I play some of my characters with permadeth occasionally anyway, so it would be fine with me. I even play that way in some of the single player games I play, like Fallout 3 or Borderlands.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I agree I love to see more games with full loot like UO, AC1, DFO, MO and such.. There is not not enough, I play as a non red, but I like the fear of dieing in PVE and PVP that I may lose items if I do not watch out.
Dawntide is another than will have full loot and I think xyson is not 100% sure .
I love to see more, I just wanted to see what people thought on perma death if it was done correctly..
Thanks for those that read and posted your ideas and opinions.
sorry I wouldn't like having to reroll my toon every time I died. Don't know why people like this perma death thing so much, unless I am confusing it with something else.
You are gonna die alot in mmorpgs, through pvp or what not. You will never be the best and unstoppable , so then you can probably expect to have to reroll all the time and just get killed again. I doubt too many people will play that kind of game .
The frustration of having to reroll your toon will be enough to turn you off to it.
I used to play Hardcore mode in Diablo II, which had exactly that.
Sure, it could get a little frustrating from time to time when a PC glitch or lag killed your level 50 barbarian, but no game ever felt so intense as playing a game with Perma death. Even going back to normal Diablo II felt lacking.
I would suggest that it's not the main game though, but perhaps a different server (like PvP servers).
Looking at your ghosts portrait added fuel to the flame as well.
Back on topic, a game with perma death would need to develope some sort of "thing" to attach to outside of your own character. I don't see how this would work but if someone could perfect it, I'd be interested.
I wouldn't play a MMO that had perma death. It would only benefit established guilds. and they would just kill you everytime u created a toon and you would of had wasted your money. Unless your part of that guild.
For the broader question of permadeath in general the game would have to be designed such that it doesnt take you too long to build up a new character back to where you were. Thats kind of the opposite of the genre that uses endless progression as a staple.
But then if its trivial to level up a new character then what was the point of calling it death? All that changed was your name.
It could be made to work . .. like instead of having to reroll your character you could just name a 'descendent' or relative that inherited the spirit of the character whom died.
Another way to look at this is if you did not play a character but played a spirit or daemon maybe that would control a host . .. once the body dies he finds another one to take control of.
If it was done right it could be very fun but I do not see much of a market as most people like to get attached to their character and pick the shade of lipstick and hair dye that they want, etc. Most people probably couldnt handle a character that they are attached to dying.
NEWS FLASH!"A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished!https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
The title says it all if they did it correctly...... I love to see this in an MMORPG I know of one that is suppose to or will but not 100% yet .
But I love to see an MMORPG with perma death, a western with hangings because you broke to many laws.
If you did it right make it so you had a char that learn skills off your main so you do not lose the skills, but you would have to re skill back up just not have to spend the money.. Like have a ghost char that learns what you learn, you can't use him until your char dies from say a hanging..
I edited this post to add this from my other.....
To explain it better
As I said there would be more to it than just dieing and starting over as bascially you wouldn't in a way.
Example Fighting mobs PVE you would not die perma, you would rez like any other game, PVP same thing, now Example so you keep breaking laws now in a town..
I would add a bounty system in place..
So perma death would not be like people are thinking every time you die from a mob..
You can get hung unless your friends guild member who ever saves you, if not then you will be hung and perma die.
Now if you pema die, you would have a Ghost slot , every skill you leared would then go to your ghost char, I would base this on skills no levels, and make it easier to get skills not like DFO...
So then what would happen is you would have all of the skills learned but you would have to skill up again..
People are looking at this like if you die thats it you havr to start over, no this would be a sandbox a true sandbox..
Like for a western MMO..
I like to hear from others and the people who said no, as I should of added more info. Thanks for reading please keep giving info as I love to hear your thoughts.
If it was not mentioned before there are tons of threads mentioning the same.
there was one game that vapored out that was going to have perma death, i belive you could even be a griffon, dragon, human ect. the game did have permadeath, cant remember the name. sadly however the game never was released and died half way thru its cycle.
permadeath will be a niche game, very few will end up playing such a game.
I've said it before, but I'll keep saying it. Permadeath means its gone. If you have descendents or spirits or some other way of saving any kind of progress you simply have an unusually harsh death penalty. You're wasting your time debating "permadeath" when really all you're doing is losing some stats and changing your name. You wonder why perma death doesn't exist is because changing your name is a PITA, so they stuck with losing stats, except that's sort of a PITA so they changed it to losing a bit of experience, or your gear, there you have the dawn of MMOG's, EQ for exp, UO for gear. Except even that wasn't terribly popular so eventually it pretty much got dropped all together.
Permadeath is an incredibly niche design choice. Even full loot PVP is going to be more popular and most of the those games never do more than break even before they shut down. UO is one of the exceptions but there are some perks to having a popular IP and being one of the first out the door in your genre.
If you like the idea of having an unusually harsh death penalty but saving some of your progress, then find some way to make that more appealing to people who do get attached to their characters and FFS stop calling it permadeath.
My favorite MUD had perma death. It wasn't after dying 1 time though, you had to die A LOT in most cases. However, it was a PvP MUD so it would happen eventually.
Also, your character aged (some races faster than others), and would eventually reduce your CON (hp stat). Dying a good number of times would also help reduce your CON. Once it reached zero your character died. You would be a spirit to roam the lands and tie off your ends RP-wise, but you couldn't interact with gear or anything.
If a game like this were to work it would have to be something like COH where people are inclined to make new characters regularly.
I think it would be very difficult to impliment right. You certainly couldn't just slap it on any of the mmos that we have right now. And I agree with one of the posters above about the definition of Perma-Death. If you have clones or family members or another way of continuing the legacy of your character it isn't perma death.
Instead of a 100% perma-death solution maybe a perma-death with extremely hardcore death penalties combined. Ironman in Wizardry and Hardcore in Diablo were intense though.
This might work in a highly (very highly) social dependent title. However, there must be a way to recover yourself somehow at early levels. Perhaps the level 1 baddies simply were not strong enough to kill you. But say at level 5 through 35 and you die. Its game over your adventurer simply sucked. It wasn’t worth it to the gods to bring back or let you wander as a spirit. Maybe you could rarely earn some kind of divine favor early on or someone could make a sacrifice of themselves to bring you back. But otherwise D-E-A-D.
Now post lowbie status into mid-game and end-game scenarios. Maybe the gods have taken notice of you and there is a chance they will resurrect you on the spot. Leading to some kind of quest event: go and kill monster X or return to me with an artifact of mine and earn your temporary reward! End game scenarios might go the path of Liches.
Otherwise you must rely on your fellow game players in the meantime you are a haunting with appropriate abilities. Perhaps you can even lend supernatural assistance in group situations.
But to return to life you must be involved in a ritual that requires a lot of players, say 10 or more. Guild mates would be part of the same order and be able to help freely due to that association. Friends and strangers would have to sacrifice something to help you. Oh and joining a guild requires… admission rites. Like oh say joining the Gray Wardens. Something you cannot just click Accept on a window pop-up. No belongings though you died someone benefitted. Unless you have a vault in the guild.
Or perhaps you can wander the void, ether, whatever the place in-between life/death is… for a long time. Of course it’s not safe there either and though weaker you learn things, like Patrick Swayze did in Ghost.
In the void you could discover a way to return (through costly quests) or perhaps - even possession. Think about that in PvP scenarios. A strong enough spirit may wander the void and sense another player in a battle, low on life. You strike, he dies you live - again.
it would really make for an intense game if you had perma death and had to restart when you die lol make it easy to level up and just concentrate on heavy pvp
I played in a few permadeath muds over the years and have done table tops in systems that don't have resurrection for ... 20+ years? God I'm getting old... but anyways, permadeath can work, but typically it works better with a smaller community better, big communities you get people like the something awful goon squad who come in with no intent except to ruin as many peoples games as possible... and you can go on about skill and what not, but in the end, they're dedicated gamers too... they just have a different goal. If the system can be manipulated they can manipulate it to get you offed.
That being said, the system your describing is a flavor text version dying not permadeath. Atriach's original vision was a lot like that really...
The problem for any developer is going to be that as soon as the word 'permadeath' gets into their press releases they will instanly lose a huge proportion of their potential player base.
What the OP describes doesn't sound nearly as harsh as permadeath to me so my first priority would be to find another way of naming it
Permadeath is a bad idea, every mmo gamer has died at times from lag or disconnection and the neagtive reaction in a permadeath game would be overwhelming.
There are other ways to make death and risk vs reward meaningfull...
If the avatar dies it could go to another sphere where it can be play itself back into the world of the living or be summoned back. If unlucky by an evil necromancer who uses it a while as puppet so there is sort of a time penalty for dying while the necromancers of a game have quite fun with it^^
Such a game had to be concepted around that...and for all you hardcore pvpers that only care of game mechanics go out and play Sociolotron and if you die you will end in hell!
Have Fun!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
I think today's gamers, like to have things handed to them rather them work had for somthing, Perma death Wouldnt go down a treat with todays gamers, I personaly wouldnt mind and would find it fun.
I think Perma Death could be a cool feature in a MMO if controlled the right way. I mean there should be a choice for the player to "risk" their toon, or keep it out of harms way. Maybe a big dungeon inside the mountains with different floors for soloing/grouping or raiding. Yes u can go there and take the risk of soloing and get some really nice loot, but with the over hanging risk of stumbling in to another mob or even worse, another player while your running low on health. In the "raid area" youd be sendt in by your guild to get the last piece of the quest you need for obtaining the newest, stronget and most shining weapons upgrade for your guilds keep! GL´s could offer nice rewards for those who decied to go and guaranties to help those who die to rebuild a new toon.
The feeling of standing infront of a raid mob with 20+ guildfriends, knowing that this might be the last time some of you plays their toons ever, would be pretty intense. I think alot of "casual" players would be qite happy to never see the inside of those caves, while "hardcore" players would feel like they had something to prove .
I tend to invest alot of hours into a game when I get hooked so I rarly get to endgame without having an alt or 2 just behind my main. I would probably be one of the dumbasses in the front swinging my sword while shouting FREEDOOM! Just before gettin pwned... (ye I dont think through all my moves in RL either) But my brother who cant invest as much time would be one of the "newbs" picking flowers outside for his next fairy potion or something ..
Well there could be many ways of having Perma Death as a fun and rewarding feature in a game without having to force it upon any player. The keyword for most games to be fun and exciting for all player types is CHOICE!!
I have played one MMORPG with perma-death. It was NWN on AOL back in the mid 1990's. There was one small area in the game (inside another area [triboar arena]) that offered perma-death. I used it 3 times and it was the most exciting gameplay ever. The puprose of settling a grudge in a permanent fashion was very appealing, and that's how it was used. If someone pissed you off bad enough, you challenged them to fight in "the chamber". Whoever won, lived... Whoever died, game over, make a new character. Sometimes, there were gnome death matches where one would have to be the gnomeslave to their victor. It was glorious.
All characters die so you would never have anyone at max level.
This could be a good thing.......people have a goal (even the HC ones) and the company doesnt have to bring about 20 expansions out to keep the game interesting.
Do you realy find lvling up 80 in a week and then grinding for frost emblems funn after two weeks??
This is not a flame but I can tell some of you guys aren't reading this right I keep hearing I will have to reroll every time I die , it will suck..
I said how it would work, I never said it would happen if you died in PVP or PVE, I said how... Please read correctly.. and all the way through to understand.. I guess I didn't explain myself as I been hearing , people thinking you would ahve to reroll every time you die thats not the case lol./
If you broke laws and had a bounty on your head.. it would take alot... then he would have to track you down..then you would be hung but, your friends guild you pay someone what ever to get ya out before then,, but if you did get hung then you would have like a ghost char that takes the place... You would have all skils but you would have to skill back up.
This game would not be a hard grind to skill up as it is.. so if this happen it would not take long, as such. So if anyone else reads this please read it clearly , if you have any questions feel free to post more as I wish people would stop posting reroll omg I have to relevel! UGH.
The problem for any developer is going to be that as soon as the word 'permadeath' gets into their press releases they will instanly lose a huge proportion of their potential player base.
What the OP describes doesn't sound nearly as harsh as permadeath to me so my first priority would be to find another way of naming it
Thank you and noted, it may be a good thing to think of something else to call it. and thanks for reading it as I intended it to. I think to many others didn't read it, they just seen OMG perma death and posted. lol
Comments
I play some of my characters with permadeth occasionally anyway, so it would be fine with me. I even play that way in some of the single player games I play, like Fallout 3 or Borderlands.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I agree I love to see more games with full loot like UO, AC1, DFO, MO and such.. There is not not enough, I play as a non red, but I like the fear of dieing in PVE and PVP that I may lose items if I do not watch out.
Dawntide is another than will have full loot and I think xyson is not 100% sure .
I love to see more, I just wanted to see what people thought on perma death if it was done correctly..
Thanks for those that read and posted your ideas and opinions.
if i wanted to directly experience real life consequences i wouldnt play games
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
sorry I wouldn't like having to reroll my toon every time I died. Don't know why people like this perma death thing so much, unless I am confusing it with something else.
You are gonna die alot in mmorpgs, through pvp or what not. You will never be the best and unstoppable , so then you can probably expect to have to reroll all the time and just get killed again. I doubt too many people will play that kind of game .
The frustration of having to reroll your toon will be enough to turn you off to it.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
Looking at your ghosts portrait added fuel to the flame as well.
Back on topic, a game with perma death would need to develope some sort of "thing" to attach to outside of your own character. I don't see how this would work but if someone could perfect it, I'd be interested.
I wouldn't play a MMO that had perma death. It would only benefit established guilds. and they would just kill you everytime u created a toon and you would of had wasted your money. Unless your part of that guild.
Permadeath just for criminals as you say is fine.
For the broader question of permadeath in general the game would have to be designed such that it doesnt take you too long to build up a new character back to where you were. Thats kind of the opposite of the genre that uses endless progression as a staple.
But then if its trivial to level up a new character then what was the point of calling it death? All that changed was your name.
It could be made to work . .. like instead of having to reroll your character you could just name a 'descendent' or relative that inherited the spirit of the character whom died.
Another way to look at this is if you did not play a character but played a spirit or daemon maybe that would control a host . .. once the body dies he finds another one to take control of.
If it was done right it could be very fun but I do not see much of a market as most people like to get attached to their character and pick the shade of lipstick and hair dye that they want, etc. Most people probably couldnt handle a character that they are attached to dying.
NEWS FLASH! "A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/ Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished! https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/ Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
If it was not mentioned before there are tons of threads mentioning the same.
there was one game that vapored out that was going to have perma death, i belive you could even be a griffon, dragon, human ect. the game did have permadeath, cant remember the name. sadly however the game never was released and died half way thru its cycle.
permadeath will be a niche game, very few will end up playing such a game.
I've said it before, but I'll keep saying it. Permadeath means its gone. If you have descendents or spirits or some other way of saving any kind of progress you simply have an unusually harsh death penalty. You're wasting your time debating "permadeath" when really all you're doing is losing some stats and changing your name. You wonder why perma death doesn't exist is because changing your name is a PITA, so they stuck with losing stats, except that's sort of a PITA so they changed it to losing a bit of experience, or your gear, there you have the dawn of MMOG's, EQ for exp, UO for gear. Except even that wasn't terribly popular so eventually it pretty much got dropped all together.
Permadeath is an incredibly niche design choice. Even full loot PVP is going to be more popular and most of the those games never do more than break even before they shut down. UO is one of the exceptions but there are some perks to having a popular IP and being one of the first out the door in your genre.
If you like the idea of having an unusually harsh death penalty but saving some of your progress, then find some way to make that more appealing to people who do get attached to their characters and FFS stop calling it permadeath.
My favorite MUD had perma death. It wasn't after dying 1 time though, you had to die A LOT in most cases. However, it was a PvP MUD so it would happen eventually.
Also, your character aged (some races faster than others), and would eventually reduce your CON (hp stat). Dying a good number of times would also help reduce your CON. Once it reached zero your character died. You would be a spirit to roam the lands and tie off your ends RP-wise, but you couldn't interact with gear or anything.
If a game like this were to work it would have to be something like COH where people are inclined to make new characters regularly.
I think it would be very difficult to impliment right. You certainly couldn't just slap it on any of the mmos that we have right now. And I agree with one of the posters above about the definition of Perma-Death. If you have clones or family members or another way of continuing the legacy of your character it isn't perma death.
Won't play it. Period.
Instead of a 100% perma-death solution maybe a perma-death with extremely hardcore death penalties combined. Ironman in Wizardry and Hardcore in Diablo were intense though.
This might work in a highly (very highly) social dependent title. However, there must be a way to recover yourself somehow at early levels. Perhaps the level 1 baddies simply were not strong enough to kill you. But say at level 5 through 35 and you die. Its game over your adventurer simply sucked. It wasn’t worth it to the gods to bring back or let you wander as a spirit. Maybe you could rarely earn some kind of divine favor early on or someone could make a sacrifice of themselves to bring you back. But otherwise D-E-A-D.
Now post lowbie status into mid-game and end-game scenarios. Maybe the gods have taken notice of you and there is a chance they will resurrect you on the spot. Leading to some kind of quest event: go and kill monster X or return to me with an artifact of mine and earn your temporary reward! End game scenarios might go the path of Liches.
Otherwise you must rely on your fellow game players in the meantime you are a haunting with appropriate abilities. Perhaps you can even lend supernatural assistance in group situations.
But to return to life you must be involved in a ritual that requires a lot of players, say 10 or more. Guild mates would be part of the same order and be able to help freely due to that association. Friends and strangers would have to sacrifice something to help you.
Or perhaps you can wander the void, ether, whatever the place in-between life/death is… for a long time. Of course it’s not safe there either and though weaker you learn things, like Patrick Swayze did in Ghost.
In the void you could discover a way to return (through costly quests) or perhaps - even possession. Think about that in PvP scenarios. A strong enough spirit may wander the void and sense another player in a battle, low on life. You strike, he dies you live - again.
it would really make for an intense game if you had perma death and had to restart when you die lol make it easy to level up and just concentrate on heavy pvp
I played in a few permadeath muds over the years and have done table tops in systems that don't have resurrection for ... 20+ years? God I'm getting old... but anyways, permadeath can work, but typically it works better with a smaller community better, big communities you get people like the something awful goon squad who come in with no intent except to ruin as many peoples games as possible... and you can go on about skill and what not, but in the end, they're dedicated gamers too... they just have a different goal. If the system can be manipulated they can manipulate it to get you offed.
That being said, the system your describing is a flavor text version dying not permadeath. Atriach's original vision was a lot like that really...
Shadus
The problem for any developer is going to be that as soon as the word 'permadeath' gets into their press releases they will instanly lose a huge proportion of their potential player base.
What the OP describes doesn't sound nearly as harsh as permadeath to me so my first priority would be to find another way of naming it
Permadeath is a bad idea, every mmo gamer has died at times from lag or disconnection and the neagtive reaction in a permadeath game would be overwhelming.
There are other ways to make death and risk vs reward meaningfull...
If the avatar dies it could go to another sphere where it can be play itself back into the world of the living or be summoned back. If unlucky by an evil necromancer who uses it a while as puppet so there is sort of a time penalty for dying while the necromancers of a game have quite fun with it^^
Such a game had to be concepted around that...and for all you hardcore pvpers that only care of game mechanics go out and play Sociolotron and if you die you will end in hell!
Have Fun!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
I think today's gamers, like to have things handed to them rather them work had for somthing, Perma death Wouldnt go down a treat with todays gamers, I personaly wouldnt mind and would find it fun.
I think Perma Death could be a cool feature in a MMO if controlled the right way. I mean there should be a choice for the player to "risk" their toon, or keep it out of harms way. Maybe a big dungeon inside the mountains with different floors for soloing/grouping or raiding. Yes u can go there and take the risk of soloing and get some really nice loot, but with the over hanging risk of stumbling in to another mob or even worse, another player while your running low on health. In the "raid area" youd be sendt in by your guild to get the last piece of the quest you need for obtaining the newest, stronget and most shining weapons upgrade for your guilds keep! GL´s could offer nice rewards for those who decied to go and guaranties to help those who die to rebuild a new toon.
The feeling of standing infront of a raid mob with 20+ guildfriends, knowing that this might be the last time some of you plays their toons ever, would be pretty intense. I think alot of "casual" players would be qite happy to never see the inside of those caves, while "hardcore" players would feel like they had something to prove
.
I tend to invest alot of hours into a game when I get hooked so I rarly get to endgame without having an alt or 2 just behind my main. I would probably be one of the dumbasses in the front swinging my sword while shouting FREEDOOM! Just before gettin pwned... (ye I dont think through all my moves in RL either)
But my brother who cant invest as much time would be one of the "newbs" picking flowers outside for his next fairy potion or something 
..
Well there could be many ways of having Perma Death as a fun and rewarding feature in a game without having to force it upon any player. The keyword for most games to be fun and exciting for all player types is CHOICE!!
I have played one MMORPG with perma-death. It was NWN on AOL back in the mid 1990's. There was one small area in the game (inside another area [triboar arena]) that offered perma-death. I used it 3 times and it was the most exciting gameplay ever. The puprose of settling a grudge in a permanent fashion was very appealing, and that's how it was used. If someone pissed you off bad enough, you challenged them to fight in "the chamber". Whoever won, lived... Whoever died, game over, make a new character. Sometimes, there were gnome death matches where one would have to be the gnomeslave to their victor. It was glorious.
This could be a good thing.......people have a goal (even the HC ones) and the company doesnt have to bring about 20 expansions out to keep the game interesting.
Do you realy find lvling up 80 in a week and then grinding for frost emblems funn after two weeks??
This is not a flame but I can tell some of you guys aren't reading this right I keep hearing I will have to reroll every time I die , it will suck..
I said how it would work, I never said it would happen if you died in PVP or PVE, I said how... Please read correctly.. and all the way through to understand.. I guess I didn't explain myself as I been hearing , people thinking you would ahve to reroll every time you die thats not the case lol./
If you broke laws and had a bounty on your head.. it would take alot... then he would have to track you down..then you would be hung but, your friends guild you pay someone what ever to get ya out before then,, but if you did get hung then you would have like a ghost char that takes the place... You would have all skils but you would have to skill back up.
This game would not be a hard grind to skill up as it is.. so if this happen it would not take long, as such. So if anyone else reads this please read it clearly , if you have any questions feel free to post more as I wish people would stop posting reroll omg I have to relevel! UGH.
Thank you and noted, it may be a good thing to think of something else to call it. and thanks for reading it as I intended it to. I think to many others didn't read it, they just seen OMG perma death and posted. lol