The Eight Stages of Permadeath Debate

MMOG Designer and commentator Damion Schubert has up an article on the constantly renewing Permadeath debate. Permadeath is the concept of permanent death for a character in a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. The design hasn't shown up in any major commercial games yet but, to borrow a phrase, the soul still burns. His commentary is a great synopsis of the debate, from the rearing of its head to the final bitter back-biting threads. From the article: "3. Captain Obvious Speaks. 'People don't like to lose their stuff.' 'It isn't fun.' 'It's hardcore, and only hardcore games will ever use it.' 'Any game which depends on the internet for its reliability has no place permanently taking away all your stuff.' 'Why in God's name would anyone consider this idea a good or compelling idea?'"

Comments

The idea is dead

[yotto]

It is hypocritical for this guy to keep bringing this idea up again every time it gets killed.

Re:The idea is dead

[Bastian]

It is hypocritical for this guy to keep bringing this idea up again every time it gets killed.

Not if he starts the debate from the very beginning each time.

You forgot to ask:

[Anonymous Coward]

First Question the article should have asked: Do the MMO operators want to add permadeath?

Answer: No. Otherwise they would already have it.

Permadeath might sound like a "cool" feature, but it's one of those features that, from a developer side, is far more trouble than it's worth. For every player that loves it - there will be three that die and can't accept that fact. The dialog will go approximately like this - several times a day, hundreds of times a week:

Player: "I died! Can I be brought back to life?"

Customer Service Rep: "No, you're permanently dead."

P: "No really, my machine crashed / my computer was stolen / my little brother played with my account / your servers crashed / someone else was cheating / my ISP caught fire"

CSR: "No, you're permanently dead."

P: "But I've been playing for 6 months, had a level 99 character with all this stuff, I'm gonna quit if I can't get my stuff back"

CSR: "No, you're permanently dead."

P: "THIS SUCKS, YOUR GAME SUCKS, I'M SUING YOU, I'M GOING TO HAVE A TANTRUM ON THE FORUMS AND TELL PEOPLE THAT YOU'RE EVIL AND THAT THEY SHOULD AVOID YOUR STUPID GAME"

CSR: "..."

Patch 1.1 change list: "Removed permadeath because users don't know what they want"

The moral of this story: Users, because each has completely different opinion of how the game should work, do not always know what they really want.