I think it's more that no one will know if you are voluntarily playing a perma-death character. So people want a "flag" that shows how "hard-core" they are. If they do die, normally you see the person playing the same character a few weeks later, in which they then claim they just restarted. Or the ever popular server move and pretend like you never died.

Every MMO that gets announced goes through a round of people wanting Permadeath. While I could support such gameplay, two big things need to happen:

1 - Every aspect of the game needs to be wrapped around the permadeath concept.
2 - Dyimg needs to be made extremely difficult to happen unless you are not paying the slightest bit of attention to your surroundings, or unless you just plain make a really really stupid decision... Like charging into a lair of vampires at Level 1 in nothing but Leather Armor and armed only with a dagger...

Permadeath is not something you can just throw into a game and have it work well...


Having said that, Star Trek Online, which also uses megaserver technology, has per-character difficulty designation. Those on normal mode receive no death penalty on defeat. They just respawn and can jump right back in. Those on hard mode suffer wounds (ground game) and damage (space game) on defeat which requires special consumables to remove after respawn. A Reset to Level 1 option could in theory be added thus forcing character startover as a "nightmare" difficulty mode could be applied for those with a deathwish. But I have a feeling that very few will choose that option, and of those who do, many will likely switch to a lesser difficulty after they get tired of either not progressing, or having progressed really far only to find themselves set way way back.

And when they get that flag, they'll be focused for the killing.

The first MMO I played was DAoC back in 2001 and I think it was one of the first that had relatively low death penalties, but the game was based around PvP combat... There is absolutely no way permadeath would work in a PvP centered game. Low penalties kept those who died from being effective for about 5 minutes after death to discourage strategies of throwing endless waves of shock troops at a problem.

Isn't TESO supposed to be centered mainly around PvP, because the series already has the PvE centered single player games?

In this game is game, no. But I hope theres little kick in the ass if you die. Boring if you can die and lose nothing.

online pvp is way different than single player play. single player you just save it wherever and your safe. pvp you need spawnpoints that dont just save anywhere

i see three main problems with the question of death when playing pvp.

like Gurkog said, theres the problem of the endless wave. respawning too fast and too close with too much. thats the first problem

second problem is your respawn point, if its fixed, its campable. people like nothing more than to kill people when they spawn.

third problem is inconvienance to the player. you dont want to be camped and you dont want to be too far from where you died.

the question of dying and respawning is going to be a very important and potential gamebreaking part of the game. i hope they make the right decision.

This

Ok ok I guess this was a bad idea I was just speculating.I'm sorry.

No need to appologize, we discuss stuff, thats what forum is for. Not all ideas are applicable and give sense in context of the game tho, this one fit multiplayer games. We can still discuss death penalties tho, as those were not mentioned anywhere and no one has clue about it

Thanks .I think I should start a new thread about death penalties because people would come in to talk about permadeath when everyone else is talking about other death penalties.

For a good number of players the challenge isn't "not dying".

Permadeath servers have worked well in the past. It's a shame we're stuck using this "megaserver."

Please tell us which game had a "permadeath server".

The game we can't remember and never played, because it had permadeath

Lol!!!

But no, seriously. I cannot think of a single MMORPG that had a permadeath server.

The notion of losing items or your whole character is difficult.
Item loss as a penalty for death works in a few mmo's, most notably runescape, however it often keeps me from attempting higher lvl content for fear of something as simple as a 1 second lag killing me and costing me millions. Then again the gains from pvp in an item loss mmo are extraordinary

On the topic of permadeath: one game in particular that I've played recently, realm of the mad god, handles permadeath very well. However unlike a traditional mmo, where it takes days or weeks of game time to reach the lvl cap ROTMG takes as little as an hour to reach the cap. Then you can get better gear at the cap. Permadeath is an aweful concept in an mmo like WOW, The Old Republic, or The Elder Scrolls Online. The reason is simple in Realm of the Mad God 1 sec of lag is a loss of a couple hours, in Runescape its a loss of a few million coins, in most other mmo's, TESO included, its weeks, or months, of your life.

It just doesn't work the risk far outweighs any benefit. Well....

...permadeath could be an appealing concept was if you gained rewards based on achievements on the permadeath character that any other character on the account gets, think WOW heirlooms and titles. That being said I'm not for item loss or permadeath as i dont think they fit into the mmo formula

on an interesting note that i hadn't though of the elder scrolls games are kind of permadeath in the sense that should u die u lose everything after your last save.

Hmmm no.

Maybe I just don't understand, but I don't get the appeal of Permadeath. Not using fast travel at all? Yeah, I can understand that. Eating and Drinking? Yeah, sure a bit odd but it works. Want a cloth map? Fine. But losing 45 levels and your Daedric Gear? It seems the opposite of fun. Like I said I can understand everything else to do with RP, but this makes no sense.

Besides, there's a logical reason to keep reviving here. Morag Bal's curse thing stops you for dying. There.

AoC, Xsyon, lots. In Xsyon you can even die to old age, aint that a [censored], you dont die but still age kills you.

Permadeath, risk and reward, difficult levels, challenges are so underrated features in game industry so its sad. We are supposed to be GAMERS right. Or can even speak about game indusry anymore. "You lose some you win some, its all game for me." Competition is only thing they seems to still care.

Ever played a rouge-like?Dying is part of the fun.


Well done you have a great vocabulary don't you!What a great disscusion.

Having played do-it-yourself dead-is-dead in other MMOs, it hasn't been about PR or immersion for me - it's about seeing how far I can get without dying. Sort of a self-challenge. The problem with DiY is that it doesn't feel as immediate and "real" as a true perma-death option, because 1) going through the motions of deleting the character manually blunts the edge quite a bit, and 2) you always know you have the option to "cheat" on yourself, which dulls the edge even more. All subjective of course - it's one of those things where people "get it" or they don't (with no disrespect intended either way).

I've argued for permadeath before in other games. However, I don't think it'll ever happen in any MMO trying to appeal to a broad base, even as an option on a server dedicated to the style. So many people are so dead-set against the notion that, if it gets on any development list at all, it's put at the very end.

It just always seems kinda pointless to me. I mean, I get the idea of Self Imposed Challenges but if I get a Badass Daedric Artifact that took me five hours to get and then I die to something, i lose that and it does not seem fun.

And i agree with dying can be fun. I've played Dark Souls and dying in that is quite fun. But if you are gonna have death as a feature you need to focus your game around death. Like the option to foind your items on the map, or you can trasfer them to a new char or som ething.

Perhaps he means Diablo?

Oh, I agree. If you're focused on leveling and gearing up, permadeath is the last thing you'd want. But if you've done the grind already and you're looking for a different kind of challenge, starting a new character with permadeath in mind can be a fun diversion, especially with like-minded friends.

But, then, I'm one of those crackpots who won't think twice about deleting a purpled-out, max-level character I haven't played it in a month (or even just because I don't like the eyebrows), so YMMV.

Hmm, I disagree. I mean, if permadeath were enforced for everyone, then, yes, the world needs to be designed around that fact. But if it's a strictly optional thing, the only things you need to really worry about are 1) making it clear to the player that permadeath is really permanent, with all that that entails, before they commit a character to it, and 2) side-effects on other players (like dying in a group instance leaving your teammates high and dry, or not completing a contract your character has been paid for, etc.). But those sorts of thing can be managed with relatively little effort.

I'm all for allowing people to play with permadeath. It can really add a sense of fear and urgency to the game, and change your expectations (you're no longer striving to get epik lootz, you're instead striving to stay alive), which can drastically change how you play.

But, I don't see any point to it being imposed by the game, even if optionally. You're more than capable of deleting the character yourself when you die, so I don't see a need for the game to do anything special. Doing it yourself even has the benefit of being able to handle cases where you were unfairly killed by out-of-game circumstances... a lag spike, a glitch, etc.