Support NeoGAF

[GekigangerV]

Prey..when you die, you crossover into some other world where you have to shoot stuff with your bow and arrow.

Or something. I can't remember...I only played the demo.

That reminds me of Herc's Adventure on the PS1. If you died you had to go to the Underworld and fight your way out. It kind of sucked because you would get out on one part of the map and walk all the way back to where you needed to go. I think that if you died enough times you would get a Game Over.

 

[wild_quinine]

X-Com: You gained stats and experience with your soldiers, if they didn't die. Death was permanent and whenever someone died in your squad his teammates would lose morale. you had to play smart and not move one soldier go off on his own and and right when he ran out of action points to move you see an alien who has a clear shot at him.

This is a great example, because I remember this game like no other as being the one where there might not be a huge mathematical 'consequence' (depending on stat gains), but you sure missed those poor saps.

If your favourite sniper went down after some bastard alien shot you in the back.... it was like losing a limb. Reload? Sure, you'd reload. But you'd get five other guys to gang up on that damn alien and get some revenge before you reloaded. That's how personal it was.

My pick for interesting way of handling death would be the original Secret of Monkey Island. You didn't die for hours and hours and hours, so you just assumed that you couldn't die. Then suddenly, in the last third of the game, you fall off a cliff and get the game over screen. One of gaming's great moments. (Shh! It's just a trick, you don't die really! Did I need spoiler tags for a two-decades old game?)

Ooh- I'd also mention Shadow of the Colossus...

 

[Throwaway123456789]

Gah, I hate permadeath. I'm scared of Fire Emblem for this reason. :lol

This. I've played about two hours of Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, but now my party is so huge and I HATE losing people permanently. Seriously, the game just isn't for me (which sucks, cause I love the Advance Wars-ish combat).

 

[Hunter D]

In the early days of Ultima Online, if you died your corpse was lootable by anyone. If you didn't make it back to your corpse in a timely manner you were very likely to lose everything that was on you.

On the plus side, you could completely loot anyone you killed.

Best mmo ever.

 

[Gabyskra]

This. I've played about two hours of Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, but now my party is so huge and I HATE losing people permanently. Seriously, the game just isn't for me (which sucks, cause I love the Advance Wars-ish combat).

That's just the beginning. Just wait for moments when you actually have to decide who to sacrifice, no matter what.

This said, despite good ideas, I believe FE on DS is easily the worst Fire Emblem I've played (having played all from FE6 to FE11). No story development at all, bland mute characters, little to no background, etc. It was too close to the feeling I get from Advance Wars precisely. Considering how insanely awesome (and more) FE9 and FE10 were, it's a letdown.

On topic, beside FE, I also love Guild Wars in all its different modes. Very smart, hard to explain how much there is to it with resurrection signets, spells, PvP, PvE, etc.

 

[MMaRsu]

MGS3 - The Sorrow.

It would be spoilerish to talk about it.

IT's 5 years old for gods sake

 

[BrokenSymmetry]

I'd love to play an MMO that is built from the ground up around the concept of permadeath. I think that would solve a lot of the persistent problems with the genre.

Except nobody would play that game. Every MMO game that has been released has had a lighter death penalty than the games before. In the end, MMO games will be just like shooters: re-spawn times (or time until at the location of the action again) of no more than 30 seconds, and no negative effects.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I'd love to play an MMO that is built from the ground up around the concept of permadeath. I think that would solve a lot of the persistent problems with the genre.

The problem being that subscribers would put 800 hours into a character, perma-die, and immediately unsubscribe and possibly commit suicide IRL. That can't be good for the long-term business prospects of any MMOG.

 

[werewolf2000ad]

The ultimate in perma-death: Sub Mission, from Mindscape. Your objective was to rescue two hostages in a submarine. You could take as many practice runs as you liked, but if you failed with one of the actual hostages on board they were erased from the game disk. If you lost both of them, the game came with a sealed one-use code to restore them. If you failed again after that, you had to send the game disk to Mindscape with a begging letter.

No, they didn't sell many copies.

 

[Hiltz]

Killer7

After one of the characters are killed, you are automatically sent back to the last save room where you are given the option to use Garcian Smith to backtrack to locate and collect the character's head inside a bag and put it inside his briefcase. Then you appear back in the save room where can revive the fallen character by pressing A repeatedly from the TV set to infuse the character with life and make him playable again.


Ultimately, it felt more like a chore but it was an interesting way to handle death given Garcian Smith's role in the syndicate as a "cleaner". Also, in a sense, the other playable Killer7 characters are immortal because they are personalities and while they can be killed, they can be revived infinite times so long as Garcian Smith is alive and doesn't recover his full memory of his true identity which allegedly cuts off his special bond to stay connected to the Killer7 personalities. It sounded cool on paper but it felt kind of tedious due to the forced backtracking and risk getting a Game Over screen if Garcian himself is killed off in the process of attempting to locate and collect the fallen character's remains by Heaven Smile enemies in the area since Garcian is the weakest playable character.

 

[charlequin]

I'd love to play an MMO that is built from the ground up around the concept of permadeath.

It's not like nobody has ever thought of the idea before. It's just not actually a particularly workable design basis for an MMO.

Permadeath is incompatible with the idea of Diku-style character grinding advancement, which takes out the vast majority of existing MMO gameplay right there, and then leaves you with the question of what to actually fill your game with and what benefit that permadeath is then providing. Is it a king-of-the-hill struggle, with new characters constantly warring to be on top? (If so: how do you expect to get people to pay you $15 a month instead of getting a similar gameplay experience from shooters or other non-persistent games.) Is it about building up property and possessions? (If so, you'll have a huge customer service challenge in dealing with PC conflicts, and you'll constantly be offering people a good "breaking point" to quit your game every time they die.) And so on, and so forth.

 

[suaveric]

That's just the beginning. Just wait for moments when you actually have to decide who to sacrifice, no matter what.

This said, despite good ideas, I believe FE on DS is easily the worst Fire Emblem I've played (having played all from FE6 to FE11). No story development at all, bland mute characters, little to no background, etc. It was too close to the feeling I get from Advance Wars precisely. Considering how insanely awesome (and more) FE9 and FE10 were, it's a letdown.

On topic, beside FE, I also love Guild Wars in all its different modes. Very smart, hard to explain how much there is to it with resurrection signets, spells, PvP, PvE, etc.

I think this FE is a remake of the very first game in the series, so that probably explains the poor story/character development.

I agree that FE is too harsh. Why not just have a tough, but manageable penalty for a character being defeated? My idea is making them unusable for the rest of that mission and based on one of their stats, unusable for x more missions afterwards. This would still force you to use a weaker character in place for the injured one, but not "force" you to restart the current mission and lose hours of your real life.

 

[Ridli]

The ultimate in perma-death: Sub Mission, from Mindscape. Your objective was to rescue two hostages in a submarine. You could take as many practice runs as you liked, but if you failed with one of the actual hostages on board they were erased from the game disk. If you lost both of them, the game came with a sealed one-use code to restore them. If you failed again after that, you had to send the game disk to Mindscape with a begging letter.

No, they didn't sell many copies.

That's hardcore. I mean, it has financial failure written all over it, but I think I'd probably have given it a go.

 

[EatChildren]

Killer7

Speaking of Killer7, the

Spoiler

boss fight in the school where you must sacrifice all your characters was pretty awesome, and at the time very unpredictable. I just thought I was shit, getting frustrated, until it all worked out.

 

[ElFly]

Except that I've never known anyone to do anything but restart the mission when a character dies.

The penalty for losing a character and beating the mission is higher than the penalty for just retrying a mission.

I am normally like that, but FE Wii gets so hard at points, that I got tired of restarting, and just sacrificed some characters here and there.

That ugly fat knight girl comes to mind :lol

 

[ianp622]

I'd love to play an MMO that is built from the ground up around the concept of permadeath. I think that would solve a lot of the persistent problems with the genre.

I would like that too, but I don't know if it would solve many problems of the genre. The level system needs to be taken out for that to happen.

However, I think it would be interesting if when you died, you took control of one of your children or someone close to you. Or, you could roam as a spirit temporarily, helping your NPC companions as they go on with their lives. Of course this would require advanced AI, but that's one thing I'd like to work towards.

 

[AndyD]

Prey..when you die, you crossover into some other world where you have to shoot stuff with your bow and arrow.

Or something. I can't remember...I only played the demo.

That was cool.

 

[AndyD]

I would like that too, but I don't know if it would solve many problems of the genre. The level system needs to be taken out for that to happen.

However, I think it would be interesting if when you died, you took control of one of your children or someone close to you. Or, you could roam as a spirit temporarily, helping your NPC companions as they go on with their lives. Of course this would require advanced AI, but that's one thing I'd like to work towards.

This would work if it allowed resurection by other players say within 24 hours. If you gained exp for resurrecting others, it would encourage both team play, caution and also wanderers resurrecting others.

The problem lies in balancing mobs and encounters. A glitch that kills you would cause a lot of heartache.

 

[ianp622]

This would work if it allowed resurection by other players say within 24 hours. If you gained exp for resurrecting others, it would encourage both team play, caution and also wanderers resurrecting others.

The problem lies in balancing mobs and encounters. A glitch that kills you would cause a lot of heartache.

I was also thinking of an MMO based on NPC companions, where you traveled with a group of people, and your companions would be your "loot", so some companions would be famous or have superior skills as a greater reward. Then I was thinking of having a system like Guild Wars where you only die if your entire party dies.

 

[AndyD]

I was also thinking of an MMO based on NPC companions, where you traveled with a group of people, and your companions would be your "loot", so some companions would be famous or have superior skills as a greater reward. Then I was thinking of having a system like Guild Wars where you only die if your entire party dies.

Guild wars was a good system. But I am thinking more of a WoW open world where you can run into all sorts of people as you travel around in the wild. Often I would find people dying here and there and help them out.

You could do a perk like you mentioned, say you have a hawk that goes to town and lets your guild know you died out in the wild whenever you die. Or something along those lines. Make it to where only real people can resurrect you, but NPCs can inform them of your death.

You could have a reward board for resurrection. You post your name and your reward for bringing you to life and when you die it auto appears on the list in town.

You could have a whole medic class that gets graves on their map. Regular people have to actually find the grave markers/bodies on the map. You could fold it into healer classes quite well.

This would obviously not work on PVP servers.

 

[smurfx]

wind waker being cell shaded? certainly took balls after nintendo had teased the fans with a video of link fighting gannon in 3d and looking great.

 

[polyh3dron]

Prince of Persia. When you die..

..oh shit.

came in to post this

 

[KevinCow]

I like the way Mega Man 9 handles death. Like other Mega Man games, every level has two checkpoints, one in the middle of the stage and one just before the boss room. Lose all your lives and you can either start over or go back to the level select screen. All levels you've beaten stay beaten, so getting a Game Over will only result in you redoing one level at most.

But all of that has been in the series since the NES days. What really makes it brilliant, in my opinion, is the fact that you are allowed to keep everything you've collected when you die, specifically E-tanks and bolts. Using the bolts, you can buy items to help you out. E-tanks, M-tanks, extra lives, spike guards so spikes don't instakill you, Beat call so you can survive pits, and damage reducer to take half damage throughout a stage.

What makes this so great is that, to me, it finds the perfect balance between brutally punishing the player for dying and being too easy on the player. Dying is still undesirable, but when you die you know that your time hasn't been completely wasted.

 

[kswiston]

I am normally like that, but FE Wii gets so hard at points, that I got tired of restarting, and just sacrificed some characters here and there.

That ugly fat knight girl comes to mind :lol

I think the mistake that some people make with Fire Emblem titles (Radiant Dawn in particular) is that they feel like they need to use the max allowed units on a map. There are plenty parts in Radiant Dawn where it is actually easier to beat a map without losing a character by just leaving the subpar units out. If the map allows 12 characters and only 9 of your characters are strong enough to be useful, leave the 3 subpar characters (who would just be killed in one enemy attack) behind.

Radiant Dawn's problem wasn't permadeath. It was that your three teams were poorly balanced. Ike's squad were unbeatable gods while Micaiah's squad was underpowered. Switching between them in later acts of the game really messes up the difficulty balance. One map would be a breeze while the next was extremely hard to beat without losing anyone (especially if you let one or two characters hog all the exp). However, some of this difficulty is alleviated by the fact that you can save mid battle in easy/normal modes.

 

[Haruspex]

Don't make me say it again... I'm a cleaner

As has already been mentioned.

 

[Danielsan]

I really liked the way a player's death was handled in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The game is narrated by the Prince himself and whenever you die it is as if the Prince made a mistake in narrating the story.

The sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3 had a pretty big impact on me.

Spoiler

Walking through an nearly endless stream of soldiers who's throats I had slit open.

 

[Darkpen]

Heavy Rain - if you die, the story goes on.

 

[Tetsuo9]

I hate high death penalty. It rarely makes the game more difficult. It just makes it more frustrating.

I play games to relieve stress, not create more.

I played hc mode on d2lod for more than 1 year competitively. It's a rare mix between planning and the excitement of risking your char and, if you die, don't take it to seriously because it was fun all the way and it's still fun make a new one.

To me hc mode in d2 is one of my greatest gaming experiences.

 

[ianp622]

It's a rare mix between planning and the excitement of risking your char and, if you die, don't take it to seriously because it was fun all the way and it's still fun make a new one.

I think that's an important note: people who don't like death penalties are probably the same people that play for an achievement of some sorts, while people who accept them play games simply for enjoyment of the moment, and not because they will get something at the end.

I'm in the latter category, which is why I don't play MMO's: I don't think the moment-to-moment enjoyment is anywhere near that of other genres.

 

[SupahBlah]

I would like that too, but I don't know if it would solve many problems of the genre. The level system needs to be taken out for that to happen.

I checked through the thread and didn't see it mentioned but this is why Eve Online has what people call a severe death penalty.

With the lack of a levelling system and the time based skills, you have two "deaths" when your ship is blown up its gone forever, most stuff on it is destroyed and whoever killed it can loot whatever survived. Your character ejects in a pod, if the pod is destroyed your character is killed but all spaceship pilots utilise cloning bays, so you appear in a clone facility but if you were too cheap or forgot to upgrade your clone to hold your current XP you lose XP so for instance I could lose a month worth of training if my clone is killed.

 

[Catalix]

I really liked the way a player's death was handled in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The game is narrated by the Prince himself and whenever you die it is as if the Prince made a mistake in narrating the story.[/spoiler]

Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of.

Plus the whole instant time reversal thing if you fuck up a platforming sequence. The fact that it was a finite ability seems like a good balance to me, unlike new PoP in some ways.

 

[Azure Dream]

wind waker being cell shaded? certainly took balls after nintendo had teased the fans with a video of link fighting gannon in 3d and looking great.

Way to read the OP? Wind Waker's ballsiest death decision was not letting the player ever experience it. (Although I did find it clever how you used a

Spoiler

fairy on your grandmother

, though it wasn't clear how you were supposed to do it at first.)


I remembered a game that had an interesting death mechanic, Nightshade for the NES. You can see it in this Happy Video Game Nerd video, he starts talking about it at the 7 minute mark. Short version is that each time you die, you're put into a death trap by the main villain. These get progressively harder to escape from, until the third or fourth time where it becomes impossible to escape.

 

[ampere]

I hate high death penalty. It rarely makes the game more difficult. It just makes it more frustrating.

I play games to relieve stress, not create more.

I agree so much.
This is what makes me love 'save anywhere' features. People can call them cheap, I call them nice

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

After BoF 3 left a bad taste in my mouth(way too many minigames and fetchquests) I picked up Dragon Quarter for $6 at Gamestop.

Those familiar with the game know that after a certain point early on in the game you adopt a gauge of sorts. This gauge essentially ends the game if you allow it to fill up to 100%. Simply running around can fill this up slowly while using your special powers can fill it up extremely quickly.

To counter this you can play smart and learn the various aspects of the game(traps, comboing, and positioning) and if all else fails you can simply Give Up. By giving up you retain your skills, some items, and whatever party exp you accumulated. Though you have to start the game over chances are if you've made enough progress your D-ratio improves and with that you unlock new areas, cutscenes, and all that other good stuff.

Admittedly I haven't gotten that far in the game(in fact I just got my D-counter..already put 8% into it eep.) But yeah this is a way cool feature

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

I hate high death penalty. It rarely makes the game more difficult. It just makes it more frustrating.

I play games to relieve stress, not create more.

Here's the answer.

I think sometimes people forget what games are, and what they're for.

Games are meant to be fun. Perma death is not fun.

 

[mattso]

I think rondo of swords for the ds had a great way to deal with death. If your characters died the next round they would return but would suffer a penalty to their stats for that round. Made it so you were still cautious but if someone got taken down you didn't have to start over.

 

[ahoyhoy]

L4D deserves another mention. Having a survivor down and needing to be rescued adds a great amount of urgency and allows you to correct a mistake if you catch them quick enough. But if one of your teammates dies, your team can recover but they are at a serious disadvantage until they get the extra survivor back. And the recovered survivor will come back without their upgraded weapons which can be a decent penalty depending on the situation.

Yep and Yep. More games need stuff like this to further encourage cooperation is maintained overall.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Honestly I prefer S-RPGs with non-perma character death. There's always those situations where you have to sacrifice a weak party member in order to divert the enemy from taking out others.

Especially on say the harder difficulties in Shining Force 2 where nearly everything can wipe your guys out in 2 or 3 hits(or even just a single critical)

 

[ivysaur12]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter?

This is the correct answer.

 

[HK-47]

I think this FE is a remake of the very first game in the series, so that probably explains the poor story/character development.

I agree that FE is too harsh. Why not just have a tough, but manageable penalty for a character being defeated? My idea is making them unusable for the rest of that mission and based on one of their stats, unusable for x more missions afterwards. This would still force you to use a weaker character in place for the injured one, but not "force" you to restart the current mission and lose hours of your real life.

Well they could have put a little more effort in and fleshed out everything.

 

[ElFly]

I think the mistake that some people make with Fire Emblem titles (Radiant Dawn in particular) is that they feel like they need to use the max allowed units on a map. There are plenty parts in Radiant Dawn where it is actually easier to beat a map without losing a character by just leaving the subpar units out. If the map allows 12 characters and only 9 of your characters are strong enough to be useful, leave the 3 subpar characters (who would just be killed in one enemy attack) behind.

Radiant Dawn's problem wasn't permadeath. It was that your three teams were poorly balanced. Ike's squad were unbeatable gods while Micaiah's squad was underpowered. Switching between them in later acts of the game really messes up the difficulty balance. One map would be a breeze while the next was extremely hard to beat without losing anyone (especially if you let one or two characters hog all the exp). However, some of this difficulty is alleviated by the fact that you can save mid battle in easy/normal modes.

I get what you are saying, but I am pretty sure I sacrificed ugly fat girl in a level where I had to hold out for X rounds against hordes of feline laguz.

She basically was a meat shield who made the enemy waste two precious turns.

 

[ElFly]

Here's the answer.

I think sometimes people forget what games are, and what they're for.

Games are meant to be fun. Perma death is not fun.

Yes, it is fun.

Challenge is fun. On well designed games, permadeath only makes the stakes higher, but not by making the game soulcrushingly frustrating.

 

[abstract alien]

In the old Platoon game on nes, did you have to restart the entire game if you died only once?

 

[Troidal]

In the Rogue-style Japanese dungeon crawler "Baroque", when your character dies, you start from the beginning of the dungeon, and your level is back to LV.1 and only equipments you've "teleported" are carried over. You don't have many opportunities where you find the teleporter so it is not game breaking. Plus, dying in the game is related to the plot.

I'm sure it's been done before, but just citing another example.

 

[Barrage]

All the complaints about Fire Emblem remind me of the original Final Fantasy Tactics, which had a "soft" Permadeath of sorts-any non-story character that died would have a number above their heads. When the number reached 3, the character would become a treasure chest/crystal and would be lost forever. You had to revive the character/clear the level to have the character be playable again.

'Least, that's how I remember it.

I always enjoy when games use the "Cloning" excuse when a character dies-from Phantasy Star 2 to Crackdown to Destroy All Humans. It leaves an aftertaste of your actions having consequences.

 

[DDayton]

Way to read the OP? Wind Waker's ballsiest death decision was not letting the player ever experience it. (Although I did find it clever how you used a

Spoiler

fairy on your grandmother

, though it wasn't clear how you were supposed to do it at first.)

Odd... I don't remember that... is there any OTHER way to do it? I think I may have used a potion or something... or maybe I had a bad memory.

 

[Flynn]

Mario games wouldn't be worthwhile if you could rewind like Braid.

I kinda disagree. I sorta hate having to run the gauntlet again just to get back to the jump that killed me.

And yet I like perma-death in Roguelikes. There's a lot of creative stuff going into it. Dwarf Fortress repays your investment by making every death unique -- the action tells such a great story that every death was worth it.

Games like Shiren and Spelunky let you invest in items or shortcuts that eventually empower you to skip over early content. Also, I'd argue that playing the game gives you the skills to better avoid all the pitfalls that take you out while playing.

I think what makes death in these circumstances tolerable is that they're different every time. They're novel experiences, failures that you take with you.

What I hate is death in a rigid game. Dying at the same boss battle. Falling into the same bottomless pit in a platform. These games force you to conform to a pattern. And failing is like butting your head up against a wall.

I really like games like Skate where failure isn't final. If you don't do a trick you just get up and try again. And if you CAN'T pull it of you just go do something else. Skate another line or whatever.

 

[Haeleos]

I don't see why they don't make these no death penalty sequences come with some sort of stiff challenge. For instance, in Prey, if that little sequence was actually difficult, you'd actually want to fight hard to avoid having to do it, thus encouraging the player to increase his skill. It should be seen as a "Here's a chance to redeem yourself." moment. Bioshock, Prey and Prince of Persia all just handle it as a free pass "god mode" type of respawn. For all the hype Big Daddies got in Bioshock, they were sure underwhelming when you realize their death is permanent but yours is not since you can just keep running at them with a wrench and eventually defeat them. Same goes for the bosses in Prey.

It also made me think of using this system in relation to the story. For instance, you could make the player feel secure in that he can revive himself if he screws up, but then have the system shut down on them. Like Cylons who are too far away from a Ressurrection ship... it would build tension.

I'd just like to see developers use this system in a more creative way other than just removing any sense of challenge from their games and calling it "casual friendly".

 

[neorej]

Steel Battalion - When you die it deletes your save if you don't eject in time.

I remember that. Christ, played with the powercord of the Xbox tied around my leg so I could pull it out before it deleted my savegame. I mistimed it once, and my entire HDD went FUBAR!

 

[CHRP718]

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
*bows to Kojima-san*