Change "Suicide" messages to leaving the kingdom/exile/etc

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

I’ve never been the kind of person to care about trigger words or anything like that, but I have a friend who won’t play this game because seeing the message “You have taken your own life” reminds them of actual suicidal impulses. Games like this are meant to be an escape from stuff like that.

I didn’t think much about it before, but wouldn’t it be easy to just change the message to “You have left the kingdom” or “You have given up your position in the court” or “You have gone into exile?” That makes more sense to me from a lore perspective too, ESPECIALLY with the changes in 1.1.

Let me explain: we now have seven classes in the game that can commit suicide (Butler, Merc, Scorned, Inquis, Knight, CL, MM). Why would an inquisitor or scorned kill himself after achieving their objective? It makes more sense for an inquisitor to just leave the court to find magic users elsewhere, not commit suicide. A butler or knight would probably renounce their position before committing suicide, too. Resurrect and Call of the Dead also got removed from the game, so changing suicide to leaving wouldn’t conflict with any abilities. It just seems like an easy change to make the game have a more party-appropriate atmosphere.

20 Likes
#2

That make lot of sense with the title.

That also requires animation work for players ‘leaving the castle’ before triggering into night

#3

No, I’m not proposing anything that requires new animation, just the message changing. The red flash and you “dying” at night can stay the same, just remove the corpse when it shows the “dead” player in the morning to indicate that they’ve disappeared.

Maybe the knight’s suicide mechanics can stay the same since it would affect the course of the game to know whether or not the knight just died or CS’ed a BD, but I feel like it’s kind of overkill having so many classes that readily commit suicide. Even then, Knight could use the small buff of giving out that information when they CS a BD.

#4

I agree, make it more thematically correct.

6 Likes
#5

Not a fan of this for BD but it’s fine for the Neuts

1 Like
#6

This is a great idea.

Example 1: Mercenary will “commit suicide” just because they…can’t find someone to contract?? That’s pretty extreme. A mercenary wouldn’t kill themselves because they can’t find work, they’d go look for work somewhere else. And if their contract dies twice…realistically, they would just leave and find a town where people die less for more stable work.

Example 2: Scorned might as well be renamed to Depressed with these upcoming changes, they will end up terminating their own life regardless of if they win or lose. The person they hate dies so they kill themselves, they live to see the person they hate get executed and they still kill themselves? So nothing they do can make them happy enough to want to live? It’s morbid. Just let the Scorned leave the kingdom for a land with less painful memories.

Example 3: A Knight tries to Cold Steel someone, discovers they are innocent, DOESN’T kill them, goes back to their room, and says “I almost committed a crime. Now I will commit suicide”. Realistically, no one would kill themselves because they almost attacked an innocent, but didn’t. It makes more sense for them to renounce their knighthood and exile themselves from the kingdom because they’re shaken up by their mistake.

Example 4: The Inquisitor has successfully killed the Sorcerer! He’s hunted down the heretic and won the game. Should he:
A) Kill himself
B) Leave the kingdom since his work here is done

I don’t struggle with depression and it still bothers me how easily characters in this game take their own life, how Throne of Lies portrays suicide to be such a trivial thing. So it must be rough on people who do have depression.

Bottom line is the suicide just doesn’t fit the game thematically. It breaks immersion and it doesn’t make sense from the character’s point of view, unless you reskin the game to be a Japanese-era thing where everyone is committing harakiri left and right for an honorable death.

8 Likes
#7

omg town of seppuku lmao

5 Likes
#8

orangeandblack5: “Not a fan of this for BD but it’s fine for the Neuts”

Knight: “I almost killed an innocent person, but discovered the truth in time. Should I…”
A) Kill myself
B) Renounce my knighthood and leave the kingdom [Gameplay effect: this will notify players that a CS failed due to the target being BD, giving a slight buff to Knight class]

Butler: “I just poisoned my King and he was Blue Dragon. Should I…”
A) Kill myself
B) Flee the kingdom because I committed treason against the crown [Gameplay effect: notify everyone that the Butler murdered the BD king, which is something that any Butler already puts in his logs already, unless they are gamethrowing]

Also, the Fool’s gameplay goal is to get himself executed, but that’s probably because he’s a fool, so I don’t think he’s actually suicidal, he’s just an idiot or an attention seeker, maybe wants to go out in a blaze of glory after being ignored all his life (he does seem to live in an outhouse). So it makes sense for him.

2 Likes
#9

The correct response is “kill myself”, because otherwise you’ll know they just left rather than being killed.

#10

Note:I don’t have a problem with the suicide message just it doesn’t feel thematically correct. This has nothing to do with my personal shit.

2 Likes
#11

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Butler already gets a notification at night saying “You are going to kill yourself because you poisoned a good king” the night before he dies, so the only thing they have to write in the log is “I’m killing myself because I made a mistake”. So, no change there, just saves the player from writing a literal suicide note.

It does affect the gameplay for knight, but a knight should already write “CS [X]” the night they do it, and if he dies that night and his target doesn’t, the most reasonable thing to assume is he tried to CS a BD. The only thing that my idea would change is a fringe situation where he’s attacked the night he tries to CS, AND his CS target wasn’t BD. Before 1.1, he could tell this info to the psychic or use it as a death knight, but now he’s just going to take it to the grave.

The only method knights have of finding information is CSing a death immune class and then telling people about it the next day. Giving everyone the info that he did, in fact, try to CS a BD, seems like a decent exchange for his life.

But, if Imperium doesn’t want to give the knight this slight buff, I would be okay with knight staying as it is. In this case, maybe the suicide message could be changed to “You have admitted your treason to the court and have been privately executed,” something like that, so his corpse still shows up.

#12

I have personally never felt it being triggering or out of place with the theme of the game, but I’d be indifferent to a change honestly.

#13

With the exception of the knight I agree with all of these.

With the knight I’m sure that we could have it instead give the target a message and have the lore be that he actually attacked them but their response made it clear they were good. So since he thinks he just killed a BD he kills himself however he’s also dumb and stupid and wrong ect because the guy he attacked is alive.

1 Like
#14

Don’t want the target to know though

#15

The target will either A: Know anyway because of knights logs or B: SAY they knew anyway because they are scum and don’t want to be caught.

AKA it doesn’t actually matter kinda like with Butler.

#16

It will matter whenever log editing occurs

It’s only a matter of time tbh

#17

True… I just hope it’s reaper that gets it, cuz he’s the one that needs it most.

Well in any case my REAL point was that we can come up with a lore reason for Knight killing himself and not his target if we try hard enough.

#18

Because if I was knight and went to someone and found they are BD so I didn’t attack them my response would be:

Ok. Time to become Alpha paladin and keep going to peoples houses and Killing them if they aren’t BD.

6 Likes
#19

It’s still weird for Inquisitor and Scorned to literally commit suicide in response to their win condition being filled. What is their motivation for this and how is it fun to play a class that will morbidly kill themselves?

3 Likes
#20

I mean Scorned makes sense if you think of her as a vengeful spirit - suicide isn’t the right word but like dissipation.

Inquisitor makes no sense though.

2 Likes