Permanent Death - in Multiplayer Video Games

In Multiplayer Video Games

Permanent death in multiplayer video games is very controversial. Due to player desires and the resulting market forces involved, MMORPGs (such as World of Warcraft) and other multiplayer-focused RPGs rarely feature permanent death. Generally speaking, there is little support in multiplayer culture for permanent death. Richard Bartle has compared player distaste for permadeath to player distaste for pedophilia. For games which charge an ongoing fee to play, permanent death may drive players away, creating a financial disincentive to include permanent death.

Diablo II and Diablo III are noteworthy mainstream exceptions which include support for an optional "hardcore" mode that subjects characters to permanent death. Sacred and Sacred 2 similarly feature or have featured a similar "hardcore" mode. Star Wars Galaxies had permadeath for Jedi characters for a short period, but later eliminated that functionality.

Proponents attribute a number of reasons why others oppose permanent death. Some attribute tainted perceptions to poor early implementations. They also believe that confusion exists between "player killing" and permanent death, when the two do not need to be used together. Proponents also believe that players initially exposed to games without permanent death consider new games from that point of view. Those players are attributed as eventually "maturing," to a level of accepting permanent death, but only for other players' characters.

The majority of MMORPG players are unwilling to accept the large penalty of losing their characters. Some MMORPGs experimented with permanent death in an attempt to simulate a more realistic world, but the majority of players preferred not to risk permanent death for their characters. As a result, while MMORPGs are occasionally announced that feature permanent death, most either remove or never ship permanent death so as to increase the game's mass appeal.

Proponents of permanent death want the risk of permadeath to give additional significance to their in-game actions. While games without permanent death often impose an in-game penalty for restoring a dead PC, the penalty is relatively minor compared to being forced to create a new PC. Therefore, the primary change in experience permanent death creates is that it makes a player's decisions more significant; without permanent death there is less incentive for the player to consider in-game actions seriously. Those players seeking to risk permanent death feel that the more severe consequences heighten the sense of involvement and achievement derived from their characters. The increased risk renders acts of heroism and bravery within the gameworld significant; the player has risked a much larger investment of time. Without permanent death, such actions are "small actions." However, in an online game, permadeath generally means starting over from the beginning, isolating the player of the now-dead character from former comrades.

Richard Bartle called out as advantages of permanent death: restriction of early adopters from permanently held positions of power, content reuse as players repeat early sections, its embodiment of the "default fiction of real life", improved player immersion from more frequent character changes, and reinforcement of high level achievement. Bartle also believes that in the absence of permanent death, game creators must continually create new content for top players, which discourages those not at the top from even bothering to advance.

Proponents of permanent death systems in MMORPGs are a relatively small sub-section of the hardcore gaming community. These players are often interested in additional challenges provided by games that attempt greater realism in their simulation. These players will often seek less restricted social and economic environments catering to a greater range of player versus player interaction and risk versus reward scenarios.

Those players who prefer not to play with permanent death are generally unwilling to accept the risk of the large penalties associated with it. Paying the penalty of permanent death often means a great deal of time spent to regain levels, power, influence, or emotional investment that the previous character possessed. This increased investment of time can dissuade non-hardcore players. Depending on the design of the game, this may involve playing through content that the player has already experienced. Players no longer interested in those aspects of the game are often unwilling to spend time playing through them again, These players seek to have fun and are unwilling to play through sections they no longer enjoy in the hope of reaching others to which they previously had access. Some players dislike the way that permanent death causes players to be much more wary than they would in regular games; they argue that this cautiousness reduces the heroic atmosphere that games seek to provide. Ultimately this can reduce play to slow, repetitive, low-risk play, commonly called "grinding". Of course, the significance of heroism without the risk of permanent death is dramatically reduced. Most MMORPGs do not allow character creation at an arbitrary experience level, even if the player has already achieved that level with a now-dead character, providing a powerful disincentive for permanent death.