So, there's a long-standing brainstorming thread on the subject of permadeath (
Brainstorming Permadeath: Making Death Significant But Not Annoying) and the topic's come up during the recent discussion on replacing the Upgrade Stone mechanic (
Out with upgrades, in with initial custom characters?) but since Chris understandably wanted it to be put to one side in the continuation of that discussion (
Dealing with the divide: customization vs randomization.) I thought it apt to start this new thread.
Bluddy, you see, had an idea which I think is rather wonderful. I suspect it won't be to everyone's tastes but go have a read on Mantis if you're curious to see it in all its glory:
0008017: Character growth in non-strength-oriented ways. Basically, the idea is you have a multiplier which increments based on you doing things of significance with a particular character, and that multiplier grants you one or more bonuses of (very minor) significance. When you die, it resets to zero. And the only way to get it back up again is to invest some serious time pursuing a variety of important goals - i.e. playing the game. Hence "Entanglement Multiplier".
Bluddy presented a number of ideas for specific bonuses including:
- Giving you more consciousness shards so you can get more stuff at the store
- Getting enchants faster
- Making your NPCs more effective at what they do (more on that in the Mantis issue)
- Increasing your abilities in the strategy portions
Now, I'm not certain that those sorts of bonuses are precisely the right fit - but maybe they just need a bit of tweaking; and/or there is almost certainly some other way of expressing the same idea.
Even at its most basic - affecting a score of some sort - I know I, for one, have felt a substantial sense of loss in other games when my multiplier has fallen from a great height back to zero. And I think it could work in Valley! (But maybe I'm in the minority!)
Edit: In fact, Bluddy also had the idea about scores:
0008054: Stats and scores.
