Some comments over at Zen of Design sparked this one… specifically this post on death penalties, and this follow-up on death penalties in general. (And after all, is there a more appropos time to ruminate about the themes of death and resurrection than immediately after Easter Sunday?)
In the second post, Damion points out some of the problems related to imposing hefty death penalties on the players, and that there are alternatives even within existing perspectives which effectively target different types of players and styles of play. For my part, I have no huge argument with much of what he writes… in relation to the basic paradigm of MMO/CRPG games today.
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
– Walter Lippman
My problem is that I’m not willing to take any of it and raise it to the level of “universal constant”, which is the way most of the writing comes across. This was the nit I would have picked with Psychochild’s insta-classic April Fools Day rant, as well. To my mind, dismissing ideas out of hand (even if it is the 157th time you’ve heard something like it) is a great way to miss the next good one. Context is everything, after all.
“The ability to innovate is only as good as how one can accept changes and take risks.”
– Franco Paolo Liu Eisma
To pick an attenuated example, if I was looking to make an MMO based on a “victim RPG” like Cthulhu, Chill, or Paranoia, or just more generally in the horror genre, some implementation of character perma-death is almost required… that’s about as close to a core concept of that particular genre as you can get.
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
– Scott Adams
That’s not to say that you couldn’t take generic-fantasy-RPG-design-number-1376, fill it with Deep Ones (Murlocs-on-steroids) and Shoggoth, with the end game instance being 40 god-like characters going mano-a-mano with the Cthulhu Boss Monster in his sunken R’lyeh throne room, and stamp it all “Mythos Online!”… but to say you missed the point would be the understatement of the modern era.
“[They] became too wise and knew too much. In particular they knew all the reasons why things were impossible and why nothing more could be achieved… And in the past, it had always been the younger generations, too naive and inexperienced to recognize the impossible when they saw it, who had been foolish enough to make the attempt. It was surprising how often they succeeded.”
– from Giant’s Star, by James P. Hogan
Only a lower case “d”
There’s also the little issue I have with calling what is currently labeled “death” in these games by that name in the first place. By MMO standards, I’ve died a half-dozen times myself in real-life…
- 5 years old, fell out of moving car due to playing with the door handle (this was before automated door locks), lost consciousness. Each forearm was essentially one big scab for weeks. Check.
- 7 years old, lost a “fight” (is it really a fight if you never even get to swing?) with a 4th grader during lunch, woke up in the nurse’s office. Didn’t even get a nice shiner out of it. (Yes, I could be a sarky little wise-ass even then, why do you ask?) Check.
- 10 years old, lost control of bike doing the “no-hands” thing. Full-on face plant, which probably explains a few things, now that I think about it… wake up tasting bloody gravel, or gravelly blood, same difference. Check.
- 13 years old, trip and tumble down a 30-foot, 45 degree slope, bouncing off every blasted tree on the way down, I’d bet. Lost a good 10 minutes that time… decent shiner, tho. Check.
- 25 years old, rear-ended by pickup truck that apparently didn’t notice the stoplight had turned red. I never used the trunk on that old junker anyway. Seat belt basically did its job, I suppose, but I’m still tasting blood when the daylight returns. Check.
- 37 years old, slip on ice patch heading to check my mailbox. During my unplanned nap it apparently decides to snow, light dusting on me by the time I come to. Sizable goose egg for a few days to show for it, but the doc doesn’t even give me enough material to make up an excuse to take a few days off. Lucky me. Check.
Then there are the times when by all rights I would have been Dead, with a capital D, had it gone down a little differently… the robbery at gunpoint in a deserted Oklahoma rest-stop… the semi travelling sideways sliding up behind me in an otherwise typical Minnesota blizzard/commute. Even a comfy, boring life nestled deep in American suburbia can have it’s moments, I guess.
The point is, what passes for death in MMOs isn’t “death” anyway. It is unconsciousness, not “death”. It gets abstracted into “death”, mainly because emulating the wait for the lights to come back on would be about as engaging as watching paint dry if you didn’t create other things to do during the “intermission”, and no one wants to bother trying to do that… aren’t there enough other details to worry about?
So, what’s the point of this little tirade, this tempest in a teapot? I guess it’s simply that perhaps changing perspectives will offer new ideas and opportunities… including ones that won’t ever come to mind by accepting a proclamation like “perma-death is stupid” as a universal truth.
For example, I’d like to try an implementation where when a character is knocked unconscious, they go into a little dream sequence mini-instance, and successful completion revives the character and grants the character special bonuses for a time. I’d like to explore game designs where a player can choose to let a character die (yes, “perma-death”) in certain situations, in return for substantial inherent bonuses while building a replacement character. Heck, in a victim game, I’d want to offer bonuses for “original” Deaths, and make part of the player’s bragging rights the length of his list thereof.
CoH/CoV already gives a “killed” character an opportunity to continue to play a role in group combat even after “death”, by allowing the passing of inspirations while “dead”… there are some possible expansions on that concept that I’ve been noodling around for a bit, too.
Of course, I’m just being naive and inexperienced.
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April 10, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Psychochild
Be careful in taking extremes here. Just because some ideas can be written off as “we’ve done that before” doesn’t mean that all ideas are unworthy of consideration. Just keep in mind that some of us have been developing games for a long time, and some of these “new” ideas have been considered previously and deemed unimplementable. There’s already a limited amount of time we can devote to design and development, and running down a likely dead end isn’t always the most productive use of our time.
In my rant, I was mostly talking about ideas like, “There should be a way to get a one-shot kill on a player, but it should be expensive/hard/rare/etc.” One-shot kills are rarely a good idea in a PvP environment, and there’s little reason to go down that road once again in public discussions or game design.
Your discussion about various concepts of death is more interesting because there is some unexplored territory here. But, as Damion’s posts indicate, there are some reasons why we haven’t looked at alternatives yet. The most vocal group of people have stated loudly and repeatedly that they don’t like harsh death penalties. Which means we get weak “death” systems and little discussion of alternatives like permadeath (beyond the “OMGWTFNO!” reaction of some people).
But, permadeath is a very interesting topic. The major roadblock is that the persistent character is what keeps most people playing (and therefore paying) for the game. Removing the character, even if you give the people some form of compensation, creates an “exit opportunity” for the person to decide the game is no longer worthwhile. This is anathema to current game design and business models in online games. But, as you rightly point out, permadeath can be the right choice for some games, such as horror-themed ones.
Hopefully this clarifies things a bit.
Have fun,
April 10, 2007 at 11:54 pm
damianov
Agreed. Sorry, didn’t mean to come across quite so extreme/strident. I do get more than a little paranoid about things that sound like absolutes… too many people will hang their hat on them without looking at all the reasoning behind it, making it that much more difficult to break the mold if/when the opportunity arises.
Hadn’t heard the one-shot kill request before… and here I thought I’d run across most of them over the years. Shows what I know. Doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, but then again, I’m sure I’m projecting it into a different perspective/setting than the proponents of it would. Context is everything…
Also, I do realize that established devs and dev houses really can’t pursue a lot of ideas like this, for a variety of reasons. Despite all the bellyaching you guys have to put up with, I think many other players/interested parties realize that as well (not all, but many). Too much money riding on the outcome, too many stakeholders looking for a return, too many different types and styles of play to try to accommodate to generate the necessary size of audience. The pressure to “make WoW, but Better!” has to be intense.
For my part, at least, I’m really not looking for established devs to try many of these things… I really do think small shops/indie developers are the ones that need to pursue these different perspectives, niches, what-have-you. I suspect the most important benefit you experienced devs offer via blogging and other commentary, and what many seek from you, either obliquely or directly, are simply words of wisdom (dearly earned, no doubt) and the occasional brief nod of encouragement.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and commenting. Hoping to be able to attend your session at the IMGDC this weekend… very much looking forward to it.