To add to that, specifically about player/environment relations not naturally transcending death, is that permadeath would likely be abused at some point.

The easier one is if some reward where given to make up for death (the key to the special chest, legendary status, etc). You'd find characters being created (perhaps by a group) specifically for the purpose of sacrifice - i.e. one player dies to get the key, then the other high level players help him get to the chest, after which he kills himself again to restart the cycle.

The other method is quest abuse - the ability to easily obtain unique rewards simply by dying again and again. While this second method is possible through specially created characters (creating a character solely to complete some low level, 1 time, high reward quest), since the permadeath character would likely retain some abilities, this would be made a lot easier.

perma death would not appeal to the majority of players for the following reasons.


you can not feel, or smell or actually experiance any of the activities or surroundings in a game (yet), and to add a permanate death to a character would be absurd.

2nd, people often pay to play mmo's and who in the right mind would pay to play a game where once you die, you have to start all over. its just not fair to the consumer.


perma death would only frustrate players, make them turn to safe play styles, and i believe if players dont take chances in games, the game would therefor, be boring. You have to offer players a thrill that they can experiance over and over with chance of dying. but if they die and can no longer experiance that thrill, they will probably play another game. I for one would never want to rebuild my character and start from scratch, i rather play a game that seperates reality from fiction.

another thing is if you do eliminate levels, there is no actual perma death to your character. you will die of course, but without levels you would be right back where you were before (maybe with less equipment, but still able to do the same things). without levels you would be left with a type of 3rd person fighting game or a fps game..



the only way i can think of perma death working out in some way is the way they did it in pokemon, and well, thats pokemon. OR you can "preserve" the soul of the character and take the form of another body in some way.

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Original post by Silvermyst Ah, good ol' permadeath. One of my favorite games of all time is Rogue, which features permanent death. Single-player, no bells and whistles, permadeath, and still I enjoyed it more than a game like Everquest.

Nethack, Rogue's younger, more maintained brother, is what got me hooked on the permadeath idea, but really it just all around sounds more reasonable to me. Characters should not live forever, as neither do people.

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I'm not a big fan of MMO, and I think it'll be very hard to implement permadeath in an MMO correctly. There are so many hurdles to overcome. Disconnects, lag, player killers, and most of all the financial burden, as an MMO featuring permadeath will have to be designed from the ground up because it simply cannot be tacked onto existing models.

Well this is a game design discussion forum. I'm just tossing the idea out there because I feel it's a game element that's fun and easy to work with. There are a lot of different ways to compensate for lag, and a lot of different ways to set up the game's overall design to account for things that might simply go wrong. That's one of the reasons I mentioned in my first post that there would be ways to get around permadeath, but a lot of these ways need to be addressed as well as they are easy to abuse [for example, "life tokens"; you regen if you're carrying one.. so what happens when you go around killing everyone you can to steal their life tokens? even if you die, you've still got a cache of them. Of course this is easily defeated by having to work hard to earn one, or just make them so they don't drop at all (you have to get them through some other means). It would just take a bit of thought.]

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Original post by DuFaceTheBass Once a character suffers permadeath, there could be an option for the player to create a new character as an offspring instead of starting from scratch. The offspring could be given a certain percentage of the overall stats of the parent character, relieving the need to do the newbie quests all over again. I would make creating offspring an integral part of the game. This would make the sex of the characters actually matter. "Level 10 male wizard looking for level 10 female warrior." The two would get together, mate, and create two level 1 characters (one for each) who are both intelligent and strong (though not quite as smart as the father, and not quite as strong as the mother). The offspring matures as the parents continue playing. When one of the parents finally bites the dust at level 15, its child is now level 6 and can be selected for play. Parenting could become part of the game as well. Instead of adventuring, the level 10 parent could train its child, bringing it up to level 6 before setting out again. Then, when the parent dies at level 15, the child might be level 10.

See, this is a man who gets the idea behind it! And then what happens when your father dies at level 60 and attains legendary status? People realize that you're the son/daughter of that character, and you're either loved or hated, and that brings on all kinds of new twists to the game. I can also understand how a lot of people argue against this kind of "ingame celebrity", but I just believe it'd add something new.

As for PKing: I already figured that if a game were to include this system, that PKing would have to be introduced at a certain experience level where the character was ready to stand on his/her own, and only be able to be permakilled while not in a city/designated dueling area (the exception would be a gladiator ring). The possibility of capping PvP to only people within 5 levels of each other has also crossed my mind, or in the case of removing the concept of level, only allow certain people with the PvP skill enabled fight each other. But these are all things really on the frenge of what I wanted to think about anyways.

And sorry for replying so late to the ideas here, I had a long night last night.

[Edited by - ciroknight on December 28, 2005 8:59:12 PM]

I don't play MMORPGs, but players seem to be very into their character. I've heard of suicides when a player's character is lost, and I bet everyone would be mad if the result of weeks and weeks of their time was negated.

It seems like one of those things that seems fun until it happens to you, because what's essentially happenning is you losing your account.

Although i get very frustrated on MMOGs when i lose my stuff i have to say that permadeath would be awesome - if, like everyone else said, everything is carefully designed around this.

But i think the overall gameplay would gain a lot from it.

For instance, think about current multiplayer games (not massive). I love the feeling when i'm playing America's Army that if i get shot, i'm done and i'll have to wait for the next round. That makes it really intense and adds immensely to the strategy and teamplay components of the game. I don't feel that way playing, say, Unreal Tournament.

Yes, i know i'm talking about FPSs and not MMORPGs, but the bottom line is, the more you have to lose, the more you enjoy or get addicted to it.

How about a system where whenyou hit level 50 (or whatever the maximum level is), a dialog comes up asking you if you want to continue to level. If you answer yes, you will be subject to permadeath. If you answer no, you'll have reached the non=permadeath level cap.

This means that you might have a few truly epic level 200 characters roaming the world, but they are more apt to be hunted and killed. I think it would be very fun.

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Original post by k725j You can not feel, or smell or actually experiance any of the activities or surroundings in a game (yet), and to add a permanate death to a character would be absurd.

That's not really a reason, it's an unrelated observation and a statement of your point. I believe you're trying to say that the experience of dying can't be reliably portrayed (or something of that nature), but you'll need to expand upon the thought before it's really a point worth contending.

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2nd, people often pay to play mmo's and who in the right mind would pay to play a game where once you die, you have to start all over. its just not fair to the consumer.

Tetris. Minesweeper. Snake. There are plenty of examples of succesful games with this type of mechanic; the rest of the game just needs to be designed in such a way as to ensure it's still fun and isn't overly irritating. I agree that permadeath jambed into a current MMO wouldn't work well, but the argument isn't really for that to be done, but rather for a general redesign which could allow the permadeath mechanic to work, allowing the game to be taken in different directions.


I can see that you'd clearly be sacrificing a portion of the current potential customer base by including permadeath, but I have a feeling that a well designed game including permadeath could make up for this lost business with customers who are dissatisfied with or don't play current MMOGs.

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Original post by KazgorothI can see that you'd clearly be sacrificing a portion of the current potential customer base by including permadeath, but I have a feeling that a well designed game including permadeath could make up for this lost business with customers who are dissatisfied with or don't play current MMOGs.

Another important note on that is, you cannot please everybody anyway. You do want a decent sized audience but just because a game puts some off doesn't mean that it cannot be successful. I believe that permadeath can be done in way that could generate a decent amount of interest given that the rest of the game is made well and the marketing is done well.

Probably the most important concerns with permadeath are controlling when it is possible, giving the player the option to avoid it (or at least play safer when needed), and protecting new players just learning the game.

The point is one character isn't everything. Most people pay monthly for games and play for years. So what difference does it make if the character dies and you create a new one (you're still playing the game)?

There should be a way to combine perma-death and gameplay into one massive game, giving the object of death a new meanine

Massive-war

I wrote a massive article on this. Perma-death cannot have the effect that is intended if we use the current formulae for MMORPGS. It will require a ground-up review modeled after the only known system that can do it: LIFE

A player is killed. He is stunned. IF he is lucky, he will wake up. IF he is unlucky, he will die of complications. When that happens, the spirit (the collective energy of the player) will appear before the body. The spirit is incorporal and cannot be affected by physical attacks but leaves it open for magical attacks as well. Given the lack of structure a spirit has, when damaged, it isn't destroyed as much as it is dazed and disrupted. At best, the violent magics affecting the spirit are affecting the medium in which it is directly connected with. Based on how respected you were amongst your deity determines how much control you have over your spirit. Total devotion means you can speak to nearby people, hear them, see the world, slightly affect the physical world, and for the most devote, possess the willing... and even the unwilling. Devote players can reinfuse into their bodies... the less devote will need others to do it for them.

Those who are not devote, however... will have a difficult time being understood... or hearing... will not be able to be seen by other players, may not be able to see other players. A person of little devotion will even have a difficult time moving his spirit around.

Reinfusion is never a clean process. By returning to your mortal coils, you are subjegated to pain. Massive amounts of it. And although you won't die from the wound, most of the time upon reinfusion you will blackout from shock. (Since your technically still in negative hitpoints) Just your heartbeat is all you hear and maybe a strange sound of what’s going on around you washed away in some reverb... but over time you will wake up and be able to function... still a bloody wreak... still with little amounts of hit points to your name. However, to counter this, you are able to heal the body even without a spirit in it so that upon reinfusion, shock does not occur.

But the craftiest of players and even mobs know about this spirit crap.. and intentionally desecrate your body to prevent reinfusion. Again, devote players will have protection from such descecration while less devote ones won't. Particularly devious players will carry your body off to a well-guarded location. Either way, when this happens, your gonna need a buddy to put you back together again.

Certain spells will exist that can resurrect you (which binds your soul to your body no matter where in the world your soul is as long as all parts of your body are present) or reconstruct you (as long as a single part of your body is around with your soul, your body can be reformed)

Your body will rot over time and when that happens, you will have no parts left to cast Reconstruct on. This leaves you with two options left, one of them being Resurgence. Resurgence requires a group to cast and will recreate the body as long as the spirit is near. This will be an expensive process.

Since it appears that spirit is more or less a "form" instead of a play-state, you’re probably wondering: What balances it out this spirit freedom?

The fact that spirits can be targeted by several spells: Binding, Imprisonment, Banishment, and Eradication.

Binding makes the spirit unable to move, speak (except to their immediate vicinity), or use spirit abilities.

Imprisonment puts the soul into a special object in which the spirit cannot communicate or interact with the real world in anyway. Once either the object is broken or the spell is reserved, the spirit is free.

Banishment sends the spirit to a random location in the world, even totally unexplored terrain that NO ONE has been to before.

Eradication is the biggest threat. It requires rare materials and a group to cast, but once performed, the soul is completely and irreversibly destroyed. No undo button.

The catch to these spirit spells is that they are location sensitive. They must be runes drawn at non-movable locations. Devote spirits will have greater resistance to these effects while less devote ones will not.

Of course, because of this system, priests will be important to keep players alive. However, as oppose to their normal damage/mass-mob controller role in games, Necromancers will be greatly responsible for helping players recover from death since they can speak with the dead, locate corpses, detect spirits, cast these spirit damning spells, and generally manipulate soulless containers in many different helpful ways.

Permadeath is possible via eradication. Its also possible if no one knows Resurgence and your corpse is completely destroyed. The only protection that you control is through devotion of your deity. This simply adds another layer of immersion. And if you are completely destroyed and unable to come back… then there is always the Rebirth option: Your spirit is transferred to a new body (new stats, new looks, even new gender) but your skills are kept. However, they suffer considerable problems since they are operating under the context of your old body and haven’t gotten the hang of this new one. (Probably something like a 75% temporary skill loss)

In the end, this is just a detailed explanation of alternatives for death in a MMORPG that add another layer of experience to the game.