Real damage...

Be it resolved that weapons should cause real damage to avatars in damage-enabled sims. (That is - when avatar health reaches zero the avatar 'dies'. Inventory is erased. Name is retired from database. Restart from square one.)

Con - Hey, SL is just a game. Lighten up.

Pro - In a viable society weapons have consequences. We want SL to be a viable society don't we?

(Full disclosure - I plan to use the results of this poll as a basis for a published article or blog posting. Any residents whose comments I wish to use will be contacted for permission and elaboaration as required. FL)

Not without a "Last Will and Testament" feature that allows people to name heirs to their property.

Sounds fun!

There may come a time when people in the real world can't die or feel pain. At that point I think life may become pretty dull, so people may then volunteer to enter a state/world where it is possible to die, just so that they can once again feel alive again. So they can feel the exhiliration that's felt when they've just escaped death!. To feel real happiness, you must feel real sadness first. Yikes, I'm getting deep!... I like monkeys!!!

But maybe this is how you feel in SL? Bored and in need of some excitement?

I can't really see it working in SL though, because people would just setup alts to enter the damage enabled zones.

I was deadly afraid this was the case when I first came into SL, and held off exploring until I found out dying had no consiquence. This would stop people venturing off their own plot for fear of losing their account.

It could also lead to extreme greifing, what if someone teleported someone who owned thousands of real dollars worth of land to a damage-enabled location and killed them instantly? What if someone accidentally stumbled onto a damage enabled plot and someone had a droid set up to instantly kill anyone on the land?

Its totally impossible, it will never happen.

All great points, but it would be a little fun to have a real outland that very few would venture into for fear of total annihilation. I'd dust of one of my alts and stick a toe in the water.

If people are using guns in the combat sims, great. That's where they're supposed to be using them. Doesn't make much sense to punish people for doing the right thing.

that used to happen in UO...when you died, you lost one item out of your inventory - it would be on the monster that killed you.

That sucked - I lost a couple of VERY valuable swords that way... and don't get me started on the day some Lich stole all my gold!!

Hoping for a few more opinions and votes...

Thanks, FL.

I'd happily sacrifice my alts, but not my main. Do you know how much my inventory alone is worth? More than my real life crap, that's for sure

I dunno about going quite that far.. But I'd love to be able to actually cut off parts of avs, a bit like in Snow Crash. It'd give swords a new sort of flair... And you could stay that way until you relogged! But it'd be nice if you could still move. Like, the head retains "you" and you could just roll around as yer severed head.. Or drag yourself along with whatever parts are still connected to you. Gruesome, but might be great fun for combat zones over merely being TPed home.

I agree gabe..wouldnt it be, oh whats the word im looking for "exciting" to know there was a place in SL that you could actually die...it puts a whole new spin on SL...but then again...i could see total madness errupting before long..but still its an interesting idea

So... if I could afford to hire a small standing army, and you couldn't...

...and I got bored one day, or didn't like you, or just was feeling emotionally insecure...

...is that the kind of Second Life you want to live in?

The only way to get back in the game would be to ship a fresh home baked pie to LL in CA, or possibly an entire whole watermelon to Torley.

Absolutely not. This would only lead to a whole new culture of 'hits' where hitmen would stalk their victim to a damage-enabled location and the do the dirty. I can imagine contracts being taken out on A Certain player and other well-known and/or high-profile players as well as unscrupulous players taking out contracts on their competitors. SL is chaotic enough as it is. If such a policy were to be implemented it would be a free-for-all with mafias and armies roaming the grid. You think it's bad now? Such a policy would most likely result in 99% of the island sims dropping permanently off the map and the mainland would be even more of a trainwreck than it is now.

I see the same thing happening. The worldview would shift dramatically from creating/consuming to destroying/protecting. In responce to changes like this I think a world like RL would develop, with governments, a police force and national borders. The function of a government is to exert violence to protect its people from violence, that's precisely what the people living in these damaged enabled areas (assuming the whole main continent, or a significant portion goes damage-enabled) will desire, if not demand.

For the political theorists and experimenters out there, this would probably be a dream come true
==Chris

Well either that, Christopher, or else 99.999% of the SL grid would switch over to damage-disabled overnight.

However it would be an interesting social experiment and a major paradigm shift if LL were to introduce an avatar death-by-damage feature. Packs of predatory hunters and protection rackets. It would end up similar to any of the Top-Table MMO's. As you pointed out, it would really throw a spanner in the content-creation camp. It would probably be a boon for the weapons & security makers though.

That is so nice of you!

Bad idea blowing off limbs could be good but totally getting rid of an account. Rather pointless really. Considering what people invest into SL this is rather a bad move and would cause alot of people that enjoy combat zone to simply quit due to the fact that they could lose everything. You also run into some security systems then killing people as well and a whole slew of problems that would take a long long time to list. Ultimately weapons are there for fun and when used properly in SL can be but they can also be used to grief and making it like this just does to much damage to alot of people.

Did you learn about the SL damage system before thinking this thru? Being killed is extremely easy in damage enabled sims like Jesse where just standing inside the sim alone is enough for automated assault weapons to identify you, target you, and hit you with enough to kill you regardless of your shields.

If the damage system wasn't "one shot, one hit, one kill", it could be interesting. But still. People have invested huge amounts of time and money in this world and losing everything so easily would not be taken well. It basically wouldn't be worth coming to SL at all for fear of losing everything by accident.

Briana Dawson