Now before you start screaming bloody murder, firing up torches and shouldering pitchforks, I'm not talking about making a game around permadeath. I'm not talking about FFA PvP, which is a completely seperate subject. I'm not talking about forcing anyone to play permadeath. I'm talking about permadeath in and of itself.
People tend to get irrationally excited whenever the term permadeath gets brought up. If you're a permadeath player and you mention this in the forum, you'll immediately get flamed, lectured on how it'll never work, called on to explain your heresy, and so on and so forth. Ultimately, it boils down to a question of values in regards to the games we play. Do you value the journey, or the destination.
Most permadeath players have been there and back again. They've got a character, or more, to the level cap and end game. They've seen the raids and battlegrounds. They're intimately familiar with the entire skill tree and gear progression of one or more character classes. To put it bluntly, they're bored and they want the game to be challenging again.
Unlike single player games, you can't just up the difficulty level for more challenge in an MMORPG. There's always speed running, but that's really just a recap of what they did the first, second, third, or possibly more times through. You're basically confined to permadeath, or finding a new game.
The "normal" MMORPG gamer is more about just getting to the level cap as quickly as possible. They don't like setbacks of any kind. They don't want to waste any time that they spend playing. Although, if you don't want to waste time then why would you be playing a game? They also don't want to see their progress lost to lag or disconnects.
And that's all fine. No one is asking the "normal" player to change. No one is really asking the games to change either. In fact, no one is asking for anything. Theres a pretty good chance that you've met or played with a permadeath player and didn't even know it. Why? Because it's a choice that doesn't require the direct intervention of anyone else.
Not that I would object to a permadeath server or a checkbox on the character creation screen labeled "auto-delete on death." But those things are hardly required. I can always just delete my character when it's his/her time.
I really don't understand why other people care. The name gets freed up on deletion. It helps the economy since all of the character's money and gear gets deleted with them. And it's not like anyone is being forced to play permadeath.
Maybe they just don't like the idea of people making up their own rules...
User Comments
i agree completly
If you want permadeath why not delete your character after you die? There is no need to make any ruleset with permadeath when you can do it yourself right now in any game. Why does no one do this? The reason no one does is because they want everyone to be subjected to the rules. They want the satisfaction of permanently killing someones character.
wrong. I know of three people, besides myself, that delete characters when they die.
One of them is a level 70 druid in WoW who has never raided or pvp'd but he has never died.
I have a level 52 right now that has never died and she is a priest most people want in a raid.
I pick my raids as if she might die if I make a bad choice, instead of just jumping at any pug that offers... like it was real to her. it's called Role Play... not that "me tooeth" crap.
OoInfiniteOo, Did you actually read the blog or did you just read the title and decide to make yourself look stupid.
READ what I said and THINK about how you respond before you comment.
I can think of a few people's characters I'd like to permadeath but that's another topic.
I've always found it amusing that the worst game ever released had the best concept for permadeath. Mourning Realms of Krel, may the developers rot in the hell of mediocrity, was to have an inheritance system that allowed people to not only choose permadeath as a playing option but choose when to take the risk and and allowed you to retain some of your posessions. It had a hard time limit on character life which is a bad idea but the rest of it was pretty clever.
PD servers are always welcome in my book even if you don't ask for them. I would never play there myself. But heck, why should I care if peoples play there? You enjoy the game, more money, more subs, all cool with me.
Might need a game with 1 million+ subs for the server, but heck, whatever the minimum amount of subs is to have enought population for this one to be viable, make it so. Maybe lower the XP grind...
Anyway, tons of fun guys...and you prolly better not group me...I like to take risks from time to time...so if I am in a berserk mode and you are playing PD yourself...hehehe.
I've played on PD servers before like Starport where there is a limited lifespan or HAZE (NWN2) which was ironman PD. Really enjoyed the way it was implemented on the hardcore Starport server. As a matter of fact, it was the BEGINNERS server. They reset/clear everyones chaarcters to even out the playing field
Read Shadowbane will be doing a reset as well. not too bad of dea for pvp servers
One comment-
"Unlike single player games, you can't just up the difficulty level for more challenge in an MMORPG."
Well in City of Heroes you can increase the difficulty level for missions actually.
Totally agree with the jimmy_Scythe, I would not have a problem if every MMORPG gave us the option or even a server would be fine, don't see why pepole make such a big scary fuss about it, I mean it's not like this is something new being added into a game, permadeath has been around for ages.
althou I can see a problem with PD players and non PD players playing in the same group or team, that could get an argument happening ingame. diffrent tactics used by PD players would be diffrent from the non PD players.
There's an MMO in development now (they just got out of pre-production), called Exanimus. They plan to have Permadeath servers along with regular servers.
I like that inheritance plan fro perma death. That would be sweet.
See I think perma-death would work fine in a game that didn't have too much verticle stratification.
Compare WoW to classic UO.
In UO you could macro yourself up to 4-5x GM in a days worth of play time, easily. 24 hours, probably a lot less.
But in WoW even the best speed levelers can get to level 60-70 in what, 5-6 days play time?
So you've played a character for 30 hours and they die, it's sad, you are doing PD so you reroll. Not too big of a loss right?
Imagine the same character but you've put in 100 hours, 200 hours? Suddently that loss is a lot more severe.
I think PD is a cool idea and if that's your cup of tea then by all means, go for it. It's just not for me. I really like the advancement / achievement aspect of modern MMORPGs, so PD would really frustrate me.
Why do you need a PD server or option when you can just delete your character. The fact is PD'ers want other people to play along with them. Otherwise they would all just delete their characters when they died and this article would be moot.
I like the idea of permadeath on some levels. I would like the option of having a server dedicated to it because I think you would get groups of people who actually care and pay attention to what they are doing (at least in theory, in reality there'd probably be some jerk on there making character specifically to get others killed).
Of course, my mains would probably be on the regular servers, but I would make characters and play on the PD server as well. Just to do something different. I think MMO's should encourage people to do more than rush to cap out their character level.
Fluff content such as housing, RP servers, and potentially PD servers could add a lot of depth, replayability, and excitement to a game.
"Why do you need a PD server or option when you can just delete your character."
You''re not geitting it. A risk you can fudge isn't really a risk. Once you agree to permadeath there can't be any possible method of going back or it isn't permadeath. That's a key concept though YOU have to AGREE beforehand. Imposing permadeath is a massive failure. Just as inposing PvP is a massive failure. Just as imposing PvE is a massive failure. People have to want to engage in ythose activities, or at least tolerate them, for it to work. People won't spend time, or monry, doing things they don't enjoy if there's no reward. For a permadeath player the risk is itself the reward.
permadeath is the ultimate. Imposing PVE, Imposing PVP, none of that holds a candle to PD. On a roleplaying server if you get PD'ed thats it. You cant make a new avatar and say you're his son.
sure you can tell them on the forums but not ingame. PD is the ultimate. IT might be ultimately stupid or ultimately stupid but imposing any other ruleset usually is nothing like PD
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