Why so few games with permadeath/ironman/hardcore modes?

[Harthwain]

So the question becomes: what kind of design, and/or story, and/or setting will allow true RPG levels of attachment to characters, provide systems for guiding those characters to success or failure, and enforce severe, systematic consequences for failure; yet not so severe that the game ends, or that the player loses the motivation to continue?

You can make a game shorter to make failure not be so crippling. Let's say your goal is to reach the end of a dungeon. After that you can try another dungeon. If you die, you can start as a new character. If you don't, you get more difficult and complex dungeons. Think of this as swapping the character in-between runs.

 

[somerandomdude]

Supposed hardcore players in Path of Exile have alt+F4 on a clutch trigger if it looks like they might possibly lose. Does that sound hardcore to you all?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

So the question becomes: what kind of design, and/or story, and/or setting will allow true RPG levels of attachment to characters, provide systems for guiding those characters to success or failure, and enforce severe, systematic consequences for failure; yet not so severe that the game ends, or that the player loses the motivation to continue?

 

[Cryomancer]

As for hardcore in online games, I played DDO as an squishy Pale Master till almost lv 11. Most people can't even get into lv 5 in hardcore first character. And Pale Masters in particular only gets good at lv 11/12 with Necrotic ray and Necrotic Blast

Also am playing Titan Quest EE for the first time(only played very little as an child and don't remmeber much past act 2 egypt) as an Thunderer(Storm + Rune). Am lv 24 at moment and din't died yet. Sadly runeword : Feather is reducing only the STR requirement for weapons, not armor(which kills my idea of an armored caster) and seems like Energy Drain also only affects melee weapons, so I can't perma leech mp to use my ludicrous OP fully maxed Ice shards.

I'm not playing hardcore, but only by having an death counter, I'm trying to die as little as possible and so far I"m with 0 deaths.

Screenshot to prove bellow And my current build :

My build

 

[Dadd]

It's not hardcore if you can alt f4. The only games that could truly be called hardcore are necessarily console games. Hardcore games on pc should accelerate the game by 1000% minimum when you press alt.

 

[Derringer]

Don't save and turn the game off when you're done if you want a 'hardcore ironman' mode.

 

[Sarathiour]

As for hardcore in online games, I played DDO as an squishy Pale Master till almost lv 11. Most people can't even get into lv 5 in hardcore first character. And Pale Masters in particular only gets good at lv 11/12 with Necrotic ray and Necrotic Blast

Also am playing Titan Quest EE for the first time(only played very little as an child and don't remmeber much past act 2 egypt) as an Thunderer(Storm + Rune). Am lv 24 at moment and din't died yet. Sadly runeword : Feather is reducing only the STR requirement for weapons, not armor(which kills my idea of an armored caster) and seems like Energy Drain also only affects melee weapons, so I can't perma leech mp to use my ludicrous OP fully maxed Ice shards.

I'm not playing hardcore, but only by having an death counter, I'm trying to die as little as possible and so far I"m with 0 deaths.

Screenshot to prove bellow And my current build :

My build

I've done the 4 first act without death on TQ+IT with a storm/war build, it's not that difficult if you know the game a bit. (Also EE seems to fucked up quite a bit of things upon observing the playtrough of a friend of mine.)

Things is if you go blind, you're going to get insta-raped at some point because of low piercing or poison resistance.

 

[Cryomancer]

Things is if you go blind, you're going to get insta-raped at some point because of low piercing or poison resistance.

When this happens, I will look into guides. I wanna see how far I can go till I die for the first time.

 

[Sarathiour]

Things is if you go blind, you're going to get insta-raped at some point because of low piercing or poison resistance.

When this happens, I will look into guides. I wanna see how far I can go till I die for the first time.

I can't remember, but was there a death recap on base TQ+IT ?

 

[Ryzer]

Cryomancer, You have picked two of the most mediocre skills' tree of the game, not that it's impossible to deal with the game but there are much better and entertaining trees such as Hunting, Cunning, Dream, Spirit. You'll be outclassed fairly rapidly with new difficulties unless you know what you're doing. For example, Ice Shard is a huge investment for a very poor skill.
You should have focused more on Rune Weapon (maxed out) than Ice shard as it provides much higher damage.

 

[Sarathiour]

Spirit and rogue are both pretty low tier mastery, rune seems rather busted (unsurprisingly). Ice shard is pretty good, but need a lot of point in it, so not very good in normal mod.

 

[Ryzer]

Spirit and rogue are both pretty low tier mastery

They are extremely OP, spirit can make you immune to undead damages, and most enemies are undead. Rogue not only provides super strong piercing bonuses but also strong poison damages.

rune seems rather busted (unsurprisingly)

Rune is meh, many good skills and underwhelming ones.

Ice shard is pretty good, but need a lot of point in it, so not very good in normal mod.

No, it is awful, it requires a lot of skill points for few additional damages, also the mana consumption is absurd and should alone dismiss it.

 

[Sarathiour]

Undead are a non-issue for nearly all the game, with the exception of the secret boss. Apart from that, only liches are somewhat dangerous, and that's due to their spell. Poison used to be pure garbage, I think they added a few items too boost it in the EE/ragnarok expansion, but it's still pretty bad : does not scale, lots of enemy immune to it, and DoT are a pretty bad game plan when everything get killed in two seconds. Piercing bonus are nice. Rogue also suffer from the absence of a good crowd control ability, flashbang will only get you so far. Spirit is even worse.

Can't really speak on rune, that's just my opinion on a glance.

Ice shard need a lot of resources poured in to be effective, but it's probably one of the best left click skill once you got there. I would not try before at least halfway trough epic though.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Don't save and turn the game off when you're done if you want a 'hardcore ironman' mode.

This was my answer.

 

[Cryomancer]

No, it is awful, it requires a lot of skill points for few additional damages, also the mana consumption is absurd and should alone dismiss it.

Is high power at high cost. I like it.

Also, I don't play video games for min maxing. The master of storms, of cold and electricity creating and endless ice projectile barrage akin to many ballistas firing at once, summoning wisps and mastering over ancient norse rune magic seems quite interesting. I like that character concept and I will play as one. I don't care if is optimal or not, as longs I can have fun.

As for deaths, finally died. Against Typhon. Believe or not, I killed him and died at the same time, scoring an double kill.

Screenshots prooving

Reaching him was not easy TBH. But in Babylon, I almost died a couple of times and got lucky mainly against an optional boss which I din't remembered, he stuns and launches an rain of meteors.

Playing TQ and not watching guides and trying to avoid deaths is being much more fun IMO. I think that I should play more games this way.

 

[Sarathiour]

Yeah, I was fully expecting you to die to barmanu, neanderthal champion, because if you don't have over 50% stun resit, you're probably toast because the meteors will OS you. Sounds like you were very lucky indeed. Dragonkin spearman are also an huge pain, but you might have been able to mitigate it with rune masteries.

Basically, there is two option when you're making a tempest mage, either got with chain lightning or ice projectile.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I have a friend who plays turtle wow and he says hardcore is super popular there.

Now that i think of it nu-Doom also has an hardcore mode and lots of people play that too.

I'm pointing those out since those are games where you woudn't think hardcore makes sense given a single mistake can cost you hudreds of hours of gameplay (and in the case of WoW it doesn't even have to be your mistake, your hardcore party can wipe in a dungeon because of some else's fuck up) but it seems there are many people out there who do not actually mind and have welcomed the challenge.

 

[Bigg Boss]

In the future iron man mode will be played for real.

 

[Sarathiour]

I have a friend who plays turtle wow and he says hardcore is super popular there.

Now that i think of it nu-Doom also has an hardcore mode and lots of people play that too.

I'm pointing those out since those are games where you woudn't think hardcore makes sense given a single mistake can cost you hudreds of hours of gameplay (and in the case of WoW it doesn't even have to be your mistake, your hardcore party can wipe in a dungeon because of some else's fuck up) but it seems there are many people out there who do not actually mind and have welcomed the challenge.

yeah, knew a guy who tried that.

This is way beyond autism, and just masochism at this point.

 

[Not.AI]

So the question becomes: what kind of design, and/or story, and/or setting will allow true RPG levels of attachment to characters, provide systems for guiding those characters to success or failure, and enforce severe, systematic consequences for failure; yet not so severe that the game ends, or that the player loses the motivation to continue?

Omikron The Nomad Soul. When player character dies the player takes control of another NPC and story continues from the new perspective. Basically the game has to have the number of potential lead characters be infinite.

 

[laclongquan]

I have a friend who plays turtle wow and he says hardcore is super popular there.

Now that i think of it nu-Doom also has an hardcore mode and lots of people play that too.

I'm pointing those out since those are games where you woudn't think hardcore makes sense given a single mistake can cost you hudreds of hours of gameplay (and in the case of WoW it doesn't even have to be your mistake, your hardcore party can wipe in a dungeon because of some else's fuck up) but it seems there are many people out there who do not actually mind and have welcomed the challenge.

yeah, knew a guy who tried that.

This is way beyond autism, and just masochism at this point.

Or if it's easy/fast to reacquire better equipment and/or levelup. It depend on that specific server's design. Sometimes they want players to have ease in acquire those things, but it lead to bloat/inflation, so they add the ironman feature to counterbalance them.