Theoretical: MMO with Permadeath

Note: This is only a theoretical discussion. This project will probably not be produced; this topic is to see where a discussion on permadeath that players can trigger would lead in the context of a game designed around an ability that does this.

So, an odd idea I had in the shower involved MMOs that you could inflict permadeath in. But, permadeath without justification seemed a bit odd, and unfair. Permadeath needs to be justified, pretty darn good.

Basic idea is a more free-form MMORPG, with the following ruleset:

• A player can create one freely-customizable character per server.
• Player characters can belong to two opposed factions: Kingdom A (blue) and Kingdom B (red)
• The objective of the game is to help your faction maintain control of strategic locations scattered throughout the game world. Rewards will periodically be made available at these locations.
• There are no AI-controlled monsters.
• There are resources that can be harvested with certain tradeskills, and refined into useful items with other tradeskills.
• Magic is a Vancian construct - that is, players come 'loaded' with a number of spells with fixed effect.
• This avatar natively comes with a default attack, and a number of charges of a default spell (number varies with the spell)
• Players who are hit with spells have a chance to learn to store that spell.
• Equipment confers stat bonuses, and 'equipped' abilities. Equipped abilities have varying cooldowns with infinite use.
• Players regenerate spells while their character is resting offline at a given rate dependent on the spell, or by using a key item to tap a nexus that contains spell charges.
• One out of every ten thousand players starts with a single charge of the 'Omega' spell (regenerates a single charge every year).

Here's where the permadeath comes into play: the Omega spell can be cast to a limited range, but affects a significant area of the server. Any entity caught in the effect of the Omega spell is killed. If they are a player, they suffer permadeath, where their character is erased from the server.

The logical conclusion I came to, based on this rather generic ruleset, is that player espionage would be a resulting behavior.

Constructive players who start with the Omega spell would identify themselves and wait to make their suicide run at a time opportune for their faction (which would mean that allied players would be forewarned of the tac-nuke going off at the location, and vacate to avoid permadeath.) These players would either A) avoid investment in gear, knowing that casting Omega is suicide, or B) would be specially outfitted by their faction to attack key enemy locations with Omega, ensuring that their own character's deletion would have disproportionate impacts on the opposing faction.

Passive players would recognize the self-destructive nature of Omega, and would decline to use it, opting instead to allow players to use other spells on them to avoid using Omega. Players of this sort would command great wealth and power for having the means to do more or less whatever they want.

Griefers would find the most densely populated areas, and use Omega to hinder their own faction, for the lulz.

Thus, great efforts would be made by players to determine two salient facts about any new player:
A) Does this player have the Omega spell?
B) What kind of player is the Omega user?

So, initial discussion-maker: based on what is there, what other interesting behaviors would you expect to appear in this most hostile of game setups?

 

Permadeath is possible for some types of games (mostly strategy), like Tribal wars, where someone can just take over your village, and for that game it works just fine.

It seems to me that such a game as you've described would only work if there are really much players, which is always a disadvantage when it comes to MMOs.

 

While I like the idea of having to care about other players and finding out what they really are, I think this "atom bomb" mechanic as described would not work very well.
Some player would use them just for "fun" without caring how many own people are going to die.
I've never played an MMO but I guess if I would die this way I would never come back to this game.

Maybe it could work if death was not permanent but with a penalty and a different scale was used (like 1 out of 10 players gets the spell, however the effect is only local so you may kill max. 10 other players)... But it would not be the same

 

There would have to something to prevent greifers from using it. Maybe have the devs themselves assign the spell to select, well known players/leaders? Even if a random non-griefer was given to it, the temptation to see what it does would probably be too great.

Having perma-death sounds like a cool concept - it would encourage players to team up to survive. Once you got enough players, you would have groups teaming up, and would be able to overpower the greifers. But, any permadeath IMO, should result from the game's natural gameplay, not some random nuke that goes off.

But there would have to be something that stops 1 error from ruining a player's career. Maybe give a set number of lives?

 

I prefer old Ultima Online mechanic of stat/skill loss upon death. Something that hurts but doesn't completely re-roll the player. Otherwise it's just really frustrating when someone dies from a glitch, hack, lagswitching, etc.

There's a very small group of hardcore gamers that would be drawn to it, but it would depend on the game...

 

The best system for perma death that I've ever seen is "Rogue Legacy".

Basically, you are playing as a family line. Each character dies rather quickly, but the characters achievements still go towards helping the legacy of the family (in building up a castle for different boosts that every heir gets).

So, in an MMO...the characters would die and you would need to make a new one, but it would be more about the blood lines and family fortunes and things like that (and the new characters would be by design, allowing you to play different play styles easily without feeling like you are abandoning your "main").

 

Check out Realm of the Mad God, where permadeath is a normal part of the game. You unlock other character classes as you level up a particular class, but you can only switch to a different class once you die. So it's actually encouraged, as you try out different classes.

 

The problem with online permadeath is, it hurts subscription sales because at some point, EVERYONE has a 100% chance of an unfair event. This is called internet traffic and can make or break anyone, as all of you who've played an MMO will testify to. Being disconnected, lag, latency. Being hacked etc.

It's just a bad fit for an MMO IMHO (phew!)

When coupled with significant investment in time and a permadeath scenario, I can't see it going down well.

 

The ghost system in UO was great. For those that didn't play UO - on death you would become a ghost and the only way back to the living was by visiting a shrine or getting raised by another player. All your possessions would be left with your corpse on death.

 

To advance the discussion - and get away from how impractical permadeath really is - what if some new rules were added to this theoretical design?

• New characters have a 1% chance to start with the Antimagic spell. (Regenerates one charge per week.)
• Antimagic can be cast on a location with a n-world-unit radius; within this location, a player who casts a spell will have the charge consumed, but no effect will occur.
• Antimagic is not a character-targetable spell, and will only be obtainable in the game world from very rare nexus points.

Now, players have a means of preventing Omega-nukers from doing something, but also a tactical weapon useful in the greater PvP conflict. This spell generates charges slowly, but more than quickly enough to allow a small community of players access to it, and thus be elite Omega-hunters (and, powerful suppressive troops in the greater conflict as mentioned before).

What now?

"Off" topic - a theme I'm exploring with this thread is how game mechanics themselves may provide inhibition or promotion of certain behaviors...

 

All this talk of "you can't make permadeath work in an MMO" is no fun. Of course it's not practical. But what's the harm in trying to think about how it could work?

The first thing is to make sure that permadeath is very, very hard. You shouldn't be killed for a careless mistake - it should take multiple, consecutive mistakes (preferably of the same type) to die. That could be accomplished with high health, multiple lives, or (my personal favorite) an easily accessible escape mechanic. (basically, a panic button that teleports you somewhere safe, but also far from whatever you were trying to accomplish) Thus, in a PvP battle, it becomes your objective not to kill the other player, but to scare them enough that they teleport away. In other words, you're now not trying to kill other players, but make them think you can kill them. This is an interesting mechanic that simulates risk far better than a normal health bar that forces a respawn when you hit zero. It also encourages psychological warfare between players - displays of power, taunting, etc.

To make that really work, you'd have to track teleports just like you'd track a kill - make sure that players are adequately rewarded for forcing another player to escape, since that's the main mechanic of the game. Of course, managing to actually kill another player should be extremely tempting, and if you manage it, you should be rewarded with a sizable chunk of experience and many of that player's items (although the items would have to be fairly split somehow between attackers - kill-stealing would be bad if kills are rare)

The final problem is that of business: permadeath means you lose a potentially paying player. Whatever your business model is, it just doesn't work if people aren't playing the game! So let me propose that permadeath is not actually permanent - it lasts until the server is reset, which should happen on a regular basis. Think of it like a week-long game of Counter-Strike. This actually could be an effective mechanic to encourage players to return to the game. You should also have multiple servers running, so a player who dies in one server can still play on another until the week is over.

Well, that was fun! See what y'all are missing?

Edit: I'm avoiding the whole "Omega-spell" mechanic because... well, honestly, I forgot about it. But it meshes nicely with some of the concepts I've brought up. It should only kill enemies, not just anyone. Griefing would be a huge problem in a permadeath-style game, so any sort of friendly fire is not an option.
But just imagine the conversations that the Omega-spell would produce combined with my teleport and server-reset mechanics...

[Red is assaulting Blue's castle]
Red X: "Victory is ours!"
Blue A: "Oh really? I have Omega! Come any closer and I nuke you all."
Red X: "Lol, I don't believe you."
Blue B: "It's true!"
Red Y: "I dunno, I'm not risking it. This is how I died last week." *teleports away*
Red X: "FILTHY COWARD! I'll show you all! LEEEEROOOOOOY JENKINS" *charges in, several other reds following him*
*BOOM*
Blue A: "Told you."
Red Z: "Uh... I had Antimagic.... but now that everyone else is dead..." *teleports away*

Red X: *at his computer, watching the chat scroll by*: "Well, I won't do that next week."

 

With an insta-teleport away mechanic what stops people from making a script that simply triggers the teleport if their health drops lower than a thresh-hold? AHK, autoit, etc programs have pixelsearch functions that can trigger hotkeys. Let alone injection and other common hacks to access actual game data. And if nothing else even the x-million dollar games are prone with lag switching and exploits of hardware.

Let alone most "hardcore" gamers (open world pvp, full loot, etc) would be turned off from an insta escape mechanic, and those are the people who would be playing perma death re-roll type games.

Haven and hearth is the only open world re-roll game I've ever played and it's a very small niche for that type of thing.

 

Exactly! Thank you sir.

That's fully in line with what I'm exploring in this theoretical topic/design. Pretty much, a player with the Omega spell is a doomsday situation; other mechanics and behaviors are evolved because this is simply the worst thing that could happen to any player. Per player who joins the game, you have a 1/10,000 chance that they could walk up to you and n others, and go all Skynet on you. This is not typical in the least; our scenario is just a fast forward beyond what happens when character #10,000 is rolled (or, as this is random, whenever an Omega character gets rolled.)

Another clarification: most of the game would not center every move/ability/spell around instadeath; right now, it's only the Omega spell that explicitly enforces permadeath. But, that's a good question - is the threat of loss of character, even temporary, a good motivator of player behavior?

That would be an interesting idea. Players who roll a Red character on Server A and get 'permakilled' - however that happens, assuming we don't want to merely constrain permadeath to the Omega spell, as I'm reading the conversation - would apparently be activated as a Blue character on Server B. Not only does it allow the player to keep playing, without completely turning them off, it would let players become familiar with how the 'other half' lives.

HAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAA! I could totally see that. That'd be awesome.

 

it's been done a few times. Star wars MMO had a form of permadeath before it got changed.

 

Star Wars Galaxies was one game that made me think of some of this - the whole 'rare spells' thing is based a bit on how at first, only certain characters had the capacity for Force Sensitivity.

I never heard that early versions had a permadeath system. Details?

 

I stopped playing around the time they we're implementing the Jedi class but I believe the Jedi originally had only one life.

 

I think the big problem with the omega spell is that not everyone can use it - and it seems to be the only way you can be permadeathed. It means that player have to watch out for something that they literally have no defense from or even knowledge that it exists. Kinda like, oh, I dunno...

THIS!

Players should be rewarded for teaming up in an MMO, not punished when one lucky player just keeps trying to rush into a into a crowded stronghold and wipe them out.

 

Aah, but bear in mind - the cast range is smaller than the effect area. It's effectively a suicide spell - one person sacrificing to the detriment of many targets.

Thus, if go reread my OP, you'll find the initial conclusions I reached involved A) espionage within a faction, and B) how players with an Omega spell would handle gear. I suspect you'd have two behaviors - either A) avoiding gear altogether, probably the biggest 'give' of all, or B) the faction would properly gear the Omega user to attack the enemy faction most efficiently. C) Avoiding using the ability altogether would simply nullify the effect.

Bear in mind, we also added the Antimagic spell too...there's some non-suicidal uses as well, now, with teamwork. Or, you could have a Bonnie-n-Clyde team of faction-nukers, but most griefers aren't quite that social.

EDIT: I think that link is an attempt to dethrone the Tomb Raider movie as 'worst creation of all time.'

 

While that all sounds good, a big cause and effect of perma-death has to do with the in-game economy. If player's are only losing some items and a couple of spells, is perma-death really that bad?

What happens when they die? So if a player can only create one player per server, if you have 2 servers, can players only ever have 2 lives before they cannot play the game anymore?

Going back to the economy bit, players are a lot more scared of perma-death if they have tons of trade goods and gold in the bank. So how conducive is the economy to this?

 

1: Perma-death in this case isn't all that bad. Ideally, considering that permadeath is possible, losing a character has to be marginalized somehow. Me being me, I would say, 'an account-specific bank' that allows the player to store stuff, but that's not the only answer. Remember for magic charges, there are draw points all over the place (the more interesting spells are pretty rare), and items are a more 'flat' system. By that, I mean there aren't many 'tiers' of gear; gear adds a layer of customization in that it alters stats and provides non-magic abilities. Gear is either crafted or obtained as a reward for holding a region (which means you have to work for it, but ultimately is relatively inexpensive.)

2: Actually the 'two worlds' thing is more of a light world/dark world idea; getting killed on Server A kicks you to Server B. Getting killed on Server B kicks you to Server A again, if you go with DallonF's idea (as I'm reading it, feel free to correct me.) Thus, there are consequences for death, but not overpowering ones.

3: Actually I see permadeath through the Omega spell being an interesting way of preventing inflation. The powerful players of a faction will have an obligation for their own sakes to find out who has Omega, and how they're going to use it. Remember: All it takes is one griefer to nuke the most powerful players' fortunes to naught and in the process send prices tumbling down (because presumably those top 1% of players have a signficant amount of the server's earned currency.)

It will encourage bank use (always a good idea anyhow.) Items in the bank can't be nuked out of existence, which means when you reroll, you can still tap your previous resources and be closer to where you were before Mr. Omega Lover decided to press the button.

Further, Omega users who are going to go on suicide missions against the opposing kingdom will have two choices: go in 'as a noob' with inexpensive clothing - that is a fair tip off they may have Omega, especially if none of their allies are around - or, to be outfitted with stealth equipment all about getting the Omega user into a sensitive location alone so they can rip the opposing kingdom a new one.

 

Permadeath has potential, where 1:10,000 does not. Games that are unfair rarely succeed as human psychology will race to the easiest outcome and any idyllic scenarios you imagine will never come to be. Players will create scripts to generate 10,000 characters, until an Omega is created. And though you try, you will fail to prevent their hacks.

When I played D&D as a kid, Gary Gygax wanted us to roll 3 six siders to create our characters. He assumed in a few rare events, we'd have an awesome result, and if not, then we'd be happy to play whatever we got. In reality, I had no interest investing weeks of my fantasy-game-escape-time playing some average dolt. I wanted to be the Omega!

Gigi

 

Yes, you should have to earn the omega, not just get lucky with the RNG. It's like 1 out of every 10000 kids being born into a super rich family and having their parents buy them a formula one car the moment they turn 16. Great for the rich kid, not so much for everyone else. Or like one guy being given plate armor and a grenade, some people getting flak jackets, and everyone else gets sticks.

The other problem is that there are essentially two games going on- one with permadeath and the omega/antimagic users, and one with the useless people who can't advance up to their level or permadeath anyone. Because, what can they do other than beg? They can't stop the omega user forever. They can't really control the antimagic users to defend themselves. What good is getting a bunch of fancy gear when an omega can come along and wipe it all out? Am I not supposed to use it and leave it in the bank? It would be like playing Half Life or something and being given the role of a random scientist.

 

Rather than all these rules and a secret permadeath spell. What interests me more is an MMO where you do actually just die, any player dies.

For this to work, being at even the low level would have to be fun, and there would have to be alot of variety at the low level. There could be no grind to build up your character, and it would also have to be reasonable for a player to reach peak in maybe a day, or few days, at most a week. Cause no one will live that long. It would be a different kind of game for sure.

 

That answers one question, and I think you're right that permadeath should be global.

 

^ This reminded me of spending hours re-rolling my Baulders Gate character, just to get the better character point combination.

As for permadeath
(Theoretical space game EVE online/Freelancer hybrid with semi-realistic gravity simulation)

I've always imagined the ability to for a guild of group of guilds to eventually after 1-2 years of research to create what is essentially a black hole bomb. 2-3 powerful guild alliances would create a titan of a vessel that just happens to be capable of launching these dangerous weapons (weapons needs to be built by experimentation and without predefined methods and no one will know of their long term effects).

When used the weapon's explosion could cause a small unnoticed black hole to appear (% chance), thus several large "wars" could occur before anyone notices that they have doomed their galaxy. As time passes ships in range will get tidally locked and pulled in, while smaller faster or just those with large engines can still fly around/escape. This escape mechanism allows for locked ships to be salvaged and will create an interesting high risk PVE/ PVP zone as scavengers fight for the salvage some skirting a crushing depth while others get sucked in.

As the black hole devours more mass it gets larger and larger eventually eating entire systems and regions. This mechanic would keep the game environment dynamic requiring new content to be added monthly and allow for "mass exodus" type story arcs to new uncharted galaxies where you can only take what you can carry. Alliances will split, empires will fall, civil war will follow. (British/America 1492) This will balance the buildup of mass wealth as in the problem with EVE's economy allowing new adopters to not be at a perpetual disadvantage and will "refresh the game world" while allowing players to not loose all.

As a side note players who die in the black hole are re spawned in the "new world" keeping their skills and depending on their notoriety/fame/power will have access to get some of their most precious assets brought over during each controlled wave of the exodus.

 

I think permadeath is interesting because it means that you can actually weaken other forces, it truly forces players to work together, and makes everything you gain actually worth something. It sounds really interesting... as long as you can stay alive.

The bigger problem is what you do with the dead people. You could swap teams, but that would result in artificial pre-built alliances, and would have people suicide to get back with their friends. Booting someone off the server would make the social aspect go down the drain, as you could lose your friends at a moments notice, and again, you would have the suicide problem. I think a better way then actually removing the player would just be to get rid of all their stuff. This would allow player to get right back into the game, but they would be weaker and unable to just charge in and get their territory back.

@Reahreic

If you could hide that well enough, and have it be a complete surprise when it happens... that would be probably the most interesting thing to happen in gaming. Imagine people's reactions as they slowly figure out where the black holes are coming from. But, that sort of thing only works once; players will be ready next time.

 

As long as we're talking about Omega and Suicide Missions... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTsD2FjmLsw

OK. Back on topic. You seem to be talking specifically about the Omega-spell mechanic, while in my original post I was talking more about a general way to make permadeath in an MMO.

So I'm tempted to simply say that the Omega mechanic wouldn't work. But as I mentioned earlier, that's no fun.

The problem is that your main idea pairs severe punishment with luck. That's a huge design no-no. No one - not even a hardcore gamer - wants to lose hours of work because they got unlucky - or because someone else got lucky. You have to balance that before this idea can approach something fun. There are basically two ways to solve this:

Reduce the punishment. Basically, do this the way roguelikes do it: make the games so short that you want to play again, and again, and see how far you get. This would, in theory, result in short (~30 minute?) mind games where players are lying through their teeth the whole time, trying to mislead the other team about who their Omega is. In other words, it'd be a lot more like a MOBA than an MMO. With this solution, players mostly keep playing for the off-chance that they're going to be the Omega player next time. That means that you'd have to change the rules to something like one-in-five rather than one-in-ten-thousand - gotta keep their hopes up. It's not unlike being the Shaman in Transformice.

Alternatively, Make it skill instead of luck. There should be a lot of warning before Omega detonates, so that if you're caught in the blast, it means you've done something very, very wrong. It's an extremely strong motivation for players to get the expletive OUT OF THE WAY, so it still has an effect on gameplay, even though people will very rarely get caught in it. Remember: when dealing with permadeath, you're simulating the experience of death itself. As a human, you don't have to die to know that you want to avoid death at all costs, and for an aversion to death to have a very strong effect on your behavior.
Similarly, you should have to earn the Omega spell. It shouldn't be a suicide spell, though, since it's likely not going to kill anybody. It would just feel wasted. Instead, it should be a one-shot spell that you have to go earn again, which is a fairly time-consuming process, and you can only hold one shot at a time.


Edit: I've suddenly realized that I have a lot of "you must do this" language in my posts... really, I'm not an experienced game designer so you should take all of my posts with a grain of salt I just have a lot of strong opinions on how games should work.

 

I like the idea of giving lost of waring, as it would basically achieve the same effect. If you're trying to capture an area, all you really have to do is get the other team to leave. Whether they are permadeathed, or run away, they're still gone and you've won the day.

 

Permanent death in a MMORPG could work IF the MMORPG in question was not a level grinding paradigm. No one wants to lose a level 62 warrior due to lag, server disconnects, ganking, spawn camping, etc.

In order for perma death to be accepted the game has to be more of a RPG attribute/skill game, something similar to Darklands for the PC. Here players from the moment you say go; they can travel to any where in the game world, they are not limited based on a preordained level requirement for gear or areas and could tackle most of the game content except of course the epic level creatures and raid content. In this way IF their character dies they create a new one and can pick up where the last one left off. Anything they store in their vault is accessible to the new character immediately, so they could leave an inheritance to new characters in the form of money and gear.

This approach does have some fundamental problems for the developer(s). Since it is a content driven game meaning they have 3 times more work cut out for them to get and retain a player base. Also the content will have to be more than just your common FedEx/Destroy/Kill/Find type of quests. They may have to have depth but also some dynamic elements to it which requires a lot more work on the design and implementation.

Simply example here...Player A gets Quest A; while Player B is tasked with Quest C and finally Player C is tasked to perform Quest B + D which are related but are separate from the other two quests. To make it fair you can have the quest giver "offer" the quests and what reward they are offering for performing each task, but they only can perform one such task.

Another challenge is in player vs player, how do you make it work and not have players feel they have been cheated. Also how do you improve the player characters as they develop in the game world, is it a gear system where your ability to fight and craft depend on what gear you currently are using or is there in game skills your character will improve as they use them. How about where you "buy" or earn special abilities in relation to your chosen class/profession/career like all warriors start out with common attacks, but can earn newer attacks/defenses that can make them better.

Perhaps limit a player to say 15 special abilities of any combination and they can have 12 locked and loaded into the ability tool bar. Also there are upwards of 200 special abilities so players would have to travel far and wide to acquire the ones they really want.

Any how, just my random thoughts...and maybe I have said to much.

 

Very intriguing Topic!

Actually, I've had what you call "permadeath" planned for my game since its inception over four years ago, only I've been referring to it as " "Dead" IS DEAD". And I think it will work on multiple levels for my game, because it isn't a traditional PvP by default. And I expect to implement it in both the Single Player "campaign" and the MMO aspects of it. I've devised a new type of MMO for it anyway, which I call "SE-LMO". It'll make my game one of the most in/famous MMO developments in recent years, I hope. Whether for good or bad remains to be seen...

 

This whole subject actually reminds me alot of Counter-Strike Beta 1.

The first few betas or counter-strike (1, 2 and somewhat 3) had this dynamic in them where, it was really hard to get enough money to buy a good gun. This was most dramatic in beta 1 and they slowly 'balanced the gameplay' with each new beta. But in the first beta, you could find yourself playing for like 30 minutes just to buy the assault rifle. The big machine gun was like an hour long venture to get sometimes. It was set up so that you only got money if you killed people or won, the losing team got nothing. This created a really interesting dynamic that I actually loved. Achievement in the game was hard, but if you did achieve, as in get the assault rifle, it gave you a huge advantage. It being so hard to get made it so that when you did get it, it was really really satisfying. It also made it so that when you did get an assault rifle, you also took that S*** very seriously. Counter-Strike became fiercely competitive because of this.

Over time that mechanic was changed so that, even if you die and lose, you still get some money. And you only have to die a few rounds to get an MP5 to stand a chance. Then getting to the top and the best gun only took like winning a round a few times. The odds were lowered dramatically as betas went on.

I always remember back to CS beta 1 though as being the most white knuckled, furiously played gaming sessions I ever had. It is a dynamic I have always wanted to see replicated. This whole thing about 'balance' in games to give everyone a fair chance I think has become a dogma that isn't completely necessary. I really like the dynamic in multiplayer games where you work hard to get something, you get it and it's extremely rewarding and satisfying, but also extremely risky. The combination of working hard to create a sense of extreme risk and satisfaction I think plays on a more primal instinct. Having players permanently die and lose everything they worked for would create this dynamic.

However as I said before, the thing that makes or breaks this dynamic is whether or not the game is still fun at the low levels. The low levels need to provide the meat of the enjoyable gameplay, getting to the top with all the upgrades or something just needs to be seen as a temporary perk or reward to spice things up. Counter-strike beta 1, although extremely infuriating when you played for 30 minutes to get the assault rifle and then die next round, it was still extremely fun to play with just a glock.

 

I like the "concept" of permanent death in a game. You just don't feel the thrill if you die and respawn. That's not dying, that's teleporting, and I'm sorry but the red particle effect doesn't sell it!

But of course only as a concept. As it would be an awful business to kill your customers permanently!

A nice example is Jagged Alliance 2 btw. It's not a MMO.
You hire mercenaries, they are limited, have names, an unique avatar, voice acting, and a personality that made them different from other mercenaries. So if they die, nothing respawns, the character is gone, and nothing is generated to replace that. So you really felt like you had to preserve their life.

 

Sounds very simlar to a light novel series i know of...

The concept of the perma death is actually quite interesting but it depends on how it is implemented into the game...

The idea of the Omega spell is a bit... i dunno how to put it...

I mean is the game going to be level or skill base if it skill base it should be a spell learnt through a world/server event one for World A and one for World B.

There should be a variety of Omega Spells and it could become a focus of a world raid to obtain it and you can make it so that if the omega spell holder does not log in or play for a certain period of time or dies the spell gets re-released into the world.

I mean the omega spell could be a spell that uses the worlds mana whilst standard spell uses player mana and high tier spell uses field mana. This could be interesting if the spells are focus on the comsumption of the field magic cause if enough mana is used the Omega Spell can't be used plus it can cause players to retreat.

 

Alternatively, you could just make a perma-kill REALLY hard to pull off, maybe requiring multiple people and super-rare resources, so that it would pretty much only ever happen as a strategic play by late-game factions. That way, even moderate players wouldn't be subject to it (unless they manage to tick someone off), and it would give end-gamers a real incentive to team up and stay vigilant.

 

I've always thought the best way to handle perma-death would be to implement alternative states of reality / states of the world; that is, maybe your world is a 1000-level dungeon (SwordArtOnline-style, for the sake of example), and all living critters exist on levels 501-1000, with "perma-death" turning you into a ghost beginning on level 500, and further deaths shunting you deeper into the layers of the dungeon. (or a single death kicking you to level 1, and your quest being to ghost-it-up back to level 500, where you could finally ghost-it-up once more to become alive again, in level 501..)

I guess eventually that kind of design would revert to a "no-death" design, in the sense that the lowest level of the dungeon (assuming a finite dungeon) would constitute a realm where you'd have the usual no-death setup. But, if the penalties for becoming a ghost, and becoming a ghost of a ghost, and for becoming a ghost^3, etc. were sufficiently dramatic, and limited your ability to interact with the more immediately relevant layers of folks (eg the living), I'd think that would make this death feel pretty 'permanent'.

Then again, I also don't really like the permanency of this, so maybe I've got the wrong idea in thinking about this as perma-death in the first place -- I'm mostly attracted to its in-game coherence (when you die, you don't just magically repop --- you become a *thing* with a story behind how you became that thing) and that it has a serious cost attached to it. I think an even better fix would be something in the above spirit with just a few levels to the 'dead' dungeon layers, and a time-and-skill intensive quest to resurrect a toon back to the live layers of the dungeon.

 

Permadeath can work, but your game must be designed around it and you need at least some form of continuity between deaths.

Examples
- Survival game where the goal is to survive for as long as possible. Your 'continuity' comes from the record of survival times you have achieved.


- Empire building game where the goal is to build something larger than yourself with other players. Your character can die but the ongoing growth of a shared structure that you can contribute to with each new character provides continuity.



- Dynastic style game where you can leave something to the next character after the current character is destroyed.


- High environment impact game, where players can have a significant and permanent effect on the environment. Even if a character dies, the mark they left on the game remains.

 

I've had similar ideas to this in the past, mostly revolving around the concept that you have a set % of the games population "alive" and the rest in some sort of afterlife state. For one player to respawn as a living character, another player has to die etc. Would open up other possibilities such as possessing another persons character or sacrificing noobs, stuff like that.

I like permanent death in games, I feel it only really works when it's fully immersive though. Games such as DayZ do it well, however when you get spoon fed a huge U.I, friendlists etc even permadeath is really just an inconvenience. Sure people make work arounds using team speak and stuff like that. But it allows the hardcore players to make friends, only to have them ripped away them alone and scared.

 

One Death, Endgame, was my original Design. I'm not stupid enough to think Players would let me get away with that, however. So I'm allowing Single Players to Continue as another Playable Character, as long as one is still alive at the time...

+1 My Game IS a Survival Game of sorts. 50-65% anyway. One "Mode" features no chance of Permadeath, and another has a pretty low chance. The other Two have medium and high Permadeath rates, depending on the Player's Skill and ability to Strategize well.

+2 In the MMO Version of my Game, you can leave a legacy, in terms of Alliances and Kills you have achieved. You can't come back as that character, but they can't either. Perhaps you'll meet again in a 2nd Life? If both of you are still hungry for more blood...

+3 "Inheritance" is also a factor I'm looking to work into the MMO half of my Game. Players Killed in Competition can Nominate one of their regular Followers to take over their Competitor Account, the In-game Currency of which is halved, then handed over.

+4 Competitors who stockpile enough In-game Currency can Sponsor the Careers of other Competitors and even Design their own Levels and Sponsor Competitions on them. These Levels will be Permanent in the Single Player Version, and will have to pass Public Voting in the MMO Version, so will also be Permanent. And Competitors who lose their Sponsor during a Competition may choose to adopt the Signess of their fallen comrade, as a tribute to their memory...

 

Oh man, I love that twist on things! I've always been a PvP'er in MMOs, and "Someone has to die for you to live again." would open up for some genuinely terrifying motivation for players.; and, as a bonus, it gives you player-controlled ghosts/undead/etc. that really do have a vendetta against the living. That'd really have some magnificent impacts on player sociology. It'd be curious to see what kinds of organizational setups that spawns in the afterlife; maybe the undead folks would form guilds and then develop some kind of DKP-esque system to determine who gets to benefit from the next resurrection? The implications for the living could be interesting, too; there's a bona fide need in this kind of world for undead-slayers to protect the populace from the ever-encroaching undead...

The system designed for allocating "newly available lives" to the resurrection-seeking undead as the living die off would be really important, too. It seems natural to let an undead player that actually kills a living player take their place among the living; that could breed some real vendettas, heh. For living players that just happen to die in the natural course of things, though, and free up extra lives, I guess you could have some kind of epic quest/adventure designed around an item that's only attainable / usable when there's spare room amongst the living?

 

Permadeath is something that all my pet projects incorporate. It's so ingrained in my game ideas because my whole childhood was based around perma-death games that were "MMO" in a sense or just something like Dwarf Fortress. I don't have any game ideas I want to do that does not involve some form of perma-death and each one of the ones I do have that does involve permadeath are pretty varied with different implementations.

I actually had a hugeee post written out about my recounts playing these games and how it worked(it worked so very well(death was not boring and actually made the game more fun in some cases with the communities being very active)) and talked about how they were the inspiration for me to start game development myself, but I think I'll leave that for a different thread. Those games were the ones that formed e-friendships that have lasted over 8 years now. -edit: I tried to write it again, but once again I went overboard, ahh well.

But to add something to the thread:

Permadeath is great, death shouldn't be a punishment though, it should open up new things but not open up something 'exclusive' to those that died. Taking the focus away from items and putting the focus on character development allows you to incorporate 'caps', instead of just removing their items or restricting their usage. I personally like the system of stat focused, levels should be a representation of your stats(your development focuses on stats, level goes up but does nothing but provide an easy var to say 'oh that guys strong').

The people playing will probably be more "hardcore" than anything, you shouldn't try to cater to everyone at once. Know who you're making your game for and make it for them. Do people wanting permadeath want role-play? In my experience that's a yes, they do. Your character should be how you want it, don't balance out their stats. If they want a character that hits 500x a second, let them spend those hours training for it. The more stats you have the harder it becomes to train, by the time they've wasted all that time making a character that hits 500x a second, they won't hit for anything and anyone that has trained their defense will smash them in a few blows. You give the players the ability to craft their player how they want and maybe make balance tweaks to the equations here and there to determine how much damage is done, but that's it. I don't want my items to be make my character legendary, I want my character to be legendary. This is how it was with the games I played as a child and it's probably the most fun I've ever had in a game.

Items require a techie etc, someone focused on that specific stat and mined the resources to make and upgrade their items. Most players won't have an item or were friends with a techie and got their item off them or traveled in their spaceship to other planets(yep..that was in the game).
Being stat focused and not item focused(although, still a little, but mainly for the people who focused on developing their items rather than character), most players are willing to part with their items when they die, their stats could be capped when they die(while dead, you only have say 20% of your potential). You're in a different realm, you're stuck dead but can be revived but not without a lot of work. People living could revive you, maybe requiring collecting n amount of something to revive someone. The afterlife realm could have heaven and hell, maybe the devil there will grant you a life(although, good luck getting back to the living realm even after you're alive), but that's a real player and he may not care about you, may not like you or wants you to be his follower for all eternity.

Maybe you're a good guy, you'd need to prove yourself to one of the guardians by fighting in wars with hell(oh and yes, these did happen with the game I used to play ). Although, for them to revive you they have a 20% chance of them-self dying in the process(and as it's role play, most people were willing to take that chance). Once again, it was still hard to get back to the living world. Once you're alive, you're back to where you started but you keep what you trained while you were dead get back your original stats, maybe with a little gone though.
Death was pretty interesting, I trusted no-one in the game and was always on my lookout, it changed the dynamics of dramatically and when I did take risks, they were for huge rewards.

When I killed someone I felt like I accomplished something, when I died I sometimes laughed at how I died(left the spaceship in space, forgot airmask, KO'd out in space, slowly dying, friend didn't realize I left and I kept messaging him to come back and he couldn't find me..when he did it was my dead body and all my items were in space or the times where I accidentally run into my extremely powerful friends charged up beam and die instantly) and sometimes I smashed at my keyboard in rage but worked harder to get back alive and get revenge.
Anyway, I'll end it there since it could get a lot longer if I wrote anything more .

I can proudly say I'm very happy to have some memories of my childhood(like those of you that played mario as a child or Zelda) and to have them shape my future and inspire me to recreate them with my own twist so I can experience them again in a new fashion.


tl;dr: I like permadeath.