Guild Wars 2

So let’s say the death penalty is much, much higher. Not some silly “you loose X% exp.” like those other games which incentivize you doing nothing over and over. No. And not “pay some golds to waypoint” because that is weak and scares no one. No. What if … when you died you actually died for real?

Instant character deletion if not revived within 300s. Permanent. Hardcore.

Would you use toughness then?

To put it bluntly, I wouldn’t. Play, that is. I would have no interest in a game with such a harsh penalty. Especially not an MMO where everything is a long-term goal. Having months of work striped away in an instant would be horrendous.

I used my second account as a permadeath account and didn’t play any differently as normal. Which meant, for me, using toughness if it was on a piece of armour I used as a drop. Never got anyone to 80 so not sure what I’d change at that level. I’d probably group more if there was a 300 second limit.

i would have some tanky chars probably … chars where i dont risk losing progress

but im pretty sure i would still use mostly fully offesnive chars to push the limits and for the fun and the challenge

i would most likely test out new content on tanky chars carefully .. but once i know enemies and new animations and know what could kill me and what i have to avoid i will get my berserker chars in there because they are just more fun to play
more fun to play because:
when enemies lifebars melt quicker its satisfying to me (i feel powerfull >:D)
also the risk and challenge definitly makes it more exciting

if i just stood there while knowing that i can facetank 90% of content now because i run a tanky spec and i only have to dodge at the really heavy enemies then the game would get rather boring to me
so the only reason to use tanky geared characters would be really to not los 100% of my progress in case some of my zerker characters permanently dies and is deleted

If you compare it to Diablo 3 where you actually can chose to play a “Harcore” Character who is permanently dead if he dies once then it can definitly give you more excitement and fun in playing such a character …
but only if you still play pretty much the same builds as you do on a normal character
because if you play the hardcore character fully tanky… then there is no risk and no more excitement .. the whole point of actually playing a hardcore character is completely gone if you play 100% tanky then…
you would maybe take one emergency skill/trait to make use of when you are really about to die in order to rescue yourself but the rest of the build and your gear should stay the same as if death wouldnt have any significant impact

I wouldnt play, aint about dat life.

DGraves.3720:

Instant character deletion if not revived within 300s. Permanent. Hardcore.

Pfft. I’ve seen this question several times now, each poster labelling it as ‘hardcore’ while giving themselves an out like your “..if not revived within 300s”.

That’s not hardcore. This (channelling Mick Dundee) is hardcore: no escape clause and on death, your entire account is deleted. Ha! Would you play that hardcore?

Given the following:

• High damage attacks hidden behind the particle blur that obscures the creature. This means that in order to avoid the attack, I have to see it coming, which I find difficult. This also means that the learning curve in events featuring such creatures almost always involves downs and/or defeats.
• Uncertain respawn rates at random in various areas.
• An investment in direct damage stats nets me anywhere from 50% more damage up to 2×. A similar investment in Toughness nets me a greater amount percentage-wise of damage reduction, but since the larger hits still ablate significant amounts of health, it is still better to kill the mob 1.5 to 2x as fast while using avoidance mechanics to reduce/eliminate damage.
• While bunker builds (with both damage reduction and sustain) are the best way to survive other than just killing everything fast, it is nowhere near as much fun to plink away at mobs while regenerating health as it is to kill them faster.

if non-optional character death were a feature, I’d either:

• Play an extreme bunker build and never do anything too risky, or
• Uninstall

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

DGraves.3720:

Instant character deletion if not revived within 300s. Permanent. Hardcore.

Pfft. I’ve seen this question several times now, each poster labelling it as ‘hardcore’ while giving themselves an out like your “..if not revived within 300s”.

That’s not hardcore. This (channelling Mick Dundee) is hardcore: no escape clause and on death, your entire account is deleted. Ha! Would you play that hardcore?

I would. Then I could stop wasting time.

Character deletion? I wonder what kind of people ask themselves such questions. Are you making a habit of crossing streets with your eyes closed too? The line between thrill and masochism is fine.

PS: Like any sane person I would not play this.

DGraves.3720:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

DGraves.3720:

Instant character deletion if not revived within 300s. Permanent. Hardcore.

Pfft. I’ve seen this question several times now, each poster labelling it as ‘hardcore’ while giving themselves an out like your “..if not revived within 300s”.

That’s not hardcore. This (channelling Mick Dundee) is hardcore: no escape clause and on death, your entire account is deleted. Ha! Would you play that hardcore?

I would. Then I could stop wasting time.

Would you though? That’s an experiment we’ll probably never get an answer to.

I think a lot of people just wouldn’t play. Especially an online game. Get some lag or a server crash and you’re basically screwed.

I would still play.

I think permanent death can create a greater bond to your character so you’ll do everything in your power to prevent death. The immersion, the attachment, plus you’ll probably get better at the game.

I’d play as carefully as I do on EVE Online. There would be so much more forethought and planning in everything I do.

I’d stay in the Ossan bar at Divinity’s Reach, RPing!

With the current set up, I wouldn’t bother playing. There’s too many long term goals, losing all of the progress would be pointless frustration.

However, if the game was properly scaled to that level of difficulty (much easier access to gear and skins, appropriate loot for the risk involved and so on) I’d probably try it out. Could be fun. I’d just play tankier builds and range everything. Rangers would be king in permadeath GW2, lol.

I would dust off my soldier reaper.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

DGraves.3720:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

DGraves.3720:

Instant character deletion if not revived within 300s. Permanent. Hardcore.

Pfft. I’ve seen this question several times now, each poster labelling it as ‘hardcore’ while giving themselves an out like your “..if not revived within 300s”.

That’s not hardcore. This (channelling Mick Dundee) is hardcore: no escape clause and on death, your entire account is deleted. Ha! Would you play that hardcore?

I would. Then I could stop wasting time.

Would you though? That’s an experiment we’ll probably never get an answer to.

If Path of Exile counts then it’s already been done. Sadly.

I wouldn’t play…
Permadeath games aren’t very popular. They’re incredibly niche and there’s a reason that it’s not generally found in mainstream gaming…

With crash/bug/glitch/disconnection/ERROR 404 or whatever reason you can’t control, I will certainly just quit the game.

You haven’t played a game unless you’ve played it permadeath, no trading and dice rolls to decide all build decisions!

In my DDO guild we played it like this once a week and it was awesome fun. Your build was completely randomised, you could only use gear we found as a party(you were allowed to share loot within the party) and death for any reason except dc was permenant.

Probably the best fun I’ve had in an MMO, clearing a beginners dungeon you had speed run 100+ times became a major achievement.

If anyone wants to start a permadeath guild, then I’m in!

I wouldn’t play. I die way too often and I would quickly get sick and tired of “restarting” and then it would become not fun due to frustration. And since I would know that would happen from the beginning, I likely wouldn’t play.

Now if it was optional per character thing, I’d likely try it.

Roll a MM Reaper. Don’t do any jumping puzzles. Avoid any content where my death could be caused by people I couldn’t kick out of my group. Roll exotic gear.

And that’s about it. There isn’t much substance to this game. No cool items randomly acquired from loot that substantially change my ability to influence the game; any such items are purely cosmetic. Progression ends at 80 and the enjoyment was from doing the content (at least, it used to be).

If I die, so what? Biggest lost is the map exploration. I roll, another character, get to 80 in a couple of weeks and acquire all the same gear that then enables me to access and do all the same content.

Any cosmetic items of note, if you can call a cosmetic item that, are account bound.

Wvw would be dead, not dead like they claim, but dead, like wouldn’t exist.

And while on the subject, are we talking about death by enemies or some stupid death like falling off a ledge in the borderland?

Actually, no, any game that takes a toon you spent sometimes hours creating and upgrading then deletes it just because your run key had gunk on it and you hurled your body off a cliff and died. Or you decided hey, I’ll go roam in wvw and fresh out of spawn you get ganked by 5 thieves and lose your life, any game where you could lose everything you worked for just like that sounds like a pointless game.

One of those pointless questions unless you consider every facet of the game and the design of every fight. For starters every single instance of things like attacks failing to render would have to be fixed. Hard hitting attack without any telegraph? That needs fixing too. Oh and you better make kitten sure your game has an unbeatable leveling experience. Permanent death is not one of those things you are just toggle on and off for a game and go “what if…?”.

In theory I never would have paid any attention to the game but on the other hand I probably would have stuck with playing Realm of the Mad God(which has permanent death and in a way requires it dying at some point as well) some more if I found more people to play it with.

Toughness… Yeah well you see even with 2500 toughness and 2000 vitality you will still drop like a stone when focused by a 70 man zerg.

WvW alone would account for around ~250,000 new characters that has to be created per week. Assuming that creating a character and playing through the early tutorial take maybe 15 minutes, we would spend over 60,000 hours a week just creating new characters.

Not so sure that would be time well spent.

Edit: Whups I only counted EB. Make that more around 350,000 accounts that need to be created weekly and thousands more hours spent creating them.

DGraves.3720:

Would you use toughness then?

I already use toughness on my Necro. And laugh my butt off when I’m the only person alive at Tarir. XD

I would play a Mesmer and port jumping puzzles for 10g a port

Loading.4503:

I would play a Mesmer and port jumping puzzles for 10g a port

This.
And I’d revive the Queensdale-Farmtrain.^^
And I’d rage about dying because I’ve walked down some stairs. Or I’d avoid stairs like hell.

BTW: Why does it have to be character deletion? I really like the hardcore-mode in Path of Exile where you have 2 separate communities and economies. One for hardcore and one for normal. If your hardcore character dies it will be converted to a normal character. This still results in a hardcore community and economy where only characters roam that have never died and have items that were farmed in that environment. The only difference to character deletion: People who would normally play in normal mode are more likely to try hardcore because they don’t loose anything compared to starting their character directly in normal mode.

It’d be like Diablo 2 where anything but Vitality is considered a wasted status point. Even if we have Toughness and Vitality here and tmost attacks are bound to power or condition damage unlike in Diablo 2.

Mea.5491:

DGraves.3720:

Would you use toughness then?

I already use toughness on my Necro. And laugh my butt off when I’m the only person alive at Tarir. XD

You shouldn’t need toughness as a necro. Necro is already a sandbag that you can play full zerker or condi without problem. And you will certainly be always the only one alive, even without it.

I might do it on one character for the novelty value, I still have my survivor in GW1 who has gone all the way from Pre-searing to getting all 3 Protector titles and completing EOTM without dying. My next goal for her is ‘double survivor’; getting 2,675,000 XP (which I’m close to doing).

But I wouldn’t want an entire game like that. I spend most of my time in real life planning ahead, trying to predict consequences and make sure I’ve put enough precautions in place that nothing bad will happen (fortunately I only occasionally have to worry about anyone dying if I get it wrong).

In games I much prefer being able to just go anywhere and do anything and find out what happens as it’s happening.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

DGraves.3720:

Instant character deletion if not revived within 300s. Permanent. Hardcore.

Pfft. I’ve seen this question several times now, each poster labelling it as ‘hardcore’ while giving themselves an out like your “..if not revived within 300s”.

That’s not hardcore. This (channelling Mick Dundee) is hardcore: no escape clause and on death, your entire account is deleted. Ha! Would you play that hardcore?

Someone is working on it. It’s called Upsilon Circuit.

If you die you can never play again. You can still participate as part of the interactive audience but you can’t actually play at all. And apparently some people are genuinely excited to try.

Some familiar games already mentioned like Diablo 2/lod, Diablo3/Ros(that cheating a death abilities was bad idea)… or even a Path of Exile except if you did play POE in a hardcore is did move your character to a softcore side out from a certain league if you died. If remember right.
I would definely play HC mode and it would work in mmorpg as it does work in a aRPG games. (same thing grinding, gearing,choosing a skills a character progression).
This DC is a little complicated stuff in a HC also in a way that if it would be that a character logs out right away if dc happens. This would use also at advantage by doing it manually when ‘’things goes wrong’‘, or wanna make purpose deaths to a other players like it did happened in a diablo 3 (wich i doesnt call PK because its based on a lag and mobs in my mind it just ’’unsafe TP’’). a PK died after D2- lod in that game series when you required to do a killing by yourself. Just point it out.
So far what i have play it a GW2 i have not really ’’dc’’ from a game itself even once if remember at all. A Levelling is easy in this game anyway, and many stuff has changed from a ’’oldschool’’ games to ‘’accound bound’’ saved things like in a FPS games.
A Game style would perhaps even change a little bit because you cannot ‘’wow/gw zerk everything by knowing a friend will ress you up’’. Exceptations of playing style sure there would be but more adaptive (like in a mostly PVP aspects because a encounter is never a same).

I used to play Shaiya a couple of years ago. The game has several modes ranging from Normal to Ultimate, Ultimate being the one where if you die and aren’t resurrected within 3 minutes, your character is deleted.

I’ve had that happen a few times, and it was fun the first time, annoying the second, and every time after that just made me want to bash my head against the screen because a) that game’s economy was ( probably still is ) so far down the toilet you wouldn’t reach the bottom even with a submarine, thus starting over was…ugh, and b) lag/latency accounted for more than half of my deaths.

Now imagine that in GW2. Imagine having a legendary weapon, or something you worked really hard for, possibly for months, and then having that character deleted — not because you don’t know how the game works, bit off more than you can chew, or were zerged down…

But because of lag/latency. Imagine having a lvl 80 character with a legendary weapon and/or ascended gear, and then dying to a lvl 5 mob in core Tyria because your internet went wonky for 5 minutes.

I can’t really think of anything more frustrating.

So tl;dr: HELL NO.

It would be nice to have like a hardcore mode, where you can’t use the BTC, and you can’t send mail or receive mail, and you have to gather everything yourself, and craft all your gear and what not. When you die your character is locked, and you either delete it or keep it to remind you of your failures.

Imagine getting a legendary though, then shortly after you die. That would be pretty funny, as well as horrible and terrible and I would cry for days.

You can play hardcore in this game if you want to,soon as your character die you log out and delete it that way you can be sure you dont lose your character on some server DC and get your hardcore mode

Kyvrn.4209:

It would be nice to have like a hardcore mode, where you can’t use the BTC, and you can’t send mail or receive mail, and you have to gather everything yourself, and craft all your gear and what not. When you die your character is locked, and you either delete it or keep it to remind you of your failures.

Imagine getting a legendary though, then shortly after you die. That would be pretty funny, as well as horrible and terrible and I would cry for days.

Well locked mails and so on between a hc and softcore characters like in aRPG already have separated them.

In a last part like many others (dont mean you in this one) whine/cry about that, but that is a part of playing hardcore and keep you in a toes all of the time. No penalties and certain restrictions even or if a game experience/challange is a flat and not like its a little randomized is boring and it will easily makes a certain playerbase to quit a game.

That is true, but some people could cheat!

Killface.1896:

You can play hardcore in this game if you want to,soon as your character die you log out and delete it that way you can be sure you dont lose your character on some server DC and get your hardcore mode

Kind of yes, but imagine someone doing that a people eyes in a game wich doesnt offer that kind of a aspect or a people who doesnt even wanna ‘’understand it’’ that some people would like to play hardcore because of its ’’challenge’’ wich it does bring up.
I bet they will look at that is one crazy person and leave it out from a community

DGraves.3720:

Would you use toughness then?

No of course not, because when any of my characters die, they would die even if I had max toughness on them.

You can’t rely on toughness to survive. It’s an active game after all.

I just wouldn’t play.

GW2 was designed specifically to be lenient in death, so it can make death and dying all the more common. If you want a permadeath game, you have to build it from the ground up.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I just wouldn’t play.

GW2 was designed specifically to be lenient in death, so it can make death and dying all the more common. If you want a permadeath game, you have to build it from the ground up.

I believe enviroments works just fine it just that most of a people anyway focus in a mmorpg in a part wich is -RPG (character progression wich is excatly a same then in a aRPG what you are doing). A playing style would change of course to more adaptive and rushing will kill you for sure. Unless you play in very organized group.

I would not play. Most of my deaths have nothing to do with the game really but with real life. Being called away likely not long enough to log out but enough to possibly return to an online corpse is not uncommon for me. If the game punishes me for having to choose giving my 14 month old the attention when he wants/needs and having a character basically deleted due to it, the game is a no go for me. If it is there as option for people to flag a character as perma death on defeat, I would have no problem. Choice is good. If a game forces it on me I will say goodbye and never look back.

Playing a toon in hard mode in Shaiya(just another mmorpg) meant exactly character deletion in 300s if nobody revived you. And it worked out just fine

I wouldn’t because:
This game is far too bugged/poorly designed for permadeath.
And it’s over the internet which is never 100% reliable and for permadeath 99.9% just isn’t enough.
Guild Wars (the first one) was far better suited for permadeath-style stuff, and survivor was bad enough already.

However, if I somehow would have a reason to play a gw2 permadeath game I would:
Not play PvP or WvW; unless these would be excepted from permadeath, in which case I would play WvW almost exclusively.
Only use armor with toughness main stat, either vitality or healing power and maybe one offensive stat (condition damage or power, depending on build).
Never do anything without being in a fairly large group of players (5-10+ I’d guess).
Primarily play in lower level maps.
Avoid anything marked as a [Group Event], they tend to scale very unpredictably and would by design negate the benefit of the group.

Not play? I have over 43k deaths on my main character.

I already use toughness on most of my toons. The scenario you envisage wouldnt be one Id play.

However, talking as a hypothetical situation

- id stack defences even further. Possibly even heals. Reflects and shields of all types would be high priority. I use them now out of fun, id use them here for essentialness

- id go nowhere dangerous on my own. It would at least encourage strong team bonds

Not hardcore enough.

Dead character = dead …you get the idea.

I like to play a relaxed game, so with perma death I would not play at all.

LordSaa.8357:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I just wouldn’t play.

GW2 was designed specifically to be lenient in death, so it can make death and dying all the more common. If you want a permadeath game, you have to build it from the ground up.

I believe enviroments works just fine it just that most of a people anyway focus in a mmorpg in a part wich is -RPG (character progression wich is excatly a same then in a aRPG what you are doing). A playing style would change of course to more adaptive and rushing will kill you for sure. Unless you play in very organized group.

You’d have to extend that list a bit. You’d get killed unless
A) You play in a very organized group
B) You never do a jumping puzzle, since failure in those leads to instant death
C) You never do fractals, because they’re loaded full of instant death mechanics and can require literally hundreds of hours to get the necessary gear.
D) You never do raids, for the same reason as fractals.
E) You never do an overworld event with too many people, as the bosses would scale up and cause instant death even in with full tank gear opponents.
F) You never go in to heart of thorns, as the place is also full of near instant death mechanics.
G) You never walk into a WvW zone. Oh, I shutter to think what would happen in a WvW area with permanent death.
I) You only play on a high end computer capable of processing the game no matter what the circumstances create.
J) You only play with a reliable high speed internet connection, as a d/c can result in death.
K)You only play a select group of specific builds on the most durable of classes.

The fact is that if you make a game that requires dozens of hours to build a character, that game can’t also have PVE mechanics that one-shot said character even when fully geared and properly built. For comparison, lets take a popular perma-death game: The Binding of Isaac. BoI is a game that is tough as nails and has RPG elements, along with a randomly generated (I.E. not necessarily “fair”) map layout. The reason why it is BoI can get away with, and is actually enhanced by, the perma-death mechanic is the fact that the game only takes an hour and a half to complete. At any point, when you start, you are only an hour or so away from your goal, so failure does not sting. It enhances the stakes, and it gives meaning: the 1.5 hours is an accomplishment only because if you die at any time in that timeframe, you have to start over.

You can’t just go to any game and say “permadeath, now its cool.”. Anything resembling perma-death in GW2 would actually be immensely harmful, because anyone who didn’t get turned off by the prospect of having 100 hours literally vanish into thin air will only play the must dumbed down content and neutered and boring builds to survive.

There are games out there already that have this feature you are free to go and play them. Wizardry online is one of them.

Here in this game it would just not work. 1 it goes against the very nature of this game with its “care bear” attitude and environment. And 2 if something like this were to happen Anet would have to rework the entire game and take out a lot of the cheesy things that they have in place.

Just imagine jumping puzzles alone. People would ignore them altogether. Your toughness here wont save you at all from a bad jump due to bad timing, lag, high ping or anything else that occurs.

What about game disconnects? A lot of people are having problems now with DC issues, Just imagine the rage if all of their work was tossed away because of a DC issue.

What about the learn from your failure systems the game has in place? Again Jump puzzles can be an example and so too could be vistas, Poi’s to a simple extent. Then you can take this to the next level with even just basic exploring of the HOT maps. “Oh you wanted to glide over there just to see what’s there or try to get that mastery point? Too bad, you ran out of energy or you could not reach anywhere safe in time and you hit the bottom floor – GAME OVER – GET GOOD”.

This would make the game like studying for a test. People would be watching videos or viewing guides to do everything perfect just not to die. There goes the fun out of the game. Do your homework children or you wont get anywhere without it lol.

I main an engi and have always played in PVT and probably have more survivability than most. Let me tell you that does not save you from a lot of the cheesy mechanics that this game throws at you. 1-2 hits from certain bosses etc. Toughness only delays your death, it does not make you invincible. But if you play it right you can survive and win pretty much 99% of the time. That other 1%? well like I said, you get a bad day and have a high ping or a spike, dc and those cheese factors and you can still fail.

Having said all that then there is PvP. Lets be honest here, no matter how many people they throw at it and how many hours/resources they put into it. It will never be 100% balanced. People will always find some way to get that extra edge over other players. So there you go again, another thing you would wont to avoid if such a mechanic was in this game. Besides even if they DID get it right one day and had 100% perfect balance. You can still get a bad day from pvp by the nature of it. Team compositions comes to mind, bad team members. Even if they had a duel or 1 vs 1 system going on there will still be those cases where you will lose due to no fault of your own. Think Rock, Paper, scissors. Some classe/builds are just beter than others at taking down others. So that would bring slight RNG into it as well.

Another example I could give here are those card games that people play. Have you ever played for example Magic the Gathering or any such similar? You could be the best player in the world but due to how the game plays you can still fail. As a lot of it comes from what cards you are given at the start and as the game goes on. Also again, some decks are just better at taking out others, its that rock, paper, scissor thing again lol. You can see this in pvp to a degree, I do all the time although I probably can’t think of any examples off the top of my head right now.

Summary: What we would see basically is low lvl players running around everywhere because they like to play for fun and will die due to taking the risks. No high lvls? They would exist but more than likely from levelling in safe zones or from crafting. You will probably only see them standing around in cities showing off their high level or again in low lvl/safe areas earning some coin the best they can.

Yeah, that would be a fun game to see and play! :P