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Originally posted by daadamo

If ever there was a game that should have permanent death for characters it is STO. (In my opinion)

Your Starfleet character would have to think of multiple different ways out of a jam than just shooting away, it would give officers a responsibility to keep crew casualties down as well as promote good roleplaying. I think that you could also have funerals for characters who die in action, sending their bodies out into space. This would be great for the game.

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I totally agree. Considering the old text MU* like Strange New Worlds, TOS, Trekmuse, DS9Muse & others, yes, especially then because in those online trek games if your character died, you were dead.
Yes, some kind of grievance was given to many chars after losing their main..

Example : Character dies after having trained a lot of skills. A % of those points that were over the standard amount of points normally allocated to a new character in a chargen, were given to their next character.
Example : Character dies with a massive amount of wealth. Their next character could be a brother or a family member who inherits this fortune.

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Originally posted by interfekter
another way they could do it is incapacitation, and if within a certain time your starfleet budies dont get you to sick bay, you die permanantely,this would re-enforce the starfleet all for one attitude.

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yar

that's exactly how it was in the text games & I bet one of my posts from months ago says pretty much what you've said & I do like that idea

A way around the problem of the character having to be re-created is an in-game chargen system.

Example : Your character dies, you no longer are in the IC (In Character) world & are moved to the OOC (Out of Character) world. You can now move around, interact with the OOC things, & what not. In the OOC world will be a character generation room. Since your character is dead & you know you are dead & do not plan to /appeal, you enter the character generator room & at this point you choose a new name, race, starting place, stats, skills, ect. After your chargen has been accepted, you are moved back to the IC world as your new character. Additional variables would check for the previous characters skills / assets & allocate to the new character appropriately.

This would make reimburcement extremely simple as the character would continue to have the same DB#.

I did forget this...

Consider your character has a certain security clearances or access to certain areas..
In my old code they are added clearance in the code & it says Name + (DB#) | Name + (DB#) in an attrib
Basically, if they use something similar & don't add the appropriate code to clear this out when the character enters a new chargen (or changes name BECAUSE of chargen) some people could find their new character w/ access to things their old had access to, which would be OOC because the new character hasn't earned that clearance yet.

An alternative would be to add a attribute?? perhaps.. on the character which is like a security clearance number which is matched in with the security systems..  Then in chargen they'd just have to reset that #.
I used to make code for security systems in bases & ships on the old text MU*s... I'm sure these programmers are way better though & will minimize the loopholes.

Another thing was, in Strange New Worlds characters could control NPC troops if their rank was high enough, of course, a new character would have a reset rank. So they could base clearances strictly on rank but that doesn't make sense because individuals would be in different divisions.. so perhaps it will be division / rank based.. ah I have no idea but they'll figure it out.

Another thing I mentioned was name changing. In Strange New Worlds it was possible to have the disguise skill. (along with SO many other great skills)
Anyway, a person with disquise could alter their appearance & name & even trick IC characters because they appeared to be someone else. 

still, i'm not sure what to expect w/ STO, who knows what kind of skills their will be or even what kind of stats or sheets .. innates as well ?

Example : Ferengi in Strange New Worlds had an innate level 2 in hearing while Humans had the base of 0. Humans could increase their hearing & Ferengi could also go to level 5. Other innates were available including vision, combat instincts, photographic memory, & many many more.

I'm getting way off course here but here are my last thoughts for today.

When a character dies or is out of character it gets a FLAG or attribute, either the FLAG says DEAD or the attribute says OOC (as opposed to IC or no DEAD flag) .. If a character SOMEHOW enters the In Character world w/ a dead flag or OOC in the 'Status' or 'Mode' or 'WhatNot' attrib, the character is immediately moved back to the OOC world.

all these thoughts are based on text MU* code used successfully in online star trek games

OK, haven't read every post in detail, but here is my two penneth;

How many of you have actually watched Star Trek? I am gonna guess that all of you have seen at least a few episodes, yes?

Now, thinking back on Star Trek in general, how many times did you see a main character die for good?

The main characters face certain death or even get killed many times, but are always saved at the last second or revived by some sudden miricle of medicine or transporter technology (Spock went the whole hog and not only died, but re-grew). Why? Well would you watch the whole series if the main characters were being killed off every other week and couldn't be saved or revived?

It would have been commercial suicide to kill off main characters, as it would be in this game as well. You will be the main character in this game and people would be leaving the game in droves if they had struggled to get a character to captain status only to be killed off by someone else's stupid mistake during a joint mission. Think now about how you would feel if your main character were wiped out in whatever MMO you currently play or you weren't allowed access to it for a week or two, not a good thought is it!

I totally understand your feelings about the reality factor, but to be honest, when was Star Trek ever about total reality?

I agree Jason, well written.

Besides Star Trek and other games are Heroic opera, not reality. With in reason some reality is good for a game or a heroic opera, but too much and people wonder why they are playing real life and paying for it.

Sounds like a few people are at least a little concerned about it.
Need we forget the red shirts? Tasha? Data? & Yes Spock

But here is my point, where is the risk? When does gaming begin to reflect reality more?
I don't dig it.. Consider.. If the game is built so if you die you're dead, how often will you die?
If the game is built that you die but don't really die, how many times are you going to die?
Consider all the other MMOs you ever played.. Everquest, WoW, Planetside, Eve Online, SWG, any of them..

Anyway, I know some players are scared by the thought of an actual death but, I think it is very important that they do add a possible real death.

Also, in the text games, when someone died, it added to the RP the IC aspect of the game.
Me, I'll be playing Star Trek completely In Character & if I can't really die ? Eh, I don't know if I'd like that.

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Originally posted by alicairo

Sounds like a few people are at least a little concerned about it.
Need we forget the red shirts? Tasha? Data? & Yes Spock

But here is my point, where is the risk? When does gaming begin to reflect reality more?
I don't dig it.. Consider.. If the game is built so if you die you're dead, how often will you die?
If the game is built that you die but don't really die, how many times are you going to die?
Consider all the other MMOs you ever played.. Everquest, WoW, Planetside, Eve Online, SWG, any of them..

Anyway, I know some players are scared by the thought of an actual death but, I think it is very important that they do add a possible real death.

Also, in the text games, when someone died, it added to the RP the IC aspect of the game.
Me, I'll be playing Star Trek completely In Character & if I can't really die ? Eh, I don't know if I'd like that.

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First off most people are playing a game to enjoy it, the enviroment, the community, NOT to duplicate the total real world experience.

Second, at least in my case it is not "scared" as you stated, but more to the level of balancing a enjoyable game, time committment, and the negative aspects of failing.

Third,  Perma-death while sounding like a great Rp idea, fails to take into account things such as lag, crashes (server, your computer, your ISP, etc). Let's assume you are a careful, take all the reasonable precautions, then bamb in teh middle of your ship to ship duel you lag out? How happy are you going to be to get back in game only to find out, that you are dead and have to restart from scratch?

Finally, perma-death will kill any reason to explore, to push the bountries of your know space. Why in the heck should i check out that unknown system with a charater that i have spend months creating and fleshing out? why would I risk trying to seek out new life when that life could very well be life that thinks i am the blue plate special?

Death in a game should have down side, no doubt, but if you force perma-death on everyone, then you are goig to limit the appeal and desire to even try the game out and stay with it. There are many other ways to make players actively desire avoiding death.

Perma-death to me is equal to the ulitmate and endless treadmill grind. In your own words, if i knew i was facing perma-death eh, I do not know if I would like that.

Lag? Crashes? ... My understanding is many ships will have much NPC control & you cannot forget about the NPC aspect. If you're disconnected unconscious I'd think you'd either be brought back to the ship by a real player or an NPC or you log back in unconscious. People can be 'dead' in star trek but not 'dead' as well because they can be revived within a certain time frame.

Really I do think scared is the right word... You covered my exact point.. A game is just that, a game for fun.. To me, if I died, it wouldn't be a serious issue. In fact, if one thought it a serious issue, I think they're taking the game too seriously. To be honest, my opinion is, with a perma-death system there will actually be LESS deaths.

Personally, I think this is very justified. I've been a gamer since 85 ? Something like that & I participated in the first MMOs on the Internet. I have less of a concern about my in game characters & more of a concern about my real life. Anyway, the first Star Trek online games all had perma-death & you know what? It wasn't very likely the average player died. In fact I played a perma-death system in Strange New Worlds, my character lasted until the game ended & I had been in many fights & even yes, killed a few people's characters. In those games it was very unlikely that someone would progress far enough to get in a situation that they actually risked a real death, but, STO will be much broader & I am sure more dangerous.

Still, in the end, I wish & wish again for a perma-death system or else it would not be doing Star Trek right.

Oh, & someone talked about deleting a character after you die? Please go back & read one of my posts here.. Going back to a character screen / deleting the character is just what you're used to seeing in MMOs..
I think a person should already be in game by the time they're making a character.. *shrug*
They won't care about the STO DB anyway so it's most likely going to be just like the other MMOs anyway.

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Originally posted by SmurfMagic
nooooooooooooooooooooo perma death sucks.

why spend all that time and creative energy to create you own persona online only to have some jerkass PK ruin your fun... then to have to re-grind everything all over... no thank you.

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As far as I know? It'll just be UFP at launch.. Just Star Fleet.. so why would a fellow Star Fleet player-kill you?

Here is my main point. I want players to start considering what they're doing in games more often. With the real risk of perma-death, players won't just run & gun because they'll know if they don't consider consequences, they'll die.

Perma-death would also bring the community together instead of apart. Why you ask?
Very simply, in a reality where you can die, you're going to want a friend or two.

Here is my other thought.

Consider you're playing the game & don't know who to associate yourself with?
Well, what if Admiral Player has a 'service' of the entire games history & has not died once.
You'd want to hang w/ him awhile wouldn't you?

Now consider if there is no perma-death.. It's left to guessing as to wether these people you're going on a mission with are death-prone or not.

Perma death is a bad idea.  Original Jedi in SWG who died when they had perma death in place quit the game.  You dont want to work an average of probably 3-6 months on leveling up your toon to lose it all in an instant.  Plus here's another point.  Again referring back to SWG.  The Jedi who unlocked when perma death were in place ended up playing their normal toons 95% of the time because of that fear of death factor.  They worked for months to unlock and can have it all taken in an instant.  So the way they kept their toons alive was to just not play them much at all.  What fun is that?

The idea is just not practical for an mmo.  MMO's normally have about 4 classes of players, 1. hard core, playing all the time player, 2. Semi Hard core, (playing most every day at least for a few hours), 3. casual gamers who play weekends or here and there throught the week, and finally 4. browsers, people who come and check out the game and quit.  So as a business decision how many of these areas would you put off with perma death?  Easily #'s 3,4 would quit because it would takes much longer for them to level because of lack of playing time.  #2 a huge majority would quit because they feel that all their off time playing the game was in vain.  That leaves the #1 people.  Really I only see the hard core gamers taking any sort of liking to this.  You have to remember that an mmo as a business is going to want to KEEP their subscribers as well as attract new ones and perma death would be a tremendous blow to subscription resubs.

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Originally posted by TeranHawkins

Perma death is a bad idea.  Original Jedi in SWG who died when they had perma death in place quit the game.  You dont want to work an average of probably 3-6 months on leveling up your toon to lose it all in an instant.  Plus here's another point.  Again referring back to SWG.  The Jedi who unlocked when perma death were in place ended up playing their normal toons 95% of the time because of that fear of death factor.  They worked for months to unlock and can have it all taken in an instant.  So the way they kept their toons alive was to just not play them much at all.  What fun is that?

The idea is just not practical for an mmo.  MMO's normally have about 4 classes of players, 1. hard core, playing all the time player, 2. Semi Hard core, (playing most every day at least for a few hours), 3. casual gamers who play weekends or here and there throught the week, and finally 4. browsers, people who come and check out the game and quit.  So as a business decision how many of these areas would you put off with perma death?  Easily #'s 3,4 would quit because it would takes much longer for them to level because of lack of playing time.  #2 a huge majority would quit because they feel that all their off time playing the game was in vain.  That leaves the #1 people.  Really I only see the hard core gamers taking any sort of liking to this.  You have to remember that an mmo as a business is going to want to KEEP their subscribers as well as attract new ones and perma death would be a tremendous blow to subscription resubs.

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Some people think Star Wars is better then Star Trek..
My opinion is Star Trek is way better.

Anyway, why are we talking about POSSIBLY the worst MMO in the history of MMOs?

To be honest, I do not care about sales numbers & player populations or even these people who take these games so seriously. I don't.
I do care about Star Trek being true to it's roots & that's from the point of the 1st Red Shirt going down to the Next Gen & on.

My thoughts are, what's the f'n point of playing if you can't really die? Wheres the end?
I'm tired of this perma-alive avatar concept & the game that never ends idea.

Sure, when the concept of this game was first thought up & then the visual direction was considered I spoke to my friend about it some 3 - 4 yrs ago & he was outraged at the idea of a perma-death.
Where is he? Dude doesn't even play video games anymore, he joined the military.

Do you see my point? To all of you 'perma-death' is a bad idea because you've never played a game you couldn't just reset or restart your character at a save point from.

Even with perma-death you are basically 'resetting' & I even showed how reimburcement would occur in a perma-death system.. You'd basically lose nothing but your name (add a II or III) & your In Character knowledge. So certain things like another character you used to know would be KIND OF lost.

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Originally posted by alicairo
Here is my other thought.
Consider you're playing the game & don't know who to associate yourself with?Well, what if Admiral Player has a 'service' of the entire games history & has not died once.You'd want to hang with him awhile wouldn't you?
Now consider if there is no perma-death.. It's left to guessing as to wether these people you're going on a mission with are death-prone or not.

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I just don't see perma-death working at all. Just in the point you raised above it doesn't work. You may want to hang with a veteran that hasn't died, but why the hell would he want to hang with you if you have no experience. The last thing he (or she) is going to want is some newbie coming in and taking his phasers off line just as he is in the middle of a life or death battle.

Just stepping back a bit, you mentioned some characters that died, but i will get a little geeky now. Tasha (i never considered a main char, but anyway) was revived in another dimension for further episodes of TNG, Data didn't really die because he dumped his brain into another andriod and Spock also came back to life on planet Genesis. As for red shirts, i don't remember one that made 'main character' status and they would be the equivalent of the NPC in most MMO's (expendable).

The two most valid points have been raised already in this thread as to why perma-death just won't work;

- Game longevity, there just wouldn't be any if you lose your char to one silly mistake, people would just walk away after losing their first significant character.

- Incentive to explore, again because of the risk of death there would be none, it would be a case of better safe than sorry.

I know what you are saying about thinking before you run in, but at the end of the day it is just a game and sometimes just running in for the hell of it is half of the fun. How many times have you challenged yourself in a game to try and complete something that should be damned near impossible? It may take a few tries, but you learn and get there in the end, improving your skills along the way. With perma-death in place, that fun process would become an absolute nightmare.