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I think that what you want is Permadeath.
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Anyone who gets off by humiliating someone they just beat in a fight is not the type of person whose arguments I will listen to.
Just wanted to comment - I didn't see what you did as trolling at all and I agree 100% that it's hard to take seriously the arguments of somebody who finds t-bagging opponents to be a highlight of their gaming experience.
I'm sure that out of 100 lives you'l lose less than 10% of them to your net going out or your batteries dying. And if your batteries dying is such a common problem then maybe you should replace them more often?
Or maybe it's just not FOR you? The offer was made to check out something that might bring a bit more life into your character, but if losing them would destroy you, then just pass on the offer and move on. The appeal is making a difference in an ever changing world rather than being just another passenger in an MMO thrill ride that never changes.
The thing you miss here, as you have gone of the path you laid out is the very important fact that in most other games. Dying only cost you time and potentially a little bit of gold. In a PD game you potentially loose everything. Do you see the difference there.
As for cheats being detected, that is true they are but it is ALWAYS a reactive move. Before it is detected someone can do a lot of damage.
That is why cheating is a lot worse in a Perma Death game.. Just look at DayZ.
As for your other ideas... It seems that EQ:N will come fairly close to that without the hassle of me having to start over each time bad luck strikes.
@Happywulf: But with 100 lives it is not really perma death now is it... it is 99 respanws then you are royaly toast death.
This have been a good conversation
You didn't address my concern. You said that the issue of the "oops" is taken care of with the 100 deaths before permadeath and I simply showed how that doesn't actually solve the problem since there will be people at 99 deaths that have something cause them death that is not their fault. I've fallen through the world in plenty of MMO's and I'm sure there are going to be bugs and things the player can't control - it's an MMO reality.
Perhaps it isn't for me, but that's why I'm here right? To have a discussion and perhaps have my mind changed, but I haven't seen any arguments that have influenced me yet. I can tell you that lines rip on other mmo's with marketing hype-speak like, "The appeal is making a difference in an ever changing world rather than being just another passenger in an MMO thrill ride that never changes." won't cut it.
One solution could be tracking the players ping and on death checking whether it has been extremely high for a significant period (like 1 second) before death. Then reviving the player or something if that was the case.
The 100 lives model is valid too - sure, it doesn't hinder you from loosing your final life to lag or something else, but it reduces significanse of loosing one life to lag. And saying that it isn't PD until the last life is like saying that you aren't dying until you are on 1hp...
None of these solutions are complete, and the first one can be abused so I wouldn't recommend that to a devoloper. Neither will there ever be a perfect solution. But it is really like lagging in any other game - you die. In other games death is less influential and in PD games it is very influential - that is the gist of it.
I don't know how much you picked up, but a large part of my post was about explaining all the benefits of PD, and what it can add to the games/what it can allow the devlopers to design, that cannot otherwise be achieved. Do you really think that all these perks and the improved game that would come from that is not worth dying 1/100 times to lag?
Your last death could also come just as easily from a sneeze that made you press W as you were looking over the side of a cliff or on the balcony of a tall castle tower. That said, by the time you've reached the end of your 100th life, you'll have likely already made as much impact in the world with this character as you ever will. By then you should probably be making out a will, role playing up being an old age coot, and mentally preparing yourself for the inevitable. Go out into a dungeon, alone, with all your best stuff. Go out in glory. Or trip off a cliff. Whatever the case, it'll make a good story and the end of a legend.
But then you can start a new legend. And you could claim yourself to be the decendent of your old character. Or an evil brother and try to undo the advances your other character brought forth.
In any case, the bottom line is that you have to come at it with a different frame of mind. Your life in any character will not be forever. Your objectives will never be set in stone. Personal achievement or communal, it's for you to decide. But the bottom line will be that the world will have changed because of your involvement. Think of it like DnD players who talk about old characters who've died. Only with this you'll have a world you can log into and see the changes you made, and you can show your friends.
Well if we go by high ping that can be exploited to all high hell. And 100 lives is not perma death until the last... Heck the first 20 or so life tokens will not be worth the bytes they take up on the server. To continue on your analogy. In any game i do not care one iota about the first fifth of my health bar. I car a little bit about the next and when 3/5 are gone i might start paying attention and one i am down to the last fifth i might feel something close to caution. So your entire idea of immersion linked to perma death would evaporate if a 100 life system was used. Heck if a 10 life system was used it still take the whole point out of it.
This have been a good conversation
I think you're focusing too much on the actual permadeath feature, as an aspect in a vaccume, and not on what would mean and change how the game was played, experienced, and altered by it's players. It's not a thing added in arbitrarily just to be edgy and cool, but to bring meaning to the world and it's citizens. A warlord's adventure will have a definite beginning middle and end. As will a Wizard's journey. Or a Dragon's reign.
You couldn't have a typical MMORPG if you're going for perm death. I think both sides seem to fail to see that. You're not going to invest hundreds of hours into a character for perm death to be done by lag.
But that is the thing.. Perma death is the core feature in the OP´s suggestion. Because everything else can be had in a non-PD game too. So in order to give the whole concept a fair shake we need to deal with the elephants in the room. The biggest one being how your journey can be cut short from things that are outside your control. It is one thing to die from hubris and another one to die from a system error or other outside effect. It also make it much more critical to stay on top of cheat´s as there is nothing worse then to loose a three year old char to someone exploiting or using a script.
This is actually the thing that turns me off perma death games. I oove the idea of a journey but a multi-player game is not the best place to do that, since well... humans are humans...
This have been a good conversation
3 Years is a looong time. I will be proud of myself if any character I make will last longer than 1 year.
I think Permadeath brings to the table Two main things.
A. No Power Creep. You can get strong, but eventually it'll be over. There will be no ever more powerful stuff to do as everyone will at some point hit their limit. But this also means that a powerful player will always be considered powerful. What he chooses to do with that power is up to him. Create a nation, or destroy one... But you will not be one of many lv 80's, you'll be your own mix of experiences that have happened uniquely to you.
B. It will allow for things that are REALLY HARD TO DO, like become an insanely powerful mage, be as OP as you could expect it to be. It'll just be really hard to get to that point and to maintain it. By the time you've gotten even moderately powerful you might have already lost half of your character's 'lifetime'. But the more powerful the reward, the longer and harder it will be before you get it.
My mindset is that the 100 deaths are an aspect of character age. I expect to live for 5 months, minimum. Anything longer will be a privilage. At the end of it, i'll recount my characters life, and then try something completely different.
And thus we represent each one side of the spectrum.
I personally would not bother with a game where i have a constant nagging fear that any step could kill me... I used to play UO... I was not very fun. You on the other hand it seem enjoys the added layer of danger and rush that comes with that.
Now i agree that to create a space where a story have a real gravitas you need some form of Perma death... The problem is to make the game safe enough to attract a crowd large enough make it viable from a financial standpoint. That is the thing i get stuck on because either you have to cut back on graphics (maybe even cut back to 2-d) or you need to put in A LOT of safeguards for people.
I simply can not find a happy medium.
This have been a good conversation
I disagree and im also a proponent of ToA wich includes the 100 lives to perma death system. When those lives start ticking away I bet wed be surprised at how much the care or concern for your character will grow. Sure the first few might go by fairly unnoticed maybe you get confronted trying to bring your farmed materials back to town and then loose a few more trying to get said materials back or just plain ole revenge for getting robbed takes a few but after 10 or so are gone youll be happy you had 100 heck youll probably wish you had more than 100.
I can understand the argument of 100 lives taking the point away from perma death but 1 life to perma death doesn't make the point any more valid when you consider that after the one death your gone you had no to little time invested in the character and your going to want that time in a sandbox game that offers all the features that ToA is putting on the table.
Guess you never played Wizardry Online nor experienced the way they handled permadeath. It can and has been done successfully and just cause the game got shutdown means nothiung as Sony shutdown all games they deemed a burden to their structure so they could promote EQN/L, cause Wizardry Online was quite popular and the servers were almost always full and alot of people liked the system, it had a bigger following than most realize.
It...can work.
I admit i didn't read the OP post in great detail, and i skipped over the rest, but from what i've read, this is not about perma-death.
Ultima Online, even on the small free-shard i played (or exactly because it was small?) allowed exactly that: You can start hunting and sell the hides to the local leatherworker. During hunting you see someone get robbed, you decide to take out the robbers. the victim points you to the right places and so on.
The robbers may not be permanently dead, but that actually allows for stuff permadeath does not support in the same way. Deeper relationships, especially rivalry. With permadeath, it's easily settled, just ambush your nemesis when he's fishing or whatever. Without permadeath, you can not simply remove people you don't like, you have to work with them, one way or the other.
On the shard i played, some people even get famous without ever using a weapon.
Which kingdom wins could be decided through the course of (a) battle(s), or by slaying the killing - he shouldn't run around in dungeons etc. anyways, so you can not kill him on the go so to say.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
Not the developers fault. If you know your internet is bad or someone is downloading something in the house, its your fault. If your kid is being stupid and gets hurt, its both your faults. If the keyboard dies out, your problem. Think of problems that aren't your fault. If the server goes down then its the developers problem. If they have a bug, its their problem.
I would because its fun. I've had a character for over 300 hours on DayZ and died one day from a random leg break and zombie pile(High population servers). I started up again and kept playing. I want to progress, learn, and get better so my next life will be even longer.
Plus typical MMORPG's are themepark crap. All WoW clones with carrot on the stick gameplay, cookie cutter quests, tab targeting combat, everyone's the hero type shit.
Yes this is exactly what I am talking about - allow me to quote the first paragraph of the OP "I have to make something clear. I totally agree with you that permadeath will not work in a modern MMORPG, let alone add anything to it. We have to do more than just delete your character after 1 death, to utilize all the potential of permadeath and make a better game. This is vital to understand when creating a game with permadeath. It isn't permadeath itself that is good, it is what it allows you to do." So, as Vermillion and HappyWulf so deftly put it: It is not so much about the permadeath feature itself, but rather about the way it can allow the devs to change the gameplay.
You are right that EQ:N has some of the features (some mobs can change where they spawn, and players can build anywhere I believe) but those features are not at all, everything a game like this needs. First off, in EQ:N you can build litterally everywhere, which means that over time the world is probably going to be cluttered with structures. And as far as I know not everyone can blow up your private structures (might be wrong). That said i don't like the way they handle construction, but of course thats just my personal opinion. And it is also the player run elements that I find the most important. There wont be kings and leaders, and no one will pay taxes or have their own shops or be a part of the city guard or any of those things. I don't remember anything mentioned about the terrain (forrest/plain/desert) changing in everquest?
I think one thing that helps PD in ToA is that it is not a theme park, it's a sandbox. You do not build up equipment that much, there are no levels, it's all skill, you build things in the world that stay and last, you have settlements/kingdoms that you live in for protection, among other features.
It doesn't have static dungeons/raids, so you don't grow your character to get to the next best dungeon or raid. You progress you character's skill to create a story in the game and like all great stories, they have an ending and you can end up being mentioned in the Monolith if you were great enough.
PD works in ToA because of the feature set. Without these features, PD would not work well, if at all. Everything put together makes PD and ToA work.
AKA - Bruxail
I thoughtHaven & Hearth was more famous
try to convince people on the internet? All you get is either flames or the choir preaching back to you. Few will change their minds just because some random dude on the internet say so.
What i want is fun game to me ... not perma death, not sandbox, and not what you want.
I think it's possible for permadeath to work, but it certainly requires gameplay caveats.
I agree with having things like magic, or other abilities be rare, this provides a way to be unique. Nevertheless, I think that the game needs to have skills as opposed to levels, and a relatively low skill cap. In this sort of situation, it would be fairly easy (wouldn't take too long) to become "capped." You could always design it so that you could drop skills at a later time to pickup new skills (say, for example, you stumble across a magic tome that is difficult to find and obtain, it lets you begin learning a magic skill-line at the expense of another skill).
I also think it has to have full loot, without items being very powerful, although again there could be rare exceptions. With this full loot system comes a durability system where items lose a % of their max durability every time they are looted (this also serves to appease the "realism" trolls as it fundamentally makes sense skilling somebody and taking their stuff is going to result in damaged stuff).
Finally, I think you need one character per server. Allow for reputations to grow, and allow for friend-lists to persist to the next character. This helps to keep you involved with communities you have formed after dying. There needs to be a bevy of non-combat activities, probably mostly pertaining to crafting and enhancing. Players need an option to be non-combat characters who aren't exposed to unsafe situations. Perhaps if someone does manage to gank a master crafter in a safe-ish area, the time it took to level their skills isn't particularly long, so it doesn't completely discourage them from coming back.
I think in this type of game exploration would be way more rewarding than in most games we have currently. The world wouldn't be so mapped out, or you would need to adventure around in large parties to progress through dangerous content. PvP elements are necessary to prevent power creep and keep game areas unique, as are inconsistent spawns of skill tomes, trainers, rare mobs etc. Otherwise you could just have roving zergs that camp mage towers until everyone gets a tome.
These are my thoughts on PD. I think it can work but the game really needs to be designed from the ground-up with it in mind. Most people don't want to lose months of work, but if it only takes a week or two of casual play to max out a character, I think that it could possibly work. There could also be extremely rare items that allow characters to resurrect, sans gear obviously. They would only be obtainable in difficult situations.
Plenty of people play D3 hardcore mode, and when/if their character dies, they start back up again. This is because the barrier to re-entry is low, and they get more of a thrill of playing on the edge at all times.
Nailed it...