Would you play this MMO?

[Dasani]

Can you go a little more in depth with this please? How would a character retrieve this weapon? Is it just sent to a new toon you created, or is it picked up by anyone that comes across your corpse? Would this item be 'soulbound', or be be able to be sold?

It would depend on the circumstances of your death and the type of item or items (You could create an entire set of gear as well, though each item independently would be weaker than say, just ONE item, however it would be YOUR character's set which is cool enough in it's self).

Most commonly, another of your characters would inherit the item and while these items are very powerful it would come down to a risk vs reward situation. You could risk using it for the bonuses it gave, but you also risk losing it if it was stolen from you. These kinds of items would be pretty high profile I imagine and would be the target of people who wanted them for themselves or even just to sell it to someone else for a profit.

Say your character died and made such an artifact... Over the next 3 or 4 years of gameplay, there is no telling how many people will have possessed and used the item or where it will end up. You may even run into it again someday if you lost it years ago. But these items would be truly unique and one of a kind. If you used it wisely, you may have kept it yourself all this time. Really depends how you play and what you do I suppose.

Nothing is soulbound.

[Paladin Racoon]

As others have said Perma-death ruins it for me. Sure a lot of them would be my own fault but on Off days i can play really badly and id constantly be super cautious to avoid death all the time. That'd probably reduce my enjoyment considerably

[Deleted]

I don't think the "100 lives" thing would actually take much of the sting out of perma-death; it would just make it feel arbitrary when it finally happened.

For MMO purposes you'd want to find a way to kill off the character without entirely wiping the player's progression. Maybe some concept of ancestry where limited property and/or skills can be passed down from one character to the next, like remorting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_point#Remorting) in muds.

But sure, I'd play it.

After thinking about for a bit, I actually think the permadeath idea is doable too but no this way.

Make it 10 lives or even 5 and not as lives but strokes of luck or favors from the gods. If you "die", you get an option to get up and limp back home or pass out. If you choose to get up, you'd just get a "wounded" debuff for a while and can continue on and if you pass out, you'll wake up in a temple or hospital.

But you can "buy" more lives by donating to the gods so they'd watch over you. This way, permadeath would make more sense and you could avoid it by praying and donating a lot.

[SilverSnake]

100 Lives is even worse then Diablo style permanent death.

Sure, the first 25-50 deaths doesn't really matter, but once you hit 90 or so deaths, presumably quite a long ways into the game, you are a point where it does work like Diablo, at this point a single latency hiccup will mean it's game over, for good.

It would be much better to have one life only, like in Diablo, and balance the game around this (faster progression so it's feasible to start over without feeling you are now months or years behind).

Or better yet, handle death like in Meridian 59, dying too much means negative leveling. Meridian 59, although it had quite a lot of flaws, actually managed to make death have a huge impact while still not making it so every single death felt like you were screwed for good. Sure you lost your gear, but it was reasonably easy to get hold of most of the stuff, and the super rare stuff either stuck with you through death or could be soulbound to do so.

[Joyride]

How would convince people to actually play the game? Would the game of raids, dungeons, pvp, and other activities to do?

How do you think the community would behave if peradeath was part of the game?

[Dasani]

That list is basically stuff from pieces of every MMO made beside WoW.

Isn't that kind of like saying any new game that comes out is going to have stuff and pieces of various other games that existed before it? :P

[Deleted]

You really think they wont just adapt and find new ways of getting other players killed? It's just a bad idea overall, it even encourages group members to let you die. A game shouldn't encourage players to let their teammate die, it should encourage them to keep them alive.

It's been done pretty well already in Runescape and would you really let your guildies die to get their stuff? I guess you could but then you'd probably get kicked too or made to return them.

As with randoms, yea, it's a great idea It adds so much depth. You can either trust them and have them backstab you or betray them first.. but then you're all alone VS groups of other players and can meet the same fate.

Still, like I said, this should only be active in distant PvP areas or have guards protect you. Even if players find a way to snipe someone in town and leg it, they still get the whole town hostile, cant trade there, cant sell there and would be attacked by guards and other players without penalties.

[Askyl]

Perma death was bad. But Sandbox MMORPG in a limited minecraftstyle sounds fun.

[Idontlikeyou]

Right, cause in the life span of leveling a character 100-200 deaths only is reasonable after 4-5 years of playing. Factor in running dungeons, PvP, raids, getting ganked, or some other reason and deaths stack up pretty quick.

I have around 5000 deaths on my main.

You dont have to debate my opinion. It will not change. Just like I will not debate your opinion. I was stating why I liked it for Dasani.

Now just to point this out. I dont want you to change your opinion on the feature, but just keep it in mind.
Now, out of all 5000 deaths on your main, how many deaths were pointless LOL moments? None? Cool. How about how many deaths were cause by other players being careless and not really caring about the game? A few? Cool.
It would appear that this game would be designed the perma death feature. WoW is not designed around that at all. Its designed for you to die. So to compare your WoW deaths with a hypothetical game, is just not fair. Thats comparing chess to risk. While some concepts are the same, they are different games. The only thing that will remain constant is the human mind.

Again, this type of feature would limit the number of people that would just play. To many games these days try to appeal to a very wide range. It wouldnt hurt if some indie developer created a game that was developed for a certain audience.

[robzombay]

In my opinion it would be an excellent game, aside from the perma-death. Perhaps change perma death to after you align yourself with a deity you have to serve them for x hours of gameplay, i.e. the deity says you have followed my ways so all you have to do is walk over to where your corpse is. But if you go against your deities ways they may say you have not followed the enlightened path and thusly I am stripping you of this magical ability.

[Nachopie]

You lost me at perma-death.

[Deleted]

i think it is better to lose a level or gear then perma death. I did play Tibia awhile and losing gear and level did realy hurt.

[Atrea]

No, this 'game' sounds like a very tedious rehash of Ultima Online's Pre-UO:R era.

[Joyride]

You dont have to debate my opinion. It will not change. Just like I will not debate your opinion. I was stating why I liked it for Dasani.

Now just to point this out. I dont want you to change your opinion on the feature, but just keep it in mind.
Now, out of all 5000 deaths on your main, how many deaths were pointless LOL moments? None? Cool. How about how many deaths were cause by other players being careless and not really caring about the game? A few? Cool.
It would appear that this game would be designed the perma death feature. WoW is not designed around that at all. Its designed for you to die. So to compare your WoW deaths with a hypothetical game, is just not fair. Thats comparing chess to risk. While some concepts are the same, they are different games. The only thing that will remain constant is the human mind.

Again, this type of feature would limit the number of people that would just play. To many games these days try to appeal to a very wide range. It wouldnt hurt if some indie developer created a game that was developed for a certain audience.

I don't think any indie developer would ever create a game as the OP described, if it's core features are built around limiting the number of players who would be interested.

Not sure if this is just a creative writing exercise by the OP, but any actual thought or implications in an MMO where you have permadeaths, just isn't well thought out, nor practical.

[Volitar]

Permanent death is bad it basically punishes those who chose to play more.

[Irisel]

a lot of this sounds like glorified Runescape.

[Dasani]

How would convince people to actually play the game? Would the game of raids, dungeons, pvp, and other activities to do?

How do you think the community would behave if peradeath was part of the game?

There would be all of the above.

PVP would occur naturally in the world because you might want a certain spot of land for your city, another nearby settlement might want it for themselves and if the leadership involved can't get a handle on the situation and come to some kind of agreement (or if they just don't want to) it will lead to conflict. Some players need very little provocation or reason to attack one another. There will always be conflict going on because when you put players in control, conflict is what they love. But all of it takes place naturally. There are no predefined goals or "pvp zones" or anything like that, it is all world pvp and as past MMOs and even WOW before they introduced battlegrounds, world PVP was great and ALWAYS going on.

As far as raids and dungeons, there will always be somewhere to go and something to do. Caves and dungeons will naturally attract various types of creatures. Larger creatures, like dragons for example, will be extremely difficult to kill and require large groups of players to bring down just like a raid boss. However they don't just drop a couple of "epics" when they die. A dragon may have a hoard of gold and other treasures (or not) but the real prize is the dragon it's self. You will be able to harvest many components from it's remains, everything from dragonscales, which will provide great protection while also being flexible and highly resistant to fire, to Dragon's Blood which will be an extremely valuable (and hard-to-obtain as you might imagine) component that can be used in a variety of ways from alchemy to sorcery.

There will also be dynamic quests involved in the game. What this means is, rather than pre-scripted dialog with linear gameplay and predefined goals, there will be a team of staff members dedicated to continuing and advancing different stories and plots in different parts of the world. They would assume direct control over characters in the game world and interact with players directly. Rather than grinding non-stop "go here and kill XX number of guys and loot XX number of items" quests you have in WOW, these would be far fewer but more engaging quests and the outcomes would be up to the players' imaginations. They might try to be diplomatic about it and try to convince a monster to stop what it is doing, they might try to bribe or pay off a band lord from robbing a particular highway that is hurting the local town's economy, or maybe they just roll in there and kill everything that moves. These events would be a daily thing and take place in different parts of the world each time to sort of "spread the love" so to speak. This practice has actually been done before in both Ultima Online and Everquest to varying degrees. But these staff would do nothing but interact with other characters in the game both as quest givers and the also the characters or creatures involved with the quest it's self so they could provide real interaction. Some of these events would be kind of small scale, just to give people something fun to do, but others would be part of larger storyarcs that will impact the game world as a whole based on the outcomes.

Also, other players have needs. Someone who is desperately trying to teach himself magic might require all sorts of magical components and you could go out looking for them and return any you find to him for a reward. Afterall, that is what quests are. You do something for someone then get gold and experience for it and occasionally an item you can use that doesn't just get immediately sold for more gold. Again, it's an open ended world where players run everything. Questing in WOW is just a mindless activity that is more about handholding than anything else. Most people don't even read the quest info, they just skim directly for the objectives, then look at the map at the lit up area where you do the quest, then go kill, loot, and return for gold. Selling your services to actual players is no different except it is more engaging and actually helps people.

There will also be "some" scripted content, but only where it makes sense and it won't always be there. For example, there could be a randomly occuring periodic event where a group of orcs or other such creatures setup a camp somewhere and the locals don't appreciate it. The quest would become available for only as long as the orcs were actually there. Once they were gone for whatever reason, the quest is no longer available. These kinds of events could occur at any time, anywhere.

Immersion is a major goal, having people go through quests like an assembly line is not engaging.

Now, i'm afraid it's getting a bit late (or early) for me, so i'm going to have to turn in for the night.

One last thing before I go. Keep in mind this is a different kind of game, it isn't bound to the standards and preconceived expectations of other MMOs. WOW has mechanics that kill you and you can't even avoid them like the Blood Lord encounter, Hardmode Iron Council, Teron Gorefiend, etc. They also have a lot of 1-shot mechanics, things that kill you if you make the slightest mistake, etc. The game is balanced around 10-minute boss fights with gimmick mechanics that mean you either kill the boss and progress or die. If the game isn't based around expecting you to die constantly in pointless pvp with fake objectives or pve encounters that kill everyone in a raid because one person makes a mistake with a gimmick mechanic, then perma death becomes less of an issue. But again, the goal isn't to please everyone. It is impossible to do that, so why try?

It is possible permadeath may be dropped, but there would need to be a sufficiently acceptable replacement for it that still makes players actually think about what they are going to do before they just rush in headlong. That is the main goal. I see it in WOW pvp all the time, where someone runs into a group of enemies to kill one really quickly knowing full well they will die immediately afterwards, but they don't care, because death is meaningless. It must not be cast aside so casually. It has to have consequences that make you not want to die.

[Mavecryst]

Those are some interesting ideas, like the deity and hirelings idea. I also would love to have games being made from passion again, and not to drive sales up. Unfortunately though, with games losing their stigma of only-for-nerds and becoming more popular, companies as a whole care less and less about making games for the gamers' sake, even if the individuals in them do it with passion.

Other ideas though, like perma-death and magic being over-powered make less sense to me. Perma-death has been argued enough by now, so I won't go into that. But magic being over-powered for the reasons you say seems a little off, somehow. It would be nice if you put in tons of effort into your caster and discovered your own unique spells somehow that give you an immense advantage. But then, why can't a swordsman do the same? Some people can do amazing things physically, things that normal people wouldn't dream of doing because they have trained and trained and discovered their own unique path.

Also, I think in most games you could roleplay almost anything you want to anyway. You could easily pretend to just be blacksmith (or its equivalent) throughout your game time. You don't need to follow a "hero's path" if you don't wish to. I understand where you're coming from; the fact that most games, if not all, are centred (when talking about storyline) on you being the hero. But still, I think that's because most people would play a game for that. Why would you play a game to be a normal person? I'm already a normal person in my normal life, I don't need to play a game to be a normal person.

If you mean your game to "force" people to start out as a "normal" for a period of time before able to become a hero, then in my eyes that would be another minus point. Sure I might have fun roleplaying it for an hour or two, but after that I'd be really bored..

So no, I would not be interested in playing such a game if it was developed with all those ideas in mind. I do like some of the ideas, but others are total deal breakers for me. Also, please remember these are just personal opinions, and I hope that I didn't make anything sound like it was fact. Games are fluid money making machines of the world now, and what is successful today may not necessarily be tomorrow.

[Deleted]

This sounds like a combination of RuneScape, DDO and Minecraft. I dunno if I would play it though.

[Numeanor]

I will just leave that here...
http://www.havenandhearth.com
Same game as you wrote in many points except there are no NPC's, only other players and wildlife. Death is permanent and it can be 25-75% loss of learning points and ofc all gear if you drown or somebody kill you / rob you. When you die, you can inherit stuff from ancestor that died and you can also pray to ancestors to get their powers for a short time.
Everything you do in world is permanent. You cut down tree, it won't grow again. But you can plant new trees around when you learn how to and it takes a lot of time to grow them up.