VGCulture - Permadeath

Last week, I posted a blog about "Hardcore Games" and my interest in challenging games.  I missed out on a lot of aspects that made difficult games exciting, but there was one I really want to mention that I haven't tried yet: games with "Permadeath".  Permadeath is a shortened form of Permanent Death where your character and progress is all lost at the time of defeat of death of the character.  It is generally used more in RPGs (Table-top, offline or online, text based, etc.) as losses in a RPG is much greater than any other type of game.  Retro-games can be considered to have permadeath where the player has to start all over if all the 1-Ups/free-mans, but these games consisted anywhere between 10 minutes to 3 hours.  RPGs, some players will have spent 100 hours to 5 years on playing, questing, meeting new players, etc.  To lose a character in an RPG is like losing all that time that was spent into working on it.  It is because of this that I haven't tried yet (though, there is Fire Emblem, I'll get to that), I spend quite a lot of time on my RPGs.  The usual trade off for such a dangerous mode of play is that player are rewarded with better items, more experience points, and rare loot.  For offline games, the player just have to be weary of stronger enemies.  For online games, it's much more dangerous because a lag, server crash, stronger player in PvP, or glitch in the system can cost the player their work and time put into their characters.

Source: http://photo.mmosite.com/picfile/2006-04-01/20060401003848446.shtml

One MMORPG I've played that had the option of permadeath was Shaiya: Light and Darkness.  The game had difficulty levels that affected player growth, enemy strength, and capacity to level.  Hard mode is unlocked by playing through normal mode (I never finished the game, I was too busy and had other games to play through) and Ultimate mode, which turns on Permadeath, is unlocked by playing through hard mode.  If you die and your character is not resurrected within a certain amount of time (I think, I'm not 100% sure how it works) the character is then deleted off the server and the player has to create another one and start over.  This level of challenge could be exciting and really pits the player into the risk/reward factor of the game.  From what I hear, Diablo 2 has a "Hardcore Mode" which enable hardcore mode.  I'm sad that I didn't get into Diablo when it first released.  When I tried it years later (we're talking about 8 years later), it failed to captivate me.  I think I would've liked it if I had more time to play games.  Oh well, still waiting for Diablo 3, definitely going to buy that.

In the Online games, yes, you can choose whether to turn on permadeath or not, but the player has very little control when and how they die when it does happen.  For Offline games, there are times where the player can cheat.  Fire Emblem is one game I've actually played that has permadeath where I chose not to let anyone die.  If a character is defeated on the battlefield in Fire Emblem games, they are gone for good.  The player can choose to accept that sacrifice to progress through the story or cheat and restart the game to go to the last save they had or restart the chapter entirely.  Some offline games won't even allow that.  Two games I know that has an anti-cheating method is Dokapon Monster Hunter for Gameboy Advance and Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for Gameboy DS.  When dying inside a dungeon in either game, the player loses ALL items and gold found when exploring.  If the player tries to turn off the game while inside the dungeon, it counts as a death and the player is brought back to the town with all items and currency gone.  That was annoying and stupid about Dokapon, but I really enjoyed the difficulty and challenge in Izuna to a point.  It got really difficult in the last dungeon and I only got to the boss twice and had to leave if I didn't want to die and lost my belongings.  I ended up giving up and continued to play my other games.  Maybe I'll go back to it someday.

Permadeath is a difficult aspect to add into a game that people are willing to play.  It's very discouraging when the player constantly has to start over each time something goes wrong, even when it's the player's poor decision that brought them to it.  On the other hand, it's that pressure and nerve wrecking chance of losing everything that causes players to make careful decisions, play smarter, and having the patience to progress through the game at a slow pace if needed rather than rushing in head-first and beating the game without breaking a sweat.  I haven't read any articles on permadeath, but I remember seeing some as a big debate on whether it makes a game fun, is it fair, and some issues it has with players.