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MMORPG.COM News: Outside the Box: Perma Death
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age might play an interesting role.. as a child nobody might listen to your ideas..
old peole might be respected, or seen as burdens to society.
there might be a prime in each generations life where the ability to influence society athletically, politically, etc would be more affable, and some with education and teaching meaningless.
it would all depend on player choices and prejudices. imagine being a young man and told it's not your place, being a middle aged man with influence, and later an old man who is respected by all, or told to shuit up.
it would be such an interesting thing to see... just to watch people form miny societies. it would be completely up to the players and their thoughts...
role playing would be honest, because players would be responsible for what they say.
if you start being racist in a community where you are the minority....
they might kill you.
i can think of some amazing and exciting ways that societies could implement religion and enforce social pracitces by punishment of death.
i bet alot of people would mimic others in the society and mock those in other tribes etc...
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
Illogic? Explain how it is Illogical ? In the online world with lag, bugs, exploits and any other number of problems added to the "greifer" mentality if it NOT illogical to assume it will not work out.
Seriously, if there is ever a game with such a thing it will die faster than AC2.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
Case and point is I play these games with a lot of gamers I have met through playing various MMOs. If you take my ability to play with them away, you take away most of my reason to continue to play so any kind of level based, and even an in depth skill system like UO would still kill that experience, the main reason most of us play these games in the first place.
If it took me say even 3 months in an easy mode game to reach max whatever measured system of a perma-death game, it would cripple me in continuing to group with my friends .especially in a PVP game which is the main feature I look for in MMO's. No pvp is a deal breaker for me playing an MMO. And mentoring just does not cut it, you are going to punish myself and my friends to grind out newbe stuff and have to repeat low end content to get us back up to what ever measure, and we will have to repeat that same cycle over an over again as our guild members get killed? The reverse is also the case make it super easy to get to whatever measure fast you lost the hook to keep people playing an MMORPG long term. No matter how much content you add if you do not give players a reason to do it other than it is a challange and its new with no measure of achievement the concept of that will become old fast.
You said level is king when it comes to PVP, but also skill is king in a different way. A 7X GM in UO would rape a newbe or even a mid level skilled character (50-60 skill vs. 100 skill for all those not familiar with UO) and did so it is not just level is king, max skill could also be king and would be in a robust skill system.
Take away achievement where everyone has everything, is the same skill, a short content cycle to max or whatever measure of the high end game would take away a hook to keep most of MMOs players interested for any length of time (MMO players are very fickle as it is with game swapping to the newest, brightest shinny game out there) ..Look at peoples sigs on these boards some have 8-12 games listed. UO launched in what 1996 or 1997 so it has been roughly a decade and people have 8-12 games listed ..
The average gamer who plays an MMO invest I read somewhere but it escapes me at this moment was between 20-30 hours per week, so quick max whatever equals board player base very fast even with a lot of content. If Permadeath game is easy mode where you start off and can get to high end content in a week what is the hook to keep people playing this new game? I have tons of games that offer that kind of instant action that I can play for free, and would point out would defiantly not pay $15 a month to play.
I just do not see a system that could hook enough players for a long enough period of time 12-24 month with what I would consider a MMO Fantasy RPG to make it profitable for a company to put out.
A lot can be done to improve the crappy cloan games we have gotten since really EQ, however perma-death I do not see as being one of them
i think that power dispararity would be inevitable...
thats the point.
it's like in pirates of the caribean...
he can kill him, but then he cant sail the boat with one person.
players with power can command respect, thus their power is more valuable if they manipulate those they can kill instead of doing it.
strong players can have a slave force of thousands, or thousands of dead bodies and starve.
ultimately players could united to kill a stronger character... unlike john woo movies, 10 people can always kill one person..
thus the need to intimidate your population.
all these ideas have been explored in thousands of movies... bugs life is a familiar one.
---this is a system that encourages disparity. it encourages the terror of dying.
thats what makes it fun. the point is, the meaning of life is not xp...
it's what you have changed in the world.
why the hell do people climb mount everest without enough oxygen to get back down?
because they left a mark.
mmo's denyplayer ability to do this.
like he said "heroic sacrifices"
this would be a game that would make up for losing everything for the chance of having the unimaginable. it would be an adventure, like a civilization game that you actively control, where it is your burden to unite a clan to defend from another, to rapidly change from a diplomatic land to a authoritarian dictatorship and crush others...
then a revolution would inevitable bring that down, etc etc etc... see?
it would be an mmo, but be fun and drastically change the system.
effort would not = reward like in wow and old mmo's
it would be all about ingenuity, you could do nothing but simply convince everyone to appoint you king, have them build what you want when, and exact obedience through courageous leadership or through restricton of civil right.
cool!
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
Permadeath is obviously not for the faint of heart. If a quality game system were implemented that included permadeath that would not prevent me from playing. I don't know about every playing style out there ,but I do know I go out of my way to make sure I'm not killed at all.
Maybe it only works best for those who enjoy RP? Anyone who ever played a true PNP RPG knew the possibility of death existed and started over if no other options were available often allowing for funeral arrangements for their character. There is death in fantasy worlds. Some of the best stories written allow for the demise of key players in the storyline. If not key players even lesser characters act as motivation for the growth of others in revenge or acknowledgement leading a player to become a cleric or priest. It could allow for the opportunity to settle early to create descendants or reincarnation. In a fantasy setting this could create life extension quests such as a mage quest to evolve into a lich or assume a spirit form to posess an NPCs material form. Upper level quest may revolve around defeating death. Norse warriors could actually see the Halls of Valhalla and be judged.
I can also understand the value in a system that allows coexistence for those who choose to accept permadeath being allowed faster attainment vs those who choose the standard "I'm young and immortal and like things the easy way" (gankers) route.
The positives are fewer players running around with rare Dragon Armor or enchanted quest items. It would require more thought and planning before storming an enemy operation. Agreeing with others the intelligent, strategic player could work their way up to warlord, demigod or godlike status. Right now any gimp can work their way up to level 60 with near minimal effort in grinding and alot of trash talk. In a permadeath system only true legends could work their way up to such a level. Perhaps as a reward for hitting a peak level they would find an item allowing reincarnation or an opportunity to reclaim their body. A permadeath system could also allow the opportunity for clerics of an upper level to truly perform a resurrection of value.
Either way to show profit the intelligent company will try to work with all variables perhaps creating separate servers to handle each playing style.
....and of course many other good points made by Slapme7times and others on both sides of the coin.
GOOD TOPIC
I think some of you guys are missing some major points. To say that a game with permadeath would fail is silly, as Nathan said in his article permadeath would be an 'option'. You could still play your normal characters like always, it's just that for a price (permadeath) you could have an extra-powerful character. The power could either be in the form of greater combat prowess, or the ability to accomplish certain feats - be it a bonus agianst slaying a particular mob or being able to become King, or both.
Normally I hate the idea of permadeath, but - if it was kept optional, in a skill-based game, with an heir system so that if you did die you could already have most of your gold, skill-up faster, and quest for any particular 'epic' item you had - I think it would be neat. Also, some sort of rules would have to be in place to protect agianst lag/bug/disconnect permadeaths.
As far as the free subscribers being followers of a 'main' character - I'm not so sure I'd like this. It might not give them a true feeling of how the game works (so they might not want to subscribe) and if too many people did it there would be alot of extra lag on the servers - with no money being made from it.
Some people are just to hardcore against permadeath like on the first few posts on this thread people instantly start bashing it without even reading it. Hes offering other ways to NOT lose gaming time from perma death. Like choosing to be main or regular character. Those who want to play without perma death play regular and those who want more at a cost will play main.
I don't agree with people saying they lose time with permadeath. You aren't losing anything. Its a game and they are entertainment. Playing them at all is a waste of time permadeath or not. Its all about the fun factor.
Here's the thing if yer gonna call it Permadeath, it's Permanent Death. Not reincarnation, or not clone your character. Call it something else but anything else isn't permadeath.
Although I think there should be more drastic penalties for death in most popular MMOs, I don't think Perma Death is an option unless you want to make a very hardcore niche game. The freedom to be wreckless, or to take a chance would be taken away.... or folks would be starting over alot.
I also agree as a previous poster has said, from a game management standpoint it would be too much trouble when you consider the factors of lag, disconnects, ect. I know that people will find ways around dying. It would be a CS nightmare.
Mourning had the coolest Perma-Death Solution:
After 50 played hours, your toon dies of old age.. but you carry on as the next-of-kin, and develop "family skills" quickly..
Also, hints of Epic Quests that could end with your perma-death, so you'd have to avenge your fallen character with it's grandchild, or something.
What ever happened to Mourning?
You've never played with permadeath, and if you have, it was a shitty game. You have nothing, at all, to base your opinions on.
"O noz my lvl 60 pwnzor gots killd 4evar wuts will i do now"
Lay aside your ignorant, baseless preconceptions, and embrace change.
Freakin' pussies.
-----------------------------
Listen Asmodeeus, seven years ago, Ultima Online didn't even have those pathetic "quests" that you refer to or those "professions" of ninja, samurai, necromancer, and paladin. Nor did it have any of the neon crap, or bug mounts. It didn't even have any "combat moves." You turned on attack and jousted with simplistic swings. It was a better game then. if you can't guess why then just uninstall the thing and move along. - Crabby
Figured I'd throw up my take on this. Although this is my first post, I've been a reader here for a while, checking up on MMO's and whatnot.
A little background so you know where I'm coming from. WoW was my first mmo, I was the 2nd hunter in my guild to hit 60 and played that game an absolutely ungodly amount. I was there when pvp was first implemented, I had one of the original skinned mounts, and went through the unbareable lag that was the first 2 weeks of the game. I've since went on to try Lineage 2, Rf-online (beta of course), and CoH/V to name a few major ones.
Anyways to get to the point, I think the problem with accepting perma-death as viable now is that it's tough to really see a working platform for it. We have systems that are near perma-death and systems that are polar opposites of perma-death but it really takes a system built from the ground up with perma-death in mind to see it really flourish. The only system I've seen for an online game thus far in my gaming career is that of Diablo2 and of The Chronicles. Of course diablo 2 took about a week to hit a respectably high level and wasn't persistent (I did however quit for ~4 years after losing my assassin to a spot of lag). And although Chronicles does provide a system for it, it also provides an alternate, showing that for now, at least the gaming community isn't ready for true perma-death.
A good amount of the anti-perma-death post's I've read thus far cite the loss of time investment/emotional investment as a major factor in not having permenant death. I can definetly relate with that; on occasion I've spent hours randomly generating/rattling off names out loud just to find one that I like. I definetly grow attached to my character, he/she is my portal into the world in which I'm playing, and I therefore have no choice but to grow with them; any information I get as far as game lore/experience goes, is as that character and not as myself.
I can't see too many people just picking up the pieces and moving on when they lose a character, that's a lot invested. Even with the heir system, you still lose that character; granted you get to keep some equipment and they get bonuses but if I make a character, then I want to play as that character, not as their son/daughter, neice, nephew or cousin. And although I can see myself enjoying the system, the fact that I won't be able to get to paly my first choice of a character anymore irks me in a way that getting picked 2nd to last for wiffle ball irks me.
Not that I'm against perma-death at all, I love the idea, but there are things one has to give up to get it. Like I said above, you have the chance of losing a character you invested time into. Also people keep talking about how permenant death magnifies deeds you do; and although that may be true, I jsut can't envision it. Example, if I'm in an instance in WoW (I know I know, the author wasn't speaking about current games, but bare with me) and my groups going down, So i set a frost trap and send my pet in to taunt/tank for as long as possible while we run out. The pet goes down, and my feign death fails and I die. I did heriocally delay the mobs from getting the rest of my group, saving their lives, but will a bunch of pick-ups remember my name, 1 month, 2 months down the line from what I did, it seems every good deed is destined to fade into obscurity, which doesn't seem like a huge bonus currently. Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a current game, but I just can't see it happening.
Granted, a lot of examples slapme7times gave were nice, although rather fantastical. It would be great to have a game where legends spread from tribe to tribe about deeds that would seem trivial by todays gaming standards. I know Chronicles of Spellborn takes a step in that direction by erecting player statues (or so I've read) of players who've done great deeds. This is definetly a step in the right direction, there's absolutely nothing better, imo then having your likness and name plastered in a place accessible to everyone for somethign that could be considered extra-ordinary. I have absolutely no doubt that player-driven content/story based games are on their way, it's only a matter of time. But I'm not sure if the current state of gamers is ready for such games, you have to remember people play these games to be the best, and will stop at nothing to do so.
One thing I did enjoy was the authors idea of the bell-curve or as I'd like to call it; the give and take system. Where you get a bonus by making your character more 'real', or more mortal. This allows players the ability to choose how 'real' they want their players to be. It doesn't alienate those who want to play the game through, hardcore rp'ing and not die once, and it doens't alienate the players who want to run into the other factions city, stark naked screaming juberish; there's a balance. But I can see, or hear rather, the cries for seperate servers and stronger checks and balances in pvp already.
The problem is, after almost a decade of grindcore, time-in based games; players have grown accustomed to these, forming a bond to the idea that they can log on, take off their characters clothes and /dance whever they damn well please. It's the freedom to do that that possibly draws them to the games.
In a perma-death game they have to give some of that up (no /dancing outisde the city walls
). But in return they get, what some would be considered the excitment of every second being their characters last.
In fact, this would probably increase social bonds within game. If a game was open-pvp or even semi-open (contested/neutral zones), there's no way I'm going more then a 3 minutes ride from town without a group, It'd force people to be mroe active in guilds, to form stronger bonds in game and to actually have to trust who they party with. The game shifts completely from being time based to being skill-based in a sense.
Regardless, I can't really say I welcome perma-death in any game, in-fact I could see many a game tanking because it tried to step forward in that direction and stepped off a cliff by not implementing it correctly. But if done right, it could create an entirely new experience for mmo'ers out there, possibly setting the bar for the next generation.
My philosophy has been that these thigns need to evolve. Just as gore has evolved over the years, as well as other mature content; these thigns are on a cycle and it's only a matter of time before we see a form of evolution take us in that direction; it's merely a matter of someone wanting to risk the time/investment of developing it. Remember, the first few games emulated real life (if it only was a game of table tennis); we've merely been distracted by advancements in hardware/graphics; but it's only a matter of time before we start to hit that limit and developers need something else to draw people to their games.
There are a few things to point to to illustrate the whole evolutionary mmo theory. For one, instancing is growing more and more dominant in games (ddo being the most I've seen). Also twitch combat is on the rise, from gothic, to morrowind, to ddo, and chronicles of spellborn plans to expand on it. We're slowly straying away from the old select and auto-attack days. But we'll see what happens I guess, I'm in no position to predict the direction fo the industry.
Anyways, it's 3:09; so apologese for the rambling, just threw out what came to mind.
Just a side thing; to kazirak's (sp?) comment (I believe) about how Robert Jordan seemed to kill off some of the characters that readers didn't grow attached to. I still have hope that Morraine will make a gloriouse come back (although I haven't read his latest yet). Fingers crossed.
-Sherlok
permadeath needs to forfill many parameters inorder to retain success. It can't be implemeted in a game as WoW at the time being (that would be a disaster lol). Would like though to sum up some strong points reading this thread.
- the game content and lore has to fit the idea of death and give solutions as heirs and liches accordingly.
- the community has to be really mature about this and the game mechanics should prevent the players from bugs or exploits of this feature.
- the PvP system should not exist at all, or , apear under unique circumstances such as a battle of generals that would mark the fate of a city.
In general, after my mmorpg experience so far and depsite what the game industry thinks, i think that permadeath is a great idea. I am pretty sure it will bring loads of cash to the pioneers who will achieve to implement such a feature in their forthcoming product.
I dont know if its been mentioned yet..... dont have time at the moment to go through all the threads i want to read, but there is one major concern with Permadeath..... Latency, we cant all live near a game server to have a great ping and even if you do there is no guarntee that one of the hops along your connection wont drop out or develope problems while you are playing leaving you high and dry and Dead.
I dont know about the rest of you..... but after a couple of those i would probably end up throwing my game cds out.
I do belive that the hair system has some potesiale, in a permadeth system leveling sholdent be to hard mabey as in guild wars. The chalenge of the game has to be some thing ather than to gain lvl eg. survivel. I whold much rather fight fore survivel then level. I meen endles grind is totaly boring anny way an just a quetoin of time not skill. To survive a complet game with out daying ones thet will giv ju braging rights :-)
To make this work I think as stated erlier that the game has to be slower. The battles has to take longer and there shold be fewer but harder mobs. So that killing a sertin mob will be an acoplichment some thing to brag abaut. PvP ofcorse has to be in but ther shuldent be hard ore take time to rech a competetiv level (not level as in leveling)
The chalenge with permadeth as I se it is manely to find a way to preserve you gains even tho you die. A main way to do this is to fight fore a colektive (guild or clane) if the main gains i the game is colektive ones youre new char. gains back the benefits from the colektive ones he is reborn. The idee is to be part of a clan or oganization that you can indentifie whit as strongly as you now indentifies with your char. It will be as in real life, I die but my clan liver on.
I think someone mentinoed an idea of a pool system in a similar thread which sounds like an excellent idea.
Let's think sci-fi!
How about all characters being robotic cyborgs rather than living flesh. When you die you don't leave behind a corpse as such but scrap metal, parts and the like. You have a set time limit to retreive the item as a very basic robot, you have no skills, the most basic weapons. If you fail to retreive your leftovers, then it is a free for all for anyone else to claim your parts. These parts could consist of very expensive implants, weapons, exotic metals so it would be in another players interest to prevent you from collecting your parts. The player who 'corpse-camps' would only know what parts they could claim when the time limit is up.
Once you have your parts you have to go to a recylcing plant to reprocess them and let the nanobots do their work, there is a chance that part of this process could fail as your body parts have been damaged. One way to increase this chance is to use a more expensive recycling plant.
You got a few ideas mixed in there, a money/item sink, a quasi-permenant death system (if you don't want to pay for a greater chance to get back your items then you don't have to which should make it more 'friendly' fo new players) and you still have to find a way to retreive your parts whilst you have virtually no offence or defence which becomes almost a quest in itself and 'encourages' players to group.
Thank you, i was hoping i didn't have to confirm this esspecially when all a person had to do is take a bit of time to read the F.A.Qs and find out. Basically if you die and haven't bought a good clone you lose a small percentage of your skill points (max of 1.5 mil).
IMO if you want to implement permadeath in a game you need to let players control a group of characters instead of a single one (we let them control a whole growing family because of this) and automate skill gain of those.
The main reason for this is simply socializing with others - if perma-death would take away your ability to play on with your friends because you are a noob again, it would ruin your game experience. But if you control a larger group of characters you can go on playing with your friends because you have some other characters left and you might get some more in future (atleast with a family concept and fast moving game time or times, if you use several time scales at the same time like we do).
The main reason to have perma-death in a game is stop players from having maxed out characters and concentrating too much on one uber-character. Also permadeath in a game forces more player interaction and the need to form social structures and communties to protect each other against enemies you really need to fear now. There are more advantages from perma-death in the long run than there are disadvantages - but you need to provide a good law and order system to make it work.
Ragosch
I find permadeath quite appealing, but maybe that's not strange given my EVE background. However, I could not see it in action in EVE - and this is the main point which a lot of the repliers here really missed in the article - that this is not referring to any current game, it simply wouldn't work there.
Breaking the mould, thinking outside the box or whatever you want to call it means you have to approach something differently than you have before to make it work. This also seems to be a problem with some posts here, where comparison to current MMO's is used as an example to not do something. That sounds quite futile to me, since if we intend to always compare to the previous examples and thus limit us by them, how on earth are we going to innovate?
MMO's - or MMORPG's - or MMOG's? Anyways, massively multiplayer games are just massively multiplayer games. That's what the ground we should build upon to create something new, not taking WoW, SWG, EVE or whatever as something which is "right" or "wrong". That simply isn't the right approach.
Nathan suggests we can do a game which features permadeath if we design the game from groundup to support it, and I tend to agree with him 100%, this can be done. But if you persist on taking a concept, like permadeath which is especially complex and apply it to a game which didn't consider permadeath from its very inception, it's not going to work - and that's the premise which this article was written with, it doesn't work in any current game.
Instead, I'd suggest you sit down for 30 minutes and create your own game, but from the beginning include the concept of permadeath. I'm sure all of you can come up with (and indeed some already have) with a game which can feature permadeath at it's core. Here's a really quick and dirty one, I'll steal a subset of SW Empires at War since I just played it last night for familiarities sake and I happen to like spaceships!
Star Wars Commander
Don't be the Tie Fighter, Be the Star Destroyer Captain
Game features:
This is my stolen-licensed-10 minute version. It's massively multiplayer and features permadeath and couldn't care less about what other MMO's have done to date since that isn't an requirement. The aim is not to make permadeath work in WoW, the aim is to make a game where permadeath works. It's not perfect but then again, maybe we need more than 10 minutes to create the perfect MMO
Nathan
(The one from EVE)
ps. EVE does in a sence have something close to permadeath as discussed here, however it's quite hard to achieve. You would have to have your pod killed, repeatedly, without having a clone. However, the chances of you doing that to yourself (as in, you don't buy a clone) are slim at best.
Exactly, I agree that the group is one of the main enablers of achieveing a system which could feature permadeath. I even felt this annoyance with most RTS's that infantry was always dead the minute you used them, you then had to manufacture new ones, group them, bring them up etc. (rinse, repeat). W40K Dawn of War solved that quite well with allowing you to reinforce your infantry squads, both with more men and better (or different) weapons.
Well, there seem to be a lot of carebears here.
Also a lot of people with poor reading comprehension.
The guy is not saying to put perma-death into an existing, level-based, grind-yourself-into-a-coma game. He is talking about using a system of OPTIONAL permadeath in a FUTURE game which is DESIGNED from the GROUND-UP to accomodate such an OPTIONAL system. If nothing else, look at the words in all caps. Almost all of the negative posts here refer to the fact that they don't want to grind their characters back to their old levels to play with their buddies. That doesn't have to be the case!
Some people say it takes away the fun by risking death. For me, I question what is fun about endlessly killing rats to get loot, when everyone can get that loot. In a lot of MMOs, it's just a simple equation: More time = more loot. There is nothing else to it. No skill, no daring, nothing. Just pay your subscription and log in. That's not fun for me. Permadeath, in a future game designed for it, would be an exciting way to break out of that stultifying grind.
And besides, like the author says, it doesn't have to be for everyone. There can be regular chracters who get to do most things, like craft or assist on quests/missions, and then there are the main characters who risk permadeath but gain more rewards. If you don't want to die, then play regular. If you're worried about keeping up with your friends, play regular, or risk it all as mains - chances are you all will die at some point and stay roughly equal.
I know of at least one game in beta right now that has full looting at death and an afterlife, plus the concept of main characters that will risk permanent death, so the idea is out there and being worked on.
Good article Nathan!
I have just one thing to say about permadeath. No. And that idea about 'extras' is horrible, and shows absolutely no understanding about how people online behave. A character like that would be played, in the majority of cases, by someone wanting to grief or harrass. There's no way you'd be able to count on such characters, they'd be constantly causing problems, logging off in the middle of things, refusing to help, spamming chat with crap and/or vulgarities. Have you ever even played an online game? A throw-away character, for no fee? Come back to reality, please.
Permadeath will work in any of these ^^^^^^
Perma death would only work in a MMO-RTS, where you control large numbers of weak NPC's, and all your grind-time isnt wrapped up in your level 200 grinded character and/or uber sword of god slaying.
There are three options besides levels for MMORPGs: skill-based (Ultima Online, Eve Online, etc), player-based (Planetside, Face of Mankind, etc), and non-advancement (Second Life, There, etc), but that is a topic for another day. Watch for Outside the Box #5
Please. Stop. Your embarrasing yourself. There is levels and grinding in UO, Eve Online, and Planetside. Its just called something different.
well i think my original point was missed
we as a society take the path of least resistance,
i play a pure pvp game we destroy cities and spend weeks to rebuild them mind you it takes 2-3 days to max out a character to the level cap, that aside if i died once and lost that caharcter i would not bother rerolling, even if it only set me back an hour, why? because regardless of how small or miniscule the grind is its still a grind
now you may say well thats just a class system, okay so if i takes me 5 hours of swinging my axe to maxs my axe skill is that not grinding?
games like guild wars grant us instant leveled characters that can pvp yeah that would be fine, oh theres perma death okay no prob takes 5 minutes to make a new one, whoopdiedo i got bored of guild wars in about 2 days, the pvp was boring after half an hour their is no attachment to your character
so imho permanent death is a barrier, whether a lineage system or not, people dont play a game to have to do the same things they would in RL
to attach a player to their avatar it must be a building experiance, tearing them away from said character will chase people away
shadowbane has no permadeath, has very small death penalties (repairing items and 5 minutes of vulnerablility) however it does have asset lose and destruction closest thing to permanent loss that i have seen, now SB has a small but loyal player base that fully accepts that cities are just pixels, but if you remove one of my chacters because he died in a fantasy game where the goal is to fight im going to be pissed. people have quit SB after loosing cities and is a major facto in low populations atm the community is roughly 1500-2000 players (no acurate way to tell) aside from bugs the city/asset loss is the single largest reason people have left the game, no every one of their characters are left intact when their city is destroyed but they still quit, callem carebears callem what you will but these are the people who make up the majority of the MMO market and lets face it they dont like to loose
Perma death is the ultimate form of loosing,
macros became an issue because people wanted the easy button, fast leveling/skill systems came from people wanting an easy button, perma death is a hard button and while theyre maybe a niche for it the majority of players will choose to avoid it
adding permadeath will imho cause a game full of carebears afraid to leave their town with their super ranked crafters and politicians, and a smaller group of griefers with bare bones characters killing anything that steps outside
Is our writer here in MMORPG.COM just intending to create controversial topics? Because God knows what the MMORPG market needs is less controversy, and more constructive things being done.