Could Permadeath Work in a commercial MMORPG?
Permadeath was never a tremendously popular feature in MUDs, but it was common enough that it did have a certain following. Some players consider permadeath a vital component of roleplaying, and they feel it adds a significant amount of excitement and tension to a game.
I certainly understand why no commercial MMORPGs have experimented with the concept, but my question is whether it will EVER happen on a commercial MMORPG?
If it does happen, what type of gameplay elements would be required? I would think that to be successful, a permadeath game would have to focus a lot more on the experiences than statistical or gear based character development/advancement. I think for the sake of continuity, such a game would need some sort of achivement or unlocking system where some of the accomplishments of previous characters were either retained in some way or at least recorded in a meaningful manner.
What are your thoughts?
I think permadeath is definitely a viable option, but it has serious hurdles to overcome. I think the keys to making it work are pretty much in line with what you pointed out:
1 – Focus on ‘(the) experience’ instead of ‘experience (points)’
2 – Shift a gamer’s sentimental attachment to a ‘user account’ or personal archive instead of a specific character
A lot of online and offline games add replay value with unlocks – harder difficulty levels, prestige classes, etc. I dipped my toe in the water of permadeath MUDs hesitantly, because I always loved building a character with a long-lived history. I used to really enjoy things like reconnecting with friends in-game after a long absence. It may be lame, but little stuff like that adds a bit of an epic feel to a character’s life for me.
I do think that permadeath is more appropriate when there’s heavy/mandatory roleplaying going on. When there are important or high-profile roles to be played, it helps to have some way of determining reliable players to fill those roles. Permadeath allows players to cut their teeth as grunts, prove themselves and then move on to more demanding roles in their subsequent lives. Most people don’t like seeing their creations die, but an epic death can be a very memorable thing. Especially if it’s followed by a prestigious next life
.
The closest we’ve seen to this is Hardcore mode in Diablo 2. Perhaps take a look at that to get an idea, as I think it’s the only permdeath in a mainstream multiplayer rpg.
Making it an optional mode seems like a good idea. Basically, set up perm-death servers and non permdeath servers, so the permdeath chars don’t meet up with the non-permdeath.
Faster advancement than the standard MMO seems like a good idea. In Diablo 2, you could reach level 70 or 75 pretty easily and quickly. Getting to level 99 took alot longer, but most characters seemed relatively “complete” around 75. Going for 99 powered them up a bit, but was more for challenge/fun.
Looking at the hostility system might have some merit as well. Knowing a PK is coming for you gave you time to plan for it(or just wuss out and leave the game if you were a chicken, like most players). The amount of random ganking that goes on in an MMO would have to be addressed some way in a permdeath game.
Dealing with lag and connection issues would be important too, because as soon as people are paying to access a game’s servers, they are going to be PISSED if they permanently lose their character due to a server hiccup.
Crowd control would have to be very carefully controlled, or non-existent. The ability to flee somewhat reliably is VERY important in a perm-death game, I would think.
I think very few people would play perm-death long term. Alot of people would try it, and quit once a character they had put a month or more into died. It’d be interesting to see if there’s any stats out there on the amount of hardcore players in Diablo 2 compared to regular players.
Just had a random thought after submitting my last post. How about you unlock the ability to create higher level characters as you level up a perm-death character. Like, once you’ve reached level 50 or whatever, your perm-death characters now start at level 50. Make the last unlock 20 or so levels below the cap, so having a max level character is still an accomplishment.
> Talsek: “2 – Shift a gamer’s sentimental attachment to a ‘user account’ or personal archive instead of a specific character”
I think this is huge. You’d need to store a lot of data, information, etc. on an account level rather than a character level. This would allow players to still feel a sense of history connected to the game. Their characters would then simply be a temporary window with which they interacted with the world.
> Outsider: Looking at the hostility system might have some merit as well.
What is that? How does this system let you know PKers are coming for you?
> Outsider: Dealing with lag and connection issues would be important too
The internet is pretty reliable – certainly compared to 20 years ago when I first started gaming online. I’m not sure how much you can really do here, since most problems are going to be nowhere close the game’s servers.
Hostility: basically, you have to declare hostility on somebody in order to fight them in Diablo 2. You have to do this from town, so your target has from the time you declare hostility until the time you can reach them from town to prepare for the fight. It’s not quite like a PK flag, as the attacker controls it rather than the victim. It’s still non-consensual PVP, but you get some warning it’s coming at least.
Yeah, that’s interesting. It is a bit of a warning. Perhaps some kind of system could be built into an MMO – like a danger sense or something.
When I posted a link to this blog post on Facebook, that post got an enormous amount of discussion. I wish they’d discussed it here, but alas…
I wonder if you could design an MMO that is different enough than the current M59/EQ/WoW style that permadeath could be a viable feature.
For example, imagine an MMO where everyone’s account represented a nation state – something like Ikariam or Travian. Within your nation, you create characters that you level up, explore the world, interact with others, wage war, negotiate trade, etc. These characters you make could potentially be assassinated, could die in a battle, or even die of old age. At that point, you would make a new character who would become the new face of your nation.
All the while, your nation is advancing and developing through the actions of your many (or few, if you are particularly good at staying alive) characters.
Is this an example of an MMO that could support permadeath in a manner that wouldn’t turn players off, and instead might add excitement to the game?
That example is interesting because it sounds more like a strategy RPG. In strategy games you often have relatively faceless units along with more notable hero-type units. If your ‘character’ was somewhere in between the typical MMO character concept and that of a strategy game’s hero, perhaps it would create a stronger link between the player and his account/nation/etc.
I use the strategy game comparison somewhat warily here. There’s a preconception (in my mind at least) that strategy games have pretty shallow characters. I don’t want to imply that shifting focus from character to account necessitates underdeveloped characters.
I can definitely see the strategy connection. What makes it still an MMORPG, imho, would be the fact that your character (”hero unit”) would be your primary way of interfacing with the game. You would develop it, advance it, level it up, etc. This process would probably be a lot more rapid than a traditional EQ/WoW/M59 style MMO of course.
But your primary concern for development would be advancing your kingdom, island, whatever.
EverQuest had a permadeath PvP server called Discord. It had a 7x experience gain rate and was great fun because you became much more emotionally involved — your friends were strong friends, your enemies strong enemies. Everything mattered a lot more than on other servers.
You can’t have good without evil. Similarly, creation without destruction leads to boredom and saturation. That’s one thing EVE Online has going for it — the beautiful dance of ship creation and destruction and all the systems that support it: mining, blueprints, war, trading.
Greg, that raises another interesting idea. Imagine a regular garden variety MMO. Now take one server – just one – and make it permadeath with 10x experience and perhaps a minor tweaking of major boss mobs “bullshit” attacks.
Does that qualify as an MMO having permadeath?
Would that intrigue people?
Would it truly support a full time population, or would it be a pure vacation or “screw around” server for the general MMO population?
For example, imagine an MMO where everyone’s account represented a nation state – something like Ikariam or Travian.
I know it’s not an MMO, but I think Lionshead were edging around this idea with Fable 3.
From a multiplayer perspective, one citystate per person sounds like a stupidly massive world though. I personally think the issue is more about seeing the players ongoing influence within the game, which is why the idea of your account controlling a persistant city seems so appealing.
In games, we don’t have to be confined by reality. A planet with tens of thousands of islands is not horribly impossible. And we already have tens of thousands of cities on Earth as is.
I’d have optional PD hero-quests that unlocked content. The rewards could be titles, unique gear, zones or whatever.
Some examples:
–to become a shadowknight dark elf warriors have to complete a PD dungeon.
–characters could do a PD hero quest as a dedication to their God and get a special ability like summoning a minion of the God.
–special titles
–your name colour seen by other players changes e.g blue for normal, bronze for one completed PD quest, silver for three, gold for five.
I think perma-death could be very interesting mode of play, providing it were done right.
* It definitely should be optional.
* Should have some sort of bonus or reward attached to it.
* Characters should be able to leave some sort of legacy to the world and future characters — some sort of “connection”. Tupodawg999 has some interesting ideas in this regard.
* Should be some sort of explanation in the world lore/setting, especially if it’s optional. In other words, why do some get resurrected but others do not? Maybe it’s some sort of pact with a higher power, “Serve me and I will grant you limitless power! But should you die, your soul will be mine forever!” =)
Eh, forgot to add: I would prefer a middle ground between perma-death and the “easy” approach games like WoW take. Something where death is to be feared; very painful maybe but not permanent.
An idea that’s interesting to me would be to allow a player’s future characters (or maybe other players’ characters) to accomplish quests to bring back dead characters. Perhaps something like in Dungeon Master, where you have to take the body of the dead character to a specific shrine or temple, in order to bring them back…
I’ve bloviated about this before. I think permadeath can work, but with some caveats:
One, if you’re going to splice it into the mainstream WoW-wannabe design, you have to leave it as an option, not a mandate. Players can start “hardcore” characters like in Diablo or Torchlight and see how it goes, but they could also play with the traditional model, just as different characters. (And notably, some players do this themselves; they create characters and then just delete them after they die. Self control makes it work, though some will allow themselves “heirlooms” or the ability to “loot” their own corpses under some arbitrary conditions.)
Two, I’d recommend design changes across the board to really make permadeath make sense. A small power band, no or very few levels, account-based progress, and maybe even some of the generational mechanics we’ve bandied about before. Players should probably also have the ability to jump into other characters soon after death, meaning a stable of characters that can be activated on a moment’s notice rather than logging out and back in, and/or quick character creation options (or taking over NPCs?). That’s a concession to gamist tendencies, to be sure, but if permadeath means a lot of *player* downtime and wasted effort, it’s not going to sell well.
Effectively, we need to ask “what exactly is it we’re angling to kill with permadeath?” Are we trying to kill player progress and kick them in the teeth for their incompetence, or are we trying to kill *characters*, and why? Once those design questions are formulated and answered, implementation can flow naturally from the goals.
Permanent death, without a relatively closed community (like a smaller mud), and with nonconsensual PVP is just unworkable.
A closed or close community like a MUD with 10-100 regular players and typically fewer than 50 players on at any given time can self-balance, have repercussions for hostility, and allow you to know who is dangerous.
A much more wide-open commercial MMO will have at least hundreds of players logged in at any given time, and hundreds of thousands (at least) of players. This leads to a sense of complete anonymity and thus rampant antisocial behavior. The brinksmanship of permanent death combined with the anonymity factor will create the most antisocial gaming environment possible, which will be a complete failure both commercially and in game design. The only way to get anything out of such an approach is to be extremely up-front that it’s an environment of sociopaths.
Joshua, good points, but your points appear to be made within the context of a traditional MMO – grind grind grind up levels, grind grind gring up gear, etc. In other words, a situation where people have hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of hours invested into a character and all of that advancement is completely lost upon character death.
I think in that scenario, permanent death is a total non-starter.
The interesting question, as I see it, is whether or not you could design a game to operate in a different way such that permanent death was not such a devastating problem. Players would still have an attachment to their “hero”, but a significant part of their overall “avatar development” could be in their nation-state, some kind of meta-character that passes on benefits to their actual in-game character, etc.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a loss of 40 days of game time or 20 hours. If it’s a significant setback enactable non-consensually in a large pool of players, it will simply result in sociopath-like behavior.
The lure of griefing and the sting of its success will be too strong for any counterweight to balance it. I’ve played in many MMO environments, as well as muds that were PK oriented as their whole point.
The only times I’ve seen player killing work with significant setbacks is when the entire structure is set up as a ’sport’, like a game of quake 3 with rpg bells and whistles. Points are earned for kills and the like, and death, while a setback, doesn’t lower your score, and is only a setback for a day at most. In these games, all anyone is doing all day long is trying to PK, so getting killed yourself is exactly what players expect at all times. Unexpected permanent setbacks inflicted by other players will always result in a poisoned social environment, no matter how you try to shift the focus away from the character and towards the account.