Something came up that I hadn't given much thought to. How to handle player death.

So I'd like to throw this open for ideas. We've had suggestions for player revive, base respawn and others.

Shouldn't that be death and taxes?

Or is a pun on the Taxi role for a Heli?
Or is me being an italian? ^_^

How about:

Don't kill them.

Crash the heli. have a wee clip viewed from lying outside the crashed chopper seeing a Medivac Chinook landing. Transport them to base camp for recovery. Player loses that game, but live to fight on in another one.

Cheers,

Andy

PS this would allow another Apache pilot to provide cover for the Chinook.

Some things in life are unavoidably fatal; re-heated kebabs, oranjeboom, and TPS reports are all prime examples.

A frontal SA-6 strike is going to prove to be fatal in most cases, although I like your idea of a clip showing a medivac chinook transporting you back to base. It's definitely retro.

Cheers

I always liked how it was handled in the original Microprose Longbow. Depending on how and where the player crashed/landed, they either made it back to friendly lines and the campaign advanced or they were killed/captured, which ended the campaign. So maybe utilize three different graphics; the Medivac idea would be great for landing and surviving to fight again, one of a prisoner being led away if captured and a simple graphic showing the wreckage if the player dies.

Taxis was indeed a weak pun referring to helos as taxis, and being rescued by your team-mates. I would have elaborated but I was using a mobile device and cooking sausages at the time


I had a little rant about death as a concept in video games on the forum of another game. Essentially why is it even part of the equation when it has no meaning? It just seems like one of the many game conceits along with medi-packs that instantly heal or tanks that take 30 seconds to build.

I don't like the idea of having my character 'die', I'm happy to take a hit to my mission score, loss of the aircraft (and possibly AI crewman and his/her accumulated experience). Respawn at base, mission possibly flagged as 'fail'. Loss of 40 million quid aircraft.

I'm keen to keep the game moving, we all make mistakes. But as a player I hate playing catch-up if I did something as stupid as prang my tail-boom on a hillside. One idea is to have it (now don't roll eyes, just think about it) like World of Warcraft where you remain at the crash site, dead/dying/immobile with the option to re-spawn at base, or wait until a player lands to revive you.

While I like the idea of a "medivac chinook transporting you back to base" this should IMO ONLY happen when a crash is survivable.
I fully agree with AD that there are many situations/crashes which aren't and shouldn't be survivable and in this cases the player should simply "die". IMO what should happen for these cases is the following:
1- Before starting a game, the player would need to create a profile. This profile would of course evolve (promotions, medals, etc...) according to the player's performance during the game/campaign.
2- When the player trully dies (due to a non-survivable crash/situation) his profile would become inactive -> KIA (killed in Action). When this happens and in order for the player to keep playing the game/campaign he/she must create a new profile (with all stats, such as medals, promotions, kills, etc... set to "zero").

This is IMO, is how the "death" issue should be handled since IMO it's the best compromise between realism and gameplay.

That seems a bit harsh IMHO. Would suck to accumulate a ton of hours/stats and my wingman hits me or something accidental happens (glitch) and I lose everything. Plus, I think you would start to accumulate quite a few old profiles while you're learning the game. And I may run out of names for profiles .

I kind of like how Falcon does it, in that dying hurts your profile/logbook for promotions and whatnot, but it doesn't stop the campaign. You could add a RTB% to the profile reflecting how often you bring the chopper home. High RTB% would be something to be proud of...



Cool idea. I like it.

"A frontal SA-6 strike is going to prove to be fatal in most cases"

Yeah but we can't really kill the character or people will get frustrated and angry. I like the idea of being evac'ed to a FARP or base camp. Mission screwed, aircraft lost, lose some XP (speaking in WoW-like terms) add a shameful "crash" or "shot down" entry to the log and let the player move on. I'm not very fond on the idea of being able to respwasn or being "rezzed" (darn WoW...). You should feel the pressure not to screw things up.

Well reality or realism sometime hurts!
IMO if the sim will be well balanced (which I'm confident it will) you just need to be carefull and NOT to play like "Rambo" style which again is realistic and if you don't play like "Rambo" you should have an extremelly high probability of surviving and this IMO would be a "extra plus" for this sim - again, for this to happen the sim must be well balanced - not too hard or exageratedly hard while at the same time not being "too easy".

Regarding the old profiles "accumulation problem", it's easy -> Give the player the ability to remove or delete the old profiles anytime that he/she wants.





I don't think that the way Falcon manages profiles is the best and most realistic/gameplay wise.

Killing the character doesn't necessarily mean deleting the profile. Death in the game sense would mean you are unable to be revived and rescued. A fatal strike or crash would most likely be followed by respawn.



Being able to rescue down comrades in multiplayer is a key feature we're angling at. One concept we discussed was the ability for a player to land near your crash site, open your cockpit door, drag you out and load you up onto one of the external mount points and take you back to base.

This would create the possibility for 3 distinct levels of survivability.

1) Minor strike/crash - Ability to get out of the pit, move around on the ground and wait for rescue.
2) Major strike/crash - Ability to be pulled out of the pit and placed in an aircraft. Once 'dropped' back at base, 'health' is restored.
3) Fatal strike/crash - Respawn at base after a timer has counted down.

It would create some seriously interesting multiplayer scenarios. It's doubtful that numbers 1 and 2 would work at all in single player. The level of AI it would require is quite detailed. So in that case something 'canned' would work well i.e a cutscene or scripted event showing a rescue bird landing and taking you off.

Cheers

From a realism point of view, I like AD's comment above about having the game engine determine the severity of the crash. But straight up, having to choose between death or respawn, i would take respawn any day, there is nothing more frustrating than having to start a campaign and/or career over. It is after all, a GAME. LB2 had a cool option you could select where you could enable limited helos/weapons. Crash an Apache, your unit has one less aircraft to fly, campaign is obviously affected by this from a logistical standpoint.

To further reinforce AD's comments, the Apache was built to be extremely survivable, provided the darned thing lands in a level attitude so the gear and other systems can absorb the impact as designed. I suppose if you could have the game determine the severity of the impact, you might also be able to lower survival probability the further away from that level attitude you are at the moment of impact. That may be a little to much in depth, just a thought.

Be pretty cool to strap onto the side of your buddy's aircraft for a cool, however shameful, ride back to base.

Between not having a "death", which is not realistic since death is a risk in a war and having a "death" from which you "respawn", which is also not realistic, I'd rather not have the player dying.

Call it the luckiest pilot of all times and just wound the player. I'd scrap option 3). Make a couple of nice videos for single player or for multiplayer where people don't want to "lose time" rescuing others. You could make it so that the player would only be rescued by the "AI" (I know it's not real AI due to complexity but let's pretend here) after a random given time (based on the distance to the nearest available MEDEVAC team).

Something like this:

Single player: players is always rescued by "AI" (actually a movie is shown). Time moves forth a random amount based on the ETA from the nearest available MEDEVAC and then to the nearest FARP or base. Something like
.

Multiplayer: the server can choose (or players can vote) to either rescue the downed pilot or not. Not rescuing him means that the "AI" will do the job. Players can then warp time so that the downed friend is rescued by the "AI". Same formula as above. Not warping means the player won't be able to do anything besides sitting still (or going for a walk on the dunes). Boring? Hell yes. Fly safe and don't die then, or get your friends to warp time for you or pick you up.

By choosing rescuing means you get to fly the mission (or simply picking up the pilot if a friend is nearby).

Edit - just remembered this: an achievement system (it's not gravy, trust me; people LOVE achievements for some reason -- bragging to others, maybe?) and develop a few achievements based on the player survivability (for not crashing through the whole campaign, or for a given amount of successful multiplayer missions, etc.).

Leaving the player stranded is not an option. Forcing the player to lay wounded for the duration of his time online is an even less desirable situation. Time is a valuable asset to most simmers therefore a respawn option will be a necessity in all multiplayer modes regardless of whether the player is wounded, dead or as fit as a fiddle. Rescue should be optional. Rescue should provide bonuses to those doing the rescuing and respawn should provide a slight penalty to those doing the respawning.

Trying to mix time warp and rescue operations is a recipe for disaster. Stability, gameplay and then simulation, that's the mantra.

Cheers

Time warp would work exactly as if you pushed the "time warp" button.

And you'd never get stranded. You'd always had the ability to respawn but I think some sort of time warping should happen. After all, Scotty wouldn't just beam you up to the base. This would also maybe increase teamplay where folks watch out for each other. Having a pilot down is not just bad for the pilot. It's bad for the whole team.

I can see how it can go bad, though. Pilot's down, team continues the mission and the poor guy is laying there. On the other hand, a pilot I'm not sure how well it would work for a player that respawns at the base rejoin the operation, flying alone until he meets the rest of the guys. Spawning at the place he crashed... Well it's good for gameplay but feels odd. Too arcade, I think.

Forcing everyone to RTB in-order to press the magic time warp button is unlikely to happen. On a minority of servers with everyone on voice comms, it might be possible but 95% of multiplayer servers are public where most people fly for themselves. I can just see the cartoon clock spinning out of control as people are repeatedly forced to RTB and press the time tent just so someone half a map away can respawn.

Furthermore, forcing everyone back to base as a requirement for respawn or rescue ops is adding a layer of unnecessary complexity to a system designed to get the player back into the game as quickly as possible.

That level of teamwork is acceptable for a MilSim used by military personal, but truthfully we're making a game with sim aspects for gamers and casual simmers.

Cheers

I think that we shouldn't look into a multiplayer in a combat flight sim (as Combat-Helo is) where respawns are quite unusual or even non-existant in the same way we look into the multiplayer of a FPS game where respawns are always present. For example in IL2 which is probably the most played combat flight sim of all times in the multiplayer enviourment when a player dies he/she will become "standed" until the next mission (and no-one stops playing IL2 because of this!). The same thing also happened in Longbow2, therefore I disagree with the "Leaving the player stranded is not an option" argument.

Honestly I like the idea where all the remaining player must be in base in order to be able to "issue" a "warp" or "time advance" if the "dead" or "shot down" players are to be able to get back to base sooner than when playing in real time - This of course in the multiplayer enviourment.

BUT, I still think that when a player really dies due to a non-survivable situation (a frontal strike from a SA-6 for example) there should be:

-> For single player, an option for the player to be able to select between "revive" or "die". If the player chooses "revive" then it would be log into the player profile that he/she was killed (and how many times the player was killed) and would for example respawn at base and be able to carry on. For other players that prefer a bit more realism in this regard (like me) he/she would choose the "die" option which after this the pilot profile in question would NOT be able to carry on in the campaign and in order for the player to be able to continue the same campaign, he/she would need to create an another pilot profile (kinda simulates the player taking control of an another pilot).

-> For multiplayer, the option between "revive" or "die" would be set as a server option at the begining when the server is going to be hosted. For example if the server host decides for the "die" option than every player profile that plays in this server/campaign and that really dies would kinda become locked for this server - The player would need to create an another profile to keep playing in this server which after doing this, the player would "respawn" or "re-start" back in base. Alternativelly the host could of course select the "revive" option instead.

This IMO, would be the best of two worlds and would cater for both the "more casual" and the "more hardcore" simmers.

CH is at it's core an FPS. It's built on an engine designed to function as an FPS. When you start the game you are spawned at your base on foot. You are free to move around the entire terrain with the campaign happening around you. You can choose to fly or not. The closest model/case study for the way you move around on foot and mount your aircraft would be ArmA.

In IL-2 you are part of a mission that starts when the server clicks start and ends when either everyone is dead, the mission has succeeded or the server chooses to end the mission. Everyone on the server flies in the same mission with the same start time and same basic objective/flight plan. You are forced back into the GUI when the mission is over. This is something we have been trying very hard to avoid as it kills the immersion of 'Being There ™'.

For example, in CH it will be quite possible for one group of people to be flying a CAS mission at 1 point on the map, an entirely different group to be flying Armed escort at another point with a 3rd group back at base getting ready to lift on another mission altogether. Those groups may well be squads operating on different voice comms or simply public players that may not be interested in teamplay. Couple that with join in progress it's a very different situation to either IL-2 or LB2. Forcing 3+ groups of flyers to RTB just so 1 person can respawn is impractical.

If CH lacked respawn you could be stranded not simply for 1 mission but for the entire time you are connected to the server.



I'm sure an optional profile deletion would be easy enough to implement. Would you want to re-enter every entry such as your name/callsign or just have the mission/weapon stats rounded down to 0?

Cheers

The option to "have the mission/weapon stats rounded down to 0" is in fact a very interesting one and IMO it would be great to have it in Combat Helo. It would make the process quite faster for the player that want to keep the exact same name after a previous profile was KIA.

I'm with you on this. Respawn would be my preference.