If you were to make a PermaDeath game, how would you try to design it?

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1

Despite lacking the coding knowledge needed to make it work my brain has just been throwing ideas around in my head since yesterday, so i gotta

First things first would be a pvp toggle that is off by default so the newbies can’t just get hunted off rip (they actually get to stick around for slightly longer)
I also prob wouldn’t bother with hunger or thirst mechanics (it just becomes a tedious annoyance to constantly manage)

I’d also want to add some sort of “tracking” abilities (find those runners who jumped you just to run away)

May also add a surrender mechanic, basically allowing others to loot you in exchange for keeping your leveled character alive (only available if you are participating in pvp)
May also add like a 10-30 second window where an ally could revive you when you would have otherwise been killed

Races (could also just go with having non of them)

Instead of being rng dependent you can just choose whatever “common” one you want (better ones would require specific tasks to be completed which may then get selected in future lives)

I’d also try to have them all be varied instead of having 1 different passive compared to another

  1. Possibly a speed based build but either increased stamina usage or just a lower stamina capacity in exchange for being faster, would be designed with mobility in mind and not wanting to get hit in the first place (for the folks who hate parry based games like me, you can just dodge) may also have weakened tracking abilities since it would be harder for slower builds to actually run away in the first place, so tracking would be the least needed

  2. Something more heavy but slower, would prob have a slight health increase and have buffs for blocking (not parrying) and prob have increased stamina capacity for the slower movement. something made for actually taking the hits, could be more difficult to stagger/stun (if i even add those other mechanics cause i don’t like hit stun much at all) Would also have enhanced tracking abilities due to the slower movement

  3. basic, just the middle ground default stats without an extra penalty or buff

Rambled abt post life/permanent progression

There would also of course 100% be permanent upgrades that can be obtained after your first death, both as ways to preserve some progress from previous lives and to add things you never had in the first place in order to give an actual sense of progression even when a life is lost
(and also as mentioned earlier with the lack of rng dependance, you don’t gotta pray to get the same character type you liked when making a new character, making it feel less punishing if you died as smth ‘rare’ since you could just choose it again without needing to have good luck)

May also add smth like dojo’s or training grounds where fighting can be done without the risk of death, like a friendly spar for people who may still want pvp but not risk their character.

Think I’m done rambling for now-

2

Probably have it be a roguelike/roguelite, since having random elements would help with the otherwise monotonous grind to get back to where you were at. Its also the type of permadeath game i play the most.

Id also have it off of roblox preferably steam since it doesnt take all my money and provides some tools helpful for multiplayer.

I dont think most permadeath games on roblox really do the permadeath well. Its pretty hard to do that with multiplayer games that have pvp after all, so optional multiplayer seems the best (or something like the invader system from dark souls)

id probably have the punishment for death to be not too many hours of progress, since that usually result in better experience ( games like casualties: unknown or cditdz are good examples of this).

The usual problem is that its tacked on instead of having the game be built around it so you have to keep that in mind while making everything

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3

Yeah that’s one of the big problems, it just becomes a time sink with no sense of actual progression towards making future runs/characters easier/stronger

If you want permadeath to be in the game, it needs to be planned from the first step or it just doesn’t fully work, and by having it actually be at the start of development instead of being stuck on at the end would allow yourself to actually get a feel from it and possible tester feedback on where you are currently falling short.

4

I’m gonna put this gently: if you find yourself implementing means to avoid a central mechanic most players would consider undesirable, you should instead be putting thought into if said central mechanic befits the game at all.

Permadeath should be an intended part of the gameplay loop. Not something the player is trying to put off for as long as possible because it sucks to deal with. It also really doesn’t work at all in games with any amount of PVP, in my opinion.

Maybe a cooperative permadeath game could be interesting? Then you’d be a lot more justified in having the “other players can save you” mechanics.

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5

I wouldn’t make stuff focused on the pvp aspect, i’d put more focus on the pve aspect

and since pvp is hidden behind a toggle or duels/sparring, it would be entirely your choice if you went to enable it in the open world and go for that high risk/reward game play.

Most of where pvp is encouraged would be in safe zones, and prob some healer/medic npc on the sidelines watching the sparing

i do understand not wanting pvp in permadeath though, hence why it is hidden behind a toggle and (mostly) encouraged in safe environments as practice

since pve is the main focus, i’d say “ideally” teams would be at sizes of 3+ (atleast 1 person to distract enemy while other revives downed teammate)

6

it’s not great if dying sucks. yeah. but the problem is that this part of permadeath is buried very deep within the design of roblox permadeath mmorpgs and makes them very addictive because it adds stakes to each encounter that simply no other game has – if you fuck this up, you lose your whole character, they literally die.

maybe not to you, or not to us, or not to anyone who isn’t hyper-competitive or an adrenaline-junkie, but for the super hardcore audience it does. those stakes mentioned earlier mean that the consequences for losing and the reward for winning is so much higher than in any other games. the atmosphere it adds, that this world is dangerous and you can’t trust anyone you meet, is also apt for the tone of a game like idk deepwoken, where everything sucks and the world is a fuck. additionally, because of the permadeath pvp aspect, any positive relationships you have feel way more valuable, because of the inherent trust involved within it.

so what am i actually saying in this post? permadeath games aren’t popular by accident. permadeath games are popular because they specifically maximize the amount of stress and stakes that each encounter has, so they feel more visceral. you need to keep that in mind when designing your game, because that’s why people play permadeath games. hence, death shouldn’t be too punishing, you should be able to come back faster than you did before, and the game should be designed with the idea in mind that players will be doing it over and over again, but you can’t want to die, and the player needs to really dread death.

and while pvp was probably thrown into rogue/deep as an afterthought by rag to make himself feel more evil, it serves a critical role in determining the atmosphere of these games and how your roblox permadeath mmo deals with pvp should play a factor into the tone of your world and how you want players to interact with each other.

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7

Very simple: Your goal is to reach an ending rather than survive as long as possible.
That way, you are intending to go back to having nothing again when you succeed. That way, balancing can be done more around the experience of starting again. It would also mean that deaths are simply failing your goal and having to try again rather than undoing all your progress for no real reason other than a very fragile attempt to make you play for longer.

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8

I’d add a ton of p2w, battlepass, gamepasses and dev spces. After that I’d design enemies to be as inconvinient as possible when if tinally comes to fight.

Can’t forget about no refunds policy :moai:

9

Okay, but seriously, if I were to make one, it would probably be like Abyss World, but more cooperative, and with combat more than parkour.

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10

There was an undertale game I liked where everyone was placed into an arena and the first person to get to level 20 (pacifist or genocide) wins and everything was reset back to square one. It had weapons, souls, and all that cool stuff.

Mechanics

I’d do something like that but with expanded with more core gameplay mechanics, rogulite elements, and a fighting game. It’d probably end up like a Fighting game version Crypt of The Necromancer or something.

The PvE mode can be those undertale boss rush games (Or straight up an RPG). If you’re attached to your build for some reason then you can just make it in singleplayer and keep it. I’d also put a freeplay option if you just wanna PvP with no strings attached.

Also a dark RP roleplay mode with optional pvp because every undertale game needs RP’ing

Or another one can just be vampire survivors. (Easy or hard AI because I’m not a big fan of making things easy, so it’ll be like those old stick figure animations where you have to fight like 50 guys)

Races

There will be lightner and darkner races as the main race. Humans and all types of Monsters are subcategories within lightner races. And There’s the highly customizable darkners then plants I guess. Then there’s whatever the fuck the roaring knight, the goners, or the titan spawns are.

Fighting Mechanics

It’s like Virtua Fighter or Black Magic in the sense that it replicates traditional fighting game mechanics

AND THERE WILL BE NO PVP TOGGLE

Too lazy to write down specifics, but you can do a domain expansion type thing and force your opponent into a box with your soul’s specific soul mode. Then you just force them to play UTDR and hope they’re trash at the game while you barrage them with shit.

Roguelike mechanics

When the game starts there will be modifiers put on the map that indicates which AU you spawn in. Spawning in the regular AU is normal mode for example. The AU you spawn in also affects the appearance of your character, so spawning in Underfell would make the game more violence focused but also make your character look red and edgy. That’s all I came up with but I could think of other shit as well.

After that you just start finding weapons and start murdering (Or Sparing for a different type of win) for exp. That you will put into stats and skills.

When you die you go down some levels depending on your current level so it’s kind of like a race to the top

Whoever wins gets the pacifist, genocide, or neutral ending.

Repeat

You can have 3 build slots for if you wanna do the same build and have the system auto allocate your moves to.

Character Customization

This is what you spend your currency on when you win I guess.

You get to make your custom UTDR OC!!!1!1!

You get to choose their soul and appearance

Their appearance will affect their abilities and build (Being a boss monster gives you fire magic, Being a deer gives you ice, Humans have no magic, plants have the omega attacks, and so on).

I’d like to include elemental pairs for darkners into this but I don’t feel like writing a bunch of shit.

Imagine the build variance :skull: like being a boss monster and having the option between like 5 fire builds and various other sub builds :sob:

Future Content

When I need future content I can just pull whatever shit that I want from long established Canon/Fanon EZ.

Also secret boss and shadow crystal items to buff you for a price…!!!

This would be quite a fun project to do but luckily I’m not a roblox dev :face_vomiting:

Then again forcing a roblox player to learn frame data and builds will make them throw a fit.

I already know this game’s fanbase would be cancer.

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11

Deepwoken except pvp doesnt take lives away from your character

I will take my game design award next tuesday thank you thank you

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12

“”“Permadeath”“” but you can gain extra lives and I throw them at you for free every chance I get because the average roblox dev isn’t smart enough to know how to design a game around it in a way that doesn’t feel utterly fucking miserable and I’m not about to pretend I’m any better

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13

permadeath is another way to say “realism” or “lore-accurate” stuff
on other side the thing as i see it: its more of a way to use rogue-like aspect of permadeath

instead of leaving you to very beginning after dying, you instead given boosts that will not only make your progression faster where you ended, but also get you further than you originally could
while also basically letting you to restart your build and make a better one

which means permadeath has no reason to exist if players are not willing to interact with it
however there’s a need to note that just letting players die and die while doing little to no progress is a bad thing since they just grinding… lets say “legacy points”
(“legacy points” can stand for “echo” or uh, whatever currency is permament and can be used for perm upgrades)

more about the ''legacy points''

just linearly giving “legacy points” is a bad thing due to players not discovering further locations and stronger monsters without thinking of getting stronger without “legacy points”
and way to encourage players to focus on game without perm. dying is by making this:

“legacy points” are gained as normaly: by achiving certain stuff in character’s life
however most “legacy point” purchases tend to get more and more expensive alongside being locked out
here comes an “legacy experience” and “legacy level” part: everytime you level up “legacy level” you get bunch of “legacy points” respectful to its level, however “legacy level” requires “legacy exp” which grows in requirement more and more "legacy level"s you have
and you get “legacy exp” through simply playing the game and going into more fit for the character’s level locations, so getting to some dangerous area and farming here can get you quite an amount of “legacy exp”, while also doing difficult quest and defeating bosses can also reward you with “legacy exp” alongside “legacy points”
And as you can expect, having certain “legacy level” unlocks some upgrades for purchase in “legacy point shop” or smth

and as bonus, talent/skill or whatever quest reward with perm. toggleable upgrade to “legacy point shop”

one more thing is that permadeath games often tend to add “races” that have various upsides and slight downsides (or none at all), which is quite a problem in balancing if they have more than just slight rearrangement in stats

more about ''races''

so first things of all: does “races” feature needs to cost Robux?
this is quite a question due to the fact that its quite unfair to lock certain races behind RNG, as games like deepwoken also make races have different chances of being obtained from a roll
and that is a problem: you can’t reroll your race without either paying in Robux or without doing an achivement that only gives you a single reroll
of course, certain games give you reroll much easier but it doesnt change the fact you have to go through hell or go through a youtube video just to get one reroll.
And yet they are all the same, you can reroll, if you don’t like the race you got you can revert to one you had or reroll again
and tbh, that sucks

SOOOOO, here’s my idea
instead of just giving an reroll
its an one-time purchase
what i mean by that is that you can choose any unlocked race for a character
and to make things better, you can unlock these races globally through files
so if you bought another character file, if it has different race: you unlock it
alongside that, there could be some kind of item that has couple of requirements that if met can give you an race unlock!

its beautiful
no need to have 10 character slots just to have all different races on each one..!
as one slot can have either that or other race, just what you want is here for you all you want!
… all i am saying is that its useful for drip making fashions and stuff

one thing people are quite uncomfortable with permadeath games is Pvp
and reason is simple: TRYHARDS and TROLLS
one is just impossible to fight against as they are basically one-man-army (aka. neckbeards)
and other one might just use a build that is impossible to fight against due to exploiting an loophole in balancing that can just stunlock you or attack you from a distance with high damage without any risk

more about ''pvp''

simpliest solution is to bring in the “pvp toggle” which would let pve or casual players to enjoy the game without encountering unwanted kind of players
yet it still can leave stuff like “summoned monsters” or “redirected monsters” or even “teleported monsters” that can ruin someone’s experience, which can be easily dealt with by making tags on where, who and when monster can attack, you can call this an safety net, but its completely different discussion
so about unfair pvp
another way to deal with it is to make it so live wont be wasted upon dying to a player, or dying because of a player
which means that if your death was caused or lead by a player, your live wont be wasted ALONGSIDE your items

… for pvp focused individuals, i have also a solution for you guys but its in another summary, just below this one

im quite surprised that people dont tend to look towards “optional difficulties”, of course it takes time to make one especially when you didnt even make the game that accounts different difficulty, but it can be done through some or many instances and stuff

more about ''difficulty setting''

before creating a character and starting playing, you are given a choice for difficulty you’ll face

Easy - everything costs less, monsters have less abilities and are weaker, less danger overall, faster exp gain, however “legacy” gain is highly decreased, you have unlimited lives, and you can choose to go to the “hell/depths” or “stay in the overworld”, wiping build can only be done through menu, Achivements are unavailable, this mode is intended to be uses as exploration and scouting, however due to monsters having less abilities it will be less effective way to learn certain monsters’ attack patterns
“For easy-go experience”

Normal - default, default “legacy” gain, and Achivements are available for obtainment, you have 2 main lives and 2 afterlife lives, 2 for “overworld” and other 2 for “hell/depths”, however you get 1 more for each “hell/depths layer” that is available for you however you will have to go there once you reach that live
“Default and intended”

and finally

Hard - everything is expensive, monsters have uniquer behaivor and can have more abilities, more danger overall, “legacy” gain is increased, you have 2 lives for “overworld” and 1 for “hell/depths”, you only get 1 more for any available another “hell/depths layer” and you go to lowest one upon reaching that live, PVP is permanently enabled alongside it you will no longer be saved from death if it was caused by a player, so you die if you are killed by player, PVP progression is available so you can sometimes get both normal exp and “legacy exp” from Pvp under certain circumstances
“For hardcore lovers”

another thing i want to mention is replayability… well, its simple really
just add couple of quests here and there, make a map, make different maps
maybe make couple of layers of “hell/depths” (however its boring)
and make bosses all over the map, that can be accessed through the dungeons or encountered while having a quest/or under certain requirements (like holding an item on the field at night or on the full moon being at top of the cliff after sacrificing your best friend to the blood god, and etc. etc. etc.)
i mean, just try some games and be inspired idk

maybe something that i said can be done better, or done in a way that monetization can still work, im not gonna do analysis and calculations
im bored

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14

Smth else i might add would be like “first time bonuses”
like the first time you accomplish something major (like reaching a high/max level of any race, or beating a boss you never got to beat before)

You would still be able to get the points by repeating those actions on future runs, but it would be less earned than the first time. It would encourage exploring into areas you may have not gone down previously in order to hunt down unique foes instead of just trying to fight what is familiar and you know real well

the rng & robux cost just for another attempt is what i hate most about it, and as i first said way up at the top, you just get to select any common race you want when you play for the first time

I intend for the other “uncommon+” races to have access granted after completing either difficult quests or boss fights which then may be selected when making a new character

Monetization would prob still exist though, for if someone wanted to swap out the race of that file, same way you said pretty much pay up and they can switch to any race they have previously unlocked on their existing file

Summoned monsters would prob just count the same as a player with the toggle being the same as whoever created them

redirected or teleported monsters would be more tricky though, but they should only appear in specific areas, and there prob would be smth that would prevent monsters from just being teleported if they monster doesn’t have that ability of it’s own. Redirected monsters would prob get a limit for how far they can go (and prob have smth to give them like, super armour or regeneration if ppl are trying to abuse the edge of their travel distance, might be tough to figure out though)

1 problem, unless they are single player or only teamed with similar skilled players, there would need to be like 3 different versions of the world (monsters having different ai’s/attacks but easy difficulty player and hard difficulty player are on the same team, having both more but less abilities sorta wouldn’t work out)
and while i could just have it be like a damage multiplier on taking damage from monsters depending on difficulty, that’s just lame and a boring take on difficulty, things like that would be more served up like a character modifier

Though, it might be possible to make bosses have those difficulties instead of the random grunt monsters across the world, before fighting a boss a team could vote for what difficulty they want to fight which would add/remove the additional abilities

15

you will not be because this removes all of the things that pvp adds to deepwoken (the level of trust you have to place in other players knowing your life is in their hands and the meaning of the connections you make with that in mind) and turns it into an inconvenience that takes away your important items and notes sometimes

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16

i wouldnt

17

Why would i want a game where i have to trust random 13 year olds with my save file

18

Full loot PVP games like Albion Online or Eve Online are just objectively more fun than permadeath PVP games like Deepwoken.

You have ways to mitigate risk, and can shift between playing casually and risking weeks of progress depending on what you’re comfortable with.

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19

Depends