Originally posted by Ragosch There will be no discussion, dead is dead - if you dont want to take the risk, dont play our game. As simple as it can be. Ragosch
That was the best marketing slogan ever! A exellent way to make a game a COMPLETE economic failure
Permadeath with some sort of 100 credit system is worse than permadeath with 1 change. Even worse it would be ability buy these credits from game company.
When you only have 1 death in game then game designers have to design their game so that skill gaining aint too much grind and is more casual that raise while you play normally (maybe offline skill gaining).
Blurr, combat in our game is turn-based. In a turn-based system all actions to be performed in a turn are known at the start of that turn. So it is pretty easy to implement an AI which seems to be very smart - it would be not much of a problem to choose the best tactics by system and create a zero-sum situation like in game theory. But how the AI really performs depends on your characters skills. It will not choose the best action available nor any of those tactics reserved for players only, just because we want to give characters actually played out by a real player the advantage to use those tactics.
Combat actions use some kind of "resources" during the fight. If you are running out of them you need to change tactics or combat styles or choose to disengage from a fight if possible. Such "resources" are willpower, bravery and such ... your combat actions depend on those, it is not like in other MMOs, you need to use your characters abilities and combine them best, not your own real life skills and reaction times. It is more role play here and you need to accept the role or simply leave it to the system to perform this characters actions.
Originally posted by Ragosch There will be no discussion, dead is dead - if you dont want to take the risk, dont play our game. As simple as it can be. Ragosch
That was the best marketing slogan ever! A exellent way to make a game a COMPLETE economic failure
It is not a carebear game for kids like WoW but a world simulation for adults. You need to take risks and stop whining like a child - if you cant do this you are simply in the wrong game.
Please, I havent seen one MMORPG that isnt about the zerg... While the hell would I want to loose my character just because at the time the enemy had me outnumbered 20-1, and vice versa...
If people are dead set on Perma death PVP have it in Arena battles where is 1 on 1 and other people can pay to watch(ala Rome Gladiator arenas) where the winner takes the ticket sales.. I would glady pay some money as some guy puts his character on the line and self-destructs when he looses.. I think that will be very entertaining watching some grown man cry online cause he just lost a character that took him 4 months to build :P.
------------------------------ You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Originally posted by leipuri When you only have 1 death in game then game designers have to design their game so that skill gaining aint too much grind and is more casual that raise while you play normally (maybe offline skill gaining).
Absolutely true, that is the way we do it - it is time-dependent skill gain and every of your characters gains those skills while you are not playing him/her out personally. The bigger your family is (the more characters you have) the more skills can you learn at the same time as a family. You basically advance as a family not as a single character and death is a totally normal thing in our game; all your characters will die sooner or later just because they are getting old also.
Originally posted by leipuri When you only have 1 death in game then game designers have to design their game so that skill gaining aint too much grind and is more casual that raise while you play normally (maybe offline skill gaining).
Absolutely true, that is the way we do it - it is time-dependent skill gain and every of your characters gains those skills while you are not playing him/her out personally. The bigger your family is (the more characters you have) the more skills can you learn at the same time as a family. You basically advance as a family not as a single character and death is a totally normal thing in our game; all your characters will die sooner or later just because they are getting old also.
Ragosch
Sounds very intresting then.
Sorry for my earlier comment, I didn't reliaze there was devs in this thread.
Redhobbit, in our game there are ways to coordinate several characters along with their vehicles and adventuring stuff also. At all times adventurer did not went away alone because this would be just stupid. There is always a group of adventurers and a group of transport guys and animals needed for an expedition-like adventure. If you do it the old school MMO way, it is your fault, you need to be more realistic and much more clever in our game in order to survive.
Lag and disconnects are not such a problem in our system, because the AI system is designed to take over characters actions at any time. This is the normal case if a player decides to jump out of a role and jump into another of this character. The left character will be taken over by AI and and the controls of that character the player is just jumping in are tranferred to the player.
Fights are semi-automated in our game (see discusssion thread below to find out more about it) and the AI is performing combat sequences actually using the skills of those characters for actions and tactics chosen by players. If a character does not have a player "in character" currently the AI chooses the action to perform - the system is permanently checking the lag resp. connection status during a fight and takes over automatically if there is no response or ping rates are getting too high. Tricks like pulling the plug to avoid death are worthless in our game - your character would just stay in the game and switch to AI combat like he always does when you leave him.
I gave some scathing critisisms of the entire permadeath idea, but here Rag has come up with some pratical ideas for a game that could actually work.
I'm not sure that I would be wild about going back to this type of squad turn based game, it sounds quite allot like UFO were when a guy was dead, he was dead, but it was just one guy. Still, UFO was a long time ago.
But fair balls, those are realistic ideas, and you deserve credit of actually addressing the major issue of permadeath - can I lose concentration for a heartbeat for whatever reason without risking it all? If the game is turn based, yes you can. However, turn based games, have there own gameplay issues too, and so would it sell?
Nick
The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that's the way to bet.
Our game is not all about combat. It is more about conquering a new continent, building communities, states and nations. There is real economy and this creates the demand for protection by the community, what raises the need for taxes and common services like law and order and an army to protect a state or nation.
Economical power and military power leads to political power and this all leads to exciting and player-driven game content in a dynamically changing world. No artifical goals, not artifical conflicts, not much dev-made content, freedom and power into players hands by providing all the tools needed to interact with and change the world - this is a much more powerful approach to gameplay, but not many have recognized it yet or dont want to implement it because it takes away the ability to sell expansion boxes to customers.
We wont sell any boxes to customers, so we are not limited by the need to sell those boxes and can concentrate on providing interesting gameplay instead of consumeable content.
Once there was a game from Microprose about the battles of Waterloo (and near it). Microprose added a database to this game where all the fights and combats of those units participating in the battle of Waterloo were listed - real history data. I tell you what, each of those units had been in battles several times a year. War and battles were different between late medieval and pre-industrial times.
Battles happened really often but lasted just a short time - most of the time just 1 or a few days. A battle like the battle of Waterloo was really much different, actually about 250,000 men at arms in total while "normal" battles just had some dozens or hundreds of men. In a war some thousands did fight and just a few well-known battles met the marks of hundreds of thousands actually fighting.
I think fighting might not become a rarity, but it might become as short as in the real world at those times due to the fact that wounds were much harder to overcome and economy was not that powerful to support a fighting army for a longer time. If you base a game on a real working economy many problems you have with current games will simply not arise.
Most battles at those times were actually financed by credits with high interest because raising more taxes would have made political and economical power highly instable - the Rothschild family in Europe did raise an extraordinary family dynasty this way - from their beginning in the 17th century to becoming the world greatest private bank in the 19th century. They provided credits to finance battles of noble houses and got rich and powerful this way - they were at the hot spots of those times in Europe, Frankfurt (were they started), Vienna, Paris and London.
Economical power is the key to political power and economical power needs military power and a good law and order system to evolve. Our game is based on these things and therefore it is not like the normal run-of-the-mill MMORPG out there - we create it for adults, not for kids. It is not immediately rewarding, rewards are coming out of growing influence and raise of more and more powerful social structures (like states and nations) and this needs adult qualities, for kids "its just boring as hell".
The Bank of England was also founded to provide finances for the costs of war. Later, what truely make Britain great was the invention of the concept of the joint stock company. You would actually have a group of people pooling assets and tallent to make a company rather than before, when a company was a monopoly licence bought from the crown (by an aristo well conected at court) to have exclusive rights over a field of trade.
While in the rest of Europe & most of the world trade was dominated by blue bloods, in Britain it was dominated by very shrewd, calculating, and ruthless men. Vast wealth poured in and cemented the position of power.
And don't write off the kids. I spend hours beyind count at an early age playing the hell out of Civ & related games. I wasn't the only one. It's not a matter of age, it's a matter of attention span.
Nick
The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that's the way to bet.
I like the concept of PD also (to add an edge to the gaming experience) but as suggested elsewhere it should be limited to certain servers to give players the option. Perhaps it would be an idea to allow a limited number of 'resurrections' or lives initially, only to have more earned - in a controlled fashion - throughout the course of the game as rewards.
Originally posted by CardinalSin The Bank of England was also founded to provide finances for the costs of war.
Very true - it was actually the first central bank of the real world. We reflect this by providing the abillity to establish central banks in our game after the Bank of England was founded in real history. Nations get the ability to get funding by central banks, bank notes are introduced and banks are able to make use of the added-value effect - it is an important milestone in economic history, you are right.
PvP exciting?dude i think PvP is a total joke but still ,this would make it even worse.Every single game favours high level players.How would any low level players enjoy the game if a stacked player can come along and waste your efforts?
Guilds have more meaning?You mean players will been crying all day in there guilds for help to PK a player they dont like.Soloers will have no chance of surviving,and guilds will just be gang rapes,or used outa revenge.
There will never be less cheating,thats why there is millions of players registered on all the cheat site forums[epedemic]
Fear of dying more care?What can you do about it?your a low skilled player that wants to play the game,how can you possibly defend yourself?Oh ya,go crying to your guild i forgot.There are tons of powerlevel players out there,who can max out skills in weeks and really couldn't care less about any penalties or tags they get from PKing a noob.Who is gonna stop them?
Well i have to agree there will be a ton more recycling,but why would anybody want to stick in a game that wastes there efforts?I know i wouldn't.Look at how many players cry when servers shut down for maintainance,and you think they would be happy losing weeks of effort?.Nope no way.
IMO permadeath wouldn't be a bad idea if all the players were on the same level/skills.This way it truly would be a risky venture to take on a player of equal skill.That wouldn't be enough however,as i think any player who just lost 3/4/5 months of effort,would most likely cancel his subscription.I think some sorta penalty for dying would be a better idea.Perhaps you have to spend 2 gaming days in a medical facility,and lose certain skills or spells,therefore making the risk a lot harder to take.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Personally I think comments like "stop whining like a child" and calling people "carebears" are more favoured by immature people, they use it as an insult to make themselves feel like they're somehow a better person/player than others. Try going out and burning someone's house down. Then when they're upset about it tell them to 'stop crying' and 'if you didn't want your house burned down, you shouldn't have bought it here'. See how that goes...
The fact is, the MAJORITY of people don't want permadeath. (Including adults) Why? Because in an MMO, you have to WORK to achieve a certain level of play. The majority of people don't want to risk losing all their hard work when something comes along they can't do anything about. That's the real issue here I think. People don't want permadeath if they can't be in total control of when they die.
If I'm soloing out in the woods, and 50 guys come out, and the server lags because of it, and they gank me while I'm lagging out, all that time and effort I put into my character is gone. Why? Because the server lagged so I couldn't run away. What happens if a group of high level characters decides that they're going to kill anyone who leaves a town? It stops people from being able to play the game, which is no fun. It's no fun to be a level 5 newbie and have 6 level 50's outside the game saying 'If you come out here, you die'. What are you supposed to do then? Sit and wait. Sorry but that's stupid and boring.
Ragosch I'm all for you pimping your mmo in this thread (even though it's off topic), though I can tell you're probably a dev and not a PR person by some of the comments you've made. You say that in your game, players will be responsible for building the communities and enforcing the laws (if I understand correctly?) which means basically that players will have to protect themselves from griefers and the like. That theoretically works in the real world, but in an online game, people get enjoyment out of ganking and griefing because they can get away with it. Personally I think these "sandbox" games are badly designed. How are you going to charge me a monthly fee for a game that I have to build and run and make my own fun in? If you make a game you're supposed to be providing a game experience, not an empty lot where you say 'Okay go make the rest of the game yourselves'. Well, those are just my thoughts on it. But you can't just assume that people will police themselves, because with online anonymity people don't care if they aren't liked for ganking people in the woods.
What happens if it turns out that the biggest and most powerful guild happens to be a Griefer guild, and all they do all day is go around killing anyone over a certain level, so nobody can challenge them. They routinely blockade towns so nobody can leave. They kill any guild that gets numerous so they won't have a chance to be challenged equally? In a system like that, nobody would want to play the game anymore (except the griefers) because they couldn't get anywhere. And the developers couldn't do squat to the griefers because they likely made comments similar to "if you don't like being killed, play another game". So you have a griefer's guild who just took over the entire game and you can't do anything about it. If the developers take actions against the griefers, it won't be fair to the griefers. If the developers do nothing, the griefers aren't being fair to the other players, who will leave the game. How many times must you lose everything before you give up?
I think that all leads back to one of the main reasons people don't want permadeath. Retaliation. If there's no permadeath, and you're level 40 while some level 50 guy comes and ganks you, then you lose a bit of work/time, but you can go get those 10 levels and then go get him back. With permanent death, if you're level 40 and some level 50 guy comes and ganks you, guess what. You're level 1 again, while he's level 50, so you can't retaliate until you go all the way through the game again, by which time he's probably even higher level, or maybe doesn't even play the game anymore. People want to feel like they have some way to retaliate against griefers and gankers if they get screwed over. Permanent death makes retaliation alot harder if not impossible.
Note that I've talked about Ragoschs game a bit, it's not an attack on Ragosch or his game. It just happens that he and his game parallel a few of the things that I think are wrong with permadeath. I do have a question for him, if you control a 'family' and the people in the family learn the skills, and they are expected to die out every now and then, how do you make any progress in the game? Do you just have to hope that you get more skills with living characters than characters who die out? Is there an overall 'family level' that you achieve? What happens if some other players just come out of nowhere and gank the whole 'family'? Do you start over at the beginning? Also, if the AI is not able to play as well as a player, and your server has some lag that disconnects a player, and his characters die because your AI didn't make the right decisions and because your server lagged, do you feel that you have no responsibility for his characters deaths?
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Okay, everyone seems to be totally stuck on this level / class thing. We've already covered the fact that for permadeath to work, you would need to replace the level / class system with a skill system that would allow people to customize their character to fit their playstyle rather than just pumping the character up to the level cap. UO had a pretty similar system when it started out. In old school UO, you could only gain grand master in 7 skills and you would lose skills that you didn't use. Throw in the fact that you could spend money to train up your skills to a competitive level, or be trained by other players and the time to a serviceable character is almost a non-factor. Of course, the skill system would have to be playtested / playbalanced to death in order to make sure that there was no "killer build" that would just wipe out allcomers.
And don't give me that crap about not having any connection to your character because you don't spend months bonking the same monsters over the head again and again. In a game like this, I think that crafting and economy would riegn supreme and you would have bigger goals than just trying to get to level X, so you can do quest Y, in order to obtain item Z.
I'm also not interested in hearing that all the characters being the same prevents you from being a "hero" and destroys the point of PvP or playing. With a well balanced skill system, actually winning an duel or a raid will mean that you're a better player, not a better farmer. With permadeath, just surviving to make some cash will be reward enough. But in a game like this, PvP will rarely be confined to violent conflict. There would be politics, business rivalry, etc....
You have to step away from what's been done to death in order to see what we're getting at here.
perma death in my opinion is another untapped mmo resource...it offers so much to the genre. it offers things such as.....
a detterant for griefers and gankers, to have your player killed out right wud stop alot of griefing and not allow griefers or gankers to ever increase there skill level...they wud always be at the bottom of the food chain if not inteligent about the way they went about the game.
lvling or skills wud be much more varied and appreciated, instead of having a cap that everyone reaches and makes the game stale and boring, you would have elder players who have thru natural selction reached unique status in the game and have the power to affect the in game world and its players...but also cud lose it in a moment and would be sorely missed by community.
the game wouldnt feel like a grindfest...everyone wud look after there characters and prize them...and make community alot closer....to see another character die becuase you didnt get to them in time to help wud upset ya
i cud go on and on
only thing i wud hate is losing connection accidentally and coming back online to find character dead...but there are allsorts of ways to stop that!
Originally posted by Blurr Personally I feel permadeath is stupid and totally counter-productive to the MMO genre. You've put 300 hours into playing your favourite character, and then a lag hit causes your death and oh well too bad? Then you have to start all over again, and your friends are all high level while you have to repeat the same content you've already seen over and over again. Half the people you see in the newbie areas would likely be powerlevelers. It just doesn't make sense to have a game where you can put so many hours of time and effort into your character and then lose it all because of a single mistake, a bug, or lag. Could you imagine playing a Final Fantasy game with no save points? Would people play counterstrike if you only had 1 life per server?
Well said!
Real life has also no save points and you can become a victim of system faults at any time. There is definately perma-death in this "game" and you are basically forced to grind also. Are you killed all the time by high-level players in real life?- No, simply because there is law and order - you just need to ensure that there is a kind of good law and order system which makes it harder for criminals. Real life proofs that this is the way to go here!
Ragosch
I play GAMES to escape real life. (My life has way too much of what you described above already ). It's an interesting concept, I just think players will like it (even the ones that think they will). As another poster on here suggested, why not make a permadeath server and see how it goes. It's definitely a step away from the current cookie-cutter mold which is always good IMO.
Originally posted by Blurr Personally I feel permadeath is stupid and totally counter-productive to the MMO genre. You've put 300 hours into playing your favourite character, and then a lag hit causes your death and oh well too bad? Then you have to start all over again, and your friends are all high level while you have to repeat the same content you've already seen over and over again. Half the people you see in the newbie areas would likely be powerlevelers. It just doesn't make sense to have a game where you can put so many hours of time and effort into your character and then lose it all because of a single mistake, a bug, or lag. Could you imagine playing a Final Fantasy game with no save points? Would people play counterstrike if you only had 1 life per server?
Well said!
Real life has also no save points and you can become a victim of system faults at any time. There is definately perma-death in this "game" and you are basically forced to grind also. Are you killed all the time by high-level players in real life?- No, simply because there is law and order - you just need to ensure that there is a kind of good law and order system which makes it harder for criminals. Real life proofs that this is the way to go here!
Ragosch
I play GAMES to escape real life. (My life has way too much of what you described above already ). It's an interesting concept, I just think players will like it (even the ones that think they will). As another poster on here suggested, why not make a permadeath server and see how it goes. It's definitely a step away from the current cookie-cutter mold which is always good IMO.
Indo, you got an important point here - there are 2 groups, one group plays MMO to escape from reality, they want entertainment basically and not another challlenge - and then there is this other group, who plays MMOs to get right into another form of challenge, where they need to use all their abilities to survive and evolve in a hostile environment. An nothing other are most MMO - hostile.
The only question is, do you want it like a theme park is - with guided entertainment and relative safety - or do you want it like a real adventure trip, with danger and risk, where you have to struggle and fight to survive and where it is a challenge to build up a community, a state or a nation and defend it against others or even go the imperialistic way and build an empire.
When I used the words carebear and "whining like a child" it is exactly this what makes the difference. If you want to play a real adventure type game it simply is not for carebears who never in their life risk something. Sure, that is the majority, because if they would take on risks in real life too, their whole thinking would be different and they were used to have success - nearly evertime. And they would know that if you dont have success that it is not the systems fault but your own fault. Lag can happen and a clever person finds ways to be prepared for such a situation and does not cry like a child if it happens - it will happen anyway and therefore you need to take care in advance!
Comments
There will be no discussion, dead is dead - if you dont want to take the risk, dont play our game. As simple as it can be.
Ragosch
That was the best marketing slogan ever!
A exellent way to make a game a COMPLETE economic failure 
Permadeath with some sort of 100 credit system is worse than permadeath with 1 change. Even worse it would be ability buy these credits from game company.
When you only have 1 death in game then game designers have to design their game so that skill gaining aint too much grind and is more casual that raise while you play normally (maybe offline skill gaining).
Blurr, combat in our game is turn-based. In a turn-based system all actions to be performed in a turn are known at the start of that turn. So it is pretty easy to implement an AI which seems to be very smart - it would be not much of a problem to choose the best tactics by system and create a zero-sum situation like in game theory. But how the AI really performs depends on your characters skills. It will not choose the best action available nor any of those tactics reserved for players only, just because we want to give characters actually played out by a real player the advantage to use those tactics.
Combat actions use some kind of "resources" during the fight. If you are running out of them you need to change tactics or combat styles or choose to disengage from a fight if possible. Such "resources" are willpower, bravery and such ... your combat actions depend on those, it is not like in other MMOs, you need to use your characters abilities and combine them best, not your own real life skills and reaction times. It is more role play here and you need to accept the role or simply leave it to the system to perform this characters actions.
Ragosch
That was the best marketing slogan ever!
A exellent way to make a game a COMPLETE economic failure 
It is not a carebear game for kids like WoW but a world simulation for adults. You need to take risks and stop whining like a child - if you cant do this you are simply in the wrong game.
Ragosch
Please, I havent seen one MMORPG that isnt about the zerg... While the hell would I want to loose my character just because at the time the enemy had me outnumbered 20-1, and vice versa...
If people are dead set on Perma death PVP have it in Arena battles where is 1 on 1 and other people can pay to watch(ala Rome Gladiator arenas) where the winner takes the ticket sales.. I would glady pay some money as some guy puts his character on the line and self-destructs when he looses.. I think that will be very entertaining watching some grown man cry online cause he just lost a character that took him 4 months to build :P.
------------------------------
You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Absolutely true, that is the way we do it - it is time-dependent skill gain and every of your characters gains those skills while you are not playing him/her out personally. The bigger your family is (the more characters you have) the more skills can you learn at the same time as a family. You basically advance as a family not as a single character and death is a totally normal thing in our game; all your characters will die sooner or later just because they are getting old also.
Ragosch
Absolutely true, that is the way we do it - it is time-dependent skill gain and every of your characters gains those skills while you are not playing him/her out personally. The bigger your family is (the more characters you have) the more skills can you learn at the same time as a family. You basically advance as a family not as a single character and death is a totally normal thing in our game; all your characters will die sooner or later just because they are getting old also.
Ragosch
Sounds very intresting then.
Sorry for my earlier comment, I didn't reliaze there was devs in this thread.
Lag and disconnects are not such a problem in our system, because the AI system is designed to take over characters actions at any time. This is the normal case if a player decides to jump out of a role and jump into another of this character. The left character will be taken over by AI and and the controls of that character the player is just jumping in are tranferred to the player.
Fights are semi-automated in our game (see discusssion thread below to find out more about it) and the AI is performing combat sequences actually using the skills of those characters for actions and tactics chosen by players. If a character does not have a player "in character" currently the AI chooses the action to perform - the system is permanently checking the lag resp. connection status during a fight and takes over automatically if there is no response or ping rates are getting too high. Tricks like pulling the plug to avoid death are worthless in our game - your character would just stay in the game and switch to AI combat like he always does when you leave him.
Ragosch
http://mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/load/forums/loadforum/472/loadthread/63636/setstart/1/loadclass/155
I gave some scathing critisisms of the entire permadeath idea, but here Rag has come up with some pratical ideas for a game that could actually work.
I'm not sure that I would be wild about going back to this type of squad turn based game, it sounds quite allot like UFO were when a guy was dead, he was dead, but it was just one guy. Still, UFO was a long time ago.
But fair balls, those are realistic ideas, and you deserve credit of actually addressing the major issue of permadeath - can I lose concentration for a heartbeat for whatever reason without risking it all? If the game is turn based, yes you can. However, turn based games, have there own gameplay issues too, and so would it sell?
Nick
The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that's the way to bet.
Our game is not all about combat. It is more about conquering a new continent, building communities, states and nations. There is real economy and this creates the demand for protection by the community, what raises the need for taxes and common services like law and order and an army to protect a state or nation.
Economical power and military power leads to political power and this all leads to exciting and player-driven game content in a dynamically changing world. No artifical goals, not artifical conflicts, not much dev-made content, freedom and power into players hands by providing all the tools needed to interact with and change the world - this is a much more powerful approach to gameplay, but not many have recognized it yet or dont want to implement it because it takes away the ability to sell expansion boxes to customers.
We wont sell any boxes to customers, so we are not limited by the need to sell those boxes and can concentrate on providing interesting gameplay instead of consumeable content.
Ragosch
So many players working on a Sim/Civ world constructing project? Interesting, and genuinely innovative.
So most comflict would in essense be political, fighting to promote your vision within your faction. Combat would be a rarity?
Nick
The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that's the way to bet.
Once there was a game from Microprose about the battles of Waterloo (and near it). Microprose added a database to this game where all the fights and combats of those units participating in the battle of Waterloo were listed - real history data. I tell you what, each of those units had been in battles several times a year. War and battles were different between late medieval and pre-industrial times.
Battles happened really often but lasted just a short time - most of the time just 1 or a few days. A battle like the battle of Waterloo was really much different, actually about 250,000 men at arms in total while "normal" battles just had some dozens or hundreds of men. In a war some thousands did fight and just a few well-known battles met the marks of hundreds of thousands actually fighting.
I think fighting might not become a rarity, but it might become as short as in the real world at those times due to the fact that wounds were much harder to overcome and economy was not that powerful to support a fighting army for a longer time. If you base a game on a real working economy many problems you have with current games will simply not arise.
Most battles at those times were actually financed by credits with high interest because raising more taxes would have made political and economical power highly instable - the Rothschild family in Europe did raise an extraordinary family dynasty this way - from their beginning in the 17th century to becoming the world greatest private bank in the 19th century. They provided credits to finance battles of noble houses and got rich and powerful this way - they were at the hot spots of those times in Europe, Frankfurt (were they started), Vienna, Paris and London.
Economical power is the key to political power and economical power needs military power and a good law and order system to evolve. Our game is based on these things and therefore it is not like the normal run-of-the-mill MMORPG out there - we create it for adults, not for kids. It is not immediately rewarding, rewards are coming out of growing influence and raise of more and more powerful social structures (like states and nations) and this needs adult qualities, for kids "its just boring as hell".
Ragosch
The Bank of England was also founded to provide finances for the costs of war. Later, what truely make Britain great was the invention of the concept of the joint stock company. You would actually have a group of people pooling assets and tallent to make a company rather than before, when a company was a monopoly licence bought from the crown (by an aristo well conected at court) to have exclusive rights over a field of trade.
While in the rest of Europe & most of the world trade was dominated by blue bloods, in Britain it was dominated by very shrewd, calculating, and ruthless men. Vast wealth poured in and cemented the position of power.
And don't write off the kids. I spend hours beyind count at an early age playing the hell out of Civ & related games. I wasn't the only one. It's not a matter of age, it's a matter of attention span.
Nick
The race doesn't always go to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that's the way to bet.
I like the concept of PD also (to add an edge to the gaming experience) but as suggested elsewhere it should be limited to certain servers to give players the option. Perhaps it would be an idea to allow a limited number of 'resurrections' or lives initially, only to have more earned - in a controlled fashion - throughout the course of the game as rewards.
Very true - it was actually the first central bank of the real world. We reflect this by providing the abillity to establish central banks in our game after the Bank of England was founded in real history. Nations get the ability to get funding by central banks, bank notes are introduced and banks are able to make use of the added-value effect - it is an important milestone in economic history, you are right.
Ragosch
PvP exciting?dude i think PvP is a total joke but still ,this would make it even worse.Every single game favours high level players.How would any low level players enjoy the game if a stacked player can come along and waste your efforts?
Guilds have more meaning?You mean players will been crying all day in there guilds for help to PK a player they dont like.Soloers will have no chance of surviving,and guilds will just be gang rapes,or used outa revenge.
There will never be less cheating,thats why there is millions of players registered on all the cheat site forums[epedemic]
Fear of dying more care?What can you do about it?your a low skilled player that wants to play the game,how can you possibly defend yourself?Oh ya,go crying to your guild i forgot.There are tons of powerlevel players out there,who can max out skills in weeks and really couldn't care less about any penalties or tags they get from PKing a noob.Who is gonna stop them?
Well i have to agree there will be a ton more recycling,but why would anybody want to stick in a game that wastes there efforts?I know i wouldn't.Look at how many players cry when servers shut down for maintainance,and you think they would be happy losing weeks of effort?.Nope no way.
IMO permadeath wouldn't be a bad idea if all the players were on the same level/skills.This way it truly would be a risky venture to take on a player of equal skill.That wouldn't be enough however,as i think any player who just lost 3/4/5 months of effort,would most likely cancel his subscription.I think some sorta penalty for dying would be a better idea.Perhaps you have to spend 2 gaming days in a medical facility,and lose certain skills or spells,therefore making the risk a lot harder to take.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Personally I think comments like "stop whining like a child" and calling people "carebears" are more favoured by immature people, they use it as an insult to make themselves feel like they're somehow a better person/player than others. Try going out and burning someone's house down. Then when they're upset about it tell them to 'stop crying' and 'if you didn't want your house burned down, you shouldn't have bought it here'. See how that goes...
The fact is, the MAJORITY of people don't want permadeath. (Including adults) Why? Because in an MMO, you have to WORK to achieve a certain level of play. The majority of people don't want to risk losing all their hard work when something comes along they can't do anything about. That's the real issue here I think. People don't want permadeath if they can't be in total control of when they die.
If I'm soloing out in the woods, and 50 guys come out, and the server lags because of it, and they gank me while I'm lagging out, all that time and effort I put into my character is gone. Why? Because the server lagged so I couldn't run away. What happens if a group of high level characters decides that they're going to kill anyone who leaves a town? It stops people from being able to play the game, which is no fun. It's no fun to be a level 5 newbie and have 6 level 50's outside the game saying 'If you come out here, you die'. What are you supposed to do then? Sit and wait. Sorry but that's stupid and boring.
Ragosch I'm all for you pimping your mmo in this thread (even though it's off topic), though I can tell you're probably a dev and not a PR person by some of the comments you've made. You say that in your game, players will be responsible for building the communities and enforcing the laws (if I understand correctly?) which means basically that players will have to protect themselves from griefers and the like. That theoretically works in the real world, but in an online game, people get enjoyment out of ganking and griefing because they can get away with it. Personally I think these "sandbox" games are badly designed. How are you going to charge me a monthly fee for a game that I have to build and run and make my own fun in? If you make a game you're supposed to be providing a game experience, not an empty lot where you say 'Okay go make the rest of the game yourselves'. Well, those are just my thoughts on it. But you can't just assume that people will police themselves, because with online anonymity people don't care if they aren't liked for ganking people in the woods.
What happens if it turns out that the biggest and most powerful guild happens to be a Griefer guild, and all they do all day is go around killing anyone over a certain level, so nobody can challenge them. They routinely blockade towns so nobody can leave. They kill any guild that gets numerous so they won't have a chance to be challenged equally? In a system like that, nobody would want to play the game anymore (except the griefers) because they couldn't get anywhere. And the developers couldn't do squat to the griefers because they likely made comments similar to "if you don't like being killed, play another game". So you have a griefer's guild who just took over the entire game and you can't do anything about it. If the developers take actions against the griefers, it won't be fair to the griefers. If the developers do nothing, the griefers aren't being fair to the other players, who will leave the game. How many times must you lose everything before you give up?
I think that all leads back to one of the main reasons people don't want permadeath. Retaliation. If there's no permadeath, and you're level 40 while some level 50 guy comes and ganks you, then you lose a bit of work/time, but you can go get those 10 levels and then go get him back. With permanent death, if you're level 40 and some level 50 guy comes and ganks you, guess what. You're level 1 again, while he's level 50, so you can't retaliate until you go all the way through the game again, by which time he's probably even higher level, or maybe doesn't even play the game anymore. People want to feel like they have some way to retaliate against griefers and gankers if they get screwed over. Permanent death makes retaliation alot harder if not impossible.
Note that I've talked about Ragoschs game a bit, it's not an attack on Ragosch or his game. It just happens that he and his game parallel a few of the things that I think are wrong with permadeath. I do have a question for him, if you control a 'family' and the people in the family learn the skills, and they are expected to die out every now and then, how do you make any progress in the game? Do you just have to hope that you get more skills with living characters than characters who die out? Is there an overall 'family level' that you achieve? What happens if some other players just come out of nowhere and gank the whole 'family'? Do you start over at the beginning? Also, if the AI is not able to play as well as a player, and your server has some lag that disconnects a player, and his characters die because your AI didn't make the right decisions and because your server lagged, do you feel that you have no responsibility for his characters deaths?
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
All round stupid idea tbh.
Who would want to have monthly payments if they die and have to pay more money just to be revived.
Very stupid idea
Its a game.
Permadeath. FFS. Go play Battlefield then after you die 100 times uninstall and snap yer discs.
Go away with yer stupid ideas.LIke i want to play a game and pay for it with the life expectancy of a bottle of milk.
I hope the original post was sarcastic.
Okay, everyone seems to be totally stuck on this level / class thing. We've already covered the fact that for permadeath to work, you would need to replace the level / class system with a skill system that would allow people to customize their character to fit their playstyle rather than just pumping the character up to the level cap. UO had a pretty similar system when it started out. In old school UO, you could only gain grand master in 7 skills and you would lose skills that you didn't use. Throw in the fact that you could spend money to train up your skills to a competitive level, or be trained by other players and the time to a serviceable character is almost a non-factor. Of course, the skill system would have to be playtested / playbalanced to death in order to make sure that there was no "killer build" that would just wipe out allcomers.
And don't give me that crap about not having any connection to your character because you don't spend months bonking the same monsters over the head again and again. In a game like this, I think that crafting and economy would riegn supreme and you would have bigger goals than just trying to get to level X, so you can do quest Y, in order to obtain item Z.
I'm also not interested in hearing that all the characters being the same prevents you from being a "hero" and destroys the point of PvP or playing. With a well balanced skill system, actually winning an duel or a raid will mean that you're a better player, not a better farmer. With permadeath, just surviving to make some cash will be reward enough. But in a game like this, PvP will rarely be confined to violent conflict. There would be politics, business rivalry, etc....
You have to step away from what's been done to death in order to see what we're getting at here.
perma death in my opinion is another untapped mmo resource...it offers so much to the genre. it offers things such as.....
a detterant for griefers and gankers, to have your player killed out right wud stop alot of griefing and not allow griefers or gankers to ever increase there skill level...they wud always be at the bottom of the food chain if not inteligent about the way they went about the game.
lvling or skills wud be much more varied and appreciated, instead of having a cap that everyone reaches and makes the game stale and boring, you would have elder players who have thru natural selction reached unique status in the game and have the power to affect the in game world and its players...but also cud lose it in a moment and would be sorely missed by community.
the game wouldnt feel like a grindfest...everyone wud look after there characters and prize them...and make community alot closer....to see another character die becuase you didnt get to them in time to help wud upset ya
i cud go on and on
only thing i wud hate is losing connection accidentally and coming back online to find character dead...but there are allsorts of ways to stop that!
C
Real life has also no save points and you can become a victim of system faults at any time. There is definately perma-death in this "game" and you are basically forced to grind also. Are you killed all the time by high-level players in real life?- No, simply because there is law and order - you just need to ensure that there is a kind of good law and order system which makes it harder for criminals. Real life proofs that this is the way to go here!
Ragosch
I play GAMES to escape real life. (My life has way too much of what you described above already
Real life has also no save points and you can become a victim of system faults at any time. There is definately perma-death in this "game" and you are basically forced to grind also. Are you killed all the time by high-level players in real life?- No, simply because there is law and order - you just need to ensure that there is a kind of good law and order system which makes it harder for criminals. Real life proofs that this is the way to go here!
Ragosch
I play GAMES to escape real life. (My life has way too much of what you described above already
Indo, you got an important point here - there are 2 groups, one group plays MMO to escape from reality, they want entertainment basically and not another challlenge - and then there is this other group, who plays MMOs to get right into another form of challenge, where they need to use all their abilities to survive and evolve in a hostile environment. An nothing other are most MMO - hostile.
The only question is, do you want it like a theme park is - with guided entertainment and relative safety - or do you want it like a real adventure trip, with danger and risk, where you have to struggle and fight to survive and where it is a challenge to build up a community, a state or a nation and defend it against others or even go the imperialistic way and build an empire.
When I used the words carebear and "whining like a child" it is exactly this what makes the difference. If you want to play a real adventure type game it simply is not for carebears who never in their life risk something. Sure, that is the majority, because if they would take on risks in real life too, their whole thinking would be different and they were used to have success - nearly evertime. And they would know that if you dont have success that it is not the systems fault but your own fault. Lag can happen and a clever person finds ways to be prepared for such a situation and does not cry like a child if it happens - it will happen anyway and therefore you need to take care in advance!
Ragosch