I think there can only be true permadeath in an mmorpg if when your toon dies you are never able to play the game (at least on that server) ever again. If you can just create a new toon (on the same server) then you still have all of your friends and other such contacts. So, "toonaly", you may have died, but spiritually you are still quite alive, well, and present. If you were in a guild you can just rejoin it and it'll be like old times. My point is most people's idea of mmorpg permadeath is just reincarnation. It's a death penalty that encourages careful play but it's not true permadeath. Would I like a game with true permadeath? Yes. But I don't know if that is technologically or commercially feasible.
Just today I am coming back to diablo2, just for a reason of permadeath there. Why I like it? It gives me additional adrenaline and level of excitement. It is called hardcore for a reason.
AvP was so awesome to play because you could save only between missions, after completing a scenario. So was Resident Evil
When I saw poll results (about permadeath) I began to wonder why there is no hardcore mmorpg yet? Afterall, 10% of community loves the idea. This means that the game would get 10% market share immediately. Of course it would need to fullfill some requirements:
1. Freetoplay
2. Fast level gaining, similar to d2 or shadowbane. (i can easily get 70 levels in d2 in one day)
Playing: Rohan Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
Permadeath could only ever work in a sandbox game with NO progression mechanisms whatsoever. And MMOs are by definition all about progression. How many times can you do the quests in Goldshire before going out of your mind?
True. Only if you have nothing really to lose is permadeath a good idea.
It's a game people. Those who cry for permadeath will be the first to flame the forums when they get griefed/lag spiked and lose everything.
Want permadeath? Go to the arcade and only bring a few quarters.
I think that for permadeath to work as a viable element of gameplay, you need a different KIND of MMORPG than those that exist today. To make money and get those monthly subscriptions at this point, you need players who are invested in their characters and are willing to plunge headfirst into the "timesink" that most games require. Permadeath servers for players who choose this route seem fine, but I'd imagine having to build up a character from scratch every couple weeks would probably turn from an interesting challenge to frustration rather quickly for your average gamer.
I think there is a place for permadeath in MMORPGs somewhere down the line. However, I think this requires a change in gameplay mechanics as we know them in 2007 as well as a change in the way progression, achievement, and reward are handled in most MMORPGs.
Delete your toon when you die. Theres your perma death. Stop trying to bring features that rewards cata$$ing back into the genre. MMORPGs aren't just for losers with no lives anymore. Many of us enjoy playing for an hour, getting something accomplished and loggnig off. We don't need weeks or months of gametime wasted to feel "complete" and challenged.
Perma-Death in an MMO or for that matter ANY game that uses continuity of character as its basis is a horrible idea. You pretty much don't find it in any game, because most have a save/continue system to circumvent this issue, and this save/continue system has been around for 20 some years (Legend of Zelda anyone?). Developers have known and acknowledged for 2 decades that permadeath in games is horrible, and in an MMO (games with large scope that allows people to create an identity for themself through their characters), it would simply be stupid. People also contend if it's done right then maybe. Personally, I don't see how it could be done "right"; it either is or isn't and the entire structure of the game would have to be designed around that notion, taking away pretty much everything the MMOs have come to be (stat/armor/spell/level/PROGRESSION based games) and without those tools to create a massively multiplayer environment, things can go a little crazy, and the scope of the MMO would have to be dramatically small (because once you die, time to retry everything again!).
Sure there could be reward, but the reward for simply retaining your character would be nowhere near equal to the loss of that character by either risk or accident. I wouldn't touch a game with a 10' pole that used perma-death. I am a casual player and to sink a large amount of time into something just to have it taken away, I might as well just flush money down the toilet, it's faster.
From what I have read here and from discussions with others, it seems the main reason people are against perma death is because they see it as a method to cause all their previous time put in game to be wasted. An interesting conversation happened at IMGDC and that discussion was the talk of permanence. What exactly is permanence to a player? It seemed to be agreed on that permanence was the identity of that player remaining in that game even after the player wasn't there anymore.
Permanence has been focused on the avatar. I mean look at it. In WoW the only thing you can really make permenant is your avatar. You cancel your sub and when you come back your avatar is still there, with all the items you collected. But mark you ever left on the world is erased. I mean so what if you ran Molten Core nekkid with just 10 people? You did not effect the game in any way.
Now, think for a moment how you would perceive things if you could effect the game world in a permenant way but to do so you had to risk your avatar? You had to make the death of your avatar mean something. We all want to play MMOs so we can pretend to be some great and mighty character that shapes the world around us. But how many games really allow people to do that?
So you want to be known as the savior of Hockypuck viliage? Well then put yourself out there risk your avatar to hold off the horde of green spores and may your funeral be glorious as your exisitence is celebrated by those you protected. If you want to write a new legend you could start another character and try to make that characters legend even more glorious.
Granted. current MMO mechanics would have to be rethought. The idea of grinding and linear progressions would have to be redone. Death in and of itself would not come easy both for characters and monsters the ability to flee would need to be enabled. And players would need to be given a chance to flee. But importantly it would take a player base willing to open themselves to something more than just an avatar. The idea of permanence would need to disassociated with the avatar maybe given to something else. Maybe a blood line, maybe a tribe, or maybe the goal would be to die spectacularly so he with the biggest legend wins.
I think MMOs should have an option to be a Hardcore character. Much like Diablo 2. Maybe they could be on separate servers, and permanent deaths would only count with deaths to monsters (Pvp won't count). The element of survival makes games so much more intense, and engaging. In most MMOs there is no sense of danger so you run around carelessly, and get bored.
ToA death sounds cool. its not exactly perma death but its my favorite death system... keep your skills lose your gear.
like AC another person said if its ez to get gear than yeah its a good system.
Unfortunately Trials of Ascension has perma-died. Er...probably. Development has been suspended while they look for funding. Which basically means that it's dead because no company is going to invest in a mmorpg that diverges so radically from the norm.
It's pretty depressing but I think most of the people following the game expected it to happen. How I wish I could have taken the 30 million dollars that a certain developer pissed away and diverted it to ToA several years ago.
Originally posted by DDPI A very interesting conversation..
From what I have read here and from discussions with others, it seems the main reason people are against perma death is because they see it as a method to cause all their previous time put in game to be wasted. An interesting conversation happened at IMGDC and that discussion was the talk of permanence. What exactly is permanence to a player? It seemed to be agreed on that permanence was the identity of that player remaining in that game even after the player wasn't there anymore. Permanence has been focused on the avatar. I mean look at it. In WoW the only thing you can really make permenant is your avatar. You cancel your sub and when you come back your avatar is still there, with all the items you collected. But mark you ever left on the world is erased. I mean so what if you ran Molten Core nekkid with just 10 people? You did not effect the game in any way. Now, think for a moment how you would perceive things if you could effect the game world in a permenant way but to do so you had to risk your avatar? You had to make the death of your avatar mean something. We all want to play MMOs so we can pretend to be some great and mighty character that shapes the world around us. But how many games really allow people to do that? So you want to be known as the savior of Hockypuck viliage? Well then put yourself out there risk your avatar to hold off the horde of green spores and may your funeral be glorious as your exisitence is celebrated by those you protected. If you want to write a new legend you could start another character and try to make that characters legend even more glorious. Granted. current MMO mechanics would have to be rethought. The idea of grinding and linear progressions would have to be redone. Death in and of itself would not come easy both for characters and monsters the ability to flee would need to be enabled. And players would need to be given a chance to flee. But importantly it would take a player base willing to open themselves to something more than just an avatar. The idea of permanence would need to disassociated with the avatar maybe given to something else. Maybe a blood line, maybe a tribe, or maybe the goal would be to die spectacularly so he with the biggest legend wins.
Yet, here's why that wouldn't work.
Say you want to be the savior of HockeyPuck village so you go out there and risk your character and die. The game holds a splendid magnificient funeral for you and the people of the game erect a statue in your honor...right next to the 800 other statues of heroes who have fallen to the invading goblin horde.
Aside from the silly proposition of "where do the villagers put all these statues of dead heroes?" one runs across the problem of sharing the story. "Look!" says Player 1, "I died trying to overcome the goblin horde and saved HockeyPuck in the process!" "Me too!" says Player 2, "that mission was a pain in the butt. It kills me every time I get to it."
Now let's be realistic with those figures. There would be several missions of this nature in the game at moderate or low levels. Within a short period of time, you have thousands of characters (if not tens of thousands of characters played by thousands of players) all dying to the same missions with a few making it past and getting to keep their characters. Those skillful few move on to die to later permadeath missions...
Which leads back to the argument made by countless players and developers in this thread and elsewhere in the world already. Permadeath just isn't fun because you lose your progress. If you seriously expect me to pay $50 and a monthly fee, then I want something to show for it. With Diablo 2, there was no monthly fee. If I took a risk on a Hardcore character, then all I would have lost with their death is time. With most MMOs, a Hardcore character means the loss of both time AND money and that's simply an unnacceptable risk to a huge percentage of the community.
Also, let's be honest here, any game with permadeath automatically encourages players to "play it safe." You pound the newbie kobolds and skeletons until they turn grey, then find more green mobs that don't Bring a Friend and pound on them for several hours. You do this until you're midway through the game and finally realize that your existence in the game world is a pointless series of low level encounters with no real challenge. There's no real reward for taking harder challenges because the risk is simply too high. Plus, the challenges really aren't all that much more fun than whacking on greenies. All this leads to player apathy and subscription losses.
If you want to implement a permadeath, then player advancement must be quick and you can't really charge a monthly fee unless player advancement is VERY quick. This is not a sound model for most MMOs, but works fine for a linear and quick game such as Resident Evil or, say, Pong.
From what I have read here and from discussions with others, it seems the main reason people are against perma death is because they see it as a method to cause all their previous time put in game to be wasted. An interesting conversation happened at IMGDC and that discussion was the talk of permanence. What exactly is permanence to a player? It seemed to be agreed on that permanence was the identity of that player remaining in that game even after the player wasn't there anymore.
Permanence has been focused on the avatar. I mean look at it. In WoW the only thing you can really make permenant is your avatar. You cancel your sub and when you come back your avatar is still there, with all the items you collected. But mark you ever left on the world is erased. I mean so what if you ran Molten Core nekkid with just 10 people? You did not effect the game in any way.
Now, think for a moment how you would perceive things if you could effect the game world in a permenant way but to do so you had to risk your avatar? You had to make the death of your avatar mean something. We all want to play MMOs so we can pretend to be some great and mighty character that shapes the world around us. But how many games really allow people to do that?
So you want to be known as the savior of Hockypuck viliage? Well then put yourself out there risk your avatar to hold off the horde of green spores and may your funeral be glorious as your exisitence is celebrated by those you protected. If you want to write a new legend you could start another character and try to make that characters legend even more glorious.
Granted. current MMO mechanics would have to be rethought. The idea of grinding and linear progressions would have to be redone. Death in and of itself would not come easy both for characters and monsters the ability to flee would need to be enabled. And players would need to be given a chance to flee. But importantly it would take a player base willing to open themselves to something more than just an avatar. The idea of permanence would need to disassociated with the avatar maybe given to something else. Maybe a blood line, maybe a tribe, or maybe the goal would be to die spectacularly so he with the biggest legend wins.
Yet, here's why that wouldn't work.
Say you want to be the savior of HockeyPuck village so you go out there and risk your character and die. The game holds a splendid magnificient funeral for you and the people of the game erect a statue in your honor...right next to the 800 other statues of heroes who have fallen to the invading goblin horde.
Aside from the silly proposition of "where do the villagers put all these statues of dead heroes?" one runs across the problem of sharing the story. "Look!" says Player 1, "I died trying to overcome the goblin horde and saved HockeyPuck in the process!" "Me too!" says Player 2, "that mission was a pain in the butt. It kills me every time I get to it."
Now let's be realistic with those figures. There would be several missions of this nature in the game at moderate or low levels. Within a short period of time, you have thousands of characters (if not tens of thousands of characters played by thousands of players) all dying to the same missions with a few making it past and getting to keep their characters. Those skillful few move on to die to later permadeath missions...
Which leads back to the argument made by countless players and developers in this thread and elsewhere in the world already. Permadeath just isn't fun because you lose your progress. If you seriously expect me to pay $50 and a monthly fee, then I want something to show for it. With Diablo 2, there was no monthly fee. If I took a risk on a Hardcore character, then all I would have lost with their death is time. With most MMOs, a Hardcore character means the loss of both time AND money and that's simply an unnacceptable risk to a huge percentage of the community.
Also, let's be honest here, any game with permadeath automatically encourages players to "play it safe." You pound the newbie kobolds and skeletons until they turn grey, then find more green mobs that don't Bring a Friend and pound on them for several hours. You do this until you're midway through the game and finally realize that your existence in the game world is a pointless series of low level encounters with no real challenge. There's no real reward for taking harder challenges because the risk is simply too high. Plus, the challenges really aren't all that much more fun than whacking on greenies. All this leads to player apathy and subscription losses.
If you want to implement a permadeath, then player advancement must be quick and you can't really charge a monthly fee unless player advancement is VERY quick. This is not a sound model for most MMOs, but works fine for a linear and quick game such as Resident Evil or, say, Pong.
Pong...
I have to agree with the gist of what you and many others say. Its an ok concept for a box game with no montly fee. But in an MMO? Someone show me one MMO out atm that it would work in, and be accepted by the players.
What are people thinking. Sounds to me like people all they are doing is asking for a FPS that plays the same as any current FPS's out there. But they tack on a monthly fee, and make it a huge playfield. So it falls into the same category as a MMO.
Progression and longevity is what MMo's are make money from. All perma death would do is encourage griefing. Most people play games to have fun and immerse themselves in an imaginary enviroment away from R/L. Not to log into a newbie zone and Joeblow comes along and sits at the zoneing point and kills your lvl 1 character every time you try to pass thru.
I would however suggest.... If anyone wants perma death, Go play Eve-online. Don't buy clones... Get in a pvp corp and start out running takling ships for your Corp at week 1. You will see fairly quickly why perma death won't work in any mmo currently out. You simply would not progress. End of story.
Permadeath is a feature for no-lifers; it's as easy as that. Normal people don't WANT to be careful in a friggin videogame. That's why hardcore mode in D2 didn't have a fraction of the popularity of normal mode and NO major MMO atm features permadeath. Even heavy XP debt or looting is reduced in most titles.
And I'm NOT complaining. I WANT a predictable, fun, nice little whore of a game that pleases my ego when I want. Period. Little over-emphasised but that's about it - "Be a nice game, give me challenge, but don't frustrate me"... and boy I tell you, my frustration level with videogames is incredibly low, I pay money to get entertained and nothing else I expect ^^
Yet, here's why that wouldn't work. Say you want to be the savior of HockeyPuck village so you go out there and risk your character and die. The game holds a splendid magnificient funeral for you and the people of the game erect a statue in your honor...right next to the 800 other statues of heroes who have fallen to the invading goblin horde. Aside from the silly proposition of "where do the villagers put all these statues of dead heroes?" one runs across the problem of sharing the story. "Look!" says Player 1, "I died trying to overcome the goblin horde and saved HockeyPuck in the process!" "Me too!" says Player 2, "that mission was a pain in the butt. It kills me every time I get to it." Now let's be realistic with those figures. There would be several missions of this nature in the game at moderate or low levels. Within a short period of time, you have thousands of characters (if not tens of thousands of characters played by thousands of players) all dying to the same missions with a few making it past and getting to keep their characters. Those skillful few move on to die to later permadeath missions... Which leads back to the argument made by countless players and developers in this thread and elsewhere in the world already. Permadeath just isn't fun because you lose your progress. If you seriously expect me to pay $50 and a monthly fee, then I want something to show for it. With Diablo 2, there was no monthly fee. If I took a risk on a Hardcore character, then all I would have lost with their death is time. With most MMOs, a Hardcore character means the loss of both time AND money and that's simply an unnacceptable risk to a huge percentage of the community. Also, let's be honest here, any game with permadeath automatically encourages players to "play it safe." You pound the newbie kobolds and skeletons until they turn grey, then find more green mobs that don't Bring a Friend and pound on them for several hours. You do this until you're midway through the game and finally realize that your existence in the game world is a pointless series of low level encounters with no real challenge. There's no real reward for taking harder challenges because the risk is simply too high. Plus, the challenges really aren't all that much more fun than whacking on greenies. All this leads to player apathy and subscription losses. If you want to implement a permadeath, then player advancement must be quick and you can't really charge a monthly fee unless player advancement is VERY quick. This is not a sound model for most MMOs, but works fine for a linear and quick game such as Resident Evil or, say, Pong.
You are right, current models would not work with a game that has permadeath. which is why you will not see it in any game created by any big publisher because they are risk adverse. Plus it would not work in any of the static games on the market today. the current model of doing "missions, quests or what ever they want to be called then it wont work either.
Using a tool like perma death has its place, and when it is used a whole other slew of tools become unavaiable, like level progression or typical combat that is found in current games.
Perma death isnt something that could just be tossed in to make a game "hardcore". The whole game from the ground up would have to be designed to support it, and new ways of accomplishing that would need to be created.
I agree with you. In today's market with the WoW and EQ2 clones support by monthly subscriptions it wont work, but as developers look towards ways to make their product stand out, you will see more revisit the idea. And who knows maybe no one will make a game in which permadeath "works" but maybe in the pursuit of it, we will see new and inovative designs in other aspects.
Most roguelike games feature pemadeath. Years ago, I was playing one of these games and one of the cooler things about it was that you could run into the undead versions of your past characters. It was all tied up in Norse mythology which basically revolves around the idea of being reborn into misery over and over again until the end of the world.
Not sure how this would work in a permadeath MMO, but it's definitely a cool idea.
This is just plain stupid philosophy. If somebody plays Protoss in Starcraft and says Protoss army should be 10% more expensive, you will probably say: "whats your problem? just kill 10% of your army". And if somebody likes playing some overpowerful fighter in Soul Calibur, you would probably advise him to play with only 1 hand.
Now, I came back to this thread because I saw somebody wrote permadeath is for nolifes. I dare say it`s totally opposite. Hardcore players realise that game is only a game and do not whine, when they die. They are not that strongly connected to their characters and to the game, because they have other things that are important to them.
On the other hand, softcores (sorry for using diablo2 naming) need accomplishments ingame because they mean little in reality as people. Thats why they escape to wirtual world and are emotionally connected to their avatars. They spent much more time playing then hardcores. Its even more living the game then playing.
Of course ingame achievements are not totally meaningless. An important achievement is the one that requires some skill. Sadly in non-permadeath mmorpg you eventually achieve all there is beacuse of timespent, not skill. Even the biggest noob can have 99lvl in diablo soft. That is why soft diablo ladder is meaningless.
Oh and the post about heroic deaths was a good one. Its not important how long u live. What u do with your life matters. The statue part is to be refined though
Playing: Rohan Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
I finally got it: there is great game with optional perma death: Shaiya
Now I can truly prove my superiority lol
Playing: Rohan Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
Comments
If you can just create a new toon (on the same server) then you still have all of your friends and other such contacts. So, "toonaly", you may have died, but spiritually you are still quite alive, well, and present.
If you were in a guild you can just rejoin it and it'll be like old times.
My point is most people's idea of mmorpg permadeath is just reincarnation. It's a death penalty that encourages careful play but it's not true permadeath. Would I like a game with true permadeath? Yes. But I don't know if that is technologically or commercially feasible.
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
Just today I am coming back to diablo2, just for a reason of permadeath there. Why I like it? It gives me additional adrenaline and level of excitement. It is called hardcore for a reason.
AvP was so awesome to play because you could save only between missions, after completing a scenario. So was Resident Evil
When I saw poll results (about permadeath) I began to wonder why there is no hardcore mmorpg yet? Afterall, 10% of community loves the idea. This means that the game would get 10% market share immediately. Of course it would need to fullfill some requirements:
1. Freetoplay
2. Fast level gaining, similar to d2 or shadowbane. (i can easily get 70 levels in d2 in one day)
Playing: Rohan
Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
I don't get it.
You can have perma-death whenever you want.
If your character dies, just transfer your gear to a new character and delete the one that just died.
Simple. Effective. And EXACTLY what you all keep nagging for.
And, why are you not already playing EVE and/or Shadowbane?
That way, you could delete your character AND lose all your stuff.
But, I suspect that what you REALLY want is to impose perma-death on OTHER players !
Which is the mark of a true Griefer and Sociopath.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
ppl who want perm death are the one who dont even play mmorpg, they just want to to look hardcore and think they are L33T.
True. Only if you have nothing really to lose is permadeath a good idea.
It's a game people. Those who cry for permadeath will be the first to flame the forums when they get griefed/lag spiked and lose everything.
Want permadeath? Go to the arcade and only bring a few quarters.
"Oops, I died. Well, guess it's time to go home."
They build games for players, hence why no games have permadeath lol.
I think that for permadeath to work as a viable element of gameplay, you need a different KIND of MMORPG than those that exist today. To make money and get those monthly subscriptions at this point, you need players who are invested in their characters and are willing to plunge headfirst into the "timesink" that most games require. Permadeath servers for players who choose this route seem fine, but I'd imagine having to build up a character from scratch every couple weeks would probably turn from an interesting challenge to frustration rather quickly for your average gamer.
I think there is a place for permadeath in MMORPGs somewhere down the line. However, I think this requires a change in gameplay mechanics as we know them in 2007 as well as a change in the way progression, achievement, and reward are handled in most MMORPGs.
Why bother to play? What happens when you die, you can't play with your friends any more? Think about it.
No dev would touch this subject with a 10 foot pole, not at least any sane dev.
Perma-Death in an MMO or for that matter ANY game that uses continuity of character as its basis is a horrible idea. You pretty much don't find it in any game, because most have a save/continue system to circumvent this issue, and this save/continue system has been around for 20 some years (Legend of Zelda anyone?). Developers have known and acknowledged for 2 decades that permadeath in games is horrible, and in an MMO (games with large scope that allows people to create an identity for themself through their characters), it would simply be stupid. People also contend if it's done right then maybe. Personally, I don't see how it could be done "right"; it either is or isn't and the entire structure of the game would have to be designed around that notion, taking away pretty much everything the MMOs have come to be (stat/armor/spell/level/PROGRESSION based games) and without those tools to create a massively multiplayer environment, things can go a little crazy, and the scope of the MMO would have to be dramatically small (because once you die, time to retry everything again!).
Sure there could be reward, but the reward for simply retaining your character would be nowhere near equal to the loss of that character by either risk or accident. I wouldn't touch a game with a 10' pole that used perma-death. I am a casual player and to sink a large amount of time into something just to have it taken away, I might as well just flush money down the toilet, it's faster.
A very interesting conversation..
From what I have read here and from discussions with others, it seems the main reason people are against perma death is because they see it as a method to cause all their previous time put in game to be wasted. An interesting conversation happened at IMGDC and that discussion was the talk of permanence. What exactly is permanence to a player? It seemed to be agreed on that permanence was the identity of that player remaining in that game even after the player wasn't there anymore.
Permanence has been focused on the avatar. I mean look at it. In WoW the only thing you can really make permenant is your avatar. You cancel your sub and when you come back your avatar is still there, with all the items you collected. But mark you ever left on the world is erased. I mean so what if you ran Molten Core nekkid with just 10 people? You did not effect the game in any way.
Now, think for a moment how you would perceive things if you could effect the game world in a permenant way but to do so you had to risk your avatar? You had to make the death of your avatar mean something. We all want to play MMOs so we can pretend to be some great and mighty character that shapes the world around us. But how many games really allow people to do that?
So you want to be known as the savior of Hockypuck viliage? Well then put yourself out there risk your avatar to hold off the horde of green spores and may your funeral be glorious as your exisitence is celebrated by those you protected. If you want to write a new legend you could start another character and try to make that characters legend even more glorious.
Granted. current MMO mechanics would have to be rethought. The idea of grinding and linear progressions would have to be redone. Death in and of itself would not come easy both for characters and monsters the ability to flee would need to be enabled. And players would need to be given a chance to flee. But importantly it would take a player base willing to open themselves to something more than just an avatar. The idea of permanence would need to disassociated with the avatar maybe given to something else. Maybe a blood line, maybe a tribe, or maybe the goal would be to die spectacularly so he with the biggest legend wins.
ToA death sounds cool. its not exactly perma death but its my favorite death system... keep your skills lose your gear.
like AC another person said if its ez to get gear than yeah its a good system.
die.
Unfortunately Trials of Ascension has perma-died. Er...probably. Development has been suspended while they look for funding. Which basically means that it's dead because no company is going to invest in a mmorpg that diverges so radically from the norm.
It's pretty depressing but I think most of the people following the game expected it to happen. How I wish I could have taken the 30 million dollars that a certain developer pissed away and diverted it to ToA several years ago.
Yet, here's why that wouldn't work.
Say you want to be the savior of HockeyPuck village so you go out there and risk your character and die. The game holds a splendid magnificient funeral for you and the people of the game erect a statue in your honor...right next to the 800 other statues of heroes who have fallen to the invading goblin horde.
Aside from the silly proposition of "where do the villagers put all these statues of dead heroes?" one runs across the problem of sharing the story. "Look!" says Player 1, "I died trying to overcome the goblin horde and saved HockeyPuck in the process!" "Me too!" says Player 2, "that mission was a pain in the butt. It kills me every time I get to it."
Now let's be realistic with those figures. There would be several missions of this nature in the game at moderate or low levels. Within a short period of time, you have thousands of characters (if not tens of thousands of characters played by thousands of players) all dying to the same missions with a few making it past and getting to keep their characters. Those skillful few move on to die to later permadeath missions...
Which leads back to the argument made by countless players and developers in this thread and elsewhere in the world already. Permadeath just isn't fun because you lose your progress. If you seriously expect me to pay $50 and a monthly fee, then I want something to show for it. With Diablo 2, there was no monthly fee. If I took a risk on a Hardcore character, then all I would have lost with their death is time. With most MMOs, a Hardcore character means the loss of both time AND money and that's simply an unnacceptable risk to a huge percentage of the community.
Also, let's be honest here, any game with permadeath automatically encourages players to "play it safe." You pound the newbie kobolds and skeletons until they turn grey, then find more green mobs that don't Bring a Friend and pound on them for several hours. You do this until you're midway through the game and finally realize that your existence in the game world is a pointless series of low level encounters with no real challenge. There's no real reward for taking harder challenges because the risk is simply too high. Plus, the challenges really aren't all that much more fun than whacking on greenies. All this leads to player apathy and subscription losses.
If you want to implement a permadeath, then player advancement must be quick and you can't really charge a monthly fee unless player advancement is VERY quick. This is not a sound model for most MMOs, but works fine for a linear and quick game such as Resident Evil or, say, Pong.
Yet, here's why that wouldn't work.
Say you want to be the savior of HockeyPuck village so you go out there and risk your character and die. The game holds a splendid magnificient funeral for you and the people of the game erect a statue in your honor...right next to the 800 other statues of heroes who have fallen to the invading goblin horde.
Aside from the silly proposition of "where do the villagers put all these statues of dead heroes?" one runs across the problem of sharing the story. "Look!" says Player 1, "I died trying to overcome the goblin horde and saved HockeyPuck in the process!" "Me too!" says Player 2, "that mission was a pain in the butt. It kills me every time I get to it."
Now let's be realistic with those figures. There would be several missions of this nature in the game at moderate or low levels. Within a short period of time, you have thousands of characters (if not tens of thousands of characters played by thousands of players) all dying to the same missions with a few making it past and getting to keep their characters. Those skillful few move on to die to later permadeath missions...
Which leads back to the argument made by countless players and developers in this thread and elsewhere in the world already. Permadeath just isn't fun because you lose your progress. If you seriously expect me to pay $50 and a monthly fee, then I want something to show for it. With Diablo 2, there was no monthly fee. If I took a risk on a Hardcore character, then all I would have lost with their death is time. With most MMOs, a Hardcore character means the loss of both time AND money and that's simply an unnacceptable risk to a huge percentage of the community.
Also, let's be honest here, any game with permadeath automatically encourages players to "play it safe." You pound the newbie kobolds and skeletons until they turn grey, then find more green mobs that don't Bring a Friend and pound on them for several hours. You do this until you're midway through the game and finally realize that your existence in the game world is a pointless series of low level encounters with no real challenge. There's no real reward for taking harder challenges because the risk is simply too high. Plus, the challenges really aren't all that much more fun than whacking on greenies. All this leads to player apathy and subscription losses.
If you want to implement a permadeath, then player advancement must be quick and you can't really charge a monthly fee unless player advancement is VERY quick. This is not a sound model for most MMOs, but works fine for a linear and quick game such as Resident Evil or, say, Pong.
Pong...
I have to agree with the gist of what you and many others say. Its an ok concept for a box game with no montly fee. But in an MMO? Someone show me one MMO out atm that it would work in, and be accepted by the players.
What are people thinking. Sounds to me like people all they are doing is asking for a FPS that plays the same as any current FPS's out there. But they tack on a monthly fee, and make it a huge playfield. So it falls into the same category as a MMO.
Progression and longevity is what MMo's are make money from. All perma death would do is encourage griefing. Most people play games to have fun and immerse themselves in an imaginary enviroment away from R/L. Not to log into a newbie zone and Joeblow comes along and sits at the zoneing point and kills your lvl 1 character every time you try to pass thru.
I would however suggest.... If anyone wants perma death, Go play Eve-online. Don't buy clones... Get in a pvp corp and start out running takling ships for your Corp at week 1. You will see fairly quickly why perma death won't work in any mmo currently out. You simply would not progress. End of story.
If an MMO is PVE based, then I don't like permadeath. If someone can kill me, loot my stuff and I am forced to create a new charcter, then I like it.
PvP should be permadeath and player looting. EVE has it right, and other MMOs that dabble in PvP, don't.
And I'm NOT complaining. I WANT a predictable, fun, nice little whore of a game that pleases my ego when I want. Period. Little over-emphasised but that's about it - "Be a nice game, give me challenge, but don't frustrate me"... and boy I tell you, my frustration level with videogames is incredibly low, I pay money to get entertained and nothing else I expect ^^
Meridion
You are right, current models would not work with a game that has permadeath. which is why you will not see it in any game created by any big publisher because they are risk adverse. Plus it would not work in any of the static games on the market today. the current model of doing "missions, quests or what ever they want to be called then it wont work either.
Using a tool like perma death has its place, and when it is used a whole other slew of tools become unavaiable, like level progression or typical combat that is found in current games.
Perma death isnt something that could just be tossed in to make a game "hardcore". The whole game from the ground up would have to be designed to support it, and new ways of accomplishing that would need to be created.
I agree with you. In today's market with the WoW and EQ2 clones support by monthly subscriptions it wont work, but as developers look towards ways to make their product stand out, you will see more revisit the idea. And who knows maybe no one will make a game in which permadeath "works" but maybe in the pursuit of it, we will see new and inovative designs in other aspects.
Most roguelike games feature pemadeath. Years ago, I was playing one of these games and one of the cooler things about it was that you could run into the undead versions of your past characters. It was all tied up in Norse mythology which basically revolves around the idea of being reborn into misery over and over again until the end of the world.
Not sure how this would work in a permadeath MMO, but it's definitely a cool idea.
umm just delete your character when you die?
This is just plain stupid philosophy. If somebody plays Protoss in Starcraft and says Protoss army should be 10% more expensive, you will probably say: "whats your problem? just kill 10% of your army". And if somebody likes playing some overpowerful fighter in Soul Calibur, you would probably advise him to play with only 1 hand.
Now, I came back to this thread because I saw somebody wrote permadeath is for nolifes. I dare say it`s totally opposite. Hardcore players realise that game is only a game and do not whine, when they die. They are not that strongly connected to their characters and to the game, because they have other things that are important to them.
On the other hand, softcores (sorry for using diablo2 naming) need accomplishments ingame because they mean little in reality as people. Thats why they escape to wirtual world and are emotionally connected to their avatars. They spent much more time playing then hardcores. Its even more living the game then playing.
Of course ingame achievements are not totally meaningless. An important achievement is the one that requires some skill. Sadly in non-permadeath mmorpg you eventually achieve all there is beacuse of timespent, not skill. Even the biggest noob can have 99lvl in diablo soft. That is why soft diablo ladder is meaningless.
Oh and the post about heroic deaths was a good one. Its not important how long u live. What u do with your life matters. The statue part is to be refined though
Playing: Rohan
Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
YES, YES, YES
I finally got it: there is great game with optional perma death: Shaiya
Now I can truly prove my superiority lol
Playing: Rohan
Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos