Behind the scenes, we've been thinking about an improvement we could make to death pile mechanics, which UIM players may benefit from. This would be a small, but helpful change that we hope you'll love!
Currently, there is significant risk for Ultimate Iron players when dropping items to the ground. Unless they are able to get back to their items within 60 minutes after their items have dropped to the ground, the contents of the death pile will despawn and be lost forever. This risk factor is generally accepted as 'part and parcel' of the UlM game mode, however, when battling with connection issues, UIMs could suffer devastating losses. We've been looking at an engine change, to offer players a fairer opportunity to utilise death pile mechanics.
The change we're proposing will slightly affect other accounts, but not in a significant way. Please read on for more information to let us know what you think!
Nothing needs changing at the moment - if you don't want us to change anything, then we don't have to. But, let's take a moment to explain what currently happens when an ultimate ironman dies.
On death, UIM drop their carried items to the ground in the location died in the form of a death pile. The death pile remains for a period of 60 minutes, whereby if the UIM fails to pick up their items within the timer, the items will despawn. This mechanic can make for some incredibly thrilling gameplay, however there are several factors that may increase the risk disproportionately. Consider the effect of:
- Internet disruption.
- Game world reboot.
- Unexpected game world shut down.
- In rare situations, where too many items are dropped near a death pile, the world will start to delete items (cheapest first)) because the memory isn't large enough to keep all of them.
With variants largely outside of players' control, we would like to remove the risk factor associated as we don't think players should be punished for factors outside of their control. So, we're proposing a change that would offer players more opportunity to utilise death pile mechanics without fear of losing items due to a disconnection or server outage. This would allow UIM players to utilise death pile mechanics to their highest potential.
Currently, when a player drops an item, it is 'attached' to the game world that it was dropped on. Even after you log out, the item will remain there until it despawns. The proposed change is to instead make dropped items 'attached' to your player, so that item is saved when you log out, and will still be there when you log back in, regardless of which world you log into. Its despawn timer would also pause while you are logged out.
This would only apply to items that will only ever be visible to you. Examples include UIM death piles, as well as dropped untradeables such as Clue Scrolls, for all types of account (not just UIM).
The idea is to provide you with more protection from disconnection issues. When the player logs out, the item is removed from the game world, and when the player logs back in, the item is re-added to the game world with its despawn timer in-tact.
For technical reasons, we're unable to support multiple gravestones, making multiple gravestones an unsuitable option for Ultimate Ironmen because UIM require multiple death piles. Instead, we're offering a solution that makes deathpiles pause on logout. All other existing mechanics with death piles would remain the same.
To illustrate our proposal further, check out this table:
UIM would be able to utilise death pile mechanics cross-world, due to the fact their items are saved to their player-save rather than on the world they're on. In the case of dropped untradeables, regular accounts will receive a small benefit as it be saved to your player-save allowing them to appear cross-world for a period of 3 minutes. Please note, we don't recommend testing this out with your rare untradeable items just yet - we're just pitching this as theoretically possible pending your feedback.
That's it, really. We'd like to hear what you think about this proposal. Do you have any concerns or feedback? Let us know!
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