[Milawe]

If there's good input to be had, necro-post away!

I think that's what keeps me from going with perma-death as my favorite type of game to play. I really like extensive character development more than creating new characters, but I have friends that like creating new characters far more than playing them for any length of time. My preference is to be able to just spend as much time on developing a specific character as I can until I'd like to retire her, and I actually find myself being more careful with my characters because I have so much invested in them. For me, a stiff death penalty with a character that I really love causes me to work with caution on most everything I do, especially when there's extremely high political stakes.

With most permadeath games, I feel that you, as a player, are expected to go through a few characters before you figure out the "tricks" of keeping your character alive. That usually results in throw-away characters that I don't bother to invest a lot of time or thought into because pretty much anything can take her out in the first few hours or days of play. On one game, I lasted less than 45 minutes because I had the misfortune of running into a player who wanted me to do something I didn't think my character should do, and as a player, I had no interest in doing. Bam, I was dead like 10 minutes after that. This was after I'd put quite a lot of thought into my character and developing her because I'd bought into the idea that game was centered around RP, and frankly, I was upset with it because I felt like NO RP occurred than an exchange of two messages before I was slaughtered. Even being my most careful, a player could pretty much kill me on a whim and make up a roleplay reason for killing me. If I had known to make a few throw-away characters first, I might have been able to get more into it. If I had felt like the time I'd invested in the character was worth her death, it might have been worth it. Granted, I feel like it may have been bad luck for me to run into that situation right at the beginning.

So, I'm with you there. I don't want to invest a lot of time or thought into a character who could look at someone wrong and be dead a few minutes later. At the same time, I don't want to have to ignore the entire playerbase for any chance of living. I might as well be playing a single-player game then. I know that there are people who thrive on being able to "beat the odds", and I applaud them for it. I'm sure the experience is very intense, but it's not the thing I enjoy most from online, multiplayer games.