Not everyone wants to gank and execute other players just to be an asshat. Some want to do it out of revenge "I remember that guy, he killed me 5 times!" or "He just killed my friend!!! RAWR!!!!! You're mine orc breathe!!!"
If you give me the ability to gank other players and be an asshat I will. Perma kill your character? Every chance I get, especially if theres' no risk to me.
Zerg other players and perma kill them? Oh yes, I would definitely be in the largest guild that does nothing but that.
Players will do everything you allow them to do. If you allow them to be asshats, they will be asshats.
Second, the MMO concept prevents repetitive newbie quests by allowing players to start off with non-newbie characters, such as if the skill levels are 1 to 100, then the players don't have to continuously repeat 1-10 or 1-20, and after awhile achieve the ability to start at lvl 20 (20% strength, not newbie, but not strong either.) Thus preventing what would be a "omg, I'm a newb again!!" experience plagued with the boredom and frustration of having no real skills.
The problem is not, OMG, I'm a newb again!" The problem is repeating content.
Why is leveling fun? Because you go on to new content. New mobs, new quests, new territory to look at.
And it's not "permadeath" if it's just a loss in stats, and a name change. It is a loss in stats, and a name change.
Lose 50% stats, change your name from Boraaz to Goraaz. That's not perma death.
If all content is available to all characters, and there is a lot of content- I don't see the problem.
How easy it would be to categorize content in the following:
EASY CONTENT
MEDIUM CONTENT
DIFFICULT CONTENT
IMPOSSIBLE CONTENT
Or better yet, a scale of 1-10 difficult. The better the character OR the more you bring with you, the better the chance you can accomplish it.
Other MMORPG's?
Let's see...
CONTENT for...
Lvls 1-5
Lvls 6-10
Lvls 11-15
Lvls 16-20
Lvls 21-25
Lvls 26-30
Lvls 31-35
Lvls 36-40
Lvls 41-45
Lvls 46-50
Lvls 51-55
Lvls 56-60
End Game Content
If you want to talk about repeating content...talk about the negatives of EVERY OTHER MMORPG.
In this MMORPG, if you want you can level 5 characters through easy and medium (1-5) content to be powerful enough to take on difficult content (which is as much as 50% the content in MMORPG's) and then take on content for lvls 6-10.
Or maybe just get a larger group of weak characters to take on content set at a difficulty of 7 or 8 to advance faster, encouraging grouping.
Or perhaps make 75% of the content for levels 1-60, meaning there is always TONS of new content, new mobs, new quests to do- a perfect balance since you play 75% of the time at lvls 1-60. When you get to skill levels 61-100, you have less content to choose from but you dont get there as often.
Problem solved.
I am not saying this is my solution. I am only saying that the "The content would be repetitive!" argument is very, very weak. If anything, it would be significantly fresher and feel like there is MORE content since most MMORPG's have way too much content per level bracket-- yet at the same time it feels like you repeat the EXACT SAME CONTENT over and over with every single alt.
How many times have I run through the Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines??? Wow, I couldn't even tell you.
Your easy, medium, hard content makes no sense.
I will do the content that is most efficient at giving me skill progression.
If I die, I will do that content again, to regain my skills.
If the "easy" content is faster, I will do that. if the "hard" content is faster, I will do that.
If they are exactly equal, I will do the easy content, because it would mean less risk for equal reward.
The entire point is risk vs reward.
If easy content has an average success rate of 90% and a death rate of 10%, and rewards 10% XP,
medium content has an average success rate of 75% and a death rate of 25%, and rewards 25% XP, you are risking more but for greater rewards.
if hard content has an average success rate of 10% and a reward of 90% XP, you are risking alot but for ALOT more.
They all give XP. They all have a chance of dying. Which one you decide to do isn't which is "fastest" because the fastest is the hardest, and thus the greatest chance of losing everything. The slowest form of progression is the easiest.
The easy content would never be faster in gaining gold and xp...because it's easy and barely a risk...i'm sorry but I figured that would be common sense.
The question is always "How much do I want to risk today? How much do I want to gain?"
If you're skilled enough to grind the most difficult of content, then by all means do so. Just know you'll have the greatest chance of losing EVERYTHING. Want to relax, take it easy, and never die? Sure. Just know it'll take longer because you aren't risking anything.
It makes perfect sense. Also, if there are 100 ways to advance in easy content, you don't pick "the easiest one" when they're all easy. You pick 1 out of the 100 ways to advance because it's fun, or you haven't tried that quest before. When left with tons of choices and many different zones to go to, it's about more than just the easiest, the fastest, or the riskiest. It's about "Goblins or Undead? Warrior loot or Mage loot? Skinnables or Mining nodes?"
The only thing that makes sense in this set up is doing easy content.
99% of players would do exclusively easy content. Anything else would be a waste of time.
You are mistaken when you say "fastest is the hardest". Fastest would be the easiest.
Hardest would only be fastest if there was no xp loss.
The xp loss negates the extra gain.
Fastest route to the top would be easy content. People would die, do easy content, rinse repeat till they get bored of repititoin, which would be very quickly.
Hard content would result in even faster boredom, becaue it would result in even more deaths.
Not everyone wants to gank and execute other players just to be an asshat. Some want to do it out of revenge "I remember that guy, he killed me 5 times!" or "He just killed my friend!!! RAWR!!!!! You're mine orc breathe!!!"
If you give me the ability to gank other players and be an asshat I will. Perma kill your character? Every chance I get, especially if theres' no risk to me.
Zerg other players and perma kill them? Oh yes, I would definitely be in the largest guild that does nothing but that.
Players will do everything you allow them to do. If you allow them to be asshats, they will be asshats.
Sorry, but no zerging allowed. PvP is instanced or limited in # of players or (power) of players per side to retain balance, unlike the sandbox PvE world.
You can be asshats if you want. Just because you're allowed to ransom, imprison, or set free players doesn't mean anyone will. But obviously some people will because they don't like the idea of taking someone else's (small) invested time.
As for zerging, no. Teamwork? Sure. Go for it. But PvP can be balanced in population. As for power? If one side is all well-developped characters and the other are pre-made 30 skill disposables, then eventually the disposables will continuously respawn as disposables and kill off some of the developped characters. Perhaps they wont win round 1, but they sure as heck "gave em hell!"
Not to mention that loot, xp, and gold is given and raffled off at the END of the instanced scenario, so if one side lost nothing while the other had 2 elites die- although the winning elites will get more XP and gold, the horde of disposable characters will at least get some nice loot, which tehy risked NOTHING for.
Pretty much everyone wins. It's just that the winning side wins even MORE than the losing side, unless you happen to be 1 of the 2 elites who died, in which your reward is good but your loss (because of the risk) was a real loss.
In a perma-death game, I believe that PvP must be controlled or instanced. Why allow players to mass zergs of 100 who roam around killing anyone they see in 1-hit (100 players, doing one hit). That would just be an epic fail. But if you keep instances to be 10v10 or 20v20, there is no such thing as a zerg because populations are balanced and both sides can zerg if they want to. And if the team is unorganized, refuses to zerg, and sucks? Then leave. Don't risk any of your good characters.
Oh, and by the way. The 5th character slot cannot gain XP, as it is a "relax, disposable" minion character. Exactly the same as normal, but instead of XP you are forced to NEVER lose anything. The character has skills which can rise (if your LORD's skills/stats rise) but it is meant to be a no-risk character who is played to collect gold, items, or just have FUN. It is strongly encouraged to start every instanced pvp for the first few rounds with disposable characters, and only bring out your real ones if the team isnt a bunch of epic failures. This prevents people from risking their best characters for a team that sucks versus an enemy team that has VOIP and is all together. Want to try to take advantage of players? Go ahead. Most likely if your team is way too good and theirs is full of newbs, no one will risk anything, and so your gains wont be a big.
So, I unfortunately see at least two critical flaws in the OP's thinking here.
First off: "Life is cheap". What? No, you're talking about permadeath. Life is "cheap" when nobody cares about dying. That's most games. Players do unrealistic things and take illogical risks all the time, because death usually has little meaning: an inconvenience at most. In a permadeath game, nobody wants to die, and everyone carefully avoids anything that could lead to their death.
One may argue this means nobody will do anything "risky" (= "fun") in the game. This also carries logically to the common conclusion that you will have a miniscule playerbase.
Now, if you want to argue that your other mechanics "mitigate the impact of permadeath", by trying to make it somehow "low-risk" because you level back up faster... what's the point? So you want permadeath without the risk of the time investment? Why bother? You're just picking a different design axis for your version of bland.
Two: In the boat ride description - the OP talks about "random events" that may include "solely based on random chance, there is a % of death". What? No. What the heck are you thinking here? You cannot in any sane sense of game design have any system where the player simply has a random chance of "bang, you're dead" with no direct opportunity for action or contest to avoid said death. I'm sorry, but speaking as a professional game developer with nearly a decade of experience, this is an egregiously bad idea. Do not do this. The player has to be part of any process that affects him/her - especially if you want the process to be high risk. And permadeath is ordinarily by definition very much high risk.
On a side note, you shouldn't even be having this conversation here on these forums. Design is free, ideas are cheap. Implementation is where "the rubber hits the road". It is in fact key, and "the proof is in the pudding". I challenge you to assemble a team and finances and to build your dream design if you really believe it's good and people want to play that kind of game. Get it out on the market and see if you can generate revenue.
We live in an era where most of the tools you need can be obtained freely on the Internet, for a working prototype at minimum. Ryzom just released their entire codebase a few weeks ago, so if ever there was an "MMO-in-a-box", there it is. Go make your dream happen. Even professionals these days are looking around and wondering why they are working on "someone else's game"; if we can make ends meet long enough, some of us are looking at striking out on our own once again, like in the days of the "garage MMO" earlier this decade. "MMO-lite" is becoming oddly popular, and you don't necessarily need to build a AAA title to make something that pays for itself.
No matter how small the community, if the game supports itself financially, you have a success, and don't let anyone tell you different. Good luck.
So glad this idea will never make it into any MMO.
Even if it did, I'd never play it.
Character progression and achievement are at the very core of MMO's They are what make these games fun.
I've been cool with xp loss, stat or skill loss, but perma death? you can keep that game.
Did you even read the thread?
How does this NOT have character progression or achievement?
As stated throughout the thread across multiple posts (including the OP) there IS permanent, no-loss progression and achievement.
Until you lose it lol.
You cannot lose gold, faction, achievements, titles, unlocks, LORD experience (base xp for ALL starting characters), LORD abilities (starting abilities for characters), crafting skills, harvesting skills, etc.
The only thing you can lose is that which is easily gained. Character Experience (past the starting Lord's and thus ALL CHARACTER'S BASE experience) and Equipment.
Equipment is not a big deal, like Ultima Online or Darkfall. So it's not a big loss, and is easy to come by and not entirely vital like in gear-based MMORPG's.
Character experience comes very quickly, and slowly develops (up to a cap) with your LORD, so that you will eventually have 30-50% skill thus making it very quick and (relatively) easy to become a powerful character without investing too much time.
The idea is that the ONLY THING you can lose is that which is EASILY GAINED.
The idea of being able to lose something is to create the fun, enjoyment, and SATISFACTION of the higher reward, which means so much more than it would in a game where you can't lose anything.
Second, the MMO concept prevents repetitive newbie quests by allowing players to start off with non-newbie characters, such as if the skill levels are 1 to 100, then the players don't have to continuously repeat 1-10 or 1-20, and after awhile achieve the ability to start at lvl 20 (20% strength, not newbie, but not strong either.) Thus preventing what would be a "omg, I'm a newb again!!" experience plagued with the boredom and frustration of having no real skills.
The problem is not, OMG, I'm a newb again!" The problem is repeating content.
Why is leveling fun? Because you go on to new content. New mobs, new quests, new territory to look at.
And it's not "permadeath" if it's just a loss in stats, and a name change. It is a loss in stats, and a name change.
Lose 50% stats, change your name from Boraaz to Goraaz. That's not perma death.
If all content is available to all characters, and there is a lot of content- I don't see the problem.
How easy it would be to categorize content in the following:
EASY CONTENT
MEDIUM CONTENT
DIFFICULT CONTENT
IMPOSSIBLE CONTENT
Or better yet, a scale of 1-10 difficult. The better the character OR the more you bring with you, the better the chance you can accomplish it.
Other MMORPG's?
Let's see...
CONTENT for...
Lvls 1-5
Lvls 6-10
Lvls 11-15
Lvls 16-20
Lvls 21-25
Lvls 26-30
Lvls 31-35
Lvls 36-40
Lvls 41-45
Lvls 46-50
Lvls 51-55
Lvls 56-60
End Game Content
If you want to talk about repeating content...talk about the negatives of EVERY OTHER MMORPG.
In this MMORPG, if you want you can level 5 characters through easy and medium (1-5) content to be powerful enough to take on difficult content (which is as much as 50% the content in MMORPG's) and then take on content for lvls 6-10.
Or maybe just get a larger group of weak characters to take on content set at a difficulty of 7 or 8 to advance faster, encouraging grouping.
Or perhaps make 75% of the content for levels 1-60, meaning there is always TONS of new content, new mobs, new quests to do- a perfect balance since you play 75% of the time at lvls 1-60. When you get to skill levels 61-100, you have less content to choose from but you dont get there as often.
Problem solved.
I am not saying this is my solution. I am only saying that the "The content would be repetitive!" argument is very, very weak. If anything, it would be significantly fresher and feel like there is MORE content since most MMORPG's have way too much content per level bracket-- yet at the same time it feels like you repeat the EXACT SAME CONTENT over and over with every single alt.
How many times have I run through the Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines??? Wow, I couldn't even tell you.
Your easy, medium, hard content makes no sense.
I will do the content that is most efficient at giving me skill progression.
If I die, I will do that content again, to regain my skills.
If the "easy" content is faster, I will do that. if the "hard" content is faster, I will do that.
If they are exactly equal, I will do the easy content, because it would mean less risk for equal reward.
The entire point is risk vs reward.
If easy content has an average success rate of 90% and a death rate of 10%, and rewards 10% XP,
medium content has an average success rate of 75% and a death rate of 25%, and rewards 25% XP, you are risking more but for greater rewards.
if hard content has an average success rate of 10% and a reward of 90% XP, you are risking alot but for ALOT more.
They all give XP. They all have a chance of dying. Which one you decide to do isn't which is "fastest" because the fastest is the hardest, and thus the greatest chance of losing everything. The slowest form of progression is the easiest.
The easy content would never be faster in gaining gold and xp...because it's easy and barely a risk...i'm sorry but I figured that would be common sense.
The question is always "How much do I want to risk today? How much do I want to gain?"
If you're skilled enough to grind the most difficult of content, then by all means do so. Just know you'll have the greatest chance of losing EVERYTHING. Want to relax, take it easy, and never die? Sure. Just know it'll take longer because you aren't risking anything.
It makes perfect sense. Also, if there are 100 ways to advance in easy content, you don't pick "the easiest one" when they're all easy. You pick 1 out of the 100 ways to advance because it's fun, or you haven't tried that quest before. When left with tons of choices and many different zones to go to, it's about more than just the easiest, the fastest, or the riskiest. It's about "Goblins or Undead? Warrior loot or Mage loot? Skinnables or Mining nodes?"
The only thing that makes sense in this set up is doing easy content.
99% of players would do exclusively easy content. Anything else would be a waste of time.
You are mistaken when you say "fastest is the hardest". Fastest would be the easiest.
Hardest would only be fastest if there was no xp loss.
The xp loss negates the extra gain.
Fastest route to the top would be easy content. People would die, do easy content, rinse repeat till they get bored of repititoin, which would be very quickly.
Hard content would result in even faster boredom, becaue it would result in even more deaths.
Fastest is the hardest, not easiest.
Let's just lie and say 1 quest = 1 hour playtime.
If you do 10 hard quests and go from level 1 to level 100 because of it, and it took you 10 hours...
But you have to do 100 easy quests to go from level 1 to 100 which would take 100 hours...
Fastest route to the top is NOT easy content...
If you're a skilled player, with a skilled group, patience, and experience- you could tackle hard quests without dying. You wouldnt "die all the time" because you are skilled, have a great group, or have a lot of experience playing the game.
This rewards player skill. Players who don't want the risk, suck at the game, or are new would die easily and the fastest way to the top would be to do easy quests for 100 hours, because doing anything else would cause them to die and lose hours in vanity.
It's all about risk vs. reward.
A lot of players would risk [x] amount to gain [y] amount, because they enjoy the challenge.
And to be honest...if you don't like challenge in your video games, there is always World of Warcraft. The 99% of players can go play that instead. Or they can play nothing but easy content in a permadeath game. If they really find no satisfaction in risk vs reward.
Also... if you're a level 1 character, easy content isn't that easy.
If you're a level 80 character, hard content isn't that hard.
It's an escalation of progression. The longer you survive, the stronger you become. The stronger you are, the easier content gets. The easier it gets, the more difficult you can handle. The more difficult, the better the reward. The better the reward, the faster you become strong.
If players always take "medium" challenges, they will obviously become stronger faster, without as much risk, because they tailor their difficulty to their strength. You don't EVER have to risk a lot. You could wait to take on difficult content ONLY when you're very strong. providing players with tracked % of success can help them a lot as well.
This quest...
Skill Level 0-20- Very Hard (10% of players level 0-20 get halfway through this dungeon before leaving)
Skill Level 21-50- Hard (50% of players level 21-50 complete this dungeon)
Skill Level 51-80- Medium (75% of players level 51-80 complete this dungeon)
Skill Level 81-100- Easy (90% of players level 81-100 complete this dungeon)
I'm sorry, but your argument is weak. You cannot say "Fastest is easiest and hardest is fastest because easiest is fastest and everyone will do whats easiest fastest hardest english." It is just completely void of any thought.
Difficulty is determined by character strength and player skill, which is ever-changing and varied from player to player. How much a player wishes to risk is both a decision and a process. Leveling is momentuous because once you become more powerful, you can gain skill faster by completing easier quests quicker or completing tougher quests easier (the latter will always be more worth one's time) and the amount of content can scale in relation to how much players play in each difficulty bracket.
Who would NOT want to play hard content when they have kick-ass characters that have developped very easily to level 80/100 in their skills, when the dungeons are cooler, their abilities are epic, and the rewards are more epic?
There is more to an MMORPG than leveling. There are items, gold, and numerous types of rewards both in game and in real life.
Players will WANT that "Sword of Epic Power" that can only be achieved in difficult dungeons. They will NOT repeatedly grind easy dungeons which never give them anything more than "Bland Sword of Baldness"
So, I unfortunately see at least two critical flaws in the OP's thinking here.
First off: "Life is cheap". What? No, you're talking about permadeath. Life is "cheap" when nobody cares about dying. That's most games. Players do unrealistic things and take illogical risks all the time, because death usually has little meaning: an inconvenience at most. In a permadeath game, nobody wants to die, and everyone carefully avoids anything that could lead to their death.
One may argue this means nobody will do anything "risky" (= "fun") in the game. This also carries logically to the common conclusion that you will have a miniscule playerbase.
Now, if you want to argue that your other mechanics "mitigate the impact of permadeath", by trying to make it somehow "low-risk" because you level back up faster... what's the point? So you want permadeath without the risk of the time investment? Why bother? You're just picking a different design axis for your version of bland.
Two: In the boat ride description - the OP talks about "random events" that may include "solely based on random chance, there is a % of death". What? No. What the heck are you thinking here? You cannot in any sane sense of game design have any system where the player simply has a random chance of "bang, you're dead" with no direct opportunity for action or contest to avoid said death. I'm sorry, but speaking as a professional game developer with nearly a decade of experience, this is an egregiously bad idea. Do not do this. The player has to be part of any process that affects him/her - especially if you want the process to be high risk. And permadeath is ordinarily by definition very much high risk.
On a side note, you shouldn't even be having this conversation here on these forums. Design is free, ideas are cheap. Implementation is where "the rubber hits the road". It is in fact key, and "the proof is in the pudding". I challenge you to assemble a team and finances and to build your dream design if you really believe it's good and people want to play that kind of game. Get it out on the market and see if you can generate revenue.
We live in an era where most of the tools you need can be obtained freely on the Internet, for a working prototype at minimum. Ryzom just released their entire codebase a few weeks ago, so if ever there was an "MMO-in-a-box", there it is. Go make your dream happen. Even professionals these days are looking around and wondering why they are working on "someone else's game"; if we can make ends meet long enough, some of us are looking at striking out on our own once again, like in the days of the "garage MMO" earlier this decade. "MMO-lite" is becoming oddly popular, and you don't necessarily need to build a AAA title to make something that pays for itself.
No matter how small the community, if the game supports itself financially, you have a success, and don't let anyone tell you different. Good luck.
Thank you for the post, I appreciate the thought.
One point though- there is no "Bang you're dead." without any choice or chance to alter the event. I would prefer to assume that no one here is stupid enough to ever think that would be a good idea, lol. I don't know if I miscommunicated by not elaborating or if you misread, i dont know. I apologize if it was me. Complex ideas are often hard to communicate; especially on forums where everyone will think of how it will fail without also thinking to themselves how those dangers could be countered via game design.
The event occurs and the player fights, plays a mini-game (stop the sirens from crashing the boat into rocks), or play out the adventure- AND IF THEY LOSE there is a % of death and a % of a no-death alternative.
If the random event is that sea serpents attack, you fight them off. Rather by killing them or just by preventing them from jumping on the ship by whacking them off. Regardless, if you win, you get a reward and safe travels. If you lose though, you suffer consequences which may or may not lead to perma-death.
I am sorry if I did not elaborate on that, as I was trying to keep it short and sweet.
If you took everyone in the world who supported permanent char death idea in an mmo, and made them each pay a subscription fee, it would not be sufficient to maintain such an mmo.... o wait....
"How do I get people who don't pvp to pvp so I can ruin more peoples gameplay"
Go play darkfall with the rest of the people who like these concepts....ahhhhh....that's right.
No one has to PvP, so I really don't see what you're talking about.
The majority of the game is PvE. Quests, Harvesting/Crafting, Point capture/defense against NPC attacks (Towers, Keeps, Forts), Dragon Raids, or PvEvP (where players INDIRECTLY PvP with each other, but never actually encounter or attack each other via PvP)
PvP is there though for anyone who wants to play, both in PvP form and in Monster Player vs Player form. Monster Play allows players who want to risk nothing to play in PvP. Monsters are both weaker and stronger than players, and are a form of collectible and consumable. Such as finding a "Troll Whistle" which allows you to play as a giant (and powerful) Troll in MvP (Monster vs Players) for {x} amount of times.
Granted, it is always fair for the players. If a normal PvP match is 20v20 (players, evenly powerful), then a MvP match where the Monster Players are giant (and very powerful) trolls it might be 5v20. Only 5 players on the Monster's side, but each one is as powerful as [x] amount of players. Playtesting until balance is found. The players who survive and win against the 5 giant trolls get a MUCH larger reward than they would in any other part of the game, because they were risking their player characters. The giant trolls? A minor reward, or no reward. Just simply the fun of being able to play a giant troll, kill other players "for real", and lose nothing but an item.
I think this idea sounds quite good. I have always hated perma death in any game that has it though. So honestly unless this is the idea of the game down to the % to not die, then I don't think the game will work right. This idea sounds pretty good, just the fact that perma death kills you forever, it just really doesn't sound appealing unless the progression is fast. People won't flock to that idea, and the game will not be very popular. How many hardcore characters did you see in Diablo 2. I think I saw a total of 5 people who had one in the 3 years I played it.
So, I unfortunately see at least two critical flaws in the OP's thinking here.
First off: "Life is cheap". What? No, you're talking about permadeath. Life is "cheap" when nobody cares about dying. That's most games. Players do unrealistic things and take illogical risks all the time, because death usually has little meaning: an inconvenience at most. In a permadeath game, nobody wants to die, and everyone carefully avoids anything that could lead to their death.
One may argue this means nobody will do anything "risky" (= "fun") in the game. This also carries logically to the common conclusion that you will have a miniscule playerbase.
Now, if you want to argue that your other mechanics "mitigate the impact of permadeath", by trying to make it somehow "low-risk" because you level back up faster... what's the point? So you want permadeath without the risk of the time investment? Why bother? You're just picking a different design axis for your version of bland.
Two: In the boat ride description - the OP talks about "random events" that may include "solely based on random chance, there is a % of death". What? No. What the heck are you thinking here? You cannot in any sane sense of game design have any system where the player simply has a random chance of "bang, you're dead" with no direct opportunity for action or contest to avoid said death. I'm sorry, but speaking as a professional game developer with nearly a decade of experience, this is an egregiously bad idea. Do not do this. The player has to be part of any process that affects him/her - especially if you want the process to be high risk. And permadeath is ordinarily by definition very much high risk.
On a side note, you shouldn't even be having this conversation here on these forums. Design is free, ideas are cheap. Implementation is where "the rubber hits the road". It is in fact key, and "the proof is in the pudding". I challenge you to assemble a team and finances and to build your dream design if you really believe it's good and people want to play that kind of game. Get it out on the market and see if you can generate revenue.
We live in an era where most of the tools you need can be obtained freely on the Internet, for a working prototype at minimum. Ryzom just released their entire codebase a few weeks ago, so if ever there was an "MMO-in-a-box", there it is. Go make your dream happen. Even professionals these days are looking around and wondering why they are working on "someone else's game"; if we can make ends meet long enough, some of us are looking at striking out on our own once again, like in the days of the "garage MMO" earlier this decade. "MMO-lite" is becoming oddly popular, and you don't necessarily need to build a AAA title to make something that pays for itself.
No matter how small the community, if the game supports itself financially, you have a success, and don't let anyone tell you different. Good luck.
Also, by "Life is cheap" I did not mean it that players will find life cheap.
What i meant is the expression usually portrays that there is a lot of death in the [society] and that people consider death to be a common occurance. Life is never cheap, rather in real life or in a player's perspective via their developped character.
What it does mean is that players will not feel the same way in this game (because of the design) that they would in other MMO's like WoW or Everquest.
If there was permadeath in WoW, EQ, or any other major MMO- no one would play. That would just be idiotic. Months to build a character, only to lose it all because of some asshat who hits you for 9999 damage while you lag-spike? No thanks.
But in a game where you can develop your character very quickly to "strong" status in only a few hours or days, it is NOT a big deal to lose your life. Players will die often enough to not be bothered too much by it.
How many of you are bothered by losing 1 of your 10 units in an RTS game?
Exactly. It sucks. It can be a huge loss for you and cost you the battle or many hours of playtime that end in defeat. But it also means that the game is THAT MUCH MORE FUN and CHALLENGING when you lose a key unit yet still manage to beat your enemy.
If you have 5+ character slots, each full of different characters who you know will die some day, you can enter a PvP match, play a few times with your disposable no-loss character, and then send in your 4 main characters. If you lose 3 but win the match, the reward is going to be big enough to compensate for 3 characters lost. Sure, most of it will go back into rebuffing your 3 lost characters up, but it sure was fun. Or perhaps you will lose only 1 character, or none, or all of them. Oh well. That was one great hour of combat you had.
I'm not saying this is the game design, but what if a single PvP instance battle lasted 1 hour? That it was short enough to get on and play and have lots of fun within a casual player's timeframe, but long enough for it to be one really great match- completely worth killing off 5 characters. Sure it took 1 hour of questing to beef those 5 guys up, but it was well worth it. It's better than the 24 hours it takes in WoW to level up a character to 19 to enter Tier1 PvP only to end up playing a few hours a week. What if this game design's combat was not fast, you were never 1-shotted by a twink, and it was very balanced and your % of death was almost entirely decided by how much you wanted to risk. Want to try to grab the enemy flag and capture the keep? You're risking death a lot more than if you sat back and sieged the keep with a trebuchet to eventually get inside. But if you succeed- you got the keep! A lot riskier, but a lot more reward. Bonus gold for risking your life or accomplishing a big objective? Alright! Bonus gold for winning the match in a fast amount of time? Sweet! You risked alot, but few were there to stop you, and those who tried fell under your blade. Your risk rewarded you greatly, while your friends who stayed back as cowards get significantly less of a reward.
Perma death is bad for those that ONLY PVP. I enjoy risk, take my loot, that is fine, but having to start over just to fight again is pretty lame.
Taking into consideration that people play with real friends, and have groups that only PVP, And these groups set up dates and times to battle other groups ,and that is all they do, what happens when a group loses it;'s members and then they cannot battle the next group because of perma death? Game over , lets all go play something else? LOL
Some of us enjoy soley leveling on other players, and do not even see the point of NPC's in a MAssively Multiplayer game. Why would I want to hit a bot when I can fight a real person? We start out fighting players higher than us, and die frequently until we get better ourselves, and then of course die less, but that is ALL a part of it. It would defeat the purpose of playing for all those not interested in NPC interaction, and play Massively multiplayer games to fight massive amounts of other players.
Second, the MMO concept prevents repetitive newbie quests by allowing players to start off with non-newbie characters, such as if the skill levels are 1 to 100, then the players don't have to continuously repeat 1-10 or 1-20, and after awhile achieve the ability to start at lvl 20 (20% strength, not newbie, but not strong either.) Thus preventing what would be a "omg, I'm a newb again!!" experience plagued with the boredom and frustration of having no real skills.
The problem is not, OMG, I'm a newb again!" The problem is repeating content.
Why is leveling fun? Because you go on to new content. New mobs, new quests, new territory to look at.
And it's not "permadeath" if it's just a loss in stats, and a name change. It is a loss in stats, and a name change.
Lose 50% stats, change your name from Boraaz to Goraaz. That's not perma death.
If all content is available to all characters, and there is a lot of content- I don't see the problem.
How easy it would be to categorize content in the following:
EASY CONTENT
MEDIUM CONTENT
DIFFICULT CONTENT
IMPOSSIBLE CONTENT
Or better yet, a scale of 1-10 difficult. The better the character OR the more you bring with you, the better the chance you can accomplish it.
Other MMORPG's?
Let's see...
CONTENT for...
Lvls 1-5
Lvls 6-10
Lvls 11-15
Lvls 16-20
Lvls 21-25
Lvls 26-30
Lvls 31-35
Lvls 36-40
Lvls 41-45
Lvls 46-50
Lvls 51-55
Lvls 56-60
End Game Content
If you want to talk about repeating content...talk about the negatives of EVERY OTHER MMORPG.
In this MMORPG, if you want you can level 5 characters through easy and medium (1-5) content to be powerful enough to take on difficult content (which is as much as 50% the content in MMORPG's) and then take on content for lvls 6-10.
Or maybe just get a larger group of weak characters to take on content set at a difficulty of 7 or 8 to advance faster, encouraging grouping.
Or perhaps make 75% of the content for levels 1-60, meaning there is always TONS of new content, new mobs, new quests to do- a perfect balance since you play 75% of the time at lvls 1-60. When you get to skill levels 61-100, you have less content to choose from but you dont get there as often.
Problem solved.
I am not saying this is my solution. I am only saying that the "The content would be repetitive!" argument is very, very weak. If anything, it would be significantly fresher and feel like there is MORE content since most MMORPG's have way too much content per level bracket-- yet at the same time it feels like you repeat the EXACT SAME CONTENT over and over with every single alt.
How many times have I run through the Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines??? Wow, I couldn't even tell you.
Your easy, medium, hard content makes no sense.
I will do the content that is most efficient at giving me skill progression.
If I die, I will do that content again, to regain my skills.
If the "easy" content is faster, I will do that. if the "hard" content is faster, I will do that.
If they are exactly equal, I will do the easy content, because it would mean less risk for equal reward.
The entire point is risk vs reward.
If easy content has an average success rate of 90% and a death rate of 10%, and rewards 10% XP,
medium content has an average success rate of 75% and a death rate of 25%, and rewards 25% XP, you are risking more but for greater rewards.
if hard content has an average success rate of 10% and a reward of 90% XP, you are risking alot but for ALOT more.
They all give XP. They all have a chance of dying. Which one you decide to do isn't which is "fastest" because the fastest is the hardest, and thus the greatest chance of losing everything. The slowest form of progression is the easiest.
The easy content would never be faster in gaining gold and xp...because it's easy and barely a risk...i'm sorry but I figured that would be common sense.
The question is always "How much do I want to risk today? How much do I want to gain?"
If you're skilled enough to grind the most difficult of content, then by all means do so. Just know you'll have the greatest chance of losing EVERYTHING. Want to relax, take it easy, and never die? Sure. Just know it'll take longer because you aren't risking anything.
It makes perfect sense. Also, if there are 100 ways to advance in easy content, you don't pick "the easiest one" when they're all easy. You pick 1 out of the 100 ways to advance because it's fun, or you haven't tried that quest before. When left with tons of choices and many different zones to go to, it's about more than just the easiest, the fastest, or the riskiest. It's about "Goblins or Undead? Warrior loot or Mage loot? Skinnables or Mining nodes?"
Couple points.
1- your making a common mistake made by amateur designers - people won't play the way in which you envision. Also there seems to be far to much in your mechanics that comes down to pure chance. Who is going to take on content with a 90% chance of failure and thus a reroll? People will probably stick to the 90% success content.
2- What makes perma-death an exciting prospect for some? Surely it is risk of losing alot. You seem to have done an awful lot of mitigating the loss for people, i.e not starting at lvl 1. So what is the point of designing an entire game world that does it's best to minimise the effect of perma-death?
Perma death is bad for those that ONLY PVP. I enjoy risk, take my loot, that is fine, but having to start over just to fight again is pretty lame.
Taking into consideration that people play with real friends, and have groups that only PVP, And these groups set up dates and times to battle other groups ,and that is all they do, what happens when a group loses it;'s members and then they cannot battle the next group because of perma death? Game over , lets all go play something else? LOL
Some of us enjoy soley leveling on other players, and do not even see the point of NPC's in a MAssively Multiplayer game. Why would I want to hit a bot when I can fight a real person? We start out fighting players higher than us, and die frequently until we get better ourselves, and then of course die less, but that is ALL a part of it. It would defeat the purpose of playing for all those not interested in NPC interaction, and play Massively multiplayer games to fight massive amounts of other players.
What if the majority of players in PvP were "disposable" characters who did not gain XP, but were powerful enough to compete in PvP adequately. That a highly skilled "disposable" character who lost nothing upon permadeath could find a friend or two and take down a "Champion" character with 3 hours of development in it? But that same "Champion" player will feel very powerful, being able to blast away 3 "disposable" characters with his higher magic skill.
The idea, especially in PvP, is that you never START OVER. The base and starting point is adequate enough where that is the average and the mean. That the game is designed in such a way to make players feel like they are "playing normal" but IF THEY WANT or if others want, they can become "above average" in strength. That isn't the norm, but that's the point. The players who want to risk get to feel like epic heroes. The majority who don't want to risk right now don't feel like epic heroes, but they don't feel weak. They feel average, just like everyone else. Like a non-twink in WoW battlegrounds. There are less twinks, because theres more risk (time/gold required) in a twink than there is a non-twink. The twinks get to feel like epic heroes who are stronger than the rest. And they are.
The only difference is that normal players can actually take out the twinks to stop them, get revenge on them, and end up very satisfied they took the life of "That one player" who killed their disposable over and over again.
Take LEFT 4 DEAD for example. The HUMANS are very powerful, and compared to their zombie counterparts, they are elite.
The zombies are disposable characters.
In essence, you decide if yuo want to play as a zombie, or a survivor. Or in other words... a DISPOSABLE (no loss) or a Hero (loss, but greater reward & greater power)
The Survivor gets the reward of kicking tons of disposable butt. But if the disposable (no loss, thus no perma-death) players keep on trying- they eventually get to kill that elite survivor and take away his reward. Permanently. (not really...that guy is bound to be back in a few hours or days)
The Survivor, if they survive, gets a huge satisfaction and reward. Plus they got to kill TONS of disposables because they were so strong.
The Disposable, if they kill the survivor, get the satisfaction of killing that guy who killed them over and over and over again.
In fact, the entire idea of Disposable minions and permadeath characters (risk vs reward) is based off of the fun and satisfaction of Left 4 Dead's Survivor vs Horde Zombie theme.
It's something i enjoyed a lot with some online co-op modes of SP games like Diablo and Sacred.
Whilst they were fun in standard SP mode, and slightly more fun in co-op ... Hard Core added a whole dimension of exitement due to the finality an error, or lag-spike could bring. HC communities were on the whole much better aswell.
It's not something that could be easily imported into a regular mmo, even though it's addition seems logical and the 'right thing'
Equipment availability ... it's either quested (via non-repeatable quests) for, or bought from other players at humungous prices ... neither of which support the process of 1 death = re-roll.
Most players would quickly start to whine 'it's too hard' ... 'it's too grindy' and other similar complaints
High level players ganking of lower level players on pvp focused servers really would discourage the adoption of a system like this
in short, i think that only mostly older gamers, that remember the long gone days of literally "Impossible to complete" games would enjoy it, the younger/newer additions to the gaming community have been spoonfed to much with easy games and quick reward systems to fully adapt and actually enjoy it.
Second, the MMO concept prevents repetitive newbie quests by allowing players to start off with non-newbie characters, such as if the skill levels are 1 to 100, then the players don't have to continuously repeat 1-10 or 1-20, and after awhile achieve the ability to start at lvl 20 (20% strength, not newbie, but not strong either.) Thus preventing what would be a "omg, I'm a newb again!!" experience plagued with the boredom and frustration of having no real skills.
The problem is not, OMG, I'm a newb again!" The problem is repeating content.
Why is leveling fun? Because you go on to new content. New mobs, new quests, new territory to look at.
And it's not "permadeath" if it's just a loss in stats, and a name change. It is a loss in stats, and a name change.
Lose 50% stats, change your name from Boraaz to Goraaz. That's not perma death.
If all content is available to all characters, and there is a lot of content- I don't see the problem.
How easy it would be to categorize content in the following:
EASY CONTENT
MEDIUM CONTENT
DIFFICULT CONTENT
IMPOSSIBLE CONTENT
Or better yet, a scale of 1-10 difficult. The better the character OR the more you bring with you, the better the chance you can accomplish it.
Other MMORPG's?
Let's see...
CONTENT for...
Lvls 1-5
Lvls 6-10
Lvls 11-15
Lvls 16-20
Lvls 21-25
Lvls 26-30
Lvls 31-35
Lvls 36-40
Lvls 41-45
Lvls 46-50
Lvls 51-55
Lvls 56-60
End Game Content
If you want to talk about repeating content...talk about the negatives of EVERY OTHER MMORPG.
In this MMORPG, if you want you can level 5 characters through easy and medium (1-5) content to be powerful enough to take on difficult content (which is as much as 50% the content in MMORPG's) and then take on content for lvls 6-10.
Or maybe just get a larger group of weak characters to take on content set at a difficulty of 7 or 8 to advance faster, encouraging grouping.
Or perhaps make 75% of the content for levels 1-60, meaning there is always TONS of new content, new mobs, new quests to do- a perfect balance since you play 75% of the time at lvls 1-60. When you get to skill levels 61-100, you have less content to choose from but you dont get there as often.
Problem solved.
I am not saying this is my solution. I am only saying that the "The content would be repetitive!" argument is very, very weak. If anything, it would be significantly fresher and feel like there is MORE content since most MMORPG's have way too much content per level bracket-- yet at the same time it feels like you repeat the EXACT SAME CONTENT over and over with every single alt.
How many times have I run through the Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines??? Wow, I couldn't even tell you.
Your easy, medium, hard content makes no sense.
I will do the content that is most efficient at giving me skill progression.
If I die, I will do that content again, to regain my skills.
If the "easy" content is faster, I will do that. if the "hard" content is faster, I will do that.
If they are exactly equal, I will do the easy content, because it would mean less risk for equal reward.
The entire point is risk vs reward.
If easy content has an average success rate of 90% and a death rate of 10%, and rewards 10% XP,
medium content has an average success rate of 75% and a death rate of 25%, and rewards 25% XP, you are risking more but for greater rewards.
if hard content has an average success rate of 10% and a reward of 90% XP, you are risking alot but for ALOT more.
They all give XP. They all have a chance of dying. Which one you decide to do isn't which is "fastest" because the fastest is the hardest, and thus the greatest chance of losing everything. The slowest form of progression is the easiest.
The easy content would never be faster in gaining gold and xp...because it's easy and barely a risk...i'm sorry but I figured that would be common sense.
The question is always "How much do I want to risk today? How much do I want to gain?"
If you're skilled enough to grind the most difficult of content, then by all means do so. Just know you'll have the greatest chance of losing EVERYTHING. Want to relax, take it easy, and never die? Sure. Just know it'll take longer because you aren't risking anything.
It makes perfect sense. Also, if there are 100 ways to advance in easy content, you don't pick "the easiest one" when they're all easy. You pick 1 out of the 100 ways to advance because it's fun, or you haven't tried that quest before. When left with tons of choices and many different zones to go to, it's about more than just the easiest, the fastest, or the riskiest. It's about "Goblins or Undead? Warrior loot or Mage loot? Skinnables or Mining nodes?"
Couple points.
1- your making a common mistake made by amateur designers - people won't play the way in which you envision. Also there seems to be far to much in your mechanics that comes down to pure chance. Who is going to take on content with a 90% chance of failure and thus a reroll? People will probably stick to the 90% success content.
2- What makes perma-death an exciting prospect for some? Surely it is risk of losing alot. You seem to have done an awful lot of mitigating the loss for people, i.e not starting at lvl 1. So what is the point of designing an entire game world that does it's best to minimise the effect of perma-death?
just my 2c
The game design will require two things, which answer both your questions
1) The game design needs to encourage/softly force/lead players into playing as envisioned. This is done through many ways, primarily though by tailoring the reward system. This is too complex and also requires a lot of play testing to answer with anything concrete though.
2) Risk vs. Reward. The idea that your victory is not empty is big. The heart-beating, blood-pumping adrenaline rush of "almost losing it" but pulling through is a high in itself. Literally. The point is to find the perfect balance between minimizing the NEGATIVE effects of perma-death without losing too much of the POSITIVE effects.
This is not easy, or simple, or problem-free. But if one could lower the negatives while keeping MOST of the positives, it would make it a much more appealing system. This isn't to say perma-death even needs softening, or that perma-death is ever positive. The design would obviously need to be playtested, but in essence it would not be too difficult to keep the entire game except scratching perma-death for a skill-loss or stat-loss system (which this actually is, in a way) or even a completely normal system.
Permadeath is not the key component of what makes the entire game design unique. It's the risk vs reward model, which permadeath IS a big part of...but is not a requirement. One can have great risk vs reward without permadeath or even stat-loss. But if permadeath increases satisfaction and the frustration of it is minimized, then why not attempt it?
Innovation is required not only in every field, but ESPECIALLY in MMORPG's. Someone needs to try it and see what happens, even if it fails. But not by adding permadeath to a game like DDO or WoW, where the idea is absolutely ridiculous. In a game where gains come easy, loss won't be unrealistic. In essence there are already games that are highly gear based which the gear has permadeath. These games are only one step away from player permadeath, as gear is usually very important in MMORPG's.
When I played Darkfall, gear was easy to obtain, but also very very important. If you died, you lost it all. That sucked. But it was easy to obtain, so it wasn't the end of the world. And thousands of players get satisfaction in so many ways from full-loot and the risk of bringing a nice set of armor or a good weapon to battle. But people still play the game, and to be honest despite the fact I don't like Darkfall or its society, I cannot say it is doing poorly. From what I've seen, the game is actually quite popular and is doing quite well for itself.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Perma-death is a re-roll. Lots of alts. Even if you have very fast progression, why have progression at all?
If this is a PvP game then those who band together and harass everyone else will stay on top and those who have to re-roll constantly will quickly die and quit because they'll never catch up to the veterans. Ever. Which = bankruptcy.
If it's a PvE game then you force people to re-do the same content over and over and over and most people can live with a few alts but asking them do it every day is suicidal. Unless you have no progression, but then what is the point of a PvE game with no progression? Grinding? Grinding for what?
If perma-death is in game you the developer has to promise me 100% server uptime and no crashes and 0 and I really mean zero bugs.
Otherwise I am cheated out of what could have been victory be YOU the game developer and that is not something 99.9% of MMO gamers will ever pay for.
If you can hit "save points" and come back at 20% of your previous max or whatever then it's not really perma-death it's just a really, really, really harsh death penalty and one that maybe 387 gamers will ever pay for.
If you can eventually get to a point where you retain most if not all of your points after death then it is DEFINITELY not perma-death and as such just a stupid death penalty system.
If you have one character that is invincible and is used as a bank/storage for others, then why call this anything but another alt and standard bank system with shared access?
I don't like the idea of perma death in a game. Not my cup o tea. You can have perma death in ANY MMO in the market. You die you delete the character that died immediatly. No twinking, insta delete. Don't see why these threads keep poping up.
Comments
If you give me the ability to gank other players and be an asshat I will. Perma kill your character? Every chance I get, especially if theres' no risk to me.
Zerg other players and perma kill them? Oh yes, I would definitely be in the largest guild that does nothing but that.
Players will do everything you allow them to do. If you allow them to be asshats, they will be asshats.
Did you even read the thread?
How does this NOT have character progression or achievement?
As stated throughout the thread across multiple posts (including the OP) there IS permanent, no-loss progression and achievement.
Until you lose it lol.
The only thing that makes sense in this set up is doing easy content.
99% of players would do exclusively easy content. Anything else would be a waste of time.
You are mistaken when you say "fastest is the hardest". Fastest would be the easiest.
Hardest would only be fastest if there was no xp loss.
The xp loss negates the extra gain.
Fastest route to the top would be easy content. People would die, do easy content, rinse repeat till they get bored of repititoin, which would be very quickly.
Hard content would result in even faster boredom, becaue it would result in even more deaths.
Sorry, but no zerging allowed. PvP is instanced or limited in # of players or (power) of players per side to retain balance, unlike the sandbox PvE world.
You can be asshats if you want. Just because you're allowed to ransom, imprison, or set free players doesn't mean anyone will. But obviously some people will because they don't like the idea of taking someone else's (small) invested time.
As for zerging, no. Teamwork? Sure. Go for it. But PvP can be balanced in population. As for power? If one side is all well-developped characters and the other are pre-made 30 skill disposables, then eventually the disposables will continuously respawn as disposables and kill off some of the developped characters. Perhaps they wont win round 1, but they sure as heck "gave em hell!"
Not to mention that loot, xp, and gold is given and raffled off at the END of the instanced scenario, so if one side lost nothing while the other had 2 elites die- although the winning elites will get more XP and gold, the horde of disposable characters will at least get some nice loot, which tehy risked NOTHING for.
Pretty much everyone wins. It's just that the winning side wins even MORE than the losing side, unless you happen to be 1 of the 2 elites who died, in which your reward is good but your loss (because of the risk) was a real loss.
In a perma-death game, I believe that PvP must be controlled or instanced. Why allow players to mass zergs of 100 who roam around killing anyone they see in 1-hit (100 players, doing one hit). That would just be an epic fail. But if you keep instances to be 10v10 or 20v20, there is no such thing as a zerg because populations are balanced and both sides can zerg if they want to. And if the team is unorganized, refuses to zerg, and sucks? Then leave. Don't risk any of your good characters.
Oh, and by the way. The 5th character slot cannot gain XP, as it is a "relax, disposable" minion character. Exactly the same as normal, but instead of XP you are forced to NEVER lose anything. The character has skills which can rise (if your LORD's skills/stats rise) but it is meant to be a no-risk character who is played to collect gold, items, or just have FUN. It is strongly encouraged to start every instanced pvp for the first few rounds with disposable characters, and only bring out your real ones if the team isnt a bunch of epic failures. This prevents people from risking their best characters for a team that sucks versus an enemy team that has VOIP and is all together. Want to try to take advantage of players? Go ahead. Most likely if your team is way too good and theirs is full of newbs, no one will risk anything, and so your gains wont be a big.
So, I unfortunately see at least two critical flaws in the OP's thinking here.
First off: "Life is cheap". What? No, you're talking about permadeath. Life is "cheap" when nobody cares about dying. That's most games. Players do unrealistic things and take illogical risks all the time, because death usually has little meaning: an inconvenience at most. In a permadeath game, nobody wants to die, and everyone carefully avoids anything that could lead to their death.
One may argue this means nobody will do anything "risky" (= "fun") in the game. This also carries logically to the common conclusion that you will have a miniscule playerbase.
Now, if you want to argue that your other mechanics "mitigate the impact of permadeath", by trying to make it somehow "low-risk" because you level back up faster... what's the point? So you want permadeath without the risk of the time investment? Why bother? You're just picking a different design axis for your version of bland.
Two: In the boat ride description - the OP talks about "random events" that may include "solely based on random chance, there is a % of death". What? No. What the heck are you thinking here? You cannot in any sane sense of game design have any system where the player simply has a random chance of "bang, you're dead" with no direct opportunity for action or contest to avoid said death. I'm sorry, but speaking as a professional game developer with nearly a decade of experience, this is an egregiously bad idea. Do not do this. The player has to be part of any process that affects him/her - especially if you want the process to be high risk. And permadeath is ordinarily by definition very much high risk.
On a side note, you shouldn't even be having this conversation here on these forums. Design is free, ideas are cheap. Implementation is where "the rubber hits the road". It is in fact key, and "the proof is in the pudding". I challenge you to assemble a team and finances and to build your dream design if you really believe it's good and people want to play that kind of game. Get it out on the market and see if you can generate revenue.
We live in an era where most of the tools you need can be obtained freely on the Internet, for a working prototype at minimum. Ryzom just released their entire codebase a few weeks ago, so if ever there was an "MMO-in-a-box", there it is. Go make your dream happen. Even professionals these days are looking around and wondering why they are working on "someone else's game"; if we can make ends meet long enough, some of us are looking at striking out on our own once again, like in the days of the "garage MMO" earlier this decade. "MMO-lite" is becoming oddly popular, and you don't necessarily need to build a AAA title to make something that pays for itself.
No matter how small the community, if the game supports itself financially, you have a success, and don't let anyone tell you different. Good luck.
Would only work in an mmo that has not much of a skill progression at all imo, more like an online FPS / survival game.
Any game that has permadeath and meaningful skill progression would get a huge gap between the top and the bottom not being able to get up.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
You cannot lose gold, faction, achievements, titles, unlocks, LORD experience (base xp for ALL starting characters), LORD abilities (starting abilities for characters), crafting skills, harvesting skills, etc.
The only thing you can lose is that which is easily gained. Character Experience (past the starting Lord's and thus ALL CHARACTER'S BASE experience) and Equipment.
Equipment is not a big deal, like Ultima Online or Darkfall. So it's not a big loss, and is easy to come by and not entirely vital like in gear-based MMORPG's.
Character experience comes very quickly, and slowly develops (up to a cap) with your LORD, so that you will eventually have 30-50% skill thus making it very quick and (relatively) easy to become a powerful character without investing too much time.
The idea is that the ONLY THING you can lose is that which is EASILY GAINED.
The idea of being able to lose something is to create the fun, enjoyment, and SATISFACTION of the higher reward, which means so much more than it would in a game where you can't lose anything.
Fastest is the hardest, not easiest.
Let's just lie and say 1 quest = 1 hour playtime.
If you do 10 hard quests and go from level 1 to level 100 because of it, and it took you 10 hours...
But you have to do 100 easy quests to go from level 1 to 100 which would take 100 hours...
Fastest route to the top is NOT easy content...
If you're a skilled player, with a skilled group, patience, and experience- you could tackle hard quests without dying. You wouldnt "die all the time" because you are skilled, have a great group, or have a lot of experience playing the game.
This rewards player skill. Players who don't want the risk, suck at the game, or are new would die easily and the fastest way to the top would be to do easy quests for 100 hours, because doing anything else would cause them to die and lose hours in vanity.
It's all about risk vs. reward.
A lot of players would risk [x] amount to gain [y] amount, because they enjoy the challenge.
And to be honest...if you don't like challenge in your video games, there is always World of Warcraft. The 99% of players can go play that instead. Or they can play nothing but easy content in a permadeath game. If they really find no satisfaction in risk vs reward.
Also... if you're a level 1 character, easy content isn't that easy.
If you're a level 80 character, hard content isn't that hard.
It's an escalation of progression. The longer you survive, the stronger you become. The stronger you are, the easier content gets. The easier it gets, the more difficult you can handle. The more difficult, the better the reward. The better the reward, the faster you become strong.
If players always take "medium" challenges, they will obviously become stronger faster, without as much risk, because they tailor their difficulty to their strength. You don't EVER have to risk a lot. You could wait to take on difficult content ONLY when you're very strong. providing players with tracked % of success can help them a lot as well.
This quest...
Skill Level 0-20- Very Hard (10% of players level 0-20 get halfway through this dungeon before leaving)
Skill Level 21-50- Hard (50% of players level 21-50 complete this dungeon)
Skill Level 51-80- Medium (75% of players level 51-80 complete this dungeon)
Skill Level 81-100- Easy (90% of players level 81-100 complete this dungeon)
I'm sorry, but your argument is weak. You cannot say "Fastest is easiest and hardest is fastest because easiest is fastest and everyone will do whats easiest fastest hardest english." It is just completely void of any thought.
Difficulty is determined by character strength and player skill, which is ever-changing and varied from player to player. How much a player wishes to risk is both a decision and a process. Leveling is momentuous because once you become more powerful, you can gain skill faster by completing easier quests quicker or completing tougher quests easier (the latter will always be more worth one's time) and the amount of content can scale in relation to how much players play in each difficulty bracket.
Who would NOT want to play hard content when they have kick-ass characters that have developped very easily to level 80/100 in their skills, when the dungeons are cooler, their abilities are epic, and the rewards are more epic?
There is more to an MMORPG than leveling. There are items, gold, and numerous types of rewards both in game and in real life.
Players will WANT that "Sword of Epic Power" that can only be achieved in difficult dungeons. They will NOT repeatedly grind easy dungeons which never give them anything more than "Bland Sword of Baldness"
Your post is essentially this.
"How do I get people who don't pvp to pvp so I can ruin more peoples gameplay"
Go play darkfall with the rest of the people who like these concepts....ahhhhh....that's right.
Thank you for the post, I appreciate the thought.
One point though- there is no "Bang you're dead." without any choice or chance to alter the event. I would prefer to assume that no one here is stupid enough to ever think that would be a good idea, lol. I don't know if I miscommunicated by not elaborating or if you misread, i dont know. I apologize if it was me. Complex ideas are often hard to communicate; especially on forums where everyone will think of how it will fail without also thinking to themselves how those dangers could be countered via game design.
The event occurs and the player fights, plays a mini-game (stop the sirens from crashing the boat into rocks), or play out the adventure- AND IF THEY LOSE there is a % of death and a % of a no-death alternative.
If the random event is that sea serpents attack, you fight them off. Rather by killing them or just by preventing them from jumping on the ship by whacking them off. Regardless, if you win, you get a reward and safe travels. If you lose though, you suffer consequences which may or may not lead to perma-death.
I am sorry if I did not elaborate on that, as I was trying to keep it short and sweet.
If you took everyone in the world who supported permanent char death idea in an mmo, and made them each pay a subscription fee, it would not be sufficient to maintain such an mmo.... o wait....
<QQ moar plz. kkthxbai.>
No one has to PvP, so I really don't see what you're talking about.
The majority of the game is PvE. Quests, Harvesting/Crafting, Point capture/defense against NPC attacks (Towers, Keeps, Forts), Dragon Raids, or PvEvP (where players INDIRECTLY PvP with each other, but never actually encounter or attack each other via PvP)
PvP is there though for anyone who wants to play, both in PvP form and in Monster Player vs Player form. Monster Play allows players who want to risk nothing to play in PvP. Monsters are both weaker and stronger than players, and are a form of collectible and consumable. Such as finding a "Troll Whistle" which allows you to play as a giant (and powerful) Troll in MvP (Monster vs Players) for {x} amount of times.
Granted, it is always fair for the players. If a normal PvP match is 20v20 (players, evenly powerful), then a MvP match where the Monster Players are giant (and very powerful) trolls it might be 5v20. Only 5 players on the Monster's side, but each one is as powerful as [x] amount of players. Playtesting until balance is found. The players who survive and win against the 5 giant trolls get a MUCH larger reward than they would in any other part of the game, because they were risking their player characters. The giant trolls? A minor reward, or no reward. Just simply the fun of being able to play a giant troll, kill other players "for real", and lose nothing but an item.
Wont work. You are not getting more than a handful of subs.
Either people are attached to their char .. and perm death is bad for that .. or they are not .. which is not good for the game. Either way, you lose.
I think this idea sounds quite good. I have always hated perma death in any game that has it though. So honestly unless this is the idea of the game down to the % to not die, then I don't think the game will work right. This idea sounds pretty good, just the fact that perma death kills you forever, it just really doesn't sound appealing unless the progression is fast. People won't flock to that idea, and the game will not be very popular. How many hardcore characters did you see in Diablo 2. I think I saw a total of 5 people who had one in the 3 years I played it.
Also, by "Life is cheap" I did not mean it that players will find life cheap.
What i meant is the expression usually portrays that there is a lot of death in the [society] and that people consider death to be a common occurance. Life is never cheap, rather in real life or in a player's perspective via their developped character.
What it does mean is that players will not feel the same way in this game (because of the design) that they would in other MMO's like WoW or Everquest.
If there was permadeath in WoW, EQ, or any other major MMO- no one would play. That would just be idiotic. Months to build a character, only to lose it all because of some asshat who hits you for 9999 damage while you lag-spike? No thanks.
But in a game where you can develop your character very quickly to "strong" status in only a few hours or days, it is NOT a big deal to lose your life. Players will die often enough to not be bothered too much by it.
How many of you are bothered by losing 1 of your 10 units in an RTS game?
Exactly. It sucks. It can be a huge loss for you and cost you the battle or many hours of playtime that end in defeat. But it also means that the game is THAT MUCH MORE FUN and CHALLENGING when you lose a key unit yet still manage to beat your enemy.
If you have 5+ character slots, each full of different characters who you know will die some day, you can enter a PvP match, play a few times with your disposable no-loss character, and then send in your 4 main characters. If you lose 3 but win the match, the reward is going to be big enough to compensate for 3 characters lost. Sure, most of it will go back into rebuffing your 3 lost characters up, but it sure was fun. Or perhaps you will lose only 1 character, or none, or all of them. Oh well. That was one great hour of combat you had.
I'm not saying this is the game design, but what if a single PvP instance battle lasted 1 hour? That it was short enough to get on and play and have lots of fun within a casual player's timeframe, but long enough for it to be one really great match- completely worth killing off 5 characters. Sure it took 1 hour of questing to beef those 5 guys up, but it was well worth it. It's better than the 24 hours it takes in WoW to level up a character to 19 to enter Tier1 PvP only to end up playing a few hours a week. What if this game design's combat was not fast, you were never 1-shotted by a twink, and it was very balanced and your % of death was almost entirely decided by how much you wanted to risk. Want to try to grab the enemy flag and capture the keep? You're risking death a lot more than if you sat back and sieged the keep with a trebuchet to eventually get inside. But if you succeed- you got the keep! A lot riskier, but a lot more reward. Bonus gold for risking your life or accomplishing a big objective? Alright! Bonus gold for winning the match in a fast amount of time? Sweet! You risked alot, but few were there to stop you, and those who tried fell under your blade. Your risk rewarded you greatly, while your friends who stayed back as cowards get significantly less of a reward.
Perma death is bad for those that ONLY PVP. I enjoy risk, take my loot, that is fine, but having to start over just to fight again is pretty lame.
Taking into consideration that people play with real friends, and have groups that only PVP, And these groups set up dates and times to battle other groups ,and that is all they do, what happens when a group loses it;'s members and then they cannot battle the next group because of perma death? Game over , lets all go play something else? LOL
Some of us enjoy soley leveling on other players, and do not even see the point of NPC's in a MAssively Multiplayer game. Why would I want to hit a bot when I can fight a real person? We start out fighting players higher than us, and die frequently until we get better ourselves, and then of course die less, but that is ALL a part of it. It would defeat the purpose of playing for all those not interested in NPC interaction, and play Massively multiplayer games to fight massive amounts of other players.
Couple points.
1- your making a common mistake made by amateur designers - people won't play the way in which you envision. Also there seems to be far to much in your mechanics that comes down to pure chance. Who is going to take on content with a 90% chance of failure and thus a reroll? People will probably stick to the 90% success content.
2- What makes perma-death an exciting prospect for some? Surely it is risk of losing alot. You seem to have done an awful lot of mitigating the loss for people, i.e not starting at lvl 1. So what is the point of designing an entire game world that does it's best to minimise the effect of perma-death?
just my 2c
What if the majority of players in PvP were "disposable" characters who did not gain XP, but were powerful enough to compete in PvP adequately. That a highly skilled "disposable" character who lost nothing upon permadeath could find a friend or two and take down a "Champion" character with 3 hours of development in it? But that same "Champion" player will feel very powerful, being able to blast away 3 "disposable" characters with his higher magic skill.
The idea, especially in PvP, is that you never START OVER. The base and starting point is adequate enough where that is the average and the mean. That the game is designed in such a way to make players feel like they are "playing normal" but IF THEY WANT or if others want, they can become "above average" in strength. That isn't the norm, but that's the point. The players who want to risk get to feel like epic heroes. The majority who don't want to risk right now don't feel like epic heroes, but they don't feel weak. They feel average, just like everyone else. Like a non-twink in WoW battlegrounds. There are less twinks, because theres more risk (time/gold required) in a twink than there is a non-twink. The twinks get to feel like epic heroes who are stronger than the rest. And they are.
The only difference is that normal players can actually take out the twinks to stop them, get revenge on them, and end up very satisfied they took the life of "That one player" who killed their disposable over and over again.
Take LEFT 4 DEAD for example. The HUMANS are very powerful, and compared to their zombie counterparts, they are elite.
The zombies are disposable characters.
In essence, you decide if yuo want to play as a zombie, or a survivor. Or in other words... a DISPOSABLE (no loss) or a Hero (loss, but greater reward & greater power)
The Survivor gets the reward of kicking tons of disposable butt. But if the disposable (no loss, thus no perma-death) players keep on trying- they eventually get to kill that elite survivor and take away his reward. Permanently. (not really...that guy is bound to be back in a few hours or days)
The Survivor, if they survive, gets a huge satisfaction and reward. Plus they got to kill TONS of disposables because they were so strong.
The Disposable, if they kill the survivor, get the satisfaction of killing that guy who killed them over and over and over again.
In fact, the entire idea of Disposable minions and permadeath characters (risk vs reward) is based off of the fun and satisfaction of Left 4 Dead's Survivor vs Horde Zombie theme.
There have been several WoW guilds that practiced permadeath.
From what I noticed, they would start to cheat. They invented new rules that said it was voluntary and so on.
You put three months effort into progressing your character only to throw it away to a simple mistake?
I'm sure your game would have mechanics more favorable to permadeath, but still.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
It's something i enjoyed a lot with some online co-op modes of SP games like Diablo and Sacred.
Whilst they were fun in standard SP mode, and slightly more fun in co-op ... Hard Core added a whole dimension of exitement due to the finality an error, or lag-spike could bring. HC communities were on the whole much better aswell.
It's not something that could be easily imported into a regular mmo, even though it's addition seems logical and the 'right thing'
Equipment availability ... it's either quested (via non-repeatable quests) for, or bought from other players at humungous prices ... neither of which support the process of 1 death = re-roll.
Most players would quickly start to whine 'it's too hard' ... 'it's too grindy' and other similar complaints
High level players ganking of lower level players on pvp focused servers really would discourage the adoption of a system like this
in short, i think that only mostly older gamers, that remember the long gone days of literally "Impossible to complete" games would enjoy it, the younger/newer additions to the gaming community have been spoonfed to much with easy games and quick reward systems to fully adapt and actually enjoy it.
The game design will require two things, which answer both your questions
1) The game design needs to encourage/softly force/lead players into playing as envisioned. This is done through many ways, primarily though by tailoring the reward system. This is too complex and also requires a lot of play testing to answer with anything concrete though.
2) Risk vs. Reward. The idea that your victory is not empty is big. The heart-beating, blood-pumping adrenaline rush of "almost losing it" but pulling through is a high in itself. Literally. The point is to find the perfect balance between minimizing the NEGATIVE effects of perma-death without losing too much of the POSITIVE effects.
This is not easy, or simple, or problem-free. But if one could lower the negatives while keeping MOST of the positives, it would make it a much more appealing system. This isn't to say perma-death even needs softening, or that perma-death is ever positive. The design would obviously need to be playtested, but in essence it would not be too difficult to keep the entire game except scratching perma-death for a skill-loss or stat-loss system (which this actually is, in a way) or even a completely normal system.
Permadeath is not the key component of what makes the entire game design unique. It's the risk vs reward model, which permadeath IS a big part of...but is not a requirement. One can have great risk vs reward without permadeath or even stat-loss. But if permadeath increases satisfaction and the frustration of it is minimized, then why not attempt it?
Innovation is required not only in every field, but ESPECIALLY in MMORPG's. Someone needs to try it and see what happens, even if it fails. But not by adding permadeath to a game like DDO or WoW, where the idea is absolutely ridiculous. In a game where gains come easy, loss won't be unrealistic. In essence there are already games that are highly gear based which the gear has permadeath. These games are only one step away from player permadeath, as gear is usually very important in MMORPG's.
When I played Darkfall, gear was easy to obtain, but also very very important. If you died, you lost it all. That sucked. But it was easy to obtain, so it wasn't the end of the world. And thousands of players get satisfaction in so many ways from full-loot and the risk of bringing a nice set of armor or a good weapon to battle. But people still play the game, and to be honest despite the fact I don't like Darkfall or its society, I cannot say it is doing poorly. From what I've seen, the game is actually quite popular and is doing quite well for itself.
At the very least I'd give it a try.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Nope.
Perma-death is a re-roll. Lots of alts. Even if you have very fast progression, why have progression at all?
If this is a PvP game then those who band together and harass everyone else will stay on top and those who have to re-roll constantly will quickly die and quit because they'll never catch up to the veterans. Ever. Which = bankruptcy.
If it's a PvE game then you force people to re-do the same content over and over and over and most people can live with a few alts but asking them do it every day is suicidal. Unless you have no progression, but then what is the point of a PvE game with no progression? Grinding? Grinding for what?
If perma-death is in game you the developer has to promise me 100% server uptime and no crashes and 0 and I really mean zero bugs.
Otherwise I am cheated out of what could have been victory be YOU the game developer and that is not something 99.9% of MMO gamers will ever pay for.
If you can hit "save points" and come back at 20% of your previous max or whatever then it's not really perma-death it's just a really, really, really harsh death penalty and one that maybe 387 gamers will ever pay for.
If you can eventually get to a point where you retain most if not all of your points after death then it is DEFINITELY not perma-death and as such just a stupid death penalty system.
If you have one character that is invincible and is used as a bank/storage for others, then why call this anything but another alt and standard bank system with shared access?
I don't like the idea of perma death in a game. Not my cup o tea. You can have perma death in ANY MMO in the market. You die you delete the character that died immediatly. No twinking, insta delete. Don't see why these threads keep poping up.