Sorry no offense but that game looks like a 1990's retro nintendo console game. I know graphics isnt everything but that looks bad.
Ohh and FFA PvP and Perma Death will always be niche, doesnt make it bad just not mainstream.
Do you know what FFA PvP is? Are you confusing it that with full loot? You do realize that if not for factions, WoW would be FFA PvP right? You do realize that AoC(Age of Conan) is FFA PvP right? FFA PvP is not niche at all. Most games just offer faction PvP because it gives players a common enemy.
But yeah, perma-death will always be niche. It doesn't matter how you implement it. So, blah blah blah about everything else in this thread. Ultimately, it's niche. Oh well?
I would disagree that faction PVP is the same as FFA PVP. I mean take WoW for instance. You can level up to cap without really running into any oposing factions. when I played I was in thunderbluff. and a few times aliance would come and attack, but that happened like once maybe twice before I hit cap. and I almost NEVER wen't and wandered around aliant teritory.
So a true FFA PVP you could get ganked 10 feet outside of your starting area.
Which is why it makes a BIG diffrence whether its faction based or not.
Perma-death (ignoring the implementation complications) could work very well in a mmorpg. But other features, abit like open pvp, need to be built around and connected to it. You can't just add it to any old design plonk on top ~ seems most discussions don't distinguish this.
For simple eg: If you have perma-death where exploration is one of the main aims of the game, then "being the 1st" to discover a place that was very dangerous or cross the Mountains of Madness etc suddenly becomes a interesting and possibly secret worthy event "of how" etc. and so forth.
If you close some doors, you open others. But oc the implementation is an issue with networking is the practical problem aside from how to deal with the social dynamics and "near perfect information" that the web provides every gamer should they wish to exploit it.
I have no objections to permadeath as an idea, the question is in the implementation.
Yep. If advancement and gear are nearly meaningless, then permadeath might work. but if you slap it onto a traditional MMO framework, complete with beloved gear, and advancement that takes dozens of hour or more, then players will eventually quit, or pretty much quit immediately after a huge lag spike or D/C hits, and they lose their guy for nothing.
On the other hand, if you make death highly unlikely, where you can be defeated, but to be killed takes some serious sacrifice from the killer, you might find enough players to support such an MMO.
For the most part the playerbase at large does not like or want perma-death, and so the small group of players that are supporting a game that uses it would be a niche game. I would not say that perma-death is a bad idea in a game setting, but that how perma-death has been implimented is what makes it a bad idea. In the pnp rpg games like D&D, WOD, and such death was dealt with in stages, and also had methods that coould be used to avoid losing yoru character that took alot of resourses to use yet were not full proof either. Like in the vampire setting of the WOD rpg a vampire had both a downed state called torpor that was like being in a suspended animation state, and also had what wass called final death that was quite hard to get the vampire to enter into so that they would actually die. While in D&D you had the fact that you needed to reduce a target to -10 (sometimes more.) hit points to kill them, since reducing them to 0 hit points just knocks them out merely, and then you have the fact that you could resurrect a fallen/dead allie if you had their ashes/body and the money for it although it was not a sure matter to do this 9Also you only had one chance to resurrect an ally). Add in how easy it would be for the actvities that players do to grief others in the game could result in a character's perma-death, and players do not want to have that feeling that another player has the fate of their character completely in their hand. Perma-death appeals to a small although devoted group of players in the playerbade, and your numbers shows this fact by how few donators they have gotten compared to how large the entirity of the playerbase is.
Not gonna take the time to wade through the crap because I know my opinion on this is flamebait.
Most gamers today are to much gaming wimps to enjoy a game that actually puts a challenge on them. If they can die a few times and continue like nothing happened they count themselves great gamers because they could reach the end fast. They call themselves hardcore becuase they play none stop, sure they die a few hundred times but they win they got to the end first.
What they do not seem to understand is that play style is wimpish with no real skill required. Show me someone that is level 30 in a game with out any need to respawn other than a game glitch and then I will be impressed. In EVE I have a character that has played for almost 3 years and still never lost a ship. In Reckoning my character on hard has not once been defeated, in Skyrim I now on my 3rd character ude to the others dying but have reached level 35 with this one and no death.
People do not want challenge in their games any more, they complain about it not being fun. They want everything handed to them, hold theier hand as they walk through the game. They min/max game stats and act more like accountants than gamers. They will play the game system, but ignore the actual game and claim they are hardcore of l33t.
REAL hardcore gamers like the challenge, like the fact that death has meaning and thus our play has meaning. So let they little wimps flame the hardcore, let them cry about it being to hard and how it is not fun. Let them pat each other on the back and talk about how cool they are becuase they finished the game in 3 days. In the en they are just little kids that hack their way to the end thinking they deserve some credit or praise when they are in fact wimps that could not handle a real challenge if they ever faced it.
The above is purely my opinion with no minicing of words, if it offends someone then I am sorry for that but my advice is to listen to the Eagles song, "find your inner child and kick it's little ass".
GET OVER IT
Death penalties don't add challenge.
If I ask you to walk over a 10-foot-wide bridge with rails, that's mind-bogglingly easy right? Zero challenge.
If I put that bridge over a 150-foot drop with spikes at the bottom....there's still zero challenge.
Challenge is the amount of skill required to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens if you fail, and doesn't impact challenge.
People want challenge. Challenge matters.
People don't want the game to excessively kick them when they're down. That's not fun. That's masochism.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not gonna take the time to wade through the crap because I know my opinion on this is flamebait.
Most gamers today are to much gaming wimps to enjoy a game that actually puts a challenge on them. If they can die a few times and continue like nothing happened they count themselves great gamers because they could reach the end fast. They call themselves hardcore becuase they play none stop, sure they die a few hundred times but they win they got to the end first.
What they do not seem to understand is that play style is wimpish with no real skill required. Show me someone that is level 30 in a game with out any need to respawn other than a game glitch and then I will be impressed. In EVE I have a character that has played for almost 3 years and still never lost a ship. In Reckoning my character on hard has not once been defeated, in Skyrim I now on my 3rd character ude to the others dying but have reached level 35 with this one and no death.
People do not want challenge in their games any more, they complain about it not being fun. They want everything handed to them, hold theier hand as they walk through the game. They min/max game stats and act more like accountants than gamers. They will play the game system, but ignore the actual game and claim they are hardcore of l33t.
REAL hardcore gamers like the challenge, like the fact that death has meaning and thus our play has meaning. So let they little wimps flame the hardcore, let them cry about it being to hard and how it is not fun. Let them pat each other on the back and talk about how cool they are becuase they finished the game in 3 days. In the en they are just little kids that hack their way to the end thinking they deserve some credit or praise when they are in fact wimps that could not handle a real challenge if they ever faced it.
The above is purely my opinion with no minicing of words, if it offends someone then I am sorry for that but my advice is to listen to the Eagles song, "find your inner child and kick it's little ass".
GET OVER IT
Death penalties don't add challenge.
If I ask you to walk over a 10-foot-wide bridge with rails, that's mind-bogglingly easy right? Zero challenge.
If I put that bridge over a 150-foot drop with spikes at the bottom....there's still zero challenge.
Challenge is the amount of skill required to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens if you fail, and doesn't impact challenge.
People want challenge. Challenge matters.
People don't want the game to excessively kick them when they're down. That's not fun. That's masochism.
Let's take your example to the next level.
Say we ask you to walk across a 100 foot log (no handrails of course) that is exactly...... 1 foot off the ground.
Or we ask you to walk across the same log which is suspended 100 feet about a roaring river filled with rocks
While the challenge will be exactly the same in each case, the risk of the latter makes the accomplishment far more rewarding and impressive, add's some "meaning" to if if you will.
People enjoy adding risk, especially if there is a chance for greater rewards.
But even if there's not, risk makes the person think twice, and determine if the challenge is really worth doing, or would they be better off going around the canyon and finding a safer alternative to the crossing?
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Say we ask you to walk across a 100 foot log (no handrails of course) that is exactly...... 1 foot off the ground.
Or we ask you to walk across the same log which is suspended 100 feet about a roaring river filled with rocks
While the challenge will be exactly the same in each case, the risk of the latter makes the accomplishment far more rewarding and impressive, add's some "meaning" to if if you will.
People enjoy adding risk, especially if there is a chance for greater rewards.
But even if there's not, risk makes the person think twice, and determine if the challenge is really worth doing, or would they be better off going around the canyon and finding a safer alternative to the crossing?
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Kyleran Let's take your example to the next level. Say we ask you to walk across a 100 foot log (no handrails of course) that is exactly...... 1 foot off the ground. Or we ask you to walk across the same log which is suspended 100 feet about a roaring river filled with rocks While the challenge will be exactly the same in each case, the risk of the latter makes the accomplishment far more rewarding and impressive, add's some "meaning" to if if you will. People enjoy adding risk, especially if there is a chance for greater rewards. But even if there's not, risk makes the person think twice, and determine if the challenge is really worth doing, or would they be better off going around the canyon and finding a safer alternative to the crossing?
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
The extra challenge in that situation is the need to keep your cool under the extra pressure.
Say we ask you to walk across a 100 foot log (no handrails of course) that is exactly...... 1 foot off the ground.
Or we ask you to walk across the same log which is suspended 100 feet about a roaring river filled with rocks
While the challenge will be exactly the same in each case, the risk of the latter makes the accomplishment far more rewarding and impressive, add's some "meaning" to if if you will.
People enjoy adding risk, especially if there is a chance for greater rewards.
But even if there's not, risk makes the person think twice, and determine if the challenge is really worth doing, or would they be better off going around the canyon and finding a safer alternative to the crossing?
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
The extra challenge in that situation is the need to keep your cool under the extra pressure.
risk can add challenge to a challenge but to say risk is a challenge is to say a slot machine at vegas is a challenge.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Say we ask you to walk across a 100 foot log (no handrails of course) that is exactly...... 1 foot off the ground.
Or we ask you to walk across the same log which is suspended 100 feet about a roaring river filled with rocks
While the challenge will be exactly the same in each case, the risk of the latter makes the accomplishment far more rewarding and impressive, add's some "meaning" to if if you will.
People enjoy adding risk, especially if there is a chance for greater rewards.
But even if there's not, risk makes the person think twice, and determine if the challenge is really worth doing, or would they be better off going around the canyon and finding a safer alternative to the crossing?
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
The extra challenge in that situation is the need to keep your cool under the extra pressure.
That and if the log is over a 100 foot ravine with a river at the bottom we can assume that there is a fair amount of air movment and wind... could throw you off of the log., not to mention if the log is by the river all of that water spray could make the log slippery, where as the log that is 1 foot over the ground doesn't have any of those issues.
I have never encountered a person who has ever brought up permadeath.(Besides on the internet). I don't want it to play a game where permadeath is forced on you. If it's an option than I could care less if it's in the game. However, I am not saying that I'm not open to the idea if it's implemented well enough, but I think the chances are slim.
I have never encountered a person who has ever brought up permadeath.(Besides on the internet). I don't want it to play a game where permadeath is forced on you. If it's an option than I could care less if it's in the game. However, I am not saying that I'm not open to the idea if it's implemented well enough, but I think the chances are slim.
If any of you bothered watching the dev video on their kickstarter page then you would know that they said that it is currently a single-player game, and they are tentatively planning for multi-player.
Perma-death is hardly anything new in single-player games. If you die, you load your last save. Also, with graphics like what I saw in the video, if it did become an MMO it would be a crappy browser-based MMO and I probably wouldn't be playing it anyway. As it is, it looks like a $5 offering on Steam. Any more than that, and these guys would just be ripping people off.
whatever any of you say about how great perma death is, because of the thrills, or challenge, or whatever.
let me know when you plan on playing Salem and what your numbers will be, I'll get some of my people to come and outnumber you and kill you unfairly. you'll quit the game after raging.
if there is some stupid bar against socializing or working together, its not an MMO any more its just a glorified lobby. if players CAN get together and do things in numbers, groups with lesser numbers will be killed no matter what their skill level is.
imagine the best swimmer in the world beaten to death by 30 people. skill and challenge are irrelevant in a plurality.
There's a perma-death guild in DDOI just discovered. I'm thinking of joining and rolling up a character to try it. Their highest level toon is 17 (out of 20), which is impressive, as deaths are common in this game with quests on elite. Sounds like it would be fun to try, as it would add a level of RPG with the planning, strategy, attachment to toon, etc.
I played permadeath in DDO once. Got to maybe level 12 before dying. Deleted my character and went back to "carebear" land. Yes, it makes things a bit more exciting, but to me, it's not worth the bother of having to reroll constantly and rehash the same content again and again with new characters. I wasn't *that* fanatical about the game.
By the way, we weren't playing on a permadeath server because we didn't need one. A gentleman's agreement was all that was necessary. If you die, you delete your character immediately. That way most people can play permadeath games whether there is a server mechanic that supports it or not. Oddly enough, few people ever choose to do it. I wonder why...
The new MMO from CCP the WoD one will have permadeath. I am kind of lookng forward to it as it will give weight to your actions and in a open pvp world can actualy calm down the griefers some what. As they will have more to loose if they miss calculate the enemy.
All anyone has ever said is that permadeath is a niche thing. "Niche" means a small portion of the market. Slightly over 4k people out of millions is a small portion of the market. Is it becoming obvious how silly you sound or shall I continue spelling it out for you?
this, permadeath IS a niche thing that the majority of people have no interest in, theres a reason why the majority of games dont have it, because most people dont want it, dont know why its so hard for the permadeath fanboys to understand.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
How does this topic show that permeadeath isn't a niche market? If anything it helps solidify the notion.
Oh...should I put a huge "face" comment at the end of my post? Or would the obligatory facepalm picture be more appropriate?
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Truthfully i could never see a perma-death game as hardcore, or more skilled based solely on it having perma-death in it. Perma-death is merely a machanic thaat is used to enforce that players pay more attention, as well as play smarter, or atleast more carefully. Yet nothing about losing your character for ever actually makes the game hardcore, or more skill based compared to other games with similar systems without such a penalty, although it does make the game more harsh causing it to have much more thought put forth by players. A game that has a more hardcore or skill-based system coould just as easily make the systems of combat, crafting, and such all more complex in their implimentation. which would make the game just as harsh as well as skill-based. Yet implementing the system as a much more complex system would also in my opinion make it much funner combat/crafting, then merely adding perma-death to the game would since the only thing that perma-death adds which such a system does not is a harsh penalty for losing a fight.
There's a perma-death guild in DDOI just discovered. I'm thinking of joining and rolling up a character to try it. Their highest level toon is 17 (out of 20), which is impressive, as deaths are common in this game with quests on elite. Sounds like it would be fun to try, as it would add a level of RPG with the planning, strategy, attachment to toon, etc.
I played permadeath in DDO once. Got to maybe level 12 before dying. Deleted my character and went back to "carebear" land. Yes, it makes things a bit more exciting, but to me, it's not worth the bother of having to reroll constantly and rehash the same content again and again with new characters. I wasn't *that* fanatical about the game.
By the way, we weren't playing on a permadeath server because we didn't need one. A gentleman's agreement was all that was necessary. If you die, you delete your character immediately. That way most people can play permadeath games whether there is a server mechanic that supports it or not. Oddly enough, few people ever choose to do it. I wonder why...
Because for it to work the mechanics need to be set up for it for everyone, if there is no penalty for death and everyone else can charge in and die then that's what people will do, the game is set up for you to repeatedly die. permadeath needs to be the games design from day 1.
There's a perma-death guild in DDOI just discovered. I'm thinking of joining and rolling up a character to try it. Their highest level toon is 17 (out of 20), which is impressive, as deaths are common in this game with quests on elite. Sounds like it would be fun to try, as it would add a level of RPG with the planning, strategy, attachment to toon, etc.
I played permadeath in DDO once. Got to maybe level 12 before dying. Deleted my character and went back to "carebear" land. Yes, it makes things a bit more exciting, but to me, it's not worth the bother of having to reroll constantly and rehash the same content again and again with new characters. I wasn't *that* fanatical about the game.
By the way, we weren't playing on a permadeath server because we didn't need one. A gentleman's agreement was all that was necessary. If you die, you delete your character immediately. That way most people can play permadeath games whether there is a server mechanic that supports it or not. Oddly enough, few people ever choose to do it. I wonder why...
Because for it to work the mechanics need to be set up for it for everyone, if there is no penalty for death and everyone else can charge in and die then that's what people will do, the game is set up for you to repeatedly die. permadeath needs to be the games design from day 1.
So your saying that only if everyone in a game have to play by a perma-death rule, or those that want to play perma-death cann't have fun. If we have an agreement that if you die at any time you will delete your character, then you have perma death which is not needed to be forced on others, while still giving the player a feeling of tension as they play. If you are going to make a game with perma-death in it that is central to the game then i would say yes it should be there, but no perma-death does not need to be in game from day one to worthwhile. The fact that you know f you die at any point that you will lose all of the gold, the items, and time you have spent will be more then meaningful to you regardless of when it is placed in, or who impliments it. For me i had a guild i played with that had a version of perma-death rule, in that after a certainn number of deaths in a row your character was considered dead (normally you had to delete your character or be booted from the guild.), at the time it was three deaths in a row would before deletion. This kind of rule gave that feel of tension as well as causion, while also not slowing the game's combat down too much for fear of perma-dieing from a bad run of luck or such.
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
Risk does not immediately equate to "challenge", but it can indeed increase a challenge through psychological reasons due to the fact that you have to perform under pressure. There are other "mechanics" which also apply pressure, but essentially most are through fear of loss of one sort or another (losing a cup final hurts, losing a non championship, run of the mill game hurts far less).
Not really sure why this thread is so long in all honesty. Risk clearly can add to a challenge and some people clearly enjoy a risk element in the activities they undertake, be it due to the increased challenge or due to the simple inherent thrill risk taking can provide. But is is obvious that the OP is incorrect, permadeath IS niche in the mmorpg genre, well across all the gaming genres let's face it. That is not to say a large amount of people don't enjoy it, it just means that in comparision to the main bulk of gamers, they are indeed a niche crowd.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
Risk does not immediately equate to "challenge", but it can indeed increase a challenge through psychological reasons due to the fact that you have to perform under pressure. There are other "mechanics" which also apply pressure, but essentially most are through fear of loss of one sort or another (losing a cup final hurts, losing a non championship, run of the mill game hurts far less).
Not really sure why this thread is so long in all honesty. Risk clearly can add to a challenge and some people clearly enjoy a risk element in the activities they undertake, be it due to the increased challenge or due to the simple inherent thrill risk taking can provide. But is is obvious that the OP is incorrect, permadeath IS niche in the mmorpg genre, well across all the gaming genres let's face it. That is not to say a large amount of people don't enjoy it, it just means that in comparision to the main bulk of gamers, they are indeed a niche crowd.
Sorry i got to disagree that risk in any way translates to challenge in a game, since risk is merely a way of givingg or making things having more or less meaning. Such as having a light death penalty makes combat as wel as losing/dieing less meaning full, and having a more harsh penalty makes them more meaningful. Yet even no matter how harsh or light a combat system is the challenge of it stays the same, while the player merely adjust their playstyle to compensate for the penalty of dieing. Only when the system of combat is changed to be more harsh on mistakes, making it also more complex, and so making the game largely harder/challeging to play or master would i say that a game is more or less hard then another game. Even in single player games where you have varied diffiulty settings, the penalty for dieing is not changed to increase diffiulty, but instead the diffiulty of the system for combat are adjusted to make it diffiutl. Such as making you fight more mobs, more durable mobs, faster mobs, or even more percise mobs. Also even adjusting the timuing needed to proform moves, excape traps or some attacks, and such things like countering an attack.
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
Risk does not immediately equate to "challenge", but it can indeed increase a challenge through psychological reasons due to the fact that you have to perform under pressure. There are other "mechanics" which also apply pressure, but essentially most are through fear of loss of one sort or another (losing a cup final hurts, losing a non championship, run of the mill game hurts far less).
Not really sure why this thread is so long in all honesty. Risk clearly can add to a challenge and some people clearly enjoy a risk element in the activities they undertake, be it due to the increased challenge or due to the simple inherent thrill risk taking can provide. But is is obvious that the OP is incorrect, permadeath IS niche in the mmorpg genre, well across all the gaming genres let's face it. That is not to say a large amount of people don't enjoy it, it just means that in comparision to the main bulk of gamers, they are indeed a niche crowd.
Sorry i got to disagree that risk in any way translates to challenge in a game, since risk is merely a way of givingg or making things having more or less meaning. Such as having a light death penalty makes combat as wel as losing/dieing less meaning full, and having a more harsh penalty makes them more meaningful. Yet even no matter how harsh or light a combat system is the challenge of it stays the same, while the player merely adjust their playstyle to compensate for the penalty of dieing. Only when the system of combat is changed to be more harsh on mistakes, making it also more complex, and so making the game largely harder/challeging to play or master would i say that a game is more or less hard then another game. Even in single player games where you have varied diffiulty settings, the penalty for dieing is not changed to increase diffiulty, but instead the diffiulty of the system for combat are adjusted to make it diffiutl. Such as making you fight more mobs, more durable mobs, faster mobs, or even more percise mobs. Also even adjusting the timuing needed to proform moves, excape traps or some attacks, and such things like countering an attack.
I think perhaps you have missed the point. The "challenge" is increased via psychological factors. The task at hand is not mechanically any more challenging, but to the user it can indeed be more challenging by merit of the fact that something is now "on the line".
Kicking a football into the back of a net is not difficult, doing it in front of 80,000 spectators when a cup final is on the line IS more challenging because there is something at stake and a psychological factor is brought into play, making it all the more challenging to the person involved. Whether the increased challenge is brought about my mental factors or is solely in the mind of the user makes little difference.
That said, simply whacking in a death penalty will not achieve the above unless there is some connect with the user and the mechanics in place in the first place are actually half decent. It is also clear that risks can add other forms of content to certain games above and beyond thrill seeking. I'm a strong advocate of risks like death penaltys in (certain) games, but not in slamming them into them for no reason whatsoever.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
Risk does not immediately equate to "challenge", but it can indeed increase a challenge through psychological reasons due to the fact that you have to perform under pressure. There are other "mechanics" which also apply pressure, but essentially most are through fear of loss of one sort or another (losing a cup final hurts, losing a non championship, run of the mill game hurts far less).
Not really sure why this thread is so long in all honesty. Risk clearly can add to a challenge and some people clearly enjoy a risk element in the activities they undertake, be it due to the increased challenge or due to the simple inherent thrill risk taking can provide. But is is obvious that the OP is incorrect, permadeath IS niche in the mmorpg genre, well across all the gaming genres let's face it. That is not to say a large amount of people don't enjoy it, it just means that in comparision to the main bulk of gamers, they are indeed a niche crowd.
Sorry i got to disagree that risk in any way translates to challenge in a game, since risk is merely a way of givingg or making things having more or less meaning. Such as having a light death penalty makes combat as wel as losing/dieing less meaning full, and having a more harsh penalty makes them more meaningful. Yet even no matter how harsh or light a combat system is the challenge of it stays the same, while the player merely adjust their playstyle to compensate for the penalty of dieing. Only when the system of combat is changed to be more harsh on mistakes, making it also more complex, and so making the game largely harder/challeging to play or master would i say that a game is more or less hard then another game. Even in single player games where you have varied diffiulty settings, the penalty for dieing is not changed to increase diffiulty, but instead the diffiulty of the system for combat are adjusted to make it diffiutl. Such as making you fight more mobs, more durable mobs, faster mobs, or even more percise mobs. Also even adjusting the timuing needed to proform moves, excape traps or some attacks, and such things like countering an attack.
I think perhaps you have missed the point. The "challenge" is increased via psychological factors. The task at hand is not mechanically any more challenging, but to the user it can indeed be more challenging by merit of the fact that something is now "on the line".
Kicking a football into the back of a net is not difficult, doing it in front of 80,000 spectators when a cup final is on the line IS more challenging because there is something at stake and a psychological factor is brought into play, making it all the more challenging to the person involved. Whether the increased challenge is brought about my mental factors or is solely in the mind of the user makes little difference.
That said, simply whacking in a death penalty will not achieve the above unless there is some connect with the user and the mechanics in place in the first place are actually half decent. It is also clear that risks can add other forms of content to certain games above and beyond thrill seeking. I'm a strong advocate of risks like death penaltys in (certain) games, but not in slamming them into them for no reason whatsoever.
To me that is not risk that is making the action undertaken more diffcult, but the tension or pressure of being watched, not merely or even the fact of losing anything yet could the lose be part of it maybe. It is the fact of or tension from being watched at that point weither it is for the game winning shot, or not that makes the actions more challenging, but the risk of losing is not the main component that makes the action harder. Even in situations where your action is not going to make or break you, if you are the focal point of attention, than what you are attempting to do is going to be more difficult then if you were doing it without that attention. Even to many that play perma-death/risk based games it is not that the risk makes the game more challenging that is what they seek, but that the risk makes the game feel more meaningful as they progress. As you said in your example of being infront of 80,000 spectators with the cup final on the line, it is not so much that the cup final is on the line, but that you have 80,000 people watching you that makes the action harder. While the fact that the cup final being at stake merely adds somethign small to the tension of the massive amount of people watching your action, but it is far from the risk that makes the action hard, but is the fact that your every movement is being watched at that moment which makes proforming the action harder. In almost any game where you have masssive amounts of people watching the ouotcome of the game, then you have this fact of actions that would normally be easy getting harder to proform, but it is not the risk that makes them hard, but merely the fact that you are being watched by a massive amount of people.
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I would disagree that faction PVP is the same as FFA PVP. I mean take WoW for instance. You can level up to cap without really running into any oposing factions. when I played I was in thunderbluff. and a few times aliance would come and attack, but that happened like once maybe twice before I hit cap. and I almost NEVER wen't and wandered around aliant teritory.
So a true FFA PVP you could get ganked 10 feet outside of your starting area.
Which is why it makes a BIG diffrence whether its faction based or not.
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Perma-death (ignoring the implementation complications) could work very well in a mmorpg. But other features, abit like open pvp, need to be built around and connected to it. You can't just add it to any old design plonk on top ~ seems most discussions don't distinguish this.
For simple eg: If you have perma-death where exploration is one of the main aims of the game, then "being the 1st" to discover a place that was very dangerous or cross the Mountains of Madness etc suddenly becomes a interesting and possibly secret worthy event "of how" etc. and so forth.
If you close some doors, you open others. But oc the implementation is an issue with networking is the practical problem aside from how to deal with the social dynamics and "near perfect information" that the web provides every gamer should they wish to exploit it.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Yep. If advancement and gear are nearly meaningless, then permadeath might work. but if you slap it onto a traditional MMO framework, complete with beloved gear, and advancement that takes dozens of hour or more, then players will eventually quit, or pretty much quit immediately after a huge lag spike or D/C hits, and they lose their guy for nothing.
On the other hand, if you make death highly unlikely, where you can be defeated, but to be killed takes some serious sacrifice from the killer, you might find enough players to support such an MMO.
For the most part the playerbase at large does not like or want perma-death, and so the small group of players that are supporting a game that uses it would be a niche game. I would not say that perma-death is a bad idea in a game setting, but that how perma-death has been implimented is what makes it a bad idea. In the pnp rpg games like D&D, WOD, and such death was dealt with in stages, and also had methods that coould be used to avoid losing yoru character that took alot of resourses to use yet were not full proof either. Like in the vampire setting of the WOD rpg a vampire had both a downed state called torpor that was like being in a suspended animation state, and also had what wass called final death that was quite hard to get the vampire to enter into so that they would actually die. While in D&D you had the fact that you needed to reduce a target to -10 (sometimes more.) hit points to kill them, since reducing them to 0 hit points just knocks them out merely, and then you have the fact that you could resurrect a fallen/dead allie if you had their ashes/body and the money for it although it was not a sure matter to do this 9Also you only had one chance to resurrect an ally). Add in how easy it would be for the actvities that players do to grief others in the game could result in a character's perma-death, and players do not want to have that feeling that another player has the fate of their character completely in their hand. Perma-death appeals to a small although devoted group of players in the playerbade, and your numbers shows this fact by how few donators they have gotten compared to how large the entirity of the playerbase is.
Death penalties don't add challenge.
If I ask you to walk over a 10-foot-wide bridge with rails, that's mind-bogglingly easy right? Zero challenge.
If I put that bridge over a 150-foot drop with spikes at the bottom....there's still zero challenge.
Challenge is the amount of skill required to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens if you fail, and doesn't impact challenge.
People want challenge. Challenge matters.
People don't want the game to excessively kick them when they're down. That's not fun. That's masochism.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Let's take your example to the next level.
Say we ask you to walk across a 100 foot log (no handrails of course) that is exactly...... 1 foot off the ground.
Or we ask you to walk across the same log which is suspended 100 feet about a roaring river filled with rocks
While the challenge will be exactly the same in each case, the risk of the latter makes the accomplishment far more rewarding and impressive, add's some "meaning" to if if you will.
People enjoy adding risk, especially if there is a chance for greater rewards.
But even if there's not, risk makes the person think twice, and determine if the challenge is really worth doing, or would they be better off going around the canyon and finding a safer alternative to the crossing?
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Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Sure, and some players value the risk element. But I was just refuting the idea that risk is challenge, when it obviously isn't.
The extra challenge in that situation is the need to keep your cool under the extra pressure.risk can add challenge to a challenge but to say risk is a challenge is to say a slot machine at vegas is a challenge.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
That and if the log is over a 100 foot ravine with a river at the bottom we can assume that there is a fair amount of air movment and wind... could throw you off of the log., not to mention if the log is by the river all of that water spray could make the log slippery, where as the log that is 1 foot over the ground doesn't have any of those issues.
:P
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I have never encountered a person who has ever brought up permadeath.(Besides on the internet). I don't want it to play a game where permadeath is forced on you. If it's an option than I could care less if it's in the game. However, I am not saying that I'm not open to the idea if it's implemented well enough, but I think the chances are slim.
Rift
It can't be forced on you, games are voluntary.If any of you bothered watching the dev video on their kickstarter page then you would know that they said that it is currently a single-player game, and they are tentatively planning for multi-player.
Perma-death is hardly anything new in single-player games. If you die, you load your last save. Also, with graphics like what I saw in the video, if it did become an MMO it would be a crappy browser-based MMO and I probably wouldn't be playing it anyway. As it is, it looks like a $5 offering on Steam. Any more than that, and these guys would just be ripping people off.
whatever any of you say about how great perma death is, because of the thrills, or challenge, or whatever.
let me know when you plan on playing Salem and what your numbers will be, I'll get some of my people to come and outnumber you and kill you unfairly. you'll quit the game after raging.
if there is some stupid bar against socializing or working together, its not an MMO any more its just a glorified lobby. if players CAN get together and do things in numbers, groups with lesser numbers will be killed no matter what their skill level is.
imagine the best swimmer in the world beaten to death by 30 people. skill and challenge are irrelevant in a plurality.
wow, fun.
the end.
I played permadeath in DDO once. Got to maybe level 12 before dying. Deleted my character and went back to "carebear" land. Yes, it makes things a bit more exciting, but to me, it's not worth the bother of having to reroll constantly and rehash the same content again and again with new characters. I wasn't *that* fanatical about the game.
By the way, we weren't playing on a permadeath server because we didn't need one. A gentleman's agreement was all that was necessary. If you die, you delete your character immediately. That way most people can play permadeath games whether there is a server mechanic that supports it or not. Oddly enough, few people ever choose to do it. I wonder why...
The new MMO from CCP the WoD one will have permadeath. I am kind of lookng forward to it as it will give weight to your actions and in a open pvp world can actualy calm down the griefers some what. As they will have more to loose if they miss calculate the enemy.
A big
from me for games going this route.
this, permadeath IS a niche thing that the majority of people have no interest in, theres a reason why the majority of games dont have it, because most people dont want it, dont know why its so hard for the permadeath fanboys to understand.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
How does this topic show that permeadeath isn't a niche market? If anything it helps solidify the notion.
Oh...should I put a huge "face" comment at the end of my post? Or would the obligatory facepalm picture be more appropriate?
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Truthfully i could never see a perma-death game as hardcore, or more skilled based solely on it having perma-death in it. Perma-death is merely a machanic thaat is used to enforce that players pay more attention, as well as play smarter, or atleast more carefully. Yet nothing about losing your character for ever actually makes the game hardcore, or more skill based compared to other games with similar systems without such a penalty, although it does make the game more harsh causing it to have much more thought put forth by players. A game that has a more hardcore or skill-based system coould just as easily make the systems of combat, crafting, and such all more complex in their implimentation. which would make the game just as harsh as well as skill-based. Yet implementing the system as a much more complex system would also in my opinion make it much funner combat/crafting, then merely adding perma-death to the game would since the only thing that perma-death adds which such a system does not is a harsh penalty for losing a fight.
I played permadeath in DDO once. Got to maybe level 12 before dying. Deleted my character and went back to "carebear" land. Yes, it makes things a bit more exciting, but to me, it's not worth the bother of having to reroll constantly and rehash the same content again and again with new characters. I wasn't *that* fanatical about the game.
By the way, we weren't playing on a permadeath server because we didn't need one. A gentleman's agreement was all that was necessary. If you die, you delete your character immediately. That way most people can play permadeath games whether there is a server mechanic that supports it or not. Oddly enough, few people ever choose to do it. I wonder why...
Because for it to work the mechanics need to be set up for it for everyone, if there is no penalty for death and everyone else can charge in and die then that's what people will do, the game is set up for you to repeatedly die. permadeath needs to be the games design from day 1.So your saying that only if everyone in a game have to play by a perma-death rule, or those that want to play perma-death cann't have fun. If we have an agreement that if you die at any time you will delete your character, then you have perma death which is not needed to be forced on others, while still giving the player a feeling of tension as they play. If you are going to make a game with perma-death in it that is central to the game then i would say yes it should be there, but no perma-death does not need to be in game from day one to worthwhile. The fact that you know f you die at any point that you will lose all of the gold, the items, and time you have spent will be more then meaningful to you regardless of when it is placed in, or who impliments it. For me i had a guild i played with that had a version of perma-death rule, in that after a certainn number of deaths in a row your character was considered dead (normally you had to delete your character or be booted from the guild.), at the time it was three deaths in a row would before deletion. This kind of rule gave that feel of tension as well as causion, while also not slowing the game's combat down too much for fear of perma-dieing from a bad run of luck or such.
Risk does not immediately equate to "challenge", but it can indeed increase a challenge through psychological reasons due to the fact that you have to perform under pressure. There are other "mechanics" which also apply pressure, but essentially most are through fear of loss of one sort or another (losing a cup final hurts, losing a non championship, run of the mill game hurts far less).
Not really sure why this thread is so long in all honesty. Risk clearly can add to a challenge and some people clearly enjoy a risk element in the activities they undertake, be it due to the increased challenge or due to the simple inherent thrill risk taking can provide. But is is obvious that the OP is incorrect, permadeath IS niche in the mmorpg genre, well across all the gaming genres let's face it. That is not to say a large amount of people don't enjoy it, it just means that in comparision to the main bulk of gamers, they are indeed a niche crowd.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Sorry i got to disagree that risk in any way translates to challenge in a game, since risk is merely a way of givingg or making things having more or less meaning. Such as having a light death penalty makes combat as wel as losing/dieing less meaning full, and having a more harsh penalty makes them more meaningful. Yet even no matter how harsh or light a combat system is the challenge of it stays the same, while the player merely adjust their playstyle to compensate for the penalty of dieing. Only when the system of combat is changed to be more harsh on mistakes, making it also more complex, and so making the game largely harder/challeging to play or master would i say that a game is more or less hard then another game. Even in single player games where you have varied diffiulty settings, the penalty for dieing is not changed to increase diffiulty, but instead the diffiulty of the system for combat are adjusted to make it diffiutl. Such as making you fight more mobs, more durable mobs, faster mobs, or even more percise mobs. Also even adjusting the timuing needed to proform moves, excape traps or some attacks, and such things like countering an attack.
I think perhaps you have missed the point. The "challenge" is increased via psychological factors. The task at hand is not mechanically any more challenging, but to the user it can indeed be more challenging by merit of the fact that something is now "on the line".
Kicking a football into the back of a net is not difficult, doing it in front of 80,000 spectators when a cup final is on the line IS more challenging because there is something at stake and a psychological factor is brought into play, making it all the more challenging to the person involved. Whether the increased challenge is brought about my mental factors or is solely in the mind of the user makes little difference.
That said, simply whacking in a death penalty will not achieve the above unless there is some connect with the user and the mechanics in place in the first place are actually half decent. It is also clear that risks can add other forms of content to certain games above and beyond thrill seeking. I'm a strong advocate of risks like death penaltys in (certain) games, but not in slamming them into them for no reason whatsoever.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
To me that is not risk that is making the action undertaken more diffcult, but the tension or pressure of being watched, not merely or even the fact of losing anything yet could the lose be part of it maybe. It is the fact of or tension from being watched at that point weither it is for the game winning shot, or not that makes the actions more challenging, but the risk of losing is not the main component that makes the action harder. Even in situations where your action is not going to make or break you, if you are the focal point of attention, than what you are attempting to do is going to be more difficult then if you were doing it without that attention. Even to many that play perma-death/risk based games it is not that the risk makes the game more challenging that is what they seek, but that the risk makes the game feel more meaningful as they progress. As you said in your example of being infront of 80,000 spectators with the cup final on the line, it is not so much that the cup final is on the line, but that you have 80,000 people watching you that makes the action harder. While the fact that the cup final being at stake merely adds somethign small to the tension of the massive amount of people watching your action, but it is far from the risk that makes the action hard, but is the fact that your every movement is being watched at that moment which makes proforming the action harder. In almost any game where you have masssive amounts of people watching the ouotcome of the game, then you have this fact of actions that would normally be easy getting harder to proform, but it is not the risk that makes them hard, but merely the fact that you are being watched by a massive amount of people.