It's unfortunate that ressurection is likened to a nuclear launch sequence.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I am sort of indifferent, myself. I have had a PC that I love die in a stupid, stupid way to the code, doing something it was completely IC to do.

From what I heard, I qualified for a rez, but I wouldn't have taken it.

Seriously, I know that some people who love their pc's get really pissed and want to be rezed over certain things but... well... people die in stupid, stupid ways, all the time, real life not excluded.

Once my PC died, they were dead. I mean, it kind of ruined it for me.

I support the idea of having it more lenient for the people who don't feel the same way, though. Last thing I want to do is piss all over somebody's good time.

Though: I would like you to be able to subdue people in Luirs without getting instakilled when you aren't resisting arrest.

[Fathi]

Every death is frustrating, but it's part of the game and sometimes bad things happen to good people.  I've lost a character to a bug that didn't result in a resurrection, but I wasn't expecting one.  Hoping?  Maybe, but not expecting.  People drown in bathtubs, slip in the shower, accidentally drink poison, and die all kinds of bizarre and meaningless deaths all the time -- deaths that were not their fault, were completely preventable, and shouldn't have happened.

Yes, real life is like that, but would you play Armageddon if every single stupid, accidental way to die in real life was actually coded and had a chance of happening to your PC? If two out of every five PCs over a certain age got coded cancer and died, since it's a low-tech world without chemotherapy and modern drug regimens? Would you play if there was a script with a die roll that determined whether or not you'd get mowed down by a random inix or wagon every time you walked down one room of Caravan Road?

Armageddon is not Real Life Simulation 2.0, it's a game. A game we're supposed to play for entertainment. There's a big difference between someone getting upset because their character in this game died to circumstances that codedly/logically should not be possible and just "every death is frustrating," as you stated. Namely the game factor.

If we're going to use real-life examples, why not take a look at Super Mario Brothers. If your Mario dies 'cause you time a jump badly and send him sailing off into a chasm, eh, he's dead. And it was your fault. Maybe frustrating if it's a hard level or you'd been fairly far along. The circumstances we're talking about in regards to deaths in Arm that should possibly warrant more immortal attention for code fixes/resurrections is more like if you were 9/10 of the way through the level, made the final jump successfully, but Mario fell and cracked his neck while he was sliding down the flagpole, so now you have to start all over.

There will be claims of favoritism no matter how it's done so my vote is to make no changes at all in how things are handled now. We can have claims of favoritism after the staff spends months tweaking and writing and planning and meeting to figure out new rules, or we can have claims of favoritism without wasting a moment of their time on new implementation.

This, to me at least, is also a flawed argument. Yes, people are going to bitch either way, but if that's your retort to every possible code change, then why change anything ever? I don't think anyone's advocating a system that they think will please everybody; we're Arm players, we're not really a naive bunch. Not bothering to put effort into changing something that could have a net benefit for the game as a whole just because it won't please everybody is a bad line of thought.

[Armaddict]

I volunteer you to go through all the death emails demanding resses, if you want the change, politely declining the vast majority with full explanations as to why and why their argument was not accepted as legitimate, as well as all the follow up emails trying to sway that decision, and all of the emails following those meant to challenge you for your decision.  Not that I think the change will happen, or hope it will happen, anyway.

[Fathi]

I volunteer you to go through all the death emails demanding resses, if you want the change, politely declining the vast majority with full explanations as to why and why their argument was not accepted as legitimate, as well as all the follow up emails trying to sway that decision, and all of the emails following those meant to challenge you for your decision.  Not that I think the change will happen, or hope it will happen, anyway.

Could I do it with reimbursement requests, too?

You know, IRL, people lose their pants all the time.

[Comrade Canadia]

Some great points here, I'm firmly on loosening up the draconian rez policy. My issue here is that it speaks of prioritizing code over roleplay.

Actions influenced by OOC behaviour of any sort by players is prohibited, or at least strongly discouraged. I can't kill someone because they were an asshole to me IRL. I'm a bastard if I kill someone who goes LD in a place where there are no guards.

When then, is the code permitted this behaviour? The code is immune to the standards that players are held to. It constantly, and ruthlessly kills people for completely out of character reasons - many of which have been outlined above. However, when the code kills  someone for these completely OOC reasons, it's above the laws of roleplay which are supposed to be what this game is governed by. When staff are not allowed to intervene in order to correct instances where the code violates roleplay and kills a player, it's bad roleplay.

I simply don't buy the argument that rezzing someone when another has witnessed his/her death is too great a strain on continuity. As players, we deal with knocks to continuity all the time due to code fuckups like crashes or whatever. Many players deal with massive amounts of ooc knowledge due to their age in game, yet manage to ignore it and just press on with the story. But somehow a shitty accidental, ooc death because the code said so will utterly destroy any semblance of realism and destroy all roleplay.

I don't buy it.

[Eloran]

I simply don't buy the argument that rezzing someone when another has witnessed his/her death is too great a strain on continuity. As players, we deal with knocks to continuity all the time due to code fuckups like crashes or whatever. Many players deal with massive amounts of ooc knowledge due to their age in game, yet manage to ignore it and just press on with the story. But somehow a shitty accidental, ooc death because the code said so will utterly destroy any semblance of realism and destroy all roleplay.

I don't buy it.

[Reiloth]

I simply don't buy the argument that rezzing someone when another has witnessed his/her death is too great a strain on continuity. As players, we deal with knocks to continuity all the time due to code fuckups like crashes or whatever. Many players deal with massive amounts of ooc knowledge due to their age in game, yet manage to ignore it and just press on with the story. But somehow a shitty accidental, ooc death because the code said so will utterly destroy any semblance of realism and destroy all roleplay.

I don't buy it.

[X-D]

I simply don't buy the argument that rezzing someone when another has witnessed his/her death is too great a strain on continuity. As players, we deal with knocks to continuity all the time due to code fuckups like crashes or whatever. Many players deal with massive amounts of ooc knowledge due to their age in game, yet manage to ignore it and just press on with the story. But somehow a shitty accidental, ooc death because the code said so will utterly destroy any semblance of realism and destroy all roleplay.

I don't buy it.

[Armaddict]

It constantly, and ruthlessly kills people for completely out of character reasons - many of which have been outlined above. However, when the code kills  someone for these completely OOC reasons, it's above the laws of roleplay which are supposed to be what this game is governed by.

Last thing I'll say is that it also constantly, ruthlessly protects people from role-played out situations where maybe it shouldn't.  It's a double-edged sword, and you can't ignore the one and take the other.  If you're going to demand constant monitoring, log-searching, verifications, and so on and so forth, and demand to be saved from situations where you feel the code is working against you, you should also be demanding the same attention when the code is working against someone else...who happens to be against you.

[Sokotra]

I had a character that died because he/she threw an object at another clan member while RP'ing drunken fun in the barracks.  The item was something that would not be considered a weapon... especially not a throwing weapon.  Yet my own clan NPC's ganked my character to death.  That was kind of double bogus to me, and no resurrection after a polite request.  *shrug*  I guess that's how the cookie crumbles... but I still have not played since then and I still believe it was a bad decision.

I was playing in a tribe once (with no sparring room of course) So we went outside to spar, with sparing weapons.
He threw the first lick and the guards came outside the camp and pwned him.

No rez, even though the guards would have noticed that were were using training weapons.

These are the types of circumstances that you might think would fall under the rules of a good cause for a resurrection... getting killed by your own clan NPC's, seriously... for sparring in a place that you would think should be safe... and throwing objects that should not trigger the crim-code or combat code or whatever.  Most players, unless they are experts in every aspect of the game, are not going to know the intricacies of how the code works in regard to many situations like this.

I don't like the idea of rez's being handed out very often or whenever something silly happens... but these types of situations should be pretty darn close to being at the top of the list for reasons that a rez be granted.

[FantasyWriter]

I think one of the main reasons the criteria isn't broader is because of how many more resurrection requests would be submitted because people would be thinking there would be a higher probability of being approved.

So.... even if staff decided to broaden it, I doubt we would ever know about it.

[Morrolan]

I hate it when I lose a beloved character or good friend to a typo or a code change.

But I -really- do not want to open the staff up to this kind of request any further.

These requests are emotional for most players.  For some players, they are super, super emotional.

I would rather lose a few characters to stupidity and code changes, and spare staff from that kind of emotional situation.

[LoD]

Yes, real life is like that, but would you play Armageddon if every single stupid, accidental way to die in real life was actually coded and had a chance of happening to your PC? If two out of every five PCs over a certain age got coded cancer and died, since it's a low-tech world without chemotherapy and modern drug regimens? Would you play if there was a script with a die roll that determined whether or not you'd get mowed down by a random inix or wagon every time you walked down one room of Caravan Road?

I may have been unclear about the message I was trying to convey; it was not that I would like to see a game that factors in a wealth of coded conditions governing these many terrible events.  I was attempting to draw a parallel between RL and Armageddon in the way that many of us experience small amounts of random mishaps, bad luck, or freak accidents.  I wasn't advocating the integration of more of those things, but simply stating that it happens from time to time.

My major issue with broadening the resurrection policies does not concern realism or continuity, but rests primarily on managing player expectations.  One of the major lessons I have learned in life, applicable to almost any situation where there is the potential for someone to be disappointed, is that managing expectations is key.  People will accept the circumstances if things proceed according to their expectations.  If someone tells you that they're going to be 10 minutes late, you aren't mad when they show up.  If the waiter tells you when you order a certain item that it will take 10 extra minutes, you're able to factor that into your choices.  When someone tells you there's only a 10% chance of success, you aren't necessarily surprised when it fails.

It's when someone expects a certain result and is then suddenly presented with something unexpected that anger and frustration frequently ensue.  No matter how hard the staff members try, they will never be able to accommodate every player's request for a resurrection, nor will they be able to refine the policy to include every situation that would potentially warrant a resurrection.  Almost every situation will be unique and require a fresh look compared to what someone feel are "open and shut" cases where the staff members simply check a list that says, "Killed by his own clan NPC's -- Automatic Rez".

As I've mentioned before, I believe the general policy should be that resurrections are not given.  Players can expect that if they die, for whatever reason, it's time to make another character.  And any resurrection that is given becomes a special and unexpected event that makes the player happy and thankful.  I'd prefer this solution to that in which the player dies to questionable circumstances and feels that it falls somewhere in the new "acceptable" category for resurrection -- only to find out that the Staff doesn't agree.  Now that player is going to have feelings of rejection, frustration, anger, and other negative feelings toward the Staff members as people interpreting policies in a negative fashion rather than in a positive fashion.

If the situations encountered were not so unique, it would be easy to embrace a more detailed resurrection policy free from human interpretation and conditional rules.  Wouldn't the Staff members support such a thing if it were so simple and straightforward?  What do any of them benefit from seeing your beloved characters die an unfortunate death?  Logic would dictate that this policy has grown out of almost two decades of trial and error and development, and not out of the hardened hearts of an egomaniacal few.

I would vastly prefer the focus to be on fixing any aspects of the code that unfairly resulted in the death of a PC rather than amending the resurrection policies.  Treat the disease, not the symptom.  And allow the Staff members to continue with the policy that has resulted from years and years of practiced administration rather than preaching change from a position of limited perspective.

-LoD

[Comrade Canadia]

I don't like the idea of rez's being handed out very often or whenever something silly happens... but these types of situations should be pretty darn close to being at the top of the list for reasons that a rez be granted.

Well, let me modify my previous statement to indicate that reason should be employed with regards to these situations. If the staff was open to reforming the policy, I'm certain that there'd be a line drawn.

If the situations encountered were not so unique, it would be easy to embrace a more detailed resurrection policy free from human interpretation and conditional rules.  Wouldn't the Staff members support such a thing if it were so simple and straightforward?  What do any of them benefit from seeing your beloved characters die an unfortunate death?  Logic would dictate that this policy has grown out of almost two decades of trial and error and development, and not out of the hardened hearts of an egomaniacal few.

It's an excellent question, but the staff have repeatedly stated that the res policy exists in order to further game continuity. As I stated above, I don't feel that's a good excuse and player consensus seems to be on my side. It also implies that resurrection policies were once really lax, and that they've tightened up over the years. They've been as stringent as they currently are since I began playing in 1996 (to my memory, it's been a while). The reason that they are so stringent about the policy isn't about egomania, and never was. It's exactly what you said - taking a firm stand on a contentious issue. By doing so, the belief is that this heads off a potential political shit storm of players shrieking about favoritism. Still, I believe that this errs on the side of acution. Players will always feel entitled when playing games like this, and they'll always shriek about favoritism. I don't believe that the benefits of having this policy outweigh the detriments of having a policy which openly violates the pro-roleplay attitude the game is supposed to employ. Good management is tough but fair - this is just tough.

[Dalmeth]

I would rather a hundred deserving people die than one undeserving person get rezzed.

Seriously, who wants a serial killer zombie?

[Thistle]

This is just a reminder to keep the discussion civil.  I realize that this is a hot topic for people, but that is no reason to get personal.

[RogueGunslinger]

I would rather a hundred deserving people die than one undeserving person get rezzed.

Seriously, who wants a serial killer zombie?

The question is would you rather a hundred undeserving people die and be rezzed at the expense of one undeserved person get rezzed?

[Dalmeth]

The question is would you rather a hundred undeserving people die and be rezzed at the expense of one undeserved person get rezzed?

The question deserves an obvious, "yes," given what I said.   If you want some math, that's ten thousand and one hundred deserving characters taking the sand nap.

Most of these situations where people die to a code quirk are often dangerous in themselves.  My suggestion : use minions.

[Armaddict]

What makes the person who gets the res undeserving?

Because they die directly to a bug or abuse?

I don't understand, I don't think.

[valeria]

I was kind of iffy about trying here at first, because I was afraid of permdeath.  Honestly.  I didn't want to die just because my stupid sister blew the fuse to my bedroom or something, or because I don't understand how the game works and doing something stupid, but those are things that happen.  I can probably get past them.

But the reasoning behind people being dead because of things that shouldn't have codedly happened anyway, and have no roleplay basis, just boggles me.  I don't really get the policy behind it.  I don't understand the juxtaposition of, on the one hand, not doing things the code LETS you do because it wouldn't be good roleplay, but on the other hand, the code being supreme for things that would make no roleplay sense and result in the death of a character.  And that's the read I'm getting from this thread.

So, I would like it if deaths due to stupid coded things that didn't make roleplay sense were 'fixed' if the only way to fix them is to bring the character back.  Someone said earlier they'd find it less jarring to have someone 'come back to life' than to try to explain something that shouldn't have happened in the first place, and I'd probably agree with that.

There isn't going to be a concrete way to write an airproof policy, though, not even for something simpler than character ressurections.  Even if you think you have, people will bicker about definitions.  And about how you define your definitions, and then about definitions of the defined words.  And then they'll bicker about interpretation, and intent, and so on.  If you know a lawyer, or work in the legal field, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about =)

[Kryos]

In my limited experience with the staff resurrection policy, they have been both fair and willing to detail their thoughts on the matter when a request is made.  I've not be disappointed.  I agree with Nyr on this one, I like there being a wide berth for HL+ staff members to work with in terms of their decisions made.