Talk:Permanent death

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[edit] a way to add permadeath in a game

you just have to put heaven and hell , or another post-death place, this place cannot have the same amount of things that has on the places that you can go when you are alive (because if they made a very cool post-death place, stayng there would be a good thing and the bad thing in dying would be gone). Like for example making a dungeons and dragons game (a other dungeons and dragons game, a gamemore based om books) and adding contents of the book that wizard made that explain how to play after death.

[edit] Story-based permadeath

Couldn't events like the death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII and the death of Nei in Phantasy Star II be considered a form of permadeath? Crimson Shadow 18:41, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Not by any definition I've heard of. Permadeath is about risks that the player is taking. Scripted loss of an NPC isn't about risk; it's a required part of the game. Unscripted loss of an NPC is more marginal, but usually permadeath refers to the PC's existance being on the line (the death of a useful NPC is a nuisance, but typically doesn't end the game). Alan De Smet | Talk 20:55, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Alright, thanks for clearing that up. Maybe this should be clarified in the article? Crimson Shadow 13:17, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of gamers

I pulled out some of the discussion of hardcore gamers. While some discussion is clearly relevant (permadeath is something typically associated with hardcore players while being against permadeath is typically more "mainstream"), it really went off topic. For example Ultima Online was totally off topic as it never featured permadeath. A discussion of move from "simulation" MMORPGs to "gamey" MMORPGs is interesting, but more of a topic for MMORPG than poor little permadeath. Alan De Smet | Talk 01:50, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I have touched a little on the psychology of pd vs non-pd gamers in my last edit - mostly as a way to make your "some say" point and counter point additions flow a little better. Feel free to butcher away again. I'm not going anywhere and it'll help strengthen the article in the long run, even if I feel that some relevant stuff gets lopped off in the struggle. Newsmare 06:02, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
I think you're straying pretty far from a NPOV. You've added statements that are more opinion than fact. For example, suggesting that lack of permadeath is "a relatively shallow depth of experience" and that "...those looking to play under the shadow of permadeath recognise that these consequences heighten their experience with their character while they're alive." The article comes across very pro-permadeath. I definately feel that anti-permadeath players and designers are portrayed as somehow lesser. There is a condescending tone toward the anti-permadeath side. There is a very active debate about the merits and flaws of permadeath and I don't think the article conveys that terrible well. I'm going to resist a major edit right at this moment; I'd like to know your thoughts before I dive in with any non-trivial changes. Alan De Smet | Talk 00:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Permadeath RPGs are just relatively extreme gaming, with all the depth of experience that entails - certainly more so than the threat of death in non-pd games which this article needs to namecheck in order to give it a frame of reference. I wouldn't argue with an article on basejumping that said it was a relatively extreme sport that provides a relatively deep spiritual or heightened emotional experience. I wouldn't argue with a claim on that page that said basejumpers paid more attention to safety than those involved in a sport that didn't have the slightest chance of death either. Nor would I argue that these people were in fact being a hell of a lot braver than chess players.
Maybe these facts are just so obvious that they don't need stating though. Regardless, you'll notice in my quotes I used the word "relatively" and said "those looking to play [...] permadeath [...] heighten their experience". I don't see anything there about those choosing not to, other than the fact they're choosing to play less extreme games. If that's perceived as negative because it insults some fragile sense ego in someone who's spent many years and thousands of dollars cultivating a completely false view of themselves as all-conquering heroes then that's their problem, not the articles.
Obviously we're all potentially massively POV, we'd all be pathetic push-overs otherwise (ooooh POV), but I'm trying my best to be as NPOV within the article as passion allows. Keep the dialogue going and if the argument's good enough we'll go with what we've got until something even better comes along and trumps it. As for the debate on merits and flaws that are yet to appear, I look forward to reading/presenting/editing them. Newsmare 08:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
(Hrm, that probably enough indent levels for now.)
I'm not sure how extreme you can get sitting in front of your computer or console and playing a video game. If your console came installed with a gun that actually shot you when your character died, or perhaps it drained your bank acconts, I'd be more prepared to say players "that that investment to the extreme". What we're talking about here is severity of penalty, a penalty that is usually measured in time. Given that, calling a game with permadeath extreme verges on hyperbole. The same goes for heroism. As the player is risking nothing more than time and perhaps some emotional involvement, you're never going to get "true heroism" in a video game.
Ok, so you're intentionally misunderstanding me here then. I've used the word 'relatively' more than enough times to make my point clear surely? Obviously I'm not claiming it's extreme in the grand scheme of things. I would say that suggesting I'm taking that stance is spin, so perhaps you're entering the realm of exaggeration yourself. Take a random 6 month old MMO character and wipe it... tell me that's not extreme loss relative to the usual gaming experience. If it's from a pay to play MMO then guess what happened to your investment of time and money? Also, re the 'shot IRL' and 'drained bank account' comments, are you telling me a player wouldn't be grieved in real life about it, or that 6 months of fees that in any non-pd game would still hold a liquidatable value being wiped out isn't a quantifiable financial loss? Newsmare 19:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
To take the two examples I called out. "...relatively shallow depth of experience" is opinion. "Relatively" doesn't change the bias in the statement, it simply reduces the magnitude. You're labelling games with permadeath as having deeper experiences, a claim many would challenge. "...those looking to play under the shadow of permadeath recognise that these consequences heighten their experience..." also suggests that those against permadeath fail to recognize this statement as fact. The implication is that 1. it is an accepted fact permadeath heightens experiences (a fact not yet established), and 2. Those who are anti-permadeath are willfully ignorant of the fact.
I would suggest that point 2 above is confirmed if people won't see point 1 for themselves. Most gamers avoid pd games because they don't like how a big GAME OVER makes them feel. The fact that they will play similar characters in places where it won't die forever suggests that temporary death doesn't make them feel so bad, ergo the depth of feeling that pd facilitates through potential or actual loss is greater than non pd. Basically, it would take an idiot not to see that the closer a system models reality, the more realistic the experience is within that system. The events therein can still be of a fantastic nature, but as the simulation approaches reality, it's going to evoke an increasingly more intense response from participants. Where's the argument? Newsmare 19:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I've overhauled the first pro-permadeath paragraph. Take a look and let me know what you think. The first anti-permadeath paragraph needs work to, I'll get to it "soonish". I'm reasonably familiar with the debate and I think I can flesh it out with a few more arguments.
Personally, I can't see how your edit changes the message. You've said practically the same thing as me, but with a lot more repetition. Choice words for repetition are 'permadeath', 'increased' and 'significance', a net concept which is conveyed in the first sentence of your edit. I've made some changes, incorporating the additional content you added. Let's see how it sits. Newsmare 19:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Relatedly, given that the anti-permadeath group includes both the majority of MMORPG players as well as a sizeable subset who spend 40 or more hours playing per week, I don't think "casual" game is a suitable term. I'm not sure what is.
Alan De Smet | Talk 14:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
On the whole I think the paragraph in question is improving. I really disagree with "without permadeath there is little actual incentive to consider your actions quite as seriously as you would in real-life." One's decisions in real life typically aren't life-and-death. Most decisions are made weighing the pros and cons, the benefits and potentially negative consequences and costs. There is risk even when death is on the line and it strongly influences ones decisions. There is hardly "little actual incentive"; is most MMORPGs there are negative consequences that most players would avoid. Obviously it varies from game to game. While the consequences do tend to be minor (on the order of hours) for most, it's possible to have significant loss without permadeath. The most striking example is Eve Online where a mistake can cost months of gametime as a player created corporation is destroyed. The losses on Eve Online can be more severe as they are much more likely to impact other players (in the form of their similar time and monetary investments in the corporation). Lesser examples include the risk of destroying a large guild (the sort of thing that takes months or years to create) through bad management, or losing hard fought territory in games where various factions can claim territory.
When I said "as you would in real-life" I meant "as you would in a similar situation in real-life". Choosing to walk alone in enemy colours through a known gang-bang hotspot for example (i.e. travel abroad in a faction based MMORPG) or wandering into a forest to fight bears would be a fair example. People would just not up and decide to do something like that completely unprepared. Games like Eve and Shadowbane, where corps/guilds can be ruined is again a slightly different scenario to PD. Although the risk is there, it's unlikely to happen suddenly and without a concerted team effort to prevent it. These events take a while, as opposed to character death which can happen in the blink of an eye. They are systems with great potential though, both of them. -newsmare.
I suppose my point is that permadeath is not toggle without which players have little incentive to consider their actions. It's a single step across a spectrum of options. Permadeath does happen to be pretty far along the spectrum toward the "high risk / more significant choices", but it's not a lone case. Decisions of similar severity are through other forms.
"Most gamers avoid pd games because they don't like how a big GAME OVER makes them feel." This is a major assumption. I would suggest most gamers avoid permadeath games because typically after a permadeath you simply restart and replay content you've already played. The very content you (hopefully) enjoyed the first time (or first ten times) suddenly becomes your punishment for failure. It's not about feeling bad; it's about facing many hours of not having fun, it's about the game suddenly becoming a job you have to do before you can get to the fun again. Alan De Smet | Talk 05:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, you have break out of the mindset that gamers have been trained into over the years to help them hand over their money. A well constructed PD environment would not be constructed like a modern MMO. It would be more of a sandbox, less of a structured game. Therefore you wouldn't necessarily have to re-tread the same path, and advancement might only be through player versus player interaction, the human factor of which would reduce that feeling further. The single player example I provided for the article was NetHack. That's massively replayable because, although it's still very much a closed environment/goal oriented game, it's a deliberately a lot more random than most SP games. It's also stayed in a state of constant development which is unusual for a SP game, and in fact is quite similar to the fluidity of MMOs where balance, rules and features are added or tweaked all the time. ◄ИΞШSΜΛЯΞ► 21:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, a pretty serious overhaul.
- I tried to make the first few paragraphs more general. They were pretty MMORPG specific, which seemed like a bad idea. I moved that content into the online play section.
- I removed some prognostication about why permadeath won't succeed. I think it's a pretty obvious conclusion and guessing about the future really isn't Wikipedia's place. There might be a place for a less forward looking, "many claim that games with permadeath cannot achieve mainstream success."
- I overhauled the online play section to try and improve the flow. It now opens with "What's the state of permadeath today", flows into "Why permadeath" followed by "Why not permadeath", then the discussion of games in development.
- I reworked the "why not permadeath" pretty much from scratch. Notably I tried to pull pro-permadeath discussion into the "Why permadeath" paragraph and expanded it.
It feels like there is still a lot of redundancy in the text. It could probably use further pruning.
Alan De Smet | Talk 05:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intro text

From the third paragraph: "Of course, true heroism will only ever manifest itself in an environment where the potential hero has everything to lose, but given the choice between the illusion of heroism, or heroism in an illusion, most gamers will choose the former because it's the path of least resistance." What in blazes is that supposed to mean? It sounds like flowery language, but for the life of me, I can't seem to extract any meaning. Viltris 06:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Illusion of heroism: loading up a game where you automatically get to be the hero. Everybody is a dragon slaying champion who cheats death, amasses ungodly riches and weilds artifact weapons, all you've got to do is ride the ride for long enough. That's gaming on rails, a nice safe world where you really aren't going to lose - so in reality nothing you do there is ever actually heroic, hence the illusion of heroism.
Heroism in an illusion: loading up a permadeath game where you start as a nobody like everyone else until you really risk your characters life (and all your time and effort) to try to earn the gold, artifact weapons and respect that heroism brings. Although the game world is an illusion, the risks taken on the part of the players involved is still real, hence getting the chance to be a hero within the illusion. Old characters here will either have lead a safe, boring life and won't be particularly noteworthy, or they'll have surmounted seemingly bizarre odds, taking other's lives and probably saving many too along the way, including their own.
Path of least resistance: most gamers like their little comfort zones where they pay a one off or monthly fee to be a 'special' person in a sea of 'special' people, and will take the former option because it's easier and infinitely more acheivable to them. These are the people that balk at the mention of permadeath, because they can only handle a flat-line gaming experience as opposed to the intense peaks and troughs experienced when it's all or nothing. Obviously, some games do try to capture that experience by letting you risk items from your inventory, or whatever the penalty for 'death' is, but few have gone so far as to put everything on the line.
So... yes, I suppose the way I put it was a bit flowery, a bit fucking Zen if you like, but I figured the sort of people interested in the challenge of permadeath gaming would be able to infer all the above for themselves without me having to be so verbose. I'll try and think of a replacement for it that's a little less tacit - you're, of course, welcome to do the same in the meantime. Newsmare 10:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I've made an attempt at rewording it - but will leave the above here on the talk page in case it prompts further refinement. Newsmare 11:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Implications of Permadeath in Game Design

Permadeath would seem to require fundamental changes in MMORPG game design. Given the lack of MMORPGs with permadeath, I really have no direct information on the matter. If someone knows of good information (say interviews with designers or information on actual shipping games), it seems like it would be an interesting addition to the article. On the down side; is there solid information? I suspect we can find discussions by developers on games that either terminated without shipping or were modified to not have permadeath, but those simply amount to wishful thinking. Alan De Smet | Talk 03:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Out of game fee?

Apart from the obvious, are there any games with an out-of-game fee to revive a character or to create a new character? --Damian Yerrick (☎) 19:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations needed

I think the article is in really solid shape, but it could citations and references. Presumable credible people have written about these issues. Here's a scratch space to start collecting them: — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of article?

I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article Permanent death, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. 132.161.187.62 10:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC) (This comment imported from here.)

I've removed the template. It failed to "explain why." The links above fail to clairify the situation (WP:NOT covers a large chunk of territory). Trying to defend the article at this time is not realistically possible as I'm not a mindreader. However, this is useful article that documents an important game design concept. It's a concept under near-constant debate in game design. Excluding it would make Wikipedia weaker. — Alan De Smet | Talk 02:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] One major reason against permadeath, not mentioned

I'm a bit surprised that this article doesn't even mention the biggest problem with permadeath: that sometimes characters die due to out-of-game circumstances such as power failures or crashes to desktop. Losing a character because one bit off more than one can chew is one thing, but losing a character because your brother tripped over a power cord is another thing entirely. Powers T 11:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I've seen solutions to that problem in MUDs. Simply provide an automatic mechanism for your character to flee. This is often called a "whimpy level". If you are in a fight, and do nothing, when your hp gets to too low a level your character will flee. If you think you can win you can override the whimpy level and so risk your life to complete the win, but you do so knowing that it is a risk. QuantumG (talk) 10:04, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

Here's a place to dump possible references that might be used for citations in the article: — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] article organization

The multi-player section is poorly organized. There are games that feature or featured PD mentioned at the top, then some text about the controversy surrounding PD, then more games. The games all need to be listed together, either at the top or the bottom. Otherwise the reader has to sift through the text to put together a list of games. The games can be mentioned redundantly in the text if they are relevant to a point, but a clear list must appear somewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.232.143.202 (talk) 01:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The point of the article isn't to provide a handy list of games with PD. The section opens with some notable examples, which seems relatively important. The remaining games are universally minor league, and not worthy of as much of a note. (Indeed, an argument could be made to delete some of them.) — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I've tried my hand at improving what was already there, added one notable early adopter (full disclosure: which I am involved in), and separated things out into current vs. not-current. I question whether some of the games linked are notable, and researching them prompted me to prod one. Jclemens (talk) 04:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Games

I think one of the earliest examples of a Permadeath game isn't included. I'm talking about Oregon Trail. I'm not adding it cause I'm not sure if it fits in the context of the article.67.182.10.151 (talk) 12:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that takes me back. I'm not really sure if it does either, but it certainly sounds like a legitimate progenitor--I'll see if I can add it in reasonably. Jclemens (talk) 13:59, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
There isn't an expectation in the original Oregon Trail that you would play the same character over an extended period. You played for an hour or so and were done. If I recall correctly, it didn't include the ability to save, emphasizing the short nature. Permadeath does seem an appropriate label for such a game, any more than it does for Pac Man. I realize this doesn't jive with the current definition, which discusses computer RPGs and not extended play duration. Upon reflection, I think it's the wrong definition and we should tweak it. Note the inclusion of non-RPG Steel Battalion in the discussion, which I believe is very appropriate. — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)