Death, Injury - great new MMO opportunities.. I would like to see an MMO with a more "realistic" death......... The WoW corpse run is a bore and was one of the reasons for me ditching the game, it rewarded "time played" rather than game skill and tactics... I would like to see an MMO (perhaps the new warhammer 40K) implement a more challenging structure perhaps with a sliding scale so that YOU could configure your death penalty but the more dangerous end of the scale would ramp up the possibility of getting "unique" or rare equipment, new skills. You could then switch between death / reward penalties for 1 week and move back down when you are treking in new areas...or be real adventurous and play hardcore and let you character develop (may need to spend time fixing your injuries with side quests....) Having a permanent injury could help to inject some damger into the game, sure you would get "droids with an organic heart and brain running around" but hey that would be kool too..it would help to give meaning to the reason why you have a penalty (slower movement speed, that is until you get that upgrade) lol. You could even continue in the battle with an injury and get even better rewards in the face of advirsity..........(slider level 1 to 10 examples). For example, 1) Res on the spot...Hmmm chicken. 2) Corpse run...use time and some kind of stat penalty or in game cash cost. 3) Corspe run + chance of "breaking" random item that would involve a quest / challenge to fix. (increased chance of rare drop, skill enhancement). 4) "Life/durability" on equipment that say after 3 are lost for ever! (but you have an increased chance of rare drop). 5) You have to spend life force to resurrect yourself - you only have a fixed amount depending on how long you have played. (increased drop rate, short term stat penalty). 6) You have to spend life force to res yourself - you also have a chance of a random disability (e.g. blind in one eye, lost limb) Of couse this could be enhanced repaired with a cybernetic implant or same kind of strange spell / graft (endless posibilities here). This would take in game time to do and so you would have a big stat loss for a short period of the game untill you got yourself to a chaos doc for a deamon hand graft (or tenticle lol) or a carbon fibre jedi style fist addon...! 7) Sell your soul to the devil to be brought back to life - perform a "death quest" and become "tainted" - e.g. Ultramarine - Chaos Marine, or Genestealer you could no longer play with alliance / order for example..(increased special loot drop rate, and perhaps random special ability as a pay off). 8) Perhaps a special "title reward or badge" for playing at this level, to demonstrate how gutsy you are.. 9) Insert here!! 10) Insane, you hav balls of steel - you die your dead, or you spend all your remaining life points to return to the game, die again and you are DEAD, but can play as an undead version of your self with certain penalties...(e.g. space marine - choas marine (increased chance of special unique drops)? This is not like "HEROIC" mode for dungeons because you could apply certain controls for example with the "death slider greater than 6" you are playing at great risk, PvP would be active all the time for example. in 5 for example you would start the game with 5 life points, you could perform a very challenging quest to recover but not repeat. In other words die say 10 times playing with the difficulty / risk set at this level and you have messed up and could only play as a chaos character / e.g. Death knight.. Basically if your a wimp play as 3 - want a challenge and reward (but risk of being set back with injury) play at 7 or above.... Obviously the only real control then needed is to stop players switching depending on the situation, so perhaps a set time period when you move the slider....To give scope for future game play you could regen a lifeforce after say 2 months, only if you have done all the availble in game quests. This would reward players who like to play close to the edge... In the future there is only War! Matt
This is pretty bright Matt, though I thought 10 would be 10) Yours dead mate, no chance of getting anything but screenshots to remember him by. S*D
Please try not to quote entire 1000-word posts; it just creates a bunch of useless text to scroll through. Try to pick out the relevant parts of the post, and only quote those. I don't mean to sound pissy, and I mean this comment in the nicest way possible, but I couldn't think of a way to word it without sounding at least slightly put-off. I'm not sure ten levels of death is really necessary, and I can see problems with allowing users to change their difficulty level on the fly. If you were playing online multiplayer and half the party were running on easy and half running on hard, you'd have two contradictory sets of tactics going on. The hard players would be moving slowly and taking no chances, and the easy players would be trying to rush ahead, heedless to the consequences. Both styles can be fun, but they don't mix well. I really like the way Hardcore mode worked in Diablo. Once you'd beaten the game, if you felt like a serious challenge, you could play through where death was permanent. The drop rate on good items was significantly improved as a reward, but I always thought the added challenge was a pretty decent reward to begin with. The other benefit was that segregating Hardcore characters from regular characters meant that you were playing with an entirely different class of users, who were altogether more helpful and friendly. I don't really feel the need for added complexity in the system, I just wish more games could use exactly the same mechanism.
EVE's Death penalties aren't as bad as they're bemoaned to be. Lose your ship in a mission? You can turn the mission down then head back to get the parts that survived. Even if you lost it in PVP, occasionally a corp mate will come along to scoop it all up for you. As to losing implants, yes, they help incredibly with learning, and in some cases, damage, but nobody forces you to use them. Now, as to the cost of ships themselves; some are over-insured, such as Drakes - you lose about 4m in game when it's insured via plat. Oh no. Honestly, fly what you can afford to lose, and remember that it's just a game. As to the whole aspect of it becoming a "grind fest" you really can just borrow some money off of friends or corp mates to get back on your feet, then make it back in a hurry running good missions with them. As to losing skills, it only happens if you're a right moron. Set your clone in a station with a medical facility. Clones are cheap, and take all of 2 seconds to re-purchase. There isn't even an undock timer after. Losing skill points in EVE is 150% the player's fault. Would you like for CCP to hold your hand and say "You're about to undock without an up to date clone! Would you like mommy to purchase you one, and pass you a bagged lunch?"
just did like D2 make sure people have an option, dont think you should be rewarded for being hardcore thou its just a different play style, some people like it some dont.
You're right, some people like it and some people don't - that's why it's an option. It is, however, unquestionably harder, which is why you're rewarded for playing that way.
Making an MMORPG with character death lurking at every corner would certainly be a bold move by a developer. As stated, this would most certainly drive off a portion of the gaming public. Without the fear of permanent character death, the game rewards are meaningless and just a dull trip into time sink oblivion. The clever use of puzzle traps to get the adrenaline going would enhance the experience no end. Imagine your group enters a dungeon room where suddenly all doors are sealed and the walls are closing in on you. You have 60 secs to solve the rooms puzzle else its game over. I'd pay good money for a game like that. Alas such a game is no where to be found amongst the plethora of mediocrity in circulation (unless I've missed them). Where's them MMO's that challenge yer brains and reward the daring adventurer. Hell I'd settle for swordfighting with taunts as a start.
I liked the system you had in some MUDs where you started with 10 lives, after that your character is deleted. However there was the ability to earn new lives by completing quests.
harder? still the same game just need to be more careful and think a hell of alot more carefully about what ya doing. Why reward people for alernative game mode? like rewarding people in a rp server.
I believe you're right - though I thought they dropped the perma-death feature for Jedi a good few months prior to NGE? Again, not played in years!
The concepts of permanent death and a roleplaying server aren't even slightly similar. Do you think Halo is just as easy when you set it to Legendary? After all, Legendary isn't really any harder, you only have to pay way closer attention to every little detail, think much more quickly, use better tactics, have better aim, and take advantage of terrain for protection. No, that's just as easy as playing on Easy mode. In case that wasn't clear, I'm pretty convinced that any game mode which requires considerable care, planning, and tactics is harder than a mode in the same game which does not. Yes, in Hardcore mode on Diablo 2, the enemies are all the same and it's technically just as easy to defeat them. However, because you only get a single chance, you have to plan much better and act much more quickly, just as you would if the enemies themselves were harder. Therefore, playing with permanent death is harder. And I think you should be rewarded more richly for playing a harder version of the same game. I also think it's a brilliant game mode, as long as it's optional, and would love to see a lot more games offering a similar experience.
I wouldn't call myself a casual gamer, but I know I'd get hugely pissed if I died after spending 3 weeks working on a character and then found myself distracted at the wrong point in time and died. That would be one way to lose a huge amount of players.
No offence, but. Worst idea ever. Ever. More people would quit through frustration than people would like the system. WoW, for example. You get a level 70 in some really nice purples, and then get ganked and killed. People'd quit faster than you could charge their card.
Wow, it's almost as though the last two posters didn't bother reading anything but the thread title before posting. Please read at least this post: Nobody has suggested permanent death being the default behavior of a game. Every single comment in the thread has been suggesting it as an alternate, optional mode of play for people who want a bit more of a challenge. Plainly it doesn't take too long to read the whole thread; I skimmed it in the process of writing this post to make sure I wasn't lying when I said nobody else was suggesting something so ridiculous.
Actually, I read the thread and then posted my thoughts on permanent death. Isn't that the point of threads? If it was an option then most the gamers I know would turn it off, simply cause all it takes is a couple of assholes on a server to ruin the fun for everyone.
Perma-death would be a great idea for a free game though. That would mean people aren't so invested in it, I know I'd be pissed off if I'd leveled a character for 15 bucks a month only to lose them because my hardware failed at the wrong time and I died. IMHO real death penalties wouldn't work in MMORPGs, but would be great for online FPSers. A realistic, tactical shooter with legitimate death penalties would stop people running and jumping around maps like idiots, and make for a more realistic experience.
I could see an MMO with a separate server (or more) having a permadeath ruleset. Really doubt there would be enough hardcore players that would go for this to make for a profitable game however.
Doesn't matter whether it's opt-in or not - it's still downright stupid. Both the posts you refer to apply whether it was default or opt-in. You would still lose everything you worked for - Would knowing you opted in for it make it all okay? No. It would not. It'd just make you think "Wow. What a stupid option. **** am I doing that again". It would lose players, either entirely, or from that option. It'd be a pointless endeavour. You mentioned earlier in the thread about legendary - Sorry, but the Halo levels of 'difficulty' are about as challenging as a bra-strap. Sure, if you have no hands and are on the same level as a vegetable brain power wise, they'd be very difficult to deal with, but as a fully functioning human being? Permanent death would simply be an imbuggerance (I always wanted to use that word. Thanks Yahtzee!), whether it was opt-in or not.
You may have missed out on an earlier part of the thread, in which I talked about the opt-in Hardcore Mode in Diablo II. It is exactly the sort of permanent death system we are talking about here, and I found that playing with Hardcore enabled was absolutely the most fun I had ever had in the game. I'm saying I want more games to adopt the function not just because it sounds interesting, but because I've tried it, and loved it. Plainly it has to be opt-in, with enormous warnings about permanent death, because unsuspecting players would be mad at losing their characters. Similarly, like Hardcore Mode, it shouldn't be enabled until the player has already beaten the game once. However, please don't tell me that you'd quit a game simply because there was an optional difficulty mode you didn't like. I'm not guessing, here; I'm talking about a system I have used and enjoyed, and wish to see in more games.
