McQuaid v. Garriot

[Kolle]

Permadeath is extremely bad from a marketing and business point of view.

Death is what everybody in game design refers to as a crisis point. That's when you "fail" in the game. You "lost". Crisis points are points where you, the player, ask yourself "ok, do I continue playing this game?"

The very last thing someone who sells you a subscription to a game service wants to is set up a point in its game where they simultaneously place a "do I keep playing" question, and remove one of the many reasons to say yes.

Which is why you can't just toss perm death on top of a mmorpg like we have currently.

It must have unique and never before used elements like I described in my post above.

Devs would actually have to be original and press ahead doing things no one has done.


That's a big problem. Most of them seem to just want to do something safe. Eventually, tho, a group of people will do those things and get them right. At that point we'll have another hit and classic on our hands that will change the entire genre.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Revolutionary things are always out there, the difference in most things tends to be accessibility and production value. Both of those are equally important in determining whether or not something completely different is going to be a smash hit or a sleeper that conneseurs (sp...damned French) will always tell you was "incredible" but never had the chance to change anything mainstream because it was never commercially successful.

Do you remember the first time you saw The Matrix? Let's assume you are like me and my friends, who were in that "Eh? Matrix eh? What's it about? Oh yeah the chick can float and shit...I dunno...they say no one can be told...ooooooooooooh..." group who went in early and blind. In my area, The Matrix did not cause lines at the movie theater. There was a buzz. There were evangelists -- "Go see this movie. Just...do it, no I can't tell you what it's about." They had a totally unconventional advertising campaign that totally played to MY tastes, being not to have the movie spoiled by the time I go see it. But it didn't form any damn lines! Still, somehow, it managed to be a huge, huge, industry changing movie that made a ton of money. And it was a pretty radical movie, if you can think back to The Matrix when you first saw it, not the franchise it has become.

Production value, and accessibility.

Brad may be right in his conservative approach as far as what is good for the industry. The movie industry needs no proving -- lots of movies lose money, just like the record industry, but there has been serious dough to be made for a long time, and everyone has known it. This didn't happen because of revolution, it happened because of evolution...and every once in a while, in this established industry now willing to take the occasional risk, something revolutionary comes about, and it has a big, fat budget.

Evolution of the MMO industry isn't as easy as the movie industry though, the reasons for which were discussed by the interviewees. This isn't a product meant to be consumed once or a few times at an hour or two a piece...they are meant to be consumed over years. Consumers expect probably at least the level of evolution in MMOs as has been seen in film over a similar period of time, but there are so fewer iterations that ever have the opportunity to manifest themselves as the combination of consumer and human behavior experiments they are, that developers have really only some of the most successful MMOs to learn from.

Tough row to hoe...and I can't believe I'm saying this...but I'm actually grateful to have Microsoft involved in this picture, at least with the Vanguard team. They are a company that has never been afraid of a loss leader, and if we're going to really reach the third generation of MMOs getting what we hope for, it will be no small investment. Evolution might actually turn out to be soemthing very compelling.

[Angry Amadeus]

Perma-Death is such a strong penalty that however it was implemented the player would always know it was there, and might not even attempt to play the game simply out of spite. For instance, some of the weeker weenie's who played D2 over the years never ventured into the realm of Hardcore simply because they didn't see the necessity of rolling a character and grinding that character to 99 as fast as possible for the same rewards that a non-hardcore character would net, minus the risk of dying once due to lag or whatever; some idiot Sorc pk.

What about aging?

Instead of dying due to an event, like a dragon raid (which normally would take a few deaths to figure out), you are knocked unconscious or something, and fellow players can revive you. Instead of death and magical rebirth, you simply tack on an equivalent amount of "time" to that characters' age (say, for a human, each death would account for one month of missed time). Which kind of makes sense; if you accrue injuries over your lifetime, those parts of your body will derail faster than the rest of your body. Once your character reaches a certain age, then he or she loses stats on a continuous basis.

Of course, putting in a remedy for this would be a novel idea. Something like the "fountain of youth" which could be an ultra hard quest; one that you can only complete at a certain age or level, per se. Something akin to an epic quest; repeatable, but yielding the same reward all the time. And make it hard. If you go over your useful age limit; you'd need friends to help you finish the quest because you lacked the raw abilities to tackle it yourself.

My mind wanders,

Ta,

[Biodome]

Originally posted by Angry Amadeus
Perma-Death is such a strong penalty that however it was implemented the player would always know it was there, and might not even attempt to play the game simply out of spite. For instance, some of the weeker weenie's who played D2 over the years never ventured into the realm of Hardcore simply because they didn't see the necessity of rolling a character and grinding that character to 99 as fast as possible for the same rewards that a non-hardcore character would net, minus the risk of dying once due to lag or whatever; some idiot Sorc pk.

What about aging?

Instead of dying due to an event, like a dragon raid (which normally would take a few deaths to figure out), you are knocked unconscious or something, and fellow players can revive you. Instead of death and magical rebirth, you simply tack on an equivalent amount of "time" to that characters' age (say, for a human, each death would account for one month of missed time). Which kind of makes sense; if you accrue injuries over your lifetime, those parts of your body will derail faster than the rest of your body. Once your character reaches a certain age, then he or she loses stats on a continuous basis.

Of course, putting in a remedy for this would be a novel idea. Something like the "fountain of youth" which could be an ultra hard quest; one that you can only complete at a certain age or level, per se. Something akin to an epic quest; repeatable, but yielding the same reward all the time. And make it hard. If you go over your useful age limit; you'd need friends to help you finish the quest because you lacked the raw abilities to tackle it yourself.

My mind wanders,

Ta,

Thats probably the coolest feature I've ever read on these boards and out of your keyboard Amadeus.

Good day.

[Sampo]

nm

[Kolle]

I quit EQ1 just before GoD.

I've been patiently waiting for WoW while living on a steady diet of single player ps2 and comp games.

That and XM radio on my pc. Damn it kicks ass.

[Ukerric]

Originally posted by Kolle
Which is why you can't just toss perm death on top of a mmorpg like we have currently.

No. That's why you can't just put permadeath in a subscription-based MMOG. Because the crisis point is where your subscriber cancels.

You need to develop an incredible strategy of hooks that will retain a customer (who, don't forget, is at the point where it is already the most likely to be furious, angry, and ready to toss everything overboard), just to compensate for that one feature.

Anybody who's worked in a MMOG production will recognise that, and recognise that you can probably achieve a greater retention, if you have all those hooks and forget permadeath.

All the suggestions I've seen over the years about handling permadeath revolve around making death not death. I.e. the penalty for failure isn't death. Death is the penalty for extreme/repeated failure, i.e., you try to reduce as much as you can the opportunity... to get at the crisis point.

The only mass-market online game I know where permadeath works is Counterstrike. Where your character will disappear in 20mn anyway, so you don't develop too much of a problem losing it.

Permadeath works in social games, where the important things are your knowledge of the setting, your knowledge of the game mechanics, your relationships with others players. In fact it works well in RPG, not the achievement-based games. In those games, death is not a failure. It's often the crowning achievement of a well executed play. You die (permanently) because it is worth it. Not because you have failed.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Perma-death might work in a game where the object of the game is for the community to work together for some end goal, and then the server resets and a new goal is set

For example if the goal was to kill Nagafen, you all leveled up, and anybody that was involved in the final battle and survived gain a bonus of +1 starting level next playthrough. Thist ime the goal is to kill Vox. Next playthrough ist o kill CT, after that Inooruuk, after that, I dunno...level Freeport.

The perma-death server on EQ was fun for about a day, but then you died because of LD or some SZ fags camping a zoneline and you never went back.

I apologize for not being entirely coherant at this time of day.

[Clericnon2boxed]

Actually I would like the idea of an aging character alot:

- you start young (with all aspects, aka size / look etc)

- as you get older some of of your stats increase while others get lower

- you might have to adjust your gear to your increasing size, or when getting very old maybe pick up some light weight amor

- npc's remember you, or act differently according to your age

After 500 days "/played" your character might be very old, but magic items / spells / potions keep you alive, an aura of age and power will surround you.
Maybe the final quest/reward is a reincarnation that allows you to keep certain aspects of your former character.

[Neric]

How about this:

You have played for some years, reached max level, camped lots of keys, got Epic 2.0, made 800 AAs, collected the most valuable rare drops in the game and then you zone to WoS and die because some idiot has trained Shadowhunter to zone.

Wouldn't that be fun?

[Ukerric]

Actually, you wouldn't.

Have collected 800AA and the best gear, I mean. You would have died a long time ago.


But that's what I said. That's what happen when you create a crisis point: you died, and you lost part of the ties to the game.

That's why no long-term achievement-based game can allow perma-death, and keep subscribers. That, or perma-death must be exceptional, and the result of the player's own stupidity.

There's one achievement-based game with perma-death out there. That's A Tale in the Desert. In the 1st game, there was a formula, Speed of the Serpent, that gives you fast teleportation (waypoint time). The catch is that, once you consume it once, you need to make and drink counterpoison every N days, or your character dies (permanently, as there's no other way to die). The more you use it, the more often you need to drink the counterpoison.

[Angry Amadeus]

Originally posted by Neric
How about this:

You have played for some years, reached max level, camped lots of keys, got Epic 2.0, made 800 AAs, collected the most valuable rare drops in the game and then you zone to WoS and die because some idiot has trained Shadowhunter to zone.

Wouldn't that be fun?

Jaded?

[Fammaden]

Permadeath in PvP would be a good way to stop lowbie ganking. Kill someone too low for you to be challenged by them and you go permaeath status to all PC's and NPC's for a set amount of time. Maybe make the amount of time scale based on how much of a discrepency there is between you and the victim. People within a certain acceptable range, say 10 levels, might be open game, but you get a one minute permadeath window for 11-20 levels below, two minutes for 21-30 levels below you, and so on. Additionally, each new incident of lowbie ganking might increase the time. First time you get the base value, second time you get it doubled, until at some point you will go permanently perma death from the built up continuance of ganking lowbies. I can see a lot of different concerns people could come up with over this system, but I am not going to examine each of them, and I still think it is a pretty good idea regardless. Feel free to mention your own reservations from a PvP perspective if you are so inclined, maybe there is some more discussion to be had over the idea.

I do like the aging ideas though. That has a lot of untapped potential I think. It also might be a way to actually introduce some roleplaying into a genre currently all but devoid of it in any but its most pretentious and tiresome incarnations.

[Wilf McQuade]

I remember having a couple of discussions about aging and permadeath on the old Sigil forums. The community was small but very involved and well informed on various gameplay issues..

Take a peek.

http://www.sigilgames.com/forums/sho...ighlight=aging

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/sh...ighlight=aging

[Bizanich]

Probably not worth it just from an exploitation point of view (PvP vs lower levels causing permadeath).

Low level healers healing higher levels who attack you, suiciding lower levels who attack you themselves (or worse, train)....ugly, ugly stuff.

Not to mention the sheer annoyance of an Orc, lets say, not being able to kill an Alliance due to levels. Bah, they're enemies, let the Orc kill him .

The only place permadeath'd work is a place where characters were easy to make.....and a lot of people here are against "easy" leveling.