I had posted in Mephs "Just let them play" subject line, regarding my take on death in MMO's. It's here
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Original post by dggamer Well, I've always been interested in the permadeath concept, to a certain degree. It's a very scary subject to approach the mass-market with, as this playstyle and mindset tends to lend itself to a hardcore audience. If people pay money, to play a game monthly (mmorpg's) then their effort and time invested has a "real world" value. It's no longer a "oh I died I'll try again", players feel a real sense of loss. It would be like trying to play through Morrowind without ever being able to save your game /cringe.
Playing WoW actually led me to think that playing the game as the ghost, could be interesting... Simply put, it would be a counter-existence to the "living" world. There would be spirits that the dead avatar could interact with, quest for, and "earn" a way abck to the living world. (I'm not going too deep into this, because I haven't thought too deeply and put all the what if's into play). So outside of getting a res from a "priestly" character, you play as a ghost (and yah, there need to be different sets of abilities "spirit based" and not any sort of race or class based).
So you die, you lose time progressing your living avatar. You get to experience a different type of game when dead, a different world. Possibly even accomplishments that you get to "take back" to your living avatar, like being able to speak with the dead, or spirit sight, etc etc blah blah =)
The could be other repricussions as well. Death would not be an easy thing for the body to handle, so the player must choose a negative trait, something that is a permanent negative stat. There could be very involved quests to remove negative stats. Scars would give your character a further unique appearence (and possibly negative social effects), losing an arm (again, kind of unique, but you get much stronger in the remaining arm, possibly even being able to wield a 2h weapon in a single hand), the repricussions for death could be both cool and not cool at the same time. The bad makes the players fear death, the possibly cool aspect makes players not give up because of it. It goes on, but just thought I'd share and throw the idea out there.
In regards to affecting a Plot via death, while intriguing would be very difficult to actually implement successfully. One reason is you have 5000 players that die, how do 5000 players affect the same plot point. It would seem like death simply offers the players to participate in a pre-scripted event, in which it isn't really up to them specifically how it turns out. Whichever side more players picked when death took them, would win. While that makes sense, from a players perspective (specially on the losing side) they were helpless to affect the story.
Original post by dggamer In regards to affecting a Plot via death, while intriguing would be very difficult to actually implement successfully. One reason is you have 5000 players that die, how do 5000 players affect the same plot point. It would seem like death simply offers the players to participate in a pre-scripted event, in which it isn't really up to them specifically how it turns out. Whichever side more players picked when death took them, would win. While that makes sense, from a players perspective (specially on the losing side) they were helpless to affect the story.
Yes, if you actually intended to kill of EVERY player, then that would be a definite problem. The point is that you get a small subset of the players, 20-40, then offer them a chance to have a larger part in the story. The balance issue of how many people go to each side is also very important, because yo need to use that to balance out the powers of each side. Under the imbalance idea, if either side had less people it could also use more power for each individual.
I was trying to really contrast this with "perma-death", because the concept isn't that players go through this every time they die. It is just as applicable in a world where players always respawn with little or no penalty. Part of it is that there would be a greater sacrafice in taking the offer, because you will lose your character, which you have invested some amount fo yourself in.
I doubt any player will want a dramatic death. Everyone will want to revive.
I think there should be 2 ways to enhance perma-death:
a. You are dead. So you are a ghost. As a ghost you cant pick up items but can do some little tricks like pushing a chair or making funny noises. You can't move your body but may ask for help to suitable players (characters with Wisdom>20) like a Medium or a cleric. If someone agrees to help you, he may pick your rotting body and take it to a church in order to be revived. You have 7 days to ask for help or you have to depart. Meanwhile... take care of the undead hunters. In case you are in a party, you companions should be able to take you for resurrection. In case all party dies... well... look for help as a party?... maybe you may fight some undead monsters :)
b. Make time count. Say... 1 year of real time is 36.4 years game time. So 1 game year passes in 10 days or a day passes in about 40 minutes. Then make the characters age. They can keep using their characters but their bodies will decay and age. So they need to heir his items to his children. Select one of your children and start playing with that character. Who knows... you may be a knight and continue playing like a wizard!!!!
Original post by Guimo I doubt any player will want a dramatic death. Everyone will want to revive.
Soory, I just wanted to make sure I understood your opinion: You think that no one would ever decide to let their player die to advance the plot of a Game World?
The biggest obstical to making death count is probably the ease with which players die. You play most any RPG or MMORPG, and your going to die at least once within a 30 minute timespan unless your pretty good at what you do. The best way to pull this off might be to have injuries, and Fatal injuries. Anything past fatal would probably kill your character (so you could push yourself beyond your limits and die for a noble cause if you choose to). After that, i wouldn't mind being a ghost permanently and being able to do ghost things, changing the gameplay and making things interesting (like for example the ghosts of mages might be able to do more than the ghosts of fighters because of their knowledge in the mystical arts). Potentially you could keep leveling up in a whole different way as a ghost, with death being the next step opening up new levels and area's.
But anyway, all a person would have to do is create a new character if they didn't want to be a ghost (effectively being 'reborn').
Original post by Guimo I doubt any player will want a dramatic death. Everyone will want to revive.
Soory, I just wanted to make sure I understood your opinion: You think that no one would ever decide to let their player die to advance the plot of a Game World?
Honestly, I think no one would make the sacrifice, unless there was a huge benefit (let's be honest, people are paying to play your game), IF there's a huge benefit, then EVERYONE would choose it, thus you'd have the problem I named before about huge numbers etc.
I favor that the player can give his life *in special ocassions not frequently*, and if he does, he gets something in return. Like he is reincarnated with some special power only reincarnates have. But I don't want it to be a HUGE difference like it's suggested. I want to make it rather unique or elite. For example:
-In a game where there are attack types (water hits fire hard but fire can't harm water for example), you might be given the ability to learn attacks of a special type called 'void'. Void attacks are usually weaker than their elemental counterparts(if the counterpart does 3 damages per attack, the void does 2), but they take less mana than usual (usually 2 damage costs 5 mana, for void attacks it would be 3 or 4), but they don't have advantages or disadvantages. Even normal would have problems against ghost types, and normal usually would damage as much as a void attack but it cost mana just as other attacks.
-My reincarnated character can now access a special place where only a few can enter, like reincarnates, people who have made certain quests, etc..
-After reincarnating, the reincarnated players become a important part of the story, and based on this, the reincarnated players can access quest that won't give you things that other quest can give, but only reincarnated players can play these quests.
not trying to dredge up the old perma-death debate. but sign me up as a "true-believer" in it. From a business standpoint, perhaps it doesnt make sense(and perhaps it does but no one has had the guts to try in such a large endeavour.) From a game play stand-point it could very well change everything. Grinding...gone. Griefing....gone. Mediocrity....gone.
When actually fighting for your characters life, how can you be bored? if you have an emotional investment in the character every event is epic....every battle harrowing.
True, but then you think of how many hours, days, weeks, months, YEARS, you wasted working on that character only to have him die from an infected wood-tick. But on the other hand people might apprechiate the experience they had as that character during the time he was alive, and move on to creating another persona, Diablo 2 does allow a hardcore setting where if the character dies, its gone for good. The only problem with that is that i would always die at the summoner, which happened 2-3 times and royally pissed me off because of all the time i wasted getting to that point again and again.
Another turn off might be the unfortunete ways a person can die. Nothing sucks more than logging in only to be gangbanged by 10,000 PK's, monsters, or other nasties that weren't there when you logged out. Greater emphasis would probably have to be placed on RPing and the interactions between people within quests (such as dynamic quests that change the game world as a whole would help make a persons death more worthwhile and easier to take as the experiences the player had left their mark on the gameworld itself).
