Hey Everyone,

I was reading Stradden's blog entry Arguments of Perma-death in his blog and came up with some ideas.

Now, I know how perma-death can rub off people the wrong way. I mean, it's understandable, right? Our characters are our babies, we care for them, cherism them, watch them grow and learn new skills, praise them as they assassinate another player from behind.

But, should this be such a black and white issue?

Let's look at EVE online at the moment. Now, it is set in the future granted, but if your ship has been blown up by a high-energy laser beam cannon, and your escape pod has been compromised, subjecting you the the ultra-harsh enviroment outer space has to offer you, your body exploding due to the lack of pressure, even before asphyxiation begins to set in while the sheer lack of heat causes your body to instantly freeze, and quintessentially causing your body to pretty much become a hollow icy shell, no amount of band-aids and phoenix feathers are going to save you.

Your character is dead.

However, you have a clone you keep under lock and key in a safe locker in a station just in case this kind of thing happens, retaining all of your memories, but not anything that was in your head at the time (That's been destroyed also by aforemention method.) and your skill points up to the amount you had payed for in the quality of your clone because you were being cheap and rather wanted that tasty ion cannon thingy.

Still, gone on bit of a tangent there. So your character is badly wounded, body hurt and burnt from the mage you ticked off.

Perma-death rules state your character is dead. Completely dead. Not alive, but dead. Non-perma-death rules say that you will be resurrected in a short time in a safe location and suffer from nothing but a drop in stats for a few minutes, essentially - an MMO version of the common cold.

Why not find something that's inbetween. No-one is going to recover that fast, so why not impose a time penalty on her, say a few hours, or even a couple of days while she recovers from 2nd degree burns.

That's just one idea, but what I'd really like to see is your ideas. Let's skip the it shouldn't be there at all for another post. What are your ideas for semi-permadeath?

Permanent Death can work.

When a character dies:

*It can be rescued, and ressed/healed by someone else, regardless of player choices, mechanics based on a time counter.

*A fate mechanism would be added, divine interventions would ensue to those who deserved it.

*It can enter a state of torpor/deep sleep for a period of time

the period of time would vary, it can last untill the end of the fight, if the player side wins or many days/months where such character would be locked.

*The character can regenerate itself, full regeneration, how fast it happens and the extent of the regeneration depends on character abilities/build. Obviously Im not talking about "human" characters, whatever the character are, they ressemble humans, but whatever the lore uses, its just a means to justify such game mechanics.

*After the hit points reach zero, and the character lies inconscient on the ground even with severed limbs, it can regenerate itself up from its "spirit" or "will to live". Lets say, the upper body and head explodes, spirit burts its "life" and character regenerates.. If such "aparently dead" character is ignored it can regenerates, if kept attacked by players, other options follows, and some of those are risky to the character who keep attacking! (dead character tranforms or transcend and becomes a very big problem, but if such doesnt happen the character is dead giving yet other options becoming an spirit and or having its remains/flesh retrieved into another character for "bonuses", physical possession will be lootable, if not transferable, some items duplicates itself and carry on to spiritual form where they get stronger as well. Npc character wont keep attacking the character after dead. Such option wont be available to all players and not at all times. It requires a certain type of trait/skills, and time to be recharged so it can be used again.

*Upon death character goes frenzy/berserk, "transforms" and is able to run away or defeat its foes. For that, the character lifes to fight another day, but such event permanently marks the character. Its something unique for each character, depends on certain character traits or player choices, doesnt happen to everyone. The experience changes the character permanently.

*Upon death character "transcends" into something superior. It might become a monster or something. Lose a lot of stuff, but excentially becomes stronger. Becomes hunted and fear by other players. Its a player choice at any time. You kill your character for power.

*Once dead, the character flesh might be retrieved and used in another character. Physical possessions might be retrieved if friendly players wish to do so.

*Players who were killed get an option to seek revenge as a spiritual being. (You get to go after those players who made you harm, specific game mechanics follows to force the player who took such option to effectivelly seek its revenge and the ways to achieve so are provided) Its not a certain thing. The players who killed your character can survive, once, twice, many times and eventually perish, or kill you again (specific game mechanics for that follow as well).

*Character dies, player starts to control the spirit of the character, whole new game follows. Last character possessions might be lost, some emotional binding possessions remains (those are acquired with time and effort). Every attribute and ability gets translated to new stats depending on the living character. This will be the most common result of permanent death, since it provides the long term lasting effect of the last character's player's time and effort spent on the game.

In this state, there is a whole new game with the same scope and size of the one while the character was alive. Players can remain on this forever and never miss the live world. While on this world they can get killed as well and they can get reborn as a new character, everything is lost, but they "rise the ranks" of "evolution".

Depending on what the character did while alive (his time spent, quests, power, etc) he can evolve in to a higher rank. Once reborn under this higher rank the character starting stats and overall potential and power are higher. They are excentially superior to characters of the lower rank and they will tend to evolve faster. Its not something crazy, but considerably easier and gratifying. To evolve is not an automatic effect of each death, but its an achievement earned with time and effort.

Players can evolve many times. At this point godly character will rise. Evolution itself comes with a price. As a character can evolve, it can de-evolve. It depends on player actions. If a character abuse its power on new players once it evolved and was reborn a lot of times,next time it dies it will de-evolve. Its a punishing game mechanic to ensue that power has its counter balance.

Once dead, in the spirit form, character can explore the other worlds, like limbo, penumbra, underworld, outerworld, other dimensions, and even heaven, hell and different metaphysic places from a wide range of religions etc... the lore itself and the names of those worlds can be totally new or brought from the existing lore.

The concept itself embraces Spiritism in its core, where "death is not final", it embraces some manga metaphysical mechanics, such as "Claymore" and "Berserk" and mixes it up antecipating sociological behaviour patherns of players power in mmorpgs nowadays.

It solves the achievers problems, by adding the death in the mix, making it a step for even greater and meaningfull rewards. Players time and effort are not wasted.

Multiple options are offered. The game mechanics would all tie very well with the lore of the game. It would be coherently realistic, opposed to pure realism, wich is enough for any roleplay story in any genre.

*The player can directly decide to make his next character inherit A GREAT DEAL OF YOUR last character.

Its a personal quest.

It can fail.

Your other character must exist already.

If it succeed, the first character dies, the living character inherits its personal belongings and its body/flesh.

The body/flesh is very powerfull and can be used in a multitude of ways. It can be sold on the black market. It can be stolen. It can be "incorporated" in the new character for "bonuses".

The nature and scope of such bonuses would vary, but they are not obtainable elsewhere. They are very rewarding.

Your last character will live within your new character, forever. Great storytelling possibilities, memories, flashbacks.

The new character gets more apt/prone to certain skills/abilities/stats depending on the older character strenghts.

You can show that off to other people, or not. It can be discovered.

If it fails, you can keep playing with your last character, but multiple results follows.

To try again the quest, there will be a time limit.

Depending on the result of the quest none, one or both character can die. In reality none of them will die, since both would become spirits, or, ascend or transform, etc...

The player controls the new character in a quest to kill the old character. The old character becomes an NPC untill the end of the quest. A fight not necessarily needs to happen for the quest to suceed.

yawn not ANOTHER perma death thread. no one wants this garbage. 

The problem is, devs need to keep people coming back constantly, otherwise players get bored and go find something else to do.  Taking a few days or weeks to recover just means people are going to go play something else and may not come back at all.  Even taking more than a few minutes to recover runs that risk.  The majority of people playing will abandon a game that doesn't let them keep playing as much and as fast as possible.

Interesting idea, doesn't work in the real world.

 It's a very good point Cephus, a way I would suggest to address that issue is to encourage the usage of several characters. Or...here's a thought, the problem with perma-death tends to be the amount of skill points and the like you spend on a character. As a radical idea, what would you say to a game where there is minimal personal development. Rather, things you can improve on are more based around more global attributes?

I'll have a little think on that, and come back with a few more ideas on that theory. What do you think in the meanwhile?

Originally posted by Interesting

Permanent Death can work.

When a character dies:

Edit to save space

dude, you put a lot of thought into that.... i was just going suggest how SWG originally said jedi would be handled. you were suppose to have three lives. you could recover lives as you lost them, but it took time.

it's the one thing that bothers me about DDO, no perma-death. if you were grouped, in the pnp, death wasn't all that likely, but soloing in D&D was a dangerous idea. once you bled out as you layed there, dead. i like the idea of actual death, as long as say a high level cleric, or your buddies hualing your body to some holy man, that prayed to the gods, could bring you back.

though, as you said in one of your lines there, death would come from an actual skill, or attack meant to finish a character off. otherwise, one would remain unconcious for a given amount of time.

regardless, i think death needs to be re-worked in mmos. it isn't a big deal in any i've played in awhile. i've never cared for the expeirence loss road, and the ten minutes of feeling a little ill, isn't really punisment.

Originally posted by mokoleus

regardless, i think death needs to be re-worked in mmos. it isn't a big deal in any i've played in awhile. i've never cared for the expeirence loss road, and the ten minutes of feeling a little ill, isn't really punisment.

Ironically MMO death has already been re-worked to become what it is now -- one step above FPS respawns.

The problem is that death is, obviously, not fun -- but in the past, games would make players waste their time as punishment, and nobody wants to spend extra time getting back to where they were an hour ago. UO and Everquest corpse runs were, I suppose more "realistic" death penalties in a way, but ridiculous from a "fun" standpoint.

All they'd have to do is smart small in tweaking it -- either make it so death "illness" can't be removed or, since that's almost the same thing as wasting time, make it so your character needs to pay a percentage of the money they own to remove it. Not a flat fee -- that's worthless. Oh you want that death illness cured faster? It'll cost you 1% of your fortune.

Perma-death will never make it into MMOs because you can't guarantee that a server hiccup won't result in a lost character. Imagine if you're fighting a boss mob and the power goes out in your house -- you die before your character disconnects. Well shoot, there goes your hard work!

Originally posted by grimmbot

Originally posted by mokoleus

regardless, i think death needs to be re-worked in mmos. it isn't a big deal in any i've played in awhile. i've never cared for the expeirence loss road, and the ten minutes of feeling a little ill, isn't really punisment.

 

Ironically MMO death has already been re-worked to become what it is now -- one step above FPS respawns.

The problem is that death is, obviously, not fun -- but in the past, games would make players waste their time as punishment, and nobody wants to spend extra time getting back to where they were an hour ago. UO and Everquest corpse runs were, I suppose more "realistic" death penalties in a way, but ridiculous from a "fun" standpoint.

All they'd have to do is smart small in tweaking it -- either make it so death "illness" can't be removed or, since that's almost the same thing as wasting time, make it so your character needs to pay a percentage of the money they own to remove it. Not a flat fee -- that's worthless. Oh you want that death illness cured faster? It'll cost you 1% of your fortune.

Perma-death will never make it into MMOs because you can't guarantee that a server hiccup won't result in a lost character. Imagine if you're fighting a boss mob and the power goes out in your house -- you die before your character disconnects. Well shoot, there goes your hard work!

completely agree with these 2 posters specially the part in green

the reason why perma-death is not and never will be part of online gaming is due to the real world mechanics of computers. They WILL crash.

the solution isn't puting perma death but puting harsher death penalties. Anything to discourage suicide. Or something that will make everyone think 2x about attacking player/mobs.

Eve has some nice death penalties. That 100Million isk ship that your flying.... hmmm should i or should i not risk loosing it. Oh and on top of that those implants i have hooked up into my brain worth another 50-100 million, risk it or not?

other games, bah lets try it if i die oh well ill respawn there, i can sell my loot while i wait for the death timer to go away and i should be good to hand in the quests i did in the way, and  im good to go again. (free transport back to town too!)

the only reason this work in eve is because everything is player made. the ship that you just lost, well there are about 100ds more for sale on the market. there is no uber "godslayer world domination godmode immortal sword of the celestials" that drops at 0.01% from the biggest dungeon's last boss.

Originally posted by Halo-Bump

 It's a very good point Cephus, a way I would suggest to address that issue is to encourage the usage of several characters. Or...here's a thought, the problem with perma-death tends to be the amount of skill points and the like you spend on a character. As a radical idea, what would you say to a game where there is minimal personal development. Rather, things you can improve on are more based around more global attributes?

I'll have a little think on that, and come back with a few more ideas on that theory. What do you think in the meanwhile?

My particular idea along those lines was city-based.

You run a city, constructing/upgrading buildings.

You play as a character from your city.  Characters come in different types (guardsman, hunter) which are limited by the building types you've created (militia barracks, hunting lodge.)  Primary progression comes in the form of training your townsfolk or upgrading buildings (build a blacksmith to improve weapons, train your blacksmith to give access to new weapons, deliver him more ExcaliOre so he can keep making you awesome swords.)  Secondary progression exists on the characters themselves, but is shallow (1-2 hours to max out,) and exists primarily to give a sense of permanent loss.

Death is permanent for these characters.  They die and you lose the character-specific progression and everything they were carrying (which will likely include resources that would've gone into city progression.)

To a limited degree you need characters to die to max out progression.  After Joe the Guardsman killed that epic bandit lord who was leading attacks against your city, if he dies at any time he can be commemorated with a statue, which yields permanent gameplay bonuses for future guardsmen of your city.

You play as a character from your city.  Characters come in different types (guardsman, hunter) which are limited by the building types you've created (militia barracks, hunting lodge.)  Primary progression comes in the form of training your townsfolk or upgrading buildings (build a blacksmith to improve weapons, train your blacksmith to give access to new weapons, deliver him more ExcaliOre so he can keep making you awesome swords.)  Secondary progression exists on the characters themselves, but is shallow (1-2 hours to max out,) and exists primarily to give a sense of permanent loss.

I like your idea. It's mixing elements of Age of Empires and RTS into MMO-style gameplay, it's a very interesting concept. Your character get's good at learning how to use said sword quickly, and while you are doing well, your character reflects that in his usage of said sword.

I almost want to say that rather then using skill points, it's more of a focus on resources and money for your team/faction/self rather then your character suddenly become godlike. I'm curious, how else would this idea of yours progress? Would it be a team based game, where people share your team's resources, meaning sharing the equipment, choosing the people who are good at, or enjoy playing with that particular weapon setup?

Grouping would be just like any other MMORPG, with role-based gameplay (each class provides a mix of mitigation/DPS/healing/buff/debuff/CC.)

Players would team up to offset weaknesses of the character they're currently playing, and to tackle harder content where the better rewards are (solo play would remain viable, but inevitably slightly slower progression than grouping.)

Sharing equipment might be an interesting concept to work into the game. It would reward social interactions, and establish "trade routes" between cities.

Which leads to another cool opportunity this idea provides, where you have content unique to a city-centric game (in this case NPC bandits raiding your trade route, and fighting them off is one of the types of PVE activities you do.)