Societies need rules and order of law to function.
MMOs are virtual societies.
nah .. MMOs are entertainment products. Any resemblence to a virtual society is purely coincidental and not a required part.
Yah...MMOs have thousands (or more) of real people playing their characters at the same time inside of the same game world. They are by their very nature virtual societies.
P.S. WOT is not an MMO and neither is D3 so please spare everyone the BS.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Permadeath don't work in MMO's unless you give the players the option to use or not like D2 and D3 did. Spending hours grinding, raiding, or questing to lose it all due to getting ganked by 5 tards makes no sense for a MMO.
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
its a flawed design concept that many here on this forum hate to admit.
The only flaw is how people are thinking it should work. They are essentially taking the systems of known games and in their minds just "adding permadeath" on to them as opposed to re-imagining an entire system based on this concept.
There is a paradigm shift that needs to happen but people are either not willing or incapable of making it.
Bullshit. You can stick that "you just don't get it"-card right back into your pocket, mister. And if you ever want to be taken seriously, you'll never try to use it again.....
Nope. Sovrath is an intelligent and respected member of this community that will always be taken seriously. His post is well written and touches on some very real issues. I'm actually kind of surprised it caused you to become so dramatic. Or am I?
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Societies need rules and order of law to function.
MMOs are virtual societies.
nah .. MMOs are entertainment products. Any resemblence to a virtual society is purely coincidental and not a required part.
Yah...MMOs have thousands (or more) of real people playing their characters at the same time inside of the same game world. They are by their very nature virtual societies.
P.S. WOT is not an MMO and neither is D3 so please spare everyone the BS.
Wait. You're saying WoT and D3 don't have virtual societies?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Permadeath is only rewarding if the reward is insane power. SWG for example did this with amazingly powerful Jedi during Pre-CU... the problem is that an alpha class in any game that can destroy groups of people will always cause balance issues. Eventually things just spiral out of control.
I'm glad some people enjoy permadeath just for the rush. I enjoyed living on the edge in Path of Exile's hardcore league for a while. But the rush just ends at some point for me.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
its a flawed design concept that many here on this forum hate to admit.
The only flaw is how people are thinking it should work. They are essentially taking the systems of known games and in their minds just "adding permadeath" on to them as opposed to re-imagining an entire system based on this concept.
There is a paradigm shift that needs to happen but people are either not willing or incapable of making it.
Bullshit. You can stick that "you just don't get it"-card right back into your pocket, mister. And if you ever want to be taken seriously, you'll never try to use it again.
Obviously if a game uses permadeath it needs to be designed for it from the ground up. I doubt many disagree with this. The point is, even if you designed it in such a way, it would be fairly problematic. I, for one, would question its value for all the trouble and financial risks it brings. It is unlikely worth it.
And yet time after time people point out that players don't want to lose all their hard work, their progression, their "gear". On top of that there is the whole "griefer" argument whereby a perma-death game is solely populated by victims and griefers, not taking into account that systems might be added where "griefing" becomes more trouble than it's worth.
So "yeah" I'll use it and use it often until I see arguments that actually discount those systems. don't' see many of them when these threads come up.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Societies need rules and order of law to function.
MMOs are virtual societies.
nah .. MMOs are entertainment products. Any resemblence to a virtual society is purely coincidental and not a required part.
Yah...MMOs have thousands (or more) of real people playing their characters at the same time inside of the same game world. They are by their very nature virtual societies.
P.S. WOT is not an MMO and neither is D3 so please spare everyone the BS.
Wait. You're saying WoT and D3 don't have virtual societies?
I wouldn't call them virtual societies at all. WOT for example is nothing more than a than couple of handfuls of people at a time playing a TPS/FPS lobby game with a dash of progression thrown in. I do like the game but virtual society? Hell no.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
We had permadeath in the MUSH days. Then again, those games were about playing in character. Combat was rare. You could go weeks without having anyone fight at all. And when fights did happen? Well, they were full of narrative, decisive and deadly. Even if you won, you could suffer permanent injury.
Permadeath worked in the MUSH days because they weren't about xXDEATHDEALERXx twinking out a combat toon. They were about telling a collective story. Some of the most powerful folks didn't fight at all, and would probably die real easily if they were attacked. They got to where they were because of their roleplaying abilities and the ability to GM whole factions through events.
So, why didn't a guy just roll up a toon, go up to the head of the faction, pema-kill him, and say "haha I pwnz j00, LOL"?
Because that would beLAME, which is a word that has--regrettably--been lost in our online gaming vocabulary.
What is "lameness" in gaming terms? Well, it is performing an action that the mechanics allow, but is totally against the spirit of what the game is trying to accomplish. But this is a foreign concept these days, when players see games like Sirlin does. Today's player sees nothing wrong with killing Lord British if the mechanics allow it. Legal? Yes. Lame? Most certainly.
I have no problem with permadeath, if the game is played by people who aren't lam0rz. But I doubt that anybody here really knows the difference between something that isn't lame, and something that is.
Without that inner sense of knowing what is lame, one can only assume that the game will be lame. How do I know? Because you permadeathers always seem to argue on the grounds of what you'd like to encourage. But you never really talk about what the game should be about.
Or, to put it another way, who is the one who ought to be enjoying himself in your permadeath game? What are you going to do to promote this type of player? Perhaps--most importantly--how do you prevent your game from becoming lame?
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Societies need rules and order of law to function.
MMOs are virtual societies.
nah .. MMOs are entertainment products. Any resemblence to a virtual society is purely coincidental and not a required part.
Yah...MMOs have thousands (or more) of real people playing their characters at the same time inside of the same game world. They are by their very nature virtual societies.
P.S. WOT is not an MMO and neither is D3 so please spare everyone the BS.
Nah .. most of them will be running instance dungeons & raids. If you call those instances "same game world", then it should apply to D3 and WOT too.
I wouldn't call them virtual societies at all. WOT for example is nothing more than a than couple of handfuls of people at a time playing a TPS/FPS lobby game with a dash of progression thrown in. I do like the game but virtual society? Hell no.
Sounds like many MMOs, except the lobby is a 3D city instead of a menu.
If talking to a person in a 3D city is "socializing", then chatting with a person on a lobby menu is the same. Heck you use the same style text chat box.
I can do that in WOW, as well as D3, and other non-MMOs.
Depending on the function of the game and how social it is, nobody cares if you perma die, or get ganked until the cows come home. Reason being, there is no atmosphere of being a community to support each other.
However, if you build the game correctly, people will group together to fight back these kinds of forces.
The whole Trollol of the MMO permadeath world has no honor these days. I don't think they even know the definition of it. Getting someone while they're down or fighting a mob is just.. really lame. It's like they couldn't even stand up on their own.
I wouldn't call them virtual societies at all. WOT for example is nothing more than a than couple of handfuls of people at a time playing a TPS/FPS lobby game with a dash of progression thrown in. I do like the game but virtual society? Hell no.
WoT has quite a lively community playing it. The crucial part of it is the clan wars, which I'm guessing you didn't participate in.
You're wrong.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
And yet time after time people point out that players don't want to lose all their hard work, their progression, their "gear". On top of that there is the whole "griefer" argument whereby a perma-death game is solely populated by victims and griefers, not taking into account that systems might be added where "griefing" becomes more trouble than it's worth.
So "yeah" I'll use it and use it often until I see arguments that actually discount those systems. don't' see many of them when these threads come up.
But its not just griefing you have to take great measures against. You have to account for deaths due to bugs and connection issues.
Will you have any sort of significant advancement in it? Any snowball effect? What sort of PvP if any at all? Can players just gang up on others no matter what gear and advancement you have accumulated or how skilled of a player you are, you will still lose. Is that fun for you?
Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters. Permadeath on a single character would absolutely devastate it. People yap about risk and reward in those games yet the primary thing they do while playing is to minimize or eliminate the risk component entirely. And since they don't take risks, metagame will be slow, people will only engage stuff that they can surely win, and PvP would be reduced to ganking, PK and griefing.
How do you prompt people to challenge themselves so they don't quit because they got bored. Why do the players do what they do? Gear grind, XP grind, material grind? What?
What would be the motivator to roll a new character in such a game? If death wipes the table clean, what prevents people from quitting after they die?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
And yet time after time people point out that players don't want to lose all their hard work, their progression, their "gear". On top of that there is the whole "griefer" argument whereby a perma-death game is solely populated by victims and griefers, not taking into account that systems might be added where "griefing" becomes more trouble than it's worth.
So "yeah" I'll use it and use it often until I see arguments that actually discount those systems. don't' see many of them when these threads come up.
But its not just griefing you have to take great measures against. You have to account for deaths due to bugs and connection issues.
Will you have any sort of significant advancement in it? Any snowball effect? What sort of PvP if any at all? Can players just gang up on others no matter what gear and advancement you have accumulated or how skilled of a player you are, you will still lose. Is that fun for you?
Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters. Permadeath on a single character would absolutely devastate it. People yap about risk and reward in those games yet the primary thing they do while playing is to minimize or eliminate the risk component entirely. And since they don't take risks, metagame will be slow, people will only engage stuff that they can surely win, and PvP would be reduced to ganking, PK and griefing.
How do you prompt people to challenge themselves so they don't quit because they got bored. Why do the players do what they do? Gear grind, XP grind, material grind? What?
What would be the motivator to roll a new character in such a game? If death wipes the table clean, what prevents people from quitting after they die?
I would agree that single death PD in an MMO is a bit harsh for aforementioned connection issues. That's why I favor designs that provide multiple lives.
You mention that "Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters." I agree that it would likely reduce the frequency of PvP encounters, but disagree that it would reduce the quality. It would create a very different PvP environment than what we see in most MMOs. More strategy and planning, less run and gun. Lots of bloddless standoffs. I don't see this as inherently bad, just a different type of gameplay. I also don't believe the allure of being a griefer in a PD PvP environment exceeds the additional hassle that PD presents for griefers. Being a griefer is MORE of a hassle in a PD game because griefers, at risk of losing their own characters, have to be much more discerning in their targets, or rely on overwhelming numbers. Anti-pkers would also have the option of organizing and meaningfully retaliating. I'm not so foolish as to think there wouldn't be griefing, but I don't see it as MORE of a problem than in other games.
Also, players will reroll if the gameplay is actually fun and exciting. They also don't lose their player communities. The grind would have to be less central than in most MMOs, in so far as a low-level player shouldn't be a useless wimp.
How does this bear out in the game the OP is talking about? I'm curious.
And yet time after time people point out that players don't want to lose all their hard work, their progression, their "gear". On top of that there is the whole "griefer" argument whereby a perma-death game is solely populated by victims and griefers, not taking into account that systems might be added where "griefing" becomes more trouble than it's worth.
So "yeah" I'll use it and use it often until I see arguments that actually discount those systems. don't' see many of them when these threads come up.
But its not just griefing you have to take great measures against. You have to account for deaths due to bugs and connection issues.
Will you have any sort of significant advancement in it? Any snowball effect? What sort of PvP if any at all? Can players just gang up on others no matter what gear and advancement you have accumulated or how skilled of a player you are, you will still lose. Is that fun for you?
Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters. Permadeath on a single character would absolutely devastate it. People yap about risk and reward in those games yet the primary thing they do while playing is to minimize or eliminate the risk component entirely. And since they don't take risks, metagame will be slow, people will only engage stuff that they can surely win, and PvP would be reduced to ganking, PK and griefing.
How do you prompt people to challenge themselves so they don't quit because they got bored. Why do the players do what they do? Gear grind, XP grind, material grind? What?
What would be the motivator to roll a new character in such a game? If death wipes the table clean, what prevents people from quitting after they die?
and that's the very reason I said that people need to shift their paradigm because a game with perma-death might have to be developed from the ground up with perma-death in mind.
So maybe perma-death doesn't wipe the slate clean. Maybe there are separate types of progression. One that is based on your dynasty of characters and then another based on the characters themselves.
Maybe the character progression is more narrow and far less taxing but feeds into the dynasty progression?
So maybe the dynasty progression is a bit like an rts where you build up resources, maybe structures (representative structures?) that give your character abilities and benefits. This can be the long term progression and supplies buffs or resources to your characters.
This way you can work on more meaningful, longer term goals and they won't be wiped out but your individual characters can be terminated. Do they have "x" amount of lives like the post above indicates? Don't know, possibility.
As far as dying through bugs and disconnects, I think the game company can look into whether there was a disconnect or a bad bug that caused a death.
The only issue there, that I see, are players who "pull the plug" if they think they are going to die so that they can "claim" they were disconnected. I have no answer for that but I'm sure someone can be clever.
as far as pvp, this points, again, to the shifting of your paradigm regarding characters. With a more narrow, obtainable, character progression, the player can look at their characters as one link in a chain of characters, not "their only character". This way they might be more likely to engage in pvp.
Have you ever played the total war series of games? You level up generals, leaders of armies and you have many of them. They supply various benefits to your troops and each one is different. However, they do fall in battle and fall permanently. Does a player bemoan their loss? Usually you move another general into that unit's slot and level and cultivate him.
So perhaps a permadeath game will allow players to have characters that might not be so numerous like a total war game but allow for players to think of their characters in a different way.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
And yet time after time people point out that players don't want to lose all their hard work, their progression, their "gear". On top of that there is the whole "griefer" argument whereby a perma-death game is solely populated by victims and griefers, not taking into account that systems might be added where "griefing" becomes more trouble than it's worth.
So "yeah" I'll use it and use it often until I see arguments that actually discount those systems. don't' see many of them when these threads come up.
But its not just griefing you have to take great measures against. You have to account for deaths due to bugs and connection issues.
Will you have any sort of significant advancement in it? Any snowball effect? What sort of PvP if any at all? Can players just gang up on others no matter what gear and advancement you have accumulated or how skilled of a player you are, you will still lose. Is that fun for you?
Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters. Permadeath on a single character would absolutely devastate it. People yap about risk and reward in those games yet the primary thing they do while playing is to minimize or eliminate the risk component entirely. And since they don't take risks, metagame will be slow, people will only engage stuff that they can surely win, and PvP would be reduced to ganking, PK and griefing.
How do you prompt people to challenge themselves so they don't quit because they got bored. Why do the players do what they do? Gear grind, XP grind, material grind? What?
What would be the motivator to roll a new character in such a game? If death wipes the table clean, what prevents people from quitting after they die?
I would agree that single death PD in an MMO is a bit harsh for aforementioned connection issues. That's why I favor designs that provide multiple lives.
You mention that "Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters." I agree that it would likely reduce the frequency of PvP encounters, but disagree that it would reduce the quality. It would create a very different PvP environment than what we see in most MMOs. More strategy and planning, less run and gun. Lots of bloddless standoffs. I don't see this as inherently bad, just a different type of gameplay. I also don't believe the allure of being a griefer in a PD PvP environment exceeds the additional hassle that PD presents for griefers. Being a griefer is MORE of a hassle in a PD game because griefers, at risk of losing their own characters, have to be much more discerning in their targets, or rely on overwhelming numbers. Anti-pkers would also have the option of organizing and meaningfully retaliating. I'm not so foolish as to think there wouldn't be griefing, but I don't see it as MORE of a problem than in other games.
Also, players will reroll if the gameplay is actually fun and exciting. They also don't lose their player communities. The grind would have to be less central than in most MMOs, in so far as a low-level player shouldn't be a useless wimp.
How does this bear out in the game the OP is talking about? I'm curious.
Multiple lives is a bad idea best explained by Axehilt on another thread discussing PD before this. I think its actually worse than single PD.
Standoffs are bad. And so are one-sided steamrolls. That is what it devolves into. That is what it is in Eve 95% of the time. You can spend hours upon hours preparing for something and nothing happens. It is extremely anti-climactic and frustrating.
And if the gameplay is "actually fun and exciting" why would you need PD in the first place!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
and that's the very reason I said that people need to shift their paradigm because a game with perma-death might have to be developed from the ground up with perma-death in mind.
So maybe perma-death doesn't wipe the slate clean. Maybe there are separate types of progression. One that is based on your dynasty of characters and then another based on the characters themselves.
Maybe the character progression is more narrow and far less taxing but feeds into the dynasty progression?
So maybe the dynasty progression is a bit like an rts where you build up resources, maybe structures (representative structures?) that give your character abilities and benefits. This can be the long term progression and supplies buffs or resources to your characters.
This way you can work on more meaningful, longer term goals and they won't be wiped out but your individual characters can be terminated. Do they have "x" amount of lives like the post above indicates? Don't know, possibility.
As far as dying through bugs and disconnects, I think the game company can look into whether there was a disconnect or a bad bug that caused a death.
The only issue there, that I see, are players who "pull the plug" if they think they are going to die so that they can "claim" they were disconnected. I have no answer for that but I'm sure someone can be clever.
as far as pvp, this points, again, to the shifting of your paradigm regarding characters. With a more narrow, obtainable, character progression, the player can look at their characters as one link in a chain of characters, not "their only character". This way they might be more likely to engage in pvp.
Have you ever played the total war series of games? You level up generals, leaders of armies and you have many of them. They supply various benefits to your troops and each one is different. However, they do fall in battle and fall permanently. Does a player bemoan their loss? Usually you move another general into that unit's slot and level and cultivate him.
So perhaps a permadeath game will allow players to have characters that might not be so numerous like a total war game but allow for players to think of their characters in a different way.
They're just objectives why do you have to put "meaningful" in front of them. They're just objectives, whether they're meaningful or not is a subjective opinion.
Permadeath applied to units in a strategy game is not the same as permadeath in an RPG. Units are a commodity, gear. Even if they accumulate experience and even if they die permanently they're essentially the same as a sword or any other piece of gear in an RPG. And when you lose, you may or may not lose that sword. It is equivalent to gear or XP loss.
In other words, permadeath in a strategy game and permadeath in an RPG are not equivalent.
Oh, and by the way: You are doing the same thing in your reply that people do in games with harsh death penalty. They talk about how they want high risk and high reward, but then proceed to getting rid of the risk. In one hand you want a high impact upon death, but in the other you don't want to lose too much.
What is the point of all this? Since even you don't want to wipe the slate clean, what are the virtues of PD you cannot get from other death penalties?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
and that's the very reason I said that people need to shift their paradigm because a game with perma-death might have to be developed from the ground up with perma-death in mind.
So maybe perma-death doesn't wipe the slate clean. Maybe there are separate types of progression. One that is based on your dynasty of characters and then another based on the characters themselves.
Maybe the character progression is more narrow and far less taxing but feeds into the dynasty progression?
So maybe the dynasty progression is a bit like an rts where you build up resources, maybe structures (representative structures?) that give your character abilities and benefits. This can be the long term progression and supplies buffs or resources to your characters.
This way you can work on more meaningful, longer term goals and they won't be wiped out but your individual characters can be terminated. Do they have "x" amount of lives like the post above indicates? Don't know, possibility.
As far as dying through bugs and disconnects, I think the game company can look into whether there was a disconnect or a bad bug that caused a death.
The only issue there, that I see, are players who "pull the plug" if they think they are going to die so that they can "claim" they were disconnected. I have no answer for that but I'm sure someone can be clever.
as far as pvp, this points, again, to the shifting of your paradigm regarding characters. With a more narrow, obtainable, character progression, the player can look at their characters as one link in a chain of characters, not "their only character". This way they might be more likely to engage in pvp.
Have you ever played the total war series of games? You level up generals, leaders of armies and you have many of them. They supply various benefits to your troops and each one is different. However, they do fall in battle and fall permanently. Does a player bemoan their loss? Usually you move another general into that unit's slot and level and cultivate him.
So perhaps a permadeath game will allow players to have characters that might not be so numerous like a total war game but allow for players to think of their characters in a different way.
They're just objectives why do you have to put "meaningful" in front of them. They're just objectives, whether they're meaningful or not is a subjective opinion.
Permadeath applied to units in a strategy game is not the same as permadeath in an RPG. Units are a commodity, gear. Even if they accumulate experience and even if they die permanently they're essentially the same as a sword or any other piece of gear in an RPG. And when you lose, you may or may not lose that sword. It is equivalent to gear or XP loss.
In other words, permadeath in a strategy game and permadeath in an RPG are not equivalent.
Oh, and by the way: You are doing the same thing in your reply that people do in games with harsh death penalty. They talk about how they want high risk and high reward, but then proceed to getting rid of the risk. In one hand you want a high impact upon death, but in the other you don't want to lose too much.
What is the point of all this? Since even you don't want to wipe the slate clean, what are the virtues of PD you cannot get from other death penalties?
1, So what if meaningful is subjective? I used the word because "I used it". At this point it's a colloquialism. you are nit picking. Who cares?
2, I am not saying they should be like units in a rts I am saying that there are game play features that can be similiar to an rts and if one were to think about the entirety of one's characters as opposed to "OMFG I HAVE ONE CHARACTER AND I CAN'T LOOZ MY GEARZ" then the idea of permadeath might make more sense over the span of game play.
3, There are gradations to "risk" and that is also subjective. I say more narrow risk as to make the progression from one character to another more smooth as opposed to having people flip out but I have no problem with the "characters" having a more in depth progression. Still, the progression from one character to another has to be smooth and "sting" but not stop game paly.
4, your arguments are kind of moot because in the end you are arguing why "you" wouldn't play this game. I would play a game with permadeath if the game play made sense and I liked the game. Others would as well.
It would be a small group of people but as long as the game was good and as long as the game company was realstic in their goals and could make enough money to keep it going then it would be a non-issue.
Let me ask this, do you play Demon Souls or Dark souls? in those games you can die easily and lose all your souls which are essentially a type of progression. Oh sure, you don't lose your character but that's not my ponit. my point is that you can have a huge amount of "currency" taken away by just rounding the corner. really.
So do you play these games? Because some do (myself included) and we like the high risk of it. So why is it so hard for you to understand that the issues you bring up might not matter to other players?
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
1, So what if meaningful is subjective? I used the word because "I used it". At this point it's a colloquialism. you are nit picking. Who cares?
2, I am not saying they should be like units in a rts I am saying that there are game play features that can be similiar to an rts and if one were to think about the entirety of one's characters as opposed to "OMFG I HAVE ONE CHARACTER AND I CAN'T LOOZ MY GEARZ" then the idea of permadeath might make more sense over the span of game play.
3, There are gradations to "risk" and that is also subjective. I say more narrow risk as to make the progression from one character to another more smooth as opposed to having people flip out but I have no problem with the "characters" having a more in depth progression. Still, the progression from one character to another has to be smooth and "sting" but not stop game paly.
4, your arguments are kind of moot because in the end you are arguing why "you" wouldn't play this game. I would play a game with permadeath if the game play made sense and I liked the game. Others would as well.
It would be a small group of people but as long as the game was good and as long as the game company was realstic in their goals and could make enough money to keep it going then it would be a non-issue.
Let me ask this, do you play Demon Souls or Dark souls? in those games you can die easily and lose all your souls which are essentially a type of progression. Oh sure, you don't lose your character but that's not my ponit. my point is that you can have a huge amount of "currency" taken away by just rounding the corner. really.
So do you play these games? Because some do (myself included) and we like the high risk of it. So why is it so hard for you to understand that the issues you bring up might not matter to other players?
Dark Souls has harsh death penatly, sure, but it is still very far from permadeath. It is confusing to discuss the matter with you when you clearly don't know any good examples of permadeath games to begin with. I'll help you: your best/closest examples would be action RPGs in hardcore mode or any of the old dungeon crawlers with permadeath.
None has PvP, atleast not in any significant sense (ARPGs). So they're PvE games. Both are basically games to see how far you can go without dying. That was the point in those dungeon crawlers.
I played Dark Souls, I've played multiple ARPGs on hardcore mode, wide array of dungeon crawlers... I highly doubt there's anything I don't "get". I know that there is no reasonable penalty a game could impose upon failure that would have any effect on me. So what is left is unreasonable penalty: reserved for masochists only.
Harsh death penalty is a nuisance still, but atleast you don't have to redesign the whole game for it. Its not worth it. And please, don't play the victim.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
and that's the very reason I said that people need to shift their paradigm because a game with perma-death might have to be developed from the ground up with perma-death in mind.
Obviously not. D3 does it by adding PD as an option. Works perfectly well. Not everyone will use it (i won't) but it satisfies those who want it.
1, So what if meaningful is subjective? I used the word because "I used it". At this point it's a colloquialism. you are nit picking. Who cares?
2, I am not saying they should be like units in a rts I am saying that there are game play features that can be similiar to an rts and if one were to think about the entirety of one's characters as opposed to "OMFG I HAVE ONE CHARACTER AND I CAN'T LOOZ MY GEARZ" then the idea of permadeath might make more sense over the span of game play.
3, There are gradations to "risk" and that is also subjective. I say more narrow risk as to make the progression from one character to another more smooth as opposed to having people flip out but I have no problem with the "characters" having a more in depth progression. Still, the progression from one character to another has to be smooth and "sting" but not stop game paly.
4, your arguments are kind of moot because in the end you are arguing why "you" wouldn't play this game. I would play a game with permadeath if the game play made sense and I liked the game. Others would as well.
It would be a small group of people but as long as the game was good and as long as the game company was realstic in their goals and could make enough money to keep it going then it would be a non-issue.
Let me ask this, do you play Demon Souls or Dark souls? in those games you can die easily and lose all your souls which are essentially a type of progression. Oh sure, you don't lose your character but that's not my ponit. my point is that you can have a huge amount of "currency" taken away by just rounding the corner. really.
So do you play these games? Because some do (myself included) and we like the high risk of it. So why is it so hard for you to understand that the issues you bring up might not matter to other players?
Dark Souls has harsh death penatly, sure, but it is still very far from permadeath. It is confusing to discuss the matter with you when you clearly don't know any good examples of permadeath games to begin with. I'll help you: your best/closest examples would be action RPGs in hardcore mode or any of the old dungeon crawlers with permadeath.
None has PvP, atleast not in any significant sense (ARPGs). So they're PvE games. Both are basically games to see how far you can go without dying. That was the point in those dungeon crawlers.
I played Dark Souls, I've played multiple ARPGs on hardcore mode, wide array of dungeon crawlers... I highly doubt there's anything I don't "get". I know that there is no reasonable penalty a game could impose upon failure that would have any effect on me. So what is left is unreasonable penalty: reserved for masochists only.
Harsh death penalty is a nuisance still, but atleast you don't have to redesign the whole game for it. Its not worth it. And please, don't play the victim.
except you could just look at what I'm saying as opposed to "whatever you are doing".
You did the same thing with the rts "example".
I didn't bring up dark souls as an example of permadeath and I even said that. The idea was whether or not you have played a game where a huge amount of risk was on the line. So, for instance, in Dark Souls you can't progress if you lose your souls. And you can lose your souls by just going up a stair way. Since you've played it you know this.
It's extreme and that's the point. Permadeath can also be extreme. How extreme depends upon the game design.
As far as good examples of permadeath, I've given examples, in this discussion, of permadeath that I might find attractive. I don't know of many permadeath games but the idea becomes more attractive as I get older as most games now are so easy to get through without dying once they seem a bit bland. So I will be looking out for them.
To answer the part I highlighed "that's subjecttive" (to use your word) and "so what"? If I and others want to be masochists and play a permadeath game what do you care? More to the point, if a game comapny can make a permadeath game that has players and can make enough money to stay afloat "what do you care"?
You are so bent on trying to tell people it doesn't work and yet I suspect that all your arguments are just you insisting why you don't like it.
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To answer the part I highlighed "that's subjecttive" (to use your word) and "so what"? If I and others want to be masochists and play a permadeath game what do you care? More to the point, if a game comapny can make a permadeath game that has players and can make enough money to stay afloat "what do you care"?
Of course i don't. People have different preferences. The only debatable question is whether the market of PD is big enough for any serious dev action.
From the success of D3, and you can see a big list of hard core char on diabloprogress.com, i would say at least there is enough demand to put in such an option.
To answer the part I highlighed "that's subjecttive" (to use your word) and "so what"? If I and others want to be masochists and play a permadeath game what do you care? More to the point, if a game comapny can make a permadeath game that has players and can make enough money to stay afloat "what do you care"?
Of course i don't. People have different preferences. The only debatable question is whether the market of PD is big enough for any serious dev action.
From the success of D3, and you can see a big list of hard core char on diabloprogress.com, i would say at least there is enough demand to put in such an option.
I think it's important to give one caveat. Something that Quirhid said that rang a bell.
He said that some people say they want high risk and high reward but in reality they don't.
This comes back to a recent Jimquisition, it was entitled "Pasta Sauce". He also made mention of it in his latest installment.
Essentially, when customers were asked if they liked a certain pasta sauce or whether they liked "rich dark, robust coffee" most of them said "yes".
But when buying habits were evaluated that wasn't the case.
In the case of the coffee, most people were buying a medium roast brand. Even though they said they wanted "rich dark, robust coffee".
And I would say that makes sense and I can see the truth in it. Same with the whole "high risk" thing. It's why if I was ever pk'ed in Lineage 2 the attacker would be smug or would be insulting but as soon as I repaid the deed they would cry and scream and threaten, etc.
It's like they didn't buy into the system they were a part of.
However, there is one part of that observation that can't be dismissed: Just because most people bought the medium roast coffee, perhaps using cream and sugar to make it even more palatable, doesn't mean that there aren't people who actually do drink dark, robust coffee.
Just so happens that I drink freshly ground french roast coffee. Black.
So yeah, there is a small group out there who "don't mind being masochists". If that's truly what we really are. Which I doubt.
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Comments
Yah...MMOs have thousands (or more) of real people playing their characters at the same time inside of the same game world. They are by their very nature virtual societies.
P.S. WOT is not an MMO and neither is D3 so please spare everyone the BS.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
Nope. Sovrath is an intelligent and respected member of this community that will always be taken seriously. His post is well written and touches on some very real issues. I'm actually kind of surprised it caused you to become so dramatic. Or am I?
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Wait. You're saying WoT and D3 don't have virtual societies?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Permadeath is only rewarding if the reward is insane power. SWG for example did this with amazingly powerful Jedi during Pre-CU... the problem is that an alpha class in any game that can destroy groups of people will always cause balance issues. Eventually things just spiral out of control.
I'm glad some people enjoy permadeath just for the rush. I enjoyed living on the edge in Path of Exile's hardcore league for a while. But the rush just ends at some point for me.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
And yet time after time people point out that players don't want to lose all their hard work, their progression, their "gear". On top of that there is the whole "griefer" argument whereby a perma-death game is solely populated by victims and griefers, not taking into account that systems might be added where "griefing" becomes more trouble than it's worth.
So "yeah" I'll use it and use it often until I see arguments that actually discount those systems. don't' see many of them when these threads come up.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I just can't see how it could be done in a way where you could still have meaningfull progression.
Family type units are one way but I must admit I would end up not caring about the family pretty quick, just less attachment after so many deaths.
That was my problem with game of thrones, I know they did well, I just stopped caring about the characters.
Last nights episode when Cate killed the river lord guys wife, "I'll just get another". No attachment.
I wouldn't call them virtual societies at all. WOT for example is nothing more than a than couple of handfuls of people at a time playing a TPS/FPS lobby game with a dash of progression thrown in. I do like the game but virtual society? Hell no.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
We had permadeath in the MUSH days. Then again, those games were about playing in character. Combat was rare. You could go weeks without having anyone fight at all. And when fights did happen? Well, they were full of narrative, decisive and deadly. Even if you won, you could suffer permanent injury.
Permadeath worked in the MUSH days because they weren't about xXDEATHDEALERXx twinking out a combat toon. They were about telling a collective story. Some of the most powerful folks didn't fight at all, and would probably die real easily if they were attacked. They got to where they were because of their roleplaying abilities and the ability to GM whole factions through events.
So, why didn't a guy just roll up a toon, go up to the head of the faction, pema-kill him, and say "haha I pwnz j00, LOL"?
Because that would be LAME, which is a word that has--regrettably--been lost in our online gaming vocabulary.
What is "lameness" in gaming terms? Well, it is performing an action that the mechanics allow, but is totally against the spirit of what the game is trying to accomplish. But this is a foreign concept these days, when players see games like Sirlin does. Today's player sees nothing wrong with killing Lord British if the mechanics allow it. Legal? Yes. Lame? Most certainly.
I have no problem with permadeath, if the game is played by people who aren't lam0rz. But I doubt that anybody here really knows the difference between something that isn't lame, and something that is.
Without that inner sense of knowing what is lame, one can only assume that the game will be lame. How do I know? Because you permadeathers always seem to argue on the grounds of what you'd like to encourage. But you never really talk about what the game should be about.
Or, to put it another way, who is the one who ought to be enjoying himself in your permadeath game? What are you going to do to promote this type of player? Perhaps--most importantly--how do you prevent your game from becoming lame?
__________________________
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--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Nah .. most of them will be running instance dungeons & raids. If you call those instances "same game world", then it should apply to D3 and WOT too.
Sounds like many MMOs, except the lobby is a 3D city instead of a menu.
If talking to a person in a 3D city is "socializing", then chatting with a person on a lobby menu is the same. Heck you use the same style text chat box.
I can do that in WOW, as well as D3, and other non-MMOs.
Trollols are considered 'cool' today.
Depending on the function of the game and how social it is, nobody cares if you perma die, or get ganked until the cows come home. Reason being, there is no atmosphere of being a community to support each other.
However, if you build the game correctly, people will group together to fight back these kinds of forces.
The whole Trollol of the MMO permadeath world has no honor these days. I don't think they even know the definition of it. Getting someone while they're down or fighting a mob is just.. really lame. It's like they couldn't even stand up on their own.
WoT has quite a lively community playing it. The crucial part of it is the clan wars, which I'm guessing you didn't participate in.
You're wrong.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
But its not just griefing you have to take great measures against. You have to account for deaths due to bugs and connection issues.
Will you have any sort of significant advancement in it? Any snowball effect? What sort of PvP if any at all? Can players just gang up on others no matter what gear and advancement you have accumulated or how skilled of a player you are, you will still lose. Is that fun for you?
Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters. Permadeath on a single character would absolutely devastate it. People yap about risk and reward in those games yet the primary thing they do while playing is to minimize or eliminate the risk component entirely. And since they don't take risks, metagame will be slow, people will only engage stuff that they can surely win, and PvP would be reduced to ganking, PK and griefing.
How do you prompt people to challenge themselves so they don't quit because they got bored. Why do the players do what they do? Gear grind, XP grind, material grind? What?
What would be the motivator to roll a new character in such a game? If death wipes the table clean, what prevents people from quitting after they die?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I would agree that single death PD in an MMO is a bit harsh for aforementioned connection issues. That's why I favor designs that provide multiple lives.
You mention that "Harsh death penalty already turns players into cowards severely reducing the frequency and quality of PvP encounters." I agree that it would likely reduce the frequency of PvP encounters, but disagree that it would reduce the quality. It would create a very different PvP environment than what we see in most MMOs. More strategy and planning, less run and gun. Lots of bloddless standoffs. I don't see this as inherently bad, just a different type of gameplay. I also don't believe the allure of being a griefer in a PD PvP environment exceeds the additional hassle that PD presents for griefers. Being a griefer is MORE of a hassle in a PD game because griefers, at risk of losing their own characters, have to be much more discerning in their targets, or rely on overwhelming numbers. Anti-pkers would also have the option of organizing and meaningfully retaliating. I'm not so foolish as to think there wouldn't be griefing, but I don't see it as MORE of a problem than in other games.
Also, players will reroll if the gameplay is actually fun and exciting. They also don't lose their player communities. The grind would have to be less central than in most MMOs, in so far as a low-level player shouldn't be a useless wimp.
How does this bear out in the game the OP is talking about? I'm curious.
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and that's the very reason I said that people need to shift their paradigm because a game with perma-death might have to be developed from the ground up with perma-death in mind.
So maybe perma-death doesn't wipe the slate clean. Maybe there are separate types of progression. One that is based on your dynasty of characters and then another based on the characters themselves.
Maybe the character progression is more narrow and far less taxing but feeds into the dynasty progression?
So maybe the dynasty progression is a bit like an rts where you build up resources, maybe structures (representative structures?) that give your character abilities and benefits. This can be the long term progression and supplies buffs or resources to your characters.
This way you can work on more meaningful, longer term goals and they won't be wiped out but your individual characters can be terminated. Do they have "x" amount of lives like the post above indicates? Don't know, possibility.
As far as dying through bugs and disconnects, I think the game company can look into whether there was a disconnect or a bad bug that caused a death.
The only issue there, that I see, are players who "pull the plug" if they think they are going to die so that they can "claim" they were disconnected. I have no answer for that but I'm sure someone can be clever.
as far as pvp, this points, again, to the shifting of your paradigm regarding characters. With a more narrow, obtainable, character progression, the player can look at their characters as one link in a chain of characters, not "their only character". This way they might be more likely to engage in pvp.
Have you ever played the total war series of games? You level up generals, leaders of armies and you have many of them. They supply various benefits to your troops and each one is different. However, they do fall in battle and fall permanently. Does a player bemoan their loss? Usually you move another general into that unit's slot and level and cultivate him.
So perhaps a permadeath game will allow players to have characters that might not be so numerous like a total war game but allow for players to think of their characters in a different way.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Multiple lives is a bad idea best explained by Axehilt on another thread discussing PD before this. I think its actually worse than single PD.
Standoffs are bad. And so are one-sided steamrolls. That is what it devolves into. That is what it is in Eve 95% of the time. You can spend hours upon hours preparing for something and nothing happens. It is extremely anti-climactic and frustrating.
And if the gameplay is "actually fun and exciting" why would you need PD in the first place!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
They're just objectives why do you have to put "meaningful" in front of them. They're just objectives, whether they're meaningful or not is a subjective opinion.
Permadeath applied to units in a strategy game is not the same as permadeath in an RPG. Units are a commodity, gear. Even if they accumulate experience and even if they die permanently they're essentially the same as a sword or any other piece of gear in an RPG. And when you lose, you may or may not lose that sword. It is equivalent to gear or XP loss.
In other words, permadeath in a strategy game and permadeath in an RPG are not equivalent.
Oh, and by the way: You are doing the same thing in your reply that people do in games with harsh death penalty. They talk about how they want high risk and high reward, but then proceed to getting rid of the risk. In one hand you want a high impact upon death, but in the other you don't want to lose too much.
What is the point of all this? Since even you don't want to wipe the slate clean, what are the virtues of PD you cannot get from other death penalties?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
1, So what if meaningful is subjective? I used the word because "I used it". At this point it's a colloquialism. you are nit picking. Who cares?
2, I am not saying they should be like units in a rts I am saying that there are game play features that can be similiar to an rts and if one were to think about the entirety of one's characters as opposed to "OMFG I HAVE ONE CHARACTER AND I CAN'T LOOZ MY GEARZ" then the idea of permadeath might make more sense over the span of game play.
3, There are gradations to "risk" and that is also subjective. I say more narrow risk as to make the progression from one character to another more smooth as opposed to having people flip out but I have no problem with the "characters" having a more in depth progression. Still, the progression from one character to another has to be smooth and "sting" but not stop game paly.
4, your arguments are kind of moot because in the end you are arguing why "you" wouldn't play this game. I would play a game with permadeath if the game play made sense and I liked the game. Others would as well.
It would be a small group of people but as long as the game was good and as long as the game company was realstic in their goals and could make enough money to keep it going then it would be a non-issue.
Let me ask this, do you play Demon Souls or Dark souls? in those games you can die easily and lose all your souls which are essentially a type of progression. Oh sure, you don't lose your character but that's not my ponit. my point is that you can have a huge amount of "currency" taken away by just rounding the corner. really.
So do you play these games? Because some do (myself included) and we like the high risk of it. So why is it so hard for you to understand that the issues you bring up might not matter to other players?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Dark Souls has harsh death penatly, sure, but it is still very far from permadeath. It is confusing to discuss the matter with you when you clearly don't know any good examples of permadeath games to begin with. I'll help you: your best/closest examples would be action RPGs in hardcore mode or any of the old dungeon crawlers with permadeath.
None has PvP, atleast not in any significant sense (ARPGs). So they're PvE games. Both are basically games to see how far you can go without dying. That was the point in those dungeon crawlers.
I played Dark Souls, I've played multiple ARPGs on hardcore mode, wide array of dungeon crawlers... I highly doubt there's anything I don't "get". I know that there is no reasonable penalty a game could impose upon failure that would have any effect on me. So what is left is unreasonable penalty: reserved for masochists only.
Harsh death penalty is a nuisance still, but atleast you don't have to redesign the whole game for it. Its not worth it. And please, don't play the victim.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Obviously not. D3 does it by adding PD as an option. Works perfectly well. Not everyone will use it (i won't) but it satisfies those who want it.
MMO can follow suit.
except you could just look at what I'm saying as opposed to "whatever you are doing".
You did the same thing with the rts "example".
I didn't bring up dark souls as an example of permadeath and I even said that. The idea was whether or not you have played a game where a huge amount of risk was on the line. So, for instance, in Dark Souls you can't progress if you lose your souls. And you can lose your souls by just going up a stair way. Since you've played it you know this.
It's extreme and that's the point. Permadeath can also be extreme. How extreme depends upon the game design.
As far as good examples of permadeath, I've given examples, in this discussion, of permadeath that I might find attractive. I don't know of many permadeath games but the idea becomes more attractive as I get older as most games now are so easy to get through without dying once they seem a bit bland. So I will be looking out for them.
To answer the part I highlighed "that's subjecttive" (to use your word) and "so what"? If I and others want to be masochists and play a permadeath game what do you care? More to the point, if a game comapny can make a permadeath game that has players and can make enough money to stay afloat "what do you care"?
You are so bent on trying to tell people it doesn't work and yet I suspect that all your arguments are just you insisting why you don't like it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Of course i don't. People have different preferences. The only debatable question is whether the market of PD is big enough for any serious dev action.
From the success of D3, and you can see a big list of hard core char on diabloprogress.com, i would say at least there is enough demand to put in such an option.
I think it's important to give one caveat. Something that Quirhid said that rang a bell.
He said that some people say they want high risk and high reward but in reality they don't.
This comes back to a recent Jimquisition, it was entitled "Pasta Sauce". He also made mention of it in his latest installment.
Essentially, when customers were asked if they liked a certain pasta sauce or whether they liked "rich dark, robust coffee" most of them said "yes".
But when buying habits were evaluated that wasn't the case.
In the case of the coffee, most people were buying a medium roast brand. Even though they said they wanted "rich dark, robust coffee".
And I would say that makes sense and I can see the truth in it. Same with the whole "high risk" thing. It's why if I was ever pk'ed in Lineage 2 the attacker would be smug or would be insulting but as soon as I repaid the deed they would cry and scream and threaten, etc.
It's like they didn't buy into the system they were a part of.
However, there is one part of that observation that can't be dismissed: Just because most people bought the medium roast coffee, perhaps using cream and sugar to make it even more palatable, doesn't mean that there aren't people who actually do drink dark, robust coffee.
Just so happens that I drink freshly ground french roast coffee. Black.
So yeah, there is a small group out there who "don't mind being masochists". If that's truly what we really are. Which I doubt.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo