[prof1515]

As there is only one "Armageddon Feature Set" game, this is little more than a personal attack on that game. I realize you're very protective of your own game and possibly insecure in regard to possible comparisons with other MUDs, but repeated attempts to demean and attack other games is really uncalled for.

If instead you are attempting to address permanent death in all Role-Play Intensive games and simply fail to comprehend that other RPIs do not feature the same exact characteristics as Armageddon, I'll address your points as if you were referring to all RPI MUDs and not just Armageddon itself.

This might be true if there weren't fundamental differences in the philosophy behind what "pure hack n slash" and "pure role play" games are attempting to do. This really appears to be more of an attack on RPIs but let's suppose for a moment that it isn't.

This is your mistake. You may not comprehend this but there is an equally incredible investment in their characters by both role-players and H&Sers. The hours of killing and leveling done by a H&Ser is complimented by the hours of role-playing done by a RPer. In some ways, RPers require far more time because some, but not all, H&S MUDs allow botting.

A professor at my university used to bot a couple characters on MUDs. In a conversation with him, he once pointed to a computer in his office and boasted how much experience he just earned without having to even type anything. Now, if his character were killed, his loss was very little since none of the time it took to level and train the character had detracted from other things he could do because he hadn't been doing the leveling and training and so forth himself. Was there a loss, yes. He would have to re-engage the process and then go about his life as normal until the program had botted through the game to the point it had gotten his character to the first time. But the loss to him was very minimal.

By contrast, role-playing isn't really something you can do with a bot. Sure, you could try but in the end it would result in some really, really pathetic RP. There isn't an AI in existance that can match the human mind in response and interaction. While it might be possible to program a routine to go out and raise the skill levels, slowly, of a character on a role-play game, the character will be no better off for role-play than if they'd just started.

You lose a lot if you were enjoying the character. Many role-playing games, RPI or not, have a policy prohibiting creating similar characters. Additionally, every character is unique and the experiences and opportunities of a character are not always possible more than once. If your character were in a situation where they were subject to unique opportunities for role-play, the loss of that character might forever shut the door to those opportunities again. No amount of effort on a new character could recreate that and the fun of the role-play in that situation might be forever lost to the player.

Most role-players have more patience and discipline than this. They're possibly more imaginative than you and capable of finding more in a character, enough to sustain the character for a very long time. Role-playing may not suit your tastes but the same is not true of all. Personally, I've played the same character on games for years and not even touched upon a significant portion of its potential.

Opinion, not fact.

Something which would be completely attainable again. The only possibility for loss would be unique equipment. But levels and skill advancement is, unless it consisted of unique skills not attainable again, something which could be recovered.

While role-play may not be linear, there are still linear routes to some experiences. The difference in role-play linear experiences is that quite often they are one-time experiences. No matter how much you try, you can never attain the opportunity again. At least with H&S, you have the chance to go through the "grind" again.

The thing is that you can't necessarily get into the same role-play content again. The "same type of fun" role-play might be possible, but not the same role-play. When I played H&S, I made the same exact character three times and each time was able to reach the same exact, actually achievements and levels that I had the time before. In fact, each time I was able to get slightly further in some ways by doing the same thing over because I could avoid the mistakes I'd made the previous time. What took me 18 months to achieve the first time took me only 12 months the second time and 10 months the third.

By contrast, when my characters on permanent death role-play MUDs have died, everything about them was lost. It couldn't be achieved again. The opportunities and experiences of that character were gone and even if I had made another character like that again, there could be no way to reverse the course of in-game events and replay them again for the benefit of the new character. The chance was gone forever.

Agreed, some players do that very thing and you're absolutely correct that it's necessary to provide policies to prevent such things from happening. Many role-play MUDs have such policies prohibiting players from picking up where their former character left off.

Personally, I've found that permanent death enhances the sense of loss of any game regardless of whether or not it's H&S or RP. I would offer that a better chart would not be a "Pure H&S - Pure Role-Playing" line but rather a grid of that horizontal scale crossed at the middle with a vertical scale featuring "Permadeath" on one end and the inverse on the other. Various types of games find their way into the corners of the grid while others congregate near the middle.

Take care,

Jason