Dev Diary #19

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

Today I’d like to talk about a very, very sad moment that - sooner or later - comes to everyone. The moment when your avatar dies. The death of your beloved low poly guy or girl can be handled differently in various Ylands games, but now I’m going to shed a bit of light on what our plans are for the Explore game. I’ve briefly touched this subject before but there have been some changes since then, and with this getting implemented rather soon it would be good to talk about details.

We see every Explore game that you start as one long-lasting adventure (which would, eventually, become way longer, but more about that at some other time ) where various characters are washed ashore on desert ylands. They explore, create, fight... and die, and at that point, a new character arrives at the yland to continue in their predecessor’s footsteps.

This is actually what “respawning” means to us in this context and we are making some changes so that this cycle is more apparent to you, the players. Eventually, we even want to create something like a storybook that would map the history of your game. You would see all the characters that came to the yland. You will be able to read about their successes and failures. About their deaths and about those who came after them and grand things those achieved. Your game itself will become a story.

When you die you will be able to continue only as a new character. You will once again choose the avatar’s name and visuals - but with the last character’s values already preset so those who prefer not to change anything can just hit a button and they will be good to go.

You will appear in the game equipped in the similar way as if this was your first time - but with a few extra items. The most notable is the Testament - a piece of paper stating that your previous character, in case of their death, bequeaths some of their belongings to the new you. This way you will still know all the formulas you’ve learned, all the animals you tamed will recognize you as their owner etc. Keys and maps that were in the now-dead character’s possession don’t drop with other items for others to loot, but are transferred to your new avatar instead. This will prevent other players from easily taking control over things you spent tens of hours putting together.

 

The world of Ylands isn't really that dangerous... but sometimes you're just in the wrong place, at the wrong time

 

We understand that removing some items from the loot isn't very realistic and it is our goal to put as much realism in the game as possible. We want you to know how things work when you first see them. We want to meet your expectations so that when you can’t light a fire in a pouring rain you understand why that is or that you aren’t surprised when your character doesn’t do very well when running naked in a blizzard. This is the kind of realism that is very important to us. On the other hand, there are some situations where we (when out of other options) opt to take a less realistic way - mostly in situations where actions do not have the discouraging consequences as in the real life. In a game, building something nice can take a lot of time, while killing someone and taking their stuff is very easy and usually goes without punishment. While we think that losing some items when being killed or robbed is fair - having someone with nothing to lose try killing you over and over again until they succeed and take your house or a ship (or who just happens to be near you when you get killed by a predator) is something that needs to be addressed.

We understand, though, that not everyone wants the game to be this safe and that is fine as well. In the future, we want, in general, to give players more control over how Explore is played. We believe that everyone should be able to set up the difficulty as they see fit - from simple changes like deciding if some items can be carried over o the new character or not, to setting up the ultimate permadeath mode. For now, as a default, we chose to make sure that dying is “punished” only by dropping the items carried with only some very specific exceptions.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask them here - otherwise, we'll talk again the next Friday. Until then - you stay classy and have a great time!

[BigBoss87 68]

Sounds good to me!

By default, items of high difficulty of getting such as Ylandium, some potions are dropped?

Ah, I loved the picture  

[WijkagentAdrie 384]

I think that this is by far the least "controversial" dev diary/sneak peak in a few weeks now  it sounds very reasonable, balanced for now and the option to have it our way later on is very welcome!