I honestly think you've got to be retarded to play a game where there is no permadeath and then try to make-believe that there is permadeath by using KeushPuppy's logic.
I believe that is called 'role playing'.
That actually is not "Roleplaying" since roleplaying is something you do in the game with other people or you assume a particular role/personality in the game. The permadeath example is something outside of the game and not related in any way.
Deleting a character is part of most if not all MMORPGs, just like creating a character, moving around or casting a spell.
And so is checking the game credits and clicking on 'options' and changing your key bindings, that doesn't mean you're roleplaying.
A random thought on PD, what if in a f2p game, you had to pay for lives. Maybe 5 dollars a life, it could even be in game currency actually. This way there would be a variety of players taking different levels of risks based on how much they are willing to put into the game. There would be players that want to play with 1 life, and so they play it safe, and there would be players willing to die for stupid reasons, playing a little more recklessly.
Or those who would want to play a little more recklessly will just not play this game, and go for something else with no PD.
I don't play recklessly at all and I wouldn't play the game at all, ever, under any circumstances.
I don't play recklessly at all and I would never NOT play a game because of a feature, ever, under any circumstance... I have an open mind.
I would. That's a feature that just isn't fun in any way, shape or form. It could never be made fun. The entire concept is not fun. Hence, I'm not going to play with a feature that's not fun, any more than I'd beat myself in the head with a brick, just to give it a shot.
Originally posted by Keushpuppy If you want perma death just delete your character when you die.
If you don't want it, play any of the 1000's of mmorpgs available.
Sure.
But since 99.99% of the games have no PD, he is just giving you a tip of how to enable PD if you really want it.
True but the purpose of permadeath is that you can't turn back where as 'simply delete your character' is a decision you make when you die which ultimately means, you don't delete your character unless you really commit to deleting your character when you die.
So you're saying that you can't be trusted to delete your character like you promised to do?
lol I guess if that is how you want to put it. If you tell yourself, i'll delete my character the next time I die' and then you die unexpectedly, are you really going to delete your character? Maybe for you but not for a lot of others.
Then they weren't serious about wanting to play a permadeath game. Let's be honest, even if there is permadeath, they'll just create a new character, that's not permadeath, that's character swapping. You want permadeath, not only delete your character but uninstall the game and never, ever play again. That's hardcore.
Originally posted by Keushpuppy If you want perma death just delete your character when you die.
If you don't want it, play any of the 1000's of mmorpgs available.
Sure.
But since 99.99% of the games have no PD, he is just giving you a tip of how to enable PD if you really want it.
True but the purpose of permadeath is that you can't turn back where as 'simply delete your character' is a decision you make when you die which ultimately means, you don't delete your character unless you really commit to deleting your character when you die.
So you're saying that you can't be trusted to delete your character like you promised to do?
lol I guess if that is how you want to put it. If you tell yourself, i'll delete my character the next time I die' and then you die unexpectedly, are you really going to delete your character? Maybe for you but not for a lot of others.
Then they weren't serious about wanting to play a permadeath game. Let's be honest, even if there is permadeath, they'll just create a new character, that's not permadeath, that's character swapping. You want permadeath, not only delete your character but uninstall the game and never, ever play again. That's hardcore.
A random thought on PD, what if in a f2p game, you had to pay for lives. Maybe 5 dollars a life, it could even be in game currency actually. This way there would be a variety of players taking different levels of risks based on how much they are willing to put into the game. There would be players that want to play with 1 life, and so they play it safe, and there would be players willing to die for stupid reasons, playing a little more recklessly.
Or those who would want to play a little more recklessly will just not play this game, and go for something else with no PD.
I don't play recklessly at all and I wouldn't play the game at all, ever, under any circumstances.
If they donated half of the price of a new life to start a children's charity?
Geez, we picked up trash along the highway just so a charity could have a sign and get a little advertisement , I would have much rather played a game for 5 minutes.
We all have different priorities and causes. You said under any circumstances.
I meant what I said. I play games for fun. Permadeath is not fun for me. Therefore I'm not playing, I don't care what ridiculous thing you want to attach to it.
When you think about perma-death, what are you associating it with? Do you know any of the other features ToA has to offer?
I couldn't care less, that's a game killer for me. It doesn't matter what else is in the game, so long as permadeath of any kind is in the game, I'm not playing. It's like saying there's a game that requires you to cut yourself with a razor blade every 5 minutes to play. Does it really matter what else the game offers?
A random thought on PD, what if in a f2p game, you had to pay for lives. Maybe 5 dollars a life, it could even be in game currency actually. This way there would be a variety of players taking different levels of risks based on how much they are willing to put into the game. There would be players that want to play with 1 life, and so they play it safe, and there would be players willing to die for stupid reasons, playing a little more recklessly.
Or those who would want to play a little more recklessly will just not play this game, and go for something else with no PD.
I don't play recklessly at all and I wouldn't play the game at all, ever, under any circumstances.
If they donated half of the price of a new life to start a children's charity?
Geez, we picked up trash along the highway just so a charity could have a sign and get a little advertisement , I would have much rather played a game for 5 minutes.
We all have different priorities and causes. You said under any circumstances.
I meant what I said. I play games for fun. Permadeath is not fun for me. Therefore I'm not playing, I don't care what ridiculous thing you want to attach to it.
When you think about perma-death, what are you associating it with? Do you know any of the other features ToA has to offer?
I couldn't care less, that's a game killer for me. It doesn't matter what else is in the game, so long as permadeath of any kind is in the game, I'm not playing. It's like saying there's a game that requires you to cut yourself with a razor blade every 5 minutes to play. Does it really matter what else the game offers?
I'm sorry to hear you feel so strongly against permadeath but if you can spare a few minutes and read this forum post by another community member in ToA, I would like to hear your reaction and see what you think about it?
Here is a link to the post as well as the text below it.
Standalone features don't make a game, they make for an argument about which feature is better and why one feature or another just isn't any good. So why focus on features when you can focus on the interactions between the features? This is what I will attempt to do in this post.
Let's face it: Perma-death is a terrible selling point. So is an absolutely dark night, the lack of any way to identify the power of the person or monster about to attack you, a lack of defined level regions for monster spawns, and insanely difficult to obtain but way overpowered magic. This is why Trials of Ascension will succeed. Any of those features by themselves would kill most modern MMORPGs in a heartbeat but when you combine them all (and the many other unique features that ToA has) you actually manage to come out with something that works, and works fabulously.
You will eventually lose the character you spent so much time on. That's how perma-death works. But let's try looking at the other side of the coin. The side that involves magic. Magic is difficult... no, near impossible to obtain. You must face arcane demons without any assistance and defeat them time and time again. You must learn spells that do more than just wilt nearby flowers and you will face the constant fear of having a bounty on your head for attempting to become a powerful wizard. You will be hunted, hated, and feared. Your powers, when you finally come into them, will be desired by warlords and kings, militia and armies. But you will not last forever. There will come a day where your life counters peter out and your magic flows no more. You will rise and you will fall. Will it have been worth it? You may have turned the tide of war, defeated vast hordes of monsters, conquered the magical demons that haunt your every step.... you will have been a mage. That is your experience. Now go, create a new character. Lead a settlement or a kingdom, build a vast wall to save your people, or discover an invention that rocks the world of TerVarus.
Dynamic spawning means that any monster can spawn basically anywhere provided the requirements for spawning the monster exist. You may step out of your settlement as a fresh level 1 newb and find yourself face to face with a harmless caterpillar or with a fearsome dragon. This would be bad if it weren't for the fact that you have no way of knowing how difficult either of those monsters is. The caterpillar may very well be the most difficult monster in the game and the dragon could be one that just wants to cuddle. There's no "Level 1-10" area for you to go hide in and no max level area for you to sit around grinding the same mobs repetitively to max out some mythical notoriety system. End result: you treat both monsters with the same amount of respect and well earned fear. Of course, without perma-death you would just charge in to see if you could kill either one of them but instead, perma-death gives you pause to consider the consequences of your actions.
Ordinarily, with free for all open world player versus player combat, you see a lot of what is referred to as "ganking" - high level players running around killing every low level player they can get their grubby buttons around. But wait... that man wearing nothing but a loin-cloth may not be just another level 1 newbie wandering around gawking at the scenery. He could be the most powerful wizard on the face of the planet and you might only have 20 life counters left. Is it worth a life counter to find out? Whoops. You took too long to decide. The guy hiding carefully behind the stand of tall grass just shot an arrow through your knee. Too bad it wasn't night, you could've slipped away quietly and never had to worry about any of that because they couldn't see you.
There is no map or minimap with little icons to indicate where things are and you can't just tab target a person to track where they go. You need to learn the lay of the land, find out as much as you can about your surroundings, keep a decent supply of food, water, and shelter available, and all of this while dodging not just monsters but other players who may be after your gear. You need to keep an eye out for GM run dynamic events such as the appearance of a small cave or the sudden attack by a horde of marauding ogres. You need to be available to alert your nearby friendly settlement of incoming enemies and help them man the walls to stave off destruction. You need to pay the guards so they keep working for you and safeguard the players that provide raw materials to your settlement. You need to build walls and houses, ramps and tunnels, workshops and farms. You need to cooperate with other craftsmen to create epic swords that cannot be forged alone and you need the help of your clan to build a watchtower in any reasonable amount of time.
So yes, taken separately, most of these features would make for a terrible, boring, and annoyingly realistic game that nobody would ever want to play. But. Merge them all together and you will find yourself with a game that is unlike any other game. A game that requires a lot of hard work and perseverance, a game that rewards the unity of cooperation, a game that focuses on the here and now of playing rather than planning for the future of your character. Oh, and on the plus side, everyone has a chance to be the best because even the best won't stay the best for long. Even the best of us die. Take advantage of the opportunity and race for the best that TerVarus has to offer you. If you die, race again but make sure you enjoy each and every race you run. No other game gives you this many opportunities to win.
So a slew of self admitted negatives will become positive when thrown in the stewpot. Gonna have to take the 'Show me' response. The more you allow systems that can be used by griefers to cause trouble to players, the more greifers you will attract. They don't play 'inside' the game, they are playing the metagame of making the person behind the keyboard feel bad. It will take a lot of convincing for me to spend my time on this. Convincing that discussion will not provide. Show me.
It's a brave attempt, but I think you will founder on the same rocks that similar previous ventures have hit.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
You want to see how perma-death works versus not working then just look at Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Unlike many rogue-likes its advancement system is basically tailored towards itself around the play experience rather than the other way around. Additionally it makes sure you are challenged with things can kill even a good character and never lets you rest on your laurels. You better you when to hold em, know when walk away and know when to run.
But in the end while DCSS does a game with perma-death "right" I can tell you that because of experience playing that game that a cooperative expereince with similar parameters would be extremely frustrating to the point of probably not playing.
PD is interesting in that it completely changes how you cost things. In MMORPGs you often get the "too good to use" problem of powerful skills on long CDs that no one uses. In DCSS this phenomenon is somewhat altered in that most skills like this tend to be "get me out of a situation that would probably kill me". In most MMORPGs a threat of respawn is not enough to overcome people conservative nature. In DCSS these abilities are generally linked to God granted powers and basically any piety cost is worth it if it saves your playthrough.
Same thing with healing potions. In most games I wind up accumulating tons of healing potions because I prefer to get through stuff without depending on them. But in a PD game like DCSS being ahead of the curve on using that potion of heal wounds can mean the difference between getting the orb and dying on dungeon level 7 of 27. In an MMORPG with respawning you can always save stuff for later and excepting for certain raid type situations where you have planned out the use of consumables ahead of time many people will mindlessly save things (I include myself in that "mindless" part, I hate using stuff when I don't have to even if I might as well). A game like DCSS teaches you through repeated beatings and tragic loss that you really should NOT gamble and defintely should use that potion of heals wounds even if you have a decent chance of winning you also have a decent chance dying and ending the whole playthrough. Saving stuff in that context is literally meaningless.
Similarly how fast you move takes on an entirely different meaning. In most MMOs this is just a measure of how well you can execute a kiting strategy. In a PD game it becomes huge. Just huge. Escape is a key fundamental aspect of a PD game.
For example let us take the common killer of newbies in DCSS the surprise corner ogre. You are walking down a narrow corridor and it open up to a room. You can quite see around the corner. You move forward. Surprise there is an ogre with only one sqaure separating you.
Now an ogre in DCSS on say dungeon level 3 can two shot many species and even one shot some. Most characters do not have sufficient HP yet to take them in a slug out. They rarely have enough combined AC damage mitigation or evasion/shield factor to reliably kill it.
This situation is quite problematic. If you can see the ogre coming you may kill it from range with a ranged weapon (bow, crossboe etc) or damaging spells. You may soften it up with thrown weapon and then kill it fast in melee but this is still dangerous. Due to the way DCSS work an Ogre that has a Giant club with a damage factor of 20 actially roles 1-20. Same with AC, it mitigates 1-20 damage with an AC of 20. If you had 20 AC against this Ogre you may take no damage or you may get hit for half your life. Get unlucky twice and you are dead and its time for a new character. Do you want to play your chances?
So what does moving 10% faster do for you? It means you can reliably get away. It means you can try that soften them up strategy and if that ogre get lucky you can reliably back off and run away to live and fight another day. But someone who is 10$ slower is stuck with that strategy. Once you engage you must win when you are slow. Due to the random nature of DCSS if you continue to do stuff like this you will eventually lose a character.
People who are new to DCSS often do not quite realize things like this. In DCSS most of your real advancement based stuff is contained in what species you chose. If we compare two quite different species we can see a rather striking phenomenon.
Let's compare a Naga to Spriggan.
Spriggan are tiny creatures with good dodge and stealth. They move, from the beginning, at the fastest movement speed allowed in the game (0.6 versus the 1.0 of a large number of things in the game, ie. what a human moves). They have 40% LESS HP than a human. They cannot wear most armor. So while they are hard to hit, they take alot of damage and don't have the HP for it.
Naga are large creatures, which helps them use larger shields with less penalty. They are however just as sneaky as a spriggan, allowing some mobs to be bypassed or even assinated. They can use most armors but get a penalty to AC, however they get natural AC on a per level basis to make up for it. They start with the ability to spit poison at things, which works quite well on low level stuff. They get 30% MORE hp they a human. But they move slower than a human at 1.2.
In general, starting out a new character, it is often much harder to survive as a Naga than a Spriggan. In fact even though Spriggans have extremely serious toughness problem the combination of speed and stealth is enough for even a beginner to get away from danger. You still sometimes get one or shotted, but for the most part after a few times you just know when to run and intially can do so almost whenever you want as long as you are not running from a centaur with a bow.
On the other hand Naga when used right seem rather nice. They get a bit of extra AC. If you make sure to use your poison spit you can really clean up the first 3 floors even on hard stuff. You have WAY more hp that spriggan. If you get a shield (such as you started with the fight background) you can get it to point where it has no penalties way before most species. You train stealth incredibly fast and if you chose to go down that route you can see many monsters before they are aware.
So why are the Nagas dying? Because eventually you screw up. Eventually DCSS does what its known for. It tries to kill you. Sometimes in rather novel ways. Eventually you do something like meet a surprise corner ogre and even if you learned your lesson before and never try to melee it, you simply can't get away without some extraordinary means. The spriggan just turns around and goes somewhere else. The Naga has to either be tough enough to take even the worst DCSS will throw at you (unlikely until much later and even then bad luck will kill you) or needs a very good speed boost (possible with say the Swiftness spell) or some means of teleporting or other extraordinary escape. Escaping is generally something even new DCSS players understand is necessary but until you play a character with slowness from the beginning you don't quite grasp just how incredibly fucking dangerous it is. Its especially deceptive because for the most part you can really own the first few floors rather well. But its the special cases that get you. And if you can't survive (not killing is not necessary just survival) them none of that other stuff matters. In order to get Naga through the early game you either need luck (the only luck you should count on in DCSS is bad luck) or you need a plan. A plan such as take the Wizard background and make absolutely sure you can cast the Blink spell well and maybe Summon Imp to put distance and create distractions even at the expense of a damage spell. Or try for disabling magic.
Now extrapolate this to a cooperative game. Imagine a couple of new players meeting each other for the first time in some Online cooperative version of DCSS (egads the horror, so many tears would be cried). One a Naga and the other Spriggan. They adventure through the dungeon and meet a corner ogre. What does the Spriggan do? Run or help? What is quite probable is that many players that would otherwise survive will get killed. The Naga can't get away, but he should. Its the smart play. You almost always should run from a corner ogre and then use some extra mustard (confuse it, shoot it, zap it with a wand, whatever) when you are level 3 or so. The Spriggan on the other hand will be extremely tempted to go in and help, after all he may not even get attacked and he can disengage. At the same time one lucky hit and he is dead.
Thus you will see a lot of people blaming each other for deaths/character loss and see lots of acrimony. On the other the tougher people will find many of these death very funny. The online DCSS servers a large catalog of funny deaths.
But my point is that PD is a literal game changer. It very much changes to implications of many tactics and behaviors. It hones things down to point where just one individual action was so key that changing could be the difference between getting the orb and not. Add in real time playing and other people complicating things or just doing stupid stuff and you start running into possible impracticalities.
The social implications of PD in a CO-OP game are extremely far reaching and can be very subtle. For example the idea of a tank who make sure everyone stays alive, is pretty much stupid and terrible design for a PD game. A PD game absolutely must work in such a way that each person is not only responsible for their own ability to get away but also there would need to be a general understanding that getting away is the generally socially acceptable thing to do when the shit hits the fan. This doesn't mean that one character can't help out another or make it much more likely to survive.
Keeping in mind also that a PD game in which the shit does not sometimes hit the fan is a worthless thing.
For example in DCSS there is a mechanic of monsters being aware of you. They can be asleep, they can be wandering but unaware, they can be aware of you. They may be aware because they saw through your stealth. They may wake up because alot of noise was heard. A fireball spell in DCSS makes alot of noise. You can kill one thing with a fireball and attract 3 other things from an adjacent room. A blowgun make almost no noise.
Suppose one character is single pulling things from a group with a blowgun or other low noise range weapon and high stealth, and not drawing a crowd then some other guy comes in and throw a fireball and kill them all trying to "help". Then the guys from the next room come in and its an entire heard of 4 centaurs and a centaur warrior all with fire branded bows. The stealthy guy should basically run and let the fireball guy die. He brought it on himself. But even worse those fire branded bows can cause your scrolls to go up in flames, causing you to lose extremely important consumables(a couple scrolls of blinking for a ranged character can be INCREDIBLY important). Now fireball guy may not die but generally a herd of centaur can be really nasty when you are not prepared to somehow deflect missiles and range is no protection. Even worse bows out range almost all spells, sometimes by a large margin.
So how does a co-op game deal with this stuff? Remove the noise mechanics? Remove item loss? Keep them both and hope that players can deal with it somehow? Is a Co-Op PD game doomed to dumb down alot of mechanics because you just go with the lowest common denominator?
Now Realm of the Mad God is a perma-death real time Co-Op game. And for the most part I would say it works. Its flawed like all MMO type games are bound to be in that people will demand a grind for good gear and character investment which is essentially alien to any game does perma-death. I would say fairly firmly. If your game is perma-death it also MUST be winnable in a finite sense. There must be an end goal.
Clearly these issues are not insurmountable. But PD is a far more complex issue than most people realize as are many other "punishing" (such as item loss) mechanics and when you throw in the fact that these mechanics could be triggered by other people through no control of your own it gets dicey. Add in real time rather than turn based and it gets even worse. See the thing is PD is most satisfying when you know there was something you could have done, some plan or series of attempts and back up plans. Then you feel motivated to try it again and be sharper the next time. Add in people who will invariably do stupid stuff or the fact that some times in real time you simply do not have the time or information to deal with a situation properly and people will start to feel that they recieved pointless "punishment" rather than a challenge that can be surmounted.
Originally posted by Quirhid My main problem with permadeath is that I don't get any excitement from it and it makes people cowards so PvP suffers. I have played my share of roguelike games and enjoyed many, but applying permadeath to a multiplayer game with advancement is just asking for a whole lot of trouble for no reason from my standpoint.
Let me ask you a question.
Is someone who uses guerilla tactics in the real world a coward?
In a game world with perma-death the nature of tactics changes radically. In most PvP game attrition is non-existent or fairly trivial. Perma-death could be considered the ultimate in attrition.
Closer a game's attrition mechanics get to permanent loss of everything, the more effective guerilla style tactics become.
Perhaps what your are seeing is simply a visceral understanding of this, commensurate with a complete lack of fully grasping the implications. Of course the full implications of this is also that far fewer people would actually want to fight. Sparring is fun, war is hell.
Originally posted by Keushpuppy If you want perma death just delete your character when you die.
I don't mean to be insulting but this is a ridiculous response.
The whole idea of playing a game is to be on the same footing as everyone else. It creates a sense of camaraderie, a sense of shared experience.
What you suggest is akin to two people starting at the bottom of Mt. Washington: one hikes up and the other drives or takes that trolley.
Why do you care about what total strangers do?
If you have friends, guildies, enjoying challenge (like this thread seems to indicate), they should have no problems joining you on the "hard mode" trek. There are guilds devoted to "Iron Man" mode in WoW.
Not sure where your first sentence is coming from so I'll ignore it.
As far as the highlighted part my response is: "And that's just great."
but people do play games to have a shared experience. There is greater impact when the participants share in the upsides and the downsides.
If a group would like to play a "non-permadeath game" and some have elected to kill off their characters when they die then there is no issue.
But what I responded to was the "if you want perma-death then kill off your character and let others keep their character" is silly for those who want to play a game that has perma-death and want to share the same tragedies and triumphs that such a game would bring. It's a completely different experience.
So sure, if I'm playing LOTRO and I want to perma-death my character that's great. But if I want to advocate for a permadeath game because of all that entails then someone saying "well if you want permadeath just delete your character" has no actual place.
As far as Iron Man groups that's fine as well. But clearly there are people who want a complete total perma-death game and I am of the mind they should have it as long as the developers are on board with the making of such a game.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
As far as Iron Man groups that's fine as well. But clearly there are people who want a complete total perma-death game and I am of the mind they should have it as long as the developers are on board with the making of such a game.
Fact remains that those people can get those conditions of death penalty in any existing MMORPG, and other people, maybe more imaginative or more mature in the sense that they are able to respect the rules they decided to, do it right now in those games.
I am never going to play games with open pvp, so am never going to play games with perma death!
WHY: Because I have no intention of wasting months of time playing a char to lose it to some pathetic pve content or some a-hold camping in spots that are sure to get them an easy target to grief!
As far as Iron Man groups that's fine as well. But clearly there are people who want a complete total perma-death game and I am of the mind they should have it as long as the developers are on board with the making of such a game.
Fact remains that those people can get those conditions of death penalty in any existing MMORPG, and other people, maybe more imaginative or more mature in the sense that they are able to respect the rules they decided to, do it right now in those games.
yeah I sense your answer (highlighted portion) is "about" something else.
In any case, there are people who want a perma-death game and I suspect the reason is that they believe that there actually "is" a difference in game play. And I would agree.
There is a palpable difference between saying "ok, you got me I'll delete my character" and "you go in and if you aren't successful you WILL fail."
And if there are developers who want to make this game and players who want to play it then "no others need apply". And I don't agree with the highlighted portion.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I am never going to play games with open pvp, so am never going to play games with perma death!
WHY: Because I have no intention of wasting months of time playing a char to lose it to some pathetic pve content or some a-hold camping in spots that are sure to get them an easy target to grief!
I am never going to play games with open pvp, so am never going to play games with perma death!
WHY: Because I have no intention of wasting months of time playing a char to lose it to some pathetic pve content or some a-hold camping in spots that are sure to get them an easy target to grief!
Hmmm. I think spending hours grinding away at the same old repetitious content of today's MMOs is a waste of months of time too. I guess it all depends on how you value your time. They even make addons so people don't have to be bothered by actually clicking on quest givers to get those repetitious quests they've done 972 times previously.
As far as Iron Man groups that's fine as well. But clearly there are people who want a complete total perma-death game and I am of the mind they should have it as long as the developers are on board with the making of such a game.
Fact remains that those people can get those conditions of death penalty in any existing MMORPG, and other people, maybe more imaginative or more mature in the sense that they are able to respect the rules they decided to, do it right now in those games.
yeah I sense your answer (highlighted portion) is "about" something else.
In any case, there are people who want a perma-death game and I suspect the reason is that they believe that there actually "is" a difference in game play. And I would agree.
There is a palpable difference between saying "ok, you got me I'll delete my character" and "you go in and if you aren't successful you WILL fail."
And if there are developers who want to make this game and players who want to play it then "no others need apply". And I don't agree with the highlighted portion.
Of course there is; "manually" handicapping yourself with options akin to clicking the "Quit" button, or messing with your personal mouse settings to make things harder to manage, is not the same thing as having systems built into the game.
I can make a game of chess more challenging for myself by starting out with throwing all of my pawns down the hallway, however, if my opponent does not also begin in the same condition, what would be the point in playing other than wasting my time or humiliating my opponent?
There is nothing remotely compelling about "artificially" limiting my performance capabilities versus an opponent that has not done the same.
Boring in a nutshell.
"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
oh rly? think how fun those griefers can have by pullin trains of mobs onto others to stop them from levling after all with perma death yull ave to start from scratch evrytime yu die
well yu can either go delete yur char and start again when yu die or go find yur perma death style mmo or make one yurself since yu want it so bad
if yu want death penalty in wow for example its easy just spirit rez all th time n loose 75% of yur damage output n stats for 10 mins
I am never going to play games with open pvp, so am never going to play games with perma death!
WHY: Because I have no intention of wasting months of time playing a char to lose it to some pathetic pve content or some a-hold camping in spots that are sure to get them an easy target to grief!
Really? How about a PD option like Diablo 3?
Nope, never got in to any diablo games, don't like the game type!
I am never going to play games with open pvp, so am never going to play games with perma death!
WHY: Because I have no intention of wasting months of time playing a char to lose it to some pathetic pve content or some a-hold camping in spots that are sure to get them an easy target to grief!
Hmmm. I think spending hours grinding away at the same old repetitious content of today's MMOs is a waste of months of time too. I guess it all depends on how you value your time. They even make addons so people don't have to be bothered by actually clicking on quest givers to get those repetitious quests they've done 972 times previously.
Well with grinding, when you get bored, you take a break and if you come back you find you still have what you did all the grinding for!
With PD, it's all over give up and move on to another game or start again from scratch!
Well with grinding, when you get bored, you take a break and if you come back you find you still have what you did all the grinding for!
With PD, it's all over give up and move on to another game or start again from scratch!
If PD only gave you one life, sure. I can tell you I've been just as frustrated over grinding, enough so that I gave up hoping the stupid item would ever drop because their RNG sucks. At least if I PD in games, I'll feel better knowing I didn't have to grind that instance one more time and could move on to something brand new.
With PD, each character has a unique story that's finite, and it's entirely the prerogative of the player on how close to toe the PD line. I really like that. If you have only 3 lives left, do you continue on or decide to retire the character to safer city life? There is no mandate that says players HAVE to push through all the way to PD. End the character on your terms (the delete key is PD), or put the character in the safest areas to give the best chance at avoiding losing those last 2 lives.
Despite PD having a bad reputation, it only affects you if you let it (with the exception for those PD games where you only have one life), but some people really like that playstyle too.
The only game that did perma-death right was Pre NGE Star Wars Galaxies and here is why.
- Normal characters could not experience Perma-Death only Jedi could die permanently. This prevented Perma-death from being used as weapon in noob grieffing. Only hard core players had Jedi or experienced perma-death. Casuals had nothing to fear.
- Jedi characters that were perma-death flagged were really hard to kill. Jedi were god mode and could solo an entire group of other players in PvP. All PvE content was trivial to a Jedi. Perma-death was used to balance out the god mode. Risk VS reward. If the game lets a player risk a character that took 6 months of grinding to make then rewards should be huge. That reward was being insanely overpowered compared to players who were not at risk of perma-death.
- When your Jedi finally did die it wasn't the end of the world. Yes your character was still dead permanently and can never be brought back but this was just part of the game's progression. The next new character you created on that account would get access to a ghost Jedi mentor of the perma-dead character. The ghost mentor gave special buffs that were only available to players who lost a character to perma-death. Because of the ghost Jedi your second character would be more powerful than your first. The progression was to max a character out and then have it die so your second character could become even more powerful.
Bottom line is pre-NGE SWG perma-death system was pure genius. It protected the casuals, gave hard core players what they wanted, and was all around just pure awesome.
So a slew of self admitted negatives will become positive when thrown in the stewpot. Gonna have to take the 'Show me' response. The more you allow systems that can be used by griefers to cause trouble to players, the more greifers you will attract. They don't play 'inside' the game, they are playing the metagame of making the person behind the keyboard feel bad. It will take a lot of convincing for me to spend my time on this. Convincing that discussion will not provide. Show me.
It's a brave attempt, but I think you will founder on the same rocks that similar previous ventures have hit.
Exactly my thinking. I don't understand how a bunch of features I detest with a passion, put together, is supposed to make me detest them any less. A bunch of awful features all rolled into one doesn't make a game good, it just makes it different. I want to play a game that's actually good and fun and enjoyable. I find nothing about the description of this game to be any of those things.
I think you're right, just like all of the other games that try to be "unique", this will fail.
As far as Iron Man groups that's fine as well. But clearly there are people who want a complete total perma-death game and I am of the mind they should have it as long as the developers are on board with the making of such a game.
Fact remains that those people can get those conditions of death penalty in any existing MMORPG, and other people, maybe more imaginative or more mature in the sense that they are able to respect the rules they decided to, do it right now in those games.
yeah I sense your answer (highlighted portion) is "about" something else.
In any case, there are people who want a perma-death game and I suspect the reason is that they believe that there actually "is" a difference in game play. And I would agree.
There is a palpable difference between saying "ok, you got me I'll delete my character" and "you go in and if you aren't successful you WILL fail."
And if there are developers who want to make this game and players who want to play it then "no others need apply". And I don't agree with the highlighted portion.
Yes there are and if there are enough people out there to totally fund a permadeath game, more power to them. However, I doubt this is the case, which is why people keep trying to draw people who hate permadeath to their permadeath concepts, just as people try to draw non-PVP players to their open world full-loot PVP game concepts. They realize they have to appeal to a much wider audience or the games will flop, but the audience does not want to play these kinds of games. Ultimately, someone can play permadeath in any MMO they play but this isn't really about permadeath, it's about forcing people who don't want to play permadeath into doing so. It's about forcing people who don't want to play open world full-loot PVP into doing so. If it wasn't, then anyone who didn't want to do that could simply opt out entirely and anyone who didn't, could play the way they want to play, but if you suggest that, they look at you like you just suggested they eat a baby.
That's why these games fail. There just aren't enough people dedicated to the idea that want to play them and nobody who isn't dedicated to the idea will touch them.
Perma death - an ultimate tool for DESTROYING content and fun. Period. Even being forced to run back to corpse is just one big ANNOYANCE. Nothing more nothing less. Mainly probably because I will do everything possible not to die (really hate to die, never used that for i.e. faster travel, but have jumped from time to time to death wondering If possible to survive jump from that height :-)). And if no other solution other then die then at least have always tried to last breath to bring with me as many as possibly enemies. So I'm pro for self ress in place.
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And so is checking the game credits and clicking on 'options' and changing your key bindings, that doesn't mean you're roleplaying.
I would. That's a feature that just isn't fun in any way, shape or form. It could never be made fun. The entire concept is not fun. Hence, I'm not going to play with a feature that's not fun, any more than I'd beat myself in the head with a brick, just to give it a shot.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Seriously, what idiot WANTS a Purple Heart? It's given for being wounded in the line of duty. That means you WANT to be hurt? Seriously?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Then they weren't serious about wanting to play a permadeath game. Let's be honest, even if there is permadeath, they'll just create a new character, that's not permadeath, that's character swapping. You want permadeath, not only delete your character but uninstall the game and never, ever play again. That's hardcore.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
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That's exactly the point I am making! lol
I couldn't care less, that's a game killer for me. It doesn't matter what else is in the game, so long as permadeath of any kind is in the game, I'm not playing. It's like saying there's a game that requires you to cut yourself with a razor blade every 5 minutes to play. Does it really matter what else the game offers?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I'm sorry to hear you feel so strongly against permadeath but if you can spare a few minutes and read this forum post by another community member in ToA, I would like to hear your reaction and see what you think about it?
Here is a link to the post as well as the text below it.
http://trialsofascension.com/forum/threads/terrible-features-great-game.2123/
Standalone features don't make a game, they make for an argument about which feature is better and why one feature or another just isn't any good. So why focus on features when you can focus on the interactions between the features? This is what I will attempt to do in this post.
Let's face it: Perma-death is a terrible selling point. So is an absolutely dark night, the lack of any way to identify the power of the person or monster about to attack you, a lack of defined level regions for monster spawns, and insanely difficult to obtain but way overpowered magic. This is why Trials of Ascension will succeed. Any of those features by themselves would kill most modern MMORPGs in a heartbeat but when you combine them all (and the many other unique features that ToA has) you actually manage to come out with something that works, and works fabulously.
You will eventually lose the character you spent so much time on. That's how perma-death works. But let's try looking at the other side of the coin. The side that involves magic. Magic is difficult... no, near impossible to obtain. You must face arcane demons without any assistance and defeat them time and time again. You must learn spells that do more than just wilt nearby flowers and you will face the constant fear of having a bounty on your head for attempting to become a powerful wizard. You will be hunted, hated, and feared. Your powers, when you finally come into them, will be desired by warlords and kings, militia and armies. But you will not last forever. There will come a day where your life counters peter out and your magic flows no more. You will rise and you will fall. Will it have been worth it? You may have turned the tide of war, defeated vast hordes of monsters, conquered the magical demons that haunt your every step.... you will have been a mage. That is your experience. Now go, create a new character. Lead a settlement or a kingdom, build a vast wall to save your people, or discover an invention that rocks the world of TerVarus.
Dynamic spawning means that any monster can spawn basically anywhere provided the requirements for spawning the monster exist. You may step out of your settlement as a fresh level 1 newb and find yourself face to face with a harmless caterpillar or with a fearsome dragon. This would be bad if it weren't for the fact that you have no way of knowing how difficult either of those monsters is. The caterpillar may very well be the most difficult monster in the game and the dragon could be one that just wants to cuddle. There's no "Level 1-10" area for you to go hide in and no max level area for you to sit around grinding the same mobs repetitively to max out some mythical notoriety system. End result: you treat both monsters with the same amount of respect and well earned fear. Of course, without perma-death you would just charge in to see if you could kill either one of them but instead, perma-death gives you pause to consider the consequences of your actions.
Ordinarily, with free for all open world player versus player combat, you see a lot of what is referred to as "ganking" - high level players running around killing every low level player they can get their grubby buttons around. But wait... that man wearing nothing but a loin-cloth may not be just another level 1 newbie wandering around gawking at the scenery. He could be the most powerful wizard on the face of the planet and you might only have 20 life counters left. Is it worth a life counter to find out? Whoops. You took too long to decide. The guy hiding carefully behind the stand of tall grass just shot an arrow through your knee. Too bad it wasn't night, you could've slipped away quietly and never had to worry about any of that because they couldn't see you.
There is no map or minimap with little icons to indicate where things are and you can't just tab target a person to track where they go. You need to learn the lay of the land, find out as much as you can about your surroundings, keep a decent supply of food, water, and shelter available, and all of this while dodging not just monsters but other players who may be after your gear. You need to keep an eye out for GM run dynamic events such as the appearance of a small cave or the sudden attack by a horde of marauding ogres. You need to be available to alert your nearby friendly settlement of incoming enemies and help them man the walls to stave off destruction. You need to pay the guards so they keep working for you and safeguard the players that provide raw materials to your settlement. You need to build walls and houses, ramps and tunnels, workshops and farms. You need to cooperate with other craftsmen to create epic swords that cannot be forged alone and you need the help of your clan to build a watchtower in any reasonable amount of time.
So yes, taken separately, most of these features would make for a terrible, boring, and annoyingly realistic game that nobody would ever want to play. But. Merge them all together and you will find yourself with a game that is unlike any other game. A game that requires a lot of hard work and perseverance, a game that rewards the unity of cooperation, a game that focuses on the here and now of playing rather than planning for the future of your character. Oh, and on the plus side, everyone has a chance to be the best because even the best won't stay the best for long. Even the best of us die. Take advantage of the opportunity and race for the best that TerVarus has to offer you. If you die, race again but make sure you enjoy each and every race you run. No other game gives you this many opportunities to win.
So a slew of self admitted negatives will become positive when thrown in the stewpot. Gonna have to take the 'Show me' response. The more you allow systems that can be used by griefers to cause trouble to players, the more greifers you will attract. They don't play 'inside' the game, they are playing the metagame of making the person behind the keyboard feel bad. It will take a lot of convincing for me to spend my time on this. Convincing that discussion will not provide. Show me.
It's a brave attempt, but I think you will founder on the same rocks that similar previous ventures have hit.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
You want to see how perma-death works versus not working then just look at Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Unlike many rogue-likes its advancement system is basically tailored towards itself around the play experience rather than the other way around. Additionally it makes sure you are challenged with things can kill even a good character and never lets you rest on your laurels. You better you when to hold em, know when walk away and know when to run.
But in the end while DCSS does a game with perma-death "right" I can tell you that because of experience playing that game that a cooperative expereince with similar parameters would be extremely frustrating to the point of probably not playing.
PD is interesting in that it completely changes how you cost things. In MMORPGs you often get the "too good to use" problem of powerful skills on long CDs that no one uses. In DCSS this phenomenon is somewhat altered in that most skills like this tend to be "get me out of a situation that would probably kill me". In most MMORPGs a threat of respawn is not enough to overcome people conservative nature. In DCSS these abilities are generally linked to God granted powers and basically any piety cost is worth it if it saves your playthrough.
Same thing with healing potions. In most games I wind up accumulating tons of healing potions because I prefer to get through stuff without depending on them. But in a PD game like DCSS being ahead of the curve on using that potion of heal wounds can mean the difference between getting the orb and dying on dungeon level 7 of 27. In an MMORPG with respawning you can always save stuff for later and excepting for certain raid type situations where you have planned out the use of consumables ahead of time many people will mindlessly save things (I include myself in that "mindless" part, I hate using stuff when I don't have to even if I might as well). A game like DCSS teaches you through repeated beatings and tragic loss that you really should NOT gamble and defintely should use that potion of heals wounds even if you have a decent chance of winning you also have a decent chance dying and ending the whole playthrough. Saving stuff in that context is literally meaningless.
Similarly how fast you move takes on an entirely different meaning. In most MMOs this is just a measure of how well you can execute a kiting strategy. In a PD game it becomes huge. Just huge. Escape is a key fundamental aspect of a PD game.
For example let us take the common killer of newbies in DCSS the surprise corner ogre. You are walking down a narrow corridor and it open up to a room. You can quite see around the corner. You move forward. Surprise there is an ogre with only one sqaure separating you.
Now an ogre in DCSS on say dungeon level 3 can two shot many species and even one shot some. Most characters do not have sufficient HP yet to take them in a slug out. They rarely have enough combined AC damage mitigation or evasion/shield factor to reliably kill it.
This situation is quite problematic. If you can see the ogre coming you may kill it from range with a ranged weapon (bow, crossboe etc) or damaging spells. You may soften it up with thrown weapon and then kill it fast in melee but this is still dangerous. Due to the way DCSS work an Ogre that has a Giant club with a damage factor of 20 actially roles 1-20. Same with AC, it mitigates 1-20 damage with an AC of 20. If you had 20 AC against this Ogre you may take no damage or you may get hit for half your life. Get unlucky twice and you are dead and its time for a new character. Do you want to play your chances?
So what does moving 10% faster do for you? It means you can reliably get away. It means you can try that soften them up strategy and if that ogre get lucky you can reliably back off and run away to live and fight another day. But someone who is 10$ slower is stuck with that strategy. Once you engage you must win when you are slow. Due to the random nature of DCSS if you continue to do stuff like this you will eventually lose a character.
People who are new to DCSS often do not quite realize things like this. In DCSS most of your real advancement based stuff is contained in what species you chose. If we compare two quite different species we can see a rather striking phenomenon.
Let's compare a Naga to Spriggan.
Spriggan are tiny creatures with good dodge and stealth. They move, from the beginning, at the fastest movement speed allowed in the game (0.6 versus the 1.0 of a large number of things in the game, ie. what a human moves). They have 40% LESS HP than a human. They cannot wear most armor. So while they are hard to hit, they take alot of damage and don't have the HP for it.
Naga are large creatures, which helps them use larger shields with less penalty. They are however just as sneaky as a spriggan, allowing some mobs to be bypassed or even assinated. They can use most armors but get a penalty to AC, however they get natural AC on a per level basis to make up for it. They start with the ability to spit poison at things, which works quite well on low level stuff. They get 30% MORE hp they a human. But they move slower than a human at 1.2.
In general, starting out a new character, it is often much harder to survive as a Naga than a Spriggan. In fact even though Spriggans have extremely serious toughness problem the combination of speed and stealth is enough for even a beginner to get away from danger. You still sometimes get one or shotted, but for the most part after a few times you just know when to run and intially can do so almost whenever you want as long as you are not running from a centaur with a bow.
On the other hand Naga when used right seem rather nice. They get a bit of extra AC. If you make sure to use your poison spit you can really clean up the first 3 floors even on hard stuff. You have WAY more hp that spriggan. If you get a shield (such as you started with the fight background) you can get it to point where it has no penalties way before most species. You train stealth incredibly fast and if you chose to go down that route you can see many monsters before they are aware.
So why are the Nagas dying? Because eventually you screw up. Eventually DCSS does what its known for. It tries to kill you. Sometimes in rather novel ways. Eventually you do something like meet a surprise corner ogre and even if you learned your lesson before and never try to melee it, you simply can't get away without some extraordinary means. The spriggan just turns around and goes somewhere else. The Naga has to either be tough enough to take even the worst DCSS will throw at you (unlikely until much later and even then bad luck will kill you) or needs a very good speed boost (possible with say the Swiftness spell) or some means of teleporting or other extraordinary escape. Escaping is generally something even new DCSS players understand is necessary but until you play a character with slowness from the beginning you don't quite grasp just how incredibly fucking dangerous it is. Its especially deceptive because for the most part you can really own the first few floors rather well. But its the special cases that get you. And if you can't survive (not killing is not necessary just survival) them none of that other stuff matters. In order to get Naga through the early game you either need luck (the only luck you should count on in DCSS is bad luck) or you need a plan. A plan such as take the Wizard background and make absolutely sure you can cast the Blink spell well and maybe Summon Imp to put distance and create distractions even at the expense of a damage spell. Or try for disabling magic.
Now extrapolate this to a cooperative game. Imagine a couple of new players meeting each other for the first time in some Online cooperative version of DCSS (egads the horror, so many tears would be cried). One a Naga and the other Spriggan. They adventure through the dungeon and meet a corner ogre. What does the Spriggan do? Run or help? What is quite probable is that many players that would otherwise survive will get killed. The Naga can't get away, but he should. Its the smart play. You almost always should run from a corner ogre and then use some extra mustard (confuse it, shoot it, zap it with a wand, whatever) when you are level 3 or so. The Spriggan on the other hand will be extremely tempted to go in and help, after all he may not even get attacked and he can disengage. At the same time one lucky hit and he is dead.
Thus you will see a lot of people blaming each other for deaths/character loss and see lots of acrimony. On the other the tougher people will find many of these death very funny. The online DCSS servers a large catalog of funny deaths.
But my point is that PD is a literal game changer. It very much changes to implications of many tactics and behaviors. It hones things down to point where just one individual action was so key that changing could be the difference between getting the orb and not. Add in real time playing and other people complicating things or just doing stupid stuff and you start running into possible impracticalities.
The social implications of PD in a CO-OP game are extremely far reaching and can be very subtle. For example the idea of a tank who make sure everyone stays alive, is pretty much stupid and terrible design for a PD game. A PD game absolutely must work in such a way that each person is not only responsible for their own ability to get away but also there would need to be a general understanding that getting away is the generally socially acceptable thing to do when the shit hits the fan. This doesn't mean that one character can't help out another or make it much more likely to survive.
Keeping in mind also that a PD game in which the shit does not sometimes hit the fan is a worthless thing.
For example in DCSS there is a mechanic of monsters being aware of you. They can be asleep, they can be wandering but unaware, they can be aware of you. They may be aware because they saw through your stealth. They may wake up because alot of noise was heard. A fireball spell in DCSS makes alot of noise. You can kill one thing with a fireball and attract 3 other things from an adjacent room. A blowgun make almost no noise.
Suppose one character is single pulling things from a group with a blowgun or other low noise range weapon and high stealth, and not drawing a crowd then some other guy comes in and throw a fireball and kill them all trying to "help". Then the guys from the next room come in and its an entire heard of 4 centaurs and a centaur warrior all with fire branded bows. The stealthy guy should basically run and let the fireball guy die. He brought it on himself. But even worse those fire branded bows can cause your scrolls to go up in flames, causing you to lose extremely important consumables(a couple scrolls of blinking for a ranged character can be INCREDIBLY important). Now fireball guy may not die but generally a herd of centaur can be really nasty when you are not prepared to somehow deflect missiles and range is no protection. Even worse bows out range almost all spells, sometimes by a large margin.
So how does a co-op game deal with this stuff? Remove the noise mechanics? Remove item loss? Keep them both and hope that players can deal with it somehow? Is a Co-Op PD game doomed to dumb down alot of mechanics because you just go with the lowest common denominator?
Now Realm of the Mad God is a perma-death real time Co-Op game. And for the most part I would say it works. Its flawed like all MMO type games are bound to be in that people will demand a grind for good gear and character investment which is essentially alien to any game does perma-death. I would say fairly firmly. If your game is perma-death it also MUST be winnable in a finite sense. There must be an end goal.
Clearly these issues are not insurmountable. But PD is a far more complex issue than most people realize as are many other "punishing" (such as item loss) mechanics and when you throw in the fact that these mechanics could be triggered by other people through no control of your own it gets dicey. Add in real time rather than turn based and it gets even worse. See the thing is PD is most satisfying when you know there was something you could have done, some plan or series of attempts and back up plans. Then you feel motivated to try it again and be sharper the next time. Add in people who will invariably do stupid stuff or the fact that some times in real time you simply do not have the time or information to deal with a situation properly and people will start to feel that they recieved pointless "punishment" rather than a challenge that can be surmounted.
Let me ask you a question.
Is someone who uses guerilla tactics in the real world a coward?
In a game world with perma-death the nature of tactics changes radically. In most PvP game attrition is non-existent or fairly trivial. Perma-death could be considered the ultimate in attrition.
Closer a game's attrition mechanics get to permanent loss of everything, the more effective guerilla style tactics become.
Perhaps what your are seeing is simply a visceral understanding of this, commensurate with a complete lack of fully grasping the implications. Of course the full implications of this is also that far fewer people would actually want to fight. Sparring is fun, war is hell.
Not sure where your first sentence is coming from so I'll ignore it.
As far as the highlighted part my response is: "And that's just great."
but people do play games to have a shared experience. There is greater impact when the participants share in the upsides and the downsides.
If a group would like to play a "non-permadeath game" and some have elected to kill off their characters when they die then there is no issue.
But what I responded to was the "if you want perma-death then kill off your character and let others keep their character" is silly for those who want to play a game that has perma-death and want to share the same tragedies and triumphs that such a game would bring. It's a completely different experience.
So sure, if I'm playing LOTRO and I want to perma-death my character that's great. But if I want to advocate for a permadeath game because of all that entails then someone saying "well if you want permadeath just delete your character" has no actual place.
As far as Iron Man groups that's fine as well. But clearly there are people who want a complete total perma-death game and I am of the mind they should have it as long as the developers are on board with the making of such a game.
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
Fact remains that those people can get those conditions of death penalty in any existing MMORPG, and other people, maybe more imaginative or more mature in the sense that they are able to respect the rules they decided to, do it right now in those games.
My computer is better than yours.
I am never going to play games with open pvp, so am never going to play games with perma death!
WHY: Because I have no intention of wasting months of time playing a char to lose it to some pathetic pve content or some a-hold camping in spots that are sure to get them an easy target to grief!
yeah I sense your answer (highlighted portion) is "about" something else.
In any case, there are people who want a perma-death game and I suspect the reason is that they believe that there actually "is" a difference in game play. And I would agree.
There is a palpable difference between saying "ok, you got me I'll delete my character" and "you go in and if you aren't successful you WILL fail."
And if there are developers who want to make this game and players who want to play it then "no others need apply". And I don't agree with the highlighted portion.
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
Really? How about a PD option like Diablo 3?
Hmmm. I think spending hours grinding away at the same old repetitious content of today's MMOs is a waste of months of time too. I guess it all depends on how you value your time. They even make addons so people don't have to be bothered by actually clicking on quest givers to get those repetitious quests they've done 972 times previously.
Of course there is; "manually" handicapping yourself with options akin to clicking the "Quit" button, or messing with your personal mouse settings to make things harder to manage, is not the same thing as having systems built into the game.
I can make a game of chess more challenging for myself by starting out with throwing all of my pawns down the hallway, however, if my opponent does not also begin in the same condition, what would be the point in playing other than wasting my time or humiliating my opponent?
There is nothing remotely compelling about "artificially" limiting my performance capabilities versus an opponent that has not done the same.
Boring in a nutshell.
"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
oh rly? think how fun those griefers can have by pullin trains of mobs onto others to stop them from levling after all with perma death yull ave to start from scratch evrytime yu die
well yu can either go delete yur char and start again when yu die or go find yur perma death style mmo or make one yurself since yu want it so bad
if yu want death penalty in wow for example its easy just spirit rez all th time n loose 75% of yur damage output n stats for 10 mins
Nope, never got in to any diablo games, don't like the game type!
Well with grinding, when you get bored, you take a break and if you come back you find you still have what you did all the grinding for!
With PD, it's all over give up and move on to another game or start again from scratch!
If PD only gave you one life, sure. I can tell you I've been just as frustrated over grinding, enough so that I gave up hoping the stupid item would ever drop because their RNG sucks. At least if I PD in games, I'll feel better knowing I didn't have to grind that instance one more time and could move on to something brand new.
With PD, each character has a unique story that's finite, and it's entirely the prerogative of the player on how close to toe the PD line. I really like that. If you have only 3 lives left, do you continue on or decide to retire the character to safer city life? There is no mandate that says players HAVE to push through all the way to PD. End the character on your terms (the delete key is PD), or put the character in the safest areas to give the best chance at avoiding losing those last 2 lives.
Despite PD having a bad reputation, it only affects you if you let it (with the exception for those PD games where you only have one life), but some people really like that playstyle too.
The only game that did perma-death right was Pre NGE Star Wars Galaxies and here is why.
- Normal characters could not experience Perma-Death only Jedi could die permanently. This prevented Perma-death from being used as weapon in noob grieffing. Only hard core players had Jedi or experienced perma-death. Casuals had nothing to fear.
- Jedi characters that were perma-death flagged were really hard to kill. Jedi were god mode and could solo an entire group of other players in PvP. All PvE content was trivial to a Jedi. Perma-death was used to balance out the god mode. Risk VS reward. If the game lets a player risk a character that took 6 months of grinding to make then rewards should be huge. That reward was being insanely overpowered compared to players who were not at risk of perma-death.
- When your Jedi finally did die it wasn't the end of the world. Yes your character was still dead permanently and can never be brought back but this was just part of the game's progression. The next new character you created on that account would get access to a ghost Jedi mentor of the perma-dead character. The ghost mentor gave special buffs that were only available to players who lost a character to perma-death. Because of the ghost Jedi your second character would be more powerful than your first. The progression was to max a character out and then have it die so your second character could become even more powerful.
Bottom line is pre-NGE SWG perma-death system was pure genius. It protected the casuals, gave hard core players what they wanted, and was all around just pure awesome.
Exactly my thinking. I don't understand how a bunch of features I detest with a passion, put together, is supposed to make me detest them any less. A bunch of awful features all rolled into one doesn't make a game good, it just makes it different. I want to play a game that's actually good and fun and enjoyable. I find nothing about the description of this game to be any of those things.
I think you're right, just like all of the other games that try to be "unique", this will fail.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
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Yes there are and if there are enough people out there to totally fund a permadeath game, more power to them. However, I doubt this is the case, which is why people keep trying to draw people who hate permadeath to their permadeath concepts, just as people try to draw non-PVP players to their open world full-loot PVP game concepts. They realize they have to appeal to a much wider audience or the games will flop, but the audience does not want to play these kinds of games. Ultimately, someone can play permadeath in any MMO they play but this isn't really about permadeath, it's about forcing people who don't want to play permadeath into doing so. It's about forcing people who don't want to play open world full-loot PVP into doing so. If it wasn't, then anyone who didn't want to do that could simply opt out entirely and anyone who didn't, could play the way they want to play, but if you suggest that, they look at you like you just suggested they eat a baby.
That's why these games fail. There just aren't enough people dedicated to the idea that want to play them and nobody who isn't dedicated to the idea will touch them.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None