I’ve been reading a lot throughout websites scattered all over the web about how people view permadeath. Some really enjoy it while others really hate it and then you have those in between. But it seems that those who enjoy permadeath usually think of themselves as the ultimate appreciators of challenge while at the same time reducing those who dislike it to be mare casual players who seek a smooth experience instead of challenge.
Before this gets personal, I just want to make it clear that this is my personal opinion on how I view the permadeath feature, in other words, is not something open to debate but merely to demonstrate that those voting for permadeath shouldn’t automatically believe that those who deny it do not seek challenge. From what I’ve read around the web, I actually got the impression that mostly of those in favor of permadeath, somehow think of themselves as better players, in a sense of possessing better playing capabilities or in deeper sense of viewing themselves as smarter. I really don't agree with this.
As we all know, permadeath states for: ‘1 try per game’ because when you die, you will have to start all over since there is no progression resuming points whatsoever. Permadeath injects something incredible during play time that I really love: ‘tension / excitement’, because one wrong move can end your character’s life. This feature unconsciously forces players to linger about with extra caution and often forcing them to rethink their situation, unlike other games that are easily exploited through the abuse of the game’s save and load features.
However, permadeath as also one particular negative side effect from my own perspective, which is mainly: no sense of accomplishment. Don’t freak out just yet. I’ll get into details soon enough. From all the roguelike games I’ve played (tried), ADOM is the only roguelike that I can say to have actually played as I endured through it every day for a period of for nearly 6 months. This only happened because I did farm its save points, otherwise I wouldn’t have felt compelled to played it at all because of the reason I described at the beginning of this very paragraph. The problem with ADOM is that its random events generation would 20% of the time (while in the wilderness) feel unfair, like it could force you into a fight with loads of jackals with the misfortunate of your character having the wrong class or simply for being a noob. But at least its world map was fixed and each time I played it I could actually feel a sense of progression and view new parts of the game that I believe to be impossible without farming Saving-Games.
Okay, but why do I say that there is no sense of accomplishment with permadeath? The real problem lies with having permadeath combined with pretty much everything in the game being procedural generated and its harsh difficulty level. Why? Because when I start a new unexplored generated world all previous achievements I did undergo previously no longer apply and the chance of encountering similar events are scarce and I’m not talking about getting to know better how the game’s features works, like skills usage, the item’s functionality and what strategies to adopt with each type of monster or simply what action to perform in every situation, no, this is called getting to know game’s game play mechanics better. I’m talking about removing the sense of progression as everything is now different. Remember Golden Axe or Double Dragon slide scroll classic games? Yeah, they also featured permadeath because when you died you had to start all over again, regardless of the size of the life energy bar or lives amount. But whenever I replayed these games, I did feel a sense of progression as each time I tried them I would go farther and farther, leading me to eventually ending them and that felt very rewarding.
In a procedural generated game, when you start in a new world you can either die quickly or not, depending of many factors of course, namely how the game is coded and how fair randomization is and yeah, player skill / experience with the game itself. But roguelikes are usually hard by nature and this itself feels quite incompatible with permadeath. For a game to have permadeath it’s difficult level should be more forgiving as you only have one try to finish it (if it has an end at all). Of course this is RELATIVE to each game but if you want challenge you really don’t need a roguelike with permadeath, you just need basically a challenging game play like an Asteroids game, having each level getting progressively harder and harder until it gets insanely difficult. But we prefer roguelikes right? They are complex and detailed with unique and superb features and this is why I love the roguelike genre. It’s not because we are smarter but because we enjoy the complexity and tons of choices at our disposable.
So where do I stand in the permadeath ability? Right in the middle. I prefer a system where you have controlled save-games for two main reasons. The first one is that with controlled saving you will still feel the tension and excitement during the choices you take and secondly it let the players feel a sense of progression. Why having no saving points when the game has the ability to generate full worlds from scratch dynamically, therefore offering so much replay value? I can say that ADOM with occasionally saving was the best experience I had with a roguelike.
Nonetheless, there are no wrong opinions in this matter, just different preferences and this is my personal preference.
