Yes, but, Nypyren, as we''ve said-- it you seriously wanted to implement that in a multiplayer online game, you''d piss off too many people-- and you don''t want to do that when they''re willingly paying a monthly subscription... Yes, having the paramedics arrive EVERY TIME you get wasted and them being able to revive you EVERY TIME you get riddled with thousands of bullets is a bit unrealistic, but in the world of computer roleplaying games, there is little room for THAT kind of realism.

There''s one neat option I thought of last night that would help form storylines in a situation like this. Lets take the example of a present-day GTA-like game... In it I''d assume you''d be able to join gangs and work your way up the ranks, even up to very high ranking officers in the gang and be able to lead and give commands to other lower gang members. One of the targets for an enemy gang would definately be to take out that high ranking player, yet every time you do, they just get revived... boo... No room for storyline there. Maybe by getting wasted while high ranking, you lose your rank... but that seems extreme. Anyway, my idea was for the game to OFFER the player an option to be revived, or die permanently. Give them some incentive to kill that player permanently, ''cause they''re advancing the storyline... I dunno, it doesn''t sound as good as it did in my mind as I was lying in bed, so take it for what it''s worth.

-Desco-

IMO, the vast majority of people who play MMORPG''s are wusses. (Yeah I know I''ve probably just pissed 99% of you off, but bear with me. )

Most of these games aren''t made for the RP aspects that could exist in an environment of thousands of players. They''re just made to give you new and flashier ways of killing stuff.

Most MMORPG players just want to kill stuff, they aren''t worried about much else.

Now I personally favor the idea of permadeath, and I have no idea WHY a lot of people don''t like it. So you can''t just easily go back and get all your items, so what? If you have permadeath, then you care whether your char lives or dies, thus you won''t purposely put him into situations he can''t get out of, etc etc etc. So WHY wouldn''t people pay a monthly fee for a game with permadeath in it? Because they''re wusses and all they wanna do is kill stuff.

Note that even in a system with permadeath, EVERY death doesn''t have to be permanent. In a magical medieval system, someone could bring your corpse to a temple and resurrect you, if they got there before your corpse rotted away. But there''d be a very real possibility of no one ever finding you, in which case you''d just hafta suck it in and make a new char, who''d hopefully be a bit wiser in the ways of the world.

(Note that I''ve been playing a mud with permadeath for over 3 years now, and some people have been playing there for the whole 10+ years it''s existed. So these kinds of games CAN be popular, it''s just that the game companies wanna make money so they don''t go out on a limb with something like this when most players are just 15 year olds who wanna blow stuff up anyway.)

what you are basically saying is take the risk!, put that in your game ... people will play it, so, some of the people wont play, so what! other people will play it instead ... I would, I love the feeling of risk

but, of course you need to control the world more, you cant let a gang go killing around everybody, thus put stuff in the game to discourage that, like guards (NPCs), bounty hunters (PCs), and to avoid punishing the wrong people then have punishes increase with time ... first: you get a warning from the guards, fourth: guards try to catch you, if they do, well, they just take one item from you (ouch, and one of the nice ones, by the way), sixth: guards try to kill you (it would be incredibly hard to survive a fight with them), seventh: more guards than before + a bounty hunter, eight: lots of bounty hunter + guards + strong NPC attack you whenever they see you ...by the way, the offense would erase with the passage of time (thus, you wont hesitate to attack something who is bothering you, who will also probably get into a lot of fights anyway, thus he will get the worst punishment)

you can twist that a lot, the important thing is not to force measures but to control wrong behavior ...

well, if you put a lot of control you also need to add some stuff in the game that will make the people go into pvp and not be punished, guild wars, aligning with factions (a human can freely attack a orc and backwards ...), and so on ...

one advice tough, it is really important that if you are building a player base while developing the game, that you tell them all this stuff while you are still implementing them, I say this because saying that after half a year will get people angry (people dont like surprises) and start making a bad image of your game everywhere ...

[edited by - eglasius on June 6, 2003 3:00:52 PM]

Well to me, here''s the Ultimate MMORPG. (Considering I''ve been playing a RP-oriented text mud for 3+ years, I''m kind of biased, if you couldn''t tell. )

1. RP-oriented.
2. Unrestricted PK.
3. Permadeath.
4. Skill-based (level-less and preferably class-less although that isn''t so important IMO)

If the game is heavily RP-oriented, this will keep a lot of people from just hanging out and killing newbies for no reason.

If there''s unrestricted PK, you never know what the friends of the guy you just killed are gonna do to you, and they might be a hell of a lot more powerful than you are.

Benefits of permadeath have been mentioned above, but IMO you NEED aspects 1 and 2 in order for permadeath to work, otherwise no one''s char''s gonna live longer than 2 days.

As for not having levels, that''s just my personal preference and really doesn''t have much to do with this issue except that in most level-based systems you get xp from killing stuff and killing stuff ONLY, and that won''t work too well with serious RP elements.

Now, what this all means: There may be player-run governments for all the cities, and these governments may have laws against killing within the city limits. Therefore guards could be called when you tried to attack someone. This still leaves you open to random attacks in the wilderness, but those will be lessened (or at least people will need REASONS for them) by the factors mentioned above. (And the wilderness is SUPPOSED to be dangerous, right?) Also there''s other player-imposed restrictions on random killings, such as if you try to kill a noble his underlings are gonna be pretty peeved. And it''d also give you more goals in the game than just to kill stuff, and if you''re less concerned about killing stuff to advance, you''ll have less desire to kill randomly for no reason. (Sure you''re still gonna have twinks, but after the other players get pissed and kill them 20 times, they''re eventually gonna get sick of it.)

Anyway, there''s my long-winded explanation of why I think permadeath rocks and the circumstances in which it can be used to its fullest effects with the least negative consequences to everyone''s enjoyment. Sure not everyone would wanna play a game like that, but then not everyone wants to play a "hey let''s go kill stuff" game either.

I see the current "death" systems as being a little boring. If I achieve something within the game, I like to feel that I''ve accomplished something. If I''m allowed to save whenever I want to, then how am I accomplishing something? There is nothing setting me apart from the rest.

Oh, you got past the gargoyles on level 3 by using your magic missiles early in the fight while your barbarians took out the leader? I just used the sphere of anti-gorgoyleness while my archers took out the leader... but I couldn''t save during the fight or well before it, so therefore I had to formulate this tactic in order to succeed.

I feel like I''ve accomplished something. YAY!

If my death is handled in a somewhat realistic manner (adding fantasy to accomodate some loopholes) then there is a cost for losing. Having to play through some maze EVERYTIME I die can be quite frustrating. Give your characters certain death but allow them to continue as their offspring. Anything! But not a maze! If a player ends up in a place where they are going to die repetitively, then the whole maze idea becomes just that: repetative.

- Jay


[ Here, taste this ]