Death systems. And yes, Hardcore is stupid.

Turel_Azure

This is not a discussion of hardcore systems.  Yes, we all know they exist and have their place, but for the general MMO player base (which is definately more than WoW), death is something that has always escaped the grasp of most MMOs I can think of.

 

What death system is appropriate?  I am going with two assumptions:

1) Most people don't want hardcore, so that's off the table.

2) Most people find WoW's simple corpse run to be far too trivial.  Repair Bills oh noes!

3) The old EQ exp based penalty was probably a little stiff, simply in that loss of exp is a direct loss of time invested, to the point where you would lose weeks work of effort.

 

So the real question is: What do you want to see in a death system that has both significant consequences for failure, but also one that doesn't make the game less fun for the players. 

 

The only concept I have come up with is basically that death is another playable zone that is basically the afterlife, and the player has to perform 'quests' to get their life back.  Their first venture to the land of the dead would be the longest, and it would become easier afterwards.  It could be where they convince a god or something to give them back life, or they find a way out of the land of the dead.  Alternatively, players could insure themselves with a town cleric who would teleport their body back to the hospital upon dying.

The downside to this idea is A) It would be a lot of work for something that characters won't spend a whole lot of time in and it may not hold much in consequences for gameplay, overall, save time lost.  But to me the general idea of doing quests for getting life back, even short ones, might be an interesting avenue. 

Maybe it would be a better idea to do something similar to what Asheron's Call did, but not entirely the same,  as in give characters 'save points' where they have a record of all items and skills on their person, and upon death, they lose anything they've gained since the save point.  Upon death, they come back to life at that point sans their gains.

thexrated

Well, it is hard to say without knowing the gameplay.

For example, I hold EVE's system in a pretty high regard. I can't think of playing that game wihtout the risk aspect to it.

However, that is unlikely to work in many other settings. The gameplay as a whole makes it approriate in terms of risks and rewards.

In more traditional fantasy MMOs, I think there are two types of penalties - those that come from dying in PvE and those from PvP. Dying in PvE, in my opinion, does not have to be harsh, but PvP should be penalised depending on rewards. The only system that works in WoW is Arena - you die and you are out of the game. The rest of the PvP is mostly about zerg and usually a bore due to no risks. The risk needs to balanced on rewards.

If for example, dying in WOW battleground would mean that you would receive a pretty harsh negative bonus for 5-10 minutes, you would see a lot less zerging.

I can even see player looting as a viable option for certain type of PvP, but the goal needs to be rewarding enough as well. I am not satisfied by mindless killing. Ganking does nothing to me. Only time I feel adrenaline and excitement is when there is something to be risked in order to gain.

 

NCX-Charger

Asheron's Call always had a great death system I thought. When you die, you drop the most valuable items on your person (forcing you to collect Death Items (DI's) so that you didn't lose your really good armor & weapons and whatnot. You could return to the place you died and collect the items yourself, or you can give someone you trust permission to loot your corpse and get your items back. Of course there are times when you can't get back to your body, and the items are lost (now imagine if you die while trying to get back to your corpse... if you don't have enough DIs, you start dropping your armor & weapons). If you are killed in Red Dot PK (Full PvP status by choice, or by playing on the PK world) the person who killed you gets to loot your corpse. Later in the game they introduced PKL - Player Killer Lite - where if you died to another PKL you didn't lose any Vitae (see below) or drop any items... was met with mixed reactions.

You also accrued "Vitae" - which is a stat-wide penalty (-5% to all stats if I recall correctly - for some skills that rely on more than one attribute as it's base the penalty could be quite a pain in the ass, such as Melee Defense). You can remove this penalty by earning XP (the easiest way is if you're in a fellowship to teleport back to the area you died, and while you're buffing up they're still killing and earning XP - with any luck by the time you were done buffing they killed all or most of your Vitae penalty).

If you're soloing or can't safely return to your fellowship's area while you've got the penalty then you had to hunt easier areas to earn the XP to get rid of the vitae.

It was kind of complicated at first, but it really was the most balanced in my view. It definitely penalized you, but unless you accrued successive deaths the penalty wasn't severe and it was never permanent.

shad0w99

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Originally posted by thexrated
Well, it is hard to say without knowing the gameplay.
For example, I hold EVE's system in a pretty high regard. I can't think of playing that game wihtout the risk aspect to it.
However, that is unlikely to work in many other settings. The gameplay as a whole makes it approriate in terms of risks and rewards.
In more traditional fantasy MMOs, I think there are two types of penalties - those that come from dying in PvE and those from PvP. Dying in PvE, in my opinion, does not have to be harsh, but PvP should be penalised depending on rewards. The only system that works in WoW is Arena - you die and you are out of the game. The rest of the PvP is mostly about zerg and usually a bore due to no risks. The risk needs to balanced on rewards.
If for example, dying in WOW battleground would mean that you would receive a pretty harsh negative bonus for 5-10 minutes, you would see a lot less zerging.
I can even see player looting as a viable option for certain type of PvP, but the goal needs to be rewarding enough as well. I am not satisfied by mindless killing. Ganking does nothing to me. Only time I feel adrenaline and excitement is when there is something to be risked in order to gain.
 

---

I think this guy is kinda on to something

I don't think there should be a physical penalty to dying, personally. I think the biggest penalty should be how long it takes you to be ready to fight again. That's a meaningful penalty in itself. Like thexrated said, if there were a 5-10 minute penalty when you died, people would be much more careful and tactical in their approach to PvP in WoW.

In PvP make it so that zerging isn't an option. In pre-CU SWG for example, you had to get Doctor and Entertainer buffs to get back in the battle which could take up to 10 minutes or more sometimes if you died in a remote place. This made you think twice before charging mindlessly. If you died, you'd have to get set up again. If you die, you're out the battle for quite a while. And if you're an adrenaline junkie, you don't want that!

In PvE I don't think XP loss is the worst idea. I think it just has to be kept reasonable. You don't want to lose a few weeks work but losing an hour or two of work would be reasonable. Nobody, hardcore or casual would want to lose 2 hours of work but it's not such a large amount that you would get suicidal over it :-P

toddze

Lets look at this lets say your in a raid type situation and die. Your group just lost 1 member of the raid. If several people die well its probably raid over because your too short handed. The peopel who died will be pissed along with the ones who didnt die.

 

Is this a good thing? I dont know I havnt thought about long enough this was just the first thing that came to my mind.

Palebane

How about some sort of afterlife you must get through to get back to the land of the living?

paulscott

I've thought about something like the longer and more difficult "life" you have opens up extra options for if you die.   Basically along the lines of anything from a simple and depressing crossing of the rivers styx.   To coming back as a world "event" IE: mini raid boss,  or other mechanics that let you unlock new things on the real you if you play the minigame.

 

So it's not so much of I'm punished if I died, but rather if I die I won't be able to get the best death content.

1977

Originally posted by Turel_Azure


This is not a discussion of hardcore systems.  Yes, we all know they exist and have their place, but for the general MMO player base (which is definately more than WoW), death is something that has always escaped the grasp of most MMOs I can think of.
You say this isn't a discussion of hardcore systems, but yet hardcore is a relative term. What I call fun you might call hardcore. 
What death system is appropriate?  I am going with two assumptions:
1) Most people don't want hardcore, so that's off the table.
This mentality is why MMO genre sucks today. Who cares what the masses want. They have WOW let them play it, please don't taint the next possible decent MMO with this thinking. Be Innovative. It can be fun AND hardcore...
2) Most people find WoW's simple corpse run to be far too trivial.  Repair Bills oh noes!
If these players wanted a challenge they would not be playing WOW in the first place.
3) The old EQ exp based penalty was probably a little stiff, simply in that loss of exp is a direct loss of time invested, to the point where you would lose weeks work of effort.
EQ wasn't too bad as far as death penalty, cleric res and epic gave back 90-96% iir when I was playing, and when you were raiding and dying a lot, you were hopefully max level anyway. I thought permanent death/loss of items could have been a bit more common.
 
So the real question is: What do you want to see in a death system that has both significant consequences for failure, but also one that doesn't make the game less fun for the players. 
Well, see, there are people that enjoy what you call "less fun". Sitting on the edge of my seat, knowing if I messed up this pull up or zone in I could be in a really bad situation I call fun.  
The only concept I have come up with is basically that death is another playable zone that is basically the afterlife, and the player has to perform 'quests' to get their life back.  Their first venture to the land of the dead would be the longest, and it would become easier afterwards.  It could be where they convince a god or something to give them back life, or they find a way out of the land of the dead.  Alternatively, players could insure themselves with a town cleric who would teleport their body back to the hospital upon dying.
The downside to this idea is A) It would be a lot of work for something that characters won't spend a whole lot of time in and it may not hold much in consequences for gameplay, overall, save time lost.  But to me the general idea of doing quests for getting life back, even short ones, might be an interesting avenue. 
Maybe it would be a better idea to do something similar to what Asheron's Call did, but not entirely the same,  as in give characters 'save points' where they have a record of all items and skills on their person, and upon death, they lose anything they've gained since the save point.  Upon death, they come back to life at that point sans their gains.
If you are living in the land of the dead, you are alive. It's not a bad idea, but after a while I think most people are going to find it ridiculous. It would be just another grind, how is that any different than experience loss on death? I can see it now, full raid, wipe on boss, whole guild gets sent to Hades for a day till they quest off their death. Think about it.
To answer your question, though, I'm going to have to say close to AD&D ruleset. When you hit 0 hit points you are on the ground *unconscious* bleeding to death. Someone must bandage you or heal you in that time or within 10 rounds(1 minute) you bleed to death. When you die you lose a bit of experience and you lose a point of constitution(vitality). You cannot move, you are dead on the ground, you can only chat(in OOC/Guild/Whisper only, dead people don't talk  hahaha). You will need a res from a cleric to get your life back. When your constitution reaches 0 your character is permanently dead.
That to me is hardcore and still fun. Basically as long as you travel with a group, you have a good chance of someone bandaging you and helping you, and you not dying. If you don't believe in strength in numbers and think you are tough, or don't trust your precious life with others, then you can try and solo.

 

complexiator

No, I don't think death should be hardcore. Yes, I think it is good for gameplay.
These are mostly fighting games we play. Death is too much of a powerfull concept to be left out. My idea is to play as a family and not as a single character. So you can pass on your winnings in the game to a family member when you die. For examplye: if you die your son will get all you belongings and training but for your rank in the clan you have to prove yourself again. This idea ways heavely on roleplaying so it depends on the comunity to be succesfull. It has alot of possibilities.
Family management for example. You can take a wife to be a shadow character. You play yours, level it the way you want. But on the side you also control what direction your wife goes on the same speed. Then when you die and your shadow character, wife, takes over you have a character with a different setup.
I don't say this should happen everytime you fail in batle. That would be too much of a hasle. It can work next to aging characters, batle wounds, scars, surgeries or bionic body parts.
Integrating these things into gameplay can be a new part of mmo's next to crafting, trade, housing, clans, etc.

Hluill

I remember the old EQ corpse-runs.  Raid wipes were no fun, or really expensive.

A friend of mine talked about the afterlife idea.  He also talked about owing the god(s) a favor and having to do a quest for them to get rid of some sort of death-caused curse or debuff.  The idea has merits.

I like going a bit more true to life or at least changing the vocabulary...  My avatar is not dead, my avatar has been defeated, gone into shock and passed out.

In my limited experience, when I have lost a fight, been shot, stabbed, beaten or blown up, I wake up in the hospital, and typically all my stuff is gone.  In fact, after being medevacced in Afganistan, the medics took ALL my stuff  except for my weapon, which wasn't really mine and has to tracked.  But all my kit: my rig with all its cool pouches, my shades, my assault gloves, my handmade kemaugh...  all of that was gone.

So, maybe I am hardcore.  But if an avatar is defeated, the player can wait for a friend to do some first aid and try to revive the defeated avatar or choose to pass out and wake up in the nearest hospital.  For a reduced rate, like some games' repair bills, the player can buy the avatar's stuff back.  Or even venture to where the character was defeated and look for stuff, which may or may not still be there.

Loosing one's stuff would allow games to become less focused on uber gear and support a healthier crafting economy.  But I am probably in a minority when it come to hating the uber-magical gear (what does make one weapon better than another?).

 

jimsmith08

Theres no such thing as hardcore in a video game. Your topic should be renamed to 'inconvinience is stupid'.

Spellborn had a great death penalty system with PeP. Basically, it was a reward for staying alive, and the tougher the task you took the more reward you got. Once you were at pep 5, you have something like 20% extra damage, 20% movement speed and 10% faster deck rotation. If you died, you lost a rank. Going from pep 5 to 0 was a big reduction to your combat effectiveness, and even at low levels people were concerned about losing pep.

x_rast_x

The penalty for dying should make sense and not be too extreme.  Obviously this will vary from game to game.

EvE and WoW are mentioned quite often when describing death penalties but having played both games quite a bit I don't see them as being so different.

WoW is all about gear, taking your gear away when it takes dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours to aquire makes no sense.  Wasting your time doing a corpse run and some gold via a repair bill makes sense - in higher end content you have to walk a long way to get back to where you were (if you wiped inside a raid instance), especially if stuff has respawned behind you.

In EvE gear is a commodity and fancy expensive gear is not a substitue for player and character skills.  What you lose when you die is deteremined entirely by what you decided to risk ahead of time and, again, costs nothing but time spent farming ISK and moving crap around to replace.

So in both cases the death penalties reduce to the same thing - time, with the only real difference being that in EvE the player chooses how much time he's going to waste when he dies.  I think this time-based model works well and should be what devs of current and future games use a metric, even the individual mechanics will (and should) vary greatly.

Death SHOULD be penalized, it SHOULD be unfun, else you get the zerg gameplay that nobody likes.  But it shouldn't be penalized so much that people are afraid to take risks, unless, like EvE , you let people choose how harsh their penalty will be.

Cephus404

While yes, death should be penalized, if you make the penalty too difficult, who is going to take risks?  No one will ever put themselves into dangerous situations, everyone will fight low-level mobs because the risk of death is virtually nil, why would anyone stare death in the eye and take a heroic stand if failure means you lose everything and have to start over?  I'd much rather have the challenge of fighting the hardest mobs that I think I can handle, even if I fail from time to time, than taking the safe path because I don't want to replay the last 1000 hours and millions of gold to rebuild myself to where I was before.

tupodawg999

Originally posted by Hluill


I like going a bit more true to life or at least changing the vocabulary...  My avatar is not dead, my avatar has been defeated, gone into shock and passed out.

 

I've got like that since trying Lotro. I prefer the "you have been defeated" idea and that somehow you escaped back to the nearest healer rather than corpse runs, even though no CRs makes it easier.

If we assume extreme penalties would never be popular in a mainstream game then my preference would simply be downtime:

If you "died" in the same zone as a friendly NPC healer you'd respawn next to them with one HP and zero mana (and make it so mana didn't regen until you were at 50% HP). If you died one zone away from the nearest healer then on top of that you'd get some kind of "wound" debuff that lasted 10-15 minutes e.g "leg wound" might be -10% movement and -1 dodge. If you died 2 zones away from a healer then you'd get a severe wound e.g a -20% movement penalty and -2 to dodge for 20-30 minutes. If you died again while a wound debuff was still active not only would you get a new wound but the original would become severe or very severe. 

(I'd also have an option on character creation where if you died two zones away from a healer it was perma-death rather than just a severe wound).

To make up for not having corpse runs, I'd probably also have equipment damage and XP loss on top of the downtime if i was designing it for me, but maybe not in a mainstream game. Either way the XP loss and gear damage would also relate to the zone distance i.e in a mainstream game maybe no XP loss if you die in the same zone as the healer and 10% if one zone away or 10% and 20% respectively in a harsher game.

You could have high level priests able to make temporary shrines so if you were in a dungeon a long way from a healer you could respawn at the shrine.

leshtricity

I hate hate HATE carebear death systems.

Seriously, please give people incentive to play smart and tactically by making death mean something. I am so goddamn tired of the WoW/Warhammer system that includes zerging, dying, respawning, and repeating. It's absolutely retarded. I'm not saying we need a full-loot system or some bullshit, but I am saying that killing the same player 5 times within a 10-minute period gets extremely old.

I'm also tired of PvP being such a disconnected affair. I don't want to PvP just for the sake of PvP.

EVE Online does PvP the best. You PvP because: you either want to be a dick, you want to make money, you want to CONTROL sectors, etc. There's real incentive for PvP because you're not just fighting because the developer said you should. There are real issues at stake. I'm not saying EVE is the best MMORPG ever. I quit several months ago because it does a lot of stuff wrong. But it nails PvP and that is fucking inarguable.

I'm so tired of this genre, I don't know why the fuck I even bother keeping up with anything. KOTORO will likely be the same old broken record PvE/PvP bullshit.

Kyleran

Originally posted by jimsmith08


Theres no such thing as hardcore in a video game. Your topic should be renamed to 'inconvinience is stupid'.
Spellborn had a great death penalty system with PeP. Basically, it was a reward for staying alive, and the tougher the task you took the more reward you got. Once you were at pep 5, you have something like 20% extra damage, 20% movement speed and 10% faster deck rotation. If you died, you lost a rank. Going from pep 5 to 0 was a big reduction to your combat effectiveness, and even at low levels people were concerned about losing pep.

 

I never played the game, but I really think this is a good idea.

Maybe another game will resurrect the concept.

 

nariusseldon

This mentality is why MMO genre sucks today. Who cares what the masses want. They have WOW let them play it, please don't taint the next possible decent MMO with this thinking. Be Innovative. It can be fun AND hardcore...

This mentality is why hardcore MMO features are irrelevant today. Who cares what the hardcore. They don't move the needle in the subscription base.

Harsh penalty is innovative? Don't make me laugh. It has been tried and rejected before.

Games are for fun. It is not fun if i cannot jump back and play again. Loss of gold is quite enough. No one is going to learn a fight wipe after wipe if the penalty is any higher. It is simple human psychology. If the penalty is too big, people don't do a thing and sit at home. If you want them to experience risky gameplay, make the penalty low. As simple as that.

 

Credinus

It's also all relative to how easy or difficult it is to die in the game. If you've got a game where people are going to be dying frequently, then it should be more of a reward for staying alive system than a penalty for dying system (Spellborn and Sacred 2 are two newer games that use such systems). If it's difficult to die in the game and it's clear enough to the player when they're getting into an area way over their heads, then it should be a penalty system. However, the penalties could be a lot more creative than most MMO's use. Some common death penalties:

1) Res sickness - Not a big fan of this one. This is just an inconvenience and not a penalty. "Oh, you died? Well, go eat a sandwich or something and come back in 20 minutes." I've seen some especially horible res sickness implementations as well, such as one where dying causes an xp penalty (that can also de-level) you but if you respawn back to your home, you get no res sickness and full xp penalty. However, if a player ressurects you, you get a reduced XP penalty but a HORRIBLY crippling res sickness. So now you're out in the thick of the battlefield, probably near the same mobs that killed you, and you're a sitting duck. Res sickness = bad

2) Durability damage - This one is decent, however it's kind of pointless in many of the games it's used in. It's definitely not one that should be the only penalty, but in games where durability is something you actually care about (such as UO before powders of fortification), it works.

3) Corpse runs - This is usually a frustrating one. If you happened to accidentally run into an area far above your head and didn't realize it until it was too late, you're SoL. A bunch of mobs just killed you, and you're not going to get back to your corpse, end of story. However, it also works in some games, mainly ones with open looting. Very game dependent on this one.

4) XP Penalty - Logically, it doesn't really make sense unless you've received head trauma. However, in a virtual world, logic and reason doesn't apply anyway. XP penalties can be reasonable, though some games go overboard with them. De-leveling as a result, on the other hand, is an inconvenience. Why? Because more often than not, you've got to go through and try to resort all of your gear and hope you didn't already sell your gear from the previous level.

5) Item drop - This one's not as common anymore, but MMO's went through a phase some time ago that had this feature popularized. Can and can't be a good one, depends. The biggest complaint would be the ones that just disappear from existence. Some games, however, make the killer, be it player or NPC, loot the item and the item can be retrieved by killing the attacker. That way is pretty cool.

But anyway, it all depends on the game itself. Of all the death penalties I've seen in games over the years, res sickness is the only one I believe doesn't have a place in any game, but that's my personal opinion. I just don't feel that the mechanics basically telling you to go do something else for a while because you're just going to die if you try to get back into combat right now is not the right way to go. Simply put:

Death penalties should penalize the character, not the player.

jimsmith08

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by jimsmith08


Theres no such thing as hardcore in a video game. Your topic should be renamed to 'inconvinience is stupid'.
Spellborn had a great death penalty system with PeP. Basically, it was a reward for staying alive, and the tougher the task you took the more reward you got. Once you were at pep 5, you have something like 20% extra damage, 20% movement speed and 10% faster deck rotation. If you died, you lost a rank. Going from pep 5 to 0 was a big reduction to your combat effectiveness, and even at low levels people were concerned about losing pep.

 

I never played the game, but I really think this is a good idea.

Maybe another game will resurrect the concept.

 

 

Yes it is a really great system, and im sure other games will rip it off at some point. Ive read that Champs online has stars that you lose on death, and im hoping its a similar progression system as pep.

Seriously, please give people incentive to play smart and tactically by making death mean something. I am so goddamn tired of the WoW/Warhammer system that includes zerging, dying, respawning, and repeating. It's absolutely retarded. I'm not saying we need a full-loot system or some bullshit, but I am saying that killing the same player 5 times within a 10-minute period gets extremely old.

thats a good point, especially in pvp centric games. At least in wow, if you respawned at the graveyard you get a very nasty debuff and damaged your gear, WAR gives you a mediocre debuff that can be removed for a few silver.

RamenThief7

Originally posted by Turel_Azure


This is not a discussion of hardcore systems.  Yes, we all know they exist and have their place, but for the general MMO player base (which is definately more than WoW), death is something that has always escaped the grasp of most MMOs I can think of.
 
What death system is appropriate?  I am going with two assumptions:
1) Most people don't want hardcore, so that's off the table.
Yeah, but then again way too many people are copying WOW's example and that is a contributing factor to why MMO's are going downhill. I don't think that all games should instantly become rogue-likes (games with harsh death penalties), but I would like to see some sort of punishment that teaches me to stop sucking. Also, this isn't to be sarcastic, but it is to prove a point. If all people in the world wanted nothing but unhealthy fast food, and that was selling majorly at the time, would it be good to give everyone what they want? It seems to me that we need to break away from WOW clones, and at least have more hardcore games as well as moderate death punishments.
2) Most people find WoW's simple corpse run to be far too trivial.  Repair Bills oh noes!
Not sure if you think WOW's corpse run is too easy or good, so I'll state my opinion on this. It's a mere slap on the wrist. That is not a punishing death penalty, it's a mere annoyance.
3) The old EQ exp based penalty was probably a little stiff, simply in that loss of exp is a direct loss of time invested, to the point where you would lose weeks work of effort.
 You would lose alot of exp... if you sucked. Harsh death penalties can be cruel, but they teach you to become a better gamer and learn from your mistakes. Of course, lag or something else out of your control may kill you unfairly, but hey, life's tough.
So the real question is: What do you want to see in a death system that has both significant consequences for failure, but also one that doesn't make the game less fun for the players. 
 I have a question of my own: Why aren't there more games out there that have more punishing death penalties? FFXI and EVE Online proved that punishing death penalties in games can do well and sell very successfully. Also, to answer your question, I would like to see a death system that makes you lose exp. and some random items that you are carrying and items you were wearing. The exp you lose isn't significant, but it's enough to make you feel the sting of sucking, and random items means you either can lose your best equipment or just a pack of replacable items like arrows or potions, it's random that way.
The only concept I have come up with is basically that death is another playable zone that is basically the afterlife, and the player has to perform 'quests' to get their life back.  Their first venture to the land of the dead would be the longest, and it would become easier afterwards.  It could be where they convince a god or something to give them back life, or they find a way out of the land of the dead.  Alternatively, players could insure themselves with a town cleric who would teleport their body back to the hospital upon dying.
The downside to this idea is A) It would be a lot of work for something that characters won't spend a whole lot of time in and it may not hold much in consequences for gameplay, overall, save time lost.  But to me the general idea of doing quests for getting life back, even short ones, might be an interesting avenue. 
Maybe it would be a better idea to do something similar to what Asheron's Call did, but not entirely the same,  as in give characters 'save points' where they have a record of all items and skills on their person, and upon death, they lose anything they've gained since the save point.  Upon death, they come back to life at that point sans their gains.
Those three last paragraphs are a cool concept. But in my opinion the "afterlife" has to suck and ultimately you want to live again. Save points seem too casual and part of the light death punishment area. Some gamers may wisen up, while others will continuously batter dungeons over and over until they finally beat it.

 

nariusseldon

Not sure if you think WOW's corpse run is too easy or good, so I'll state my opinion on this. It's a mere slap on the wrist. That is not a punishing death penalty, it's a mere annoyance.

That is the whole point. You want NOT to frustrate the players too much and have them back in action ASAP. The time lost is already a penalty. People would quit in a PUG if it wipes a few times.

dilatedmind

Hard to say really...

 

If you want no downtime, play a fps. full loot is ok, but at the same time, it discourages pvp, and makes a necessary wait between pvp events since you need to replace the gear you lose.

 

 

MMORPGS need to think bigger. IE, territory control. maybe dying means nothing for the individual, but for a faction as a whole it could spell losses.

seabass2003

 How about we just never die. We get down to one hit point and make our last stand with it but that one hit point is as low as we will go. That would be awesome.

thafireball

how about making hard core servers where when you die your char gets deleted just like in Diablo.  Now that would be hardcore...

 

(sorry i totally didn't read anything except the heading of the post and then hit the reply button)

Zyonne

I don't agree with the OPs assumptions, so it's kind of hard to discuss death penalties based on those.  I think that most people who play wow or similar games think the death penalties are just fine, or too harsh. In practice this means that if Blizzard made their death penalties slightly harsher, the consequence would be losing more players than they would gain. 

My assumption would be that any player who doesn't enjoy wow-like MMOs because they are too forgiving wants something that is a lot harsher, not just slightly harsher... and any such system would be considered hardcore by "most people":

That said, I think the worst kind of death penalty is one that is basically just a time sink. That includes stat/xp loss both temporary and not, and "Do x for y minutes to get back to life" mechanics. I honestly think full loot is the most natural penalty. Lootable corpses gives a real sense of risk vs. reward, as it is up to the player to decide how much they wish to carry with them into situations where they are likely to die. Being naked when you spawn means that your own preparations for death is the determining factor in how quickly you get back into action. If that's too harsh, insurance is a good compromise. Either give the insured victim their items back, and the looter the monetary value, or the monetary value to the victim and the loot to the killer. Such a system means you won't ever lose anything you can't replace. (well, the first example anyway. Money can't always get you you everything back).

Yes, a game with full or partial loot upon death is for niche audiences, but lets face it: Any game with a harsher death penalty than WoW is for niche audiences.

 

Reklaw

Originally posted by Turel_Azure


This is not a discussion of hardcore systems.  Yes, we all know they exist and have their place, but for the general MMO player base (which is definately more than WoW), death is something that has always escaped the grasp of most MMOs I can think of.
 
What death system is appropriate?  I am going with two assumptions:
1) Most people don't want hardcore, so that's off the table.
2) Most people find WoW's simple corpse run to be far too trivial.  Repair Bills oh noes!
3) The old EQ exp based penalty was probably a little stiff, simply in that loss of exp is a direct loss of time invested, to the point where you would lose weeks work of effort.
 
So the real question is: What do you want to see in a death system that has both significant consequences for failure, but also one that doesn't make the game less fun for the players. 
 
The only concept I have come up with is basically that death is another playable zone that is basically the afterlife, and the player has to perform 'quests' to get their life back.  Their first venture to the land of the dead would be the longest, and it would become easier afterwards.  It could be where they convince a god or something to give them back life, or they find a way out of the land of the dead.  Alternatively, players could insure themselves with a town cleric who would teleport their body back to the hospital upon dying.
The downside to this idea is A) It would be a lot of work for something that characters won't spend a whole lot of time in and it may not hold much in consequences for gameplay, overall, save time lost.  But to me the general idea of doing quests for getting life back, even short ones, might be an interesting avenue. 
Maybe it would be a better idea to do something similar to what Asheron's Call did, but not entirely the same,  as in give characters 'save points' where they have a record of all items and skills on their person, and upon death, they lose anything they've gained since the save point.  Upon death, they come back to life at that point sans their gains.

 

Not a bad idea, but want to let you know that hardcore is a playstyle, it's not so much a gamefeature, thought certain feature's might appeal more towards a hardcore playstyle.

A example to me I play games in a hardcore way, for me this means, to give a simple example, I played WoW, I did have some purple's, but 90% of the time my outfit was handcrafted by myself, it creates a greater challenge for me in a game that to me was far to easy on the PVE side, of course at certain times when engaging into pvp it was neccary to engage in the best armor, but never felt the need to have high end armor for anything pvp as with a game like WOW I really needed to create my own challenge, that's my hardcore playstyle, while someone else might feel hardcore to get the best of the best to engage in either PVE or PVP, as that can be a hardcore playstyel for that person.

Anyway DEATH in MMORPG's should sting, should make you think before your actions but can never work in a way like perma death as some would like, so like I said I kinda like your idea. Just feel a majority of player just don't like death in anyway or form in their games.