That's a good point, what is going to be the motivation to play this permadeath MMORPG at all? The OP describes a game with no character advancement, so that motivation is gone. People will put up with boring PVE in order to advance (see grinding and raid games), but what motivates someone to do any PVE stuff in this game? None of it is going to be challenging or exciting, since no one wants to risk dying like he described, so that's not it.
It gets worse in PVP, since no one is going to play PVP for the fun of fighting if they care about their character. Diplomacy and long-term strategy is fun - for the one person making decisions. It's pretty boring if you have a bunch of troops who have to sit around while someone else does all the interesting diplomacy/strategy setup. It seems to me that the ideal way to fight in PVP in the game described would be to treat your character as a respawn. Have Wendo001 go out and fight, if he loses make Wendo002 and so on until you win. Since there's no advancement this works, but it seems to be the opposite of what the OP wants in the game. And you'll end up with 'we care about our characters' being completely at the mecry of Generic123, Loldead082, and KillMePlz019, who they can't really defeat but who can defeat them.
For the OP, what activities do you envision that players would actually do in your game? Why would anyone play other than for the novelty of saying they played with permadeath? And especially, why would anyone play the game for say 6 months?
He he this is kinda funny couse i agree whit u on everything u say and its clear that u have a pretty clear pic of the problems whit perma death games but the thing is that im not sure that a perma death game wouldent work. I would rather say that mmos still are way to new and if u look at em no mmo really have a lot of stuff to do then ur standard grind,craft, pve and pvp. This may sound as a complete game but i think that in the future mmos will develope more vs a virtual world then the games they are today. I cant really say that i would be to appeled by a game where u 99,9% of the time do ingame stuff that u very well might be doing in irl... but then on the other hand ppl play the sims
Well anyhow if we leave perma death for just one sec and replace it whit games whit a higher loss for dieing then is the standard today we might se a mix of the stuff the op and several others seem to miss in todays mmos.
One thing I want to mention is that the reason I'd like to see permadeath, isn't because I think higher penalties for deah is good.
it's for RP purposes.
The idea being, that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it. They may have friends, but if you elliminate an entire opposing faction, then you totaly wipe them out.
It's more realistic that way. It creates a more dynamic world.
It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation, but that if someone actualyl managed to kill them, they'd be dead for good, and everone would be free (for a while), etc...
It means that a PKer, or theif could be hunted down and killed, permanently by a community.
One thing I want to mention is that the reason I'd like to see permadeath, isn't because I think higher penalties for deah is good.
it's for RP purposes.
The idea being, that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it. They may have friends, but if you elliminate an entire opposing faction, then you totaly wipe them out.
It's more realistic that way. It creates a more dynamic world.
It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation, but that if someone actualyl managed to kill them, they'd be dead for good, and everone would be free (for a while), etc...
He he worst thing in an mmo is when u really hate someone and when u finaly can get ur hands on him and kill him e simply spawns and u still have to litsen to the basterd in the chat :P
Originally posted by Denikin It's more realistic that way. It creates a more dynamic world.
So what does someone actually do while playing their game in this dynamic world? You haven't answered that part, and it's a big weakness in your idea for the game. Being an active MMO player probably requires 10 hours per week (2 1-3 hour sessions during the week and one 4-8 hour session on the weekend), and plenty of people play multiples of that time. What activities are they actually going to engage in that they will enjoy enough to keep bothering to play the game? It doesn't sound like you've got anything in there to motivate people
The idea being, that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it. They may have friends, but if you elliminate an entire opposing faction, then you totaly wipe them out. It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation, but that if someone actualyl managed to kill them, they'd be dead for good, and everone would be free (for a while), etc...
What makes the person really important in a game with no (or little) character advancement? Why don't you have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it, just with a different name? How do you eliminate an entire opposing faction exactly? What's to stop the evil despot from making evildespot02 and continuing his rule?
That's the problem with player-created content; it's created by players and not by characters. Evildespot's guild, home page, teamspeak server, and connections with other players are all still exactly the same as they were before he died. The important person isn't going to have many game-mechanical contacts with other characters, it's going to be that the player is good at leading other players. So how are you going to kill either of them for good unless you permaban the player after character death?
It means that a PKer, or theif could be hunted down and killed, permanently by a community.
"Permanently" meaning "as long as it takes them to make a new guy"? Remember, you've said there's no character advancement in the game you envision, that a new character will be as tough as a veteran. He'll just be dead long enough to get some gear, and since he probably has a non-PK alt for selling off loot anyway it's unlikely to take him long to reequip.
If you think the company running the game is going to enforce a rule along those lines, what kind of rule will they make? I don't see how you'd make a rule that would keep out evildespot02 that wouldn't interfere with me keeping on playing the game with my friends in-game if a character died. I think that overall you're thinking of a few ideas of things you want but not really looking at them in the context of a game.
The only way permadeth would work, is if everyone was the same combat strength... so that any attack would be a test of skill, and strategy, and there would always be the risk of death, even for power-players. Course, it'd be a pretty boring game if you couldn't advance your character.
Not true as long as a group of people would be stronger than one. Skills should mostly measure one on one situations, 'cos that is when skill counts, when fighting multiple foes luck comes in. So anyone attacking from behind should easily kill even the superskilled warrior. so skill based system would be my choice.
This would be such a small niche of a market that I doubt we will see anything like your suggestions in the online market today.
Game companies create games to make money and a game like this would never be much of a money maker IMHO.
It just would not have the player base.
A good lithmus test is just look at EQ2 and WoW. Where are the largest populations? PvP or PvE servers?
(added: oh and you should add up the total population on ALL pvp and ALL pve servers in those games to get the real numbers - please don't just pick one server )
Add perma death on top of a PvP server and you may as well put an accounting database on that server too because there will be a lot of unused CPU.
Originally posted by Pantastic Originally posted by Denikin It's more realistic that way. It creates a more dynamic world.
So what does someone actually do while playing their game in this dynamic world? You haven't answered that part, and it's a big weakness in your idea for the game. Being an active MMO player probably requires 10 hours per week (2 1-3 hour sessions during the week and one 4-8 hour session on the weekend), and plenty of people play multiples of that time. What activities are they actually going to engage in that they will enjoy enough to keep bothering to play the game? It doesn't sound like you've got anything in there to motivate people
Permadeath doesnt work with level treadmill games. You dont seem to be able to understand that you dont actually HAVE to design games based on level treadmills.
I think that a game with permadeath, which allows you to evolve and maintain a bloodline instead of a single character, would be more then possible to implement. When characters die, have a new member of their bloodline come into existance - I'm thinking hybrid fantasy and near-scifi, werewolves and vampires with cloning tanks or something. As characters age without dying, they gain maturity, which provides skill boosts and the like. When they die, allow some directed respeccing, and allow for some increase the overall bloodline 'strength'.
Allow players to align together in player-created families and kingdoms, and design an endgame based around free PvP for resource control. Combat obviously cant be the 'LVL 60 VS LVL 59 LOL PWNED U NUB' crap that's infested most other MMOGs, but something more skill-based.
Yes, permadeath would be more realistic, but is it really conducive to a fun gaming experience? I mean, real life also has constipation and herpes, but you don't see much call for these things in MMOs.
Assuming that it was even possible to design a system where you never die from lag, permadeath is still a bad idea as it removes the single biggest motivating factor from a persistant world game: character development. Likewise, instead of bringing new intensity to PvP, a permadeath game would emsure that PvP rarely, if ever, takes place. I mean, who is going to want to fight to the death when death means losing everything they've ever accomplished in the game? The only people who will be willing to take a risk like this are those who can somehow control the risk - in other words, exploiters and gakners. At best, I can only see permadeath being a feature on a novelty server for a more mainstream game.
Originally posted by Greyface Yes, permadeath would be more realistic, but is it really conducive to a fun gaming experience? I mean, real life also has constipation and herpes, but you don't see much call for these things in MMOs. Assuming that it was even possible to design a system where you never die from lag, permadeath is still a bad idea as it removes the single biggest motivating factor from a persistant world game: character development. Likewise, instead of bringing new intensity to PvP, a permadeath game would emsure that PvP rarely, if ever, takes place. I mean, who is going to want to fight to the death when death means losing everything they've ever accomplished in the game? The only people who will be willing to take a risk like this are those who can somehow control the risk - in other words, exploiters and gakners. At best, I can only see permadeath being a feature on a novelty server for a more mainstream game.
Damn most people have narrow sights for permadeath. it doesn't have to be a game reset! It is the death of a character. YOu might be able to make a char of the same "level" (skill % etc.). And the ability to resurrect might also be included. It would not be as bad as you make it sound. Months wort of gaming going to waste... not true if game mechanics would be made correctly.
Originally posted by RollinDutch Permadeath doesnt work with level treadmill games. You dont seem to be able to understand that you dont actually HAVE to design games based on level treadmills.
I didn't say anything about a level treadmill or even leveling, I simply asked what you would actually be doing with your gametime in this game. I have no idea where you're getting the idea that I was even talking about level treadmills, much less that I think people have to design games based on them, when I haven't talked about them at all.
You don't seem to be able to understand that asking 'what would you actually do while playing this game' does not mean 'you actually HAVE to design games based on level treadmills'.
Originally posted by Sinitassu Damn most people have narrow sights for permadeath. it doesn't have to be a game reset! It is the death of a character. YOu might be able to make a char of the same "level" (skill % etc.). And the ability to resurrect might also be included. It would not be as bad as you make it sound. Months wort of gaming going to waste... not true if game mechanics would be made correctly.
So then you don't get what the OP wants frome permadeath, which is "The idea being, that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it... It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation, but that if someone actually managed to kill them, they'd be dead for good, and everone would be free (for a while)... It means that a PKer, or theif could be hunted down and killed, permanently by a community." You can't have it both ways; if you want a game where killing someone means they're gone for good, you can't also have them not be gone for good.
Originally posted by Sinitassu Damn most people have narrow sights for permadeath. it doesn't have to be a game reset! It is the death of a character. YOu might be able to make a char of the same "level" (skill % etc.). And the ability to resurrect might also be included. It would not be as bad as you make it sound. Months wort of gaming going to waste... not true if game mechanics would be made correctly.
But then it's not perma-death, is it? I understand what you're getting at, but it's not what the OP is calling for.
Permadeath is about the only open PVP I would play. I think it would keep the griefers down to a minimum and I have no problem starting a character from scratch.
Originally posted by Pantastic So then you don't get what the OP wants frome permadeath, which is "The idea being, that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it... It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation, but that if someone actually managed to kill them, they'd be dead for good, and everone would be free (for a while)... It means that a PKer, or theif could be hunted down and killed, permanently by a community." You can't have it both ways; if you want a game where killing someone means they're gone for good, you can't also have them not be gone for good.
Again you are incorrect. The character would be dead. permanently. End of his life. A tomb stone in a grave yard. Not ever coming back to life. But what you make it sound is that your next char should start from scratch, not true. The char is lost for ever, progress isn't. The evil despot might make his next char a glorious paladin or a crooked thief. What you want from perma is almost like the player would be killed. The player stays, progress stays, char dies. If you had ever played real RPGs you would know. We die a lot, always perma, but we make new chars, differend background, differend personality and differend appearance, but with the same, little more or little less progress, so he isn't too weak to be in the same story with the other chars. The way you die is the deciding factor on what your next char will be. Same, stronger or weaker. If you die as your char should, bonus if ie. your paladin dies runing away, penalty. So this system could easily be implemented in a MMORPG, by just always giving a small penalty. Ofc loosing your standing as the supreme councillor or what ever position gained by char story, but if you had offspring they might take the rule after you died. Character and story, over powergaming.
Originally posted by itzit Permadeath is about the only open PVP I would play. I think it would keep the griefers down to a minimum and I have no problem starting a character from scratch.
Really?
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch?
Originally posted by Sinitassu Again you are incorrect. The character would be dead. permanently. End of his life. A tomb stone in a grave yard. Not ever coming back to life. But what you make it sound is that your next char should start from scratch, not true.
I'm completely and utterly correct, you nead to pay attention to what I wrote. The OP, not me, wrote the quoted material, and I am completely correct when I say that what you envision from a permadeath game would not provide what he wants. What I said is not that your next character should start from scratch, but that if your next character doesn't start from scratch then you're not making the game that the person who started this thread wants.
The char is lost for ever, progress isn't. The evil despot might make his next char a glorious paladin or a crooked thief.
Or he makes evildespot02 and continues to run his evil empire uninterrupted, since all of the players executing his reign of terror know him anyway, and his guild home page, teamspeak server, and contacts with players are all intace.
If you had ever played real RPGs you would know.
I wouldn't be suprised if I've been playing real RPGs since before you were even born, it's been over 20 years since I first played a P&P RPG. You and Dutch need to stop being idiots and respond to what's written in the thread instead of making random insults and declarations about people.
Pros'. It adds a lot of replayability and tension to a game you have otherwise finished.
Con's. You do an exceptional amount of grinding.
.
I enjoyed playing Diablo2 in Hardcore mode, but if I had to pay extra or monthly to do so, I would pick up an entirely new world to play instead. I'm not into paying to regrind the same old grind I have already grinded 100 times before with no new content. Sorry but that is poor value.
.
If Guild Wars had a Hardcore server, that would be cool.
Me and a team of about hmm... 18 now have been working on a not so typical MMO project.
It includes a permadeath system which we believe may shake up the genre.
I hate to give away too much as I am not really allowed to be discussing it at all.
BUT.
The sytem works as a family.
You choose your last name. when you begin and then create your first toon. You go about your way living life, doing the evilest of deeds or the goodest of goods, all the while building reputation and fame.
The day comes when you decide to choose a cause to fight for and you bring your weapons to the field. only to get whacked to itty bitty bits.
Welp your dead.
BUT You can continue on as your first toons son/daughter/wife. Depending on your status, many of your first toons attributes and things he or she did well get passed onto it's kin.
This is alowing us to look into neat features like family tree tracking. Bonuses will be given to familys that work in one area over multiple generations. Families will be able to have bad children who ruin the family names. Housing with the ability to set asside certain pieces of goodies for nieces and nephews.
Originally posted by Pantastic I wouldn't be suprised if I've been playing real RPGs since before you were even born, it's been over 20 years since I first played a P&P RPG. You and Dutch need to stop being idiots and respond to what's written in the thread instead of making random insults and declarations about people.
I didn't think it as an insult. So I'm sorry if you felt like it. Then that is true, I just wonder what makes my system so hard to understand. Well if your "opinion" was only based on the opinion of the OP then it might be understandable.
I'll still disagree with your opinion on the guy making the same char over and over again. I really think my system would really benefit the mmorpg genre, by making it more of an RPG. Game industry nowadays gives "rpg" tag to anything with stats and/or skills. Which couldn't be farther from the truth. That is another story though.
Originally posted by Saftwear Me and a team of about hmm... 18 now have been working on a not so typical MMO project.
It includes a permadeath system which we believe may shake up the genre.
I hate to give away too much as I am not really allowed to be discussing it at all.
BUT.
The sytem works as a family.
You choose your last name. when you begin and then create your first toon. You go about your way living life, doing the evilest of deeds or the goodest of goods, all the while building reputation and fame.
The day comes when you decide to choose a cause to fight for and you bring your weapons to the field. only to get whacked to itty bitty bits.
Welp your dead.
BUT You can continue on as your first toons son/daughter/wife. Depending on your status, many of your first toons attributes and things he or she did well get passed onto it's kin.
This is alowing us to look into neat features like family tree tracking. Bonuses will be given to familys that work in one area over multiple generations. Families will be able to have bad children who ruin the family names. Housing with the ability to set asside certain pieces of goodies for nieces and nephews.
Ahem.
I think I have said too much
I may be sacked for this
-Saft
Damn this sounds fine! Only if it was reality... Almost like the system I described.
Lets get something clear, we all or atleast mostly agree that it's stupid to kill someone, just to have them return as another character to cuss you out...
Personally, I think a permadeath system would work, but it wouldn't be the same idea where the player is attached to one character and have full control over that character...
But since we do want players to be attached to something so that they would continue paying subscriptions and continue playing the game... This could be anything... Someone said Bloodline though... So for instance, lets use that, the bloodline or family tree is what a player is attached to, and the player would want to play the game and influence how the family develops...
The player may be "influencing" one character or multiple characters at once... I think one character at a time works better in certain ways though ( In other ways, it's better to control multiple characters at once), and once he's killed, he's replaced by another by the player's choice, random or predetermined - i.e. son or daughter or etc... ( Thought this over more... controlling multiple is probably works out better... )
My idea is basically, the player is playing as the conscience of the characters... Each character has their own predetermined personality, ethics, story, problems, etc... Although the player can't directly control the characters 100%, the player can manipulate and change the characters slowly towards certain directions... Atleast this way, since characters have predetermined statistics, even though the same player is controlling another character, the characters should be quite different from the last one...
Anyways, I think for this idea to work, it would require a much much more advance AI than what's currently in games right now... randomly generated Characters, stories, romance, problems, etc....
Originally posted by Novaseeker Originally posted by itzit Permadeath is about the only open PVP I would play. I think it would keep the griefers down to a minimum and I have no problem starting a character from scratch.
Really?
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch? I would have no problem. The journey is what is fun, not the destination
Originally posted by itzit Originally posted by Novaseeker Originally posted by itzit Permadeath is about the only open PVP I would play. I think it would keep the griefers down to a minimum and I have no problem starting a character from scratch.
Really?
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch? I would have no problem. The journey is what is fun, not the destination
Fair enough.
I, for one, would not play a game like EVE if a podding would delete a 25m SP character. But to each his own.
Originally posted by Novaseeker Originally posted by itzit Originally posted by Novaseeker Originally posted by itzit Permadeath is about the only open PVP I would play. I think it would keep the griefers down to a minimum and I have no problem starting a character from scratch.
Really?
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch? I would have no problem. The journey is what is fun, not the destination
Fair enough.
I, for one, would not play a game like EVE if a podding would delete a 25m SP character. But to each his own. But I can add that I suck at PVP, so I would never get a 25 m SP character with a Permadeath EVE. It would still be fun though. A High level or SP in a Permadeath game would be a god.
Comments
That's a good point, what is going to be the motivation to play this permadeath MMORPG at all? The OP describes a game with no character advancement, so that motivation is gone. People will put up with boring PVE in order to advance (see grinding and raid games), but what motivates someone to do any PVE stuff in this game? None of it is going to be challenging or exciting, since no one wants to risk dying like he described, so that's not it.
It gets worse in PVP, since no one is going to play PVP for the fun of fighting if they care about their character. Diplomacy and long-term strategy is fun - for the one person making decisions. It's pretty boring if you have a bunch of troops who have to sit around while someone else does all the interesting diplomacy/strategy setup. It seems to me that the ideal way to fight in PVP in the game described would be to treat your character as a respawn. Have Wendo001 go out and fight, if he loses make Wendo002 and so on until you win. Since there's no advancement this works, but it seems to be the opposite of what the OP wants in the game. And you'll end up with 'we care about our characters' being completely at the mecry of Generic123, Loldead082, and KillMePlz019, who they can't really defeat but who can defeat them.
For the OP, what activities do you envision that players would actually do in your game? Why would anyone play other than for the novelty of saying they played with permadeath? And especially, why would anyone play the game for say 6 months?
He he this is kinda funny couse i agree whit u on everything u say and its clear that u have a pretty clear pic of the problems whit perma death games but the thing is that im not sure that a perma death game wouldent work. I would rather say that mmos still are way to new and if u look at em no mmo really have a lot of stuff to do then ur standard grind,craft, pve and pvp. This may sound as a complete game but i think that in the future mmos will develope more vs a virtual world then the games they are today. I cant really say that i would be to appeled by a game where u 99,9% of the time do ingame stuff that u very well might be doing in irl... but then on the other hand ppl play the sims
Well anyhow if we leave perma death for just one sec and replace it whit games whit a higher loss for dieing then is the standard today we might se a mix of the stuff the op and several others seem to miss in todays mmos.
Which FF Character Are You?
Oh yeah.
One thing I want to mention is that the reason I'd
like to see permadeath, isn't because I think higher penalties for deah
is good.
it's for RP purposes.
The idea being,
that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry
about them coming back and killing you for it. They may have friends,
but if you elliminate an entire opposing faction, then you totaly wipe
them out.
It's more realistic that way. It creates a more dynamic world.
It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation,
but that if someone actualyl managed to kill them, they'd be dead for
good, and everone would be free (for a while), etc...
It means that a PKer, or theif could be hunted down and killed, permanently by a community.
Which FF Character Are You?
So what does someone actually do while playing their game in this dynamic world? You haven't answered that part, and it's a big weakness in your idea for the game. Being an active MMO player probably requires 10 hours per week (2 1-3 hour sessions during the week and one 4-8 hour session on the weekend), and plenty of people play multiples of that time. What activities are they actually going to engage in that they will enjoy enough to keep bothering to play the game? It doesn't sound like you've got anything in there to motivate people
What makes the person really important in a game with no (or little) character advancement? Why don't you have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it, just with a different name? How do you eliminate an entire opposing faction exactly? What's to stop the evil despot from making evildespot02 and continuing his rule?
That's the problem with player-created content; it's created by players and not by characters. Evildespot's guild, home page, teamspeak server, and connections with other players are all still exactly the same as they were before he died. The important person isn't going to have many game-mechanical contacts with other characters, it's going to be that the player is good at leading other players. So how are you going to kill either of them for good unless you permaban the player after character death?
"Permanently" meaning "as long as it takes them to make a new guy"? Remember, you've said there's no character advancement in the game you envision, that a new character will be as tough as a veteran. He'll just be dead long enough to get some gear, and since he probably has a non-PK alt for selling off loot anyway it's unlikely to take him long to reequip.
If you think the company running the game is going to enforce a rule along those lines, what kind of rule will they make? I don't see how you'd make a rule that would keep out evildespot02 that wouldn't interfere with me keeping on playing the game with my friends in-game if a character died. I think that overall you're thinking of a few ideas of things you want but not really looking at them in the context of a game.
On other things. Visit my post: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/102211 to see more about what I think of realism in mmorpgs. including implementing permadeath without punnishing the player.
"Lick My Weapons"
This would be such a small niche of a market that I doubt we will see anything like your suggestions in the online market today.
Game companies create games to make money and a game like this would never be much of a money maker IMHO.
It just would not have the player base.
A good lithmus test is just look at EQ2 and WoW. Where are the largest populations? PvP or PvE servers?
(added: oh and you should add up the total population on ALL pvp and ALL pve servers in those games to get the real numbers - please don't just pick one server
)
Add perma death on top of a PvP server and you may as well put an accounting database on that server too because there will be a lot of unused CPU.
So what does someone actually do while playing their game in this dynamic world? You haven't answered that part, and it's a big weakness in your idea for the game. Being an active MMO player probably requires 10 hours per week (2 1-3 hour sessions during the week and one 4-8 hour session on the weekend), and plenty of people play multiples of that time. What activities are they actually going to engage in that they will enjoy enough to keep bothering to play the game? It doesn't sound like you've got anything in there to motivate people
Permadeath doesnt work with level treadmill games. You dont seem to be able to understand that you dont actually HAVE to design games based on level treadmills.
I think that a game with permadeath, which allows you to evolve and maintain a bloodline instead of a single character, would be more then possible to implement. When characters die, have a new member of their bloodline come into existance - I'm thinking hybrid fantasy and near-scifi, werewolves and vampires with cloning tanks or something. As characters age without dying, they gain maturity, which provides skill boosts and the like. When they die, allow some directed respeccing, and allow for some increase the overall bloodline 'strength'.
Allow players to align together in player-created families and kingdoms, and design an endgame based around free PvP for resource control. Combat obviously cant be the 'LVL 60 VS LVL 59 LOL PWNED U NUB' crap that's infested most other MMOGs, but something more skill-based.
Yes, permadeath would be more realistic, but is it really conducive to a fun gaming experience? I mean, real life also has constipation and herpes, but you don't see much call for these things in MMOs.
Assuming that it was even possible to design a system where you never die from lag, permadeath is still a bad idea as it removes the single biggest motivating factor from a persistant world game: character development. Likewise, instead of bringing new intensity to PvP, a permadeath game would emsure that PvP rarely, if ever, takes place. I mean, who is going to want to fight to the death when death means losing everything they've ever accomplished in the game? The only people who will be willing to take a risk like this are those who can somehow control the risk - in other words, exploiters and gakners. At best, I can only see permadeath being a feature on a novelty server for a more mainstream game.
"Lick My Weapons"
I didn't say anything about a level treadmill or even leveling, I simply asked what you would actually be doing with your gametime in this game. I have no idea where you're getting the idea that I was even talking about level treadmills, much less that I think people have to design games based on them, when I haven't talked about them at all.
You don't seem to be able to understand that asking 'what would you actually do while playing this game' does not mean 'you actually HAVE to design games based on level treadmills'.
So then you don't get what the OP wants frome permadeath, which is "The idea being, that if you kill someone really important. You don't have to worry about them coming back and killing you for it... It means that evil despots could actually rule based on intimidation, but that if someone actually managed to kill them, they'd be dead for good, and everone would be free (for a while)... It means that a PKer, or theif could be hunted down and killed, permanently by a community." You can't have it both ways; if you want a game where killing someone means they're gone for good, you can't also have them not be gone for good.
Again you are incorrect. The character would be dead. permanently. End of his life. A tomb stone in a grave yard. Not ever coming back to life. But what you make it sound is that your next char should start from scratch, not true. The char is lost for ever, progress isn't. The evil despot might make his next char a glorious paladin or a crooked thief. What you want from perma is almost like the player would be killed. The player stays, progress stays, char dies. If you had ever played real RPGs you would know. We die a lot, always perma, but we make new chars, differend background, differend personality and differend appearance, but with the same, little more or little less progress, so he isn't too weak to be in the same story with the other chars. The way you die is the deciding factor on what your next char will be. Same, stronger or weaker. If you die as your char should, bonus if ie. your paladin dies runing away, penalty. So this system could easily be implemented in a MMORPG, by just always giving a small penalty. Ofc loosing your standing as the supreme councillor or what ever position gained by char story, but if you had offspring they might take the rule after you died. Character and story, over powergaming.
"Lick My Weapons"
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch?
I'm completely and utterly correct, you nead to pay attention to what I wrote. The OP, not me, wrote the quoted material, and I am completely correct when I say that what you envision from a permadeath game would not provide what he wants. What I said is not that your next character should start from scratch, but that if your next character doesn't start from scratch then you're not making the game that the person who started this thread wants.
Or he makes evildespot02 and continues to run his evil empire uninterrupted, since all of the players executing his reign of terror know him anyway, and his guild home page, teamspeak server, and contacts with players are all intace.
I wouldn't be suprised if I've been playing real RPGs since before you were even born, it's been over 20 years since I first played a P&P RPG. You and Dutch need to stop being idiots and respond to what's written in the thread instead of making random insults and declarations about people.
Pros'. It adds a lot of replayability and tension to a game you have otherwise finished.
Con's. You do an exceptional amount of grinding.
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I enjoyed playing Diablo2 in Hardcore mode, but if I had to pay extra or monthly to do so, I would pick up an entirely new world to play instead. I'm not into paying to regrind the same old grind I have already grinded 100 times before with no new content. Sorry but that is poor value.
.
If Guild Wars had a Hardcore server, that would be cool.
It includes a permadeath system which we believe may shake up the genre.
I hate to give away too much as I am not really allowed to be discussing it at all.
BUT.
The sytem works as a family.
You choose your last name. when you begin and then create your first toon.
You go about your way living life, doing the evilest of deeds or the goodest of goods, all the while building reputation and fame.
The day comes when you decide to choose a cause to fight for and you bring your weapons to the field.
only to get whacked to itty bitty bits.
Welp your dead.
BUT
You can continue on as your first toons son/daughter/wife.
Depending on your status, many of your first toons attributes and things he or she did well get passed onto it's kin.
This is alowing us to look into neat features like family tree tracking. Bonuses will be given to familys that work in one area over multiple generations. Families will be able to have bad children who ruin the family names. Housing with the ability to set asside certain pieces of goodies for nieces and nephews.
Ahem.
I think I have said too much
I may be sacked for this
-Saft
I didn't think it as an insult. So I'm sorry if you felt like it. Then that is true, I just wonder what makes my system so hard to understand. Well if your "opinion" was only based on the opinion of the OP then it might be understandable.
I'll still disagree with your opinion on the guy making the same char over and over again. I really think my system would really benefit the mmorpg genre, by making it more of an RPG. Game industry nowadays gives "rpg" tag to anything with stats and/or skills. Which couldn't be farther from the truth. That is another story though.
"Lick My Weapons"
"Lick My Weapons"
Lets get something clear, we all or atleast mostly agree that it's stupid to kill someone, just to have them return as another character to cuss you out...
Personally, I think a permadeath system would work, but it wouldn't be the same idea where the player is attached to one character and have full control over that character...
But since we do want players to be attached to something so that they would continue paying subscriptions and continue playing the game... This could be anything... Someone said Bloodline though... So for instance, lets use that, the bloodline or family tree is what a player is attached to, and the player would want to play the game and influence how the family develops...
The player may be "influencing" one character or multiple characters at once... I think one character at a time works better in certain ways though ( In other ways, it's better to control multiple characters at once), and once he's killed, he's replaced by another by the player's choice, random or predetermined - i.e. son or daughter or etc... ( Thought this over more... controlling multiple is probably works out better... )
My idea is basically, the player is playing as the conscience of the characters... Each character has their own predetermined personality, ethics, story, problems, etc... Although the player can't directly control the characters 100%, the player can manipulate and change the characters slowly towards certain directions... Atleast this way, since characters have predetermined statistics, even though the same player is controlling another character, the characters should be quite different from the last one...
Anyways, I think for this idea to work, it would require a much much more advance AI than what's currently in games right now... randomly generated Characters, stories, romance, problems, etc....
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch?
I would have no problem. The journey is what is fun, not the destination
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch?
I would have no problem. The journey is what is fun, not the destination
Fair enough.
I, for one, would not play a game like EVE if a podding would delete a 25m SP character. But to each his own.
I see in your Xfire that you have been playing EVE lately. If you had a character with 25-30m SPs (representing in EVE terms 2+ years of play), you would have no problem starting a character from scratch?
I would have no problem. The journey is what is fun, not the destination
Fair enough.
I, for one, would not play a game like EVE if a podding would delete a 25m SP character. But to each his own.
But I can add that I suck at PVP, so I would never get a 25 m SP character with a Permadeath EVE. It would still be fun though. A High level or SP in a Permadeath game would be a god.