War, death, and the meaning of life.

[Delia]

Another myth players took as truth? Who knows... Wink

True or not, it sometimes surely feels like it

[Vargrahim]

Yeah I agree.. I always felt it was easier to improve skills if you didn't do the quests.. only after raising skills high, do the quests. Probably psychological, though

[rex]

It would be cool if it´s possible to cripple cities or guilds a little with a war. What do i mean with it. A city that gets raided alot what will happen to it? yeah. There won`t be enough money to get new guards. shopkeeper won`t take the risk to carry precious wares in the city. It would be cool if a city suffers if it`s guards die constantly. The overall guard strength should be reduced with every successfull attack. shopkeepers can`t offer all their wares if the constantly get killed or stuff gets stolen out of their shops. after some time more beggars could be added and some might even try to steal because they don`t have enough to eat.
And now to the guilds. raids and constantly dying could cripple guilds in some way. they could loose guild items because the guild can`t effort them anymore. the trainers and shopkeepers might not be able to work because they are busy defending the temple and the guildguards could be weakened du to weaker equipment and vitality penalties. This would realy cripple them and help to realy end a war or satisfy the enemy by making a real strike on the guild and perhaps their city. Some of this penalties could be just regained paying large bills for repairs and aquiring new guild equipment.

I like this idea. Maybe the money collected by taxes could pay for new armours for the guards, and once that money is exhausted then the guards would have to wear armours of less quality or maybe just leathers. Every time a guard dies the affect on the earhtly power of the God of that city could go down a tiny bit as the God of that city would have to resurrect those guards.

Just a suggestion. Any thought?
poRex

[Alamar]

Well coming from the city that got raided at least three times a week for awhile I think that this is a bad idea. That's not a complaint it is a statement of fact. An accurate measure of a city's wealth is what is owned by its citizens (i.e. what's in the lockers). If raiders claim what is in the lockers then they are, in a very real way, claiming the wealth of the city for themselves.

If we are going to go for realism then we have to admit that between 4 and 8 people are not usually able to sack a city by themselves and that a city would be guarded by more than are actually there.

Doing actual crippling damage to a city would hurt the game in the long run (at least until we get a lot more cities added, but that's years and years away). I'm not against it in terms of realism, just in terms of game playability. (And, of course, I would rather my character be protected by more than one guardsman with a toothpick ).

-poAlamar

[chara]

I really like Vurdijak's suggested amendments to Alamar's suggestion. I think that having EP have a bigger effect on non-clerics would be cool and atmospheric.

Maybe together with more ways for non-clerics to raise EP as well, to address the problems with keeping EP from sinking too low.

I also like the idea of sacking cities having more of a visible effect, say on the available goods in the shops, but I think that it should be in conjunction with a wealthy city having more advantages, too. The ability to hire more guards with tax money, cooler items available in shops, and so on would be nifty, and would encourage people to interact more with their cities, I think. An Arborea citizen who knows that buying goods in Arborea as opposed to Elvandar or elsewhere would have a positive effect would have motivation to be more loyal to his or her own city.

There's quite a lot in the way of economy and trade that could enhance gameplay, but which take quite a lot of time and effort to implement...

[anglachel]

I would prefer following solutions.
- increasing the penalty then fighting his/her last murderer
- slower regeneration of vitality
- then vitality drops to its minimum, some skills begin to drop

To make it easier to decide who win a war (declared or not) some "Catch the flag" feature can we added. So a guild can get control over a place or small area and get some benfits for it. The guild who loss the control loose the benefits and get perhaps some temporay mali.

For cleric guild we can put several small shrines everyehere in the mud.
If a shrine is devote to s special deity theretimes in two days, a npc cleric comes (maybe with one or two guards) and the shrine is controled by this guild. These increase the power of their deity. May be we should add some feature so that the power of the deity becomes more important of nobn-clerics. The earthly power of the deity can influence the healing rate.

For towns we can add as example iron/gold mines. These can affect the price some items. Maybe some items are sold in shops only if the town has the control over some mines.
If a town loose the control of many places or the guards are killed. the taxes in the shops will rise.

[chara]

I really like the shrine idea in particular...

[genesis]

Many characters, especially those with custom items, -hate- as players losing their items, and this includes me. I wouldn't probably play my mortal if I didn't have, e.g. my weapon. This is, yes, an OOC problem which causes IC solutions. And before everyone starts shouting "Boo, bad RPer" I say this: Logging in and logging out are also OOC "problems", which have IC solutions. This is a game and we cannot act 100% coherently like it'd be a real world. We also need to take other --players'-- feelings into concern.

There are some players who know how to make money and get the stuff for their precious new custom items. I, for one, don't. All my items were bought by money given by other players or the items were given.

Does that make me a bad player? No. I just don't fancy spending 2 hours mining in the game. Fuck realism, my character isn't like that, I am not like that, and I can live being poor. I just can't get new items.

And say, if I died many times while trying to recover my things, and got penalized for that with e.g. skill-loss, I'd probably vote with my 'quit' command. This game --is-- item- and skill-based. If player is stripped from both, there is no fun generated.

I really dislike Vargrahim's solution to the problems. "Gee, they don't play like we want them to play? Kick them out of the mud." It is a matter of opinions. Sure, we can enforce rules "you have to RP death in -this- way" and introduce a long list of stuff what happens when you die and how you have to RP it... Gee, how about replacing players with NPCs with an evolved AI? That'd work just as well.

On the question of booting anyone from the game because of "failed RP", I vote no. I actually vote no for booting from mud if there's a small code breaking. There are other ways to penalize for breaking the rules. Our small playerbase already prevents us from making more guilds into game. Just imagine, a guild of e.g. Zhakrin clerics with 1 or 2 players in it, summed up, and the other would go on a vacation? Gee, how fun...

I feel that in the recent years the opinions have turned in favour of some sort of RP puritism where all and everything in game is just simply RP. Bah, I say. This is a frigging fantasy adventuring -MUD-, not Sims 2!

Do we want "realism" to overcome "fun"?

I wouldn't.

[chara]

The problem is when lack of roleplay results in no fun for any other player. "I don't care how often I die, so I will just bullheadedly do anything I want" is the opposite of how this game should be played. There are specifically no ways of winning this game, other than to have fun with other players - but some people forget that.

These bullheaded and shortsighted ways of "playing" are detrimental to the game, and drive away people who want to have fun and create a nice atmosphere. I would rather lose a single player that drives five or six others into not playing anymore than allow people who refuse to play in a reasonable way to destroy the game for others in the hopes that somehow one step forward and five steps back will result in a larger playerbase.

This has nothing to do with realism, and everything to do with fun.

[Abharsair]

Do we want "realism" to overcome "fun"? I wouldn't.

"Fun" is a matter of perspective. You claim that penalizing repeated deaths would take away the fun. I say penalizing repeated deaths (either all deaths or only PvP deaths) would decrease the amount of dying drastically, and thus increase the fun for almost everyone. In most instances where I witnessed such a "bite the dust" fest, people didn't even bother to get significant reinforcements, mercenaries or an improved strategy. They just ran back and died until the critter eventually gave up due to boredom or exhaustion.

Also, according to your argumentation, we shouldn't even have increased the recovery time for vitality after the infamous "Leviathan" incident, where each of the participants died an average of 4 deaths and where one even said (I quote) "I don't care how often I die, because I can recover vitality in a day or two". Almost identical to that statement is a more recent sentence I heard from another player: "Hah, my stats can't decrease any more anyway." Just as the former quote, this last one tells me clearly: Something has to be done.

I also somewhat wonder what your goal is: do you want people to try avoiding death, or do you want death to be a mere nuisance which can be ignored depending on the situation? Do you really think that turning an apparently optional nuisance into a deterrent would be worse for this game? Do you think asking other players for help (or buying their help), using advanced strategies and some brain would be so much worse than pure muscle and stubbornness? Do you really want brawn to win over brains?

Personally I think I am not alone when I say it is annoying to watch someone being killed, getting resurrected and then walk back to the killers and attack them again, giving them the crappy choice of either killing him again or putting themselves in danger by stunning him. I am also tired of people who are captured and who then spit into their kidnappers face and act as if death doesn't matter to them. Yes, everyone wants to be a hero, but who wants to read a book where every single character is one, perfect without any flaws at all?

The point being is that death - as it is right now - is no real deterrent. Penalizing repeated deaths within a certain time interval is in my opinion the way to go. Not only would it not punish those who die occasionally and then try to recover before they take new risks, it would also reward those who play smart and careful. And let's face it, dying more than twice a day as a non-newbie usually always involves doing stupid things (and please note that I said "usually").

[Vargrahim]

I really dislike Vargrahim's solution to the problems. "Gee, they don't play like we want them to play? Kick them out of the mud." It is a matter of opinions. Sure, we can enforce rules "you have to RP death in -this- way" and introduce a long list of stuff what happens when you die and how you have to RP it... Gee, how about replacing players with NPCs with an evolved AI? That'd work just as well.

I never seriously suggested booting people from the MUD if they "don't play like I want them". And if you payed attention, I even wrote a bit of sarcasm on exactly that NPC idea on the first page. I never wrote the importance was to enforce *my* idea on players, only that on an RP-enforced MUD, RP should be enforced. If someone deliberately ignore some facts of RP to his advantage (the problems which were described by the author of this topic), then yes, obviously something must be done if people refuse to RP. And, ironically, I even proposed a solution for the problem you like to think I did not care about (your beloved custom weapon), that would work together with an RP world. But If players deliberately work against the very concept of this MUD, then like I said, punishment is the only option left. However, I clearly stated I would rather most see the players taking the responsibility without measures (see first page), secondly a solution to the custom EQ problem, and yes if none of that works, code changes that enforces it.... and as a last option, yes, punishment.

[rex]

I am also tired of people who are captured and who then spit into their kidnappers face and act as if death doesn't matter to them.

Just want to say that I know I've done this and that the laws of the Crusaders accually tell us to do this. I will also say that from the Crusader perspective, they are not told to die constantly and doing that would be bad RP, which I know that I've also done at least twice because I was angry after dieing.

On another note, I agree with Genesis on this, Do we want "realism" to overcome "fun"? I wouldn't.'. I know some people have told me that this game is getting to realistic for them. I also agree with what Genesis said, This is a game and we cannot act 100% coherently like it'd be a real world. We also need to take other --players'-- feelings into concern.'

I 'really' hope that death penatlies are not increase to things such as skill-loss. It personally, takes me a very very long time to recover from deaths as it is and I don't think I've ever been recovered for the past 6 months. I do die alot, I will admit that, but I am not sure who is able to recover vitality from 4 deaths in one of two days like Abharsair said someone aid they could. They must know a secret that I don't in recovering from vitality.

I think that vitality should stay the way it is and people just need to roleplay it properly, and maybe for those who don't a wizard can step in and warn them, then if it happens again a certain amount of xp loss could happen?

[Abharsair]

Just want to say that I know I've done this and that the laws of the Crusaders accually tell us to do this.

Several holy books tell people in RL what to do and basically no one manages to follow those rules one hundred percent. I would also like to point out that some of those other (and also more critical) Crusader rules have been repeatedly and intentionally broken in the past, so why should this one be an exception?

Do we want "realism" to overcome "fun"? I wouldn't.'. I know some people have told me that this game is getting to realistic for them. I also agree with what Genesis said, This is a game and we cannot act 100% coherently like it'd be a real world. We also need to take other --players'-- feelings into concern.'

A discussion about punishing those who intentionally ignore death has nothing to do with "realism". Realism would be a discussion about introducing perma-death. Which we don't intend to do. Frankly, I do not see a connection between the discussed problem here and realism. I see a connection between this problem and a behavior which makes it impossible to end a conflict by any other means than making someone stop playing. And this plain and simple sucks.

...but I am not sure who is able to recover vitality from 4 deaths in one of two days like Abharsair said someone aid they could. They must know a secret that I don't in recovering from vitality.

If you re-read what I wrote you will see that I mentioned that we increased the recovery time of vitality after this incident. This happened before you created a character here, and yes, it took only a day or two of intensive playing to recover deaths.

I think that vitality should stay the way it is and people just need to roleplay it properly, and maybe for those who don't a wizard can step in and warn them, then if it happens again a certain amount of xp loss could happen?

Yes, we would love it if people would actually take death serious and we wouldn't have to change anything, but unfortunately they don't. And this is not a new discussion either, so I have my doubts that this time it would make all of a sudden a difference.

[Itenin]

While I see Abharsair and Chara's point, I must say I heavily agree with Genesis as well. I also think we're getting somewhat off track here. The goal is to somehow deter people from fighting endless wars. A person can easily not die more than once a day, or even two to three times a week and carry on a war indefinitely. Hell, I've only died one time to another player when I was actively trying to escape. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm single handedly winning some great war.

I feel that the vast majority of the player base are handling pvp deaths responsibly . In the encounters I've been in both loser and winner have acted with ooc discretion. People generally don't come back to hunt their killers for at the very least a day (or however long it takes for them to get reinforced), and the killers usually give their opponents a day before they attempt to hunt them once again.

The pvp penalties need to be farther reaching than just "certain time interval" (unless they intervals are quite long). They also need to be severe and wide reaching enough to be able to convince those persons who log in only every now and then and have never died, killed, engaged, or even attempted to be a part of a pvp battle to stop perpetuating wars. Yet at the same time, they shouldn't be something that diminishes the fun of actually participating in wars. Often times, the victor of a war can be determined long before it is fought. But in the end, winner or loser, both should be able to enjoy actually having fought in the war.

[Delia]

I wonder how people handle their PvP situations, do people prefer to slug it out no matter what or wimp away when things look tough? About everytime Delia takes punishment in one-on-one PvP situations to 50% hp its time to praise those long elven legs. Against a strong foe the battle is usually lost long before you die, best example being fighting a satho somedays ago and battle ending after the first miracle suffered(nfvw and bleeding). Guess its just down to personal preference, I find it equally satisfying even if PvP does not end in death/victory of either party...

[Alamar]

I thought of a situation that sometimes comes up... especially for players who have less available time to play than others.

I do not know, nor am I trying to figure out, exactly how the code works as far as death recovery goes. All I know is that it takes quite a bit of play time and that it has been discussed or possibly already implemented to increase the length of time required to recover from a death.

For me and most of the players who are active pvpers this is not a huge problem and it does increase the fear of death for the characters (which is always appealing). There are other players, however, who are not as active as I and others... say Rex as an example... are. If Rex and I kill each other, we can recover in a moderately timely way and continue the process continuously.

But not all players can spend that amount of time recovering from deaths. I do not wish to name any specific examples of these players with less time, but let's call him Bob. Bob is a 30-day-old Taniel priest who lives in Elvandar. PoBob plays for maybe five hours per week and sometimes he is able to put in several hours in a session on the weekend (when his girlfriend lets him ). Unfortunately Bob has also managed to incur the wrath of a certain unmentionable dark force that lives up in the tundra.

Sometimes it just seems to Bob as though no matter when he logs on, some crazy darkelf is popping out of the woodworks to kill him and tell him to quit serving Taniel (or whatever). While other characters who are more active quickly recover from their deaths, Bob is perpetually several deaths down... which is frustrating, especially during those periods when pvping increases dramatically.

My suggestion is this, for the sake of poor Bob and others like him (No I don't mean me, nor do I have anyone specific in mind):

Possibility: A combination of both "total time" and "training time" factors into the recovery process. In other words, if a more experienced player puts in 25 hours of playtime into a week of playing he should expect to recover by the end of the week. Bob, on the other hand, has only about 5 hours a week. My argument is that he should expect to be recovered from his deaths after two or three weeks (instead of 5).

In my mind this would have a few consequences:

1. A player would not have to be eternally frustrated by getting killed during those few times he logged on. (I will reiterate, this will do almost nothing to those people who are logged on most every day and can easily log 25 hours in a week).

2. Some players might play it safer after they die and instead of going on an all-day combat binge of training in order to recover, they might instead engage in a few more discussions at the tavern, learn a few of the non-combat skills that Geas has to offer, and generally learn more about the other players. In short, they will act as though they were actually recovering from a traumatic experience.

So to sum up the suggestion. Death recovery should be a combination of total time and training time. A very active character can probably recover in a week, but a far less active character should be able to recover in two-three weeks.

Just a thought that might encourage some of the less active players in their times of frustration when they feel like they die every time they log on. Let's help poor Bob out.

-poAlamar

[isengoo]

Or, you can just stun Bob and taunt him after the first kill. I really never understood the notion of killing over and over again. If roleplayed correctly by both sides, it should never come to mass killings, imo.

[Dantari]

Sorry, there is alot to go thru in this thread, but, I'll just respond directly to Abh's initial post first.

Yeah, players just try to make the most out of what's available. Thus, the phenomenum of people not getting tired of death is to be expected.

Thus, to minimize this situation and to allow a conflict to have a temporary outcome, I strongly suppport pt 5.The guy who got killed by another player could see this when he tries to go back to war and attack again: "You have gotten tired of war.." or "You are contemplating a new meaningful to the conflicts" or "You ponder about life once again".
Then, set the timing to such that all these war restrictions (aka, the player slain not able to attack other players) are removed perhaps everyday at 10am or once every 3 days (which may allow the winning side of a faction to enjoy their victory momentarily).
Likewise, attackers who tried to attack previously slain victims could get a "He is harmless" type of message.
At the restrction/penalty (associated to this type of PvP death) removal time, the slain victims could see something like "You understand your goals once again." or "You see new meaning in your ambitions", etc.

I guess we want a bit of common sense in fun. We dont have to enforce realism all the time since sometimes...that is at the expense of fun. Therefore, I am against the idea of having big penalties. Unless, this penalties are regained back slowly even when the players are offline or at the time when war restriction is removed, otherwise, I dont see why we should have more or heavier penalties to put people off from trying things out. Putting a cap on penalities encourages more activities, and, putting a limit on the frequency of attacks allows time for things to "end/buffer" for a short while and will also less likely cheapen the activity itself due to its limited frequency.

[lanyara]

Cool thread! Old too!

Since @Isengoo wants of me to write shorter statements, I'll try.

But the note will be huge, don't read it!

So, let me resurrect this thread ...

The bigger question about death in-game is:

"what do we want to have or achieve with it"

And the main concern was that vitality loss isn't really an effective punishment after some deaths. Which is very true. Often players dislike to lose expensive items, horses etc... much more than something which comes back automatically anyway (vitality).

It totally sucks if you lose something that did cost like +100 gold coins and took you a long time to work for Vitality however is super-cheap compared to... making 100 gold coins. Or anything unique, which is also hard to get back ...

Now - if a side is strong (because the players are active, the chars are big, they got more powers, they got more allies etc.. etc..), if it is more attractive to join that side and keep on playing....

... then ... who wants to stand up against that side at all?

It doesn't matter if it is a "good" or an "evil" side. It's simply more fun to win than to lose, no matter where. At least for big characters. (Small characters don't care too much IMO)

And the stronger side would logically win more often than a weaker side.

Hardly anyone will want to play an underdog for a long time.

The weaker side will NEVER be able to win or keep on any kind of conflict at all. Because they'd just get killed again and again. And it would be a complete waste of time to fight in this case as you can't effect much change. It would not make any sense to try it at all as well. What incentive would you have if you are too weak and would only lose anyway because the others are stronger?

You would automatically lose conflicts. The other side can dictate their terms how they see fit. Who please would want to play on the losing side?

In many situations, the weaker side will also have less options available to find or seek alliances (or likeminded people who could help them)

But let me explain why

vitality

does not really work as far as it was meant to be a deterrent against dying repeatedly:

- all it does require for vitality to recover is time/activity.

Once you are down in vitality, it does not matter at all whether you perform at 50% or at 60% - both is suboptimal, but between 50% and 60% is no real difference at all. And if you fall down to 40% it also doesn't matter at all, really.
If you have a weak character, it even matters less. Whether you are at 50% or at 60% you still suck. Whether you suck at 50% at 60% or at 100% isn't a big difference.

Besides, you know that, given enough time, you will eventually be at full powers again anyway, as vitality comes back.

A simple and effective way to make death more harsh would be to have death be more meaningful - as in by losing XP permanently. A not so severe approach would be to make it neigh impossible to learn anything if vitality is too low. When players would feel that they don't learn anything, they don't progress, then usually they will care more than before about not dying too easily. But note, the problem of stronger sides will still remain! Do we want the stronger side to auto-win? Or do we want the weaker side to at least try standing against them in a way?

If players know they would lose something which takes time to recover, they will inevitably care much more about it.

If your 100 sword skill drops down to 90 instantly when you get ressed, you know you will absolutely hate it. It takes time to recover from that.
Most who spent a lot of time will simply hate it. You lost playing time, another player (or monster/npc) caused this, your effort to train up a character is handicapped or slowed down.

Most probably want to go and enter payback time against this char who killed you and cause you to lose XP.

Players would complain (players always do), they would however also dislike death much more than before.

This drop-down of skills could automatically kick in when you have a too low vitality, but there should be warnings, so that players don't suddenly lose skills, or don't know when it would be "soon about".

You don't even have to do a permanent drop of skills ... For example, another scenario:

When you ress back, your 100 sword skill is suddenly at:
50 / 100

Which means, you didn't really lose theoretical knowledge, but you need a lot of practise before it gets back to 100. (This would also mean a switch away from the 10 skill points gap difference between theoretical and practical knowledge... I am not sure if this is wanted, as it would change how skill decay works. But I meant this as example merely.)

Note though - this has a few other problems associated with it.

Noone who would stand to lose XP would want to play on any side which is basically crippled, inactive, or stands no real chance against a really strong enemy side. Some players would simply switch characters. A few others may even decide to not care at all about it especially if your skills would be low already. And a few more may see it as a challenge to play that.

In case plaerchars still don't care much, one solution could be to, when you have really low vitality, you get permadeathed once you hit really very very low vitality, without a normal way to ress back. Why would gods send back a mortal who dies again and again and again and again and ... again? Would be easier to call it quits for the gods, and take him away. (In case he followed no god, the ghastly underworld could be created for the poor souls who failed to worship any god...)

To make this not a one-way ticket out, playerchars could still do a ritual to raise the vitality back above 0 of such a ghost, so that this char can continue playing if he so desires to some day again. (I actually mean ... the char could play as a ghost, but he could enter the "real world" only briefly to interact... before he is sent back to the underworld again)

Also note though, when doing such changes ... one has to keep in mind that this may also further intensify the need to "powertrain" even more.
Because if you have a superstrong character, and you can make it out of a difficult situation and not die ... then who wants to play a weak char at all who can't make it out in the very same situation? Because he is untrained and weak?

The need to powertrain is already quite big.

Questing XP is a good example - if you can pick between doing the quest, and thus have a bigger char as a result, or have a weak char without doing all quests .... you'd rather want to quests even if it doesn't make much IC sense, i.e. especially for character concepts which are "pacifists".

Anyway, I am saying here it needs some more thoughts when such changes are done.

Back to the initial post:

1) We wizards keep an eye on the kill logs and then decide after a while who has won and adjust the realities to that.

What should be considered is that this way, the stronger side would always win, the weaker side has no alternative other than accept defeat here in the long run. Because, if you die too many times, you auto-lose. Hmmm.

I know that the stronger side hates to be stuck into a permanent conflict, but what should a weaker side do? How could they turn the odds beset against them? How could they make it more attractive to play on their side?
Monitoring the kill logs is I believe a very suboptimal solution here. It would also require more wizard attention, which they could rather spend on features and new things rather than interfere too directly with the gameplay of players (even if one doesn't agree with what a player does).

What can be easily adjusted though is NPC powers, or how easy it is to raid guilds or areas in general.

Example - if sathos or someone else kills NPC patrol 3 times in 2 days, then the NPC patrol could become weaker for some time (don't know for how long, let's say a reallife week or some such). Respawning NPCs in general could also be amenable to player actions. And could take longer.

If they respawn after only 8 @hours ore more after they were killed a few times, then active playerchars have a much bigger effect on the gameworld (because, a weak NPC patrol means you can more easily enter good areas).

And normally you will also care more if NPCs die that way, because they would come back much weaker, and after a longer downtime.

2) Players do not start wars without agreeing on rules for how to win it.

I don't think this can work. Fanatical characters don't easily want to come to terms with other fanatical characters. And why should they anyway especially if they would be strong enough to enforce their rules onto a weaker side?

That's like a gentleman agreement, but it doesn't make much IC sense when you are like permanent archenemies and have totally different goals or world views.

Example - I dislike looting, but looting is a perfectly fine IC strategy. It also sucks a lot OOCly. Why would there i.e. be an IC agreement to not loot for instance? It seems to be derived from OOC, I can also understand it absolutely.

But ICly, it doesn't make much sense for the stronger side to not loot.

If it can weaken the enemy side, then of course you'd go and do so.
If I can abolish the ultimate evil and save NPCs of the world, then for sure I would want to go this way!

Raid Asador. Burn down Arborea or Elvandar!

And loot away every item I can find (which then of course means sooner or later the looting "favour" is returned - no surprise that looting is more feared than vitality loss)

Or, to end a war with... specific conditions.

It is also why I disagree with offering good areas like Elvandar to potentially evil characters. At least not in the current way with how the karma system works (as it perfectly enforces the segregation between good and evil character).
I'd rather want to foresee - as a devoted, good char - that I drive all evil out from good areas than to invite them for dinner.
At least that's how I understand the current deity/karma concept to work. There isn't a large difference between a Satho with superpowers and a Satho follower - both seem to feel compelled to follow Satho in a fanatical, exclusive way. You don't get to easily see a cuddly Satho follower or? You can always assume he must have done something evil, nowadays. Or that he would spy for Satho - why would anyone good trust a follower of an evil deity? It is a lot easier to find out who is evil, and then simply not trust him, than risk anyone "gain your trust" ...

There isn't really a grey middlezone possible from my point of view currently.

Conflicts often involve diplomacy as well, and the amount of active player fluctuates constantly.

Wars will eventually be ended by diplomacy or agreements.

3) We increase the penalty for being killed by other players.

This I believe is the second best solution. Even if players complain. (But I will agree with some complaints, hence why I think if this way is done, a few other changes should occur as well).

I also think that deaths should be treated the same, so whether you die if a monster kills you, or if a player kills you - there should not be a difference at all technically.

That's why I think this suggestion is only the second best.

4) We increase the penalty for death after being killed a certain amount of times in a row.

This would be the best honestly.

There should be IC notifications though ... I am a player who would be too stupid to easily figure out when my char has died "too many times".

Ressing from low vitality could also take longer ... why not have ress take 5 @minutes rather than 30 @seconds?

5) We make it impossible to partake in PvP for a certain period after someone has been killed by an enemy.

Bad idea, honestly. Noone could play on a weaker side at all anymore that way - you die in PvP, more likely if your side is weaker, then you are out of PvP business in an enforced manner.

That further encourages powertraining to a maximum, and getting in an early kill ("first who gets to kill enough of the enemy side won the war"), or completely avoiding dangerous situations altogether (since you would only die here anyway) ...

Whoever gets the first kill, has a bigger influence on the outcome of wars.
And that really just SUCKS. Newbies will be even more a liability. Who wants to recruit newbies that way? It already is a lot harder to join guilds.

The idea here also would mandate an auto-loss and is purely derived from OOC

PvP is an OOC concept, there is no IC difference between PvP or fighting a NPC ... that's why I don't agree with any suggestions about "PvP flags" or similar.

Anyway, I think the best way is to make death more severe in some ways, but also think about providing incentives to try and play on a side even if it is weaker or less active.

Another idea - if you didn't login for like what - 180 days ... and your vitality would have been at 50... you could start playing with vitality 100 again.

One wouldn't even need any XP loss for that, it could encourage old players to more easily return (a bit at least, I think in most situations the vitality isn't really the biggest reason to have stopped playing ... a much bigger reason would be if the world changed in a way which you, as a player, can not really change at all. I.e. watchtowers, NPCs reporting on you, patrol NPCs instantly attacking outlaws, getting outlawed, getting bullied down by goodies or by baddies while hardly having a way to escape from being bullied etc.. etc.. ... )

There were also other ideas about the underworld and similar concepts.

Would be nice if this could be added at the same time when - or if - death becomes more severe.

[Delmon]

There is no reason to add severity to dying. It takes a long time to raise vitality. I could beat halo on legendary in the time it takes to raise my vitality fully from just one death. There are times I thought about quiting because of fully lost vitality. From increased severity you will see less conflict and less rp situation. People will be less willing to explore, try new things, and rp evils due to the proliferation of goodies that are strong. People will become frustrated and leave due to added severity in punishments from dying, because frankly, shit happens sometimes like dying from guards and npcs or just bad luck and deaths are already bad enough.