Howzabout: Voluntary Difficulty Tradeoffs

In the wake of an underwhelming Blizzcon, I wanted to throw out an idea for criticism and analysis.

One of the main sources of arguments in the MMO blogosphere seems to be the differences between traditional old-school MMO values and modern WoW-espoused MMO values.  MMO traditionalists put immersion before ease, and quality socialization before mass market appeal.  Modern MMOers prefer to optimize their enjoyment -which is derived primarily out of advancement- but also respect the fact that MMO's are a business first, and thus are more likely to make concessions to immersion to support a broader audience.  Neither the Traditionalists nor the Modernists are small enough to ignore -particularly because the blogosphere contains more vocal Traditionalists- so its a tough proposition for devs to fulfill the needs of both without failing on two fronts.

One form of compromise could be found in a system of Voluntary Difficulty Tradeoffs.  During character creation (or possibly in game) a player would be able to customize the gameplay experience to meet their needs for immersion and difficulty, and rewarding sacrifices appropriately.  The basic idea would be a two column menu, with sacrifices on the left side and benefits on the right.  Sacrifices would include things like:

-Semi Realistic Inventory: a sword doesn’t fill the same amount of space in a bag as a scroll does
-Realistic inventory: you can’t carry five swords, period.
-Movement affected by inventory: the more you carry, the slower you move
-Language differences (Dwarves can’t understand Humans, etc)
-No Insta-travel
-Vendors only buy items that they would realistically need or want
-Increased enemy AI (or at least randomly varied responses)
-Racial drawbacks:
 -Little types can’t carry much
 -Large types can’t move very fast
 -“Smart” types can’t learn physical skills as quickly
 -“Dumb” types can’t learn magic as quickly
-Generic “+Difficulty” for combat: Monsters have higher stats, know more skills, react smarter
 -And of course my favorite: Permadeath.

Each of these drawbacks would have an associated point value, so whichever combination you selected would allot you a total amount of points which you could then spend on Benefits such as:
 -Better loot drop %
 -Faster rate of advancement
 -Extra tradeskill slot
 -Access to Epic events, quest chains and locations
 -Faster movement
 -“Elite Flag” that serves no purpose other than to advertise that you’re a masochist

This allows players who still crave traditional “immersive” limitations on gameplay to scratch that itch and be rewarded for doing it old-school, while allowing modernists to play exactly as streamlined as they want.
This also plays into the idea of a difficulty slider, where a player can make combat more or less difficult at any time (outside of combat and dungeons), with an accompanying increase or decrease in rewards and experience.  Group difficulty would simply be the average difficulty rating of the entire party.

Disclaimer:  The bare bones outline for this idea has been sitting in my inbox since December 15, 2009, which means I don’t remember 100% if this is entirely my idea or is based on something someone else wrote.  If this looks familiar to you, please let me know so I can give credit where its due.

A Riddle

Using the clues in this description try to figure out which game my friend is playing:

My friend Harvey is the type that only plays one game at a time, and the one he's playing now he plays almost as much as he can every day. Most people consider this game too easy, but others would argue that the very ease and simplicity of gameplay is why its so popular and has millions of players worldwide.  When he receives instructions for a task in the game, any superfluous details or context either confuses him or is ignored completely, thus he prefers only the most basic instructions so he doesn't waste time and can get on with the game.  These tasks usually involve doing a very basic action again and again, and even when he completes a task he is willing to take up the same type of task again and again and again just so he can maximize his rewards and minimize downtime.

Harvey doesn't mind PUGs, but he prefers to group with those he's more familiar with.  He judges people by oversimplified factors and doesn't even consider their intrinsic skill or experience.  He enjoys grouping but in the end he isn't doing it for anyone but himself, and is only willing to cooperate when its in his best interest.  If it comes down to it he will shout at even his best friend over a contested reward.


Harvey enjoys the simple combat of the game even if he isn't particularly good at it, primarily because the punishment for losing a battle is minimal.  He isn't interested in any tradeskills, and when he does make something it usually ends up being a worthless piece of crap that he has no personal use for and couldn't sell for much if anything.  Since he is reward driven he focuses primarily on the task that yields the fastest rate of reward.



Despite usually being happy with the state of his game, if he believes that there isn't enough new gameplay being introduced or he isn't being entertained enough, he feels entitled to whine about it to everyone and anyone willing (or unwilling) to listen. 

Think you know which game it is?  Here are some curveballs before the answer:

He pays nothing to play this game, and still expects constant entertainment.

There are no levels, but he does gain experience.

He hasn't killed a single thing in the game.

So what is the game?  Do you know?


It's Fetch.  Harvey is my one year old puppy.

The only thing I cheated on was the capitalization of Pugs.

Our games are really that basic, and our game habits are really that simple.  Why hasn't our genre evolved yet?

Permadeath: The Answer to Our Prayers

I’ve figured it out! I’ve solved all of our problems! I have singlehandedly saved the MMORPG genre! The answer we were looking for the entire time was the one thing we didn’t want to address! The solution to our problem is PERMADEATH!

Deep breath, hooooooo… whewwwwwww. Okay.

After thinking about MMOs as well as Greek Mythology over the weekend (kept seeing commercials for Clash of the Titans) I remembered a quote from the 2004 movie Troy,

“Let me tell you a secret, something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be more lovely than you are now. We will never be here again” –Achilles

How excited were you the first time you faced down a dungeon boss? You had (relatively) no idea what was coming, you only knew that this intimidating monster was probably going to hand you your ass. Remember the exhilaration? Remember the fear and adrenaline pumping through your veins? What about when you first ran from a mob, realizing you were in over your head and couldn’t win the fight? Or when you peered over a hill to find an elite mob, knew you had little chance of beating it, and decided to charge it anyway? The thrill existed only because fear accompanied it. But without consequence or risk, the thrill diminishes when you realize you can die again and again and it doesn't change anything, you can always try again.


Imagine an MMO that is a bit easier than WoW, but if you die you have to start over. How much more fun would it be to do a dungeon raid or run through a higher level zone if you knew that your character really was risking his life? More importantly, how much more rewarding would it be when you succeeded? Victories would be sweeter, rewards would be even more valuable, groups would be closer, and playtime would be much more memorable.


Naturally we have to take into account that humans are terribly risk averse and might be scared to venture out if they're faced with permadeath. An inheritance system might help cushion the blow, where you can roll a new character that is the son or daughter of your freshly-killed warrior, and while they do start at beginning level, they progress faster based on how high their parent's level was. Eventually characters would be able to track their lineage back several generations and be able to level extra fast. As for gear, a "Vengeance System" could be implemented to retrieve lost gear, where a descendant could defeat the faction/boss/mob type that felled their parent and reclaim the gear they were wearing.


There are ways to slightly cushion the blow of permadeath, but its major impact is exactly what we need in games to bring back the fear and excitement


Disclaimer: I am not egotistical enough to actually think I have solved the problems of MMOs, its obviously a (bad) joke.

Count to Five, Let the Fear In

Permadeath. Reading that word these days is more likely to make you roll your eyes than crap your pants in fear, and that’s unfortunate. I’m not pro-pants-crapping, nor am I pro-death, but I do wish there was still respect and fear attached to the concept of permadeath in video games. Instead its now viewed as an MMO taboo that is simply ridiculous to consider viable. Why? Because when a player loses a character they’ve invested dozens and dozens of hours in, the game will lose that player, because they couldn’t possibly handle the stress of such a loss, nor would he be willing to start over anew?

Nonsense.

The level of achievement a person feels when they overcome a challenge is directly proportional to the level of risk taken. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. When the greatest risk you run in an MMO is a very temporary death (which equates to a corpse run time sink and relatively small maintenance costs for equipment), how sweet is any victory? When you defeat a dungeon boss, how rewarding is it when you know that if you had failed again you would have had an infinite number of chances to try again? What greater risk is there than losing your character forever? Now this is probably the line where people stop reading, thinking that I’m one of countless people on the far end of the permadeath ideology spectrum, but keep your shirt on for a second. Psychology aside, if you institute across the board permadeath, you’ll never have a playerbase. No one wants to HAVE to lose their character forever, especially in the normal course of the normal game for normal rewards.

Thus there are three coMMOndments for Permadeath in MMO’s:
Thou shalt make all instances of Permadeath occur in optional endeavors
Thou shalt make the rewards for risking Permadeath phat and epic
Thou shalt make a big deal of Permadeath endeavors to the rest of the game world

What do these mean? The first coMMOndment means you should never ever force permadeath on someone. There should be no activity that a player must accept the risk of permadeath to take part in. Make a permadeath version of an activity, but never a simply permadeath activity.

The second coMMOndment is the simplest. Make the rewards match the risk. And don’t underestimate the aversion players have to losing a character forever. The rewards for permadeath risk don’t scale like other types of difficulty, this shoots it through the roof, so loot drop rates, experience, and any other rewards should flow like wine for the risk takers.

The third coMMOndment will justify Permadeath’s presence in the game explicitly (complementing the implicit justification that hardcore elite player’s won’t be able to whine about difficulty). We always hear people whining that their quests and actions have no significance because everyone is doing the same thing. But if the first person to achieve a major quest in permadeath mode closes that quest forever and moves the story forward, that would give significance to questing, and would allow for lots of people to try to be heroes, and only one to succeed.

So here are my five ideas for applications of Permadeath in MMOs:

1) Gladiators- Have your typical arena setup with teams, prizes, individual matches, rankings, etc. But offer the option for any player to enter the Big League, where they fight one on one with the loser dying permanently, and the winner getting huge rewards and fame. People could issue challenges, move up the rankings and gain real notoriety. Any Permadeath match should be prescheduled and publicized at least a day in advance, and any player would be able to watch the match live.

2) Difficulty Meter- Meter for each player that they can adjust any time out of battle, which determines their game difficulty and the rewards they get from battle. Highest level is permadeath. Groups play at the average difficulty level of each individual.

3) Dragonslayer- Taking a specific group quest and attempting to beat a dungeon and slay the final boss under threat of permadeath. Failing would mean permadeath, victory would result in that boss being gone forever and the story being advanced further to open new content. Even if there was success, any players lost in the attempt would be gone forever. Victors (even dead ones) would be immortalized in the history books of that server, and celebrated as heroes.

4) Highlander- Players can permanently designate themselves as “Chosen” once they reach a particular level/time played. A Chosen player can attack ANY other Chosen player, and when one kills another, that character is gone for good. The winner gets all of the loser’s equipment and money (Even bound items), a big portion of their experience/skill, and positive boosts to any factions that the loser was very friendly with.

5) Protector- This I saw on another person’s blog, if you’re reading this and it was your idea (you described it as trees), please email me so I can give you credit. A player can opt to sacrifice their character forever to create a permanent guardian for a city or town. The power of the guardian is directly related to the sacrificed character’s power. This would work best in a game with player towns and/or faction bases.

6) BONUS: Progeny. Inheritance is a concept sometimes linked with permadeath as a way of cushioning the blow, and while I haven’t heard of a system I like yet, I really believe there is a system out there somewhere that will work perfectly and make this a really fun mechanic.

So you see, Permadeath should not be shunned and laughed at, it has the potential to bring heroicism and significance back to MMOs, as long as its done right.