[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[Damion Schubert]

On 5/15/07, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
>
> Okay, to get something going again, here's a nice controversial one :P
>
> Is there /any/ ways perma-death can be implemented without being hated
> by players?


Well, certainly.  There is undeniably a market of people who would love
a permadeath game -- they're the one that post angrily on my blog
whenever I say 'permadeath sucks'.  At this point, I just do it from
time to time just to kick open the hornet's nest.

Permadeath is undeniably a hardcore feature.  By contrast, casual gamers
are the ones who think that even WoW's candy coated death penalty is too
harsh.  The problem is that death is on the game's 'critical path' -
casual gamers cannot sidestep the hardcore feature.  A successful MMO
needs a good mix of hardcore and casual players or it fails.

The obvious response is to make Permadeath an Optional feature somehow.
A flag you can turn on, or a seperate server, or something.  LotRO did
something very interesting -- they put in special titles in the game
that you can earn if you reach a certain level without dying.

      http://lotro.mmodb.com/titles/

                The Wary (Level 5)
                The Undefeated (Level 10)
                The Indomitable (Level 14)
                The Unscathed (Level 17)
                The Undying (Level 20)

There are three other problems that any game that embraces permadeath
needs to consider.

1) Increasing risk reduces the chances that players are willing to take.
 If you make it so that they can lose everything from fighting even
level monsters, expect those players to instead kill monsters 5 levels
below them that only spawn in singletons.  In this manner, players can
slowly bore themselves to death. 
2) A vast amount of the MMO experience is outside of the player's own
control. The internet sucks - deaths are often caused by one unavoidable
lag bubble. Playing with pickup groups often results in subpar groups. 
You don't want to incentivize players never taking chances, and never
grouping with strangers. 
3) The subscription model is built around a 'no-disruption' mentality -
we don't want players to feel like the game is 'over', and we don't want
to take away their most treasured possessions, because this might be the
moment that they say "well, I guess I'm done here" and cancel the
account.  Any permadeath solution needs to find ways to mitigate this
moment as much as is humanly possible.

> LotR has titles for each level range you survive without dying. This
> seems to be in a similar social area, but is it quite as impressive?
>

>From what I've heard, it's quite impressive.  Seeing someone with
'the Undying' after their name is a very rare event.


--d