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Mar 04, 2004

Comments

1.

I was going to post on this, but then realized that not a single Terranova author/commentator is mentioned. Outrageous.

2.



So "one argument would be, that would suggest that the Tolkien world should be all permadeath." But that notion was rejected, he said, because permanent death discourages new players, who are more likely to get their characters killed.


Would it work if "number of deaths" vary by the role in the world? Play a ranger - get one shot; play an orc - N lives? Newbies try out orcs first ;-)

The CG Total War had these great battlefield scenarios. However, when the commander is killed - usually such a big morale hit happens that the army would run off. But on the other hand, i can remember how hard it was to kill good commanders - especially if all you had were rank after rank of peasants and pitchforks...

Same idea.

-nathan

3.

I think that Carmen's comments that "every plausible virtual world needs death" is an excellent observation on the intrinsic non-altruistic nature of humans.

Following up to Nathan's suggestions for possible implementations of MMORPG death, I suggest we take a leaf from the elder MUDS (i.e. Nethack, Angsband), where one could choose to have permanent death, but at the incentive of getting better loot sooner.

4.

Hmmm... Now with David and Cory commenting, I'm afraid I should publicly admit to being a Tolkien dilettante. E.g. I haven't even read the Similarian.

http://www.davidslife.com/funstuff/tolkien/index.htm

I guess that would "work" in a sense, Nathan -- meaning because Orcs are just faceless incarnations of evil, having them respawn nearby fully grown wouldn't be so inconsistent with the mythos?

Kind of funny how they decided to handle it:

So characters will not die but may fight until exhausted. Then they will collapse into unconsciousness and wake up in a safe place. As for how they are moved to that safe place, well, "we just wave our hands," Mr. Anderson said. "We needed to find a compromise."

Is that really more consistent with the mythos? I guess you could say it is a little like Frodo waking up in the House of Elrond... still, there wasn't a whole lot of fainting from exhaustion in the LOTR.

I just wonder if Turbine will be met with the same reaction Raph got from some corners with SWG when they put this out -- everyone wants to be Aragorn, they don't want to sell ponies in Bree. Of course, the good Devs are thinking hard about all these things, and posting about them.

http://www.middle-earthonline.com/?section=devdiary

5.

> [Permadeath in VWs] makes me suspect that our own mortality is,
> as some existential philosophers maintained,
> such a constitutive dimension of our self-understanding
> that even in utopian fantasies we can't see our way out of the prospect of our own demise.

It's a clever argument but the internet has lots of virtual worlds (There, Second Life) in which death plays either no role at all (There) or one so marginal most players never even know it is an option (SL). Plus of course it must mean something that it is impossible in both those games to build an avatar that looks older than 22.

The long-term challenge that virtual worlds make to our concept of death will come when our avatars have enough autonomous intelligence to conduct relations in our stead when we are a)offline, and b) dead. What type of death is it when noone knows you are dead? This is not quite as obvious a question as it seems. Imagine living in a virtual world in which most of the "people" you interact with are the avatars of dead people? Isn't that going to make death itself increasingly unimportant? More like going to sleep and waking up than anything permanent??

6.

Ted and Jules will find this interesting:

MEO's economy will follow the guidelines set by Tolkien. For example, elvish communities operate strictly on a Gifting system, while the rest of Middle-earth uses silver and gold as currency.

Fascinating to see how they plan to implement this... I guess the elf avatars won't be able to carry/trade coinage?

7.

You know, it pains me to see articles like this.

I used to play a game called DragonRealms. It's all text based, but it has solved a lot of the problems that get discussed here. I can't even describe to you all the things that are done wrong over and over again in VW's that this game has done correctly for going on 10 years, and it just gets ignored.

But here's how they do death (game dev's pay attention):

1) There are many ways to die, not just being beat up by monsters. You can fall while climbing, get your hands cut off (or worse) from a trapped box, poisoned... the list goes on and on.

2) Usually, after you die, you depart or decay. This costs you some experience. You can depart immediately after you die, but if you wait 10 or 15 minutes or so, without the assistance of another character, you will depart automatically.

3) When you are dead, you are losing experience slowly but surely.

4) You can be ressurected, but it takes a powerful cleric to ressurect you, and at a personal sacrifice at that.

5) Experience loss is generally not crippling, but with the assistance of other players in the game, this can be reduced or eliminated.

6) You can have "Favors" in this game, which essentially amounts to an extra life. You can get them from several places in the world by completing mini quests and paying a small amount of experience points. If you have any favors when you die, you get to continue playing (you respawn at some relatively nearby location). If you don't have favors, then you get to create a new character.

7) None of the experience loss mentioned above is crippling (in fact, it is less severe than that used in Asheron's Call), though you wouldn't want to do it over and over again.

This game is all text so it gets over looked at every opportunity. But we have a clearly superior mechanic in use here in my opinion. I wish we'd see more like it.

8.

Fred> Plus of course it must mean something that it is impossible in both those games to build an avatar that looks older than 22.

I realize this is offtopic, but Second Life is full of avatars that look old, weathered, out-of-shape, or otherwise depart significantly from the current US norms of beauty. That's before hitting the number of avs that look far from human.

greglas> . . .still, there wasn't a whole lot of fainting from exhaustion in the LOTR.

Brilliant!

More generally, it seems pretty clear that the role of permadeath in games (or lack there-of) is driven more by gameplay needs than some supposed aspect of the human condition. Rightly or wrongly, a designer puts a stake in the ground and says that the game is better with (or without) permadeath. OK, OK, there may be marketing or business concerns as well, but it still isn't the result of some "dimension of our self-understanding"!

9.

Fred> ...the internet has lots of virtual worlds (There, Second Life) in which death plays either no role at all

Cory> ...it still isn't the result of some "dimension of our self-understanding"!

That was my initial reaction, too, and the comment still seems kind of silly on its face to me. Game "death" is just a device that bears little relation to mortality. But if you think about it -- why has the device of death always been so prevalent in computer games? It isn't always there (see Pong), but it is usually there (see Zork, Adventure, Space War, PacMan, EQ, etc etc).

10.

greglas> Game "death" is just a device that bears little relation to mortality.

Yes. Games need an end point and calling it "death" seems cooler than simply saying "Game Over." Although plenty of games have chosen the latter route, with Missile Command being the among most dramatic, IMHO.

11.

Cory> ...calling it "death" seems cooler...

And cooler than "exhaustion" of course... But is the reason for that completely obvious? Perhaps there's some reciprocity in it -- we don't just want to "exhaust" orcs and aliens.

Cory> ...Missile Command being the among most dramatic...

Well, you don't have an avatar in missle command, just a set of bases, so death would seem like a misnomer in that case.

12.

NYT> MEO's economy will follow the guidelines set by Tolkien. For example, elvish communities operate strictly on a Gifting system, while the rest of Middle-earth uses silver and gold as currency.

Ted as Role-Player: This sounds so cool.
Ted as Economist: A "gifting system"?

A price is the equilibrium rate of exchange between two goods; it has nothing to do with money. Getting rid of gold and silver does not mean you get rid of price and profit and all the other icky things that Romanticists of various stripes associate with the economy. The only way to make elves not behave like crass commercialists is to either outlaw trade completely or to make sure that only zen buddhists play them. Or how about this: radically resdistribute income within elvish society, so that, at any one moment, the value of all coin and gear held by one elf is equal to that held by another. That feels more elvish, to me, anyway.

13.

But what if the Romanticists of various stripes mistakenly believe they are escaping icky crass commercialism by playing gifting elves? Isn't crass commercialism just a social construct within a virtual world? Hmm? In other news, this was just forwarded to me:

GOLLUM: Mordor? Hobbitses having little Goth phase, maybe? Very angsssty, wanting to go to Mordor, yes yes. Can Smeagol offer black eyeliner to angsssty hobbitses?

Full story here.

14.

I was a little dismayed that Frontier 1859 was not mentioned, being one of the first major MMOs to implement permadeath and full PvP. It sounds interesting. Read the interview.

15.

"I suggest we take a leaf from the elder MUDS (i.e. Nethack, Angsband), where one could choose to have permanent death, but at the incentive of getting better loot sooner."

Correction: I do not know about elder muds, but Nethack and Angband are roguelikes. As such, they have permament death. And, other than cheat/debug modes, they don't have an option of no-permadeath in exchange for slower loot gain.

Back on topic: "Permadeath is antithetical to roleplaying." This is opposite of what some claim, as realism is often cited for permadeath. However, unless you boot people from using the service after dying, perma death of a character merely means that people will start rerolling characters. This ensures that friendships will be pushed outside the character - I don't care what shell you are inhabitating, I want to know your RL nick so we can meet again in our next shells.

If you want roleplaying, which I interpret as people acting as if the VW were the whole world, you need to allow people to form stable long lasting friendships without exiting the scenario of the VW. If people can't express themselves in the VW, they will just go OOC faster than you can type those three letters.

- Brask Mumei

16.

Ted> Or how about this: radically resdistribute income within elvish society, so that, at any one moment, the value of all coin and gear held by one elf is equal to that held by another. That feels more elvish, to me, anyway.

I love that, although wouldn't elves just convince humans/orcs/&c to act as bankers for them? Plus, it would be in your best interest as an elf to give away all of your stuff to a trusted banker because you'd immediately be replenished. Then you could give it all away. Rince and repeat. So not an ESS since the defectors hugely benefit until none of the elves have anything.

I guess that you could prevent elves from any P2P exchanges (if an elf drops something it evaporates or whatever).

17.

greglas> Well, you don't have an avatar in missle command, just a set of bases, so death would seem like a misnomer in that case.

Fair enough but it's "Game Over" that is burned into my brain from my mispent, arcade-haunting youth.

18.

Continuing with the LOTR theme, have you ever thought of using Gregolas instead of Greglas? Just a random, borderline-puerile thought...

19.

Tek,

Encouraging more instances of random puerility on TN is one of my primary goals!

20.

Indeed. I belive it's in the mission statment.

21.

And in furtherance thereof, if you haven't seen the restored Badgers LOTR cut, here's a brief preview.

22.

Thank you Walter for mentioning that fact that the New York Times is not on top of the industry facts as much as they attempt to convince the public because they failed to mention our lead on the "Permadeath," "Player Accountability" and "Conscience Inventory" system pioneered by Mr. McMillan for the "frontier 1859 Virtual World Project."

23.

I love the idea of permadeath. I've been following "Frontier 1859" for some time now and really enjoy the concept of the possibility of my character dying and not coming back. Is permadeath evil? No...it is all about preference. Those who want to play with permadeath will. Those who don't, won't. Some like chocolate ice cream and others like vanilla :). Only difference is, is that once permadeath takes off in more games, that means more and more ideas will be poured into it to create a more palatable system that will appeal to more prospective players. I applaud Daniel McMillan for taking the risk with permadeath in "Frontier 1859".

24.

i choose permadeath , this system gives to realism and a new dimension to MMORPG
I add me to the applause for Daniel McMillan

25.

Daniels Mcamillan revolutionized the world of the MMORPG, and thanks
to the introduction of permadeath, since they have said to spirestar
and kune, one plauso for Daniels

26.

Permadeath is one of the last great frontiers of gaming to be acheived, and the simulation frontier1859 will provide that and include Player Accountability" and "Conscience" to the player, all other games lack these elements so if you kill someone so what you lost nothing, now for the first time a game is out there that offers the chance at a creating a real second life where you can live out the fantasy of some other era or setting, and providing players with a real sensation of danger to their character, it will help create a much greater afinity to your avatar i feel.
I am so bored of what the industry has to offer today in the mmorpg field, and that includes the newcommers of EQ2 and WOW, as they just regurgitate the usual and have failed to provide that certain sparkle of something really new.

27.

Permadeath as an MMO concept has been around at least as long as Underlight has. It has been awhile since I have played that game so I am not sure where it stands now but I know when I did play it was not really a major factor in the game. It didn't even really exist, just the threat of it did. I honestly don't expect that anyone other than gm's or very high profile, long standing and well known players would get it in that world. Even then it would only probably be used to advance certain high profile roleplays, as happened with some of the house "elders" shortly before I started playing that game.

In beta testing Sociolotron, I got a chance to play a game with perma death in it. It certainly gave the game a much edgier feel. Just knowing that your toon, your embodiment in that world could be killed at any given time gave you alot more to think and be worried about. It gave a much greater sense of risk vs reward than the typical MMO.

All of that being said, most people are not psychologically prepared for perma-death. There is a tendency to react to negative things happening to your avatar as if they were really happening to you, no matter how valid the rp context might be. This is especially true when considering the fact that a certain percentage of perma killing will happen for no other reason than because it is possible to do so. There needs to be sufficient deterrents to make permanent death not seem like a random event. People will usually insist that it happen within a roleplaying context to be valid at all and even then there will be a certain percentage of people who will complain anyway.

As a sort of comprimise to the nonstop complaints about perma-death, the developer of Sociolotron implemented a friendship matrix, that tried to take into account how well you knew someone. You had to know someone at least reasonably well in order to permanently kill them. This was introduced to discourage random perma-kills. Once you knew them well enough, you could them add them to a perma-kill list. You could only have so many people on your "list". If you ever engaged in combat with one these people, said combat would be with the perma-kill flag turned on, thus announcing your intent to kill the person. If you successfully beat them in combat, that character was dead and you generated a murder crime, thus propelling you into the crime and punishment aspects of the game.

As of the last time I played the game, the friendship matrix was difficult enough that only people who were very close in the game could ever hope to successfully pull a pk off.

Perma-kill makes little to no sense in a PvP focussed game. In fact, in the case of a game like WoW, it would be a significant deterrent to playing the game due to the time involved in levelling and gearing a character. In a RP heavy game it makes more sense, but from what I have seen people prefer the threat of being perma killed to the actuality of it.

The problem with the "friendship matrix" style of perma killing is that if you want to kill a character off in order to advance a roleplay, it becomes a deterrent to successful roleplaying.

So far, I have yet to see a perfect perma-death environment especially in context of one player being able to kill another one permanently. I highly doubt there ever will be as the whole question is heavily dependent on the psychology of role-playing in general. Some people are capable of the level of detachment from their characters that permanent death requires and some people are not.

It has been said that there are two ways to really sucessfully roleplay. One way is to roleplay yourself, the other is to roleplay something you would not ever be in real life. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Roleplaying someone similar to yourself provides a much greater level of "identification" with your character. However, negative things happening to such a character has a much greater tendency to evince a negative emotional response in the player behind the avatar.

The last consideration about permanent death as a game mechanic is the amount of time investment involved in playing the game or at least in advancing your avatar to a reasonable level of surviveability within the context of the world. Most MMO's encourage a very large time investment to attain the greatest levels of success. My level 60 druid in WoW dying permanently would be beyond a negative emotional experience. It would be absolutely game-breaking simply due to the 40 odd days /played on that character.

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