At the risk of trying to tap an already exhausted vein of ideas on permadeath in RPGs I'd like to try a slightly different angle on this topic...It's Not About You-- It's About The Universe Many will say that the point of playing a single player RPG is progression. Save for a minority of diehards, most of us don't want to face the chance of losing our beloved character partly because of emotional attachment but (I suspect anyway) mainly because being "deleveled" amounts to the tedium of starting over. But what if advancement was split in some ratio between the character and the game world such that the game world's advancement took preeminence? That is, what if your character's progression paled in comparison to the changes that character could make in the game world? Obviously this wouldn't be your standard RPG where you brawn up until you can kill a dozen hydras in one hit. That character you care a lot about because you've spent a great deal of time making them what they are. Combat and the chance of random death, as has been well discussed before, would have to be manageable and even minimized. What I'm more interested in is the idea of what persistent changes you can accept in the face of inevitable character death (aging). I'm trying to figure out how the game world can become more important to the player than their character while trying to retain enough emotional investment in the character that the player doesn't simply throw them away. A Scenario: Shaken, Not Stirred Here's a scenario: You're James Bond in an open world RPG. As James Bond, you have a certain amount of influence. Your charm gets you past barriers and your skills give you pull within British Intelligence. Bond doesn't die, no matter how many death defying situations he faces. But Bond also fails, including getting captured, losing valuable information and even losing allies and equipment. He even pisses off his superiors. In a typical game, especially an RPG, these situations amount to game over and are (often frustrating) causes for restarting and replaying what you've already seen. But what if the world was more open and fluid and you had a limited time to accomplish your goals? What if, at all levels of the game, what mattered was beating down the bad guys, stopping world shattering plots and leaving your mark on the game world in some subtle or overt fashion? If you failed, you pay some resource penalty, your foes advance, go to ground or alter their strategy. The game world persists and progresses, and it's up to you to ensure that progression is to your liking. Bond, Conan, Joe Sixpack... Whatever... This could work not just for heroic types. What if you're a more normal character? There's less pressure and expectation to be heroic, yet you still have universe changing things to do. One scenario I can see would be building something the world needs to make it a better place. Maybe because you found a fort there are less bandits in an area. Or maybe because you gather the materials needed for a school powerful ally wizards roam the map. Perhaps you build a trade station in space and radically improve the economy of Earth, generating a well heeled Navy that comes to help when you call. What I'm wondering about is whether this is enough to accept losing a character and how much investment you can tolerate in that character knowing he or she is going to die. What make the accrued benefits enough? Anyway, I know this is well trod territory that even I've posted about before, but I'm trying to see if there's something different here.

I think that it can be done as long as you give the player something that is there own that they can hold onto. For example if they are helping progress the economy of earth then give them a piece of earth or some other planet. Give them a town or something that they can call their own.

IMO a space based MMO would be well suited for this philosophy because it is easy to create a lot of land to hand out.

IMO the biggest problem with perma death besides the feeling of loss is that it leads to players not taking risks. This is the worst thing that can happen to a game that wants players to be PVPing which most likely involves risk and the death of the player (unless you have a loss system that doesn't involve death like an escape pod).

What you're describing already exists... it's called "real life".

I don't think most gamers want to experience perma-death in the games they play. Even if their character is changing the world. You're bringing up philosophical questions about one's purpose in life.

Does it make death easier knowing that you changed the world in some way? That totally depends on the person. If given the option to live forever but not really impact the world much, or live a short lifespan and make an impact on the world, I would think most of society would pick the live forever option.

Also, the idea your describing seems like an epic feat of development. Allowing players to totally change the game world requires some serious programming and content development.

From what I've gathered from all of your threads, you're basically wanting to make "real life" the videogame. Which I think is absolute nonsense. People play games to escape the real world.

Realism does work in games depending on what the gamer wants, war simulators usually aim for realism because that is what the players wanted.

Back to the topic, perm death is only acceptable only in cases where player's perceived losses are not heavy or compensated (if not totally at least partially) by the returns they get back for the sacrifice.

It is also better to make it optional, as players do not like the notion of losing everything they have worked for.

I think this is a really cool idea, but you have to make sure players can make an impact on the world with a relatively small time investment. I think Wurm Online delves into this idea a little bit, since you can build buildings and terraform the terrain, but it has pretty limited appeal due to the incredibly tedious nature of influencing the world in any way.

The "Sims" is often called a life simulator, and yet many people choose to play that rather than spending more time in their "real" lives. I think people really like the freedom that games give them to not only impact a world, but to do so without any risk to their physical person.

I think what you are suggesting is something along what the Sims Online SHOULD have been -- take everything people liked about the Sims, and add in the addicting social factor. I think that it mainly failed, though, because of the large amount of "grinding" involved in doing anything in Sims Online.

A lot of MMO's rely on grind mainly to add longevity to an otherwise rather bland game. The longer someone is playing your game, the longer they're paying you. Also, the more time someone invests in your game, the less likely they are to quit playing, because they will feel like they wasted all that time if they do. This makes a lot of sense from a business point of view, but you have to sacrifice a lot of mainstream/casual appeal.

I think you could really get the best of both worlds by including grind in a game, but offering diminishing returns for every extra hour you spend playing the game. I think you could do this by allowing people to set up MACROS for their characters. If you were to do this, people would be able to change the world in big ways, with relatively little time investment. You could spend a few hours laying out plans for a building, city, fortress, whatever, and log in occasionally over the next few days to watch your character building, digging, moving, etc. in real time.

For those that really like to grind, they could sit there and do the tasks themselves to defend themselves and their project *if* they get attacked. Or to be able to make changes to the design in real time, if the initial design isn't looking as nice as it did in the planning mode, saving a bit of construction time.

Thus, *if everything goes well* casual players can feel like they're making a big contribution to the world, while still giving hardcore players a reason to stay logged in and involved in their characters.

What I thought about once was the idea of a scifi game where you start off with an outdated cloning machine and try to raise to prominence in a worn torn galaxy. Your character can be killed off fairly easily but if you do die then a new clone is generated and you continue on. The idea being to build a faction through accumulating wealth and influence. New technology like cybernetics and genetic engineering would allow you to grow more powerful host bodies for future incarnations. Likewise a replicator would create any equipment you wanted if you had the pattern and enough requisition points.

The idea to build up something larger than a single character and make both success and failure interesting.

Hi,

if your character had a family you could switch to one of the other family members. This way one would try to create a big family. And also you have the impact on the rest of the family.

But this kind of RPG is mainly for things like 'Guilde 2' where you don't play each day but still have a character.

Just my 2 cents

I don't get if this is an idea for a single player RPG or a MMORPG, and if you can play again in the world you have modified.

If so, every life you could impersonate a random character ( from a lumberjack to an adventurer ) withing a small community, and in your life you have to produce the most resources you can, helping the community growing up and to have more tools in your next life.
So as an adventurer you'd try to get as much gold as possible, as an ironsmith you'd try to forge the strongest weapons in case your next life is an adventurer's, etc.
Of course in every life you should have to "level" up your character from the start, helping him to start the basics. But since the general level of the town increases continuosly, playing the same character two times would be a different experience - example, in the beginning of the game, if the player impersonate a lumberjack, he would have to learn how to cut trees with an axe; after some times, he would have to learn how to cut trees with a chain saw, since the village can now afford this type of equipment.

Also, if this is a MMORPG, a thing that MUST be in is a sign on every thing the player has created with his name on it. It is very rewardful knowing that anyone that will use that thing after you created it will know your name.

Thank you all for the feedback. I just wanted to add a bit to shape what I'm imagining and see how folks react:

The simplest way I can see putting this idea together would be to allow you to make multiple characters, as is common in many single-player RPGs. The difference would be that their lifespans would be limited and changes made to the game universe by one character could be experienced by another. The characters wouldn't be playable at the same time and wouldn't be able to directly share resources and wouldn't be related by narrative in any way.

What issues might this cause? I can see it being abused in terms of leveling and role-playing, as the player might have a powerful character donate items for a weaker. But honestly that might be a benefit, as it would give all the lower level items you encounter as you level up a purpose.

I think it also would undermine role-playing, especially if the narrative has anything to do with you being the Chosen One (tm). But narrative is pretty flexible.

What about benefits? You could create a higher level fighter character to destroy threats that would have affected a lower level character. (Let's assume, however, that threats regroup and respond).

What if equipment was recoverable? If you lost a powerful item, which then fell in the hands of an NPC (amounting at the least to a location change) would it be interesting to go on a quest to recover it?

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Original post by Stangler I think that it can be done as long as you give the player something that is there own that they can hold onto. For example if they are helping progress the economy of earth then give them a piece of earth or some other planet. Give them a town or something that they can call their own.

Giving them real-estate is a very powerful psychological incentive, I think. It could serve as an in-game and meta-game type of reward-- for instance, in-game maybe having your own space station is becomes a spot for free fuel and repairs. In terms of meta-gaming, it might cause the player to strategically assess the map and decide where they want to help the most-- say Earth or it's new (but slightly rebellious) colony on Alpha Centauri.

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IMO a space based MMO would be well suited for this philosophy because it is easy to create a lot of land to hand out.

Agreed although an MMO is out of my league.

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IMO the biggest problem with perma death besides the feeling of loss is that it leads to players not taking risks.

For ships I think escape pods would be the minimum requirement to avoid death in space. Maybe I could use insurance as a money sink and way of restoring lost equipment.

Since it's science fiction maybe you pay to download your personality backup or maybe there's some other death managing technology. Then again, if you have a stable of characters you can play maybe this isn't necessary or even wise.