06-02-2009, 01:38 PM
Incidentally, respawning is probably a worthy offshoot discussion related to travel.
I think I would do something like this:
Every player has access to a personal extra-dimensional space, similar to a Bag of Holding. This is basically your bank, where you will store extra equipment and valuables. Only you can ever access this space.
A fairly basic magical construct is a "Spawn Stone". It's literally a stone which you place on the ground. If you die, that's where you respawn at. You may also access your holding space via this stone. Nobody else can use your stone or access your holding space but they CAN destroy your stone, to stop you from respawning there. (Incidentally, when you die I'd give you two options: spawn at stone or detonate stone. If you choose to detonate it, you'll lose your spawn but it will explode in quite a fireball. Campers will want to destroy stones, not hang around them waiting to see who shows up.)
You drop all of your equipment if you die, but you can get extra equipment from your stone.
If you die and don't have a stone, you'll end up at the nearest factional graveyard.
If no nearby factions like you, you'll end up at the nearest neutral graveyard (or something).
However,
Players who are in good standing with a powerful enough faction will very rarely "die". Rather, they make arrangements with a local wizard and whenever they are "just about to die", the wizard intervenes and teleports you home (perhaps with some restrictions on range and expense -- e.g., maybe he needs 1 gold bar to teleport you like this, so giving him 10 gold bars means he's ready to save you 10 times). These wizards can also help you access your holding space.
When you're ready to do some serious messing around in enemy territory, you would hire a wizard like this to go out with you and park somewhere -- basically a Planetside AMS. When you "die", you teleport to the wizard. The wizard is still a wizard NPC, so he can be killed and he will also try to defend the area around him (you can't really "spawn camp" because the spawn location will throw fireballs at you and try to turn you into a newt). You could also hire guards to go with the wizard, basically creating a sort of mobile fire base / spawn location.
So you will typically take the Long Run only with the intent of setting up a spawn location of some sort for yourself. Once the enemy has wiped out your spawn location, you'll have to make the Long Run again.
I think I would do something like this:
Every player has access to a personal extra-dimensional space, similar to a Bag of Holding. This is basically your bank, where you will store extra equipment and valuables. Only you can ever access this space.
A fairly basic magical construct is a "Spawn Stone". It's literally a stone which you place on the ground. If you die, that's where you respawn at. You may also access your holding space via this stone. Nobody else can use your stone or access your holding space but they CAN destroy your stone, to stop you from respawning there. (Incidentally, when you die I'd give you two options: spawn at stone or detonate stone. If you choose to detonate it, you'll lose your spawn but it will explode in quite a fireball. Campers will want to destroy stones, not hang around them waiting to see who shows up.)
You drop all of your equipment if you die, but you can get extra equipment from your stone.
If you die and don't have a stone, you'll end up at the nearest factional graveyard.
If no nearby factions like you, you'll end up at the nearest neutral graveyard (or something).
However,
Players who are in good standing with a powerful enough faction will very rarely "die". Rather, they make arrangements with a local wizard and whenever they are "just about to die", the wizard intervenes and teleports you home (perhaps with some restrictions on range and expense -- e.g., maybe he needs 1 gold bar to teleport you like this, so giving him 10 gold bars means he's ready to save you 10 times). These wizards can also help you access your holding space.
When you're ready to do some serious messing around in enemy territory, you would hire a wizard like this to go out with you and park somewhere -- basically a Planetside AMS. When you "die", you teleport to the wizard. The wizard is still a wizard NPC, so he can be killed and he will also try to defend the area around him (you can't really "spawn camp" because the spawn location will throw fireballs at you and try to turn you into a newt). You could also hire guards to go with the wizard, basically creating a sort of mobile fire base / spawn location.
So you will typically take the Long Run only with the intent of setting up a spawn location of some sort for yourself. Once the enemy has wiped out your spawn location, you'll have to make the Long Run again.