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Perm-Death OPINIONS
UppityNegro
Member UncommonPosts: 55
Hey guys i'm new to MMORPG forums. But i am currently developing my own game.. its gonna be a genre first, MMOHRPG the H standing for Hardcore. Moreover i'd like to get a feel for where the gaming community stands on perm-death, any and all comments are appreciated.
Dota2 > Your mother
Comments
Dota2 > Your mother
Dota2 > Your mother
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I brought up guild wars because you said you were going to have little to no leveling? Then why bother with perma death when your character won't develop at all? Unless I misunderstood and you were talking about skill leveling as in Runescape or Eve as the way to develop your character.
I will not play a game with mandatory permanent death.
I already play a perma death game - it's called "Real Life"
On a more serious note, please explain how you will handle perma death due to connectivity and bug issues (and disconnectiong on purpose). Until somebody can answer that there is no point in even designing such a game. This is of course a trick question because there is no bulletproof solution to this. And please don't tell me "you can report a questionable death and let a GM handle it". EVERY SINGLE death would be reported and unless you have an army of GMs (not feasable anyways) this will create a support nightmare. Perma death is a noble idea. I certainly would like the challenge but I can almost gurantee every "unjust death" would result in an account cancellation. If you can overcome those issues you may have yourself a game.
if you are looking for opinions on PD - there was a 24-page discussion on it on the GnH forums a while back ... interestingly entitled Gods & Heroes: Purple Cow and the Big Moo
Perhaps something along the lines of 3 deaths and your character is gone. But with the option of buying back one of those lives for some massive sum. You would always have the option to "buy back" one of your 3 lives but it would get increasingly expensive to do so.
When players lose their characters, they leave the game. I played DIablo 2 hardcore a long time and whenever I lost high level character I almost always took a long break from Diablo 2. For D2 this was no big deal but if a mmo is relying on its players to pay monthly subscription or buy constant expansions then it could become a problem.
Lag, exploits, and glitches can often lead to characters deaths. Even if these three things dont lead to a characters death, often the players will believe or pretend that their characters death was not their fault, and it can cause a lot of anger and issues in the playerbase. It could be very difficult to run customer service in a game where players are constantly losing their characters and wanting the characters back... When do you give the characters back? Ever? I think it just would cause a ton of problems between the players and devs.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
While I think a perma death game would be fun and challenging, if done right. Deathstiny brought up some very good counterpoints to that kind of system. Lag and connectivity issues would be the death of this kind of game. Also there's the fact that in a game like this the novelty would wear off fast, and the subscribers would leave in droves after a few months. IMHO the only way a game like this could stay alive would be for it to be free to play, as in fully downloadable client even.~ If a character dies 3 times within the space of 1 week then they die perminently.
This probably would work better in a game like SWG where if a players jedi character dies twice they can fall back onto a weaker secondary character. It would be useless anywho because no one would be foolish enough to play after dying twice. So, I dunno, just throwing that out there.
Also, what do you guys think about games tracking if a characters died yet and then giving trophy-type rewards for those who make it to certain points without dying? The only one that does this now that I can think of is Guild Wars, but I think its handy and I wouldnt be surprised if other mmorpgs start doing it too (its such a simple thing to do and can add tonnnssss of timesink/interest/new gameplay to peoples experience). In Guild Wars if you get to level 20 without dying once then you receive a special title 'Survivor' that people see when they hover over your character. Theres additional levels to the survivor track for those who continue getting XP without dying. I think its really interesting and playing as a survivor character in GW reminded me a lot of my old diablo 2 days.
It could never be as good as D2 hardcore though because the survivors are all mixed in with regular characters. In D2 hardcore server items were worth a lot more because they were harder to get without dying and because people dying all the time was a big money sink. Also, it can really annoy other players when one player is playing to survive while the others simply want to complete their mission or whatever. Groups are always fine with it when I tell them I am a survivor character, but then when we start playing and I have to run away (or sometimes even leave, but I wouldnt do that unless I know they cant finish the mission anywho or if I'm reallyyy screwed) they usually start getting upset.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Now I don't know much about this system, so call me stupid, but why would I play a game like that? What would be more funnier is if it had a monthly fee. Lol pay $15 a month to die.
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SWG- (retired) 2 year vet.
WoW- (retired) 3 year vet.
EQ2- (retired) 1.5 year vet
Waiting for:
AoC // WAR // Darkfall
Said it before, say it again. Don't think permadeath is that great for mmorpgs when you're spending hours investing in your character. You play excessively safely, and you can too easily be screwed over. However, two maybe formulas which could be interesting are this:
-You die, new character you start has random stats and random abilities. Also, potentially having overpowered abilities. This game I've seen before (dota variant) and it was very fun.
-Secondly, instead of dieing directly, on depletion of health bar you may have a variety of alternatives which happen- being badly wounded and needing non-combat activity for a certain periods, being lightly wounded and having to bandage up, being poisoned and having a certain period before dieing etc.
-As an alternative to last suggestion have a % chance that on each death your character may permanently die. This stops getting to mid level and then dieing and then replaying a restricted area again and getting bored and also permits more risky gameplay rather than excessively safe play.
I do believe, however, that the flaw lies in the implementation. If you simply give all players a single life (and then open the world to PvP, as most people who advocate permadeath seem to want) you will hit a point where no new people will join your game. There seems to be, in every game, a class of folks who like to wait outside the newbie zone and gank them. In most games, this is merely frustrating because you're sent back to your lifestone/bind point/shrine, but in a permadeath game, you'd have to start character creation all over again.
It would take a radical (so radical, in fact, that I simply cannot imagine it) redesign of the MMORPG game in general in order to make this idea of permanent death work at all, so that people were more cautious (but not overly so) and so that you would not have high-level players ganking newbies left and right, driving the new folks away from your game.
New folks driven away + old folks getting bored = permadeath for this idea.
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"Give a man a fire, and he is warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he is warm for the rest of his life."
It would greatly depend on the setting of the game. If set in say, a sword and sorcery fantasy setting, where dying happens ALL the time then no. It would not work.
But if set in a Star trek like game, or a western setting, then yes. Any setting where getting killed is a possibility, not a certainty then yes it would work.
X lives per month = good idea (softcore permadeath)
Pure PD = too harsh and niche.
A softcore PD must have a way to affect only a minority of players, such as me, AL, FoH and other hardcores. PD should never affect a casual in anyway, softcore or not. For example, having 20 lives per month and been unable to lose more than 1 per 3 hours played, that isn't affecting a casual, since anyone playing 60 hours+ in a month isn't a casual (especially that to be out of lives in 60 hours, you have to lose them in an "optimal" way...). Yet, with my 80 hours per week, I would have to be careful about it myself.
For the casuals, the debt system as in CoH/CoV is already doing the job, no casual wanna die with these "awful" debts, while me, I would need a softcore PD, such as lives per month as I doesn't care with these debts. Now should each live has an individual timer or be reseted on a precise day of the month (like the 30th of the month, you do it the 28th in feb, but you let players wonder and extrapolate...), both ways have merits and interests, personnally I prefer for a reset once in a month, that way you don't have peoples waiting on gaining back 1 life spread all over the month...it would be bad to have players constantly waiting...while if the reset is once per month, players may wait only once per month...the remaining of the time, if they are out of lives, they can play other toons or whatever, but they won't wait.
Players are paying to see PROGRESSION, a pure PD remove that...it is going against the main motivation of the player...while something preventing the hardcore from playing is merely stopping their progression, which is indeed affecting them in the intended way. They will avoid death is possible...and a sacrifice become noteworthy and noble.
PS: Corpse Run should only reduce the debt, and all looting mobs should be automated IMO, to reduce micromanagement, loot selection should be done while zoning, not while adventuring...while adventuring, put everything in the bags automatically, but upon zoning, bring a new screen and now the player have to play by the encumberance rules and made loot choice...allow or not to drop items on the ground if you want to see players specialising in harnassing the trash from other at the zoneline...personnally I would allow it, since after all, they will pick up garbages and if some players like that, this is a choice we cannot make for them, and preventing it, no matter how silly or lame it seem to me that some players would be garbage-picker, this feel wrong to cut options, yeah, they doesn,t add much to the game, but by their very presence, they add a little livelyhood to the game, and peoples seeing garbage pickers waiting at the zone line would feel all the more uber...
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
There are both positive and negative aspects of permadeath depending on the implementation. I'll explain below.
1. Leveling-Leveling games shouldn't have permadeath, main reasons is that xp gain is a rediculous grind work effort. If you take that away then it may be doable but very unlikely. skill based games are more open to the possiblity but still certain things can make this foreboding as well. This is the main drawback of PD, time investment and people don't want to lose progress, they want to put another quarter in the machine and keep on playing where they stopped.
a. Make leveling or skilling a non factor, ease of xp or skill gain. one thing here is that if your just firing a weapon several times gets you a skill gain then its not gonig to be much of a factor in getting back to where you were when you PD'd.
2. Loot/crafting/Money-This is by far the 2nd most important portion of PD. People like stuff, they are collectors at heart. They horde money, loot etc to show the next guy "hey look what i'm wearing, my uber armor +26 of skullsmashing". That factor alone keeps PD a non-option.
a. Insurance, here you take a hit because you pay a premium (swg implemented this in a very bad form but it was implemented). You can expect to die, all mmo players expect it and quite a bit in the beginning levels while you learn the game. If insurance is a premium payed out then you can expect your family member (read next character you create) to inherit your wealth, loot uber skullbacking armor because that's what you are paying for. This helps in 2 ways, its more of a "soft core" way of implementing PD but also a way to ensure that the "sting" of pd isn't taken out of it ala wow or swg-nge death train.
3. Clone/Respawn-This is a major issue, if you lose to lag or to connection(isp) or your mommy yelled for you to take out the garbage NOW! That kinda sucks but there is a repercussion you will die, no doubt there. you also will soon be clone zerging to get em back (many times). This is an issue of debate and one of adjustment.
a. There are possible solutions to cloning/PD issues, those being respawn at inital Bind point, hold on clone (aka can't pvp for x amount of minutes to prevent zerging). Corpse runs to reclaim some loss. A factor could be to limit the number of clones allowed so that PD has a sting but can also be adjusted or a random roll. This is probably the hardest to talk about but there are ways to make it so that players who DC and PD are able to clone but in a limited amount of time and in a limited number say 10 clones then you PD and reroll. If you are on your t0th and you die then there should be other systems in place like listed in #1 and 2 above which prevent you from losing it all so to speak.
4. Griefing/SKILLS-Those campers as others have mentioned are the most hated reasons why PD isn't implemented.
a. Eliminate the "need" for griefing. If its more beneficial for a griefer/pk'r to let the person go for "ransom" then it is to PK them then it would be in the best interest of the PK'r to let the sheep go and come back for more later. It also is a way for the community to take actions into their own hands, for example say PK1 has killed 20 newbies in one particular faction. The higher ups place player bounties on PK1 and now not only is PK1 sought after by all the dead newbies, their guildies but also a mass of other players looking to "get rich quick". The main issue here is that people think in terms of levels in a complete open skill based system where all men are created equal you don't start out as a babe in the woods. You start out as a lethal newbie capable of killing a veteran PK1 if you get that "lucky" shot in or have a somewhat even skill or just skill in general. Play smarter not harder, if 5 newbies take on 1 PK'r they should be able to take him down not all die at his hands, superiority in numbers this brings closer community bonding, lessens pk's thrills at easy targets cause they just might die at the hands of a newbie and allows for community action in general to respond to bad game play as well as good gameplay (read tactics).
These are some thoughts, I have personally debated these factors for about 2 yrs now with my own development team. We have also elected to go with a permadeath game, although its not "hardcore" permadeath there will still be a sting to it you can guarantee that having to reroll will not make you want to quit the game. Games should be fun, that's why they're games, Even permadeath ones.
See the sig if you want to read up some more on ours.
http://www.forceofarms.com/index.php
unique deeds. You can barter with your soul, for example, selling your soul to evil will grant you great physical powers,but once you die your soul has to toil in hell before it can reincarnate, or you lose precious soul stats. Bodies could be sold and bought, and items soul marked at a great price for retrieval after death.. just an idle idea
Hail DnDOnlinegames!
Sounds alot like ages of atheria, which I'm hoping actually does get developed. They seem to be having a rough time getting the finacial backing needed to produce an mmorpg.
Back to the point of permadeath, the way I see it, that is my opinion of how it should work would be this. PVP should be consentual, as in guilds declaring war on other guilds and then they fight and loot each other. Heres the catch, you can be PKed, however, if you non-consensually kill someone 1 time you go red. You can clean your slate and go blue again by doing like comunity service. The 2nd time you pk you are perma red but still no permadeath yet but you of course can be attacked at will by anyone, anytime, you can kill in defense. The third thime you kill thats it now your up for permadeath.
I think thats a pretty reasonable setup, so that theres still the thrill of not knowing if a blue will open up on you in order to get your super gear or just because.