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I am 100% Totally against Harsh Death Penalty
tro44_1
Member Posts: 1,819
Harsh Death Penalty makes games frustrating, not hard.
Harsh Death Penalty doesn’t make a game Harder. Gameplay is what makes a game hard or not.
I find the argument that Harsh Death Penalty is needed in a game to make it hard illogical.
You can even use a truth-table to realize that that is an invalid argument.
p=harsh DP q= harder
p-->q invalid arguement
Iam going to use the game “Demon Soul” for my first explanation.
For many people, Demon Soul is believed to be hard because of its harsh death penalty. But in truth the harsh DP only adds frustration to the game.
To better understand what I mean. For a moment, let’s imagine that Demon Soul had a lesser death penalty, but 100% the same gameplay. (You know longer lose 100% all your soul, but the soul you collected from the mission alone)
Would the game be harder? The game play stayed the same, (buggy controls and lock on, and the Animation locks all still there)
The gameplay didn’t change, but the frustration lessened. So how does DP regulate the difficulty lvls of a game?
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Another example more down to earth.
Many people believe World of Warcraft is the EazyMode of the MMORPG genre.
Well what if we added a EXTREME DEATH PENALTY to the game and kept the gameplay the same as it once was.
(Lets add Permanent Death to characters, and if you die 3 times on a single account, it gets locked and closed)
Now with the same gameplay currently in WoW, with this added Death Penalty, would the game be harder?
I can still solo mobs and such right? So how did making the DP extremely harsh, make the game harder? Only thing it added was frustration. See what I mean yet?
I play games to have fun, and relax, not to be frustrated to death.
If WoW had the kind of DP used in my example, people then would never explore or try new things outside of what is considered the normal.
Harsh Death Penalty scares off players in PvP gameplay. With that kind of DP, who would participate in World PvP if you have a high chance of your character being deleted and forced to start a new character over from lvl 1? Yes I know iam going to the extreme on my explanation. Most MMOs don’t use DP as harsh as this, but my point still remains valid.
Harsh DP doesn’t add difficulty. It only adds Frustration!! It scares off players to try new things and explore. It reduces the epicness of Large Scale PvP populations from what it could potentially have been.
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I really dislike the current way Harsh DP is used as a gimmick to control players. That’s all it is. A gimmick to ether slow player progression to a crawl or to scare player with the “join a team or die” mind set.
Nothing but a lame ways of control. I don’t mind gold sinks for DP to control economy, but when used to control gameplay, that’s a whole different ballpark.
Comments
You've missed the point of a harsh death penalty.
It's not to make the game hard, it's to suck you into the game more. When you have more invested in the game, every encounter is much more intense and meaningful. It also ties in with risk vs reward. You more you risk, the better your reward may be, so while you're taking that risk you're on the edge of your seat.
An MMO hasn't kept me on the edge of my seat since 2003.
Going to keep this simple. The reward is much greater when the risk is there. Personally I enjoy challenges in videogames. i dont know of any current games that have a 'harsh' death penalty, but I remember the risk that old EQ players used to take.
I think a harsh death penalty is more psycological than anything else. The gameplay is the same, but if you have a harsh DP, it will change the way you play. I would argue that it turns players into cowards more often than it turns them into selfless heroes.
I am also against harsh DPs. For me, having failed at whatever I was doing is punishing enough, I dont need to be kicked in the balls while Im down to know I messed up.
But developers are slowly finding out that what gamers really want is to play and not to wait for a meaningless mechanic that is more suited for basement dwellers than real gamers.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Losing in combat already has a harsh sting for me, I don't need salt rubbed into the wound in the form of penalties. I've played games with both hard and easy death penalties and I'll take easy any day. I find harsh penalties not only suck the fun out of the game, but if they happen often enough, which is inevitable in an MMO, it will irritate me enough to quit the game.
I disagree with the both of you.
The Difficulty of the challenge makes the reward seem more rewarding. Not the frustration of the gameplay.
The challenge is in the fight, not in what happens after the fight is over.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
A game with no death penalty is a joke, you can just run in like Leroy and get wiped laugh about it then try again..
harsh death does not make games hard i totally agree with that, but a death penalty keeps players on there toes and gives you a rush when you end up winning a hard fight, pvp or pve, i beta tested star treck that game was a joke no death penalty at all and you spawned right back in same zone you died and could just rush in blast kill a few targets and die and rush in again after respawn. now that was a joke
if you hate the rules of the game just don't play that game
The OP obviously grew up playing WOW and never played any of the other games on the market, especially not those that pioneered the genre.
In Ultima Online, when you died you lost everything you carried. Could be you lost the keys to your castle. Could be you just lost a shirt. It didnt matter. Everything was gone. Furthermore, you had to find someone to resurrect you, or take your ghostly self to a resurrection shrine on your own, and pray that it wasnt overrun with pkers or mobs. That game is 13 years old now, and still has a strong subscriber base.
The EQ death penalty has already been beaten to death. IMHO the only reason it didnt work was because it combined item loss with statloss (XP loss). Item loss was one thing to players. Statloss was another.
Asheron's Call reintroduced straight item loss, and gave a temporary statloss you had to work off via playtime, called Vitae. This death system worked great, even though the item loss wasnt full loot --- but rather determined off your level and valued equipment. Asheron's Call to this date was the best PvP mmo on the market. To say that death penalties scare away PvPers is to ignore Asheron's Call entirely.
[Mod Edit]
Laudanum - Romance. Revenge. Revolution.
Crappy, petty people breed and raise crappy, petty kids.
I dont need harsh DPs to have a "rush". Im blessed enough to be able to have a rush on simple things. I had plenty of rushes in wow, and in plenty of games with zero DP.
But thats probably because Im not playing games like they are a drug. So I dont need the "fix".
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
I enjoy Games with risk just as much as laid back games with simple 30 second rez mechanics.
Im all for different types of rule sets, It would suck if every game had the same rule set.
Bring on the FFA full loot, Loss of XP, Decay, 30 second rez, Ladder system, prema death systems.
Im all for it the more diverse the better.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
:O Nice one. Could it be that this sentence might change my mind about this? Maybe. Well done.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Hey! Look! Its a straw man argument. The topic is "do Death penalties make a game more interesting, and at what level does a death penalty hurt the game rather than help it?"
The topic is not "do we play MMO's like they are a drug"
Laudanum - Romance. Revenge. Revolution.
Crappy, petty people breed and raise crappy, petty kids.
Harsh death penalty = 15% exp loss on your current level, including stat increases in that exp gain, and bag loss of 2 items and gold + 15% chance of losing 1 equiped item.
To me that hits the medium of a perfect loss in death, anything above i.e 100% loot is over kill and dishearting.
Ex. myth of soma, legend of mir, mu online and eudemons online player.
Current game : Runescape (until pc build is complete)
A harsh death penalty can have a great many positive impacts on a game. You are more likely to consider the ramifications of your actions. Zerging becomes far less tenable, suiciding is no longer a means of quick travel back to town, people are more likely to act in groups instead of trying to solo everything.
Back in EQ, sometimes when you died you would ask others for help retrieving your corpse. Guess what; more often than not you would find a community willing to help you. After all, next time they might be the ones that need help. This was both on the individual level and on the guild level. (FEAR anyone?)
The sense of real risk also added a sense of real accomplishment. By risking that harsh penalty, you felt all that much better when you actually survived and overcame. For those that were not up to the challenge, they would be much more likely to scale back their goals, find more people to help them (again building community), and advance their characters to better be able to meet those challenges.
Lack of a death penalty = advancement without skill. It does not matter how well you play, your xp bar will always move upwards. Simply by virtue of logging in you will eventually hit max level. Yay!!!!!! This is where the skill comes in. If your lack it the death penalty will ensure you stay at a level appropriate to your abilities. You will, hopefully, eventually improve upon those abilities and once more be able to progress upwards. When you do, you will be a better player for it.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Nothing wrong with easy entertainment. After all, games are meant to be FUN, not FRUSTRATING. If I want to repeat 100 times before i can down the boss, i may as well go play competitive sports instead.
No wonder the MMO, and to a larger extent, gaming genre abandoned people like you.
I'm used to hardcore mode in D2 and Hellgate... not sure what's more harsher than loosing your max'd level toon, along w/ your stored items and money... 0 HP = poof all gone!
I really enjoyed the death penalty in EQ. About a 10% xp loss in your current level, with a chance to unding, and a naked corpse run if there was no cleric to rezz you.
For real fun, die in an awkward, out of the way place, surrounded by high level mobs, then try to recover your own corpse while naked. (i.e. accidentally run over the side of the chasm in the Overthere while in your mid-twenties.) You'll be surprised at what you discover you are capable of.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Nothing wrong with easy entertainment. After all, games are meant to be FUN, not FRUSTRATING. If I want to repeat 100 times before i can down the boss, i may as well go play competitive sports instead.
No wonder the MMO, and to a larger extent, gaming genre abandoned people like you.
quantify fun.
And?
So what if some people *choose* to approach encounters like this? It's their dime and if that's what gets their rocks off, so what? Personally, I play every encounter like it could be my last. I don't like to lose ever, so succeeding, whether or not there was a ton of XP, gold or time at stake is immaterial. However, if I failed, I'd only be more irritated by being slapped with some arbitrary penalty on top of the sour taste of failure.
If anyone is really serious about needing harsh death penalties to enjoy a game that doesn't have them, delete your character every time you die. You don't need the developer to build in a whole system to support you and everyone else gets to enjoy the game as they wish. I know there are perma-death guilds in DDO that do this, which I think is pretty cool. But cooler yet is that I'm not required to be part of them.
I'm also 100% against harsh death penalties.
I like games to be challenging enough that I can fail, but I don't want to spend half of my time recouperating my losses. I have sparse enough gaming hours as it is.
Failing to accomplish something that I spent an hour attempting is enough of a penalty for me.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I loved the death penalty in asheron's Call. I thought it was perfect, the only time it really got annoying was if you wanted to log off then you died.
But some of the best fights were helping people recover corpses.
then whats the point of failing if you don't lose anything? what so you can say you failed? there should be some fear of death.
@OP You should play some poker with real money and then only using chips without any real value backing them up. Rules are the same. But I assure you the game and how you play will be completely different.
Same for MMO's. Take e.g. Darkfall. You can loose everything you carry with you when you die. Take that out of the game and the gameplay would be totally different. Without that possible death penalty the way home from a hunting trip just becomes a boring walk, add the possibility that you loose everything and it will become an adventure.
You don't like harsh death penalties. That's fine. The by far greater part of all MMO's has no or at least no harsh death penalty. As long as you don't try to get those few games changed which still have a meaningfull death penalty everything is fine.
then whats the point of failing if you don't lose anything? what so you can say you failed? there should be some fear of death.
Thats what you've still havent understood. for some, failure IS the penalty.The fear of death comes from the fear of failing.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
then whats the point of failing if you don't lose anything? what so you can say you failed? there should be some fear of death.
I lose time. Time is the most valuable commodity any of us have.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift