The logistics requirements for such a game being quite extraordinary, the rest of the features will be too.

Imagine a MMORPG with a world the size of the USA in which you'd play a "regular" human character. Not unlike Second Life, in a way, only with total freedom : you would play by being in the game, just like in those crazy video game dev dreams. It would use some sort of implant that would allow you to play the game while your body would stay in a sleep-like state. You could do whatever you want, just like in real life. And more, obviously.

To purchase the game, you would need to go though a lot of identity checks as to avoid people buying it twice. To enforce such a system, it would probably have to be run by governments or a single company at a very limited number of stores (to limit a black market of sorts). You could only buy it once in your lifetime.

You would play a single character, and there would be permadeath: you die, you can't play the game ever again. To let viable societies emerge, permadeath would only be activated a month after release.

There would be no skill system, no levels, nothing like that. You're playing a character that has human strenght and abilities piloted by your intellect.

Would you play such a game ?

Wow. NO! Just the fact that the game would "require mulitple identity checks" to purchase would turn me off from the get go. I don't play games to guard national secrets. I play them to have fun. And, there is no value in a game that if you fail at it you are not allowed a chance to go back and do it again.....purchase after each "failure" is an extremely idiotic idea.

It is a very interesting idea. I don't know that I'd play, since the cost would probably be prohibitive. I know I'd want to play the game.

I might be playing such a game right now. We all might be playing such a game right now.

Originally posted by Gruug

Wow. NO! Just the fact that the game would "require mulitple identity checks" to purchase would turn me off from the get go. I don't play games to guard national secrets. I play them to have fun. And, there is no value in a game that if you fail at it you are not allowed a chance to go back and do it again.....purchase after each "failure" is an extremely idiotic idea.

 

Except there is no "purchase after each failure". That's why there are identity checks : people are only allowed one copy of the game, and that's it.

A couple things.  If it was hard to finish off a player before some sort of authorities, player or otherwise, step in, that would be good.  Either due to very high hit points, or ability to defend oneself etc.

Second thing would be that murder results in a criminal flag that makes it impossible for that player to do just about anything.  And helping that player would confer that flag to accomplices.  And if more than a couple criminals are in the same general area, authorities of some type can hone in on them even outside of towns and destroy them or arrest them.  If arrested, they spend like 3 days in a jail cell (real time), for first offense, week for second, death penalty for third.

And finally, vertical character progression should be limited, no levels, and not take too long before severe diminishing returns kicks in.  Otherwise people just wouldn't play, to die and lose months of progress.  Various unlocks should be account wide, and your gear should pass onto a descendant, with a death tax attached based on value.

Character creation would need to be involved.  And you should start with a lot of abilities, points to distribute, make creation itself sort of like leveling a D2 character instantly to 60.  I like to use shadowrun 3E as an example of what it's like to create powerful characters from the beginning, but many have not played that.

Would you play a game that when you died, you also lost your job, your girlfriend, your car, your house, someone close to you also died, your identity was hacked, you got a migraine, a toothache, diarrhia, aids and your dog ran away? 

I dont know about you guys but only then would it be HARDCORE enough for me.

Why do we keep making threads asking for something like 10 people want?

Why do we keep having these permadeath threads every few weeks.  I think we beeting this dead horse and then some.  Most folks don't want permadeath. 

No desire here and I come from the EQ1 days, not sure what that means they didn't have perma then. I do like one char servers, but not with the new class( jack of all trades) people seem to want these days. Isn't this Dayz, but with all these restrictions?

And If I could inplant a chip I wouldn't pick real life as my game of choice. 

Permadeath only works, if the characters created do not advance. Think Pen&Paper like Shadowrun, where you only progress by enhancing your character with surgery (implants, etc).
This way you can rapidly jump back into the game with a new character, but even this approach isn't too appealing to most players, especially when we're talking about a game where there's FFA PvP enabled.

The idea to be only able to play a single character and loose acess to the game once this character dies is probably the worst idea ever to be had, as we're talking about a game here.
The lifetime single-character design with permadeath is allready what we have in reallife, and most people sure don't want to play a copy of reallife.

What's happening here (and in a lot of other threads) is that the OP has a particular experience in mind. "Wouldn't it be fun if I were in a game and yadda yadda yadda happened... let me think of a way to design a game around this imagined experience." The end result is a simply awful idea for a game, because it was designed with just that ideal scenario in mind.

Even though it's not an MMO, I'll use Arkham Asylum as an example. Imagine the best, most epic experience someone could possibly have in that game, the kind that makes you jump up and fist pump, and tell the story to everyone you know for weeks afterwads.

Hmm... Batman goes into a room, and there's 9 guards, armed with a variety of weapons, and he beats them all with a flawless full combo.

No, go more epic than that. Okay, uh, one hit will kill him, so there's a huge amount of pressure to make sure he doesn't get hit.

More epic than that. Um, there's a really short time limit? So at the same time he's trying not to get hit, he has to beat them as fast as he possibly can, and there's just barely enough time to pull it off.

Make it more epic. He only gets one chance at the fight. Either his save gets erasd for losing, or it's a special bonus fight that you can only ever attempt once.

More epic. The enemies are unique enemies that he's seeing for the first time, so he can only rely on his reflexes and not memorized patterns or tells.

Put all of this together, and you have gamer nirvana. Can you even picture it? You walk into a room and 9 brand new enemies assault you. In 30 seconds, you have to beat them without taking a single hit and getting your save erased, despite having to figure out their unique abilities on the fly. You pull it off just barely in an absolutely amazing display of skill and coordination with just a split second to spare. It would probably be the best 30 seconds of gaming in your entire life.

It would also make an amazingly bad game, because the planets would have to align for that to have even a chance of happening to a single person. 99.9999% of the people who played the game would have a much worse experience trying to play that game. You shouldn't ever design a game completely around the best possible thing that could happen, and I think that's the mistake being made here. Frankly, I think that most people with big design ideas for sandbox MMOs make the same mistake. As they describe their dream game, they're planning it around the 1-in-a-million epic experience they would love to have rather than considering what the average experience or worst-case experience in the same game world would be.

No.. Never .. 

sounds to much like a real life.. I play games to get away from all that hoopla.. 

Damn I wish I still got high. I could really get off on this post.

But sober and all the answer would be no, unless it's FtP then why not. Would hate to see the Cash Shop though...