached GM status, I'd want to explore the game but for fear of death and losing all of my gear that I may have spent a long time gathering, enchanting, brewing, scribing, etc -- I wouldn't do it. Not only did I not want to lose my equipment, I didn't want to lose experience points either. Sometimes I'd die and be stuck in the afterlife for a long, long time because I didn't want to have to level up again and no one was around that would resurrect my sad, sorry behind. Even if situations where a group would wipe in a difficult area with aggressive NPCs, we might all be stuck dead and unable to reclaim our gear before our corpses rotted even if we were returned to life. I fully understand this is part of the game and some of what makes it challenging.
It's so hard to balance a game for PvE and PvP, let alone casual players and "hardcore/veteran/elite" players. You need to have rewards in place for those players who have more time to invest into the game, yet if you make those rewards too powerful, a new player might be at a severe disadvantage. I don't know what the game is like right now but when I played, especially the melee classes, required so much preparation if your opponents were good. You could spend hours, days, weeks even maybe getting your character ready for one battle that if you lost, all that time you spent meant nothing. To try to kill your adversary, you had to do the same thing over again if you wanted a legit shot at it. When you're competing against elite, veteran caliber players who know the game inside and out and have invested so much of their time over the years into the game to get as good as they are it, death is brutal when they jloot you and there's nobody around to return you to life. You can log off, roll a new character or play an alt but at least for me, all my focus would go into my main character and it would always come to a grinding halt when I couldn't get a "rez".
When I first started playing in the late 90's, religion was a big deal. You weren't just welcomed in, you had to prove yourself worthy. It felt to me on par with what joining a cabal felt like the first time I did that. By the time I made Tukahl in 2003(going off my forum ID), it no longer was unless you were a priest, paladin or hellion. On my latter characters, I think all you had to do was express interest in the religion and the high followers had to invest you. If all you need to do currently is declare yourself a follower of a particular God/Goddess, perhaps all the NPC priests that sit around in temples could invest new players into these religions and grant them a symbol. When wearing a holy symbol upon your death perhaps it could be scripted to return you to life in a random temple/holy location of your God/Goddess. I think it should apply all the way up through Master Status. Once you reach Champion, no more free rez ride. Using religion, perhaps you could accumulate some sort of favor/points in doing quests for or making donations to these Priest NPCs so that when you die, you'd have a command that would resurrect you providing you had sufficient favor/points with your religion. Stuff would need to be added in the newbie zone about selecting a deity to follow and the benefits of doing so, then scripting the NPC priests to be able to educate a new player about the system. A "favor/religious point system" would need to be created and the quests and/or system to earn the religious favor/points. How long before you can resurrect if you die to an NPC/Death Trap vs if you get PK'd? A lot of details need to be ironed out and this will surely require a lot of work from Big D and his current building staff to implement but I think it could change the game in a really positive way given numbers being so low. Now I can't wait to hear if you all think I'm nuts or it's a good idea. I know I'd have tougher argument with myself not to give SK a go again were such a system in place.
As Avenel said, lift the xp penalty on breath of life and raise dead and have it work on characters up to Master status. Also perhaps shamans and priests could call upon the spirits and gods to summon a corpse of a player that's Master status or lower to their location. Perhaps the player that died could pray to the gods/spirits and with sufficient favor have his corpse returned up to Master status. You could let necromancers use animate dead on willing PCs, they would be considered undead and controlled by the necromancer like the charm spell and on the same timer as the corpse rot but at least a Necromancer might be able to get you to safety and preserve your equipment or keep you in the fight a while longer. Heal would now harm the player and all that stuff. Once the corpse rot timer is up, if you haven't been resurrected your body and everything on/in it decomposes and is lost. Just throwing stuff at the wall.. let me know if anything has the substance to actually stick?
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