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If the game is MMO and the character is in a party then the whole responsibilty falls in the hands of the party members, i.e. they are the ones who should take the character to a resurrect point (be it a priest, a cinic or something else). Otherwise the game just stops for some period of time and the character finds him/herself at the nearest resurrect point with the (wierd) explanation that someone found them and took them there (well there could be actual corpse collector NPCs that wander about and look for dead heroes or something similar). In single player games there isn't much point in making the player wait, unless of couse you want to punish them =]

I think, that this approach will interrupt the game flow too much. Most group based RPGs already got the option to revive someone, so why let them drag your corpse to the next resurrection point just to start the dungeon over again ? :)

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I like the idea of the player is only resurrected if the world wants them to be. If a level 1 adventure wanders into a cave and dies no one will be concerned. If that adventurer helps out a nearby village beforehand they may be worried and send a party to retrieve and treat them. Of course if that adventurer wandered into the level 99 cave of doom the townspeople would consider their own safety and leave them to die. So your reputation in the world would have to keep up the danger you wander into.

This one is a cool variation of permadeath. You are always in danger to permanently die, but at certain occasions you are lucky enough to continue. This could be some townspeople who rescue your life or a diety who thinks that your life is worthy enough to be saved this time. Still, the danger of loosing your life permanently isn't bearable by many people.

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Essentially there's no "death" at all, and certainly no concept of loading from a save when you die. Even in combat, if you're getting beat up too much, princess pushes the baddies away from you temporarily.

Ahh... this one is an other nice option: don't let the character die. But how to establish such a buddy (a princess, an angel, a dark shadow whatever) in a rpg ?

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An idea to try: your character is a parasitic, non-physical existence that gains the control of whichever creature kills your current body. Some interesting gameplay possibilities here, although the whole game would have to be designed around this very fact.

The core idea is good. An alternative would be, that you leave your body as ghost when dying and you get the options to take control of an other already dead creature or to respawn at the i.e. level start. I could think about gaining most of the target creatures attributes but keeping your own skills.
But as you have already mentioned, this gameplay is a game of its own :)



Although many people don't like to 'lose' something while playing, many people don't see , that loosing something is part of the thrill and atmosphere, isn't it ? When I talk about loosing, I don't mean life alone. Think about loosing experiences, game progress, ammonition, items, advantages etc. Compare it to a horror movie. If you know, that a certain character will survive how thrilling will be a threatening scene ?

--
Ashaman

Before you read the rest of this post, remember: realism sucks and can't be used in any (!!!) game. Simulators are either bad games or good games with wrong descriptions. Games = entertainment, realism in games is all about stupid restrictions and too hard (like in real life) punishments. That's not how a game must work.

So...
Punishment sucks. In C++ code: "Motivation_to_play -= Punishment;" Why would you do something when you have a high chance of being punished (and with something a lot harder than simply trying a small part of the game again)? That said, simply dying and restarting the game **very fast** after player character's death is OK. But saying that he should try to play the whole level again (with less possibilities and lower stats) because of one simple mistake is really, really, REALLY, stupid. :)

As this is not an action game, it can't suffer from action breakers (if someone wants, I can tell more about them), but the game should keep the player alive as long as possible if it detects that player is really trying to play the game. Killing him on one simple mistake also does not help/encourage the player to experiment with the game, to try using different techniques on enemies.

That's all I can say for now and I hope you learn from this. :)


P.S. When I was a child, I had lots of ideas about games. Most of them were hungry for realism. But as I thought a bit more about that, it was clear to me that realism makes the game almost non-interactive, much different from good games of that time (and that means bad), much more punishing and annoying than good, non-realistic games. I hope you'll get to the same conclusion soon, because that's the only way to make good and really fun games.


EDIT: Oh here's my idea about dying as part of the game. The more violent and long fight, the more experience points player gets if he dies. The players usually are frustrated anyway because of the things they did not achieve there. Let's make their trips to the mysterious islands worth something. :D

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that loosing something is part of the thrill and atmosphere, isn't it

Even if it is as you say, the atmosphere is not part of the gameplay. In action games, you get playing experience when you lose. In RPGs, there's nothing like that.

[Edited by - snake5 on September 22, 2009 9:34:19 AM]

In 'Prey' you can never die, you will be teleported to spirit world and will have to kill some spirits to regain yourself. I think this idea is good but game implemented it badly. It was just too easy to come to life will full health again and again. Rather than that it would be nice if player have to spend some time in real world by consuming other life forms. While as a spirit he will be invincible, but he will have slow build up enough spirit energy to get his physical form again. And he take damage, his stock of spirit energy also take damage. While in spirit form he should have limited power.

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Original post by sauyadav In 'Prey' you can never die, you will be teleported to spirit world and will have to kill some spirits to regain yourself. I think this idea is good but game implemented it badly. It was just too easy to come to life will full health again and again. Rather than that it would be nice if player have to spend some time in real world by consuming other life forms. While as a spirit he will be invincible, but he will have slow build up enough spirit energy to get his physical form again. And he take damage, his stock of spirit energy also take damage. While in spirit form he should have limited power.

I also remember prey, it was an interesting idea, but I too think it was implemented awkwardly. Still, some inspiration there.

I just thought of this, whenever dying, you are faced with a challenge: maybe a mini-game, maybe a SMALL quest, or something quick, and if you fail this challenge, you lose a very SMALL part of exp/advantages/skills/eq or whatever, but if you complete the challenge you instead gain, maybe not exp, but maybe advantages or similar.
This would give people who die an opportunity to gain something from dying.

For a game designed with dying as a core gameplay element, I'd make the main character an immaterial being. His body is constructed from the remains of whatever is dead around him when he chooses to create a new body. Destroying your body to absorb new bodies would be how the character grows in power. However, whenever something dies, it loses some of its ability. If you build your character to be a fire magic user by absorbing fire magic using creatures and you venture in some ice cavern and keep dying, your fire power will diminish over time because you lose some power every time you die. You replace it with ice powers, but your fire power grows weaker since your body dies and loses power. That would create some tension to not die because you really need strong fire powers to kill the ice cavern boss while at the same time allowing you to carry on if you die. It would also speed up gameplay because players will not have to kill themselves and regenerate every time they kill something to be sure they are the most powerful because they will lose power while doing so.

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Before you read the rest of this post, remember: realism sucks and can't be used in any (!!!) game.

Realism in games is a current hype, indeed, and this is not my goal. I think, that games should be less realistic and more entertaining. Btw. it is not my goal to justify permadeath, I'm looking for alternative to make "dying" as part of the game like in planescape torment or prince of persia.

@sauyadav:
Prey seems to introduce some kind of mini game to respawn. Is there still the option to load/save at will ? Will you "gain" something from dying, like knowledge or other properties ?

@Tiblanc:
Well, I thought about something similar. In my version you have to choose some god to serve. When you do to his liking you will start gaining his favour. With increaing favour you will get special powers until you die. The god will always protect you, but you will loose the current favour and gained special powers. The idea is, that long lifing will be rewarded, but dying not punished.



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Here's an other approach: let's look at a football match. Two competitors who want to gain the cup, but only one will get it. The looser will not be punished, but the cup will be gone for some time.

Let's try to transfer this "match" to a rpg. The competitors are the player and the environment, the goal is i.e. some artefact. In most rpgs you just have endless tries to get the artefact, but in a football like match, you only got one "session" to get it or leave it.

The environment will gain scores when the player dies (and get resurrected), the player get scores for progress. Finally there must be some kind of limit (i.e. player died X times, player needs more than 1 hour) to stop the match. When the match ends, either the player got the artefact or the artefact is gone (someone else has stolen it, the treasury collaps etc.).

It's clear, that the artefact shouldn't be THE artefact, but at least it should be of some value.

--
Ashaman

I have one more idea (it's a minigame about ghosts, maybe a half-rip-off from the ones mentioned here but I'll post it anyway):
When the player character dies, he will spawn a ghost which runs around and scares enemies. The more enemies you scare, the more health you gain back. That's how dying can also be planned and used as a special weapon. :)
You can also extend on that idea and place the ghost so the enemy is between a ghost and a wall, when the ghost scares him, he'll run into that wall. That adds even more health than a basic "scare move". :D

I disagree with the idea that death and especially permanent death have no place in modern games.

For the current MMORPG style epitomised by World of Warcraft, permanent death is not going to work. Death is an accepted part of your gaming experience and a way of telling you that you overextended yourself beyond your abilities.

But this does not mean that permanent death will not work in an online RPG. After all, the same people who gave us WoW also gave us Iron Man mode for the Diablo series. The scope was smaller than WoW and the enemies scaled to match your level, but the fact remains that it was not meant to be easy to complete the game.

Permadeath works, as with any other game mechanic, when the risk is appropriate for the reward. If you know the risks, which you should do by the time you have a legacy to lose, then you can choose whether to take them.

And with this mortality comes the chance to carve a legend. You can be Jim-Bob, Scourge of Rats, who played it safe and got to level 80 quietly, or you can be Llorgob of Teliot, who killed the great wyrm Grognard and was last seen entering the tomb of the spider-king.

If every encounter could mean death, then killing a major boss is an achievement borne of grit and determination. Suddenly, losing the party cleric is a major event rather than a short wait for her to respawn. People will raise a glass in the tavern to fallen comrades, or sometimes even statues. Each death makes the successes more meaningful.

Or maybe I am a roleplayer and a romantic...

I can think of several old style rpg games that only gave you 3 lives and after that it was game over. Actually, I know of one game that only gave you one life! I think it was called Lord of the sword for the Sega master system.

Of course in those days you actually had to be skilled enough to make it to the next level. Games would force you to become good and you would be rewarded with more content. The problem is that if you made a game like that today most people would get very angry and give it low a reviews.