Not because I feel I have anything 'new' to say on the subject, but because a snowball's chance in hell of getting the game I'd like to play is better than no chance at all.)
There are a few hobbyists already on it. I've been arguing with my self about making a Rogue like MUD along the lines of Diamonin with all the features we debate about here. Sure, it would look like ass and probably never have a population over 1000, but it would allow me to experiment with some of the more controversial aspects of MMO design without spending a shitload of money. Come to think of it, Diamonin is open source.....
If it was a softcore system, where I can't play till next month or next week or something, depending on how long I can play before running out of lives in a month, quite possibly.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Jimmy_Scythe: One point, is that you did not have to pay a monthly fee for Diablo II. I doubt anyone would want to pay a monthly fee for a perma-death game. Unless you had some sort of choice over when you die where your stuff goes to, especially if you have stuff stored.
Diablo II wasn't massively multiplayer and it had controls that allowed you to have control over the players you interacted with.
That is a solid arguement. Unfortunately, people pay monthly fees for games that they claim they can't stand. Read the rest of the board if you don't believe me. Also remember that people pay money to to do a large number of things that most of us couldn't be paid to do. Adventure racing, sky diving, BDS&M, etc. It's obvious that the people that do these things get something out of it, but it isn't something that most of us could connect to. Same thing with Permadeath. I have no doubt in my mind that there are people that would pay monthly for a game where they would have to start all the way over if they "died." With the poll the way it is, I'd say that there are quite a number of people that would pay and keep the game alive.
being free or semi-free isn't the only explination for Diablo 2 and Nethack's popularity. There are any number of factors that contribute. My guess is that people like to think that they are doing well at something. In a permadeath environment, surviving is a solid indication that they are doing well. Yes, it can be frustrating when you're character gets wiped out, but that can also push you to do better on the next character. You'll also have a better understanding of how the game works as you develope your second character, making your survivability increase even further on your second character. Keep the game open ended enough, and you don't have to worry about players doing the same things with different characters.
BTW, permadeath doesn't mean PvP. Permadeath can be used to deter PvP, by making anyone who dies in PvP permadie and letting people that PvE rez. However, you can go the other way and make the game PvE only, at least in the combative sense, and then the players will only die when they have a lack of judgement in fighting mobs or solving puzzles.
Lag and disconnects are issues, but they aren't as bad as they used to be. The best way to prevent such things from happening is for the developers to have a solid networking infrastructure. Most of the problems that I've had with lag originated at the server and not at my ISP. The few problems on my end were usually caused by thunderstorms and I should have known better than to be on my computer then.
Wow 40 votes in and it's still 50/50, very cool. I played a game with perma-death successfully implemented. It was called Cybersphere, it was very focused on roleplay in a post apocalyptic setting. Anyways what you would do is buy a genclone. Upon death the genclone would be activated and naked. Sometimes genclones would go through this thing where they would lose stats upon activation but the more expensive the genclone, the smaller there was a chance of that happening.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system but it sure did add a lot of roleplaying to the game and I liked the idea that if I hated someone bad enough, there are means in that game to permanently kill them and their clone.
Comments
Kaos&Light wrote:
Not because I feel I have anything 'new' to say on the subject, but because a snowball's chance in hell of getting the game I'd like to play is better than no chance at all.)
There are a few hobbyists already on it. I've been arguing with my self about making a Rogue like MUD along the lines of Diamonin with all the features we debate about here. Sure, it would look like ass and probably never have a population over 1000, but it would allow me to experiment with some of the more controversial aspects of MMO design without spending a shitload of money. Come to think of it, Diamonin is open source.....
No.
If it was a softcore system, where I can't play till next month or next week or something, depending on how long I can play before running out of lives in a month, quite possibly.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Jimmy_Scythe: One point, is that you did not have to pay a monthly fee for Diablo II. I doubt anyone would want to pay a monthly fee for a perma-death game. Unless you had some sort of choice over when you die where your stuff goes to, especially if you have stuff stored.
Diablo II wasn't massively multiplayer and it had controls that allowed you to have control over the players you interacted with.
That is a solid arguement. Unfortunately, people pay monthly fees for games that they claim they can't stand. Read the rest of the board if you don't believe me. Also remember that people pay money to to do a large number of things that most of us couldn't be paid to do. Adventure racing, sky diving, BDS&M, etc. It's obvious that the people that do these things get something out of it, but it isn't something that most of us could connect to. Same thing with Permadeath. I have no doubt in my mind that there are people that would pay monthly for a game where they would have to start all the way over if they "died." With the poll the way it is, I'd say that there are quite a number of people that would pay and keep the game alive.
being free or semi-free isn't the only explination for Diablo 2 and Nethack's popularity. There are any number of factors that contribute. My guess is that people like to think that they are doing well at something. In a permadeath environment, surviving is a solid indication that they are doing well. Yes, it can be frustrating when you're character gets wiped out, but that can also push you to do better on the next character. You'll also have a better understanding of how the game works as you develope your second character, making your survivability increase even further on your second character. Keep the game open ended enough, and you don't have to worry about players doing the same things with different characters.
BTW, permadeath doesn't mean PvP. Permadeath can be used to deter PvP, by making anyone who dies in PvP permadie and letting people that PvE rez. However, you can go the other way and make the game PvE only, at least in the combative sense, and then the players will only die when they have a lack of judgement in fighting mobs or solving puzzles.
Lag and disconnects are issues, but they aren't as bad as they used to be. The best way to prevent such things from happening is for the developers to have a solid networking infrastructure. Most of the problems that I've had with lag originated at the server and not at my ISP. The few problems on my end were usually caused by thunderstorms and I should have known better than to be on my computer then.
Wow 40 votes in and it's still 50/50, very cool. I played a game with perma-death successfully implemented. It was called Cybersphere, it was very focused on roleplay in a post apocalyptic setting. Anyways what you would do is buy a genclone.
Upon death the genclone would be activated and naked. Sometimes genclones would go through this thing where they would lose stats upon activation but the more expensive the genclone, the smaller there was a chance of that happening.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system but it sure did add a lot of roleplaying to the game and I liked the idea that if I hated someone bad enough, there are means in that game to permanently kill them and their clone.