It is hard enough to get in a group with certain classes as it is, let alone if the penalty for failure increases.

We need an MMO where each class in the game is actually needed when going into a dungeon or multiplayer encounter. Perhaps have a requirement of each class. That way you don't play a class that is regarded as worthless and in short demand. One of the reasons I quit wow, didn't want to level up multiple classes just to be useful.
 

Gooms argument is right, if this kind of idea establishes, a slight offskill or some minor gear will get you kicked out of a group. What you could do would be to enforce a penalty somewhere in between, e.g. start a quest you can only do monthly. The quest chain leads you to the boss which you have to kill. If you fail, thats it, no reward but you have a chance to retry after a month. If you make it, you get the reward and the quest chain ends.

Actually, something like this was in place: The hunter epic quest chain. If you failed 3-5 attemps at the demon, then it despawned for 3 hours. Later on they changed that to a much quicker respawn timer, I think it was 30 minutes or so.
 

Yeah I'm a much bigger proponent of Permafail it can be applied in many interesting ways. I would not use it for the example you described but rather for situations that would be much more appropriate to take the place of Permadeath. It has the potential to be a very great consequence
 

Thanks Tobold for taking this into consideration: my initial proposal wasn't named as permafail, but in this context is serves well.

I would rather think that this kind of approach would need a continuing storyline, not ending in the end boss, but rather continuing from that point on. There should be pretty well established requirements and 'group checks' to make pretty certain that the group has a chance to deal witht the final, 'permafail' boss.

I wouldn't say that this would fit WoW or any current games directly, but from a story driven explorer kind of players point of view this might give the toon certain depht in the long run.

This would fit rather nicely to Tobold's level-less game, where the trophies would depict the toon's 'success' in adventuring: the trophies would have value in themselves, as people would recognise the effort needed to get there.

Another issue that this 'one shot end boss' would solve, in a way, would be the unique or named boss loot: there would be one of Big Baddie Swords of Uber around in a server at the time, making it really worth showing off...

Honestly, I hate the idea of boss grinding and having some boss on farm status. That only shows the narrow scope of the game in the end: reap, rinse, repeat. This seems to be the 'Game Over' sign of a MMORPG.

Where is the lore, story and continuity?

Copra
 

Neither perma-death nor perma-fail really work in a networked game if you ask me.

So you got DC'd at no fault to you. You log back in and get "You failed this quest." and it is permafail.

A less obvious example is group behavior. So you do a quest. Someone else screws up. You lose your ability to succeed. Group dynamics and the blame game is bad enough as I see it. Adding points of no return to this is not good design in my book.

Yet I know some people like permadeath and permafail. And there will always be small projects (just as there were MUDs like that) that offer this. But it is a very far cry from something that I would ever design into anything and frankly I don't see a successful mainstream game offering this in an MMO setting.

Or you can do the "holy-crap" ability that Diablo II had with town portals. Then perma-death turns into the ability-check to cast that portal in time and enter. I find that a very shallow addition to gameplay. A game that can reliably make you fail (like WoW) is a very different beast.

So you failed the epic druid flight form quest because you happen to be the first to ever try it and didn't know what to expect? It's permafail so you got screwed by the idea. Give it 3 tries perma-fail mechanism but the quest is very hard and needs lots of practice, so you still get screwed. People come to find exploits and support even more, just to mitigate the danger even more (in fact both hunter and priest epic quest had exploiting behavior despite no permafail).

Really I don't see that as a good concept. But like the permadeath idea, these never fade and one can debate them ad nauseum.

P.S. There are single-player games where perma-lock exists and works. For example in The Witcher, your actions will matter and you can't go back and undo them unless you replay the game. But these games have a save game feature which allows people to control branching points in the story in a way that doesn't exist online.
 

Permadeath makes sense, when there's no significant consequences - like in games with short session duration, e.g. online FPSs and arcade games.

In a persistent gameworld (where effort actually amounts to something) permadeath/-fail would simply make players MUCH TOO careful. It'd take out the fun factor. It wouldn't be a game anymore. It'd be a simulator...
 

Nooooo..... I don't play games to be told I am a failure, I get enough of that in real life. I think perma-fail is a terrible idea. I like the idea that if you fail once you can keep trying again until you get it. I admit it breaks the immersion to be killed and then magically resurrected but there are way to fudge over that (eg Lotro's use of "morale" instead of "health").

What I would like however is to be able to make permanent changes in the world. When I kill that evil dragon I'd like him to stay dead and not resurrect over and over again. I don't think this is going to happen sadly for exactly the reasons you give for perma fail not happening - developers want people to re-use content over and over. Its cheaper than creating new content.
 

What I would like however is to be able to make permanent changes in the world. When I kill that evil dragon I'd like him to stay dead and not resurrect over and over again.

I'm pretty sure that ol' evil dragon feels just the same way about you (and the droves of raiders) who keep resurrecting and coming back - over and over again... ;)

(Just kidding, really.)
 

I don't think the evil dragon staying dead is possible at all. You would have a few uber guilds grabbing all that sort of content the second it comes out, and the regular players never even seeing the evil dragon. Developers can't program a completely new Onyxia encounter every day and then have only one raid group per server ever see it.
 

I never liked D2's Hardcore mode, but I'm oddly attracted to Dofus'.

Why? Simply, I've never played it. The increased exp rate would make it a bit easier for me to try out new combinations and see what I like best before going to the slower, casual game.

Then again, Ill probably get sick of dying and quit without getting to the normal servers.
 

CoX has permafail. If time runs out on a timed mission, or you can't contain a boss who gets away, you fail and can't try again.

There are actually some end-of-arc missions in CoV that accomodate "failure", where you accept an alternate offer to do nothing. The souvenir you get from the arc reflects this.

There's also a badge for completing a series of permafail missions on a very tight timer.

So far the game hasn't imploded.
 

Tobold the evil dragon staying dead can certainly be achieved with instancing and lets face it most self respecting evil dragons live instances these days. Depending on whether or not you have already killed the dragon you get a different result when you enter the instance.

Of course now that I say all this I have just realised that Lotro's "epic" storyline instances are very similar to what I am talking about.
 

As mentioned before, there is a single case of 'permafail' in City of Villains. However, the penalty is not being able to achieve a piece of 'fluff' (a badge others can see on your character to denote your achievement). The quest XP is diminished many times, but you still get some, even if you fail. And, the bonus XP at the end of the short gauntlet of quests (missions) is eliminated on failure.

It's probably just a test, since the consequences are so minor.

I'm a big fan of permadeath, but not if it's just one life. I used to play a PvP MUD where you got 7, and if you spent a lot of money (epic flying mount amount of money), could get up to 25, which is plenty. A very good system, I'd say. Then again, leveling up in that was about 5-10 times faster than in WoW.
 

I could live with the evil dragon being totally wiped out of my game after falling it for the first time. I a sense the permafail could be assigned so that you get to try the end boss as long as you fail: it is alive after you fail, so why would you have to fail at that point. (that wasn't my intention or idea in the first place that you have one shot on the instance itself, though I may have put it that way...)

How hard would it be to code that one boss to disappear from the toon's life after the toon has been part of killing the Big Bad Boss?

I know, I'm changing my view, but I still don't grasp the idea of being able to farm an unique being in the world just to get the bloody gear I happen to want from it...

Copra
 

Permafail (or Copra's permavictory) makes a lot of sense in single-player games (and solo-content), where the focus is on story-telling and immersion.
But in multiplayer-land, we want to play with our friends.

Imagine, you couldn't help out your friends with killing that nasty dragon, just because your avatar already killed it.
Waiting outside the empty cave of the long gone dragon, while your guild members are inside finishing off the same dragon and looting all it's treasure, does break the immersive reality anyhow.

Storytelling mechanics and game mechanics in conflict...