Some folks have expressed how Death Traps put a serious damper on Tempus fun-having. The risk of losing absolutely everything without any chance of getting it back is a major turn-off, especially those with limited resources.

Most of Tempus’ Death Traps have been turned into Damage Traps, where instead of all your equipment falling to the floor and becoming unreachable, instead there is a corpse that can be magically retrieved (under most circumstances). You still suffer the death and ignominy, but you can put yourself back together and keep on keeping on.

We want your opinion. Do you think retrievable Damage Traps are the way to go? Or do Death Traps add more excitement to the game?

Please feel free to discuss here, and make sure to vote in the voting booth in Modrian on the subject!

I definitely do not get excited about death traps… despite popular belief. :P More than anything, death traps deter me from exploring a zone I've never been to before.

You would feel more comfortable exploring knowing that there was a chance you could hit a Damage Trap, but be able to get your corpse?

Along those same lines, what about exploring areas that you know you can’t magically retrieve your corpse from? If you knew you could always use a retriever, would that also make you explore more?

As it is now, even if you hit a Damage Trap and not a Death Trap, in some zones you still wouldn’t be able to use a retriever to get your corpse. I’m curious if every death resulted in a retrievable corpse, if people would have more fun, or if at the loss of that risk it would be less enjoyable.

I think losing all your stuff forever because you hit a wrong direction or didn't check your exits is extreme. People work hard for their eq or the money they used to buy that eq and when it's instantly gone it ultra sucks. I have no problem dying and not being able to retrieve. A few times I've had to switch chars, or go back naked with a quad to get my own stuff back, and I think that is reasonable. The hard zones that are !recall make total sense, and if you bite it in one of them, at least there is hope to get your stuff back rather than sitting in star plaza locating your eq in the fan blades while filling the fountain with your little naked mage tears.

As a player, losing all equipment with no chance of recovery is overly harsh. It creates distrust (between players and the builders of the zones) and unwillingness to explore or take risks. An interesting risk is exploring a dangerous area because you might die/lose some items/lifepoints/experience/etc. An uninteresting risk is that misreading someone builder's clues gets all your equipment lost forever.

I agree with everything posted in here. However, if you hit a DT it doesn't take your tattoos or implants (I could be wrong about 1-2 of those points) so that's a plus. I just wish the stupid death message wasn't instantly overwritten by the login text that follows it. Can't death messages have like 20 trailing blank lines so you can at least read what happened in the last few seconds before you rage-quit the game?

I would definitely be more comfortable exploring without the risk of losing everything to a death trap. I try to be careful in zones that I can't retrieve from, but at least if I do bite the dust, I've still got a chance of salvaging my gear before the next reboot. Doesn't mean I like !retrieve zones, but it's doable either with another character or assistance from a clannie.

If you hit a Death Trap, your equipment and implants hit the floor, and your tattoos are erased. You do not, however, lose any life points or experience.

With Damage Traps you do indeed lose everything just as if you died in combat, complete with a corpse left behind.

I agree that Damage Traps are much better than Death Traps.

I am also of the opinion that the impacts of death should be changed drastically so that you don't even drop equipment. Instead, when you reenter the game you get a big undispellable debuff for a few minutes. Like -50% to all damage/stats/saves/ac/damroll/hitroll. You also take damage to your equipment and maybe you lose all the money you were carrying as well.

I feel that penalizing people for dying with recovery time is much less discouraging than potentially losing all the equipment that you struggled for so long to put together.

Look at some of the most popular MMOs they usually just require you to run back to your corpse (time component) and take durability damage to your equipment (money component), you can't lose your eq by dying because they don't want to discourage players from taking risks, just give them the perception that it takes time away from their efforts if they do die.

Many PK Restrictions could be taken out if death was changed in this way. Maybe mobs who summon your corpse could be instead paid (expensive) to remove the death debuff?

The message on death is usually skipped past because there are other commands in the queue. You die, it says to hit "return", but any command is sufficient to continue, and therefore all of those "flee" commands you entered has you skip right through.

We should be able to clear your command queue at death so you can read the death message if folks really wanted to see it.

Me personally i have no issue with death traps. I understand when i go into a new zone there might be certain things i have to watch for and death traps are one of them. They are a part of tempus and should be respected. Be careful when you walk around zone and check exits its just a way of life on the game. To me it adds a certain thing to tempus that makes you read the zone descriptions and actually know where you are in the world.

One of our goals is to submit ideas about our wonderful world for your consideration, and take your opinions seriously. Thank you to those who have responded, and please consider adding your thoughts if you have yet to do so.

-W-

Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts on this. I have a question. How do you feel about death or damage traps in a zone that has a high pay off for successfully navigating and clearing the zone? The pay off could be a very rare or impressive equipment that few would try, because of the difficulty and fear of death. On a separate note, do you feel a gen 10 should be able to solo every zone in the world, and hence be able to freely explore?

One thing I hate about zone exploring is the crippling fear when looking at the exits. It has been a while since I've explored but you can see something like "Falling to your death" and pretty much assume it is a DT/DS. However, "A sinking feeling" could be a cleverly named quicksand DT/DS. Maybe if there was a way you could "throw calzone south" and have it trigger a message in the adjacent room that you are in, something like "you hear a sharp snapping sound to the south as the room collapses on itself, destroying everything within." Or what about if the DT would only work once per zone reboot? You could retrieve your stuff if you can get back there but you better be fast.

I absolutely agree with Tower on that one. I've eyed exits before with suspicion and have futilely tried a few things to see if the neighboring room was a DT. Gust of wind, at least from what I've tried, doesn't seem to push mobs into a DT and you can't order followers to stick their neck in and find out. Being able to toss an item in for some kind of response would be great too.

I like the idea of taking the risk on a challenging zone for an end reward. You can get exp and money easily and without too much risk, but equipment, especially something impressive is usually hard to load. It would be worth it though to get something good.

Now that Wile is finally gen 10 and with the player population as it is at the moment, I want to be able to solo more zones…afterall, that is what I put all the time and effort into her for, but still there are a lot of places that I'm not going to explore. Back when I used to play, the auction was pretty busy compared to how it is now with people loading gear and selling it to the highest bidder, but I've been haggling WTB the same items for ages with little luck. I guess maybe then there were more groups rolling around since there were more players and more circulation of equipment, but I feel like we need to adapt to make those "grab all your buddies and say a prayer" zones more playable.