This morning I was thinking about the future of gaming. Since I think MMO's are the future I thought I would post the idea here and see what the community thinks...

I was thinking about the life and death of a character/avatar in a virtual world. The way it's usually handled in games today is...well, there is no life! When you make your character they are already an adult. And then there's death...there's no death at all! You just lose morale and come back to fight again in a few minutes.

Ok, so how do we implement life and death and allow the player to continue playing. You make a baby! With another consenting player of course. You then pass your "genetic traits" (stats) onto your baby who you will control when you eventually die of old age.

You could train your child so their stats are boosted beyond your own stats that you pass to them and they become a better person (evolution). The possibilities are endless!

-doctorgrim

I would like to see it implemented coerently with the story and lore.

If there is no perma-death, then they should explain what just happened and why I am comming back.

Was I just ressurrected, did my gods restored my life, do I reborn as something, do I go to another plane of existance...

Im ok, with "perma-death" is not popular mechanic, but if you wont implement it, atleast make getting reborn coerent.

Im just tired of the same "you get ressurrect because you are and thats it."

In some space games, people dont permanently die, they just get in their life pod untill ressurrected

In some sci fi games, people have the option to make clones

In other games people dont die, they just get beat down and unconscious for a period of time

Some religions explain life and death in their way. Why MMORPGs dont create their own lore/religion with metaphysical laws that apply according to that lore?

I like how World of Darkness pen and paper games approach this subject, very deep and detailed.

What about spirit doctrine? life, death, evolution, rebirth, etc...

The answer is simple: developers and money.

Originally posted by doctorgrim

This morning I was thinking about the future of gaming. Since I think MMO's are the future I thought I would post the idea here and see what the community thinks...

I was thinking about the life and death of a character/avatar in a virtual world. The way it's usually handled in games today is...well, there is no life! When you make your character they are already an adult. And then there's death...there's no death at all! You just lose morale and come back to fight again in a few minutes.

Ok, so how do we implement life and death and allow the player to continue playing. You make a baby! With another consenting player of course. You then pass your "genetic traits" (stats) onto your baby who you will control when you eventually die of old age.

You could train your child so their stats are boosted beyond your own stats that you pass to them and they become a better person (evolution). The possibilities are endless!

-doctorgrim

I think that would be horrible. Spend hundreds of hours making and raising a great heroic character with awesome gear just to have him die off, then being forced to start as a child.. again. That is, IF you could find another consenting player.

Doctorgrim's suggestion is pretty excellent imo. It's basically Spore, the MMO. Except without all the epoch-jumping; you'd always be in "creature" phase. Your avatar would start young, grow old while accomplishing things, then inevitably die (either by old age or other causes). At which point you'd 'hatch' somewhere with whatever evolutionary traits you earned.

However...

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Originally posted by Interesting
I would like to see it implemented coerently with the story and lore.

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Interesting immediately hits upon the major downside of such an idea. The storyline would basically have to center around the interactions between species, as you would be playing a species rather than a single character.

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Originally posted by Interesting
Im ok, with "perma-death" is not popular mechanic, but if you wont implement it, atleast make getting reborn coerent.

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The only reason perma-death isn't popular is you lose progress. If progress in the game is purely based on the Evolution Points you earn during your creatures' life, you don't lose progress (even though that particular creature permanently dies.)

If you can't advance except by evolving, perma-death is the only way to progress. :P

(EDIT: By "Spore the MMO where you're always in Creature Mode" I'm obviously assuming that all of the dev effort goes into making that mode fun to play. It occurs to me that people might assume I meant "let's make an MMO about retardedly simple combat and dance-offs!" and I assure you that's not the case. You'd play an creature who gradually gains new abilities/traits each new life, through evolution, and the activities would be designed to be drastically more compelling.)

Yep, if you don't procriate you die. It's that simple. And more realistic.

Originally posted by nickelpat

Originally posted by doctorgrim

This morning I was thinking about the future of gaming. Since I think MMO's are the future I thought I would post the idea here and see what the community thinks...

I was thinking about the life and death of a character/avatar in a virtual world. The way it's usually handled in games today is...well, there is no life! When you make your character they are already an adult. And then there's death...there's no death at all! You just lose morale and come back to fight again in a few minutes.

Ok, so how do we implement life and death and allow the player to continue playing. You make a baby! With another consenting player of course. You then pass your "genetic traits" (stats) onto your baby who you will control when you eventually die of old age.

You could train your child so their stats are boosted beyond your own stats that you pass to them and they become a better person (evolution). The possibilities are endless!

-doctorgrim

I think that would be horrible. Spend hundreds of hours making and raising a great heroic character with awesome gear just to have him die off, then being forced to start as a child.. again. That is, IF you could find another consenting player.

Or, you could visit the old sperm bank! hehe There are ways around these issues. Use your imagination.

This is what Sims 3 is like.  You have babies and grow old and die and your children grow up.  You can pass your money and house on to your children and keep the game going forever.  Or you can just turn aging off.

Add in a clone feature and your game's there. The ability to clone your character at any time will allow you to skip the "baby-phase" and "teen-phase" and go straight to being an adult.

The spore conceptual idea of how to deal with death is very good.

You avoid permanent-death negatives while enjoying the positives of having a system that integrates gameplay and story elements coerently.

Also, this idea of an ever evolving progression system is very hardcore, beware casual players!

With creativity, we could add a metaphysical explanation of evolution, instead of physical evolution as well.

The metaphysical explanation "you die, you back to the spirit pool, and you get reborn with whatever evolution you acquired in your previous life". It could be implemented in any game.

The metaphysical explanation can have multiple religious flavours as well, it can embrace any lore or specific religion on the setting.

The clone idea requires a certain tech level (Who remember GURPs?) of the world, so it needs sci-fi settings.

But the best one, for me keeps being the World of Darkness system, depending what you are (if you are human, or supernatural entity) and depending how was your life, what you believed and how you die, many different effects result.

You can become a spirit, a wraith, a vampire, a demon, a lycan, a wyrm, a zombie, so many possibilities and I would have to spent the entire afternoon just to remember what could happen after the death. Death was only the beggining.

What's wrong with cloning?

Rather than having to faff around with a "child phase" or micromanage some breeding farm of chinese eggfarmers when you want to have a weekend of PvP; one could simply use cloning.

EVE does this and it works well; it's pretty much the only coherent death mechanic in any MMO that I've seen.

Originally posted by doctorgrim

This morning I was thinking about the future of gaming. Since I think MMO's are the future I thought I would post the idea here and see what the community thinks...

I was thinking about the life and death of a character/avatar in a virtual world. The way it's usually handled in games today is...well, there is no life! When you make your character they are already an adult. And then there's death...there's no death at all! You just lose morale and come back to fight again in a few minutes.

Ok, so how do we implement life and death and allow the player to continue playing. You make a baby! With another consenting player of course. You then pass your "genetic traits" (stats) onto your baby who you will control when you eventually die of old age.

You could train your child so their stats are boosted beyond your own stats that you pass to them and they become a better person (evolution). The possibilities are endless!

-doctorgrim

I definitly like the idea as you do not lose anything really.

But this will take a very HUGH amount of rethinking the whole game, cause we can't have our new born become a man and do the excact same thing'(like quests) as like you said within the full gameworld the world needs to evolve.

That makes a new intresting question: How do you evolve a online gameworld, like another poster said, place lore of your character into the playworld.

Lets say my main and first character that enters the game: Reklaw, eventualy there are some bosses I have to kill, after I have killed them, there is no chance me having to kill them again with Reklaw or even having the option to kill the same boss again is out of the question, instead the story evolves and my Son...or Daughter all grown are now dealing with the revenge of the Sons or Daughters of one or all of the bosses I as Reklaw have killed.

Anyway like the idea, might get back on it..........oh noessss.....

Different concepts that could play into this, as far as character developement could be milestone. Use the milestones as incentives to want to be excited, or at least more willing to embrace being a child again. When your offspring is born, they would start out with stats that scaled and averaged against the parents. As you play through certain phases there are different ways of developing your character. In child could be the point where you character can establish a life passion if you will. If you wanna be good a swords, use wooden/toy or in the more tragic case real swords at the childhood phase, this could unlock a trait once the child moves on to the next phase of life, "Passion for swords" or something of that nature, it means your character will develope sword skills faster and maybe even have certain advantages with a sword that others without the same passion won't have.

The teen phase would be the point wear one can experience the most growth in terms of character bound stats. Things like strength and intelligence etc. These stats at this milestone in life more easily effected. Once a character reaches an adult phase developement of skills and stats slow to a certain point, your not going to get new passions and your character bound stats would take more work to boost. You essentially have grown into the person you are going to become. When you start the next generation, their starting stats are modified by yours and your partner. Also, 1 or 2 of your passions you picked up become inherited talents, which would be stronger then passions. You can embrace them and have the passion and inheritent talent stacked together or ignore it and go a whole other way with it.

As far as quests, reputation with NPC factions or groups, I'd suggest a legacy system. So if your former character ticked off the assassins guild then maybe that opens up a larger life quest of fending off and surviving the assassins guilds attacks. If you parent saved a town from attack maybe they welcome you there with open arms and offer you discounts in their shops or in some places that are more isolationist, they simply allow you in.

I think I'm tapped from there but yeah I like the idea of a system of life, death, and evolution. Actually I think that Dragon Ball Z mmo you hear so little about is suppose to have some kind of system with a life, death, and evolution cycle. I don't know how it works or how deep it will go.

This could be implemented into a game if they added super intelligent AI's that give birth to every single player, and both npc and players will expand rapidly. To create such a world will be difficult, including if it's fantasy. Let say I was borned, but my virtual father died from a war, therefore, I only have a mother. I have random genetical traits, both good and bad, and depending how I choose on decision making, interaction choices, and risk-taking decisions that I make will change my alignment. Will I be a good person, or a bad person. If I was a good person, I could probably be able to become a paladin in the medieval world, fighting against the undead and saving lives. Or I could become a bad person, and could become a bandit or a necromancer, depending if I could become successful. As This life and Death system affects everyone, to truly become undyable, I need to become a vampire, or achieve an artifact that could grant immortality, or something else.

Mixing Fantasy with Spore, and Sims 3 together, along with other stuff will be difficult, however it will be great to make an evolving world, and faces lots of challanges.

Originally posted by Writh

Different concepts that could play into this, as far as character developement could be milestone. Use the milestones as incentives to want to be excited, or at least more willing to embrace being a child again. When your offspring is born, they would start out with stats that scaled and averaged against the parents. As you play through certain phases there are different ways of developing your character. In child could be the point where you character can establish a life passion if you will. If you wanna be good a swords, use wooden/toy or in the more tragic case real swords at the childhood phase, this could unlock a trait once the child moves on to the next phase of life, "Passion for swords" or something of that nature, it means your character will develope sword skills faster and maybe even have certain advantages with a sword that others without the same passion won't have.

The teen phase would be the point wear one can experience the most growth in terms of character bound stats. Things like strength and intelligence etc. These stats at this milestone in life more easily effected. Once a character reaches an adult phase developement of skills and stats slow to a certain point, your not going to get new passions and your character bound stats would take more work to boost. You essentially have grown into the person you are going to become. When you start the next generation, their starting stats are modified by yours and your partner. Also, 1 or 2 of your passions you picked up become inherited talents, which would be stronger then passions. You can embrace them and have the passion and inheritent talent stacked together or ignore it and go a whole other way with it.

As far as quests, reputation with NPC factions or groups, I'd suggest a legacy system. So if your former character ticked off the assassins guild then maybe that opens up a larger life quest of fending off and surviving the assassins guilds attacks. If you parent saved a town from attack maybe they welcome you there with open arms and offer you discounts in their shops or in some places that are more isolationist, they simply allow you in.

I think I'm tapped from there but yeah I like the idea of a system of life, death, and evolution. Actually I think that Dragon Ball Z mmo you hear so little about is suppose to have some kind of system with a life, death, and evolution cycle. I don't know how it works or how deep it will go.

Brilliant stuff... I think we'll start seeing some of these real life mechanics simulated in MMO's as time goes by. It creates a more plausible and therefore more immersive experience. An "all-in-one" simulator that allows us to truly live the life of a fantasy character. The future is bright!

Thanks for the game suggestions everyone. :)

Originally posted by doctorgrim

Originally posted by Writh

Different concepts that could play into this, as far as character developement could be milestone. Use the milestones as incentives to want to be excited, or at least more willing to embrace being a child again. When your offspring is born, they would start out with stats that scaled and averaged against the parents. As you play through certain phases there are different ways of developing your character. In child could be the point where you character can establish a life passion if you will. If you wanna be good a swords, use wooden/toy or in the more tragic case real swords at the childhood phase, this could unlock a trait once the child moves on to the next phase of life, "Passion for swords" or something of that nature, it means your character will develope sword skills faster and maybe even have certain advantages with a sword that others without the same passion won't have.

The teen phase would be the point wear one can experience the most growth in terms of character bound stats. Things like strength and intelligence etc. These stats at this milestone in life more easily effected. Once a character reaches an adult phase developement of skills and stats slow to a certain point, your not going to get new passions and your character bound stats would take more work to boost. You essentially have grown into the person you are going to become. When you start the next generation, their starting stats are modified by yours and your partner. Also, 1 or 2 of your passions you picked up become inherited talents, which would be stronger then passions. You can embrace them and have the passion and inheritent talent stacked together or ignore it and go a whole other way with it.

As far as quests, reputation with NPC factions or groups, I'd suggest a legacy system. So if your former character ticked off the assassins guild then maybe that opens up a larger life quest of fending off and surviving the assassins guilds attacks. If you parent saved a town from attack maybe they welcome you there with open arms and offer you discounts in their shops or in some places that are more isolationist, they simply allow you in.

I think I'm tapped from there but yeah I like the idea of a system of life, death, and evolution. Actually I think that Dragon Ball Z mmo you hear so little about is suppose to have some kind of system with a life, death, and evolution cycle. I don't know how it works or how deep it will go.

 

Brilliant stuff... I think we'll start seeing some of these real life mechanics simulated in MMO's as time goes by. It creates a more plausible and therefore more immersive experience. An "all-in-one" simulator that allows us to truly live the life of a fantasy character. The future is bright!

Thanks for the game suggestions everyone. :)

I like the idea, but evolution is what I like to see as well besides the experiance of life and death of a character.

I want a mmo, that first starts off as in the pheolictic age in fantasy, population will be booming and war has been wage on between the tribes that you guys are born on, as people began to become civilizated and start making their first city. I want the world to go on, even if I die, as you are born into this world, with many different jobs that are always expanding depending on where you are at. I could become one of those alchemist if I could in the renaissance era, I could be one of those cusader's during the third crusade. I want the world to always evolve. NPC's are very intelligent and there could be many of them as us players, which make the game more better, as both new players become born at the same rate as npc characters, and after you made your character, you will be born somewhere in the world, and have different mothers and fathers, or maybe become a single parent.

In the world, there are many ways you can die, eaither from disease like the black plague or if it's a fantasy game, a different plague as well, you could die from sword fights or got killed by an assassin, you could die from incidents, there are many things that could happen, and many roles that you will face. It makes this game appear just like in Real life, but way different depending on the game and the growth rate. You could be a space pilot, you could be a necromancer, you could be them real estate housing people or if your very, very lucky, a prime minster or king. You could be a soldier fighting multiple wars, there will be so many oppertunities, so many jobs, so many challange and so many events that make people think (this game is awesome due to how this world evolve so quickly, and the infinite amount of challenges that  I could have.

now some people will often complain about this system and disagree with it being implemented probably due to the following:

"I don't want to lose my best equipment when I die in old age"

You don't need to worry about this, as the world is evolving, and there will be better equipment then you previously had in your previous live, and if the world didn't evolve yet, you still will get the same equipment or you take a personal quest to find your equipment that your previous life have. your tales of your death in your previous life wil be written in the virtual books probably by a priest npc or from a player.