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@Errant — I'm a fan of permadeath but I also recognise that IRE game aren't games that suit it. These aren't RPIs with a focus on gritty immersion and cooperative storytelling. These are competitive, wish-fulfilment vehicles with a focus on living vicariously through your character and 'winning' by stomping over and being better than everyone else. They're different animals. One encourages you to create a flawed character distinct from yourself; the other encourages you to create the best and baddest version of yourself.

You see evidence of this even in the way that targeted emotes are handled. RPIs refer to your character in the third-person, no matter whose perspective it's from; IRE/balance MUDs serve up the story to each audience of one in second-person. You attack X, X attacks you. Dying in IRE games is being a loser. It's being dunked on. Nobody wants to be that guy. It isn't just your character who loses a fight, it's you. Can you imagine the butthurt if you were to add completely losing your character to that?

Speaking of butthurt though, I think people really underestimate the humiliation of defeat. Nobody likes losing/dying. Saying you want an XP penalty because you want death to hurt is nonsense. Death already upsets people. What an XP penalty does is discourage people.

MKO had its fair share of butthurt but what it also had was a higher level of player-engagement in PvP compared to any other IRE MUD I've played. If you were a non-com on MKO, you were the weirdo. In other IREs, that's the norm; you're either the baddest of asses, or you let those few true badasses fight your battles for you. PvPers *cough* Killers *cough* love to cry 'omggg no one engages in PvP any more this game suuuucks u r all a bunch of pussies!' yet ironically they also seem to be the most vocal advocates of making death/loss as humiliating and painful as possible. It's counterproductive. The reason MKO had such a healthy PvP atmosphere compared to other IRE games is you honestly had very little to lose. If you suck and die a lot, well it's not like you lost more than 5 minutes of your time waiting for rez; you wouldn't have had any warpoints to lose in the first place (different, parallel system) but you did help the better combatants in your city by serving as good cannon-fodder. But if you win? You stand a chance of gaining a bunch of warpoints for a lucky kill-shot, and glory from your city for those little David vs. Goliath moment. Speaking as someone who always sucked at combat on MKO, no one ever hated or criticised me for it, because I was always game to roll the dice anyway. Opponents were happy for an easy target and allies were happy that at least I'm trying.

We should have that in Starmourn. A healthy spirit of competition that lets you engage at any level — because what have you got to lose? — rather than making you feel like if you can't be the best, there's no point in trying at all, because you'll only be hurting and embarrassing yourself. Negative incentives (like permadeath and XP loss) shouldn't be seen as cornerstones of a competitive environment. They are antithetical to it. Death hurts on RPIs and carries consequence because death is supposed to be rare. Do we want death and consequently combat to be rare on Starmourn?