Gameplay Design Rants (tm) - Permadeath, Game Loops and Flow

[Horis]

Your point on the FPS is amazing. I was thinking that to apply it to Salem we can't use travel time as a penalty for death but let's say that you could lose certain skills.

There is already a "kin" feature where you inherit claims, but what if while you advance your main character you also have alts that are not necessarily usable while your main is alive but your main educates the alts. The alts start as offspring (children who must come of age before they are usable) during their upbringing they accumulate some of the knowledge and skills of the main. The player chooses how to raise the offspring and the offspring, when they come of age, become usable with lets say a specialization in one of the main's fields of knowledge.

Players can still have regular alts, but if their main dies they only have to wait for the offspring to mature and they can pick up where they left off with only a slight disadvantage.

I'm taking the idea from a game called "the guild 2".

Players can make choices in what kind of education to give their offspring at a cost of silver. They send them "off to school" which is better or they can apprentice them, which brings less accumulated skills at maturity.

[nonsonogiucas]

I really like the way you adapt design principles to Salem's theme Horis, it is really inspiring! (ok, ok... I also tend to unconditionally love anyone that agrees with me )


A little more food for thought in the video:
When Difficult Is Fun - The Difference Between Challenging and Punishing Games - Extra Credits.

Loving that channel by the way.

[materia]

one of the main problems of this game is keeping player base after they die, its the main reason ppl quit playing.
why not add something witchcraft related stuff that lets you inherit some skills and humours from your previous character.
lets say a voodoo doll of your character that once created will store the info about humours and skills you had at that given time. only one doll can be crafted per character and can only be consumed upon death.dolls acts as an item so they need to be safe as other ppl can steal it, they need to be in an altar (to avoid boston alt mules)dolls become obsolute if away from alter more than 24h. how many skills and humours you recive from your previous character...idk.

[Dallane]

its the main reason ppl quit playing.

No its not

[materia]

its the main reason ppl quit playing.

No its not

if its not the first its a close one after boredom
tbh i have seen more ppl quiting due to being killed than to anything else.not to mention those who quit, quit because they are bored mostly because they were too afraid of doing anything in game due to the fear of loosing their charater. so the two often are related.

[nonsonogiucas]

its the main reason ppl quit playing.

No its not

if its not the first its a close one after boredom
tbh i have seen more ppl quiting due to being killed than to anything else.not to mention those who quit, quit because they are bored mostly because they were too afraid of doing anything in game due to the fear of loosing their charater. so the two often are related.

In this thread I tried to analyse the effect of Permadeath on two particular design models (Game Loop and Flow).
Pinpointing the first cause of people abandoning the game is another problem entirely, possibly one that is a lot more complex too, involving a lot of different aspects like (imo) in-game community management tools, characters specialization and end-game content.

I'm more interested however in hearing what veterans think about my assessment of Salem's current implementation of Permadeath and Progression. Do you feel the same about very long game loops? Do you feel that starting again after 6-12 months of Progression is not that big of a deal? Does the first time feel different than the second, third, etc?

[Ukhata]

currently, the biggest reason for players quitting is a convergence of the following in no particular order:

boredom once you have everything you need (base, high enough humours, a purity cycle, money etc)
Being killed for whatever reason
The Tribe being ***** in the arbitrary "we are the natives setting" etc. (no you are not natives you are settlers from England as are the rest of us, otherwise you could never get the rights of the English.)

at least that's what i see on the forum from people

[nonsonogiucas]

currently, the biggest reason for players quitting is a convergence of the following in no particular order:

boredom once you have everything you need (base, high enough humours, a purity cycle, money etc)
Being killed for whatever reason
The Tribe being ***** in the arbitrary "we are the natives setting" etc. (no you are not natives you are settlers from England as are the rest of us, otherwise you could never get the rights of the English.)

at least that's what i see on the forum from people

While I agree in a very general sense that those things are perceived as problems I would like to point out that 2 and 3 are basically the same. The Tribe is merely playing the game as it is, which is the intended behaviour of a beta tester.

So you suggest the problem is a convergence of:
Lack of end-game (nothing to do when Progression stops being interesting)
Dying as an end-game scenario (End game seems atm to be pvp... implying that Progression, albeit long and painful, is just one iteration of a birth-death loop)

I'm sorry I'm probably just twisting your words toward my point here but I made it boil down to permadeath... sorry about that feel free to explain you point further.

Fact is I don't really think removing permadeath is the only solution. (One could argue that at this point is the easiest to code thou)

Let's say for example that to be high-end two weeks is the time required, you could go farther but it doesn't mean a whole lot. Maybe if you play with friends and really specialize you are end-game in one week square.
I bet that dying for wathever reason in this scenario instantly becomes much less of a pain and the Tribe along with that (they would be in the same wagon with anybody else and if they still win a lot then it means they are good period.).

Also, being that the birth-death game loop has become a short term loop you have your end-game fun thus avoiding boredom: After 1-2 weeks you start looking for an opportunity for combat! That means you could actually start to like the birth-death cycle because (I could draw a picture about this...) it starts to stay in Flow.

Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe a piece would still be missing... maybe pvp is not interesting enough with the present assortment of stances / moves to justify a player wanting to go through multiple week loops to get better at it. But is easily fixable... this is a beta server, just let's start experiment with a lot of different moves and stances.

Did I go too far? What do you think?

[Horis]

permadeath is not a big deal if you enjoy the game. If you quit after dying then you don't "get it".

[Ukhata]

currently, the biggest reason for players quitting is a convergence of the following in no particular order:

boredom once you have everything you need (base, high enough humours, a purity cycle, money etc)
Being killed for whatever reason
The Tribe being ***** in the arbitrary "we are the natives setting" etc. (no you are not natives you are settlers from England as are the rest of us, otherwise you could never get the rights of the English.)

at least that's what i see on the forum from people

While I agree in a very general sense that those things are perceived as problems I would like to point out that 2 and 3 are basically the same. The Tribe is merely playing the game as it is, which is the intended behaviour of a beta tester.

2 and 3 are not the same.
tribe being ***** is not about them killing people. thats fine, thats part of the game.

the way they make arbitrairy rules of where to settle, the constant nagging as natives and great spirit and forum crap and whatnot is what makes them be *****, not the killing of noobs, newbes or others.

as suchs 2 and 3 are very different.