Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Pro on Permadeath
cdhames
Member Posts: 26
So I've been a big proponent of permadeath since the golden days of MUDing. Back then, there were several RP enforced MUDs with strict adherance to the rule (Arm, HL, 4Lands). The reason it was so fun was because it was so intense. I'll say that again: "so intense". Every time I logged on I was wired because I knew just one mistake could cost me months and months (sometimes years) worth of character building. You learned to love your successes because they were always perfectly executed -they had to be or you'd end up dead. And you despised your failures because it usually mean't death (I admit more than once I Rage Quit but I always came back to the genre hungering for that experience again).
I bring this up now because I just watched RIpper X's latest video and I am witnessing him experiencing the same thing. Several people have commented in his video that they've never heard or seen Ripper X so thorough, so engrossed, and so... passionate about a game.
It's because of the Permadeath. Because it's "so intense". If he reads this, I'm sure he'll agree. As a matter of fact, I challenge someone to get the guy on here and post a response, I'd love to hear his thoughts.
My point with this is again; the company that designs a MMORPG geared around Permadeath will be the next heralded game design company. I know a lot of you disagree. And I've heard your arguments about no one playing such a game because losing everything isn't fun. And it isn't, I agree completely.
But there has to be Risk for the Reward to be so sweet. The genre is stagnating with the same wheel being recrafted and repainted. The industry needs to start taking risks again.
Comments
Permadeath is for pussies.
account-IP-ban on death on the other hand...
waste of time
Wow, nice reference to your own post, very succinct and self contained.A couple of thoughts:
I have to agree that high-risk MMO play is much more thrilling than the prevalent "no-death-penalty" set of games. Some of my most memorable gaming experiences came from early EQ, home of the dreaded multi-hour "corpse run". Saving a group from a deep dungeon wipe with a timely teleport made you actually feel like a hero, because you were. You had to pay attention to your environment, and you had to respect it. When DAOC (and then WoW) came out you could always tell the ex-EQers, because they were cautious and precise. That being said, Permadeath has a couple of very serious ramifications for game design, many of which would prevent it from being widely accepted.
The biggest problem is that PvE has to be a pale shadow of what it would be in a "low-penalty" game. Permadeath means no raiding at all (I assume I don't need to explain why). That alone is a dealbreaker for many, since raiding is THE PvE endgame. It means easy dungeons, if you have dungeons at all. If WoW had Permadeath, no one would have ever set foot in Gnomeregan, Deadmines, Scholomance, etc. EQ could pull off corpse runs because it's dungeons were MUCH easier than WoW dungeons. Even so, the prevalent behavior was to get a full group and chainpull single mobs below your level.
The second problem (from a PvE perspective) is that the characters are, of necessity, fairly disposable. No one is going to risk eight months of gear, character and skill development to a server crash, or a single bad pull. You'd probably need to be able to level to max and gear up in a couple of weeks.
Nor is PvP immune. If you and your nemesis are both level 80, and he kills you, do you really want to have to hide from him for six months? Again, unless character power (gear and levels) is nearly irrelevant, there's no good way to recover from a loss. You're not going to be playing with the big boys for a long, long time. Or maybe everyone kills each other so frequently that the highest level on the server is 7.
"Intense" gaming is great (if you have the time and focus to invest). But there is a significant market for some sort of progression also...that's kind of the point of an MMORPG (as opposed to Team Fortess/Counterstrike). Permadeath pretty much mandates an almost trivial PvE experience and greatly limits options for character development.
Account-IP-ban on death is for pussies.
Dying in the game means you die in real life on the other hand...
Did a MUD kill your character because your game lagged?
Did a MUD kill your character because you got disconnected?
Did in a MUD your character die because people exploited / "BOT" do avoid failure. (PVP)
Best example, force log when close to death with a third party "tool"?
A MUD is fundamentaly different in applied logics in game design to any current "MMO". Anything what was "intense" in a MUD 20 years ago will be annoying and frustrating in current games.
To sum it up, today when you die in a game featureing permadeath it will be 99.9% because of metagame and design flaws in current realtime combat designs. Not because of your "errors" unless you count just logging in on a thursday was an error in itself.
I love the concept of permadeath and I hate the actuality.
I lost a D2 level 95 character (hardcore) due to a power outage that was completely out of my control. I get that it happens.
I love the idea that you have to play more cautious about your actions and think about what you are doing. But permadeath is not a good thing because the internet is not perfect. Power systems are not perfect.
I love the idea of heaviliy punishing deaths. EXP loss, very steep repair costs, consumable needed to even survive fights, loss of items or other similar mechanics. But permanent death of a character is too much unless the investment of the character is not that much (systems like Realm of the Mad God are fine)
I play mmos for the fun of advancing the character,cant see any fun having permadeth, seem like playing super mario from 1985 or something,not cool at all.
Ouch.
I'd play that.
If i ever watch another RipperX video then permanant death would be a blessing.