I wrote an ealier thread related to this but kinda bogged down by lots of text and game specific stuff.

What I want to know is what you think about an MMO where the players can lose.

Essentially its playerbase vs virtual world. If you've ever played Warring Factions or Space Fed GC you have played an mmo where the world ends.

The game wouldn't end fast like a typical RTS game. It would be designed so that with average player decision making it would last about 8 years. It would take into account also that the monsters could be acting all the time and players would have to log off.

At a minimum it would take 3 or 4 years for bad player decisions to cost them the game. If they played really well the demon hordes could be held off for 10-12 years.

That part really isn't important though. The general concept is what matters. In guildwars 2 they have the dynamic event system, but i am pretty sure you can't actually lose.

I guess the closest example is EvE. In Nullsec you can lose everything. The whole game is like that, but you are playing against the game and not other people. Because you are playing a game one side can't just get all the active players and stomp the other. And griefing is non existent and there is no backstabbing.

I figure this will appear mainly to sandbox players and hardcores, even though playing hardcore isn't necessary.

One of my earliest designs was that of a 3-faction game where a faction can actually *win* a territory conquest and cause the end of the world, where it resets the map with new textures and items that suit the theme of the winning faction controlling the world for a thousand years. All servers would have a history of turnovers that people making new chars can see, as well as a list of said changes, so they can pick one that has additions to their likings. I.E. the robot race takes over in two maps, but in one there would be implants as a new gear slot, and the other would have slave collars as a new starting item that acts as an enemy radar (or something). Every map would be somewhat unique.

Really though, this kind of method is already used in WWIIOL, because the allies/axis can actually win the war, and it resets to the static territory lines used at the start.

Originally posted by GTwander

One of my earliest designs was that of a 3-faction game where a faction can actually *win* a territory conquest and cause the end of the world, where it resets the map with new textures and items that suit the theme of the winning faction controlling the world for a thousand years. All servers would have a history of turnovers that people making new chars can see, as well as a list of said changes, so they can pick one that has additions to their likings. I.E. the robot race takes over in two maps, but in one there would be implants as a new gear slot, and the other would have slave collars as a new starting item that acts as an enemy radar (or something). Every map would be somewhat unique.

Really though, this kind of method is already used in WWIIOL, because the allies/axis can actually win the war, and it resets to the static territory lines used at the start.

I know about WW2 online. I was more focusing on a sandbox where you reset all the way back to the start. I wasn't under the impression that WW2 had much long term progression, and the map is somewhat small. And you don't lose things like player made towns and items.

First of all, I would never allow that much attachment to things you can lose in a game with either permadeath, or that of a cyclical reset of gamespace.

That means if towns can be made and lost eventually, wheel back on the customization. People may be pissed you can't pimp out a hamlet in Darkfall, but in the long run it's better to not have invested dozens of hours into deco - only to lose it. Imagine SWG housing that can be absolutely lost - what would be the point of bothering with it?... and for that matter, bothering to implement such systems in the first place? HnH straddles a fine line, because while losing hard work is many the cause of a ragequit, everything is generic and can be remade... it just sucks to lose all that f**king time and effort, and it will bite your ass as a designer if you don't dance around the subject complimentarily.

Losing skills and items are nothing, so long as the climb back is quick enough. Mortal Online is a good example of skill-gain speed, though, the resource ladder is powerful enough to guarantee that most goods are not suited for majority use. That ladder itself becomes pointless with an added sense of regaining those skills to jump on the good stuff again. Granted, it will demarginalize the crap stuff in cycles, but overall just causes repeated grief in doing the grind over again.

The rule here; go extremely generic in a game with utter loss. It doesn't mix with the ideologies of "unique and rare".

In Shores of Hazeron you can be beaten back to the stoneage from an advanced space farign civilization if you get completely conquered.

Natural player behaviour would be to start jumping ship as soon as players see the end is starting.

in MMOs, there is the illusion that player characters and the world will be there forever. When the close of a server or MMO is announced, the illusion is shattered and player population drops off. There's also the other catalyst in the population decline which is that players will log off in order to expedite the fall so they can start again after the reset. The longer it is before reset, the lower the number of returning players as they move on. A telling can last for a year or so.

The basic concept of reaching an endgame scenario is definitely doable, though.

Players are willing to accept server resets of varying degrees. For example, in ATITD, only one player becomes pharoah at the end but the other players don't necessarily lose. Also, the game's mechanics and features persist into the next round (called 'tellings'). Since the overarching accomplishments of the players are in the form of the new content, not in the tasks to reach them, there's no actual sense of loss.

In Pirates of the Burning Sea(PotBS), players compete in four factions to 'win' the map. shortly after the map is won, the map itself resets but player characters and their assets remain intact. These resets are much shorter term than ATITD's and occur every few weeks or months, so even though there are players that clearly lose, there is still light at the end of the tunnel. PotBS is also an example of the opposite, however, as the original design only allowed players to play on one faction per server, so there were a few periods where one faction was dominating and players either went to the other server or stopped playing altogether until the server reset and it was 'safe' to return.

With PvE, the option of switching to the other side is absent, and during a conflict that seems futile or unwinnable (Asheron's Call - elemental invasions) the players that see no victory in site will simply stop playing.  The players need to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Remember: They are paying to be entertained.

Originally posted by Cuathon

I wrote an ealier thread related to this but kinda bogged down by lots of text and game specific stuff.

What I want to know is what you think about an MMO where the players can lose.

Essentially its playerbase vs virtual world. If you've ever played Warring Factions or Space Fed GC you have played an mmo where the world ends.

The game wouldn't end fast like a typical RTS game. It would be designed so that with average player decision making it would last about 8 years. It would take into account also that the monsters could be acting all the time and players would have to log off.

At a minimum it would take 3 or 4 years for bad player decisions to cost them the game. If they played really well the demon hordes could be held off for 10-12 years.

That part really isn't important though. The general concept is what matters. In guildwars 2 they have the dynamic event system, but i am pretty sure you can't actually lose.

I guess the closest example is EvE. In Nullsec you can lose everything. The whole game is like that, but you are playing against the game and not other people. Because you are playing a game one side can't just get all the active players and stomp the other. And griefing is non existent and there is no backstabbing.

I figure this will appear mainly to sandbox players and hardcores, even though playing hardcore isn't necessary.

 

I'm all for it.

A game that i often bring up already has it (realmofthemadgod).

It has perma-death and in each realm when the mad god is defeated the realm "ends" and is reset. There is only one character slot.

What i actually noticed is

first a very big reliance on team-play in that game, because of permadeath you stick together, preferrably with a priest that can heal, the bigger the group the better.

Second, people are way more attatched to items because if you permadie, its full-loot free for all because you drop your items.

Third, people have shittons of fun, because the game is fast paced and you don't feel like you can't make up for a death.

How permadeath might turn out if you play for long periods like years is of course different, but i would think that there is a sweet-spot to be hit with lenght.

The longer the game, the better, but i think 1-2 years might be too short and people might get pissed off too soon (depending on when people join, etc.).

It would be an experiment to run, a long one obviously.

Well in the other thread I did talk about putting some systems in place to prevent quick slides. Players have various actions, and of course they could always play more or work to organize. Other things include trading character permadeath for a powerful spell or effect. Also in some cases the game deity will interfere, but only in the early stages. Like, you guys messed up better get moving. Also a lot of the danger is focused out in the other worlds as opposed to the main world.

But yeah, I know from warring factions that if people perceive themselves as having lost they will quit in droves.

I was thinking that in the case of cities which can move it might be possible to retreat to a new world. Like, if you lose a lot of colony type worlds and then you start losing the main world, you could open a gate and head into a colony world and then the main world would be lost. And you could retreat moving cities out, and like ship resources there and then characters wouldn't die. And the game could even be more like humans surviving in the world as opposed to losing if the homeworld falls. The focus of the game could be how far the players could expand the world before being defeated and then they could try again. sort of like a soft reset.