Postby Loreweaver » Fri Sep 30, 2016 12:48 pm
The respawn ability was added as a way to avoid pointless deaths. You don't want to have to use it because it still carries a risk of stat loss, but it doesn't have the monetary or XP gain penalties associated with a Revive spell and it doesn't force an end to a dungeon run as the party tries to get your carcass back to a priest. It's not available when soloing because this is a multiplayer server and we should encourage teaming up whenever possible. It's also not available when the entire party is killed or driven off, because that implies a dramatically significant death. Lastly, it's not available if you cheated death once already and continue to press your luck (or literally tried to cheat it through relogging).
As a level 1, you can use a number of respawns which have no time-based or party-based restraints. This is meant as a tool to help new players get their bearings with greatly reduced chances of losing a character or an attribute point, though both remain possible. At 1000 xp, after roughly 4-5 real dungeons or their equivalent, players are considered to have had enough exposure to their new PC and the server to have an idea of what they're working with and are held to the same rules as all others.
A common complaint is that high levels are on cooldown for a very long time. One near-miss and a level 8 can't respawn for a month. The reason for this is that the respawn system isn't really meant for them. Although they fight more difficult enemies, they also have more options in combat, more coin for supplies and a larger buffer enabling them to realize they're in a bad fight and disengage before running out of HP. If they do die, they can afford to be Revived and stat losses are more easily dealt with. Because they're expected to need respawns less often and to be better able to cope with death penalties, high level PCs shouldn't feel like they need to have their respawn ability available in order to go out and adventure.
Low level PCs, in contrast, only need a few bad rolls to die. The respawn system plays a vital part in pretending they haven't been returned from the dead many times over. They still need some cooldown however, lest they lack the ability to die entirely.
The first suggestion in this thread, respawning but with guaranteed stat loss, sounds sympathetical but is aimed at the wrong target, being the higher level PCs. Having this extra safety while soloing will see more of them on respawn cooldown and so perhaps unavailable for groups later on, it also means that those who have the coin and intention to get stats fixed anyway effectively respawn for free, whereas low level PCs with stat loss are more often abandoned and replaced with a new character. We're not sure what sort of penalty could be applied instead to make this work - though we can think of some, none are pretty.
One thing we can consider for high level PCs is the purchase of some kind of priestly blessing or regenerative salve which they can purchase and apply when resting to gain a couple hours of protection - the ability to respawn once if they do die in that period regardless of their cooldown-, as a form of insurance. Whether that should include solo deaths is a separate matter.
The second suggestion is extending the grace period to level 2. While PCs have to be weaned off the ability to respawn without conditions sooner or later, and preferably sooner, it is a fact that most dead PCs are level 2 PCs. Some don't have friends to revive them, others' friends are too poor, and by extending the unconditional respawn ability a bit further perhaps some of these deaths could have been prevented. It's something we're taking under consideration.
