World Death System/death's Mansion Rework

The Problem

As with any game, Wynncraft has decided to punish players upon death. The way this is realized is through the Soul Point System (SP). The SP system causes players to permanently lose items when at low SP. The only way to mitigate this risk is to venture out when you have a high amount of soul points. You obtain these soul points by... the passage of time.

Thus, an issue is born. This system encourages players under certain circumstances to afk or disconnect. In other words, the game rewards players for not playing the game at all. This is generally not acceptable in a game.

What the SP System is Attempting


Accordingly, the player should experience some set back for misplaying/underestimating their strength/generally messing up. This is to sweeten the eventual victories that the player experiences, as well as to provide a challenge. Nowhere in this ideal is it necessary to force the player to AFK or otherwise stop interacting with Wynncraft for a stint of time.

The Suggestion

An idea already implemented in the game could be further expanded: Death's Realm/Death's Mansion.

The player could be warped to a variant of Death's Mansion every time they die. This variant would reflect the level and general progress through questlines/discoveries the player has made along the way. Within the mansion, the player could interact with Death, an NPC who will allow them to return back to the main world so long as they are able to complete various (nonrepeating) tasks for him. Players who have completed his task can freely leave the realm.

Within Death's Mansion (which changes based on the player's progress), the player would be able to interact with NPCs that have died in questlines, view various emblems of their accomplishments, and even discover new secrets and lore within the building. This journey would cause the player to take a moment to reflect on their previous accomplishments, assign some of these new meanings, and prepare to face the world again.

The player would still be being penalized for death in that they would be temporarily removed from the gameplay loop of the overworld, but they would still be interacting with Wynncraft in a meaningful and interesting way in its own right.

Bolstering the System/Additional Ideas

Quests Unique to the Death Realm

There could be various quests that go into further depth with characters encountered in major questlines in the overworld. Example Idea:

Spoiler: Heavy Endgame Quest Spoiler

The player could confront Death about the fate of Aledar after a Journey Further, and they would refuse to assist the player. The player could then venture deep into the Death realm, which becomes more and more horrific and maddening. Eventually, the player would reach an impassable abyss at the bottom of the world after several puzzles in a combat-heavy labyrinth. Within this labyrinth, players would discover those who met their fate in the Silent Expanse, as well as characters who met similar fates, such as Ohm. Near the edge, the player would encounter a destroyed room from Death's mansion, meant for Aledar, with no occupant. The quest would end upon this discovery.

Character Encounters

• Interact with various characters the player has witnessed die/has killed:
  Spoiler: Characters who have died

  Amadel, The Witch, Axelus...
• Engage with characters able to visit death, such as:
  Spoiler: Powerful Characters

  Qira, The First of the Fallen (The one random disguised demon in the quest "From the Bottom"), ...

Lore Unlocks/New context

• Able to read various books in the libraries as they unlock in Death's mansion
• Able to interact with various spirits to hear new perspectives
• Able to get randomly chosen dialogue from Death commenting about your journey's progress
• Secret areas

 

Would be pretty cool, but could you add a few examples of tasks? This would require another introduction, but could be done by just creating something like Beyond the Grave, which occurs when you first die.

 

As long as it isn't long/ grindy. If I'm having trouble with a boss, and I have to keep doing the same task over and over whenever I die, I'm gonna quit eventually. That's the key problem for me is that it works fine when you're just going through the game, but if you ever hit a difficulty wall and have trouble, it's terrible. I don't think this would really solve that aspect of it. That said, if it could be skippable at some small cost (such as temporarily decreased loot/xp bonus, NOT losing items) I would really like this system.

 

It's more souls like in terms of design.
We talked about it together on discord. I knew the suggestion didn't explain this well enough but,
Let's say for example that at level 1-15 you spawn next to a gate, death says you get leave through the gate if you find the key.
Once you've found the key, you no longer need to do the task. As soon as you spawn in, you can walk through the gate.

You only need to do another task, in this case, every 15 levels.
The world also updates depending on the quest you've done, but they don't require a new task (Or for you to even do the task again) to just freely leave.

(This is just an example)

 

Difficult battle encounters are almost never your only options in Wynncraft. Instead of waiting around or disconnecting, a player can instead tackle easier quests, do professions, explore the world, or just about anything else in the game. While most places in Wynn have some degree of danger and the big fights might be the most exciting part of the game, there's still a lot you can do in the game without risking your life too much.

 

Yes, but there is always the risk of you dying.
Literally ask anyone what to do when at or under 5 souls points, and they will respond with "Wait"
Plus, stating that there are other things to do while waiting doesn't make it a better system.

 

This would be SO F*****G ANNOYING. You would have to go through the realm CONSTANTLY. Plus, the mansion is a nightmare to navigate and this would ruin the point of the quest. The quest ''beyond the grave'' is a meta joke that is assumed to be non-canon and unimportant. As for Death having more roles in the story, I still disagree. Although death is my favourite NPC aside from Seaskipper, it would just get annoying to see him appear in literally every quest where somebody dies.

Axelus: Tell. The. TRUTH!! G-gaagh... you know that's th...the only way to stop this. Swallow your pride you... old fool...
King of Rodoroc: I... I... Axelus... He... he called me Draani... why did...?
Death: HEY GUYS ITS ME FOR THE TENTH TIME
King of Rodoroc: Ugh... Death, can you revive my son?
Korzim: We have... a war that needs... finishing...
Death: NO, I'M JUST HERE TO SAY HEY LOL.
King of Rodoroc: looks like i have to bargain with the chief

Honip: Hey there! Ya bringin' me good news?
Honip: You took care of those damn thieving rodents? A... colossal rat you say?
Death: NO I NEED TO REVIVE IT ITS TOO CUTE
Honip: NOT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm assuming that if this was added, Beyond the grave would be removed. That would be bad because BtG is one of the only good quests in CoTl.

I completely disagree with this entire thread.

Edit: I appear to have read this whole thread wrong. I don't want to remove my previous reply though so here's my new opinion

I think this should only start happening after Beyond the grave. Players would think that they actually died to Krolton in the quest and you're only supposed to meet death here.
Seeing more of the realm would be interesting
Once again, this is a meta joke and does not fit here.
I like the lore library thing

Problem is, the idea of Death's realm is that to leave you have to fight the enemy who killed you. This entirely messes up this idea. I still disagree.

 

The idea is great, very detailed and with poll.

I disagree with it though, as it would ruin the Beyond the Grave quest also the task would have to be really creative and timed, so if you won't complete you in 5-15mins you will be instantly respawned. So it isn't so tedious for those who can't do it.

 

I feel like this one of the less cheesy meta jokes, and I know that this would cause Kroltron to either be reworked or removed entirely (I also agree that its one of the better quests in the CotL in general, so I guess reworking it could be a reason to be opposed to this idea). This would remove the focus on "you need to kill the thing that killed you" (for obvious reasons, if you unga bunga into a level 100 area as a level 1, you literally would get stuck), and would put more of a focus on helping death out and interacting with them. Thanks for the feedback though!

Huh, interesting idea! My suggestion was more "1 time quests/tasks that unlocked after every few level ups", so there would be no grinding every time you die (otherwise it would be even more annoying than "wait" every time you're low SP)

Hey! Sorry for the late response, I've been quite busy! An example of a task could be: There are a couple of lost spirits in the mansion, each looking for things found around the mansion. You could guide each spirit to its respective room and maybe have to fight 1-2 evil spirits at the level the task was unlocked at. This would not be a repeating task, just a one time mini-quest of sorts.

Thank you all for your feedback once again!

 

The quest "Beyond the Grave" is already what you mentioned. There is no need to make that quest generic and boring.

 

I think this would be hard to work in without spoiling or ruining beyond the grave, and that it should only happen at low soul points to make it less tedious