Permanent death in MMO is only for hardcore players. Yes/No

No, not neccesarily

just implement some sort of afterlife...

I just can''t answer yes or no, since I don''t know why you could want permanent death at all...

I would say it''s for NOONE.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Well if by hardcore gamer you mean a player who like to use his brains to play, then I would say yes. Most players play for fun and think that using one''s brains is not fun...

Most current games are quite easy for that reason, you have to set them to the hardest difficulty level to have a reasonable challenge.

Failure means that success is a reward, if you cannot fail to accomplish the tasks necessary to win the game, then what is the point to play anymore...

So perhaps I am a hardcore player and my point of view is biased, but most games nowadays seems designed with the 3-99 years public in mind. Noticed the lack of true adeventure game these days ? Try to design a correct adventure game which can be finished by a 5 year old kid, what is the interest for more mature players ? None. So adventure games tend to disappear. (even if I must admit that I look forward to the release of full throttle 2 and sam and max 2 to see what lucasarts have decided on this particular issue)

So if your game is designed with a more specific public (say the 16-99 years old) then I think the technical issue of permadeath is your main concern.

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius there was an age undreamed of..."

The problem with permadeath is dealing with playerkilling and grief players. You see, a level 1 newbie stands no chance against a pack of grief players, and his $8 a month and $1 per character is wasted on getting slaughtered at the gates of newplayerdium.

Though, if you ever wanted to experiement in the weird, you can let the account keep the experience, and let the player distribute the points he accumulated amongst his characters, and then permadeath means losing equipment and money, but not neccessarily the EXP.

AP: I guess I should''ve made it clearer that the question pertains to MMO games. Will edit original post.

No, it''s not for hardcore players, it''s for different games.

My comments here are based on the assumption that you are referring to MMORPGs.

I like permadeath as long as there''s *usually* a way to avoid dying. In most RPGs, you have no option to escape or surrender. All the enemies are mindless trolls who will attack in waves and die by the thousands for a chance to do three HP of damage to the character. If you kill all but one, and then run away, he''ll follow you. It''s stupid. If the enemies had goals that didn''t involve the death of the player, and death became less common, then permadeath would be valid, even neat.

The concept of the shining knight who charges nobly off into battle with demons is great, especially when that knight can do it again after the demon eats his soul. Seven or eight times. If death was death, then people would probably favor trade over heroism. We''d see fewer Paladins and more merchants, and the occasional monk. Not as exciting, but how can you compare the excitement factor of almost being eaten by wolves to the excitement of killing scores of giants and only dying five times? It''s a different paradigm.

So, if you can surrender to the enemy soldiers that chase you instead of Butch&Sundancing your way through them every time, then permadeath would be neat. You get beaten almost to death, and the guy says, "Give me your PUSD and I''ll let you live", then by God give him the PUSD! Of course, he might kill you anyway, but dying with the PUSD and dying without it are about the same thing, all things considered. Of course there are times when you can die nobly, but there are also times when you die stupidly. Permadeath reduces the stupid deaths, since people who die stupidly get Darwinned right back to the beginning of the game.

It''s definitely not for hardcore players only, the problem with people is that all they can think of are current games having a permadeath system. "I would hate to lose my D2 character after spending months on building her up..." What if it only took about 20 minutes to have a good character, and combat wasn''t as constant as most games, and actually meant something if you lost?

Before I start to ramble, this discussion has been discussed rather thoroughly in another post already.

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=126660

As is it''s a bad idea, don''t do it.

BUT, if the game use some kind of reincarnation/Soul which preserve some characters attributes across death, then it might be OK.

But I don''t see how you would like to see your 10/50/100 hours of game wasted in 1 minute, because you died.


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

AO (Anarchy-Online) has an interesting way of death. You loose all the XP you had since you last ''saved'' (you save at insurance terminals and it costs you a set ammount of credits based on your level and such). Also all of the stuff you were not wearing (in your inventory) go to a reclaim terminal were you must pick them up. Also all of your skills take a large hit so that you cannot go into battle, but they do regain slowly. In my opnion this was a really cool way to have death. It doesn''t make so bad that you will never want to die, but it does make hard enough that you won''t take stupid risks

If hardcore gamers is your audience, be prepared for hardcore lawyers when your player''s permadeath becomes reality. Frivilous, sure... possible, sure.

Reading over this thread again, there are two schools of thought that I see. There are people who think death is a critical part of the gaming experience, and should be a minor setback, and those who think death should only happen once to a character.

I readily admit that all current games are designed to kill you off as often as they can manage, and if it was for keeps, you''d be screwed. However, if a game was designed such that death wasn''t the only way to end a fight, or such that fighting wasn''t the only way to solve a dispute, then death would become less important, less common, and could be permanent. In current games, there''s really nothing that a player can be afraid of. It''s like the United States going to war. It''s not whether they can win the war, it''s how much it''ll cost, how long it''ll take, and how the voters will feel about it.

Everyone who''s dead-set against permadeath says "I''d be totally pissed if my character died for good" or "If my character dies and I can''t resurrect him, I''m gonna quit playing your crappy game." If your character dies, it''s because you killed him. You''re the damn player. you want to spend hours and hours and hours building him up until he can go into that cave with the level 47 vampires and not die in one minute, but if he dies in five minutes it''s okay.

How about this: There are no level 47 vampires. Did anyone ever wonder how human civilization can exist in these games when the rodents patrolling the sewers can kill trained soldiers? It''s stupid. You apply the sharp end of a sword to a rat, and that rat is going to bleed, and probably die. Likewise, when a giant tramps on your head, you''re going to die. Why not let characters start out with some semblance of ability (I never knew why a freaking paladin couldn''t handle a single wolf) and let them go out and do things, with death being a possibility?

You make a character, you trot into the wilderness, and you take care of some freaking business. If you shoot an arrow into a gremlin''s face, it dies. If an arrow goes into your noggin, you die. Sure, you can raise skill levels and buy better armor that will help you survive, but why is it your resistance to fire increases as you run around stabbing trolls?

Role-playing systems are really dumb, when you get right down to it. If the characters were all gods, then it would make a little sense that their cosmic power was increasing and they were always reborn in the Fortress of Solitude at the moment of their death. But when they''re supposed to be people, then why the hell are they chopping their way through ogres and demons? Isn''t that why we have freaking armies? Adventuring is fine, but it shouldn''t consist of eradicating monsteers and stealing their booty. RPGs have been around for decades now. Find a better (non-anime) way to represent a character''s strength.

The critical phrase here is designed around a permanent death system . This, I assume, means that there are ways to avoid death if you use common sense, and characters start out reasonably competent and don't advance without bound, and there are interesting things to do that don't involve a high risk of injury. In that case, the answer is YES.

[edit] by which I mean NO.

-STC

[edited by - SpittingTrashcan on January 12, 2003 6:13:25 PM]

I think it''d be fun to explore permanent injury. In a pre-medical world, if you took an injury just right, you''d be disabled for very long and/or ever. So, rather than race of and fear being killed, you can add fear of being stabbed in the leg and losing the ability to move fast. Then your oldbies all suffer a disadvantage against newbies.

Inmate, that''s a compelling idea. Long-term penalties from injuries sustained could lend a good element of self-preservation to the game and cripple up characters that might otherwise be unstoppable.

Another variation on this could be that your stats take a hit when you die. When an athlete screws up a leg, they need serious physical therapy to get it back to 100% effectiveness, and sometimes it''s never as good as it was or might have been before. you get killed by the ogres, you come back to life, but your stats are all 5% lower. So you could have a level fifty guy with stats equivalent to a level 27 guy who never died.

It depends on the game. In the current Everquest style constant combat gameplay styles, yes it would be a problem. In something more social or strategic, where death is relatively uncommon, in a game where most players are low level and it is very hard to kill high level players, or in a game where it is very easy to become powerful it is ok. If you think about it, most online action games have "perma-death" in that you usually use all your weapons and armor (the only way your character can improve.) However, it is very easy to regain your advantage so it''s not that big of a deal.

quote:

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Original post by Impossible
If you think about it, most online action games have "perma-death" in that you usually use all your weapons and armor (the only way your character can improve.) However, it is very easy to regain your advantage so it's not that big of a deal.

---

So by "perma-death" you mean death which isn't permanent at all. Excellent.

These games also reward you with cash prizes in that they give you a certain percent of your online money in real money. 0%. After all, if you think about it, zero is a percent.

[edit: typo]

[edited by - scaught on January 12, 2003 12:55:33 AM]

When I did some work on a personal UO server, I set up a dungeon where the monsters were extremely difficult; even the highest level characters had to band together to survive travelling through it. I had added one particular creature to the dungeon (a death vortex) which was impossible to kill; it'd do massive damage and kill any character within 10 seconds (despite the amount of healing, magic-buffs, and armor they had).

The problem with creating this dungeon was:
1) The server had been around a while, so I designed a high-danger dungeon for the highest-level characters. But because the rest of the dungeons were low-level to mid-level difficulty, most characters didn't like the idea of extreme mortality in this dungeon.
2) The death vortex was pretty much the only thing that the players didn't have a guarantee to defeat; in fact, its superiority was the only guarantee! Since the game-system dictated that any character could achieve levels of combat mastery (even the craftsmen classes), this creature was a shock to the player community.
3) Combat was a day-to-day occurance, rather than a rarity. If the game server was more socially-oriented, this dungeon wouldn't have been a necessity to curb boredom in veteran players.

Just some thoughts on my past experiences with social-vs-combat MMORPGs

And no; I think permanent death should be for everybody. At the same time, I think danger should be rarer, rather than a daily occurance.


MatrixCubed
http://MatrixCubed.cjb.net



[edited by - MatrixCubed on January 13, 2003 2:06:26 AM]

The problem isn''t dying. The problem is the game before you die.

If starting with a new character means doing pretty much the exact same shit you did with your original character, than permanent death sucks. So, the problem isn''t really whether the game lets you pick up where you left off. The problem is that the game has made restarting with a new character boring.

Which leads to an interesting point: the player must not really be enjoying the game, but instead is hoping that they will enjoy the game in the future as their character gets more powerful.

So you lost a great character. Admittedly, this hurts, and it should. This way, you''ll try in earnest to protect the character. But by the same token, if the game is designed right, then playing a new character should be fun as well.