Quote:Original post by makeshiftwings Still, in a real RP environment, you'd have to basically RP every new character just like your old one for him to really be the same person, which RPers won't want to do. Plus, just the loss of your name and everyone needing to update their address books or wonder who you are when you text message them is annoying enough. There's no reason I couldn't change my email address every two months and keep the same address book, but it sure would be annoying.
MMORPG != Real RP environment. 99.9% (probably many more then that) of players don't know the meaning or origin of Role Playing. They have absolutely no problem with OOC talk and knowledge. The "Role Players" within the game however have the option to ignore the OOC "address" book and procede to rebuild their network manually if they would like (Real Role Players™ are already used to working around the limitations provided in a MMORPG). The change of name would be NOTHING like changing your email address! Communication could be on an account basis or could be tied to a character and when you create an heir, all of your contacts and everyone who has you as a contact could be updated with the new character.
Quote:Original post by makeshiftwings Still, in a real RP environment, you'd have to basically RP every new character just like your old one for him to really be the same person, which RPers won't want to do. Plus, just the loss of your name and everyone needing to update their address books or wonder who you are when you text message them is annoying enough. There's no reason I couldn't change my email address every two months and keep the same address book, but it sure would be annoying.
MMORPG != Real RP environment. 99.9% (probably many more then that) of players don't know the meaning or origin of Role Playing. They have absolutely no problem with OOC talk and knowledge. The "Role Players" within the game however have the option to ignore the OOC "address" book and procede to rebuild their network manually if they would like (Real Role Players™ are already used to working around the limitations provided in a MMORPG). The change of name would be NOTHING like changing your email address! Communication could be on an account basis or could be tied to a character and when you create an heir, all of your contacts and everyone who has you as a contact could be updated with the new character.
Ok, I concede that it could be done pretty easily and probably isn't that big a deal. Guild Wars in fact has account-spanning buddy lists and it works out by putting your name as "Newguy Jim (aka Original Bob)" if you make a new character. However, I know that I personally would be upset just at the loss of my name. Even though I don't bother trying to RP in MMORPG's, the RP-er in me still gets attached to the name and the character and the personality I envision.
Quote:Original post by Telastyn 1. Because some people get immersed so much that character death is much more personal.
But in Eve your ship pretty much IS the character.
I would have to disagree. I've got like five ships in EvE, and a few we share between corpmates, and I don't think of any of them as "me". I think of "me" as my avatar pic, my name, and the RP personality I use.
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Quote:Original post by Telastyn 2. Because (under some systems) you'll need to create a new character with a new name. This causes all of the social connections built over time to be redone. If people are playing an mmorpg rather than a offline rpg, they probably value those social connections.
There is no reason to remove those social connections. There is no reaon why the next character couldn't have the same "friends" list as the previous one.
Still, in a real RP environment, you'd have to basically RP every new character just like your old one for him to really be the same person, which RPers won't want to do. Plus, just the loss of your name and everyone needing to update their address books or wonder who you are when you text message them is annoying enough. There's no reason I couldn't change my email address every two months and keep the same address book, but it sure would be annoying.
Please... the second part of your post is a non-issue. Period.
Okay, I've just skipped to the last page so I can just give my opinion. I can't really be bothered reading through 5 or so pages to catch up, so forgive me if I say something that's already been said.
I've played a few MUDs over the years, and I must say that what you're suggesting isn't very new. There are a few MUDs where permadeath is one of the main staples of the game.
But anyway, an honor system would work well. When you make a chara, you get a choice of what to be, but one of the main things is the culture you begin in. A theif from one culture...say, a Nazish one, would have very different ideals to a theif that hails from an extremely democratic area.
Depending on what you do, say whether you hold to one kind of ethics or another or if you smited the mighty dragon-thingy, you get karma. When you die, you use karma to build a new character. If you get more karma than you did in a previous life, you'd begin with someone who is both initially and potentially stronger than your last guy.
In other words, you buy attributes, or rather the possibility of getting those attributes with karma in-between lives, things like the ability to use magic, noble birth, better class/race and such. The more karma, the better you are and the higher chance of getting something. There'd be a certain element of randomness involved, so you may get some aspects without buying them. Your first character is completely random, and you'd need a ton of karma to do things like gain the ability to use magic 100%.
----------The universe is, in reality, an incredibly long and complex setup for a joke that is so infinitely stupid that humans cannot percieve it....That's what makes it funny.*On April 1st, will change name of every topic created by me to "WHOAH! BEST GAME IDEA EVER! READ ME MORON!!"...Or not.
Quote:Original post by GairenKarrandeas Okay, I've just skipped to the last page so I can just give my opinion. I can't really be bothered reading through 5 or so pages to catch up, so forgive me if I say something that's already been said.
I've played a few MUDs over the years, and I must say that what you're suggesting isn't very new. There are a few MUDs where permadeath is one of the main staples of the game.
But anyway, an honor system would work well. When you make a chara, you get a choice of what to be, but one of the main things is the culture you begin in. A theif from one culture...say, a Nazish one, would have very different ideals to a theif that hails from an extremely democratic area.
Depending on what you do, say whether you hold to one kind of ethics or another or if you smited the mighty dragon-thingy, you get karma. When you die, you use karma to build a new character. If you get more karma than you did in a previous life, you'd begin with someone who is both initially and potentially stronger than your last guy.
In other words, you buy attributes, or rather the possibility of getting those attributes with karma in-between lives, things like the ability to use magic, noble birth, better class/race and such. The more karma, the better you are and the higher chance of getting something. There'd be a certain element of randomness involved, so you may get some aspects without buying them. Your first character is completely random, and you'd need a ton of karma to do things like gain the ability to use magic 100%.
This post made me think of something... A question posed earlier in the thread by TrapperZoid, "How will you ensure a player with a newly deceased character will want to continue playing the game rather than quit?" could be answered with basically giving players a *reason* to kill their characters every once in a while.
Suppose a game adopts this sort of "Karma Point" system where you initially have a range of choices for your initial character. For example, you could choose between being an Orc, Human, or Android, and having a class as a Fighter, Rogue, or Mage. You play your Human Rogue for a month or two, and amass 1000 Karma Points before you die and are pissed. You got to create a new character and find that you can now choose to be an Elf in addition to your old races, and you can also choose Paladin or Demolitionist for your class. With every death, assuming you amassed enough Karma points, you gain a totally new reason to play the game.
This satisfies the explorer types, as they have a reason to explore and, by exploring, they actually open up new opportunities to explore (you now have easy access to that Elven Capital City that would have killed you on sight as an Orc!). This also satisfies the achievement-types, since not only do they get to achieve things with their first character, the fact that they were killed by a disease days after killing the rotting Lich of Auberdine will be reflected in their new character, who has the status symbol of being a Demolitionist. The Role-player should be suitably entertained, as well, as with every character's death comes a new opportunity to create a brand new, fresh role-playing opportunity. Alternatively, they would be able to stay with their Android City if they so chose to, for role-playing purposes. The killer-type would be least catered to by this model, but they'd still have plenty of things to kill and it's quite possible that the people they kill would be thankful for being killed, due to the "unlocking" aspect of the game.
sorry i didnt read all posts,(i did read half of it)
I just love permadeath game play, i used to play diablo2 softcore, one day i decided to play hardcore, it was a completly new experience.
you'll babysit your character, defensive skills will have more priorty, you won't take on bosses untill you are sure you are ready for it, and you will form a group of people to take on the bosses just to make sure; you trust less people, less bots running boss runs to get godly item, and less rushing. all this resulted in better team play, and better social experience.
but why softcore people are afraid to play hardcore? because when you die in hardcore you lose everything, items, gold, character. but if you have a friend you can trust he can help you to start again. and this is what previously discussed in this thread regarding prestige system. i also believes that a statical prestige system and social connection can co-exist and works differently. for example you could be the king's bodyguard, and people recognise you as one of the person the king trusts(social), and may bribe you to assassinate the king or gain some advantages from the king. on other hand, when some merchant you dont know offers you a deal thats too hard to refuse, but maybe the item he is offering is a "fake"? you can then look up his prestige record and found that he have -50% in prestige(stats), now you gonna think twice before you go through the deal. we even have a similar prestige system in gamedev.net, for example people like IronLion85 may get famous for his giant posts in permadeath topics(social), some member were known for their "GDNet+" tag next to their name(stats)
back to the topic about permadeath. and i also believes that the game must be developed around the idea of "player can die permanently", and you have to inform the player and makesure they understand "they can die permanently", or they will rant you with "this game is so crappy, i spent a month building up a char then got killed by a mimic tresure chest".
things should be done to encourage dead players come back. one of the most important factor is social connection and relation. if you die, your friend may not want to lose a friend in this dangerous virtual world, they will do everything to encourage you to get back, or if you are the guild master, when you die, you dont want to just left your guild there, you have also spent much time on it. ofcourse the second will apply to less people, but if the game is developed around the idea of "player permadeath", there will be more emphasising on social aspects, not just guilds, you may run a shop, you may have built a lovely house, you may have married someone in the game, all these social stuff will keep you in the game, and therefor, a permadeath game will place less emphasis on character itself, you maybe the strongest char in the game world, but you could still die if you made some mistakes, and if people knows this, they will tend to change their goal from "become strongest as possible in the game" to "develop best social relation as possible". not that people will not try to get stronger, if someone is very strong, he should became well known, thus get better in social relation.
when i say character itself, i mean the character as "naked", or does not include any item. the idea is to make character's power more item oriented than skill and stats oriented(think diablo2), when you die, you should only drop a few random items that you carried, and you can get rest of the carried item back for a price, or for free. in real life, when you lost some property, you go to police and report it, and hopefully the police can get them back. this can be done in game with some kind of lost property agent, that you can recover some of your carried item back with your new char under the same family name(account name). this will also make stashing your item and gold more important task, and people will note their existence as safe storages rather than storage expansion. items should restrict level or stats to use them, you dont want people starting with new chars "instagib" all the low level monsters, its boring. having restrictions like class, is also interesting, for example, you just found a "godly sword of pwning" after you defeated a dragon, but you are a mage, and you cant use it. then someday, you got owned in a PvP fight with some knight welding the "godly sword of pwning", you say to yourself, "hey i got this sword too, if i make a knight, i'll be as powerful as him". therefor, item emphasis will bring people back from dead. some one will eventually suicide and start a new char if the item is too good, and/or he have stuffed up his char, well things happen to keep the game interesting :p
so when you dead you create a new char under the same family name(account name), or even better if you have married someone, you have a NPC child to pet for and "pre-build" them, so when you die, your child immediatly grow up, that he will possess some skills you taught him when your previous char is alive. it should also help your new char to start faster, or skip the newbie city(area),(this will also reserve the newbie area for real newbie), for example, he could be starting level 5 instead of level 1, starting with basic sword fighting already learnt, depend on how much you teach him while your previous char alive, but it doesnt give you much advantages as the time you saved are the time you spent petting your child. however this will make people comeback from dead because they have already "planed" their backup and future, that they will eager to start again. if you have planed and designed a "my idea game", but you dont know how to program, then one day some programmer came, and said "i like your design, lets make your game" will you proceed?
finally, permadeath could work, it is a completly different kind of gameplay experience(think diable2 softcore and hardcore), it have to be developed around the idea of player can permanently die, in permadeath game, character itself is less important as to today other MMORPGs. to encourage people come back from dead, dont cap achievement low because he only lose a little, but enhanced other aspect of the game that tells the player that it isn't the end of his time. the statement of "if WoW have permadeath then no one will play" is both true and non-valid, as it is a different kind of game.
Wow long thread, I will catch up eventually, but I just wanted to say that I think permadeath will only work well in a game that has quick access to content, in which you die often. I don't care how good the game is, or how well the systems work, if I am attached to my character and have been playing for 1 or 2 months, I don't want him to be wiped out. Period. I am actually a proponent of permadeath. It works like a charm in nethack for instance. The goal isn't to finish the game, its to see interesting things and see how deep you can go. And due to the lack of graphics and characterization, you never have strong attachement to your character.
In a long-term play situation, it's just not going to be cool to die and lose it all. Having bonuses carry over is nice, but it's still going to knock the wind out of you when you make that one, fatal mistake.
I would say that it could work though in some types of games. If you "level" up (just using levels as the easiest example) really quick (especially when taking risks) than that would be incentive to see how long you can stay on top of the game. You can take some of the progress out of the character and put it in the business or other things instead, so that when your character dies you don't lose all of your work. But if your character lives too long, then it's still going to be too devastating.
It's all about how much you actually lose. If you lose too much its going to put people off (although it may still find a niche audience). If you don't lose enough than you don't get that tension that can be so immersive. You are definately right that it cannot be bolted on. The entire game has to be based around it.
Quote:Original post by GairenKarrandeas Okay, I've just skipped to the last page so I can just give my opinion. I can't really be bothered reading through 5 or so pages to catch up, so forgive me if I say something that's already been said.
I've played a few MUDs over the years, and I must say that what you're suggesting isn't very new. There are a few MUDs where permadeath is one of the main staples of the game.
But anyway, an honor system would work well. When you make a chara, you get a choice of what to be, but one of the main things is the culture you begin in. A theif from one culture...say, a Nazish one, would have very different ideals to a theif that hails from an extremely democratic area.
Depending on what you do, say whether you hold to one kind of ethics or another or if you smited the mighty dragon-thingy, you get karma. When you die, you use karma to build a new character. If you get more karma than you did in a previous life, you'd begin with someone who is both initially and potentially stronger than your last guy.
In other words, you buy attributes, or rather the possibility of getting those attributes with karma in-between lives, things like the ability to use magic, noble birth, better class/race and such. The more karma, the better you are and the higher chance of getting something. There'd be a certain element of randomness involved, so you may get some aspects without buying them. Your first character is completely random, and you'd need a ton of karma to do things like gain the ability to use magic 100%.
