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Original post by superpig Many games have this. If you let the board fill up to the top in Tetris, it's "permadeath," and usually one or two key presses to start a new game with a new score. It actually enhances the addictiveness of the game - the player thinks, "I can do better than that!" and can quickly have another try.

Some very good posts here, and I can see the arguements for all of the suggestions, so I'm not going to start a flame and say that only my sugestions would work becaus eI actually believe everyone is correct in their own way. I did however fid the above quote interesting though.

Can you really compare tetris and an MMOG (which is vaguely what I'm referring to). Remembering of course that most MMOGs require a lot of time spent on character building. Perma-death (which is not entirely what I started this topic for, but it seems to have progressed that way) is fine for tetris because at most you spend a couple of hours playing if you're incredibly good, but applied to an MMOG, you lose a LOT of progress with such a system. Progress needs to be persistant if you spend a long time building it up.

What if though, we changed this and made the average lifespan in an MMOG a very short lifespan, with the challenge of doing the absolute best you can in a short timeframe? This way, when the player dies, they roll a new character and get back into the game ASAP with minimum inconvenience and the drive to better their last attempt. The downside to this of course is that people generally live longer than a couple of hours, but perhaps death need not be the losing factor of the game, perhaps there is some other conclusion which could also be a 'win factor' just as much as it could be a 'lose/death factor'.

One possible problem with this though is that it could break the whole persistant world feel, with characters winning or losing the game so quickly and starting again, but perhaps this could be worked into a game somehow?

As a quick thouht before my lunch break ends, what about some kind of Quantum Leap game where you jump into the life of a character and have a single goal to achieve or fail at, either way you are ejected from the game at a certain point and are judged to have won or lost at that point? Actually, the more I think about this the more I like it as it could definitely help enforce the likelehood of more roleplaying!

Any further thoughts?

Cheers,

Steve

Short-term, episodic MMORPG? Funny, that's what I've always wanted - a game where I hop onto a server with 300 other people, vie for control, restart when I die, and can spend a day fighting to become King.

The problem is that MMO's run off monthly subscriptions, so the long-term persistence and character attachment is crucial to revenues.

On permadeath:

That killer MMOG has yet to rear it's beautiful head. It may be a few years before it does. I'd like to speculate that it won't feature "permadeath" except in extreme cases - usually as corporal punishment. (Neighborhood theif/villan/murderer gets the chair)

I'd like to see being knocked out, kidnapped/captured/enslaved, frozen in carbonite, coming down with some weird disease, or going to some otherworldly dimension. By making death an unlikely adventure of it's own, it can be appreciated as a part of the game.

That killer MMO will likely not differ too much from our own lives, except their world has mystery, danger, and adventure, and ours has the 9-5 grind.

I happen to think permadeath actually improves roleplaying. You don't send your little wussy mage out to fight 10 zombies alone because you know he'll die, and that's pretty much how a real wussy mage would act if there were real wussy mages.

For this reason, I have the opinion that people who hate permadeath are just in it for the killing stuff part. I could be wrong, and don't take this as a flame, but that's how I feel.

I think there should be a MMORPG where you never have to kill anything if you don't want to. Few things kill RP more than levels, and only being able to gain levels by killing stuff.

Even with a pure skill-based system, some people tend to spend every waking moment practicing one thing or another. What's so bad about sitting around in a tavern gossiping? Sure you don't get your Uber Sword skill, but your char makes friends (and enemies) which provide for later plot points not precoded by the game. Too many people think the game is only fun once they gain skills/levels/whatever, but why? These are probably the same ones I mentioned above who are only interested in the combat possibilities of the game.

A side note on permadeath - I don't care for "1 death, you're out" types. There should be a resurrection spell, which can be used if you can get your corpse and a healer in the same place (either by having friends move your corpse, or by sending a "deathtell" to get a healer to come to where you died) before your corpse rots away. If your corpse rots away, bam, that's it. If you can get ressed, you continue on as normal, losing skills based on how long your corpse sat there before getting ressed. This way, intelligence and careful planning is rewarded by long life, whereas people who can't or won't learn what's too much for them to handle die a lot.

As for getting attatched to your char and then having it die after you've spent months on it, that's life. I still think fondly on chars I've played in the past, but really if they were still alive I would've gotten bored with them by now. As someone previously said, if you make it interesting to play a char from the beginning, permadeath won't be as big of a hardship. And who knows, you might even hear others talking about how cool something your previous char did was. You can make a real history this way, and old chars don't have to fight to get respect because it's automatic that newbies will be in awe of their ability to stay alive so long. (Except for the total morons who don't respect anything, that is.) The key, I think, is that every time you permadie, you think "ok, now how can I make my next char even cooler/more interesting/more fun to play than the one that just died?"

Just my opinions of course, based on experience playing in several MUDs which enforce RP, all but one of which include permadeath of one type or another. (The non-permadeath MUD actually has pretty good RP, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that its players are mainly German and British and so on.)

Regarding the GTA system. The one issue I have with that is if you amass a large quantity of cool weapons (particularly through missions where the equipment can be hard to find elsewhere) this makes you very reluctant to try and do anything highly risky in case you get killed and lose it all. To a certain degree this increases the tension in some situations, but in such a freeform game I do get annoyed when a stupid mistake (which is very easy with some of the new stuff in San Andreas) loses me everything.

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Original post by Pxtl Short-term, episodic MMORPG? Funny, that's what I've always wanted - a game where I hop onto a server with 300 other people, vie for control, restart when I die, and can spend a day fighting to become King.

I guess you'll like Zombie Nation then, if I ever make it. [smile]

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The problem is that MMO's run off monthly subscriptions, so the long-term persistence and character attachment is crucial to revenues.

Now that's something we can run with.

Why is character attachment crucial to revenues? Because it keeps people playing the game - keeps the game addictive. If our MMOG had very little character attachment, but was as addictive as Tetris, it'd still work, right? (*crosses fingers*)

If we want to kill off characters and the like, I reckon it's fine provided you have something else keeping the players coming back instead (for example: make the game fun, rather than the level-up slogfest I seem to hear most games are these days).

One option I've heard suggested is the console approach to keeping players going: priviledged option unlocking. What if playing a mummy was no better than a zombie, but mummies are more complicated and rare? Well, lets say that 5 players are allowed to be mummies, and the players with the best karma get dibs.

Nice thread everyone!
from...

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Original post by Pxtl Short-term, episodic MMORPG? Funny, that's what I've always wanted - a game where I hop onto a server with 300 other people, vie for control, restart when I die, and can spend a day fighting to become King. The problem is that MMO's run off monthly subscriptions, so the long-term persistence and character attachment is crucial to revenues.

and...

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Original post by superpigWhy is character attachment crucial to revenues? Because it keeps people playing the game - keeps the game addictive. If our MMOG had very little character attachment, but was as addictive as Tetris, it'd still work, right? (*crosses fingers*)

I ask... would a 1-time-fee, permadeath MMOG scheme work? an online multiplayer arcade! jump in for the afternoon, for cheap. Irresistible for new players, and if you get the hook, you'll come back. Again and again.

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Original post by onyxflame if you make it interesting to play a char from the beginning, permadeath won't be as big of a hardship. And who knows, you might even hear others talking about how cool something your previous char did was. You can make a real history this way, and old chars don't have to fight to get respect because it's automatic that newbies will be in awe of their ability to stay alive so long. (Except for the total morons who don't respect anything, that is.) The key, I think, is that every time you permadie, you think "ok, now how can I make my next char even cooler/more interesting/more fun to play than the one that just died?"

Actually i played Ragnarok some time ago *dodges thrown bottles* and i learned some good things. You can have cool characters without permadeath. Customization is the key, and no, even without permadeath you still need to work to get that Ubersword, if the game yanks you out of the quest each time you die/get comatose, so its still a nice feat. And noobs? they won't respect you anyway =)
Many people remember me from that server, mainly because me and my friend would do cool things as newbies, mainly because we weren't afraid to die. I explain:
If you gather a group of newbies and decide to go in a high-level monster zone, you'll prolly get all slaughtered.. but its still fun, and eventually all the party will die. And it'll be a blast. If you manage to survive it means a lot of exp and a good story.
This avoids players only fighting monsters that they overpower by a large margin, because its much more fun when there's a struggle.
In ragnarok i remember cracking jokes while lying dead on the floor. If they had been able to carry my talking carcass, it would have been much funnier, and i still would avoid death, because if i die i don't get the items/exp/cash or simply i don't get to fight.

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Original post by DBX Regarding the GTA system. The one issue I have with that is if you amass a large quantity of cool weapons (particularly through missions where the equipment can be hard to find elsewhere) this makes you very reluctant to try and do anything highly risky in case you get killed and lose it all. To a certain degree this increases the tension in some situations, but in such a freeform game I do get annoyed when a stupid mistake (which is very easy with some of the new stuff in San Andreas) loses me everything.

Yes. This is a very good point, and i've been there too. A way to fix this could be a kind of weapons checkpoint, where you could save the guns you have and come back for them afterwards. Maybe only risk losing the one you die with.

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Original post by Madster Quote: Original post by superpig Why is character attachment crucial to revenues? Because it keeps people playing the game - keeps the game addictive. If our MMOG had very little character attachment, but was as addictive as Tetris, it'd still work, right? (*crosses fingers*) I ask... would a 1-time-fee, permadeath MMOG scheme work? an online multiplayer arcade! jump in for the afternoon, for cheap. Irresistible for new players, and if you get the hook, you'll come back. Again and again.

Yes, exactly. The kind of thing you can play in a cybercafe if you've got an hour to spare while waiting for an airplane or something.

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Quote: Original post by DBX Regarding the GTA system. The one issue I have with that is if you amass a large quantity of cool weapons (particularly through missions where the equipment can be hard to find elsewhere) this makes you very reluctant to try and do anything highly risky in case you get killed and lose it all. To a certain degree this increases the tension in some situations, but in such a freeform game I do get annoyed when a stupid mistake (which is very easy with some of the new stuff in San Andreas) loses me everything. Yes. This is a very good point, and i've been there too. A way to fix this could be a kind of weapons checkpoint, where you could save the guns you have and come back for them afterwards. Maybe only risk losing the one you die with.

This is something which is only a flaw in GTA3, btw. In the first two GTA games, weapons were so easy to find that you just didn't care about losing them - because you knew that within five minutes you'd have another rocket launcher or whatever.

It's a question of what the player stands to lose. The more they stand to lose - amassed character attributes, weapons, score - the more dying is a punishment. It's a concept we'd probably do well to abstract; all we're really talking about here is some kind of penalty which gets exacted when the player's health drops to zero. When debating the "fairness" of things like permadeath, what we're really asking is whether the penalty for that loss in health is appropriate. Once you get that, you can treat it as balancing any other game system.

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Original post by superpig This is something which is only a flaw in GTA3, btw. In the first two GTA games, weapons were so easy to find that you just didn't care about losing them - because you knew that within five minutes you'd have another rocket launcher or whatever.

Getting weapons back in Vice City and San Andreas is pretty easy - just pop down to the local gun store (although rocket launchers and similar gadgets are a bit less common). The problem with this is that say you're in the middle of a particular objective (particularly the gang fights which require you to tool up in advance) then getting killed requires you to spend time doing something laborious to get back to exactly where you were - thus fragmenting the fun.
I think Halo did this system perfectly (at least for that type of game). You had regular checkpoints, and death put you back at the previous checkpoint exactly as you were. This means you always have to complete each section, but failure means you are thrown straight back in as you were for another go (at the start of the particular section), you can then try again with the same tactic or try something new.
The checkpoints were also beautifully spaced, not too short to remove all tension (as in PC quicksave) but not too far to make it frustrating. On the harder difficulties, dying was sometimes fun as you got to try the section again doing something different (and the way your foes would stand over your corpse and laugh was very amusing).