[MUD-Dev] Permadeath or Not?

[John Buehler]

Ananda Dawnsinger writes:

> > From: "J. Eric Townsend" <jet at well.com>
> > If the uber-mob is generally friendly, perhaps it isn't a problem.
> > But why on Earth would you have a hostile uber-MOB wandering around
> > that can whack anyone without them even having a chance of running
> > away?
>
> I can think of a few reasons offhand, some more compelling than
> others:
>
> 1) The inevitability of death slows down player advancement, keeping
> players from reaching too high a level in too short a period of time.
>
> 2) The constant threat of inevitable death adds a sense of danger
> ("excitement") that might not otherwise be available from hunting
> creatures at your level.
>
> 3) The threat of inevitable death leads to a sense of community as the
> players in the zone band together to track and avoid the uber-mob.
>
> 4) Uber-mobs encourage high-level players to hunt in a generally
> low-level area, leading to interaction between newbies and veterans.
>
> Now, as far as I'm concerned, 1 and 2 aren't reasons in their own
> right, but ways of patching up weaknesses in game design --
> overly-rapid advancement in case 1, lack of challenge and intrinsic
> interest in case 2.  (Not a slam on EQ -- show me a game system that's
> perfectly balanced and unbreakable even under severe overpopulation
> and stress, and I'll nominate the designers for a Nobel Prize.)  3 and
> 4 are real reasons, but I'm not sure they're worth insta-killing
> characters.

I'm glad you put in disclaimers on 1 and 2, because they're poor
applications of death, especially if we're still talking about
permadeath.  But I have a similar attitude about even your points 3
and 4.  The layout of a zone is such a minor issue when discussing the
social structure of a game, which is what you're talking about in
those points.  The difficulty of communicating in these games makes
casual interactions essentially impossible.  How fast can you type?
Many people will ask a question and then wander off before you can
compose your answer.  They can't tell the difference between a player
typing on their keyboard and one who isn't.

Point three suggests that players will band together to track and
avoid uber-mobs.  This happened to some extent in EverQuest in East
Commonlands.  That was an area that was a newbie zone with a few high
level griffons.  Griffon sightings would be announced in the zone by
players that spotted them and we'd all stand around waiting for the
griffons to go away before resuming our hunt.  What's the point?  The
entertainment value while waiting for the griffon to go away is
watching the griffon animation.  It's not interesting, nor
entertaining.  Nothing is gained by keeping an eye out for the
griffons.

Point four suggests that high level players will be encouraged to
visit newbie areas to nail those high level mobs, again trying to get
that interaction between high and low level player characters.  While
it occasionally happens, the norm is simply for the high level
characters to come in, kill the mob and then leave.  The best that can
be said of interaction is that the newbies say "Thank you" and the
high level characters say "You're welcome".  Or, more probably "Thx"
and "Np" (sigh).  Newbies and high level characters will not interact
in any way other than gratuitous social interactions because a newbie
(in EverQuest) has nothing to offer a high level character.  The power
disparity is too great.  Everything that a newbie can do, the high
level character can do.

The fundamental problems of power disparity and difficulty of
interacting casually need to be addressed.  The first is a design
problem and the second is a technology problem.  As I understand
things, Achaea reduces the power disparity between newbie and mature
characters, which I applaud.  I also look forward to reports on the
effects of that design decision.  The technology needed for casual
interactions is a spoken voice mechanism.  You speak, it goes to the
server as text, the server sends it to the appropriate clients and
those clients turn that text back into speech again - in a tone
appropriate to the character.  Completely practical eventually, just
not right now.

JB


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