Permadeath would work best in a game based more on skill and less on leveling. FPS type combat, for instance, would work better than traditional stat-based MMO combat. Players who play longer will acquire better weapons and gear, and you could still have some skills or atributes that increase over time, but the most important thing is skill at using the weapons of the game. Since this is a real life thing, it carries over from one character to the next. If your character dies, you can start a new one, and, if you are good at the game, you can start fighting difficult monsters immediately without replaying the newbie quests.

Another useful thing would be to have a changing world so that when people start a new character after dying they don't have to go through the same quests and story-lines again.

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Original post by martiandragonyou can start fighting difficult monsters immediately without replaying the newbie quests.

Interesting point, redoing newbie quest can be very annoying if its the same old things over again. That doesn't discourage everyone, but it would be nice if the journey did not have to be the same every time.

Also, skills are an important part of most RPG's. Without it you don't have character development and you would not have a very customized character either. That is one of things that I think all RPG's need to advance futher. The more custom a player's character is, the more they can feel like they own that character. RPG's where everyone is a carbon copy of the same template are lame.

Anyway, skill should be a great factor any well designed game gives the advantage to the most skillful with the best tactics. However, without character leveling its just another action game, not an RPG.

Also, in most RPG's players are encouraged to create more than one character so they have to do those same newbie stuff over again anyway. Creating new characters from scratch is an important part of most MMORPGS so requiring it after a permadeath isn't that great of a new burden.

Perma-death is cool if and only if it's skill based. There's nothing more that I hate than when I'm playing Diablo II Hardcore and I can't hit someone because they have high resistance. What, I can't kill them because they have armor that absorbs damage? How stupid.

It's only good if the player killing system is good. If you can legitamently kill a character by using skill and tactics, then I support it. (Armor does play a role, but that's where levels would come in... only being able to fight characters at close to your level, or some other excellent system.) However, if the character with the best armor always wins, then there's no point in playing.

Massive-war

(There's no better feeling then leveling up your character and killing another, knowing you spent time to take someone else's away. Horrible as it sounds, that's what drives my fun factor in games)

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. It was only when I found out how to bypass permadeath that Rogue lost its luster.

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.

A game featuring permadeath will need to give a player tools to program his avatar to deal with technical glitches. if (status == disconnect && health < baseHealth/2) run away;

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Original post by massive-war Perma-death is cool if and only if it's skill based. There's nothing more that I hate than when I'm playing Diablo II Hardcore and I can't hit someone because they have high resistance. What, I can't kill them because they have armor that absorbs damage? How stupid. It's only good if the player killing system is good. If you can legitamently kill a character by using skill and tactics, then I support it. (Armor does play a role, but that's where levels would come in... only being able to fight characters at close to your level, or some other excellent system.) However, if the character with the best armor always wins, then there's no point in playing. Massive-war (There's no better feeling then leveling up your character and killing another, knowing you spent time to take someone else's away. Horrible as it sounds, that's what drives my fun factor in games)

I think permadeath should not be a factor in PKing. That could easily lead to abuse.

*edit*

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Original post by T1Oracle However, peramanently killed characters should be able to create new characters that inherit the wealth of the fallen character. They don't need to get the same levels again, but the player should not lose everything.

I just thought of another good permadeath idea. For certain events of permadeath the player could be rewarded with a key to a chest that will be given to the next new character from that player. The key will open a chest in some very high level area. That way they have to regain their levels before they can get to the reward (the contents of the chest). That will allow you to grant the player a high level reward without ruining the balance of player levels within the game. This could also be used as a way to opening up a different path of newbie quests so the player can level up with a different experience the next time around.

What about giving characters a real lifespan of four months or something? Then the character wouldn't die at level 60 and the character is whatever the player makes of it.

The family idea is good. 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.

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Original post by T1Oracle I think permadeath should not be a factor in PKing. That could easily lead to abuse.

What kind of abuse do you fear it will introduce?

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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.

But abuse is fun. Pking is why I played MMO's. It's just the fact that you spent all this time training and now you're better than most people you're level. You now have the opportunity to massacre people and take their stuff.

That's what made old Runescape so fun.

Massive-war

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Original post by massive-war But abuse is fun. Pking is why I played MMO's. It's just the fact that you spent all this time training and now you're better than most people you're level. You now have the opportunity to massacre people and take their stuff.

And they now have the opportunity to fight back, and kill the player killers.

I would refer you to this thread.

I could see the idea of having kids in games leading to all kinds of trouble. Focusing just on the in game ones, say two players have a kid, which gets to inherit that kid if their player dies? I think the game would end up with players making babies almost constantly, or as near as the game would allow.

If you do allow perma-death I think you'd really need to come down hard on pkers. Generating large bounty quests for even the first pk a player does maybe. Make it proportional to the xp difference: a level 90 player killing a level 6 gets an automatic bounty of 100000 * (90-6) xp /gold on him/her etc. Make it so that pkers can't use facilities in towns. My mmorpg experiences have been ruined by pkers to the point where I just can't be bothered to play them any more, I get tired of run from players 90 levels higher than me.

Refering to the thread I referenced above, rather than having kids I'd have the players power go into the weapons. Imagine a LOTR style where your power starts to possess whoever is wielding it.