[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[cruise]

Thus spake Damion Schubert...
> 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.

:P

> 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)

I think I managed Undefeated on my Elf Loremaster in beta before being 
zerg'd by goblins or something equally pitiful.

> 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.

There is another way to make permadeath optional - only have certain 
creatures cause it. My current game plan has three "stages":

1) Non-lethal damage. Simply causes you to lose conciousness, from you 
will recover.
2) Lethal damage. You're dead, but you can be rezzed/recall to some kind 
of bind-point.
3) Soul damage. Perma-death.

Only very high-end enemies would use number 3 - and they'd be well 
marked and offer lots of options for players to escape.

> 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.

Agreed - making it optional seems a sensible choice for this reason too. 
Ping sucks? Play it safe. Net smooth and your group kicking butt? Let's 
go play hardball...

> 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.

See the suggestions about "inheritance" - either of skills, equipment, 
or both.

>> 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.

I'm curious - can anybody else comment on other player's reactions to 
these titles? I'm interested in how much other people care about such 
titles.