Would Imperian work with some form of perma-death after it goes free?

Zoroaster

I haven't checked in on Impy in years now myself but I read on reddit that it was going 100% free.  If there's a forum thread on this then I missed it.  Even after it goes free, I wonder how the possibility of thousands of credits characters vs. newbie characters would work out, just saying that I personally wouldn't play that, but with some basic tweaks I suspect that Imperian might be a fun game with some form of permanent or highly consequential death.  Even the heydays of IRE where dying could cost you 40% or more of a level were better IMHO than what the IRE games became over time.  Anyone agree?

Assiminik

This change already provoked hours and hours of complaining that IRE was stealing away people's "investments" (as if it was ever a good idea in the first place to consider credit purchases or artifacts as "investments"). I can't see how permadeath or permanent, significant consequences could ever be a good thing. It could only increase the likelihood that people would isolate themselves and not get involved in any conflict.

Jeremy Saunders

At one point in the past I was trying to think up a way to have a "hardcore" type character in Imperian that would suffer from permadeath. I never really came up with a fun way to do it though.

Aysari

Knowing how scummy and generally asshole-ish people can be in these kinds of games, I'm gonna have to say "No thanks" to things like that. You also never lost 40% unless you were like level 50. In which case you got it back in like 5 minutes.

Wyll

Assiminik said:

This change already provoked hours and hours of complaining that IRE was stealing away people's "investments" (as if it was ever a good idea in the first place to consider credit purchases or artifacts as "investments"). I can't see how permadeath or permanent, significant consequences could ever be a good thing. It could only increase the likelihood that people would isolate themselves and not get involved in any conflict.

I think you're intelligent enough to know no one used the word 'investment' when talking about 'investment' here in Imperian in a traditional sense. No one bought 100 credits one day thinking it'd be worth 105 the next year. To think anyone truly believes that is ridiculous. It's almost like some of you are being intentionally obtuse when it comes to that word.

Now, to OP's original question. That's going to be a hard no, because yes, people would avoid conflict at all costs if the consequence of death was heavy or permanent. You're also forgetting that people who have invested their money and time here will not be fans of that because you can't make that change now after a decade of no perma death. People who have spent 10 RL years investing in their character to this point are going to be pissed that it can be erased with one asshole character messing with them or they accidentally D/Ced while in DP and get beat to death because 3 direwolves walked into the room.

Swale

Basically, Wyll.  I don't know why a fair amount of people like this end up concentrated on IRE servers, but they definitely do, and it can be more than a little crazymaking (and also, unfortunately, useful to admin when they take what I think would be really clearly anti-customer positions most anywhere else).  But again, believe it or not, we have less of them here, and more people who rightly view this differently than "yeah, it was a good game for awhile, I even spent a couple hundred bucks on it, oh wells" - because a lot of us spent so, so much more than that, and in not-crazy-world that generally comes with a very different set of expectations!    

Really, the best thing to do to help people going forward is probably going to be something like "reddit" + "Starmourn".  And I wouldn't even tell people "lol, don't buy creditsssss, IRE is teh bads" (although honestly, they certainly can be, and we've just experienced that).  The people who really need to know what we've learned the hard (and expensive) way, are the people like us, from other IRE or totally new to whole thing.  The people who might buy THOUSANDS upon thousands of credits.  They need to know that IRE views them as sort of "casuals" and doesn't really take the relationship that a normal person would expect between customer and company at that level of "investment" seriously.  So they might want to adjust their level of "investment" to something that makes more sense.  Starmourn is probably worth spending money on for the average guy who thinks it looks interesting.  He just needs to have all of the data points if he's considering spending the kind of money that IRE whales spend.  And if the game becomes unfun because he can't compete with whales, oh wells!  Time to move on!

As for the OP, I actually have a question.  Beyond saying "I like having serious 'consequences' for death in a game", what does that really mean?  What actually goes through people's heads when they say they yearn for stuff like this?  Because OP isn't alone, I just have never, ever understood people like OP (much like I don't understand some people who don't get why other people are angry that the only way out of Imperian, a game that is dead on the table, is to forfeit half of a ludicrously expensive "investment").  

Mereis

What I don't understand is why you insist that you and others have "stuck with Imperian hoping it would get better", but when a huge change is planned that actually has a shot at making Imperian better, your most ardent point is "make it easier for us to jump ship".

Swale

That ship has sailed.  No offense, but if you don't realize that at this point, there is nothing anyone can say to you.  That is part of our frustration, too.  I mean, you are actually talking to the diehards right now, who stuck around, and honestly probably even kept -buying- well past when that made any sense.  And the diehards are saying "it's done, it's been done, at least don't trap us in this dead game by saying 'but you can still log on and your text stuff still exists'"!  Or actually, we WERE saying that.  Now we're just saying "yeah, so that happened".  

EDIT:  in what world are these "changes" a sign of Imperian coming back in force, beyond some sort of temporary curiosity, if we're lucky?  Getting rid of your last paid staff?  Going "free" but keeping all of the old whales around with 30-40K escrows (unless they leave and take the hit) and saying "you can still use them"?  If the game did start to do well somehow, those whales now HAVE to be addressed.  Have to.  And really, the only way to "address them" at that point is to make their purchases mostly meaningless within "free Imperian" itself (having already made them pretty meaningless more generally)  - because they are an actual problem that doesn't fit well with your new model in any way.  It's all just so ludicrous.  Any serious attempt to "go free" would definitely involve shuffling off your whales to paying games, and perhaps having them return as free players to the "free" game. 

Gjarrus

The only way I could see a permadeath working is a kind of meat fodder producer. You roll a HARDCORE character, so you get a boost to level 100 with a good selection of skills, maybe even an arti or two. You'd probably want to give them some sort of autogen character history/desc/etc or something. You can possibly throw in a faster advancement rate (not for unbound stuff) to encourage them to Not Die.

This way, if Bob the Achaean wants to come experience pk in the Land of the Free, he can get a good taste without grinding. Natives can also roll a quick character in other orgs if they want to participate in a fight or something. Even this probably has unforeseen BAD THINGS, though, since it's just a spitball.

Otherwise, any kind of permadeath on a 'real' character would be insane with how easy it is to die.

Wyll

@Mereis - I think you were someone who admitted to not spending for whatever reason. You have no horse in this race whatsoever. Most of us are okay and looking forward to the change, we'd just like to know that our investment is protected and is available to the fullest if we choose to jump ship. I promise you, most people are actually staying. But you don't know what the future holds for Imperian and we don't either.

You have no horse in this race and I don't understand why you keep dropping your opinion on the matter on those who us who have literally spent $10K+ on this game. I honestly can't wrap my head around why you are so opinionated on the matter of retirement value when you likely have a small one or none at all. And you haven't even been active in this game for at the very least, the last year. And I know for damn sure the people who are "complaining" as you all like to put it, have been active in the past year.

We're trying to get our shit together by asking relevant questions and discussing topics that impact our retirement value(promo items, gem items, etc) and you keep cluttering up every thread with your opinions and points that won't impact you at all. You likely can't even fathom why we care about the value of some of our items because you don't have them and never bought in.

I'm not the type to ever say one person's opinion is more relevant than another's just because of $$$, but in this particular case that absolutely is the truth.

Sorry for derailing your thread @Zoroaster, I'm just kind of tired of people bringing up this retirement issue in every thread.

Lartus

I don't know if permadeath would be a good idea, since it is really easy to kill people here. But who knows? It might work, if we had a few more tweaks to it. :V

Jeremy Saunders

Keep this thread on topic or I'll have to delete crap.

Rinaldi

I think a permadeath system could have a place in Imperian as long as it is also an opt-in system. Some people aren't going to want to lose a character with 10+ RL years of history. An additional option to consider for something like this, especially with the other changes coming to the gsme, may be to attach credit value to registration instead if individual character when applied to permadeath characters - you die, that character is gone and you have to start at level 1 with no resources, but the credits you earned carry over to the next "life". 

Jeremy Saunders

I was originally trying to come up with an opt-in system where you made a character, started with 5K credits or something, and had 1 to 3 lives. You would get more credits based on a bunch of factors I forget now. There would be a rankings system for characters who made it the furthest as a hardcore character. I think one you died you could be reborn with a new name, but keep your level. I finally decided it sounded cooler than it would be in practice.