Star Trek Online - "Boldly going where Everyone has gone before"

[stray]

I just liked the idea of blacks, whites, russians, and pointy eareds all getting along. Not sure why Roddenberry's involvement with the LAPD effects that.

[Ghambit]

Couple all this with Permadeath

Congratulations. Your game is an epic failure.

Here's a bit, fat, juicy fucking hint from the real world: Role-playing games and perma-death do not get along. They are two things that never, ever, go together.

People like their characters. They give them names. They play them for hours and hours. And they do not wish to reroll them because the baby cried at the wrong moment, and especially not because some jackass named "E3ltrt" or whatever decided to gank them while they were off taking a piss.

The type of game I'm talking about actually has little to do with the "RPG" genre.  It's more of an MMOsimulator set in a virtual galaxy, maintained by the players themselves.  Like I said before, it'd be more based on real-world skills and knowledge as well as your typical Trek-style puzzle solving...  rather than how many points you have in the body skill.  Matter of fact, I'd probably adopt a more BF2142 style or WW2O ranking system rather than having player stats.  Your skill in particular elements earns you the right to use certain equipment, post certain positions, etc.  Rather than just playing wack-a-mole so you can drive the Defiant.

Yes, it's hardcore... but it's a hardcore IP.  Star Trek itself was hardcore when it first showed up on TV; it took reruns for people to realize how kick-ass it was.  The game IMO should be no different.  If Star Trek TOS was just Flash Gordon reskinned, it would've failed.  The game should follow the same Roddenberry avant-garde style or no matter how much initial box sales it has, it will STILL fail. (this is where I agree with Schild)

As for Permadeath, if you adopt a skilless system it's not really an issue.  Aside from that, even WITH skills or even character dependent rankings, do you even REALIZE how hard it is to actually DIE in Star Trek?  I think I remember one Voyager episode where they're able to resuscitate someone who's been dead for 3 days.  Then there are episodes where their neural patterns are stored in a holodeck or x-porter buffer.  Escape pods.  Torpedo coffins.  The list goes on.  Fact is, in order to adequately give trek-style "moral objectives" in a gaming format, you HAVE to have a system of permadeath.  There has to be consequences or you'll just have anarchy and chaos and a game that sux WAY worse then one without pd.  I look at it as a way to maintain order, and in a Sandbox style game it really helps people flesh out a proper gamespace.

Look at EVE, technically... it's a Permadeath game.  You just have to have spent a certain amount of money to resurrect your character fully.  As for your ship (which are the true characters IMO) they're lost aside from insurance paybacks.  I'd probably put a similar "security zone" system in STO to institute some form of automatic protection; basically, if you kill someone you can expect to lose your own life as well (either by NPC or PC).

We can argue Permadeath systems all day if we wanted to.  They're not that cut and dry.  But for Trek to be Trek (especially in a game that focuses on sandbox and the spirit of exploration), there needs to be consequence.  Impending death or death itself also lends itself to great gameplay opportunities (rescues, wars, medical miracles, revenge, augmentation/alteration, ascension, escape, forced colonization, etc.).  Use your imagination.

[Venimor]

There is a lot of hate in that post.

No, just truth. Trek is a cursed license. I'm doing devs, fans, and investors a huge favor by pointing out why.

Or, they could continue doing things the way they have been, and seeing more perfectly good career people ending up unemployed and starving in abandoned church basements, and legions of fans whining perpetually (no pun intended) about why no one can make a decent Trek game.

[Venimor]

I just liked the idea of blacks, whites, russians, and pointy eareds all getting along. Not sure why Roddenberry's involvement with the LAPD effects that.

Because it doesn't. Roddenberry did some good things, and publicly embracing diversity in terms of casting choices was one of them. Bowing to diversity bought him a lot of credit back in the '60s.

But diversity isn't relevant to my point, which was about why Star Trek is a cursed license. Star Trek's strides in areas like diversity are among the reasons why most fans would like to see the license succeed.

[Morat20]

As for Permadeath, if you adopt a skilless system it's not really an issue.  Aside from that, even WITH skills or even character dependent rankings, do you even REALIZE how hard it is to actually DIE in Star Trek?  I think I remember one Voyager episode where they're able to resuscitate someone who's been dead for 3 days.  Then there are episodes where their neural patterns are stored in a holodeck or x-porter buffer.  Escape pods.  Torpedo coffins.  The list goes on.  Fact is, in order to adequately give trek-style "moral objectives" in a gaming format, you HAVE to have a system of permadeath.  There has to be consequences or you'll just have anarchy and chaos and a game that sux WAY worse then one without pd.  I look at it as a way to maintain order, and in a Sandbox style game it really helps people flesh out a proper gamespace.

Look at EVE, technically... it's a Permadeath game.  You just have to have spent a certain amount of money to resurrect your character fully.  As for your ship (which are the true characters IMO) they're lost aside from insurance paybacks.  I'd probably put a similar "security zone" system in STO to institute some form of automatic protection; basically, if you kill someone you can expect to lose your own life as well (either by NPC or PC).

We can argue Permadeath systems all day if we wanted to.  They're not that cut and dry.  But for Trek to be Trek (especially in a game that focuses on sandbox and the spirit of exploration), there needs to be consequence.  Impending death or death itself also lends itself to great gameplay opportunities (rescues, wars, medical miracles, revenge, augmentation/alteration, ascension, escape, forced colonization, etc.).  Use your imagination.

Okay, here's the thing -- if your character "dies" and then you "Get it back", it's not perma-death. Permadeath means "Reroll a new character". Anything other than that is NOT permadeath, you're now discussing "death penalties".

Guess what? People don't like those either.

[Draegan]

Ghambit,
That game you describe will make zero dollars.

[Ghambit]

Okay, here's the thing -- if your character "dies" and then you "Get it back", it's not perma-death. Permadeath means "Reroll a new character". Anything other than that is NOT permadeath, you're now discussing "death penalties".

Guess what? People don't like those either.

<sigh>  I never said you'd always get your character back (do I really have to spell out an entire game's design?).  I merely said there are plenty of opportunities to SURVIVE and/or get rescued.  If you're traveling in a heavy cruiser ala ST: TOS and you're getting owned by 3 klingon heavies, you dont just simply sit there and die (unless you're being heroic and sac. yourself for the "good of the many").  You either transport, man a shuttle, or hit the escape pods... or some other creative way to keep yourself alive.  Before all that, maybe you plead for your sorry life to the Klingons and get captured.   If you make it to a class M planet via pod, you have to survive there until rescued.  If someone flips out on the planet and shanks you in the heart 'cause he's hungry, yah.. you may die - but if adequate help arrives soon enough... you live.

As for penalties, they're not always BAD things.  They can be quite immersive and add gameplay value.  It's just the vast majority of MMO penalties are damned stupid.  Obviously, if you get shot in the leg and have a movement nerf until healed, that's good.  If you die and are resurrected via technology, obviously you cant jump straight into an ambo'jitsu tournament either.  Maybe your character will forever be cursed with an artificial heart (picard) and have a nerf to stamina.  Maybe your character carries a permanent scar.  And on and on.  Currently, most MMOs just give you some arbitrary textual nerf to all stats for like 5 mins; how is this a better system?

I'd much prefer a system that reacts to my gameplay and those around me, rather than the usual 20+ year old timed stat-nerf system.  And yes, this involves permadeath.

[Ghambit]

Ghambit,
That game you describe will make zero dollars.

Isnt that what "they" always say when products like this are introduced?  (both star wars and star trek are prime examples)
Point is to push the genre and let the market catch up.  Not the other way around.

[Draegan]

So you make moral choices and play choose your own adventure etc.  How are you interacting with other people?  How fast can you generate that type of content to make people stay over time?  What's the replay value of each situation?  What kind of dev cycles are you talking about?  What are you doing in your down time between scenarios?  What kind of farming/tradecrafting/grinding etc type things are you doing?  The type of stuff you do on your own at max level to keep you busy until your friends come on for your nightly romping?  Are you just chatting with that twit that spent the last decade of his life learning Klingon?

You should go make a single player game.  It'll work much better.

[Morat20]

<sigh>  I never said you'd always get your character back (do I really have to spell out an entire game's design?).  I merely said there are plenty of opportunities to SURVIVE and/or get rescued.  If you're traveling in a heavy cruiser ala ST: TOS and you're getting owned by 3 klingon heavies, you dont just simply sit there and die (unless you're being heroic and sac. yourself for the "good of the many").  You either transport, man a shuttle, or hit the escape pods... or some other creative way to keep yourself alive.  Before all that, maybe you plead for your sorry life to the Klingons and get captured.   If you make it to a class M planet via pod, you have to survive there until rescued.  If someone flips out on the planet and shanks you in the heart 'cause he's hungry, yah.. you may die - but if adequate help arrives soon enough... you live.

So, in short, you are advocating a system in which people CAN lose their entire character and be forced to reroll, using a mechanism OTHER than the player deliberately deleting their toon?

Epic fail.

No one will play it, no matter how much you like it.

As for penalties, they're not always BAD things.  They can be quite immersive and add gameplay value.  It's just the vast majority of MMO penalties are damned stupid.  Obviously, if you get shot in the leg and have a movement nerf until healed, that's good.  If you die and are resurrected via technology, obviously you cant jump straight into an ambo'jitsu tournament either.  Maybe your character will forever be cursed with an artificial heart (picard) and have a nerf to stamina.  Maybe your character carries a permanent scar.  And on and on.  Currently, most MMOs just give you some arbitrary textual nerf to all stats for like 5 mins; how is this a better system?

I'd much prefer a system that reacts to my gameplay and those around me, rather than the usual 20+ year old timed stat-nerf system.  And yes, this involves permadeath.

NO ONE WILL PLAY IT.

You don't seem to get this. Players DON'T LIKE PUNISHMENT. THEY DO NOT LIKE DOWNTIME. They want to play the game. They do NOT want to spend their time "working back" to where they were before, they do NOT want to be forced to reroll, they do NOT want to put up with stupid fucking cockblocks between them and "fun" for the sake of uber-realism.

Realism is fucking boring, which is why people play games.

[bhodi]

Seriously. Think about this for a second. Even EVE, the most hardcore of pvp games has no permadeath.

[Morat20]

Seriously. Think about this for a second. Even EVE, the most hardcore of pvp games has no permadeath.

Death in EVE is only as bad as you choose to make it. Don't like death penalties? Fly a cheap frig with no implants, and you can pew-pew-pew in 0.0 all damn day (assuming you have some buddies).

[geldonyetich2]

EvE is an interesting case in that it has proven that, despite the great number of things we could easily conceive could go wrong with an "open and deadly space" system, it can work and work well.  In many ways, EvE may end up being closer what Star Trek Online should be than the actual game turns out to be.

[eldaec]

Permadeath in Star Trek would be against the lore anyhow.

And also stupid of course.

[stray]

Permadeath in Star Trek would be against the lore anyhow.

This guy disagrees.

[geldonyetich2]

This guy too.

[Margalis]

Permadeath would force players to be so risk-averse that the game wouldn't be any fun. They'd be fighting level 1 rabbits at level 20.

[Venkman]

EvE is an interesting case in that it has proven that, despite the great number of things we could easily conceive could go wrong with an "open and deadly space" system, it can work and work well.  In many ways, EvE may end up being closer what Star Trek Online should be than the actual game turns out to be.

It doesn't prove anything until at least two other companies have similar success.

Star Trek permadeath = bad.
Star Trek niche title = bad.

Again, you don't bother playing with a big IP unless you (being both the IP holder and the developer) expect to do better than the competition you're emulating or ripping off. Ghambit's ideas are interesting for an indie game.

[geldonyetich2]

It [EvE's success as a harsh death open-ended space game] doesn't prove anything until at least two other companies have similar success.

I don't know about this logic.  It sort of strikes me as the same logic they used when spawing monsters in Jericho. 

"Once isn't enough, we're going to have to see it 3-5 more times before we believe the player can kill those mobs."

[Ghambit]

Permadeath would force players to be so risk-averse that the game wouldn't be any fun. They'd be fighting level 1 rabbits at level 20.

The question you have to ask yourself is, why fight rabbits in the first place?
If I'm hungry and will die w/o food, then I'll kill the fuzzy bastard.  If I farm them to serve in my 'frisco corner restaurant, ditto.  
With risk also comes reward.  When there is no risk, there is no real reward - only the illusion of one.

Sometimes I think people forget how "gaming" itself got started.  You'd put a quarter of your hard-earned money in a machine, you'd have 3 lives, and if you lost those lives... "GAME OVER"   Unless you put in another quarter, many times which would wipe out your high score anyways.

Nowadays, I think people are actually tired of the care-bear and are willing to swallow more hard-core games that dont have an Autosave every 3 seconds.  WTH kind of game is it that I merely have to devote some time into to "beat?"  Where's the challenge?  Where's the fun in that?

And as far as Trek is concerned, one of the main elements of the genre is risk-taking for the rewards of exploration and knowledge.  Of course, for some others it was just for another bar of latinum.  Either way, w/o loss there can be no gain.  Anyone remember that episode where the Q Continuum was falling apart due to boredom?  It's because everything was so easy for them.  Entropy was out of wack because they were having trouble understanding give and take.  

Lastly, if you were paying attention to my prior posts... I DID give the players an outlet to experience a "care-bearish" godmode, and that's via being "Q" themselves... or rather maintaining their own servers.  So there is an avenue there for them to ultimately avoid "mortal" permadeath (but there still will be inevitable consequences to their actions).

The whole point of this format is CHOICE.  Let the players have it and they've got no fingers to point except to themselves.

[Margalis]

The basic problem with permadeath is that if a game takes literally hundreds of hours to play through starting all over really really sucks. It's like a Contra game where you only get one life for the whole damn game which has a thousand levels.

You have to fundamentally change that dynamic and I don't think your suggestions do that nearly enough.

[Typhon]

You'd put a quarter of your hard-earned money in a machine, you'd have 3 lives, and if you lost those lives... "GAME OVER"   Unless you put in another quarter, many times which would wipe out your high score anyways.
[...]
The whole point of this format is CHOICE.  Let the players have it and they've got no fingers to point except to themselves.

Did you even stop to think about how arcades are essentially non-existent now due to people having choice?  When arcades were the only game in town, people paid to play.  Because there was no choice.  People ALWAYS choose the game that penalizes them for playing less.  c.f. WoW versus Vanguard.

[Akkori]

I wish to point out that perma-death, good or bad, only applies to characters that are involved IN COMBAT! Not every fucking game should involve forcing players to fight. I don't think permadeath is a good idea myself, but I *DO* believe in an unpleasant penalty for dying. I figure EVE has a pretty good one.

[Margalis]

The entire point of really old arcade games like Pac-Man was to play a very simple and repetitive game and see how long you would last.

You didn't have to grind for 100 hours in Pac-Man to see the end-game. If you played for literally 10 seconds you saw the entire game. It had ONE maze, 4 ghosts. That's it.

In a MMOPRG to see all the content you have to play for *days*, not seconds. In that context permanently dying and starting over makes no sense. People aren't going to choose to play a game where they play for hours, see only 1/100th of the content, then die and have to start over.

Who here would play Contra if you only got one life and no continues? Not as an optional super hard mode but as the only mode? Not many I'm guessing.

[Ghambit]

The entire point of really old arcade games like Pac-Man was to play a very simple and repetitive game and see how long you would last.

You didn't have to grind for 100 hours in Pac-Man to see the end-game. If you played for literally 10 seconds you saw the entire game. It had ONE maze, 4 ghosts. That's it.

In a MMOPRG to see all the content you have to play for *days*, not seconds. In that context permanently dying and starting over makes no sense. People aren't going to choose to play a game where they play for hours, see only 1/100th of the content, then die and have to start over.

Who here would play Contra if you only got one life and no continues? Not as an optional super hard mode but as the only mode? Not many I'm guessing.

Death doesnt mean you miss content. Actually, in many cases it's the other way around.  W/O death you could possibly miss content.  And as I said already like 3 times, we're not talking about a level grind system here.  This is more akin to some of the existing trek MUSH out there where there are no lvls, skills, etc.  So even if you were careless enough to die, you're not losing a whole lot.

What I'm trying to do here is connect the PLAYER more to the game, not the PLAYER CHARACTER.  Screw the characters, it's the man behind the curtain that matters.

This is some of the stuff that faults MMOs these days, they disconnect the player from the game and simply give them a toon with stats and a weak storyline.  The next-gen stuff we're seeing soon enough will have more to do with emotion, personal achievement, and creation... not just leet gear with cool stats.  The object is to play the game, not play the character that plays the game.  feel me?

Give the players the right tools under the right constraints with a sense of real consequence and let them write compelling storylines they can take part in.

[Ratman_tf]

Remember that episode where they brought Tasha Yar back?





Not that I'm advocating permadeath here. I agree that it's too much of a swing in the other direction of player concequences.

[Margalis]

That's not Tasha Yar, that's her daughter or whatever. Totally different!!!

Permadeath is a fine concept, but not to slot into a typical MMO. It is only going to fit into very specific designs.

[Ghambit]

Heck, if we add in temporal mechanics technically anyone has a built-in "do-over" switch if they die (or rather, their friends can opt for an earlier version of a server if they find a way to go back in time - asskissing a Q the most obvious).  Granted, they'd have to answer to the Temporal Police for violating the Temporal Prime Directive.  :)

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Anyways, whatever... I'm dreaming as usual.  This game will never come to light no matter how well designed it gets.  The only way I can foresee any model like this happen is by using the inherent free license built into Star Trek fiction and making the game non-profit and voluntary... which is why I mentioned player-ran shards.

p.s.
Tasha Yar DID get brought back to life... kinda.  It was that episode where a prior Enterprise needed to return to their own timeline to die gloriously in battle against the Romulans.  The altered timeline brought Tasha back to the Enterprise-D in a state a war; the Enterprise meets the older Enterprise (C I think it was) near a temporal rift.  To put the timeline back to normal they send the old Enterprise back to their own time WITH Tasha aboard and all is henceforth well in the future timeline. (w/o Tasha)  Problem is, Tasha didnt die and got captured by the Romulans to become some dudes concubine (I dont blame him).  That produced the evil offspring.   So you see?  If there was no Permadeath, none of that great drama coulda happened!  

[Venkman]

This and the last page really should be moved over to the Game Design forum, leaving this place to talk about what has been done and what is likely to occur. This would allow the ideas themselves to be decoupled from the license, evolve in its own way. The main reasons I think this:

• There is no perma-death in Star Trek lore. Yes, someone's gonna trot out an example or two, but not only are they arguable (Tasha Yar, Scottie, Troi), the big reset button in the sky allows them to ignore their own rule.
• No publisher has the stomach to do it. Nobody can point to an example of a major success that had it within the last X number of years (X defined by your particular market).
• Publishers have even less stomach to do it when it's tied to a major IP, because of the belief that <proven game system> + <IP> has to be better than <proven game system> alone. Otherwise, why incur the royalties and extra eyeballs?
• There's no real reason to do it. Cater to a very few super hardcore folks that really mostly want permadeath for other players? Nah. There's a reason PD was evolved out of the genre.
  
  

Good ideas are good ideas. But the above frames constraints that can't be ignored.

And the Yar sub-plot occured because in Trek, there is no Permadeath 

[WindupAtheist]

Look at EVE, technically... it's a Permadeath game.  You just have to have spent a certain amount of money to resurrect your character fully.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Nowadays, I think people are actually tired of the care-bear and are willing to swallow more hard-core games that dont have an Autosave every 3 seconds.

The last three years of the MMO genre just called.  They told me to tell you you're a fucking numbskull.

[geldonyetich2]

Am I the only one that thinks it's silly to look at key characters being perpetuated by ratings-desperate writers and declare, "It must mean that, in that universe, nobody dies!"   

No! Epic fail!

Nor do I really approve of a "Permadeath has never been done before in a big-name so it never will be done" standpoint.  Not applicable: Tere's a first time for everything... and this wouldn't be the first time.  (Early Star Wars Galaxies Jedi, anyone?)

Better to argue against permadeath from a purely game-design standpoint. 

Stating the obvious: If you want people to bond with their characters (and you do if you're trying to stick another hook in that can drag out $15/mo) you'll be shooting yourself in the foot to rip the character out of their hands.  You can do a voluntary perma-death system, a.l.a. Hardcore mode, but most people won't tolerate the fruits of their grind going kaput from a bad roll.

It's too bad.  In all honesty, this steadfast rejection is confirmation that we, as players, have become a bunch of whiny panzies who would rather prevent MMORPGs from having meaningful consequences than be inconvenienced in any way.  Permadeath?  Hell, these days we bitch about experience debt.

[Ratman_tf]

p.s.
Tasha Yar DID get brought back to life... kinda. 

The first pic was of alternate Tasha, before I got busted for bandwith theft. 

[Margalis]

He did say that he didn't want people to bond with their characters.

It could be done, but the system would have to be totally different from a standard MMO with permadeath added in. It's hard to evaluate without reading some sort of longer design writeup. I'm sure it would be possible to create an MMO with permadeath. Hell Resident Evil Online is close to that in some ways. But the key point is that you can't just take standard MMO conventions and clamp on permadeath.

[Venkman]

Am I the only one that thinks it's silly to look at key characters being perpetuated by ratings-desperate writers and declare, "It must mean that, in that universe, nobody dies!"  swamp poop

No! Epic fail!

Nor do I really approve of a "Permadeath has never been done before in a big-name so it never will be done" standpoint.

Not what I was saying at all. My point has been entirely about convincing publishers (and by extension, developers) that it's a worthwhile pursuit. I quoted both of your points because they're one in the same. Risk averse revenue seekers do not kill off cash cow characters and do not link indie ideas with games that need to be cash cows to justify the effort. The Star Wars lore is similar. They killed one main character from the movies, in something like 30 years of published fiction. And the other "big" death (Anakin Solo) was an invention of the extended universe most people don't know about.

And on the game side, the genre (heck, the industry) has evolved to make things more approachable and momentarily-fun and has only grown (size, scope, revenue) because of it. Ghambit seems to think there's a hole in the genre right now, a need for a more immersive experience for a harder-core player (because they often do go hand-in-hand). That's great, and maybe even right (and we really shouldn't use VG as a counterpoint because that was a trainwreck regardless of their moving target audience).

But it's not really something that should live or die on the 7th page of a thread about a game not likely to launch.

You don't want to stimey creative thinking with a contrived license. People who spend money on this stuff do not look at the games that have tried to have high concept with a huge IP as big successes.

[geldonyetich2]

Ah.  Nevermind the severity my last post, I think I was challenging Klingon.  Really, the whole thing has been a pet peeve of mine.  Right now, this exchange is going through my mind:

MMORPG player: This game is shallow, dude, WTF?

MMORPG developer: Well, you don't want any kind of death penalty because you hate being inconvenienced. We can't put in open-PvP because players will inconvenience themselves.  We can't allow the world to change in even slightly meaningful manners because changes worry and inconvenience our players.  To be honest, you really can't lose this game, as to do so would be considered a terminal inconvenience.  So, yeah, the game's going to be a bit shallow.

MMORPG player: ... Dude, shut up, I don't pay you $15/mo for back talk.  Now go make me some end-game content for your shallow-ass game.

MMORPG developer: ... Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say.