Holiday mode for Characters

[Doug R.]

It seems to me that many players, possibly the majority, tend to kill off characters when they are going to enter a period in their lives that won't allow them to play these characters adequately. They say that they have to, because if they're there on their screen, and they light up, they'll have to check them. I propose an alternative: "Unspawning"

You can unspawn a character for a period of time that you specify. When unspawned, the character disappears from your character list and from the game, dropping all items just as if they had died. When the time period is up, the player can respawn them back in the same place that they unspawned, or kill them. They'd still take up a character slot.

[SekoETC]

It seems weird that established characters could just disappear and respawn later.

My mom has often asked me why can't you just put your characters go on a long journey and come back when you have time to play them again. I think it would make sense if a character went on a road and disappeared, with all their stuff, and they wouldn't consume food while they were "traveling", they would be invisible to everybody. To stop people from making invincible thieves this way, there could be a limit that either a person could only disappear if no one has seen them in a day, or entering the vacation mode would take a day and they'd be attackable during that time.

[Doug R.]

It seems weird that established characters could just disappear and respawn later.

Weirder than appearing out of nowhere in the first place? We already have characters that disappear upon death, so the phenomenon is not unknown in the game.

I'm very pro dropping everything. Characters should not be permitted to use this feature to inconvenience other characters any more than death would. If they want to keep their possessions secure while they're gone, they should take precautions. If we need something to indicate that a character has unspawned, then we could put some kind of unmovable object in their location so everyone would know.

[SumBum]

If items are kept, there definitely needs to be a delay before the char disappears. I like the idea of having some sort of place holder or marker to let people know the char is on holiday. It's hard enough to convince people when you leave to travel that you WILL be back so don't break into my house, car, etc.

[SekoETC]

I still think it would make more sense if they were allowed to take some stuff along. Of course they can give someone else the key to their house and go disappearing butt-naked (or could they even keep clothes? Corpses can), then appear years later to find out that the keyholder died and someone who never knew you has sold all your stuff. Although playing a successful character who lost everything in her 50s, I know it's possible to bounce back, so possessions don't mean everything. The bigger problem comes from everybody you once knew most likely being dead, so even if a person did come back from a vacation mode, they would likely go back into it and never come back once they realized all their social contacts were gone. I suppose it would make it easier for people to let go if they could come back any time, or if they could in a way die without dying, just go on indefinite leave and never come back.

[viktor]

well... when they respawn, would they respawn exactly where nthey unspawned for example... lets say i had a char in a room and unspawned, dropping all thier stuff.. would they when repsawning, do si in that exact room? this way people aren't wierded out by someone disappearing and reappearing.. only real difference this would make is the consumption of food...

[Wolfsong]

What about abuses, where a player will "unspawn" a character or go on holiday, say, after being chased by town guards - then wait several months and respawn, naked but alive and probably forgotten?

[Piscator]

Wouldn't it be more convincing if the char would fall into a very deep sleep? He could still drop everything (at least until there's a way to access the inventory of an unconcious character directly), but leaving a touchable (and killable) body behind would for example avoid problems with people who unspawn to shake off pursuers and would also provide the place holder that has been mentioned.

Alternatively, a checkbox that prevents a char from lighting up would probably help a lot and would presumably be easier to program.

[viktor]

it's still pretty simple to just go into a secure room and keep urself fed, most chars of value usually (not necessarily always) have the ability to go into a secure room with a good stash of food.

[EchoMan]

We could allow the Cantrian race the ability to hibernate. They would still be killable, and drop everything (except clothes?). They would have to make sure they have a relatively secure area to hibernate in. Doing it in the open would probably be bad for health.

There could be an option to set the number of days you wouldlike to hibernate. You would not be able to view events or anything, it would be like a game lock for that particular character. If you come back before the time you have specified, the time to awake the character could be a random number of days between 3 and 10 or something.

[Doug R.]

I'm willing to accept EchoMan's compromise proposal.

[Addicted]

Tell me if I'm wrong....

Unspawning would be for all your characters, not just the one thief or troublesome one.... So, you couldn't play while in this state.
Hence as a way of escaping it's limited?

I like the ideas so far. Time and real life and unexpected hardships means players lose characters they would rather keep.

[SumBum]

Hibernating was proposed before and never got anywhere:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20068


Addicted, I think this is just for individual chars not the entire acct.

[Doug R.]

That thread was ruined by people arguing semantics and being less than serious. Let's keep this one serious and it might go somewhere.

[Wolfsong]

Shouldn't the two threads be merged per this?