Not permadeath idea

[grävling]

I'm playing CK at brutal. The fights are more interesting. But the permadeath feature is something -- hmm, well it does give spice to the operation, but sometimes I would like a bit less spicy.

Then I was re-reading the Zelazny book 'Jack of Shadows' (not one of his best, but it has its moments, like all of Zelazny) In it a there is a race of humanity who has limited immortality. You can die, but every time you do so, you anr reincarnated in 'the dung pits of Gléve' where you have to start over again ... Sort of like playing CK on crazy or lower. In that book is a character called 'The Colonel Who Never Died'. The main character in the novella gave him

cause to change his name to 'The Colonel who Never Was Killed by Another' -- by allowing
him to commit suicide.

It occurred to me that I would like a game where you could post exploits, but your captain's name always reflected the number of deaths you had.

Thought I would mention it here.

[Cory Trese]

I really like perma death.

Games without it as a feature bore me to disinterest.

We will be adding a "custom" difficulty setting for Elite players

[blackgauntlet]

Masochist. Permadeath is great if the game is a short (or endless) game without need to develop our characters.

Pacman? Go ahead and permadeath me.
Super R-Type? Go ahead and permadeath me.
Street Fighter? Go ahead and permadeth me.
King's Quest? Go ahead and permadeath me.
HACK? Go ahead and permadeath me.

Some people like the thrill of possible finality, some people enjoy the thrill of exploration while some enjoy the thrill of character growth.

That said, I belong to the the group where there's lots of stuff to try out and interact with. If doing those stuff will have me dying and having to REPEAT everything I have done before, the repetition would bore me instead of the lack of permadeath.

All I'm saying is, Cory, we don't mind going up against an Ancient Dragon. We'd just like to have a 2nd chance, if we get burnt to a crisp on the 1st try, without having to start at level 1 and millions of miles away from his lair.

[fallen]

blackgauntlet - you can have your second chance in a lower difficulty, which is true training for the high difficulties. A unique and sometimes hated, but often loved, feature of our games is that there exist real and serious differences in difficulty levels. A lot of games post up 6 difficulty levels and the difference is visible, but in TB games its painful. Cory and I loved Nightmare in the Doom series, hardcore players on Diablo II battlenet and all the rest. Somewhere in there, I cam upon the realization (as gravling points out in the first post) how epic it is to truly be a survivor and never die.

From my POV, dying completes a story and makes it real. Resurrecting cheapens it.

I wrote a blog post about it once:
tresebrothers.blogspot.com/2011/03/hardcore-games-youre-going-to-die.html

[fallen]

The crux of it:

"For me, the hook was this: your story, your suffering, and your trials are epic and compelling. You have never died, your story is a single running thread. Letting the computer kill you, and then respawning strips all that legendary away. I'd rather die a legend, I'd rather know I was going to die and keep pushing through and striking mighty blows until the end comes. It smacks of Norse mythology as well, in which the gods were told of the end of the world, in which man recognized death was inevitable, and both chose to stride forward with courage, for that was all that could be done."

[blackgauntlet]

fallen- I understand the entire gist of it, believe me. I was on both Diablo 1 & 2 in hardcore levels of battle.net. You might have known me as Lord BloodGod (Paladin in 1, Barbarian in 2). Sold away some really good shit too. The thing is, in Diablo or Doom, like what I pointed out in the earlier post, are games with not much character development. Diablo, with its pseudo-RPG elements is just a hack-&-slash game. Doom is a FPS.

I see your RPGs as a lot more than those and I do hope that you could at least give yourself more credit than comparing your games with the mindless drivel which are Diablo and Doom. And um... although Norse Gods do die, they don't get killed off by a pack of hunds or possible cross-gendered nameless tranvestites-in-red. ;D

[Fenikso]

Permanent death and Impossible difficulty are the two things (and maybe ONLY two things) which really keep me still glued to this game after half a year of playing.

Call me masochist, but I think that honorable and epic death is needed to complete character's story of every hero. Or at least retiring with style . Also characters around level 70+ are not much fun for me anymore. They achieved everything they wanted.

I found recently in my early 30s that when I was younger I did not enjoy death in stories and RPGs. But now I kind of like this inevitable end which will come, the character's nemesis and fate.

Of course dying often in a "random" manner is no fun. But I would say - play lower difficulty then. The difficulty you have picked is not meant for you yet.

Just my 2¢.

[ab357]

Why not make it an option? Then each player could play their preferred style. I would LOVE to be able to take my character to higher difficulty levels with me. But even then I wouldn't with permadeath.

[Fenikso]

One thing is that it would break the way how the game is designed and how we can now discuss the game.
It would be very different game to play Crazy, Insane, or Impossible with permanent death off.

But maybe it would be good to be able to "buy the death off" at Challenging and Demanding by some penalty or by buying kind of expensive insurance (similar to aTan in Sergej Lukjaněnko's novels).

[fallen]

Team - its a good discussion and something we are continuing to look at. Cyber Knights for example was built with custom-difficulty capabilities. It is not turned on now, but would allow you to choose Brutal, and then pick which settings you like (no perma-death for example, but leave in all the other gnarly difficulty raising things). This is not enabled yet, but was enabled in the game engine.

We shall see where this goes. I am completely on Fenikso's side =) Suffering is good for you!

[Slide87]

I like what u said fallen...an option that enables permadeath in the future can't be bad..=) to satisfy all the players community...the hardcore gamers won't suffer of this,i think...=)

[Fenikso]

I kind of dislike the ability to have named difficulty as "Crazy" + some options. I am fine with "Custom", but I imagine horrors of starting each discussion on the forum like "I am playing Impossible with Permanent death off, all Upgrades on, Aliens set to Nightmare mode and Officer profits at 500%. Can anyone help me?"

[fallen]

Fenikso - i agree. We have to be very careful in the naming of these difficulties. Also, enabling too many options could be a big problem. We will tread careful, and remember -- neither Cory or I actually like the idea of removing perma-death.

This one will take a while to pan out, any way it goes.

Thanks for all the great feedback!

[Cory Trese]

by the definition in the database "crazy - permadeath" is never going to be called "Crazy"

The difficulty will be called "Custom" and you will be able to set different parameters:

- Death
- XP Penalty
- Staring $
- Monster Handicap
- Econ Handicap
- Encounter Nasty
- Mission Payout Rate

[blackgauntlet]

Fenikso- Er... are you talking about ST or CK? I didn't mind it on ST one bit. In fact, it's welcome for me. ST is like playing MOO on a smaller, but possibly infinite, scale.

@tb- I was thinking about some Adventure games I played which featured death only at certain points of the game. Thus, I was toying with the idea of Permadeath on key events, during certain periods or even facing certain monsters... all with a similar feature- the option to walk away from them.

For instance:
1) You come to a bridge, leading to the Castle of Arrrghh. Before you stands a bent old man holding a gnarled walking stick. He announced that he is the Bridge-Keeper and you may pass should you answer his questions three. If you fail to answer any 1 of his questions, however, you will plummet to the chasm below... never to return (Permadeath). Do you proceed?

2) You are now standing before the Cave of Doom, guarded by the sinister Beast- masquerading as a harmless bunny- chewing on a human femur. Judging from the amount of gnawed up skeletons here, you know that, should you fail, no one will come to your aid (Permadeath). Do you still wish to challenge the Killer Rabbit?

3) You flip aside the tent flap and peered within. The Sheikh of Arabos is sucking on his hookah with one of his harem maids lying on his lap. Your negotiation with him to make peace with the Kalahians rests on your shoulder. Once the fight between them has ended, you may continue your journey to the badlands with the opening of Arabos' city gates. However, although Arabosians do not have the culture of shooting messengers, they are notorious for beheading inept negotiators (Permadeath). Do you wish to go ahead?

This way, we still get the thrill of possibly failing ultimately and permanently... AND we completely (with the exception of fat fingers) remove the possibility of our deaths through total randomness. This is rather important, especially when your encounters are not visible and we could not run away from them until it is too late. Unlike Diablo where you could set PvP or Doom where you could avoid obvious enemy hotspots.