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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?'"
The hardcore market would love this. It's the ultimate sense of danger, lending reality to a fantasy world. Most everyone else, however, doesn't. The quote about losing your stuff is absolutely, wholly true. Case in point: the success of World of Warcraft. When you die, you lose a couple dozen silver each time at most. No xp, no lives, no item penalties. Nothing. The other night I must have died a dozen times or more in attempting a difficult raid without enough people and I racked up 3g in repairs (for those who don't play WoW, at max level you can make 3g back with 15 minutes' lightweight work or 10 minutes hard grinding).
People love that. Hell, I love that. It encourages raiding and confrontations and risk, and pretty much adds to the enjoyment of the game knowing that attempting something difficult or even stupid won't set you back. It's just fun.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Well a Permadeath-only game would be a failure, by why not have the option to make a permanent death or a regular character, and seperate the servers? This works in Diablo 2, the Permadeath (hardcore) characters are more fun to play with, the game is more challenging, you actually have to use your brain, and the best incentive, the items gained in hardcore mode are better than in normal. Plus it's a status symbol - "You have a Level 99 hardcore Assassin? Wow! I bow down to you."
It's not exactly an MMORPG, but it works alright. There are always those who seek to ruin the game by player-killing though, so anyone implementing Permadeath mode might want to take care of that, unlike Blizzard.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
Its not multiplayer or really online (nethack.alt.org aside), but it definately qualifies as a massive role playing game, and it not only has permadeath, but has stuff that will kill your high level character before you even have a chance to react. Of course it sucks to lose a good character, but without meaningful death you get people throwing their life away in an attempt to zerg something more powerful than them. Just look at diablo, you might be seriously outpowered mephisto, but as long as you can do more damage than it can self-heal by the time you get back, you'll kill him eventually. Even worse would be watching a game of team fortress where you'll die 12 times just trying to keep the flag alive moving it a few inches at a time.
For the record, I enjoyed all the games I mentioned here, but if you want to play a role, unless that role is already undead dying should kill it. (Though that is an idea.. make death force you to live your life as a zombie/ghost/whatever, with the ability to still transfer your items to a live player, but no ability to really level or continue as you were)
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I think this is what I find annoying about the permadeath designs i've seen. The strategies and skill people talk about are generally overly causious. I mean to say a strategy is to disconnect from the game, stinks. It means the game isn't designed well for the punishments.
For permadeath to work the game has to be designed from the ground up to take it into account.
But the issue isn't really permadeath. There are plenty of ways, as mentioned above, to make it work without punishing the player. But then we would be right back to square one.
The people who want permadeath, don't really need their characters to die. They just want to risk EVERYTHING. They want the rush of knowing that 178 hours of gameplay depends on whether or not they live through this next encounter.
That's what they want, extreem risk at every corner. For all the suggestions "making it work" you are defeating the purpose of it by just making it an inconvience. Why have it there at all if the player isn't sweating bullets everytime 10 imps rush out at them?
Personally I prefer games that offfer you greater rewards the better you play it, rather then extreem penalties. But that is just me. Some people like to live on the edge.