If you're doing a pay-to-play model, you might have it such that items acquired as loot are subject to being lost -- perhaps after a certain number of deaths, or on a dice-roll during death -- but that items bought through a real-money transaction wouldn't be subject to such loss. You could also augment this with being able to enchant looted items for a smaller fee, such that they are treated in the same way as paid items. Further, paid/enchanted items could either be permanently safe, or just have a really high resistance from being lost.

I'm not a huge fan of pay to play if it means buying an advantage over other players, but it seems to me that successful $$$-to-Play games that are enjoyed by all types of players are those that are selling convenience and time-savings, rather than pure advantage, and that the model I described above would fit into that category.

On a 2D orpg I worked on (as a tile artist and scripter) with a couple friends online, we made only the currently equipped items be dropped on death, while keeping the items in your inventory mostly safe. We also choose a random non-equipped inventory item and dropped that as well, to make sure you usually drop something.

It worked out fairly well. A player could then choose to go into combat with their second-best equipment instead of their first-best, and in the worst case scenario, only lose a random one piece of their first-best equipment.

EQI got such a feature. It depends on a lot of factors:

1. Do you provide some bank space which will not be affected by the perma-drop ? How large is it ? How easy to access ?

2. How hard is it to obtain items of similar quality ? It is very expensive (crafting) ?

3. How hard will it be to recover a corpse if you lost your primary equipment set ?

I liked it back in EQI, but it introduced some interesting gameplay. For one many stripped all their equipment and put it into their bank to travel from town to town, so that you didn't loose any valuable items during this kind of death-run. On the other hand, you got punished for exploring unknown terrain. If you entered a hi-level area a single hit was deadly and there wasn't much you could do to recover it on your own. On the other hand many other people helped you to regain your corpse, often hi-level characters of your own guild.

From a gameplay perspective it is permadeath light and introduces some counter intuitive behaviour. E.g. if you want to explore a dangerous dungeon, you normally would equip the best items, but here you would leave useful equipment back at your home. With permadeath you would prepare to confront the dangers, accepting the risk, with item-drop you would probe the dangerous areas first with crap-equipment, leaving the good equipment for the already easy areas. And there's the danger of introducing some balacing issues when you have gear-dependent character classes (e.g. warrior vs mage).

I played Runescape extensively about 6-8 years ago.

You can keep your items in a bank, including money. When you die, your 3 most valuable items are saved and you drop everything else. In PVP areas, if you attack another player, you drop all of your items upon dying. This is signified with a skull over your head that everybody can see.

Corpse runs were never fun. But I guess it can add to the overall experience.

Corpse runs were never fun. But I guess it can add to the overall experience.

I didn't intend to have corpse runs. But I did intend for players to leave a corpse behind when they die, so other players can come across corpses of their fallen comrades.

But...that will just degenerate into corpse runs.

Current solution: players lose all items permanently when they die. No more corpse runs. (no rare items that takes a lot of effort to get, to avoid frustrating people)

Are corpse runs really a problem that need to be fixed?

In the small ORPG I worked on (no longer active) that I mentioned above, corpses could be picked up by anyone, and they completely disappeared after a "random" 0 seconds to 5 minutes, unless another player was near the corpse.

A map with no players on it had all item drops cleared every 5 minutes. If you died 25 seconds before the map was cleared, your corpse only lasted 25 seconds. If you died 10 seconds after a map was cleared, your corpse would last until the next clear in 4 minutes and 50 seconds. This was an unintentional side-effect of maps clearing monster drops that nobody wanted to pick up, but we liked it so we left it in.

Players A) were frustrated by the inconsistent timing of their corpse disappearing B) actually seemed enjoyed the scramble to get their corpse - Is it still there or isn't it? Anticipation/anxiety C) hunted with a friend so the friend standing by the corpse would keep it from disappearing, or so the friend can pick up the items and return them later.

PvPers would kill someone, stay by their corpse for them to return and kill them again. This was an understood and accepted risk of hunting in PvP zones.

You could make the corpse not be retrievable by the player who died, and fade after 3 minutes. But why stop corpse runs at all - are they really all that bad?

But why stop corpse runs at all - are they really all that bad?

It feels bad on the player's end. They will think its a deliberate death penalty and a compulsory chore. E.g. there are quite a few articles on the net about the "dreaded" Everquest corpse run.

I rather have the player get on with the game, than feel frustrated trying to retrieve his corpse over and over again.

I like the idea of all the players loot going away when they die, but my thought to help the player deal with such a lose is to have loot drop a lot more often and limit how much they can carry.

Say the player has a weapon slot, a magic slot, and an armor slot, plus 3 spaces to store things in their invintory. Well, they will fight a gang of 4 roaming bandits and they get 2 pieces of loot from each of them. Even if their inventory was completely empty and had nothing equiped, they still need to leave 2 things behind.

By getting the player used to leaving loot all over the place, they become less attached to their gear. It will make starting over a little more bearable, even if the player had nearly end-game gear and screwed up right before the big bad end boss fight.

But thats just what I think about it

I like the idea of all the players loot going away when they die, but my thought to help the player deal with such a lose is to have loot drop a lot more often and limit how much they can carry.

Say the player has a weapon slot, a magic slot, and an armor slot, plus 3 spaces to store things in their invintory. Well, they will fight a gang of 4 roaming bandits and they get 2 pieces of loot from each of them. Even if their inventory was completely empty and had nothing equiped, they still need to leave 2 things behind.

By getting the player used to leaving loot all over the place, they become less attached to their gear. It will make starting over a little more bearable, even if the player had nearly end-game gear and screwed up right before the big bad end boss fight.

But thats just what I think about it

Good points. This is pretty much how I am going to design it.