Why Won’t You Just Stay Dead! - Returning from the Afterlife

Over the course of the autumn, we’ve been gathering feedback on a number of issues. One of the things that has been mentioned to us quite a lot is the perceived high resurrection rate at Odyssey - opinion seems to be generally split about it. Some players like it, others very much do not. A lot of the people who’ve fed back back seem to think it happens too much.

Some of the claims made in the feedback are eyebrow-raising indeed and I can set them to bed for sure. There are no characters who have been resurrected “four or five times”. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think there’s even any characters who have died more than once. I’m baffled by these claims - I do wonder whether the perception of endless resurrection comes from where players are respawning into their groups in similar or the same kit, and people are assuming it to be the same character returned to life...?

Some people have cited that some nations seem to get “soft” treatment when it comes to people being sent back whereas others get a very hard time. This is objectively true. Those nations who have better-disposed death gods have them because, well, they’ve made their death gods better disposed toward them. There’s a clear game mechanic there, with a clear chain of cause and effect. If you want better treatment after death, make your death god happier.

So I am not sure based on the feedback that we’ve recieved that we’re overdoing it, but the feedback has set me to thinking about the whole process of after-death roleplay at Odyssey and how we can make much, much more of it. The situation we have now is very much not what we envisaged in the game design. Originally we had planned to make even the chance to see a death god after death very rare and very unusual - however, we found ourselves flooded with unexpected casualties early on at the first event.

Since then, partly because we liked it and thought the process was cool and partly because it gave us a fantastic debriefing opportunity, we’ve tried to ensure all casulaties get the chance - if they wish, and if they’ve had the rites - to see their death gods. This has, at times, put the back office under considerable resource pressure and worse, from our point of view, its’ created a sense of expectation and entitlement - now everyone is certain they’ll get the interview. And if every casulatiy sees the death gods, the number of those who manage to turn on the charm is higher...

The Death Gods are generally well-disposed to tales of heroism and the like; and roleplayers are as a rule good talkers. So, on average, about twenty characters have been sent back in total each Annual. Not twenty per culture - twenty in total. What isn’t broadly known, I think, is that the majority of such resurrections are time-limited; characters are sent back “for ten thousand breaths” - until the end of the Annual, until dusk, until the end of their next arena battle, until they have achieved a specific goal set by the death god. Full, true resurrections are exceedingly rare - and usually require player action or intervention to trigger. They normally have conditions attached too.

Nevertheless, based on some of the feedback we’ve recieved, we’re going to redesign the “after-death” part of the game, placing yet more emphasis on the actions of the players themselves - both the people doing the dying and the priests whose job it is to intercede with the gods - and how they influence events after character death.

We’re also looking at what happens to people who die during the final battles of the Sunday - up until now, we have stopped processing death audiences at around 2pm on the Sunday and deferred all casualties until the start of the next event. Given the opportunities for player events over the winter, we are now looking at ways we can ensure all the honoured dead come before their gods at the event itself. I won’t explain the specifics of the changes to preserve a little of the mystery, but suffice it to say you’ll be able to see them in action from the Fourth Annual onwards.

If there are percieved to be too many coming back to the land of the living then the miraculousness of the event becomes diluted, even if the actuality of things may be at odds with the perception. After throwing open the doors of the underworld to establish the Annual, the time has come to wedge them shut once more and allow only a scant few to escape their doom.

Ian A