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Harsh death penalty means a good game?
eccoton
Member UncommonPosts: 1,340
In the EQ2 forums lately there has been a lot of debate about the quality of that game. One of the main things people who dislike but have played EQ2 say is that the death penalty is not harsh enough. This is not about eq2 alone but a question for all those who want harsh death penalties and those who seem to think those that do not want them somehow are not true mmo players. There is often a lot of put down placed on those that do not like harsh death penalties. I have been in mmos since the begining UO and have played pretty much all of them. Some with steep penalties and some like WoW with easy ones.
What makes a harsh death penalty so fun for so many? I have heard the classic response "It makes the game more exciting." How is that exciting? Also why is it suggested that somehow those that do not like steep penalties either do not get it or are not good gamers? I do not see that connection but I have read it here dozens of times when this discussion comes up. Other then the "it makes the game more exciting" I have yet to hear why those that like harsh penalties enjoy it so much, as they claim.
Comments
I wouldn't say I like HARSH death penalties, but there needs to be some death penalty in place. There are a few reasons why I think this.
1) As you said, this adds excitement to the game. Games these days have turned into a reward festival with pretty much 0 risk. What fun is that? There should be a good balance between risk and reward, otherwise MMO's are just turning into Teeball leagues where everyone gets a trophy.
2) It makes you think about your actions. Without a death penalty, people don't have to worry at all about what they do. Why not suicide charge into a room with 20 enemies in it? It doesn't matter if you die or not. With a death penalty, you will plan things out more carefully, and think things through before you do them.
3) Adds a sense of realism to the game. You should be afraid of death in a game just like you are in RL.
4) Stops people from using death as an exploit. Gets rid of the old "hmm I'm all the way over here, and I need to get back there... oh theres a resurrection spot right by where I need to go, I'll just go kill myself". This type of behavior ruins immersion.
5) Death penalties are a key part to Crafter driven economies. Without decay, you will never need to go back to a crafter for anything. And Crafter driven > loot driven.
Well those are my reasons why a death penalty needs to be in place. I'm not saying I want a ridiculously hard death penalty, but something substantial.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Different games need different systems.
It depends if it is item or skill based and then also if it is PvE or more PvP based.
And then you need to decide if the game is for casual players or for hardcore gamers
Overall PvP games live better with a lesser death penalty. Onbly way UO got away with a harsher one is that gear was easier to replace.
PvE games are better off with lesser death penalties if they want to have the casual gamers and maybe just open servers with harsher penalties for their hardcore crowd.
I am against harsher death penalties, but some systems sort of need it.
A system like UO which had a big crafter market can only exist if gear gets lost and replaced. You can see what happened when they removed it and the market crashed and was only open for hardcore players.
It doesn't make a better game in my book.
But I'm not a masochist who wants to be punished for making a mistake.
I would take it you do not like WoW then? WoW has a very weak death penalty easier then EQ2's. Yet hardcore people play it and it is common knowledge the WoW is a challenge in the endgame raids yet it has a light death penalty. It has an economy with crafting without steep penalties. It also has over 10 million players. Not all 10 million are casul players many hardcore gamers play WoW. You can have item decay without a steep death penalty. There are many here and I have read their posts who complain about easy death penalties yet go on about how great WoW. I see a double standard when it comes to this idea of harsh death penalties. People claim to want harsh penalties but game popularity does not support all this talk.
Fun? it doesn't make the game fun. MMORPGS were not fun, they were epic. You remembered what you accomplished after suffering a lot and needing the help of others. Nothing fun about that, only epic!
edited typo
I would take it you do not like WoW then? WoW has a very weak death penalty easier then EQ2's. Yet hardcore people play it and it is common knowledge the WoW is a challenge in the endgame raids yet it has a light death penalty. It has an economy with crafting without steep penalties. It also has over 10 million players. Not all 10 million are casul players many hardcore gamers play WoW. You can have item decay without a steep death penalty. There are many here and I have read their posts who complain about easy death penalties yet go on about how great WoW. I see a double standard when it comes to this idea of harsh death penalties. People claim to want harsh penalties but game popularity does not support all this talk.
I don't not like WoW... It is a good game for what it is. I honestly only play it because I am so bored with this genre and need something to lul me over until a good game comes out. But WoW's death penalty is a joke. You can't even call it a death penalty since it can be completely eliminated with a small fee in gold. And WoW is NOT CRAFTER based economy. Crafting in WoW is also a joke. It is incredibly simple, and there are very few items that are crafted that are better than even introductory raid drops. Crafter driven economies are economies where crafters make everything and they make the best gear. WoW is not crafter based.
So to your original question, I like WoW for what it is, but don't like what it is. It is far to easy/linear/boring for what I like to play. But honestly, the MMO industry really hasn't provided us with any good games that differ from WoW in a long time. Everything coming out is just a WoW clone, so why play a clone when you can play the real thing?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
To implement a harsh death penalty successfully I think you have to go all the way. Perma-death. But to do that I think a few things need to be in place:
Imagine a game like this:
1.) Very few levels... say maybe 10 levels. Reached through time-in-game rather than EXP. Add to that Character aging. Lets say physically you are at your best around level 7 and your physical characteristics decay up until 10 where they level off.
2.) Skill based progression with EXP. Similar to EVE. But where in EVE you learn a skill and then train it up I would try having all skills be bind-on-pickup items that you find through quests. Then every time you use that skill you get EXP for it and it improves your ability to use that skill.
3.) Eliminate gear grind. The rarest gear in the game would look much cooler on your toon but in reality improve your abilities in combat just a "smidge" better than the normal gear. So yes rare-gear would be sought after but not be so powerful that it eliminates player skill in combat.
4.) Focus on game-play instead. Make it fast-paced and fun. Closer to a FPS with a weighted close-combat element maybe? RvR and world PvP with consequences... wanna play a good guy? Wanna get mad at someobody and smoke them? Go ahead... now there is a bounty on your head and if you do it to many times... you become an outlaw and join the bad guys RvR. Bounty hunting with Perma-death should put a kink in a griefer's style, right?
5.) Sandbox... similar to EVE. Beyond the boundries of the RvR realms... you are on your own.
6.) Craft everything. Every item or house in the game is player crafted. But what about gold-farmers in China ruining the Economy? No player trading whatsoever. Controlled economy baby... you craft it and sell it to an NPC who in turn places it in the auction house... where an algorithm calculates what it is worth based on how much gear is out there of that kind and sells it.
- Just a few ideas that have been floating around in my head ever since THQ announced they are making WAR40K-online.
Yes, a harsh death penalty means a good game. There is a game in development, which I can't reveal yet, that has a very harsh death penalty. The game won't run, unless you hook up clamps to your nipples (they come with the box). When you die, you get an electric shock to your nipples that's hard enough to make your teeth hurt.
Now that's a death penalty! Any game with a les harsh death penalty than that is for care bearz.
harsh death penalties are naff. Want to incent a player to stay alive? provide a nice little bonus that they lose when they die.
I think WAR has a 30 second timer after you die before you can get back in the action. Getting kicked out of the gameplay for 30 seconds can be pretty harsh.
Don't all death penalties come down to time?
Xp loss = time grinding to gain it back.
Gold loss= time grinding quests or mobs to make it back.
Item loss= time to grind mobs for another drop, or more gold to buy it back.
Everything Abrahmm said is correct. Whether anyone wants to agree or not, it's a point of fact that harsh punishment forces players to chose thier actions differently as well as adds completely needed excitement that MMORPGs are missing these last few years.
I remember a time when I played EQ when I would be sitting on the edge of my seat, my hands litterally shaking because my naked character had died in the lower level of Black Burrow and I was praying the gnolls didn't see through my invisible or it didn't wear off whileI tried retrieving my corpse.
To me, THAT was the most fun I have ever had. Most people want things to be hard. That is the main reason why you constantly hear about how this game or that game is boreing. Because the reward and penalty don't usually balance out. Finally being able to craft that tunic of +10 Str etc.. feels like a real acomplishment if you had to collect the items to make it, or kill a named mob with the stolen letter that tells so and so to give you a finely crafted sword +5 attack from a place that is nearly impossable to retrieve your corpse if you die.
Strong death penalties also forces players to rely on each other as well. If you know your chance of survival in improbable, you're going to go looking for others to help you.
The problem games often face is that designers and programmers often mistake tediousness with hard. Having to craft and item with seven different components one at a time is not hard, it's just plain monotonous and tedious. Now having to figure out how to get from one end of an undead infest forrest to the other where the mobs can see through invis to get to the merchant who sells them is hard.
As I said, real gamers want the challenge, it's why they play. Players that just want quick leveling, easy loot, and end game as fast as they can get it, are the same players that come here and complain at how much the game sucked, and it's because they missed the whole point of why we play. A game never truely has to end unless all you rtely on is the pre-written script.
You can play a game all the way to the last recieved level or untill you are the player with the most powerful weapon, or you have kills than any other player etc...but the game never really even begins until you start using your own imagination.
A tiny mind is a tidy mind...
Oops. No long term subscriptions for this game, as the ADHD crowd moves on to something else after a month or so, and there goes the modern "target audience" for MMO publishers.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Now see I don;t see a losing all your stuff in inventory as a harsh death penalty.. I expect that and am fine with it, I just don't want any death penalties that affect stats, or make me wait. I want to be able to get back in the action .. otherwise I don;t bother playing the game. Full loot is fine, but leave everything else alone. lol I don't pay to play games that make me wait to have fun.. that is boring not fun. Regardless of death penalties I am going to fight players. If It is possible in a game I will not even hit an npc ever.. just level solely in pvp. Death penalties have no affect on whether or not I kill players, the only affect they have is whether or not I pay devs money for their game. If I am paying to wait .. nah I will pass. I just won;t play that game. Simple as that.
If you have full loot, and you are left with no gear, which means any player with gear can Pwn! you until you get more gear, then you do have to wait.
You have to go get more money, to get more gear, before you can jump back into the PvP.
after playing a jedi in pre-cu swg, and having a bounty hunter kill me and losing 2 - 3 hours worth of grinding exp, it gave me a new taste for harsh death penalty.
The next bounty hunter I fought, and all the ones after were THRILLING. Actually heart pounding and I really looked forward to being attacked by bounty hunters. Successfully fighting and killing off a bounty hunter with an exceptional weapon (could kill in 4 - 5 seconds, needed to make him kneel and really keep on the knockdown to win), tons of kills under his belt and only one loss was probably my favourite memory from swg.
After that point, all mmorpgs I played had little to no death penalty, and I found pvp in them to be absolutely pointless and down right boring because of it. If I hadn't had that taste of harsh death penalty, then I would probably say that being punished for losing in pvp is ridiculous.
It's really something you need to try before you dis it. You might end up really enjoying it; also, it might ruin pvp for you in pretty much any other mmorpg out there.
What I noticed most about the harsh death penalty was every time I died, I learned an extremely valuable lesson about why I died, and how to prevent it in the future. If there was no harsh death penalty, I'd have shrugged it off and made the same mistake ad nauseum.
I still think that you can have your cake and eat it too.
Make a scaler of sorts so players can choose their risk/reward in PvP games. Players can then decide how they really want to play. Risk factors such as exp / level loss, item degradation (or even loss), longer respawns, etc.
Rewards, in turn, are greater for players who choose the High Risk setting. Bonuses to loot table rolls, increased gold drops, experience boosts, etc.
This way the game can appeal to all players. Can it be abused? No doubt it would require some balancing. I can think of healers and those characters who may not be on the front lines always, maybe tone the rewards down a tad for them.
Lmao.. nah all I have to do is have my equipment manager standing there at spawn point ready to suit me up and send me back out .. LOL.. I don;t know how you play but that is how I play. If you want to play it like that you go ahead.. but that is how it's done with the pros lol.
I fear dying in games with a harsh death penalty and as a result I play better and am more alert...... Games like EQ2, LoTRO, WoW, etc that have little or no death penalty just dont cut it........ALl of those games get boring quickly and I find that I have an "I dont care if I die" attitude towards them...... The more severe of a death penalty you have the better quality of player you will find because it makes it more difficult..... if we keep getting easy mode games with no death penalty then you're going to keep getting the mediocre players that so many of these games have (and I am one of those mediocre players because I just dont care if I die in these games).
Basically, there is some uknown variable connecting dying with surviving and winning. As this variable is increased, the feelings (joy or grief) go up in both.
You've seen games which were too easy and sort of gave you your victory. In those games, dying was meaningless and winning equally so.
However, in games where you had to take risks, and in which the penalty for failing was harsh, the rewards for winning were all the sweeter.
Naturally, there is some balance, and a penalty can be too harsh. I think that if dying makes you "almost" want to pound your keyboard, then the winning times will be quite enjoyable.
Really, the fun in a game = joy - grief. Games with wimpy death penalties are reducing both joy and grief, but are less fun in total. After all, you presumably win more times than lose, so the "joy" side of the equation should always be proportionately larger than the "grief" side.
Take this from a former Psychology major. (ah, finally found a use for Psychology.)
Communities in games with Harsh Death Penalties have always been better in my experience.
People with low tolerance, or impatiences don't play these games, which leaves the tolerant and patient behind, who also seem to be able to have more fun when playing then getting caught up with the drive to better ones mate.
Just in my experience Harsher Death Penalty means Better Community, but doesn't have to mean better game.
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
-Oscar Wilde
I'm all for harsher death penalties, just as long as I never die.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
I like harsh death penalities. While it's sometime a bit hardcore and yes, it can suck, it calm things down a bit.
In a world like EVE, big battles are constant but at the same time, most people are a bit cautious about their lost. It balances alot of things and most people think twice before acting.
ALso, when you kill someone, you get the satisfaction that he won't be coming back anytime soon. (Unless his clone and extra ships are in the same system)
In a game like WOW, you kill someone, he comes back... sometimes before you even had the time to fully heal. As a result, he just comes back non stop until you die yourself...
EVE might be too harsh for many though.
Corpse runs ftw
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Was always funny when you'd see some Ogre with all these sweet looking gear and remember his name, and later on see the same ogre run by you naked.
Gave you a sense of equality. Sure, he was 25 levels bigger and had lots of rare gear, but he has to run back to his corpse naked like the rest of us.
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
-Oscar Wilde
I need to save these reponses so I can just cut and paste every time this comes up.
Death penalties encourage ultra-cautious play, which is boring. If I only play for 5 hours a week, and I loose all of that progress because I died one time, then I don't get to do a whole lot of exciting stuff with my time.
Look at FFXI, people sit around in a "camp" and pull mobs into it one by one. It's a very safe way of getting experience and thus prevents people from delevelling while trying to, well, level. But it's ultimately very boring.
The fact that I went out on a journey/quest alone and failed in that journey is a pretty big penalty given the time I have available.
As a previous poster said, it all boils down to time. Punishing the player with having to grind out more stuff (exp, loot, cash) just further pushes some of the boring parts of the game onto the player more than they are already there.