I understand your points. I'll do my best to summarize my objections. Keep in mind that I'm fine with perma-death if it requires the player to screw up royally; my main objections are on the ability to perma-die from a random ganking (or some other mechanism that is relatively easy, such as the Prince calling Blood Hunts indiscriminately).
A no-holds-barred perma-death-ganking will turn a role-playing game into a FPS gank-fest. Even people who want to play social-specialties will instead focus on combat in order to survive long enough to be able to form a storyline. Focusing on social skills will be fun right up til you get ganked for no reason and lose all your skills.
Gankers are better at ganking then roleplayers (the vast majority of the time). They will become extremely effective at what they do, particularly because they enjoy doing it. For most role-players (like me), hours spent ganking (or avoiding gankers) is insanely boring to start with. If I wanted a game like that, I'd get Planetside. Allowing perma-death-ganking will force players to play in a ganking-style just to keep playing--if you don't, you perma-die. Even if you make it a month without dying, it just takes once and suddenly you lost everything... not just your gear and stuff, but you entire storyline! This will utterly devastate roleplaying mechanics, and the game will be Vampire Gank Fest 2015.
With perma-death-ganking, the limiting reagant is combat skill (both your character's "level" and the player's skill). If your combat skill sucks, than no matter how good you are at other things (social intrigue, subterfuge, investigation, occult mysteries, etc.) you will die in a relatively quick manner. In order to survive in the game, you'll be forced to focus on combat skills. Allowing perma-death-ganking squarely places combat as the limiting reagant.
And on the pen-and-paper comments.. I could give a long dissertation on this manner, as I adore pen-and-paper RPG, but I think this sums it up best:
Any Storyteller can, anytime he likes, surround his players with a Sabbat Pack that's twice their numbers, twice their "level", and utterly destroy them within one round. He doesn't do this because it's pointless, and has nothing to do with story, and ends the entire campaign. There's only "challenge" when the enemies are at your same "level" (or close to it), or there's a reasonable manner of escape, or the over-powered enemies capture the players instead of killing them (which can start a cool story as a captive), or something like that.
Sure, if a player screws up royally and has a series of stupid choices, he can find himself in combat with zero chance of survival, but that's not "getting ganked", it's walking into the fire because you made dumb choices. No Storyteller "ganks" his players with murderous enemies that far outnumber and outpower them simply because he was walking around downtown (i.e. not doing a series of really dumb things), and kills them off with zero chance of survival. In an MMO, this happens all. the. time.
1st I would like to say I appreciate this intelligent and respectful conversation involving our different point of views. So with that lets dicuss our ideas. Ok so you pointed out if permadeath ganking will turn a rolplaying game into a fps gank-fest and pretty much chalked it up to planetside everyone is killing everone becuase they can. I had no idea what planetside was so i had to look it up i didnt find anything on planetside 1 or its sequel having perma-death involved in it.(if i am wrong please point me to where i can find out otherwise) I am also not sure how this genre thats fps with mechs directly speaks for WoD. I am assuming you ment WoD would become a fps and the object would be kill kill kill till you died and had to reroll?
So i agree if the game has a starting point where all vantrue or what ever clan start and the gankers can take premo advantage of the 5 min old off the rack types, yes terrible idea and a game breaker. But if not, as i already posted, how can a person tell how powerful somone is otherwise? If their is no levels or gear to state power level or good idea bad idea sence of direction. Other then point buy, again iam assuming keeping it to the original roots of what makes vampire, what it is. That aside in all respawn mmo i believe their are gankers becuase of a simple fact. Well frankly they are out very little. In eve its lose a ship grab a clone and walla iam out some time and money. But hey, its not expensive if i can afford it attitude.
If the gankers can suffer a loss like welcome to a reroll. Its a serious loss, not some no big deal. Now they have to play the game of can i take that one or can he take me all over again. For all we know 5 minutes out he could try to gank and just get a boot in his ass and sent back to reroll again. This is what i am saying their are adding a real life mechanic to a mmo "I am dead". Case and point I read a article a while back about a very bad place in Florida murder and violent crime was unbeliveable high. With violent crime against women staggering high there. The woman banned together and got gun permits ccw's took some self defence classes and crime dropped in 2 weeks. In one month time crime rate was petty and not violent. True story if you msg me ill try to find the article for you.
My point is this try to imagine your a ganker type completly oppisite of your play style. Now how many rerolls would it take to get it out your system? Keep in mind a bloodhunt will loom over you soon as you dust someone or what ever how many. Lets say your not a ganker and a pvper alright, every conflict of warring sides cami vrs sabbath you risked perma-death. (again i have no idea on the pvp system if it is perma-death but lets just say it is for the sake of argument.) Now are you going to form some sort of plan and commit to it like its real life or are you going to hike the ball and resort to every man for himself? Can you imagine the thrill of victory in that sence risking it all and over coming the challenge. I can say who ever lived would be high off adrenaline. I know this because me and a couple of friends used to play SOCOM back in the day in rooms where it was one death and your out the game. Again thats a fps but iam trying to relate to what it would be like for the pvpers.
To speak briefly on the stating. If you knew it was more survival horror and wanted to go with say social or mental skills ect you would have to round out and not be what they call a Min/Max or a one trick pony.
Why don't they just add a hardcore mode with perma-death that's optional with maybe increased rewards? IMO, that would be the best way to go about it.
You clearly don't understand the mechanisms, permadeath would require both participants in a fight, or avoiding a fight to have something to lose. Best would be for those who can't deal with loss to not play.
just noticing a lot of people referencing "EVE's permadeath system" and I wanted to ask what you meant.
EVE does not have a permadeath system. Your character never "deletes" unless you tell it to delete character from char-select screen just as it works in most other mmos.
First, based on the video where they discussed perma-death, I'm fairly certain you can only perma-kill someone if the Blood Hunt is called on them. If this is correct, then as long as there's no Blood Hunt called on you, a random ganking won't perma-kill you. I personally feel that, as long as Blood Hunts aren't given out as freely and frequently as virginity on prom night, then this will be fine. Our discussion, however, is based on a "worst case scenario" where Blood Hunts are called all the time, because the Prince didn't like your face or something.
Your points regarding perma-death reigning in ganking activity may be correct. I find gank-style play (both actively ganking, or avoiding gankers) to be boring and not condusive of role-play (for my style), so I avoid games that have a lot of it. As such, my predicition on how gankers will respond to perma-death may be wrong, and you may indeed by right.
But to explain my apprehension on the issue, I'll use the best example of personal experience I have: Ultima Online.
Ahhh, UO. The first MMO. How I loved thee... and hated it at the same time. In UO, there was no perma-death, but BY FAR death held the most negative consequences than any other MMO I've ever played. In case you never played it, death was handled as the following: you die, and you become a ghost, your body is on the ground and all your stuff (every last bit) could be looted by anyone. You had to wander around (sometimes for 1-2 hours) to find an NPC healer (or powerful PC who could rez) to bring you back to life. You came back basically nude, and had to run back to your body to get back your loot.... which was usually empty of loot by the time you got to it. Dying in UO really sucked... which wasn't all that bad, I actually love the idea of very serious consequences to death.
The point in this is the following: gankers where ALL OVER the game, flooding every mountain pass, wandering through dungeons in big groups... It sucked just as much for them to die, in fact is was WORSE since they were labelled as "evil" and couldn't even go into town to buy new items or use the banks. But it didn't deter them; they simply adapted. Gankers were a serious problem in UO, because they were everywhere, and made PvE extremely difficult. I remember how I responded to it: by adapting my skills to what was best for PvP, getting good PvP gear (crossbows and magic), and getting in big groups. What eventuallu happened was I was doing PvP most of the time, and simply stopped enjoying the game, so I quit.
It is my belief that, while gankers share the serious death consequences, it will not stop them from ganking. They will adapt. Perma-death, unkown "level" of enemies, whatever the case may be.... they will wander in large groups, become very skilled at hit-and-runs, and basically adapt like some Darwinian frog-monkey to dominate the game and make it a PvP warzone. In response to this, non-gankers will need to act like gankers: wander in big groups, focus on combat skills, etc. Which is my point--nothing you can do will stop gankers, and the more serious death consequences will affect the roleplayers far more than gankers, due to the importance of character development in a storyline. To survive, you'll need to play like a ganker... which isn't how most roleplayers want to play.
I'm fairly certain perma-death won't be easy, and will require some big folly on a player's part to get a Blood Hunt called on them. In this case, I think it'll work out fine. We've got a good 2-3 years of waiting time, so we'll just have to sit back and see
Why don't they just add a hardcore mode with perma-death that's optional with maybe increased rewards? IMO, that would be the best way to go about it.
You clearly don't understand the mechanisms, permadeath would require both participants in a fight, or avoiding a fight to have something to lose. Best would be for those who can't deal with loss to not play.
I clearly see your point in UO with roving packs of "ganksters" lol. Correct me if I am wrong but didnt UO also have insurence on items too at some point? Ok but lets look at this rationaly so a band of roving mauraders, would gang up and overwhelm players to well rob them. Lets look at this rationaly in modern times on loot issues. 1st, if vampires dont have alot of stuff to well upgrade/ sell as in well credit cards, a few bills, possibly bulletproof vest, a gun of some sort a few clips or rounds depending of course, some clothes, and hell lets throw in a couple quest items for good measure. 2nd, not a big payday for a split on the take. Again iam purely speculating of course but its not so far fetched as in out n left field. 3rd lets take limmited space and how much you can carrie is based off str/stam/ Ok other then a possible backpack/suitcase/dufflebag i see this as limiting but not in a bad way a good way, reflect reality. If we have cars we have more space in a trunk i see room for gear at a haven but why do we need 54 slots on a toon when its not grinding junk loot?
Ok lets address the roving bands of madness ok. so me you and lets take 2 more players with us to go gank someone because well we dont have anything better to do. Lets now assume we are playing cami's and are real life friends in JR high.(iam trying to paint the most dispicable gankers from the real world, that the majority of players hate) So us 4 now go roving around ganking people so we notice bloodhunt tag on us. So now we are headed to lets assume again they have "low sec" or something to that degree. Some how we figure where exactly it is and we are there. Again, with out all getting killed of course. So here we are in "low sec" dodge the law and lawless. What preventing them as in others in "low sec" from ganking us? Thats right NOTHING. So now we are watching each others backs none of us want to afk because well it would lower our odds of survivability. So lets assume one of us dies and has to reroll lets say its me. I am hustling trying to create a guy and come back.
So i come running back to "low sec" to be with you guys fresh right off the rack. I am now the weakest link and have no real insentive to really be here in low sec but to be with you guys. So lets speed this up 2 more people die off so now those two come running back after a reroll. Looks like your the top dog left and 3 of us are very much weaker then when we 1st came in. The odds of you actually surviving here with us is staggering low. See what i am driving at? Not such a fun "ganking" game for kids. I am not saying ganking wont happen if its possible it will be done but what iam getting at here is it would take 3 things to happen brains brawn and real life friends in vent that have balls of steel to risk what they worked for.
Thats not a huge posse as your description but more people more problems.Insentive to rob low. loyalty is a constant issue so is moral and guts. So your the leader of us but i want to lead i noticed 3 of your real life friends are rerolling i bump you off i got the gang now well till someoen bumps me off and in the meentime. This gang is getting thinner and thinner because coups, schisms and lets not forget drama.
Everything you just said is correct. My point is that gankers enjoy that kind of play, while roleplayers do not.
If permadeath is relatively easy (which I don't think it will be, but for the sake of this arugment we're saying it is), then there will be a relatively high turn-over rate for characters. For gankers, death would suck, but the challenge and excitement of it would add more fun for many of them; they play MMOs for the excitement and fun of PvP. Even if it acted as a deterrant to ganking, we'll still have a ton of gankers--every MMO does.
Roleplayers, on the other hand, don't play for pure PvP. They form storyline, and have character development. Even if their turn-over rate is once every 2 months, that would destroy their ability to form creative, meaningful stories. Furthermore, to maintain a character so he lasts long enough to have any story at all, he'd have to play like a ganker (i.e. focus on combat skills, roam in packs, etc). We don't want to play like a ganker to start with.
That's what I mean by "limiting reagant". If surviving in a game requires a certain type of play-style, then everyone MUST adopt that play-style; their preferred play-style (role-playing, socializing, whatever) must take a back seat, since otherwise they won't survive. Perma-death will making a PvP/ganking play-style the limited reagant--everyone will have to be good at it, and play to ganking specifics, or they don't survive long enough to play how they want to. This means the only people who will enjoy the game are the people who happen to enjoy whatever the limiting reagant is, in this case PvP.
Many posters have answered with "thats fine, then don't play", which is perfectly reasonable.... if you think a Vampire game should be a giant war-zone of immortal PvP. I've read Vampire/WoD enough to know that this is NOT what the environment of Vampire is supposed to be.The Jyhad is not a bunch of roving vampire packs killing each other indiscriminately. It's politics, control, social intrigue, dark mysteries, pupper-masters and pawns, domitors and lackeys, webs of deciet and lies... AND packs of roaming killers. With permadeath (easily done permadeath, as previously said), it would limit it to involve only the latter (roaming packs of killers), and forsake all other types of play.
(Note to Diamond: I got your PM, but don't know how to reply. lol. I'll look into that for sure!)
Originally posted by Nosferatu4U Seems reasonable for a blood hunt to end in permadeath, if you make Prince that angry with you, then you deserve to have your character removed.
Depends on how they do it. If the Prince can randomly assign Blood Hunts to anyone he likes for any reason, I see this turning into a clutterfuck bloodbath.
I'd prefer to see a system where the Prince only has the option of calling a Blood Hunt on a player under specific circumstances (like if the player broke Masquerade, or did some action that makes him "blood hunt-able")
I didn't read this whole thread before posting, so sorry if this has been said already.
If they have permadeath, and it occurs because of a prince-sanctioned hunt, then those who are trying to kill the vamp in question should be at risk for PD as well.
That would make it a real high-stakes event.
And perhaps the hunt could be ended if the huntee was able to kill the Prince?
I agree with many saying how bad it would stink to lose your character, but if there were controls in place, i.e. only one hunt could be called a month and there was risk for all involved, then I think the resulting politics would add a level of depth rarely seen in online games.
If they have permadeath, and it occurs because of a prince-sanctioned hunt, then those who are trying to kill the vamp in question should be at risk for PD as well.
That would make it a real high-stakes event.
This is a good idea.
Something to add along those lines: perhaps the Prince is always perma-killable? Makes the position very powerful and very risky.
Hopefully CCP will survive the inevitable disaster that DUST 514 will be (PS3 only = death, imo) and can get WoD polished and out the door for us to enjoy. A sandbox in the WoD setting would be pretty epic.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
If they have permadeath, and it occurs because of a prince-sanctioned hunt, then those who are trying to kill the vamp in question should be at risk for PD as well.
That would make it a real high-stakes event.
This is a good idea.
Something to add along those lines: perhaps the Prince is always perma-killable? Makes the position very powerful and very risky.
Perma death also results from other things besides Camarilla Prince's declaring a hunt. The Sabbat actively destroys Camarilla vampires, as do other creatures in WoD. See Garou, Mages, Hunters, Mummies, Kindred of the East, and so on and so forth. I don't know much about the game, but if it's going to be oWoD and VtM only, there still leaves the element that vampires will be killing vampires. Fire destroys vampires, as does inflicting enough damage. You make them enter torpor, then burn the body, destroy the heart, chop off the head, or even give it a few good blasts with a shotgun, it's going to die. Read Vampire: The Masquerade 3rd Ed. Combat etc. Also, even though it is against the Camarilla tenets/rules to kill another vampire, the Camarilla constantly plot against eachother, scheme for power and control for their own purposes. It's a gothic horror game for a reason, they all don't sit around and hold hands.
I don't think permadeath is going to translate very well to the MMO genre... I think it'll be a ghost town within six months of it's launch date unless they have a dedicated server for it which will also be "low-populated."
Being a Vampire LARPer, Final Death is something that needs to be involved. however it shouldn't be easy. There are afew ways to avoid it and they need to be added.
I'm really hoping this game doesn't just turn into GUNZ with vampires. Also Permadeath should not happen often in this game, anyone who plays anything in the World Of Darkness will know this. Well Mortals are Squishy and i have a feeling that once added into the game that people will whine about being too squishy.
Anywho the Final Death isnt a worry from the game for me. i want to see Social abilities and how they are enacted in game.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Oh no, I'm lagging - son, stop downloading porn goddammit!!! Now look, my 200 hour character is DEAD! You murderer, I'm going to kill you my child. *Gets axe and goes to town on his family*
Originally posted by nyxium Probably if a blood hunt is announced. Or diablerie.
That is my take on it until proven otherwise. I can see it being an option to take based on lore. I played the game off and on over years and it would actually be very strange NOT to have perma-death in the game somewhere at some point but certainly it isn't in the game's best interest to have it full time.
Comments
To Diamond:
I understand your points. I'll do my best to summarize my objections. Keep in mind that I'm fine with perma-death if it requires the player to screw up royally; my main objections are on the ability to perma-die from a random ganking (or some other mechanism that is relatively easy, such as the Prince calling Blood Hunts indiscriminately).
A no-holds-barred perma-death-ganking will turn a role-playing game into a FPS gank-fest. Even people who want to play social-specialties will instead focus on combat in order to survive long enough to be able to form a storyline. Focusing on social skills will be fun right up til you get ganked for no reason and lose all your skills.
Gankers are better at ganking then roleplayers (the vast majority of the time). They will become extremely effective at what they do, particularly because they enjoy doing it. For most role-players (like me), hours spent ganking (or avoiding gankers) is insanely boring to start with. If I wanted a game like that, I'd get Planetside. Allowing perma-death-ganking will force players to play in a ganking-style just to keep playing--if you don't, you perma-die. Even if you make it a month without dying, it just takes once and suddenly you lost everything... not just your gear and stuff, but you entire storyline! This will utterly devastate roleplaying mechanics, and the game will be Vampire Gank Fest 2015.
With perma-death-ganking, the limiting reagant is combat skill (both your character's "level" and the player's skill). If your combat skill sucks, than no matter how good you are at other things (social intrigue, subterfuge, investigation, occult mysteries, etc.) you will die in a relatively quick manner. In order to survive in the game, you'll be forced to focus on combat skills. Allowing perma-death-ganking squarely places combat as the limiting reagant.
And on the pen-and-paper comments.. I could give a long dissertation on this manner, as I adore pen-and-paper RPG, but I think this sums it up best:
Any Storyteller can, anytime he likes, surround his players with a Sabbat Pack that's twice their numbers, twice their "level", and utterly destroy them within one round. He doesn't do this because it's pointless, and has nothing to do with story, and ends the entire campaign. There's only "challenge" when the enemies are at your same "level" (or close to it), or there's a reasonable manner of escape, or the over-powered enemies capture the players instead of killing them (which can start a cool story as a captive), or something like that.
Sure, if a player screws up royally and has a series of stupid choices, he can find himself in combat with zero chance of survival, but that's not "getting ganked", it's walking into the fire because you made dumb choices. No Storyteller "ganks" his players with murderous enemies that far outnumber and outpower them simply because he was walking around downtown (i.e. not doing a series of really dumb things), and kills them off with zero chance of survival. In an MMO, this happens all. the. time.
To Rcubano
1st I would like to say I appreciate this intelligent and respectful conversation involving our different point of views. So with that lets dicuss our ideas. Ok so you pointed out if permadeath ganking will turn a rolplaying game into a fps gank-fest and pretty much chalked it up to planetside everyone is killing everone becuase they can. I had no idea what planetside was so i had to look it up i didnt find anything on planetside 1 or its sequel having perma-death involved in it.(if i am wrong please point me to where i can find out otherwise) I am also not sure how this genre thats fps with mechs directly speaks for WoD. I am assuming you ment WoD would become a fps and the object would be kill kill kill till you died and had to reroll?
So i agree if the game has a starting point where all vantrue or what ever clan start and the gankers can take premo advantage of the 5 min old off the rack types, yes terrible idea and a game breaker. But if not, as i already posted, how can a person tell how powerful somone is otherwise? If their is no levels or gear to state power level or good idea bad idea sence of direction. Other then point buy, again iam assuming keeping it to the original roots of what makes vampire, what it is. That aside in all respawn mmo i believe their are gankers becuase of a simple fact. Well frankly they are out very little. In eve its lose a ship grab a clone and walla iam out some time and money. But hey, its not expensive if i can afford it attitude.
If the gankers can suffer a loss like welcome to a reroll. Its a serious loss, not some no big deal. Now they have to play the game of can i take that one or can he take me all over again. For all we know 5 minutes out he could try to gank and just get a boot in his ass and sent back to reroll again. This is what i am saying their are adding a real life mechanic to a mmo "I am dead". Case and point I read a article a while back about a very bad place in Florida murder and violent crime was unbeliveable high. With violent crime against women staggering high there. The woman banned together and got gun permits ccw's took some self defence classes and crime dropped in 2 weeks. In one month time crime rate was petty and not violent. True story if you msg me ill try to find the article for you.
My point is this try to imagine your a ganker type completly oppisite of your play style. Now how many rerolls would it take to get it out your system? Keep in mind a bloodhunt will loom over you soon as you dust someone or what ever how many. Lets say your not a ganker and a pvper alright, every conflict of warring sides cami vrs sabbath you risked perma-death. (again i have no idea on the pvp system if it is perma-death but lets just say it is for the sake of argument.) Now are you going to form some sort of plan and commit to it like its real life or are you going to hike the ball and resort to every man for himself? Can you imagine the thrill of victory in that sence risking it all and over coming the challenge. I can say who ever lived would be high off adrenaline. I know this because me and a couple of friends used to play SOCOM back in the day in rooms where it was one death and your out the game. Again thats a fps but iam trying to relate to what it would be like for the pvpers.
To speak briefly on the stating. If you knew it was more survival horror and wanted to go with say social or mental skills ect you would have to round out and not be what they call a Min/Max or a one trick pony.
You clearly don't understand the mechanisms, permadeath would require both participants in a fight, or avoiding a fight to have something to lose. Best would be for those who can't deal with loss to not play.just noticing a lot of people referencing "EVE's permadeath system" and I wanted to ask what you meant.
EVE does not have a permadeath system. Your character never "deletes" unless you tell it to delete character from char-select screen just as it works in most other mmos.
Diamond:
Yes, I agree, a nice discussion
First, based on the video where they discussed perma-death, I'm fairly certain you can only perma-kill someone if the Blood Hunt is called on them. If this is correct, then as long as there's no Blood Hunt called on you, a random ganking won't perma-kill you. I personally feel that, as long as Blood Hunts aren't given out as freely and frequently as virginity on prom night, then this will be fine. Our discussion, however, is based on a "worst case scenario" where Blood Hunts are called all the time, because the Prince didn't like your face or something.
Your points regarding perma-death reigning in ganking activity may be correct. I find gank-style play (both actively ganking, or avoiding gankers) to be boring and not condusive of role-play (for my style), so I avoid games that have a lot of it. As such, my predicition on how gankers will respond to perma-death may be wrong, and you may indeed by right.
But to explain my apprehension on the issue, I'll use the best example of personal experience I have: Ultima Online.
Ahhh, UO. The first MMO. How I loved thee... and hated it at the same time. In UO, there was no perma-death, but BY FAR death held the most negative consequences than any other MMO I've ever played. In case you never played it, death was handled as the following: you die, and you become a ghost, your body is on the ground and all your stuff (every last bit) could be looted by anyone. You had to wander around (sometimes for 1-2 hours) to find an NPC healer (or powerful PC who could rez) to bring you back to life. You came back basically nude, and had to run back to your body to get back your loot.... which was usually empty of loot by the time you got to it. Dying in UO really sucked... which wasn't all that bad, I actually love the idea of very serious consequences to death.
The point in this is the following: gankers where ALL OVER the game, flooding every mountain pass, wandering through dungeons in big groups... It sucked just as much for them to die, in fact is was WORSE since they were labelled as "evil" and couldn't even go into town to buy new items or use the banks. But it didn't deter them; they simply adapted. Gankers were a serious problem in UO, because they were everywhere, and made PvE extremely difficult. I remember how I responded to it: by adapting my skills to what was best for PvP, getting good PvP gear (crossbows and magic), and getting in big groups. What eventuallu happened was I was doing PvP most of the time, and simply stopped enjoying the game, so I quit.
It is my belief that, while gankers share the serious death consequences, it will not stop them from ganking. They will adapt. Perma-death, unkown "level" of enemies, whatever the case may be.... they will wander in large groups, become very skilled at hit-and-runs, and basically adapt like some Darwinian frog-monkey to dominate the game and make it a PvP warzone. In response to this, non-gankers will need to act like gankers: wander in big groups, focus on combat skills, etc. Which is my point--nothing you can do will stop gankers, and the more serious death consequences will affect the roleplayers far more than gankers, due to the importance of character development in a storyline. To survive, you'll need to play like a ganker... which isn't how most roleplayers want to play.
I'm fairly certain perma-death won't be easy, and will require some big folly on a player's part to get a Blood Hunt called on them. In this case, I think it'll work out fine. We've got a good 2-3 years of waiting time, so we'll just have to sit back and see
Hardcores can only fight other hardcores. solved.
I clearly see your point in UO with roving packs of "ganksters" lol. Correct me if I am wrong but didnt UO also have insurence on items too at some point? Ok but lets look at this rationaly so a band of roving mauraders, would gang up and overwhelm players to well rob them. Lets look at this rationaly in modern times on loot issues. 1st, if vampires dont have alot of stuff to well upgrade/ sell as in well credit cards, a few bills, possibly bulletproof vest, a gun of some sort a few clips or rounds depending of course, some clothes, and hell lets throw in a couple quest items for good measure. 2nd, not a big payday for a split on the take. Again iam purely speculating of course but its not so far fetched as in out n left field. 3rd lets take limmited space and how much you can carrie is based off str/stam/ Ok other then a possible backpack/suitcase/dufflebag i see this as limiting but not in a bad way a good way, reflect reality. If we have cars we have more space in a trunk i see room for gear at a haven but why do we need 54 slots on a toon when its not grinding junk loot?
Ok lets address the roving bands of madness ok. so me you and lets take 2 more players with us to go gank someone because well we dont have anything better to do. Lets now assume we are playing cami's and are real life friends in JR high.(iam trying to paint the most dispicable gankers from the real world, that the majority of players hate) So us 4 now go roving around ganking people so we notice bloodhunt tag on us. So now we are headed to lets assume again they have "low sec" or something to that degree. Some how we figure where exactly it is and we are there. Again, with out all getting killed of course. So here we are in "low sec" dodge the law and lawless. What preventing them as in others in "low sec" from ganking us? Thats right NOTHING. So now we are watching each others backs none of us want to afk because well it would lower our odds of survivability. So lets assume one of us dies and has to reroll lets say its me. I am hustling trying to create a guy and come back.
So i come running back to "low sec" to be with you guys fresh right off the rack. I am now the weakest link and have no real insentive to really be here in low sec but to be with you guys. So lets speed this up 2 more people die off so now those two come running back after a reroll. Looks like your the top dog left and 3 of us are very much weaker then when we 1st came in. The odds of you actually surviving here with us is staggering low. See what i am driving at? Not such a fun "ganking" game for kids. I am not saying ganking wont happen if its possible it will be done but what iam getting at here is it would take 3 things to happen brains brawn and real life friends in vent that have balls of steel to risk what they worked for.
Thats not a huge posse as your description but more people more problems.Insentive to rob low. loyalty is a constant issue so is moral and guts. So your the leader of us but i want to lead i noticed 3 of your real life friends are rerolling i bump you off i got the gang now well till someoen bumps me off and in the meentime. This gang is getting thinner and thinner because coups, schisms and lets not forget drama.
Diamond:
Everything you just said is correct. My point is that gankers enjoy that kind of play, while roleplayers do not.
If permadeath is relatively easy (which I don't think it will be, but for the sake of this arugment we're saying it is), then there will be a relatively high turn-over rate for characters. For gankers, death would suck, but the challenge and excitement of it would add more fun for many of them; they play MMOs for the excitement and fun of PvP. Even if it acted as a deterrant to ganking, we'll still have a ton of gankers--every MMO does.
Roleplayers, on the other hand, don't play for pure PvP. They form storyline, and have character development. Even if their turn-over rate is once every 2 months, that would destroy their ability to form creative, meaningful stories. Furthermore, to maintain a character so he lasts long enough to have any story at all, he'd have to play like a ganker (i.e. focus on combat skills, roam in packs, etc). We don't want to play like a ganker to start with.
That's what I mean by "limiting reagant". If surviving in a game requires a certain type of play-style, then everyone MUST adopt that play-style; their preferred play-style (role-playing, socializing, whatever) must take a back seat, since otherwise they won't survive. Perma-death will making a PvP/ganking play-style the limited reagant--everyone will have to be good at it, and play to ganking specifics, or they don't survive long enough to play how they want to. This means the only people who will enjoy the game are the people who happen to enjoy whatever the limiting reagant is, in this case PvP.
Many posters have answered with "thats fine, then don't play", which is perfectly reasonable.... if you think a Vampire game should be a giant war-zone of immortal PvP. I've read Vampire/WoD enough to know that this is NOT what the environment of Vampire is supposed to be.The Jyhad is not a bunch of roving vampire packs killing each other indiscriminately. It's politics, control, social intrigue, dark mysteries, pupper-masters and pawns, domitors and lackeys, webs of deciet and lies... AND packs of roaming killers. With permadeath (easily done permadeath, as previously said), it would limit it to involve only the latter (roaming packs of killers), and forsake all other types of play.
(Note to Diamond: I got your PM, but don't know how to reply. lol. I'll look into that for sure!)
Depends on how they do it. If the Prince can randomly assign Blood Hunts to anyone he likes for any reason, I see this turning into a clutterfuck bloodbath.
I'd prefer to see a system where the Prince only has the option of calling a Blood Hunt on a player under specific circumstances (like if the player broke Masquerade, or did some action that makes him "blood hunt-able")
I didn't read this whole thread before posting, so sorry if this has been said already.
If they have permadeath, and it occurs because of a prince-sanctioned hunt, then those who are trying to kill the vamp in question should be at risk for PD as well.
That would make it a real high-stakes event.
And perhaps the hunt could be ended if the huntee was able to kill the Prince?
I agree with many saying how bad it would stink to lose your character, but if there were controls in place, i.e. only one hunt could be called a month and there was risk for all involved, then I think the resulting politics would add a level of depth rarely seen in online games.
This is a good idea.
Something to add along those lines: perhaps the Prince is always perma-killable? Makes the position very powerful and very risky.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Perma death also results from other things besides Camarilla Prince's declaring a hunt. The Sabbat actively destroys Camarilla vampires, as do other creatures in WoD. See Garou, Mages, Hunters, Mummies, Kindred of the East, and so on and so forth. I don't know much about the game, but if it's going to be oWoD and VtM only, there still leaves the element that vampires will be killing vampires. Fire destroys vampires, as does inflicting enough damage. You make them enter torpor, then burn the body, destroy the heart, chop off the head, or even give it a few good blasts with a shotgun, it's going to die. Read Vampire: The Masquerade 3rd Ed. Combat etc. Also, even though it is against the Camarilla tenets/rules to kill another vampire, the Camarilla constantly plot against eachother, scheme for power and control for their own purposes. It's a gothic horror game for a reason, they all don't sit around and hold hands.
Being a Vampire LARPer, Final Death is something that needs to be involved. however it shouldn't be easy. There are afew ways to avoid it and they need to be added.
I'm really hoping this game doesn't just turn into GUNZ with vampires. Also Permadeath should not happen often in this game, anyone who plays anything in the World Of Darkness will know this. Well Mortals are Squishy and i have a feeling that once added into the game that people will whine about being too squishy.
Anywho the Final Death isnt a worry from the game for me. i want to see Social abilities and how they are enacted in game.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
That is my take on it until proven otherwise. I can see it being an option to take based on lore. I played the game off and on over years and it would actually be very strange NOT to have perma-death in the game somewhere at some point but certainly it isn't in the game's best interest to have it full time.
You stay sassy!