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Why i think permadeath would work.
Centhial
Member Posts: 30
hello all,
recently there was a game in development called trials of ascension. one of the main features of this game was that it included permadeath ( for those of you new to the mmorpg industry this means that once your character dies it is gone permanently). This game has closed its doors and has become vaporware. But i just wanted to comment on this. I know the topic of permadeath is sensitive around here. But i also know that many members of the mmorpg.com community call for change. I believe permadeath would be a great change and an innovative idea in the future of mmorpg's.
Many of the mmorpg's that are out today have cater to the solo player. Myself i am a casual player and i do solo most of the time. However i do understand the concerns this raises in the gaming community. Grouping is a neccesary part of mmorpg's in my opinion and it is what seperates us from single player games such as oblivion. i do beleive the best gear should only be obtained by those that are able to defeat a difficult monster as a group working as a team.
This is where i think the positive aspects of permadeath would work into a game. I think it would make the bonds of online friendship and guildmanship stronger. As your character progresses and becomes stronger the more you would not want your character to die. This would encourage grouping and bring back to life the true spirit of mmorpg's. You would not go into a dangerous encounter without your trusted friends and allies. this is what it is all about. let's face it the average pickup group is usually mediocre at best. not because each player is a bad player but because there is no chemistry between the group.
I believe a permadeath game would bring the gamers back close together and force us to work as a team to accomplish anything rather than give us the option to do it all ourselves. Now on the other side of that coin, i also think it would appeal to the casual player. And this is why. I myself being a casual player i am an extreme altoholic. i like to expereince it all with all classes and races. i beleive a lot of casual players are like this. within a permadeath game we would create a character and attempt to solo it as far as we could and possibly die at low to mid levels. to a casual player i dont think this would be an extremely devastating moment. it would be a chance to expereince anotyher race/class combo if we failed.
long story short i think a permadeath game would bring mmorpg's back to once they what were. To accomplish something great and challenging you would not want to attemt it without a strong network of friends. Lets pull us gamers back together instead of apart.
My thoughts, yours?
Cen
Comments
Everyone would have to have extraordinary abilities to deal DPS and everyone would need effective self-heals if this was going to work. Let's face it, making alts is fun...but not after the second time around, to me anyways. To keep doing it over and over...no thanks! Also, unless you wanted some way of turning off permadeath in PvP, a game with it could not have PvP. Imagine, superpowered chars running around everywhere fighting, and some of them dying quickly. Battles would be very short and unexciting once everyone was gone. No more enemies to fight!
Also, if you disconnect or have a lag spike in the middle of a big fight, and you die, what then? Hundreds of hours wasted. I think a permadeath game would have to have a very low level cap, easy raiding/high-end stuff and limited or no PvP if it was going to work. And everyone would have to be powerful enough to survive at least halfway through the game, otherwise why pay for it? This may sound attractive to some, and I like the idea of gamers bonding, but I don't think this is the best way to do it.
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A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
I like the idea old fashioned MMOs like Ultima Online did. you kill 'em, and their gear is yours. its simple and fair, don't mess around unless you're willing to lose it all in order to gain it.
my 2 cents.
- Farseen
Current Game: Panzar
you do bring up an excellent point. I cant deny that lag spikes or a game crash could make it an unenjoyable expierence. I cant really think of a great counter response to this. But on the point of redoing it all over again. I do think a game that attempted permadeath would bea huge undertaking for the developers. Yeah to keep it interesting it would require many races or at least many starting areas to keep it interesting. A huge world would be neccesary so you could expereince something new each ime u played. I do not think this is impossible, i think it is very realistic and attainable though. As far as pvp is concerned it would make a very dynamic and volatile pvp world where once again friendship and allies would be of utmost importance. I am not going to lie as a casula player i was kind of thinking narrow minded as a pve enviroment only.
but....pvp could work in a permadeath enviroment and i think it would only be all the more exciting. not just the 1 on 1 full pvp settings that we have now but forced group pvp fights. it sounds very fun to me. It is just not safe to travel out into the wilderness alone. this is the way it should be in mmorpg's. But would u feel safe fighting along side a true friend?...one that u knew what they were going to do before they did it? it would make groups more important and significant than they are now. And make soloing even more of an accomplishment.
People get really attached to their characters. The game would have to have no level scheme. Noone would know what other peoples skills are or how strong they are. Make equipment as least identifiable as possible.
People cry about lag spikes/connection loss but games have been backing up the characters on a regular basis while you are playing for a long time now.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
I really don't think we need yet another reason to make clans act more "clanish." By that I mean only gaming with one's close friends.
What we need is a mechanic that will make clans, guilds, and friends game with strangers again; like we used to do when the stakes didn't seem so grave.
The reason we have so much solo emphasis lately has really very little to do with reasons to guild up and work as a team. It's because groups and guilds have now become so serious of an issue, a significant amount of people who do not meet the grade are left out of the system. Good, active players who are denied by groups and guilds for trivial things like not using the third party voice application the guilds require, or not being of the correct character build, or other personal criteria that are not met (too old, too young, too freaky, etc.). And because these players who are left out deserve a game to play for their fees, we have solo content; something that we probably wouldn't need so badly if players and guilds didn't take things so seriously these days.
See, the developers have learned that when a game uses guilds and personal friendships between players to facilitate the fun, then a large number of players will simply not have their fun facilitated. The accessability problems caused by too much emphasis on strong relations between players are beyond the ability of the developers to correct.
The way we approach play these days is different than the old days. We don't take chances, we don't roleplay, and our tolerance for the peculiarities of strangers is small. We're already too risk averse today, and we want to raise the stakes even higher by deleting characters due to a series of freakishly low die rolls from random number generator from the combat engine?
I'm not sure many subscribers would be able to fit in that sort of system. Even if they didn't mind permadeath, many will simply not be able to fit in with the rigid demands groups and guilds will require.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I would like perma death in a MMO.
But it would have to be a sandbox MMO. A game where you didnt have to anything, or you could do anything. No quests, no xp, no levels or classes.
Just a fun game world to live in. You decide if you wanna do something stupid as go to war.
I'll never play a permadeath game. That about sums it up.
Permadeath stinks, Lag or Disconnect and you lost all you had )
First of all, Trials of Ascension gave you 100 lives.
So permadeath? kinda. You need to die 100 times to really die and there might have been ways to "restore" some of your credits.
So, 100 times, feasible, one? nope. why?
let's see.
Pick up groups are mediocre cause you just need one guy that does not know how to play his/her role to destroy the whole party, it has nothing to do with party "chemistry", it is you know what to do or you don't simple.
In the OP idea it just take one of such and not only he dies, but other people die too, and lose their characters.
PvP, as usually unfair, would be avoided like the plague cause if your group get wiped, well that's it and your Clan just lost their top tier leaders and disband.
You would need groups for EVERYTHING, even just moving from one city to the next to counter possible roaming group of bandits or a bad connection. I'm all for encouraging group play, but I do not wish to seek a group just to go to the local mall shopping, no thanks.
Another point is starting areas repetition. with a single life, you will be in the beggining areas a whole lot more often than a normal mmorpg. This will have the double effect of needing many many beginning areas and having little to no advanced areas cause most people will never get to that level.
But what if someone does... and find out that he managed to survive for 6 months and is not maxxed character and there is nothing to do for him there?
In the end permadeath might be feasible, but it requires a complete different design than we have seen so far. In addition having one life is way too harsh, multiple lives is the way to go to counter technical, out of game, events.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Prmadeath would work but only instances of unforced perma death
It only works as a server option IMO.
As someone who also followed Trials of Ascension... I think it's necessary to say that the reason why Perma Death fits in so well into their design, is because the whole game concept revolved around Perma Death.
I think it's a valluable feature, but if it was worked out into many of the existing games... It'd just break them.
ToA had alot of ambition, but nothing against Brax... they were trying to bite something bigger than they could chew.
The Anti Social Gamer
I reacted to the last sentences you wrote. And ofcourse we dont talk permadeath in a game as example WoW. That would be stupid.
This is about permadeath in a real MMO. A game where you are not forced to do anything. But you can try do whatever you want. You might never end up in a fight. If you are not stupid ofcourse. And not every fight have to be to the death, just winning is enoughe. And this would lead to funnier gameplay. The really good politics, crafters, fighters and any other profession would be legends in no time.
And best of all, all idotes in the community would quickly vanish by natural selection : )
I'll never play a permadeath game. That about sums it up.
What sums it all up is I wouldn't mind seeing a Permadeath game simply for the fact that all the permadeath fans can go play it. This of course won't stop the debate and they will most likely find flaws even in the permadeath system, but at least there will be a permadeath game.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
People always bring up perma death as a one death only option. This is not the only way to do it. I played a mud with eventual perma death, it was based on a players con. Which would give most poeple about 80 lives.
Most players never died the final death but a few did.
It makes you think before you pk someone. You have to be careful about who you piss off.
Back when I played WoW, some friends form my guild and I made (self imposed) perma death characters. We all wiped at 29 and it was heart breaking. But damn it was a blast playing those characters. Prolly the most fun I had in that game.
I dont see why there can not be an option to roll a perma death character in ANY MMO. Just have a special title or something for that character. There could even be something else graphicly special about the character. You dont even need a special server for this. (One of the things I liked in LotRO was that if you made it to certain levels without dieing you would earn a title for it that you could display, that was a neat way to say hey look i made it at least that far and did not die , plus you didnt lose your character when you died)