All Posts by DDPI

Not having a release date means no promises are made that would have to be broken.  

PVP will be a major part of Valhyre. The exact mechanics are still being worked  out.

Originally posted by Thor_Leifson

 

 

Yet, here's why that wouldn't work.

Say you want to be the savior of HockeyPuck village so you go out there and risk your character and die. The game holds a splendid magnificient funeral for you and the people of the game erect a statue in your honor...right next to the 800 other statues of heroes who have fallen to the invading goblin horde.

Aside from the silly proposition of "where do the villagers put all these statues of dead heroes?" one runs across the problem of sharing the story. "Look!" says Player 1, "I died trying to overcome the goblin horde and saved HockeyPuck in the process!" "Me too!" says Player 2, "that mission was a pain in the butt. It kills me every time I get to it."

Now let's be realistic with those figures. There would be several missions of this nature in the game at moderate or low levels. Within a short period of time, you have thousands of characters (if not tens of thousands of characters played by thousands of players) all dying to the same missions with a few making it past and getting to keep their characters. Those skillful few move on to die to later permadeath missions...

Which leads back to the argument made by countless players and developers in this thread and elsewhere in the world already. Permadeath just isn't fun because you lose your progress. If you seriously expect me to pay $50 and a monthly fee, then I want something to show for it. With Diablo 2, there was no monthly fee. If I took a risk on a Hardcore character, then all I would have lost with their death is time. With most MMOs, a Hardcore character means the loss of both time AND money and that's simply an unnacceptable risk to a huge percentage of the community.

Also, let's be honest here, any game with permadeath automatically encourages players to "play it safe." You pound the newbie kobolds and skeletons until they turn grey, then find more green mobs that don't Bring a Friend and pound on them for several hours. You do this until you're midway through the game and finally realize that your existence in the game world is a pointless series of low level encounters with no real challenge. There's no real reward for taking harder challenges because the risk is simply too high. Plus, the challenges really aren't all that much more fun than whacking on greenies. All this leads to player apathy and subscription losses.

If you want to implement a permadeath, then player advancement must be quick and you can't really charge a monthly fee unless player advancement is VERY quick. This is not a sound model for most MMOs, but works fine for a linear and quick game such as Resident Evil or, say, Pong.

You are right,  current models would not work with a game that has permadeath.  which is why you will not see it in any game created by any big publisher because they are risk adverse.   Plus it would not work in any of the static games on the market today.   the current model of doing "missions, quests or what ever they want to be called then it wont work either.  

Using a tool like perma death has its place, and when it is used a whole other slew of tools become unavaiable,  like level progression or typical combat that is found in current games.   

Perma death isnt something that could just be tossed in to make a game "hardcore". The whole game from the ground up would have to be designed to support it, and new ways of accomplishing that would need to be created. 

I agree with you.  In today's market with the WoW and EQ2 clones support by monthly subscriptions it wont work, but as developers look towards ways to make their product stand out, you will see more revisit the idea.  And who knows maybe no one will make a game in which permadeath "works" but maybe in the pursuit of it, we will see new and inovative designs in other aspects.

A very interesting conversation..

From what I have read here and from discussions with others,  it seems the main reason people are against perma death is because they see it as a method to cause all their previous time put in game to be wasted.  An interesting conversation happened at IMGDC and that discussion was the talk of permanence.   What exactly is permanence to a player?   It seemed to be agreed on that permanence was the identity of that player remaining in that game even after the player wasn't there anymore.  

Permanence has been focused on the avatar.  I mean look at it.  In WoW the only thing you can really make permenant is your avatar.  You cancel your sub and when you come back your avatar is still there,  with all the items you collected.  But mark you ever left on the world is erased.  I mean so what if you ran Molten Core nekkid with just 10 people?  You did not effect the game in any way.

Now,  think for a moment how you would perceive things if you could effect the game world in a permenant way but to do so you had to risk your avatar?  You had to make the death of your avatar mean something.  We all want to play MMOs so we can pretend to be some great and mighty character that shapes the world around us.  But how many games really allow people to do that? 

So you want to be known as the savior of Hockypuck viliage?  Well then put yourself out there risk your avatar to hold off the horde of green spores and may your funeral be glorious as your exisitence is celebrated by those you protected.  If you want to write a new legend you could start another character and try to make that characters legend even more glorious.

Granted.  current MMO mechanics would have to be rethought.  The idea of grinding and linear progressions would have to be redone. Death in and of itself would not come easy both for characters and monsters the ability to flee would need to be enabled.  And players would need to be given a chance to flee.  But importantly it would take a player base willing to open themselves to something more than just an avatar.  The idea of permanence would need to disassociated with the avatar maybe given to something else.  Maybe a blood line, maybe a tribe, or maybe the goal would be to die spectacularly so he with the biggest legend wins.

Specifics?

1. It will be pay to play.

2. client based not browser base

3. combat system is still be worked out but will skill based.

4. Crafting will be involved but hopefully not a grind. 

There will be more information released as we can.

if you are using IE  then got to tools>internet Options>Privacy>Advance   then you can select accept first party cookies.  I would suggest selecting block third party cookies

Valhyre takes a little from all the past MMOs,  I like Hz, I also like DAOC and AC, so there may be a few things that are similiar to those games as well

the audience Valhyre is after are those players that want an indepth game play and story. With emphasis on the story that they can become part of and change.

Nope, we havent been cancelled and most of the discussion take place on the community forums at www.valhyre.com 

I only get to visit mmorpg.com once in a while and it makes for slow posting here.

Hi Mikey,

I have an asbestos suit so I am prepared for the flamers :)  Learned a long time ago everything has its critics.  You can either hide in a corner afraid of the flames or grab the fire hose and stand firm. :)

Id.  Sometimes I need a vacation from my vacations thats for sure.

Sly,  Glad you think its cool looking,  but slight correction.. those are bastlurs not dragons.  they will be completely different than what people think of dragons as

doing good.  taking things one day at a time.  trying to find some free time here and there

hows things with you?

And Welcome

Society of Gamers hosted a Developer Chat with the developers of Valhyre. 

The transcript has been posted over on the Society of Gamers site  CHAT