Question of the Day, September 2, 2010

[martin's a madman]

If only they would have acting "police" and safety nets like hospitals, and losing in combat made you "stunned" and you have a chance to reach safety.

 

[Blackpapa]

OTOH, it's also a matter of self-preservation. Sooner or later, you're likely to be their next target if the problem isn't dealt with. The threat is more pronounced when you stand to lose days/weeks/months of character development to these people. People coming together for mutual protection is pretty natural.

It all depends on how much people are ready to invest in the game as well as their intellect. I can't see any sort of organized work happening in Runescape, but I would be curious to see it attempted in Eve.

Sorry for referencing EO again, but the difficulty cliff drives stupid people away.

I imagine that if vigilante groups or gangs don't form for mutual protection, then this game system would empty itself out in no time. The whole project might prove to be an interesting study in anarchy theory, in fact.

The players are the variable, as well as the game world, design and even usability or marketing.

 

[Nurb]

It would put an end to dungeons and raiding real quick where a person is guranteed to die the first time they run through it.

 

[Riobux]

I think it'd be interesting, however it'd only work as an additional option and not as the only one.

 

[PureChaos]

in the MMO i play some enemies can easily OHKO you so that would be a bad idea

 

[Infinatex]

I loved it in Diablo 2. Back in the day all my characters were hardcore. So much more challenge and it completely changed the way you spec'd up. I stopped doing it after I lost 3 lev 90+ characters in a space of a week.

 

[Macgyvercas]

I would prefer not having to reroll every time I make a stupid fatal mistake.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

It would make them far less... time consuming.

Edit: Wait, I guess that would kill the point of MMO's and loose the devs money...

Infact it would probably be more time consuming, i know i'd certainly play differently, i'd make sure i was always fully healed and mana'd up before every fight and i wouldn't even dare attempting an elite or groups of mobs let alone a dungeon or a raid, not to mention starting all over again when you die.

The thing is, in an MMO the point is to play with other people and people make mistakes. So if your level capped character died and was lost forever because of someone else?
Well, it'd either end with murder, suicide or spontaneous combustion (or even maybe all three).

So in conclusion an MMO with perma death will never work because other people are stupid and will get your character killed.

 

[CloggedDonkey]

I could see myself doing it once or twice, but it would lose its appeal fast.

 

[Necrofudge]

I already do! It's called making a hardcore character on Diablo II.
Still it does get kind of annoying if you stop paying attention for a moment and die, losing a character with lots of nice stuff and at high level.

 

[Miumaru]

If the MMO was a persistant world where everyone roleplayed their characters and what everyone did mattered, sure. If its every MMO out there, no.

 

[tthor]

It would be interesting, but i think it would require a completely new game style. all of the mmo's are built around the idea of flirting with death, but if you were to make a game were death was permanent, then you would need to make the game not focus souly around risking your life in combat and such.
Infact, the game would probably be something like this..:
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outside_mmorpg.jpg

 

[Apocalypse Tank]

horrid idea, no one would take any risks.

I think the poll is referring to Diablo III, which recently declared it have a hardcore mode, in which case the poll creator is herp derp.

 

[ZehGeek]

It'd be a complicated issue. You don't really have saves in a MMO. If there was some method to revive the player, without it being as easy as like running back in the example of WoW, and like more of a consenquence, it might work.

 

[Verkain]

I love the idea of perma death but I think it'll cause more customer service nightmares for the devs. People invest a lot of time in their characters and will not be happy if they lose it even if they know the consequences of dying.