The Death Double Standard

[CanadianKiwiFlight 1622]

Hi there people of the Lord of Crafting forums! It's your favorite person, Dont-Advertise here to drop a debate post in the stead of some other people.

I'd like to start off this post with saying that this is not a debate about whether or not you're cool or cringe for not PKing when killed in roleplay. I have been on both sides of the 'infinite revives' argument wherein at one point I believed in only ending a story when you wanted to, and nowadays I'm the type of person to PK first death no matter what. 

Now I still heavily believe that there is nobody who is entitled to pressure someone into PKing. Are there situations wherein people should realistically PK after being killed? Absolutely. That being said the minutiae of that exact argument is irrelevant to this post here and not something I'm trying to bring attention to.

The point of this post is to point out something that I just frankly see as hypocrisy, this being people who take advantage of lore revivals outside of using the Cloud Temple Monks. I'm entirely inactive and don't read lore, but I know there are MULTIPLE lore written ways to be revived with certain magics/CAs outside of the ones that I'm just going to roughly touch on. Generally in my opinion, lorewritten 'outs' of death tend to consist of a few different general 'themes'

1: 'My Magic/God keeps me back and brings me back from death with no real drawbacks, lol?'
- This is objectively the laziest form of 'Death Double Standard' that I see, though it's not as common as the second point. Just because your magic inherently writes a way for you to come back through your divine- or through some type of different place, does not mean it is any less cringe in comparison to a player reviving at the CT.

2: 'There's this awesome material/ring/Klone that's actually keeping me alive, and if you killed them I'd be dead'
- First off, I've been told by longstanding Necromancer players that a Lich Phylactery has never been broken- PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong. The idea behind this topic basically cements down to being 'oh if you destroy/do this one thing then I literally just instantly die'. The conditions for these PKs are almost always entirely avoidable, obtuse, and impossible to pull off. That being said people will come back from death over and over and over again whilst dangling the proverbial carrot of 'Oh, well my (blah blah blah) is keeping me alive!'

- As well at least in the case of Lich Phylacteries (as far as I know) the Lich is supposed to instantly die, but in the case of things such as Pale Knights and Klones, you can have all of your clones/Menhir broken... and then still keep playing your character. Hide in a base 50 blocks underground behind 20 iron doors, have your buddy go get the vague ingredients to rebuild your stuff, and then BAM you're back to being practically unkillable.

IMO the worst offender of the 'Death Double Standard' is Kloning. Whilst it's cool in concept I frankly have no idea why you'd ever create something that could devalue death even more on a server where death is already practically meaningless. Though, at the same time, I also don't blame any people for picking up Kloning, it makes sense in RP to have and if it's an option to players I can 100% understand why they'd take it. It's not the player's fault that the lore exists in such a way to 'define' this mentality, It's just really eye-rolling when you see people throwing shade at one another for having their 'ways out' of death whilst also constantly getting into conflict. Lore written resurrections should be imperfect, or at the very minimum shouldn't be showboated as 'legit just cuz lore said so'. 

To the human RPers that instantly PK on first death and dont have any special outs, I appreciate you all. Feel free to debate down below about what yall think. I don't have a huge stake in this argument in comparison to lots of other people. Due to my lack of knowledge of current lore right now I'm not calling out any specific magics, and to avoid getting a comment warning by a moderator I suggest people not aim their comments towards any specific group/magic/player. 

MY ENTIRE OPINION DOWN BELOW IN SPOILER FOR HOW TO 'FIX' THIS PROBLEM THOUGH NOT SUPER PRACTICAL:
 

Spoiler

- The Easiest Solution? Literally just stop letting people use the argument of 'Oh I have my magic out'. I don't want this post to lead to people getting harrassed but frankly there needs to be a mindset change away from thinking that these lore-ways out of death are in any way shape or form more 'legitimate' and/or any less devaluing of conflict/death.

- The Me Solution? Shelf Kloning. Remove revivals from all end-tier CAs/magics that have extreme boons. There's literally no reason that Pale Knight murderhobos that can rez the next day should realistically be allowed to exist. Add a 'Oh it's not a PK if you're PVP defaulted' rule if you want but lowkey I've been PVP defaulted on this server one time outside of the first few months that I played back in Atlas. I don't really think it's that big of an issue. 

- The PERFECT WORLD SOLUTION? Remove any form of resurrections (including CT) for anyone whose been playing for over 4-6 months. Make a 'no PVP' clause for this if you have to. Allow more rituals to bring back characters that were killed in some imperfect way (other than ghosts). Soulless? Undead? Golems? Homunculi? Sorvians? There's already way too many CAs take advantage. Sure you'd have alot more people being revived but atleast then when you kill someone there's alot more permanence to it.
       - To people saying this is a terrible idea and people will murderhobo... my mindset is 'If everyone has a gun, people are less likely to use it.' You find people are alot less likely to kill someone if they understand the consequences of such. 
       - And to the 'alt PVP goon bandit throwaway' character argument... - Just get better mods. Pointing out shit villainy IMO is not difficult.

Go nuts

Edit: Clarified My 'Murderhobo' comment for Pale Knights. Adjusted portion about Phylacteries 

Edited June 1 by Dont_Advertise

[Sandman_Plays 302]

1+

 

[Punished_Pup 1431]

Actually Myst, you don't understand how important and powerful and how much sense it makes that my character can revive via this method. /srs

[sam33497 3519]

SLEEPY TAKE. 

[SlitheryC1 537]

13 minutes ago, Dont_Advertise said:

There's literally no reason that Pale Knight murderhobos should realistically be allowed to exist.

There's literally no reason that Azdromoth should realistically be allowed to fly, he's too fat

[Unwillingly 11823]

it's pretty sad how the only way to invoke a sense of consequence on this server is by creating OOC consequences, such as by making people d40 on death to steal their epic items, or nuggetting their character to the point where RP becomes impossible. outside of that death as a punishment is entirely obsolete. I've had encounters where people will literally beg OOCly not to be killed, only to return the next day to the same instance that originally got them killed, and complain again about being killed (?)

 

in an ideal world death would have consequence, but asking everybody to PK on death would create more problems than it'd solve. you'd get people making throwaway characters who constantly try to murderhobo for the sake of it, people would be even MORE afraid of pursuing risky encounters and thus do nothing but hide, etc.

 

so what we're left with is the current state of affairs where killing your enemy isn't what defeats them, and what consequence there is to dying is determined by player culture 

[HurferDurfer1 2630]

24 minutes ago, Dont_Advertise said:

2: 'There's this awesome material/ring/Klone that's actually keeping me alive, and if you killed them I'd be dead'
- First off, I've been told by longstanding Necromancer players that a Lich Phylactery has never been broken- PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong. I also know that when Shades used to exist the 'Shade Rings' were ALSO never broken, and could be hidden away. The conditions for these PKs are almost always entirely avoidable, obtuse, and impossible to pull off. That being said people will come back from death over and over and over again whilst dangling the proverbial carrot of 'Oh, well my (blah blah blah) is keeping me alive!'

 

  Reveal hidden contents

- The Easiest Solution? Literally just stop letting people use the argument of 'Oh I have my magic out'. I don't want this post to lead to people getting harrassed but frankly there needs to be a mindset change away from thinking that these lore-ways out of death are in any way shape or form more 'legitimate' and/or any less devaluing of conflict/death.

- The Me Solution? Shelf Kloning. Remove revivals from all end-tier CAs/magics that have extreme boons. There's literally no reason that Pale Knight murderhobos should realistically be allowed to exist. Add a 'Oh it's not a PK if you're PVP defaulted' rule if you want but lowkey I've been PVP defaulted on this server one time outside of the first few months that I played back in Atlas. I don't really think it's that big of an issue. 

- The PERFECT WORLD SOLUTION? Remove any form of resurrections (including CT) for anyone whose been playing for over 4-6 months. Make a 'no PVP' clause for this if you have to. Allow more rituals to bring back characters that were killed in some imperfect way (other than ghosts). Soulless? Undead? Golems? Homunculi? Sorvians? There's already way too many CAs take advantage. Sure you'd have alot more people being revived but atleast then when you kill someone there's alot more permanence to it.
       - To people saying this is a terrible idea and people will murderhobo... my mindset is 'If everyone has a gun, people are less likely to use it.' You find people are alot less likely to kill someone if they understand the consequences of such. 
       - And to the 'alt PVP goon bandit throwaway' character argument... - Just get better mods. Pointing out shit villainy IMO is not difficult.

Go nuts

 

 

when i played a lich his phylactery was broken. this was a long ass time ago and that character did get raised again later

[CanadianKiwiFlight 1622]

5 minutes ago, Unwillingly said:

 

in an ideal world death would have consequence, but asking everybody to PK on death would create more problems than it'd solve. you'd get people making throwaway characters who constantly try to murderhobo for the sake of it, people would be even MORE afraid of pursuing risky encounters and thus do nothing but hide, etc. 

Oh absolutely. Frankly I don't actually care whether or not LOTC wants to have more or less consequences for death thats an administration problem. There's a reason why I said my 'opinionated solutions' are very unlikely and impractical in the state of the server right now. I agree that in reality unless there is some type of massive overhaul the idea of consequence to death wouldn't change on this platform.

That being said, something that can easily be changed today if people are more aware of it is the general mindset of 'Oh, just because I have this different flavored form of resurrection its somehow less cheap than just rezzing the next day to CT Monks'. 

 

1 minute ago, HurferDurfer1 said:

when i played a lich his phylactery was broken. this was a long ass time ago and that character did get raised again later

Thanks for the fact chess boss I'm not an Undead Lore nut, just went based off of an old wight's comments (this was also back in like Atlas tbf). Wild though that apperently Liches can come back after getting a phylactery broken though that's wild didnt know that. Edit time

[Epicethan4 278]

There are, imo way too many ways to die and simply be revived.

You've got darkstalkers, ghouls, liches, Azdrazi and cloning and maybe some others. I would definitely support cutting these down.

[Damnit_Delmar 1289]

48 minutes ago, Dont_Advertise said:

As well at least in the case of Lich Phylacteries (as far as I know) the Lich is supposed to instantly die,

Just a heads up, Liches do not have phylacteries in current lore, that's just Draugar. 

Besides that, I think a solution would be a cost to revival, or better requirements to achieve it. I'll admit, current Necromancy lore is really garbage in how revival is handled. Seeing as you just need a pile of meat and another necromancer, and boom you can revive your buddy from the grave. 

 

Personally I think the problem stems not from revival itself, but by the limited interaction that the revival process has. I think if people where able to gain more routes that made rp more intruiging, whether this be curses via revival, PK clauses, magic consequences, it would make revival more unique as a whole. I can't comment on most other forms, simply because I'm not knowledgeable with them.  But in terms of Necromancy revival, the one good thing is that you understand as an ordained Necromancer you will and do die, and thus are barred from access to Monk Revival. 

[MeteorDragon 3159]

People handling death goes for both sides of the coin. Personally, I'm a believer of deciding when you wish to PK a character, especially if they don't have a particularly significant death that actually ties into their overall story. Then again, most of my characters don't have revival mechanics. However, for the ones that do, it's just a lot less that I have to worry about since they just come back anyways. I think that's fine, but it's not really what I wanted to talk about
 

45 minutes ago, Unwillingly said:

I've had encounters where people will literally beg OOCly not to be killed, only to return the next day to the same instance that originally got them killed, and complain again about being killed (?)

 

This sort of thing is what does bug me about the current death mechanics. People just being annoying with it. For one, you have people like the Ferrymen or bandit "rpers" who literally find any reason to justify killing a character just so they can make you d40 and take your stuff. They abuse the system so they have no consequence for killing characters and thus generate 0 real RP around the action. On the other hand, you also have people like what Unwillingly said who will complain over and over about not wanting to be killed, they either get killed, or get let go, and then are back to the same shit the next day and it repeats all over again. These people don't care about being killed and are just there to be a nuisance to the general public. There's also a case I heard of relatively recently where someone was saying OOCly how they'd PK if they died so they could 1) try and get out of being killed, or 2) get the people who killed them punished even further for it. This person did end up dying and then DIDN'T PK. But, the threat of it made people act differently, or was used to try and make people act differently

Another case is that someone is killed because they did X. They revive and start walking about, not doing anything that would cause harm, but the person who killed them sees them and is like "grrr, you did X", and then they kill them AGAIN, for the same reason as before. This, or they will just have everyone call that person "undead" due to reviving because of the monks and will just kill them over and over again. Actions like this also tend to not generate good rp due to the fact the person could literally just be sitting around, already having been punished for the thing, and then die for no reason. I'm of the belief that Death should be treated as an end to a story, at least in some way. This doesn't have to mean a PK, but it should mean that part of a story or grudge is ended. For example, character X stole from character Y, so character Y later finds X and kills him. Y is now satisfied because he got his revenge (and potentially the item back). Later, Y sees X but doesn't kill them because they already let off their steam when they killed X

[Cheese 2998]

4 hours ago, MeteorDragon said:

This sort of thing is what does bug me about the current death mechanics. People just being annoying with it. For one, you have people like the Ferrymen or bandit "rpers" who literally find any reason to justify killing a character just so they can make you d40 and take your stuff. They abuse the system so they have no consequence for killing characters and thus generate 0 real RP around the action.

 

THIS. There have been several times where I've been in like a 1v4 or against a character much powerful than mine just to bandit me. During the Haense/Veletz war the Amadors had a breakin problem where we had an orc literally just camp our keep and when I ss'd there to drop something off, I got one shotted over the head (an elderly woman unarmed can't do much about that). 

 

It's not fun to pk to someone who doesn't care at all about the narrative or storyline because they don't see the consequences of their actions; their character won't even remain affected or even know that their victim isn't coming back. They just see that I have everything soulbound and are disappointed because their no name oneshot kill didn't have anything to nab.

 

I am not very good at creating solutions, especially because I'm not very familiar with deific/dark magics, but maybe having a certain number of revivals? Like maybe (idk if this is a lore example so don't @ me) Xan is like "alr buckeroo you've died like 3 times now I'm not gonna revive you just for you to get killed again". 

 

Idk, just a thought. There might not even be one good solution, but I do think this debate thread is an interesting topic I wouldn't have thought about on my own.

[TeawithFrisket 2791]

"Death is not the end, but the beginning to a new chapter!"

 

Naturally, I agree with the sentiment of perma deaths so long as it agrees with the narrative. However this is primarily a decision, and something that one player must agree to not with just the antagonist in question but with themselves as well. I have had many people ask me not to kill their character, or to not use them for my creepy clockwork amalgam experiments (coming soon). And I respect these conditions, though the only thing is that there are times where I deny these conditions, considering the roleplay that has been done- leading up to their impending doom, in these instances, I do not wish to take anything from them and I allow the individuals to SS out from their point of death. I despise asking people to d20/40 (even though some of you guys deserve it after your behavior and fail rp) which ruins someone characters narrative, so I try my best to avoid demanding or even offering that choice. 

The CA/MA ones are a bit difficult, I'll use myself as an example. My character has a small wish, that basically led her down the path of using clones to witness things for a long time. Even with her descendant curse, this doesn't mean she's purely immortal. In some sense she's very much so capable of being killed by some random fleeper/bandit for existing. Thus she uses this knowledge to extend her life more. This is avoiding death- for a story reason of her own. If I did die prior to learning this I would of permanently died yes. However the point is that everyone has their reasons for using magics and feats to allude death, whether it be to be more powerful and pull a fast one on your enemies, or for a much deeper and sinister plot. This is mostly up to the player and how they wish to follow along their own narrative.

Your statement is sound, there are various amounts of scenarios which certain people need to pk. (I still think that NL's should be held on a pk clause due to their status and importance to a nation.) However that should be up to the players to decide what would suit best for the narritive they are trying to reach. 

That's of course if you assume the person who is endangering your character gives a **** and isn't just murder hoboing because they hate you OOCly.

[Latelle 719]

what if we made death have actual consequences if a character cheats it and, ya know, actually acknowledge that instead of making rules where if you imply death to not be final then your character spontaneously combusts (yeah i know that isn't actually the rule)

 

obviously i don't think we should have John Smith the human blacksmith like "yeah i died and i walked it off" but more something like "i almost died, but some wild shit happened and here i am"

 

plus it would resolve the problem of "bro I watched you get stabbed in the heart by bandits how are you alive" in a way that's more interesting than just handwaving it, you feel me?

 

(take this all with a massive pinch of salt i have barely played in the past couple years i don't know what shit's like out there)

[MailC3p 1211]

personally for me? all my characters have been lucky, even when I was NL I never had any threats against my characters life at all, meaning that my characters go for a while and don't die a single time (unless in pvp, which most people do not count for obvious reasons)