There seem to be a lot of good arguments both before and gainst permadeath.  I've been thinking of some ways that it can be implemented in a way that's not forced on the general playerbase.  What do you think of these ideas?

1.  Duel to the death.

Pretty self explanatory, players agree before the duel that the loser will suffer permadeath.  Used to settle matters of honor like duels were intended for in the real world.

2.  Territorial permadeath.

Got the idea from Lewt Warz.  Basically, a guild can decide that anyone who dies in their territory will stay dead.  Used as a detterant to attack, but can also set the stage for epic final showdowns between guilds.

3.  Games of chance.

Allow the players to play some form of Russian Roullete.  This will  basically work like #1, except it is not  dependent on the combat skill of the two players.  Like #1 it could be used to settle matters of honor, or perhaps some guilds with a gangster type theme would require potential new members to play a single player version of this as a rite of initiation.

There's some risk that permadeath would drive some people away, even if they agreed to it, but I think having some mechanisms like this would make the game a lot more entertaining, and actually allow players to feel less powerless to defeat their enemies.

My biggest question would be what is the incentive to do permadeath activities?  I couldn't see players risking permadeath on honor, to risk having your character deleted would require some grand rewards, otherwise you are risking a lot for nothing.  But that would create a problem, big powerful rewards lead to inbalanced fights.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

My biggest question would be what is the incentive to do permadeath activities?  I couldn't see players risking permadeath on honor, to risk having your character deleted would require some grand rewards, otherwise you are risking a lot for nothing.  But that would create a problem, big powerful rewards lead to inbalanced fights.

The reward would be to make your enemy do the same thing.  You wouldn't think people would risk their real lives in wars and duels, but they do.  As it is, pvp warfare is neverending.  There's not possible way for either side to "win" as long as they both keep popping up as good as new.  Under this system, they could agree to one final showdown where all participants are subject to permadeath, resulting in one or the other being wiped out.

And like I said, gangster type guilds could use something that risks permadeath as an initiation.  I can also imagine some extremely rich vets entertaining themselves by making newbies play Russian Roullette with each other for the promise of great rewards to the winner.  There's all sorts of possibilities really.

Basically, the reward would be whatever the players make it.  You're right that many, if not most will not want to risk it under most circumstances, but that's the whole point of making it consensual. 

 

The reward would be to make your enemy do the same thing.  You wouldn't think people would risk their real lives in wars and duels, but they do. 

Its safe to say in general people risk their lives in war under very specific circumstances, I.E. the boss told them to (as a soldier) or because the other guys boss told the other guy to.

I doubt many people go to war out of choice, but rather when there are no other choices left.

Permadeath in a game cant work, any reward worth dying for would imbalance the game too much.  People wouldnt do it for honour, realistically speaking theres no such thing anymore in MMO's.

To extend your analogy , the only way pvp-permadeath will be accepted is if it was forced, but unlike RL...people can walk away when they want, meaning you'd end up with one very lonely and very powerful character per server.

Originally posted by rokknroll

 

The reward would be to make your enemy do the same thing.  You wouldn't think people would risk their real lives in wars and duels, but they do. 

 

Its safe to say in general people risk their lives in war under very specific circumstances, I.E. the boss told them to (as a soldier) or because the other guys boss told the other guy to.

I doubt many people go to war out of choice, but rather when there are no other choices left.

 

Permadeath in a game cant work, any reward worth dying for would imbalance the game too much.  People wouldnt do it for honour, realistically speaking theres no such thing anymore in MMO's.

 

To extend your analogy , the only way pvp-permadeath will be accepted is if it was forced, but unlike RL...people can walk away when they want, meaning you'd end up with one very lonely and very powerful character per server

Fair point, but losing your character in a game isn't generally considered equivalent to dying in real life. 

Consider also that the alternatives to consensual permadeath are forced permadeath or no permadeath.  How are these better, really?

Any time someone says something can't work I get this little voice that says WRONG! in my head :). As much as I respect the idea of closed mindedness in certain circumstances, like as a tool for stimulating someone like myself to post heh, ya just have to pipe up against it.

People work on risk vs. reward simply.  Enough reward, warrants the risk. Now if you have the ability tyo become the most powerful mage and unlock some super spell to destroy armies, but the risk is that you may die in attaining it, then you weigh the risk vs. reward.

• Can you increase your odds by getting help from others? -Risk
• Can you increase your chances by researching the monster that holds the secrets? -Risk
• Can you fashion some sort of crafted/spell protection and perhaps a way out? -Risk
• Will the spell let you claim the town next to the gold  mine and reap the rewards as leader once you get the spell? +Reward.
• If you don't get the spell, is there anything else you would rather have? Yes -Reward, No +Reward
• If you DO die, is there a way to one day resurrect your character? Start anew with increased ability in creation?(design mechanics) -Risk

Balancing the elements of human psychology is how games are made successfully.  My point is that possibility is limited by your ability to reason and see possibility ie create.  To say, "Permadeath in a game cant work, any reward worth dying for would imbalance the game too much. People wouldnt do it for honour, realistically speaking theres no such thing anymore in MMO's." speaks only f the thought that it cannot be based on honour.  I agree with this, but say that there are other more 'primitive' ways to manipulate the player :)....in a good way of course.

edit: And as for consensual permadeath, I haven't thought much on it given the idea that if you have the option to slack off and not die, I think we know what we'd pick.  I imagine its a balls to the wall type game mechanic where its all or nothing.  

• IF however you really wanted to you could use the same idea that FtP games use for their cash shop.  Players that consent to permadeath are rewarded with the same type of rewards people pay real money for in those games. Money or permadeath...choice is yours :)

I probably wouldn't want to risk permadeath under most circumstances, but I've seen player feuds get extremely heated and intense, often spilling outside the game into other mediums.  I can easily imagine someone involved in this to want to settle it "once and for all".  It has the added bonus of defusing the situation before it becomes so toxic it drives people from the game.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong and this type of people is all talk.  In that case, having something like this might shut them up, so either way it's win-win. :)

Either way, can those of you who say it won't work think of a disadvantage to providing the option?

Need help to play a bad character for you (without being a bad player) and commit unspeakable acts risking getting permakilled when the odds are that they probrably will?

Need help to protect newbies from bullies?

Need help in the form of a third party that will risk permadeath to attack anything?

Need help not caring to listen to your help whine if they get permakilled themselves?

We're working on a mercenary multi game group that can respond like that among other things. Let me know if you're interested.

I have run across the idea before in the form of an Epic Duel where you challenge a person for their character name, and upon winning the loser forfeits the name to the victor (who can take it or leave it) and then the character is deleted. I think permadeath is a fickle idea for any MMO as a headlining feature, but the option to remove someone you absolutely hate with a duel to the death would be welcome on all fronts. Some people are sure to use it, and because of the supposed "grandeur" of it all, my plan is to impose a longer-lasting fight, and making it viewable by other players like an event. This requires the right place to fight as well, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think consensual is the best way to make it work honestly. That means given players the choice to decide if they want to have endless life or permadeath. The systems in question though may not be the best ways to go about it. For example, dueling system may never actually be used for that purpose at all. Depending on the game, most duels where players can have heavy loss only happen when the challenger knows he or she can beat the target. The concept of just dueling to have fun is now more void for a lot more people.

It's interesting to hear many ideas on how to make permadeath work in our genre. Though, I have yet to see anyone argue the uncontrollables with simply loosing due to client issues, server lag, in-game bugs, and etc. Things beyond any players real control (for balance reasons) where one wrong slip could end even the best and longest lasting player on the game to lose everything then eventually quit.

Originally posted by FC-Famine

It's interesting to hear many ideas on how to make permadeath work in our genre. Though, I have yet to see anyone argue the uncontrollables with simply loosing due to client issues, server lag, in-game bugs, and etc. Things beyond any players real control (for balance reasons) where one wrong slip could end even the best and longest lasting player on the game to lose everything then eventually quit.

 

Ha, been a while since I spent my days devastating your suggestion section, hope AoC is looking good these days.

~On to my point though; Bugs, servers lag, client issues, etc.

When I stated above that permadeath duels deserve their own place to do this, I meant that as an instanced arena of some sort that is sharded off to maximize available stress (though that won't fix the occasional 'stutter'). If you take the fight away from busy areas you can cut out a lot of the prevalent issues - but then the problem in a lack of witnesses occurs. I wonder if there would be a way to place static camera positions around the arena and have players tap into them from out of the zone in order to view the combat, maybe even just two floating cams around the players to make it simple... but would that just add to the problem that made the bout instanced to begin with? Two things have to be kept in mind here; keeping the bout as isolated as possible, while allowing it to be witnessed. Consensual permadeath is the sport of champions imo, gotta have it go down in history beyond smacktalk afterwards.

As for client stability, can't speak on it - but as for bugs and general imbalance - you don't have to have the duel occur at the current player levels, gear setup, even hotbar lineup. For the sake of true balance there is nothing wrong with having definitive setups for stat layout, skills, etc upon entry. The idea being that these things can be set to a point where the fight is as near-balanced class to class as it's going to get, going far beyond the stats of endgame that are tweeked in order to make the fight last *longer* I would even put a "best of 5" deal in there, the fight has to be epicly good/long/fair. As for hotbar abilities, I would keep it to a few well known ones in each class range and perhaps change the reuse timers. Simplicity for dueling mechanics is probably a good foot to stand on, at least in the beginning stages - after a successful run you could experiment with allowances of 2-3 chosen skills to add, but they too must be changed to suit the battle, and that means adding them one at a time once each works as it should.

I'm not too keen on perma death systems in an MMO. I woulld like a reincarnation system tho.

How it would work is that when you die your character dies and the name cant be used again for some time. When you create a new character you would be able to reincarnate the spirit of the dead player. What this would do is start your new player at 75% the stats of the dead one and you gain an increased stat/level/skill gain  until you reach the level that the origional was at. You would have to create a new name and anything that the previous character owned has to be physically claimed by you within x ammount of time or its destroyed/lootable.

After each death, the spirit gets 25% less stats to restart with and less carry over form being alive. So eventually you have to make a new character with no bonus and no claim to the spirits previous life.

I think any perma death system has to take several things into account. For an MMO permadeath could mean loosing subscribers. Eventually perma death will piss people off and consensual perma death only sounds good on paper. Character progression is important in an mmo and is different than a singeplayer game.

Originally posted by colutr

I'm not too keen on perma death systems in an MMO. I woulld like a reincarnation system tho.

How it would work is that when you die your character dies and the name cant be used again for some time. When you create a new character you would be able to reincarnate the spirit of the dead player. What this would do is start your new player at 75% the stats of the dead one and you gain an increased stat/level/skill gain  until you reach the level that the origional was at. You would have to create a new name and anything that the previous character owned has to be physically claimed by you within x ammount of time or its destroyed/lootable.

After each death, the spirit gets 25% less stats to restart with and less carry over form being alive. So eventually you have to make a new character with no bonus and no claim to the spirits previous life.

I think any perma death system has to take several things into account. For an MMO permadeath could mean loosing subscribers. Eventually perma death will piss people off and consensual perma death only sounds good on paper. Character progression is important in an mmo and is different than a singeplayer game.

I kinda get what you mean on reincarnation, I employ something similar in a concept that hit me recently that is a dynasty-building game much like The Guild 2. Basically you build a family and royal house under it that acts as your army and time passes when offline, eventually your char dies and you have to pick up with one of your offspring to lead. I hate that fact in the aforementioned game, and it applies here - but then I started thinking of ways to make players *want* their patriarch/matriarch to die of old age. Perhaps asking the ancestor ghosts for buffs by visiting their grave, or affecting events in other ways that would make it more welcome (working on it). Nobody likes to lose their creation...

...and that is why you are absolutely right about permadeath in MMOs causing rampant quitters; it does.

But isn't there always a way to "trick" the player into dealing with something? (yes)

Making the loss in death cycle back in *any* way is a start. Perhaps gear/goods being inherited by alts, or fusing some stats to an alt, or leaving a memorial in-game via permanent gravestone - that would get someone interested enough to see their own grave before rage-quitting, giving ample time to reconsider. Abuse is something to keep an eye out for though, can't have noob alts doing this just to milk any benefits in a fashion that beats getting to endgame and doing so. Think about CoD4; they let you recycle lvl 55 for a unique marker-thing over your name - that's all it took, and that's basically permadeath as well (starting over anyway).

Originally posted by GTwander

Originally posted by FC-Famine

It's interesting to hear many ideas on how to make permadeath work in our genre. Though, I have yet to see anyone argue the uncontrollables with simply loosing due to client issues, server lag, in-game bugs, and etc. Things beyond any players real control (for balance reasons) where one wrong slip could end even the best and longest lasting player on the game to lose everything then eventually quit.

 

 

Ha, been a while since I spent my days devastating your suggestion section, hope AoC is looking good these days.

~On to my point though; Bugs, servers lag, client issues, etc.

When I stated above that permadeath duels deserve their own place to do this, I meant that as an instanced arena of some sort that is sharded off to maximize available stress (though that won't fix the occasional 'stutter'). If you take the fight away from busy areas you can cut out a lot of the prevalent issues - but then the problem in a lack of witnesses occurs. I wonder if there would be a way to place static camera positions around the arena and have players tap into them from out of the zone in order to view the combat, maybe even just two floating cams around the players to make it simple... but would that just add to the problem that made the bout instanced to begin with? Two things have to be kept in mind here; keeping the bout as isolated as possible, while allowing it to be witnessed. Consensual permadeath is the sport of champions imo, gotta have it go down in history beyond smacktalk afterwards.

As for client stability, can't speak on it - but as for bugs and general imbalance - you don't have to have the duel occur at the current player levels, gear setup, even hotbar lineup. For the sake of true balance there is nothing wrong with having definitive setups for stat layout, skills, etc upon entry. The idea being that these things can be set to a point where the fight is as near-balanced class to class as it's going to get, going far beyond the stats of endgame that are tweeked in order to make the fight last *longer* I would even put a "best of 5" deal in there, the fight has to be epicly good/long/fair. As for hotbar abilities, I would keep it to a few well known ones in each class range and perhaps change the reuse timers. Simplicity for dueling mechanics is probably a good foot to stand on, at least in the beginning stages - after a successful run you could experiment with allowances of 2-3 chosen skills to add, but they too must be changed to suit the battle, and that means adding them one at a time once each works as it should.

This sounds very cool but yet very expensive for something generally looked at as a non-feature to the game.

I think for the most part that players wouldn't like to be completely balanced. I say this from my own personal experience in PVP MMO's and even PVP MUD's from back in the day. It's good to have a balanced system outside the dueling system of course. The point however is that players need to have some flexibility in range in order to *seem* a little overpowering or underpowering in the effort of tactics. For example, when you're dueling or fighting 1on1 some players go out of their way to make their character seem underpowering compared to the target. They do this to lore the target in and keep them fighting until you are ready to unleash hell. In other cases, players will make themselves seem very overpowering or valuable so that others will always hunt and fight them. A good example of that is like achieving a high bounty on EVE so players are attracted to your system or region.

Still you have to remember that the higher the risk the lower the quality of PVP. People wont fight as much if they could lose characters or even equipment. Then you have the risk of having more ganks (1v1 become rare) for the simple fact they could lose everything.

There are some very obvious and very important problems with having a system of chosen permadeath.

1. Anything that involves such a choice will have to carry some form of reward appropriate with the risk. For example; if you have a duel to the death then part of the terms of such a duel would have to be subject to the terms of the winning party getting ALL of the losing parties stuff. If there is no appropriate (high) level of reward for making this choice then people who do it are only ever going to complain and ultimately the entire system will just turn out to be a waste of dev time.

2. All forms of pvp (full group through 1v1's) must be 100% balanced. Consider, for a moment, the varied and monumental problems associated with such a task. It can be done, but it's nearly impossible. Every single thing that is done to the game has to be extremely carefully considered. If there is ANY class that has a clear advantage (especially in 1v1's) then anybody who is going to make this choice is probably going to play that class.

3. There can be ABSOLUTELY no means of exploiting ANY of your combat mechanics in an unfair or illegal fashion. Subsequently, there must be essentially no lag and essentially no bugs. In other words your game must be perfect and I would wish anyone a lot of luck with that.

4. Choosing this option must be very clearly marked and have multiple checks. Let's face it most people are stupid and will click on it by accident if it isn't clearly marked and even if it is there are still really stupid or careless people.

These are very important problems that would need to be addressed. None of these are 'in my opinion' in the selfish sense that is oft used on these forums. These problems would either have to be addressed or such a system would contribute significantly to the failure of your title. None of these problems are impossible to solve, not by any means. They are, however, very costly and very time consuming. Committing the kind of resources that would be required to such a system is generally not worth it. If there were a million or more confirmed, rabid fans all actively searching for a title with permadeath it would have been done in a well-funded title already.

Simple fact of the matter is there aren't that many people who are interested in such a system. Most developers aren't willing to submit themselves to the kind of intense criticism they would come under by the very community they would be trying to appease either.

I personally wouldn't implement permadeath into any game that is about creating and shaping andp laying your character over a long time. Sure, it sounds interesting, but I think it's one of those things people want when they don't have it, and when they have it they are unhappy.

Too many will die of lag or of their cat jumping on their keyboard, the mother pulling the plug or a thunderstorm cutting the connection. Not to mention that somehow some guilds could try to abuse this system.

I'd rather implement a very severe death penalty. IE having your char fall into a coma, or die in game and getting buried somewhere, but can get ressurrected by another char of yours using very long / time consuming / expensive rituals and whatnot. Simply that in theory your character can be played again but that it's a heck of a lot of work. 

Originally posted by FC-Famine

This sounds very cool but yet very expensive for something generally looked at as a non-feature to the game.

True, this all falls under the line of "gimmick", and one that is guaranteed to be used by very few people overall.

I agree with Maji on the point of if the game takes to long to advance in, then it's a terrible idea. A quick maxing game would be fine, I mean a month or two to hit endgame these days is nothing like it used to be. On the other hand, I would never, ever, ever attach something like this to Lineage 2. Guaranteed cancellations.