The more I personally think about death penalties the more I start to really dislike a lot of the "hardcore" ideas for penalties. In a game the biggest thing a developer doesn't want is to have people have to wait around before jumping back into the fun part again. Having to sit around 5-10 minutes to wait for a debuff to go off, or having to buy/farm up a new set of armor is both time consuming and pointless.
I'm not saying that a game should have no death penalties. I also think that the penalty should be relevant based off of the game and the setting it is in. EVE has a perfectly fine penalty for its setting. WoW also has a just fine death penalty, because it isn't built to handle a harsh death.
My favorite death penalty idea so far, in all honesty, is from Aion. The entire game is based off of a rank system, where the higher Abyss Points you have the higher rank you have. You can use this AP to buy gear or save it and advance in ranks. What is nice about it is that when you die in PvP combat you lose AP, which is dependent on what rank your character is at. What this means is that for your average player they won't lose a ton of AP upon a death, but they also won't be able to buy any good AP gear either. For the players who really rush up in ranks it is much more of a challenge, because it gets to the point where you will need to get multiple kills per death to even break even. What I like is that this penalty does two things,
1. It makes people think twice before rushing in a zerg. 2. It doesn't slow down PvP combat, or the time between fights.
I do think that if developers want to have harsher penalties they should start looking outside of arbitrary player penalties and look to a larger scale. The idea of harshly penalizing a player for doing something is long gone, and to be truly innovative developers should look forward and not back. I bring up the example a lot in these threads, but really if you look at some of the finest games, artistically speaking, a lot of them have no real "death". Of course in a single player game death would only cause a loading screen, but even still several developers are looking ahead and looking towards the core experience.
I'm not going to say that an ultra-harsh penalty doesn't have its place anywhere. However I don't think it has its place in a game so much as it does a simulator. I feel like more and more the people who are looking for these harsh penalties are looking for more of a simulated world, and not a game. It's two entirely different things, surely.
TL;DR: I don't think harsh death penalties are innovative, developers should look forward and think of death in a new way.
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.
I actually think EQ the way it used to play pretty much had the death penalty right on. It was enough to make people think twice before doing something studid, but pretty trivial if you had a cleric. rezz you.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
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.
Gasp then people would you know group up to fight larger risks to receive a superior reward. Soloers do admit they don't like to take risks...
I really liked EQ's death penality. I would consider it to be a good medium for death penalities. For perma death, yes that would be a good idea depending on the game. Death would't occur quick because it would piss too many players off. Wow's death system is not existent because it doesn't matter. In EQ, you cared about staying alive versus people in wow, who really dont care because there was no penality. I think you have to balance out penalities versus rewards, just not have rewards all the time, via wow. Anyways, I have came up with my own death penality system. I think it's very good and makes sense.
- 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.
I think the lost of experience is a good thing because you actually care to not die so therefore maybe grouping/playing would make you a better player in some cases. I only added the durability because that is kinda realistic.
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.
Of all the death systems I have played with, I have to agree Asheron's Call had the best one by far and the fairest. There was penalty, but it was removable with a little work and at no loss of experience. The DI systems worked well, there was always some loot for the looter...
First off, unless you're playing in a hardcore mode, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, challenging about a death penalty. There can certainly be challenge associated with avoiding it, but not once you've died.
So, to me, any "punishments" the devs decide you drop on you for dying are very subjective. By and large, I find them to be nothing more than timesinks, which I despise in MMOs.
When I play a SP game, I can save right before the boss fight, and if I die, reload and try again. Depending on the game and the comp, my downtime or "punishment" for dying, is between 10 and 30 seconds.
I see no reason to make it any different in an MMO, at least not for me. I can accept that, for some, the excitement of avoiding death adds to the game. For me, it's all about avoiding an annoyance. So, my perfect MMO would have a basically non-existant penalty. You respawn, fully healthy, with no item or exp loss, at the nearest safe location to where you died, and you can do this an infinite amount of times, exactly like most sp games.
First off, unless you're playing in a hardcore mode, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, challenging about a death penalty. There can certainly be challenge associated with avoiding it, but not once you've died. So, to me, any "punishments" the devs decide you drop on you for dying are very subjective. By and large, I find them to be nothing more than timesinks, which I despise in MMOs. When I play a SP game, I can save right before the boss fight, and if I die, reload and try again. Depending on the game and the comp, my downtime or "punishment" for dying, is between 10 and 30 seconds. I see no reason to make it any different in an MMO, at least not for me. I can accept that, for some, the excitement of avoiding death adds to the game. For me, it's all about avoiding an annoyance. So, my perfect MMO would have a basically non-existant penalty. You respawn, fully healthy, with no item or exp loss, at the nearest safe location to where you died, and you can do this an infinite amount of times, exactly like most sp games. Well that sounds pretty good on paper, but single player games are not necessarily like that. If you mess up in single player it could cost you the whole game, and quite possibly MUCH more than 10-30 seconds of playtime. I've died in many single player games unexpectedly and had to redo content that took me 30 minutes to an hour to do and even longer because I forgot to save or my save points were not where they need to be. Not only that you are making a blanket assumption of single player games. All single player games death penalties are not the same. So you see, in a single player game, when you reload, you are sent back in TIME. TIME in an MMO does not stop or go back, and therein is the problem. No death penalty leads to zerg tactics, which is equally lame as 1 death only and you are dead. There has to be a death penalty or you can do away with strategy. Doing away with strategy = lame game.
You know I was thinking of an alternative to my permanent death AD&D penalty. Instead of it taking off a point of constitution and you permanently dying at 0 constitution, maybe a 1 in 1000 chance your character permadeaths upon ANY death. And I think it would totally rock to have some awesome effect when it happens, like the person spontaneously combusting and their spirit rising or the person getting "chunked"(body parts flying everywhere). That would avoid the player knowing exactly when their time is up and making arrangements for it, because you never know when you are going to die.
There could even be a graveyard, you know.
-Here lies Rick the Pick level 12 halfling rogue, died in the year 355 at the hands of a Hill Giant. May he rest in peace.
There would be stories of brave adventurers that came before and died in certain battles. I imagine a person getting chunked would probably leave an impression on people, especially for the party members nearby that shamelessly loot the corpse, hahaha.
I have to agree with a few of the previous posters, EvE's system is the best I've seen to date. You control the level of risk and potential loss. Rule #1 of EvE is "Don't fly what you cannot afford to lose".
Funny thing is, before I started playing EvE I would never of thought that I would like that kind of death system. Now I wouldn't have it any other way. I wonder how many other people have dismissed item loss or full loot systems because it sounds too harsh without ever really giving it a fair chance.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
First off, unless you're playing in a hardcore mode, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, challenging about a death penalty. There can certainly be challenge associated with avoiding it, but not once you've died. So, to me, any "punishments" the devs decide you drop on you for dying are very subjective. By and large, I find them to be nothing more than timesinks, which I despise in MMOs. When I play a SP game, I can save right before the boss fight, and if I die, reload and try again. Depending on the game and the comp, my downtime or "punishment" for dying, is between 10 and 30 seconds. I see no reason to make it any different in an MMO, at least not for me. I can accept that, for some, the excitement of avoiding death adds to the game. For me, it's all about avoiding an annoyance. So, my perfect MMO would have a basically non-existant penalty. You respawn, fully healthy, with no item or exp loss, at the nearest safe location to where you died, and you can do this an infinite amount of times, exactly like most sp games. Well that sounds pretty good on paper, but single player games are not necessarily like that. If you mess up in single player it could cost you the whole game, and quite possibly MUCH more than 10-30 seconds of playtime. I've died in many single player games unexpectedly and had to redo content that took me 30 minutes to an hour to do and even longer because I forgot to save or my save points were not where they need to be. Not only that you are making a blanket assumption of single player games. All single player games death penalties are not the same. So you see, in a single player game, when you reload, you are sent back in TIME. TIME in an MMO does not stop or go back, and therein is the problem. No death penalty leads to zerg tactics, which is equally lame as 1 death only and you are dead. There has to be a death penalty or you can do away with strategy. Doing away with strategy = lame game.
You are correct that some sp games have more that you have to redo if you die.
However, zerg tactics to get past a goal don't have to be made to work.
If I'm outside of a boss encounter room and I enter and lose (die), just have the room reset. I can zerg it til the cows come home, but unless I change my tactics, I may never succeed.
Downtime is an annoyance, period. It adds nothing to the game. So, yes, you can have a non-punishing death penalty and still require just as much strategy. You're just removing the pointless "wait ten minutes" or "run across zone and back into entrance and back to where you were" junk.
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.
Gasp then people would you know group up to fight larger risks to receive a superior reward. Soloers do admit they don't like to take risks...
No, nobody would take those large risks at all if every time they died, they lost absolutely everything and had to start all over from the beginning. It has nothing to do with group or solo, but with the penalty for failure. Besides, I'd be extremely hesitant putting my health and safety in the hands of a bunch of retards who could screw up and cost me the ultimate price.
Originally posted by 1977 You know I was thinking of an alternative to my permanent death AD&D penalty. Instead of it taking off a point of constitution and you permanently dying at 0 constitution, maybe a 1 in 1000 chance your character permadeaths upon ANY death. And I think it would totally rock to have some awesome effect when it happens, like the person spontaneously combusting and their spirit rising or the person getting "chunked"(body parts flying everywhere). That would avoid the player knowing exactly when their time is up and making arrangements for it, because you never know when you are going to die. There could even be a graveyard, you know. -Here lies Rick the Pick level 12 halfling rogue, died in the year 355 at the hands of a Hill Giant. May he rest in peace. There would be stories of brave adventurers that came before and died in certain battles. I imagine a person getting chunked would probably leave an impression on people, especially for the party members nearby that shamelessly loot the corpse, hahaha.
You would reduce the loss of a character to a RNG roll? Look, I know you like D&D but sometimes rolling on something is not the best course of action.
And at your earlier statement about single player games, the only ones where death matters are ones where you have checkpoints or a limited amount of lives. Those games almost all are older games as well. Sure, every now and then we'll get a sort of classic 2D platformer, like Contra 4 for the NDS, but they certainly are not the norm today. Since you like D&D so much as well I should say that death is not near as taxing in a game like Baldur's Gate II or Icewind Dale because I can just reload the game. If you forget to save that's sort of your own fault.
Man, at least SwampRat gets what I'm saying. Like I said though the only penalty I like is the one I described in Aion, because that one ultimately does take skill (not a timesink because it pretty much just makes your K:D ratio in game important). However most death penalties are just timesinks, which aren't very skillful at all and just really fucking annoying.
I have to agree with a few of the previous posters, EvE's system is the best I've seen to date. You control the level of risk and potential loss. Rule #1 of EvE is "Don't fly what you cannot afford to lose". Funny thing is, before I started playing EvE I would never of thought that I would like that kind of death system. Now I wouldn't have it any other way. I wonder how many other people have dismissed item loss or full loot systems because it sounds too harsh without ever really giving it a fair chance.
I think your first paragraph pretty much answered the question in the second paragraph. The games need to be designed around it.
OP here, and I'd like to put in some more cents. Reading the thread I get a few things so far:
1) Hardcore really is kind of stupid for the majority, and people complaining about it seem to just really want the ability to ruin someone else's day by killing their character completely. Legal murder as it were. Man, I can't wait to see responses for this conclusion.
2) Death penalties, to most people, are necessary. Those who think WoW's is okay as it is state so because it is a very short time sink, which is sort of key here.
3) Time sinks are not favorable as death penalties. Whether this is through a loss of real time, or through a loss of XP or skills, a loss of time in the most literal sense possible is just a huge bummer.
Which brings me to this question: If time sinks are bad, and death penalties through item or gold cost is the most ideal (we assume), how can such a system have any form of story/rp implementation?
I mean, case in point, in Warcraft everyone just plays a warrior-Jesus, coming back to life at a whim as long as they get back to their body. There is almost no form of story implementation whatsoever in this. You have no idea why you have such great powers of ressurection, other than the game just not being 'hardcore' in death. So in such a system that say, has people losing gold and items, what explanation is there for it?
For the record, I'm still a fan of the MMORPG 'save point' idea, where you simply record your character's status at a hub, and any items or skills you gain after you adventure is lost until you 'save' again. Perhaps more appropriately an insurance on both your character's life and on certain items, with all other uninsured items being dropped.
I see no reason to make it any different in an MMO, at least not for me. I can accept that, for some, the excitement of avoiding death adds to the game. For me, it's all about avoiding an annoyance. So, my perfect MMO would have a basically non-existant penalty. You respawn, fully healthy, with no item or exp loss, at the nearest safe location to where you died, and you can do this an infinite amount of times, exactly like most sp games.
I think that's probably close to what the majority wants and that's fair enough.
I think games that have extreme death pemalties need to be built around it from the ground up and any game that wants to be mainstream and attract very large numbers probably has to have a minimum death penalty.
However... even in a mainstream game I think it wouldn't be too hard to include both. Say when you create a character there's three tick boxes.
The default choice could be named "standard" and has the death penalty you describe.
The second could be called "role-playing / immersion" and with this option when you died you were smashed up a bit depending on distance from nearest friendly NPC healer so same-zone was zero health, one-zone-away was zero health plus some "wound" debuff for a while and two-zones-away was zero health plus a "severe wound" debuff.
The third tick-box would be an option under the second so the death penalty was the same as the RP one for same-zone and one-zone-away but the penalty for two-zones-away was perma-death for those people who'd get an adrenaline buzz from the risk.
The "reward" should either be the immersion or the buzz so there'd be no XP bonus or anything - you'd choose that route purely for the fun aspect (for those that found it fun).
...However... even in a mainstream game I think it wouldn't be too hard to include both. Say when you create a character there's three tick boxes. The default choice could be named "standard" and has the death penalty you describe. The second could be called "role-playing / immersion" and with this option when you died you were smashed up a bit depending on distance from nearest friendly NPC healer so same-zone was zero health, one-zone-away was zero health plus some "wound" debuff for a while and two-zones-away was zero health plus a "severe wound" debuff. The third tick-box would be an option under the second so the death penalty was the same as the RP one for same-zone and one-zone-away but the penalty for two-zones-away was perma-death for those people who'd get an adrenaline buzz from the risk. ...
I think it would be better to implement this choice server wide, rather than per character. People that don't want any DP at all, would get really upset to find out someone in their group has setup their char for DP when the rest didn't.
Personally, I like DP. It makes you play more strategically and carefully. Rather than just running in gung-ho not caring what happens because it doesn't matter if you die anyhow.
...However... even in a mainstream game I think it wouldn't be too hard to include both. Say when you create a character there's three tick boxes. The default choice could be named "standard" and has the death penalty you describe. The second could be called "role-playing / immersion" and with this option when you died you were smashed up a bit depending on distance from nearest friendly NPC healer so same-zone was zero health, one-zone-away was zero health plus some "wound" debuff for a while and two-zones-away was zero health plus a "severe wound" debuff. The third tick-box would be an option under the second so the death penalty was the same as the RP one for same-zone and one-zone-away but the penalty for two-zones-away was perma-death for those people who'd get an adrenaline buzz from the risk. ...
I think it would be better to implement this choice server wide, rather than per character. People that don't want any DP at all, would get really upset to find out someone in their group has setup their char for DP when the rest didn't.
Personally, I like DP. It makes you play more strategically and carefully. Rather than just running in gung-ho not caring what happens because it doesn't matter if you die anyhow.
Hmm, good point, I hadn't thought of that. Trouble with it being server-wide is the PD option server would probably be under-populated even though most of the time the RP or PD option players would be in safe zones anyway. Perhaps if your DP option was reflected in the color of your name or some symbol on your name so people knew in advance?
OP here, and I'd like to put in some more cents. Reading the thread I get a few things so far:
1) Hardcore really is kind of stupid for the majority, and people complaining about it seem to just really want the ability to ruin someone else's day by killing their character completely. Legal murder as it were. Man, I can't wait to see responses for this conclusion. Wish granted. First off, the term "hardcore" could mean many different things since we the gamers have not accepted a universal term for that word. I consider hardcore to be a status in which a gamer is playing a particular set of games and sticking to them. Or, hardcore could mean that you play video games more than the average person. Perhaps hardcore means you play a particular type of a game (like for example, you only play turn-based mmorpgs, or you only play FPS mmorpgs, that sort of idea). I don't think any of the terms I created for the term "hardcore" seems stupid. I'm not trying to be extremely critical here, but just so you know, there really are alot of terms for hardcore, and some of them wouldn't be as stupid as you might think. Also, I don't know of many games where a death punishment involves you losing your character completely and having to start over (though I think someone on this thread mentioned a game with this idea). Even though I am a hardcore gamer with a love for rogue-likes (games with harsh death penalties), even I think losing your character completely as a death penalty would be a little too harsh. 2) Death penalties, to most people, are necessary. Those who think WoW's is okay as it is state so because it is a very short time sink, which is sort of key here. That is somewhat understandable. If you only played WOW and you loved its death penalty, that would be something you would defend. The problem comes when those types of people then spam on these forums about how harder death penalties suck and should be removed forever, not realizing that other people grew up on other types of games. I may not like solo games or casual games, but I at least recognize they exist and there should be games for those types of gamers. 3) Time sinks are not favorable as death penalties. Whether this is through a loss of real time, or through a loss of XP or skills, a loss of time in the most literal sense possible is just a huge bummer. Personally, I favor losing a ton of XP and loot you were carrying or wearing. Of course, then you need time to make up that which you lost. So, a combination of time sink with losing items and xp, done correctly, would make a decent yet punishing death penalty. In a way, having to make up the items and xp can sometimes end up being a time sink, and that aspect doesn't suck in my opinion. Of course, time sink not done that way can end up sucking if the mechanics of the game are built that way. Which brings me to this question: If time sinks are bad, and death penalties through item or gold cost is the most ideal (we assume), how can such a system have any form of story/rp implementation? I mean, case in point, in Warcraft everyone just plays a warrior-Jesus, coming back to life at a whim as long as they get back to their body. There is almost no form of story implementation whatsoever in this. You have no idea why you have such great powers of ressurection, other than the game just not being 'hardcore' in death. So in such a system that say, has people losing gold and items, what explanation is there for it? In my opinion, most mmorpgs have lost the story implemention. They've degraded into boring quests that you grind things a certain amount of times, go fetch a certain amount of a particular item, go from point A to point B, etc. But, I personally don't think a harsh or middle-core death penalty system involving the loss of item, xp, or gold cost is causing this problem. A story should somehow involve dying. For example, you could be doing a quest where you need to slay a dragon, and you need a total party of 4. But, the group ends up dying. So, because of that, the story evolves. The dragon, not having been slayed, is now causing further havoc in a distant town. That would seem like an effective story. One that involves dying changing up some aspects in the story. For the record, I'm still a fan of the MMORPG 'save point' idea, where you simply record your character's status at a hub, and any items or skills you gain after you adventure is lost until you 'save' again. Perhaps more appropriately an insurance on both your character's life and on certain items, with all other uninsured items being dropped. In a instanced solo mmorpg, this idea could work. And this could work on a casual group game with casual aspects and a light death penalty system. But, these are the only types of games that I think of that could use this system effectively.
1) Hardcore really is kind of stupid for the majority, and people complaining about it seem to just really want the ability to ruin someone else's day by killing their character completely. Legal murder as it were. Man, I can't wait to see responses for this conclusion. I agree, there are plenty of people out there who are into that. I think EvE is a good example, there are plenty of PvP gankers hanging around low security level gates just waiting for someone to fly by so they can wipe them out for fun. I can't tell you how many times I not only had them blow apart my ship but purposely "murder" my "character" so that it had to respawn as a clone. These are pathetic losers who get off on it. 2) Death penalties, to most people, are necessary. Those who think WoW's is okay as it is state so because it is a very short time sink, which is sort of key here. Reasonable death penalties are necessary, otherwise why care if you die? If you just pop back with no loss of any kind, what difference does it make? 3) Time sinks are not favorable as death penalties. Whether this is through a loss of real time, or through a loss of XP or skills, a loss of time in the most literal sense possible is just a huge bummer. I don't have a problem with a reasonable time sink, maybe a couple of minutes while your toon regenerates to full health. You can fight if you want to but low HP and low skills make that a very dangerous proposition. For the record, I'm still a fan of the MMORPG 'save point' idea, where you simply record your character's status at a hub, and any items or skills you gain after you adventure is lost until you 'save' again. Perhaps more appropriately an insurance on both your character's life and on certain items, with all other uninsured items being dropped. Anarchy Online does that very well. You can "save" at an insurance terminal, it costs you money to do, but that limits the amount of XP you can lose if you die. Otherwise, if you don't save, you go back to the beginning of the level when you die. In any case, you lose about 5 minutes recovering back at your save point before you can set off again. I think that's entirely reasonable, after all, death is supposed to teach you not to bite off more than you can chew, not discourage you from trying in the first place.
1) Hardcore really is kind of stupid for the majority, and people complaining about it seem to just really want the ability to ruin someone else's day by killing their character completely. Legal murder as it were. Man, I can't wait to see responses for this conclusion. I agree, there are plenty of people out there who are into that. I think EvE is a good example, there are plenty of PvP gankers hanging around low security level gates just waiting for someone to fly by so they can wipe them out for fun. I can't tell you how many times I not only had them blow apart my ship but purposely "murder" my "character" so that it had to respawn as a clone. These are pathetic losers who get off on it. Well Cephus, you just seem to have gotten really unlucky in those situations. But just because you got wasted constantly doesn't mean it was the hardcore gamer's fault. No, it was simply that a group of raiders with evil intentions decided to waste you. You could be a total bastard in the game (like being a pirate for instance), that's the freedom of choice in that game. Also, you probably didn't read my discussion of how the term "hardcore" can mean a bunch of different things and that gamers have not settled on a universal agreement of what "hardcore" should indefinitely be described as. 2) Death penalties, to most people, are necessary. Those who think WoW's is okay as it is state so because it is a very short time sink, which is sort of key here. Reasonable death penalties are necessary, otherwise why care if you die? If you just pop back with no loss of any kind, what difference does it make? Having weak death penalties or low time sinks removes alot of challenge for people that favor middle-core through rogue-like styles. For gamers like me, knowing that dying will screw you over big time gives me an adrenaline rush, and adds to the excitement of making sure I plan ahead so that I don't die. There should be death penalties, whether they are light, middle-core or rogue-like, but nowadays there just seems to be too many light death penalties that I haven't really seen too many challenging games in my opinion. 3) Time sinks are not favorable as death penalties. Whether this is through a loss of real time, or through a loss of XP or skills, a loss of time in the most literal sense possible is just a huge bummer. I don't have a problem with a reasonable time sink, maybe a couple of minutes while your toon regenerates to full health. You can fight if you want to but low HP and low skills make that a very dangerous proposition. This is a good idea, and it contributes to one of many good ideas on how to balance time sinks with death penalties. For the record, I'm still a fan of the MMORPG 'save point' idea, where you simply record your character's status at a hub, and any items or skills you gain after you adventure is lost until you 'save' again. Perhaps more appropriately an insurance on both your character's life and on certain items, with all other uninsured items being dropped. Anarchy Online does that very well. You can "save" at an insurance terminal, it costs you money to do, but that limits the amount of XP you can lose if you die. Otherwise, if you don't save, you go back to the beginning of the level when you die. In any case, you lose about 5 minutes recovering back at your save point before you can set off again. I think that's entirely reasonable, after all, death is supposed to teach you not to bite off more than you can chew, not discourage you from trying in the first place. I already stated my thoughts on this. See my previous post.
- you get 100 lives to start, they start being decreased each time you die after lvl 20.
- if you die, you can just respawn in a safe place near to where you died, no xp loss or anythign but you char has -1 lives.
- if you are in a raid and wipe you all get pushed back to the beginning and minus 1 on that.
- past lvl 20 and you have 90 or more lieves you have a certain halo - lives are displayed on your character - if you lose all your life you are permanently put in full loot pvp mode meaning anyone can kill you and take your stuff, effectively making that char semi-useless.
- this way it means something not to die, to have a halo and be high level means something.
Cryomatrix
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I actually think EQ the way it used to play pretty much had the death penalty right on. It was enough to make people think twice before doing something studid, but pretty trivial if you had a cleric. rezz you.
Why would you want that? You want people to explore and try (even stupid) things in a game.
You will never admit a new guy into a PUG if the death penalty is so harsh. If you think the DPS checks are bad in WOW now, it will be harsh if the death penalty goes up because no one wants to risk a wipe.
I actually think EQ the way it used to play pretty much had the death penalty right on. It was enough to make people think twice before doing something studid, but pretty trivial if you had a cleric. rezz you.
Why would you want that? You want people to explore and try (even stupid) things in a game.
You will never admit a new guy into a PUG if the death penalty is so harsh. If you think the DPS checks are bad in WOW now, it will be harsh if the death penalty goes up because no one wants to risk a wipe.
Two words. LEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOY nnnJEEEEENNNKIIIINS. Heh, yeah that's just who I want in my raid, so we can zerg and wipe and waste hours of playtime, sounds totally fun.
People explored and tried even stupid things in Everquest, but see the thing is people came with a solid plan. They didn't just do stupid things for the sake of being stupid because the game is on ezmode and a joke(Leroy Jenkins).
1) Most people don't want hardcore, so that's off the table.
And most people are wrong.
The only good online RPG I ever played was a MUD with eventual perma death. You had about 40 lives.
And if was full loot, so if you're worried about losing all your stuff that can happen anyway.
It's the only good system. Argue all you want, I'm right and your wrong. Because it's the only system where people at the top deserve to be at the top.
And it solves all of your end game issues. The end game is trying to stay alive. Trust me, you will never have a better PVP experience.
I had a two hour long fight once in that MUD and my hands were shaking most of the time. All the years I played MMOs my hands never shook.
And by the way my main character when two years max level and never died once. And yes that meant something. That will never mean something in a no permadeath MMO.
Comments
The more I personally think about death penalties the more I start to really dislike a lot of the "hardcore" ideas for penalties. In a game the biggest thing a developer doesn't want is to have people have to wait around before jumping back into the fun part again. Having to sit around 5-10 minutes to wait for a debuff to go off, or having to buy/farm up a new set of armor is both time consuming and pointless.
I'm not saying that a game should have no death penalties. I also think that the penalty should be relevant based off of the game and the setting it is in. EVE has a perfectly fine penalty for its setting. WoW also has a just fine death penalty, because it isn't built to handle a harsh death.
My favorite death penalty idea so far, in all honesty, is from Aion. The entire game is based off of a rank system, where the higher Abyss Points you have the higher rank you have. You can use this AP to buy gear or save it and advance in ranks. What is nice about it is that when you die in PvP combat you lose AP, which is dependent on what rank your character is at. What this means is that for your average player they won't lose a ton of AP upon a death, but they also won't be able to buy any good AP gear either. For the players who really rush up in ranks it is much more of a challenge, because it gets to the point where you will need to get multiple kills per death to even break even. What I like is that this penalty does two things,
1. It makes people think twice before rushing in a zerg.
2. It doesn't slow down PvP combat, or the time between fights.
I do think that if developers want to have harsher penalties they should start looking outside of arbitrary player penalties and look to a larger scale. The idea of harshly penalizing a player for doing something is long gone, and to be truly innovative developers should look forward and not back. I bring up the example a lot in these threads, but really if you look at some of the finest games, artistically speaking, a lot of them have no real "death". Of course in a single player game death would only cause a loading screen, but even still several developers are looking ahead and looking towards the core experience.
I'm not going to say that an ultra-harsh penalty doesn't have its place anywhere. However I don't think it has its place in a game so much as it does a simulator. I feel like more and more the people who are looking for these harsh penalties are looking for more of a simulated world, and not a game. It's two entirely different things, surely.
TL;DR: I don't think harsh death penalties are innovative, developers should look forward and think of death in a new way.
I actually think EQ the way it used to play pretty much had the death penalty right on. It was enough to make people think twice before doing something studid, but pretty trivial if you had a cleric. rezz you.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Gasp then people would you know group up to fight larger risks to receive a superior reward. Soloers do admit they don't like to take risks...
I really liked EQ's death penality. I would consider it to be a good medium for death penalities. For perma death, yes that would be a good idea depending on the game. Death would't occur quick because it would piss too many players off. Wow's death system is not existent because it doesn't matter. In EQ, you cared about staying alive versus people in wow, who really dont care because there was no penality. I think you have to balance out penalities versus rewards, just not have rewards all the time, via wow. Anyways, I have came up with my own death penality system. I think it's very good and makes sense.
- 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.
I think the lost of experience is a good thing because you actually care to not die so therefore maybe grouping/playing would make you a better player in some cases. I only added the durability because that is kinda realistic.
Of all the death systems I have played with, I have to agree Asheron's Call had the best one by far and the fairest. There was penalty, but it was removable with a little work and at no loss of experience. The DI systems worked well, there was always some loot for the looter...
First off, unless you're playing in a hardcore mode, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, challenging about a death penalty. There can certainly be challenge associated with avoiding it, but not once you've died.
So, to me, any "punishments" the devs decide you drop on you for dying are very subjective. By and large, I find them to be nothing more than timesinks, which I despise in MMOs.
When I play a SP game, I can save right before the boss fight, and if I die, reload and try again. Depending on the game and the comp, my downtime or "punishment" for dying, is between 10 and 30 seconds.
I see no reason to make it any different in an MMO, at least not for me. I can accept that, for some, the excitement of avoiding death adds to the game. For me, it's all about avoiding an annoyance. So, my perfect MMO would have a basically non-existant penalty. You respawn, fully healthy, with no item or exp loss, at the nearest safe location to where you died, and you can do this an infinite amount of times, exactly like most sp games.
You know I was thinking of an alternative to my permanent death AD&D penalty. Instead of it taking off a point of constitution and you permanently dying at 0 constitution, maybe a 1 in 1000 chance your character permadeaths upon ANY death. And I think it would totally rock to have some awesome effect when it happens, like the person spontaneously combusting and their spirit rising or the person getting "chunked"(body parts flying everywhere). That would avoid the player knowing exactly when their time is up and making arrangements for it, because you never know when you are going to die.
There could even be a graveyard, you know.
-Here lies Rick the Pick level 12 halfling rogue, died in the year 355 at the hands of a Hill Giant. May he rest in peace.
There would be stories of brave adventurers that came before and died in certain battles. I imagine a person getting chunked would probably leave an impression on people, especially for the party members nearby that shamelessly loot the corpse, hahaha.
I have to agree with a few of the previous posters, EvE's system is the best I've seen to date. You control the level of risk and potential loss. Rule #1 of EvE is "Don't fly what you cannot afford to lose".
Funny thing is, before I started playing EvE I would never of thought that I would like that kind of death system. Now I wouldn't have it any other way. I wonder how many other people have dismissed item loss or full loot systems because it sounds too harsh without ever really giving it a fair chance.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
You are correct that some sp games have more that you have to redo if you die.
However, zerg tactics to get past a goal don't have to be made to work.
If I'm outside of a boss encounter room and I enter and lose (die), just have the room reset. I can zerg it til the cows come home, but unless I change my tactics, I may never succeed.
Downtime is an annoyance, period. It adds nothing to the game. So, yes, you can have a non-punishing death penalty and still require just as much strategy. You're just removing the pointless "wait ten minutes" or "run across zone and back into entrance and back to where you were" junk.
Gasp then people would you know group up to fight larger risks to receive a superior reward. Soloers do admit they don't like to take risks...
No, nobody would take those large risks at all if every time they died, they lost absolutely everything and had to start all over from the beginning. It has nothing to do with group or solo, but with the penalty for failure. Besides, I'd be extremely hesitant putting my health and safety in the hands of a bunch of retards who could screw up and cost me the ultimate price.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
You would reduce the loss of a character to a RNG roll? Look, I know you like D&D but sometimes rolling on something is not the best course of action.
And at your earlier statement about single player games, the only ones where death matters are ones where you have checkpoints or a limited amount of lives. Those games almost all are older games as well. Sure, every now and then we'll get a sort of classic 2D platformer, like Contra 4 for the NDS, but they certainly are not the norm today. Since you like D&D so much as well I should say that death is not near as taxing in a game like Baldur's Gate II or Icewind Dale because I can just reload the game. If you forget to save that's sort of your own fault.
Man, at least SwampRat gets what I'm saying. Like I said though the only penalty I like is the one I described in Aion, because that one ultimately does take skill (not a timesink because it pretty much just makes your K:D ratio in game important). However most death penalties are just timesinks, which aren't very skillful at all and just really fucking annoying.
I think your first paragraph pretty much answered the question in the second paragraph. The games need to be designed around it.
OP here, and I'd like to put in some more cents. Reading the thread I get a few things so far:
1) Hardcore really is kind of stupid for the majority, and people complaining about it seem to just really want the ability to ruin someone else's day by killing their character completely. Legal murder as it were. Man, I can't wait to see responses for this conclusion.
2) Death penalties, to most people, are necessary. Those who think WoW's is okay as it is state so because it is a very short time sink, which is sort of key here.
3) Time sinks are not favorable as death penalties. Whether this is through a loss of real time, or through a loss of XP or skills, a loss of time in the most literal sense possible is just a huge bummer.
Which brings me to this question: If time sinks are bad, and death penalties through item or gold cost is the most ideal (we assume), how can such a system have any form of story/rp implementation?
I mean, case in point, in Warcraft everyone just plays a warrior-Jesus, coming back to life at a whim as long as they get back to their body. There is almost no form of story implementation whatsoever in this. You have no idea why you have such great powers of ressurection, other than the game just not being 'hardcore' in death. So in such a system that say, has people losing gold and items, what explanation is there for it?
For the record, I'm still a fan of the MMORPG 'save point' idea, where you simply record your character's status at a hub, and any items or skills you gain after you adventure is lost until you 'save' again. Perhaps more appropriately an insurance on both your character's life and on certain items, with all other uninsured items being dropped.
I think that's probably close to what the majority wants and that's fair enough.
I think games that have extreme death pemalties need to be built around it from the ground up and any game that wants to be mainstream and attract very large numbers probably has to have a minimum death penalty.
However... even in a mainstream game I think it wouldn't be too hard to include both. Say when you create a character there's three tick boxes.
The default choice could be named "standard" and has the death penalty you describe.
The second could be called "role-playing / immersion" and with this option when you died you were smashed up a bit depending on distance from nearest friendly NPC healer so same-zone was zero health, one-zone-away was zero health plus some "wound" debuff for a while and two-zones-away was zero health plus a "severe wound" debuff.
The third tick-box would be an option under the second so the death penalty was the same as the RP one for same-zone and one-zone-away but the penalty for two-zones-away was perma-death for those people who'd get an adrenaline buzz from the risk.
The "reward" should either be the immersion or the buzz so there'd be no XP bonus or anything - you'd choose that route purely for the fun aspect (for those that found it fun).
I think it would be better to implement this choice server wide, rather than per character. People that don't want any DP at all, would get really upset to find out someone in their group has setup their char for DP when the rest didn't.
Personally, I like DP. It makes you play more strategically and carefully. Rather than just running in gung-ho not caring what happens because it doesn't matter if you die anyhow.
I think it would be better to implement this choice server wide, rather than per character. People that don't want any DP at all, would get really upset to find out someone in their group has setup their char for DP when the rest didn't.
Personally, I like DP. It makes you play more strategically and carefully. Rather than just running in gung-ho not caring what happens because it doesn't matter if you die anyhow.
Hmm, good point, I hadn't thought of that. Trouble with it being server-wide is the PD option server would probably be under-populated even though most of the time the RP or PD option players would be in safe zones anyway. Perhaps if your DP option was reflected in the color of your name or some symbol on your name so people knew in advance?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Damn, I guess no one liked my idea for a death penality..
My idea for death penalty is the following:
- you get 100 lives to start, they start being decreased each time you die after lvl 20.
- if you die, you can just respawn in a safe place near to where you died, no xp loss or anythign but you char has -1 lives.
- if you are in a raid and wipe you all get pushed back to the beginning and minus 1 on that.
- past lvl 20 and you have 90 or more lieves you have a certain halo
- lives are displayed on your character
- if you lose all your life you are permanently put in full loot pvp mode meaning anyone can kill you and take your stuff, effectively making that char semi-useless.
- this way it means something not to die, to have a halo and be high level means something.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I actually think EQ the way it used to play pretty much had the death penalty right on. It was enough to make people think twice before doing something studid, but pretty trivial if you had a cleric. rezz you.
Why would you want that? You want people to explore and try (even stupid) things in a game.
You will never admit a new guy into a PUG if the death penalty is so harsh. If you think the DPS checks are bad in WOW now, it will be harsh if the death penalty goes up because no one wants to risk a wipe.
I actually think EQ the way it used to play pretty much had the death penalty right on. It was enough to make people think twice before doing something studid, but pretty trivial if you had a cleric. rezz you.
Why would you want that? You want people to explore and try (even stupid) things in a game.
You will never admit a new guy into a PUG if the death penalty is so harsh. If you think the DPS checks are bad in WOW now, it will be harsh if the death penalty goes up because no one wants to risk a wipe.
Two words. LEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOY nnnJEEEEENNNKIIIINS. Heh, yeah that's just who I want in my raid, so we can zerg and wipe and waste hours of playtime, sounds totally fun.
People explored and tried even stupid things in Everquest, but see the thing is people came with a solid plan. They didn't just do stupid things for the sake of being stupid because the game is on ezmode and a joke(Leroy Jenkins).
And most people are wrong.
The only good online RPG I ever played was a MUD with eventual perma death. You had about 40 lives.
And if was full loot, so if you're worried about losing all your stuff that can happen anyway.
It's the only good system. Argue all you want, I'm right and your wrong. Because it's the only system where people at the top deserve to be at the top.
And it solves all of your end game issues. The end game is trying to stay alive. Trust me, you will never have a better PVP experience.
I had a two hour long fight once in that MUD and my hands were shaking most of the time. All the years I played MMOs my hands never shook.
And by the way my main character when two years max level and never died once. And yes that meant something. That will never mean something in a no permadeath MMO.