Permadeath? I was not aware that this was in the plans. I think this is a terrible idea in any game let alone a multiplayer game where griefers reside in their hundreds. Then there is the grind aspect of MMO’s which will be made worse by restarting over and over. Really not a fan of this.
Interested to hear what you guys think of this.
Ok so what I missed the first time I watched the video due to phone call, was the beneficiary of your equipment and ships if you die, so that would eliminate a lot of the grind.
Actually there is no grind for characters at all. Your avatar is just that, an avatar, it has no skills or perks or stats. So yeah the only “downside” would be if you liked the look and name of your character, but then you would just have to recreate your beneficiary the same. Maybe they will have a way to save how your character looks and then just reload that, name it and bam you are back in the saddle again.
In some ways it is a ruse, this form of permadeath. It really doesn’t have much of a real function in the game other than creating a history of characters for you.
The thing to always remember about SC is that it is primarily based on player skill, NOT character stats.
In fact, Mac has described it well when he says that in this game the ship is more your character than your avatar is.
Ok, so there is no grind in character development, but there is a grind in making money. You will need it to buy ships and equipment and for insurance. There is no mention on how many times you can create beneficiaries. If you can create one every time you lose a character, then I suppose it is a pointless exercise, more like just changing you character appearance. But what if you can only create one beneficiary, and once he/she also dies, its game over and you lose everything you have worked for. Then its create new character and start all over again. I think that will put people off the game. I know it will really annoy me.
I am going to guess/hope that this is not the case.
@outlawjwales and @H-K ,
I have been following development for a while and my understanding is that you playing your avatar through its ‘life’ as it ages, gets hurt from encounters, gets replacement limbs and battle scars will make you care for it. So rather then have death with a small repair cost as in most MMOs, they decided to have death occur at a certain point where you can no longer heal.
With the death there will be a certain transfer tax to your heirs so your death will have a certain negative consequence. Not so harsh as to make anyone rage quit because their character died but enough so that you feel not good that your character died but that you feel something. At this point they are saying each game package is a beneficiary but they may come up with some other mechanism in the future for that as they rethink it. The game is still being developed.
Jon C/StellarRaptor in Star Citizen
Worth the read
There is no limit in how many beneficiaries you can have, you can pass your stuff on an infinite number of times, but there are “death taxes” or inheritance taxes, so you’ll pay a fee to pass the stuff along. I’m sure, however, you can put your stuff in a private org and get around most of that.
The only real grind is reputation. There will be missions and equipment that can only be accessed by certain levels of certain reputations, and when you die, your successor will only get some of that reputation, so you’ll have to go grind it back up. That’s the big PITA in death. Well that, and you’re gone, but that happens whether you die or not. You take 6 hours to fly out there to be with us, you get shot and you revive in a hospital 6 hours away, with no ship. No other games do that, so I’m sure they’ll tune that a lot before all is said and done.
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Mac is spot on. The only stat that has any meaning is reputation and that will not carry 100% after death. We do not know how much will carry, but we know it is only a portion.
Also, reputation is not a single universal stat. You have a unique and specific reputation with each different organization, NPC, government, race, etc.
The idea being if you spend time cultivating a good relationship with the Banu, it will give you an advantage with all Banu, BUT, each NPC encountered will have its own reputation score. I am interested to see how CIG intends to implement this and how granular they plan to get.
Additionally, NPCs also have permadeath, even “permanent slots” that we’ve “purchased”. The difference between us and them is that we have “lives” and they don’t, at least according to what we’ve been told.
What do I mean by “lives”? Your ship blows up, you wake up in a hospital, maybe with scars, maybe with a cybernetic limb, but you’re alive. You’ve burned 1 “life”. How many “lives” do we have? No clue, even CIG doesn’t know right now. And CR has insinuated that, if you’re murdered, headshot, deliberately killed, it might consume all “lives”. All rumor and conjecture, but we do have chances, “lives”, so it’s not “1st death is perma death”.
Meanwhile, the NPCs on your ship when it blew up? Dead. Gone. You need to hire new ones. So, you worked for months to get their skills up? Gone. You may even need to pay out insurance on them because they were your employees. All of these are from tidbits and conversations, all subject to change, with minimal details.
My wife is not really looking forward to this aspect at all. She gets very attached to her toons and may turn her off from playing the game. I can’t say I look forward to getting attached to my character to say goodbye to him. I hate it when I get nerfed in MMOs after putting all the time and effort in and permadeath is close to the ultimate nerfing or at least pretty extreme IMO.
I’m with your wife. I get attached to my toons and, IMHO, this makes them tissues, disposable. I’ve never deleted a toon in an MMO. If M59 were still online and I remembered my account info, my toons would be there.
That’s the problem with permadeath, too harsh a penalty and it discourages people from taking risks and, eventually, from playing. Too weak a penalty and it has no sting.
As I’ve mentioned in other threads, I will never surrender to a pirate, there’s zero reason to, I don’t really “lose” anything. There will be ways to avoid the taxes by giving ships to private Orgs that are owned by all of your toons, or something similar.
I agree, and it kind of forces players to play a certain way because of the risk. It may also prevent some fun org activities such as the one I will link below (go to 38 minutes in vid), unless there are a set of rules put in place for org activities such as this where death won’t count or auto eject happens before your ship explodes. I guess there will be no dueling either, even if its implemented.
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There was a PvP game called Shadowbane, way back with UO, AC, EQ, etc. It was RvRvR, one of the best, in theory. It had serious death penalties, like most games did back then. A few months after launch, the game distilled down to people playing in their private areas and only leaving in massive groups, where they never found anyone because no one would risk encountering a massive group, and if 2 massive groups encountered each other, they ran away from each other because both sides had too much to lose.
You’ve seen all of those war movies, especially revolutionary war, where the men line up, point guns, and fire, and the guys on the front line know they’re the ones getting shot. Now imagine that in a game, where there is no “patriotism”. No one wants to be in front, so they all jockey for last place until they just never leave.
Real life sucks, no one wants to pay money to be reminded of that in a game
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There is a point where a simulation becomes too real to be fun. I don’t really want to have to watch my toon go to the bathroom, get sick, etc., that we have to deal with in daily life. I hope CR and Co. can balance that aspect including the permadeath thing. It is a game.
They mentioned that in this last AtV, wrt to some visual effect. They want it accurate, but they want it fun, and fun is more important. CR has echoed that as well, which is why we have sound in space and dog fighting is “in your face” vs how it is in real life with planes miles apart firing weapons that are computer driven.
I remember Shadowbane.
It was actually a lot of fun and the RvRvR aspect was well done.
But as you mentioned, it eventually became a different game as people and clans had so much to lose. I remember having a character that I used as a throw away for “fun stuff” and having my main character that never did anything without a large group for protection.
Side note, a few years ago I found that this game is still alive. Some secondary or tertiary developer picked it up and kept it running. It is nothing like what it was originally designed to be, they changed tons of stuff to make it more like more recent games. It was a mess and hard to play, the UI was clunky, etc etc.
I also get attached to most of my toons, especially when I have put a lot of time into doing special events and getting titles or outfits that you don’t get any other way. This is why the more I think about this the more I believe I’m not going to like permadeath. I’m just picturing something like competing in a race and just having one of those days where the planets are aligned and your ISP is actually stable with a low latency and just the right amount of grease on you fingers from your fries, so you fly around that track and manage to win the Murry Cup knowing its unlikely you will ever manage that again. Then your character dies and poof goes all your bragging rights, cause anyone can say ‘well on my original toon…’.
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Keep in mind the idea behind permadeath is to deter people from taking unreasonable risks.
CIG does not want to force you into recycling your avatar on a regular basis. If you play smart and do not take unnecessary risks you are likely to keep the same avatar for years.
But for those who like to play more of the “dive in head first shoot until I die, rinse, repeat” method similar to most FPS games, there will be a disadvantage. You will lose some rep, at the very least, which is the only attribute you have that matters.
During CitizenCon this year I am going to try and catch a dev that can comment more on the permadeath issue because for us it really is important. OTG is much more of a long term single character type guild than a tissue paper character type guild.
Until we have more details I am going to stick with the assumption that CIG will provide this feature in such a way that for players like us, we wont be pushed into losing character unless we put ourselves in a situation to do so.