If you asked me 10 years ago, I'd have said players would group more.
Today, they would group less.
The average ability of players these days, in both attention, skill, maturity, and apparently intellegence, has dropped off significantly. I wouldn't chance grouping with people I didn't know for absolute sure weren't incompetent at playing the game, whereas 10 years ago I would trust that the majority of players weren't terrible.
So the central point of your post is to show us you played back in the days when only super geniuses played?
No, simply that the demographic of MMO gamers tended to be composed of players who were significantly more apt to excel in said games due to several factors.
Today's player populations are diluted with a gross amount of... less than apt individuals.
Seems like more of a brag. Having been a gamer since the early 70s, there have always been those who came before who "thought" they were "special". Nothing has ever been shown that demostrates they are that great.
It is a brag - and, in my opinion, the complete opposite of what has actually happened over the last 10 years.
The pool of people playing games has gotten larger leading to a greater number of good players playing than ever before. However, there are also a larger amount of all kinds of other players. He sees this and spits out the assumption that players are worse than they were 10 years ago.
It is far more likely there are a similar percentage of players the are good, average or bad. It is likely that he is unable to see this because he falls in line with average or below players. He looks around and sees that all of the players are worse than before. Which is true for him. All the players are worse than before because he stopped keeping up with the great players at some point.
If someone were to be demoted from Vice President to Janitor because they were terrible at being Vice President, the Janitor would look around and say, "Look at the average worker. They are terrible!" The truth is that they were never cut out to be Vice President and people that are good at their job stopped accepting them in their group a long time ago.
Well, permadeath means there is no permanent success in your gaming.
Except you don't lose your friends. You don't lose your respect. You don't lose the experience (not XP points) or the practice you've acquired. Is that not a more noble measure of success?
If you had good friends or a good guild, I'm sure they would be quick to equip whatever new character you had to make and get you back into the action ASAP. You would hardly even be able to tell your character died. But at the same time, if you were able to stay alive for long periods of time, others would most definitely look up to you, I think.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Perma death is not applied in any shoot emup action games whatever you name it .
I don't see it that way. Every time I die in many many shooters, I start with basic weapons and have to find better ones or take them off of a dead enemy. Is that not similar to starting over from scratch i.e. Permadeath?
You lose your weapons and your armor, but you still have your skills that you've been practicing since you first started the game. And more importantly, you still have a team (except maybe in deathmatch).
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Well, permadeath means there is no permanent success in your gaming.
Except you don't lose your friends. You don't lose your respect. You don't lose the experience (not XP points) or the practice you've acquired. Is that not a more noble measure of success?
If you had good friends or a good guild, I'm sure they would be quick to equip whatever new character you had to make and get you back into the action ASAP. You would hardly even be able to tell your character died. But at the same time, if you were able to stay alive for long periods of time, others would most definitely look up to you, I think.
Who is going to make those guilds , farming and equiping up your toon over and over again ?
you got so much time to invest ? wait i dont have so much time to invest into restarting from 0 everytime i die .
You do lose friends , who says fun is fun , but i am out of here , and trust me i played enough perma death servers .
As for your other post , you see youself sent back when you play singleplayer ?
You game style is hard mode + nice for you , but tell me one game you recently finished without dying once or reloading ?
And i am not talking about shootemup online , in a boxed envoirement with respawn . infact you shouldn´t respawn at all .
Thats how you should play with perma death , no respawn , just stay there dead till the game is over .
Well, permadeath means there is no permanent success in your gaming.
Except you don't lose your friends. You don't lose your respect. You don't lose the experience (not XP points) or the practice you've acquired. Is that not a more noble measure of success?
If you had good friends or a good guild, I'm sure they would be quick to equip whatever new character you had to make and get you back into the action ASAP. You would hardly even be able to tell your character died. But at the same time, if you were able to stay alive for long periods of time, others would most definitely look up to you, I think.
If you had not cut away so much from my original posting, you would have noticed that I say such games cant have longtime motivation, unless players find a way around the consequences of permadeath and losing everything.
Like they do in Diablo Hardcore, where they use alternative characters that dont level to saftely store away equipment, so while your character is dead, at least you still have the equipment.
Who is going to make those guilds , farming and equiping up your toon over and over again ?
you got so much time to invest ? wait i dont have so much time to invest into restarting from 0 everytime i die .
You do lose friends , who says fun is fun , but i am out of here , and trust me i played enough perma death servers .
Who says you have to farm for hours just to get gear? Maybe your team or faction gets free weapons and armor depending on strategic resources they own. The NPCs could farm the materials and make the equipment for your guild/faction to use. And yes you are right, you do lose friends when they quit the game. What I was saying is that you don't have to reset your friends list or ignore the friends you made in the past every time you die.
As for your other post , you see youself sent back when you play singleplayer ?
You game style is hard mode + nice for you , but tell me one game you recently finished without dying once or reloading ?
And i am not talking about shootemup online , in a boxed envoirement with respawn . infact you shouldn´t respawn at all .
Thats how you should play with perma death , no respawn , just stay there dead till the game is over .
I play a lot of single player games such as Fallout 3 and Mass Effect (as well as some MMORPGS) with my own form of permadeath. When I die, I restart my character. That doesn't mean I have to uninstall the game every time I die.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
If you had not cut away so much from my original posting, you would have noticed that I say such games cant have longtime motivation, unless players find a way around the consequences of permadeath and losing everything.
Like they do in Diablo Hardcore, where they use alternative characters that dont level to saftely store away equipment, so while your character is dead, at least you still have the equipment.
Real permadeath wont know anything like guilds.
Well I disagree with you, they can have long term motivation. Just look at games like Planetside where there is a constant struggle for territory. Just because you die and lose all your gear doesn't mean that you are not still useful when you start another character. You may not even have to level up again at all. It depends on the other mechanics of the game, but I believe there would still be guilds and community in such games, it just might not be exactly the same as what you or I are used to.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Guys please stay on topic. This is not a thread for discussing the legitimacy of permadeath as an MMO design concept. Assume a game already has permadeath, how do you feel it would affect that game's community in terms of grouping and socialization? That is what the OP is asking.
You'd have groups of people always sticking together. New people would get killed extremely quickly by these groups, thus having no new influx of people.
These groups would never fight, as that would lead to loss of characters. The game would stagnate.
Guys please stay on topic. This is not a thread for discussing the legitimacy of permadeath as an MMO design concept. Assume a game already has permadeath, how do you feel it would affect that game's community in terms of grouping and socialization? That is what the OP is asking.
If the game is FFA PvP, it would absolutly destroy it in less time it takes to say "I pwn you n00b". No sense in denying that...
In a PvE/PvP_RvR game, it would keep it on a very niche level as the community would degenerate into a close minded bunch of elitist that would put tag on everyone on a level worst than anything WoW gear score ever did.
Guys please stay on topic. This is not a thread for discussing the legitimacy of permadeath as an MMO design concept. Assume a game already has permadeath, how do you feel it would affect that game's community in terms of grouping and socialization? That is what the OP is asking.
One of the things that was rather amusing about the early days of CoH is that although you were playing a hero, if an instance became too tough, a hero would instantly flee to avoid the death penalty (25% of your current level xp would have to be re-earned per death before you could continue progress again if I remember correctly). This resulted in a lot of groups falling apart quickly as soon as the first death occurred, or, in some cases, if early trash mobs became too much of struggle (therefore likely resulting in deaths against bosses and lieutenants).
I would think that the presence of permadeath would result in even stronger feelings, and grouping would be very negatively impacted since few people would be willing to risk relying on someone they didn't know for even one encounter. With that in mind, I would seriously doubt that such a game would become a resounding success in the marketplace. I'm certain there are people that would love the concept, but I think this is a niche concept in general.
i haven't read the whole thing but it would be kind of sad to throw away a character because its permanently dead because some higher level came by and kicked your ass cos he thought it would be fun or you accidentally fall into lava or what not.
I can see players who had a bad day go on a rampage while others suffer from the permadeath rule Even if there is just a small percent of it happening there are always griefers and corpse campers. Lets face it people like that exist in every game and i admit being guilty to the latter myself a few times.
If the game wouldn't have pvp then there is always a nasty disconnect on a mob or something else that will at least kill you once . So in short it would drive the community of the game apart because people would be afraid their character they build up would be gone in mere seconds, at least that is my view on the subject.
Permadeath, taken alone and with no other modifying mechanics, would ruin most most MMO's. It's would simply suck the fun out of the game for all but the most hard-core basement dwellers.
There was a game I saw in development that I don't think ever got released (can't remember the name-sorry) that had a form of permadetah but the player, upon dying, became a relative (son/daughter or whatever) or an apprentice of the now-dead character with some lesser percentage of his skills and wealth. Since it never even went to beta, I've no idea how well this worked in practice.
Another possible way to have permadeath is for the player to be a "mastermind" operating a stable of characters. The weatlh of each individual character would always be the property of the "mastermind" and, should one character die, a replacement of roughly similar skill could be recruited (bought).
Other than those two concepts, I'd think death and advancement would have to be made almost entirely trivial in a game with permadeath in order to keep people playing...unless, of course, the goal of the game was to die and then allow the player to go on playing his character in some afterlife...which was actually the "real" game!
Guys please stay on topic. This is not a thread for discussing the legitimacy of permadeath as an MMO design concept. Assume a game already has permadeath, how do you feel it would affect that game's community in terms of grouping and socialization? That is what the OP is asking.
That's the problem I have with the question Mike...I don't think any game with 'permadeath' will last out of beta.
There would be no "community" because you've already destroyed several key aspects of what "community" means.
Grouping would be the ONLY aspect of the game that flourished...for a bit. Between the gank squads and select player groups, you would create a definite "have" and "have not" divide. Casual players would be worthless. Only the hardcore would be worth playing with...until they got cocky and started to fall. The more that fell, the fewer players you'd have. Ego's would prevent some from returning, the grinding up another toon would prevent other.
Forget new players even a week after launch. Catching up wouldn't be worth it and you would never see lower level players being invited to groups and certainly not to a PUG - losing your toon to teach someone new what to do just isn't worth the risk (PvP or PvE).
And forget socialization. Who has time to reply to you when that reply could be the difference between living and permadeath?!
The foundation of "permadeath" is destroying your personal connection to the game...your toon. When you have no connection to your character, you'll attract players who 'don't care'. MMOs NEED players to care about their avatars and their community. When all of that can be stripped away because of one mistake, you eliminate the core of an MMO (developing and growing a character) and you turn it into nothing more than a FPS where nothing really matters.
I voted for option 1. It would bring the community together.
Now, that doesn't mean permadeath automatically makes people more social, or encourages people to group up. Hell, if you introduced permadeath in any current MMO that I've played, it would not only tear up the community, but likely kill off the game.
However, any game with such a feature would have to pretty much be built around that one feature. People would have to want to play the game because of the possibility that you can die permanently, not despite it. The game would probably be about survival, not advancement, and with that premise, most people would find that seeking out companions is a good first step. It's tempting to start arguing why the survival concept might work for MMOs, but that wasn't really the question.
Guys please stay on topic. This is not a thread for discussing the legitimacy of permadeath as an MMO design concept. Assume a game already has permadeath, how do you feel it would affect that game's community in terms of grouping and socialization? That is what the OP is asking.
That's the problem I have with the question Mike...I don't think any game with 'permadeath' will last out of beta.
There would be no "community" because you've already destroyed several key aspects of what "community" means.
This is simply false, because 50% of mmorpg.com members would at least TRY the game out for a free trial. And I don't know the % that say they WANT a permadeath game, but there is a % here, on these forums, which say "Yes, I'd love a permadeath game".
So my question is... if there are 1% to 10% of people on mmorpg.com who say they WANT a permadeath game and 50% who say they'd at least TRY it for a few hours on a free trial... this fact there would be no "community" is completely false. I am providing real evidence, not opinion or speculation.
Grouping would be the ONLY aspect of the game that flourished...for a bit. Between the gank squads and select player groups, you would create a definite "have" and "have not" divide. Casual players would be worthless. Only the hardcore would be worth playing with...until they got cocky and started to fall. The more that fell, the fewer players you'd have. Ego's would prevent some from returning, the grinding up another toon would prevent other.
How can you tell what aspect of the game would flourish and what wouldn't... when grouping, community, and permadeath are the only actual aspects of this hypothetical question?
Forget new players even a week after launch. Catching up wouldn't be worth it and you would never see lower level players being invited to groups and certainly not to a PUG - losing your toon to teach someone new what to do just isn't worth the risk (PvP or PvE).
In a game with permadeath...why do you think players would have to "catch up"? Every player will eventually die and start over... meaning no one would need to catch up, because no one would advance forever.
Why would yo unever see lower level players...when in essence ALL players will repeatedly be lower level...forever?
And forget socialization. Who has time to reply to you when that reply could be the difference between living and permadeath?!
Assuming that talking or socializing is never in a safe area? What game would not have a safe area? All games, even Darkfall, have safe areas.
The foundation of "permadeath" is destroying your personal connection to the game...your toon. When you have no connection to your character, you'll attract players who 'don't care'. MMOs NEED players to care about their avatars and their community. When all of that can be stripped away because of one mistake, you eliminate the core of an MMO (developing and growing a character) and you turn it into nothing more than a FPS where nothing really matters.
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
Permea daeth can work, it works in PNP, and it works in Real life. it can work in a MMO but it would rquire a completely different design approach that all mmos take... it would require no to little progression, and would have to be centered in a world based upon PLAYER interaction and not so much NPC interaction
However, an mmorpg with features and game mechanics thats never been tested before would never fly with investors, or AAA game studios, which leaves the INDIES to make it, if it ever gets made at all...
So instead we must continue playing WOW clone after wow clone, with each wow clone improving one small feature at a time, as they try and tie it with ... Innovation is dead in this genre, we are in the dark ages of online gaming.
EDIT: I should make my own game, even if its only a simple Graphical MUD It would be more fun than the next wow killer which will be WOW in a different IP.... And all the people talking about levels and ganks above me have no clue... You are thinking in terms of the norm mmo mechanics.... We need to try something new, maybe a game without levels or skills, maybe a game with zero progression. Like I said permadeath would never work in any mmorpg currently in exsistance.... yet many people are unable to realize this genre has stagnated into nothing... Back to the drawing board
I"ve said it once before even put on here a system of game play but Highlander would work great as a perma death MMO, as an immortal once your head is gone you are done in short.. wont' explain leveing etc again..
I voted that it would do neither; that players would act the same way regardless of whether a game had permadeath or not. There's so many variables that go into merely defining what permadeath even is. I think a game could incorporate permadeath mechanics in a way that most players wouldn't consider it to be hardcore permadeath.
The term has such a negative conotation that many players wouldn't bother looking into the mechanic if a game company tried to tout it as a feature. Either that or the company could not even mention that there was permadeath mechanics in the game and most players would probably not even notice. It depends on what exactly permadeath is, and how it's incorporated into the rest of the mechanics in the game, in my opinion. I believe that players change the mechanics of games more than the mechanics are able to change the players.
Yeah, the poll conveniently sidesteps the "dramatically niche audience" factor, so "neither" is probably the correct answer (and I agree with the rest of your post too.)
Although some might argue that reducing your potential audience by millions and millions of players would sort of eliminate a lot of potential community before it even existed.
Niche games are fine, if they bring a profit above developer input,. they can be sucessful right? Does a game need to have a 2+ million subs to be considered a good game? Is everyones lust for WOW and its ability to print money made us lose reason as to what a good game is?
Does a game need to be sub based to make money? We are quickly finding out , NO... Does a game need to have the latest version of Unreal engine with perfect art to make it good? What is consdiered a MMORPG, vs a online persistant RPG? is there cut off, player wise? I think developers need to stop thinking BIG and start thinking smaller... Ill take a bite size MMO/online rpg thats fun with a smaller community and working features that are polished and playable over a game with millions of subs in a big epic graphics engine game with the same age old game mechanics like raiding leveling and arenas that iv played 100 times before...
This is simply false, because 50% of mmorpg.com members would at least TRY the game out for a free trial. And I don't know the % that say they WANT a permadeath game, but there is a % here, on these forums, which say "Yes, I'd love a permadeath game".
So my question is... if there are 1% to 10% of people on mmorpg.com who say they WANT a permadeath game and 50% who say they'd at least TRY it for a few hours on a free trial... this fact there would be no "community" is completely false. I am providing real evidence, not opinion or speculation.
How can you tell what aspect of the game would flourish and what wouldn't... when grouping, community, and permadeath are the only actual aspects of this hypothetical question?In a game with permadeath...why do you think players would have to "catch up"? Every player will eventually die and start over... meaning no one would need to catch up, because no one would advance forever.
Why would yo unever see lower level players...when in essence ALL players will repeatedly be lower level...forever?Assuming that talking or socializing is never in a safe area? What game would not have a safe area? All games, even Darkfall, have safe areas.
Can you please link your "evidence"? And 50% of the MEMBERS I would like Mike to verify because, seriously, that's just a silly claim.
Comments
It is a brag - and, in my opinion, the complete opposite of what has actually happened over the last 10 years.
The pool of people playing games has gotten larger leading to a greater number of good players playing than ever before. However, there are also a larger amount of all kinds of other players. He sees this and spits out the assumption that players are worse than they were 10 years ago.
It is far more likely there are a similar percentage of players the are good, average or bad. It is likely that he is unable to see this because he falls in line with average or below players. He looks around and sees that all of the players are worse than before. Which is true for him. All the players are worse than before because he stopped keeping up with the great players at some point.
If someone were to be demoted from Vice President to Janitor because they were terrible at being Vice President, the Janitor would look around and say, "Look at the average worker. They are terrible!" The truth is that they were never cut out to be Vice President and people that are good at their job stopped accepting them in their group a long time ago.
Listen up its 21st century , no longer 20st century where game over was normal .
Perma death is not applied in any shoot emup action games whatever you name it .
Let alone promote it on a MMO , it simply doesn´t work , one lag one dc you are dead while farming .
Hurray there goes 3 month worth of investment , where is the cancel subscription button again .
Grouping or forced grouping , is another ideal lost from the 20th century .
Where people could socialise , talk about RL how much it suxors to online .
Sadly online nowadays has the stigma worst then Real Life , infact aside from anominimity (auch hope i spell that one correct)
The people online are nowadays acting worst then Real Life . and online has problem with there is no consequences to your action . unlike real life .
Sorry while perma death ideology i can applaud , it has long time ago lost its appeal .
Except you don't lose your friends. You don't lose your respect. You don't lose the experience (not XP points) or the practice you've acquired. Is that not a more noble measure of success?
If you had good friends or a good guild, I'm sure they would be quick to equip whatever new character you had to make and get you back into the action ASAP. You would hardly even be able to tell your character died. But at the same time, if you were able to stay alive for long periods of time, others would most definitely look up to you, I think.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I don't see it that way. Every time I die in many many shooters, I start with basic weapons and have to find better ones or take them off of a dead enemy. Is that not similar to starting over from scratch i.e. Permadeath?
You lose your weapons and your armor, but you still have your skills that you've been practicing since you first started the game. And more importantly, you still have a team (except maybe in deathmatch).
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Who is going to make those guilds , farming and equiping up your toon over and over again ?
you got so much time to invest ? wait i dont have so much time to invest into restarting from 0 everytime i die .
You do lose friends , who says fun is fun , but i am out of here , and trust me i played enough perma death servers .
As for your other post , you see youself sent back when you play singleplayer ?
You game style is hard mode + nice for you , but tell me one game you recently finished without dying once or reloading ?
And i am not talking about shootemup online , in a boxed envoirement with respawn . infact you shouldn´t respawn at all .
Thats how you should play with perma death , no respawn , just stay there dead till the game is over .
If you had not cut away so much from my original posting, you would have noticed that I say such games cant have longtime motivation, unless players find a way around the consequences of permadeath and losing everything.
Like they do in Diablo Hardcore, where they use alternative characters that dont level to saftely store away equipment, so while your character is dead, at least you still have the equipment.
Real permadeath wont know anything like guilds.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Well I disagree with you, they can have long term motivation. Just look at games like Planetside where there is a constant struggle for territory. Just because you die and lose all your gear doesn't mean that you are not still useful when you start another character. You may not even have to level up again at all. It depends on the other mechanics of the game, but I believe there would still be guilds and community in such games, it just might not be exactly the same as what you or I are used to.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Guys please stay on topic. This is not a thread for discussing the legitimacy of permadeath as an MMO design concept. Assume a game already has permadeath, how do you feel it would affect that game's community in terms of grouping and socialization? That is what the OP is asking.
It would be exactly the same. It's just a more hardcore form of griefing. Griefers gonna grief...
You'd have groups of people always sticking together. New people would get killed extremely quickly by these groups, thus having no new influx of people.
These groups would never fight, as that would lead to loss of characters. The game would stagnate.
If the game is FFA PvP, it would absolutly destroy it in less time it takes to say "I pwn you n00b". No sense in denying that...
In a PvE/PvP_RvR game, it would keep it on a very niche level as the community would degenerate into a close minded bunch of elitist that would put tag on everyone on a level worst than anything WoW gear score ever did.
One of the things that was rather amusing about the early days of CoH is that although you were playing a hero, if an instance became too tough, a hero would instantly flee to avoid the death penalty (25% of your current level xp would have to be re-earned per death before you could continue progress again if I remember correctly). This resulted in a lot of groups falling apart quickly as soon as the first death occurred, or, in some cases, if early trash mobs became too much of struggle (therefore likely resulting in deaths against bosses and lieutenants).
I would think that the presence of permadeath would result in even stronger feelings, and grouping would be very negatively impacted since few people would be willing to risk relying on someone they didn't know for even one encounter. With that in mind, I would seriously doubt that such a game would become a resounding success in the marketplace. I'm certain there are people that would love the concept, but I think this is a niche concept in general.
I cannot vote in the OP's poll as there is no selection for "I would never play such a game."
Hedonismbot: Your latest performance was as delectable as dipping my bottom over and over into a bath of the silkiest oils and creams.
It would make a very boring game:
LFG - Dungeon of Certain Death
*crickets*
*crickets*
this.
i haven't read the whole thing but it would be kind of sad to throw away a character because its permanently dead because some higher level came by and kicked your ass cos he thought it would be fun or you accidentally fall into lava or what not.
I can see players who had a bad day go on a rampage while others suffer from the permadeath rule Even if there is just a small percent of it happening there are always griefers and corpse campers. Lets face it people like that exist in every game and i admit being guilty to the latter myself a few times.
If the game wouldn't have pvp then there is always a nasty disconnect on a mob or something else that will at least kill you once . So in short it would drive the community of the game apart because people would be afraid their character they build up would be gone in mere seconds, at least that is my view on the subject.
Permadeath, taken alone and with no other modifying mechanics, would ruin most most MMO's. It's would simply suck the fun out of the game for all but the most hard-core basement dwellers.
There was a game I saw in development that I don't think ever got released (can't remember the name-sorry) that had a form of permadetah but the player, upon dying, became a relative (son/daughter or whatever) or an apprentice of the now-dead character with some lesser percentage of his skills and wealth. Since it never even went to beta, I've no idea how well this worked in practice.
Another possible way to have permadeath is for the player to be a "mastermind" operating a stable of characters. The weatlh of each individual character would always be the property of the "mastermind" and, should one character die, a replacement of roughly similar skill could be recruited (bought).
Other than those two concepts, I'd think death and advancement would have to be made almost entirely trivial in a game with permadeath in order to keep people playing...unless, of course, the goal of the game was to die and then allow the player to go on playing his character in some afterlife...which was actually the "real" game!
Lots of antiquated ideas and attitudes in this thread. But I guess a lot of mine are also when it comes to other things.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
That's the problem I have with the question Mike...I don't think any game with 'permadeath' will last out of beta.
There would be no "community" because you've already destroyed several key aspects of what "community" means.
Grouping would be the ONLY aspect of the game that flourished...for a bit. Between the gank squads and select player groups, you would create a definite "have" and "have not" divide. Casual players would be worthless. Only the hardcore would be worth playing with...until they got cocky and started to fall. The more that fell, the fewer players you'd have. Ego's would prevent some from returning, the grinding up another toon would prevent other.
Forget new players even a week after launch. Catching up wouldn't be worth it and you would never see lower level players being invited to groups and certainly not to a PUG - losing your toon to teach someone new what to do just isn't worth the risk (PvP or PvE).
And forget socialization. Who has time to reply to you when that reply could be the difference between living and permadeath?!
The foundation of "permadeath" is destroying your personal connection to the game...your toon. When you have no connection to your character, you'll attract players who 'don't care'. MMOs NEED players to care about their avatars and their community. When all of that can be stripped away because of one mistake, you eliminate the core of an MMO (developing and growing a character) and you turn it into nothing more than a FPS where nothing really matters.
I voted for option 1. It would bring the community together.
Now, that doesn't mean permadeath automatically makes people more social, or encourages people to group up. Hell, if you introduced permadeath in any current MMO that I've played, it would not only tear up the community, but likely kill off the game.
However, any game with such a feature would have to pretty much be built around that one feature. People would have to want to play the game because of the possibility that you can die permanently, not despite it. The game would probably be about survival, not advancement, and with that premise, most people would find that seeking out companions is a good first step. It's tempting to start arguing why the survival concept might work for MMOs, but that wasn't really the question.
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
Permea daeth can work, it works in PNP, and it works in Real life. it can work in a MMO but it would rquire a completely different design approach that all mmos take... it would require no to little progression, and would have to be centered in a world based upon PLAYER interaction and not so much NPC interaction
However, an mmorpg with features and game mechanics thats never been tested before would never fly with investors, or AAA game studios, which leaves the INDIES to make it, if it ever gets made at all...
So instead we must continue playing WOW clone after wow clone, with each wow clone improving one small feature at a time, as they try and tie it with ... Innovation is dead in this genre, we are in the dark ages of online gaming.
EDIT: I should make my own game, even if its only a simple Graphical MUD It would be more fun than the next wow killer which will be WOW in a different IP.... And all the people talking about levels and ganks above me have no clue... You are thinking in terms of the norm mmo mechanics.... We need to try something new, maybe a game without levels or skills, maybe a game with zero progression. Like I said permadeath would never work in any mmorpg currently in exsistance.... yet many people are unable to realize this genre has stagnated into nothing... Back to the drawing board
I"ve said it once before even put on here a system of game play but Highlander would work great as a perma death MMO, as an immortal once your head is gone you are done in short.. wont' explain leveing etc again..
Dustin
Niche games are fine, if they bring a profit above developer input,. they can be sucessful right? Does a game need to have a 2+ million subs to be considered a good game? Is everyones lust for WOW and its ability to print money made us lose reason as to what a good game is?
Does a game need to be sub based to make money? We are quickly finding out , NO... Does a game need to have the latest version of Unreal engine with perfect art to make it good? What is consdiered a MMORPG, vs a online persistant RPG? is there cut off, player wise? I think developers need to stop thinking BIG and start thinking smaller... Ill take a bite size MMO/online rpg thats fun with a smaller community and working features that are polished and playable over a game with millions of subs in a big epic graphics engine game with the same age old game mechanics like raiding leveling and arenas that iv played 100 times before...
Can you please link your "evidence"? And 50% of the MEMBERS I would like Mike to verify because, seriously, that's just a silly claim.