Ironside: Thanks.

Now let me re-state and restart (if possible) the discussion. In private correspondence, Silvermyst and I have found that the primary obstacle to perma-death schemes seems to be the fact that most games of this nature feature human avatars, and human personal success/advancement (very broadly speaking) is measured in terms of possessions, affiliations and physical/intellectual prowess. This makes the death of a human character devastating, because virtually all advancement has been tied to the character in a non-transferrable form (thus giving rise to ideas like account-based storage and so forth).

If a similar game had animal avatars, for whom possessions are a non-issue, then the only problems are affiliations (who you know/knew) and ability. To a certain extent, ability is heritable, meaning if the player can continue the adventure via the offspring, then a certain amount of the parents'' ability/potential is retained. And we all know that - in real life - your father''s friends tend to react favorably towards you, and his enemies adversely. Perhaps some distinguishing birthmark could identify a spawn as decended from a particular progenitor? Or perhaps affiliations could be completely lost?

Also, combat need not always result in death. Our animals are fairly large - some almost dinosaur-sized - and as such mere flesh wounds should not be sufficient cause to kill them. Some injuries may be debilitating (broken limbs) while some may be fatal (broken neck, obviously, but punctured lungs could also lead to death). Some may even lead to loss of consciousness or coma of the avatar, during which time the gamer may wish to use other animals in his/her "stable".

These are just ideas, none set in stone. I think that making the context clear will help many more evaluate the specific considerations of this design, while also noting the limitations of human avatar games with respect to death and its effects may clarify the issues.

Ironside, thatlink in your sig needs to have an "http://" prefix, otherwise web browsers will interpret the URL as being relative to "http://www.gamedev.net".

Your remark on flesh wounds Oluseyi gives me a great idea.

Make death permanent, with the option to restart as an offspring. An offspring is given similar genes to its two parents to DEVELOP similarly as it''s parents. This doesn''t mean you start with everything leveled up, and it''s not like losing a bit of experience like dying in everquest. Now, because you can go off of previous generations of experience, the offspring will level faster until it''s roughly the same level of the parent. Your offspring also are born BEFORE you die. When you lay an egg, it is born in, say, 48 hours or so. You have to monitor and keep the egg safe or it wont hatch. Once it hatches, you have to keep the youngling safe. It will not be very protected unless you watch over it. If you die while it''s still young, then you will be able to carry on as the youngling, but it will be very hard to level it up without other adult protection. Once you get the youngling to roughly teenaged level, then you can safely spawn into him upon the parents death, as he can pretty much take care of himself. So its not just a simple, "Lay an egg, and you don''t have to worry about dying anymore" but you have to monitor the egg so its a suitable offspring to play. This also fixes the attachement, because even though you are attached to the adult, if you have to bring the youngling up from a baby this will help you get attached to him before the parent is gone. By the time you need to take over the child, you HAVE grown attached to it.

Now about the flesh wounds. Make each fight not that difficult. You don''t have to worry about getting into a fight and dying. Most fights will only result in "mere flesh wounds". You have A LOT of health. In this way, most scuffles with other players will also not damage you very much in the long run. But, healing in the game is hard. There could be some sort of healing shrine that you must find that changes places every time someone finds it. As you get beat up, and your health slowly lowers, it gets to a point where you ARE in danger of dying. At this point, if you don''t want to die, you need to set out on the long journey to find the healing shrine. You do recover health over time, but you also get older over time, and as you get older your physical traits start to subside, making it harder to recover your strength.

But why would the player characters want to fight each other in the first place? If you have ''family'' names than perhaps over feud. Even without this, players will fight either because they have something to gain in attacking (and possibly killing) their fellow players or simply because they are being malicious. Now my question is: when one player in a battle decides he''s had enough and is in danger of dying, what is stopping his enemy from persuing in order to finish the job. In the case of a feud, the likelyhood of one player trying to finish off the other is high. After all, why not kill this enemy of your family. In the event of players trying to gain something from one another, what do you get if your opponent simply runs away (presuming that you let him.) If there is no punishment for ''murder'' then malicious players probably wouldn''t mind killing another player just for the ''fun'' of it. If there is punishment, then the likelyhood of them being satisfied with severly injuring their enemy increases.

The only respite for retreating players would be the enemy''s need to heal.

A host of interesting replies. I''ll try to do them justice.

Saluk:
Death is permanent, as you suggest, but the health is also tremendous - again, as you suggest. We want players to be encouraged to engage in skirmishes whenever they feel like it and not have to worry excessively about permanently losing their avatar based on a single encounter. It thus becomes the outcome of a series of bad decisions when an avatar dies. The "grief" might even serve as stimulus to do better in subsequent play.

We haven''t really developed the parent-child-egg thing yet, but your ideas on guarding the nest and protecting the young are very interesting. I like them because they also allow the player to grow attached to the offspring and maintains a high level of involvement if a parent avatar dies.

quote:Original post by MagicScript
But why would the player characters want to fight each other in the first place? If you have ''family'' names than perhaps over feud. Even without this, players will fight either because they have something to gain in attacking (and possibly killing) their fellow players or simply because they are being malicious.

Players are constrained to one of two overarching roles: prey or predators. Our animals (lets call them dinosaurs) are something analogous to herbivorous, largely deriving their sustenance from inanimate "life" (we call them microbes; they''re similar to plankton), but it is possible for a dino to become carnivorous and consume other dinos. Doing so gives a fast rate of growth at the cost of a sort of carcinogenic decay due to a substance in the bloodstreams of the victim, set off after a while. The more a predator dino consumes prey dinos, the more it needs to in order to combat the cancer. It is possible to completely extract the cancer, but at great loss of power and/or size. A dinosaur that becomes a carnivore and later extracts the cancer will now have a greater rate of decay should it return to eating other dinosaurs.

This systems hasn''t quite been perfected and is something completely different that we were planning to run by the public at a later date. The idea is to present the user with choices that have consequences, allow for repentance/change of heart but continued responsibility. For this to work, there has to be some downside to playing a prey throughout so players have a legitimate reason to consider both paths. It is also important to us that players know all the consequences of actions upfront. Finally, the offspring of cancer-infested dragons do not inherit the cancer nor the need to prey; it''s a non-transferrable genetic reaction.

Under this scenario, fighting becomes a matter of life and death. Obviously, predator dinosaurs will seek out weak, beginner prey. To give the beginners a chance, we also make some areas "safe havens" by virtue of the presence of certain (micro)organisms that attack predators quite rapidly, but give them enough time to escape. Another option is that the predators are too big to swim, so water can serve as an effective barrier.

Right now it''s very much a thrown-together scheme, and it will be significantly revised for consistency within the game world as well as for balance.

quote:Original post by MagicScript
Now my question is: when one player in a battle decides he''s had enough and is in danger of dying, what is stopping his enemy from persuing in order to finish the job?

Other than the safe zones (which we might still eliminate), nothing. The upside to safe zones is that they make the supply of "cancer medicine" for predators fairly scarce, thus ensuring a steady stream of attacks and assaults on prey dinosaurs. (predators can eat what prey can; they wont get as much nutrition from it, nor will it fight their cancers).

Predators will generally seek out mismatches in their favor (not because we constrain them to, but because doing so gives them the greatest chances of victory), making prey less vulnerable as they grow.

quote:Original post by MagicScript
In the event of players trying to gain something from one another, what do you get if your opponent simply runs away (presuming that you let him.)

This is part of why we''re trying to stay away from items. For one thing, they don''t make much sense in the context of our creatures and world; for another they complicate the rules and balance. Viewed in a certain way, though, there is the possibility of our dinosaurs having some possessions - kinda like how dragons supposedly had hoards of gold and precious stones - but it wouldn''t be other dinosaurs trying to dispossess them. It''d be adventurous little creatures - like hobbits and humans.

There''s no punishment for "murder".

quote:Original post by CGameProgrammer
Interesting, but the game will be played by humans, which are material creatures. We like getting nice items. So most players would probably want items in your game.

As noted above, we might consider an alternative where there are certain items. It is important to us to ensure that the entire game world and gameplay experience are cohesive and consistent. If items enhance this, then we''ll seriously consider them; if they''re detrimental, they''re gone.

quote:Original post by CGameProgrammer
I suppose one idea is having "items" that you insert into your genes to give you bonuses or abilities, and you can replace them with another if you want, and these will be inherited by your children. So you might find genes that give you a poison bite, or whatever.

This is an interesting idea. If you don''t mind me adapting it more to a technologically primitive world populated by "low-order" animals (ie, no man) based on science as opposed to Magick, perhaps the consumption of certain herbs/fruits/etc give certain physical/intellectual benefits (increased acuity of hearing, venom?). Finding, controlling and concealing the source of such substances would then be important (and could serve as an item detached from the individual) while some items would eventually be absorbed into the system (much like how some people are immune to certain diseases) in a way that can be inherited.

What do you all think?

quote:Original post by CGameProgrammer
The problem, as I see it, is that we like to horde items, to be possessive.

I concur, and I also see it as a problem. If we''re asking a player to inhabit a role, then that role may have certain logical restrictions (or actions with repercussions). I mean, what kinds of items can we give a dinosaur to possess? Would the lack of possessions and items cause players not to try/stick with the game?

Grr, this is starting to sound like a super original game I thought up years ago, involving dinosaurs, and, eggs.

In my old system, the plant eaters were basically a team against the meat eaters. The meat eaters have to eat plant eaters to survive, while plant eaters have to avoid meat eaters to survive. You can mate and prodoce eggs which serve as respawns, although you don''t necesarily get to respawn as you''re offspring. What would happen is, if one team was signifigantly winning, then the other team would grow smaller, and smaller. They would be running out of respawns while you would be ammassing large amounts of eggs. It was kind of set up for one team to wipe out the other. The neat thing is, the plant eaters don''t have to fight to kill off the meat eaters - they only have to avoid them for long enough.

My problem with it being an mmorpg though, was that I couldn''t think of enough for the plant eaters to do. Running from meat eaters might be fun for a while, but really, EVERYONE would want to be a meat eater. I never really solved the problems, although it would probably be GREAT as a non-persistant skirmish game rather than a persistant huge world one.


Your game is sounding like it has the same problem though - if you don''t collect items, what DO you do? Fight things? But if everyone is a herbivore, and you don''t need items that enemies drop, WHY fight at all? To level up just in case someone with cancer comes to get you? Or are there so many monsters out there that getting food is a life-or-death situation anyway?

I see a few great opportunities for gameplay, but I also see A LOT of gameplay missing. Just some things to think about.