Link Death

Link death is what happens to a character when the player controlling it loses her network connection.

These are some notes about possible game mechanics to handle such events.

  • The character could become unconscious, but remain in the game. This is attractive only as a means of discouraging players from disconnecting to avoid the other three kinds of death, and because it is less damaging to other players' roleplaying experience.
  • The character could disappear into a stasis of some sort. This is what typically happens in most MUDs, and can be annoying if abused. It also makes the suspension of disbelief rather more difficult. It is, however, very easy to code.
  • A mixture of the two. When the player initially disconnects, her character becomes unconscious for a predetermined time, during which she is not protected. After the predetermined time elapses, the character is put into stasis. Movement into stasis could also be made contingent on the character's not being observed by any other character for a reasonable amount of time (perhaps using the same object-cleaning mechanism as for other objects). This would make abusing linkdeath nearly impossible, not ruin suspension of disbelief for others around her, and also provide the benefits of the stasis strategy. The down sides: it's almost certainly the most difficult to code, incurs a rather high penalty for those people who are in combat when it happens.
  • The character could become an NPC. This would require minimal extra coding, as the NPC consciousness? object that would facilitate it needs to be coded anyway, but it is not necessarily desirable to players. A computer-controlled AI will never be as good at playing as a human, and might make decisions that the player would never make.

— Ged The Greys Hain - 21 May 2000

  • Once again this last one could be combined with others. The AI-driven NPC could have a tendency to try to find an inn or a place to lay down and sleep (safely, if possible), with a further switch to stasis (nonbeliever status?) if time passes that way without disturbance.

— Scotus - 6 April 2002

This issue also relates fairly closely to the passage of time.

— Ged The Greys Hain - 21 May 2000