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Post by resistor on Oct 15, 2017 0:55:18 GMT -5
It's painful to lose a captain you've invested many hours playing and perfecting. All the more so if that character was very successful, and yet still had the potential to become greater. When I lose a captain like this, I feel disheartened, and usually put the game down for a few hours, or sometimes days. So why do I set myself up to feel the bitter sting of defeat by playing this game on Impossible? I do it for the feeling of struggling and surviving. It feels good watching a Talent I play in combat save the battle, knowing if I had chosen differently, I probably would've died. It feels good knowing when new ships or upgrades I purchase give me the strength I need to dominate my enemies. But when my captain inevitably dies, I think not of the victories I've forged. I think of what I did wrong; I think of what I could've done to survive a little longer, and how the opportunity to fix my fatal mistake is gone forever, as is my captain.
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Post by fallen on Oct 15, 2017 12:31:58 GMT -5
I love permadeath because it makes the legend. Legends all end in death of the heroes, somewhere, even if most stories stop telling before that moment. Our Captains die in fiery explosions, beheaded, or cut down trying to make a fortune as their expedition tracks across a trackless world. We go down fighting, my friend.
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Post by slayernz on Oct 15, 2017 16:57:22 GMT -5
resistor in the early early days of ST, Permadeth was a hot topic - lots of people couldn't get why you would want to play a "casual fun game" where you could lose everything in a heartbeat due to some careless glitch in the code (roll of the dice/current wind direction/price of cheese). I absolutely hated it when I moved up to Crazy difficulty - "This is not fun! I only got off on my first mission, took on every ship I encountered along the way, and all of a sudden, I'm DEAD?!?". Captains became named after letters of the alphabet so I knew how many were killed (Crazy Adam, Crazy Bob, Crazy Charlie, Crazy Derek, etc). However ... then I learned from my mistakes. I figured out that cautious captains lived longer than gungho kill-em-all captains. I learned what stats helped my playing style, and what I needed in a ship, and how to trade, and how to capitalize on the rumors and politics of the day. Yes, permadeth sucked if you lost a captain to an evil Steel Song pirate (it happened so often, that I have maintained a blood feud with Steel Song ever since), but it forces you to learn and actually understand how things work. Jumping up to Impossible difficulty, same learning pain - one in ten captains survived, and even then, it was to the point that every turn risked certain death. Now (on ST1), I can start an impossible captain, and be pretty confident that I will have him/her up and running 90% of the time, and killing Steel Song with impunity within a few dozen levels. In summary, I think that Permadeth actually makes the game more enjoyable and replayable in the long run. You get bored when you become dominant, and if death is not a barrier and your captain can live on forever, then boredom comes quick. It'd be like playing Basic difficulty all the time. Fun to learn on, but boring once you can kill anything that moves while flying an escape shuttle.
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Post by Zer0Winds on Oct 20, 2017 16:46:20 GMT -5
resistor in the early early days of ST, Permadeth was a hot topic - lots of people couldn't get why you would want to play a "casual fun game" where you could lose everything in a heartbeat due to some careless glitch in the code (roll of the dice/current wind direction/price of cheese). I absolutely hated it when I moved up to Crazy difficulty - "This is not fun! I only got off on my first mission, took on every ship I encountered along the way, and all of a sudden, I'm DEAD?!?". Captains became named after letters of the alphabet so I knew how many were killed (Crazy Adam, Crazy Bob, Crazy Charlie, Crazy Derek, etc). However ... then I learned from my mistakes. I figured out that cautious captains lived longer than gungho kill-em-all captains. I learned what stats helped my playing style, and what I needed in a ship, and how to trade, and how to capitalize on the rumors and politics of the day. Yes, permadeth sucked if you lost a captain to an evil Steel Song pirate (it happened so often, that I have maintained a blood feud with Steel Song ever since), but it forces you to learn and actually understand how things work. Jumping up to Impossible difficulty, same learning pain - one in ten captains survived, and even then, it was to the point that every turn risked certain death. Now (on ST1), I can start an impossible captain, and be pretty confident that I will have him/her up and running 90% of the time, and killing Steel Song with impunity within a few dozen levels. In summary, I think that Permadeth actually makes the game more enjoyable and replayable in the long run. You get bored when you become dominant, and if death is not a barrier and your captain can live on forever, then boredom comes quick. It'd be like playing Basic difficulty all the time. Fun to learn on, but boring once you can kill anything that moves while flying an escape shuttle. slayernz, what would you do in the hypothetical situation where Steel Song was allied with Cadar (or whoever you're with during)? Now permadeath... I originally when starting off the game, didn't look into it. It wasn't until I played the game a bit, that I moved up difficulty levels. However, I got bored of not dying eventually. I tried moving up... Got mad at dying, but had even more fun playing the game. Then I bought Elite.
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Post by fallen on Oct 20, 2017 16:52:26 GMT -5
I think the amazing difficulty/permadeath ladder of ST RPG is one of its most defining and successful features. Get bored? Move up the difficulty ladder, you have to play more angles of the game to survive.
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Post by Cory Trese on Oct 20, 2017 16:55:48 GMT -5
I think the amazing difficulty/permadeath ladder of ST RPG is one of its most defining and successful features. Get bored? Move up the difficulty ladder, you have to play more angles of the game to survive. It is among the most commonly mentioned elements in the 30K reviews of the ST RPG games. Permadeath and difficulty scales keep people coming back.
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