I played diablo2 HC for a couple years, another game based on Rogue. I actually never played D2 online SC unless I was trying to unlock HC on my account. When you die in D2 HC it is permanent. You lose everything, your character, your gear, your gold, and everything in your bank. If you were teamed and you had consent someone to loot your corpse before you died, then they can grab whatever you dropped, otherwise you're at square one.
You pretty much learn to brush it off and just go to the char select screen and start over, focus on how your going to spec differently or something instead of throwing up your arms. Besides the game was pretty damn fun, and the fact that you were at risk of permanent loss all of the time really made it exciting. I don't even know how many sorcs I had.. At one point I was on the top of the sorc HC ladder, but that sort of thing just wouldn't be possible under a system of ressurectable players.
Even those who like D2 HC will eventually lose one too many characters due to lag or exploits. That sort of thing will eventually turns players off the game. But to me, the excitement the whole time was the risk. I loved barely surviving hell ancients and then catching my breath for the next 10 minutes, heart pounding..
Thing is in d2 HC, the longer you played the more this risk meant, and the more exciting it become, of course when your guy did bite the dust it sucked that much more too, but looking back it was worth it.
No death penalty or low death penalty is pointless, why even waste your time? You could be cheating at solitaire or playing HL2 on god mode or something.. why play a big time consuming sub fee costing mmo when it's just mindless and pointless no risk trivial boredom.
The mmo genre could use at least one perma death MMO. I guess hellgate doesn't really count. This is another reason I'm looking forward to D3.
My opinion? Game developers are too afraid to implement anything that causes a significant setback for the player. They want to coddle the player, make them feel like a "winner" all the time. You see the same thing happening in (American)society today with things like little league baseball and football. Everyone gets a trophy and is a "winner". Noone "loses" anymore when they are growing up, and consequently they cry and moan when introduced to the fact they you will lose sometimes when you are older. Well, game companies have decided to continue the "everyone's a winner, let's walk on eggshells" design mentality. Funny thing is people lose at board games, people lose at card games, yet they still continue to play. There are plenty of games out there that take a time investment in which you can lose it all and have to start over. Yet, people still continue to play. They just have to play more cautiously, and think about their moves. I guess it's like the difference between checkers and chess, though. I't be nice to have more "chess-like" MMOs out there, for sure.
There is a big difference between chess and MMORPGs though. MMORPGs are about consuming content. A cautious player may never want to fight the tough boss because he does not want to risk losing all the good equip. There is no such psychology in chess. There is no content, everyone knows all the pieces and rules about chess.
And the goal is different. MMORPGs are entertainment, not unlike feel-good movies. Chess, OTOH, is like a sport.
I've played UO and EQ from their earliest days, and played Hardcore D2. I don't prefer to be penalized like that for playing these games. The interruption of play that occurs in AO or WoW is perfect for me.
To everyone talking about making MMOs fun and easy, that's fine and dandy, but there are still some of us that want a slightly greater challenge than most current MMOs without being masochistic.
The reason isn't that I like penalties or want to lose, but winning after a loss makes the win so much more rewarding.
I think that I would be happy with a system similar to EQ1's original (exp loss, naked spawn)
I actually miss the severe penalty. I believe that it made your character's life actually mean something to you mainly because death was the one thing you didn't want to experience that often. Take dying in old EQ, you lost xp and had to do a corpse run with a high chance of dying depending on where you died and your class if you didn't happen to be in a group with a rezzer. And it was made wose by the fact that you mighthave forgotten to change your bind point. (done that a few times, even as a caster) Heck, when you died right after you dinged, you undinged if you died as an extra bit of humiliation.
Every other game I have played since then, WoW included, I could care less about dying. "Oh look, I get to run back to my corpse as a ghost with no chance of anything to kill me until i resurrect." Sure, the durability takes a hit on your bank, but the older death penalties took a hit to something much more close to home, your Ego and Pride. I say screw those who think that the penalty for dying should be a soft one. It's just that a penalty for dying. It should be a severe penalty just to make you not want to die carelessly. Now even EQ has a way around having to do corpse runs, but I can say that in certain situations they are handy to have (like a corpse stuck under the world, can't remember where you died, died on a raid last night because you got d/c'ed and couldn't get back on until after the raid was over.) I say let the penalty be severe, people will still play the game, they will just have to learn how not to die.
I actually miss the severe penalty. I believe that it made your character's life actually mean something to you mainly because death was the one thing you didn't want to experience that often. Take dying in old EQ, you lost xp and had to do a corpse run with a high chance of dying depending on where you died and your class if you didn't happen to be in a group with a rezzer. And it was made wose by the fact that you mighthave forgotten to change your bind point. (done that a few times, even as a caster) Heck, when you died right after you dinged, you undinged if you died as an extra bit of humiliation. Every other game I have played since then, WoW included, I could care less about dying. "Oh look, I get to run back to my corpse as a ghost with no chance of anything to kill me until i resurrect." Sure, the durability takes a hit on your bank, but the older death penalties took a hit to something much more close to home, your Ego and Pride. I say screw those who think that the penalty for dying should be a soft one. It's just that a penalty for dying. It should be a severe penalty just to make you not want to die carelessly. Now even EQ has a way around having to do corpse runs, but I can say that in certain situations they are handy to have (like a corpse stuck under the world, can't remember where you died, died on a raid last night because you got d/c'ed and couldn't get back on until after the raid was over.) I say let the penalty be severe, people will still play the game, they will just have to learn how not to die.
I could not have said it better. It actually saddens me to watch people in mmo's now. Everything is a zerg rush and nobody cares about dieing. There is one thing you left out that I feel is very important to mention. You forgot the "Fear" that death gave people. Fear made you more cautious while playing the game. You were afraid of that monster 20 levels higher than you chasing you as you were trying to explore a new zone. You did not dare to travel the roads, they were far to dangerous, you traveled the edges of the zone and slowly worked your way in and always in the back of your head is the fear that if you die, you may not be able to find your body without help!
Fear is the key ingredient that is missing in todays mmo's. The only way you can instill fear without perma death is to have a very harsh death penalty and I dont mean pvp lose your stuff to the guy that killed you. I mean corpse runs, having to go to the bank and get your backup set of armor just in hopes of getting to your body and getting your stuff back. Fear of deleveling and losing those new powers you just got. The simple rush that fear gives you when you are adventuring! Fear is gone from PVE mmo's and without it, the mmo of choice is still but a fraction of what it could be until the developers put fear back into them.
I think I see what has happened to todays mmo's. The developers have replaced fear with PVP. Thinking that pvp will make up for what has been lost in the pve game. It doesn't work. Nobody fears the pve side of games anymore. heck in most games they dont even fear the pvp, its just an annoyance if they get ganked while questing. Strip out the pvp and put the fear back in the PVE game. I think people will be shocked at just how much more interesting it makes the game.
Like so many I was all in favour of death penalties being reduced, but now they practically reward you for dieing. There is a happy medium, designers just need to remember that not everything in a MMOPRG (including death!) has to be ‘fun’.
You all want to know what's scary? What if dying inside an mmorpg is actually encouraged to accomplish something vital? In Silkroad Online, it's based on an exp. and sp. (skill points for unlocking skils) system. Problem is, you get way more exp than sp, so how to solve that problem says pros? You have to constantly die your exp to a point where you're on par between exp and sp. One guy on those forums once admitted that he had purposely died more than 500 times just to get his fully farmed character. It's one of the few non-bot related gripes I have with the game.
Has it come to the point that some games encourage you to die? Sometimes I think I should go back to RuneScape (just found out that my younger brother still has my lvl 50), at least dying sucks in that game.
In an mmorpg with strict death penalties, these rules of thumb should be noted:
1. Will there be a corspe run, and what exactly happens during it? Will it follow EQ1 in which you're running to your dying body or else you lose everything?
2. What do you lose when you die? Items, exp., stuff from your bank, etc. are included in this idea.
3. How fast can you recover after dying and losing all your stuff?
4. PVP and PK should be level restricted (this is a statement). No one likes high levels ganking noobs and continuously stealing their equipment in a rogue-like. Or, PVP and PK could instead be able to do only in certain areas (for example: in Runescape you can only attack other people in the wilderness).
5. PVE needs to be a key aspect. Grinding is boring when you're not fearful or downright paranoid of dying. And there should be light grinding, not heavy grinding.
6. Other means of making cash and crafting equipment need to be implemented. This allows recover for players who died so that they can once again hit the fields of PVE.
Of course, there are probably alot more rules of thumb anyone could add to this. So, these are my thoughts on how to make a successful rogue-like.
Back in the day, I actually played rougelikes a fair amount, and never used any backup files or similar. If I died then I died. Never did get to finish any of them, although I remember getting to level 80 something playing Zangband.
The way to make any progress in Roguelikes is to be incredibly cautious. There are always risks, but those risks can be managed by only progressing slowly, and making sure that before you got to level X in the dungeon, you had every single piece of gear and spell that would be needed to handle level X. Not got any nether resistance? Tough luck - don't dare go down below level 40 of the dungeon without it, since down that far you could meet Dracoliches that could one-shot anyone without that resistance.
So what would groups be like in an MMO if several people had this attitude? If everyone was being ultra-cautious? Sounds boring as hell to me. It's alright to judge your own risks, but being continually held back by other peoples caution could get frustrating really fast.
TBH, even in games like WoW, which have seemingly light death penalties, people just adjust their play style to compensate, and to make up the risk that wasn't apparently there. For example, in games like WoW most raiders are familiar with things like "Wipe nights", where the raid will attempt some tough boss over and over again, in order to get used to the tactics. Ever been on a wipe night? It hurts. Not only does each player spend hundreds of gold pieces on gold for repairs and consumables, but the time spent continually failing over and over hurts as well. There is a cost - a cost which many of the more immature people find impossible to play (which is one of the main reasons why most raiding guilds only recruit people with a mature attitude). So these games aren't remotely risk free.
And I find the low risk result (i.e. continually throwing yourself at difficult challenges) to result in a much more fun overall experience than the high risk approach (i.e. ultra caution).
Some people are saying that games need harsher death penalties. Perhaps for some individuals, the threat of loss of items or experience equates to more fun, but not for me.
First off, until an MMO can absolutely, utterly guarantee that no losses will ever occur to due death cause by lag, there should be no penalty whatsoever.
For myself, I absolutely hate dying. The fact that I died is itself a punishment to me. I don't need a harsher penalty to make me strive to avoid it. I stopped playing D2 after a few deaths which took my necro from level 88.9 to 88.0 . It never makes sense to me to have a player make backwards progress.
So, to each his own, but a harsh death penalty simply means I won't play the game, regardless of any other charms it may have.
90% of people play games, including MMORPG's as games. As fun, entertaining things to do to waste time after school / work. To those 90% of people, just the fact that you died is punishment enough. Unless you can re-spawn exactly where you just died without losing anything, which no game really does, not even WoW, then even the simplist of death penalties like a ghost run is enough to discourage death. Ever die multiple times trying to do something / get to something in WoW? It happens. It's a lot more rare now then it was in the Classic days, but dying even with no penalty over and over does start to piss you off. It's like in a FPS game you die what happens? You respawn. That's it. Your team may lose a point, the other team may gain one, it has no effect on your character. It still sucks. Mostly you will lose whatever additional weapons you were carrying compared to the starting kit for that map. For most, that is punishment enough. Dying in any game sucks, even if there is no penalty like in an offline single player game where you just reload the last save and try again. I've played through plenty of games where I have never died, like Mass Effect or something, and it is still very enjoyable. I've also been playing MMOs since UO so I fully understand full loot PKing and such. It was a lot of fun too. The thing is, in UO there was no gear or equipment that really mattered. Even if you were looted clean it didn't really matter because everything was so easy to come by you just went to the bank after rezzing and got a new set of gear and such. The reason you don't see heavy death penalty games is because companies like to actually make money and games cost way too much money to make these days to take such a retarded risk and actually plan on succeeding.
If you do EVERYTHING else right, if you are lucky you will make enough money to recoup your development expenses and turn a profit. If you make a bad game with these harsh penalties, why the fuck would anyone play it?
This post speaks the truth.
Only the niche hardcore ever wants a death penalty. Me, I want a game to be enjoyable. I am not investing my life into this game, it is a fucking GAME after all. You're supposed to have fun.
However, games shouldn't be too easy, but I think WoW offers up enough of a death deterrent that makes it a challenge. Imagine being deep into a dungeon and getting swarmed by a bunch of MOBs. You respawn and run to your corpse, but you are fucked because those MOBs are still there, ready to attack. It gets pretty hard.
Antipathy: What you're saying makes zero sense. So you're bored of being paranoid of losing your equipment in a dungeon? Ok, lets put this to a real life sample. You're exploring a cave, with only a flashlight and a few back up batteries. You find a convient medium sized tree branch, and it's thick enough to f*** something up fierce. Now, there are rats, bats, and poisonous snakes that constantly threat you, but you still go into the cave. Why? Because somewhere inside that cave is a legendary entrance to a king's ransom tomb, that's why. All of a sudden, HURRAY! Your found the legendary entrance! Then, you black out a short while later while you were carelessly celebrating and shouting. A long time later, you wake up in a hospital. You're fine, but all your gear was burned because it was contaminated and filled with alot of your blood. Turns out, those funny looking monkeys you saw earlier weren't exactly human friendly, and you should've watched your back more.
Now, apply that story to video game equates, and know what you get? A rogue-like you can't be "bored" by, because you're more likely frightened. To say that you're bored of dangerous dungeons isn't exactly accurate. More likely you're too afraid to venture into that dungeon for said reasons. That's the fear that many rogue-like junkies such as myself are looking for. What could be in there? What should I stock up on? Should I invite strangers into my party that might later rape me while we're deep into the dungeon and near the treasure room protected by a dragon the stranger could kill by himself?
SwampRob: Problem is, there's alot of people that miss rogue-likes. To say that there should never be any rogue-likes is being a little unfair. Think of it this way, why not have both types of games out there in masses? Don't you think that would be more fair if there were as many rogue-likes as there were light punishment type games?
My opinion? Game developers are too afraid to implement anything that causes a significant setback for the player. They want to coddle the player, make them feel like a "winner" all the time. You see the same thing happening in (American)society today with things like little league baseball and football. Everyone gets a trophy and is a "winner". Noone "loses" anymore when they are growing up, and consequently they cry and moan when introduced to the fact they you will lose sometimes when you are older. Well, game companies have decided to continue the "everyone's a winner, let's walk on eggshells" design mentality. Funny thing is people lose at board games, people lose at card games, yet they still continue to play. There are plenty of games out there that take a time investment in which you can lose it all and have to start over. Yet, people still continue to play. They just have to play more cautiously, and think about their moves. I guess it's like the difference between checkers and chess, though. I't be nice to have more "chess-like" MMOs out there, for sure.
The difference is board games and card games are a one-time purchase -- companies make their money immediately from selling the game to a distributor. MMO developers are dependent on the continuing subscriber revenue stream and a hardcore death penalty can compromise that.
Well, Theirain, I'm guessing you never heard of EVE Online, an extremely successful and still very popular mmorpg that is based heavily on rogue-like elements.
SwampRob: Problem is, there's alot of people that miss rogue-likes. To say that there should never be any rogue-likes is being a little unfair. Think of it this way, why not have both types of games out there in masses? Don't you think that would be more fair if there were as many rogue-likes as there were light punishment type games?
I can speak factually in only what applies to me: so, I tried to describe what I dislike about death penalties.
Do I think all games should cater to my way of thinking? Am I the undisputed master of the universe? The answer to the first question is yes only if/when the second answer is also yes.
Yes, there should be games with differing rules so we can all find something we like.
However, I would speculate that having a harsh death penalty in an MMO is more likely to chase away customers than attract them. If you play a game of Monopoly and lose, it doesnt matter because the game resets for everyone, and the "losers" have at most, lost an hour or two.
In a harsh penalty MMO, you may lose a lof of hours invested when you lose items. Not only that, the game keeps going, so now you have to "catch up", just to be where you already were.
This, in a nutshell, is what I dislike about death penalties. It's not the dying per se, it's the having to redo stuff I've already accomplished. I hate that. I find it plenty unfun to have my character's progress stop, to have it go backwards reaches a level of unacceptability for me for a game.
Well, Theirain, I'm guessing you never heard of EVE Online, an extremely successful and still very popular mmorpg that is based heavily on rogue-like elements.
I have heard of EO, it bucks the mmo trend in a number of ways. I was merely pointing out that there is an inherent conflict of interest in having an exclusive hardcore ruleset and wanting an ongoing revenue stream --- that doesn't preclude a company from not doing it....
DEATH PENALTIES are the fastest way to get me to quit a game. I have been playing MMo's sence EQ1 and i have never like the death penalties in any game. I have quit playing games becouse the death penalties suxed. Vanguard great game i played for 3 months and then died a few times and then a few times more trying to get my body back. i lost a lvl of xp and was so far in xp debt that i quit the next day. There has been other games that have had bad death penalites.
The only game i have played with death penalties.That I did not mind them, even though they can rack up is CoH/CoV. You never loose xp just slow down getting new xp for a bit.
I was thinking of starting a similar thread but I was going to title it "How light can death penalties be before most people agree that it's too light?"
Ok, but I'll relate my feelings when I tried WoW. The lack of a death penalty in WoW is one of the key factors (but not the only one) that ruined the game for me. The complete lack of any sort of significant penalty destroyed all sense of adventure the game might otherwise have had. Live or die...it's all the same. If you die, no biggie, it's like 20 seconds running back and then you pop right back up without having lost anything. So any situation that otherwise might have felt adventurous instead turned into a tedious trudge through a boring world. Why? Because I knew I had God-like invulnerability to harm. Even if a creature could kill me I knew it could hurt me or even cause me any real inconvenience.
Here's an example: In order to complete an important class related quest I needed to run through an area that was far too high level for me. I knew there was a good chance I would die running through there. Did I feel a tingle of fear? No. Did I feel even a vague sense of excitement? No. Why? Because I knew I couldn't be hurt and nothing bad could happen to me. I knew that no matter what happened I would make it through the area unharmed and reach my destination with little trouble because nothing could hurt me or cause me any real trouble.
I didn't even bother trying to be carefull and cautious as I might have done if there was any danger. I just ran straight through the place completely unconcerned about what might happen. And of course I did die. But what difference does it make? None. When I died it was just a brief run back as a ghost, click to revive, and I popped right back up none the worse for wear and started running again. I died probably four or five times, popped back up, and kept going untill I made it through. I was absolutely unconcerned about dying because death made no difference whatsoever.
When a game gives me that kind of God mode invulnerability it's boring for me. It sucks all the excitement and feeling of adventure right out of it.
I do wonder just how light death penalties could get before most people agreed that it was too light. In WoW all death means is that you'll be out of action for something like 20 or 30 seconds. So how much lighter could it get before it's too light for most people? You fall down and lie there for 15 seconds and then pop back up, would that be too light? 10 seconds? 5?
Or should they just make players unkillable and get it over with?
After careful thinking, I have just remembered another strong element of rogue-likes. Stronger, closer clans (or in general people will help each other out more). Many people think that in rogue-likes you're in shear terror always losing equipment, but people forget that's what buddies are for.
I have a friend that played a rogue-like a while ago (can't remember the game's name), and he was part of a clan that I wish I could have. He joined a clan that had a total standing of 7 people (himself included), and it was small. But, he had become great friends with the clan he joined, and they did everything together. They all got to the point where they could trust each other with their (virtual) lives. And they were are strangers to each other (for safety reasons they never told each other their real names, but they did say where they were from), yet they came to each other's help. And the best part? Most clans on that game were like that. One other thing to note was that the death punishment on that game was severe. When you died, your equipment automatically went to the person who killed you, so your buddies couldn't salvage your equipment when you died. But his buddies could help hook him up with gear, and since they were never rich, it was often scrap equipment they found (but it's also important to note that the entire clan in general wore whatever they got their hands on, so technically they weren't giving my friend hand-me-downs, they were hooking him up with the best gear available). In general, it was a beautiful example of teamwork and looking after your friends.
You can't really see that on lighter, casual games. "Close" guilds are rare, because the majority of people don't care about others usually or they only join a clan to have a cool clan name attached to their normal name.
So if there's one bonus you get to see from a game that has strict death penalties, it's being closer to a clan you join. You do become more dependent on others as a result (if you hate that sort of thing), but rogue-likes really do bring out the best of any clan/guild system.
EQ1 experimented with an ironman server where if you died you were gone. It went for a month then was shut down and never restarted. It just sucked too much to lose your character to internet death or to game bugs. Nowadays the internet is 100x cleaner than those days but imo it still isnt good enough to support the concept.
A good balanced death penalty is one where it makes everyone be suitably careful, but not so tough that people dont want to take any risks or get furious when someone else in the group makes a mistake. Its a fine line.
Comments
I played diablo2 HC for a couple years, another game based on Rogue. I actually never played D2 online SC unless I was trying to unlock HC on my account. When you die in D2 HC it is permanent. You lose everything, your character, your gear, your gold, and everything in your bank. If you were teamed and you had consent someone to loot your corpse before you died, then they can grab whatever you dropped, otherwise you're at square one.
You pretty much learn to brush it off and just go to the char select screen and start over, focus on how your going to spec differently or something instead of throwing up your arms. Besides the game was pretty damn fun, and the fact that you were at risk of permanent loss all of the time really made it exciting. I don't even know how many sorcs I had.. At one point I was on the top of the sorc HC ladder, but that sort of thing just wouldn't be possible under a system of ressurectable players.
Even those who like D2 HC will eventually lose one too many characters due to lag or exploits. That sort of thing will eventually turns players off the game. But to me, the excitement the whole time was the risk. I loved barely surviving hell ancients and then catching my breath for the next 10 minutes, heart pounding..
Thing is in d2 HC, the longer you played the more this risk meant, and the more exciting it become, of course when your guy did bite the dust it sucked that much more too, but looking back it was worth it.
No death penalty or low death penalty is pointless, why even waste your time? You could be cheating at solitaire or playing HL2 on god mode or something.. why play a big time consuming sub fee costing mmo when it's just mindless and pointless no risk trivial boredom.
The mmo genre could use at least one perma death MMO. I guess hellgate doesn't really count. This is another reason I'm looking forward to D3.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
There is a big difference between chess and MMORPGs though. MMORPGs are about consuming content. A cautious player may never want to fight the tough boss because he does not want to risk losing all the good equip. There is no such psychology in chess. There is no content, everyone knows all the pieces and rules about chess.
And the goal is different. MMORPGs are entertainment, not unlike feel-good movies. Chess, OTOH, is like a sport.
I've played UO and EQ from their earliest days, and played Hardcore D2. I don't prefer to be penalized like that for playing these games. The interruption of play that occurs in AO or WoW is perfect for me.
I don't play these games for adrenaline rushes.
To everyone talking about making MMOs fun and easy, that's fine and dandy, but there are still some of us that want a slightly greater challenge than most current MMOs without being masochistic.
The reason isn't that I like penalties or want to lose, but winning after a loss makes the win so much more rewarding.
I think that I would be happy with a system similar to EQ1's original (exp loss, naked spawn)
I liked Spellborns death penalty system.
I actually miss the severe penalty. I believe that it made your character's life actually mean something to you mainly because death was the one thing you didn't want to experience that often. Take dying in old EQ, you lost xp and had to do a corpse run with a high chance of dying depending on where you died and your class if you didn't happen to be in a group with a rezzer. And it was made wose by the fact that you might have forgotten to change your bind point. (done that a few times, even as a caster) Heck, when you died right after you dinged, you undinged if you died as an extra bit of humiliation.
Every other game I have played since then, WoW included, I could care less about dying. "Oh look, I get to run back to my corpse as a ghost with no chance of anything to kill me until i resurrect." Sure, the durability takes a hit on your bank, but the older death penalties took a hit to something much more close to home, your Ego and Pride. I say screw those who think that the penalty for dying should be a soft one. It's just that a penalty for dying. It should be a severe penalty just to make you not want to die carelessly. Now even EQ has a way around having to do corpse runs, but I can say that in certain situations they are handy to have (like a corpse stuck under the world, can't remember where you died, died on a raid last night because you got d/c'ed and couldn't get back on until after the raid was over.) I say let the penalty be severe, people will still play the game, they will just have to learn how not to die.
Currently playing EverQuest 2
People are forgetting the RPG part of MMORPG.
This is a ROLE PLAYING GAME. You are playing the role of a live sentient being. Sentient beings care if they die.
The only way to care if your avatar dies besides permadeath is to make death harsh.
Don't wanna do this raid, because you might die?
GREAT! There are HEROES who will do that raid and will survive. Then there are normal everyday people who will kick a dog, but not take on the elites.
I want an MMORPG that is as close to life-like as possible.
People don't want to lose gear they worked days/weeks/months on.
Then again, they forget the fact that they can steal stuff that other people worked days/weeks/months to get.
So make gear a non-factor . . .
I could not have said it better. It actually saddens me to watch people in mmo's now. Everything is a zerg rush and nobody cares about dieing. There is one thing you left out that I feel is very important to mention. You forgot the "Fear" that death gave people. Fear made you more cautious while playing the game. You were afraid of that monster 20 levels higher than you chasing you as you were trying to explore a new zone. You did not dare to travel the roads, they were far to dangerous, you traveled the edges of the zone and slowly worked your way in and always in the back of your head is the fear that if you die, you may not be able to find your body without help!
Fear is the key ingredient that is missing in todays mmo's. The only way you can instill fear without perma death is to have a very harsh death penalty and I dont mean pvp lose your stuff to the guy that killed you. I mean corpse runs, having to go to the bank and get your backup set of armor just in hopes of getting to your body and getting your stuff back. Fear of deleveling and losing those new powers you just got. The simple rush that fear gives you when you are adventuring! Fear is gone from PVE mmo's and without it, the mmo of choice is still but a fraction of what it could be until the developers put fear back into them.
I think I see what has happened to todays mmo's. The developers have replaced fear with PVP. Thinking that pvp will make up for what has been lost in the pve game. It doesn't work. Nobody fears the pve side of games anymore. heck in most games they dont even fear the pvp, its just an annoyance if they get ganked while questing. Strip out the pvp and put the fear back in the PVE game. I think people will be shocked at just how much more interesting it makes the game.
Like so many I was all in favour of death penalties being reduced, but now they practically reward you for dieing. There is a happy medium, designers just need to remember that not everything in a MMOPRG (including death!) has to be ‘fun’.
You all want to know what's scary? What if dying inside an mmorpg is actually encouraged to accomplish something vital? In Silkroad Online, it's based on an exp. and sp. (skill points for unlocking skils) system. Problem is, you get way more exp than sp, so how to solve that problem says pros? You have to constantly die your exp to a point where you're on par between exp and sp. One guy on those forums once admitted that he had purposely died more than 500 times just to get his fully farmed character. It's one of the few non-bot related gripes I have with the game.
Has it come to the point that some games encourage you to die? Sometimes I think I should go back to RuneScape (just found out that my younger brother still has my lvl 50), at least dying sucks in that game.
In an mmorpg with strict death penalties, these rules of thumb should be noted:
1. Will there be a corspe run, and what exactly happens during it? Will it follow EQ1 in which you're running to your dying body or else you lose everything?
2. What do you lose when you die? Items, exp., stuff from your bank, etc. are included in this idea.
3. How fast can you recover after dying and losing all your stuff?
4. PVP and PK should be level restricted (this is a statement). No one likes high levels ganking noobs and continuously stealing their equipment in a rogue-like. Or, PVP and PK could instead be able to do only in certain areas (for example: in Runescape you can only attack other people in the wilderness).
5. PVE needs to be a key aspect. Grinding is boring when you're not fearful or downright paranoid of dying. And there should be light grinding, not heavy grinding.
6. Other means of making cash and crafting equipment need to be implemented. This allows recover for players who died so that they can once again hit the fields of PVE.
Of course, there are probably alot more rules of thumb anyone could add to this. So, these are my thoughts on how to make a successful rogue-like.
Back in the day, I actually played rougelikes a fair amount, and never used any backup files or similar. If I died then I died. Never did get to finish any of them, although I remember getting to level 80 something playing Zangband.
The way to make any progress in Roguelikes is to be incredibly cautious. There are always risks, but those risks can be managed by only progressing slowly, and making sure that before you got to level X in the dungeon, you had every single piece of gear and spell that would be needed to handle level X. Not got any nether resistance? Tough luck - don't dare go down below level 40 of the dungeon without it, since down that far you could meet Dracoliches that could one-shot anyone without that resistance.
So what would groups be like in an MMO if several people had this attitude? If everyone was being ultra-cautious? Sounds boring as hell to me. It's alright to judge your own risks, but being continually held back by other peoples caution could get frustrating really fast.
TBH, even in games like WoW, which have seemingly light death penalties, people just adjust their play style to compensate, and to make up the risk that wasn't apparently there. For example, in games like WoW most raiders are familiar with things like "Wipe nights", where the raid will attempt some tough boss over and over again, in order to get used to the tactics. Ever been on a wipe night? It hurts. Not only does each player spend hundreds of gold pieces on gold for repairs and consumables, but the time spent continually failing over and over hurts as well. There is a cost - a cost which many of the more immature people find impossible to play (which is one of the main reasons why most raiding guilds only recruit people with a mature attitude). So these games aren't remotely risk free.
And I find the low risk result (i.e. continually throwing yourself at difficult challenges) to result in a much more fun overall experience than the high risk approach (i.e. ultra caution).
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Some people are saying that games need harsher death penalties. Perhaps for some individuals, the threat of loss of items or experience equates to more fun, but not for me.
First off, until an MMO can absolutely, utterly guarantee that no losses will ever occur to due death cause by lag, there should be no penalty whatsoever.
For myself, I absolutely hate dying. The fact that I died is itself a punishment to me. I don't need a harsher penalty to make me strive to avoid it. I stopped playing D2 after a few deaths which took my necro from level 88.9 to 88.0 . It never makes sense to me to have a player make backwards progress.
So, to each his own, but a harsh death penalty simply means I won't play the game, regardless of any other charms it may have.
This post speaks the truth.
Only the niche hardcore ever wants a death penalty. Me, I want a game to be enjoyable. I am not investing my life into this game, it is a fucking GAME after all. You're supposed to have fun.
However, games shouldn't be too easy, but I think WoW offers up enough of a death deterrent that makes it a challenge. Imagine being deep into a dungeon and getting swarmed by a bunch of MOBs. You respawn and run to your corpse, but you are fucked because those MOBs are still there, ready to attack. It gets pretty hard.
I think this is the perfect death system. However your idea has a nice balance of all 3 difficulties.
- Will focus on loss of experience
- Will have corpse runs and still indecisive to have you return as nude character or ghost.
- Loss of experience will cease once you accumulated 100% death experience lost.
- If you die from a target that is within the same level to 1-3 levels of you, you will loose 7% experience
- If you die from a target that is within 3-6 levels of you, you will loose 5% experience
- If you die from a target that is 7-10 levels you will loose 3% experience.
- So you can loose up to 1 full level at max.
- Resurrections and potions can help you obtain loss experience back.
- Will also loose 1% durability to items each death.
Antipathy: What you're saying makes zero sense. So you're bored of being paranoid of losing your equipment in a dungeon? Ok, lets put this to a real life sample. You're exploring a cave, with only a flashlight and a few back up batteries. You find a convient medium sized tree branch, and it's thick enough to f*** something up fierce. Now, there are rats, bats, and poisonous snakes that constantly threat you, but you still go into the cave. Why? Because somewhere inside that cave is a legendary entrance to a king's ransom tomb, that's why. All of a sudden, HURRAY! Your found the legendary entrance! Then, you black out a short while later while you were carelessly celebrating and shouting. A long time later, you wake up in a hospital. You're fine, but all your gear was burned because it was contaminated and filled with alot of your blood. Turns out, those funny looking monkeys you saw earlier weren't exactly human friendly, and you should've watched your back more.
Now, apply that story to video game equates, and know what you get? A rogue-like you can't be "bored" by, because you're more likely frightened. To say that you're bored of dangerous dungeons isn't exactly accurate. More likely you're too afraid to venture into that dungeon for said reasons. That's the fear that many rogue-like junkies such as myself are looking for. What could be in there? What should I stock up on? Should I invite strangers into my party that might later rape me while we're deep into the dungeon and near the treasure room protected by a dragon the stranger could kill by himself?
SwampRob: Problem is, there's alot of people that miss rogue-likes. To say that there should never be any rogue-likes is being a little unfair. Think of it this way, why not have both types of games out there in masses? Don't you think that would be more fair if there were as many rogue-likes as there were light punishment type games?
The difference is board games and card games are a one-time purchase -- companies make their money immediately from selling the game to a distributor. MMO developers are dependent on the continuing subscriber revenue stream and a hardcore death penalty can compromise that.
Well, Theirain, I'm guessing you never heard of EVE Online, an extremely successful and still very popular mmorpg that is based heavily on rogue-like elements.
I can speak factually in only what applies to me: so, I tried to describe what I dislike about death penalties.
Do I think all games should cater to my way of thinking? Am I the undisputed master of the universe? The answer to the first question is yes only if/when the second answer is also yes.
Yes, there should be games with differing rules so we can all find something we like.
However, I would speculate that having a harsh death penalty in an MMO is more likely to chase away customers than attract them. If you play a game of Monopoly and lose, it doesnt matter because the game resets for everyone, and the "losers" have at most, lost an hour or two.
In a harsh penalty MMO, you may lose a lof of hours invested when you lose items. Not only that, the game keeps going, so now you have to "catch up", just to be where you already were.
This, in a nutshell, is what I dislike about death penalties. It's not the dying per se, it's the having to redo stuff I've already accomplished. I hate that. I find it plenty unfun to have my character's progress stop, to have it go backwards reaches a level of unacceptability for me for a game.
I have heard of EO, it bucks the mmo trend in a number of ways. I was merely pointing out that there is an inherent conflict of interest in having an exclusive hardcore ruleset and wanting an ongoing revenue stream --- that doesn't preclude a company from not doing it....
DEATH PENALTIES are the fastest way to get me to quit a game. I have been playing MMo's sence EQ1 and i have never like the death penalties in any game. I have quit playing games becouse the death penalties suxed. Vanguard great game i played for 3 months and then died a few times and then a few times more trying to get my body back. i lost a lvl of xp and was so far in xp debt that i quit the next day. There has been other games that have had bad death penalites.
The only game i have played with death penalties.That I did not mind them, even though they can rack up is CoH/CoV. You never loose xp just slow down getting new xp for a bit.
I was thinking of starting a similar thread but I was going to title it "How light can death penalties be before most people agree that it's too light?"
Ok, but I'll relate my feelings when I tried WoW. The lack of a death penalty in WoW is one of the key factors (but not the only one) that ruined the game for me. The complete lack of any sort of significant penalty destroyed all sense of adventure the game might otherwise have had. Live or die...it's all the same. If you die, no biggie, it's like 20 seconds running back and then you pop right back up without having lost anything. So any situation that otherwise might have felt adventurous instead turned into a tedious trudge through a boring world. Why? Because I knew I had God-like invulnerability to harm. Even if a creature could kill me I knew it could hurt me or even cause me any real inconvenience.
Here's an example: In order to complete an important class related quest I needed to run through an area that was far too high level for me. I knew there was a good chance I would die running through there. Did I feel a tingle of fear? No. Did I feel even a vague sense of excitement? No. Why? Because I knew I couldn't be hurt and nothing bad could happen to me. I knew that no matter what happened I would make it through the area unharmed and reach my destination with little trouble because nothing could hurt me or cause me any real trouble.
I didn't even bother trying to be carefull and cautious as I might have done if there was any danger. I just ran straight through the place completely unconcerned about what might happen. And of course I did die. But what difference does it make? None. When I died it was just a brief run back as a ghost, click to revive, and I popped right back up none the worse for wear and started running again. I died probably four or five times, popped back up, and kept going untill I made it through. I was absolutely unconcerned about dying because death made no difference whatsoever.
When a game gives me that kind of God mode invulnerability it's boring for me. It sucks all the excitement and feeling of adventure right out of it.
I do wonder just how light death penalties could get before most people agreed that it was too light. In WoW all death means is that you'll be out of action for something like 20 or 30 seconds. So how much lighter could it get before it's too light for most people? You fall down and lie there for 15 seconds and then pop back up, would that be too light? 10 seconds? 5?
Or should they just make players unkillable and get it over with?
After careful thinking, I have just remembered another strong element of rogue-likes. Stronger, closer clans (or in general people will help each other out more). Many people think that in rogue-likes you're in shear terror always losing equipment, but people forget that's what buddies are for.
I have a friend that played a rogue-like a while ago (can't remember the game's name), and he was part of a clan that I wish I could have. He joined a clan that had a total standing of 7 people (himself included), and it was small. But, he had become great friends with the clan he joined, and they did everything together. They all got to the point where they could trust each other with their (virtual) lives. And they were are strangers to each other (for safety reasons they never told each other their real names, but they did say where they were from), yet they came to each other's help. And the best part? Most clans on that game were like that. One other thing to note was that the death punishment on that game was severe. When you died, your equipment automatically went to the person who killed you, so your buddies couldn't salvage your equipment when you died. But his buddies could help hook him up with gear, and since they were never rich, it was often scrap equipment they found (but it's also important to note that the entire clan in general wore whatever they got their hands on, so technically they weren't giving my friend hand-me-downs, they were hooking him up with the best gear available). In general, it was a beautiful example of teamwork and looking after your friends.
You can't really see that on lighter, casual games. "Close" guilds are rare, because the majority of people don't care about others usually or they only join a clan to have a cool clan name attached to their normal name.
So if there's one bonus you get to see from a game that has strict death penalties, it's being closer to a clan you join. You do become more dependent on others as a result (if you hate that sort of thing), but rogue-likes really do bring out the best of any clan/guild system.
Rogue wasnt an online game so it doesnt count.
EQ1 experimented with an ironman server where if you died you were gone. It went for a month then was shut down and never restarted. It just sucked too much to lose your character to internet death or to game bugs. Nowadays the internet is 100x cleaner than those days but imo it still isnt good enough to support the concept.
A good balanced death penalty is one where it makes everyone be suitably careful, but not so tough that people dont want to take any risks or get furious when someone else in the group makes a mistake. Its a fine line.