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How could you accept permanent death?
Vermillion_Raventhal
Member EpicPosts: 4,198
It seems like most players are opposed to permanent death. I have a feeling most players think of a WoW character they spent hundreds of hours on just gone or dying and starting over repeatedly. To me yes that would suck.
That said, there circumstances I could accept perm death.
1. Only risky gameplay causing perm death like fighting the world eater dragon. Not every defeat is perm.
2. All items would have to decay to destruction point and be much easier to get than typical MMORPG.
3. You can choose a successor or child that gets your items, unique traits depending on how character was played and higher skill cap.
I think that kind of gameplay could make for me.
That said, there circumstances I could accept perm death.
1. Only risky gameplay causing perm death like fighting the world eater dragon. Not every defeat is perm.
2. All items would have to decay to destruction point and be much easier to get than typical MMORPG.
3. You can choose a successor or child that gets your items, unique traits depending on how character was played and higher skill cap.
I think that kind of gameplay could make for me.
Comments
1. The game had little to no character progression.
2. The game had perma-lives, so you wouldn't die after just one unlucky movement. I could see this being a good way to differentiate races and classes as well - while an Elven knight might get 6 lives, a human berserker would only get 2.
3. The game were based on controlling a group of characters rather than just one, so losing one would be more akin to losing a piece of gear or a pet.
There could be several grades of injury which would lead to your death if left untreated, or a disease/poison that kills you eventually if you don't seek cure. Mobs that are a lot above your level could permakill if you foolishly attack them, or they could have abilities like petrification that are lethal unless you know how to protect against them.
Permadeath is an interesting concept but it has to be implemented very carefully. You should never be permanently killed by a single event like combat or falling damage, and a player should know when there's a chance to die for the last time.
When the lost is big deal , it can't consider as casual gaming anymore .
How is super easy progression different from a death penalty?
No perma-death is either thinly disguised respawning or too harsh a penalty to make an enjoyable game.
As for playing mutliple characters, I suspect you're saying that it can't work in an MMO because you're imagining controlling 15 full mythic, max level characters in a WoW raid. A game where you play multiple characters like that would have to be designed completely differently from pretty much any MMO currently on the market.
Alternatively, you could have a game where you naturally have a lot of characters. That way, losing one character out of many isn't devastating. It would have to be a case where all of your characters naturally level if the game has any concept of it, not one where if you play a lot of alts, they all level up far more slowly than if you were to focus on a main.
Power goes out? Just likely lost a life (if it had like 3 lives or something before perma dying. Be even worse if no lives at all)
Computer freeze or some other PC issue?
Servers randomly go down without notice?
Lag? (which could be caused by all kinds of things. A lot of the times if the game is too demanding to run on hardware or/and poorly optimized. But poor servers play a part too)
Just to name a few of the really big issues.
I play Darkest Dungeons, and never worry about any of those things.
In an MMO, most I like is EVE. EVE has a good death penalty as far as the more hardcore MMOs go. Sure can run into the above, but you never permanently die and its pretty easy to get stuff back if you are smart about going out with having backup ships/loadouts.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
No, perma-death would be something like a game with a large number of 'starting areas', each substantially different, creating a character locks out that area for at least thirty days so on 'death' your new character starts somewhere else with zero XP and only starting equipment.
Personally though, I think the best way to do permadeath is the GW1 way.
"But Guild Wars 1 didn't have permadeath!"
No? It had a title, "Survivor". The title required you to reach a certain experience level on a character without dying. There were three levels of this title each progressively harder to reach (Survivor, Indomitable Survivor, and Legendary Survivor). I believe you kept the title once you earned it, even if you died after, but you had to not die to get that title.
I very much enjoyed trying to reach that title on new characters. It was a huge rush. I wish more games would do something like it. Perhaps with less focus on earning XP and more focus on completing certain challenging tasks that put you in harms way though.
It makes reaching a level meaningful. It can work in MMO of you have the following abilities.
1) instantly heal or very quick heal
2) be able to log out relatively quickly
3) be able to run away from fights
4) or allow player res within 30 minutes and have huge open world.
If you could do that with an MMO then you could do it.
My alternative idea is just to have a character with unlimited deaths but it counts each death and is displayed next to your character as a sort of score.
So being max level with 300 deaths is not as good as bring max level with 5 deaths.
Permadeath is great, I suggest you all try it if you play PoE.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I would probably still give it a shot. If I have fun in a game, I'll play it. One feature probably isn't going to keep me away. Ultimately depends on how all the other game systems work out.
The way I see it, you basically have two options. One is to make dying rare, so that you aren't resetting all of your progress all the time. The other is make progress relatively fast and/or easy. I'm sure there's a middle ground somewhere in there too, but if it takes months to reach end game and you get killed by a level 5 boar because you d/ced in the starter zone...
I think most people realize the issue here. Permadeath, just like any other game feature, has to work with the game as a whole. You can't just tack it on to a game and expect it to work out in every scenario.
Permadeath could work in a game were a session is short and somehow "reset" your character.
For example, that works with darkest dungeon because you manage your team in the town and go occasionnally in dungeons, but sessions in dungeons are short and it resets your characters, but you get to keep some features of its last state.
Another example is a pen&paper rpg known in France (maybe in other countries), whose name is "Rêves de dragon", in english "Dragon's dreams".
In that game, your character is comprised of two parts. A "permanent part", which is called "archetype" and is somehow its essence or soul. And a short-lived part, which is a real character and that is used to play a short session. This short-lived part can be anything, a whole new class or race or anything you want to experiment. When this short-lived part dies, your archetype evolves according to what you've done with the short-lived part.
It would be like;
1. Quick to get certain skills to cap. A few hours of play.
2. Housing and storing items that any character can play
3. Achievement and extra benefits for having a long surviving character
4. Conquest mode server
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Long term ressurection is also an idea. Where you can be brought back to life and live as a spirit until you a brought back slowly losing exp or skills until you disappear forever in a time period.
A permadeath Crowfall campaign would be a campaign where when you died you would be booted from the campaign. They would probably have to run shorter than normal campaigns but the concept could be pretty interesting.