[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Vincent Archer]

According to Richard A. Bartle:

> Again, that's an argument againt dying too much rather than dying at
> all. Also, it may well be the case people wouldn't die anywhere near
> as often if they lost everything when they did die - they'd be far
> more careful.

As I'd said in another list where the topic is currently raging, there
are two conditions that are required to make permanent death palatable
in a game.

  1) The player must be able to trust the game not to kill him
  "needlessly".  

or 

  2) The player must not have a strong attachment to his character

Two extreme type of games where you have Permanent Death (or a better,
softer, term: Character Reset) and are very succesful and popular:

P&P RPG games, which satisfy condition #1. You usally trust the GM not
to kill you unless you really deserve it.

Quake & others FPS. Where your character restarts at the same starting
point everytime you die. But you don't care, since you can get armored
and grab your favorite weapon within a few minutes. Condition #2.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can satisfy condition #1 "enough" in
a MMORPG/Internet environment, unless you severely restrict the
conditions under which PD can occur (special PD "deathmatch arenas",
very high level tailored "epic encounters"). And even then, you'll
have customer service problems with people whose IPS router decided to
reboot, 30s into the "epic fight of their life they couldn't lose".

--
Vincent Archer                                         Email: archer at nevrax.com

Nevrax France.                              Off on the yellow brick road we go!
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