You just don't get it, no developer in their right mind would offer such a feature unless they just don't do customer support.  Dofus is a good example of that.

Permadeath would be a support nightmare, how can the support people handle the multitude of tickets that would result from this and determine whether the petitioner has a valid reason?  They couldn't.  They can't determine whether it was  a disconnect or someone turned off their computer, for example.

Sorry, the only developer that would take a chance on this would be a small indy developer, mainly because those types of companies have little or no support.  A major development company would never ever incorporate such a feature.

So just stop the wishing it is a waste of time.

And 100 lives, likeTrials of Ascension had planed.

Originally posted by RogueSeven

 

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Originally posted by WRyan
I don't necessarily dislike the idea of Permadeath, but I am not whole heartedly for it.
My manner of thinking on this subject is pretty clear - the punishment must fit the crime.  For instance, permadeath would be entirely acceptable in my mind if the character in question belongs to a certain Alpha Class.  An example of this would be something along the lines of the original Jedi in SWG.
The timeline of SWG runs the gamut, but for the first few months of Jedi esitisting in the game, but for the purpose of this example, I'm speaking of before the Aurillian Village.  They were the bane of every players' existence in PvP, and could solo even the unsoloable in PvE.  However, this wasn't exactly always the case.
When you first started out as a Jedi, you were but a Padawan, and you were indeed quite killable.  I would probably go so far as to say you weren't anymore powerful than the average starting character.  Why?  Because the skills simply were not there.  It wasn't until you hit Knighthood that you became the proverbial force to be reckoned with (but really, it all depended on your build, but nevermind that.)
What I'm saying is, that Jedi Knights (originally) were the Alpha Class of the game.  No one will argue this who remembers.  They took an army of players to take down, and then they could easily run away with enough speed to outrun even the fastest of vehicles.
But all of this also brings in the notion of whether or not Alpha Classes are appropriate for a game.
Personally, I would say yes to both, but only yes to one, if the other exists.  What I'm saying is, I would say that Alpha Classes are indeed appropriate for an MMO, but only if they are under the rules of permadeath.
Why?  Because it gives players the only challenge they really can't get in an MMO.  The first challenge is to get the Alpha Class.  The second challenge is to keep it alive for as long as possible.

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indeed, was it not 3 deaths or something like that and you would loose your jedi?...they took out that, of course, because people kept whining
 

Yes, it was three deaths.  And in reality, that could just be the rule of thumb.  But, again, most of them were dying before they became Knights (the Alpha Class.)  Still, there were a whole lot of problems hindering the whole idea of Permadeath here, but fundamentally, it was a sound idea.

Like I said, I wouldn't have made them Permadeath until they were actually Knights, because until they became Knights and passed the trials, they didn't have access to the Skills that made them so powerful in the first place.  The whole time they were not Knights, they were just like any ordinary character - just as easily killed - probably more so.

At any rate, what I'm getting at here is that permadeath is indeed possible, as long as you do it the smart way.  Why have permadeath on a normal character?  It's nonsense.  But to add an Alpha Class with permadeath, then you have an entirely new set of game mechanics that can be brough to the game.

You have your normal game, for everyone to enjoy.  Then you have the elitists game - where people who like playing with hardcore mode, turned on.  But, because it's an MMO, and having an entire character wiped, you have to make sure they have every tool available to keep that from happening.

But, this also brings up another problem, which could be what keeps Skill Based games from working in this scenario.  Multiple Alpha Classes.  So, you no longer have 1 Alpha Class... you have 2 or 3 or 4.  What happens when they start to fight?  We already know you can't balance the classes - and balancing classes that already are overpowered is even more of a headache.  Sooner or later, you're going to have some very pissed off people, because one Alpha Class is better than another, and they'll want their character back... which negates the reason to have it in the first place.

I still think Permadeath could work... but you would seriously have to cover all the angles on this one, and leave no stone unturned in the design.  Until someone can figure out a way for it to work, I would say just leave Permadeath out of the equation.

Originally posted by Owyn

One thing I think is interesting here.  Most of the written comments have been fairly negative; but 42% of the poll responders have been positive, about the same number as say they would not play a permadeath game.  I wonder why that is?  Judging by the poll, there's quite a few people here who would be interested in trying a PD game out.

42% just isn't good enough for "suits" they want to see 85% I'd reckon. I'd be interested in seeing Permadeath. So far only seen it in Empire / Neverwinter Nights-RP_PWs myself.

Maybe we dont need to go as far as permanent death. Wouldnt a system that if you die, you can not play that character for 24 hours work? 48 hours? A week? Even that would be penalty enough to keep people from dying and add the whole heroism idea that was mentioned earlier in the thread. At least you did not lose your work but still gives the feeling that you lose something if you die. This is why I loved EQ back then, if you died, you lost a lot of work. It gave a meaning to a death. I think a timed character lock would provide the same effect as permanent death. If people are willing and feel comfortable with that, then maybe the next step could be to make a permanent death game.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

You just don't get it, no developer in their right mind would offer such a feature unless they just don't do customer support.  Dofus is a good example of that.

Permadeath would be a support nightmare, how can the support people handle the multitude of tickets that would result from this and determine whether the petitioner has a valid reason?  They couldn't.  They can't determine whether it was  a disconnect or someone turned off their computer, for example.

Sorry, the only developer that would take a chance on this would be a small indy developer, mainly because those types of companies have little or no support.  A major development company would never ever incorporate such a feature.

So just stop the wishing it is a waste of time.

 

Say it was based on the number of zones you were away from a friendly base. Say, one or two zones away was no perma-death while three zones away was perma-death. So if you tried to move from zone 2 to zone 3 a message box would pop up saying "PD Alert!" and asking you to click "Yes" or "Cancel". If you clicked cancel then you wouldn't zone into the PD area. You choose to take the risk or not. If you clicked "yes" then no support tickets.

I agree it will probably never happen with a big company unless it was a game with a lot of specialty servers.

Originally posted by Owyn

Originally posted by The-Nit

 OP makes a fatal mistake with perma death: he talks about LEVELS.

Perma death and levels cannot co-exist.

Perma death will only work in a skill based game.

 

Actually, I'm inclined to agree.  At least in that it would be FAR easier to design a skill based game than a level based one.  I tried to be even-handed in my post, but skill based would IMHO be much easier to design in convert with PD.  Even the "skill cap increase inheritance" system I mentioned in my OP pretty much relies on a skill based system.

It certainly doesn't make much sense to do PD unless it gets us something.  So - what does it get us?  Besides dead characters?  ;)

First off, it removes the need for a grindy game.  Since you're going to be going through character after character, players aren't going to want to do 'whack a mob'.  They want to do something that matters, something more meaningful to the game world.  Think ATITD, or Eve, or Shadowbane - something where the players are interacting with the game world more deeply than in most games.

Second, it adds an element of danger that most MMOs lack.  Which allows heroism.  Anyone here read Bartle's book, "Designing Virtual Worlds"?  I don't agree with everything he writes there, but he has an interesting bit on heroism in MMORPGs.  Basically, there isn't any, most of the time.  We play games where we have the illusion of heroic action.

But for something to really be heroic, there needs to be both risk and the inability to do something an easier route.  It's not heroic to swim across a croc infested river if there is a bridge there, for instance - it's stupid.  For that reason, the "delete your own character to make your own permadeath" suggestions miss the boat, because while the person who follows their suggestion faces risk, they do so without reason.

With PD, individual heroism becomes possible.  Trying to hold the bridge to buy the rest of your team time to flee into the castle is a real sacrifice, not an empty gesture because you will respawn in a minute anyway.  Jumping in to save someone against a beastie that's about to kill them becomes heroic, because you risk permanent death of your character.

In most of today's games, all of these things are empty acts.  We do quests and games call us heroes, but nothing we do in them really shows any heroism, not even in the context of the virtual world.  And somewhere inside, we know those actions are hollow.  The stronger the penalty for failure, the greater the chance to show heroism.  And PD creates perhaps the greatest possibility of all.

I don't think Permadeath HAS to be Skill based (and I know you're not really saying it does.)  Ideally, yes, Skill based systems lend themselves to this sort of mechanic, but only because they tend to be more Sandbox in nature, and really, Sandbox/Skill based pretty much goes hand in hand with open-ended game design, which easily fits into permadeath mantra.

But that is a term that is thrown around quite loosely (Sandbox), since... well... the only thing we've seen as far as Sandbox is concerned, is open spaces for people to actively Role Play whatever story arc they dream up.  In game, there is little there to concretely display the "heroism" one might wish to excersize.  However, that just gets into design theory, and I'm quite certain that if more time was spent developing the Sandbox game, then it could be much more than just that.  Also, one of the greater things about this would be a truely unparralleled sense of discovery.  Walking into an area for the first time, not knowing if you can hack it or not tends to lend itself to smart gaming, instead of no-holds-barred fragfests - which is what we need less of.  But, in reality, this would be a much slower game, and as a result, the costs would be a lot more than the alternative....

In a Level based system, it's usually quite clear what your objectives are.  Your routes for leveling up are often layed right before your eyes.  Sometimes you get choices in where to go next, sometimes you don't.  What you do know, however, is that deviating from the given path usually ends with death or time wasted.  This could offer a certain amount of safety, since the designers know exactly where you should be acording to your level, thus they can more easily set the difficulty more appropriately, but it also takes the element of surprise out of the player - you KNOW you will be successful here with relatively little danger, but you KNOW you will meet certain doom if you go to this other place.  Consequently, on PvP servers especially, this will be possibly the worst environment ever for people who fall victim to griefers and gankers.

The notion of "whack-a-mole questing" getting old is... well... it's been only for about three or four years now.  But it still keeps people playing, and really, I would be willing to bet that if more MMO's would use Voice Acting for their quests, people would stop spamming accept and complete, and actually listen to what is going on.  For instance, I have been playing AoC recently, and I have noticed that when the NPC actually has Voice Acting... I pay attention.  I usually read a good bit anyhow, but even I get tired of it sometimes... a lot of times - when I've been in the same area for what seems like forever and I'm ready to get out.  My point is, the reason the "whack-a-mole questing" feels so mundane, I beleive, is in the presentation of the design.  It's like they have these wonderfully scripted quests... and then they throw it all away by pulling it back into the stone age.  This is one area ALL MMO's need to get on the ball with.  It's quite sad that out of all the MMO's out right now, only one comes with full Voice Acting (EQ2) and only one other even attempts it (AoC).  I realise that it costs money, but it's not like $100,000 more is going to make that $40,000,000 price tag much harder to swallow.

At any rate, both have their advantages and disadvantages, all of which could be ironed out to make both viable gameplay possibilities.

Actually, you don't need the game to enforce permadeath. Look around an you'll probably find a few permadeath guilds in whatever game you happen to be playing. Although I think that DDO has the most permadeath players of any MMORPG.

Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have one or two permadeath servers set aside. Hell I'd be thrilled if there was a "delete on death" option you could flag at character creation. But enforcing PD on everyone is just lame. Permadeath is mostly for vetran players that have been there, done that and want to take it to a new level.

An idea where perma death could be applied successfully.  They already have karma based systems and those have been really popular.  Well, make it so that if your character has bad karma, and dies, then they are permanently dead.  This allows for people to run around and have their fun while also catering to the crowd that isn't so much interested in the gank teh noob fests that you see commonly.  Griefing is probably one of the biggest player loose features of any pvp based game.

While certainly not mainstream, there are rogulike games that people enjoy which use permadeath. The game isn't about constantly getting items / levels, it's about trying to survive as long as possibly and dying in generally hilarous ways.

There's also Dwarf Fortress where there's, again, many hilarious ways to lose your entire fortress. A somewhat success story, but showing how such gameplay can be entertaining: Take for instance the famous fortress of Boatmurdered that suffered many losses due to enraged elephants but solved it all by locking themselves in their mountain and rerouting a magma river to flood the world with lava.

I'll agree there might not be enough of a market for an MMORPG along those lines, but games with permadeath can work! It's about having fun, because you CAN have fun in other ways than grinding levels / gear!

God damn I love Dwarf Fortress...

Throwing out an idea for brainstorming.... what if perma-death was linked to free-to-play/trial mode. When playing a game in trial mode you get one life. IF your character dies, you have two options: start over, or pay for a ressurection. You could also make the ressurection a one time thing, where if you die again, you again have to pay a nominal fee. Like coin-op arcade games.  YOU LOSE. insert one quarter to continue.

In a sense Mabinogi sorta works like this. If you die in free-play mode, the death penalty is fairly harsh (once you reach a certain level and have a certain amount of gear). But if you die with a nao subscription, you are allowed one painless death every 30 minutes or so. I've used the nao subscription as a handicap for dungeons I don't have much experience with, but once I became familiar with most of the game, I turned it off. This amped up the challenge level from "can you finish this dungeon without dying too much" to "can you finish this dungeon without dying at all" keeping the game interesting longer. And I am rewarded for accepting the higher challenge by not having to spend as much money.

PERMA DEATH SYSTEM

Please follow chart # to following # to receive explanation.

1. This is a core, which is basically your primary account.

In the core is where your, stats - “ STR/END/INT/DEX ” - would be.
Also, this would be where skills are kept - “ Attack skills/defensive skills/magic skills” - ETC.

All-in-game characters after death would contribute to this core.

EX. “ Pirates Hoarding treasure.”

The system would read, the total assigned stat/skill points at the avatars time of death. Then assume a percentile towards the cores over-all point base.

CHART

10 points or below to 0 = 3% Sent to Core

50 points or below to 10 = 20% Sent To Core

100 points or below to 50 = 40% Sent To Core

1,000 points or below to 100 = 75% Sent To Core

With all of that in mind, It seems to be more like reincarnation and the core is the soul.

So every time a character dies, a percentile is sent to the accounts core/cores.
Then the player then must create a new avatar. “ NEW NAME/NEW LOOK.”
But the newly created avatar will receive the cores base stats as its own.
Making The PLAYER have a sense of progress.

So then your core will adept to the way that you like to play and over time, your one of many avatars will have a unique combination of stats / skills befitting your own play style.

2. This is your HERITAGE RING.
This is where the system Links all avatars to its soul. “ THE DEAD/ 1 LIVING.”
So Then in turn the game can still maintain What quest you have done, where you have traveled.

3. These are your characters dead/ or alive.

Now, in a game with perma-death there has to be some kind of penalty‘s, That players dread in some form.
This system could possibly use a POINT PENALTY SYSTEM.

EX. For Every Death, X Amount of points would be taken away. -“ Small amounts.”- From the avatar at its time of death, not from the core.
But of course gaining points would not be too easy nor too hard. To give the system a gentle flow.
 

Originally posted by Aka-Shadows

This system could possibly use a POINT PENALTY SYSTEM.

EX. For Every Death, X Amount of points would be taken away. -“ Small amounts.”- From the avatar at its time of death, not from the core.
But of course gaining points would not be too easy nor too hard. To give the system a gentle flow.

Doesn't that pretty much defeat the whole point of using a perma-death system to begin with? Why not just come out and say you'd prefer an XP or stats penalty instead?

Because, technically perma-death means " 1 char dies then you must make another."

So then with this system, perma-death is existent. But not to such an extent that it drives players away.

And there has to be a penalty becuase of the fact that, this type of perma-death is mild'ed down.

So to balance it out the more you die the harsher the consequence. The more you lose...

Thus, less points go to your core.

And with this system it probably need a pretty large skill cap

to make it work.

and becuase i believe a point system, would be more efficient.