http://www.edge-online.co.uk/news_main.asp?news_id=3416

So VI stopped ebay sales b/c they didn't want player jealousy? Obviosuly, the man's cracked :-)

Discussion anyone?

Xilren

Archimedes
02/23/01 01:11 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Before this I've always thought of Bartle as a pretty smart cookie, I may be forced to revise that opinion.

First off, he doesn't seem to recognize that there is no major game engine difference between Player Death from being PKd and Player Death from the environment (monsters/NPCs). Granted, the psychology of the two is very different, but he treats them as if the game engine treated them differently. As if the penalty/loss if your character gets PKd is greater than if your character dies from a monster, or even as if no one ever dies due to monsters.

Second, he refuses to recognize the problem that unlimited PKing brings to a game, as if PKing always adds fun to the experience.

Third, he acts as if random player gankage is somehow more meaningful than random monster hacking. Here's a clue: it's not.

He does have a good point when he argues that these games have to be more meaningful to retain players better, but saying that PvP is THE solution to the problem is just silly. PvP interests a small minority of the potential market for these games, and those not in that minority will be just as bored with meaningless PvP as they will with meaningless hack 'n' slash of any other kind. To make a game seem meaningful to players you have to put MEANING into the game. Whether that's by making PvP meaningful, by making PvE meaningful, or by any other method doesn't matter that much.

Xilrens Twin
02/23/01 02:51 PM
[re: Archimedes]
You know, after reading that article it just struck me that he seems to ignoring the3 other player types he's so famous for writing about.

Explorers, Acheiviers and Socializers need not only some PVP but a certain amount of random painful death in order not to get bored?!?

Perhaps he's suffered some kind of major head trauma....

Xilren

Bebblebrox
02/23/01 03:39 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
I dunno, I think you guys missed the point of the article.

He's not arguing about the game mechenics differences, he's totally arguing about the need for "PD" as he calls it for long-term game subscription retention. And from what I read, it sounds like he's arguing for more meaningful death, be it from PKs or from environment. Like he pointed out, being able to res right away with no penalities isn't really much of a deterent to the player.

While I agree that he doesn't address any of the problems associated with unrestrained PKing, I really don't think he needs to. He definately wasn't arguing that the whole game should be a PK haven, as evident through his liberal use of "badlands", referring to the area "outside" of no-kill zones. Rather, it appears to me that he was trying to drive home the point that larger risk=more appreciation of reward=longer retention.

And he's not really talking about random painful death. More, he's speculating that the best way he can think of to add the required layer of risk is through either perma death or high death penalty. Then he counters that point, stating that the obvious problem with this situation is that players won't be as eager to play a game where your char can perma die.

All in all, I found it a good read. I really didn't feel he was trying to argue a point as much as he was pointing out one of the largest issues game designers have to face: Higher death penalty/lower player base/higher retention vs. No penalty//larger player base/lower retention.

Ithaqua Loves ME!!!!

Xilrens Twin
02/23/01 05:38 PM
[re: Bebblebrox]
But that's just it, i disagree with his premise entirely. He seems to be saying that without Player Death (a meaningful death; one that hurts in term of items/stats/skills, or even permanant) brought about by other players, any game will not have long term viability, b/c "without that loss there is no game"?!? His entire article is couched in such vague generalities that it's practically boils down to this: he thinks player conflict is good b/c it gets people more involved, but it's also bad b/c it drives them away.

Lets not confuse long term stability with long term profitability here. Who really cares if your dedicated player base has been on for 10 years or more if there are only 1000 of them? Long term profitability is what is driving these MMORPG's and in that sense designing you game to appeal to the mass market is the only reasonable course of action. And based upon what the market has shown to this point, most of the players subscribed to one of the "Big 3" do not prefer non-consentual PVP. And one other thing, what kind of long term do you think these games should have? 2 years, 4? 10? If a game only lasts 4 years with 300,000 subscribers is that really less "successful" than a game that last 8 years with 50,000? If you were a development company, which model would you prefer?

He's stuck on the concepts that these game are simply pissing contests about who can get acheive the highest, and that these games need conflict so players can properly determine their worth. I love this next line...

(quote)Some degree of PKing is good: although players may rail against the very concept of it, unless they do actually get PKed on a regular basis they're not going to leave in droves(/quote)

Um, how exactly is the pking good for the victims? Especially if they truly lose something (be it money, gear, skills, exp). It's like he's saying "Trust me, it's good for you" to the childish playerbase who's unable to grasp such simple concepts like "vegtables taste bad but are good for you". PK is a neccessary evil for the good of the game? You may not like it now, but in 2 years it will seem really fun?

Sorry, i don't buy that premise at all.

My personally viewpoint is you could have just as successful, long term viable game with no direct PVP combat AT ALL if the game was designed to appeal to long term involvement. Look, there always has to be some cap on acheivement, and exploration, but not on socialization. Designing games that allow people to foster long term social bonds seems to be the only way to extend the life of your game beyond continually adding new content (And no, i don't consider hating Mr Azzmaster b/c he ganked you and stole your dog to be a social bond that would keep people in game). People will stay in a game they now loath as long as their friends are there; the same cannot be said if you replace friends with "hated enemies".

Forcing PK on people simply b/c you think it's in their long term best interests seems ludicrous, especially considering that these programs are purely for entertainment value in an increasingly competative industry. Making people do something they don't like seems like a good way to get them to sample your competition.

Give player more and more options for how THEY play the game, not how you want them to play it. Encourage positive social interaction by rewarding cooperation. Allow players to have a postive impact on the world around them. Lot's of options is good; forcing one play style is bad. :)

And most of the upcoming games seem to have come to the same conclusion: make PD optional. Let the player determine their own level of risk.

Seems to make sense to me.

Xilren

What exactly was he basing his idea that "no PD means high churn rates" on?

LumsOtherHalf
02/23/01 09:14 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Good Grief.

Richard is a smart guy but he is so totally missing the boat. He is firmly stuck on win/lose and 'it's a game". People want WORLDS not games. You CAN'T win in a world - it's impossible - you can't win in ours either - everyone exits out pretty much the same way - dead.

Worlds can be win/win - no one has to lose so you can be superior. This is very anti-game mentality. That is the key difference that makes these more than just games.

Worlds can certainly have conflict - and you can even achieve goals - those are quite necessary, but those are personal for the most part. He's quite correct in there needs to be reasons for conflict but doesn't seem to get the PK rarely has a fictionally justifiable reason.

Worlds are more suited to play - with competition sprinkled throughout. Games are about competition. The very mention of the word game invokes an image of a winner and a loser. Play doesn't necessarily have to have a winner or loser - and is most enjoyable when everyone wins.

He seems to think folks are leaving EQ because they are bored. Well, if they are bored - it's not because they don't have a PK breathing down there back - it would be because EQ is setup with the game mentality with levels and a perceived end, and not quite enough has been done to make the world end deep enough. Although I haven't noticed any drop in number logging into EQ. People stay because of friendships in all the big 3, that is a constant. This is a good thing. Having things to do while socializing is a HUGE part of these - no matter what your Bartle classification of player is.

Take a look at the numbers on PvP and nonPvP servers in any of the big 3 and justify nonconsensual PvP to a shareholder - I dare ya, I double dog dare ya. Once SB is out - supposedly the holy grail to this type - I suspect everyone can shut down their PvP servers and get on doing what they really do best, which isn't PvP.

I don't begrudge people that enjoy this their fun, as long as they are segregated to people that share that particular amusement. What I will REFUSE to ever, ever EVER do again is pay for the opportunity to play the role of a victim in circumstances I have no choice in......period.

I am far from alone.

Damiano
02/23/01 09:15 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Frankly, I thought that while he headed off into never-never-land for a good bit in the center there, he got back to where he needed to go at the end.

To start, I suppose I should state that I am a fan of limited perma-death, and a wide range of player-vs-player options, including some limited non-consensual opportunities. Actually, for me, the two concepts should be irrevocably tied together... a player that wishes to indulge in non-consensual-PvP should be required to give up their virtual immortality permanently to do so. That will separate the men from the boys quickly enough...

I also agree with _some_ of his analysis of the effect of perma-death on play. I don't do it often (because I don't play all that often), but I have on occasion used the insta-refresh of mana on death feature in EQ to my and my parties' advantage, for instance, particularly during the scavenger hunts. Death in EQ has all the significance of getting lost in the woods... irritating and infuriating, but hardly a major loss. And since they've designed their game in such a way that "death" is a more common occurrence for most PCs than bathing, it kinda loses it's ability to generate tension more quickly than might otherwise be case. Example: most players I've known/encountered admit they would get more upset about losing an item to ninja-looting than to being killed in a train. As one PC put it, "I'm killed nearly once per session, whether I am adventuring or not. What's so big about that?"

However, as I've written elsewhere before: it is not _death_ per se that creates enjoyable tension (aka drama)... it is the believable illusion of it's imminence in a realm of actual safety. An amusement park ride does not have to kill the occasional customer to generate tension... the same priniciples apply to death in the MMORPG, IMO.

Maintaining that illusion and the associated tension can be hell, however, even in PnP RPGs, where the GM has a wide range of tactics to use in vocalization, prop manipulation, word selection/phrasing, etc. to generate uncertainty in an overly comfortable group of players. In a game where every little nuance of a scenario is posted to a dozen web sites 30 seconds after release: not an easy task to generate tension.

As I've posted before, however, I believe games which implemented extended injuries with associated penalties and a meaningful unconsciousness state could start to regain some of that illusory tension that Mr. Bartle would like to see, without having to be uniformly draconian in their handling of player death.

That section where he equates "player (character) death" to "perma-death"... I'm _still_ trying to decide whether that is drug-induced lunacy or simply a statement of a perspective that I am totally ignorant of. Probably the latter, but...

As to whether PvP is more meaningful in some way than PvE: I think the guy is simply overreacting in response to the overreaction of the UO evacuees during the aZZr4p3r era. I do believe that PvP can play a role in a viable MMORPG... but it's neither the savior of the MMORPG experience nor an automatic pass to a virtual hell. It can be controlled by the very same mechanisms used to control it in real-life, of which "perma-death" is a vital part. IRL, serial killers shot to death resisting arrest generally aren't a problem thereafter. The same basic logic could apply to such players in an MMORPG, assuming you eliminate the viability of a "PvP God in 24 hours" book series...

Anyway, definitely an interesting article, if a bit strange. Thanks for pointing it out...

"There is no problem that cannot be made infinitely worse through the proper application of utter ignorance." - Me

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

Edited by Damiano on 02/23/01 09:19 PM.

Damiano
02/23/01 09:46 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
In reply to:

Look, there always has to be some cap on acheivement, and exploration, but not on socialization.

I don't disagree with your real point in this statement, but I thought I should add that I don't think there has to be a cap on achievement or exploration. Not a "hard" cap, at least. For achievement: the concept of diminishing returns, folks. Been used often and well in the past. As for exploration, all you need is a big enough canvas and the ability for players to impact it significantly, and exploration will never be capped. (See the real world for details.)

And frankly, socialization in these games is usually pretty lame. Most of the avatars/characters have a combined personality and history that couldn't fill a postage stamp in 10 point type, and even if you break fiction and talk about the person behind the character, sometimes it doesn't get much better. Your best bet is rude jokes and the occasional argument on tactics.

Perhaps if the PCs were actually allowed to develop a general history and background _before_ they were dumped naked onto the streets of their hometown with not a clue of who or where they are, who they have been, who they might know, what's going on around them... silly me. Back story? For a Player Character? That'd take all the _fun_ out of it...

I have to ask: have any of these designers ever actually played an honest-to-goodness face-to-face role-playing game? (I believe Raph has... can't remember for sure.) Have they ever GM'd even one session, let alone a campaign, or dozens of them? Run a tournament event, or better yet, a pick up game at a convention? And then, assuming the answer to all of the above is _no_: would you ask a person with no experience in accounting to design/write your bookkeeping software?

(Excuse my vitriol. It's been a long week.)

In reply to:

Give player more and more options for how THEY play the game, not how you want them to play it. Encourage positive social interaction by rewarding cooperation. Allow players to have a postive impact on the world around them. Lot's of options is good; forcing one play style is bad. :)

No major disagreement, especially on play options. The more, the better. BUT, that includes the ability to effectively _solo_. Forcing one play style is _bad_.

Another two cents (I'll soon be a pauper at this rate...)

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

Domasai
02/24/01 03:37 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Um...no. Mr. Bartle, I suggest you actually do a bit more research before stepping into this. Personally I'm for a limited sort of perma-death, but I still can't agree with what he's saying.

BTW, a quick comment on some of these replies: UO, AC, and EQ aren't worlds. In fact, they're in no way worlds. In worlds, there are no balanced classes; no worrying whether one person has equal opportunity to kill the other.

If these were worlds, perma-death would be the norm and the classes wouldn't be balanced at all. Only in games do we strive for such illusions of fairness. These are, and will remain for quite some time, games.

What fighting a bear is like in UO: http://www.adcritic.com/content/john-west-red-salmon-bear-fight.html

Dids
02/24/01 04:22 AM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
Spot on with your comments, LOH!

Let's take the article apart:

"When the first wave of massively multiplayer online games hit the open market, 'player killing' was allowed"

Huh? Even if we add M59 to UO, it's hardly a wave, hardly massive (the small community kept PKs at bay) and <30hp people were PK-.

"The Ultima Online approach was to rebalance the game so that PKs didn't have so much of an edge. The EverQuest approach was to remove player (character) death altogether. "

Huh? UO introduced, basically, a PVP switch, sorry area. You still die in EQ.

"The same people who initially complained bitterly about being killed in EQ are the same ones who are leaving now for other games because they're bored."

Huh? EQ was always PVP-, PVP+ was an afterthought.

"If you could reach higher levels in the badlands than out of them, for example, then that would do it; if you could increase your character's stats beyond those of stay-at-homes; if you could buy bigger houses, or get higher skills, or bake tastier pizzas "

IMX, the average person interested in baking pizzas is not going to be interested in kicking ass, and will be mightly pissed of if researching how to bake fluffier cakes, s/he gets 0wned by Mr PK.

"Major counter-intuitive fact: most players who complain don't actually leave."

Umm, anyone who spends more than 10 minutes on Whineplay, et al, will soon come to that conclusion.

"The flaw in this argument is that that although current players may not leave a game that has PD or PKing, new players might not even start it. "

Umm, his whole point seems to be "I know better". He admits PD/PK discourages new players, so why the hell have it? It's a bit like your mother telling you to eat your greens...

"Verant recently stopped eBay from selling characters from EQ on their service, [snip] It was because players complained bitterly that it gave an unfair advantage to a select few. "

Now he's totally lost the plot!

"So the designers of massively multiplayer games have a dilemma. Should they have no PD (and pay for it in long-term churn), have caps on functionally immortal characters (and attract fewer newbies), or have optional PD (and cross their fingers)?"

And his conclusion is, he doesn't have one. "Long-term churn" is a good thing (but actually makes little sense to me) if compared to "short-term churn". Surely he means "no long-term retention"? What is a "functionally immortal character" and how does it dissuade newbies?

Boogaleeboo
02/24/01 05:26 PM
[re: Dids]
I dont fit into ANY of the "Bartle types". am I going to die?

1.This is not a game. 2.Here and now,you are alive.

Richard Bartle
02/25/01 06:20 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Hi, Lum people.

I thought I'd respond to a few of the comments that have appeared here concerning my Edge article. I apologise in advance for not tackling every issue in a thorough and comprehensive manner to the complete satisfaction of everyone, but there are more of you than there are of me and I can only type so fast...

Just by way of context, the Edge article was written at the invitation of the (online) magazine's editor, who's a former player of my MUD. I could have written about anything I wanted to, but provocative was better; the idea was to get people to read the magazine, after all... My aim was to cause people to think about online game design; whether they agree with me or not isn't strictly the point, so long as they advance their own thoughts on the matter. The more people who think about games objectively instead of simply going with the flow, the better. By questioning current paradigms, people can come up with new ideas; whether these are in line with or at right angles to the current crop of games, I'm not particularly bothered, so long as it moves things along. The worst thing that can happen to the nascent massively multiplayer online game industry is for it to stagnate.

I invariably have two problems when I try do this kind of thing: 1) people take what I say as an attack on their own particular game's way of doing things, and after much dialogue eventually conclude that their own game's way of doing it, while not perfect, is better than whatever I've suggested; 2) they argue about what they think I wrote instead of what I actually wrote. In the former case, well, there's not a lot I can do about it. I'm not arguing for change to existing games, which is why I'm particular to use generalities in my writing. If people are happy playing game X, well then of course they're going to be upset if some self-professed expert who doesn't play it comes along and tells them it's all screwed. If they want to say why a suggestion wouldn't work in their game, fair enough, but it's not like I was suggesting they alter their game anyway. If they couldn't accept their game the way it was, they wouldn't be playing it. In the latter case, I just have to live with it. Over the years, I've become used to people putting words in my mouth. I've had people attack what I've written without actually their ever having read it. There's also a "young gun" aspect to it, where people take a pot shot at the ol' time gunslinger because then they'll look good if they manage a deadly wound on him. Still, if it keeps me sharp!

OK, that's the end of my boring introduction, now for my boring comments...

Xilren>So VI stopped ebay sales b/c they didn't want player jealousy?

Then why did they stop it then, exactly?

Archimedes>First off, he doesn't seem to recognize that there is no major game engine difference between Player Death from being PKd and Player Death from the environment (monsters/NPCs).

Of course there isn't! I needed to say this?!

>Granted, the psychology of the two is very different, but he treats them as if the game engine treated them differently. As if the penalty/loss if your character gets PKd is greater than if your character dies from a monster

You were right in your assumption that I was talking about the psychological effects. People are less hurt if they die to a monster than if they die to a PK.

There are tweaks you can put into the game engine concerning PK deaths, of course - I wouldn't rule it out. One common early strategy in MUD development was to have the attacker lose everything if they were killed in a fight, but the defender lose only a slightly-more-than-token amount. This wasn't what I was talking about, though.

>Second, he refuses to recognize the problem that unlimited PKing brings to a game, as if PKing always adds fun to the experience.

No, no, no.

As I pointed out in my now ancient paper on player types, if you have a game with too much PKing (let alone unlimited), you pretty soon end up with a game that ONLY has PKing. Unless you're aiming for that, it's a Bad Thing.

PKing in itself doesn't add fun to the game except for PKers, who we don't really care about. In my article, I attempted to separate the notion of PD from that of PKing, because I feel that virtually all of the benefits of PK and are due to the PD involved and most of the particularly hated aspects of PK don't apply to PD.

Perhaps at this point I ought to mention that the article was edited by the people at Edge. It is not identical to the article I submitted to them, although on the whole it differs only in minor ways. One place where editing has made an impact, though, is the line which reads "Introducing player death helps, but it has to be 'real' death";, this originally read "Introducing player death helps; indeed, it may well be enough. It has to be "real" death, though". Had the original line stayed as written, this would perhaps have made my point of view clearer and not led to the impression that I was primarily advocating PKing. I was being pro-PD, rather than pro-PK.

>He does have a good point when he argues that these games have to be more meaningful to retain players better, but saying that PvP is THE solution to the problem is just silly.

I agree, it is, which is why I didn't say it. In fact, I mentioned the two solutions already employed: "a constant influx of newbies or the regular addition of new areas".

PvP is a solution, but it comes with problems of its own. PD helps, and may well be a solution, but it has to be done carefully and thoughtfully.

Xilren>Explorers, Acheiviers and Socializers need not only some PVP but a certain amount of random painful death in order not to get bored?!?

Socialisers and explorers don't need PvP. Achievers don't necessarily either (depending on how the rest of the game is constructed), but they need PD or something close to it. Without that, what are they achieving?

People who don't want to die (socialiers) don't have to go into the places where they're at risk of dying. They won't reach the top of the tree, but they're not into that anyway. True explorers don't care about PD one way or the other, except inasmuch as it's a tiresome inconvenience. Achievers need some concept of loss, however, because otherwise achievement isn't achievement, it's just progression.

There are other ways to do this, yes, of course. PD is only a valid concept in games which are built around combat - I wouldn't advocate it for a game where players tried to become pop stars or business tycoons. I'd advocate having some way for people to lose everything if they were prepared to take risks, though, and I'd advocate rewarding people who DID take risks commensurately.

Bebblebrox>Rather, it appears to me that he was trying to drive home the point that larger risk=more appreciation of reward=longer retention.

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying, only somewhat less coherently than your summary!

>I really didn't feel he was trying to argue a point as much as he was pointing out one of the largest issues game designers have to face: Higher death penalty/lower player base/higher retention vs. No penalty//larger player base/lower retention.

Correct. I had a motive, in that I wanted game designers (and players, although that hope was somewhat fainter) actually to think about the issues rather than considering mere mention of the subject taboo. There ARE ways to address PD and PKing other than switching them off or condemning them to their own servers. Whether there are other approaches that bring the same positive value to the game as PD without the associated negative ones, well, that was the question I was throwing open.

Xilren>He seems to be saying that without Player Death (a meaningful death; one that hurts in term of items/stats/skills, or even permanant) brought about by other players, any game will not have long term viability, b/c "without that loss there is no game"?!? It can have it by other means - turning a newbie hose on it, or constantly producing new add-ons - but those are expensive. If a gameplay way to have the same effect could be found, it ought to be considered.

>he thinks player conflict is good b/c it gets people more involved, but it's also bad b/c it drives them away.

Almost. It's good because it retains them, but in today's climate it's bad because they won't come in the first place if they know it's there.

>Who really cares if your dedicated player base has been on for 10 years or more if there are only 1000 of them?

Well, those 1000 do, obviously.

Perhaps a more pertinent question might be who cares if you have a game with 300,000 players when you could have had one with 600,000?

>based upon what the market has shown to this point, most of the players subscribed to one of the "Big 3" do not prefer non-consentual PVP.

They don't prefer it in the form any of the big 3 used. Suppose you were designing a passenger ship just after the invention of steam engines. You suspect your ship will go faster with a steam engine than with sails, so you install one. Unfortunately, because no-one ever fitted a steam engine to a passenger ship before, the engineers put it too close to the back and its weight lifts the front up and makes the boat unstable. Hundreds of passengers get seasick and refuse to travel on your ship again unless you put back the sails, so you do.

This isn't necessarily an argument for using sails instead of steam, though; it could be an argument for putting your steam engine further forward. The failure of PvP with the "big 3" isn't necessarily to do with non-PvP's inherent superiority over PvP; it could be an argument for doing PvP a different way.

>He's stuck on the concepts that these game are simply pissing contests about who can get acheive the highest

For achievers, that's precisely what they are.

Now you CAN take all the achievers out of a game, and still have a stable game full of socialisers. It won't have as many players as if you'd kept the achievers - it won't even have as many socialisers as it would have had if you'd kept the achievers. You'll still have a game, though (well, you'll still have a world; whether it's a "game" or not is debatable).

If you don't want achievers, fine, ignore my article. If you do, well, hopefully it'll have given you some food for thought.

>My personally viewpoint is you could have just as successful, long term viable game with no direct PVP combat AT ALL if the game was designed to appeal to long term involvement.

But there's the dilemma: at the moment, there doesn't seem to be any discussion of how to design a game which does that, other than using player death or pumping money in from the outside.

>Look, there always has to be some cap on acheivement, and exploration, but not on socialization.

Actually, there doesn't have to be a cap on achievement. One approach that could be worth pursuing is to allow players to get to whatever highest level they can, with no limit. It takes them longer and longer to reach the higher levels, but there's nothing except time and tedium to halt progression.

>Designing games that allow people to foster long term social bonds seems to be the only way to extend the life of your game beyond continually adding new content (And no, i don't consider hating Mr Azzmaster b/c he ganked you and stole your dog to be a social bond that would keep people in game).

The bonds you get from PD are the "friendship under fire" ones, not the "common enemy" ones. Those can last a lifetime.

>Give player more and more options for how THEY play the game, not how you want them to play it.

Actually, that IS how I want it. I want a game world which is so full of things to do and ways to do it that there's no need for camping, or story arcs, or player classes.

>And most of the upcoming games seem to have come to the same conclusion: make PD optional. Let the player determine their own level of risk.

Wasn't that pretty well what my article was advocating?

LumsOtherHalf>He is firmly stuck on win/lose and 'it's a game". People want WORLDS not games.

You're teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. I've been telling people they're places, not games, for years. In a recent design document for a massively multiplayer persistent world that I was working on, I insisted that every reference to its being a "game" be purged in favour of its being a "world".

But you have to look at the bigger picture. Most people DO want worlds, not games, but the worlds have to have meaning. Achievers, who want games not worlds, add that meaning - they add the plot. If you don't have achievers, you don't get so many socialisers. Therefore, if you want more socialisers, increasing the number of achievers is one way to do that.

>You CAN'T win in a world - it's impossible - you can't win in ours either - everyone exits out pretty much the same way - dead.

And yet these games worlds don't even have that! Characters don't even die of old age. That inevitably leads to a world top-heavy with powerful characters. It's only through the death of the people in power that the real world gets to change - it was only the death of dictators from World War 2 in the 80s that enabled so many changes in Eastern Europe, for example.

Would you play a game where you were told, in advance, that your character would die of old age after, say, 3 real-life years?

>People stay because of friendships in all the big 3, that is a constant.

Yes, indeed, as I've said many times before (mainly because I first identified this phenomenon).

>Take a look at the numbers on PvP and nonPvP servers in any of the big 3 and justify nonconsensual PvP to a shareholder - I dare ya, I double dog dare ya.

Well were I in a position to take you up on that, and were I actually advocating PvP rather than mere PD, I guess I'd say that it would be like taking an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and making two edits. One edit has all the violence removed, and the other edit has all the violence that was removed but none of the rest of it. On the whole, people don't like a lot of violence, but they miss it if it's not there in a context where it should be. The majority of people would watch the volence-free edit, but it wouldn't be as satisfying as the unexpurgated version that they're not allowed to watch. The people who actually like the violence for its own sake would watch the violent part and get pretty much nothing out of it. Now if the two parts were married back together in just the right mix, it can make both camps happy (although that isn't actually the point; the point is to make the majority part happier - the minority is such a minority that they're not even worth considering for a mainstream product).

Damiano>a player that wishes to indulge in non-consensual-PvP should be required to give up their virtual immortality permanently to do so.

Yes, I agree. I'd take that as axiomatic.

>it is not _death_ per se that creates enjoyable tension (aka drama)... it is the believable illusion of it's imminence in a realm of actual safety.

That's a very important point. It's the threat of death which is of primary importance, not actual death. You have to HAVE actual death, otherwise there's no threat, but if you can usually get away using your skill, and it's only by staying around to try to minimise your losses of other things (eg. kit) that gets you killed, then it won't happen very often. On the other hand, if you WANT your character to die, you really ought to be able to cause it to do so.

>That section where he equates "player (character) death" to "perma-death"... I'm _still_ trying to decide whether that is drug-induced lunacy or simply a statement of a perspective that I am totally ignorant of. Probably the latter, but...

The reason I said "player (character) death" was to make it clear I was talking about the death of the character, rather than the player sitting at the computer. It's called "player death", but that's something of a misnomer because the player doesn't die, the character they're playing dies. I also meant death in the sense of permanent, you're not going to get resurrected, this is it, wave bye bye, think of a new name and start over. This is sometimes called "permadeath".

Damiano>I have to ask: have any of these designers ever actually played an honest-to-goodness face-to-face role-playing game?

Yes, I played a lot of D&D in my teens (and yes, that was D&D, not AD&D - my teens were a LONG time ago!).

>Have they ever GM'd even one session, let alone a campaign, or dozens of them?

Yes, I've GMed many, many sessions and a campaign that we played every day across a long, hot summer. These were the days when people designed their own, too, rather than buying modules off a shelf.

>Run a tournament event

I don't believe I've done that unless you stretch your definition of what constitutes a "tournament".

>or better yet, a pick up game at a convention?

Yeah, done that. Flash an English accent at GenCon and you can open all sorts of doors .

Domasai>Um...no. Mr. Bartle, I suggest you actually do a bit more research before stepping into this.

If you're going to talk about research, you might at least do a little yourself: it's Dr Bartle, if you have to use the sword of feigned formality on me.

>BTW, a quick comment on some of these replies: UO, AC, and EQ aren't worlds. In fact, they're in no way worlds. In worlds, there are no balanced classes; no worrying whether one person has equal opportunity to kill the other.

They're not worlds like our world, and they're not worlds as I personally would design them, but they're still worlds in the general sense of being (virtual) places you can visit. They're worlds in the same sense that Disney World is a world.

OK, that's about it. Have fun tearing it apart!

Richard

Damiano
02/25/01 09:04 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
I knew it was my own ignorance that was the problem.

My comments on designers and RPGing, take with a grain of salt. I know most of the vast majority of them have been heavily involved in RPG play from the beginning, and love the hobby even more than I do. It is just so frustrating to see these offerings constantly ignore tried and true techniques for encouraging actual roleplaying. Giving players a back story (or better yet, letting them develop it themselves) and a solid grounding in the setting prior to the start of the "campaign", to pick an example.

It was a bad day, and I had a headache... and very poor showmanship nonetheless. I sincerely apologize to anyone offended.

In reply to:

Xilren>So VI stopped ebay sales b/c they didn't want player jealousy?
Then why did they stop it then, exactly?

According to G. Zatkin at the USC conference, they stopped it because of their design. His explanation: the group-centric mechanisms in their design means that people become "trained" at playing their character over the course of the months spent developing it, and the challenges at those upper levels are tuned to require the maximum effort of a well-honed group. Allowing E-bay sales, according to him, not only hurts the buyer (who doesn't have the skills to effectively play the character), but also everyone he encounters (who cannot depend on that PC to fill his required role).

All the logic of which somewhat flies in the face of their semi-regular changes to high-level spells and tactics. If allowing _one_ player to be ineffective for a short period of time while they learn how to play the game is bad, isn't changing the effective tactics of an entire role in the game, and rendering _all_ such players equally inept while they blunder about redeveloping their tactics, infinitely worse?

In reply to:

Characters don't even die of old age. That inevitably leads to a world top-heavy with powerful characters. It's only through the death of the people in power that the real world gets to change - it was only the death of dictators from World War 2 in the 80s that enabled so many changes in Eastern Europe, for example. Would you play a game where you were told, in advance, that your character would die of old age after, say, 3 real-life years?

I would. In a heartbeat. Given certain other assumptions about the game, admittedly.

Oh, I agree with this so much it hurts. I've built it into my own "dream design" document, as a matter of fact, as a Lifespan value which can be affected not only by the raw passage of time, but by spell use (ala 1st Ed D&D Haste, for example) and undead attacks, as well as being part of the cost for certain "close calls"/death reversals. It also opens up opportunities for: seeking the philosopher's stone, fountains of youth, longevity potions, researching necromantic procedures for "side-stepping" death (lich/mummy), attaining sainthood in a "religion" to extend lifespan with the usual conditions, and a whole host of other historically potent plotlines and dramas that cannot exist meaningfully in the current mass market offerings. Even in the realm of sci-fi, there are certain powerful plots/themes with a longevity component (Niven's Pak Protectors, for less direct example): the quest for immortality could probably be considered a central theme of the human condition.

In reply to:

>That section where he equates "player (character) death" to "perma-death"... I'm _still_ trying to decide whether that is drug-induced lunacy or simply a statement of a perspective that I AM
totally ignorant of. Probably the latter, but...

The reason I said "player (character) death" was to make it clear I was talking about the death of the character, rather than the player sitting at the computer. It's called "player death", but that's something of a misnomer because the player doesn't die, the character they're playing dies. I also meant death in the sense of permanent, you're not going to get resurrected, this is it, wave bye bye, think of a new name and start over. This is sometimes called "permadeath".

I had no problem with the player/player character distinction. It was the automatic equivocation of PC death and permanent death that had my head twirling. You were, in essence, a step ahead of me.

I have to admit, it took me another two readings to make head or tails of that section of your article, even with your explanation. I think it was the way it lead directly in from the initial PvP discussion, and the fact that we are all usually so focussed on the latest MMOG stuff here that I, at least, often fail to back off and look from the wider perspective of MUDs to present. The first several times I read it, it appeared you were automatically equating PC death to permanent character loss, which as we know, is not the MMOG industry standard (quite the opposite, actually). It took a drastic change of perspective to realize that you were essentially saying that these games don't really have "death" at all, in any real sense... essentially, that their use of the term is a misnomer to begin with.

Or did I get it wrong, again?

In reply to:

>or better yet, a pick up game at a convention? Yeah, done that. Flash an English accent at GenCon and you can open all sorts of doors .

"Sorry, Craig. Everyone's going to play with some English gent over in the other hall, accent and all. Catch us after the tournament, okay?"

So it was YOU! Unfair! (Do you think a bad Monty Python impression with an "American Nordic" twang would work as well?... Probably not.)

On a more serious side note, though... some of the most enjoyable and challenging sessions I've ever run in my life have been at GenCon in the commons area. It's been -way- too long since I made it out there.

GenCon 2001 or Bust!

For my part... thanks for stopping in and clarifying your views, Dr. Bartle. Nobody is safe here, as you can probably tell, but at least everyone does get a fair turn in the role of whipping boy.

I do hope you'll come visit us more often...

"There is no problem that cannot be made infinitely worse through the proper application of utter ignorance." - Me

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

(Ed: removed a duplicate "here" and gave the man his deserved title.)

Edited by Damiano on 02/25/01 09:18 AM.

LumsOtherHalf
02/25/01 01:28 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Dr. Bartle....

I wish this had come thru clearer in your article - it did come across to most here as an advocate of the old free PKing system - perhaps most of us here are a bit overly sensitive to that having suffered from it's practical application in UO for too long - we know as a practical matter that allowing freewill in this regard doesn't quite hold up to theory. I didn't get into the perma death part as I can agree with the basic premise and necessity of it - I'll address that below.

>But you have to look at the bigger picture. Most people DO want worlds, not games, but the worlds have to have meaning. Achievers, who want games not worlds, add that meaning - they add the plot. If you don't have achievers, you don't get so many socialisers. Therefore, if you want more socialisers, increasing the number of achievers is one way to do that.

Well, achievers hmmm. The only type you have identified in your famous document about player types that I would not allow in a world of mine is a small subset of the killer group - known around here as the griefer. Not all killers are griefers by a longshot - and not even all griefers are killers, but if that avenue is open to them - that's usually the route they choose as they can cause the most destruction and disruption with the least amount of work.

But the motivation behind an achiever is much better served in a world than a game. Sure, some folks are always gonna think of these in terms of a game and look for their pellet in the way games historically have conditioned them to - but already folks are waking up. Achievers want to be known for something. I have a small streak of achiever in me - but I am content with personal fulfillment of goals. Most want to be for lack of a better word famous. The two things most important to an achiever are the challenges - and then the accolades, fame (or in some cases infamy) that results. If you relate the ideas of PKing and achievement together, what you get is very poor negative reinforcement. In world recognition of positive actions would serve everyone much better - achievers would get their pellet without the need to distress the population.

The other major area that can be looked at for achievers is mechanisms that allow a players REAL skills to shine thru their character. In FPSs - this translates to reflexes. In worlds - this translates to the proper use of craft skills which we have yet to see in these. Allowing tailors to truly DESIGN clothing. Allowing bards to really play their own music. Allowing craftsmen of all types to have as much flexibility as possible in the intangibles. Perhaps allow construction of housing via pieces. Personal creativity is a boat everyone has missed so far - I suspect in large part due to technical limitations, but I also suspect it's because developers don't appreciate the intangibles in a world - they are comfortable with tangibles of games.

One thing I think we have not seen nearly enough of in these is player education to potential. Folks come to these with the baggage of years of playing singleplayer or few player games. That sets them up with expectations and reactions that in many cases are not appropriate to the massive player environment. Not only do there need to be systems inworld to reinforce positive motivations that appeal to the different interest sets - there needs to be some effort on the developers part upfront - perhaps before they even get into the arena of the world to set the tone and expectations that the player will find. This is more important for brand new users than folks that have spent the last 3 years playing in one of these relatively new graphical MUDs, but even some of those haven't quite 'gotten it' yet.

>And yet these games worlds don't even have that! Characters don't even die of old age. That inevitably leads to a world top-heavy with powerful characters. It's only through the death of the people in power that the real world gets to change - it was only the death of dictators from World War 2 in the 80s that enabled so many changes in Eastern Europe, for example.
Would you play a game where you were told, in advance, that your character would die of old age after, say, 3 real-life years?

Ok, I'll address my ideas on permanent death here - I did not do so in my original post as at the core we are in agreement.

Meaning - how can ANYTHING have meaning if people are immortal? In short, it really can't - people are not equipped either thru experience or imagination to handle that. The one thing that is truly missing in these is some kind of meaningful timeframe.

The problem of duality haunts these and flys up to bite devs in the butt on a daily basis. How to make something affect the character without burdening the player. Since these are oftentimes played for years - no one wants the sense that they've devoted months or years to a project that will simply go up in smoke with nothing to show for it.

I wrote a rather lengthy article on how *I* would deal with this problem. Not only does this solve the meaningfully spending your time problem, it also addresses uberness, newbieness, economic problems, truly neverending longterm goals, and a way to really make a mark on the world.

I won't repost the whole thing here - but in a nutshell, it introduces time as a counter. People age - and they can also exchange aging (think of them as lifecredits - you only have so many) to compress tedious tasks. What this does is cost the character something (meaningful now that you only live so long) while NOT costing the player their REAL time. Along with this is the generational model whereby you only have one playable character at a time - but at the same time - you are having, educating, outfitting - children. Once your character dies (extremely rare - most in my model would retire in old age from diminishing abilities) one of the children you have spent time, money, resources on would take over. Not as advanced as their parent - but past that newbie stage that most longtime players dread if they decide they wanna start over again. If you have more than one child as a direct heir - once you are playing one of that set - the others go into a pool to be randomly chosen to replace NPCs of the world/area. At this point you really ARE having an impact and making your mark on the world. Your children inherit your reputation, likes, dislikes - I'd even let players script them to some point as to responses. The base unit of humanity is not country, religion or guild - it's family.

This provides neverending goals - you continue, you don't really lose the time you've invested, it allows a means to limit characters without artificial levels or skillcaps - there is only so much time. It also allows a totally natural way to make your mark on the planet/area.

Twinking that is seen in these is very much the natural player response to EXACTLY this problem - whether the player realizes it or not. They are providing their own goals in very much the same way.

Now - throw a layer on top of the generational model for politics or a judicial system - the weight you carry in a world or area takes on an entirely different tone. You really CAN make a difference thru positive means. Conflict is easy to supply thru direct confrontation - but it tends to be hollow, especially in a world full of immortals - you really don't have that much of an impact. By looking at humanity we have the answers, we can also tell the areas we have the luxury of clipping out. These worlds are enjoyable because we can make them and can tailor them as we see fit. I have never advocated trying to simulate OUR world - I have often advocated looking to our world to figure out what motivates people, what may be missing in todays society that people miss and are looking for an escape to find.

The Hanged Man
02/25/01 02:57 PM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
It would be great if one of the crack Lum Staff would interview Dr Bartle. We would still tear what he says apart but its interesting to hear what he has to say just like Ralph or any of the other opinionated game theory eggheads .

Richard Bartle
02/25/01 04:00 PM
[re: Damiano]
Damiano>My comments on designers and RPGing, take with a grain of salt. I know most of the vast majority of them have been heavily involved in RPG play from the beginning, and love the hobby even more than I do.

Hmm, I don't know if I'd go THAT far (grin).

>It is just so frustrating to see these offerings constantly ignore tried and true techniques for encouraging actual roleplaying.

Things that work face to face don't always work in a computer-moderated context, of course, and there are aspects of smaller-scale RPGs that you can't have in massively mutliplayer ones (eg. you could run an "Indiana Jones" style scenario for your local group of gamers, but not for 300,000 gamers simultaneously - the real world couldn't handle 300,000 Indiana Joneses, let alone a virtual world that was exclusively populated by them!).

That said, yes, there are things that you can do to enhance the role-playing experience which everyone who has designed their own AD&D or Call of Cthulhu or whatevr campaign has thought about, but which don't get used in persistent worlds. Although such worlds tend to be broad, for example, they rarely have much depth, and they almost never have any cultural depth (eg. historical backstory). Sure, elves hate dwarfs, but WHY do they hate them? Pure racist snobbery, or some kind of "desecrating the earth by digging holes in it" spiritual/scientific objection, or because the dwarfs keep attacking elven territory in orer to expand their own lands, or what?

>Giving players a back story (or better yet, letting them develop it themselves) and a solid grounding in the setting prior to the start of the "campaign", to pick an example.

I'm a strong believer in open-endedness in online worlds, and therefore am not all that impressed by long story arcs. They do have some advantages in terms of retention of players (particularly, if anecdotal evidence is to believed, female players), however they're not great at attracting newbies. Overlapping storylines, soap-opera style, are a better bet in my view, although my ideal is for the storylines to develop as a result of player actions, rather than of those of the game's management.

>It was a bad day, and I had a headache... and very poor showmanship nonetheless. I sincerely apologize to anyone offended.

S'OK, you don't have to count me among those offended (grin).

>According to G. Zatkin at the USC conference, they stopped it because of their design. His explanation: the group-centric mechanisms in their design means that people become "trained" at playing their character over the course of the months spent developing it, and the challenges at those upper levels are tuned to require the maximum effort of a well-honed group. Allowing E-bay sales, according to him, not only hurts the buyer (who doesn't have the skills to effectively play the character), but also everyone he encounters (who cannot depend on that PC to fill his required role).

There are so many things wrong with this argument that its hard to see where to start attacking it. However, let's just assume for a moment that it's correct, and the game is so balanced, and people can't get to a high level ordinarily unless they are skilled to play at that level. That would mean that Verant couldn't possibly have any objection to anyone buying a character of a level LOWER than one they had already. Furthermore, if they took X months to get to level Y, then Verant itself would be happy to sell them a second level Y character for X months' subscription fees. If that's the case, why haven't they done it? I'm sure there'd be lots of takers.

>Oh, I agree with this so much it hurts. I've built it into my own "dream design" document, as a matter of fact, as a Lifespan value which can be affected not only by the raw passage of time, but by spell use (ala 1st Ed D&D Haste, for example) and undead attacks, as well as being part of the cost for certain "close calls"/death reversals.

I like the idea too, but how are you going to persuade people to play your game when they won't go anywhere near one where their character is GUARANTEED to DIE?

>The first several times I read it, it appeared you were automatically equating PC death to permanent character loss, which as we know, is not the MMOG industry standard (quite the opposite, actually).

Oh, yes, sorry, I see now what you mean. Although I was talking from the point of view of "death" in the context of absolute, lose your persona death, for most players of persistent world games the term means the watered-down "ouch, that smarts!" kind. Yes, that would make it a little confusing..!

>t took a drastic change of perspective to realize that you were essentially saying that these games don't really have "death" at all, in any real sense... essentially, that their use of the term is a misnomer to begin with.

Yes, that's indeed what I was saying. "You call THAT death? HA! Now this, THIS is death! Muahahaha!"

>(Do you think a bad Monty Python impression with an "American Nordic" twang would work as well?... Probably not.)

So long as you don't end up sounding like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. There isn't an English native alive who doesn't find that hilarious.

>or my part... thanks for stopping in and clarifying your views, Dr. Bartle.

Just call me Richard. Dr Bartle is for formal occasions, for sarcasm, or for getting hassled by in-flight attendents when someone in first class gets an upset stomach from having consumed too much alcohol...

Richard

Richard Bartle
02/25/01 04:04 PM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
Lumsotherhalf>I wish this had come thru clearer in your article - it did come across to most here as an advocate of the old free PKing system

Well, that's probably my fault for being imprecise, and for writing so much that the editor of Edge had to chop it down a bit before publishing it.

>Not all killers are griefers by a longshot - and not even all griefers are killers, but if that avenue is open to them - that's usually the route they choose as they can cause the most destruction and disruption with the least amount of work. If it's open to them, at least it lets you identify them and watch their every move. It's a bit like the argument for retaining usenet groups like alt.sex.pedophilia - not having the groups wouldn't get rid of the people, and at least this way you get to see what they're up to.

In a game where PKing is a viable strategy for advancing levels, people will PK whether they're in it for the fun, the points, or to inflate their egos. The hard core PKers are the ones who would still play a game where if you did kill "dead dead" someone you attacked in a fight, you lost your own character too. Whether griefers would fit into that category or a general across-the-board set of attention-seekers is, I suppose, currently a matter of personal opinion.

>Achievers want to be known for something.

Well, yes, but I wouldn't necessarily say that this was their primary aim. They can decide to achieve at the level of goals they determine themselves rather than those proposed by the game, but they have to have some kind of absolute measure so they can gauge their success. If there were a "fame" property for characters, for example, then it's quite conceivable an achiever would aim to maximise this. If it were more subjective, though, with fame measured in human terms and not in the game world itself, they're probably not going to care about it a great deal.

>The two things most important to an achiever are the challenges - and then the accolades, fame (or in some cases infamy) that results.

They want challenges that they can overcome and tangible recognition that they have overcome them. They may be competitive with their peers in measurable ways, "I made level 43 yesterday, youhave some catching up to do", but they're nowhere near as desperate for attention as killers (in the classical 4 player types sense). Killers put their own fame/infamy ahead of everything else, because they measure themselves against other people - they (usually) have a need to show themselves to be superior in some way to others. Achievers, while happy to accept whatever kudos comes their way, don't live for it. For them, it's beating the world that matters, not beating its inhabitants.

>If you relate the ideas of PKing and achievement together, what you get is very poor negative reinforcement.

You generally do, but it doesn't have to be this way. In particular, if you could contrive some way to ensure that PKs never amounted to much no matter what they do, it would act as a positive reinforcement against PKing. Players would try it, find it was a losing strategy, and abandon it. It's an approach I've used for many years in my MUD, but it would be extremely hard to extend into a game with many times its number of players. PKs can't really hunt in packs in a medium sized MUD, but they can do it with ease on a 3,000-player server.

>The other major area that can be looked at for achievers is mechanisms that allow a players REAL skills to shine thru their character.

Again, this is where PD would help, if only people would play games where PD could occur...

>Allowing tailors to truly DESIGN clothing. Allowing bards to really play their own music. Allowing craftsmen of all types to have as much flexibility as possible in the intangibles.

Until about 3 months ago, I was working on a game where we did have this - well, an analogy to it - basically by implementing fashion. Objects were identified as being equivalences, and players would buy them. There was a curve defined for each object type which defined its fashion rating, based on how many people owned objects of that kind. For example, say the default fashionability rating of a skirt was 50. A bunch of people with high "cool" ratings start buying skirts where the length parameter was "ankle" instead of "knee". As more of them buy it, the skirt's fashionability rises, perhaps peaking when maybe 10% of skirt owners have ankle-length skirts. These characters would get an increase in their own "cool" rating. As more people buy the skirts, though, they become commonplace - or as fewer buy them, they stop being fashionable. In either case, the level drops back to the default of 50. In the meantime, people have been seeking the next fashion - maybe yellow skirts, or skirts with pleaats - and the process starts again.

This kind of approach could be adapted to handle any kind of creative act by players in a game. If your tailor character designs clothing that other characters like enough to buy, your reputation as a designer goes up and the NPCs will buy from you too. If your pots are hideously ugly, no-one will buy unless you drop the price.

The disadvantage to this is that it's open to abuse from mule characters' fixing the market. I'd hope that the players would organise a tailors' (or whatever) guild to combat this with a more powerful cartel of their own, but you can never be sure what they'll do...

>Folks come to these with the baggage of years of playing singleplayer or few player games. That sets them up with expectations and reactions that in many cases are not appropriate to the massive player environment.

While they think of them as "computer games", sold in "computer games shops", we'll always have that problem. At least products like UO, EQ and AC look like games - think how hard it is for text MUDs and their ilk to attract new players! They look worse than HTML!

>Meaning - how can ANYTHING have meaning if people are immortal? In short, it really can't - people are not equipped either thru experience or imagination to handle that. The one thing that is truly missing in these is some kind of meaningful timeframe.

No disagreement from me on that!

>no one wants the sense that they've devoted months or years to a project that will simply go up in smoke with nothing to show for it.

Everything tangible may go up in smoke, but the player's own knowledge doesn't. This is good for games which are rich and deep and depend on skill and a network of friends, but bad for games where skill isn't really a huge factor and high-level characters can't interact productively with low-level ones. Sadly, the way that most games are designed today and are being designed for tomorrow, the effect of actual player skill on the success of a character is much less than the effect of the character's stats are. It shouldn't be that way, but it's understandable when there are web sites giving away every speck of information about a game so people can find stuff out about it at their leisure.

>People age - and they can also exchange aging (think of them as lifecredits - you only have so many) to compress tedious tasks. What this does is cost the character something (meaningful now that you only live so long) while NOT costing the player their REAL time. Along with this is the generational model whereby you only have one playable character at a time - but at the same time - you are having, educating, outfitting - children.

Yes, I've come across this suggestion before. I like it, but your problem is persuading newbies to like it...

Richard

Boogaleeboo
02/25/01 08:30 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
These past few threads,in addition to being informative,have shown me that spam kills.I make one comment about Bartle,and the next post he shows up.Um....Jesus has nice abs.

1.This is not a game. 2.Here and now,you are alive.

LumsOtherHalf
02/25/01 08:30 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
>You generally do, but it doesn't have to be this way. In particular, if you could contrive some way to ensure that PKs never amounted to much no matter what they do, it would act as a positive reinforcement against PKing. Players would try it, find it was a losing strategy, and abandon it. It's an approach I've used for many years in my MUD, but it would be extremely hard to extend into a game with many times its number of players. PKs can't really hunt in packs in a medium sized MUD, but they can do it with ease on a 3,000-player server.

Well, we don't have to look any farther than the early days of UO to see this application of theory. That is exactly what happened there - little nudges taking away all the supposed advantages and adding punishments for this kind of behavior. What it resulted in was extremely upset users who felt disenfranchised. In short - the overwhelming concensus among that population was - if the game lets me - I shouldn't be punished for it. The gradual limitations were perhaps worse than if they had taken a hard stance immediately. My personal suggestion at the time of the original rep system - if you leave victimization in - the victimizer pays in permadeath upon his death. The theory that people would rise up and control the PK population simply don't work when the PK is back in business in 5 minutes - there is no sense of justice at all. But still - PKs cried - that's not fair - the game LET'S me - that's why the game can't let them expect in consensual modes. Once consensual - it's not PKing anymore, it's PvP which can be extremely beneficial and enjoyable.

>Until about 3 months ago, I was working on a game where we did have this - well, an analogy to it - basically by implementing fashion. Objects were identified as being equivalences, and players would buy them. There was a curve defined for each object type which defined its fashion rating, based on how many people owned objects of that kind. For example, say the default fashionability rating of a skirt was 50. A bunch of people with high "cool" ratings start buying skirts where the length parameter was "ankle" instead of "knee". As more of them buy it, the skirt's fashionability rises, perhaps peaking when maybe 10% of skirt owners have ankle-length skirts. These characters would get an increase in their own "cool" rating. As more people buy the skirts, though, they become commonplace - or as fewer buy them, they stop being fashionable. In either case, the level drops back to the default of 50. In the meantime, people have been seeking the next fashion - maybe yellow skirts, or skirts with pleaats - and the process starts again.

Hehe, this sounds interesting - but this is also a perfect example of tangible vs. intangible. While it certainly couldn't hurt to have this for those that feel they need something within the gameworld to give them milestones of success - to truly give tailors creative powers would be much more satisfying for both the tailor - and the customer - than game mechanics - this is intangible, can't easily be measured. Would I care if my cool score was high? Probably not - what I would care about is someone seeking me out because they saw someone in an outfit I designed - liked it - and wanted ME to use MY taste to design one for them. That's not something you can really measure directly.

In my tailoring system - game mechanics might limit what patterns you had access to and possibly supplies based on skill - but how you assembled the pieces would be up to the players real skill and taste. By using pieces and allowing various colors, transparencies, textures etc - you can have nearly an infinite variety. That's the way sewing really works - I can take this bodice - with those sleeves, with this collar and create something totally unique - or at least different than where those 3 pattern pieces came from. The barbie doll factor is alive and well in these - and is every bit as observable among male players as female players. Another gameplay tangible would be to add attributes to components - but I've seen MANY people give up supposed gameplay benefits in favor of a look they prefer. The barbie doll syndrome has been majorly underestimated so far in what we have. From the buyers point of view - being able to look unique also ties into world impact. Granted - it's a small impact, but looking and feeling unique is the first step to both immersion and the sense you are really there. For the same reason people like to decorate their homes in UO - people want their avatars to be as unique as they can possibly make them.

>The disadvantage to this is that it's open to abuse from mule characters' fixing the market. I'd hope that the players would organise a tailors' (or whatever) guild to combat this with a more powerful cartel of their own, but you can never be sure what they'll do...

Well, that's why I favor one playable character at a time. Folks can and will go buy multiple accounts - that is not something I'd be overly concerned with. If someone feels they want 4 accounts, more power to them - since you can only really spend any time on one at a time, they are reaping the benefits directly in proportion to the support they are giving the enterprise.

>Yes, I've come across this suggestion before. I like it, but your problem is persuading newbies to like it...

Well, it has to be presented in a way to make them realize this is not something being taken away - but something added, namely long term goals and depth to the world. Since this is also pretty much the way the world works - it's also extremely intutitive. Although character building will always be a part of these - the focus really needs to swing away from that as a PRIMARY goal. UO proved that although some will complain if you move the milestones (i.e., make things eaiser than some think they should be) life goes on - that what would be the end in a levelbased outlook is only the beginning if the focus is on living in the world. You are absolutely correct in the player doesn't lose knowledge - which is another reason not to make them go thru that newbie stage more than once. Using the generational approach - your focus is on more than just yourself - to impact the world to the greatest extent - you also need to be worried about your children, their education, your reputation - for your posterity thru them. Once you have to be worried about others you also instantly have reasons to pursue goals as well as protect them (should things of that nature be allowed). I firmly believe once the checks and balances of all this is ironed out - this is the model that will come to be used in one form or another.

You touched briefly on what female gamers may want out of these - I've written extensively on that very subject purely thru my own experiences - and thru observation. What I've observed is that the list of wants isn't all that different in the male and female player - but that the order of priority of them tends to be a tad different.

Intangibles will rank higher on the females list than the males. Doesn't mean the male player doesn't like them - just that in order of importance, they are further down their list. Females will absolutely be more concerned with the reasons and purpose behind things than their male counterparts. Females will also be far less tolerant of violence towards their avatar that has no fictional rational whatsoever. That said - if she is inclined to revenge - no male can hold a candle to the lengths a female is willing to go to exact it. Most however will not seek revenge - they are much more likely to simply extract themselves from the world so as not to be subjected to that kind of abuse. Socialization also tends to be a bit higher on the females priority list than a males and these worlds are absolutely perfect for that - as long as they are not driven out.

Dan Homerick
02/25/01 11:38 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
In regards to player-death in general, I think it's worthwhile to point out that the mechanism used for it in games like Diablo II (hardcore) only represents one rather simplistic, extreme style of implementation. When reading Bartle's article, many people -- I'd go so far as to say most people -- don't think beyond the well-known Diablo style. Pity, really, because the "One Strike, Yer Out" system is so drastically different than what would be appropriate for the current crop of games.

When the reader so flat out disagrees with an article that they simply rant and rave in response -- not much gets done. Too much confrontation, too big of a jump for them to swallow, it just leads to them tuning out, rather than listening in and being convinced.

I've got to wonder just how much more effective the article would have been had it taken the time to establish that Perma-Death could be composed of something as low-impact as a "Nine Lives" system, or a "Non-Guaranteed Resurrection" system where the player has only a 1% chance of becoming perma-dead. Both of these low-impact versions still present (admittedly lowered) levels of the tension and achievement that he was talking about, but without forcing the reader to make such an abrupt shift in their concept of how the game would play out.

By ensuring that the reader only has to follow you through a small change in their gameplay, it leaves them more willing to follow you across what is a fairly large conceptual leap. Once you've got them conceptually in the land of permadeath, you can then, at some later point, tighten it down and aim for whatever level of extremity of it you choose.

Or is this sort of badgering about the style of the writing and about the techniques used not appropriate? am I supposed to be responding to his actual ideas?

Oh yeah. It wasn't a think piece. He wasn't actually saying anything new. He was just trying, rather clumsily, to change people's minds.

- Faerlyt

Domasai
02/26/01 01:53 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
{Domasai>Um...no. Mr. Bartle, I suggest you actually do a bit more research before stepping into this.}

If you're going to talk about research, you might at least do a little yourself: it's Dr Bartle, if you have to use the sword of feigned formality on me.

Apologies for using the incorrect moniker; I'll see to it that I use the appropriate one from now on. As for 'feigned formality'...Sorry if you took it that way, but it was in no way fake. My remarks may've been biting (even inaccurate), but that's the nature of posting on LtM's boards.

{BTW, a quick comment on some of these replies: UO, AC, and EQ aren't worlds. In fact, they're in no way worlds. In worlds, there are no balanced classes; no worrying whether one person has equal opportunity to kill the other.}

They're not worlds like our world, and they're not worlds as I personally would design them, but they're still worlds in the general sense of being (virtual) places you can visit. They're worlds in the same sense that Disney World is a world.

True, but then we're using the word 'world' in different ways. In Disney World, 'world' is referring to a realm of social activity; it's to imply a place where people can indulge in the collected fantasies and creations of Disney.

In your other way of using it, as in '(virtual) places you can visit,' wouldn't it be a bit too broad a definition? I mean, wouldn't this also make a chat room a 'world'? Under your two definitions, yes, the present crop of MMOGs would count as worlds.

When I commented before, I used bad judgment and I apologize. I won't excuse my behavior any more than I'll defend it. I've admired a lot of your work, and on that alone, I should've shown the proper respect. It just didn't occur to me to use 'Dr.' or to amend my comments to be less aggressive than I'm accustomed to writing on these boards.

As for your philosophy: I'm with you there. I don't want this industry to be repetitive. If that was the intent of your article, then I'm glad you wrote it (even if I don't agree with you on a number of issues).

Fighting a bear in UO: http://www.adcritic.com/content/john-west-red-salmon-bear-fight.html

Richard Bartle
02/26/01 03:58 AM
[re: Boogaleeboo]
Boogaleeboo>These past few threads,in addition to being informative,have shown me that spam kills.I make one comment about Bartle,and the next post he shows up.Um....Jesus has nice abs.

I think the phrase you're looking for is "speak of the devil...". (grin)

Richard

Richard Bartle
02/26/01 05:55 AM
[re: Domasai]
This is another bulk assortment of replies to points raised in various postings.

Lumsotherhalf>Well, we don't have to look any farther than the early days of UO to see this application of theory.

Well, to see one application of it.

>In short - the overwhelming concensus among that population was - if the game lets me - I shouldn't be punished for it.

So this overwhelming consensus is presumably also fully behind people exploiting bugs they find in the code?

Golf lets you hit balls into bunkers and lakes, but do you hear golfer complaining of being punished for it? TV remote controls let you switch channels at critical moments during movies, but do people moan that the manufacturers ought to figure out a way to stop people doing it? My computer lets me delete files irrevocably when I empty the recycle bin, but do I blame Microsoft when I lose something that way I didn't want to?

By definition, anything that players can do in the game, it "lets them" do. Therefore, also by definition, what they want is for there to be NO punishment in the game at all. Every time you fight a mobile, you should win without a scratch - after all, any damage would be "punishment". What kind of game would that be? It wouldn't have any lows, only highs - yet highs without lows are worthless.

OF COURSE players are going to say "if the game lets me, I shouldn't be punished". There aren't many people who would willingly agree to let people punish them for doing anything, given the option!

>The gradual limitations were perhaps worse than if they had taken a hard stance immediately.

Yes, I agree. However, UO was the first major game with this kind of issue, and the designers had no past examples to work with. Getting it exactly right from the very start was next to impossible. I think they did rather well, given the circumstances.

>The theory that people would rise up and control the PK population simply don't work when the PK is back in business in 5 minutes

That's right. If people have to invest a lot of time and effort to get a character to the stage where it can take on another character in a fight and they won't simply be able to run away, it means a) they can't take up PKing on a whim, and b) they don't attack anywhere near as often as they're frightened of dying themselves. Unfortunately, with games that have masses of players, these points aren't always valid: you can get hordes of organised throwaway PKs banding together to take on someone much higher level.

>PKs cried - that's not fair - the game LET'S me

Well a real-life lavatory lets people stick their heads down it and flush, but not many people do...

>Hehe, this sounds interesting - but this is also a perfect example of tangible vs. intangible.

It was a way to move the intangible into the realms of the tangible. Not ideal, but at least it gave people a sense that their creative skills were being judged by other people, not by a computer.

>Would I care if my cool score was high? Probably not

You wouldn't necessarily complain, though (grin).

>what I would care about is someone seeking me out because they saw someone in an outfit I designed - liked it - and wanted ME to use MY taste to design one for them. That's not something you can really measure directly.

I agree. The "coolness" factor is basically just a way to rate a label, as in real life where people may go and buy a Paul Smith outfit not because they themselves think he's a great designer but because people who are educated in such matters think he is. Being a name just means you get to sell more objects, which lets you make more, and be able to experiment more because you can take the loss if your collection fails. Selling one-off, individual items is rewarding at a personal level, but can be frustrating if no-one buys because they don't know who you are.

>Another gameplay tangible would be to add attributes to components - but I've seen MANY people give up supposed gameplay benefits in favor of a look they prefer.

That's because most people are socialisers. Achievers would play a naked hideous character of the opposite sex if they felt the gameplay advantages were sufficient.

>looking and feeling unique is the first step to both immersion and the sense you are really there.

That's an interesting point of view I haven't come across before. I'll have to give it some thought.

Great thought it is for tailors, it doesn't really help bakers or weaponsmiths, though.

>Well, that's why I favor one playable character at a time.

Me too, but it's impossible to police.

>Well, it has to be presented in a way to make them realize this is not something being taken away - but something added, namely long term goals and depth to the world.

This, as you will have noticed by the response to my article, is not exactly easy...

>What I've observed is that the list of wants isn't all that different in the male and female player - but that the order of priority of them tends to be a tad different.

There are also particular common sub-categories of male and female behaviour that I've noticed in games over the years. No way am I ever going to write about them, though!

Faerlyt>Pity, really, because the "One Strike, Yer Out" system is so drastically different than what would be appropriate for the current crop of games.

The current crop of games are pretty well inviolate. It's the next-but-one crop of games where we might see some innovation in this area.

>I've got to wonder just how much more effective the article would have been had it taken the time to establish that Perma-Death could be composed of something as low-impact as a "Nine Lives" system, or a "Non-Guaranteed Resurrection" system where the player has only a 1% chance of becoming perma-dead.

I didn't have that degree of freedom. As it was, I went several hundred words over the number allowed, and the article was cut as a result.

>Or is this sort of badgering about the style of the writing and about the techniques used not appropriate? Am I supposed to be responding to his actual ideas?

You were supposed to read the article and be set thinking. Whether that thinking was cogent, coherent and imaginative or not is another matter, of course. I was trying to provoke thought; if debate came too, so much the better.

>Oh yeah. It wasn't a think piece. He wasn't actually saying anything new. He was just trying, rather clumsily, to change people's minds.

I'm sorry you think that, but I guess I should be pleased that at least you did think!

Domasai>As for 'feigned formality'...Sorry if you took it that way, but it was in no way fake.

OK, apologies accepted. There's usually a reason for people to be formal to me in a posting, and it's normally either because they hold me in unnecessary awe or want to imply I'm some kind of pompous ass. I figured it wasn't the former (grin) so it was probably the latter. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

>My remarks may've been biting (even inaccurate), but that's the nature of posting on LtM's boards.

Oh, I'm sure there's far worse being said on other boards I don't even know about!

>In your other way of using it, as in '(virtual) places you can visit,' wouldn't it be a bit too broad a definition?

It would, yes, but I wasn't attempting to give a full dictionary definition.

>I mean, wouldn't this also make a chat room a 'world'?

Chat rooms ARE worlds, just not very big or deep ones.

I concede that there probably should be a difference in terminology between worlds that have self-sustaining environments that continue to change even if there's no-one in them and worlds that don't, but for the moment we don't have that degree of fidelity in the terms available to us.

>It just didn't occur to me to use 'Dr.' or to amend my comments to be less aggressive than I'm accustomed to writing on these boards.

Well, posting in a public forum is opening yourself up to attack, so it's understandable for people to come out fighting in the first place. Posters here come from a variety of games, which means they don't tend to reinforce their own personal prejudices in terms of what makes a "good" game or not, and therefore the discussion is more open than on boards devoted to individual virtual worlds. There's some aggressive language, but that's pretty well the house style for the entire site, so it's not out of place.

I'm not going anywhere near game-specific forums, though. That way lie Savage Beasts. Last time I entered one it took me 3 weeks to extracate myself.

Richard

Archimedes
02/26/01 10:52 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Well, thanks for clearing up what you meant by that article, Richard. It didn't seem much like your previous writings, probably because of the imposed word limit. Nevertheless, I think you could have made much clearer what you actually intended to say. Oh well.

I wanted to make it clear because of some previous comments in this thread that neither I nor, apparently, most of the other people who objected to the article, had any problems with the basic concept of permadeath. It might be tricky to get Joe Gamer to accept, but most of the folks posting here seem willing to give it a shot under the right circumstances. Note that one of the changes that MUST be made before permadeath is viable is that it can't result from frequent problems external to the game. These include massive lag, lost connections, and similar internet related issues.

I agree with the idea that player justice is a laughable concept as long as PKs are able to recover quickly from anything another player can do to them. I'm not sure, though, that player justice was ever a good concept to begin with. I mean, as an outlet for consensual PvP it's not really "justice" at all, and as a means of penalizing non-consensual PvP you have the problem that you are asking people to act as policemen during the time they expect to be playing a fun game.

One alternative is to make the game system itself punish or prevent PKing. I'm still not sure here, but the article seems to be saying that PK switches are bad because they take away excitement from the game. While I don't agree with this premise (I think it makes the game less fun for a small subset of gamers, but most gamers aren't all that into PvP anyways, and wouldn't miss it if it were gone) there are many other in game ways of making life difficult for PKs that haven't been tried yet. Aside from the obvious possibility of diminishing rewards for PKing and/or diminishing the penalties for being PKd there is also the possibility of having the game engine tracking down the PKs and making their characters' lives a living hell. Call this a Non-player justice system. UO tracks PKs, and prevents those characters from entering most towns, but this is a relatively easy penalty to get around. The game engine could be set up to cause guards to gradually home in on the murderer and either jail him (taking the character out of the game for a set period of time), or kill him. Obviously death in these games doesn't mean much as thing stand now, but if NPCs track murderers down relativekly quickly the murderers may find they can't do anything except resurrect and try to outrun the guards again, much like their victims had to do previously. Another possibility is levying fines upon PKs. If you have in game property outside the character inventory (bank boxes, appartments, houses) these can be taken away. I also think that the current trend in some games to make PKing difficult or impossible with a starting character, but to make other aspects of the game achievable with said character is also a good way to go.

Personally, I think that if a game could be designed where permadeath occurred but was rare, and mostly avoidable by the player's actions, that it could add a lot more meaning to the game in other ways than just PK-prevention. I think a large reason people see these games as games rather than world is because of the association with video-games where a character has N lives. I think the PnP RPG model of death (where resurrection, if possible, is usually difficult, time consuming, and costly) will encourage a very different mindset.

Xilrens Twin
02/26/01 01:40 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Geez, leave for the weekend and you never know who might drop by. Next time ill pick up the place a little first...

Nice to see you here; sorry if I came across badly but my initial reaction to that article was something along the lines of "WTF was he thinking!!". Having read it a few more times and you replies makes thing much clearer. Anyway, couple of points...

I actually think there are quite a few people who would like a ORPG type game with permanent death from a role playing perspective, but right now I don't think it very feasible for any type of mass market game. My generally problem with the concept in such a setting is simply that it seems to run counter to the idea that these games you are "building" your character. If your character is truly getting better/stronger/richer/more skilled through your daily investment of time into them, losing all that due to random chance (be it connection loss, server crash, bad random number roll in combat, or killed by a player whome you don't know) is very lacking in appeal.

It almost every game type deemed an RPG I can think of (be it computer or paper), their is MEASURABLE character growth be it levels, skill numbers, stats, status points, vassals, houses owned, gold banked, monsters slain whatever. (There is also the non-mesurable things like pride in accomplishments, friendships fostered reputattion garnered and the like). In many ways that is how the acheivers keep score. To accomplish that growth requires the investment of time, if nothing else, and it is that perceived waste of time which bothers so many people when it comes to permadeath. That time spent with the same avatar tends to form bonds of attachement which I think help the intellectual transition of viewing the virtual space as a world and not just a game. Persistance and all that. So in some ways I think the concept of permadeath is also a hindrence to crossing that boundy.

The only way I can think of that permadeath wouldn't hurt that much is if the game either has a very short vertical growth potential, if their is a process which allows new characters to "jump up" the growth ladder (inheritance and the like), or if the game relies more on player skill than character skills. Such a game would be very different than the old journey from newbie to demigod most crpg players are familiar with and expecting.

One last thought, if your game system has permadeath for characters, and in order to compensate for that you have some sort of elaborate inheritance/family tree system where you pass down some of your kit, or if you have a game based on player knowledge and skill rather than tied directly to the characters skills/abilities, do you really have permanent death? If you can fairly easily start a new character and be on equal footing with established characters, how much of a penalty is that really other than a name change?

Character death works well in p&p sessions b/c it is wholly managed by the DM/GM. A good GM could direct a game is such a fashion that a player wouldn't be bothered losing their experienced character b/c the GM could make it worthwhile. In a MMORPG setting, I still don't see how this concept would add to the long term viabilty of a game.

Xilren

Archimedes
02/26/01 02:14 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Xilren, just an idea about permadeath.

I was in a fairly long running PnP campaign where characters did sometimes die permanently. This happened fairly frequently to low level characters, and much less so to high level ones. The big thing was that it almosty always had to do with the character or group deciding to do something that was obviously very risky, and then rolling badly. If you played it relatively safe, and didn't make huge mistakes you would very rarely die, and never as a high level character. When you did die, however, there were no goodies the DM gave out, no compensation for the loss. You rolled up a new character at level one with starting equipment and skills. The excitement was there. You knew that death was possible, and even likely, if you screwed up badly enough, either as a player or as a group, but it wasn't too bad because death didn't just occur randomly, only as a possible result of the player's decisions.

That's a model that could work for MMOGs if done right (yes, it would be quite hard to do right). One suggestion here has been that permadeath be possible if the player decides to have his character start PKing others. Definite decision there.

Xilrens Twin
02/26/01 03:47 PM
[re: Archimedes]
I agree that such a game with permadeath COULD be done, I just think it would be a niche game rather than one with massive appeal (think nNWN :-).

The only real problem I would have in your permadeath setting is it doesn't happen enough for it to really be effective, so when it did happen it would be construed as unjust. If you can avoid it by playing it safe, and still advance (albeit more slowly), then that is what people would do. And if they happened to be one of the few "unlucky" ones who lost their character while playing it safe, I really wouldn't think they would want to re-start. If you make it to level 25 out of 50, and by pure random bad luck, die and have to restart from level 1, where's the incentive? Especially if your friends are still level 25.

About the only system I could envision is one where each character death is subject to review by actual people (i.e. GM's in the guise of gods) who may return the character to life, allow them to enter the afterworld, or re-incarnate them in a slightly different body :). 'Course, then you have to deal with the whole GM favortism/subjective ruling thing..

Xilren

Domasai
02/27/01 12:15 AM
[re: Archimedes]
Archimedes said, "I think a large reason people see these games as games rather than world is because of the association with video-games where a character has N lives."

Bingo. A world, to me, is a place where resources - be they lives, trees, whatever - are finite in number, where they must be either replenished or replaced in some fashion. To me, the current crop of MMOGs aren't worlds because they're TOO game-like; they bear no realistic perspective on anything really. I don't consider them worlds anymore than I do, say, Tribes or Counter-Strike; the only difference is that the two I mentioned aren't persistent. In other words, the context around you doesn't remain the same over extended periods of time; they usually shift between one map or another, on a set schedule or by player request.

To my mind, being persistent doesn't necessarily make something a world; it just makes the manner in which you re-spawn slightly different each time. The current ones simply aren't persistent enough to warrant considering them worlds in my book. Persistence with infinite resources is, IMO, a bit of an oxymoron, and it's totally adverse to my viewpoint of what a world is.

True, as Dr. Bartle pointed out, others may not share my opinion; he stated that even chat rooms could be considered worlds, depending upon one's definition. But to me, we've yet to see an online world; we've seen online games that act as mock worlds.

Fighting a bear in UO: http://www.adcritic.com/content/john-west-red-salmon-bear-fight.html

Richard Bartle
02/27/01 04:25 AM
[re: Archimedes]
Another bulk reply. All that time spent as a youth writing programs for batch processing must have had an effect...

Archimedes>Well, thanks for clearing up what you meant by that article, Richard. It didn't seem much like your previous writings, probably because of the imposed word limit.

Possibly, but it was also supposed to be an opinionated column, so I deliberately wrote controversially.

>It might be tricky to get Joe Gamer to accept, but most of the folks posting here seem willing to give it a shot under the right circumstances.

The problem is that those "right circumstances" vary from person to person. Well, that and the fact that Joe Gamers outnumber Lum Standard Thoughtful Gamers a hundred to one (sigh).

>Note that one of the changes that MUST be made before permadeath is viable is that it can't result from frequent problems external to the game. These include massive lag, lost connections, and similar internet related issues.

But of course - I'd have thought that went without saying (although I may be overestimating the perspicacity of some developers, here). The key is the ability to log all game-related data. Without logging, the number of people who die in fights from carrier loss, lag, hardware failure and so on is huge; with logging, it drops to almost insignificant levels. People who claim they were suffering lag are strangely reticent to pursue their case when you can show them a time-stamped log of exactly what happened which proves they were in full control of their character right up to the end (or close enough to the end that they'd have died anyway even if they hadn't pulled the plug on their phone line in an attempt to fake disconnection). If the logs support their case that they were not in control for some crucial part of the fight, then of course they get reinstated.

There are two reasons why this approach hasn't yet found favour with massively multiplayer games, however. One is the sheer amount of data you need to log to be able to reproduce events exactly - 1K per player every 4 seconds for some games. The other is the cost of servicing customer complaints - someone has to go through those logs to check the authenticity of a claim. Fortunately, there are ways to alleviate both of these problems.

>I'm not sure, though, that player justice was ever a good concept to begin with.

It's OK as a concept, but in practice it rarely happens. Every once in a while you'll see a lynch mob, and there may be organised groups of bounty hunters, but PKs can easily stay offline until the heat is off.

>One alternative is to make the game system itself punish or prevent PKing.

I agree. Internal controls are far more effective than external ones.

>I'm still not sure here, but the article seems to be saying that PK switches are bad because they take away excitement from the game.

It does, but I'm not talking about the excitement experienced by the PKers. Rather, it's the excitement of having been under threat and come out alive experienced by the non-PKers. Indeed, as the article would have pointed out if they hadn't taken out the crucial line (sigh), PKing isn't necessarily required at all, it's PD that's important.

>Aside from the obvious possibility of diminishing rewards for PKing and/or diminishing the penalties for being PKd there is also the possibility of having the game engine tracking down the PKs and making their characters' lives a living hell.

You could make it that PKers lost all their characters and were unable to play for 3 weeks after an attack and they'd STILL do it. You'd only deter the wannabes or the people who were role-playing a darker side of themselves (a common excuse for people dallying with PKing - no-one ever seems to want to explore the lighter side of themselves...).

>Personally, I think that if a game could be designed where permadeath occurred but was rare, and mostly avoidable by the player's actions, that it could add a lot more meaning to the game in other ways than just PK-prevention.

Me too. This is what my article was about. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't solve the problem of how you get people actually to play a game with PD in it.

Xilren>Geez, leave for the weekend and you never know who might drop by.

Well, one of the illusions you get when posting to a public forum is that the only people who read it are the same members of the small community who post there.

Similarly, I thought that putting my article in the relative backwater of Edge Online wasn't going to cause any ripples because no-one would read it. How wrong I was...

>I actually think there are quite a few people who would like a ORPG type game with permanent death from a role playing perspective, but right now I don't think it very feasible for any type of mass market game.

Oh, I believe the contrary! I think it COULD be sold to the mass market - just not to gamers!

>it seems to run counter to the idea that these games you are "building" your character.

But are you really building your character when it's never ever really tested? When success is guaranteed and the only variable is how long it takes you to achieve it?

I'm personally more interested in building the, er, character of the player than of the character. I know this is idealistic, and runs counter to the now dominant American school of role-playing (choose a path and follow it, rather than the British one where you wander around exploring until you find somewhere you like); however, I'd prefer to see the player able to develop themselves rather than the inexorable rise of character stats that passes for "building" in so many games today.

>If your character is truly getting better/stronger/richer/more skilled through your daily investment of time into them, losing all that due to random chance (be it connection loss, server crash, bad random number roll in combat, or killed by a player whome you don't know) is very lacking in appeal.

I addressed this in my article, though. If you don't want to lose your character, don't go to where it could happen.

If the worst happens, you shouldn't feel it was random, either, unless it was billed as such: "Pull the lever. 51% of the time you will double in level, and 49% of the time you will die. House limit, level 50".

>In many ways that is how the acheivers keep score.

That's true, they do use character stats to keep score. It's when they realise that the stats are meaningless because any half-brained loser can get them that the problems start.

>To accomplish that growth requires the investment of time, if nothing else, and it is that perceived waste of time which bothers so many people when it comes to permadeath. That time spent with the same avatar tends to form bonds of attachement which I think help the intellectual transition of viewing the virtual space as a world and not just a game.

Yes, this is all true. That's why the threat of losing it all can add real edge to an experience that you can't get any other way. If you don't want that kind of experience, fair enough, don't go where it could happen. However, don't complain when those who did risk their characters end up better off than you (those that weren't killed, that is...).

>The only way I can think of that permadeath wouldn't hurt that much is if the game either has a very short vertical growth potential, if their is a process which allows new characters to "jump up" the growth ladder (inheritance and the like)

In other words, as you spotted, if it weren't actually permanent death at all.

Archimedes>You knew that death was possible, and even likely, if you screwed up badly enough, either as a player or as a group, but it wasn't too bad because death didn't just occur randomly, only as a possible result of the player's decisions.

That's exactly the kind of experience I want to see recaptured. Some players say they get it from EQ-like "death", which is fair enough. The other effects of PD still don't apply, though, in particular making achievement actually mean something.

The critical thing is that the player should not feel that their death was random. They should feel that they made a mistake, or took too high a risk, or were let down by their friends - anything but random (well, anything but random or "fixed by those (expletive) admins who put my name on the to-kill-at-all-costs list").

Xilren>The only real problem I would have in your permadeath setting is it doesn't happen enough for it to really be effective, so when it did happen it would be construed as unjust.

I think here's considerable scope for narrowing or widening the window in which PD can occur. Knowing what the optimum model is, however, is something else - for some people, being killed 20 times in a row is the last straw, but for others once is more than enough.

>If you can avoid it by playing it safe, and still advance (albeit more slowly), then that is what people would do.

But what if you couldn't advance AS FAR if you didn't put yourself at risk? What if, say, there were 10 levels beyond those available to people who didn't venture into places where they could get killed?

>And if they happened to be one of the few "unlucky" ones who lost their character while playing it safe, I really wouldn't think they would want to re-start.

I can only speak from experience in text MUDs with PD, but in those people DO re-start. If you've been fair to them, if they knew they were at risk, if they ignored the warnings and went ahead anyway, if they held on too long in the belief that help would come and it didn't or whatever, yes, they come back.

If PD happens too often, people won't come back because they can never get anywhere. If it happens too infrequently, they feel victimised. If it happens somewhere in between - often enough that people at higher levels feel they've achieved something, but not so often that they can't reach the higher levels in the first place - then that's best.

>If you make it to level 25 out of 50, and by pure random bad luck, die and have to restart from level 1, where's the incentive?

Who said anything about dying to pure random bad luck?

Richard

Comstr
02/27/01 06:19 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Wow, I'm going to argue with a Genuine Gaming God. Twice in a year even. I feel like a Sturt light tank going up against a King Tiger, that know's I'm coming, and has already shot back at players far better than I.

Anyways, I read the thread 1st, then the article, so most of it went right over my head. The following assumptions- He's not just talking about roleplaying games, but MMOG's in general.

I know it's vaporwhere right now...but what about the Sim's online? I cannot imagine Player Killing in that...less it allows people to be Hannible the Cannible (ha ha). How does THAT fit into this???

What about the Online Flight/War/Infantry Sim's? Air Warrior, Warbirds, Planetside and WW2OL. Nothing BUT PKing, at low levels. 'Corse, in the current one (flight sims) you don't lose much bar your pride and your score. I *think* you'll lose equipent in PlanetSide, not sure. But how could you possibley have a game where eveytime the archiver enters combat, unless he's very very good, he'll die after a few missons? Hell, even the best Warbird pilots get killed after 100 or so kills. (And no, they arn't full of nothing but Killer types).

One of his major arguments is, no game without perma death in some way, won't have long term prospects compared to a game that will. Umm....huh? ("They could simply head for games where they know their character will be immortal, not realising until it's too late what that means for the game's long-term prospects.") In 20(?)years (well, 3 years since UO started) has this happened? A game will have long term prospects if it's well designed, not because it has one rule no others have! How long term is 'long term'? Some of the posters here (hands up please) have played UO for how long? Richard, what's a MUD that has players playing it for more than 3 years BECAUSE it has perma death? I've never heard of it (not a MUD player, but surly someone here would have mentioned it).

Actualy, come to think of it, I can think of ONE thing that WOULD make me risk many days of work. Real World Money. Kill the Dragon and win $500US dollers (not free acess mind you, MONEY IN THE BANK, prefrebly directly to my credit card). Gameshow style, but not a gamble. And I'd need evidence I could win 1st before I lept in. Somehow I don't see that happening till a game has no bugs and no cheats. 3010 Perhaps?

"Players will go for the games where they can't be killed, then leave when they get bored, without ever linking the fact that they've become bored with the fact that they can't be killed".

They get bored because....huh? I thought your Barlet types left for every other reason except that one. What about the Sim's, FPS's and RTS's and MassivlyMultiplayerTurnBased? Or are we JUST talking about role-playing-character-building-games-fundemently-based-on-MUD's.

Is one of the arguments that if you have imortal characters running around, less newbies will join, or is it the other way around?

"That's true, they do use character stats to keep score. It's when they realise that the stats are meaningless because any half-brained loser can get them that the problems start".

Arcording to every time I do your test, I'm an Archiver. But I'm not a very good one :(. I'd like to be more a fame kind of guy than a score kind of guy. Guess I'm too much of a socialiser.

"That's why the threat of losing it all can add real edge to an experience that you can't get any other way. If you don't wantthat kind of experience, fair enough, don't go where it could happen. However, don't complain when those who did risk their characters end up better off than you (those that weren't killed, that is...).".

But if they play better than I do they will ALWAYS be better off! Excatly what is the percentage of people in EQ who are level 60? They will always be able to risk more 'cause they won't die as often. Even if we both die at the same time when a Giant treds on us, he'll be higher, faster, as he's a better player. Are level 60 EQ characters NOT archivers? Surly the percentage who are not is very low compared to the archivers?

And as for the feeling of "risk of dienng and losing everything"....one of the reasons I quit EQ is becuase I don't want that feeling every time I have to run from Qeynos to North Karana. The feeling only lives on if the happiness does. In Warbirds it does, because dieing didn't lose me much, and I *could* enjoy a duel aginast an intellegent human being. That allows me to continue playing long after EQ drained me. The feeling I got at level SIXTEEN of losing 1 hours play...compared to losing 16 months of play? I don't like the feeling now, why should I like it when it's much much worse? Losing all your money at the Poker table does not feel any better afterwards when you think....gee, I *almost* won that jackpot.

"The critical thing is that the player should not feel that their death was random. They should feel that they made a mistake, or took too high a risk, or were let down by their friends - anything but random".

How? All MMRPG's use random (they BETTER be random) dice rolls. You can load it in your favor, but there is ALWAYS a chance something not working out, if you want the big reward. Less you mean twitch games (which have real randomess of human beings), Or Chess (Log onto the Zone, and you might play aginast Big Blue, or someone like me).

"Who said anything about dying to pure random bad luck?"

If it's aginast a Human, there will ALWAYS be someone better than me. In my case most of the population of the world. If it's aginast an AI, and luck dosn't come into it, I want to see this AI, in a game more complex than chess. If there IS no luck, how can I possibly NOT lose, as I can calculate the odds. If there is no luck, what ARE the odds? Do I lean via experiance? Wounderful, I get to go againast the dragon once per character, till I work it out myself. How long does that take? If other people tell me how to beat it, what accomplishment is that (Stratagy Guides anyone)? If I can see clear warning signs "Danger Will Robinson!", and step back, I'll just come back later till I see no danger signs, and walk through the problem. Less the Giant Spider can get lucky. Uh oh.

I can't write what I mean, I can't say what I mean, but I expect you to know what I mean. Edited by Comstr on 02/27/01 06:59 AM.

Damiano
02/27/01 07:52 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
I get tied up at work for a couple of days, and... good lord, I don't even know where to start...

In reply to:

Things that work face to face don't always work in a computer-moderated context, of course, ...

Quite true: I certainly don't advocate slavish adherence to traditional gaming systems/techniques. Much the opposite. On the other hand, the old baby/bathwater saw comes to mind.

PnP RPG: small cohesive group, strictly moderated. MMORPG: huge disjointed group, totally unmoderated.

As to translating the Indiana Jones concept, not sure. It's very much a "lone wolf" style, but so is a lot of high fantasy fiction/drama... and that certainly has no problem being seen as a proper setting for a large scale setting. A game based on the pulp fiction (American 20s/30s fiction, not the recent movie) might be very interesting to try to set up... there is at least one GMUD out there like that right now, but it's a bit too much "style over substance" for my taste...

In reply to:

I'm a strong believer in open-endedness in online worlds, and therefore am not all that impressed by long story arcs. They do have some advantages in terms of retention of players (particularly, if anecdotal evidence is to believed, female players), however they're not great at attracting newbies. Overlapping storylines, soap-opera style, are a better bet in my view, although my ideal is for the storylines to develop as a result of player actions, rather than of those of the game's management.

No argument from me. A bit more work for the service's management team, however, I think you would agree. This is where a good cohesive group of storytellers and GMs would be a good fit in the process, I think. Give them solid tools they are comfortable with and a solid setting/foundation to work from...

My original thought on back story for characters was a bit less comprehensive than that, however. To illustrate:

Current MMORPG as a PnP campaign: "Okay, characters finished? Great. Let's get started.

Let see... you are all in a tavern. What do you do?"

Current MMORPGs as they should be: "Okay, your character is ready? Great. Let's get started.

You've chosen to be a dwarf, and want to be a cleric. Are you interested in your parents at all? Okay, let's see: your mother, Karreda Mithrilweaver ka-Marradon, is a smith currently working in the forges at Karredin's Watch. Your father, Marradon, died in the Second Battle of Fommori some 30 years ago: not surprising, about 30% of the current dwarven population can say that about at least one of their parents. You were raised in Karredin's Watch, of course, and have many good friends amongst the guards there, most particularly your dad's second cousin Dwerrin and Gorran Deepstalker, Captain of the Guard (No-Go to the kids, because he keeps telling them not to go there, or there, or there...)

Now, on the world on Arnak, there are many gods, but Dwarves usually worship either one of their own pantheon, or the ancient Pentar empire god Thorbaddin, god of volcanos and the earth. Thorbaddin sounds interesting, you say? Okay, there are three major temples you could have trained at in your apprenticeship: one at Dororock in the northern steppes, a medium-sized town on the trade route between..."

For my money, I'd say the second would be the more effective way of introducing players to the world and encouraging them to invest a piece of themselves in it. Giving them people they "know", places they've "been", developing an overview of the setting and it's recent history as it would have impacted them during their "youth".

A concept from PnP gaming far more useful and applicable than the d20 randomizer or "hit points". A lot of work creating a forest of branches for players to select from amongst and climb along, I admit, but well worth the effort, I believe.

In reply to:

I like the idea too, but how are you going to persuade people to play your game when they won't go anywhere near one where their character is GUARANTEED to DIE?

I don't think you can, in many cases, until the player is ready for it. As I look back on my PnP experience, there is definitely a "learning curve" you see in players, over and over again. I truly believe the same curve will apply in the virtual realm.

Players often talk about the "magic" of their first session or campaign. They didn't have a clue what was going on, etc., but it was a blast.

Subsequently, one of two things happen. They become practiced and experienced, know the basic game rules in and out, can tell you what is going to happen 5 minutes before it does... and wonder aloud where the "magic" went, probably leaving the hobby for good shortly thereafter.

Or, they experiment with different game systems and genres, expand their notions of how the game should work (suddenly, not all orcs are "evil", not all humans are "good", not all adventures are "find dungeon, kill monsters, sell treasure, repeat", and so on...) and continually rediscover the "magic" in a less intense yet more satisfying way... making the hobby a life-long experience.

To my mind, the first batch of "Joe Gamers" are in stage 1, many nearing the end of that part of the cycle. Veteran PnP players, MUDders, etc. are waiting for (even praying for) both "critical mass" and the right systems/titles at the right time to take advantage of it before it falls away to become a repeat of the "yeah, I played that back when I was in high school/college" syndrome. Perhaps that is inevitable, anyway... but I certainly hope not.

I know, sounds corny, but I think there's a "kernel" of truth to all the above. (pun intended)

My two cents.

"There is no problem that cannot be made infinitely worse through the proper application of utter ignorance." - Me

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

Damiano
02/27/01 08:21 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
It is my long-held opinion that 1) a believable threat of perma-death is far more effective than it's actual occurrence, and 2) a perma-death implementation neither needs to be, nor should be, universal in scope.

The argument against permanent death invariably includes something to the effect of "but if I get to 30th level and die, it's certainly not going to be fun!" Quite true: but why are you so worried about it?

Only the cruelest hardened criminals "make sure" someone is dead to begin with. Animals IRL rarely attack until an opponent is truly dead, especially something they don't identify with "food"... a large part of the reason the rare "man-eater" in nature is hunted so ruthlessly in parts of the world where such is a potential danger. In war, who has time to check if that last opponent is truly dead? Highwaymen, thieves, and bandits generally want your money, not your life... put up enough of a fight and give them a chance to escape, they'll take it unless desperate. Undead, aliens, robots and the like might be real issues... but there are a variety of ways to subtly mitigate those effects.

In short, the only real danger of perma-death in a cohesive well-plotted setting comes from the other players to begin with... and in those cases, subtle mechanics can be put in place to reinforce the basic understanding that "this is just not allowed", without shredding the fiction as a byproduct.

On the other hand, an adventurer going hand-to-hand with the dragon terrorizing the land might -want- to go out in a blaze of glory (gods, I'm pun-nish today), especially if it turned the tide in the battle for his comrades as a result... i.e. a hero's death. The stuff of legend. That kind of thing.

And I do believe it can all be 99.9% achieved through a properly tuned set of mechanics in a larger robust and complex game system, yes.

My two cents.

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

0.5robo
02/27/01 08:48 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Richard Bartle wrote: >There are two reasons why this approach hasn't yet found favour with massively multiplayer games, however. One is the sheer amount of data you need to log to be able to reproduce events exactly - 1K per player every 4 seconds for some games. The other is the cost of servicing customer complaints - someone has to go through those logs to check the authenticity of a claim. Fortunately, there are ways to alleviate both of these problems.

Really? How do you alleviate those problems? I'm just asking because I'm curious, but I have a feeling there are some CS and server maintenance types out there (at EA.com, for sure... last I heard they were struggling to integrate Kesmai's "log everything" policy) who would sacrifice their eyeballs for any posible solution to the logging mess.

>Oh, I believe the contrary! I think it COULD be sold to the mass market - just not to gamers!

This is a very, very, very good point which I agree with completely. Gamer expectations have been inbred by game designers for decades, and now many designers feel like they've painted themselves into a corner. Well, that might be stating it too strongly, but the basic point: one of the main things stopping experimentation in the game industry is the hidebound relationship beween the designers and their hardcore fans.

>I can only speak from experience in text MUDs with PD, but in those people DO re-start.

Yes, and those MUDs sometimes have a rewarding re-mort system, where in order to unlock the more advanced races and classes, you have to live out a lifetime as a basic race/class, die a permanent death, and then reincarnate as a more advanced being. Kind of cool if you think about it.

To Comstr who was wondering if there are text MUDs where permadeath is actually a draw: yes. The one I always use as an example is Armageddon MUD (http://www.armageddon.org/), a fairly venerable permadeath MUD with almost unparalleled roleplaying. Most of the players there would agree that permadeath is directly tied to RP and narrative quality, and it does draw new players with those two aspects. Of course, the other necessary aspect is the rather small, socially-oriented player base which makes decent RP possible and keeps PKing under control.

As a side-note, I've been wondering why more MMOGs don't protoype as text muds. Well, EQ sort of did, and Shadowbane sort of did, but not fully.

>>It might be tricky to get Joe Gamer to accept, but most of the folks posting here seem willing to give it a shot under the right circumstances.

>The problem is that those "right circumstances" vary from person to person. Well, that and the fact that Joe Gamers outnumber Lum Standard Thoughtful Gamers a hundred to one (sigh).

I've always been an advocate of both PvP and permadeath (both, ideally, in a controlled fashion, of course... easier said than done). Both get a very allergic reaction from most players, even the thoughtful ones. With PvP I've noticed something I am starting to call "Post-UO Shock Syndrome" which as previously mentioned, is an allergic reaction to any kind of PvP resulting from formative experiences being azzr4p3d by early-UO PKs. But still, there are people out there who are willing to try PvP, because they saw some of the possibilities inherent in direct competition and conflict, maybe also due to their experiences in UO. So now you have a small but enthusiastic (and no, not mostly kewld00ds and griefers) playerbase who is willing, champing at the bit, to participate in a PvP experiment like Shadowbane. Many of them are achievers, socializers, explorers -- it's obvious from browsing through the SB Dev Boards. Perhaps one day the same will be true of permadeath -- but who will introduce this concept to the masses in the glorious, catastrophic way that UO introduced PvP? Atriarch maybe?

I should also note that even the PvP-heavy Shadowbane has geographic restrictions on PKing. I believe there are no less than eight PvP-negative areas in the Shadowbane beta world, situated around large cities. It's just that the point at which players are expected to "graduate" to PvP is much earlier than, say, DAoC, where PvP is an elder game. Assuming a fictitious 60-level scale, DAoC players can PvP after level 45, Shadowbane players after level 20, and the content of the games is tailored accordingly. I'm just pointing this out because it does seem that many or most MMOG designers are following this idea of geographic PvP separation. We'll see how many of the UO-type geo-exploits crop up.

Xilrens Twin
02/27/01 10:07 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

There are two reasons why this approach hasn't yet found favour with massively multiplayer games, however. One is the sheer amount of data you need to log to be able to reproduce events exactly - 1K per player every 4 seconds for some games. The other is the cost of servicing customer complaints - someone has to go through those logs to check the authenticity of a claim. Fortunately, there are ways to alleviate both of these problems.

Yep, that was the kind of thing I was referring to when I meant having an actual person adjudicating each death to determine if it was legit or not. It would be very cost intensive in terms of tech and personel. What kind of ways were you thinking might allievate it?

In reply to:

But are you really building your character when it's never ever really tested? When success is guaranteed and the only variable is how long it takes you to achieve it?

I'm personally more interested in building the, er, character of the player than of the character. I know this is idealistic, and runs counter to the now dominant American school of role-playing (choose a path and follow it, rather than the British one where you wander around exploring until you find somewhere you like); however, I'd prefer to see the player able to develop themselves rather than the inexorable rise of character stats that passes for "building" in so many games today.

Well, it depends on your definition of success. IMHO, I do not determine my success or failure by simply getting to max level or the skill point cap (even soft caps). My goals are much more short term than that (i.e. can I defeat this mob im fighting right now, can I complete this long quest, can i earn enough money to upgrade my gear to the next level, can i do something fun for/with my guild, etc etc). All of the above goals can pretty much be summarized as a simple "Am I having fun this playsession?" Much more immediate and attainable. If the answer to that short term question is "no" too often, I won't be back so the long term goals really don't matter much.

As to the time invested part. In many ways I think that any task in such a game MUST be doable by any player who applies enough time. That's why I think there needs to be a very stark difference between games that are character skill based vs ones that rely on player skils/knowledge. If I am playing a wizard type character, then when he reaches the appropriate skill level he should be able to use the same spell set as any other wizard of the same level. It may take him twice as long to get there as an "average" gamer (or half as long, it doesn't matter), but he MUST be able to do it. These MMORPG's must be about equality of opportunity in ways other games (even P&P rpgs) need not be. So yes, if any player invests enough time they can acheive the same heights as everyone else. Now while this might seem to put off the acheiver types, I actually think it assist them. Just b/c someone rates highly as an "acheiver" type doesn't mean they are actually good at it; them being able to still acheive those heights would be a positive aspect. If you limit it to only people who have certain personal skills/resources, you are preventing acheivers without those traits from reaching their goals, which I would think would lead to frustration.

Consider, if the about wizards spell set depended entirely upon the skill of the player rather than the character. In such a setting, you could easily end up with a bell curve of wizards power (i.e. a small group of highly skilled wizards with the "best" spells, large average group, small below average group). While that may sound fine, in terms of mass market appeal the majority of your players are NOT going to be happy with that. This reminds me of a discussion Hedron was having about "ideal PVP" being based entirely on the skill of the players thus requiring their characters be equivalents each other. It think that's fine, but it also doesn't seem to jibe with the "amercian" RPG model of developing your character over time (which seems pretty pervasive in both computer rpg's and p&p ones). At least with Hedron's type of PVP you could tack on as and "elder game" once players had maxxed out their characters, but once again, it would require all players being able to get to that point (equality of opportunity again).

Most people don't have a problem with that in the real world, but in a game setting they would scream about the "unfairness" of it all. :-)

In reply to:

But what if you couldn't advance AS FAR if you didn't put yourself at risk? What if, say, there were 10 levels beyond those available to people who didn't venture into places where they could get killed?

We will be seeing instances of this in several upcoming games. In DAoC, if you engage in the realm PVP game you can earn "realm points" for victories which you can use to improve your character. IIRC, In Anarchy Online and UO2, there will be geographic PVP and in those "high risk" areas you can obtain the highest level rewards. So we are seeing rewards for taking those risks, but not the related increase in penalty for dying in those areas. The carrot without the stick.

I guess the perceptions is people generally don't pay money to get whacked with sticks much (barring certain S&M fetishes of course..).

In reply to:

Who said anything about dying to pure random bad luck?

Well, there is luck in just about every combat routine you can think of. What I was envisioning is a situation where someone was "playing it safe" and died due to a series of really bad random numbers (the infamous, "I'll win if I roll anything other than 1" and you get that 1, several times). God I still have nightmares of one particularly bad series in a P&P game where i rolled something like a 1,2,5,1,2,1,10,1 and practically died to some low level grunt, which would had ruined any otherwise great adventure i was in the middle of. Luckily, the DM fudged it enough so that didn't happen, but a computer doesn't have that leeway. Unless you removed randomness completely from the game, it will happen. And if it does happen, resulting in the loss of your carefully sheltered character, you'd see more flame filled threads than whineplay :-).

Xilren

Stephen Nichols
02/27/01 02:01 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Richard,

You don't know me, but I've spent a great many hours thinking about and working on the concept of permanent death within persistent state worlds. I am a game designer and programmer by trade, which may or may not be a good thing. :) I was the lead designer for Sierra's Middle-earth On-line project (which was canned partly for the inclusion of permanent death in the design). I'll say right up front that I agree with your concepts in prinicple...

It seems clear to me that a system which includes permanent death can be viable so long as it is properly structured. To most game players, the concept of permanent death is tantamount to blasphemy. This is partly due to the fact that persistent state worlds are still so tightly coupled with the gameplay provided by their single player counterparts. Players expect a cooperative single player game, not a truly dynamic environment. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but the true potential of this medium will not be realized through mutation of single-player design concepts. Of course, trying to convince management that anything but the status quo is viable is difficult at best. But I digress...

Viable permanent death is predicated on rarity. If permanent death is common and uncontrolled then you will bleed customers at an alarming rate. PD should be avoidable through reasonable choices -- situations where a player might be permanently killed should be obvious. Of course, this is easier done for game controlled threats than the other players. One novel approach to the issue of non-consensual PvP is based on the concept of menacing and befriending. For a player to be able to engage another player in combat, a sufficiently poor relationship should exist between them. A similar concept is used in The Sims. Imagine that if you want to attack another player you have to instruct your character to menace the intended target. When in range of the target, your character will gain "menace" points over time with that target. This mechanism is made obvious to the target player through auditory and visual cues. Once the menace points exceed some threshold, combat becomes an available interaction. Conversely, if you want to improve the relationship between your character and another character, you can choose to befriend. While befriending a target, menace points are removed from the target over time. This action can counteract the effects of another player's menacing. Of course, if two players are menacing you, your befriending action will not prevail as it can only counteract a single menace per time step. When not in range of a target, your relationship will tend toward neutral over time. This is a simple mechanism that could fundamentally change the nature of PvP in a PSW. Even this simple system could be extended to handle the concept of anti-socialness. If a player menaces a large number of targets, anti-social points could accumulate. After a certain threshold is crossed, the anti-social player could be open to attack from others. The idea is to make the choice of fighting another player an aspect of the gameplay, not arbitrary.

What if you took this idea further and predicated the option of permanent death on similar metrics. Perhaps a player must engage in anti-social behavior for an extended period of time before murder becomes an option. Such a mechanism has the effect of allowing players to realize that another player is an up-and-coming Ted Bundy. Actions could be taken before a player becomes capable of murder. This could supply the limitations required to make murder rare, but not impossible. I think that trying to model some of the properties of character psychology (ala The Sims) would go a long way toward controlling the impulsive behavior of the population. Make interactions between characters more dependent on their modeled psychological state instead of the free-will of the user (of course, the free will of the player is what leads to the modification of the character psychological model). That adds an interesting aspect to gameplay as well as a useful mechanism for behavior management.

Anyway, I could ramble on -- and I will again. :) Consider my 2 pence deposited.

steve

Richard Bartle
02/27/01 02:55 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Here goes for another 2 hours of replying to messages...

Comstr>Wow, I'm going to argue with a Genuine Gaming God.

I think you'll find that most people who've heard of me in the online gaming world would regard me more as a devil than a god...

>The following assumptions- He's not just talking about roleplaying games, but MMOG's in general.

There are just too many definitions...

What I was talking about were what I'd ordinarily call MUDs if I felt that the people reading the article would know what I meant. There was a definite bias to the graphical variety that tend to be massively multiplayer. While these don't have to be formally stay-in-character RPGs, I was nevertheless assuming a gaming component and (implicitly) that people would play as individual characters rather than, say, as an army or as a party.

>I know it's vaporwhere right now...but what about the Sim's online?

I don't know enough about this to do anything more than hazard guesses, but I'd say that a) it's not first-person (this may be what you meant by role-playing?); b) it's not a game, it's a simulation; c) you maybe can kills Sims, eg. by setting them off swimming and then removing all means of exiting the swimming pool, or boarding them up behind a wall with no food.

>What about the Online Flight/War/Infantry Sim's? Air Warrior, Warbirds, Planetside and WW2OL. Nothing BUT PKing, at low levels.

I wasn't really talking about those. They're mainly intended for achievers only (ie. true "games"), for which the point isn't how well you do over individual sessions but how well you do on the whole as measured by some kind of high-score table or whatever. Achievers will play solitaire card games if they feel they could get their name on a high score list for doing so!

>One of his major arguments is, no game without perma death in some way, won't have long term prospects compared to a game that will.

Except I was at pains to point out that there are other, external ways (eg. constantly making improvements or bringing in hordes of newbies).

>In 20(?)years (well, 3 years since UO started) has this happened?

It's happened to text MUDs, sure, but to be honest they usually die for other reasons well before that happens.

>Richard, what's a MUD that has players playing it for more than 3 years BECAUSE it has perma death? I've never heard of it (not a MUD player, but surly someone here would have mentioned it).

Well there's my own MUD, MUD2, which still has players from 10 years ago in it. Indeed, I can think of at least one MUD2 player who cut his teeth on MUD1 back in 1985!

>Or are we JUST talking about role-playing-character-building-games-fundemently-based-on-MUD's.

Whatever you choose to call them, yes, that's what I was talking about. I guess that explains a lot of the things I was saying that you were disagreeing with .

>Is one of the arguments that if you have imortal characters running around, less newbies will join, or is it the other way around?

It's not the immediate newbies, but the ones who have been playing for long enough to see the kind of people who are at the higher levels and find out how long it took them to get there.

>But if they play better than I do they will ALWAYS be better off! No they won't. If you play 10 times more often then they do, they won't be.

>Losing all your money at the Poker table does not feel any better afterwards when you think....gee, I *almost* won that jackpot.

No, but winning money when you thought you were at real risk of losing it does. Poker is built around the maxim that loss actually has to hurt. If you're playing for matchsticks it isn't half the game it is when you're playing for something you actually value.

>How? All MMRPG's use random (they BETTER be random) dice rolls. You can load it in your favor, but there is ALWAYS a chance something not working out, if you want the big reward. Well if you want to be literal about it, yes, quantum physics makes the entire universe random so therefore you are ALWAYS going to die randomly, even in real life.

The thing is, sure, it's random, but it's a lot of random that tends to pan out to something reasonably predictable statistically. It's up to the player to look at the odds and make a decision. If they have 100% chance of escaping a fight were they to run now (but lose a few points for doing so), or a 95% chance of winning if they stayed (and getting a ton of treasure) and a 5% chance of losing (and losing big time), it's up to them what they do. The act that causes them to die or not isn't what the random number generator produces, it's the decision whether they ask the RNG the question or not.

Damiano>A game based on the pulp fiction (American 20s/30s fiction, not the recent movie) might be very interesting to try to set up...

I agree. I looked quite hard at Daimon Runyon style Gangsters as a milieu for a persistent world game, but it suffers from the same "equaliser" problem that dogs many of the more modern genres (the Wild West is another). Basically, you can't get round the fact that any oik can take hold of a gun and shoot you dead whatever skill you have, unless you compromise the premiss of the whole world.

>This is where a good cohesive group of storytellers and GMs would be a good fit in the process, I think. Give them solid tools they are comfortable with and a solid setting/foundation to work from...

Actually, I'm not a great fan of insinuating actors and storylines into games. I prefer to dream that the game world is rich enough and absorbing enough and deep enough that the players generate the storylines by their own actions. It makes back story for character generation harder, though, because when you write the game you don't know what the back story a couple of years down the line is going to be as it hasn't happened yet!

>You've chosen to be a dwarf, and want to be a cleric. Are you interested in your parents at all? Okay, let's see: your mother, Karreda Mithrilweaver ka-Marradon, is a smith currently working in the forges at Karredin's Watch.

This is something I'd love to see, although I have a nagging worry that if the game can generate such family history then there would be large numbers of players who would insist on being able to do it themselves but wouldn't actually be up to the job.

That said, there are techniques for introducing backstory into character generation. One way is to have a question-and-answer session where your answers to earlier questions determine the direction in which the later questions go. Another is a step-by-step history approach like the one MicroProse used for Darklands (now there was a game!).

I worked as a design consultant on one game (sadly aborted when the owners of the publishers funding its development pulled the plug) which not only gave you a family, friends, job and skeletons in your cupboard, but actually inserted them into the game if they didn't already exist!

>As I look back on my PnP experience, there is definitely a "learning curve" you see in players, over and over again. I truly believe the same curve will apply in the virtual realm.

I believe so too. "The market will mature", I say, hoping it'll happen in my lifetime (sigh).

>It is my long-held opinion that 1) a believable threat of perma-death is far more effective than it's actual occurrence, and 2) a perma-death implementation neither needs to be, nor should be, universal in scope.

I agree totally with 1). The only point I'd make is that permadeath nevertheless DOES have to happen sufficiently often that the threat really is believable. In Suffolk (that's an English county, for non-natives) I counted 14 signs warning of police speed cameras on the road between Sudbury and Bury St. Edmonds but no speed cameras. I may have been fooled by the signs once, but not on subsequent occasions. As soon as you realise a threat is empty, it's no threat at all.

>In war, who has time to check if that last opponent is truly dead?

The ones who go around sticking in bayonettes after their side won? The ones who throw the bodies into the shallow mass grave before bulldozing it over?

>In short, the only real danger of perma-death in a cohesive well-plotted setting comes from the other players to begin with... and in those cases, subtle mechanics can be put in place to reinforce the basic understanding that "this is just not allowed", without shredding the fiction as a byproduct.

I agree that some badly hurt characters may look dead but not actually be dead. However, a good majority of the ones who look dead DO have to be dead, rather than merely stunned or whatever. If everyone's going to get up and walk away, what's the point? And why can't monsters and bad NPCs do the same trick?

>On the other hand, an adventurer going hand-to-hand with the dragon terrorizing the land might -want- to go out in a blaze of glory

But how do you differentiate between someone who wants that and an idiot who wanders into the dragon's cave despite all the warnings just to see what sound it makes when hit with a mace?

Xilren>Really? How do you alleviate those problems?

I don't plan on being too detailed here, because I don't see why I should tell absolutely everyone how they can go about it (nopoint in being a consultant if you give away everything for free!). Basically, though, you can design the logging into the server code in such a manner that it doesn't take anywhere near that many bytes to record what's generally going on. Also, you can make the data available to players so that those with a grievance can do the looking-up themselves, you merely have to watch the clip they point you at.

>I have a feeling there are some CS and server maintenance types out there (at EA.com, for sure... last I heard they were struggling to integrate Kesmai's "log everything" policy) who would sacrifice their eyeballs for any posible solution to the logging mess.

Unfortunately for them, the solution starts something like this. "Before you begin programming the server, ...".

>Gamer expectations have been inbred by game designers for decades, and now many designers feel like they've painted themselves into a corner.

It's a two-way thing. If the players won't play your games, as a designer you have to make changes so they will - otherwise you're out of a job. The reason that upcoming games are PD-free is because that's what the players insist they want - it's not necessarily because the designers want it.

>one of the main things stopping experimentation in the game industry is the hidebound relationship beween the designers and their hardcore fans.

Yes, that's the crux of it. I'd also wrap in the media, where too many magazines continue to review games in terms of their graphics rather than their gameplay, their look rather than their interface, the way they're supposed to play rather than the way they actually play...

>and those MUDs sometimes have a rewarding re-mort system, where in order to unlock the more advanced races and classes, you have to live out a lifetime as a basic race/class, die a permanent death, and then reincarnate as a more advanced being. Kind of cool if you think about it.

I don't think much of it myself - it's usually another one of those delaying tactics that encourage people to play for longer without actually doing anything different - but it's popular all the same.

>As a side-note, I've been wondering why more MMOGs don't protoype as text muds.

Without the graphics, they wouldn't necessarily look any good next to a MUD that was designed to be text only. MUDs that know from the outset that they're not going to be graphical can have functionality that you wouldn't WANT to build into a MUD that was going to be graphical.

>With PvP I've noticed something I am starting to call "Post-UO Shock Syndrome" which as previously mentioned, is an allergic reaction to any kind of PvP resulting from formative experiences being azzr4p3d by early-UO PKs.

That's not going to affect more than a few thousand people directly, though. It's their influence on the thousands who didn't play UO but hear the horror stories where the problems lie. What started as a real situation is transformed into a myth which is far more powerful.

>As to the time invested part. In many ways I think that any task in such a game MUST be doable by any player who applies enough time.

Excluding the influence of other players, welllll, perhaps. It doesn't matter how much time a player spends in the game, though, some doable things they just shouldn't necessarily be able to do (eg. get elected to town mayor).

>If I am playing a wizard type character, then when he reaches the appropriate skill level he should be able to use the same spell set as any other wizard of the same level.

All things being equal, yes, of course. There may be possible adjustments for othr factors, eg. if your character took twice as long as everyone else to reach that level then theoretically you can't complain if he's twice as old, but these would most likely be only minor differences well advertised in advance.

>So yes, if any player invests enough time they can acheive the same heights as everyone else.

So do you have any objections to people being able to get higher if they do things where their pesona could be killed dead dead?

>Now while this might seem to put off the acheiver types, I actually think it assist them. Just b/c someone rates highly as an "acheiver" type doesn't mean they are actually good at it; them being able to still acheive those heights would be a positive aspect.

Positive for them, but not for everyone else. It's not for the sake of plodders that achievement should have meaning, it's for the sake of the non-plodders who are indistinguishable from them in terms of character stats, possessions etc.

>If you limit it to only people who have certain personal skills/resources, you are preventing acheivers without those traits from reaching their goals, which I would think would lead to frustration.

Or for them to change their goals. If someone wants to be a racing driver but is no good at driving racing cars, no matter how long they spend at it they're never going to drive in the Indianapolis 500. There should be other career paths where achievers who aren't great at levelling through combat or whatever can take.

I'm not advocating that all achievers should have first-class intellects and the reactions of a cobra, but there should be some minimal standards (at least in the former - lag makes the latter impossible to measure). If everyone passes an exam, why make them sit it?

>it would require all players being able to get to that point (equality of opportunity again).

Equality of opportunity means that people aren't ruled out of undertaking some task simply because of traits they do or don't possess which are irrelevant to the task. You can't stop a woman from being a firefighter simply because she's a woman. However, it's perfectly OK to rule someone out because they're not up to the job. You can stop anyone from being a firefighter if they're not strong enough, male or female.

So although I would agree with you that, say, stopping a player from being a wizard because he's over 50 is a denial of equality of opportunity, I wouldn't agree that stopping someone who was as thick as a brick from being a wizard was. They had the same opportunity as everyone else, they were just unable to take it.

>We will be seeing instances of this in several upcoming games. In DAoC, if you engage in the realm PVP game you can earn "realm points" for victories which you can use to improve your character.

This is good so long as the PvP can result in PD. I'd have to check, but my understanding is that in DAoC it doesn't.

>IIRC, In Anarchy Online and UO2, there will be geographic PVP and in those "high risk" areas you can obtain the highest level rewards.

But can you actually lose everything if you blow it? And can the rewards be obtained elsewhere without the risk?

>I guess the perceptions is people generally don't pay money to get whacked with sticks much

No, but they'll pay to see other people get whacked with sticks.

>What I was envisioning is a situation where someone was "playing it safe" and died due to a series of really bad random numbers

That's what I figured you meant. There should always be enough time for people to be able to escape if they want to, perhaps with minor penalties, but if people don't take the chance to escape and then get the bad luck, well, it's not really the bad luck's fault if they die.

>(the infamous, "I'll win if I roll anything other than 1" and you get that 1, several times).

If you can take X hits and you roll 1 X-1 times, it's not dumb luck that'll kill you on the next roll, it's your own refusal to quit while the going is good!

Richard

Richard Bartle
02/27/01 03:24 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
Steve>You don't know me

Maybe not, but I've certainly heard of you!

> I was the lead designer for Sierra's Middle-earth On-line project (which was canned partly for the inclusion of permanent death in the design).

Yeah, I heard about that. Bit of a downer.

>It seems clear to me that a system which includes permanent death can be viable so long as it is properly structured.

Agreed.

>To most game players, the concept of permanent death is tantamount to blasphemy.

Also, unfortunately, agreed.

>Viable permanent death is predicated on rarity. If permanent death is common and uncontrolled then you will bleed customers at an alarming rate. PD should be avoidable through reasonable choices -- situations where a player might be permanently killed should be obvious.

Precisely, although there is also the possibility that it's TOO rare. If you tell players that they can die but none of them do, it won't take them long to realise.

>Imagine that if you want to attack another player you have to instruct your character to menace the intended target. When in range of the target, your character will gain "menace" points over time with that target. This mechanism is made obvious to the target player through auditory and visual cues. Once the menace points exceed some threshold, combat becomes an available interaction.

This would give people the chance to run away, sure, especially if menace points degrade over time so you can't just menace someone once then kill them 10 months later. It's very artificial, though, and hard to justify with an explanation in game terms, only in gameplay terms.

>This is a simple mechanism that could fundamentally change the nature of PvP in a PSW.

I'm not so sure. I have this vision of hordes of PKs walking around and choosing someone for all of them to menace at once. The victim either has to run or quit, probably unable even to take a pre-emptive strike against one of them. The PKs wouldn't care if they accumulated enough bad rep points that anyone could attack them, because combat is what they want anyway. Besides, there's a gang of them ready to menace the first other player who comes near them.

I'd want to see ohter controls on PKing, too, not just this one.

>The idea is to make the choice of fighting another player an aspect of the gameplay, not arbitrary.

It just LOOKS too much like a gameplay device for my tastes. Still, it would be interesting to see how it worked in practice.

>Perhaps a player must engage in anti-social behavior for an extended period of time before murder becomes an option. Such a mechanism has the effect of allowing players to realize that another player is an up-and-coming Ted Bundy.

I've no idea who Ted Bundy is, but I can think of plenty of people who kill completely without warning or without any visible sign of aberrant behaviour in everyday life. The Boston Strangler was one. Harold Shipman, the British doctor who murdered hundreds of elderly patients over many years, was a pillar of local society. Only last week a Palestinian bus driver who had passed all Israeli security checks for years and was not regarded as any sort of a risk suddenly snapped and drove his vehicle into a crowd of people.

>I think that trying to model some of the properties of character psychology (ala The Sims) would go a long way toward controlling the impulsive behavior of the population.

Yes, but if players are immersed in their character then the LAST thing they want is for it to start acting on its own initiative. It's not so bad if it stops them from harming themselves, "your instinct for self preservation prevent you from jumping" or whatever, but if you stop them from doing something that they think is quite reasonable they will not be happy. "You don't dislike Tom enough to attack him". Yes I do, he kicked my dog!

Richard

Jude the Obscure
02/27/01 04:00 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
{Deleted my ignorant rant after reading several interesting, detailed posts from Richard Bartles.}

Edited by Jude the Obscure on 02/27/01 04:33 PM.

Myschyf
02/27/01 04:04 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Ted Bundy = Serial Killer

FYI

Raph
02/27/01 06:26 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
Steve! Good to see you on these boards. :)

-Raph, adding nothing to the discussion

liira
02/27/01 07:12 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

Would you play a game where you were told, in advance, that your character would die of old age after, say, 3 real-life years?

Absolutely not, nor would I play one with permadeath.

Stephen Nichols
02/27/01 07:19 PM
[re: Raph]
:) Indeed, where a discussion of permanent death is found, I am found. :)

steve

Boogaleeboo
02/27/01 10:23 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
You know the idea of perma death in an mmog is just wrong on an elemental level. Well at least in a skill/level based system. But it really does add a level of emotional involvment that can be nice. I mean you die and lose some skills or exp eh. But you lose everything and explenitives are heard the likes of which men were not thought capable.

1.This is not a game. 2.Here and now,you are alive.

Xilrens Twin
02/27/01 10:27 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
I understand your position on PD much better now, but I guess Im still not sold on how this concept enhances the general gameplay in a commercial MMORPG setting. If the PD penalty is too rare and easily controllable, it might as well be non existant. And of course if it is occurs to often with some degree of randomness (uncontrolability), it would seem to turn people away from staying subscribed long term (unless they are of the hardcore gamer segment, which is a much lower target audience; mustn't forget the profitabilty factor).

So, let me ask you to switch gears for a minute. How would you sell a player on the benefits of PD? Where is the appeal? How does it improve the game? In short, is PD in and of itself a "fun" concept?

Needless to say, I'm a bit skeptical. I think the MMORPG community is having a hard enough time selling people on the concept that PVP is a GOOD thing, to say nothing of permadeath. Perhaps this is a idea that really won't get explored until another 1 or 2 generations of these games gets released (my assumption being that as time passes we will see more and more of these games, each of which has there own unique take on the game model; diversity is a good thing).

I think the PD concept translates much better to a smaller game setting like the upcoming Neverwinter NIghts, or even the hallowed realms of MUDS. Once your game goes the Massive route, the wide latitude of player perception of what constitues a "fair" permanent death would undermind it's acceptance, especially by the "casual" gamer. If enough players scream about the unfairness of losing their character in situation X, Y or Z, you run the risk of that attitude being adopted by the general subscriber base.

Every scenario I could come up with to incorprate PD into a gameworld either seemed so lacking in occurance rate as to be negligable, or rife for potential exploit. Especially the scenario where if you risk PD in order to gain the best rewards in the game. Visions of powerguilds group playing ultra twink characters farming such "best of" stuff for sale on ebay dances through my head like a prophecy of doom (heh, well I trust you get the point).

It just seem like one of those concepts which sounds good, looks good on paper, but in practice is really lacking.

But then again, I'm not a gaming visionary like some people (*cough* hey Raph you're allowed to respond ya know!), so no pressure on me. :-)

Xilren The skeptic and impatient norseman

Edited by Xilrens Twin on 02/27/01 10:34 PM.

Domasai
02/28/01 12:25 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
I'm a supporter of Perma-Death, though my friends of course think it's a bit of lunacy just waiting to happen. My own addition to this conversation would support something Dr. Bartle said regarding whether a player is able to accumulate the same degree of prowess with their character as another has. He basically said that, if they can't be as successful as they'd like in one thing, there should be other avenues that might just interest them in the game setting.

Simply put, this doesn't exist in the present crop. Essentially every mechanic, every system design, is built around the concept of combat. Killing is the only valid, supported choice in them. As Dr. Bartle has stated previously, these games should be open-ended, except they aren't - not as they presently stand. They're essentially still games with a conceptual point where the player does, in fact, win or lose. If they win, they go on with the game till they've killed enough that it grows boring; if they lose, there's no alternative path to keep them interested.

That's the problem; the system doesn't offer much else to get involved with other than combat. This is why, when a player can't hack it for one reason or another, they quit; it's the lack of dynamic content that drives this. This narrowness of aspect has to be addressed before Perma-Death can be utilized well, IMO, because you have to provide something other than warfare for those who don't care to lose their character permanently.

Comstr
02/28/01 04:25 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
As someone has pointed out in the mean time...What is my attraction to pemadeath? Because it gives a better thrill to combat? If the combat is designed well. I get should get that already. I also get the dissapointment and anger and loss from losing already, and happiness when I win.

I rembember being in a party fighting orcs at Oasis in EQ. All was fine till the orc train arrived, but we won, with about 10 hit points left, each. If I die, I have a 15 minute run to get my stuff back, and I don't look forward to THAT already. The threat of losing EVERYTHING would make me NEVER(*) do such a fight. Why should I?

It seems that you want a game desginer to come up with the magic sword of rulebuilding +5. Personlly, I wish I was playing Falcon 5, dosn't mean anyone can actually do it. So, what reason, would I want to play a game such as that, that had perma death, and I would furhter, want to risk my character in such a fight? Because I can get the Hackmaster +12 instead of using my Longsword +3?

If my Permadearth is a result of Human Behavoir (I got killed by another player), it was either luck, or he was the better player. You don't want luck doing it, and if it's a better player, I will lose. How does one avoid that? If he can't kill me without massive retibution (and thus a reason not to) what is my risk unless I'm playing aginast a grief player (who won't care anyway). I am ignoring AI, as so far, no one seems to have consistantly LOST to one unless it's at Chess or it flat out cheats (Oh sure, Dorn the darke elf does more damage with his hands than a level 25 Fighter does with his Sword).

If the rest of the game is my be all and end all (A mix of Star Wars, Privater, Falcon 4, SMAC, Thief 2, SMG) game already, I'll be playing inspite of the risk of permadeath, not because it ads anything to the game. And it would only subtract from the game, not add to it.

---------------

*- Well, Like I said, if I made a living of 50K a year selling things on Ebay, I probably would.

I can't write what I mean, I can't say what I mean, but I expect you to know what I mean.

Comstr
02/28/01 04:33 AM
Re: RE: Perma-Death.[re: Domasai]
"This is why, when a player can't hack it for one reason or another, they quit; it's the lack of dynamic content that drives this. This narrowness of aspect has to be addressed before Perma-Death can be utilized well, IMO, because you have to provide something other than warfare for those who don't care to lose their character permanently".

But what if I want to role play being a great and mighty warrior, but arn't top class? You're either talking about Role Playing Games, or Simulators. Sim's depend on the players skill, and if you're not an Ace, tough*.

As an RPG, most people would expect the ability to be something they are not. Taking this argument, Richard dosn't want a RPG, he want's a Fantasy War Simulator with simulated bread making and cloth weaving. This is not a BAD game mind you, just not what the current definaiton of MMRPG's are!

------------------------------------------

*- Note many people who play Sim's are NOT the Ace's, but still enjoy playing the game aginast all the other Mug's. I'm one of the many.

I can't write what I mean, I can't say what I mean, but I expect you to know what I mean. Edited by Comstr on 02/28/01 06:18 AM.

Domasai
02/28/01 06:07 AM
[re: Comstr]
Originally Posted by Comstr: But what if I want to role play being a great and mighty warrior, but arn't top class?

Can you do that now? Can you be a 'great and mighty warrior' in the current crop of MMOGs? No, you can't. You're not a significant figure, just another warrior. Because, once two people have reached their Skill Cap, they're essentially viewed as identical for the most part. What one can perform, so can the other.

I mean, come on, if there are ten thousand people who can slay the dragon, then what's so special about the lucky bastard that just happened to get to it first? That's right: Nothing.

Comstr Continued: You're either talking about Role Playing Games, or Simulators. Sim's depend on the players skill, and if you're not an Ace, tough*.

Then does that make PnP RPGs simulators? Because what your character does in roleplaying sessions is greatly based upon the player. Controlling the same character, one player might get him killed, the other might not.

Comstr Continued: As an RPG, most people would expect the ability to be something they are not.

And how am I negating that concept?

Comstr Continued: Taking this argument, Richard dosn't want a RPG, he want's a Fantasy War Simulator with simulated bread making and cloth weaving.

I can't comment as to what Dr. Bartle wants from these games; I'm sure he'll respond to you on that for himself.

As for me: I just want something akin to what's essentially possible via a PnP session. But that doesn't necessitate having nothing but combat as a valid choice for system interaction.

Comstr Continued: This is not a BAD game mind you, just now what the current definaiton of MMRPG's are!

Well, in my humble opinion, the current definition sucks.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Comstr 02/28/01 06:17 AM
Re: The 'Great and Mighty Warrior'[re: Domasai]
"But what if I want to role play being a great and mighty warrior, but arn't top class?

Can you do that now? Can you be a 'great and mighty warrior' in the current crop of MMOGs? No, you can't. You're not a significant figure, just another warrior. Because, once two people have reached their Skill Cap, they're essentially viewed as identical for the most part. What one can perform, so can the other".

But Permadeath won't fix that either! The only ways to stop the above from being a problem is either the NWN soultion of small worlds and parties, or too much content that current games can't provide. Though I think the next gen games might do it, if the're large enough (Damm, if you think of it that way, SB and DAoC might be good games for me).

I can't write what I mean, I can't say what I mean, but I expect you to know what I mean.

Damiano
02/28/01 06:26 AM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
Sorry, but I've got to be a "fan boy" for just a second, here.

Just wanted to thank you for your contributions to the genre in the past. I found both versions 1 and 2 of The Realm to be pleasant diversions, and was rather devastated when MEO got axed, to be honest.

Last I saw, you were at Codemasters USA, and as a result, I imagine (and keep hoping) we'll be hearing something interesting from that quadrant eventually...

Thanks for joining us, even briefly...

/fan off, we now return you to normal Lum operations, ranting without a clue...

As to the menace factor you proposed... I am not a big fan of that level of systemic intervention in the player's control over his character... my personal preference would be for a bit more subtle "backstage" approach to controlling non-consensual PvP, predicated far more strongly on just a basic uncertainty of results. The "menace" factor you mention would be interesting as a "psychological warfare" tactic, I admit...

"There is no problem that cannot be made infinitely worse through the proper application of utter ignorance." - Me

Damiano, EQ Prexus (and The Realm, ret.) etc...

Treacherous
02/28/01 07:12 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Anyone here read the Otherland series by Tad Williams? In this series of "near future" science fiction about VR, a main character, in an early chapter, loses an online RPG character (due to death by NPC) that he'd played for years. I found it fascinating that this author assumed that the best popular fantasy RPGs of the computers of the future will obviously not simply respawn dead players, but leave them dead. This isn't some ignorant hack rambling on about "those kids video games" either. The author seems to have first-hand knowledge or meticulous research about all things VR. I recall an appropriate reference to LamdaMOO, for example.

There are always arguments over definitions when people discuss permanent death, gamer types, player goals, etc. in um... shall I call them online entertainment venues? Are we talking about games, simulations, halucinations, emotional experiences, experiments, time wasters, alternate lives, what? The answer, of course, is yes. Please stop talking about what "PD" as a marketing bullet point will add/not add to EQ/AC/UO. Let's talk about the future.

In real life what is there to stop people from killing one another? Social pressure is a really important thing. People are social animals--they do what other people do and don't do what other people don't do. The anticipated consequence is another important thing. People don't want to pay for their actions in personal freedom or their lives.

The idea about having NPCs always track down criminals is all about anticipated consequences. Steve's idea about character personality and personal hostility is all about social interaction. I can envision a (insert game/sim/whatever here) that works a lot like the sims, or the interesting alignment/dialogue system in Planescape: Torment, limiting possible activities not only in the physical/combat area, but also in the social/anti-social activities based on what your character could or would not do. That kind of experience is what I want to have in the future.

"But I wouldn't be playing my character then!" people have told me. I don't mean to be rude, but you're not playing your character now in any appreciable way if you're interacting with a computer system. Unless you're describing what you do to a GM and he's altering a representation on paper, in the heads of a group around a table, or on computer, you're not in control of your character. A set of rules implemented on a big database is in control, and you're altering a few input variables.

It is not such a leap to recognize that the same systems that won't let your character swing his/her sword at the guy who just called your mother a dirty name (nominally because it's just wrong to hurt others) or keep you from climbing past a waist-high fence (because the physics model couldn't get that extra million dollars dev work) can actually prevent any range of character activity they see fit. But these systems can also simply give us more options than we currently have in limiting or allowing natural activity, like talking or fighting. Lots more.

Eventually, expert systems will be able to tell that that jerk just called your character's mom something terrible. Technological advancement dictates this as surely as it dictates that eventually large enough VR places to eliminate the overcrowding/large community pool mess will exist. By this I mean that a virtual world on scale with a real life contanent will eliminate the thouroughly discussed community size problems that, by their very nature, lead to anti-social behavior. What will a system do with this knowledge?

If my character is a hothead with bloodlust, I want it to let me kill the jerk dead. Then I want something or someone to consider the mitigating circumstances surrounding my crime, and probably try to kill me dead finding that I wasn't justified.

This entire situation has no context if there's no death as Richard has been defining it in the system my character inhabits. Since the system can tell this situation from the proverbial random ganking and the community can be small enough that anonymity doesn't protect my character, why not use permanent death to let the situation make sense? "Because I don't want to lose my hothead character for killing the jerk" is not a reason.

So the way I see it, the question is where the line between our (relatively) crappy modern AI and database technology *cough, especially game AI technology* and the cool technology of the future that will naturally allow death and unrestricted pk (like real life!) gets crossed.

I say we just keep experimenting, killing characters in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons. Let's see what falls out of the tree when we shake it. But that part's just my personal leaning.

Damiano
02/28/01 08:25 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

Damiano>A game based on the pulp fiction (American 20s/30s fiction, not the recent movie) might be very interesting to try to set up...

I agree. I looked quite hard at Daimon Runyon style Gangsters as a milieu for a persistent world game, but it suffers from the same "equaliser" problem that dogs many of the more modern genres (the Wild West is another). Basically, you can't get round the fact that any oik can take hold of a gun and shoot you dead whatever skill you have, unless you compromise the premiss of the whole world.

I know... a familiar problem from my PnP campaigns in the "Old West" and "Roaring 20's". You either need to mute the realism to the point of distraction when working in those eras, or engender a "victim game" perspective (ala Call of Cthulhu/Paranoia), to make them really work. I've occasionally wanted to try a "Wild Wild West"-style old West campaign, loosely based on the feel of an old TV series here: (kind of a James Bond meets Wyatt Earp concept), to see if that would work any better... then the movie came out...

Interesting enough, I had far better luck with a Victorian-era campaign based on such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Shelley... the fantastic/wonder elements made the occasional combat abstraction/fudging/un-reality far more palatable to that group of players, at least.

In reply to:

>This is where a good cohesive group of storytellers and GMs would be a good fit in the process, I think. Give them solid tools they are comfortable with and a solid setting/foundation to work from...

Actually, I'm not a great fan of insinuating actors and storylines into games. I prefer to dream that the game world is rich enough and absorbing enough and deep enough that the players generate the storylines by their own actions. It makes back story for character generation harder, though, because when you write the game you don't know what the back story a couple of years down the line is going to be as it hasn't happened yet!

While I basically agree, I'm not sure even today's games have the "critical mass" of participation to really get us there. And for my part, I'd say it definitely can't happen under the Candyland mentality. The human condition: tragedy drives interest and involvement. Radioactive elements were just interesting scientific and medical oddities until someone made a bomb with them: suddenly they were shaping the world.

The second best option, IMO, is a team that can insinuate plot and story into the world based primarily on the actions of the players... i.e. the tactic I use in my PnP refereeing.

In reply to:

>You've chosen to be a dwarf, and want to be a cleric. Are you interested in your parents at all? Okay, let's see: your mother, Karreda Mithrilweaver ka-Marradon, is a smith currently working in the forges at Karredin's Watch.

This is something I'd love to see, although I have a nagging worry that if the game can generate such family history then there would be large numbers of players who would insist on being able to do it themselves but wouldn't actually be up to the job.

Considering that current games don't offer it at all, I doubt that would be the case. I have no doubt there would be a few die-hards that wanted to be the "bastard child of a demon lord and the Queen of the Fae, born of the primordial chaos, burdened by foreknowledge of the technological future-to-be, destined to rule the world and be loved by all," as well as other less pretentious yet similarly discordant backgrounds (and yes, someone presented that to me in all seriousness for a relatively "normal" fantasy campaign... once...)

In reply to:

That said, there are techniques for introducing backstory into character generation. One way is to have a question-and-answer session where your answers to earlier questions determine the direction in which the later questions go. Another is a step-by-step history approach like the one MicroProse used for Darklands (now there was a game!).

Yep, and yep. Exactly my thought. And part of the creative team's on-going job would be to update the possible questions, answers, and outcomes based on the events of note within the active game.

I have no idea whether it's financially feasible, unfortunately.

In reply to:

I worked as a design consultant on one game (sadly aborted when the owners of the publishers funding its development pulled the plug) which not only gave you a family, friends, job and skeletons in your cupboard, but actually inserted them into the game if they didn't already exist!

Exactly what I was describing/expecting/hoping for. Figures the plug would be pulled.

In reply to:

>It is my long-held opinion that 1) a believable threat of perma-death is far more effective than it's actual occurrence, and 2) a perma-death implementation neither needs to be, nor should be, universal in scope.

I agree totally with 1). The only point I'd make is that permadeath nevertheless DOES have to happen sufficiently often that the threat really is believable. In Suffolk (that's an English county, for non-natives) I counted 14 signs warning of police speed cameras on the road between Sudbury and Bury St. Edmonds but no speed cameras. I may have been fooled by the signs once, but not on subsequent occasions. As soon as you realise a threat is empty, it's no threat at all.

I have to return to my roller-coaster analogy at this point. The "Excalibur" at the local amusement park has never killed or even injured _anybody_ that I am aware of, in hundreds of thousands of rides... and yet half of my siblings are too scared to ride it.

The techniques to create that kind of "tension in the absence of reality" in an MMORPG are far more difficult to implement, I agree. But I fully believe it can be done, and in such a way that

In reply to:

>In war, who has time to check if that last opponent is truly dead?

The ones who go around sticking in bayonettes after their side won? The ones who throw the bodies into the shallow mass grave before bulldozing it over?

Modern warfare... takes all the glamour out of it.

Assuming the battle is a total rout, leaving one force in total control of the entire field of the conflict, agreed. Assuming you weren't lucky or smart enough to crawl out of sight when the focus of the battle was elsewhere on the field. From Bilbo in the Battle of Five Armies to a virtual host of Vietnam War memoirs, the abandoned-for-dead soldier is a powerful romantic/thematic concept that I personally have no problem leaning heavily on to ensure my players enjoy the game experience.

We can accept flying stegosaurs (dragons) and summoning beings from thin air (demons/janni) without blinking, but "luckily" escaping permanent death in a battle out of Braveheart is stretching reality too far?

In reply to:

>In short, the only real danger of perma-death in a cohesive well-plotted setting comes from the other players to begin with... and in those cases, subtle mechanics can be put in place to reinforce the basic understanding that "this is just not allowed", without shredding the fiction as a byproduct.

I agree that some badly hurt characters may look dead but not actually be dead. However, a good majority of the ones who look dead DO have to be dead, rather than merely stunned or whatever. If everyone's going to get up and walk away, what's the point? And why can't monsters and bad NPCs do the same trick?

Well, to be somewhat flippant about it, monsters and NPCs don't pay the light bill and taxes, for starters.

A little more seriously, I'm not worried about seriously disappointing, even hurting, an NPC. I can (generally) always make another one, and frankly, he won't hold any previous harshness against me. Players, on the other hand, have a slightly different reaction.

In the end, I'd apply the same rules here as I do in my campaigns. Permanent death applies in exactly four cases:

1) Sheer stupidity Walking into a trap you have found, presumably to "see what it does". Strolling into a dragon's lair and deliberately -waking- it to challenge it to a duel. Swimming in lava (without a really good fire resistance spell.) Jumping off a cliff (without a levitation spell.) And so on. Predicated on a combination of obviousness (cliff+gravity-parachute = pancake) and avoidability (b-b-b-big d-d-d-dragon...)

To me, in an on-line game, implementing this almost requires some limited AI on the server side.

Bad: A character is auto-walking down a hall, "detects" a trap, but a lag spike prevents the player's Stop Walking command from reaching the server in time, and the character dies.

Better: Same as above, but the character automatically stops and waits for command from player as to what to do next... lag spike ends, player decides to risk it anyway, character dies.

2) Player's choice Foreknowledge that the player is tired of the character, and _wants_ to go out in a blaze of glory. This could be a simple Yes/No flag in an on-line game. To my mind, #1 and #2 are basically the same concept, just a little different implementation...

3) No plausible explanation for escape The hardest to adjudicate or avoid, and the one most likely in my campaigns to earn a player an option for resurrection or recovery. This is also the category most vulnerable to PvP activities, in my opinion. If a "bounty hunter" literally takes your head, it makes it awful tough to just pretend you weren't -really- dead...

4) Grief player In PnP, this is a far less common occurrence that I have to handle... the other players usually take care of it for me. I think it's been sufficiently proven that won't work well in the larger venue. This is the category that such some ideas of mine such as "non-consensual PvP requires loss of virtual immortality" and "government-ordered public executions are final" fall under.

Note: I have no problem whatsoever with leaving a character with multiple broken limbs requiring real-life days to fully heal... having them looted to a near-naked state... leaving them suffering from a concussion which leaves them addled and uncoordinated for an extended period of time... and so on. To those who would shriek at that: what is AC's vitae penalty but a "blood-less" abstraction of crippling but healing wounds? What is EQ's experience loss but a vague abstraction of mild amnesia and shock? I would simply call them by their true-to-life names and let "death" go back to being the ultimate end it should be.

In reply to:

>On the other hand, an adventurer going hand-to-hand with the dragon terrorizing the land might -want- to go out in a blaze of glory

But how do you differentiate between someone who wants that and an idiot who wanders into the dragon's cave despite all the warnings just to see what sound it makes when hit with a mace?

As presented above, I wouldn't bother making a distinction in that -particular- case. To me, the idiot made the very same choice the hero did, just for a different reason. A little genetic "weed-pulling" now and then isn't necessarily a bad thing...

However, it's not an easy balance to strike in an unmoderated setting, I readily admit. You have to be truly effective at foreshadowing and giving the player the information they need to make an informed decision. The "idiot" above isn't so idiotic if he didn't realize the dragon was there in the first place. EQ is a running case study of examples of this kind of "well, you should have known better even though we didn't give you the slightest clue because we didn't want to spoil the 'fun'" type of thing. Which, similar to UO's known effect on non-consensual PvP, is crippling yet another avenue for creating robust worlds by savaging a trust people have offered the developers and their fellow players.

Not to pick on either title... it's not really a designer's fault that people (including myself, sadly) generally can't be bothered to see the forest for the trees. It is discouraging, nonetheless.

Anyway, duty calls... great discussion! Thank you!

"There is no problem that cannot be made infinitely worse through the proper application of utter ignorance." - Me

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

(Ed: Spelling? What's that?)

Edited by Damiano on 02/28/01 08:30 AM.

Domasai
02/28/01 08:25 AM
[re: Comstr]

Originally Posted by Comstr:
But Permadeath won't fix that either! The only ways to stop the above from being a problem is either the NWN soultion of small worlds and parties, or too much content that current games can't provide.

Please read what I said on my original posting. I didn't say that Perma-Death would solve this problem; I said that a successful use of Perma-Death is contingent, IMO, upon the inclusion of dynamic content. I never stated that PD would provide it, though I feel it certainly couldn't hurt.

It seems to me that the inclusion of PD into a player's online environment would necessitate the construction of actual tactics, not to mention considerable thought prior to aimlessly combatting everything one comes across. It would also help to emphasize the need for socialization, since grouping would be a benefit when considering going on a journey or quest.

I know what's coming: "What if I want to solo?" My response to that is simple. Even Conan had allies and people he relied on. Without vulnerability of any kind, he'd be very hard to relate to. It's like the difference between Batman and Superman: IMO, it's a lot easier to relate to the former, because (in the end) he's just a guy in a suit.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Xilrens Twin
02/28/01 10:06 AM
[re: Treacherous]
In reply to:

I found it fascinating that this author assumed that the best popular fantasy RPGs of the computers of the future will obviously not simply respawn dead players, but leave them dead. This isn't some ignorant hack rambling on about "those kids video games" either

He might not be, but you might as well have said "Have you see the Star Trek episode where Picard and Data were on the holodeck role playing Sherlock Holmes." for all the relevance it has. You can build castles in the air for some future gaming nirvana, I more interested in the applications here and now myself.

Whether you like it or not, something like PD MUST be considered from a marketing point of view as well as a gaming one, b/c these are not simply volunteer staffed free MUDS were talking about here. These game are big business, which drive many of their design decisions to appeal to the max audience possible. Failure to give weight to the economic realities of this nascent genre could leave you with a mutli-million dollar loss. Good ole ivory tower theory meets the cold harsh reality of the market head on.

Trying to use the same mechanisms that exist in the real world in a virtual environment won't work unless you bring over ALL of them, and that simply ain't gonna happen (besides, who wants to play "Real-Life Online"??). As some previous posters have pointed out, to a lot of people who subscribe to these services, these are world, not just games. And while that may be true, there is also and equally large group of people subscribing who treat these programs as simply games. Considering you can start one at any time, play only when you desire, and also stop whenever you want, a lot of the social pressures that exist in "real-life" simply don't apply. A serial killer in real life can't just logout til the posse has gone home, nor can they simply switch identities and continue there depredations in as little time as it takes to create a new account. Not to mention the expected consequences are hardly deterrants. Whats the worst thing that could happen to you? Losing you account, bah, that;s so trivial it's practically meaningless.

So while we could dream about "perfect" VR games with thousands of players where there are no griefers, nor gameplay bugs which result in death, nor anti-social behavior due to the perfection of the code, forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for it. I've only got 70 years or so left :-)

In reply to:

So the way I see it, the question is where the line between our (relatively) crappy modern AI and database technology *cough, especially game AI technology* and the cool technology of the future that will naturally allow death and unrestricted pk (like real life!) gets crossed.

So, you basically you think that any such game should naturally evolve to a state where unrestricted pk and permadeath is the norm?

Why?

I feel pretty confident in saying that there is a huge segment of the gaming market that would not share that desire.

I have always found the concept that we need to make these games "more like real life" to be a highly dubious one. If you are playing a game where you character can fling fireballs from his hands, or fly a faster than light spaceship, or use mental telepathy, or be a non-human, or even raise the dead, why the heck would you go dragging such limiting concpets as what happends in the real world? I thought one of the best things about these games was that they are NOT reality based (be it gameplay mechanics, social circumstances or something else)

Xilren

LumsOtherHalf
02/28/01 01:58 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
>Trying to use the same mechanisms that exist in the real world in a virtual environment won't work unless you bring over ALL of them, and that simply ain't gonna happen (besides, who wants to play "Real-Life Online"??).

Hmmm, I'll agree and disagree on this point just a bit. Many of the answers to these can be found in RL - or at least the answers can be reflected in these thru mechanisms that serve the same functions.

A lot of the posts I've read here reflect in one way or another the duality of player/character. The big question is - how to make the character have meaning (to the player and others) without overburdening the player (mainly thru time) in the Real World?

When I look for answers - I look for them around me, then try to think how they can be applied thru the mechanics in a virtual environment. If it can't be - what else could be that would give the same feeling from the same motivations with relatively the same results?

Some folks get a little too intense on the simulation aspects. Even UO tried to simulate an ecology and it simply didn't work. First, people are not good stewards of their environment in most cases and secondly - why have all that burden of overhead on the servers? The questions also have to be asked - is there a way to imitate for the same end results - and is this important enough to the player/world to really make a difference? If a wolf eats a sheep out in the woods and no one is around - yes, eventually it has an impact in there being less sheep but that subtlety is going to be lost on 99% of your playing population. Now - if you have a quest that generates a sheepeating wolf when triggered and someone is sent out to save the sheep - that's a whole nother kettle of fish.

A realistic working economy on the other hand is VITAL. The economy effects every single player and indeed the Achiever type perhaps even more than any other. In a perfect world everyone would be happy with what they have as long as it's enough for their needs - Achievers need to keep score - and the coin of the realm is a scorekeeper as long as it still retains some value. Having a billion gold should make anyone happy- but it seems less of an achievement to them if everyone has it.

A lot of this discussion has focused around someone needing to lose so you win to satisfy the achiever - they have to measure themselves and be 'better than'. Death and combat are the shallowest possible means - but the means most often used because it has the most immediate gratification.

Some attention needs to be paid to what is satisfying to achiever types in the real world - and how some of those things can be brought in or imitated in virtual worlds. This is what adds depth and immersiveness to a world.

Another advantage of looking to RL for the answers that can be mirrored in our virtual worlds is intuitiveness. One of my acid tests in looking at anything in a virtual world is - does this make sense? If it doesn't, it flunks my suspension of disbelief test. Ever play one of these and think - WTF did they do THAT for? This doesn't make any sense! Humans play these so it's a human baseline that has to be considered no matter if your character is human, Klingon, a small furry bunny or a dragon. Even roleplayers have a human baseline that everything else is going to be judged from or adjusted from. So far, we haven't had a real strong baseline built into these. Humans will invariably bring in their own baseline or create one to fit the circumstances from their own in a vacumn. Their motivations and reactions as a whole are fairly predictable. Where devs usually have a fatal blind spot is that they expect players to embrace the spirit of the game and stuff starts falling apart when they don't. There are other factors at work here that allow the 'if it lets me do it - it's ok' mentality. Lack of inworld concequences and anonymity being the two main ones.

The very issue of immortal characters flunks some folks baseline test - why? Because people aren't immortal. That is very much drawing from a RL baseline.

Now - let's draw a little further from common RL experience (this baseline I keep talking about) what pieces may be missing? Well, the two that I have been advocating are time and children. People aren't immortal but thankfully most of us don't end up with a violent end. Most folks at least expect to die in their beds from old age. Once you start talking about permanently ending a character you again get back to the duality of player/character. It makes sense for the character's life to end - but the player resents the feeling he's wasted RL time building something that goes poof. How to soften this blow and let them retain SOMETHING for all the time and effort they have put in. Children. In our world it's traditionally been children that have carried on - cared for, defended, educated by their parents and when the time comes - taking up their parents load and moving on into the future. This is also an achievement to successfully raise and support children that are capable as adults. If your game mechanics support building your next character (your child) offscreen thru support, education, resource allocation - you are imitating the fuctions and providing longterm goals to everyone. You are providing a way to end a character but without the burden on the player of going back thru everything from scratch.

Now, you could also have violent PD in these from very special events - but I'd make them absolutely a choice for the player - perhaps with grand rewards, but not something that could be accidental or even very common. With the child model - even an unsuccessful attempt carries over thru it's effects on the children. It's not so much an end to the player as a shifting of perspective, although it IS an end to the character.

These worlds are very much suited to win/win vs. win/lose. What you have to do is build subcontests into them that are voluntary and allow those that wish to compete a means to do so without unduly or nonconsensually infringing on others.

Your local community center is a good model. The one we have here has a basketball court, a meeting room, a swimming pool and a football field outside. Everyone enjoys what they enjoy without undue influence from others enjoying their chosen activity but all under the same roof and socially in close proximity to each other.

The pool is fun for everyone but occassionally they have competitions. The basketball and football areas are usually competitive, but just for fun things happen there too. The meeting rooms are used for socializing, learning, work, i.e., a group accomplishing a task. The common areas are typically socializing - but you occassionally see folks playing chess or checkers there. Any outbreak of violence is simply NOT tolerated.

Now if the basketball players decide to hold their game in the middle of a meeting - they might think it's fun, but the folks trying to hold the meeting in it are not likely to be very enthusiastic. There are no physical limitations telling them they can't, but they'd be ejected from the building if they tried. One note about Dr. Bartle's comment of why this doesn't happen in the real world but folks think it's ok in these.....

If you reward a behavior in ANY way - people are going to take that as a license to do it. Now, if someone had a bet with someone else that hey - bet we can crash that meeting and get them upset - there are some folks that would try it, they now have a motivation of reward to try it. Hopefully common sense would prevail and they'd realize they are going to be tossed out on their ear, but some WILL complain about the rules and people that can't take a joke, or are uptight, or unfair. You don't have the constraint in these of someone's fist contacting with your nose to keep you from engaging in such behavior in the first place. One would think that death of a character SHOULD be a deterent, it's not. There is no physical pain involved and for those that value disruption over their character - even permanent death would only be a mild deterrant.

Now, the biggest and most logical rebuttal to the generational model with relatively easy advancement is the shake and bake griefer. If you unburden Joe Player from tedious character building you are also doing that for Joe Griefer. Ummm, not really. In the generational model the children are really as important as the current playing character - long term goals are essential, griefers seldom have the patience for longterm goals. Also, by using the generational model you have the means to make consequences of actions far outlast the lifetime of a single character. If your parent is a total and complete jerk - you get a very bad family name. This isn't something you can avoid or run from - it can be changed but takes a LOT of work. If someone is a sufficient ass - perhaps their own children run away - they HAVE no future without an heir. I'd even have reputation thingies track by account - so even deleting and starting all over again won't work. Once you have longterm concequences of actions then player justice starts to become a real possibility. The idea of karma coming back to haunt you if you reincarnate instead of inherit hits a cord in RL mythos, if perhaps not in reality.

Richard Bartle
02/28/01 02:08 PM
[re: Damiano]
So many messages, so little time to answer them...

I'm going to have to cut down on what I say here, otherwise I'll end up firefighting threads for all eternity. Sorry if I fail to reply to stuff you think I ought to have.

Xilren>If the PD penalty is too rare and easily controllable, it might as well be non existant. And of course if it is occurs to often with some degree of randomness (uncontrolability), it would seem to turn people away from staying subscribed long term (unless they are of the hardcore gamer segment, which is a much lower target audience; mustn't forget the profitabilty factor).

Oh, I didn't say it would be EASY to have it (grin).

Yes, what you say is correct. You can have too much and you can have too little. The window is wider than first appears, though, and doesn't have to be constant throughout the game. For example, in some areas you may never stand a chance of dying, but you can only go so far; in others, there may be a slight risk, and in others a strong one. There may be places where it's absolute suicide to visit except as part of a large, well-equipped group.

>So, let me ask you to switch gears for a minute. How would you sell a player on the benefits of PD?

It depends on the player. I wouldn't attempt to sell it at all to a socialiser, because they're not going to get killed except to prove a point. I wouldn't sell it to killers, because I wouldn't have to. I wouldn't sell it to explorers, because they wouldn't care. I'd sell it to achievers by stressing that it's optional (in the system I was describing) and that they should try it using a character they don't care about before they try it with one they do. It makes the game more exciting, because you have more to lose. It gives the lows that define the highs. It means that people who look like heroes really are heroes. It means that the good players (which everyone thinks they are) are distinguished from the plodders (which most of them actually are). It doesn't happen too often if you keep your wits about you, but if you get too complacent it could.

>Where is the appeal? How does it improve the game? In short, is PD in and of itself a "fun" concept?

The appeal isn't in dying (although some people, looking at it objectively some time later, may consider it a cloud with a silver lining). The appeal is in being under the threat of perhaps dying but coming through it alive because of you and your friends' skill, ingenuity and sheer luck (which is probably nothing of the sort, but they don't see it that way).

>I think the MMORPG community is having a hard enough time selling people on the concept that PVP is a GOOD thing, to say nothing of permadeath.

I agree. That's the dilemma I mentioned at the end of the article. It may be something we ought to have, but how are we going to give it if people don't think they want it?

>Perhaps this is a idea that really won't get explored until another 1 or 2 generations of these games gets released

That's my opinion, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about it now so the ideas have firmed up more (or been rejected) when the time comes.

>If enough players scream about the unfairness of losing their character in situation X, Y or Z, you run the risk of that attitude being adopted by the general subscriber base.

Only if the general subscriber base experiences the same thing. If they never go anywhere near where they could be killed, they're not going to care. "I was killed by a dragon and I had a Sword of Law and Armour of Fire Resistance and I was buffed up on protection spells and there were another 20 people with me who didn't die". It was a dragon, you thought maybe it was tame?

>Visions of powerguilds group playing ultra twink characters farming such "best of" stuff for sale on ebay dances through my head like a prophecy of doom (heh, well I trust you get the point).

The "best of" may be things you can't use normally. If you have to be level 51 to use the Bow of Slaying and you can only score points above level 50 in the badlands, it's not worth a great deal except to people who have been in the badlands themselves.

Domasai>Essentially every mechanic, every system design, is built around the concept of combat. Killing is the only valid, supported choice in them.

That's true. These games are "all about" killing, which throws their views on attacking other players and permanent death all the more into relief. When you can't even use area effect weapons and spells in case someone suffers from colateral damage, that's getting weird.

>This narrowness of aspect has to be addressed before Perma-Death can be utilized well, IMO, because you have to provide something other than warfare for those who don't care to lose their character permanently.

In a new game, they could be addressed hand-in-hand, but in existing games you can forget it - they're not going to change now.

Comstr>What is my attraction to pemadeath? Because it gives a better thrill to combat? If the combat is designed well. I get should get that already. I also get the dissapointment and anger and loss from losing already, and happiness when I win.

Well good for you. You wouldn't find any extra excitement going somewhere dangerous for your combat where you might actually die, so you wouldn't have to. The worst that would happen is that people who did go there would call you a wimp.

>I rembember being in a party fighting orcs at Oasis in EQ. All was fine till the orc train arrived, but we won, with about 10 hit points left, each. If I die, I have a 15 minute run to get my stuff back, and I don't look forward to THAT already. The threat of losing EVERYTHING would make me NEVER(*) do such a fight. Why should I?

You wouldn't have to. Just don't make out you're any kind of hero.

>So, what reason, would I want to play a game such as that, that had perma death, and I would furhter, want to risk my character in such a fight? Because I can get the Hackmaster +12 instead of using my Longsword +3?

If a hoody hoo Hackmaster +12 was your goal and one was available, yes, you might. That way, you could take out the orcs and whatever a lot easier. If you didn't want to risk your character for the Hackmaster, hey, you don't have to. Just because YOU don't want to, doesn't mean there aren't people who would.

>If my Permadearth is a result of Human Behavoir (I got killed by another player), it was either luck, or he was the better player. You don't want luck doing it, and if it's a better player, I will lose.

Er, not all fights end in death or victory. You ought to be able to run away if you know you're outmatched.

Comstr>But what if I want to role play being a great and mighty warrior, but arn't top class? You're either talking about Role Playing Games, or Simulators. Sim's depend on the players skill, and if you're not an Ace, tough*.

What if you want to role-play a great and mighty warrior and your fighting skills are top class but your role-playing skills are pitiful? If you're not an ace, tough?

>As an RPG, most people would expect the ability to be something they are not.

They would expect the opportunity to try, but they'd be very naive if they took success for granted. If you were to role-play a character of the opposite sex and no-one believed you, you couldn't really call foul. Similarly, if you want to role-play being a hero but you never do anything heroic, you can't really complain. Role-playing is a way to explore your own identity, to find out what you're capable of, to discover more about yourself. If it's all handed to you on a plate it's not role-playing, it's fantasy.

Domasai>I can't comment as to what Dr. Bartle wants from these games; I'm sure he'll respond to you on that for himself.

I just want to design them!

Treacherous>Please stop talking about what "PD" as a marketing bullet point will add/not add to EQ/AC/UO. Let's talk about the future.

As I said in my first post on this board on the subject, this always happens. Whenever anything new is proposed, there is inevitably a number of people who address it completely in terms of their own game. It's not like these games are going to change anyway - the people who like them like them as they are, and the people who don't aren't going to come back and give them another try. Only newbies will be affected, and they'll pretty well accept whatever you give them as it's so unlike whatever they've encountered before.

>you're not in control of your character. A set of rules implemented on a big database is in control, and you're altering a few input variables.

You could apply that argument to the real world. For all you know, what we call reality is someone else's simulation, the laws of physics are a set of rules implemented on big database and all you're doing by existing is altering a few input variables. It would have to be quite a big database, though...

>If my character is a hothead with bloodlust, I want it to let me kill the jerk dead. Then I want something or someone to consider the mitigating circumstances surrounding my crime, and probably try to kill me dead finding that I wasn't justified.

I agree that this is the ideal, but real life and game can start to overlap. If your CHARACTER says something obscene about another PLAYER's mother, it's the RL effect you're interested in, not the in-game effect. Even if your character says disparaging things about another character's mother, you might be doing it for the RL effect - especially if you do it using a throwaway character you created expressly for the purpose of annoying someone verbally. PD is not a deterrent to the verbal abuse of other players by low-level characters.

Damiano>Interesting enough, I had far better luck with a Victorian-era campaign based on such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Shelley... the fantastic/wonder elements made the occasional combat abstraction/fudging/un-reality far more palatable to that group of players, at least.

British settings are especially good, because in general no-one has a gun anyway.

>While I basically agree, I'm not sure even today's games have the "critical mass" of participation to really get us there.

I think they have the necessary mass, but it's not close enough to be critical. 300,000 people is a lot, but if they only ever get to interact in batches of 4,000 then in individual game terms you can forget about the other 296,000.

>The "Excalibur" at the local amusement park has never killed or even injured _anybody_ that I am aware of, in hundreds of thousands of rides... and yet half of my siblings are too scared to ride it.

Do they say why?

>From Bilbo in the Battle of Five Armies to a virtual host of Vietnam War memoirs, the abandoned-for-dead soldier is a powerful romantic/thematic concept that I personally have no problem leaning heavily on to ensure my players enjoy the game experience.

Nevertheless, people wouldn't be abandoned for dead if the majority weren't dead (or at least dying).

>We can accept flying stegosaurs (dragons) and summoning beings from thin air (demons/janni) without blinking, but "luckily" escaping permanent death in a battle out of Braveheart is stretching reality too far?

Luckily escaping death every single time, to the extent that you can absolutely rely on it, IS stretching reality too far.

>I'm not worried about seriously disappointing, even hurting, an NPC. I can (generally) always make another one, and frankly, he won't hold any previous harshness against me. Players, on the other hand, have a slightly different reaction.

So why use sleight-of-hand to try to justify why you're letting the players live? Why tell them that they're not really dead, just badly wounded but the enemy doesn't notice, when the reverse is NEVER the case? It's obvious that you have ulterior motives, you're insulting the players' intelligence if you try to suggest it makes perfect sense in the game world. Why not just come straight out with it and say "you're not dead because we don't think you'd play if you were"?

>Permanent death applies in exactly four cases: >1) Sheer stupidity >2) Player's choice >3) No plausible explanation for escape >4) Grief player

Of these, 2) covers a huge variety of cases. If you deliberately attacked a gang of bandits solo, sure, but if you deliberately enter an area that you know contains bandits and they ambushed you, would that count? What if you've done it many times before and they've never found you, only this time they do, would that count? What if you go in with a group of friends, well able to kill the bandits, but when the bandits attack then half your friends run away and you're slaughtered, would that count? They're all consequences of (your) player choice at some level.

You could perhaps add a 5) Old age. It doesn't seem to fit naturally under any of the other headers, unless you count actually playing the game as a tacit player choice to accept that their character will age and die (although you could use the same argument to say that all killing is consensual, in that if you weren't up for being at risk of being killed then you wouldn't be playing).

>You have to be truly effective at foreshadowing and giving the player the information they need to make an informed decision.

I agree. One of the advantages of geographically based PD is that you can give a visual cue that the player is at risk of dying if things don't go to plan - a red border round the screen or their stats box or their mouse pointer or something equally noticeable.

Just ring those alarm bells!

Domasai>It seems to me that the inclusion of PD into a player's online environment would necessitate the construction of actual tactics, not to mention considerable thought prior to aimlessly combatting everything one comes across.

Well, not in all cases. Even unprepared, I think I'd fancy my chances mano a mano against a kitten. In a game setting, well-armed and armoured players shouldn't have to worry about whether a zombie is going to kill them, they should be able to learn from experience that they always beat them easily and that even if the RNG goes against them they'll have plenty of time to flee. For fights against major creatures, though, yes, tactics DO become more important. Attacking as an unorganised mob of dragon fodder is probably the worst approach to taking one down, but if you're worried that any delay while you set up a more considered attack will mean some other group attacks instead...

Xilrens Twin>If you are playing a game where you character can fling fireballs from his hands, or fly a faster than light spaceship, or use mental telepathy, or be a non-human, or even raise the dead, why the heck would you go dragging such limiting concpets as what happends in the real world?

Because the game has to be internally consistent. If you were playing a game where hitting a monster with your sword set off the cuckoo clock in the cafe 3 blocks away; if whenever you ate bread, ants from a random clony grew to the size of a cat; if every 17th door you opened made it start to rain. These are arbitrary happenings that would need somewhat convoluted backstory to explain.

Players will accept some aspects of the fantastic, but they have to make sense. That which isn't an aspect of the fantastic has to map to reality, because reality is the "default". Games don't have to fake gravity, or daylight, or bipedal humanoids, but they do - that way people have something to fall back on. It helps immersion.

However, the flip side is that if you import aspects of reality to enable your players to feel immersed, then anything which jars against it will take them out of it. Obviously, you can't implement reality to any great level of detail, but you can nevertheless cover many of its more obvious aspects. The ones you leave out therefore have to be explained in a rational manner that doesn't undermine the integrity of the rest of the game.

In other words, most of what goes on in a game is based on what goes on in the real world. Stuff that isn't - magic, FTL travel, resurrection etc. - is the exception rather than the rule.

Richard

Stephen Nichols
02/28/01 04:58 PM
[re: Damiano]
Damiano wrote: "As to the menace factor you proposed... I am not a big fan of that level of systemic intervention in the player's control over his character... my personal preference would be for a bit more subtle "backstage" approach to controlling non-consensual PvP, predicated far more strongly on just a basic uncertainty of results. The "menace" factor you mention would be interesting as a "psychological warfare" tactic, I admit..."

------

I understand your aversion to having the system mediate your character's actions. Certainly, nobody wants to have their character become uncontrollable. And I'm not suggesting that. The idea is to add gameplay mechanics that model psychological aspects of your character. You can always control your character so long as you condition it properly to do the actions that you want. The menacing concept is a bit artificial, I admit. However, the concept has potential. I would like to see players having to configure their character through play to enable actions such as murder. How is murder any different than casting a high-level spell? Why should PvP be a given where other in-game actions require investment to achieve? I believe that the only people who would complain about not having PvP being a given would be the ones who want to use PvP as a harassment tactic. Not to mention that there are other "gentlemens" means of PvP which could bypass this system (dueling). Richard touched on your point as well with his comments regarding not being able to attack someone who had kicked their dog. It seems to me that actions like kicking a pet would affect the relationship between the kicker and the pet owner. Perhaps kicking the dog enough times would enable attacks as it is a form of menacing. Of course, the other side of the coin has to do with chat-related offenses. I'm of the opinion that chat-related offenses are not directly related to in-game consequences. If someone is cussing you out, combat is probably not the answer. The menace game option does provide some means to backup your words, however. So, you may indeed begin menacing someone who is being rude. However, providing powerful chat management tools is probably more suitable in this case. A simple ignore option seems quite viable.

This idea also has implications toward helping to enforce roleplay that is consistent with the environment. Having a simplistic model of your character's psychology act as a mediator to actions opens up several interesting ideas. Imagine that the psychological model of your character includes situational fear or anger. These are the kinds of emotions that you don't see players embracing very often within the context of gameplay. Sure, a player may fear a creature that he knows will defeat him, but the character shows no such reactions. I'd love to see some characters with irrational fears (say, a fear of spiders). Such a fear could accumulate within the psychological model when the affected character is within range of a spider. After a certain threshold is passed, the character begins acting adversely. This could be a character weakness that helps to offset other benefits. This gives the player something to roleplay about. Taunting(blah), for example, could be a skill used against another player to increase his character's anger against you. After a certain threshold of anger is passed, the angered character will attack the taunter. All of these are potential uses of the psychological model that may help to enrich a game world. There are many more examples of this system being applied to a plethora of situations. I could go on and on. :)

Having this sort of psychological mediator seems quite viable. I see it being little different than other arbitrary limitations to character action. Level limits on equipping items, being under the influence of a fear spell and not being able to pick a lock are all gameplay action modifiers that people have come to expect. The difference is that the psychological-based limitations help to enforce reasonable behavior from players. Without it (or some other method) you will not be able to control the destructive behavior of KewlD00ds in your game. And, as you might guess, I'm not for the PvP switch. ;)

steve

Xilrens Twin
02/28/01 05:00 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

Players will accept some aspects of the fantastic, but they have to make sense. That which isn't an aspect of the fantastic has to map to reality, because reality is the "default". Games don't have to fake gravity, or daylight, or bipedal humanoids, but they do - that way people have something to fall back on. It helps immersion.

However, the flip side is that if you import aspects of reality to enable your players to feel immersed, then anything which jars against it will take them out of it. Obviously, you can't implement reality to any great level of detail, but you can nevertheless cover many of its more obvious aspects. The ones you leave out therefore have to be explained in a rational manner that doesn't undermine the integrity of the rest of the game.

In other words, most of what goes on in a game is based on what goes on in the real world. Stuff that isn't - magic, FTL travel, resurrection etc. - is the exception rather than the rule.

I understand and agree with what you're saying, i was mainly questioning the premise that these games should move towards unrestricted pk and permadeath simply b/c they are more "realistic". I don't advocate the pursuit of realsim at the expense of gameplay to be a desirable goal; just the opposite in fact. And until we see a workable design with those two hotbutton things, I prefer not to make them some sort of standard.

If realsim was a goal into itself, I suspect a lot of gamers who soon find out the parts of the system that can be modeled based on real world examples weren't much fun (swimming in platemail anyone? different players having different running speeds? starvation and disease?).

Ill take fun gameplay over realism any day.

Xilren

Edited by Xilrens Twin on 02/28/01 05:03 PM.

0.5robo
02/28/01 06:34 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
Stephen,

I have to agree with Damiano, the mediated psychology you're suggesting strikes me as a bit disturbing in the traditional context of an avatar-based game. Personally, I would definitely feel like reasonable control of my character was being taken away from me.

Time for some half-baked player psychology. The usual assumption is that players identify directly with their avatar. That guy on the screen is "me" and "I" am walking around the world, doing different things. If "I" can't cast a spell, it's because I don't know how. I don' t know the proper mental patterns, or whatever the in-game fiction. If I can't use a sword or a piece of armor, it's because I'm not strong enough, or because it will interfere with my magical energies. (Obviously different games have gone to different lenghts to make this reality seem coherent and consistent.)

But "I" definitely know how to kick a dog. And if I the player suddenly can't kick the dog, I start to feel like there's a big chain wrapped around my leg. What's keeping me from kicking that dog? My psychology? But I am the brain that's controlling that virtual body. If you think about it, that's why there's often no "charisma" score in MMOGs... the players have to charm each other with real words, using their real or roleplayed personalities.

I don't think this kind of psychological motivation is out of the question. But once you start introducing it, you're severing the link between the player and the avatar. The avatar is no longer "me" -- it's now some being that I'm ordering around. Think about games like various Kings' Quests. The character is fully autonomous in some respects, with his own personality. You're just telling him what to do, and sometimes he doesn't want to. Instead of "hey, my leg won't move, I can't kick that dog" we now have "the prince doesn't want to kick the dog, because he likes animals." It makes more sense in that context, but that's a very different context from what MMOGs have been doing so far. Do you want to make an MMOG where players are giving commands to semi-autonomous beings? Or do you want an MMOG with avatars?

I can definitely see the merit in some "extreme psychological reactions" like fear of snakes. In real life, that kind of thing DOES take control away from us for periods of time. My girlfriend is afraid of snakes, and she involuntarily jumps whenever she sees a picture of one. It's still a little bit of a stretch to have players run away automatically from things they're scared of, but this has been done a lot in MUDs and MMOGs with fear spells, auto-flee, etc. However, I have to say that auto-flee always broke the immersiveness of the game for me. I'm walking along, controlling my actions, then suddenly my legs are acting of their own volition, running away because my HP have dropped below a limit. And I the player have to thrash around to get my avatar back under control. Sigh. Nothing's perfect.

Julien
02/28/01 07:26 PM
[re: 0.5robo]
This is kind of interesting. Certainly most people identify strongly with their characters in these games as 'themselves', but is there a way to change this? Various RTS games give you control of small groups of characters, rather than one single hero, although they tend not to be persistent from game to game.

I've been playing Myth 2 recently. In that game you get an assortment of troops (no resource management / building in this game) at the beginning of each level. However, if one of your troops does particularly well in a level, they are carried on to the next level and marked as a veteran, rather than being replaced with a fresh soldier. Blizzard's plans for Warcraft 3 involve being able to train Heros over time, although according to their current FAQ those Heros can be resurrected fairly easily if you get them killed, no permadeath there. I know I've heard someone make reference to the Sims in this context, as well, although I can't remember now if it was in this thread or not.

Let's say a new player is presented with 3-5 pre-generated characters at the start, and could select one to be a warrior, and one to be a farmer, and one to be an armorer, and so on from a large selection of possible career choices, based on what the stats are most suited to. If the player decides he doesn't like one of the characters, he can cut it loose and it becomes an NPC, or vanishes, and a new one is generated. If one dies beyond hope of resurrection, it is replaced with a fresh character, and the others are able to help the new one get up to speed. I know many people here might balk at working with pre-generated characters, but keep in mind that the intent is not to concentrate on just one of them. Think of it more in terms of a Pokemon style game [insert screams of horror here] which have become insanely popular over the last few years. In this framework, perma-death of a character would be a tragedy, but not an end to the game... you still have the rest of your little family of characters.

Granted, controlling a half-dozen characters at a time in a mmorpg, at least in the current style, would probably be difficult. I see this as working best in a game where characters are persistent, that is, in the game somewhere even when you're not (assuming they're safe from being PK'd and so forth while you're away, in some fashion or other). You could take the hero out hunting while the armorer is set to use a crafting AI, and the farmer is tilling fields... thus avoiding the drudgery of the menial aspects of craft characters. But of course, if you like that drudgery you can choose to directly control the farmer and do the tilling yourself...

I guess this is kind of like what LoH was saying about using your current character to 'breed' children to be future replacements, except rather than have them as abstracts or as NPCs, you actually control an entire family, or platoon, or whatever.

From this perspective having individual characters with phobias and so forth that affect your control over them makes quite a bit more sense, as none of them are officially 'you', and you can simply play a part in molding the personality traits of the characters you're controlling.

0.5robo
02/28/01 08:47 PM
[re: Julien]
Oh, you could certainly do online multiplayer games where the player doesn't directly identify with the player. The classic example would be a "pet" game or a "robot" game where the player gives his pet commands, or programs his robot, and then watches what the creature does. The Sims Online might be like this too -- I'm not sure. I am under the impression that they've scaled it back for online to only one Sim per player -- online games are still trying to grapple with letting people control one character, before trying to tackle teams!

It's certainly possible. After all, you can play Starcraft over the internet. It's just that once you no longer have a player-identified avatar, it's not really a MMOG in the traditional sense. Maybe it's a MMOG-RTS hybrid, like you're describing. That'll probably show up sooner or later. And the more online game experiments, the better.

Archimedes
02/28/01 10:54 PM
[re: 0.5robo]
Well, this thread has taken an interesting turn. Aside from the realism vs. practicality argument we now have a far more interesting (IMO) best perspective argument. Some of you seem to feel that various problems could be solved by distancing the player from the character more. This leads me to a thought I have had about RPGs in general. Nearly half the problems players have with them are due to overidentifying with their characters (believing the character is the same as the player) while the other half is due to underidentifying with the characters (believing the character has nothing to do with them).

As with many such things, if everyone agrees on how closely the player should identify with the character it would all work out, but people can't. Moreover, frequently people aren't consistent in this. There is a strong tendency for us to believe others aren't identifying with their characters ("it's just a game, get over it) while we do (of course I attacked him, he insulted me).

Personally, I've always tried to draw the line at believing the character is not, and should not, be treated as the player, but that what it does is a reflection of me. Kind of a tough concept to get across, even to people who know what you're talkign about. For people who've never had any exposure to role playing games it can be virtually impossible.

For someone like me, permadeath is great. It helps me get into my role a lot better. It makes the aspect of playing a character that is different from myself more "real". However, either end of the role playing spectrum is going to find permadeath a useless concept. For someone who sees the avatar as simply an extension of themselves no immersiveness is necessary. They aren't really role playing because there is no other role, but by the same token, no further immersiveness is really necessary. At the other end, we have folks that don't associate with a character at all. It's alll just pixels on the screen to them. Immersiveness, what's that? Permadeath isn't going to do anything for these folks either.

I have no idea how many people fall on the extremes, or how the distribution of people between the extreems works itslef out in your typical MMOG. I do think this ought to be looked at. Right now we have people being thrown into these games with no backstory, no concept of role playing, no comprehensive set of rules, or anything. This means that the vast majority that joins a new game is probably going to figure out how this stuff should be done by watching/listening to everyone else in the game. Some kind of tutorial to get acquainted wiht the basic concepts would probably help, but most will elect to skip that. Obviously game companies can't afford to shell out money to tutor every player who enters their game in these concepts, nor can they afford to enlist "volunteers" who will later sue them for back wages.

Basically what you have is a situation where a very complex concept exists that people aren't aware of until they've played the game for a while, if then. This concept shapes player expectations and enjoyment of the game, which directly affects player retention and hence, the game's economic success. Unfortunately, how players react to this concept and learn about it is not really controllable on the scale of an MMOG (PnP RPGs handle this just fine, and it tends to work out in MUDs, but MMOGs are just to large). Smaller scale games can rely on a self-filtering mechanism, where people are shown what's what in the game and if this isn't how they like it they can go elswhere, unfotunately this relies on the initial agreement (among the player base) on concepts like immersiveness and role playing that doesn't exist in the large scale games.

On a completely unrelated note I wanted to mention to Stephen that I and some friends of mine were very much looking forward to Middle Earth Online. The design looked really promising. We were all very disappointed when it got junked. It was probably a much bigger let down for you, I just wanted to let you know that there certainly were folks who thought you guys did a good job.

Edited by Archimedes on 02/28/01 10:54 PM.

Serafina
02/28/01 11:03 PM
[re: 0.5robo]
Sorry for throwing noise into this wonderful discussion. Just wanted to drop in my two cents.

I love perm death if I'm a powerful character. I hate perm death if I'm a weak, lowly and nothing character. Why? Because there is a sense that powerful characters have an impact on the story and politics in a game. If I die permanantly as a powerful character, then I die with a sense of accomplishment. I die knowing there is an impact from my death other than just to me as a player. To me, perm death only makes sense when it impacts something more than just that player. Alternatively, when perm death happens to a character of mine when it is young, weak and with no impact to anything or anyone around me, then there is no sense of a hero's death. There is no legacy. There is just the inconvenience and annoyance of starting another character. I don't mind dying. However, I do mind dying without having an impact.

Serafina Lead Game Designer http://www.atriarch.com/

Domasai
02/28/01 11:35 PM
[re: Serafina]
I know this is a bit removed from the context, but I'd like to say something I found rather interesting during a PnP RPing session I GMed for a friend of mine.

A bit of background: Some people have stated that Perma-Death shouldn't exist in online environments because there's no GM looking out for you, as there is in PnP. I'm not saying what I'm about to state will negate this, but it reflects upon the mindset.

My friend's character had been going for about four years; we'd both become so familiar with the persona and his NPC friends, that we could often have entire conversations about them outside of playing (almost, scarily enough, as if they were real people). We cared about them; when one of them died, it affected us both. There was, after all, no coming back from death.

Anyway, during a storyline that had been going for about a year, his character (a decently powerful guy, though no real power-hitter) was put in the unenviable position of fighting a tremendously potent enemy. He could've run; in fact, I gave him every chance to do so (as many GMs do to guard their players' characters). He knew that running might indirectly endanger someone else's life, but he also knew that fighting this person would mean his certain death. As I said before, after all, there was no coming back.

He stayed and fought the man. The reason he did this was simple: It was in his character's personality to do this. He'd put up with this man far too long, allowed him to take pot-shots and harm others, and he felt that his character had come to his breaking point. And he died; he lost his character, one he'd so feverishly cared for and developed over four years of play sessions.

To my surprise, however, he wasn't upset or even the least bit angry. He even thanked me for not pulling a deus ex machina in order to save him. In his words: "If you'd have saved him cheaply, I'd never have been proud of him. He died doing what he felt was right, and I can't think of any better way that we could've ended his life."

I understand there are complications unique to online environments that don't appear in PnP sessions -- lag, connection failing, even PKs.

But, to be frank, I want this to be possible: I want players to be able to value their character's spirit more than they do his belongings. When their character dies, there should be the opportunity of sacrifice, the chance to have the avatar's life mean something.

This doesn't exist in games without Perma-Death. It just doesn't. Sure, we get some sort of puerile enjoyment from ganking our one-hundredth orc lord, even if it means being killed, respawning, and coming back to finish the job. But is that RPing, or is that our attachment to the games of old creeping back into our psyche everytime the opportunity to win arises?

I'm not saying the former is better, but it's the one I'd prefer and it's the one I'm not getting.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Zazmak
02/28/01 11:59 PM
[re: Serafina]
My brain hasn't absorbed the entirety of what I have read this evening but Ill just comment on the last red name a saw :)

In reply to:

If I die permanently as a powerful character, then I die with a sense of accomplishment. I die knowing there is an impact from my death other than just to me as a player. To me, perm death only makes sense when it impacts something more than just that player. Alternatively, when perm death happens to a character of mine when it is young, weak and with no impact to anything or anyone around me, then there is no sense of a hero's death. There is no legacy. There is just the inconvenience and annoyance of starting another character. I don't mind dying. However, I do mind dying without having an impact.

I thing the whole point of including perma-death in a online game would be to a) Last long enough to make an impact in the world and be hailed as a famous hero (or infamous). b) Last till forced retirement (Can anyone say old characters home. A mini jail cept you didn't really do anything wrong except win )

However with that being said I think in any permanent death situation the rate of advancement should have internal controls which prevents no-lifers (er power gamers) from outpacing the norms (casual gamers of course). Not power hour or anything. Just an increase in some theoretical skill table for showing up and playing per day. I also think characters should age and become less effective later on in their careers. Imagine a 92 yr old Navy seal in a knife fight against a 22 year old computer geek. The old seal guy has the training to mop the floor with the computer geek. But is he going to remember how? Can he move fast enough?

Ok ok.. I'm rambling and off topic so I think its time for me to go

Zazmak

Tôi bi di úng thuõc pênixilin!

Richard Bartle
03/01/01 05:13 AM
[re: Archimedes]
Archimedes>Nearly half the problems players have with them are due to overidentifying with their characters (believing the character is the same as the player) while the other half is due to underidentifying with the characters (believing the character has nothing to do with them).

The relationship between player and character is something I'm very interested in. Distancing players from characters would lead to a different type of game that I may well like in its own terms (because I like running parties of characters), but it wouldn't be a MUD (or MMORPG or whatever today's acronym is).

>Unfortunately, how players react to this concept and learn about it is not really controllable on the scale of an MMOG

I think you can bootstrap it, given time. You need to find the right players to seed your game first, though. Having on several occasions run identical (in code terms) incarnations of my text MUD simultaneously, I have been struck by the great differences in culture and behaviour that can evolve. Sometimes it's due to the demographics of the user base (games with lots of schoolkids in them are going to be different to games packed with engineers, accountants and lawyers), but even when the demographics are similar the games can be quite different.

Serafina>when perm death happens to a character of mine when it is young, weak and with no impact to anything or anyone around me, then there is no sense of a hero's death. There is no legacy. There is just the inconvenience and annoyance of starting another character. I don't mind dying. However, I do mind dying without having an impact.

At least if you're weakand puny when you die, you won't take quite as long to get back to where you were. Not much of a fillip, I admit, but better than nothing.

Domasai>But, to be frank, I want this to be possible: I want players to be able to value their character's spirit more than they do his belongings. When their character dies, there should be the opportunity of sacrifice, the chance to have the avatar's life mean something.

There is still a difference, though. You could have a game where characters were only susceptible to PD if the player flipped their "susceptible to PD" switch. People would generally go into fights against vastly superior foes and come out a mangled heap but still alive. Only if they switched off the safety controls would they actually be in any danger of death.

In my view, this still doesn't work. The character hasn't gone out in a blaze of glory, they've gone out because they committed suicide. A blaze of glory is where you realise death is inevitable, but you go ahead anyway. In the above system, death isn't inevitable. There's no sacrifice, as you're not giving yourself up to save others, you're just giving yourself up - you could save the others without dying. Heroism is where you don't want to die and you're at a real risk of dying, but you go ahead anyway in the hope that you can pull through. In the above system, you don't care whether you die or not; if you did care, you'd leave the safety controls on. Unless the rewards for playing with the controls off are greater than those for playing with it on, so people have some reason to risk their characters other than wanting to kill them off, it's not really PD.

Richard

Richard Bartle
03/01/01 09:20 AM
[re: Treacherous]
Treacherous>Anyone here read the Otherland series by Tad Williams?

I'm waiting for volume 4 to come out in England before I buy any of them. I'm pretty well forced to, though, given the first line of the foreword to volume 1...

Richard

Xilrens Twin
03/01/01 09:22 AM
[re: Serafina]
In reply to:

Because there is a sense that powerful characters have an impact on the story and politics in a game. If I die permanantly as a powerful character, then I die with a sense of accomplishment. I die knowing there is an impact from my death other than just to me as a player

Well, that sort of depends upon allowing your character to actually HAVE an impact on the story/politics of the game. I believe you will be trying to give players that ability in your upcoming title, but to date we really haven't seen that allowed. UO came the closest with their ability to create permanent in game structures and towns, but even so, player there couldn't affect the plot of the general game unless a seer designed some materials for them specifically. And even, then the impact of their actions was kept minimal (which is probably wise).

The oft mentioned problem with allowing players to affect the plotline of the worlds they inhabit is one of control and management. If you allow everyone to alter the world, how do you avoid chaos as each player changes the world to suit them own desires (be they beneficial or harmful to the rest of the community)? Not to mention the whole server divergence issues. Do you restrict it to "elder game" status where only those powerful characters can affect the world, but they also are the only ones subject to permadeath? How are you planning on handling this in your upcoming game?

As a side note, there are proabably just as many people who would feel just the opposite of losing a powerful character. At least when you lose a weak, lowly character you haven't invested much in it, thus the "loss" would be much less in impact. If had been developing said character for a long time to a point where you perceive them as powerful and influential, I imagine it would be quite a blow to lose them and be back to square 1, especially, if it was not by choice (which bring us back to the controlability issue of PD).

Xilren PS Nice to see you on the boards; we need more Atriarch info :)

Arcadian Del Sol
03/01/01 09:31 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Richard,
I have a great deal of respect for your opinions, but I think you're wrong this time around.

People do not play these games because they lead lives that have a lack of conflict and struggle - people play these games because they wish to *escape* lives that are chock full 'o struggles.

The games you are thinking of are Half Life: Team Fortress, QuakeII:Arena, et. al. The persistent fantasy world genre is a genre that calls out to people who just want to log in and relax for a few hours. Those who -don't- do exactly that are confused as to what game they are actually playing. Permanent death is -not- something people will pay a monthly fee for, not when DiabloII, Half Life, et. al. are free.

Xilrens Twin
03/01/01 09:59 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

Domasai>But, to be frank, I want this to be possible: I want players to be able to value their character's spirit more than they do his belongings. When their character dies, there should be the opportunity of sacrifice, the chance to have the avatar's life mean something.

In my view, this still doesn't work. The character hasn't gone out in a blaze of glory, they've gone out because they committed suicide. A blaze of glory is where you realise death is inevitable, but you go ahead anyway. In the above system, death isn't inevitable. There's no sacrifice, as you're not giving yourself up to save others, you're just giving yourself up - you could save the others without dying. Heroism is where you don't want to die and you're at a real risk of dying, but you go ahead anyway in the hope that you can pull through. In the above system, you don't care whether you die or not; if you did care, you'd leave the safety controls on. Unless the rewards for playing with the controls off are greater than those for playing with it on, so people have some reason to risk their characters other than wanting to kill them off, it's not really PD.

This actual brings to mind a question I meant to ask earlier. How can some be considered "heroic" without having other people actually at risk? Taking a big risk for some possible reward is very different from heroism. Mountain climbing might require a lot of bravery, but i don't know that anyone would call it heroic.

Consider what the one of the general perception of a hero is;"supremely noble or self-sacrificing". Being noble or self sacrificing has couple within it the concept of acting that way to other people. Can you really consider yourself a hero in these games if you a risking or "sacrificing" yourself to save an NPC?

One of the ideas I've seen bandied about is that in games where everyone (the players) is supposed to be a hero, and there are no real "victims", heroism doesn't exist.

Supposedly, one of the goals of these games want to provide is to let people "be the hero". So how do we do that?

Well, perhaps that's one of the unstated reasons PVP seems to be becoming more and more the focus in upcoming games? (Plus the whole intelligent opponent issue).

Xilren PS Course, you could say the same of single player games too; can you be a hero in a game of one?

Stephen Nichols
03/01/01 12:29 PM
[re: Archimedes]
Archimedes, thanks for the kind words. :) It was certainly disappointing to all of us involved. Oh well, you can't blame a guy for trying. lol

Anyway, on to the points that you've raised. I think that you've said some interesting things related to the extreme demographics in this domain. I tend to believe that the majority of players do not fall on those extremes. Indeed, I believe that a product created as a simulation of a fantasy world would have wide appeal. Such a game supporting permanent death would require a much richer context for character development. A world which predicates all character development on killing puts the player in the position of regularly seeing his character die due to various dangers. The fact that death is so common (even unavoidable) forces death to be relatively meaningless. This is the true enemy of permanent death as we have been considering it. Why must our games be simple monster-hacks? There are a great many interactions beyond killing. Of course, being able to do dangerous things with your character should be included in any set of interactions. I can't help but to use The Sims as an example of a product that follows this very same idea. The Sims is very much a system of complex interactions that supports permanent death (although you can always reload a saved game). If you have not played this game, I highly recommend it. I also believe that it is no coincedence that The Sims is doing so well in the market. I believe many computer users have wanted a refreshing view on how games should be played -- and The Sims does that quite nicely. As long as we continue to provide worlds where gameplay is an exercise in dispatching increasingly powerful enemies we will be unable to integrate meaningful death. What about cooperation instead of conflict? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work. ;)

steve

Treacherous
03/01/01 01:55 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Richard>I'm waiting for volume 4 to come out in England before I buy any of them. I'm pretty well forced to, though, given the first line of the foreword to volume 1...

"It started in mud, as many things do."

Glad to find another fan. I especially enjoyed the description of the social scene within a fortress inside the hack n' slash fantasy simulation in the book. There was basically a goth club socializer haven that sprouted up in the middle of a d&d type game. I wonder how they keep out PKs...

Richard Bartle
03/01/01 03:26 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Arcadian Del Sol>People do not play these games because they lead lives that have a lack of conflict and struggle - people play these games because they wish to *escape* lives that are chock full 'o struggles.

Well some do, yes, but some don't. I was particularly referring to the ones that do, yet attempting to take into account the views of the ones that don't. I do realise that there are different types of players...

>The games you are thinking of are Half Life: Team Fortress, QuakeII:Arena, et. al.

I gave those games no thought in my article. I wasn't concerned with them in it at all.

>The persistent fantasy world genre is a genre that calls out to people who just want to log in and relax for a few hours.

That's correct, it does, but it doesn't ONLY call out to such people. It calls out to many other people, too. If it didn't, the games would just be glorified chatlines.

>Permanent death is -not- something people will pay a monthly fee for, not when DiabloII, Half Life, et. al. are free.

I'm at a loss here. Do I have to tell everyone individually that my article was not advocating PD for all before? I was hoping the several times I've already said it in the 7 pages of discussion thread here so far might have been enough.

Xilrens Twin>This actual brings to mind a question I meant to ask earlier. How can some be considered "heroic" without having other people actually at risk? Taking a big risk for some possible reward is very different from heroism. Mountain climbing might require a lot of bravery, but i don't know that anyone would call it heroic.

There is opportunity for heroism in mountaineering, but it's of the "I'll undo my safety rope so I can reach my friend" variety. Yes, I agree, heroism does involve taking real personal risk to save others.

>Can you really consider yourself a hero in these games if you a risking or "sacrificing" yourself to save an NPC?

Assuming nobody had any emotional attachment to the NPC, probably not.

>One of the ideas I've seen bandied about is that in games where everyone (the players) is supposed to be a hero, and there are no real "victims", heroism doesn't exist.

Sounds fair enough to me. If you can't do heroic deeds, you can't be a hero. If you can deeds which would be heroic in the real world but they're watered down in the game world (eg. "I risked my life to save you!" in EQ) then that can hardly be said to count as heroism either.

>Course, you could say the same of single player games too; can you be a hero in a game of one?

Heroism is a term granted by others rather than taken by oneself, so there isn't a lot of scope for it in single-player games, you're right.

Richard

Mahrin Skel
03/01/01 05:09 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

That's correct, it does, but it doesn't ONLY call out to such people. It calls out to many other people, too. If it didn't, the games would just be glorified chatlines.

According to Warren Spector, that's exactly what they are. I'm not sure he's wrong.

--Dave Rickey

Archimedes
03/01/01 05:15 PM
[re: Mahrin Skel]
This thread has now officially become the "let's see how many red names we can pack into a single thread" thread.

:)

Soulflame
03/01/01 05:27 PM
[re: Serafina]
Serafina said:

In reply to:

I love perm death if I'm a powerful character. I hate perm death if I'm a weak, lowly and nothing character. Why? Because there is a sense that powerful characters have an impact on the story and politics in a game. If I die permanantly as a powerful character, then I die with a sense of accomplishment. I die knowing there is an impact from my death other than just to me as a player. To me, perm death only makes sense when it impacts something more than just that player. Alternatively, when perm death happens to a character of mine when it is young, weak and with no impact to anything or anyone around me, then there is no sense of a hero's death. There is no legacy. There is just the inconvenience and annoyance of starting another character. I don't mind dying. However, I do mind dying without having an impact

I think most people would disagree. Who cares if your level 1 newbie bites it? Sure, probably half the people who had their newbies die would never go to the character creation screen again, but for me, if I had a character I worked on for years up and die, I would log out, and never return. Ever.

I wouldn't have a sense of accomplishment, I would have a dire sense of loss. Two years of developing, being that avatar, flushed because the developer wants me to be more immersed. No thanks. I think any game that has permadeath will simply not be played by me, regardless of how important game developers regard it.

I guess I don't see how permadeath would affect anything outside my character. With my luck hehLafLOL would harvest me for whatever, and store the resulting 'points' on his mule. And how does this legacy thing work? People are going to talk about how I went up against the big dragon, and lost? Probably not. It is meaningless to them, and in fact will cause fewer people to go after the big dragon. Who wants to risk the huge investment that getting a character up and running on the chance of being deleted? I can assure you, that person is not me.

Xilrens Twin
03/01/01 05:34 PM
[re: Mahrin Skel]
In reply to:

According to Warren Spector, that's exactly what they are. I'm not sure he's wrong.

Well, don't let the EQ model of "sit around and chat for 15 minutes before you can actually DO anything" color your perception too badly :-).

Besides, it's hard to solo in a chat room unless you have multiple personalities...

Xilren

Domasai
03/01/01 05:35 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
When a fireman goes into a burning building to save a child, he's putting his life at risk; he could die in there. Heroism is putting one's life or needs above your own, but with little to no cost for dying, every action is made hollow.

If the fireman knew that the child would simply respawn, where's the incentive to even behave heroically?

If he runs in and saves the child, he doesn't feel heroic; he'll get pissed off if there isn't a reward for doing it, for taking the time to even bother.

That's a game mechanic; it's been around for quite a while. I remember it in the Zelda games, where after performing some 'heroic' deed, you were given a new power or item. So, when there's no reward for going out of our way, we feel cheated. Unless, of course, you make the action have meaning in and of itself.

It's the possibility of loss, major loss, that makes us endeavor to protect others, and it's also the thing that allows heroism to exist.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Damiano
03/01/01 05:41 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
My apologies. I do have responses, but I am in the middle of an install which is consuming every waking moment of my time... a few minor points 1) yep, missed including the Old Age option, 2) I was assuming a system where option #3 for perma-death is more prevalent than in an abstract hit point based system (injuries and etc.), and 3) the more I've thought about it, the more I'd include participation in war (as a soldier) under option #1... although my original thought had PCs manipulating 5+ NPCs each as colonels and lieutenants, with the requisite corpse count being mainly filled by those poor sods.

Anyway, no time to get into grand detail. Perhaps this weekend (I hope.)

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

Damiano
03/01/01 05:43 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
I've been trying to give your idea more thought, but work has gotten in my way. My apologies. I hope to be able to think coherently and be able to respond again this weekend...

Damiano, EQ Prexus etc...

Xilrens Twin
03/01/01 05:46 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

>Can you really consider yourself a hero in these games if you a risking or "sacrificing" yourself to save an NPC?

Assuming nobody had any emotional attachment to the NPC, probably not.

Only reason I bring it up is if there really isn't a mechanism in place to be "heroic" than it seems the only way to temp people into risking PD is by offering them some substantial reward.

Now that, I could probably see incorporated as an nice optional add on to the elder game. But, you'd have to take appropriate measure to ensure the rewards was not transferrable to other characters to try and stop the ebay farmers from simply making it a profitable farming task. (I thinking something non-transferrable that also dissapates if the account's billing info ever changes too. Not perfect, but a start to curtail ebaying either the reward or the whole account at least).

Xilren

Domasai
03/01/01 05:53 PM
[re: Soulflame]
Originally Posted by Soulflame: Sure, probably half the people who had their newbies die would never go to the character creation screen again, but for me, if I had a character I worked on for years up and die, I would log out, and never return. Ever.

I wouldn't have a sense of accomplishment, I would have a dire sense of loss. Two years of developing, being that avatar, flushed because the developer wants me to be more immersed. No thanks.

I honestly believe it would depend upon how your character died. If it happened along some life-span restriction, where your character automatically just dies by reaching a certain age, then yes, I can see where that would piss you off. ___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Domasai
03/01/01 06:08 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Originaly Posted by Xilrens Twin: Only reason I bring it up is if there really isn't a mechanism in place to be "heroic" than it seems the only way to temp people into risking PD is by offering them some substantial reward.

I disagree here, actually. I'm not saying they should never get a reward for doing this, but I've seen this premise proven wrong on numerous occasions in PD-based PnP sessions. People have often risked their character's life just because it's in their character's persona to do that.

That, to me, is the difference between Roleplaying and Playing w/ Avatar.

In the latter, the object is to win. Of course, since the game is open-ended, that can essentially mean anything -- PKing (winning through victory over anyone), Item Hoarding (winning through collection), etc. No matter the form it takes, it's all about winning, which is a concept that belongs more in a game rather than a world, be it even a virtual one.

In the former, it's about developing a character's personality, and doing things based upon what that persona would likely want and/or need to do.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Soulflame
03/01/01 07:36 PM
[re: Domasai]
Domasai said:

In reply to:

When a fireman goes into a burning building to save a child, he's putting his life at risk; he could die in there. Heroism is putting one's life or needs above your own, but with little to no cost for dying, every action is made hollow.

If the fireman knew that the child would simply respawn, where's the incentive to even behave heroically?

If he runs in and saves the child, he doesn't feel heroic; he'll get pissed off if there isn't a reward for doing it, for taking the time to even bother.

That's a game mechanic; it's been around for quite a while. I remember it in the Zelda games, where after performing some 'heroic' deed, you were given a new power or item. So, when there's no reward for going out of our way, we feel cheated. Unless, of course, you make the action have meaning in and of itself.

With the risk of seeming to belong to the 'its just a game' crowd, there is a large difference between a fireman rescuing a child from a fire, and slaying the big baddie for a foozle, or even just bragging rights. I don't see heroism in an MMOG, for several reasons. For a large percentage of the playerbase, these are just games. For a small percentage, these are single player games with the added satisfaction of messing with others. What's left have varying amounts of involvement in the world, but with differing abilities to actually affect the world. See Asheron's Call...

I agree, giving a reward for rescuing an NPC is a game mechanic, and a good one at that. Give a foozle, and you use the foozle to complete the next phase. In fact, parts of Zelda couldn't be completed without the foozles you would get. I don't know that this mechanic would translate to a world where people can deny you access to foozles, or charge you for them on eBay.

Again with the heroism... I don't have any particular want or desire to be a hero. I just want to play with a close group of friends, with as little interferance from others as possible. Yeah, I know, go back to pnp, and leave the MMOGs for the big kids... Still, I would venture to guess that a sizeable percentage of the playerbase has little desire to be punching bags for the 'l33t' crowd (AC), or the PKs (UO). We inhabit these worlds as a way to have fun, to interact with others, and to have fun. Did I mention that I want to have fun?

In reply to:

It's the possibility of loss, major loss, that makes us endeavor to protect others, and it's also the thing that allows heroism to exist.

No way. In UO, PKs had the risk of major loss, and this caused them to act even more cowardly. The last few PKs that existed would travel in large groups, with as many blue healers as red killers. Fear of loss causes major cowardice, particularly since our investment in these games is really shallow, when you think about it. I value my characters, I wouldn't risk them for someone else's characters, while I would risk my life to save someone IRL. You can walk away from the game. You cannot walk away from RL.

Soulflame
03/01/01 07:51 PM
[re: Domasai]
In reply to:

I honestly believe it would depend upon how your character died. If it happened along some life-span restriction, where your character automatically just dies by reaching a certain age, then yes, I can see where that would piss you off.

Nope, sorry. If my character died permanently after I worked and slaved and became well known in the community, that would be it. Time to unplug. I doubt I would ever pick up a game where there was a lifespan restriction. Three years, then I die? Hah! Oooo, a different shiny box, without permadeath and aging. This won't be a hard choice for me, nor I suspect for most consumers.

Now, Dr Bartle suggested limiting permadeath to areas where people would have to make a conscious decision to go, to obtain training or foozles. Or bragging rights. This area would affect only those willing to risk it all at a shot for glory. This doesn't work well, just look at AC. Certain players can access the high level content, others read about it on CoD. Segregating the playerbase into haves and havenots is very divisive, and the people who don't wish to risk it all on a roll of the dice will be jealous of the foozles or skills (or bragging rights) of whoever did risk it all.

I just don't see how permadeath is feasible, in a commercial MMOG. Just the mere mention of it is enough to kill projects (MEO, Dark Zion), and the potential for customer support problems and grief is simply immense. I personally regard permadeath as a big can of worms that would be better left undisturbed.

Domasai
03/01/01 09:52 PM
[re: Soulflame]
All I've stated is that I'd like to give PD a try; I'm not saying that it works for everybody. I just find it surprising when people who are anti-PD bash every game that would like to utilize it, not to mention stating that games with it should never exist at all. Why not? Shouldn't we at least give it a try before making all sorts of judgments on it?

I'm not saying that's what you're stating Soulflame; it's just the most common thing I come across. People make all sorts of rampant assumptions of how this or that wouldn't work, when it's never been tried before. I'd just like to see what would actually occur and how we might learn from it.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Treacherous
03/02/01 02:47 AM
[re: Soulflame]
I'm glad Steve has mentioned The Sims several times already. A few years ago, I used to all the time see on boards like this an argument against incorporation of RL function into games that went something like this: "Well nobody's ever going to suggest that you'll need to make your character sleep or go to the bathroom or anything like that... what fun would that ever be?" Hmm I wonder why I never see that argument used anymore...

All the "permanent death will never be viable" talk just keeps me up at night thinking of the following things:

The Sims illustrates a fact I see entirely too many people overlook: designing a game to be fun is an art form. You can't just point blank blindly ask on an internet discussion board like this a question like "Should this painting I'm thinking of working on have 15% of its content red tones, or just maybe about 10%?" Well you could ask, but the response you'd get would be incoherent and very little of it would help you. Thus is it with permanent death.

1. "I hate the color red, it should be 0%." 2. "I want to see all red, all the time, everywhere I go." 3. "Red is ok, but I'm with #1. Give me special glasses so I don't have to look at it, but I can see the rest of the painting."

To get anywhere, you have to ask questions about mixing colors, paint brands, blending techniques, art composition, etc.

I learned as a little kid back in the 80s that a video game about making a sandwich can be fun. I also learned that even when in the side scrolling shooter type of game my last life ran out, and no matter how far I'd gotten, all my progress was wiped out, I still had fun getting there. In fact, I still had fun starting over and doing it a different way. As I recall, I even had fun starting over and doing it exactly the same way, only trying to do it better. The reason was that these games I was playing were well designed to be fun.

The ammount of fun in a game is pretty much content independant. That is the same as saying art is medium independent. Certainly not every single person will like every single game. An online game with permanent death, like a game about evacuation and carpooling (The Sims) will be fun for most people if the context is right. This is like saying that most art house patrons will say that painting of madonna with elephant feces on it is, in fact, art, which is true. So now I'm comparing permanent death nay-sayers to art boycotters. Ok, I'll try something less confrontational now.

When you've got The Inventor of MUDs

Richard>There ARE ways to address PD and PKing other than switching them off or condemning them to their own servers.

and The Inventor of the First Big Commertial Graphical MUD (that I know of)

Steve>Indeed, I believe that a product created as a simulation of a fantasy world would have wide appeal. Such a game supporting permanent death would require a much richer context for character development.

saying things like that ^ and a bunch of peopel coming out of the woodwork saying "Yes, we want to play games like that," why don't you consider that they and/or others may be able to artfully create something fun and appealing? Letting someone try, or helping play devil's advocate when they're hashing out detalis is much easier than proving a dispositive like "Permanent death will never work."

Now then, as for what such a game might actually be like... Well, maybe I'll get to that some in another post. But it is what we should be focusing on, really, instead of whether or not we personally like the color red.

Richard Bartle
03/02/01 05:29 AM
[re: Domasai]
Domasai>If the fireman knew that the child would simply respawn, where's the incentive to even behave heroically?

I don't think we're in disagreement here. The heroic rescue of an NPC is only heroic if someone else has emotional interest in it (unless the NPC's AI is so advanced that it could itself be considered a PC).

You can be heroic rescuing an old lady's cat from a fire. You can be heroic rescuing an old lady's family album from a fire. If you're rescuing your own family album, you can be brave but not heroic. If you're rescuing your own cat, you're only going to be heroic if the cat understands the concept.

>It's the possibility of loss, major loss, that makes us endeavor to protect others, and it's also the thing that allows heroism to exist.

I agree. PD doesn't guarantee heroism, but it enables it.

Xilrens Twin>Only reason I bring it up is if there really isn't a mechanism in place to be "heroic" than it seems the only way to temp people into risking PD is by offering them some substantial reward.

The game can't itself rate heroism, because, as with any essentially social relationship, it can never have all the facts. People may be tempted into a PD area by the thought of great reward, or of greater excitement, or out of sheer curiosity, or because they want to be nasty to someone else - there are lots of reasons. Even if this remains their goal, there is still plenty of opportunity for heroism (unless they're running solo). Even PKs can be heroic, within their own context if not within everyone else's.

>Now that, I could probably see incorporated as an nice optional add on to the elder game. But, you'd have to take appropriate measure to ensure the rewards was not transferrable to other characters to try and stop the ebay farmers from simply making it a profitable farming task.

It depends on your goal as a designer. It's easy to add, say, a fountain of youth in a badland area, so the benefits were tied to the character. That would mean an eBay sale of the entire character, which if the player wasn't skilled at using might not last very long if obliged to visit the badlands again. You could add weapons that only worked in the badlands. You could add objects whose power depended on how many of them there were, so if there were 20 Swords of Light then they'd do twice the damage each than if there were 40. There are other, more subtle ways to do it than this, but it's not like any of it is difficult if you (as a designer) think about it beforehand.

Soulflame>Nope, sorry. If my character died permanently after I worked and slaved and became well known in the community, that would be it. Time to unplug.

Even if you knowingly put your character in a situation where it could die, despite being clearly warned that it was a possibility, and despite having plenty of other things you could have?

If not, there's nothing to worry about. If so, well you'd be stopping playing because of your inability to accept responsibility for your actions. At least the game might help you realise you had a problem in that area, even if you didn't ever want to play it again.

>Now, Dr Bartle suggested limiting permadeath to areas where people would have to make a conscious decision to go, to obtain training or foozles. Or bragging rights.

I think it has to be more substantial than mere bragging rights.

>This doesn't work well, just look at AC.

It doesn't necessarily work well in AC, but then lots of other stuff doesn't either. (I'm not particularly criticising AC here - lots of stuff in all games of this size is experimental; some works out, some doesn't).

>Segregating the playerbase into haves and havenots is very divisive,

It is if it's done as straight binary chop. "All those who wish to have the really good stuff and do all the heroic deeds and risk dying in a blaze of glory - stand to the left. Wimps - stand to the right" or "All those who wish to reach the pinnacle of success with peace of mind and the companionship of adoring followers - stand to the left. Idiots, stand to the right".

It doesn't have to be binary, though. There could easily be some areas where people theoritically run a risk of being killed, but it happens so rarely that you've got a greater chance of having a coronary at the keyboard than your character dying in the game. You can graduate from absolute safety to absolute suicide, along a whole continuum of risk. That makes segregation less likely. People in RL who don't step out of their house in case they get knocked over by a car aren't ever going to get knocked over by a car, sure, but they're not going to see an IMAX movie either.

>I just don't see how permadeath is feasible, in a commercial MMOG.

It's feasible because most of the people who object to it haven't really thought about its implementation. It's either "I don't want to be killed so I won't play" or "I die so often I'd never get anywhere". The former don't consider that they can play and guarantee not to get killed, ever, and the latter assume that frequency of death in a future game will be the same as it is in their current one.

I'm not saying that the solution I proposed is ideal, or even necessarily any good. I am saying that people ought to think about the cocnept of PD more, rather than simply dismissing it out of hand.

>Just the mere mention of it is enough to kill projects (MEO, Dark Zion)

This is a publisher/developer issue. If the publisher doesn't want PD and you can't persuade them to allow PD, then when you give them PD they're going to be annoyed. If as novelist signed a deal to write a Fantasy novel and delivered a Science Fiction novel, their publisher would be unamused - even if they did have a Science Fiction list.

There are commercial constraints, I agree. Big publishers will follow bandwagons, because they know they work. This lets the smaller outfits in, if their product is good enough.

Developer: "FPSs, FPSs, everyone is doing FPSs!"
Small publisher response: "We ought to do something different"
Big publisher response: "We'd better do one too, then"

Treacherous>The ammount of fun in a game is pretty much content independant. That is the same as saying art is medium independent. Certainly not every single person will like every single game.

Where online games differ is that they have to be liked by different types of people for different reasons in order to flourish. This is true of art to some degree, in that if your art appeals to those who understand art and to those who don't but they "know what they like", you'll be more successful than if you just appeal to one or the other (or neither!). With online games, there are large numbers of players of different types that don't necessarily like each other but are to some extent reliant on them. A virtual world full of achievers is game-only; one full of socialisers is a chatroom with active wallpaper. There has to be a mix, and there are dynamics between the different types.

So yes, I agree that not every single person will like every single game, but for the kinds of game we're discussing here people do have to be able to like a game for different reasons. I don't think you were saying the opposite, incidentally, just it wasn't mentioned so I thought I'd mention it.

>But it is what we should be focusing on, really, instead of whether or not we personally like the color red.

This is exactly why I wrote the article I did (rather than some other article). People need to think about this kind of thing, and do so now - before the games we have are such accepted dogma that any other thought is stifled. It may be that after debating the subject, the consensus is that PD is indeed a bad idea. At least we'd have a better sense of WHY, though, rather than "I don't like it".

Very thoughtful post, there, Treach!

Richard

Serafina
03/02/01 06:18 AM
[re: Treacherous]
Souflame> I guess I don't see how permadeath would affect anything outside my character.

That is a good point, because mmorpg's don't really allow you to impact things much yet. However, I see that changing with several of games currently in development. We'll just have to wait and see on that.

Soulflame> If I had a character I worked on for years up and die, I would log out, and never return. Ever.

What if your character dies, but your family lives on? I know there isn't an mmorpg that does it like this yet, but we are working on it. What if your character died, but you as the player have the option to come back as your child. You inherit your parent's wealth. Your character dies, but your family lives on. There is a lineage... a bloodline that is created.

Do you still have the same reaction? Would you call this perm death or something else?

Bartle > Developer: "FPSs, FPSs, everyone is doing FPSs!" Small publisher response: "We ought to do something different" Big publisher response: "We'd better do one too, then"

That's the truth if I ever heard it! *smile*

I think that one of these days someone will put true perm death in their game and it will work. Until then, most publishers won't touch it with a ten foot pole. They are risk averse and want proof before they do it. Something like true perm death will most likely come from an independent. That is the way it is with most new or different things.

Something that I think many people will disagree with me on is my crazy opinion that perm death may possibly work better in a mass market game than in a game directed at hardcore players. Why? Because most mass market game players don't have expectations. If they come to a game and are told if their character dies, then they start over with a new character, then that's what they accept. That's just how the game works, not much to argue with. There is nothing really for them to compare it to. However, most of us as hardcore gamers have lots to compare it to and are conditioned to expect immortality. We are used to it. So much so that it is hard to let go and try something else. Ok, I'll end my crazy opinion here.

Serafina Lead Game Designer http://www.atriarch.com/

Xilrens Twin
03/02/01 08:21 AM
[re: Serafina]
In reply to:

What if your character dies, but your family lives on? I know there isn't an mmorpg that does it like this yet, but we are working on it. What if your character died, but you as the player have the option to come back as your child. You inherit your parent's wealth. Your character dies, but your family lives on. There is a lineage... a bloodline that is created.

Do you still have the same reaction? Would you call this perm death or something else?

Well, personally I wouldn't call that perm death. It's more like a perm skill/level reduction. You essential have to start your charcter over again from the newbie stage with the advantage of previously gathered wealth. Persumably such wealth would give you a leg up on a brand new account who starts the game with zero skills AND zero wealth.

People do this all the time now when they begin a new character on an existing account. The transfer the funds/equip over from a previously played charater to speed the new character along the advancement curve; i think it's called "twinking" ;-) but you know that already.

The only difference here is you don't have the option of continuing to play your former character anymore. Due to that, I would imagine most players would start another character to follow the same skill selections as the former, so it's essentially the same character back at the newbie stage.

So, no, I wouldn't consider it permadeath; simply a harsher kind of death penalty. How harsh depends entirely on how easy/difficult it is to increase chacater skills/attributes compared to how regularly you expect them to die.

Xilren PS Details, we want details!

Arcadian Del Sol
03/02/01 08:52 AM
[re: Archimedes]
This thread has now officially become the "let's see how many red names we can pack into a single thread" thread.

:)

------------

The answer is " > any other website in history"

yay.

dave
03/02/01 10:17 AM
[re: Arcadian Del Sol]
In reality when you speak of permadeath for MMORPG's it's just an extremely harsh form of penalty on death, not really any different from some on the market at the moment…

Asherons Call :

You lose vitae which can be gained back while still gaining experience.

EQ :

You lose actual earned experience, which you have to earn back

Dragonrealms :

You lose favours from your god, zero favours and no rez = loss of character. You can earn favours by solving puzzles in game. When you lose your character you lose your bank account, possesions etc.

To me, permadeath itself would be that you lose you character, your account, the publisher blocks your credit card when you try to sign on with a new account. The publisher mails passwords for your account by snailmail so they can verify your address and block it if you try to sign up under a different card etc etc. You die, you never get back in. Now that's permadeath.

Everything else is just severity of punishment for 'dying' in game. Look at Dragonrealms. When you die, you are faced with a choice. If you have enough favors, you can depart, and appear as weak as a kitten, naked in a temple. You then run back to your grave and try to retrieve your possessions. If you're too slow getting back, your grave spits your things out one by one, for any passer by to take. You can also hang on within your dead body, waiting for a cleric to come and resurrect you. Unfortunately, while you are waiting, your skills are slowly reducing. You can wait for around 2 hrs I think and then you are auto-departed. No favours and you're outta here ;) There were also situations where you could be disintegrated which meant that you were auto-departed immediately.

Now, Dragonrealms had no real PvP system (apart from duels), but death meant that other players could get their hands on all your equipment. It had a possibility of 'permadeath' it also had experience loss on death. Looking at that compared to EQ and AC, I think most players of these two games would be horrified if you told them that death could mean loss of all your equipment (not a few bits), loss of skills, loss of experience (and levels), and even the chance you would lose your character.

But Dragonrealms worked. Fair enough it only had 2k-3k players online at peak times, but then again it was text only and as such would never command a large user base.

Maybe if we didn't use the 'D' word in these discussions and changed tack slightly to see what possible downsides there could be for getting in over your head then people wouldn't feel so bad about permadeath. Oops I've used the 'D' word . I personally feel that penalties should fit the actions that the player took. Go fight the uber dragon, and OMG! He can disintegrate you with one breath, no more character. Fight the wimpy drudge skulker and the worst he can do is knock you unconscious and run off with that pointy metal stick you were beating him with. PK a trader on a supply run for the city council and a big bad bounty hunter will come after you, if he beats you in a fight then you're up on charges, maybe in a public courtroom where other players can laugh as you squirm in your manacles. Depending on your crimes you can be sentenced to a percentage of your possessions being confiscated right up to real time incarceration, loss of stats and skills or the ultimate, execution.

I've seen it touched on, have permadeath in the badlands but not in towns etc. But to me the reaction should be more tailored to the action. Not a choice of one of two things happening, permadeath or normaldeath (whatever that may be).

Character loss on death could encourage players to be more supportive of one another by increasing empathy felt among players. But this empathy factor is also shot to hell when you realise that you know nothing about the guy you are about to help. His alt could be a Pker for all you know, or a griefer, or 9999 levels higher than you and a member of an Uber guild that controls all the good stuff, so why the hell should you help them. Things like picking an unchangeable sex and fictional surname at account creation would help remedy this, as would only allowing a single character on an account at a time.

The only two gains I can see coming from permadeath are this increased empathy and a heightened sense of excitement while entering unknown situations. The empathy can be increased by allowing the players to identify better with other players. And the increased excitement can be gained by a stiff penalty but not necessarily full level loss, eg half level loss would still be bad enough. So strictly speaking, I don't believe permadeath is a necessity.

Just my 2p worth :)

Take care

Dave

LumsOtherHalf
03/02/01 11:09 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
>Well, personally I wouldn't call that perm death. It's more like a perm skill/level reduction. You essential have to start your charcter over again from the newbie stage with the advantage of previously gathered wealth. Persumably such wealth would give you a leg up on a brand new account who starts the game with zero skills AND zero wealth.

>People do this all the time now when they begin a new character on an existing account. The transfer the funds/equip over from a previously played charater to speed the new character along the advancement curve; i think it's called "twinking" ;-) but you know that already.

>The only difference here is you don't have the option of continuing to play your former character anymore. Due to that, I would imagine most players would start another character to follow the same skill selections as the former, so it's essentially the same character back at the newbie stage.

Yeah, twinking is nearly EXACTLY what this is like - and for the same motivations. Look at what having children does for a player beyond a safetynet on death. Ask yourself - why do people twink? In some cases - they have nice stuff they don't wanna let go to waste. In some cases - they wanna play with another class. In nearly all cases - people are creating their own goals - something to wake up and walk into the world for. Kids are great for longterm goals (and item and money sinks - ask any parent).

In the system I'm dreaming of - you can only play one character at a time - and I suspect many would retire or die of old age. The child isn't a newbie anymore by the time you take over playing him/her - probably not as mature as your first character, but definately well past the newbie stage. And yes, you do inherit a sizeable portion of your familys property - but it will also be split up among siblings and perhaps some benefits to your social standing if you support your parent in their retirement.

To folks that don't invest themselves much in their character - this is just different game mechanics. To the roleplayer - this opens vistas beyond belief for people to build their own storyarc. I've known many people that do exactly this - even tho game mechanics don't really support it. They simply roll another character and say - I am the child of so and so. Some folks in this thread have mentioned heroes and how dying in a blaze of glory and then that character ends doesn't seem to give enough fame to make it worth it. If you have children that can talk about your deeds - that in itself is immortality, but a more intuitive, easily understood kind. We live on thru our children. Heroes are those that OTHERS declare so - a person can never declare themselves a hero - or even really set out to do heroic deeds. A hero is a normal person in abnormal circumstances that rises to an occassion - and someone noticed.

Now - the other aspect of this is having multiple children. Only one can be your direct heir and thereby playable once you retire the first one. If the others go into a pool from which future NPCs are drawn, all of a sudden having a large and influential family becomes REAL important. All of a sudden personal justice has a hope of being attainable. Shunning in these works - it is slow, but it works very well if people don't have NPCs they can run to and in essence play singleplayer in a multiplayer environment. Joe Griefer is a royal pain in my side - finally one day I've had enough I declare a personal feud against him and his. My family won't deal with him. Big deal huh? Well, it might be if my family were perhaps the only NPC in a 100 mile area he could by supplies from or sell to. If he is truly a pain in the neck - chances are others are also shunning him - all of a sudden, he has no way to effectively play in that area - he'll move on - or humbly apologize and change his ways. THAT is true player justice - knockin someone in the head with a halbred whether or not they are back in 5 min is just a hissy fit. This is truly worldimpacting and worldshaping - something we can't really do in what we have today.

I'd also have things like reputation track by account. Deleting and starting all over again isn't gonna help you much if you are a royal griefer. This could be changed over time - but it's not something that anyone would want to look forward to having to do. This isn't so much so that antisocial things don't have to be coded against - this is to catch the myriad idiocies that can never be caught by the AI - that the players want to extract justice for.

Thor
03/02/01 02:02 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
A common perception of massively multiplayer games is to regard them as part game, part world and part community. Then each design decision can be measured in these three dimensions. And the ideal design is that which strengthens all three dimensions.

First some definitions: Game is the aspect of scoring points. The aspect of winning or losing. Like a game of tennis or football.

World is the modeling of a virtual environment. Realism is a central concept in worlds. However not necessarily as in magic isn't realistic and therefore weakens the world aspect. But instead realism in the sense that we feel immersed in a virtual world.

Community is the feeling of social bonds between players. Anything strengthening the social bonds adds to the community aspect.

Now looking on permanent death in these three dimension, it seems that:

- In a PD-free massively multiplayer game you are guaranteed to win, in the sense that your character will eventually reach the top. It's only a matter of how long it takes you to do it. If you implement PD then every player is no longer guaranteed to win. You actually risk losing your life when putting your character at risk. This means that some will win (survive the risky situation) and some will lose (die in the risky situation). But that is the very core of what a game is. Some lose, some win. Imagine a game of tennis where both players are guaranteed to win if they only play long enough… Not much game it would be. The bottom line is that by implementing PD you change it from a pseudo-game where everyone wins, to a real game of winners and losers. In other words you strengthen the game aspect through PD. Not to mention it makes winning much more fun, when you know you could have lost.

- In the world dimension of a massively multiplayer game the element of death is that of realism. It isn't very realistic to automatically reappear at a spawn point every time you die. However it is quite realistic to permanently die. That is after all what happens in the real world, which we use for reference. So in this sense PD strengthens the world aspect.

- The last dimension is the community aspect. Players are more likely to co-operate in the 'badlands' when they are under the threat of dying. And through co-operation social bonds are formed. Further more, friendships formed under the threat of dying strengthen the bonds. So PD strengthens the community aspect as well.

With PD strengthening the three major dimensions of a massively multiplayer game it does seem like a rather interesting design feature. But of course it has to be done right. It's like with all other features. If it isn't done right, it doesn't matter how great the feature your implementing is. So how to do it right seems to be the big question here…

Xilrens Twin
03/02/01 05:52 PM
[re: Thor]
In reply to:

- In a PD-free massively multiplayer game you are guaranteed to win, in the sense that your character will eventually reach the top. It's only a matter of how long it takes you to do it. If you implement PD then every player is no longer guaranteed to win. You actually risk losing your life when putting your character at risk. This means that some will win (survive the risky situation) and some will lose (die in the risky situation). But that is the very core of what a game is. Some lose, some win. Imagine a game of tennis where both players are guaranteed to win if they only play long enough… Not much game it would be. The bottom line is that by implementing PD you change it from a pseudo-game where everyone wins, to a real game of winners and losers. In other words you strengthen the game aspect through PD. Not to mention it makes winning much more fun, when you know you could have lost.

You built a few assumptions in there that I disagree with. The first is the whole win/lose concepts. LoH has comments on the before, but basically the whole zero sum win/lose structure doesn't apply here. In the "games" structure you have implicitly put the spectre of direct competition. That sort of competition doesn't apply in most of these type games. At most, you will have an indirect competition to "see who can get to the top the fastest", but there again, a lot of people don't opt into that scenario either. You could max out you character in 2 weeks where it takes me 2 months; it doesn't matter. According to that narrow definition of a "win", we both did.

The second implicit assumption has to do with the nature of a game. Most "game" settings have a very definite set of rules which dictate what constitutes a win or a loss, and more importantly, the time frame in which that occurs. Once that time frame has ended, the game is over for ALL the participants. Again, doesn't apply to these environments.

Now, to be sure, there are a whole lot of mini-games imbedded in a MMORPG. The most notable being combat you/your group vs. mob(s). First side to die (or run) loses. There you have a direct competition, a narrow rule set (the combat programming) and a limited time frame (race to see who dies/flees first). There are other mini-games as well, but they follow the same paradigm.

The only setting where win/lose really rears it's head is if you had PVP. But once again, you're back to the combat mini-game. The only difference if you include PD is that when the game is over, the loser cannot play again. Call it a single elimination tournament if you will.

The overall game goals for an MMORPG are completely up to the individual. Only they can set the rules for when they think they have "won" or "lost", and most never think about it that much. Even if someone starts playing one with a victory goal of hitting the max level in the shortest amount of time, once they reach that state, the game isn't over (and I very much doubt they would stop playing just as soon as they acheived that goal). That's not a game (in the way I used it above), it's a loosely structured process for having fun.

In reply to:

- In the world dimension of a massively multiplayer game the element of death is that of realism. It isn't very realistic to automatically reappear at a spawn point every time you die. However it is quite realistic to permanently die. That is after all what happens in the real world, which we use for reference. So in this sense PD strengthens the world aspect.

No offense but how do you know when you die in the "real world" you don't respawn back on earth on dimension over, or for that matter, respawn on this world with a total skil/experience reset (thats reincarnated back to a baby)? Ok, runs counter to common sense I know, but consider..

It's not terrible realistic to grab a broadsword and attack a 2 ton, 50 ft long, fire breathing flying lizard either. If you're willing to put aside the realism to accept that any rational, intelligent being would want to take on that dragon by waving a pointy stick at it, why get hung up on something like respawning? Actually, to my mind it is far more "realistic" and keeping with a consistent worldview to believe that a person would voluntarily and optionally take such a life endangering action if they knew it wasn't going to be, um, permanently life-ending. I still don't by the premise that PD is good simply b/c it is more "realistic". It's not terribly realistic to appear into a strange world as a full developed adult with no family, background, home, or reference points either, yet this is how you begin each and every one of these games. If your "birth" is not terribly realistic, why should your "death" be?

I said it before, realism does not automatically equal fun (and remember, this is entertainment, not simulation). Make PD fun, and then we'll see.

I do agree that PD could strength the bonds between friends. But, it also has the effect of breaking those bonds once it actually occurs. If you're dead, you can't play with your friends anymore (unless they all died too; then you can all restart together). Even if you do start again, your skill set will be dramatically different now, and depending on the gameworld, that may further prevent you from adventuring with your buds. And you thought it was tough to keep up with your friends in EQ did you? :-)

Xilren

Thor
03/03/01 05:23 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
In reply to:

At most, you will have an indirect competition to "see who can get to the top the fastest", but there again, a lot of people don't opt into that scenario either. You could max out you character in 2 weeks where it takes me 2 months; it doesn't matter. According to that narrow definition of a "win", we both did.

Exactly. Without PD everyone is guaranteed to reach the max level. With PD it's only the onces who dare to go into the 'badlands' and risk their characters life who reaches the top level. With PD it's a true sense of achievement. Without PD it's just progression and everyone will eventually get there, no matter how they played. To achievers this matters. But your right explorers, socialisers and killers won't care for it.

In reply to:

Now, to be sure, there are a whole lot of mini-games imbedded in a MMORPG. The most notable being combat you/your group vs. mob(s). First side to die (or run) loses. There you have a direct competition, a narrow rule set (the combat programming) and a limited time frame (race to see who dies/flees first). There are other mini-games as well, but they follow the same paradigm

Yes, of course. And they should stay. That's the question of how to do PD right. If you ask me PD should be consensual in the sense that PD is only enabled in the badlands, where the best stuff is found and where you need to go to get the best skills. There should still be PD-free areas where you can play you vs. 'mobiles', without risking your life – but the award should be less than that from the badlands.

In reply to:

The only setting where win/lose really rears it's head is if you had PVP. But once again, you're back to the combat mini-game. The only difference if you include PD is that when the game is over, the loser cannot play again

And that's a very important point. Without PD the ones who die in PvP don't lose – they just postpone their victory. Because they can come back resurrected with all their friends and kill the 'winners'. And then the 'losers' (the ones who died this time) can resurrect and come back with even more friends and kill the 'winners'. And so everyone just postpones his or her victory in a PD-free environment. With PD only one side wins. But again this should only apply to the badlands.

In reply to:

No offense but how do you know when you die in the "real world" you don't respawn back on earth on dimension over, or for that matter, respawn on this world with a total skil/experience reset (thats reincarnated back to a baby)

If you ever had anyone close to you die, you know they don't auto-resurrect at a spawn point – they stay gone.

In reply to:

It's not terrible realistic to grab a broadsword and attack a 2 ton, 50 ft long, fire breathing flying lizard either. If you're willing to put aside the realism to accept that any rational, intelligent being would want to take on that dragon by waving a pointy stick at it, why get hung up on something like respawning? Actually, to my mind it is far more "realistic" and keeping with a consistent worldview to believe that a person would voluntarily and optionally take such a life endangering action if they knew it wasn't going to be, um, permanently life-ending. I still don't by the premise that PD is good simply b/c it is more "realistic". It's not terribly realistic to appear into a strange world as a full developed adult with no family, background, home, or reference points either, yet this is how you begin each and every one of these games. If your "birth" is not terribly realistic, why should your "death" be?

Instead of realism call it suspension of disbelief. Anything that disrupts your belief of being in a virtual world is to be avoided. Now some game-mechanism have been implemented for the sake of 'fun'. Like starting out as an adult. It still doesn't change that the more suspension of disbelief the better. And if you compare auto-resurrect at a static spawn point when you die to permanently dying, I know which I think is better for suspension of disbelief…

In reply to:

I said it before, realism does not automatically equal fun (and remember, this is entertainment, not simulation).

That's the point of regarding MMPG in these three dimensions of game, world and community. Any design that strengthens world (suspension of disbelief/realism) but that ruins the fun for players is not a good design. A good design is one, which makes the game more fun, makes the world more immersive and creates social bonds between players. I think PD is a feature that could do this – if done right…

Richard Bartle
03/03/01 08:29 AM
[re: dave]
dave>In reality when you speak of permadeath for MMORPG's it's just an extremely harsh form of penalty on death, not really any different from some on the market at the moment…

It's different enough to give people the heebie-jeebies. It's also a better match with the concept of "death". I agree that if people didn't use the "D word" then we may get a better discussion as a result, but the problem is that most games out there and most games coming have combat as an integral part. There's no question that the monsters and NPCs they attack die, so they want to know what happens when their own characters reach the same situation under which a monster would die. You can't avoid using the D word under such circumstances except by not having monsters die either.

>To me, permadeath itself would be that you lose you character, your account, the publisher blocks your credit card when you try to sign on with a new account.

So you would associate permadeath with the player, rather than with the character? Or are you just trying to ridicule the concept by taking it way beyond what anyone is proposing? What next? You kill the dragon and the dragon can't play ever again?

>I've seen it touched on, have permadeath in the badlands but not in towns etc. But to me the reaction should be more tailored to the action.

That would be ideal, but it's a PKer's paradise. They don't really care if they die because of their actions, so long as the person they wanted to kill dies too. It's because of the victims that I proposed the badlands idea, not because of the perpetrators.

>Things like picking an unchangeable sex and fictional surname at account creation would help remedy this, as would only allowing a single character on an account at a time.

Although making people buy several accounts is good for business, couldn't the same ends be achieved by letting players have more than one character per account but also letting other players see what a character's account ID is? If players could get a readout that summarised all the characters on an acocunt, they could tell whether Joe Newbie was really some high-level character trying to insinuate himself into your confidence (unless he had a separate account, which your solution doesn't address either). I'm not suggesting that players necessarily SHOULD have access to other players' account data (there may even be RL laws against it), but if you wanted to identify player with persona more strongly then that would be a way to do it.

>The only two gains I can see coming from permadeath are this increased empathy and a heightened sense of excitement while entering unknown situations.

You don't see that giving meaning to achievement is an advantage?

LumsOtherHalf>If you have children that can talk about your deeds - that in itself is immortality, but a more intuitive, easily understood kind.

I'm not so certain. If some child character goes on about how great their parent character was, but isn't itself great, that's like meeting some washed-up guy in a bar telling you how he used to be one of the greats, won every medal there was, went to all the best parties, was in with all the people you've heard of, will you buy him a drink please?

The other problem with children is that they have two parents, not just one.

>I'd also have things like reputation track by account. Deleting and starting all over again isn't gonna help you much if you are a royal griefer.

This sounds like a karma system. Normally, the way I'd expect this to work is that when you're reborn (ie. start your new character) it starts off worse if you accumulated bad karma, and better if you accumulated good karma. However, the slate is then wiped clean. This means that people who change (and people DO change) aren't forever damned for the indiscretions of their youth. Under your system, though, if you start off playing like an asshole and get a ton of bad reputation, no-one is ever going to go near you and you'll get no opportunity to redeem yourself even if you do have a moment of epiphany and suddenly "get it".

Karma systems are notoriously difficult to code, of course.

Thor>A common perception of massively multiplayer games is to regard them as part game, part world and part community.

This is to say they have achievers, explorers and socialisers... You could add "part politics" or (being kind) "part catharsis" if you wanted to include killers too - or you could just ignore them or say that they don't fit in anywhere.

>Then each design decision can be measured in these three dimensions. And the ideal design is that which strengthens all three dimensions.

Yes, but they're inter-related. There are dynamics between the different parts, which must be taken into account. It's all very well taking 3 of the quadrants from my player interest graph and renaming them if it's easier to solve problems in the resulting "quadrant space", but you have to take an understanding of the way they impact on each other, too. They're not orthogonal: if you increase the game then you will attract more game-players which will (over time) act as a damper on the number of socialisers you get. Because there is an inter-relationship between the quadrants (or points of the triangle, if you prefer) they can't be regarded as true "dimensions"; "directions" or "vectors" may be better words.

>World is the modeling of a virtual environment. Realism is a central concept in worlds. However not necessarily as in magic isn't realistic and therefore weakens the world aspect. But instead realism in the sense that we feel immersed in a virtual world.

Self-consistency is the central concept. This is usually closely allied to realism, because otherwise players have to much to learn, and the more that the game matches reality and the more it behaves like you expect it to, the more you feel you're there. However, realism in itself isn't the aim, because otherwise people would just stay with reality..!

>With PD strengthening the three major dimensions of a massively multiplayer game it does seem like a rather interesting design feature.

It strengthens three major areas (although I'd quibble about whether it buys explorers anything). However, you have to remember that these areas are inter-dependent (so there may be detrimental effects from increasing one area too much), and that there's another area - the one with the PKs in it - which could throw a real spanner in the works.

For form's sake, it would have been nice if you had mentioned that this is Damion Shubert's UO2 Triangle you're talking about (http://www.uo2.com/comments-dev_23.html).

>Without PD everyone is guaranteed to reach the max level. With PD it's only the onces who dare to go into the 'badlands' and risk their characters life who reaches the top level.

I agree with you here. If people want to race one another to the maximum level, they can do so - it's just a different maximum level if they go into the badlands than if they don't. In the same way that game X and game Y don't have to have the same maximum level, sub-game X1 and sub-game X2 don't. If non-PD people are jealous that PD people are a higher level than they are, they have a choice: acknowledge that the other players deserve it because they've actually achieved something more; become a PD person and achieve it; mewl about how unfair it is, threaten to leave, write to rant sites etc. in the hope that the game management will cave in (and get grumpy and self-righteous if they don't).

Richard

Thor
03/03/01 12:42 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

This is to say they have achievers, explorers and socialisers... You could add "part politics" or (being kind) "part catharsis" if you wanted to include killers too - or you could just ignore them or say that they don't fit in anywhere.

Yes. Could it be that someone identified this and pointed it out in a mail? *wink*

In reply to:

>Then each design decision can be measured in these three dimensions. And the ideal design is that which strengthens all three dimensions.

Yes, but they're inter-related. There are dynamics between the different parts, which must be taken into account. It's all very well taking 3 of the quadrants from my player interest graph and renaming them if it's easier to solve problems in the resulting "quadrant space", but you have to take an understanding of the way they impact on each other, too. They're not orthogonal: if you increase the game then you will attract more game-players which will (over time) act as a damper on the number of socialisers you get. Because there is an inter-relationship between the quadrants (or points of the triangle, if you prefer) they can't be regarded as true "dimensions"; "directions" or "vectors" may be better words.

Yes, this is true. But can you identify any absolute relationship between the three dimensions (or directions/vectors)? I can't. It seems that each design element can be anywhere on this triangle. Some design decisions strengthen community, but lowers the other two aspects. Some design decisions strengthens community and world, but lowers game. Some lowers all three dimensions. And some strengthens all dimensions. If you could describe an absolute relationship between the points of this triangle it would be useful. But I can't see any absolute relationships, only relative relationships.

If the triangle points had absolute relationships then there would be dynamics like “all design elements that strengthen game automatically weaken world”, or some similar dynamics. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Some design element can increase game while decreasing world. Yet other design elements increase both game and world. The only absolute relationship I can see is the relationship between game/achievers, world/explorers and community/socialisers, which I previously pointed out.

So a design that improves game will increase the achiever population, a design that improves world will increase explorer population and finally a design that improves community will increase the socialiser population. And from there on we can use the inter-relationship between these player types, which you identified in your article “Players who suit MUD's”. In this way we can illustrate a sense of dynamics between the points on Shuberts Triangle. But that still doesn't imply that the points on the triangle has an absolute relationship in terms of design elements, only that each point on the triangle tends to appeal to a specific player type in which we can describe an absolute relationship…

In reply to:

>World is the modeling of a virtual environment. Realism is a central concept in worlds. However not necessarily as in magic isn't realistic and therefore weakens the world aspect. But instead realism in the sense that we feel immersed in a virtual world.

Self-consistency is the central concept. This is usually closely allied to realism, because otherwise players have to much to learn, and the more that the game matches reality and the more it behaves like you expect it to, the more you feel you're there. However, realism in itself isn't the aim, because otherwise people would just stay with reality..!

Correct. Realism is only an aspect of world, like Damion Shubert pointed out. Self-consistency, or suspension of disbelief, are better ways to describe the world aspect.

In reply to:

For form's sake, it would have been nice if you had mentioned that this is Damion Shubert's UO2 Triangle you're talking about (http://www.uo2.com/comments-dev_23.html).

*grin* Yes, you're right. That's exactly what I'm talking about, and I should have made the correct reference. Sorry. Could it be that someone pointed that out in a mail as well? *wink wink*

As you probably know Richard, UO2 has a badland area in their design (where the best resources and skills can be found). The only thing they're missing is enabling PD in the badlands. I'm sort of hoping they would make one server where PD is enabled in the badlands. If nothing else, then for the sake of pushing the limits of this genre. But they probably won't. They stated the other day that PD wasn't a feature they would ever do in a game they would work on. But ”they thought your article was interesting.” Go figure. Hey Damion Shubert, how about coming to this board and explain why that is…

P.S. I still hope you will design a massively multiplayer game and no, unfortunately I don't have $15m to spare. Maybe someone else has *looks around*

LumsOtherHalf
03/03/01 12:56 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
LumsOtherHalf>If you have children that can talk about your deeds - that in itself is immortality, but a more intuitive, easily understood kind.

>I'm not so certain. If some child character goes on about how great their parent character was, but isn't itself great, that's like meeting some washed-up guy in a bar telling you how he used to be one of the greats, won every medal there was, went to all the best parties, was in with all the people you've heard of, will you buy him a drink please?

>The other problem with children is that they have two parents, not just one.

Well, that's the human element at work here - which is really the strong point in these. What do you do to that washed up guy in the bar? You might listen and if his story sounds full of holes, you call him on it. This is the kind of areas where interesting and not necessarily violent confrontation between players starts player stories. As far as 2 parents, yeah I know - but I am confident a few minor additions to a worlds backstory can account for this in a plausible fashion. The kids in my proposal are pretty much offcamera until you take them over. Their support and directed training are up to the parent, but I wouldn't have them walkin around or playable till that generation inherits from the current characters death or retirement. There could certainly be affirming game mechanics - say obits - where if you did meet someone like this and cared enough to look - you could find out how a person died. It's things like these that roleplayers need to be able to craft their own fiction. Tools that add to immersiveness that people can latch onto and spin into their own stories. I am in the school (as I think you probably are too) that it's the player driven storyarcs that drive a world and make for active participation, instead of solely company driven ones where folks end up more as spectators.

LumsOtherHalf>I'd also have things like reputation track by account. Deleting and starting all over again isn't gonna help you much if you are a royal griefer.

>This sounds like a karma system. Normally, the way I'd expect this to work is that when you're reborn (ie. start your new character) it starts off worse if you accumulated bad karma, and better if you accumulated good karma. However, the slate is then wiped clean. This means that people who change (and people DO change) aren't forever damned for the indiscretions of their youth. Under your system, though, if you start off playing like an asshole and get a ton of bad reputation, no-one is ever going to go near you and you'll get no opportunity to redeem yourself even if you do have a moment of epiphany and suddenly "get it".

I didn't say they couldn't ever escape - just that it would be HARD. It would possibly also entail making sincere apologies to those affected and convincing THEM you've changed your ways. That is true regret - and true player justice. This also falls into the realm of things the game mechanics simply can't do. UO was supposed to have player justice - but there were simply no tools to make it effective. I view game mechanic justice and player justice much the same way as I do the law - and what's right....they ain't necessarily the same thing. Game mechanics can certainly prevent or punish certain behaviors but those aren't typically the most common infractions on the peace. I want to see personal mechanisms of shunning, and I want to see a player ran court system where offenders can actually be brought up on charges with players in control, and I want to see an island, planet - someplace that people can be exiled to and can't leave vs. banning them from the game for the most antisocial of offenders.

Interpersonal conflict beyond battle hasn't really come up on dev's radar (at least that we've seen) in terms of supporting mechanisms. Battle is, if not easy - what they have always done and know. Balance weapons, classes spells - all number crunching. Once you get into the area of interpersonal conflict you have no control, the players do - that's scary. The sad part is - things to support this should be a LOT easier to do than balancing combat. Obituaries, ways to record information as evidence, all the other myriad of things that can be included are tools - once made - it's up to the players to use them. As long as these worlds keep straddling the fence between interactive and passive observation - a whole lot of users are going to be really really confused - this is new to them. The tools have to be there - and it has to be an active effort on the part of the developers to stress interaction as the point. Duh - well, not everyone gets that part, you'd be amazed how many log in and expect to somehow be entertained more as tho they were watching a movie. Realistic management of expectations is just as important and perhaps even harder to do than actually producing the game.

Richard Bartle
03/04/01 09:30 AM
[re: Thor]
Thor>Yes. Could it be that someone identified this and pointed it out in a mail? *wink*

It could indeed, but only you and I read our emails. Here, everyone else gets to, too.

>But can you identify any absolute relationship between the three dimensions (or directions/vectors)? I can't.

I can - I did it in my "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades" paper. I worked in two dimensions - action/interaction vs players/world - rather than three. Using that paradigm, I identified several effects that stressing one or other aspect of the game would have on another. Rotating the axes 45 degrees doesn't invalidate any of it, although it does change the way you'd naturally think about it. If doing that makes it easier to wrestle with concepts of game design, then fair enough. If not, don't do it!

I'm not entirely sure that both axes have been rotated, by the way. The vertical one has, but the horizontal one may not have been. It depends on what you mean by “world”.

>It seems that each design element can be anywhere on this triangle. Some design decisions strengthen community, but lowers the other two aspects. Some design decisions strengthens community and world, but lowers game. Some lowers all three dimensions. And some strengthens all dimensions. If you could describe an absolute relationship between the points of this triangle it would be useful. But I can't see any absolute relationships, only relative relationships.

It's defined by my "player interest graph". If you remove killers from the equation, what's left is a situation where: increasing the number of achievers too much has a negative effect on the number of socialisers; decreasing the number of achievers too much has a negative effect on the number of socialisers; increasing the number of socialisers has a positive effect on the number of socialisers; decreasing the number of socialisers has a negative effect on the number of socialisers; increasing the number of explorers has a positive effect on the number of explorers.

In plain English, this means you can increase the number of explorers as much as you like as it won't affect the other two, but you have to keep a reasonable ratio between achievers and socialisers. Therefore (in triangle terms), you can increase the actual (if not the apparent) responsiveness and depth of the world arbitrarily, but changes to the community or gameplay should, over time, be matched by changes to the other if balance is to be maintained.

The problem with this is that there are no dynamics that increase or decrease the number of achievers, so that any balancing has to be done manually. If you add too much gameplay, then hordes of achievers will be attracted to the game and socialisers will leave – there are no killers to keep their numbers in check. If you have too little gameplay then the achievers will leave, causing the game to descend into a chatfest where the socialisers who are there already are OK but newcomers have a terrible time trying to break into established cliques.

Now if some way could be found for the game to take on the role of killers itself, that could go some way to alleviating this situation as it would act as a balance on the number of achievers. If there are so many achievers that they feel they're not achieving (ie. the gameplay is poor), their numbers will drop as some of them risk PD to put them ahead of the herd. If there are too few, there's no need to risk PD because there isn't the challenge to achievement anyway. This is effectively what I was postulating in my recent article.

>If the triangle points had absolute relationships then there would be dynamics like “all design elements that strengthen game automatically weaken world”, or some similar dynamics. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Well it won't for what you call “world”, because a quick look at the player interest graph shows that it's not affected by anything other than the number of killers (weakly) and the number of explorers (they tend to attract each other).

As I mentioned earlier, “world” is a little confusing in this context. On the original diagram, I had PLAYER/WORLD as an axis, with both explorers and achievers reacting to increased emphasis on the world. In this sense, gameplay and world are quite closely bound. On the other hand, if you mean the world as an organic thing that interacts with and enchants the players (a “gaia theory” type of world), then that would give you orthogonal axes rather than having one at 45 degrees to the other.

>So a design that improves game will increase the achiever population

Which, if there are plenty of achievers already, will have an overall dampening effect on the socialiser population.

>a design that improves world will increase explorer population

And perhaps achiever, depending on what you mean by “world”.

>and finally a design that improves community will increase the socialiser population.

Yes, which will in turn attract more socialisers (unless it dilutes the achiever/socialiser ratio too much, in which case it won't).

>In this way we can illustrate a sense of dynamics between the points on Shuberts Triangle.

Well yes, except you're only illustrating the dynamics between the quadrants of my player graph, which I described some time ago.

There are two types of relationship here. One is what happens externally, by changes made to the game (eg. adding more rooms is a “world” thing), and the other is internally, by changes due to the way the players interact (too many achievers puts off socialisers even in a game that's highly community-friendly). Designers want to change the latter, but they only get to change the former. They're therefore working one step away from the effects of their actions.

>But that still doesn't imply that the points on the triangle has an absolute relationship in terms of design elements

You're correct, in that it depends HOW you increase them as to what their effects will be. If you increase the number of socialisers by emphasising the people over the world, that will have a detrimental effect on the number of explorers (and achievers); if you increase the number of socialisers by emphasising interaction over action, that will have a positive effect on the number of explorers (but not achievers).

>Self-consistency, or suspension of disbelief, are better ways to describe the world aspect.

It's the amount by which you have to WILL your suspension of disbelief that's critical, not the mere fact that disbelief has to be dispelled.

>Could it be that someone pointed that out in a mail as well? *wink wink*

Yes, but you weren't writing a mail here.

>As you probably know Richard, UO2 has a badland area in their design (where the best resources and skills can be found). The only thing they're missing is enabling PD in the badlands.

Yeah, I knew. Without PD, they're hadly badlands, though.

>But they probably won't. They stated the other day that PD wasn't a feature they would ever do in a game they would work on.

That's a little disappointing. You can see why PD is outlawed at the moment – commercial imperative – and I've no problem with that. Categorically saying you'll never have PD in any game you're ever going to write is perhaps lacking in vision, though.

LumsOtherHalf>The kids in my proposal are pretty much offcamera until you take them over.

Yes, this is how most games designs with kids propose to do it.

>I am in the school (as I think you probably are too) that it's the player driven storyarcs that drive a world and make for active participation, instead of solely company driven ones where folks end up more as spectators.

I am definitely of that opinion, yes. There's no real excuse for pre-ordained storylines for games like this except, perhaps, if they have to adhere to conditions imposed by a licence holder.

That said, if people want to write novels they should go write novels. You can't give too much story-telling power to many individuals or they'll interact to the extent that there'll only be chaos.

>I didn't say they couldn't ever escape - just that it would be HARD. It would possibly also entail making sincere apologies to those affected and convincing THEM you've changed your ways. That is true regret - and true player justice.

When faced with that kind of formal, oppressive obstacle to rehabilitation, few players are going to comply. I can think of a number of occasions where players in my own games went from chief villain to popular member of the community by restarting anonymously and doing things right. When they finally admitted to their past, it didn't matter any more – by then they were integrated back into decent society and their previous “life” was clearly little more than a youthful indiscretion. If they'd had to do it with everyone hating them, without being able to produce any evidence that they had indeed changed, or if they were subjected to the humiliation of having to plead forgiveness from their victims, they just wouldn't have. They'd have been lost forever.

>I want to see personal mechanisms of shunning, and I want to see a player ran court system where offenders can actually be brought up on charges with players in control

You might not if the PKs wormed their way into controlling it…

>and I want to see an island, planet - someplace that people can be exiled to and can't leave vs. banning them from the game for the most antisocial of offenders.

What's the difference between banning them and exiling them?

>it has to be an active effort on the part of the developers to stress interaction as the point. Duh - well, not everyone gets that part, you'd be amazed how many log in and expect to somehow be entertained more as tho they were watching a movie.

Although some player types are more passive than others, all require some effort. Anyone who plays an online game expecting to be entertained like it was a movie would be far, far better off just going to see a movie.

Richard

LumsOtherHalf
03/04/01 11:38 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]

Lums Other Half>I am in the school (as I think you probably are too) that it's the player driven storyarcs that drive a world and make for active participation, instead of solely company driven ones where folks end up more as spectators.

>I am definitely of that opinion, yes. There's no real excuse for pre-ordained storylines for games like this except, perhaps, if they have to adhere to conditions imposed by a licence holder.

>That said, if people want to write novels they should go write novels. You can't give too much story-telling power to many individuals or they'll interact to the extent that there'll only be chaos.

You can give them complete storytelling power - just what tools you give them has to be relative in relation to their actual characters power within the world. A bright kid with the tools and an internet connection and the right URLs could probably build an Abomb - but we probably don't wanna give anyone quite that much power in one of these that is intended to be persistant. A lot of folks that play these are very talented writers, I've met more per capita in these than anything else I've ever been involved in. By their very nature - they are natural to this medium. If by chaos you mean that they'll contradict the fiction - or start spinning their own seperate diverging fiction within yours - well, they do that anyway. Even people that aren't storytellers do this when they name their characters radically inappropriate things for the fiction. This is going to happen - this can be shortcircuited however if you build a universe instead of just a world. If your fiction is slanted so that nearly any possible person coming in can be comprehended within it - all of a sudden they CAN'T break the fiction. They may be outta place - but they can be justified and rationalized. Again, it comes down to expectations. If you are walking around a closed world - say preindustrial, and all of a sudden a punk rocker plops down in the middle of town - folks aren't going to be able to comprehend the strangeness or differences - he might as well be an alien from another planet. Now - take that same preindustrial society - that IS attached to a larger universe, although THEY may be preindustrial - they have knowledge of other places that aren't and simply prefer their own lifestyle. The punk rocker is still outta place but people have a way for him not to be fiction breaking - they can intuitively come up with the answer to what he is - if perhaps not exactly where he came from. People will tend to pool and balance in groups if given enough room and enough choices to do so. I can easily envision a universe of planets that may all be similar in certain aspects (i.e., human habitable) perhaps even long ago colonized by humanity so there is a reason for a lot of shared flora and fauna - but very different as to social rules, social mores, landscape, political institutions, period of time embraced etc.

Lums Other Half>I didn't say they couldn't ever escape - just that it would be HARD. It would possibly also entail making sincere apologies to those affected and convincing THEM you've changed your ways. That is true regret - and true player justice.

>When faced with that kind of formal, oppressive obstacle to rehabilitation, few players are going to comply. I can think of a number of occasions where players in my own games went from chief villain to popular member of the community by restarting anonymously and doing things right. When they finally admitted to their past, it didn't matter any more - by then they were integrated back into decent society and their previous "life" was clearly little more than a youthful indiscretion. If they'd had to do it with everyone hating them, without being able to produce any evidence that they had indeed changed, or if they were subjected to the humiliation of having to plead forgiveness from their victims, they just wouldn't have. They'd have been lost forever.

If someone is so immature that they consider an apology for past improper behavior humiliating or oppressive, well - they probably aren't mature enough to be in a world where social structures and other people are like - the point. These games teach a ton of negative things, bout time they threw a few positive things in the mix. And I don't think they'd be lost forever - perhaps just until they grew up a bit. Youthful indiscretion is one thing - not learning from your mistakes or having to own up to the responsibilities of making them is totally another. The other option is to move sufficiently far away that the people they offended don't have influence on that area. Course - they keep makin the same mistakes - they are gonna come full circle to the concequences again.

Lums Other Half>I want to see personal mechanisms of shunning, and I want to see a player ran court system where offenders can actually be brought up on charges with players in control

>You might not if the PKs wormed their way into controlling it…

Oh - there might be corrupt politicians no doubt - we've never seen those in OUR world have we? *snicker*. First - presuming that there are PKs - which I am still not convinced I'd allow - a murderer could simply be excluded from jury pools, or elected offices. When you have corrupt politicians - you get rid of them. This again is a people driven thing, people driven things are good - it gives folks goals. Even if you allow PKing - this system allows them to be dealt with and brought to justice - you don't have them long. The only reason they flourished in UO is because there was no way to stop them in the far larger populaces hands. Killing them did nothing, they popped right back like a bad penny. Justice is one thing in our world many people feel denied - it's one of the things they'd like to see in these.

>and I want to see an island, planet - someplace that people can be exiled to and can't leave vs. banning them from the game for the most antisocial of offenders.

What's the difference between banning them and exiling them?

Ummm - beyond 9.95 a month? Seriously, Australia started as a penal colony - this is simply helping those that can't deal with society to find a society that they CAN deal with and most of all - removing the thorn in the side of your other customers. Some will quit, if you were going to ban them anyway it's a wash. Some will really really ENJOY it. Others will start their own communities and try to civilize the place perhaps under slightly more barbaric social rules. It's also a whole lot easier to keep an eye on the problem children if they are all in one spot - especially in a universe as large as the one I'd like to see done.

Boogaleeboo
03/04/01 04:40 PM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
Let me take a moment to thank you all for the 2000 word a post opus this thread has become. Even if I myself am holding out for 3D Zelda online [any game that has a combat system with a variation of point click wait is evil] I like to see a bunch of the smartie types talk about the practical application of so far unused ideas.

Um.....thats all I have. Go talk about closed economies or something.

1.This is not a game.
2.Here and now,you are alive.

Treacherous
03/05/01 05:05 AM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
LumsOtherHalf>Even if you allow PKing - this system allows them to be dealt with and brought to justice - you don't have them long.

I think you totally missed something here. You're talking about handing the justice system over to players, as part of giving them story telling tools and power in the world. Those players will inevitably do something horribly wrong with the player driven justice system, like forming a PK Judge/Sheriff guild which exists outside of the game, but functions as a unit in the game, with seperate characters/accounts/individuals/etc., killing whoever it feels like, then setting the killers free. That's the ultimate extent of the corruption that will happen. You will not be able to have murderers "simply be excluded from jury pools, or elected offices."

The bad thing is that if you, as creator of the game, decide to try to change a situation gone horribly wrong, you will have a nightmare on your hands. About half your players will probably say something like this: "But the whole point of the system is that it's player controlled! What right do you have to say the way we're controlling it is wrong!?" About another half will probably say "I got screwed by those bullies way too much! PKing just shouldn't be allowed at all! Make a switch! Do like Game X does instead of this justice thing!" I assume and/or hope you've read a piece called "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell.

So I hope you understand why I totally disagree that the existance of a player driven justice system will necessarily weed out PKing.

You're talking about right and wrong, in between which there are always grey area situations.

The way we do things here in America (theoretically) is that laws are passed telling you what's right, and then when a grey area comes up, a wise person called a judge decides what's fair and consistant with the law in that particular situation. I too would love to participate in something like this online. But from what you're saying:

LumsOtherHalf>Justice is one thing in our world many people feel denied - it's one of the things they'd like to see in these.

you don't seem to realize that justice is not an absolute concept. The reason so many people feel that justice is denied is that they all disagree as to what exactly would be just in their own given situations. That's the whole point behind putting a judge in charge who can evaluate each situation as a seperate case. The basic idea I believe would work in the kind of online world we're talking about here.

But when something really unjust happens--as it always does in a few cases, even given the most perfectly well intentioned officials--where will the wronged turn, pleading, threatening and cajoling? To the people who created the whole thing in the first place.

Those people in charge tend to take the reins when it seems like they must in order to make life in their world somewhat fair (realsim vs. gameplay again.) The whole player contorl thing breaks down when the players have a Supreme Court in the sky overruling the things that most players don't like. Remember that in real life, a Supreme Court usually is supposed to be able to make very unpopular decisions in favor of what is legally correct (balance of public opinion vs. constitutional gaurentees.) In the online example, the gaurentee of player control is broken in favor of public opinion which is against what the players in control have done.

I've seen several online games change the titles of their staff from "Gods" to other words. The transition is to words with more expectation and less potential behind them (Implementor, Moderator, Game Master, Mediator, Programmer, Police Officer, Guide, Customer Service Representative.) Those are the titles of folks who are put in the world to help you, the player/customer, have fun should a problem happen. A God on the other hand, is the person who created physics and gravity, a person who can both despense justice and allow bad things to happen to good people. The difference is mostly in attitude, not capabilities.

I've come to believe that a functioning justice system with players in charge would have to be created by a "God", (someone with a certain attitude about their world) not programmed by a Game Guide. Probably the same is true of permanent death. I say this because Game Guides won't let those bad things happen to their good players. Gods would realize that people can only actually be in control if they're allowed to be evil.

LumsOtherHalf
03/05/01 09:54 AM
[re: Treacherous]
LumsOtherHalf>Even if you allow PKing - this system allows them to be dealt with and brought to justice - you don't have them long.

>I think you totally missed something here. You're talking about handing the justice system over to players, as part of giving them story telling tools and power in the world. Those players will inevitably do something horribly wrong with the player driven justice system, like forming a PK Judge/Sheriff guild which exists outside of the game, but functions as a unit in the game, with seperate characters/accounts/individuals/etc., killing whoever it feels like, then setting the killers free. That's the ultimate extent of the corruption that will happen. You will not be able to have murderers "simply be excluded from jury pools, or elected offices."

The whole one playable character at a time per account goes a LONG ways towards helping this work. Someone thinks they wanna buy 10 accounts to dominate - let them - that's still 10 votes, not 80 like we would have in some games now. The other part is a jury system, yeah, juries can be bought off - bribed too. The antisocial player (unless encouraged to the point that's all you have left) is really a tiny minority in these. If there are effective ways of dealing with them, starting at the personal level, you soon start seeing a society where folks actually can start to shape it themselves. Note however that I am still against PKing and would ONLY start to entertain the idea of allowing the concept if a system of justice was in place.

>The bad thing is that if you, as creator of the game, decide to try to change a situation gone horribly wrong, you will have a nightmare on your hands. About half your players will probably say something like this: "But the whole point of the system is that it's player controlled! What right do you have to say the way we're controlling it is wrong!?" About another half will probably say "I got screwed by those bullies way too much! PKing just shouldn't be allowed at all! Make a switch! Do like Game X does instead of this justice thing!" I assume and/or hope you've read a piece called "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell.

Oh yeah, exactly. And this is exactly where some have missed the boat. As the creator of the world starting out - there has to be some guidelines drawn on what is, and is not - acceptable behavior. There has to be right and wrong - and that tone has to be set by the devs - leaving it up to the people to start will simply devolve to the lowest common denominator. Without right and wrong as a baseline there cannot be a concept of good or evil. Humans cannot function in a rules vacumn. If rules are not setup - they will setup their own and therefore you get to the point of everyone crying "The game let me do it". If we were talking perfect people inhabiting these that would indeed work, we aren't.

>I've come to believe that a functioning justice system with players in charge would have to be created by a "God", (someone with a certain attitude about their world) not programmed by a Game Guide. Probably the same is true of permanent death. I say this because Game Guides won't let those bad things happen to their good players. Gods would realize that people can only actually be in control if they're allowed to be evil

Devs being gods (little G) has been a longstanding tradition - and you are right - they are the creators, THEY HAVE TO set up the baselines that everyone else functions from. Unfortunately when the term god is extended down thru all the ranks, some folks take it a little too much to heart, call it an occupational hazard that has to be avoided with any kind of Sysop in any online community. I do disagree on the control and allowed to be evil part. EQ is a good example of making the world the evil to fight. Yeah yeah - I know they left out all the rest, but THAT part they got right - and it does work well. Fighting monsters gets old mainly because there isn't too much else left in the world to do - it's pretty one dimensional as far as depth on the world side. Dr. Bartle in one of the posts above mentioned that when nothing else is controlling - people fall back on our world as the expected 'default' - this is exactly what I mean by baseline. Without a baseline you have nothing to judge the highs and lows against. In a singleplayer experience it's totally different, you have one persons expectations to deal with - in a multiplayer experience - you have to set that baseline first to have 'everyone singin off the same page in the hymn book' as my mamma used to say. Now, if the majority of the congregation decides they want a different tune - you might turn the page, but that's when you start gettin into the problems you noted.

I predicted some time ago (before we had any idea just how MANY of these were on the horizon) that we would see a few things in these.

You'll have the me'toos - basically the same game as one successful, just a few parts done right or better and probably still missing the boat.

You'll have the niche market where the devs embrace one playstyle only thinking this will solve the problems only to find that without a rich blend of playstyles the world is very shallow and you have a game, but not a world.

And if we are VERY lucky - you'll have one gem out there somewhere where the devs consider the world issues first. After the world is crafted and all the societal elements are dealt with, you have many many games layered in. People can get upset at major changes - but they get MORE upset when it's an aboutface on world issues than gameplay issues.

When I say world - I am talking about more than eyecandy - the world side to me is all intangibles not necessarily related directly to gameplay - but to interpersonal interactions.

World rules and fictional genre are the two things that are going to make any of these stand out from the rest.

dave
03/05/01 10:33 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
> There's no question that the monsters and NPCs they attack die, so they want to know what happens when their own characters reach the same situation under which a monster would die. You can't avoid using the D word under such circumstances except by not having monsters die either.

Hmm, I sort of get your point here, but in reality the type of 'death' experienced by the creatures in todays games is currently less of a punishment than the type of death experienced by the player, and if permadeath were introduced for players then they would receive a hugely greater punishment than the creatures. EG, if you kill that level 3 critter, does he respawn as a level 2? No, he comes back just as powerful as before, while if he kills you, you have to suffer some sort of inconvenience for a space of time.

> >To me, permadeath itself would be that you lose you character, your account, the publisher blocks your credit card when you try to sign on with a new account.

> So you would associate permadeath with the player, rather than with the character? Or are you just trying to ridicule the concept by taking it way beyond what anyone is proposing? What next? You kill the dragon and the dragon can't play ever again?

Personally I believe that the eventual outcome of all these game systems will be to associate the player and avatar closely. I know roleplayers might hate that thought, but to me it doesn't prevent roleplaying, and in any case, if a roleplayer has done a quest before where at the end he was offered a choice between two buttons, one will kill his character permanently the other will give him the uber widget, would the majority of so called roleplayers really toss a coin, even though they knew that the left button was always instant death? But here, I was trying more to illustrate that permadeath, isn't 'death' in the sense that a lot of people will understand it, ie you're gone from the world. Permadeath as it's being talked about here is 100% level loss, or experience loss or whatever you want to call it, since it would then be possible to reroll a character and progress him to the exact same stats, skills etc over a period of time.

You mentioned above about not having the monsters die, were I would argue that the monsters don't really die at the moment. So, yes, if the player can 'die' then why shouldn't the monsters die too? I'm not suggesting for a moment that you kill the huge red dragon and no one else has a proper chance to do the same. But this side of the game could be organized so that creatures have life cycles etc where they can grow from weak things to powerful things over periods of time. With a large enough game world (relatively easy to implement), there would be plenty of room for creatures to breed and grow strong, individually and in numbers. So, if the players kept killing all the baby dragons then the big chief dragon would never play again. But that's another area entirely.

> >I've seen it touched on, have permadeath in the badlands but not in towns etc. But to me the reaction should be more tailored to the action.

> That would be ideal, but it's a PKer's paradise. They don't really care if they die because of their actions, so long as the person they wanted to kill dies too. It's because of the victims that I proposed the badlands idea, not because of the perpetrators.

The problem I have with a 'badlands' implementation is that a player can stand in one spot and experience 'normal' death penalties while a player standing in front of them can experience permanent death. It depends where the line is drawn, what happens to the player. But yet, the player outside the badlands could be hit by a tactical nuke or uber powerful spell to kill them, while a ricochet could hit the player inside the badlands, or a wimpy first level spell. The result is entirely different, the player who should be 'dead and gone' is still very much alive but the player who should be alive is an ex-player. To me this wouldn't do very much for suspension of disbelief, no matter how many 'Danger' signs you put up, and in fact I think a lot of players would be very annoyed, “well, I shrugged of nukes before, so how come someone looked at me sideways and I've lost my character, just because I took a few steps past that danger sign????

With some sort of justice or law and order system in place then Pkers wouldn't have as much of a free reign as they do. Things like newbie areas protected by guards, you can still get killed by the PKer but run to the guards and they'll exterminate the aggressor. The Pker might have fun ganking a few newbies but they'll eventually grow tired of constant deaths at the hands of the guards while most of their intended victims progress to new and better things. If a player gets to the stage where he can launch that tactical nuke, or cast that uber spell at you then it's assumed he's played the game for a long time. If he was a Pker for this period in the game then it's unlikely he would be so powerful, he'd be too busy keeping away from the NPC police and the player bounty hunters, he'd have been shunned by vendors in towns etc. Maybe he'd have spent a lot of time in a penal colony, isolated from the rest of the world, and getting ganked himself by the big boys in there. It's like the system in real life, the president (or prime minister) of a country can give the order to launch the nukes but the assumption is that he's got to that level by doing basically the right thing. If the president seems, to everyone else, to be a bit of a madman, then no-one is going to help him get those nukes in the first place, in fact they'll do everything in their power to stop it. So the Pker would find himself with an almost natural cap to his power, unless of course he just went off on one at some point :)

> Although making people buy several accounts is good for business, couldn't the same ends be achieved by letting players have more than one character per account but also letting other players see what a character's account ID is? If players could get a readout that summarised all the characters on an account, they could tell whether Joe Newbie was really some high-level character trying to insinuate himself into your confidence (unless he had a separate account, which your solution doesn't address either). I'm not suggesting that players necessarily SHOULD have access to other players' account data (there may even be RL laws against it), but if you wanted to identify player with persona more strongly then that would be a way to do it.

Yes, at the moment most games do need players to be able to have more than one character. Simply because they want to experience the entire game, “I've played a wizard to death, hmm, wonder what's it's like playing a warrior”. With well engineered skill systems in place that don't preclude any character from playing any other type if they want this need would lessen. I'm talking about things like skills declining through disuse here so that a high level wizard could pick up a sword and practice on a few low level critters (exactly the same as if he added a new warrior character on his account), until his warrior abilities eventually outmatched his wizardly skills. There are other reasons as well, a la AC, where players need a mule character because of lack of storage facilities in game. But provided the other systems are implemented correctly there is far less of a need for this. Even so, provided that the family name was visible to other players and unique for each account then it's a strong method for knowing who you're dealing with.

> >The only two gains I can see coming from permadeath are this increased empathy and a heightened sense of excitement while entering unknown situations.

> You don't see that giving meaning to achievement is an advantage?

Hmm, I talked above about 'permadeath' being 100% level loss. Would 99% level loss make sense of achievement any less? Would 50%, or 5%? Would banning from the game on death make it a lot greater? If the sense of achievement is what you want to increase there are better ways to go about this. I'm not saying that permadeath wouldn't increase this sense of achievement, but if there were things to do in game that required real skill an/or effort, not just reading a walk through on the net, then the sense of achievement could be increased far more than forcing a player to reroll because he walked into the badlands and got hit with a stray shot.

>>I'd also have things like reputation track by account. Deleting and starting all over again isn't gonna help you much if you are a royal griefer.

>This sounds like a karma system.
>Karma systems are notoriously difficult to code, of course.

Why bother with an in game system to control Karma, surely with a fixed surname for the whole account this can be left up to the players themselves. Add something like a newspaper in game and you can see who's done what and when during the last week or so. I know it doesn't solve the problem of someone with two accounts, but you'd assume the second account was to somehow complement the first. In other words you'd maybe see the second accounts surname associated with friends of the first (griefer) account a lot. Headline : Bloggs family seen partying with Smith family, Smith's linked to armed robbery last week! Either that or the second account would have to be played as total separate entity, which means it's not being a griefer or associating with griefers. In fact it's played as if it were a totally different person, so no problem there.

rgds

Dave

Xilrens Twin
03/05/01 12:12 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

>As you probably know Richard, UO2 has a badland area in their design (where the best resources and skills can be found). The only thing they're missing is enabling PD in the badlands.

Yeah, I knew. Without PD, they're hadly badlands, though.

Depends on how "bad" you want to make them. Their badlands (much like AO's as well) are called that simply b/c that is where you have unrestricted PVP. Most players consider getting killed at the hands of some random stranger traumatic enough without it being of the permanent variety. Call it a first step.

Actually, that does bring to mind another question. Would you recommend implementing PD with or without PVP?

In reply to:

That's a little disappointing. You can see why PD is outlawed at the moment – commercial imperative – and I've no problem with that. Categorically saying you'll never have PD in any game you're ever going to write is perhaps lacking in vision, though. BR> Ok, so the 10million dollar question is, what changes are needed in the market in order to make a game which includes PD as commercially viable? Or better yet, does the concept of PD in and of itself have any redeeming commercial value? Right now, I'd have to say no.

Xilren

Richard Bartle
03/05/01 02:54 PM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
It looks like this thread has finally started to move away from my original article, so I'll post less frequently now. Besides, it's not like I have any reputation left to defend any more (sigh).

LumsOtherHalf>You can give them complete storytelling power - just what tools you give them has to be relative in relation to their actual characters power within the world.

I'm not in disagreement with that. Just so long as you don't give complete storytelling power to everyone.

About 25 years ago, I came across a play-by-mail game called, I think, Elsinore, where players took it in turns to write installments of the history of a fantasy world. The only rule was that whatever you wrote was thereafter true. It was a lot of fun for its players BUT it was very sensitive to people who were either poor storytellers or too mischievous.

Online games don't have quite the same degree of storytelling power, but they do have a lot. They're also full of people who are poor storytellers (but don't know it) and people who are too mischievous (but don't let anyone else know until it's too late). There therefore has to be a set of controls on storytelling, but these will inevitably be a damper on creativity for all but the very top storytelling players.

>A lot of folks that play these are very talented writers, I've met more per capita in these than anything else I've ever been involved in. By their very nature - they are natural to this medium.

A lot more aren't, though.

>If by chaos you mean that they'll contradict the fiction - or start spinning their own seperate diverging fiction within yours - well, they do that anyway.

But the framework they're working within is quite tight. They're more acting than storytelling. The great stories come from how their actions pan out. If too many people have the capacity to kill off the storylines of other people before they develop, no-one will get anywhere with their stories. In such circumstances, it's not so much contradiction or inconsistency that worries me as incompletion. You can't tell a story if you're always interrupted.

>The punk rocker is still outta place but people have a way for him not to be fiction breaking - they can intuitively come up with the answer to what he is - if perhaps not exactly where he came from.

That's OK, but it can lead to fictions that are mystique-rending. If someone plays the game and starts talking about real life, for the fiction to be maintained you either have to accept that the game world is a tiny subset of a much vaster world where its characters can't go or you have to claim the real-world person's character is mad. Neither is really satisfactory. I guess most games go for selective storytelling: integrate into the game fiction what you think ought to be there, and ignore anything that you don't.

>If someone is so immature that they consider an apology for past improper behavior humiliating or oppressive, well - they probably aren't mature enough to be in a world where social structures and other people are like - the point.

I agree, but they're never going to GET that mature if you make them jump the hurdle before you'll let them try to become mature. OK, some people never do learn, but many do. Later, yes, they feel ashamed about their past and will openly apologise for having been prats. However, to get to that stage they have to have played for a while without the taint of their own past forever dogging them. If they can't, they won't yet be at the stage where they feel able to apologise.

>These games teach a ton of negative things

If they're written that way, yes.

>bout time they threw a few positive things in the mix.

Ritual humiliation isn't 100% positive, though, is it? "Listen, everyone, Tommy has an apology to make. He's been very naughty and he wants to say he's sorry to the people he's hurt - don't you Tommy? And they want to say how cross they still are that you hurt them, and that even though it still hurts they forgive you, because you were just immature. OK, well we seem to have everyone here, now what do you have to say, Tommy?"

Whatever Tommy says, 9 times out of 10 what he thinks will be "you'll pay for this, you smug, self-satisfied bastards!".

>Oh - there might be corrupt politicians no doubt

No, there WILL be. They don't even have to be corrupt to be bad, either, just malicious.

>First - presuming that there are PKs - which I am still not convinced I'd allow - a murderer could simply be excluded from jury pools, or elected offices.

Sorry, I gave the wrong impresison when I said PKs. I meant people with a PK kind of mentality. Most people are bored stupid by politics, therefore it's quite easy for a group of people to organise themselves into power. Once in power, they can do what they like. People with a PK mentality could take over a game and utterly trash it from positions of responsibility that they take every opportunity to abuse.

I'm not saying this will happen, just that it has to be something that the REAL powers (the game's admins) monitor all the time. In the same way that players can abuse other aspects of the game, they can abuse a "player power" system, especially if they organise themselves effectively.

>When you have corrupt politicians - you get rid of them.

Yes, but if all you get is a new batch of corrupt politicians, what's the point?

>Australia started as a penal colony - this is simply helping those that can't deal with society to find a society that they CAN deal with and most of all - removing the thorn in the side of your other customers. Some will quit, if you were going to ban them anyway it's a wash. Some will really really ENJOY it.

Yes, those would be the guards...

Boogaleeboo>Let me take a moment to thank you all for the 2000 word a post opus this thread has become.

And to think it all started with "Obviosuly, the man's cracked"...

Treacherous>You're talking about handing the justice system over to players, as part of giving them story telling tools and power in the world. Those players will inevitably do something horribly wrong with the player driven justice system

I don't think it's totally inevitable, but other than that I agree with you entirely.

>But when something really unjust happens--as it always does in a few cases, even given the most perfectly well intentioned officials--where will the wronged turn, pleading, threatening and cajoling? To the people who created the whole thing in the first place.

In a commercial game, it's impossible for this not to be the case, simply because of the fact there's a real world legal system out there. If the players choose not to implement real-live laws in the game, eg. they allow racist abuse, then the game admins HAVE to step in because if they don't they'll be sued - whether they have conditions of use contracts in place saying they can't be or not.

LumsOtherHalf>The whole one playable character at a time per account goes a LONG ways towards helping this work. Someone thinks they wanna buy 10 accounts to dominate - let them - that's still 10 votes, not 80 like we would have in some games now.

It doesn't really make any difference unless you have a system where a quorum is necessary for a vote to be meaningful. If 80% of players can't be bothered to vote, that means 80% of characters won't vote. Whether those characters come in batches of 1 or 10 is immaterial unless you have some system in place saying something like "sorry, we need 4 times the square root of the number of characters allowed to vote before we can make any binding decisions".

>Note however that I am still against PKing and would ONLY start to entertain the idea of allowing the concept if a system of justice was in place.

Is this an overarching player justice system? Or would you allow one part of a game world to have different laws to another part (as in the real world)? If not, how would you implement your exile system? If so, how would your anti-PK country stand up to an invasion from the pro-PK country next door?

>Humans cannot function in a rules vacumn. If rules are not setup - they will setup their own and therefore you get to the point of everyone crying "The game let me do it".

To which, of course, the admins can reply "and the game lets ME do THIS!" (grin).

I don't see much of a problem allowing players to dispense formal justice for day-to-day offences. If traffic cops can write speeding tickets in real life, game magistrates can fine you for stealing someone's fruit. Traffic cops can't change the immigration laws or the rate of income tax, but you could imagine how the king of country in a game could have those kind of powers if their parameters were carefully prescribed.

The central issue with a player justice system is not who decides whether someone is guilty or innocent, but how that decision is implemented. If a player is fined by a magistrate for stealing fruit, what if the player says "no"? Is the money automatically deducted from the player's cash in hand? If so, the game implements the decision. Does the player have to hand it over? If so, then coercion is necessary - the lawmakers have to remove it physically from wherever it's stashed.

Automatic law-making that is coded into the game is where problems can lie. Maybe not for trivial fruit-stealing offences, but certainly in the wider context. I have no objection to a king raising a tax to a punitive level if he then has to send his troops out to try collect it. I don't mind a king decreeing that refugees don't flood over the border, so long as he can spare the troops or the cost of constructing a wall to keep them out. Similarly, if a character is sent to jail, there'd better BE a jail, and a jailer, and a set of keys so his buddies can at least try break him out. If players start making rules of their own, they have to be able to back them up on their own and not expect the game to do it for them. If they're following rules laid down by the designers, well, OK, the game can handle those if they're not too drastic.

Obviously, there's a layer of implementation below all this, and some things just have to be abstracted. Nobody buys things in real life like they do in games, they have to carry money around or sign credit card slips, they don't get goods or services for payment simultaneously. I've therefore no objection to some kind of "this object is owned by this player/NPC/creature/guild" key, for example, because it just makes life for the coders SO much easier. Letting player magistrates reassign ownership is another thing entirely, though. It would need very strict controls.

dave>EG, if you kill that level 3 critter, does he respawn as a level 2? No, he comes back just as powerful as before, while if he kills you, you have to suffer some sort of inconvenience for a space of time.

Well those are today's games. If the critter did come back as a L2, maybe that would stop people camping. Likewise, if it got points for winning a fight and actually went up levels, maybe that would make it more of a challenge.

>Personally I believe that the eventual outcome of all these game systems will be to associate the player and avatar closely.

I wrote a short article on this subject last year, but unfortunately the site it appeared on is currently undergoing maintenance so I can't point you at it. Basically, though, I agree.

>But here, I was trying more to illustrate that permadeath, isn't 'death' in the sense that a lot of people will understand it, ie you're gone from the world.

Well you the player aren't, but your character is. The way these games are conceived is that the character is the centre of attention, not the player. Now if you identify so much with your character that you feel it's you in the game, sure, you won't feel "you" are dead if your character dies, because clearly you're not. However, the game has no way of detecting whether you feel that or not. For most players, if a character is killed then that should have no impact on any of the player's other characters - they're separate entities, like if an actor plays multiple roles in the same play.

>Permadeath as it's being talked about here is 100% level loss, or experience loss or whatever you want to call it, since it would then be possible to reroll a character and progress him to the exact same stats, skills etc over a period of time.

In theory, but not in practice. The way you accumulate your points or skills can never be identical, there are just too many random factors. Furthermore, you the player will have changed your playing skills, so you'll do things differently whether you liked it or not. You might get a clone, but it would have a different upbringing and could end up with a radically different position in the world.

>But this side of the game could be organized so that creatures have life cycles etc where they can grow from weak things to powerful things over periods of time.

I agree that this is a great idea, but it's pretty damned hard to do because players kill creatures with such ruthless efficiency. They tried it in UO, but had to resort to a spawning mechanism rather than the much vaunted "aha! empty fields! just the sort of thing that would attract a dragon to raze them!" approach that was originally planned.

>The problem I have with a 'badlands' implementation is that a player can stand in one spot and experience 'normal' death penalties while a player standing in front of them can experience permanent death. It depends where the line is drawn, what happens to the player.

Well yes, but it's a very fuzzy line. The difference between "you can't die here" and "you can die, but you only have a 0.1% chance of it happening and then that's only if you're on really low hit points and someone gets a critical hit on you with an arrow" isn't a great deal. In practice, you'd probably be pretty well safe for some distance into the badlands, just the more you want to do the more you'll be at risk.

>“well, I shrugged of nukes before, so how come someone looked at me sideways and I've lost my character, just because I took a few steps past that danger sign????”

"It's because you took a few steps past that danger sign".

>Hmm, I talked above about 'permadeath' being 100% level loss. Would 99% level loss make sense of achievement any less?

Yes. At least you still have all your skill levels and all your property.

>Would banning from the game on death make it a lot greater?

Perhaps, as would going round the player's houe and hitting them with a spanner. That's a real-life thing, though, which is beyond the context of the game.

>then the sense of achievement could be increased far more than forcing a player to reroll because he walked into the badlands and got hit with a stray shot.

Well he'd have to walk into the badlands on very low hit points (or whatever they're called) to die from a stray shot. In that case, he can't really complain that he was hard done by.

>Why bother with an in game system to control Karma, surely with a fixed surname for the whole account this can be left up to the players themselves.

I agree - I don't think karma systems need to (or indeed should) be coded into the game. Someone suggested I implement a karma system for MUD1 in about 1981, but I turned the idea it down and have never regretted doing so.

Identifying players by accounts is good, but it can stifle bona fide role-playing. On an anonymous system, if a player wants to see what being evil is like and creates an evil character, then after a couple of weeks they decide it's not the life for them and delete it, they can continue playing their usual characters without problem. In a system where everyone can tell who you are, this wouldn't be an option.

Richard

Zazmak
03/05/01 03:32 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Someone may have touched on this before but Its been nagging at me all weekend. How about a Arcade style approach to PD. You put in the quarter you get three lives. = You create a character you get x num of lives + some random seed number for each player to keep things interesting. Now let this player know how many times they can die before the big eraser comes along and wipes them from the face of the earth. You could justify linkdeaths, ganked deaths and just good old stupid deaths to these numbers and slowly eat away at the player until they are down to <5 deaths left. I wonder how each individual would react when they were getting closer and closer to the end.

Richard Bartle
03/06/01 02:53 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Xilrens Twin>Depends on how "bad" you want to make them. Their badlands (much like AO's as well) are called that simply b/c that is where you have unrestricted PVP.

Well the "badlands" I was proposing in my article were ones that had PD in them. Whether they had PvP as well as PD is another issue.

>Most players consider getting killed at the hands of some random stranger traumatic enough without it being of the permanent variety.

It isn't really being "killed" unless it's of the permanent variety.

>Actually, that does bring to mind another question. Would you recommend implementing PD with or without PVP?

It would depend on the game. At the moment, if you wanted to attract a good number of existing massively mutliplayer gamers, and wanted level 9 criticism of your game instead of level 10, you'd go for PD without PvP. For some gamess, you maybe couldn't have PvP anyway as it wouldn't fit into the genre (and the same applies to PD).

>Ok, so the 10million dollar question is, what changes are needed in the market in order to make a game which includes PD as commercially viable?

Give me $10m and I'll tell you (grin).

Richard

LumsOtherHalf
03/06/01 03:30 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
LumsOtherHalf>The whole one playable character at a time per account goes a LONG ways towards helping this work. Someone thinks they wanna buy 10 accounts to dominate - let them - that's still 10 votes, not 80 like we would have in some games now.

>It doesn't really make any difference unless you have a system where a quorum is necessary for a vote to be meaningful. If 80% of players can't be bothered to vote, that means 80% of characters won't vote. Whether those characters come in batches of 1 or 10 is immaterial unless you have some system in place saying something like "sorry, we need 4 times the square root of the number of characters allowed to vote before we can make any binding decisions".

The top tiers of power should probably be retained in a game masters hands - at least at first. And yes - everything from a jury system, to referrendums on things should have a voting mechanism in place. People don't vote in the real world because they think it will make no difference, they won't in these either unless it WILL make a difference and they know it. If they still don't, well, folks tend to get the government they deserve.

LumsOtherHalf>Note however that I am still against PKing and would ONLY start to entertain the idea of allowing the concept if a system of justice was in place.

Is this an overarching player justice system? Or would you allow one part of a game world to have different laws to another part (as in the real world)? If not, how would you implement your exile system? If so, how would your anti-PK country stand up to an invasion from the pro-PK country next door?

Kinda sorta overarching. Different worlds/countries could certainly be setup with differing social values and therefore laws. Instead of 20 servers - I'd like to see 20 worlds that have different backstories some would be very feudal, some might be technological, others might be a mixed bag. If the basic mechanics are setup so each one can have flags on and off - say for PvP/non or PK/non, folks will move to the culture, genre and level they are most comfortable with. With this in place, people don't have to start over to be with friends on a new server, they just immigrate. If someone decides they are tired of the BS - they move to a more civilized plant/country. Fiction can cover a multitude of flaws - people are incredibly accepting with suspension of disbelief if just a little groundwork is laid to say WHY something is the way it is. With this system overcrowding is up to the individual - if a type of server gets too crowded people can liquidate their assets, perhaps take some possessions (that are allowed based on the destinations tech restrictions) and just pull up stakes and move.

>Ritual humiliation isn't 100% positive, though, is it? "Listen, everyone, Tommy has an apology to make. He's been very naughty and he wants to say he's sorry to the people he's hurt - don't you Tommy? And they want to say how cross they still are that you hurt them, and that even though it still hurts they forgive you, because you were just immature. OK, well we seem to have everyone here, now what do you have to say, Tommy?"

This isn't ritual humiliation - it's owning up to your actions. People used to know how to apologize, but it seems our society has been so inundated with the nonapology apology - it's become a lost art. To truly be penitent - you have to own the error. To truly forgive - the offended party has to know that you understand the impact your actions had - and that you are truly remorseful. The burden of an apology lies squarely in the lap of the offender - and that is it's proper place. An apology that rationalizes the reasons is no apology at all, it's simply an attempt to jusity the action and make the offended party take the offenders side - and that NEVER works. But again, this would be on a personal level. All this means is that if I have declared a family feud against Joe - none of my kin will deal with him or his kin until the stain is removed by ME (or perhaps time could do it - if you wanted to have it wear off over a few generations naturally). Course - the Hatfields and McCoys kept their feud going for quite some time - long past when anyone fighting really knew how it started.

Domasai
03/06/01 06:57 AM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
Lum's Other Half This isn't ritual humiliation - it's owning up to your actions. People used to know how to apologize, but it seems our society has been so inundated with the nonapology apology - it's become a lost art. To truly be penitent - you have to own the error. To truly forgive - the offended party has to know that you understand the impact your actions had - and that you are truly remorseful. The burden of an apology lies squarely in the lap of the offender - and that is it's proper place.

________________________________________________

It would still be considered humiliating to the offender. I have to agree with Dr. Bartle on this one: People, on the whole, don't like 'owning' up to their mistakes, especially those who behave in the manner that would be deemed offensive in these games. I'd say the vast majority of those who cause problems in online games are those who are insecure as hell in real life to begin with. Forcing them to apologize is emasculating to them, not counting into the fact that they're emasculated enough in real life - which is typically the reason why they play these games in the first place: They want some level of power, of control; they don't want to be humiliated (which is how they'd see it) within the virtual context.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Xilrens Twin
03/06/01 09:00 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

>Most players consider getting killed at the hands of some random stranger traumatic enough without it being of the permanent variety.

It isn't really being "killed" unless it's of the permanent variety.

Ok, ok already. How about we call it "an unlooked for waste of game time" instead. Personally, that is how I view character deaths that occur irrespective of my choice. My primary reason for not being a fan of unresticted PVP is it basically allows others to decide how I spend my game time. If I want to just travel from point A to B and on the way so random Joe "im roleplaying a bandit" Schmoe ganks me, I feel like I've just wasted whatever time it takes me to respawn and get back to where I was. Even if I spotted Joe and simply ran from him, Im still wasting my time doing something I didn't want to do.

At least in a PVP optional game (be it geographic or othewise), I can control such encounters. If I know the the road from A to B is through a open PVP badlands, them if I choose to take that route at least I made the decision knowing (expecting even) to be attacked en route.

And that, to my mind, is probably my biggest objection to PD. It simply seems like the ultimate waste of time if it happens in an uncontrolled fashion. Without some hard and known boundries too it (i..e like geographic), I personally wouldn't be interested in trying it until I had pretty well exhausted my other in game options. That's why am I not a fan of even the range of possiblities options, where in this areas it 5% chance of PD, over there it's 15% etc etc. Even if you can "run away" from a PD situation when it occurs, again, I'm still wasting my time doing something I don't want.

That's why I'm much more of a fan of options that give the ultimate control of risk to the players (like geogrphic ones), be it PVP or PD related.

In reply to:

>Ok, so the 10million dollar question is, what changes are needed in the market in order to make a game which includes PD as commercially viable?

Give me $10m and I'll tell you (grin).

You really think if I had 10 mill lying around I'd waste in on one of these games? Im not that much of a gambler. I'd rather do something more stable from and ROI standpoint, like say, funding an expidition to find Atlantis. :-P

Xilren

Stephen Nichols
03/06/01 12:16 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
In reply to:

Ok, ok already. How about we call it "an unlooked for waste of game time" instead. Personally, that is how I view character deaths that occur irrespective of my choice. My primary reason for not being a fan of unresticted PVP is it basically allows others to decide how I spend my game time. If I want to just travel from point A to B and on the way so random Joe "im roleplaying a bandit" Schmoe ganks me, I feel like I've just wasted whatever time it takes me to respawn and get back to where I was. Even if I spotted Joe and simply ran from him, Im still wasting my time doing something I didn't want to do.

That's an interestingly powerful argument you're making, Xilren. However I don't think I agree with you completely. It seems to me that most players want to have control over the kind of game experience they have. And they should -- to a degree. Are you saying that nothing should happen within a game world that makes you "waste" time doing something you don't want to? If so, that's a recipe for disaster. That same argument could be made to avoid any unsavory activity in a game (i.e. monsters killing you, losing items on death, long-distance walking). Do you see my point? Taken to the extreme, your argument could support allowing the player to automatically gain power in the game without risk. Control over your experience must be confined within the context of the world design in which you are playing.

Perhaps you are the kind of player that wants to have complete control over the environment so that nothing bad happens to you. I doubt that though. It seems to me that you are touching on another central issue. That is, what makes being attacked by a player worse than being attacked by a monster? Presumably you would have no problem being unexpectedly attacked by an NPC bandit in a wooded area, so why is it a waste of time if it's a player bandit? Perhaps it's due to the fact that it's quite easy to get into an unbalanced player vs. player battle. That certainly is a major issue, but not unsolvable. What are your opinions?

steve

DanSTC
03/06/01 12:48 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
I will say this right now. I am VERY against permadeath. I do NOT like the idea of losing a character I've worked so hard on. That being said, I personally like the idea of immortality areas. Perhaps in newbie areas/dungeons, it is impossible to die. That way, the newbies can rise up in XP and learn the early ins and outs of the game without penalty. Perhaps in some of the more amiable towns and areas of the world, parks, safe mining areas, or trade meets are immortality zones. This way, the players feel 100% secure in their safety when socializing or trade skill-ing.

Of course, there will be areas where you can either be killed by monsters (PvE area.)

There will also be areas where you can be killed by any other players, but there are no monsters in sight (PvP only areas)

Also, places where killing is only consensual and you die without penalty, unless you put something up for gambling sakes. (Dueling area)

Areas where opposing guilds can attack eachother with impunity, but not anyone else. (Guild/faction area)

And of course, all-out "anyone or anything can kill you anytime" areas. (Battle royal/Freezone)

If a game could set up nice self-contained areas for each player type to do what they enjoy doing, (without harming those who do not want to take part) then I think it'd improve things a little. I suppose there would be the matter of making each area fun, and building each area to suit that style of play better.

But of course, I feel a little shaky on this myself. I'm not sure about the idea of player segregation. Anyone got any comments?

~DanSTC

Treacherous
03/06/01 03:02 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Xilrens Twin>Even if I spotted Joe and simply ran from him, Im still wasting my time doing something I didn't want to do.

Xilrens Twin, I'm shaking my head. I don't know what to tell you.

I know of games that will give you what you're saying you want here. Diablo II lets you play the game by yourself with nobody else around, or play with a selected group of other people. Then you can go out into the chat channels and talk to the other players, and arrange to trade items/money with them. You don't have to waste any time interacting with other people while trying to level up or kill monsters or get items if you don't want to. Then there are also single player games that are almost exactly like it, where you don't actually get to trade items with other people, but you can still go onto online chat rooms and talk to them. Diablo II is not a multiplayer online world, which is what I thought we were discussing here.

Xilrens Twin
03/06/01 03:38 PM
[re: Stephen Nichols]
In reply to:

Perhaps you are the kind of player that wants to have complete control over the environment so that nothing bad happens to you. I doubt that though. It seems to me that you are touching on another central issue. That is, what makes being attacked by a player worse than being attacked by a monster? Presumably you would have no problem being unexpectedly attacked by an NPC bandit in a wooded area, so why is it a waste of time if it's a player bandit? Perhaps it's due to the fact that it's quite easy to get into an unbalanced player vs. player battle. That certainly is a major issue, but not unsolvable. What are your opinions?

Your right, i don;t want complete control over my enironment so that nothing bad happens to me. What I want is to be able to control my level of risk. PVP, let alone PD, has an altogther different risk factor for the player than PVE (at least, as far as I am concerned).

And you're also right in that I wouldn't mind be attacked by an NPC, as long as it made sense within the world context. There are some circumstances when even NPC attacks come across as "time wasters". Case in point: High level mobs roaming through low level zones in EQ.

Supposedly added to give some zones that "extra feeling of danger", you basically had a few mobs in their 30's (like giants and griffins) wandering through areas where characters are in their teens. If one attacked you, you usually were dead before you got hit twice. You couldn't run away, you couldn't band together with a bunch of same level character and take it out, all you could do it try to avoid them. In fact, often in such zones you would need to listen out for the "traffic reports" to make sure on wasn't headed your way (i..e "Hill Giant near north zone wall headed east. Just passed the second orc camp.")

On time when I was in the middle of fighting a ghoul in one such zone, my only warning that a giant was even near was when i saw the good ole "A Hill Giant hits YOU for 68 points of damage! You have been killed by a Hill Giant. Loading, please wait...""

When I finally returned to my body, I asked some people in the area where the hell that it come from b/c I was fighting using the 3rd person view so I wouldn't be surprised. Apparently it had spawned a short distance away and had closed and killed me in about 5 seconds flat. Whee.

That's what I call a "time waster".

Yeah, I know it was pure bad luck on my part, but still, at least make the mob such that you have SOME chance to either run away or fight it. I wouldn't have minded nearly so much if I could have rejoined my friends, grouped with a few more and hunted the bastard down. Hell, it's not like I intentionally took a low level character into a high level zone sightseeing or something (which has earned me a few deaths to be sure, but those I didn't mind b/c i chose to take the risk). My entertainment time is limited enough that I hate to waste it due to cirumstances beyond my control.

Same is true for the PVP aspect when unlooked for, b/c you are right, it is much easier to get involved in a stacked PVP fight than a "fair" one. Perhaps it's just my experience, but people who go around attacking random strangers aren't usually looking for a fair fight to begin with. And again, if there is not even a chance for me to either fight back, taqlk my way out, or get away, I feel like I have wasted my time. If you throw in losing equipment/money on top of that, the sense of waste increases.

That's why I said uncontrollable PD seems like the ultimate time waster for me. In those situations where you have the misfourtune to die without being able to do anything about it, you now lose everything. No thanks.

Just give me the choice if I want to play the high stakes game or stick to someting less risky (with less reward of course). I dont mind taking risks, I just don't like going to play quarter slots and losing 100 bucks on a single bad spin.

Xilren

Xilrens Twin
03/06/01 03:51 PM
[re: Treacherous]
In reply to:

You don't have to waste any time interacting with other people while trying to level up or kill monsters or get items if you don't want to. Then there are also single player games that are almost exactly like it, where you don't actually get to trade items with other people, but you can still go onto online chat rooms and talk to them. Diablo II is not a multiplayer online world, which is what I thought we were discussing her

You're missing my point. What I said has nothing to do with not wanting to interact with others at all. It was just an example. I could be travelling solo and get attacked or be with a group of my friends be attacked. The same still holds. In many way it's worse when you are grouped up b/c then you're wasting mutiple people time. Read my other reply on the subject and see if that makes it any clearer. The reason I generally use single example it just b/c it's MY opinion, not b/c I want to play solo.

Oh, one other thing, get attacking by some random guy for no particular reason, be it in a group setting or solo, is hardly what i would call the height of multiplayer social interaction.

Xilren

Richard Bartle
03/07/01 04:15 AM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
LumsOtherHalf>The top tiers of power should probably be retained in a game masters hands - at least at first.

So what is billed as "player justice" is actually more like "players who do what we want but don't have time to do ourselves justice".

>People don't vote in the real world because they think it will make no difference, they won't in these either unless it WILL make a difference and they know it.

And how, precisely, is it going to make a difference? Even if there are only 300 votes cast, 1 vote isn't going to make a difference.

Another reason people don't vote is because they don't like any of the choices. "No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in". If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you give it a mandate; if you don't, they can't claim your support.

>If they still don't, well, folks tend to get the government they deserve.

What annoys people is that even if they DO vote, they DON'T get the government they deserve.

Voter apathy in the real world isn't too awful if the number of people voting is still large. In a persistent world, where the electoral list is much smaller and there is huge scope for guilds/clans/whatevers to vote en bloc, it could be disastrous.

>Instead of 20 servers - I'd like to see 20 worlds that have different backstories some would be very feudal, some might be technological, others might be a mixed bag. If the basic mechanics are setup so each one can have flags on and off - say for PvP/non or PK/non, folks will move to the culture, genre and level they are most comfortable with.

So what you want is a set of individual servers, each with their own sets of laws and social mores, loose-knit together so people who don't like one can go play somewhere else they do like?

We already have this. People who don't like EQ can go play AC.

>if a type of server gets too crowded people can liquidate their assets, perhaps take some possessions (that are allowed based on the destinations tech restrictions) and just pull up stakes and move.

Let's suppose the good folks at Turbine said, "OK, we'll let EQ players migrate here. Give us your EQ account, we'll convert all the goodies on it into AC goodies at favourable rates, and give you a new character on AC". Suddenly, people on AC who thought they were doing rather well find incredibly wealthy immigrants coming in and moving them down the social scale. They're going to be resentful that outsiders can leap-frog them this way.

What you're proposing, while not necessarily quite as dramatic as a shift from EQ to AC, would lead to the same kind of attitude. People who play on a server that's "easier" who move to a server that's "harder" (this is from the point of view of people on that second server) are going to cause all kinds of problems.

OK, so these are problems that the real world sees, too, and the solutions that apply in the real world can also apply here.

Where there's a difference is that it's quite possible that groups of people organise with the aim of trashing a game for fun. If 50 players all switch from one game to another in the same week, taking pots of money with them, suddenly the whole social dynamic of the second game changes. With their cash and numbers, they could quite easily take over some of the game's institutions and wreck it. This isn't too far-fetched, either - I know of at least one instance where a group of players "invaded" a MUD with the sole aim of causing mayhem and destruction.

I believe there is scope for allowing players to migrate between servers. I believe there is scope for meaningful in-game democracy. I'm concerned that they're not independent, though, and that if you want both of them together then you have to design both systems with that in mind from the start.

>This isn't ritual humiliation - it's owning up to your actions.

No, it's pretty much ritual humiliation.

>People used to know how to apologize, but it seems our society has been so inundated with the nonapology apology - it's become a lost art.

Although I am a great believer in using computer games as a force for social good, I think you're on a loser with this one..!

>To truly be penitent - you have to own the error. To truly forgive - the offended party has to know that you understand the impact your actions had - and that you are truly remorseful.

Sure, but if you force people to do that prematurely, they just won't. They need to LEARN why their actions were wrong, not simply be TOLD that they were wrong and that they have to say the magic words in a suitably contrite fashion or they don't get to play again.

Domasai>I'd say the vast majority of those who cause problems in online games are those who are insecure as hell in real life to begin with. Forcing them to apologize is emasculating to them, not counting into the fact that they're emasculated enough in real life - which is typically the reason why they play these games in the first place: They want some level of power, of control; they don't want to be humiliated (which is how they'd see it) within the virtual context.

Exactly.

The kind of people who would readily accept this kind of "accept you did wrong in public then we'll all hug and make friends" approach are the ones who aren't going to do wrong in the first place.

I just hope no-one goes down the nightmare route of enforcing formal counselling sessions...

Xilrens Twin>Ok, ok already. How about we call it "an unlooked for waste of game time" instead.

OK, let's do that. See how long you can keep it up before starting to call it "death" again.

>And that, to my mind, is probably my biggest objection to PD. It simply seems like the ultimate waste of time if it happens in an uncontrolled fashion.

This would be one reason my article advocated doing it in a controlled fashion, of course...

>I personally wouldn't be interested in trying it until I had pretty well exhausted my other in game options.

You'd be perfectly at liberty to do that.

>Even if you can "run away" from a PD situation when it occurs, again, I'm still wasting my time doing something I don't want.

OK, so don't go to the areas where you can get PDed!

>You really think if I had 10 mill lying around I'd waste in on one of these games?

I don't know. Maybe if you had $1,000,000,000 lying around you might invest $10,000,000 in one.

Stephen Nichols>Are you saying that nothing should happen within a game world that makes you "waste" time doing something you don't want to? If so, that's a recipe for disaster.

I agree with you. Taking Xilren's argument to its logical conclusion, everything is ups, because downs waste the player's time. You never have to learn from your mistakes, because you never make any mistakes. This can't be what they mean. I think it must be to do with whether the waste of time is due to other players or to the environment, although since other players are part of the environment it isn't clear why that should be so important from a "waste of time" perspective.

DanSTC>I will say this right now. I am VERY against permadeath. I do NOT like the idea of losing a character I've worked so hard on.

That puts you in the same group as 95% of the players of these games!

>That being said, I personally like the idea of immortality areas.

Do you mind the fact that you can't advance as far in an immortality area as you can in one where you can be killed?

>If a game could set up nice self-contained areas for each player type to do what they enjoy doing, (without harming those who do not want to take part) then I think it'd improve things a little.

Wellllll sort of. There has to be interaction between different player types, because they're inter-dependent. Partitioning all socialisers in one part of the world and all achievers in another part with very little interaction will lead to a pretty sterile world.

Xilrens Twin>If one attacked you, you usually were dead before you got hit twice.

You mean you were usually forces to suffer "an unlooked for waste of game time"?

Richard

Draco the Grey
03/07/01 07:13 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
Finally, a thread interesting enough to convince me to register for the boards after over a year of lurking here. =)

A lot of interesting things have been discussed here, but the first point I want to tackle is the issue of challegnge and heroism. When I play AC, I know that being "killed" is rather meaningless - my character and my equpment are essentially not at risk. The key to becoming more powerful is simply spending more time playing and the key to overcoming most obstacles in the game is to become more powerful. Any achievement in the game will be repeated ad nauseum by countless other characters, unless it can only be done once. In those instances, it becomes a race to see who can do it first. There's no real risk, so anyone sufficiently powerful can dive into "quest" with reckless abandon trying to beat the other 500 super powerful character the the foozle. There is no risk, there are no heroes. The only challenge is that which exists in our own minds, and when we see the world for what it is (simple accumulation of stats and equipment) the challenge starts to fade away. Some see PvP as the new challenge, but for most it is unappealing in its current state. I for one am too lazy to be prepared to fight someone every moment my character is logged in.

Having player death not only adds to the challenge, and increases the sense of accomplishment manyfold for certain actions, it also eliminates many of the problems that exist in the "high level" game. You can already see the problems immortality causes, patricularly in EQ, with lines (!) and waiting lists (!!) to fight against certain powerful creatures, or in high level areas.

Take the example of a dragon in its lair. In a world with virtual immortality, the lair would be a scary place for the first few months the game is up, because nobody would be powerful enough to fight the dragon. Eventually you would have groups lined up outside the enterance to the lair waiting to kill the dragon, because while individuals in the group may be "killed", as long as the dragon dies they will gain far more than they lose (if anything at all.) There is little to no incentive to not kill the dragon, thus if they can, they will.

In a world with player death, the dragon's lair would be a place to be avoided, where even the most powerful characters fear to tread. Without any motivation, few would dare to even bother the dragon. But suppose it was guarding the 'uber widget of doom'? It would still be a rare day that anyone dared to challenge the dragon, but if a group did manage to slay it and claim the treasure, while they wouldn't be looked upon as heroes, they would probably be looked upon in awe for accomplishing something few would dare to try.

Now suppose the aforementioned dragon went on a rampage, burning village after village to the ground. In a world full of immortals, hordes of high level characters would simply rush out and put a stop to it. What about a world with player death? What would the most powerful characters on that world do? Would they band together to go slay the dragon, knowing some of them would die in the process? Would they allow the dragon to rampage unchecked? Would they stand around and look at each other waiting for the other guy to go do something about it? When the stakes are that high, is there any doubt that those who risked everything to stop the dragon (regardless of whether they lived or died) would be remembered as heroes? And would the general populace be very impressed with the fact that G4ndulf1234 is the most powerful wizard in the land when he ran away with his tail between his legs in the face of real danger?

I'm not saying that player death is something that every game must have or they will suck, or that everyone should like it and STFU. ;) I'm just saying that player death is something that can drasticly alter the dynamics of a tuly interactive world, and for the better imho.

"You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too."

Xilrens Twin
03/07/01 09:46 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

Xilrens Twin>Ok, ok already. How about we call it "an unlooked for waste of game time" instead.

OK, let's do that. See how long you can keep it up before starting to call it "death" again.

Well, it did call it death the first time (actualled I think I said "killed"). You objected to that since it wasn't of the permanent variety. Make up your mind how you want non PD character "death" referred too so we don't get stuck on semantics. :-)

But in a very real way, that's all death is in these games; an invalidation of invested time. Whether it's permanent or not, if you continue to play you must in some fashion invest addtional time to "recover" from death. Could be earning more exp point, gold, items, skills points, status, of even just travel time. Death has a cost, but when you boil it down, it's a cost in the only real currency of these games: time. Permadeath simply increases that loss of invested time. If you elect to still play, you must now start back from square one, having lost all of your perviously invested time. (well, you do generally get to benefit of you in game knowledge so the amount of invested time to climb back to your previous level is usually shorter, but that decrease in time falls off rapidly beyond your first few deaths).

In reply to:

I agree with you. Taking Xilren's argument to its logical conclusion, everything is ups, because downs waste the player's time. You never have to learn from your mistakes, because you never make any mistakes. This can't be what they mean. I think it must be to do with whether the waste of time is due to other players or to the environment, although since other players are part of the environment it isn't clear why that should be so important from a "waste of time" perspective.

Your right, that's not what I mean (see my other reply for a bit more clarification). It's also not a environment vs other player issue. A waste of time to me is simple a situation in which I don't have an opportunity to exercise choice over what kind of penalties I'm willing to risk. Let me elabortate a bit (sticking with combat as well since it's the common way to die in these games).

Generally speaking, these game offer varying levels of combat risk by geographic area: newbie areas, lower level parts etc etc. It make sense b/c it allows people to be find and engage in similarly power mobs without constantly be overmatched (or undermatched). Without that kind of segregation, people would spend far more time wandering about looking for a challege that fits their requirements then they would contesting them. If right outside the city gates you could run into a low, mid or high level mobs with about the same frequency, you would spend about 2/3 or your hunting time turning down potential encounters. A low level player would have to avoid mids & highs (too tough); mid levels would avoid highs (too tough) and lows (not enough challege or reward); and the high levels would avoid all but highs (again, not enough challenge or reward). Doesn't sound like much fun.

So, by giving geographic areas general ranges of difficulty, people can focus on actually overcoming the challenges that fall within their range. In short players can now effectively manage their own risk/reward levels. If you really want to take a mid level character to a high level area you know you are running a high risk for failure, but success will bring a greater reward. That's fine, no problem. Adding PD in such an environment simply increases that risk factor (which I don't have a problem with b/c again, it's player controlled risk management).

PVP is slightly harder to manage b/c now you have 2 players/groups of player acting to control the risk managemt in opposition to each other. Each group would (of course) like to maximize their risk/reward ratio, but you can only really control that in fights that you choose. When a fight chooses you instead, you often have to decided when to try and stick it out or escape. So, from that standpoint pvp is much "riskier" than PVE b/c there is a much greater degree of randomness to the challenges. Again, in a system where you give the player control over when they want to enter/leave such an area, no problem.

What I call "wasting time" are situations where you can effectively manage the risk, so the penalty to your invested in time is much more random. I had remarked how a higher level mob had spawned and killed me in a low level area. Without any opportunity to fight/flee, that encounter pretty much invalided the whole risk/reward management I was trying to pursue.

It would be like programming in a 1% random chance that any given game day your character could drop dead of a heart attack. When it happens, there is no feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction over having beaten the odds for so long, it's simply an annoyance you must endure to get back to having fun again.

The only currency that exists in these games presently is simply invested time. I don't mind gambling with it, I just don't like not being able to set my own stakes.

Xilren

LumsOtherHalf
03/07/01 11:10 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
LumsOtherHalf>Instead of 20 servers - I'd like to see 20 worlds that have different backstories some would be very feudal, some might be technological, others might be a mixed bag. If the basic mechanics are setup so each one can have flags on and off - say for PvP/non or PK/non, folks will move to the culture, genre and level they are most comfortable with.

>So what you want is a set of individual servers, each with their own sets of laws and social mores, loose-knit together so people who don't like one can go play somewhere else they do like?

>We already have this. People who don't like EQ can go play AC.

Not exactly - if we go with the universe model - these are all part of a larger whole, just an expotentially larger map - think of them as zones instead of other planets if you like. I would put limits on what could be immigrated with, and each planet would likely have it's own coinage (there would be an exchange rate between currencies) and I would also set embargoes on what can be imported in terms of technology based on the destination world. On a world where the original settlers decided that it is dishonorable to fight out of arms reach of another, phasers wouldn't be allowed on the planet. Remember, my model also uses aging - there would also be some character age costs in interstellar travel - as well as financial costs. Also - this model depends a lot on having children be your true wealth. I could see allowing someone to pack up their family and move everyone but that would get REAL pricey. Not to mention your local power would be very limited - you haven't established your family there yet. The one thing I recommended when UO started up Trammel was that it setup a different currency - that would have stemmed the tide (or allowed currency exchange options) of gold being more easily obtained in Trammel to fund fights in the old world.

>I believe there is scope for allowing players to migrate between servers. I believe there is scope for meaningful in-game democracy. I'm concerned that they're not independent, though, and that if you want both of them together then you have to design both systems with that in mind from the start.

Exactly - one reson this thread has wandered into so many topics - there are a LOT of things that have to be considered that are all interconnected - you can't just look at one thing - or say - fix THIS and everything will be fine - these have a lot more problems than that.

As to voter apathy - well, one thing folks want to do in these is MAKE A DIFFERENCE. That is another need that folks seem to look to these for that seems lacking in the real world. Not all types to be sure, but I've yet to meet a player of any type that doesn't wish they could truly make their mark.

>Sure, but if you force people to do that prematurely, they just won't. They need to LEARN why their actions were wrong, not simply be TOLD that they were wrong and that they have to say the magic words in a suitably contrite fashion or they don't get to play again.

Heheh, well, we are gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. I am a firm believer that without meaningful concequences that impact the player thru the character - the type this will affect just won't get the message. But again - no one said they couldn't play - they can - and in that area too - but if they are on everyone's shitlist - gonna be REAL hard in the area they made an arse of themselves in. This is the core theory behind shunning - and shunning is THE most effective means of player justice in these worlds - if the mechanisms are there to back up the players decisions. The jerk in question has several options - convince the people that shunned him to lift the stain, move to another area where people don't know him - possibly immigrate to another world. They can play, just not gonna be a happy place for him if he has sufficiently managed to piss everyone in a given area off - which is like - the point.

Onto the point of wasting time - I did an article on that sometime back - player time is the true currency of these realms. People want to be able to assume the level of risk they are comfortable with. Not everyone likes risk at all - some want a little - some want to just go in guns blazing (a minority).

Domasai
03/07/01 03:10 PM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
The only point in making the player suffer for his character dying is to get some extra cash out of him. It's like, "Wow. Your guy was just about to GM that skill, wasn't he? Man, tough break - now you're down a few points. That'll take, say, three weeks to rebuild, right?" or "Damn, you were doing really good there, till that punk bastard came up and hit you after you'd killed those other three. How dare that fruit pull that sort of **** on you, you're a |_33+ gamer! So spend some more money and spend the next month getting back into the shape you were - show him who's boss!"

I'm sick of it: Why does having your character die (in a system with or without PD) mean that you, the player, must be punished for it? No other game does that.

Now, after the above declaration, can you believe I still think PD is a good idea? I'm a sick, twisted bastard, aren't I? ___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Stejar
03/07/01 04:11 PM
[re: Domasai]
Well, I may as well jump in with my thoughts: Time will always be a neccessary constraint in MMOGs, for a variety of reasons. First, to limit grief players in PvP+ situations. In a free (or relatively free) PvP situation, having no (or essentially no) consequences for death and respawning at the same point turns those places into frag fests. Without consequences for their own anti-social behavior griefer PKs will waste your time as much as they please (because I can't imagine how death wouldn't have at least some downtime (and thus lost time) built into it as your settings were reset and so on). Making death have some additional consequences aside from that sliver of time (which essentially adds up to more time), I think does serve as a disincentive for Little Johnny Griefer to come along and gankz0r you over and over again, or stalk you and do the same. While some people may be itching for a persistent world Q3TA or Q3A, I don't think most people will enjoy being ganked over and over and over again (at exactly the same point!) by L0rd n00bk1ll4h the first time they create a character and leave safe areas. Thus, respawning away from your character's corpse or respawning in a 'safe' form. I know this doesn't prevent corpse camping in PvP+ situations, but it at least make life even more time consuming for the grief PKs who gets kicks from making you waste time (well, at least it's only from the company's policy, not from the company's code, right? :) as you keep dying over and over and over.

In PvP- situations, the safe zone reason still applies. Witness computer controlled monsters whacking away at casters who bound in bad places in EQ (docks in Oasis of Marr), even if they didn't lose all the time invested in experience they would probably have still been pissed for dying again and again and again at the same spot. I don't think most people want to sit through something like that, and if it became par for course, I'm sure at least as many people would be frustrated with that as with that as with having to redo work. (What makes you angrier, your OS crashing and you having to restart your computer, without significant loss of data, or printing out a 'final' copy that still-needed fine tuning and having to do it over yourself? Further, just about every game has a risk/reward structure and 'time' seems to be the most easily controlled (and abused) variable in determining risk versus reward by both players and developers. What alternative method would you employ for consequences? I'd really be interested in hearing this. And, not having played AC, it seems that vitae is a time penalty of sorts, too (even though not as harsh as those employed in EQ/UO) since you have to take time getting vitae points back by gathering experience (at sub-optimal performance levels) (can someone correct me on this?). Heck, even in 'social' MU*s like the MUCKs, it is sometimes possible to 'kill' a character and the consequence is still essentially time lost (albeit a few dozen seconds to a few minutes versus half-an-hour or more). As for the exact time element, well, I can't tell since my primary MUCK doesn't let players 'kill me.'

All that is in my not so humble opinion of course.

-------

Stejar

"IN THE GRIM FUTURE OF HELLO KITTY, THERE IS ONLY WAR!" Edited by Stejar on 03/07/01 08:33 PM.

Domasai
03/07/01 09:28 PM
[re: Stejar]
I didn't state that the person would instantly respawn in the same spot; that would be ridiculous and result in the type of gankfests that you're detailing.

As for PKs: It isn't going to deter them from ganging up with their buddies and tearing into people. Remember that PKs are generally people driven to act that way through some sort of real world insecurities. I doubt anything will deter them significantly from what they feel grants them a degree of power in the world.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Stejar
03/07/01 10:16 PM
[re: Domasai]
In reply to:

I didn't state that the person would instantly respawn in the same spot; that would be ridiculous and result in the type of gankfests that you're detailing.

I know, but if your character was reborn/respawned without any time loss, then you'd have to be reborn/respawn very near where you were killed, if not in the same spot. (I know you don't mean that, I'm just saying that some time loss will be unavoidable and will always be the 'penalty' for death). :)

In reply to:

As for PKs: I've seen nothing that indicates they could care less about losing skill points or whatever the system requires. It isn't going to deter them from ganging up with their buddies and tearing into people. In the end, more non-PK people are harmed by this. The argument that it somehow acts as a deterrent to PKing is, IMO, wildly inaccurate.

Well, maybe disincentive would be the wrong word since it implies a direct cause and effect relationship. :) Maybe 'obstacle' is a better word. Statloss, equipment loss (even if that just means being forcibly seperated from it on a corpse), experience loss all represent, or add up to, time taken away from resuming optimal r0xx0ring. Yes, it equally punishes those who are not griefers and do actually 'care' conciously about the penalties of death, but the penalties still have an effect even if you don't care.

Okay, maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but that's the way I see it. :)

-------

Stejar

"IN THE GRIM FUTURE OF HELLO KITTY, THERE IS ONLY WAR!" Edited by Stejar on 03/07/01 10:17 PM.

Treacherous
03/08/01 03:45 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Xilrens Twin>But in a very real way, that's all death is in these games; an invalidation of invested time.

This is only true in "these games" when you're talking about EQ, UO, and the other "current crop." Once again you're not talking about any possibility that would be a good idea for implementation, but ONLY about what permanent death would be like when tacked onto an existing game. See my above posts about this...

Permanent death takes away your life. If the only point or importance to your life was the stuff you had and your experience points, then yes, death is only an invalidation of the time it took to get those things. But in a world in which a character has more importance than "owner of 1,000,000,000 gold pieces worth of rare loot" there are an infinite number of things death can NOT invalidate. If the things you did in life were unique and irreproducable, if you were liked or hated, if you ever owned land or participated in politics, if you loved or hated others, if you had a place in history, had children, parents, true friends, a monument or tomb, if you had -=made a difference in the world=-, your summation of "all death is" would fall far short of complete. Furthermore, if you've been following the posts here about inheretence and taking over your character's offspring, you'll realize that I'm not even necessarily talking about losing everything you owned upon death. Death shouldn't "have a cost." It is an event in the life of a person; it is the price of being alive in the first place.

There will be people who respond to what I just said with something like this: "well I don't care about all that stupid RP poop, I just don't want to lose my loot!" I have news for you. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. Why do you ever get in a car? Why do you leave your house, or even unlock your door? Aren't you afraid of dying, losing your computer, your cd collection and never having sex again? Oh yeah, you probably have to leave your house sometimes to keep some of that stuff anyway... But really, you go out and live your life anyway because chances are, you're not going to die just yet, today.

Simulate a world in which permanent death is realistically rare, not in which the 4th "newbie creature" you run across will probably mean your end. Add to that simulation the ability to own property, participate in politics, make friends, etc., etc. When this rarity is simulated, why assume you won't take at least the same amount of risks with your character as you do with yourself? Even a person who only cares about trying to have a little fun and collecting some loot in real life before dying (instead of caring about all the RL equivilants of that stupid RP poop, you know, politics, arts, religion, etc.,) should be able to transfer that same philosophy to a character. Do the best you can, live fast, die young, if that's what you like to do. Then do it again, but differently or better or whatever you want!

The point I'm trying to make is this: the fact that sometimes when you die it will be for bad reasons or at random does not make the whole proposition of permanent death wrong to begin with. This is the reason I'm pretty confidant about what I said before on god-like attitudes necessary for permanent death design. Bad things can happen to good people, and life can go on.

Xilrens Twin
03/08/01 09:58 AM
[re: Treacherous]
When I said "these games" I meant any such game where you are playing a consistent character. The reason I mention it is b/c so far all upcoming games in the genre will be providing the same situations. Any accomplishment acheived while playing are therefore tied directly to the charcter, not the player.

In reply to:

Permanent death takes away your life. If the only point or importance to your life was the stuff you had and your experience points, then yes, death is only an invalidation of the time it took to get those things. But in a world in which a character has more importance than "owner of 1,000,000,000 gold pieces worth of rare loot" there are an infinite number of things death can NOT invalidate. If the things you did in life were unique and irreproducable, if you were liked or hated, if you ever owned land or participated in politics, if you loved or hated others, if you had a place in history, had children, parents, true friends, a monument or tomb, if you had -=made a difference in the world=-, your summation of "all death is" would fall far short of complete.

Actually, no it wouldn't. While obviously you wouldn't lose the fun you had while playing the now dead character, nor remove and changes you made to the gameworld, that doesn't address my primary complaint, that being YOU CAN'T PLAY ANYMORE! Your choice are to either stop altogether or restart as someone completely new.

All of the above things you mentioned are tied to the character you were playing and no long apply to your new character (talking PD here, not some type of inheritance mechanism). All of the skills, abilities, wealth, items, political standing, alliances, reputation, tombs, etc etc are no longer yours. Any accomplishments you made have had are again, not longer yours, b/c you are someone *different*. Even your in game relationship to your friends changes; you have different name, skill set, etc etc. The emotional bonds or the relationship are still there, but the gameplay aspect is now radically different.

In reply to:

There will be people who respond to what I just said with something like this: "well I don't care about all that stupid RP poop, I just don't want to lose my loot!" I have news for you. YOU ARE GOING TO DI

The risks you take in REAL LIFE have nothing to do with this! This is game, a form of entertainment, and it should be approached as such. That's why the whole "realsim" argument leaves me cold; this isn't reality, not even a reasonable facsimile there of. The question shouldn't be "how do you act in real life when faced with such choice?" The much more relavent question is, "is it fun? does it make the game more enjoyable?" and right now, i'd have to say no, Pemadeath isn't. PD is neither good or bad, but your last statement made me shake my head when you consider it related PD in a game.

In reply to:

Bad things can happen to good people, and life can go on.

Um, in a PD game? No it doesn't. And that exactly the problem: the character's life is over, and so is the game. Please insert a new quarter.

Could it be done in a fun way if the game were designed around it? Sure. When I see one, I'll let you know. Game that have an inhertiance or legacy system don't really fit the bill here. Those are just different types of death penalties.

Xilren

Treacherous
03/09/01 03:55 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Xilren's Twin, our back and forth has gotten predictable, and is distracting from some of the more interesting debate around here. As many times as I can say "I can imagine an MMORPG with PD that's fun," you can reply "I can not."

Xilrens Twin>The much more relavent question is, "is it fun? does it make the game more enjoyable?" and right now, i'd have to say no, Pemadeath isn't.

I'm really not sure why you're reminding me that no game implements PD like we're talking about it here. It is difficult for what does not exist yet to be fun.

Xilrens Twin>Could it be done in a fun way if the game were designed around it? Sure. When I see one, I'll let you know.

I'm glad that you do admit the possibility, as you have been saying all along. I give up trying to convince you that what's in my mind's eye can work, as I can not demonstrate it but only echo it poorly with inadequate words. When you do "see one," I'd implore you to just give it a chance.

Richard Bartle
03/09/01 10:19 AM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
Draco the Grey>Finally, a thread interesting enough to convince me to register for the boards after over a year of lurking here. =)

Ha! Our cunning plan has worked!

>Some see PvP as the new challenge, but for most it is unappealing in its current state. I for one am too lazy to be prepared to fight someone every moment my character is logged in.

PvP isn't in itself so bad. The trouble is, with vast user bases it's more like PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPvP, which really is not going to appeal to everyone!

>You can already see the problems immortality causes, patricularly in EQ, with lines (!) and waiting lists (!!) to fight against certain powerful creatures, or in high level areas.

The irony of is, though, that by the time they reach this stage the players are so hooked that although they might stand in line and grouch, they don't think "what a waste of playing time, I'm going somewhere else".

>But suppose it was guarding the 'uber widget of doom'? It would still be a rare day that anyone dared to challenge the dragon, but if a group did manage to slay it and claim the treasure, while they wouldn't be looked upon as heroes, they would probably be looked upon in awe for accomplishing something few would dare to try.

Of course, only one of them would actually GET the uber widget of doom, too, which adds a certain frisson to the adventure...

>I'm just saying that player death is something that can drasticly alter the dynamics of a tuly interactive world, and for the better imho.

That's what I'm saying, too. It has to be done right, though.

Xilrens Twin>Make up your mind how you want non PD character "death" referred too so we don't get stuck on semantics. :-)

Not as "death".

>But in a very real way, that's all death is in these games; an invalidation of invested time.

Objectively, it isn't even that. If you experienced fun while playing the character, you have got your money's worth. You're not paying for the character, you're paying for the fun.

Of course, people don't look at it objectively. If you went to see a 2-hour movie and the last 10 minutes were missing, you wouldn't ask for a twelfth of your money back, you'd ask for ALL of your money back, even though you've actually had 110 minutes of entertainment.

>Whether it's permanent or not, if you continue to play you must in some fashion invest addtional time to "recover" from death.

OK, so what you're saying isn't that you object to PD, just that you object to any "death" at all, since they're basically one and the same thing.

Well OK, just don't go anywhere where you're likely to get killed, whether permanently or just pretend.

To be honest, I'm amazed you actually play these games since you clearly dislike them so much!

>A waste of time to me is simple a situation in which I don't have an opportunity to exercise choice over what kind of penalties I'm willing to risk.

So you would, in fact, be happy to play a game where other players could take significant risk and gain significant advantage if the risk paid off, so long as you yourself had the choice of whether to take such a risk or not. That's pretty well what I was proposing, isn't it?

>The only currency that exists in these games presently is simply invested time. I don't mind gambling with it, I just don't like not being able to set my own stakes.

If you set your own stakes, they'd always be favourable. The game has to offer the stakes, you just get to decide whether to accept them or not.

LumsOtherHalf>As to voter apathy - well, one thing folks want to do in these is MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

I agree that most players do make a difference. However, O disagree that having a vote gives any of them the remotest sense that they actually ARE making a difference.

>I am a firm believer that without meaningful concequences that impact the player thru the character - the type this will affect just won't get the message.

You have to have an impact on the player, yes, of course, I'm not disputing that. However, I don't see that making them stand up in front of everyone else in class and say how sorry they are is having the right impact - in fact, I believe it has a very negative impact.

Forcing people to play incognito is actually quite a punishment, because they don't get to talk to their friends, they have to behave with propriety at all times in case they're found out, and they can't go back to their usual old haunts or people will suss them. They learn over time how to behave, and the come to understand what the fuss was all about. I've seen this happen, hmm, perhaps half a dozen times now in my MUDs, and it works. I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd forced the individuals concerned to do the Dance of Shame in front of their peers. I can guarantee that although they may have done it, NONE of them would have been remotely sincere, and am fairly sure their behaviour would have only got worse thereafter. The only difference would be that they were more careful about covering their tracks next time.

>This is the core theory behind shunning - and shunning is THE most effective means of player justice in these worlds

It may be THE most effective way of making people leave, but that isn't "player justice".

>Onto the point of wasting time - I did an article on that sometime back - player time is the true currency of these realms.

Almost, but not quite.

When people lose a character permanently, and they identified with that character, there is an order of magnitude of difference between how bad they feel about it than how bad they feel about losing playing time. If time was all it was about, then losing 99% of your character's points and possessions would feel 99% as bad as if you lost all of it. It's not like that. It's like 9.9% as bad as if you lose all of it. That's why PD is such an emotive topic.

Treacherous>This is only true in "these games" when you're talking about EQ, UO, and the other "current crop." Once again you're not talking about any possibility that would be a good idea for implementation, but ONLY about what permanent death would be like when tacked onto an existing game.

This is inevitably what happens when a new game mechanic is proposed. It's annoying, but there's nothing you can do about it, even if you point it out at the beginning of a discussion (as I did in my first post in this thread). Look on it as one of life's little certainties (grin).

>If the only point or importance to your life was the stuff you had and your experience points, then yes, death is only an invalidation of the time it took to get those things. But in a world in which a character has more importance than "owner of 1,000,000,000 gold pieces worth of rare loot" there are an infinite number of things death can NOT invalidate. If the things you did in life were unique and irreproducable, if you were liked or hated, if you ever owned land or participated in politics, if you loved or hated others, if you had a place in history, had children, parents, true friends, a monument or tomb, if you had -=made a difference in the world=-, your summation of "all death is" would fall far short of complete.

This is another very eloquent expression of exactly what I wanted to say myself! Yay for Treacherous!

>It is an event in the life of a person; it is the price of being alive in the first place.

This is something I strongly agree with, too. If you're never going to die, then in what sense are you ever alive?

>The point I'm trying to make is this: the fact that sometimes when you die it will be for bad reasons or at random does not make the whole proposition of permanent death wrong to begin with.

I think I'm becoming a fan of this Treacherous person..!

Xilrens Twin>that exactly the problem: the character's life is over, and so is the game. Please insert a new quarter.

I think the remark about "life goes on" was with reference to the characters who DIDN'T die. It's not for the effects on the individual who dies that PD is important, but for the effects on the individuals who DON'T die.

Richard

Mira
03/09/01 11:40 AM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Actually I kind of agree with Bartle. Without some kind of PD or risk in the game everyone is going to finally become ubermage/warrior/etc with all the l33t weapons and end up leaving because there is nothing else to do.

The thing is some people don't play to be the best, they play for the company or just the fun of it and expect the game to reflect what they want. If anything the player who doesn't want to fight is more selfish then the player that does. The player that does fight knows that it is in fact part of the game where as the other wants the game to change to suit them.

I don't like Jessicas take on it that it's rape. If the player knows by leaving town they can be killed by other players. Just because you don't want to get killed doesn't make it rape, and it's quite distressing to say this. The player has the option of not leaving town, running away, fighting, getting help. Either way if it is in the game mechanics that conflict happens in the bad lands then going there and then screaming rape is wrong.

Nearly every game I know is built on a system of winner/loser or scoring system. So if there is no losers does it really make it a game or a monty haul?

Xilrens Twin
03/09/01 12:12 PM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

>But in a very real way, that's all death is in these games; an invalidation of invested time.

Objectively, it isn't even that. If you experienced fun while playing the character, you have got your money's worth. You're not paying for the character, you're paying for the fun.

Of course, people don't look at it objectively. If you went to see a 2-hour movie and the last 10 minutes were missing, you wouldn't ask for a twelfth of your money back, you'd ask for ALL of your money back, even though you've actually had 110 minutes of entertainment.

Of course you are paying for the fun, but the way you have that fun is by playing a persistant character. PD doesn't retroactively remove the fun you already had, but it does prevent you from having additional fun with that character b/c your game is effectively over. Once that character is gone, you can no longer use any of the character specific "stuff" you had accumlated is gone (skills, stats, levels, spells, items, money, property, alliances, guild membership, vendors, shops, etc etc). It dramatically changes what you can and cannot DO in the game. The assumption being that you still wanted to play the game of course.

To use your movie example, it is more akin to watching the first 110 minutes and then have management kick you out of the movie. The movie continues to run but now you can't see it unless you get a new ticket and start over at the begining.

In reply to:

OK, so what you're saying isn't that you object to PD, just that you object to any "death" at all, since they're basically one and the same thing. Well OK, just don't go anywhere where you're likely to get killed, whether permanently or just pretend. To be honest, I'm amazed you actually play these games since you clearly dislike them so much!

No, no no. You completely misunderstood what I was trying to say. I don't object to "death" at all, i was just tying it to the fact that it is simply an impact of your playing time, and that a death resulting from uncontrollable risk management is what I consider a waste of that time . You got it much closer in the next bit.

In reply to:

>A waste of time to me is simple a situation in which I don't have an opportunity to exercise choice over what kind of penalties I'm willing to risk.

So you would, in fact, be happy to play a game where other players could take significant risk and gain significant advantage if the risk paid off, so long as you yourself had the choice of whether to take such a risk or not. That's pretty well what I was proposing, isn't it?

Yes. Too bad the article that started this whole rigamaroll wasn't clearer that's what you meant (but then again, we would have missed out on a fine thread :-).

One last thing.

In reply to:

Xilrens Twin>that exactly the problem: the character's life is over, and so is the game. Please insert a new quarter.

I think the remark about "life goes on" was with reference to the characters who DIDN'T die. It's not for the effects on the individual who dies that PD is important, but for the effects on the individuals who DON'T die.

Would you care to explain that a bit more. I would have thought that the effects of PD on the individual who DOES die would be far more important than the ones that don't. After all, the deaders aren't even playing the same game anymore (if at all)...

Xilren

LumsOtherHalf
03/09/01 06:55 PM
[re: Mira]
Mira>Nearly every game I know is built on a system of winner/loser or scoring system. So if there is no losers does it really make it a game or a monty haul?

That's just it - these aren't JUST games. In a world - there is no endgame, there is no winning beyond subconfrontations. Achievers that are looking for scorekeeping in traditional ways games have always provided are going to be disappointed no matter WHAT mechanism a developer ever puts in these. The best that can be hoped for on that front is the subgame for those that wish to participate.

There absolutely needs to be various ways to achieve - but a little player education will also go a long way in preparing especially new players on the possibilities. These worlds are much better suited to play than competition - and there is a huge difference in that distinction.

Mira
03/09/01 09:05 PM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
>That's just it - these aren't JUST games. In a world - there is no endgame,

There is always an endgame, and life (or the world as you call it) is also techincally a game. All be it with a more complex scoring system and worse penalties for the losers.

Anyway back on track. First off PK + PD are two different issues.

I think there should be PD, because without any risk in anything you do, means those actions have no purpose. If everyone gets thier own monster to whack and risks nothing doing, what is the point in playing? (or paying to be online for that matter).

One of the other things about MMOG's is unscripted human interaction. Monsters display patterns which can be cheated, humans don't (so easily). To remove that from the game destroys something in the game.

Of course there are people who see online fantasy games as thier world where they should be the center of that fantasy and would quite happly play watered down pseudo single player chat room type games.

Stejar
03/09/01 11:01 PM
[re: Mira]
Oh what the hell, I'll stick myself into this conversation again.

In reply to:

There is always an endgame, and life (or the world as you call it) is also techincally a game. All be it with a more complex scoring system and worse penalties for the losers.

Interesting take on things. Assuming for a second that you are right, as your position is something which would cause an interesting philosophical debate which everyone has touched on and I don't want to get into anyway, the ultimate problem with life is that the 'scoring' system is not transparent. Who you call losers may not really be losers at all and, yet, it is also possible that they actually are losers. We just can't know. Anyway, onto your post...

In reply to:

I think there should be PD, because without any risk in anything you do, means those actions have no purpose. If everyone gets thier own monster to whack and risks nothing doing, what is the point in playing? (or paying to be online for that matter).

Actually, in all of the current games, even on PvP- servers, there is risk. It's the risk of wasting time (potentially alot of time) or losing possesions to other players (in PvP+ situations). All that PD does is amp up the risk even further and look at how much people hate even being penalized that way on a smaller scale (witness countless Whineplay posts on the subject of experience loss in EQ). I, personally, get very frustrated in single-player games that even have the save game feature or flash save when my plans go completely awry and my character/avatar dies over and over again or lose tons of units and have to replay the whole scenario from the save point. That frustration is very easily multiplied in multi-player games since it isn't even my actions that neccessarily screwed me over and if I had to pay such an enormous penalty (loss of all time invested) for them, I would very soon stop playing the game. The problem with comparisons to smaller scale multi-player games is that in a PnP RPG campaign with permadeath, or even a linear strategy game. Your group is self-selecting hence it's easier to remove grief players, you can't be disconnected and die because of it (the closest you can ever come to that is being made into an NPC if you have to leave and the GM making a bad decision), and the time invested tends to be far, far less (how many hours did you ever invest even in an RPG character in a true permadeath system that lasted 2 or 3 years? 40? 60? 80? How many DAYS do EQ, UO and AC players invest in their characters even in average experiences in that same time period? 40? 60? 80? (Note: I don't have exact figures just saying that it is a serious difference in scale). Hence, permadeath or, ultimately, losing is something less of a problem.

That's my $.02, 2pf, 4 yen, whatever.

-------

Stejar

"IN THE GRIM FUTURE OF HELLO KITTY, THERE IS ONLY WAR!"

Domasai
03/09/01 11:22 PM
[re: Mira]
In reply to:

Originally posted by Mira:

There is always an endgame, and life (or the world as you call it) is also techincally a game. All be it with a more complex scoring system and worse penalties for the losers

That's true. But in an open-ended environment, the endgame is relative to the player; it's not a static formula that results inherently from beginning to end through game mechanics. But the current crop does that anyway, devising every game mechanism to feed into the perspective that the acquisition of items and negation of one's (perceived) enemies is the only feasible route one can take. What's the benefit of playing these things if all they offer you is one supported method of gaming? May as well just play Vagrant Story. At least there, I'll get a storyline to complement the in-game action, not to mention a far more interesting combat system. The reason people see these games - UO, EQ, and AC - as so shallow in many cases is due to the fact that, since only one playstyle is viable in the gameworld, there's no dynamics present to keep from making the game stale or only unilaterally interesting.

___________________________________

Revisionist history is equally as biased as the other kind.

Richard Bartle
03/11/01 03:55 PM
[re: Xilrens Twin]
Mira>The thing is some people don't play to be the best, they play for the company or just the fun of it and expect the game to reflect what they want.

This is fine so long as these people are happy to avoid those parts of the game where there is more danger than they wish to handle. If, however, they want the entire game to submit to their particular style of play, well, they're always going to moan.

>If anything the player who doesn't want to fight is more selfish then the player that does. The player that does fight knows that it is in fact part of the game where as the other wants the game to change to suit them.

Where it gets selfish is if player X wants the kit that player Y has fought through thick and thin to get, but player X is unwilling to take the same risk, yet player X still covets the kit and insists on being able to get it without taking more risk than they're willing to.

>I don't like Jessicas take on it that it's rape.

I personally make it a point never to use the word "rape" metaphorically, it's just too emotionally charged.

I can see where being PKed can feel like a violation, in the same way that people can feel violated if they get home from work to discover someone has broken into their house and stolen stuff. I wouldn't put that in quite the same league as being violently sexually assaulted, though.

Xilrens Twin>Of course you are paying for the fun, but the way you have that fun is by playing a persistant character.

No, the way YOU have that fun is by playing a persistent character, in which case YOU wouldn't take YOUR character anywhere it could get killed.

What exactly is it that annoys you about OTHER PEOPLE who want to feel that their character is more rounded than yours by putting it in situations where it could cease to persist?

>I would have thought that the effects of PD on the individual who DOES die would be far more important than the ones that don't.

Yes, it IS from the point of view of the individual, obviously. If it were only for the effect of PD on the individual, there wouldn't necessarily be a great deal of point putting it in. From the point of view of players who avoid PD, though, the PD of someone else shows that they did actually risk something themselves; it underpins the sense of worth they have in their own character. This is what PD is REALLY for. It does have some other "silver lining" effects, but it's the meaning that it gives to the achievements of other characters that are its primary claim for inclusion.

LumsOtherHalf>That's just it - these aren't JUST games. In a world - there is no endgame, there is no winning beyond subconfrontations.

I agree that they aren't JUST games - they're only games to achievers (although killers/politicians can play a "meta game"). However, the point is that for achievers they nevertheless ARE games, and therefore if you give them a world with no driving element of game in it you won't get the achievers, or you won't keep them for as long as you might. Without achievers, you end up with a "social only" world.

If this is what some people want, OK, fair enough, they can design their world with that in mind. It will neither last as long nor be as large as a game with achievers. It will cost more to run, because they'll need to draw in ever more newbies and continually add new wallpaper for people to look at, but they might make some or all of that up by the (presumably) reduced customer service overheads.

A social-only, PD-free world is a fairly stable design. For people who only want that, it's fine. I'd prefer to figure out ways by which people who like that kind of world could live alongside those who want something more, and it was from that perspective that I wrote my article.

Stejar>Actually, in all of the current games, even on PvP- servers, there is risk. It's the risk of wasting time (potentially alot of time) or losing possesions to other players (in PvP+ situations).

This is a risk for the player, not for the character.

>All that PD does is amp up the risk even further

If that's "all" it does, there wouldn't be a problem. The fact is, however, that PD is FAR FAR WORSE than merely wasting time. If you're level 50 and you get into a fight with a dragon and fall to level 1, you're highly annoyed. If you lose your character, then theoretically you should be only about 2% more annoyed, but it's WAY worse than that. Losing a character isn't just losing time, it's losing identity.

Richard

LumsOtherHalf
03/12/01 12:58 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
LumsOtherHalf>That's just it - these aren't JUST games. In a world - there is no endgame, there is no winning beyond subconfrontations.

>I agree that they aren't JUST games - they're only games to achievers (although killers/politicians can play a "meta game"). However, the point is that for achievers they nevertheless ARE games, and therefore if you give them a world with no driving element of game in it you won't get the achievers, or you won't keep them for as long as you might. Without achievers, you end up with a "social only" world.

Well, it's in the subconfrontations and things to do that achievers can get their cookie. Politics is definately a possibility for metagame that isn't necessarily antisocial. Merchanting if supported is a HUGE metagame - again, can be competitive, but not antisocial.

You are describing a scenario where someone can take a huge risk and theoretically gain huge bragging rights or noteriety - I can tell you from experience - someone puts there arse on the line - slays uberdragon_01 walks away with the mighty widget of whoopass - their friends might care - to everyone else it's a huge yawn. They die in the attempt - they aren't gonna go down as a hero - they are gonna go down as that idiot that thought he could take on uberdragon_01.

I know some folks that like to stare down death for a rush by jumping out of perfectly good, functioning aircraft with this silly little piece of fabric strapped to their backs. That's their business, I'm glad they have fun - but occassionally one of those chutes don't open - and I'm sorry - I'm appauled at the needless waste of life - but I can't feel sorry for them, or think of them as anykind of hero. You can't volunteer to be a hero - heros are just normal people in abnormal circumstances. Folks that throw themselves into harms way for a thrill aren't heros.

Savant
03/12/01 02:51 AM
[re: LumsOtherHalf]
"You can't volunteer to be a hero - heros are just normal people in abnormal circumstances."

I didn't want to chime in on this debate until I had time to form a lengthy response, but I had to jump in for just one second -- LOH, that is one of the absolute best arguments on this subject I've ever read. Kudos.

-=Savant

www.fallenage.com

Xilrens Twin
03/12/01 09:03 AM
[re: Richard Bartle]
In reply to:

Xilrens Twin>Of course you are paying for the fun, but the way you have that fun is by playing a persistant character.

No, the way YOU have that fun is by playing a persistent character, in which case YOU wouldn't take YOUR character anywhere it could get killed.

What exactly is it that annoys you about OTHER PEOPLE who want to feel that their character is more rounded than yours by putting it in situations where it could cease to persist?

Um, no, the way EVERYONE has fun in these game is by playing a persistant character; that's kind of the whole freaking point on any rpg, online or otherwise. Getting killed has nothing to do with this; the whole premise behind these game types is persistance of characater. Without that persistance of character there is no difference between you the player and you the character, and you might as well be playing fantasy themed tribes.

And I thought I had made perfectly clear in my last several posts, I have no problem with people choosing to risk PD for any reward (or none at all). As long as it's a controllable choice, it's fine with me (much like my take on PVP).

Xilren

These forums are a service of "The Rantings of Lum the Mad", a tiny little website hidden somewhere in the ether. Please note that posting on these forums is a privilege, not a right. Complaints about why you have been banned can be cheerfully directed here. Free Leonard Peltier.