yes

That link isn''t working for me.

Worked for me

Just adding my thoughts. I think the problem is that most games go for one of the extremes regarding permadeath. Either you want permadeath, and then the player is dead when he''s dead, or you dont want it, and let people get themselves killed over and over. Why not mix those two together? You could make a system where people will usually respawn after dying, but during special events can get permakilled. Or force influential players to risk permadeath in return for becoming famous/respected/powerful. So everyone can in theory permakill a big leader if they want to (and if he dont have any bodyguards or anything), but your average player won''t actually risk too much from dying. Or make people die in the usual die->respawn way, but enable people to permakill by destroying the (non-permakilled) corpses, in return for some penalty to ensure people only permakill when they have a reason to.
Just a couple of random ideas on how you could mix permadeath with the usual die->respawn stuff...

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Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast

Hehe I love permadeath discussions. I don''t know why, maybe because it''s such a hard idea to make fun.

Spoonster,
I thought the second idea you had about having to destroy the non perma-killed corpse was a great idea for handeling permadeath. What sort of consequences would there be for choosing to permakill someone? That''s a tough one.

Here''s an idea of my own. Each player could have a living will where they could will all of their items/cash to their friends. That way people wouldn''t permakill just to steal stuff because all the items that were willed would immediately go to a friend of the dead player. If the game had a friends list people could just right click an item and click will and then pick someone from their friends list. That would make it easy to keep your living will updated.

jake

quote:Original post by jakerrz
Spoonster,
I thought the second idea you had about having to destroy the non perma-killed corpse was a great idea for handeling permadeath. What sort of consequences would there be for choosing to permakill someone? That''s a tough one.

Just some half-baked idea really, just to prove that you didn''t have to go for some kind of all-or-nothing mentality regarding permadeath. But maybe you could suffer a couple of hours (playing time) of reduced skills? Say, the psychological effect of killing someone traumatizes your avatar (lol) or maybe the deceased''s spirit haunts you for a while, making it impossible for you to do anything properly. Could take a while to permakill someone too. Maybe for some reason you have to carry out a 1-minute ritual to kill someone properly, which means it isn''t practical to do when you''ve just ambushed some poor defenseless newbie, or in the middle fo a big battle, but can still be useful for assasinating important characters, for example.

quote:
Here''s an idea of my own. Each player could have a living will where they could will all of their items/cash to their friends. That way people wouldn''t permakill just to steal stuff because all the items that were willed would immediately go to a friend of the dead player. If the game had a friends list people could just right click an item and click will and then pick someone from their friends list. That would make it easy to keep your living will updated.

jake

Depends on how important equipment is versus your characters skills/level. Might make permadeath rather pointless since you can give your stuff to a friend, start a new character, and get it back again, so in effect it''s not so much permadeath as it''s a skill/level reset. Anyway, you''ll still have wasted all the hard work you put into your character, although you''ll suddenly be a rather well-armed newbie with your new character...
But I think it''d still be too much of a penalty if this is the only compensation for being permakilled... Just because get to keep my equipment doesn''t mean I can live with having to start over every 30 minutes because anyone can just kill me.

I think the key is risk/reward balance. You have to implement a system which allows average players to stay alive to enjoy playing, while having the potential of permadeath to spice things up, and give people a reason to roleplay/kill each others. MMOG''s really need player involvement in the plot, and that''s just not going to happen if players don''t have a way to actually achieve anything. If I kill an enemy who respawns in his home town 5 seconds later, I don''t feel all that motivated to kill more of them, and basically nothing ever happens...

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Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast

quote:Original post by Spoonster
I think the key is risk/reward balance. You have to implement a system which allows average players to stay alive to enjoy playing, while having the potential of permadeath to spice things up, and give people a reason to roleplay/kill each others.

I agree. To make permadeath work i think it needs to be an option for hardcore gamers. Maybe if you chose permadeath you could use special items that others couldn''t.

Except then you''d have to balance a game where some people are obviously stronger than others (because they can use better equipment). On the other hand, if they can die just like that... Hmm, wouldn''t be easy to pull off, but could be pretty good...

Though I still think it''d be better to let the reward be solely in the player interactions (I just killed the big bad enemy leader. Now everyone will worship me / Now I can conquer his city/insert other goal here. The whole point about MMOG''s is player interaction, and not spiffy equipment, so I think the "reward" for risking permadeath should be something along the same lines. Maybe with a skill/stats/equipment-related penalty to balance it out and prevent rampant PK''ing

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Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast