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Role Playing (Games)

The Eight Stages of Permadeath Debate 154

Posted by Zonk from the step-nine-profit! dept.
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?'"
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The Eight Stages of Permadeath Debate More

The Eight Stages of Permadeath Debate

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  • The idea is dead (Score:5, Funny)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:01PM (#12265039) Homepage
    It is hypocritical for this guy to keep bringing this idea up again every time it gets killed.

  • Would need the right arena (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:05PM (#12265053) Homepage
    My previous comment (which was a joke, thoguh it sounds a bit more mean spirited than I'd intended) aside, I think this would work in the correct game. Say, MMOGTA or something.

    You'd have to seriously rethink (or more likely abandon) the idea of leveling and posessions, though. /goes to RTFA.
    • I thought that combination of UO and the Sims could feature perma-death. Since a player would control multiple characters, the loss of one isn't a huge deal.

      There still is the problem of what will happen when all of the characters die, though.
    • Definately, the concept of leveling as it stands in most mmorpgs would have to be rethought... but there are other things to consider as well.

      More important would be to address the question of how you die. If certain characters could perform "saving moves", having perma-death could lead to much better balance between characters, and a need for balanced parties. Dieing should be something that's fairly difficult to do, unless you ignore the warnings and foolishly try to conquer the world on your own.

      If it'

      • Re:Would need the right arena (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @09:40AM (#12269242) Homepage
        I agree that perma-death could work. There are several problems that come from the lack of perma-death:

        1) endless progress. The strong players can become obscenely powerful and lord over the newer players. While this provides a nice incentive to keep playing, it means that the fundamental concept of play balance is really impossible (which is pretty crucial for a multiplayer game).

        2) fear. Fear is fun. This is why many people prefer Counterstrike to fast paced FPS games - CS has the fear of death because if you die, it sucks. It gets your heart thumping hard.

        3) changing classes. These games often have a massive variety of player classes and species to play, and often no easy way to change. Death lets you roll up a new character, and lets the player explore the game more completely.

        4) realism. How realistic is it to never die?

        Of course, then there's the converse problem - nobody wants to die. Nobody wants to lose their stuff. Not losing their stuff also means there's no reason to kill anyone - you don't get to take anything. So PVP never becomes anything but a side-game.

        Personally, I'd like to see a short-term MMO. Something that had thousands of players, but didn't focus on keeping them on the level treadmill. Something like a throne war - every man for himself, but you can form alliances, and the winner is the one who controls the Throne Tower (spoils of controlling teh Throne are divided among the members of the winning alliance, so pruning your ranks is encouraged). Various smaller towers allow control over areas with good resources that can be used to arm your players for sieging the main Citadel (and these smaller towers are, in turn, being raided by members of smaller clans as well as unaligned thieves).

        Let the players have storage lockers for backing up extra equipment and spells and otherwise eliminate any concept of "level-up" besides your gear. Make it easy to escape/survive combat (but at the loss of some gear) so that death matters but is avoidable. Then make the equipment come easily with some hunting. Kind of a compromise between traditional action gameplay and MMORPG gameplay. You could have backstabbing, binding oaths of fealty, heroic wanderers, oppressive kings, tight squads of bandits, etc.
        • You could also allow a form of passing equipment from character to character: inheritance. New character would need to come from the original character's lineage, or a newb character that had some contact to the original. A will gets produced beforehand. You could even stick in amusing instances like other players contesting the will.

          The character gets the boost from the item, but should still be limited by their newb characteristics. Also, the game should favor experience & acquired skills, and le
        • Personally, I'd like to see a short-term MMO. Something that had thousands of players, but didn't focus on keeping them on the level treadmill

          Perhaps going back to the coin-op pricing model would help with a model like this: For $x, you get N lives. Maybe provide "1-up"s in the game for "heroism" (define it computationally?) and at the end a pinball-like random "free play" chance.

          The storage locker idea is also intriguing. Diablo 2's stash never seemed to be big enough to make retrieving your corpse a
    • 'levels' and 'gear' as it were are bigger legirons on the genre than the 'death penalty'.

  • what about (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:09PM (#12265079) Journal
    Move/allow characters of a certain level into a separate world which is inaccessable to lesser characters and may or may not let the greater characters to leave and reenter. Sort of like an Olympus or Valhalla.
    • Maybe you could make it so that if you "die" in the special world, you revert to your original state in which you first gained access; but if you "die" in the regular world, it's a permadeath.

      Or maybe the other way around. I don't know, the only RPG I play is Nethack, where death is (almost always) permanent.

  • Steel Battalion (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The definitely 'hardore' XBOX mech sim Steel Batallion did this a few years ago, as I remember. While that wasn't an MMORPG, it's easy to see how the feature would translate. People start getting overly cautious when they could stand to lose a creation they put months into. One thing that does do is allow beginners a small advantage, because they don't care if they lose their puny avatars. They can afford to be wild, in other words.

    • Re:Steel Battalion (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:55PM (#12265294) Journal
      You were definitly cautious at times in Steel Battalion. But, due to the emergancy eject, you could still take risks and survive, as long as you had enough cash for another mech. Run out of cash, and you did have to end your career.

      The most annoyning permadeath for me in that came came on a midrange mission. I was fignting in a canyon, came so close to finishing the mission, and got hit hard in the front of the mech. It fell onto its back, got hit again and blew up. Hitting the eject failed, because it ejected you out the back, not the top. So since my mechs back was on the ground I died, and had to climb up the missions again.

  • Hardcore... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Southpaw018 ( 793465 ) * on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:16PM (#12265117) Journal
    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.

    • Re:Hardcore... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GoofyBoy ( 44399 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:23PM (#12265147) Journal
      > pretty much adds to the enjoyment of the game knowing that attempting something difficult or even stupid won't set you back.

      Thats what some people complain about. All "leveling" games have no level of risk or sense of actually achieving something. Any monkey can get to level 60 given enough time.

      You run by a level 60 in WoW and you think, "gee that guy has a lot of time on his hands." You run by a level 60 in a permadeath game and its a whole different story.

      • Re:Hardcore... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nc_yori ( 870325 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @08:15PM (#12265383)

        That of course begs the question "does anyone give a damn?" I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out that WoW and the like are games, nothing more. When a game has built-in mechanics that cause frustration in most/all of its players, is it really that well designed?

        I know the whole point of hardcore play is the added element of challenge, but is there really a point to implementing something that less than 1% of players will enjoy.

        Another thing to consider is the human factor. I could only begin to imagine the tech support headaches stemming from people who have suffered the effects of hardcore play without being prepared to deal with them. About to die? Pull your ethernet cord, let the game log that you timed out, log on, bitch out tech support for you dying because of "lag" or "being disconnected."

        I think he fundamental problem behind hardcore play in games that you pay actual money for per month is the risk for both the player and the provider. Players risk losing months of work they've payed for and providers risk being on the recieving end of a lawsuit when jackass player X loses a character due to server lag and demands retribution.

        • Re:Hardcore... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by GoofyBoy ( 44399 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @08:37PM (#12265518) Journal
          >That of course begs the question "does anyone give a damn?" I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out that WoW and the like are games, nothing more.

          Casinos have games in them, with people losing to the house all the time. Yet they are still profitable and people still come in the bus loads. Look at really bad sports teams, if you have a loyal fan-base, then you can still be profitable even though its fustrating to those participating.

          >I could only begin to imagine the tech support headaches stemming from people who have suffered the effects of hardcore play without being prepared to deal with them.

          Yep, I agree with you here.
          • Casinos have games in them, with people losing to the house all the time. Yet they are still profitable and people still come in the bus loads. Look at really bad sports teams, if you have a loyal fan-base, then you can still be profitable even though its fustrating to those participating.

            Yes, but you don't have to bet the house constantly. You cannot lose the house due to extraneous circumstances such as lag, power outage, etc.
            • I think you misread. GP said "losing to the house", 'the house' being, of course, the casino itself.

            • Yes, but you don't have to bet the house constantly. You cannot lose the house due to extraneous circumstances such as lag, power outage, etc.

              Then why do they ply the patrons with free drinks, I wonder, and parade all manner of mammary eye candy around? They are definitely looking for you to suffer some lag and power outages of your higher mental facilities.

          • Re:Hardcore... (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Casinos have games in them

            Ah, yes, I remember the $2,000,000 jackpot you got for hitting 60 in WoW.

            Wait, no I don't. Because the only reward you get in most computer games is the reward of playing them in the first place.
          • Casinos have games in them, with people losing to the house all the time. Yet they are still profitable and people still come in the bus loads.

            The big difference is that in a casino, people are there to try to win real money. Make a MMORPG where there are actual (legal) cash payouts and I guarantee it'll draw a different type of crowd than it currently does...
        • > but is there really a point to implementing something that less than 1% of players will enjoy.

          Yes, when you don't want to compete in the same market as Lineage, WoW, Everquest, ... .

          > When a game has built-in mechanics that cause frustration in most/all of its players, is it really that well designed?

          If it is cause of constant frustration, then of course not. However permadeath doesn't have to be the cause of it. The game just has to put a stronger emphasis on non-monster killing parts and maybe

      • Re:Hardcore... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @09:08PM (#12265676) Homepage
        You realize that you're implying the existence of skill in MMPORPG's, right?

        In permadeath games people behave far more conservatively. You die, your character dies, everything you've built up dies. So you're not going to go for the massive boss pile-on unless you're sure you're going to win. And where is the fun of that? Ultimately this means that the level 60 monkey will have to have even more time on his hands, and the game will seem boring and uneventful that whole time.

        Of course, there are shades of gray. The question is what is the punishment for death, and is it appropriate? In Diablo, you had to go get your stuff. This was a pain in the tail, and generally made people not want to die. This also meant you were vulnerable until you went back and got your stuff. 20 minute setback. In other games, you have to buy death insurance to keep your stuff, or pay for an escape pod, or the like (10 minute setback). Losing half your gold is another example (1 minute - 10 hour setback). Losing all of your experience, and equipment, and progress (1 minute - 2 year setback) seems harsh in comparison.

        • Re:Hardcore... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @10:02PM (#12266040)
          I think that in a permadeath game, the entire play mechanics would have to be shifted. For one, there would be no level 60 - well, maybe there would be, but it wouldn't be anything anyone sane would care to go after. Also, the characters would have to start out with more skills in the first place - I think we can all agree that nobody wants to play a game where you're tooling around with a level 1 weenie that can't do jack half the time.

          You could make the penalty for dying something short of losing everything by giving you more skill points, hit points, etc. when you're creating your next character. So if you just lost a level 12 character, your next one would get to start at, say, level 8, and if you just lost a level 6 character, you'd be able to start at level 4.

          You could also make it harder to die. I once played a tabletop RPG called Beasts, Men, and Gods where you were knocked unconscious at 0 hit points, and from there you would slowly lose hit points until you either got some medical attention or reached some negative number of hit points which represented death. I personally like this option because it makes those often-overlooked healers people you suddenly want to have in your party.

          Personally, I think the above would be really neat ideas. I tend to look at permadeath as a great excuse for a friendly kick in the pants for MMORPG gameplay mechanics, which in my opinion aren't too different from the mechanics used in computer RPGs since the beginning of time.

          Sadly, the thing that you would need most to make a permadeath game truly enjoyable is to include a way of making the game fun besides the usual level-grind. While I'd personally like a game of this nature, since I don't enjoy level grinding one bit, I realize that anyone who tries to create a game of this nature is up against 10 years of precedent and tradition as well as the incredible cost it takes to pay for people to make the game world come alive for new players and stay fresh for veterans.

          • Agreed (Score:2, Interesting)

            by PromANJ ( 852419 )
            The 'inheritance' idea is an interesting one. Die and your next character will get X percent of the experience points.

            Anyways, I think the key to getting permadeath to work is to put more emphasis on the player skill than on the character skill. Equipment could also be used to store the momentum you've built up. In real life, a toddler with a gun is more dangerous than a... real ninja. Assets like weapons and gold could be kept in a bank so the next character can use it. Stuff dropped in the field might

            • Re:Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)

              by NinjaFarmer ( 833539 )
              About 4 months ago I thought up a design document for an MMO that had everything I would like to see, and every couple of weeks someone comes out with an article about something I've already addressed in full, with improvements.

              An easy solution to permadeath is to not include respawns at all. Try using the D&D system, where another player must come and ressurrect you (simplied explination). The challenge is making this fun for both sides and profitable, so you don't have tons of people spamming

              • Re:Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)

                by Bastian ( 66383 )
                (try including about a quarter of the game as content specifically for dead people)

                This actually reminds me a bit of an old adventure game (sort of) called Cosmology of Kyoto. When you died, you'd get transported to other worlds (the different "hells and heavens" of the Japanese Buddhist cosmology - a different one depending on whether you've been a good boy lately), and you'd tool around there until you get killed somehow, then come back to the main world at some "respawn point."

                It might be interesting

              • Re:Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)

                by Onan ( 25162 )


                The problem with most such systems are that they arn't fun when you do die, and that is exactly the opposite of what you want a game to be.

                Well, I think you need to have some occasional, semi-avoidable anti-fun in games, just to contrast the fun, and to make it possible to distinguish between doing well and doing poorly.

                The problem with permdeath isn't that it's un-fun when you die, the problem is that it's un-fun the entire damn game because you're not willing to take any risks that might result in

        • Permadeath is only possible if most of your effort is not invested in a single character. Imagine MMOGTA, by which I mean something that would be completely unlike GTA exept for the parts I'm talking about. In GTA, what matters is your money, and property. You can always buy guns, and steal vehicles.

          There would only be a few things attached to your character, enough to make the character a meaningful concept. Let's say, a few stats, like an increase in health, armor, increased ability to cling to a mot

        • Re:Hardcore... (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I don't see any reason why you can't have variations within a game. Most areas where death penalties are light, some areas where the penalties are more severe, and some areas, that are hard to get to, allow for perma death. Then people could select the level or risk they want. Don't want to risk losing all your stuff and character, stay away from the extreme areas. I'm surprised no one has done this before, it's always a global death rule it seems.
      • Making you wander up a treadmill while threatening to take it away is NOT the solution to this.

        I believe a new look at the system used in MMORPGs is in order. Levelling is great for the bank accounts of companies charging per month fees, but it's just not fun to most people.

        If I were to make a new mmorpg, I'd remove the concept of levelling entirely, and replace it with more tangible things; make it so the newbie has to hunt for his weapons and such, so pacing can be controlled that way, rather than being

    • Re:Hardcore... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by the_ed_dawg ( 596318 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @11:32PM (#12266502) Journal
      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.
      Playing devil's advocate here. What you are saying is that the sense of danger causes players to think twice before doing something stupid. How do we think this could apply to malicious behavior, such as griefing? The time barrier for reaching a level to annoy players effectively would make it prohibitive. I can see the 13 year old now. "Yeah, I got killed for being a tool. It's going to take me three days to do it again. I'm going to go play something else." Yes, it sucks for those who get whacked, but after the tools understand that they can get their kicks elsewhere, all that will be left will be the people who take it seriously, which should make the game an overall more satisfying experience (until death, of course). I seriously doubt that anyone would ever make it to a level where they became a serious threat if they acted like an asshole, so griefers become mobs with a really good AI. :)

      Yes, this sucks as a business model because there aren't enough hardcore gamers to pay developers, but it should remove a lot of the hassle of playing MMORPGs. I also totally agree with you that respawning should be relatively painless. However, I eventually stopped playing Anarchy Online simply because I lost the patience to deal with a bunch of morons on a team. (Tank sees room full of high level mobs. Tank runs into room before party is ready. Tank gets raped. Party blames doc for tank's stupidity. Repeat as often as possible.)

  • d2 count? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The design hasn't shown up in any major commercial games yet"

    Does Diablo II's old 'hardcore' option count?

    • i say it does.

      Lots of people swear by hardcore only, and diablo 2 is still very popular after all these years.

      the problem i had with hardocre is that the risk of dying to lag and latency is very high and completely game ruining. Your windows box crashes when you'Re in a hot situation, *poof*. Annoying 12 years old kids can be a pain too.

      For MMORPGs, a separate server for hardcore is nice, dotn force people to, but give them the choice.
  • I played it today. Went up a level in the Council of Light. Meh. And you would REALLY have to blow it to catch a permadeath. But it could happen.

  • Doesn't have to be permadeath only (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mtrisk ( 770081 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:20PM (#12265136) Journal
    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.
    • I only play diablo2 in hardcore. I started in softcore, but it just isn't as fun... mostly because softcore play dosent require any strategy, only time investment. But then again thats what a lot of these mmorpg'ers are into.

  • Nethack? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by irc.goatse.cx troll ( 593289 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:21PM (#12265139) Journal
    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)
    • well, nethack players don't mind dying - they're not playing for the ending movie. but permadeath in an mmorpg.. could be very intresting AND refreshing. of course the whole game would have to be re-thought when even not the friggin enemies perma-die. it's frigging illusion shattering to be be waiting for a spawn of an 'unique' character because another party got to him before you.

      permadeath would not be a bad thing - but the whole game concept would need to be reworked, so that you wouldn't die so usually
    • Try ToMENet. It's Mangband, but far more expansive and "traditional" in the popular RPG sense. It's got Permadeath (default) and Everlasting options to boot. I love that game, it's the only mmorpg I play and ever cared about, because it *real* fun.

      http://www.tomenet.net/ [tomenet.net]
  • Permanent death emphasises skill with the game over pure dumb luck and brute force. Which goes right back to the idea that this sort of option will be most appealing to hardcore players.

    So, why not?

    Well, it's a poor strategy for a game like WoW where everything is a time sink and your ability scores are largely based upon items that you spent long hours grinding away for. It sucks to die after you've spent a week on a character, and with a subscription based service you don't want someone just giving up b
    • A collary would be that there is some flexibility in the system. To use an example I am familiar with, Dungeons and Dragons as the basis of an example. Within 3.5 level advancement proceeds at a fair clip, and between all the skills and feats it could be said that magic items are a bit less important (especially if you limit their presence).

      On top of this, as with many fantasy games, there is the ability to ressurect a fellow character. It is a fairly expensive proposition (that sometimes carries penalties
    • I would have to agree with one of the previous posters and say that permadeath would work best in a GTA style game. Having a game that doesn't necessarily have levels would allow a death to just change what your character had done and what they owned.
      I do have to agree with you, though, and say that permadeath for most subscription based MMO's would be a bad idea. Especially due to issues such as lag. I know that I am upset when I have to make up a bunch of debt after losing my connection, but I can deal w
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Diablo II had this as an option. I liked playing it back in the day, but ultimately quit because my internet connection wasn't quite reliable enough. If World of Warcraft had a permadeath server, I would definitely try it out. The challenge is appealing. Comparable to nethack, in some ways (nethack being a great example of a permadeath game).
    • Okay, so we've hit Stage 5 of the Permadeath Debate... Just a few more to go, now.

      To help advance that:
      Remember the Super Mario way: You get three deaths before permadeath, you can earn more, or you can circumvent it entirely by holding the A button.
    • There would be alot of people getting geeked in Gnomergan if this was a "feature" of WoW. And if not there, then in Uldaman or a host of other places.

  • MAngband perma-death (Score:2, Insightful)

    by djdanlib ( 732853 )
    Well, I run a MAngband [mangband.org] server, and we have a sort of perma-death there. If your player croaks, then he turns into a ghost... which can be revived, or die horribly. It seems like a good balance. The players don't mind too much. It works because hey, they had a chance to avoid perma-death. Most of the time.

    • If your player croaks, then he turns into a ghost... which can be revived, or die horribly. It seems like a good balance. The players don't mind too much. It works because hey, they had a chance to avoid perma-death. Most of the time

      I'm hoping you mean if your character croaks, in the world I live in, if the player croaks, it's fairly final...

  • Mourning Realms of Krel (used to be Realms of Torment) is planning on having permadeath. You also have the possibility of having kids and passing traits onto them before death, then being able to play the kid when your character dies. One of the possible death paths is growing old, based on actual play time.

    Now, an interesting twist on permadeath is that in certain situations, you can become infamous enough to be executed. Their hope behind this is to have an honor system of sorts in PvP, and if you are
    • in wow though... curently.. what else does a 60 level twit have to do than to prey on low levels? all this crap "fun begins at 60" but really, what's there to do than to go over and over again the same high level instance to get some extra-rare artefact? the problem with wow is that they created a ceiling that people have hit very fast now in big numbers with nothing to do(honor system where are you?).

      and were it a real war, like it's supposed to be, wouldn't that be perfectly logical action to take to hit
      • What else does a level 60 person have to do? Well for starters, they could shelve the character and make another one, since the game does offer variety. Or, they could play other games and wait for battlegrounds.

        Sorry, that all sounds logical. I still don't see why people get so much joy out of "ganking" lower level characters in a game. It shows no skill at all.

        In Shadowbane, we did use the strategy of trying to attack the enemy no matter what level simply to introduce a resource drain. The more gol

        • What else does a level 60 person have to do? Well for starters, they could shelve the character and make another one, since the game does offer variety. Or, they could play other games and wait for battlegrounds.

          Ah, so the endgame content is making a new character? Wohoo! I busted ass to get to 60 so now I can roll a mage alt! Or better yet, I achieved lvl 60 so I can go play Splinter Cell.

          Tells you something about the end game when the recommended action is to stop playing it. The honor system w

    • You also have the possibility of having kids and passing traits onto them before death, then being able to play the kid when your character dies. One of the possible death paths is growing old, based on actual play time.

      It's not a MMO, or even a CRPG, but Hackmaster [kenzerco.com] gives players that option. It also has rules for players to acquire proteges and sidekicks, either of which can take the PC's place if he/she bites the dust.
    • Exactly thats how permadeath should be.

      Permadeath should be inevitable (there's no escaping old age)
      Permadeath shouldn't be the end (kids get your wealth)
      PK permadeaths should have consequences (justice)

      It shouldn't be a godlike character training up, but an evolutionary process where you burn through one character and move to next. If the kid isn't a total newbie again when they start again, it should be fun to die and start your next character.

      For example, everytime you gain xp, your kids gain 1/3 xp

  • Frontier 1859 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zonk ( 12082 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @08:06PM (#12265339) Homepage Journal
    While there are MUDs out there that have Permadeath (PD), the most promising graphical game that will include Permadeath is Frontier 1859 [frontier1859.com]. The game is going to be an Old West adventure with as much realism as possible, and because of Player persistence via offspring, the possibility exists for a character in-game to die of sickness, wounds, or bad luck.
  • [i]"The design hasn't shown up in any major commercial games yet but, to borrow a phrase, the soul still burns."[/i] Seeing as it HAS been in games... including (but not limited to) Diablo 2, which is most certainly a "commercial game."
  • If you made a MMOG, Highlander Online, where when you killed someone, your character got stronger. And the person you killed has to jump onto another server that's starting up(probably have serious wait time before starting though).

    Diablo 2 had hardcore mode, which was fun, because it wasn't a complete grind fest.

    In a MMORPG, I've seen people quit because they lost equipment that took them 3 months to aquire.

  • battle.net and chess (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gilmet ( 601408 )
    I think permadeath will definitely attract the hardcore -- and I think there are a lot of those to be attracted.

    Despite that fact that I agree that permadeath would successfully link skillful play with the level of one's character, I think there could be another way of achieving this.

    The notion of permadeath doesn't really exist in warcraft III or chess, but a characters "level" is quite accurately reflected in both of these games (actually, the new rating system in WC3 isn't as good, because it purposefu

  • Just like the roleplaying server (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @09:34PM (#12265866) Homepage Journal
    There should be a permadeath server. It's funny that when the discussion began about permadeath, the idea that you could run multiple servers of the same game was considered unthinkable. Now it's standard practice.

  • Diablo II (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben.int@com> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @09:38PM (#12265898) Homepage
    I played three hardcore charecters in Diablo II. Hardcore basically meant, when you died, you were dead...and there's no coming back. One of them lasted to level 74.

    I'll tell you right now that every second of gameplay with those charecters was interesting. When your actions have great consequences, they also have great meaning.

    Lag was just part of the game. If you started to lag out, a couple of quick health potions and an Alt-F4 was all you needed to keep yourself safe. Of course that's a double edged sword...die, and stay in the game, and you can have someone recover your stuff. If you were too slow on the keyboard, and quit after you died, you lost all your stuff too.

    I say, being on the permadeath! I'd be nice to care about my RPG charecters again.

    • Re:Diablo II (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Reapy ( 688651 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @08:35AM (#12268565)
      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.

      • There's a happy medium, I think. Take World of Warcraft, for instance. In many of the high-level instances, if your party wipes on the boss, the whole place resets, and you have to spend another two hours getting back there. (I'm thinking of Scholomance and the Baron side of Stratholme, specifically.) That seems like the best way of doing things, at least from my perspective. Dying sucks, because everyone values two hours of their time, but it's not going to drive anyone to real-life suicide or anything

  • ...and variants (moria, nethack, *angband)? 'nuff said.
    • Ever hear of savescumming or Wizard mode?

      He does bring up a valid point though (although largely inadvertantly): Not ALL deaths are reasonably avoidable.

      Just as an example, in my most recent Nethack game, I stepped on a squeeky board, then opened the door to a large zoo (the board was by accident, I didn't know it was there). As a wizard, I had to use my magick to try and win. However, I soon ran out of magick power and began running for the stairs. Running thru a room to the stairs, I fell down a trap do
  • DartMUD is still working quite well with (nearly) permadeath enabled. In DartMud when you die you lay in your body until it rots away. In this state you can send tells requesting help -- and a well-trained healer can put you back together.

    There's a slightly better solution -- if you are wearing a soul amulet your soul is transferred into the amulet, and you run no risk of having your body rot away... but you can't send a tell... And if you were killed by a player (DartMUD has no limitations on PK....) the

    • Muds always have the inovative features and solutions to problems. I like hearing about them whenever people post about them.

      Although the amulet concept is really cool, it is easily circumvented by an outside messenger program to your buddies.

      But I guess they could still set you up and camp your amulet waiting for your friends to come by and heal you.

      It actually sounds really cool. I wish graphic mmos would start taking lessons from the muds.

      (I just can't play muds, i get too engrosed trying to keep up
      • Well, using an outside messenger is grounds for deletion, and for the persistent offenders, siteban. And if you've been playerkilled you can expect your amulet to be dropped somewhere out of the way -- like way out in the ocean where only your killers will know your coordinates. And to prevent you from counting squares or pulling it from a log, you'd probably be put in a closed backpack.

  • Federation... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tickenest ( 544722 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @10:22PM (#12266148) Homepage Journal
    Over at IBGames [ibgames.net], while really a MUD instead of a real MMORPG, had permanent death in it if players weren't careful. Players started out with insurance for one life, and if they died, their cloned body would wake up in the hospital, good as new, except for dropping any items the player was carrying. The problem was that the player was now uninsured, and his character would be deleted if he lost again. Insurance was easy to get safely, but the problem was that the cost of it would go up with each purchase, and the price could get hefty after many deaths.
  • Losing your hard-earned stuff makes people so risk-averse that it will freeze up the game flow. Will you likely try new things and explore with perma-death? Have you ever grouped with incompetent players and one mistake got the whole group killed? Would you group with people you don't know? Some say to just make the rewards much higher for the risk. But, these are the same rewards that you lose when you die. Once someone gets an uber item, their career is practially over due to the chance of losing that i
    • It sounds like you misinterpreting perma-death as something that will be introduced to current game systems while most other posters want to change the rest of the game too to compensate for perma-death.
  • This would require a non-dice baced game. Because if luck screws you to the point where your skill is irrelevant(chain-misses, enemies chain-critting) then that adds frustration to the death which you can't recognize as being your lack of skill. It's far too upsetting to lose everything when it's out of your hands. This is impossible to avoid in an MMORPG. MMORPG's have new content being created, new skills/feats/enemies/items/whatever. All these things can be bugged or unbalanced. And during that time of

  • What permadeath adds (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @11:28PM (#12266481) Homepage
    I've thought about permadeath in games before, and it does add something that you can't get out of games where death has little consequence.

    Without permadeath, there's no notion of sacrifice, daring, or true adventure. If you and your group run into a giant dragon that's going to destroy your sorry asses, your Paladin can't tell the rest of you to run away from the dragon while he holds it off and gives you time to escape. You can't have a hero in the game, because there's no actual danger. Dying is just the thing that costs you a few minutes of time and some minor frustration.

    Now that said, I'm not sure that the addition of such a game concept is essential to good gameplay - in fact, it's provably not essential, since there are lots of great games that don't have permadeath.

    The balance is trying to find a way to include permadeath to really make the game exciting, but not have it so often that people become frustrated at rerolling new characters. And, there should be at least some reward (a heroes list, or something) for being brave enough to throw away some of your time for the sake of adventure.
    • The problem is that 95% of deaths are not heroic. They are crappy and random, like "My brother kicked my router" or "I was trying to send a message to Hagar the Destroyer and some guy snuck up on me and killed me" or "I had my inventory open and an Ogre spawned next to me" or "I wandered into the wrong area and was eaten by a grue".
      • Perhaps you would have to let the character act automatically. That way neither lag nor view-blocking windows would prevent fighting back. Perhaps settings to let the character run away automatically from monsters too strong to fight would be a good idea too.
      • I agree, and there should be very strict guidelines for how that sort of thing is handled.

        If your connection drops, you should be put into a safe state. Unable to move, but also unassailable.

        I don't really think much of PvP at random in the world. I think it should be done in duels, or tightly controlled areas like the theoretically up-and-coming WoW Battlegrounds.

        Spawn deaths suck, so maybe creatures wouldn't be allowed to respawn in attack range of you. Or maybe the notion of permadeath will make peopl
        • If your connection drops, you should be put into a safe state. Unable to move, but also unassailable.

          This just leads to players fighting difficult battles with one hand on the ethernet cord, ready to yank.

          The MMO equivalent of 'save before every battle.'

          • I suppose. But I can't think of a good solution for this. On one hand, you need to protect players in the event of a legitimate network outage. On the other hand, someone's always going to be an ass.

            Someone else in this thread mentioned that Diablo II hardcore players would quaff potions and Alt-F4 the game if things got bad. That's just the way it's going to be, I guess.
  • I don't think there is anything wrong with Permadeath, but as in real life they could have auctions if they wanted, or pass it on to another account they had predesignated. Have a lawyer hut you go into, and if you don't keep it current maybe your stuff could go to an enemy or charity.
  • I would love to seea Call of Cthulhu mmorpg with perma-death(or perma-insanity). I think it would be rather fitting. There are ways to mitigate the "losses" of perma-death. In a Call of Cthulhu game I could imagine having multiple characters per player, one of which would/could be your professor-type that never adventures but keeps a trove of artifacts/cash/weapons for his/her assistants(other characters), granted this character could die still, but would/could be kept safe if you wanted to play that wa

  • You forgot to ask: (Score:2, Funny)

    by 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

    • First Question the article should have asked: Do the MMO operators want to add permadeath? Answer: No. Otherwise they would already have it.
      So we should just stop adding new features to games because they are not already added?

      And I think you are right for commercial games but that doesn't mean a free game (doesn't have to get the largest possible userbase) couldn't pull perma-death off to create a totally new and different MMORPG.
    • If that player wasn't aware of permadeath in the game, he would have died way before level 99. The loss wouldn't be so bad. From there, he could either decide that permadeath is not for him and quit, or retry another character, but play it way more carefully this time.
    • P: "That's correct, your honor. I'm suing them because my character died in their game."

      J: "..."

      P: "So, will you make them give me my character back?"

      J: "Get the hell out of my courtroom."
  • Proposing some sort of real death in a video game begs the question "what about real life?" or to be even more diametrically opposed, "what about real birth?" Perhaps MMORPG's should start your character as an infant and make you spend some time growing up. And the best part could be that when you do finally have an adult (or irreponsible teenager) character, you could mate with another player and have babies who could be new characters inherriting traits from the parents. This might even be good practi

  • Permadeath in tabletop RPGs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Yert ( 25874 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [3dnalragmm]> on Monday April 18, 2005 @03:48AM (#12267449)
    In every dice & paper RPG I run, Permadeath is "on". I don't give second chances, and if you do something stupid, make a bad roll, or generally just get ganged up on, you're dead. End of story, get a clean sheet of paper and roll up a new character. You don't find many D&D or Vampire games where the GM announces "Free rez for your character if they die, just gotta start back at the nearest town." I also don't have a problem with group dissension - ie, PvP. If one player decides to be a dick and "accidentally" pop another player's character in the back of the head when no one is looking during a firefight, and he makes his rolls, then it happens. On the flip side, the game system I run doesn't have "classes" or "levels", and character generation can pop out a 70 yr old War Vet as easily as an 18 yr old street punk. You can improve your character's skills and stats, But the net effect of all this is that a year old (real time) character doesn't have that much of an edge on a 5 minute old (real time) character, and if he slips up when he's offing his own party, he'll be next. I think permadeath in a game will greatly increase interest in role playing and team building, and PvP won't be much of an issue - because you won't respawn, and eventually the victims will team up against you. I'd play in a permadeath game in a heartbeat. More challenge, more fun, less grind. Just my take on it.

  • Debate on Permadeath Debates or Permadeath itself (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DingerX ( 847589 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:01AM (#12267476) Journal
    No offense, but I thought the linked article was a discussion of the stages that every permadeath discussion goes through.

    "Permadeath" comes up so often as a debate topic because of the general conservativism of gaming imagination. Just look at the debate here. As long as these games are about A) encouraging risk-taking (the "Supersoldier syndrome" , to borrow a term from military simulation speak) B) building prestige among one's virtual peers and C) levelling through boring activities, "permadeath" ain't gonna work. People want to be rockstars, and these games let them be rockstars and socially important, but only through the investment of a lot of time and suffering. If you somehow make that rockstar status risky -- so that people routinely lose it, and have to repeat the same old stuff to get to their peer level again, permadeath ain't gonna work. "Dead is Dead" is one of the most obvious gaps of realism in these games, and that's why people mention it. The problem is that it reveals one of the fundamentally attractive features of on-line gaming (or anything else online): the appearance of being able to achieve the glory without the risk. Most people are cowards (or, in other words, socially crippled by a fear of the consequences of their actions), and uneasy with that. Games give them a chance to be brave, where the penalty is pretty slight. Make the penalty major, and people will go play something else.

    Now, if you did want to do permadeath, the way I'd do it would be to take advantage of the progressive development model of MMPORGS: since they're worked on for several years after release, make the "updates" reflect a temporal progressivism: players choose skills for their "avatards" at a fixed point, and that avatard can advance in those skills. But as time goes on, new and more interesting skills are developed, which can only be adopted by younger avatards. That way, you make the aging superplayers gradually become obsolete. They may bitch and whine and stage their million-gnome marches, but every virtual year their numbers will grow fewer, as they give in and explore the game from a different angle.
  • There is no "Y" in "God's name"! (now, don't go getting Indiana Jones on me...)
  • One of the points in the article was "losing the tired concept of the Avatar." Since this concept is akin to roleplaying a god, it depends whether that's appropriate for the game in question. If you think of every RPG as a story being written, death is really a point where you erase what you did back to your last major mistake and rewrite. Since most RPGs are pre-written, the story has many mandatory "waypoints."

    In some MMORPGs, the modules are prewritten, but the basic overworld is just a framework whe
  • I'm surprised that no one mentioned that the original plans for Star Wars Galaxies involved Jedi suffering from permadeath. Of course, since they are such an iconic class, and a reason a large number of people play the game, that has since changed, which only lends weight to the theory that permadeath is not viable in a commercial game.

  • depends on how you define your "stuff" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MORTAR_COMBAT! ( 589963 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @10:26AM (#12269763)
    sure, every MMO game seems to have a similar tack: build up your character, get them stuff and levels. obviously if perma-death existed, this could mean a spot of net lag or a down router would mean perma-death for your character, and as many argue that is unacceptable.

    however, let us imagine games "outside the tiny box" of current MMO. how about a game where your "character" is really just a soul, which possesses a mortal being. sure, you can upgrade this mortal with some gear, but the real "stuff" is being accumulated by the "soul" - that is where things like special skills, experience points, levels, or whatever "progress" constructs you want to have are attached. so when the mortal is killed, your soul escapes to possess another. so we have something like "perma death" where your "character" dies, period, but you go on in a different fashion from the majority of MMO which I have seen. you could even have it set up so the "soul" would die a permanent death if they wander too long without a mortal body, and if that is too harsh, you could have that soul be "recoverable" in some fashion.

  • Good for RP-based games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Experiment 626 ( 698257 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:09PM (#12274971)

    I think for games where the focus is on actual role-play instead of the hack-and-slash grind, perma death makes a lot of sense. Paper and pencil games use this concept. You die, grab a blank character sheet. MUSH'es pretty much follow the same approach.

    One MUD I recall offered an interesting balance. The focus was on role-play, but there were MOBs (computer-controlled characters) to fight also. If you lost to them, you got knocked unconscious and suffered some penalties similar to what MMOGs have. On the other hand, if in the course of the role-playing with other characters or GM's, your character wound up dead, you were expected to delete them because they were no longer part of the storyline. This let you do a little of the griding type stuff when there was no RP going on without worrying about dying to out-of-character things like a bad ISP, and it also maintained a similar feel to paper-and-pencil, since if your actions in the context of the RP story lead to you dying, you were dead.

    Wouldn't work for MMO's at all however. A lot of times, conflicts involved players role-playing and coming to a consensus about the consequences, which they all then accepted. GMs aren't always around to arbitrate, and letting the game engine decide things turns it from role playing events out into typing "kill soando". It really only works with a community of people are all willing to put roleplay and storyline ahead of their own ub3rn355 which isn't going to happen on a MMO.

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