GameBanshee Forums

As a long time PnP'er and MUD'der, one thing I've always found that MOG's lack is the risk of permanent death (or even a good death penalty). I dearly hope that'll change with DDO.

One of the best things I can think of in that regard was a MUD I played in for many years (The Magic Realm). Characters had X amount of lives (based on race) that they could go through n order to make it to the next level. if they ran out of lives (died enough) before making the XP for that level and training, the character was permanently written off. You were allowed to keep 1/2 of you current XP for the new character you'd create. So in effect you'd lose about half or your levels.

You wouldn't even need a specialized server. Simply give players to choose the option at character creation start-up. Those who feel like taking the risk could do so, whereas those who don't like that much risk don't have to. In effect it's a semi-hardcore server. One life simply isn't enough due to problems beyond the players control such as lag and latency, but 7-9 lives would be ideal.

The risk is really rewarding for this style of play. The lower levels aren't much of a risk, but as you start getting up there and require more and more XP between levels it becomes considerably more difficult. I can't count the times where I was down to my last life and still needed 100k XP or something. It was so scary, and I knew I had to count on my guildmates and friends to help get me there. And then when you made it, the feeling was incredible! Sometimes you lost a character, but that was ok too, because the risk was what made it such fun.

Again, what I'm proposing here is completely voluntary, and there's more to it (which I can flesh out if people are interested), including a solution to having PvP and non-PvP players on the same server living in harmony.

[QUOTE=Halsy]As a long time PnP'er and MUD'der, one thing I've always found that MOG's lack is the risk of permanent death (or even a good death penalty). I dearly hope that'll change with DDO.
<snip>
[/QUOTE]

Well - I am not familiar with the abbreviation DDO (possible Dungeons and Dragons Online?), but perma-death causes problems in many games and especially large multiplayer games- such as MMOGs. The most obvious is the case of the casual game vs. hardcore gamer in any type of PvP where time has an influence on your characters strenght.
Many griefers (I've met) are a varriation of the hardcore gamer, and perma-death opens up a whole new ballpark for them to play in, so to speak
Another thing where perma-death is a bad thing is because of technical "stuff". Lagspikes, bad connections etc (which there is plenty of in MMOGs) .... all can kill a character without the player even being able to do something. Perma-death is terrible in thoese situations.

To have perma-death working in a multiplayer game, you need only mature players, and IMO also Roleplayers (if it is an RPG, which it most often would be) and any game with a broad appeal can and will attract thoese less mature, and less interested in RPG.

I'm on occasion playing a NwN server called Argyle, that is full PvP and perma-death, and the only way that happens is because of the maturity of the players and their interest in roleplaying. But any game with a mass-appeal and large servers, will have a very hard time to incorperate perma-death.
But NwN servers (or this one) is rather small.
The only large scale MMOG I've played with harsh death-penalties was EVE-Online, which also were in effect full PvP, but there you could insure yourself towards the penalties. So if you had the money (in-game) the penalties were lesser.


I think a suggestion of loosing level/2 at death is a decent one, but then again - it depends on the mass-appeal of the game. Such harsh deathpenalties are likely better in MUDs or small game servers of RPG games (such as Argyle); then large scale MMOGs or just large multiplayer servers in games.

I agree with Xandax...unless permanent death is hard to come by, like this MUD which I play (Darkmists) where you lose 1/5 con points with every death and 3 con means you're dead or from the hours you play, which would mean you die of old age (usually over 500 hours, depending on con and race), then I think it might not work with every player.
However, if you are able to choose this 'hardcore' option of risking permanent death at the start of the game, and maybe such a player gains a few perks for it, then I think that's cool. He's putting his character at risk for a few benefits. Or even without benefits, I can assume the challenge is fun. So yeah, it's a good idea. Much like in every single player shooting game you get like different levels of play, easy-medium-hard-ultrakiller, I think this could work in PvP online games.

[QUOTE=Lost One]However, if you are able to choose this 'hardcore' option of risking permanent death at the start of the game, and maybe such a player gains a few perks for it, then I think that's cool. He's putting his character at risk for a few benefits.[/QUOTE]

We had a similar system in my PnP group a while. we introduced a new attribute called "survival". Whenever a character died he rolled a survival roll against a difficulty depending on cause of death, and if he succeded he was somehow miraculosly saved. This representing your default heros ability to get washed ashore after nearly drowning, surviving when the villains have left him for dead etc. It worked rather good actually, but dont know how it would fit into online gaming.

We had a similar system in my PnP group a while. we introduced a new attribute called "survival". Whenever a character died he rolled a survival roll against a difficulty depending on cause of death, and if he succeded he was somehow miraculosly saved. This representing your default heros ability to get washed ashore after nearly drowning, surviving when the villains have left him for dead etc. It worked rather good actually, but dont know how it would fit into online gaming.

Good idea.

In the beginning stages of DM'ing, when a character would die I'd give each the chance of divine intervention where a divine power just basically steps in and raises them from the dead. LOL, that was a bit cheesy, much like this other DM I knew that gave every player a ring of nine lives so that they wouldn't die so quickly, hehe.

If I ever go back to DM'ing, I'll use your idea. I have to say this forum is starting to make me want to play again with all the ideas it has.

Again, this would just be an option that players can choose. No one would be forced into choosing it. The MUD we had this system in had an optional PvP system as well - which made it really interesting to say the least.

Like you, everyone is just sharing idea's.