[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Perma-death

[John Buehler]

cruise writes:

>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, the first question is surely why?
>
>a) A high-level character really means something. It's not just a question 
>of time.
>
>b) ...actually, that's the only thing I can really think of. Any 
>suggestions.
>
>
>What other ways could we create such a feeling (assuming that's something 
>we even want to do...)?
>
>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?

Players don't like to lose things.  In a game predicated in achievement, the 
loss of an old character is simply devastating.  That's why people don't 
like permadeath in current games.

Solution 1: Keep achievement, but permit many characters.  The characters 
would be macro-managed.  Assume the player is managing 10 characters, all 20 
days old.  One dies.  A new one is created, so the player has 9 20-day old 
characters and one newbie.  Only a fraction of the achievements of all the 
characters is lost.  The pain is ameliorated.

Solution 2: Dump achievement as the backbone of gameplay.  The player's one 
character would rely on the player's skills to accomplish things in the game 
world.  The death of a character means the loss of the history of the 
character and any achievements that might be bound up with it.  Faction 
accumulations and so on.  This is another way of ameliorating the pain of 
loss.  The player hasn't lost their skill in the game, so they will be able 
to get right back to playing at a high level.  But some aspects of their 
character will be lost.

I'm sure there are other ways of approaching the problem of character loss 
so that the fiction of permanent death can be introduced without it being 
the equivalent of uninstalling the game from your computer.

JB