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Permadeath Proposal
Andromedus1
Member Posts: 67
Before you write a reply telling me that permadeath has no place in MMORPGs, hear me out. Many of the readers of this site are younger, and the younger readers were not around back when MUDs (text-based MMOs) were popular.
MUDs were the first MMORPGs, the father of the genre, if you will (allowing pen&paper as the grandfather). As with the current generation, the worlds were persistent, character data was saved, skills and spells required timing and even twitch to a degree (believe it or not). More so then than today, MUDs were extremely varied from one game to the next. One game would be full PvP, full loot, perma death, the next would be PvP optional, PvE centric, more of an action chat-room, if you will - and then everything in between. Over the full spectrum one repeatedly found tightly knit communities. Some were free, some were donation only, some were micro transaction, some monthly, and so forth. There is nothing that has been created since the advent of graphical MMORPGs that wasn't already present in many, many MUDs, with few exceptions.
In MUDs, perma-death was a very popular model. For whatever reason - and we can debate it until we're blue in the face - perma death never really translated into the graphical side of the genre. Why would text-based MMOs lend themselves to such harsh game worlds, while graphical MMOs have scarcely seen it at all? The reason can be summed up in one word: art.
Art, in my view, is any medium which holds an emotion or string of emotions frozen in time. In modern video games, the essential element of art is largely cinematographical and quest-based, otherwise known as content. The modern MMORPG evokes emotion, its artistic essence, with stunning visions of heroic knights and gallant dwarves, grand mountains and romantic deserts, proud dragons and morbid trolls. The game takes you on a visual journey as you explore the pre-established events that the programmer has laboured to produce - albeit in a somewhat haphazard order. The MUD did not have these cinematographical tools at its disposal, and thus had to evoke its emotive response by other means.
Granted not all MUDs were perma-death; some were PvE centric. However, in these games the playerbase largely centered around roleplay. This is important, because in a roleplaying server the players have elected to become the content themselves. It's true there were storylines in MUDs, some written brilliantly, but once you've read the description of the local tavern, you're not likely to re-read it every time you walk in to /rest, and even if you did, the artistic effect simply is not the same in a non-graphical game.
So, the way other MUDs evoked emotion was by creating a harsh social environment. In this world, as with the role-player world, the players became the content. Emotions ran very high, and as a response the political landscape was inevitably highly evolved. The strong both preyed on and protected the weak, players formed and broke alliances, items were gained in exciting victories and lost in grievous defeats.
Once graphics became a major part of the game world, art had a new outlet, and that outlet came to replace the emotional experience prevalent in the earliest MMOs. My proposal is simple: if it could work as an artistic, emotional experience manifested in complex social and political landscapes in non-graphical MMOs, what is to say it can't work in graphical ones? I would argue that it already has (Ultima Online and the Darktide server of AC come to mind). In either case, what law says that both artistic outlets cannot coexist? Is it too ambitious an undertaking? Personally, I think not.
There are various hybrid permadeath solutions as well. I saw someone on this site mention having a family name, and every time you die, your family name is strengthened (or weakened) by the exploits of your previous characters (your ancestors). One could take it a step further and allow that the player reincarnates as species of increasing intelligence and potential, somewhat in the Buddhist sense, granting the player some feeling of progression even in death.
In a harsh MMO world, the content must shift from quests to players, or at least be shared equally by the two. The game must be set up in such a way as to facilitate complex political environments while not constraining player behavior, and it must allow free trade without making commerce automagically protected. In essence, it must allow human nature to take its most, well, natural course. The beauty of the harsh MMO is that fear of loss - of permadeath in the extreme - keeps everyone honest. That is when players become worthy content; never before.
Comments
The only permadeath I would accept in a mmo setting is dying of old age.
I think it would be cool to take care of a family and as you get older you die and take over one of your children.
I have an issue with just starting all over if i die in a pvp or pve situation though. I would rather take all my money, some skills, xp and loot than outright kill my character.
Thats just me though.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I played Gemstone III, and they had a permadeath thing going on with lots of options to avoid permadeath. The thing is, I wouldn't play a game with permadeath now. In fact, if they even mentioned permadeath, I'd look elsehwere immediately. Having said that, who knows, there might be a big enough crowd for that sort of game, but I am skeptical that there is. This "feature" that you want would make a game niche instantly, regardless of the other content involved.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I would never play a permadeath MMO until ALL instances of lag, crashes, etc. could be eliminated completely. I remember how mind-blowingly frustrating it was to lose even a relatively new hardcore character in D2 to a sudden lag spike. I couldn't imagine losing one that I'd spent hundreds of hours on in a similar fashion.
Unfortunately, I think such technical errors will always exist in some form or another.
Developers probably don't implement permadeath because people who die have a high chance of quiting and stop paying them money.
It might work though, I dont' know.
I will say it, permadeath will not work in an MMoRPG that is combat based...no one would do anything that is even remotley challenging, as it is people have to be over geared and higher level then is neccasery to do the boss mobs and dungeons in most games , plus you have to rely on others you dont know to keep from dieing, not to mention the tech side of things allready brought up.
You also said something about, not constraining human behavior, that is an experiment that never works for the better, humans unconstrained will always move towards destruction.
This perma death stuff pops up every week or two, but no one wants it, even you guys that bring it up would quit the game that had it after dieing at level 2 or 3 a few times in a row, youll get tired of starting over and we would just have another wasted game.
Godz of War I call Thee
This. When you can lose everything to a network glitch, and when everyone experiences network glitches once in a while, permadeath is simply not practical.
What amazes me is that in the OP I described a whole class of real MMOs which existed and in which permadeath was the rule - and they thrived. Yet nearly every reply tiresomely states that permadeath would never work, ignoring the fact that it already has (in fact, many times). I further analyzed why they fell out of favor, and argued why and how they could be brought back - yet not a single response addresses that core argument. Me thinks most readers do not have the patience for reading...but perhaps I doth protest too much.
^ ya but it getsmore complicated when something cost nothing to make and maintain now require 50 million to make and 2 million to maintain per month.
You need to look at the scale of things. An individual like you or me can get a mud server up and running in a month. It gets alot more complicated when this much is invovled in making an MMO. It's really more of a business decision than game design desicion.
no
Failed concept has failed.
Let it go already.
What about the scale of PvE? How was the PvE in text-based MMOs scaled up to the multi-million dollar behemoths released today? Doesn't it "get more complicated?" Yet that stopped nothing. If scale is your concern, then the only thing you've shown is that games have proven to be scalable.
The game must be fun and playable, that's all. Of course, a game with perma-death or harsh death consequences would be a very different game from one based on PvE and standard content. You can't examine the idea with all of your biases about what you expect an MMO to be, you have to take it for what it is: a new style of game. If you were to play Starcraft from a first person shooter perspective, you will find it has none of the qualities you are looking for, however that doesn't mean it's a bad game. A perma-death MMO would probably not be as centered around gear and epic MOBs as what you are used to. There is, however, no inherent law that says that an MMO in which perma-death exists cannot possibly be fun - you just aren't open to the possibilities of what it would take to become fun. As I have said, such games have existed, and will exist again, even in the mainstream.
Imagine you've been playing an MMO you really like for a few months. You have a character almost to the top level, and then you go to sign in one day, and you find that your exgirlfriend/brother/father/jerk friend/etc has deleted your character. How would you feel?
That is why permadeath has no place in an MMO. Your hours or weeks or months of effort is wiped out in an instant.
Not to mention, as another poster said, dying due to lag or server crashes.
I would think perma death would be ok if there was no leveling no earned skills just everyone at the same level from the start and has access to all the skills of their class right from the start. Like starting at endgame when you die you would loose the equipment and money but that's it. The thing i would not accept is the loss of the time investment in leveling the skills or whatever the gear can be replaced.
I would accept perma death if the idea was like the example you gave at the end of your post. I like the idea of your next character being the next in line of your family name. It could work if the character that you make starts out with say 75% of the skills or powers that your dead character used to have, but could then somehow develop into his/her own character by having skills unlocked that were not available to the other character. These skills would only be unlocked if your previous character achieved some goal in the their life.
This would make it at least interesting and more bearable than the character being gone alltogether.
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I wholeheartedly agree with your last paragraph, Andromedus1.
For permadeath gameplay, the focus has to shift from quest driven drivel to player created quests.
Humans are so much more creative when its all in the name of good fun and imagination.
Something as simple as a quest window where u edit x by y for z. Say a crafter needs fur(x). Fur can be collected from the red foxes in Greenvine woods(y). Bring 10 fur back for a reward of 100 gold(z). All of this can be edited by the player and it adds to player lore.
Or even as a bounty. l33tk1lle12 must die(x), he is seen last in the town Harvale(y). 1000 gold if you bring back his head(z).
It is true that for player interaction to occur in a healthy and wholesome manner, there has to be more options and incentives to allow for it than /lol , /dance or /joke. If the structure was in place for it, social interactions would be more meaningful and would add another dimension to the rpg aspect of the mmo.
""The game must be set up in such a way as to facilitate complex political environments while not constraining player behavior"" indeed.
Not only that, but it would be a customer service nightmare for the devs.
Think people get whiny and cry now over things? Just wait until they're paying an active sub for a permadeath game and they die to a lag spike or glitch. People would be demanding that their characters be restored by the devs immediately, and the flame wars would be intolerable.
Honestly? Permadeath exists in every game if the player wants it. As soon as you die, promptly log out and delete that character and start over. Don't loot your corpse, or sell your items for cash to give to other characters, or anything. Just log out, delete, and restart. Voila! Instant permadeath.
All I'm saying is developers dont' want to implement an idea which provoke people from quiting. And people died in permadeath have a high chance of quiting.
I'm not here to tell you permadeath dont' work. It might work because the adrenaline rush from permadeath might bring enough subscription. I'm just saying in the back of developers head they are thinking about money. And how players quit after they died will stop paying them money.
And I actually support the permadeath idea. And is looking forward if any studio make a permadeath MMO.
The only way permadeath can work is for you not to build an emotional investment with the characters (a.k.a fps).
The only way mmorpgs's and their large AAA budgets can be economically viable is if you emotionally invest in your character.
I'm sure you guys can put together the next piece of the puzzle.
I wouldn't ever play a permadeath game. Even in the pnp d&d campaigns i had played so far, our DM would offer another character of equal level when the one we were currently playing, died.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
I don't agree with permadeath. I think its pretty much dead as far as MMOs go. But I do believe there should be harsher penalties for dying, as apposerd to just having to walk back to where you where training.
Playing: Ever quest 2
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For a while, many years back, there was an Everquest permadeath PvP server called Discord where good and bad races could kill each other. It was loads of fun while it lasted. My stomach was in knots much of the time, added a very high level of tension. Many people who played it talked about it on forums, wanting the server back but they it never returned after its short lived presence.
In MUDs, perma-death was a very popular model. For whatever reason - and we can debate it until we're blue in the face - perma death never really translated into the graphical side of the genre. Why would text-based MMOs lend themselves to such harsh game worlds, while graphical MMOs have scarcely seen it at all? The reason can be summed up in one word: art.
Very simple. You are wrong in saying that perma-death was a very popular model. Text muds are never "very popular", compared to modern MMOs. We are talking about may be hundreds of users. Tell me a text muds that have more than 100k players? Even that is no where close to "very popular" in today MMO world.
So essentially the reason why you have a perception of perma-death being more popular is because old text muds are played by a niched audience anyway.
There are just too many things that can go wrong.
PvP becomes out of the question. Too many hacks, sploits, etc.
Bad connection leaves you hanging, character dies forever.
You invite Skippy the WonderNoob into your group, everybody dies forever.
Raids are impossible. Even the best guilds wipe on the first try against a tough boss. Goodbye to all the characters in the raid guild.
I could go on, but you get the point.
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In A, X is true.
B is greater than A.
Therefore: in A, X is false.
What the fuck is that?
Permadeath - No
I was in a game running through some woods. PC lagged and locked me out for a few seconds. Since I was using autorun when my PC regained the connection I was not too happy to discover my character had run straight off of a cliff killing herself.
The OP does have some good ideas about families and such but I have a hard time imagining the average casual gamer being ok with it. How about just rewarding people for not dying? Give them survivor titles like in Guild Wars. Have a retire option so when you max out you can retire your character and pass on their belongings to their children. You could even have a notariety system where if your character had survivor titles the fame they gained from them would also pass on and would provide your new character, their kid, with extra gold to start with or special access to somewhere or maybe even a secret quest storyline. If it has housing, maybe you can get a special statue for your house too. Just saying instead of forcing permadeath, why not do something positive and reward people for not dying?
Permadeath is already in every game, just create a new character, bank or mail your gold and belongings to it, then delete your dead character and start over. Simple.