Player death idea (enemy regeneration, hear me out)

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

I know that player death consequences is a trodden subject by now but hear me out.

I think that when you die, the remaining robots who you fought before you were killed simply be repaired to full health. This is obviously a non-diagetic gameplay mechanic, which will inevitably upset players who want as much realism as possible, but I have good reasons.

Reason the first: What do you lose when you die? The resources you used to fight the enemy. If the enemy regenerates then when you run back into the fight over and over again (something that most people agree feels like an exploit) then your penalty is that you slowly lose ammo and consumables each time you fail, simply by the act of using them. Simple, challenging, but not unfair.

Reason the second: This mechanic would encourage people to try to escape alive rather than allow themselves to be killed in combat when they are getting overwhelmed. You’ll save the resources by running, returning later and re-engaging strategically until the troublesome enemies in question go down.

The enemy persistence in Generation Zero is obviously designed with the specific intent of players engaging individual enemies over a longer time-frame when compared to other games. So it stands to reason that the player should be encouraged by the mechanics to participate in that mindset by gently punishing recklessness. Engage, flee, reassess, re-engage, over and over until you slowly wittle down the enemy forces blocking your way (be it a bunch of robots or one really big one).

You could take this even further by replenishing destroyed enemies in places where you were killed (or spawning new ones, depending perhaps on how many times you were killed within a certain timeframe). I don’t personally think it needs to be that aggressive, but it wouldn’t hurt to raise the stakes a bit.

Thanks for reading my post, I hope you liked this idea.

Edit: I want to add that I play exclusively in offline singleplayer, so the only caveat is that in co-op this should probably only happen if everyone in the area dies. Alternatively, spawn another robot in a player dies and rushes back (to prevent people from creating a dedicated suicide bomber).

[FreeCandy]

How would that work in a co-op game?

One of the team dies, all the robots the rest of the team is fighting is magically repaired again?

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

Heh funnily I was adding an edit addressing this right as you commented. Answer is that I don’t know, but maybe the best solution is to spawn another robot when a player in co-op dies, but regenerate enemy health if everyone dies. That idea could probably use some tweaking, but I think there’s something to it.

[Madchaser]

Hi,

Sorry, but I don’t like this idea.
It’s one of the core features that you can meet a machine you once fought but didn’t destroy. So if it would be repaired after dying, what’s the sense of this feature?

I completly agree that there is missing some kind of penalty. I once made a suggestion regarding this issue in some ways:

Feature request - New difficulty: survival

I posted this in another topic, but got the idea to make an own topic out of it. It don’t think, that playing GZ is too easy in general. I always play on skirmish and that’s ok. It’s challenging but not too hard. But it can be silent and stealthy, too. But something is missing: It’s the feeling of the first hours of play. The fear not to be strong enough to survive. I’m not a bullet sponge. I’m not a super soldier, hero or what else. I’m a teenager and I can die within 1 or 2 shots if I got …

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

I think my suggestion has merits for its simplicity, and a big part of that is that the persistence of enemies health is only broken if the player allows themselves to die (instead of trying to escape). The continuity of your character is already broken when you die and respawn at a fast travel point, so it’s not like enemy regeneration as a consequence is breaking continuity any more than it already would have. Currently player immortality via respawning is an advantage that machines don’t have, so this merely would even the odds and prevent rushing.

[FreeCandy]

Im sorry but it does not.

I dont know who you played with that “allows” them self to be killed of, I have played a couple of hundreds of hours in this game and I have died a total of 10 times. Most of them by falling down from stuff or chain explosions in warehouses when I began to play the game because I had no idea that was a thing

If you dont use the mechanics given to you by the game, yeah you will probably die of acute lead poisoning but if you use flares, manoeuver and use the surroundings to your advantage this is not an issue.

The devs added the persistently simulated world for a reason.

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

I don’t play online at all.

[Madchaser]

@PEACELOVEFLESHBONES

… is only broken if the player allows themselves to die…

Well, that has nothing to do with “to allow themselves to die”. There are situations where you have no choice. If you’re accidently in a battle with a fnix tank rival, a fnix harvester and about 20 fnix hunters plus 10 runners in the middel of a destroyed forrest (you know how easy you can get stuck at the lying wood), you can die faster as you need for using healthpacks.

Happened to me yesterday… But I had my usual 2 adrenalines with me and was able to solve the situation after a while.

Nevertheless, death is what happens to you and nothing you can control, therefore this change, which would break one core element of the game, is indiscussable.

I just discuss here to show up the reasons for at least my opinion.

But maybe we can find another solution for a penalty for using respawn at a safehouse after death, instead of using adrenaline…

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

I’ll just add that I like adrenaline as a gameplay item in Generation Zero. It’s a rare loot item which means you don’t necessarily have an unlimited amount of them at any given moment, and it allows you to keep the fight going despite the odds being perilously stacked against you.

My goal is not really to suggest that the game become much harder, just more thoughtful. Whatever the consequence for dying be in the future, I only wish for it to make me consider those consequences when I’m in a tight spot. Currently the only consequence is travel time, which isn’t nothing tbf. But impactful motivations really improve a game’s longevity.

[Madchaser]

That’s just my intention, too.
See the link I posted above, there is somewhere a suggestion for a possible penalty for using the “respawn at a safehouse function”.

[Terrorrobot]

Bad idea to spawn more machines in coop if someone dies. It’s already an issue with lag if there is too much going on in a battle or area. And I only play coop. And heal the machine when someone dies don’t work well in Coop. Because some players die a lot. Like me. I always start a new run with this game with the ambition to die as few times as possible but after a while on guerilla it becomes more than a few times.

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

In that case perhaps the enemies should simply regenerate health, and only if everyone dies. This also encourages everyone to watch eachothers backs! Might also make it more prudent to drop paramedic kits around a battlefield.

What do you think?

[Terrorrobot]

It’s very very rare that everybody in a 4 player game dies at the same time or before a dead guy can spawn back. So it would not work that well. In ghost recon breakpoint if I die I have to wait 60 seconds before I can respawn but another player can revive me before that. I think that would be a better option.

[Madchaser]

There already is a countdown for reviving, but I think you must have an adrenaline.

There are even skills to improve that.

[Terrorrobot]

I know. But it’s something we never use. Adrenaline is in short supply.

In ghost recon the countdown is for when you are able to respawn by your own hands. And that is 60 seconds. It’s a long wait when you are in battle.

[Moldyaco]

i think that this would only work as like a robot repair station. throughout the map maybe at fnix bases there are stations damaged machines go to repair. this would only happen if they were below 75% hp and nearby a station, so the machines wouldnt be repairing a ton after fighting.

[Madchaser]

I don’t think fnix does matter if a machine is damaged or not. Instead of repairing them it/he would construct new ones.

But that’s not the point.

As said before, it would work against one of the core elements of the game if damaged machines would be repaired or exchanged against new ones just because the player died and decided to respawn at a safehouse.

Just my thoughts regarding player death from an other topic

4. No penalty for "dying"
To be exact: We can’t die. We get shot down and can use adrenaline or respawn where we want to.
Sometimes it’s even part of a tactic to just respawn instead of using adrenaline + healthkits

• if the next safehouse is very close or
• if you’re overloaded and want to get to a plundra as fast as possible or
• if you just want to leave combat to travel somewhere else fast or
• if you just don’t want to spent your adrenaline and healthkits.

Remember: with respawn you can get where you want without loosing anything and no need of healing!

If there would be some kind of penalty, we would think twice:

• Maybe there could be a reduction of carried/stored adrenalines when choosing to respawn.
• Or we could loose 10% (at least one thing) of everything in our backpack (ammo and consumeables).
• What about loosing XP / skillspoints?
• What about dying when shot down after using your last adrenaline? So your current character dies. End. Game over. Gear in the backpack gets lost, XP and skills get lost. You may start a new character after that…

We are just as strong because of these missing limits and penalties. That’s the only thing which let us feel that this game could be too easy.
That’s why we loose the feeling of the first hours.

More possible changes

• Limits for fast travel
  What if we would just be able to use fast travel a few times per day? We would have to walk/cycle more distances. We would think twice, if we use fast travel or take the risk to walk.
• no fast travel after being shot down
  We should not be able to descide where to respawn after shot down.
  There should just be the options to

1. use an adrenaline and to stand up or
2. to respawn at the next discovered safehouse.

The last one should reduce the stored adrenalines by one and you should start with the same low health as when just using an adrenaline.

• Addition to the limit for adrenalines and the idea of dying characters:
  Instead of taking adrenalines with you or storing them in the plundra there could be a overall adrenaline counter, like the number of lives left in older games. It would get reduced automatically when being shot down and rises if you find new ones. If the last adrenaline has been used and you get shot again… Game over for this character, as described above.

[PEACELOVEFLESHBONES]

I don’t mean to come off as confrontational, but it feels at least a little bit rude that you keep copying and pasting your feature request post in the discussion of my post. Like I get that you also have ideas but the wall of text with all those different suggestions really derails the whole discussion, assuming it doesn’t just hijack it.

[Madchaser]

I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention.
I just wanted to bring in my already written thoughts into a topic regarding the same topic in parts.

I’ll hide it.

[yamibelle]

I can see so many bugs comming from this idea including toasters healing at long range while getting picked off by a pvg with low damage(1c 2c 3c) or other adverse issues.

Maybe if the toasters had some destroyable limited deployable that they put on your body that might be fun like the wolfs nanorepair they get like a 1 minute of use version of that on your body when you die. But even that is likly to bring alot of bugs because on the code side of this it would be quite complicated.