Originally posted by iskareot BUT it did teach you not to be a moron like the Jedi are now in the NGE... Perma death did make us rare and they did give us power to boot back then to balance it out.
And that is perhaps one of the biggest upsides to having a Permadeath game.. It will weed out the Morons and idiot childish fools...
People will be more reluctant to talk trash to others since they will be worried about pissing off the wrong people and being killed..
People will be more reluctant to run up and make silly mistakes during an incounter and will sit back and plot things out more carefully... (NO more stupid people that get you wiped)
Personally I think Permadeath will just take care of more problems in a game then it will create.. Some developer needs to just take a chance and make a Permadeath server for thier game it will be a huge success population wise. God's and Hero's has been tossing around the ideal last I heard, while I might not be really looking forward to that game I will buy it none the less to try out the Permadeath aspect if they go ahead with it. So long as its Permadeath and not some wannabe version of it.
------------------------------ You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Originally posted by RollinDutch Originally posted by Pantastic Originally posted by AranStormah Pros: Allows for a whole different take on gameplay offering players a structure and type of adventure they've never / rarely dealt with before.Cons: Is sublimally associated with how permadeath would be in one of the thousands of Everquest clones
Oddly, people seem reluctant to describe the actual gameplay of permadeath games in any kind of depth, especially RollinDutch. There's been discussion of making permadeath into more of a forced name change than a permanent death, but that's not a description of what actions you'd actually take in the game.
Its almost like I dont care to do more then sketch out a potential idea.
I mean, who wouldnt want to cram an entire MMOG design into one post to prove something to a bunch of half-literate morons?
I'm amazed youre whining about something thats NOT EVEN IN ANY GAME AT ALL. Its a special level of meta-whining, where you invent things to whine about simply because you like to whine. Thanks Dutch. And here I thought what I said actually would make sense to people.
If I was able to sum it up well I would try to sell the idea and not convince a bunch of narrowsighted people who will ignore it anyway, but just to keep your discussion going:
A permadeath, multiplayer game would have to be based around one or more of the following principles:
*Levels not being the main focus of the gameplay. Something like old SWG, GW, PlanetSide or WAR. Where more playtime gives more options, but not a direct translation into more power
*There being inheritable benifits for the future characters on the same account tied to the death of your former toon. These would of course have to be based on how successful that character were in certain aspects of the game to make it meaningful. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the following statement, but I think the ditched project Ultima Online 2 (Ultima X or something) had a good concepth for multiple characters which could be converted into a permadeath scheme. You'd have one main and your alts would be disciples of the main getting bonuses from it because of their alignement. You could translate that into your first char being the parent of your next char allowing for direct inheritance of certain attributes and equipment. Death would still hurt, but the saga of your characters bloodline would carry on.
*Non-itemcentric gameplay. There either couldn't be rare/unique items or these would have to be possible to reclaim easier than how they were to get in the first place when you return with a new character (either from killing your killer, or an artificial source like loot or quests). Meaning items would have to be crafter based, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it would allow for player controlled economies.
Games from Romancing Saga and Phantasy Star comes to mind. There you would be playing certain characters and then later as time would pass, these would die and you would continue with the next generation. It worked for singleplayer so it should be possible to take the same idea into a massive multiplayer with good planning and design.
Edit: I played Romancing Saga 3 the most out of the two series, and it actually had a sort of permadeath system. Your characters would have "life-points" together with healthpoints. Each time they were knocked out they lost a life point, some had fewer than others, and if they lost them all they died for good. Allthough these could be replenished by sleeping at inns. In a MMO that would be the halfassed way to do permadeath, but could work with more conventional dungeoncrawlers.
Originally posted by Sinitassu He said: still, "it'd be cool to implement it somehow." I told him how it could be implemented without alienating the general public and still making death permanent. Your line of thinking is something like: "'We are talking about food, don't come here talking about bananas to us" .
No, you talked about your idea for a kind of 'permadeath' that DOES NOT IMPLEMENT WHAT HE WANTS. I quoted a big bunch from him about what he wants from permadeath in a game, and what you're proposing simply DOES NOT DO IT. I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept for you to grasp, but it's really simple. Your thing not give what him want.
Your line of thinking is something like "The OP asked for vegitarian food, so I told him about steak, why do you keep saying that's not what he wants?"
It would be possible no doubt, but he would have to regain hes status and that is why *I think most roleplayers would like to try out a differend kind of char.
Why on earth would he have to regain his status? Are you postulating some magical force that's going to make the players in his empire forget him, or their website, teamspeak server, and any other organizational tools? If his evil empire was a success, what's going to make the players want to fold up and start anew; why wouldn't they want to keep the evil empire going? The thing about player-created content is that it's created by PLAYERS and there's no reason why he'd need to regain his status with other players.
So I disagree with you saying "he would do the char again with a differend name", but this is off topic.
How on earth is discussing the effects of permadeath in a game off-topic in a thread about the pros and cons of permadeath? It's exactly the topic of the thread.
Originally posted by AranStormah Thanks Dutch. And here I thought what I said actually would make sense to people.If I was able to sum it up well I would try to sell the idea and not convince a bunch of narrowsighted people who will ignore it anyway, but just to keep your discussion going:A permadeath, multiplayer game would have to be based around one or more of the following principles:
How about base an answer around the principle question of "what would gameplay in this permadeath game be like and what would motivate people to go out and risk permanent death while engaging in this gameplay, and what would permadeath add to the game"? Yeah, it's easy to accuse people of being 'narrowsighted' or 'half-literate morons' on the basis that they're asking you questions about your game idea, but it only makes you appear as a bunch of half-witted morons who just want to say "permadeath is wicked cool" instead of actually discussing the topic.
Originally posted by Denikin I'm sure this has been talked about before, but I just wanted to start up a new discussion about this.
Mainly, because, the part of me that plays MMOs and wants to see realism would love to see permadeath, though the realistic part of me knows it wouldn't work.
Personally i want realisme because i adds fun and complexity. I only want realisme if it adds to the fun. People like you really give me the creeps next ting will be that you make a mmorpg you actaully have to have a job to earn money and stuff eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwww. Go play sims online if you want realisme closes thing you get to realisme
The pros (and this is why I'd like to see this) is that it would make teamwork and community really important and more realistic.
If live wasn't hard enough for the healers in the first place :P Now you get yelled at because you healed to late and somebody needed ressurection. With Permadeath they probably not going to play with you anymore heee not that you have to worry they stay death and before there going to reach your level you probably died somewhere else and didn't know your new chars name
If you can die for real, it makes you less willing to go out and risk fighting something alone... You'll want to work with people all the time, and make sure people have each other's backs covered.
I die a lot because other peoples stupidity, sins mmorpg generally don't have perma death i tend not to attack people on it. In a perma death mmorpg i probably would react otherwise
And, if you can die, you're less likely to throw yourself into PVP fights where there's a chance you might die. So it would make PVP more of a strategy thing, and more defensive. In other words, more like wars, and less like random thuggery. It would also create a place for diplomacy in PVP. I mean, why risk death, attacking their army, when you might be able to accomplish your objective by negotiating, or just threatening.
PvP will die with permadeath, nobody going to risk it unless there sure there going to win, it would take all the fun out of it
All in all, more defensive gameplay would suit me just fine, as long as the option was there for PVP.
Perma death will make the game toooooooooooo defensive you hate it
The problem with all this, obviously, is that this is a game. So, in any game, people aren't going to take concequences as seriously as in real life. Meaning that there'll still be people who attack and kill, create conflict for no reason, and get themselves and everyone else around them killed for no good reason, because it's a game, and people some people are going to play agressively.
Normally those agressively people just going to be an ennoying factor but with perma death it probably would mean that al lot of peeps will quit just because the can't get to a level they can compete
The second (major) problem is that in real life... People are a lot more equal then in games. Sure, a proffesional soldier could probably take on a few civilians, even when properly armed... but a lucky shot would still kill them and it'd be a major risk to just pick a fight like that.
And a rich man could hire an army and let take in a whole country, the problem is that in reall life we not killing mobs all day so we develop other skills and we get drive by other things then just exp. Comparing reall life with a game is bull. reall life is about survival and games are about fun and i prefer it that way
RPGs, even skill based ones, a high level/skilled characterwould know exactly how many weaker chars they could kill without any real risk. So any time someone who likes to kill for fun, runs into a weaker char, they can, and will, kill them with little or no risk to themselves. Hell,a small group of power-players at really high level could band together and kill whole towns, and if they did, it'd be permadeath for everyone who stood in their way.
HAHAHAHA, a high level band of power players would rule the world nobody would ever get to a level high enough to make it even remotly difficult
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.
*shrug*
still, it'd be cool to implement it somehow.
MMORPG are still games, there should be about having fun
A sense of realizem adds to the fun because our senses are more active.
But perma death makes loads of work go down the drain which is NOT fun, so permadeath actaully attacks the fundamental reason to play a game
Still you could make something like this work but you have to make the advantages work for your account and not for your chars any more, withouth something permit to build up playing an mmorpg would be no fun.
But lets say that every thing you do would add to a general basic skill level to you would get at start of creating a new char.
an example :
Your first char is an explorer, you get him to high levels of running let say 300% running skill (3x normal speed)
You die and you create a new char and the story becomes that your raised by the explorer you created earlier and he learns you 75% of the running skill that he has and you start of with 225% running skill
Make this part of basic skills and make class skills become infleunced by these basic skills and your next char will actaully be able to advance further then your first char make it a part of the gamming mechanisme
And even the leveling of a new char wouldn't be as a grind as the first part. If you make an explorer again and you would get exp for exploring the country you would start with a 225% running skill making this done in 1/3 of the time you did it the first time.
This way you could implement perma death and make it in suchs a way that it would still have an appeal for the spelers
Only weird thing would be that an incredible experienced player would at some point start with chars that seem to be infunrable at start because at some point all the basic skills would be max start point (which in this example would be all basic skills at 75%)
I haven't read the whole thread, but I will. But I'll put my 2 cents in.
Quick background.
I played DIablo 2 in permadeath (hardcore server). I Pked, I dueled, no hacks, no cheats, and I loved every minute of it. I didn't even play softcore. The first time i played the game was on hardcore got to lvl 18 and died and i was hooked.
The game, diablo 2, was pointless in softcore, why care about your gear if you there are no consequences, why care about the tactics you use if no consequnces?.
It was weird when I played WoW, what kept me going was the fact that i wanted to hit lvl 60, i hit lvl 60 and the game died on me so quickly it was amazing. I did a few raids trying to get better gear and then I created a paladin on another RPG server to play where if i died once, I'd delete my char and start over. Safe to say, i got bored quickly and went back to Diablo.
I am playing lineage 2 and what kept me hooked was actually trying to obtain A grade gear wihtout ebaying, so I played the market like a bastard, it was great, but now i can afford my A grade, I have an excess of money and I'm on the verge of quitting as I can't take the grind and I keep asking myself, what's the point, grinding from lvl 70-75, where each level is going to be at least 30 hours of play and could balloon to up to 100 horus, what's the point if reaching lvl 75 is just a matter of time and has nothing to do with skill.
Getting back to my point, there's no reason in my opinion to worry about what gear you have and how awesome your character is if there's no consequence to not doing that. Sure in L2 if you suck and die you lose time but if you think of it, there's no reward that really comes from reaching high level. Okay, hero system but it's broken and in the end, no one cares.
Dueling and PKing in a permadeath atmosphere was bloody amazing, i mean, hands sweating, heart pumping, adrenaline rush becayse you know weeks and months were on the line if you screwed up and/or god forbid, hit a lag spike at the wrong time.
I'd absolutely love Lineage 2 if they had a hardcore server, absolutely love it. Then of course, you'd have to change a few game mechanics but you could do it.
In the end, permadeath adds a level of excitement, it adds another factor, it gets you that rush, that you can't get without it. Many people i know played on a hardcore server in diablo 2 just to try it out and they always said they liked it much better, it was a rush, but then again, a lot quit when they died. For me, give me a PvE permadeath environment where what level you are actually matters and i'll lose my job over it probably.
I played on a private server on diablo 2 mod, it was an amazing mod, i was the highest level and it was awesome. Problem in Diablo 2 is that there isn't politics, but at the same time, in games with politics, you pretty much have to be a clan leader or a high ranking clanny to enjoy it.
I just had to add a thought, this is my view on it. I completely realize that it is a one-sided view, but i put the reward way over the cost of losing all my work. One thing is, if i lose my work to a bug or lag I'm a be mighty upset but it's the risk you take among the bigger risk you are already taking. Pretty much with permadeath, being level XX actually means something.
I remember in classic diablo i had a lvl 67 paladin and that was meaningful. People were llike wow, good job man. Then I had to quit . But after the xpac came out, level meant nothing, even in hardcore. In softcore level was meaningless to begin with.
This was my opinion, let me read the rest of the thread.
Cryomatrix Diablo 2 East hardcore server a.k.a Michaelbolton, Chrysanthemum, BtK-whatever, Cookie-Crisp, and other cereal names.
Lineage 2: Qais - 70 Gladiator
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I agree with Cryomatrix in many things. It is just the dull fact that people not in to permadeath would be rather alienated. That might not be a bad thing. I'd make my game skill based instead of level, but that is besides the point.
Originally posted by Pantastic Originally posted by AranStormah Thanks Dutch. And here I thought what I said actually would make sense to people.If I was able to sum it up well I would try to sell the idea and not convince a bunch of narrowsighted people who will ignore it anyway, but just to keep your discussion going:A permadeath, multiplayer game would have to be based around one or more of the following principles:
How about base an answer around the principle question of "what would gameplay in this permadeath game be like and what would motivate people to go out and risk permanent death while engaging in this gameplay, and what would permadeath add to the game"? Yeah, it's easy to accuse people of being 'narrowsighted' or 'half-literate morons' on the basis that they're asking you questions about your game idea, but it only makes you appear as a bunch of half-witted morons who just want to say "permadeath is wicked cool" instead of actually discussing the topic.
Okay. If you repeat yourself long enough ignoring what we've replied I'm sure you can find some kind soul willing to draw you an illustrative, pretty picture with flowers and arrows. So, thumbs up and good luck with that.
OMG OMG OMG, I made a huge post detailing how permadeath could work in a MMO style like L2 and WoW, it was at least twice the length of my previous post and when i was about to be done my comp froze and i lost eveyrthing.
Let's give the highly abbreviated version without explanation.
Facts about Permadeath.
1. It will only be a fringe feature and or game, I can't see the majority of people playing a permadeath game, I personally love permadeath, but thunder and lightning is also my favorite weather of choice. In diablo i think non-PD:PD server ratio was at least 9:1. 2. PD in a MMo type game is tough. 3. I'm the most pro-permadeath fanboi in this thread it appears.
I had 4 points but I could only remember 1 for now. BY the time i finsih this post there should be like closer to 4 there.
permadeath worked in diablo for the following reasons.
1. You could save/exit at will. 2. The person had to hostile you in town before they go attack you
Permadeath sucked in diablo because of: 1. hackers who can kill you by shooting at you, using a hack to get to town and hostile you in .1 second, having what they shot at you kill you. Blizzard could have have fixed in this in 5 minutes of coding. 2. Hackers having an auto-save/escape when their life when below a certain level, nothing more fascinating then one-hitting that chicken hacker and then them not having time to loot their corpse. You'd see, X was slain by Y, X has left the game instantaneously.
Let's talk about how a PD could be implemented in a game like L2/WoW. Tiny Version:
In reference to PvE: 1. It could be easily put into place in either L2 or WoW, one thing would be to make instant ways of escaping to town a bit more affordable or, in WoW's case, putting them in place. But in L2/WoW theycan be implemented.
2. What worries is me people traiing other people. - it can be fixed by better monster AI
3. what worries me is people dying too easily by having retard party members in an instance - it can be fixed by giving each class an escape-claouse skill like feign death or something or some special instance-only skill if they are getting screwed, but if htey use this skill, then they'll have a stiff reward, it weeds out the retard players and prevents people from purposely dioing that inside raids.
4. I'm worried about people in a duo where one person attacks a crap load of mosnters and while they are attacking an even fight, one guy leaves on purpose via an out-clause skill, to kill the other guy. - This would be a tough solution, but either give players many ways to outrun opponents or something or make it so when people are duoing in, if one leaves, it takes the other one with it or in a party or something of that nature. If people abuse it, people won't party them.
In reference to PvP:
This is uber hard to solve but a couple of ways to solve exploiters/griefers.
1. global consequence if someone Pk's X amount lower than them 2. a way for players via in-game mechanics to tell from afar if a "high-risk" player is coming 3. Bounties on people that PK lower than them, the dead person can place bounties, some classes have skills to locate those who have bounties on their heads, perhaps, bounty hunter class, but don't make it a useless dwarf like in L2. I think they screwed up the classes, they have bounty hunter as a spoiler class and treasure hunter as a dagger class, total screw up in my opinion, i could be wrong, but NC soft does suck. 4. To make sure to have clan warfare or mass PvP or castle siege crap, you need to have other consequences within specially defined zones or in special situations. 5. Have an arena, that is a global system where it allows duelers to be only duelers and it allows them to copmete for in-game fame if you can be top ranked in the gladiator's circle. 6. Absolutely hawkish GM system that is silently ubiquitous and is on the ball when it comes to hackers, exploits, in a Pay-to-play game, hacks/botters/etc should be eliminated as fast as a server crash especially in reference to permadeath. 7. Allow for players to perhaps hire NPC guards if they'd like, may create a niche for botters and ebay sellers and what not, but a good company should prevent it if they can.
I had many more examples and more explained possibilites of implementing PD into a game but i wrote a huge post and my comp crashed near the end so I was pissed off as hell, if you really care about my ideas, PM me and i can go furthre into them. Soryr, i wished my comp didn't crash, but it did.
I personally, if i played a game like this, I'd create an assassin's guild, where if people hated another player and wnated him dead, i'd see to it with my assassin's guild, of course, I'd be tagking a large chunk of in-game and, i'm sad to say, perhaps and probably USD, to put myself and/or my assassin's at risk. BUt talk about the roleplay capabilities. IN my opinion, RPG's have like zero roleplaying, the role playing or the politics is really only done by the clan leaders and it excludes 99% of the players, that's why bounty hunting and such will allow for regular plaeyrs to partake in the in-game politics.
I'll sovle the problem so my comp doesn't wipe out everything by editing my post yay.
ALso PvP in PD will not go away, PD was very very much alive in Diablo hardcore 2, of course most were cheaters, but it was very much alive, the duelers know who all the other duelers were and we were one nice community. I just wish people could play games without hacking/ebaying, it would be so so amazing, then again, the population would be a quarter of the size cuz most people won't duel without hacks/ebays etc. It's just a fact of life.
I feel PD is an amazing feature but a company who wants to make money will never produce a game wtihout it if they didn't want to bankrupt their investors. Basically, it could work if a company like WoW or L2 in korea made one server Permadeath and that server had some special coding and a bit different game mechanics to allow for it. But it could only exist as a fringe element.
The argument of i don't want to lose weeks/months of time for my mistake or a retard's mistake is, in reality, an amazing argument. Playing PD is fun as hell but it's stupid. It's a risk/benefit relationship, for me the benefit is worth the risk, for many others, it is not. My first MMO was a hardcore style so i fell in love with it, i probably would have abhorred it if i started off on softcore. It's jsut the person who introduced me to diablo 2 was the leader of a PK clan in diablo 2, so it's sort of like, i stepped into the wrong crowd. Also, i played Starcraft and I was so against backstabbing but then i started doing it, and it was amazing. End of tangent lol.
Being a griefer is ridiculously fun in many cases, well backstabbing in starcraft is fun as hell, pking in diablo gets old if you're a griefer but when you take a lvl 13 dueler and go out and try to pk lvl 30-40 classes and you tempt death every which way then it's fun, still a jerk thing to do, but pking someone who is equal in strength to you is actually fun.
My motto is, if your heart isn't pumping, if you're not getting an adrenaline rush, if your palms aren't sweaty, then it's not PvP.
Cryomatrix P.S. Nice post denikin.
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
[quote]Originally posted by AranStormah ]Okay. If you repeat yourself long enough ignoring what we've replied I'm sure you can find some kind soul willing to draw you an illustrative, pretty picture with flowers and arrows. So, thumbs up and good luck with that.[/b][/quote]
In other words, you're just here to sprout a few buzzwords and stroke your ego by insulting anyone who questions you (not even disagrees with you) but don't really want to talk about how a permadeath game would work. Babbling off the usual 'player created content' bit doesn't really tell anyone anything, 'no level grinding' is a tiny fragment of information, same with the other stuff. Is "what would gameplay in this permadeath game be like and what would motivate people to go out and risk permanent death while engaging in this gameplay, and what would permadeath add to the game" really so hard for you to answer?
Originally posted by fansede To the OP there lies the rub... Permadeath can never work on a monthly subscription based model because no player, no matter how skilled can control his connection to the game. Now perhaps a GW based model where the only cost is the software, you may be able to try permadeath. However, people still invest a lot of time and effort in their avatar and to lose it all when a lag spike causes your death.. Bad taste. While most of the posters on this thread are addressing the concerns of PvP, don't forget PvE as well. One extra add, one missed save, a string of resists on your target and in a permadeath game you are toast for good. Found a death penalty debate for those interested http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/387/DebateDebateMMORPGDeathPenalties.html
This is only partly treu sins you assuming that it will be an mmorpg like you know it but in fact suchs a system would have suchs a fundemental different way of going around things it wouldn't be the same as a classical mmorpg. Beside that it's pretty easy to have server side checks to determine if a death is valid.
I still think a softcore permadeath would be ideal. A system where you have lives per month. Enought lives to leave the casuals unaffected(can't lose more than 1 life per hour and such measures, yet to avoid chain deaths on purpose, maybe the hour break could be reduce by 5 minutes if you died a second time and so on), while making it a constant consideration on peoples with more time.
Lives per months is the only death penalty that hardcore players will FEAR, yet it has no bearing on a casual. The casuals have proven that a DEBT system like CoH (not WoW), is plenty and make them avoid death.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Originally posted by Cryomatrix ]1. It will only be a fringe feature and or game, I can't see the majority of people playing a permadeath game, I personally love permadeath, but thunder and lightning is also my favorite weather of choice. In diablo i think non-PD:PD server ratio was at least 9:1.
I remember going to Stieg and asking him if he could tell me what the percentage of players was that played Diablo II on the Hardcore setting. Out of the millions of copies that sold, less than 1 percent of all players had ever tried playing on Hardcore. That's not how many people played on Hardcore and beat it, but the number who actually tried to play on Hardcore. The number of players who have actually beaten Diablo II on Hardcore is infinitesimal when compared against total units sold. There are plenty of other games, MMO and otherwise, that have strict-to-ruthless death penalties, and when you look at the numbers you begin to realize that people don't want to be punished to play a game.
Less than 1% of people even tried hardcore in D2 according to Stieg, while I'm not sure what you mean by the server ratio I kind of doubt that Pd accounted for 10% when less than 1% of players even tried it.
People seem to have the idea that a PD game would be the same as WoW or DAoC with PD tacked on. IE: you start at lvl 1 and grind for 6 months to lvl 50. Then you go to the PvP forest and permadie, only to start at lvl 1 again. Oh, and you lost all those neat weapons and pieces of armor that you needed to dungeon raid for. Prepare to go back to hell for another 14 hours with a 200 aggro-dragging morons. A game like that truely would suck donkey balls.
But why does it need to be like that? If a dev team is willing to step away from the norm to put in permadeath, they should be willing to go that extra mile and change the necessary feature to ensure that it fits. PD in DAoC would be a disaster. But if the game was designed from ground up with PD at its core, you could easily avoid that scenario.
For starters, characters need to be designed to be disposable. They need to gain skill quickly and smoothly and they need to be viable fighters hot off the character creation screen. The easiest way to accomplish this is to get rid of levels completely, and make the game skill based. In real life, a bank robber who has never fired a gun can still kill a SWAT cop with a well aimed bullet. But the SWAT cop has full body armor and knows how to perform surgery with an with assalt rifle. 99 times out of 100 the cop will win in a gunfight, yet he's still in real danger. This is the difference between ability and reliability. A new character can kill, but maybe it's wise to train first.
The other reason I like PD is that you don't need to worry as much about end-game content. With PD enabled, a sizable portion of the population would always be in transition. If that transition were smooth (as I mentioned above) and fun, its not a chore to start over. This ensures that the people at the top rung of the ladder, with the most skill and the most money and the best weapons, won't stay there forever. Eventually even the richest and meanest S.O.B.'s will permadie. It keeps the leadership constantly fresh. And honestly, what's so special about being level capped when 20,000 other people are there with you? Your time at the top will be more meaningful, and your trip back doesn't have to be painful.
As for lag, its an issue. The best way to combat it is to accept it, and to give players a buffer (of 100~ deaths?) before PD. That way if lag takes a few it won't be a huge deal. Plus when it comes to laggy computers, I find people are more apt to blame the buggy machine than the game mechanics.
I didn't read all the replies, so sue me. This is just based on the OP.
I have always liked the idea of 'permadeath', but I honestly don't think it has a place in MMOs with PVP. Perhaps in a PvE only game, but I don't enjoy those so I won't argue those points.
Few things that I believe would need to happen in an MMO design for permadeath:
Permadeath game would need to have NO restrictions to pvp. There would have to be consequences for random murder, etc. But this just adds risk to the people who go the murderous route.
Permadeath can't be after XX deaths, it needs to be after one, if it's going to be 'real'.
Permadeath will not work in a level based game. Power of character can scale by having more options, not raw power, therefore you have progression, but not a significant power increase between the veteran characters and 'newbie' characters. Sure the veteran has more options, and most likely will be able to win a one on one, but they aren't gods and are killable.
There are more, but I will move on to pros and cons.
Pros permadeath can add:
Real politics, if people hate you, you are likely to die. You need to make sure people like you enough to protect you, in some cases they may even die for you. Negotiating becomes a preferred option in many cases to avoid combat conflict. You don't typically die in a negotiation, but your chances go up considerably in combat.
Death has meaning. Assassins are actually assassins. Losing your great leader in a coup or battle means something, there is loss and if that person was important enough, it would actually effect those that followed them.
Your investment in a character has a lot more meaning, and there is much more attachment. I guarantee you'll have a lot more respect for someone with a very old character, because they've dodged death for so long. Also, you'll feel really good about that character that you've played for however long, who's gone through thick and thin and came out on top. It would be a lot more impressive to me to say this character has been through many wars, personal battles, etc. and survived, than to say I've done 255 Molten Core raids (sorry for the WoW reference, you can substitute that with any item based game)
When the character does die, then you have stories you can tell of heroism and valor, or dirty deeds and evil doings. In non-permadeath you have 'that jerk xxxx ganked me' or 'that guy xxxxx was really nice and helped me out when I needed it'. But these are fleeting and soon forgotten. With permadeath, they can have significant meaning.
Cons permadeath can add:
People leaving a game. This kills games, if it becomes empty, you have server merges, eventually it will die. Why, because people hate to lose. If you lessen the sting of permadeath by giving x lives, then it just slows down the process, and really isn't true permadeath.
Loss of time committed. I play a character for 20 days, I get far along with the character, and they die. If that's all there is, then it's a complete loss. I believe this can be mitigated by stats, shrines to very old characters, etc. But this would be an issue of eventually you have so many of them. One of the flaws of an MMO. Everyone wants to be the remembered hero, even if they only got to level 2 and died. (yes, I said level, but it's an example of perspective). This is another reason for people to leave the game.
Your investment in a character has a lot more meaning, and there is much more attachment. Pretty much the same as above, but the investment isn't just time. You come to be attached to a character, you want to see them do everything. And when that is suddenly taken away, you are going to be upset (the majority of people would be), and again a reason to leave the game.
"Griefing" will happen, in any MMO. And if you get enough lower level people together, they can take down that vet character (in the system I described above). This is one of the main reasons permadeath won't work in an MMO. You could say 'well have levels' and this saves the high level from the low levels. Well, for PVP to have meaning, it has to be open, level restrictions and other artificial blocks cheapens it. So in the end, you will have some jerk, either a gank squad in the non-level version of a game, or some high level jackass going after someone much weaker than themselves. Either way, it's another guarantee that people will leave the game.
There are surely more pros and cons than I have listed, but I really should be working, not posting.
I think overall, permadeath can work, but the crowd that plays AND STAYS will be the hardcore. Some will say they are hardcore, but will run crying after that first 60 day old character finally dies. Others will say, "that was a hell of a ride, let's do it again", and start over. But those pure, hardcore players will be few, which makes it extremely difficult to make into an MMO. Since you really take away from the massively multiplayer aspect of MMO.
Permadeath can work, but it will have a small following and likely will die off within a year or less. I don't think that there are that many hardcore out there to keep an MMO alive. I for one, would not likely play in that environment. I like my 'saved games' and magical unlimited lives in games. I think there are other ways to add the pro's I mentioned to a game, without permadeath, but that would be for another discussion.
In order for permadeath to work, you have to start on character creation and work from there.
One way to approach this is the static character. You choose your character class, set the stats and skills and that's what you'll be playing with forever. I personally prefer a points system where you're allowed to build a character out of a set number of points. This encourages players to pay more attention to the build and less to grinding. The more build options you have, the better. People are more willing to re-roll a character if they have a lot of possibilities to play with.
The next approach is to lock the base stats (str, dex, int, hp, etc.) and allow the players to choose a set number of skills that can only level up to a particular maximum. Notice that in both these systems you have to pay particular attention to how the various skills balance out.
A slight modification on the last approach is to allow players a set number of non-leveling skills that modify the base stats which can be raised or lowered under certain conditions.
The final approach is a pure skill based system where the character learns a skill by performing it. This would have to be balanced by the character losing ability in skills that they don't use so that they don't become grandmaster of everything.
At any rate, the character creation would have to be fairly quick but still provide enough options to keep players from feeling a total loss at restarting.
The next major issue is items. Grinding for PHAT L3WTZ is another way that MMOs turn time into an unfair advantage for players that have been around the game for awhile. Obviously, this has got to go. Or at least be tweaked so as to not totally unbalance the competition between players.
I think it's safe to say that in a PD game, all items and equipment would have to be crafted, or at least craftable, by players. The player would always have the option to buy stuff, but there shouldn't be anything that they can't make for themselves. Enchanted items and high quality items would have to be difficult to make, be made of hard to get materials, or both.
On a similar note, all equipment would have to fall apart from frequent use, need to be repaired, and only be able to be repaired for so long before becoming totally useless.
Griefing would have to be dealt with using some pretty extreme measures.
Assuming that you're basing the game around clan warfare, killing anyone in your faction would automatically mark you as a murderer, there would be some graphical way of representing this on your character so that anyone you come in contact with would know. Likewise, you could not enter a town without being attacked by the town guards or any other NPC that you encounter. Anyone could kill you without being marked as a murderer themselves. And finally, a bounty would be placed on your head based on how many people you killed. The status of murderer would never leave your character, they would keep it until they died.
You would also have to limit players to one character, at a time per, account. Harsh? Absolutely. But this would allow for PvP without having to deal with teamkilling griefers.
As for lag and link death....
I've died in countless FPS games from dropped connections and reloading and it's never bothered me. As someone else already said, it's just part of playing a game online. You accept this or you don't have any fun... ever.....
Permadeath is an interesting concept, but I would never consider playing on permadeath server for one reason - some factors that may cause my permadeath are beyond my control. Im not talking about enemy player killing me, im talking about my ISP disconnecting me, or my house losing power... these things are outside of our control, so there is a chance that my hard work will disappear not becuase someone killed me, but becuase my ISP sux. Untill these outside factors are taken out of the equasion Im never playing anything permanent.
... these things are outside of our control, so there is a chance that my hard work will disappear not becuase someone killed me, but becuase my ISP sux. Untill these outside factors are taken out of the equasion Im never playing anything permanent.
That effect could be minimised if a character has to die X-times (not sure... from 5 to 50 depending how rough the world is) by PC or NPC before he finally has to be mourned for the last time.
... these things are outside of our control, so there is a chance that my hard work will disappear not becuase someone killed me, but becuase my ISP sux. Untill these outside factors are taken out of the equasion Im never playing anything permanent.
That effect could be minimised if a character has to die X-times (not sure... from 5 to 50 depending how rough the world is) by PC or NPC before he finally has to be mourned for the last time. That would be slightly better, but still bad enough for many people (myself included) to not consider permadeath option at all. As it is right now, imagine a situation where each character has a 0.00001% chance to die for no apparent reason at any given minute. Perma die.
I'm on the hardcore end of things, but perm-death is where I would draw the line. Perma-death would likely cause more players to quit when they lost everything than attract players for the realism of it. Although, Roma Victor will have perma-death for legendary characters, that is on a very limited scale since it is extremely difficult to obtain legendary status. And, if you do, you will likely have the power, influence or army behind you to likewise make you extremely difficult to kill.
As far as the general population of a game, there should be penalties for death that hurt, but nothing that drastically destroys your efforts in playing the game i.e. skills and abilities, otherwise you have nothing to come back to.
Pros: If i kill someone in PvP it will actually mean something
Cons: everyone will be sissy and stay in home towns, and alot of people will be afraid of dying,
to make it work there would need to be a large reward for killing people, and levels should not be too hard to get, like guild wars factions, 2 days to level 20,
maybe losing 1 level per death would work, still in a game where levels arent hard to get, but that the armor and weapons you get from killing people is pretty good, and worth the effort and risk,
then again to balance things is another story, i mean 5 v 1 gangup isnt good.
I'm sure this has been talked about before...<SNIP>... to implement it somehow.
As long as we are subject to internet interruptions I can't see any real pros that aren't heavily outweighed by the cons.
It's one thing to be beaten... its a whole nother thing to stand there while they murder you because some router between you and the server went kaput.
The lag issue (1) can't be helped and (2) isn't the fault the game. If the game lags, and you die, its your computer's fault. The problem PD solves, for me at least, is having no real repricussions for your actions. Do you know how many times in DAoC I've seen people zone out of combat by suiciding? "Ok, guys, I'm done for the night. I'll rush that group of albs, don't follow me." If death is that inconsequential, what's the point of avoiding it? So if not PD, what are we gonna use? Because there is no way to effectively punish death AND forgive lag at the same time. If you lag and die, you suffer the penalty.
I have no problem with people who don't want to play a PD game. Just don't. But to argue that it would never work, ever, no matter how hard they try is just short sighted. Seriously, it's never even been fully implemented in a game. This is such a hot topic, and enough people argue for it, that I think a well thought out well implemented PD game would find a population.
Comments
People will be more reluctant to talk trash to others since they will be worried about pissing off the wrong people and being killed..
People will be more reluctant to run up and make silly mistakes during an incounter and will sit back and plot things out more carefully... (NO more stupid people that get you wiped)
Personally I think Permadeath will just take care of more problems in a game then it will create.. Some developer needs to just take a chance and make a Permadeath server for thier game it will be a huge success population wise. God's and Hero's has been tossing around the ideal last I heard, while I might not be really looking forward to that game I will buy it none the less to try out the Permadeath aspect if they go ahead with it. So long as its Permadeath and not some wannabe version of it.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Oddly, people seem reluctant to describe the actual gameplay of permadeath games in any kind of depth, especially RollinDutch. There's been discussion of making permadeath into more of a forced name change than a permanent death, but that's not a description of what actions you'd actually take in the game.
Its almost like I dont care to do more then sketch out a potential idea.
I mean, who wouldnt want to cram an entire MMOG design into one post to prove something to a bunch of half-literate morons?
I'm amazed youre whining about something thats NOT EVEN IN ANY GAME AT ALL. Its a special level of meta-whining, where you invent things to whine about simply because you like to whine.
Thanks Dutch. And here I thought what I said actually would make sense to people.
If I was able to sum it up well I would try to sell the idea and not convince a bunch of narrowsighted people who will ignore it anyway, but just to keep your discussion going:
A permadeath, multiplayer game would have to be based around one or more of the following principles:
*Levels not being the main focus of the gameplay. Something like old SWG, GW, PlanetSide or WAR. Where more playtime gives more options, but not a direct translation into more power
*There being inheritable benifits for the future characters on the same account tied to the death of your former toon. These would of course have to be based on how successful that character were in certain aspects of the game to make it meaningful. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the following statement, but I think the ditched project Ultima Online 2 (Ultima X or something) had a good concepth for multiple characters which could be converted into a permadeath scheme. You'd have one main and your alts would be disciples of the main getting bonuses from it because of their alignement. You could translate that into your first char being the parent of your next char allowing for direct inheritance of certain attributes and equipment. Death would still hurt, but the saga of your characters bloodline would carry on.
*Non-itemcentric gameplay. There either couldn't be rare/unique items or these would have to be possible to reclaim easier than how they were to get in the first place when you return with a new character (either from killing your killer, or an artificial source like loot or quests). Meaning items would have to be crafter based, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it would allow for player controlled economies.
Games from Romancing Saga and Phantasy Star comes to mind. There you would be playing certain characters and then later as time would pass, these would die and you would continue with the next generation. It worked for singleplayer so it should be possible to take the same idea into a massive multiplayer with good planning and design.
Edit: I played Romancing Saga 3 the most out of the two series, and it actually had a sort of permadeath system. Your characters would have "life-points" together with healthpoints. Each time they were knocked out they lost a life point, some had fewer than others, and if they lost them all they died for good. Allthough these could be replenished by sleeping at inns. In a MMO that would be the halfassed way to do permadeath, but could work with more conventional dungeoncrawlers.
No, you talked about your idea for a kind of 'permadeath' that DOES NOT IMPLEMENT WHAT HE WANTS. I quoted a big bunch from him about what he wants from permadeath in a game, and what you're proposing simply DOES NOT DO IT. I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept for you to grasp, but it's really simple. Your thing not give what him want.
Your line of thinking is something like "The OP asked for vegitarian food, so I told him about steak, why do you keep saying that's not what he wants?"
Why on earth would he have to regain his status? Are you postulating some magical force that's going to make the players in his empire forget him, or their website, teamspeak server, and any other organizational tools? If his evil empire was a success, what's going to make the players want to fold up and start anew; why wouldn't they want to keep the evil empire going? The thing about player-created content is that it's created by PLAYERS and there's no reason why he'd need to regain his status with other players.
How on earth is discussing the effects of permadeath in a game off-topic in a thread about the pros and cons of permadeath? It's exactly the topic of the thread.
How about base an answer around the principle question of "what would gameplay in this permadeath game be like and what would motivate people to go out and risk permanent death while engaging in this gameplay, and what would permadeath add to the game"? Yeah, it's easy to accuse people of being 'narrowsighted' or 'half-literate morons' on the basis that they're asking you questions about your game idea, but it only makes you appear as a bunch of half-witted morons who just want to say "permadeath is wicked cool" instead of actually discussing the topic.
MMORPG are still games, there should be about having fun
A sense of realizem adds to the fun because our senses are more active.
But perma death makes loads of work go down the drain which is NOT fun, so permadeath actaully attacks the fundamental reason to play a game
Still you could make something like this work but you have to make the advantages work for your account and not for your chars any more, withouth something permit to build up playing an mmorpg would be no fun.
But lets say that every thing you do would add to a general basic skill level to you would get at start of creating a new char.
an example :
Your first char is an explorer, you get him to high levels of running let say 300% running skill (3x normal speed)
You die and you create a new char and the story becomes that your raised by the explorer you created earlier and he learns you 75% of the running skill that he has and you start of with 225% running skill
Make this part of basic skills and make class skills become infleunced by these basic skills and your next char will actaully be able to advance further then your first char make it a part of the gamming mechanisme
And even the leveling of a new char wouldn't be as a grind as the first part. If you make an explorer again and you would get exp for exploring the country you would start with a 225% running skill making this done in 1/3 of the time you did it the first time.
This way you could implement perma death and make it in suchs a way that it would still have an appeal for the spelers
Only weird thing would be that an incredible experienced player would at some point start with chars that seem to be infunrable at start because at some point all the basic skills would be max start point (which in this example would be all basic skills at 75%)
Quick background.
I played DIablo 2 in permadeath (hardcore server). I Pked, I dueled, no hacks, no cheats, and I loved every minute of it. I didn't even play softcore. The first time i played the game was on hardcore got to lvl 18 and died and i was hooked.
The game, diablo 2, was pointless in softcore, why care about your gear if you there are no consequences, why care about the tactics you use if no consequnces?.
It was weird when I played WoW, what kept me going was the fact that i wanted to hit lvl 60, i hit lvl 60 and the game died on me so quickly it was amazing. I did a few raids trying to get better gear and then I created a paladin on another RPG server to play where if i died once, I'd delete my char and start over. Safe to say, i got bored quickly and went back to Diablo.
I am playing lineage 2 and what kept me hooked was actually trying to obtain A grade gear wihtout ebaying, so I played the market like a bastard, it was great, but now i can afford my A grade, I have an excess of money and I'm on the verge of quitting as I can't take the grind and I keep asking myself, what's the point, grinding from lvl 70-75, where each level is going to be at least 30 hours of play and could balloon to up to 100 horus, what's the point if reaching lvl 75 is just a matter of time and has nothing to do with skill.
Getting back to my point, there's no reason in my opinion to worry about what gear you have and how awesome your character is if there's no consequence to not doing that. Sure in L2 if you suck and die you lose time but if you think of it, there's no reward that really comes from reaching high level. Okay, hero system but it's broken and in the end, no one cares.
Dueling and PKing in a permadeath atmosphere was bloody amazing, i mean, hands sweating, heart pumping, adrenaline rush becayse you know weeks and months were on the line if you screwed up and/or god forbid, hit a lag spike at the wrong time.
I'd absolutely love Lineage 2 if they had a hardcore server, absolutely love it. Then of course, you'd have to change a few game mechanics but you could do it.
In the end, permadeath adds a level of excitement, it adds another factor, it gets you that rush, that you can't get without it. Many people i know played on a hardcore server in diablo 2 just to try it out and they always said they liked it much better, it was a rush, but then again, a lot quit when they died. For me, give me a PvE permadeath environment where what level you are actually matters and i'll lose my job over it probably.
I played on a private server on diablo 2 mod, it was an amazing mod, i was the highest level and it was awesome. Problem in Diablo 2 is that there isn't politics, but at the same time, in games with politics, you pretty much have to be a clan leader or a high ranking clanny to enjoy it.
I just had to add a thought, this is my view on it. I completely realize that it is a one-sided view, but i put the reward way over the cost of losing all my work. One thing is, if i lose my work to a bug or lag I'm a be mighty upset but it's the risk you take among the bigger risk you are already taking. Pretty much with permadeath, being level XX actually means something.
I remember in classic diablo i had a lvl 67 paladin and that was meaningful. People were llike wow, good job man. Then I had to quit
This was my opinion, let me read the rest of the thread.
Cryomatrix
Diablo 2 East hardcore server
a.k.a Michaelbolton, Chrysanthemum, BtK-whatever, Cookie-Crisp, and other cereal names.
Lineage 2:
Qais - 70 Gladiator
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
"Lick My Weapons"
How about base an answer around the principle question of "what would gameplay in this permadeath game be like and what would motivate people to go out and risk permanent death while engaging in this gameplay, and what would permadeath add to the game"? Yeah, it's easy to accuse people of being 'narrowsighted' or 'half-literate morons' on the basis that they're asking you questions about your game idea, but it only makes you appear as a bunch of half-witted morons who just want to say "permadeath is wicked cool" instead of actually discussing the topic.
Okay. If you repeat yourself long enough ignoring what we've replied I'm sure you can find some kind soul willing to draw you an illustrative, pretty picture with flowers and arrows. So, thumbs up and good luck with that.
OMG OMG OMG, I made a huge post detailing how permadeath could work in a MMO style like L2 and WoW, it was at least twice the length of my previous post and when i was about to be done my comp froze and i lost eveyrthing.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Let's give the highly abbreviated version without explanation.
Facts about Permadeath.
1. It will only be a fringe feature and or game, I can't see the majority of people playing a permadeath game, I personally love permadeath, but thunder and lightning is also my favorite weather of choice. In diablo i think non-PD:PD server ratio was at least 9:1.
2. PD in a MMo type game is tough.
3. I'm the most pro-permadeath fanboi in this thread it appears.
I had 4 points but I could only remember 1 for now. BY the time i finsih this post there should be like closer to 4 there.
permadeath worked in diablo for the following reasons.
1. You could save/exit at will.
2. The person had to hostile you in town before they go attack you
Permadeath sucked in diablo because of:
1. hackers who can kill you by shooting at you, using a hack to get to town and hostile you in .1 second, having what they shot at you kill you. Blizzard could have have fixed in this in 5 minutes of coding.
2. Hackers having an auto-save/escape when their life when below a certain level, nothing more fascinating then one-hitting that chicken hacker and then them not having time to loot their corpse. You'd see, X was slain by Y, X has left the game instantaneously.
Let's talk about how a PD could be implemented in a game like L2/WoW. Tiny Version:
In reference to PvE:
1. It could be easily put into place in either L2 or WoW, one thing would be to make instant ways of escaping to town a bit more affordable or, in WoW's case, putting them in place. But in L2/WoW theycan be implemented.
2. What worries is me people traiing other people.
- it can be fixed by better monster AI
3. what worries me is people dying too easily by having retard party members in an instance
- it can be fixed by giving each class an escape-claouse skill like feign death or something or some special instance-only skill if they are getting screwed, but if htey use this skill, then they'll have a stiff reward, it weeds out the retard players and prevents people from purposely dioing that inside raids.
4. I'm worried about people in a duo where one person attacks a crap load of mosnters and while they are attacking an even fight, one guy leaves on purpose via an out-clause skill, to kill the other guy.
- This would be a tough solution, but either give players many ways to outrun opponents or something or make it so when people are duoing in, if one leaves, it takes the other one with it or in a party or something of that nature. If people abuse it, people won't party them.
In reference to PvP:
This is uber hard to solve but a couple of ways to solve exploiters/griefers.
1. global consequence if someone Pk's X amount lower than them
2. a way for players via in-game mechanics to tell from afar if a "high-risk" player is coming
3. Bounties on people that PK lower than them, the dead person can place bounties, some classes have skills to locate those who have bounties on their heads, perhaps, bounty hunter class, but don't make it a useless dwarf like in L2. I think they screwed up the classes, they have bounty hunter as a spoiler class and treasure hunter as a dagger class, total screw up in my opinion, i could be wrong, but NC soft does suck.
4. To make sure to have clan warfare or mass PvP or castle siege crap, you need to have other consequences within specially defined zones or in special situations.
5. Have an arena, that is a global system where it allows duelers to be only duelers and it allows them to copmete for in-game fame if you can be top ranked in the gladiator's circle.
6. Absolutely hawkish GM system that is silently ubiquitous and is on the ball when it comes to hackers, exploits, in a Pay-to-play game, hacks/botters/etc should be eliminated as fast as a server crash especially in reference to permadeath.
7. Allow for players to perhaps hire NPC guards if they'd like, may create a niche for botters and ebay sellers and what not, but a good company should prevent it if they can.
I had many more examples and more explained possibilites of implementing PD into a game but i wrote a huge post and my comp crashed near the end so I was pissed off as hell, if you really care about my ideas, PM me and i can go furthre into them. Soryr, i wished my comp didn't crash, but it did.
I personally, if i played a game like this, I'd create an assassin's guild, where if people hated another player and wnated him dead, i'd see to it with my assassin's guild, of course, I'd be tagking a large chunk of in-game and, i'm sad to say, perhaps and probably USD, to put myself and/or my assassin's at risk. BUt talk about the roleplay capabilities. IN my opinion, RPG's have like zero roleplaying, the role playing or the politics is really only done by the clan leaders and it excludes 99% of the players, that's why bounty hunting and such will allow for regular plaeyrs to partake in the in-game politics.
I'll sovle the problem so my comp doesn't wipe out everything by editing my post yay.
ALso PvP in PD will not go away, PD was very very much alive in Diablo hardcore 2, of course most were cheaters, but it was very much alive, the duelers know who all the other duelers were and we were one nice community. I just wish people could play games without hacking/ebaying, it would be so so amazing, then again, the population would be a quarter of the size cuz most people won't duel without hacks/ebays etc. It's just a fact of life.
I feel PD is an amazing feature but a company who wants to make money will never produce a game wtihout it if they didn't want to bankrupt their investors. Basically, it could work if a company like WoW or L2 in korea made one server Permadeath and that server had some special coding and a bit different game mechanics to allow for it. But it could only exist as a fringe element.
The argument of i don't want to lose weeks/months of time for my mistake or a retard's mistake is, in reality, an amazing argument. Playing PD is fun as hell but it's stupid. It's a risk/benefit relationship, for me the benefit is worth the risk, for many others, it is not. My first MMO was a hardcore style so i fell in love with it, i probably would have abhorred it if i started off on softcore. It's jsut the person who introduced me to diablo 2 was the leader of a PK clan in diablo 2, so it's sort of like, i stepped into the wrong crowd. Also, i played Starcraft and I was so against backstabbing but then i started doing it, and it was amazing. End of tangent lol.
Being a griefer is ridiculously fun in many cases, well backstabbing in starcraft is fun as hell, pking in diablo gets old if you're a griefer but when you take a lvl 13 dueler and go out and try to pk lvl 30-40 classes and you tempt death every which way then it's fun, still a jerk thing to do, but pking someone who is equal in strength to you is actually fun.
My motto is, if your heart isn't pumping, if you're not getting an adrenaline rush, if your palms aren't sweaty, then it's not PvP.
Cryomatrix
P.S. Nice post denikin.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
[quote]Originally posted by AranStormah
]Okay. If you repeat yourself long enough ignoring what we've replied I'm sure you can find some kind soul willing to draw you an illustrative, pretty picture with flowers and arrows. So, thumbs up and good luck with that.[/b][/quote]
In other words, you're just here to sprout a few buzzwords and stroke your ego by insulting anyone who questions you (not even disagrees with you) but don't really want to talk about how a permadeath game would work. Babbling off the usual 'player created content' bit doesn't really tell anyone anything, 'no level grinding' is a tiny fragment of information, same with the other stuff. Is "what would gameplay in this permadeath game be like and what would motivate people to go out and risk permanent death while engaging in this gameplay, and what would permadeath add to the game" really so hard for you to answer?
I still think a softcore permadeath would be ideal. A system where you have lives per month. Enought lives to leave the casuals unaffected(can't lose more than 1 life per hour and such measures, yet to avoid chain deaths on purpose, maybe the hour break could be reduce by 5 minutes if you died a second time and so on), while making it a constant consideration on peoples with more time.
Lives per months is the only death penalty that hardcore players will FEAR, yet it has no bearing on a casual. The casuals have proven that a DEBT system like CoH (not WoW), is plenty and make them avoid death.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Take a look at this dev blog from one of the G&HY developers, who is working with Stieg Hedlund: http://community.godsandheroes.com/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=2331
Less than 1% of people even tried hardcore in D2 according to Stieg, while I'm not sure what you mean by the server ratio I kind of doubt that Pd accounted for 10% when less than 1% of players even tried it.
But why does it need to be like that? If a dev team is willing to step away from the norm to put in permadeath, they should be willing to go that extra mile and change the necessary feature to ensure that it fits. PD in DAoC would be a disaster. But if the game was designed from ground up with PD at its core, you could easily avoid that scenario.
For starters, characters need to be designed to be disposable. They need to gain skill quickly and smoothly and they need to be viable fighters hot off the character creation screen. The easiest way to accomplish this is to get rid of levels completely, and make the game skill based. In real life, a bank robber who has never fired a gun can still kill a SWAT cop with a well aimed bullet. But the SWAT cop has full body armor and knows how to perform surgery with an with assalt rifle. 99 times out of 100 the cop will win in a gunfight, yet he's still in real danger. This is the difference between ability and reliability. A new character can kill, but maybe it's wise to train first.
The other reason I like PD is that you don't need to worry as much about end-game content. With PD enabled, a sizable portion of the population would always be in transition. If that transition were smooth (as I mentioned above) and fun, its not a chore to start over. This ensures that the people at the top rung of the ladder, with the most skill and the most money and the best weapons, won't stay there forever. Eventually even the richest and meanest S.O.B.'s will permadie. It keeps the leadership constantly fresh. And honestly, what's so special about being level capped when 20,000 other people are there with you? Your time at the top will be more meaningful, and your trip back doesn't have to be painful.
As for lag, its an issue. The best way to combat it is to accept it, and to give players a buffer (of 100~ deaths?) before PD. That way if lag takes a few it won't be a huge deal. Plus when it comes to laggy computers, I find people are more apt to blame the buggy machine than the game mechanics.
I have always liked the idea of 'permadeath', but I honestly don't think it has a place in MMOs with PVP. Perhaps in a PvE only game, but I don't enjoy those so I won't argue those points.
Few things that I believe would need to happen in an MMO design for permadeath:
Permadeath game would need to have NO restrictions to pvp. There would have to be consequences for random murder, etc. But this just adds risk to the people who go the murderous route.
Permadeath can't be after XX deaths, it needs to be after one, if it's going to be 'real'.
Permadeath will not work in a level based game. Power of character can scale by having more options, not raw power, therefore you have progression, but not a significant power increase between the veteran characters and 'newbie' characters. Sure the veteran has more options, and most likely will be able to win a one on one, but they aren't gods and are killable.
There are more, but I will move on to pros and cons.
Pros permadeath can add:
Cons permadeath can add:
There are surely more pros and cons than I have listed, but I really should be working, not posting.
I think overall, permadeath can work, but the crowd that plays AND STAYS will be the hardcore. Some will say they are hardcore, but will run crying after that first 60 day old character finally dies. Others will say, "that was a hell of a ride, let's do it again", and start over. But those pure, hardcore players will be few, which makes it extremely difficult to make into an MMO. Since you really take away from the massively multiplayer aspect of MMO.
Permadeath can work, but it will have a small following and likely will die off within a year or less. I don't think that there are that many hardcore out there to keep an MMO alive. I for one, would not likely play in that environment. I like my 'saved games' and magical unlimited lives in games. I think there are other ways to add the pro's I mentioned to a game, without permadeath, but that would be for another discussion.
Niccoli
Niccoli
One way to approach this is the static character. You choose your character class, set the stats and skills and that's what you'll be playing with forever. I personally prefer a points system where you're allowed to build a character out of a set number of points. This encourages players to pay more attention to the build and less to grinding. The more build options you have, the better. People are more willing to re-roll a character if they have a lot of possibilities to play with.
The next approach is to lock the base stats (str, dex, int, hp, etc.) and allow the players to choose a set number of skills that can only level up to a particular maximum. Notice that in both these systems you have to pay particular attention to how the various skills balance out.
A slight modification on the last approach is to allow players a set number of non-leveling skills that modify the base stats which can be raised or lowered under certain conditions.
The final approach is a pure skill based system where the character learns a skill by performing it. This would have to be balanced by the character losing ability in skills that they don't use so that they don't become grandmaster of everything.
At any rate, the character creation would have to be fairly quick but still provide enough options to keep players from feeling a total loss at restarting.
The next major issue is items. Grinding for PHAT L3WTZ is another way that MMOs turn time into an unfair advantage for players that have been around the game for awhile. Obviously, this has got to go. Or at least be tweaked so as to not totally unbalance the competition between players.
I think it's safe to say that in a PD game, all items and equipment would have to be crafted, or at least craftable, by players. The player would always have the option to buy stuff, but there shouldn't be anything that they can't make for themselves. Enchanted items and high quality items would have to be difficult to make, be made of hard to get materials, or both.
On a similar note, all equipment would have to fall apart from frequent use, need to be repaired, and only be able to be repaired for so long before becoming totally useless.
Griefing would have to be dealt with using some pretty extreme measures.
Assuming that you're basing the game around clan warfare, killing anyone in your faction would automatically mark you as a murderer, there would be some graphical way of representing this on your character so that anyone you come in contact with would know. Likewise, you could not enter a town without being attacked by the town guards or any other NPC that you encounter. Anyone could kill you without being marked as a murderer themselves. And finally, a bounty would be placed on your head based on how many people you killed. The status of murderer would never leave your character, they would keep it until they died.
You would also have to limit players to one character, at a time per, account. Harsh? Absolutely. But this would allow for PvP without having to deal with teamkilling griefers.
As for lag and link death....
I've died in countless FPS games from dropped connections and reloading and it's never bothered me. As someone else already said, it's just part of playing a game online. You accept this or you don't have any fun... ever.....
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I'm on the hardcore end of things, but perm-death is where I would draw the line. Perma-death would likely cause more players to quit when they lost everything than attract players for the realism of it. Although, Roma Victor will have perma-death for legendary characters, that is on a very limited scale since it is extremely difficult to obtain legendary status. And, if you do, you will likely have the power, influence or army behind you to likewise make you extremely difficult to kill.
As far as the general population of a game, there should be penalties for death that hurt, but nothing that drastically destroys your efforts in playing the game i.e. skills and abilities, otherwise you have nothing to come back to.
I also think about this alot. why?
Pros: If i kill someone in PvP it will actually mean something
Cons: everyone will be sissy and stay in home towns, and alot of people will be afraid of dying,
to make it work there would need to be a large reward for killing people, and levels should not be too hard to get, like guild wars factions, 2 days to level 20,
maybe losing 1 level per death would work, still in a game where levels arent hard to get, but that the armor and weapons you get from killing people is pretty good, and worth the effort and risk,
then again to balance things is another story, i mean 5 v 1 gangup isnt good.
As long as we are subject to internet interruptions I can't see any real pros that aren't heavily outweighed by the cons.
It's one thing to be beaten... its a whole nother thing to stand there while they murder you because some router between you and the server went kaput.
Shadus
I have no problem with people who don't want to play a PD game. Just don't. But to argue that it would never work, ever, no matter how hard they try is just short sighted. Seriously, it's never even been fully implemented in a game. This is such a hot topic, and enough people argue for it, that I think a well thought out well implemented PD game would find a population.