Sure. We've played D&D, and it's completely different from computer gaming in this regard. You mentioned it yourself. There's a human GM, who actually gives a crap about the playerbase, and partymembers who can speak in complete sentances.

You make the decisions that effect your death. Death in MMORPGs is often not due to player choice, but lag, PKers, ignorance (oh, what's in here? A dragon? *splut*), or ineffective teammates.

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Original post by Telastyn Sure. We've played D&D, and it's completely different from computer gaming in this regard. You mentioned it yourself. There's a human GM, who actually gives a crap about the playerbase, and partymembers who can speak in complete sentances. You make the decisions that effect your death. Death in MMORPGs is often not due to player choice, but lag, PKers, ignorance (oh, what's in here? A dragon? *splut*), or ineffective teammates.

Current mainstream RPG deaths are caused by ignorance and ineffective teammates. PKing isn't that much of an issue since nothing happens when you pk, in a permadeath world people wouuld be more inclined to travel in groups. See UO and how you lost all your gear when you died so it was PK heaven.

If you had permadeath I'm sure you'd eliminate the aspect of ignorance, no one would just run into a room without first knowing how to know what's inside. If you didn't and did die to said Dragon, well damn you deserve it.

Permadeath would also enforce how important every part of the chain in a team is important. Because if the priest sucks and wipes the team, well he dies too. So ineffective teammates could cause you to die, in that case choose your friends wisely.

PKers... well I don't know what to tell you about this one. Griefing will always be in games no matter how hard you try and iron it out. You could either disable pking or maybe even make pkers unable to permakill someone. I don't know this is just an idea that is thrown around.

"There's a human GM, who actually gives a crap about the playerbase, and partymembers who can speak in complete sentances." I told you in the example above that the GM told us he'd kill us if we were going to be stupid and take on those 25 goons. We took the chance of dying permanently. I don't see how this doesn't apply in an MMO. If you see 25 creeps and decide to fight them go for it, atleast you know what tactics they'll use (unlike that DnD session where the orcs weren't using some simple AI, they were smart!). If you die you die and think "damn I was dumb to try that". If you survive you can brag about it.

And then there's lag. I really don't feel like getting into huge details about this, but if you're going to play a game with permadeath, don't play on a 56k modem. Heck there could even be some kind of system that would log a user's ping and they could define what is considered unplayable lag. Say when you died you had x msec where x is considered unplayable. The system could determine that you died to unavoidable circumstances and let you live as if nothing happened or with penalties.

Right, so is being forced to: travel in groups [to avoid PKers], read through a walkthrough [to avoid walking into a dragon's den], interview for competant/high level teammates [to avoid death by sucky teammates], and remove PvP althogether [to avoid PK issues]...

fun?

If not, why add death penalties?


Re: 25 creeps - Ideally, MMORPGs won't continue to be completely braindead and creeps will actually attack rather than waiting to get aggro'd. The difference is that the GM gives you a choice and AI orcs won't. Further, D&D allows your party to sit and discuss wether or not to engage the orcs, and MMORPGs don't. One overzealous noob, and you've got everyone angry with you.

Re: lag - Right, because the userside modem has much to do with over subscribed servers and the hundreds of miles of cabling between the user and the server. Wonderful, so I can avoid the death penalty by having my other server ping flood me. Good plan.

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Original post by Telastyn Right, so is being forced to: travel in groups [to avoid PKers], read through a walkthrough [to avoid walking into a dragon's den], interview for competant/high level teammates [to avoid death by sucky teammates], and remove PvP althogether [to avoid PK issues]... fun? If not, why add death penalties? Re: 25 creeps - Ideally, MMORPGs won't continue to be completely braindead and creeps will actually attack rather than waiting to get aggro'd. The difference is that the GM gives you a choice and AI orcs won't. Further, D&D allows your party to sit and discuss wether or not to engage the orcs, and MMORPGs don't. One overzealous noob, and you've got everyone angry with you. Re: lag - Right, because the userside modem has much to do with over subscribed servers and the hundreds of miles of cabling between the user and the server. Wonderful, so I can avoid the death penalty by having my other server ping flood me. Good plan.

25 creeps.. You have the CHOICE to attack them or avoid them. CHOOSE how you'll deal with it. If you're only two, maybe charging them isn't such a good idea? Right?

The lag issue, dude that was just some brain fart idea I put there for discussion. Lag can't be avoided, it's kind of one of those "deal with it" things.

I never said you had to remove pvp, you assumed that. I gave a few ideas on how to avoid permadeath through pking. Travelling in a group to avoid dying is a lot more fun then travelling alone, but hey, it's your choice!

What is this about walkthroughs? Is it so hard to look ahead before you charge? I mean damn, when is there a dragon standing RIGHT behind a door? You don't need to do five hours of research to know what's coming ahead. Heck, if an NPC says "A dragon lives in a cave to the north" guess what, there's a dragon in a cave to the north, you've been warned.

And about the teammates. If you're a high level character who has avoided death so far you're probably competent enough to be in a group. So if you're a level 50 character and you're looking for a competent level 50 priest for a quest... well if you find one it's a pretty good indication that he has survived previous quests in his other groups (meaning he's okay to group with).

edit: Didn't notice this argument:"D&D allows your party to sit and discuss wether or not to engage the orcs"

Counter: I don't know which mmo you've played but all groups I've been with strategize some way or another. Either through calling out targets or having specific tasks per player.

And another note: When we introduce the idea of permadeath in a game, you can't just take WoW and add permadeath and be like "Wow that would suck" you have to realize that the game would be modeled to fit with the issue.

Edit2: Hmmm I reread this post and I feel aggressivity in it. Sorry I didn't mean to post it that way, I'm just carried away in the idea and like anyone I like to defend ideas :P

no offense intended but it appears to me to be a "half pregnant" idea.

im a perma-death advocate so i have no inate resistance to the idea as a whole, but you're not talking about permadeath, you're talking about renaming your character and losing some experience when you die.

the beauty of permadeath is that the risk you take is very real, therefore the reward can be equally spectacular. each step you take to minimize the sting of death requires an equal minimization of the reward.


this isnt to say that for the end user that death == reroll with no alternatives, but unless you completely divorce the end users ability to play his toon by death then you dont have permadeath, you have a squishy in between. it is possible that the in between has its benefits, but it is guaranteed that it will not have the full scale benefits that perma-death brings.

simple examples:

_high level avatars are skilled avatars.

_griefers can be dealt with on a permanent basis.

_every battle carries the future of your avatar with it.

_the role playing possibilities of player funerals.

_a changing of the guard as high level players are slain and newer players take their place.


your solution allows none of these. here's the issue. when i compiled my short list here i didnt discern your implementation and try to point out what permadeath allows and your implementation doesnt. i simply listed some advantages of permadeath. thus your system isnt technically permadeath.

respectfully.

Permadeath, in its purest form, does not and cannot fit the paradign of current MMO games. It is not compatible with the games' structure or the players' mindsets. You'd have to reduce the grind from a ten-month process to something that could be done in relatively short order, or else a player who loses a year-old character would be unwilling to restart, and permanent character death becomes permanent player desertion, permanent account cancellation and permanent your-ass-in-the-poorhouse.

Abstractimmersion's "squishy in between", though it may seem chickenshit to PnP old-schoolers, is as close as we'll get with the current game generation. The continuum isn't between "Superhardcore Perma-death" and "Lego Starwars respawn ten feet farther along in the level", it's between "Grind for months and become uber," which is the MMO system, and "Play and die and start over all the time, with no real repurcussions because you've got nothing invested in an individual character," which is seen primarily in FPS and other action games.

In the MMO paradigm, there's a hierarchy of leetness that contributes to social stratification and community. You can't be killing off the pillars of the community like that. If the Order of the Blood Paladins is a powerful guild, and the high-ranking members die off and those players have to restart, does control of the guild go to a day-old character? Does the former guildmaster have to start over as a page, and if so does he still run the website and make administrative decisions? It would be ruin role-playing.

If you go the other way, toward character expendability, then you're looking at the PnP system, where you can "roll up" a new character any time and head out on adventures. In this system, permadeath isn't unfeasible, but you'll never have characters that last long enough to really impact society. How many "Hardcore" Diablo II characters stay on PvP servers while getting all the way through the game? If you lose one fight, just one single fight, you're totally boned, and have to start over with a club and a leather hat and no super powers. Hell no. The oldest characters would be the most cowardly, and if the game rewards sissiness, then the "community" will consist of a thousand wussies peeking suspiciously out at one another over the edges of their foxholes and occasionally building up the guts to run out and kill a mob. The game would eventually be colonized and overrun by established multip-game guilds who transfer over from other, better games.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Permadeath, in its purest form, does not and cannot fit the paradign of current MMO games. It is not compatible with the games' structure or the players' mindsets. You'd have to reduce the grind from a ten-month process to something that could be done in relatively short order, or else a player who loses a year-old character would be unwilling to restart, and permanent character death becomes permanent player desertion, permanent account cancellation and permanent your-ass-in-the-poorhouse.

no ones arguing that you can simply make EQ2 or WOW have permadeath and improve the game. the games are designed to grind not shine.

i agree you'd need to speed up the level progression. in fact you'd need to change a lot of things to make it feasible.

_you need to make the lower levels compelling since one would spend as much or more time at lower level than higher level.

_you need quests to be non repetitive or else compelling enough to be done multiple times without losing interest.

_you need a technical answer to lag deaths or a scriptable fall back system for disconnects.

_you need to make sure that the power distinction between lower levels and higher levels are bridgeable, to a degree.

_etc.

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Abstractimmersion's "squishy in between", though it may seem chickenshit to PnP old-schoolers, is as close as we'll get with the current game generation. The continuum isn't between "Superhardcore Perma-death" and "Lego Starwars respawn ten feet farther along in the level", it's between "Grind for months and become uber," which is the MMO system, and "Play and die and start over all the time, with no real repurcussions because you've got nothing invested in an individual character," which is seen primarily in FPS and other action games.

your point is debatable, but my point is simply that what hes describing isnt permadeath. notice how it overcomes the issues with permadeath and lacks some of the incentives? thats because its not permadeath, its rename your character death and regain some xps death.


take an FPS, set it in a persistent world, raise the bar for the typical death and grant the player a scaling system of power that increases as he achieves victories. grant him the ability to accumulate wealth and equipment. give him something meaningful to apply wealth to. permadeath doesnt require the throw aware character mindset.

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In the MMO paradigm, there's a hierarchy of leetness that contributes to social stratification and community. You can't be killing off the pillars of the community like that. If the Order of the Blood Paladins is a powerful guild, and the high-ranking members die off and those players have to restart, does control of the guild go to a day-old character? Does the former guildmaster have to start over as a page, and if so does he still run the website and make administrative decisions? It would be ruin role-playing.

aye, "leetness" is based on time played not skill or effectiveness. the paradigm would change from player = avatar to player with avatar. its not exactly a revolution, just a simple paradigm shift. running a guild doesnt require 10,000 hitpoints. it requires good organizational skills and social skills, and a good team of people around you.

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If you go the other way, toward character expendability, then you're looking at the PnP system, where you can "roll up" a new character any time and head out on adventures. In this system, permadeath isn't unfeasible, but you'll never have characters that last long enough to really impact society.

existing MMO are static. you can't conceivably impact society no matter how long you play. if you kill a million orcs the guy beneath you still has to face the same orcish hordes when he's level appropriate.

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How many "Hardcore" Diablo II characters stay on PvP servers while getting all the way through the game? If you lose one fight, just one single fight, you're totally boned, and have to start over with a club and a leather hat and no super powers. Hell no.

you're entrenched in the belief that the game won't be fun until you reach some uber-level, at which point it opens up. current MMO's condition you for this. if a game is compelling from beginning to end-game your club and leather hat warfare can be just as satisfying. contrary to your previous statement your level and power will determine the macro scale of your social impact.

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The oldest characters would be the most cowardly, and if the game rewards sissiness, then the "community" will consist of a thousand wussies peeking suspiciously out at one another over the edges of their foxholes and occasionally building up the guts to run out and kill a mob. The game would eventually be colonized and overrun by established multip-game guilds who transfer over from other, better games.

the highest level characters will be the most skilled and the best equipped, players who have gambled their lives and won, and walked the edge of the knife and lived to tell the tale. they will have seen things that the cowardly would never risk and their power will be suitable for their courage.

the reason you believe otherwise is the "level is king" paradigm, which current MMO's condition you to.


Heres a link to a more comprehensive opinion

There's the way it ought to be, and there's the way it is. Don't preach to me about how I'm conditioned. I'm not describing the games I like, I'm describing the games that get made and have steady fanbases. Your idea of permadeath isn't a game design, it's a pipe dream. Look at the list of revolutions you yourself cite as pre-requisites for such a system:

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i agree you'd need to speed up the level progression. in fact you'd need to change a lot of things to make it feasible. _you need to make the lower levels compelling since one would spend as much or more time at lower level than higher level. _you need quests to be non repetitive or else compelling enough to be done multiple times without losing interest. _you need a technical answer to lag deaths or a scriptable fall back system for disconnects. _you need to make sure that the power distinction between lower levels and higher levels are bridgeable, to a degree.

We're supposed to be discussing Abstractimmersion's idea, and the two of us have hijacked the thread for the sake of semantics. How about this: You ignore the word "permadeath" in this thread and I'll try not to use it anymore.

But you're right that all the tired conventions of the MMO format need to be challenged and defeated, and I think they will be. But it'll have to be a gradual process. There is, I certainly agree, a degree of conditioning, of expectations of an MMO. We expect stat-based combat, and PvP with controls, and endlessly spawning mobs, and tanking and grinding and powerlevelling and boting and GMs and loot drops and fetch missions and kill missions and minigames and a steady treadmill with exponentially more and more distant *ding*s. These need to go, and maybe some day we'll see a game that works the way you describe.

For now, I think this thread is getting close to what might be the next evolutionary step in how MMO characters operate. I'm not convinced yet, though. I think that the character death system will change only after some other major system is altered, like the quest system or the levelling system. I don't think this is the place to start. Too much risk, and the rewards are meaningless in current scenarios. The game has to be adjusted so that the rewards and enticements of a modified character destruction system can outweigh the frustration and sense of futility such a system would introduce.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage There's the way it ought to be, and there's the way it is. Don't preach to me about how I'm conditioned. I'm not describing the games I like, I'm describing the games that get made and have steady fanbases. Your idea of permadeath isn't a game design, it's a pipe dream. Look at the list of revolutions you yourself cite as pre-requisites for such a system: Quote: i agree you'd need to speed up the level progression. in fact you'd need to change a lot of things to make it feasible. _you need to make the lower levels compelling since one would spend as much or more time at lower level than higher level. _you need quests to be non repetitive or else compelling enough to be done multiple times without losing interest. _you need a technical answer to lag deaths or a scriptable fall back system for disconnects. _you need to make sure that the power distinction between lower levels and higher levels are bridgeable, to a degree. We're supposed to be discussing Abstractimmersion's idea, and the two of us have hijacked the thread for the sake of semantics. How about this: You ignore the word "permadeath" in this thread and I'll try not to use it anymore. But you're right that all the tired conventions of the MMO format need to be challenged and defeated, and I think they will be. But it'll have to be a gradual process. There is, I certainly agree, a degree of conditioning, of expectations of an MMO. We expect stat-based combat, and PvP with controls, and endlessly spawning mobs, and tanking and grinding and powerlevelling and boting and GMs and loot drops and fetch missions and kill missions and minigames and a steady treadmill with exponentially more and more distant *ding*s. These need to go, and maybe some day we'll see a game that works the way you describe. For now, I think this thread is getting close to what might be the next evolutionary step in how MMO characters operate. I'm not convinced yet, though. I think that the character death system will change only after some other major system is altered, like the quest system or the levelling system. I don't think this is the place to start. Too much risk, and the rewards are meaningless in current scenarios. The game has to be adjusted so that the rewards and enticements of a modified character destruction system can outweigh the frustration and sense of futility such a system would introduce.

Chef:
aye, im following you. you're essentially ignoring innovation and assuming a cookie cutter design with modular style changes. my point is meaningless in this context because given your premise i agree with you totally.

i still believe that a half measure, which is what is being discussed, can only be half right or half wrong. its like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

its funny i cant tell if were both just very frank or you're getting steamed :)

you admit that some of the staples have to be challenged but then scoff because that must be a predicate of another idea. im not sure i understand.


abstract- you're essentially describing an "unlocking" procedure similar to many single player games of the past, or unreal tournament as regards weapons(for example)

your idea has a lot of similarities with the "legacy" method that we've discussed here before.(i think Wavinator or Oluseyi was the original author), my problem with his idea and your own is that level will still be a direct reflection of time spent and not necessarily skill at play.

in my view this is what turns the shine into the grind. a level 50 healer could be a skilled master of his profession or a guy thats been playing a warrior for 2 years then got killed at 60.

To be meaningful, the level should be a badge of competence and skill not a reflection of time invested.


In order for this to occur the game must be very deep. with wild variations in efficiency between two like levelled players of varying skill.

Single player games accomplish this as the norm, so it is not beyond the scope of a well made MMO.


To de-barb my criticism let me say that the vast majority of pros agree that permadeath is a "Bad Idea", of which im sure you're aware.


what specific issue pushed you to eliminate a real permadeath system and consider the "unlocking" system instead?

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Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom in my view this is what turns the shine into the grind. a level 50 healer could be a skilled master of his profession or a guy thats been playing a warrior for 2 years then got killed at 60.

I think you're the one who's hung up on the level paradigm. I wouldn't actually allow this to happen in my system. If you want to create a high level priest, you have to have been a higher level priest.

I'm using "levels" basically as an example that people can understand. A skill-based system, with no or minimal focus on levels would be ideal for this sort of game.

Just another example: At 25% axe skill, and player gets "strength bonus." 20% axe skill means getting a 10% axe skill starting bonus. If the character dies, he can get 10% axe skill, so long as he has at least 6/10 strength. Creating a character would involve stat distribution, say 50 stat points spread over 10 stat catagories, each originally 1-10. The "strength bonus" carried over from previous character would be something like "spend two strength points, get one free; you can use this once."

This would be the foundation, "levels", should the even be included, would provide stat bonuses. The difference between a uber-leveled char and a low level player might be that the uber char can take 3-4 more direct axe strikes. However, an uber-level char shouldn't be able to get hit by low level strikes, he should be able to dodge them or have them be blocked by expensive armor.

I hope I'm making myself more clear. My anti-PK system comes later, as soon as folks get this.

[Edited by - abstractimmersion on March 17, 2006 10:20:20 PM]