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How would you make permadeath work?
l2avism
Member UncommonPosts: 386
I think we've overdone it with this whole concept of zombie avatars that magically rise from the dead every time they die.
We need to diversify.
I think that if you base game progression around the actual player instead of what gear the avatar wears or what stats the avatar has.
You should progress in the game by basically learning how to play the game.
We'd have to do away with levels and gear farming and make avatars disposable. It would also be a good idea to make it really hard to die. Instead of PvP always ending in death, there could be a surrender mechanism that grants victory to the opponent. (this could mean dumping inventory on the ground to be looted while allowing the loser to run away naked or something)
We need to diversify.
I think that if you base game progression around the actual player instead of what gear the avatar wears or what stats the avatar has.
You should progress in the game by basically learning how to play the game.
We'd have to do away with levels and gear farming and make avatars disposable. It would also be a good idea to make it really hard to die. Instead of PvP always ending in death, there could be a surrender mechanism that grants victory to the opponent. (this could mean dumping inventory on the ground to be looted while allowing the loser to run away naked or something)
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Make it an optional game mode.
* more info, screenshots and videos here
This would solve many things in MMO game. First, stupid kills. You try to solo a tough elite mob unsuccessfully or pull constantly too many normal mobs, you reroll. Second, you want to harass players from other factions. They call help and your pride keeps you still doing that, you reroll. Third, You're doing your own business, and a player from other faction kills you, but you still show up and try to ignore the pest, you reroll. Dying in MMOs has been too forgiving for a long time. There has to be consequences if you fail, or if your enemy kills you. Full loot is not a good option, imo; maybe in more PvP centric games but not in other MMOs.
If you die, your consciousness can be restored into a new body, but will only be at the point where you last downloaded. So, if you downloaded consciousness, then went off leveling for 3 hours and then died, you'd lose all 3 hours of progress. I'd also make such a system full loot, so it'd have to be a game which is less gear reliant than usual and with a strong player economy.
Any system with actual full permadeath (loss of everything) just isn't feasible in an mmo. A large part of the attraction of MMOs is that people get attached to their characters. If you kill that character, especially after any sort of decent length of time, chances are the player will quit.
Why does every game have to cater to every demographic?
How about "I dislike when people feel that their preferences have to Trump all". It's as if they feel the entire world should just be homogenized.
Why can't people of one demographic play the games they like and people of other demographics play the games they like? As long as all of those games can be done well and support themselves realistically based upon what they might take in as far as money.
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Sadly, most MMO's that currently have permadeath and a few of the upcoming ones pervert their own concepts with stuff like "pay to avoid permadeath" or "pay to avoid stat loss after permadeath".
You can't fuck around with your core concepts like that.
One thing that I would like to see is permadeath as a POSITIVE choice rather than a negative punishment.
How and why would you do such a thing you ask? Well, everyone gets tired of their character at one point or another. Some people roll alts, but for non-altaholics like myself it's usually at that point where we grow tired of our main that we quit a game.
A positive permadeath would be to take your character on one last heroic journey. Perhaps the character could gain incredible powers in their last moments, perhaps the game could grant you a single wish, something like that. A last meaningful moment.
Your next character could then level up or progress in a faster way than they normally would through collecting mementos or exploring the feats of your dead previous character.
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Permadeath in MMOs is totally defeatist because, assuming the game is about building your character, to have such a penalty will prevent risks or it will just drive people away from the game as the MMO grind is usually enough as it is without the additional grind of starting again.
Each to their own but I can't see how permadeath in an MMO would appeal to people until it was managed in a 'last man standing concept' i.e. everyone starts at the same time and the winner is the one left standing at the end. Not sure how to make an MMO out of that concept, but unless you weave permadeath into the game goals i.e. people who die can't re-roll until someone has won, then there's no point to it.
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I don't personally enjoy perma death most of the time but in certain SP games it can work well. It's possible to have it in multiplayer but things like number of lives, or a dead-cooldown, or attaching it optionally on whatever game aren't good ways to deal with it. The game needs to be designed around the purpose of perma death.
One way is to sap most of the power (and attachment) from your character. The result would be a grindy with minimal character progression and frequent death type game. I doubt that would go over so well.
Something better would be to shift the power into something else. That way you still can be attached to playing and progressing but not necessarily one particular character. I do like the idea of a spirit/consciousness/saved cyberbrain that persists even after death which hold the true strength and power of your character even if it does break the idea of perma death. Though, that is the nature of making permanent events, like death, function in a persistent world.
I would like to see more player group, guild, clan, nation, or corporation type of progression being were most of the power resides. Playing for the greater good of the group you belong to sounds far more interesting.
I suppose Crowfall will be like that in some respects. Low character power growth, pvp focus, and the reach of skilled guilds or factions will have the most power, are some of what the game will have along with world perma death instead of character perma death.
As long as there is any possibility of accidental death caused by coding issues, network conditions, or social misbehavior, Permadeath just has too many fundamental flaws to be any more than a small niche market.
And is the ability to create a new character really in the permadeath mentality anyway? The concept of recreating characters just screams 'Purchase an EXTRA LIFE in our Cash Shop' to me.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
You know, people around here want something different. At least until something different is offered, then they want the same old thing.
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I guess it's just a matter of your own personal discipline.
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When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
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This design journal explains all the mechanics in more detail: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1308/feature/10014/Design-Journal-4-Incapacitation-Spirit-Walking-and-Permadeath.html
How would you make permadeath work?
when you die your dead for good..theres no coming back..then make a new toon but instead of losing those "hight end items / end game gear" (no i m not talking ALL of your gear..unless its ALL end game gear) is stored in a soul..you can regain this soul with the items inside only if you take a penalty buff for a certain amount of time..if this occurs more often like over / over /over again the buff stacks..there ya go now go make a game!Completely eliminating a person's personal avatar and all the time they invested into it is not feasible in a long-term based RPG as it is in ARPG's or Rogue-like games. That being said, penalizing the players in a certain way (loss of time through item loss or crippled-like/death penalties) can enhance the experience of trying harder content or competing against other players.
My idea for a solid game in this sense would be to actually make death a viable option for character advancement and not a time sink leading to frustration. I would combine elements from games with rebirth systems such as The 4th Coming and Ragnarok Online with competitive risk/rewards of pvp and raid intensive titles such as WoW and EVE.
I would want there to be several different levels of "death", falling to a small npc in pve would incur almost no loss where as dying in a pvp battles or raids would permanently reduce your stats. On the flip side, continuously winning pvp battles or completing raids would escalate your strength indefinitely (think a-la Highlander) and would add incentives for people to group together to take down a strong mark or to band together to protect their increased strength.
I would leave an option for people to sacrifice themselves/transcend , whether you wish to use a rebirth or descent twist to start anew as a low level, low skilled character but with increased based stats / quicker leveling bonuses so that in the scenario that you've become too crippled, you can start again without having the time you played gone to waste.
By the same token, you could have this option for people who have become extremely powerful to start again while on top to remove the bounties on their own heads and give themselves a huge advantage in leveling again.
Combine this with less focus being used on players finding gear and instead have them hunt for each other and/or components used for rituals/rebirth process. I would make the gear system extremely simple so that combat is focused on player specialization and skill rather than farming a build and pressing buttons in the most efficient algorithm, I think it would keep players entertained quite a bit.
The last comment would be that, there would have to be some restrictions, as you wouldn't want players to be able to easily pk and farm other players, so, maybe make the bonuses/penalties only apply once a player has reached a certain level which would allow them to be competitive/able to farm what is necessary to start over if need be.
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Only for the Hardcore of coarse.
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"No! If i die in combat in 3 hits to a ganker or to lag I'll lose like 3 years of character progression!"
this kind of ignores my point about making death difficult and about moving progression from the avatar to the player.
If you make it nearly impossible to die and you make death a non issue then permadeath isn't a big deal.
You just died? well, make a new character. Are you now 4 years behind where you were? Not really.
You still have 4 more years of experience at playing that game that someone who just downloaded the game and started playing. You just cant have it work in a game were creating a new character requires like 5 months of endless grinding.
ALSO if you have the ability to create as many characters as you want and have them all trained up in the background passively then its simply a matter of re-logging and you are back in the game world immediately just on a different character you had saved for the occasion.
To make permadeath work you have to sever the bond between the avatar and the player. One way I planned on doing this is to have two levels of avatars. You have your main avatars and then you have the secondary avatars they control. In my game concept the dragons (actual players) rule over the human civilizations (playable minions with NPC AI when not played). Since the dragons are almost impossible to kill (they have old forgotten human technology like quantum travel- its a futuristic game after the fall of human civilization) its basically your fault if you kill your dragon. The humans are breed massively in cities you control, and attend training you assign to them so you could basically have 1000 copies of your most favorite mage build ready to go to war at any time.
If you and I were to play, say, Medieval Total war would you have less investment because your units die? Or if say you were to win (or lose) would you not want to play another game or would you just say "well, I played it once how can I play it again?
I actually like many of the suggestions in this thread and think there is merit in each of them. I especially like the suggestion about wanting to have an eventual death.
It could be something where you keep your character alive as long as you can but there is also a benefit for having a glorious death.
Additionally the game is probably about a "family" or "dynasty" and not exactly about individual characters.
Sort of like the sci fi books "Foundation Series" where you would read about all these characters and then "yadda, yadda, yadda they all are dead for many years/here's some new characters...".
If a game is to incorporate something like perma-death it cannot be grounded in the old idea of working your character for hours and hours and days and days. It has to be about something larger than those characters while still allowing something alluring about having a character.
If people cannot make this paradigm shift then it's very difficult to have a real discussion about creating a game that goes beyond individual characters.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo