Topic: Permadeath

I was just glancing around this thread and started to wonder how to solve the problems associated with permadeath. The two main problems to it seem to be:

1) Loss of hard work, such as character skills and possessions. In other words, hours and hours of grinding gone to waste.

2) Stupid deaths, such as deaths due to lagspikes, or getting into too hard a fight without being able to know that beforehand.

I don't really know how to handle number two, but number one made me think about Pendragon. In Pendragon, you're not playing so much a character (even though you still control one at a time) but a family. During a typical campaign your first character will have died of old age way before the end.

In a Pendragon MMORPG, each player would play a family, and the gameplay would focus on gaining wealth and prestige to pass on to your descendants. Thus, the only thing you'd lose on death would be your character's skills (which could be made less important than the, hum, absurd ability ladder in in most MMOs). Inheritage is, in no way, a new idea, but I think the family aspect is perfectly implemented in Pendragon. Playing generations after generation is the thing, not a patch to mitigate the ill effects of permadeath.

So, any other thoughts on the topic of permadeath? Or is it just a dumb idea altogether?

Re: Permadeath

Permadeath is a good thing in a low-combat game, but it's hard to implement correctly. Random/technical (Lags and the like) deaths shouldn't be allowed, and generally it should be hard to actually die. If a game is heavily combat-oriented, however, permadeath just isn't the way.

Actually, Seed's injury system seems to be the best for that - let's say a character dies if his pain, trauma and depletion meters all hit 100. It was pretty hard to reach these levels even with several injuries, given a good supply of meds. I can't see why a similar system can't be used for combat.

RP in MMOG's looks like this when trying to base it on in-game activities:
"Let's go <activity>!"
"Yay, <activity>!"
"<motivation>!"

Re: Permadeath

Permadeath gives people a very good reason to think twice about combat. This means that it's a good thing in games where combat is possible but not the central focus, but bad for combat-oriented games.

I agree that running a greatly accellerated timescale (one week to one year?) and having the Pendragon family system to provide you with extra "lives" would be interesting to see in an online game, though not a very likely one for anything but a niche market. I'm just caught by the concept of applying the Pendragon mechanic, as I've just started running the "Great Pendragon" campaign at my local games club.

A more practical solution, for games that want to have combat but not have it too much as a focus, would be to have "Fate Points". When dead, your character actually is only badly injured or otherwise has a near-miss, and loses a Fate Point. If a character with no Fate Points dies, then it's Permadeath. A character would start off with a certain amount (One? Three?) and then slowly accumulate them with the passage of time (one per three months real time?).

This would mean that a character who avoids combat won't be in that much risk, unless they're the target of a determined campaign of assassination.  Characters who repeatedly engage in combat, however, will eventually have their number come up. It also means that if two characters take an intense dislike to each other they can try to kill each other off, and will eventually succeed. There could also be certain high-risk situations judged by the GMs where Fate Points don't apply and all deaths are Permadeath, though players should never be able to enter these without being aware of them.

Although laking the charm of the Pendragon suggestion, the Fate Point idea gets rid of the most glaring problems with Permadeath whilst still making it possible to permanently eliminate a character. It would also be much easier to implement than a complex family system, only needing a means to keep track of how many "lives" a character has each time they respawn.

Re: Permadeath

An interesting suggestion, though not without problems, either. If players have these "lives", then people would indeed be more careful with combat and these near-misses wouldn't happen as ridiculously often as usual. But actually dying would still result in loss of achievement, and thus be something no one ever wants to happen (particularly the devs who want people's money).

This could result in some rather bizarre situations like: "I can't join the mission today. I have used up my last bit of Karma, so I'll have to wait two weeks before trying combat again. Sorry." Many people might get frustrated for having to wait as a "death penalty" (or do whatever it takes to regain fate points).

I'd still prefer a system that makes death part of the experience without taking too much away when it happens. The Pendragon model wouldn't suit your generic MMO, true - the whole concept should be built with permadeath in mind.

Re: Permadeath

The Fate Point system is never intended for a typical combat-fest MMORPG, but for a moderat combat one. So if they get in a situation where they're needing to go on a mission where combat is likely, then it isn't a suitable world for Permadeath. With ANY permadeath concept, the game needs to be built around it. And Fate Points would need less changes than any other system.

With the Pendragon model, you have the problem of characters being killed before they manage to found a family- that's often the case in the tabletop Pendragon campaign as well. The family system would reverse the trend of MMOPGS- there would be serious, indeed final, consequences for death in the early stages but once a character is well-established, the player has a powerbase that will be very difficult to destroy.

As an amendment to the Fate Point sytem, how about a "chance of permadeath" score? A percentage chance of surviving a potentially fatal incident, which goes up slowly with time and drops after each survival. This produces the same effect as the Fate Points, but the player can never know for certain if his characters will survive (unless it's at 100%). Particularly fatal or not so dangerous situations might have reduced or increased survival chances. And ideally, a player would never be told what his survival chance is at any given time- he might suspect it is high or low, but will never know for certain until his character dies or survives.

Re: Permadeath

The ideal method from my point of view would be to introduce a detailed wound system such as Seed had, which has the potential for death. Remove any chance of INSTANT death, and have a fallen character need to be stabilised by someone else before they bleed to death. Introduce a ransom  or slavery system or the like to encourage people to capture fallen characters rather than kill finish them off. And have realistic healing times and infection chances, so that people will really feel the effects of combat even if they don't get killed.

Re: Permadeath

Tantavalist wrote:

The Fate Point system is never intended for a typical combat-fest MMORPG, but for a moderat combat one. So if they get in a situation where they're needing to go on a mission where combat is likely, then it isn't a suitable world for Permadeath.

I don't understand this. If combat is part of the game, then surely there are situations where it's likely? Some of those probably being missions people go on voluntarily. Apparently it's likely enough to eat away a few Fate Points now and then, or otherwise what's their point?

Tantavalist wrote:

With the Pendragon model, you have the problem of characters being killed before they manage to found a family- that's often the case in the tabletop Pendragon campaign as well. The family system would reverse the trend of MMOPGS- there would be serious, indeed final, consequences for death in the early stages but once a character is well-established, the player has a powerbase that will be very difficult to destroy.

Trivial. If you die early, you pick a brother of sister or cousin or whatever next. There's always someone to put a claim on the estate.

Tantavalist wrote:

As an amendment to the Fate Point sytem, how about a "chance of permadeath" score? A percentage chance of surviving a potentially fatal incident, which goes up slowly with time and drops after each survival. This produces the same effect as the Fate Points, but the player can never know for certain if his characters will survive (unless it's at 100%). Particularly fatal or not so dangerous situations might have reduced or increased survival chances. And ideally, a player would never be told what his survival chance is at any given time- he might suspect it is high or low, but will never know for certain until his character dies or survives.

I'd probably like to play in this system. It'd probably allow a few plunders or strikes of bad luck and still have the possibility of death looming about. But it doesn't address what happens when you eventually do permadie. No matter how many times you didn't die before, you'd still get very pissed off after you die.

This would also lead to a kind of a "certain death curve", at least if applied to a game where death (or near-death) can't be reasonably avoided completely. Meaning at certain point of the career of the average character he's more or less certain to die. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Tantavalist wrote:

The ideal method from my point of view would be to introduce a detailed wound system such as Seed had, which has the potential for death. Remove any chance of INSTANT death, and have a fallen character need to be stabilised by someone else before they bleed to death. Introduce a ransom  or slavery system or the like to encourage people to capture fallen characters rather than kill finish them off. And have realistic healing times and infection chances, so that people will really feel the effects of combat even if they don't get killed.

Agreed. As long as none of this leads to death, it'd be great fun. And even death might not feel as stupid if it wasn't sudden. This combined with a way to not lose everything upon death, would be great, in my opinion.

Re: Permadeath

I've been pondering some ideas for a cyberpunk MMOG that involved both permadeath and Seed's injury system. Another option was, even after your body was (almost) completely destroyed, you could "go cyborg", gradually building a new body - provided you could somehow get your brain saved. Even after that, you could successfully die, but that'd be pretty hard.

Another possible option is a system from a Russian sci-fi novel I read some time ago. Basically, there was a way to buy "resurrection". It costed pretty much (But was affordable), but you could only have one "resurrection" at a time. If you ever died, you were immidiately reconstructed at one of the "resurrection" centers, retaining memory of all but the last couple of minutes before dying.
In a MMOG, this would mostly save a character from accidental dying, but if someone would ever decide to kill him for good, that wouldn't be too hard.

RP in MMOG's looks like this when trying to base it on in-game activities:
"Let's go <activity>!"
"Yay, <activity>!"
"<motivation>!"

Re: Permadeath

I always am for complicated things. All of them options above. :ange:

First an injure system, though more severe than Seed. After severly injured there are only very few minutes left to stabilize the wounds. If that fails, or the blow was such heavy to be fatal in the first place, the 'fate points' come into play. The body can be rebuild, biologic or including cyborg or other artificial means, a few times. With growing age, or maybe defects from former injuries, the number of max possible points goes down and time to regain one raises. If permadeath happens, or if the player decides to do so before the parents death, the player switches to (one of) the child(s), though, if still alive, switching (back) to one of the parents or husband/wife may be possible as well. Wealth can be inherited and because the child had, more or less, time to develop and get some training it would be no start at 0 again.

The big problem of perma death is again the structure of most MMORPGs. They are built solely around grinding up of skills and more or less time consuming building up of equipment and possessions. Games like Seed would have it easier in that regard. Given a kickstart of maybe 3 months worth of skilltraining and a basic tool setup the remaining really hard thing to loose is mostly the history of the character.

Last edited by Quanto Solo (2007-02-18 18:53:56)