I've seen permadeath only ever work in two types of games: 2) Do the opposite. Make the characters so detailed, so expressive and so social so as to make the game all about character drama, and not about fighting. Make the game about role play intrigue, and not about fighting, making the avatar-player connection so strong that fighting will be rare as to almost never happen, reserved it for specific, roleplay inspired reasons only.
The problem with this is that there are always sociopathic griefers, and they don't care about anything except being a sociopath.
Even if you made it all about drama, they would still want to kill (or glitch, even better, if they knew the net code!) all other players.
Sociopathic griefers didn't last too long in the old MUSH games where permadeath was de rigeur. It was too boring for them.
Advancement in the games I was talking about couldn't be ground; someone had to let you get more powerful. Which meant that in order to get in a position to grief, they would have to master certain skills that don't come naturally to the lulz crowd: character acting, fidelity to the lore, witty banter, text-fighting prowess.
And, if they could do all those things, they really were playing the game, and their sociopathy became a plot device in itself.
__________________________ "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
1 - Game need remember whats character did and envolve 2 - Skills and Item cant be focus in game 3 - Clever IA to realy make player/npc think twince before do any dangerous move 4 - Need be dynamic enough to make each death interresing , because restart scratch is painfull , but if you do thing dynamics peoples dont mind do over and over
I've seen permadeath only ever work in two types of games:
1) Action-oriented dungeon crawler style games, with shallow, very functional mechanics such as in the Diablo series, where the character-avatar just acts as a convenient interface for action in a semi-linear experience.
MMOs, today, are neither of the two. There's still an element of social gameplay and creative expression that the dungeon crawlers like Diablo lack.
what do you mean?
There are plenty of MMOs with zero need for social interactions. Marvel Heroes, Warframe, ... can all be played like Diablo.
And what "creative expression"? I don't see it in LoL, WoW, Rift, or any MMOs that I have tried.
Like everyone suggested, optional. I play games purely for long term investment and progression. Perma-death is counter-productive to this...
Optional and or controlled. Perma-Death a risk only available in instanced combat or dungeons, done through a fatigue system. Fatigue bar gets to 100, you die. You get lots of warning, multiple warnings if you are entering dungeons with fatigue levels that mean you might not return. In addition you need to have a motive for this. As you push your fatigue, you unlock skills with near death epiphanies and have motive to take risks, even if they are optic. You might be able to control true risk by math. Determining that a dungeon rotation will get you to 90% fatigue and unlock a skill. Rest of course reduces fatigue and eliminates any chance of perma-death. A reincarnation system could be added as well. So there is carry over benefit to perma-death.
The system could be done and be made quite elaborate but it needs to be more than a shoddy time sink. Games have enough of those already.
Comments
Advancement in the games I was talking about couldn't be ground; someone had to let you get more powerful. Which meant that in order to get in a position to grief, they would have to master certain skills that don't come naturally to the lulz crowd: character acting, fidelity to the lore, witty banter, text-fighting prowess.
And, if they could do all those things, they really were playing the game, and their sociopathy became a plot device in itself.
__________________________
"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
2 - Skills and Item cant be focus in game
3 - Clever IA to realy make player/npc think twince before do any dangerous move
4 - Need be dynamic enough to make each death interresing , because restart scratch is painfull , but if you do thing dynamics peoples dont mind do over and over
There are plenty of MMOs with zero need for social interactions. Marvel Heroes, Warframe, ... can all be played like Diablo.
And what "creative expression"? I don't see it in LoL, WoW, Rift, or any MMOs that I have tried.
Perma-Death a risk only available in instanced combat or dungeons, done through a fatigue system. Fatigue bar gets to 100, you die. You get lots of warning, multiple warnings if you are entering dungeons with fatigue levels that mean you might not return.
In addition you need to have a motive for this. As you push your fatigue, you unlock skills with near death epiphanies and have motive to take risks, even if they are optic. You might be able to control true risk by math. Determining that a dungeon rotation will get you to 90% fatigue and unlock a skill. Rest of course reduces fatigue and eliminates any chance of perma-death. A reincarnation system could be added as well. So there is carry over benefit to perma-death.
The system could be done and be made quite elaborate but it needs to be more than a shoddy time sink. Games have enough of those already.