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I ran into a link to an article by Richard Bartle today:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041103/bartle_pfv.htm

There's a lot of truth in it.

I laughed, I cried, but in the end I realized the article was short-term bad long-term good, and discarded it. Pff, why would *I* want to put any real effort into re-designing the world, just so that my illegitimate kid can take it all for granted? Pff, yeah, I bet.
Xenophon
(Sarcasm intended)

I just know you're a vile slashdotter Scandum :P

Nice link though, I think there's alot of truthness in there. However you'd think that the hardcore gamer is around to play online games as well right, even though they might want to find their old features all again, then why would they buy new singleplayer games that are different?

Still in general, you know there's alot of truth in these words, cause people always do the same old thing again. There's a reason that doom 3 is a success (financially) but it really ain't that progressive as some might want to see it.

Still a good article...

The difference with singleplayer games is that those focus on the game being playable for about 1 month, with a clear begin and ending. I guess for long term games people prefer to play what they define as the ultimate game, not like they'll ever find it, or won't get bored eventually.

Having to compete with other players is another issue that doesn't need to be addressed with single player games.

It's an interesting article though, and as far as I can tell muds haven't advanced much since 1990.

I understand, to a degree, the difference between singleplayer and multiplayer games. However it was stated that people always look for similar features. How would this not be the case for singleplayer games? Because it has a clear beginning and ending? Or because they don't have to be ultimate games? Perhaps the latter.

About mud not advancing, I don't think that's true, not many of them though. The thing of course is that very advanced muds won't be so popular unless they are really something oldbies and newbies both like. If you go really advanced then you prolly don't attract newbies and die. (according to the article). Succesfull muds apparently attract alot of newbies, but do they also have alot of short term goods and long term bads?

'How it was stated that people always look for similar features. How would this not be the case for singleplayer games?'
****
The Author's note on the article reads:
What I'm calling virtual worlds, you might call MMORPGs or MMOGs or (if you're a real old-timer) MUDs.
****
Plainly put, the article refers to multiplayer games. :)

All too true.

Heh. You don't want to be the one the players come to when even a minor change comes in that inconveniences them - or when there's a feature they are all used to, and want. Check out an old-school GW that lacks a goto-type command for all classes, and await the newbie whining ;).

It makes refrence to single player games though.

Where?

[quote]The market for regular computer games is driven by the hardcore. The hardcore finishes product faster than newbies, and therefore buys new product faster than newbies. Because of this, games which are good are rewarded by higher sales than games which are bad.[/quote]

It wasn't explicitly stated, although I had taken "regular computer games" in respect to virtual world games to mean single-player driven games. There are other takes though, since one could see Neverwinter Nights as being a regular computer game as well; the important point being more that it is not a persistent, multiplayer world the player is to spend hundreds or thousands of hours engaged with.

As far as game design goes, I agree completely with the author. As an excellent example most developers would recall was the rash of DBZ muds which, primarily, consisted of some horribly balanced, power-levelling nightmare. The players could get a lot of power extremely fast [short-term good, long-term bad] and if the right class/race combination, were invincible [same thing].

The author is also 100% dead on with the permadeath issue. It is long-term good, but only if it is possible to have more incoming players than outgoing. I've been trying to find good solutions to some older issues like the author said, such as implementing permadeath without immediately making newbies quit, and making the world something players actually have to get around in w/o instant teleporting everywhere, with the same issues.

Kelson

The author pokes reference previously to Asheron's Call, Everquest, etc, in a statistical way. Since the entire article is driven at MMORPG, MMOG, or Muds, which all involve the word "multi", I take the call of "regular computer games" to refer to these. However, I can see how explicitly stating "virtual world" is a macro for your preference of MMORPG, MMOG, and Mud, then poking reference at "regular computer games", to mean single-player, however I still wouldn't think that point is more valid than having that reference mean online-multi-gaming, as the article is based on online-multi-gaming. Just my thoughts.

This would probably involve a lot of coding an building,
you could have a permanent death but instead of making the player create a new character or just brining him back like in gw, you could have one of two options one another player goes to a temple and gets him ressurected and brings him back to the real world, the other one is to have a spirit world where he's stuck until he can complete a certain number of quests or some such thing and then he can create a new body. Of course if your mud isn't RP then this is probably a complete waste of time.

For my money, the more RP-centric a MUD is, the more important it is to have actual perma-death instead of death-as-nuisance. In a world where characters _can_ come back from death, they _will_ come back from death.

I've lost count of the times other players have coming to me on a typical death-is-a-dawdle MUD, wailing and moaning and gnashing their teeth to invite me in mourning the death of character X with them. Sometimes X is a PC, sometimes X is an NPC, but always it's a cheap plot device that makes no sense in the world I have to RP in.

Then there's the whole question of 'where do all those bloody undead beasties' come from if everyone lives forever? And why exactly do we have tombs and graveyards instead of a quick funeral pyre to dispose of the shed body if (contrary tradition) it doesn't just disappear on resurrection, anyway?

Given the number of self-appointed role-play police that inhabit any MUD, not having a consistent internal logic to life in a virtual world opens up as much room for arguments as a combat MUD that's based on shouting 'bang, you're dead'. Whoever throws the biggest tantrum defines how the game is played, and drives away anyone who doesn't want to put up with it.

> Then there's the whole question of 'where do all those
> bloody undead beasties' come from if everyone lives forever?

Easy. The spirits that never returned or were perhaps otherwise traumatized by death became chained halfway between the physical and spirit worlds, thus becoming undead. Perhaps these spirits could never complete the trials necessary to come fully back to life.

> And why exactly do we have tombs and graveyards instead of a
> quick funeral pyre to dispose of the shed body if (contrary
> tradition) it doesn't just disappear on resurrection,
> anyway?

Hey, not everyone comes back to life. You thought players were a representative group of the entire mud world?

The whole meme espoused by Bartle that believable worlds need permadeath is stupid. It's just another fantasy element in an already fantastic world. There are countless completely consistent explanations for why players characters come back to life and your average non-player character doesn't.

Like everyone else Bartle speaks from what he knows, and shaped by his first mudding experiences. Otherwise I drew some of the same conclusion, though I think muds have to try to draw players that never mudded before in order to survive.

It's not permadeath if the character can come back by completing some set of tasks.

I started mudding by playing carrion fields, and their death system was like many other muds, "crap I died will you guys grab my stuff?" I play d&d though, and think playing a mud with death like d&d (perma-death unless resed by a high level cleric) would be a nice change and would add alot of otherwise not possible roleplaying opportunities.

Perm-death can be bad, because if a player puts hundreds upon hundreds of hours on a char, and suddenly its all gone, inspiriation to play goes with it! Now, I'm not saying perm-death is a bad thing. I agree with it. I remember my oldschool days, I'd kill someone, they'd come back with 2 people, I'd kill them, they'd come back with 5, I'd die, I'd come back with a few, they'd die... got old! So I say! Everyone, RP based should have a perm-death system. May it be becoming a ghost or entire deletion. If deletion occurse, the player should be compensated with something. Maybe 75% of thier total xp. Gold. Levels, what ever it may be, there should be some compinsation to -keep- that user on your game. Chance of resurrection is a great idea as well. Keeps giving them that false sense of hope *grin* anyways, my millions of dollars worth of an opinion!

Davion

I feel mudconnector has been lacking any serious discussions of game design lately [instead being inundated with political messages and actual code-implementation questions of late that have made my visits less common], so perhaps it is worth while to inquire as to how it is permadeath if the player returns with 75% of what they had? Sounds more like a 25% penalty to death.

Now, I agree completely that after investing hundreds of hours in a player and having it die, losing all that work sucks on a short term basis. This can happen on non-permadeath muds as well though. Example below, but my question is more directed to...should we prevent this? Players may lose immediate interest in the game because their character died or they lost a lot of work (I know I did), but if the underlying game is still fun and enjoyable then they will tend to return. It sounds more like you're claiming that we should protect the user from the risks they choose to take, to remove or deaden serious consequences as it were.

I used to have a very strong character with the best equipment for the level quite well enchanted and far better than the original stats. Everything had been restrung and was all customized, good stuff. I could take down character that, by the norms of the mud, should be crushing me [my lvl 60 vs a lvl 90]. Now, one day after a long battle with some other characters in which I killed three before running to safety, I had to leave really badly. So after getting to safety, the game prevented me from just quitting [pk flag...gg] so I just left. Come back a couple hours later, players had forced their way into my safe zone and killed my character after a surprisingly long battle despite no one at the control. They stole everything, destroyed 90% of it [all invaders were too high level to use it], and mocked me with the last 10%...worse than if they'd just deleted me and threw away all those hours of work.

Kelson

My personal opinion is that a system with permadeath should have a relatively easy way of getting back into the game with a new char. If you have to put literally hundreds of hours into a character to be able to play the game fully, permadeath seems a bit unfair to me. If, however, a new char can get into the storyline, and be a part of the community after a couple of hours play, permadeath is the way to go. IMHO, permadeath, and especially combined with aging, is a good way to avoid the stalemate a virtual world can come to if a lot of the old chars have been played into positions of power, preventing newer chars from actively participating in the major storyline.

Welcor

I think permadeath puts people off joining the game in the first place, and, although I don't have too much experience with it, I imagine it does make building a high-quality RP environment difficult. After all, if you're going to lose all your friends just because you disconnected just after an orc hit you, or because some idiot has decided to kill all elves, then either you're going to quit the game fairly quickly, or else come back as 'Son of Sam' and tell all your friends who you really are. Either way, not going to create a cohesive in-role community.

What would be interesting is a game with perma-death only in certain circumstances, e.g. during a world-wide event, to rid the world of a demon lord or so on. It'd still have the problems with re-creating, though.

> My personal opinion is that a system with permadeath should
> have a relatively easy way of getting back into the game
> with a new char.

Very much agreed. A huge problem with games in general is that the game is considered work and progress in the game is the only fun. If the first and second hours of playing a new character are just as fun as the eighth and ninth or fiftieth and sixtieth, permadeath wouldn't be such a large put off. If a player is pretty much going to be doing the exact same auto-combat and level progression thing on his first try as he is on his 10th, permadeath is going to sap the will of the players to enjoy the game through its promise of monotony.

I'd envision a successful design that made use of permadeath as one that looks less like a modern RPG and more like a classic video game. The modern games, in general, have low replayability. They need to be more like the simpler games that are easier to get into, have a player skill factor much higher than we see currently, important early branching decisions, and much faster progression.

Adding player skill to the mix over your average pseudo-automated combat should greatly decrease the monotony of playing the earlier levels. If the player can see a marked improvement in how his 3rd and 4th characters progress they might not be as averse to playing a 5th. Knowledge plays an important role here -- it's not just knowing where to go to fight the monsters with the best XP gains, but how to beat them in such a way that the player grows the way he wants.

If the early decisions are important factors in the late game, many players will want to start over so that they can optimize their growth. If certain areas of the game required better growth patterns than someone who has 'played through' the early stages can know, it would encourage players to start over to see if they could best their previous characters. Basing stat growth on the current stat rather than a fixed table is a great way of compounding growth. Disgaea is a popular tactical RPG that uses the compounding growth method -- you will want to transmigrate your characters into level 1s with higher stats because their potential will be far greater than a completely new level 1 character.

Progression needs to be quicker so that players don't become too attached to individual characters. If progression is slow, even if the game is mighty fun, players are going to feel cheated when all of the time spent on a desired progression path is lost. Fortunately compounding growth helps mitigate this problem. If a level 5 character directed by a skilled player can take level 10 enemies, a good design would encourage higher XP gains so that the skilled player would grow their characters quicker.

All in all I think that to create a successful permadeath design, we need to change how we think about RPGs. Classic video games are great examples for us to use since they typically never suffered the flaws (if you see it that way) that encourage modern players to become attached to their characters.

Yup, a chess like combat system, where the main emphasis would be on tactical insight would rock. A text implementation of the streetfighter combat system would already be unique for text games.

Area knowledge and specific quests that need to be solved is another way to make game play interesting, while allowing to go through things at a much faster rate the second time. Ofcourse cheat sites that print in detail how to do stuff ruin a lot (if not all) in that department.

Funny thing however is that there are smart and dumb players, and unfortunately this mostly results in admins 'balancing' the game, which basicly means that every 'cheat' to do things faster is removed.

A text implementation of Street fighter style combat? I take it you never tried 'Gladiator Pits' by KaVir.

KaVir's Gladiator's Pits is going in the right direction, but what he did with it is a complicated clone of the diku combat system. He's got the controls right, but the inner working of the combat engine is based on damroll, hitroll, and AC. There's also still a visual issue porting a streetfighter style system to text, especially movement is tricky.