I'm throwing this idea out there for people to play with. Suppose your game world has an afterlife? That is, your content is split into two parts: The earthly life, which has levelling and permadeath; and Heaven (or Hell if you prefer, or both) which has no permadeath, but also no levelling. (No XP gain in the afterlife, in other words - you had your chance at learning things when you were mortal.) Both sides have quests and whatnot, and might interact in other ways. To prevent the afterlife from becoming clogged with level-1 characters that died from fighting a bilge rat (NetHack, I'm looking at you...) there would be a level cap for getting into the afterlife; there might even be different afterlives for different levels. (Which gives you the following tradeoff: Do you suicide at level 39 and become one of the most powerful people in the Third Heaven, or go on into the forties and risk becoming a lowly spear-carrier in the Fourth Heaven?) What do you think?

Sounds like an idea. But there's really no point in questing if you get nothing out of it(leveling). There would have to be some other type of reward. Maybe the goal would be getting "reborn" or whatever and coming back to life? The quests you do in the afterlife could have an affect on how powerful you arewhen you came back. Weaker/Stronger. Kind of reminds me of Riddick, where the leader of the bad guys had gone to their afterlife and came back with cool powers and better than before.

The afterlife rewards would have to be something other than experience, yes, but there are many other options: Equipment, faction influence, story advancement, resources.

I really like your idea. Really. What about using it for a MMOFPS zombie game?


You wake up in an hospital. You are a skinny, weak soldier, and you don't remember anything. After seeing you are conscious, the doctors send you with some military guys, which give you a weapon, and tell you about the virus, and that the bullets can heal it, and that you must do your part in saving the world.
You go outside, map is a mall, a city, big or small doesn't matter. What it does matter, anyway, is that everywhere is war. Soldiers vs zombies, in an endless fight.
You start doing your job, and learn some things about how to survive out there. However you are slow, can't keep up with the zombies unhuman speed and strenght.
After a while, you get outnumbered and you die.

The virus starts immediatly to spread in your body. Your muscles rot, fall down. You hunger blood and brains. Still, you remember your old life, and you remember how soldiers fight, which gives you some advantages. You start your hunting, and as you feed with human corpses, your body processes the meat and you become a bloody muscle mass. Not that you really needed it, as a zombie, but it doesn't hurt either. You continue hunting.
After a while, a nice-shot round of bullets hits you in the back, and you die.

On you, the skin starts to grow back, and as your body is seized by convulsions, your hunger for blood starts to vanish. You pass out.
You wake up in an hospital. You are a pumped, strong soldier, and you don't remember anything.


tl; dr:

2 species: Soldiers and Zombies. 2 stats: Strenght and Experience.
Soldiers are based mostly on strength, but can upgrade only their experience.
Zombies are based mostly on experience, but can upgrade only their strenght.
When a Soldier dies, his strength drops to zero, and he becames a Zombie.
When a Zombie dies, his experience drops to zero, and he becames a Soldier.
So, actually, you would be always leveling your next life, but every time you die, that is effectively a permadeath.

What do you think? ^_^

[Edited by - Svalorzen on July 3, 2009 8:35:37 PM]

Hm. The game world would have to be designed around the afterlife in many ways, with the expectation that rewards would carry over into the world beyond. I think the basic system you described could be fun if properly executed, particularly if characters would treat you differently after you (if you could) came back.

Resurrection would have to be done REALLY well though, meaning that you would have to do some kind of difficult (but not that time intensive) quest in the afterlife to achieve it.

That seems like it would be really cool if you did it in the context of something like Norse mythology, and incorporated the ideas of Valhhalla and Ragnarok somehow.

Quote:

Original post by d33ts That seems like it would be really cool if you did it in the context of something like Norse mythology, and incorporated the ideas of Valhhalla and Ragnarok somehow.

A good idea. What's interesting about this concept (and possibly others) is the ability for interaction between the afterlife and human world. On a very base level, wouldn't it be cool to be a ghost? Maybe characters in hell need to help others in the real life to get to heaven? maybe characters in heaven need to do some mischief to go to hell? I think there's a lot to that concept given some good thought.

Hmm, on second thought I like the idea of death switching you back and forth between worlds better than my original one-way trip. If you had Earth, Heaven, and Hell, you might give your karma system some bite: Accumulate enough evil points and you go to Hell. Where, perhaps, there is a constant XP drain and deadly enemies to fight to get out of there. And characters in Heaven can intercede for those in Hell, although since players would totally game that, it kind of destroys the neat karma system. Perhaps intercession requires you to take responsibility for the character you help, and if he continues in his evil ways, the helper loses some XP? At any rate, this looks to me like it could be a reasonable way to tap into Christian mythology, which is rather under-used compared to the old pagan stuff. And that's only one possibility; I liked the zombie thing, too.

ZOMG this is brilliant. Seriously, I might actually consider using something like this.

Lots of games have a system where if you die from zombie attacks you become a zombie, but i dont know of any that send you back to being a soldier. The only problem is that it might start to get silly. However, there is one serious balancing issue to contend with; The stronger side will have more players on it, since they will kill a larger number of enemies who will then join their side. Thusly, the game would eventually consist of 100% of one team and 0% of the other, and the game would become unplayable. How would you contend with that?

For a round based game however, this would be awsome.

@King of Men:

Or you could put Heaven and Hell as coexistent with the real world. For example, if when you die you are classified as Evil, when you respawn the world is reddish, monsters are a lot stronger than before and you are somewhat stronger. This should make you more difficult to level, but easier to bully other pcs ( which I assume is the reason for your evilness ).
For a good char, Heaven could be a world in which monsters are a lot weaker, and he is just somewhat weaker, but I'm not sure.

@speciesUnknown:

Glad you like the idea =)

There are some methods to fix the apparent balance issue:

1) One would be to introduce strong NPCs as the teams start to became unbalanced. However, I don't like this idea too much.

2) Simply, when the 100%-0% stadium is reached, that particular game is over. Start another one ^_^
This could also allow the creation of a meta-game, in which, based on the number of victories of the military vs the zombies, you could give bonuses to one team on another. And the cool thing would be that you are not unbalancing the game for the players, just for the meta-teams, which no-one will care about xD
- also, if you're interested in making something like this, let me know, I'll help ^_^ -