Really, this is dumb. There is no "right" answer. Different people want a different experience from their game time is all. There's no moral or philosophical conundrum here. We might as well argue over whether Apple Pie or Cherry Pie is "correct". All you gotta do is make sure you don't order apple when you actually like cherry. What's it to you what flavour pie the other guy likes?
Good post and I completely agree.
People keep forgetting that we are different. I don't know how as we are constantly reminded of it every minute of the day!
There are people who, if they die, that is penalty enough. They feel it as actual failure. I am one of those people. I don't really require any death penalty as the idea that i failed is penalty enough and very meaningful.
There are people who need the fear of death, the fear of consequence to force them to play at their A game. They essentially need the spanking.
hmmmm... I wonder if any of this can be tracked to how people were raised in their homes by their parents....
now THAT'S a thought.
But in a game like WoW, nobody is stoping these pro-HDP from deleting their gear or toons whenever they die.
Think about it. We all win, if they would cause their own HDP on themself when they die.
My point in the OP, was that DP doesnt make the game harder. take away the DP but keep the gameplay the same, and you would see.
I would hope that people who enjoy a high death penalty wouldn't be playing WoW in the first place. It's certainly one reason I dont care to play it. That would be like wanting apple pie and ordering cherry pie. Why would I do that? WoW Provides a different game experience to the kind I want. It's not like it's the only option available. So I play EVE, which is the kind of game experience I want, and I'm pretty happy with it. (If I wanted swords and orcs and whatnot, I'd play Darkfall, I guess.)
(Except when those god damb cherry pie eaters come in and whine about the death penalty. Why don't they just photoshop themselves an assets page showing themselves having all the best stuff? That's just a sensible as advising HDP people in LDP games to be deleting their characters, after all.)
i can't even conceive how boring EVE would be without death penalty. I am really glad a lot of people do not agree with you OP.
Careful not to say "without" death penalty. Nobody's asking for that -- no game instantly respawns you at 100% hp where you just died, not without some form of time cost.
But beyond that, you're merely stating an opinion. Personally I think both EVE and DF would be amazing massive warfare games if they focused on massive warfare like Planetside did. Instead, both EVE and DF have all these game mechanics (some of which are excessively tedious) which cause battles to be rare, and penalize the losing side with a lot of tedium. A fun-focused, massive warfare-focused variant server for either game would be pretty amazing with the right tweaks to combat.
yeah certainly different opinions. The game you describe sounds awfully boring to me and I would not like it even in the least. So to each their own i guess. I like my games to be more of a simulation. I dont want war all the time that would be horrible. It makes it so when it comes its really special. And also the economy would be pretty weak if no one lost anything taking away my favorite part of online games.
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Harsh death penalties tend to turn me off from a game.
I played DFO, and I loved it, and I got to playing for a while, but then... someone killed me.
I had forgotten to bank, and now I was broke once again, and guess what, the guy who killed me didn't even in win a fair fight, he simply two shot me and left me lying in the mud.
I came back to my corpse to find only the useless stuff remaining. I stopped playing for two days because I was so ticked off.
You're right, gameplay makes a game hard, not the death penalty.
And no, I'm not a carebear, I don't want things handed to me, I just don't want them ripped away from me by some jerk who's killing people that are helpless against him.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I can see the attraction to both sorts of Death Penalty. On one had the pretty much instant respawn in WAR scenarios encourages the charge/die/zerg mentality - bit like a fast food fix, good but ultimately bad for your health
At the other end of the spectrum, Eve's harsh punishment for noobie mistakes, and the high cost for PvP, limits the game's "fun appeal". While I accept that it makes for an adrenaline rush everytime you brave low sec space, an off-day where you forget to switch in your micro warp drives and reload your drones - can cost you weeks of gameplay (and yes I do know about limiting losses through insurance, but I still manage to blow up three cruisers in about an hour one day when I was feeling a bit brain dead).
Personally, I feel DAoC earlier death penalty of no loss of gear, but out of the PvP game for 10 mins (I think) was about the best - although I can see why Mythic bowed to player pressure and reduced the time/cost by several orders of magnitude. They are playing to play after all.
Even in my limited four month Eve career, I know of several players who quit as the were killed/conned/podded and they just didn't like the losses they encured. I guess that harsh death penalties are definately not for everyone - although I know that many players feel that this is the hardcore way to play.
Demon's souls was freaking awesome. Game made you think, made you value everything you had, and made you actually fear death. No other game actually made you feel scared like you did in Demon's Souls. If there were more check points or a less harsh death penalty, it would've taken away from the experience entirely.
And the "Why don't you delete your epics" argument is a fallacy, and I don't need to say what others have already said.
And I couldn't stop myself from giggling at the attempted use of a truth-table.
Originally posted by cukimunga Like if I were exploring a cave and stumbled upon a dragon. If there was no death penalty I wouldn't think twice and zerg in and if I died I died oh well, I can respawn and go on with my business. If there is a harsh penalty I'll think twice before I just go zerg some monster that will eat me alive. I would look at the surrounding get a plan together to either fight it or find a way to get around it.
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
With "Wimpy" death penalties, risk is absent, achievements and rewards are meaningless, and immersion is lessened. (ex. WOW, Star Trek Online, Free Realms, current EQ2)
With "Too Harsh" death penalties, players quit in frustration. (ex. Shadowbane, Darkfall Online, any game with full loot PVP or permadeath)
With "Just Right" death penalties, players strive to stay alive and are careful about their choices of combat encounters. Immersion is elevated and rewards are much more valued. (ex. EQ, early EQ2, DAOC)
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> WimpyJust Right Too Harsh With "Wimpy" death penalties, risk is absent, achievements and rewards are meaningless, and immersion is lessened. (ex. WOW, Star Trek Online, Free Realms, current EQ2) With "Too Harsh" death penalties, players quit in frustration. (ex. Shadowbane, Darkfall Online, any game with full loot PVP or permadeath) With "Just Right" death penalties, players strive to stay alive and are careful about their choices of combat encounters. Immersion is elevated and rewards are much more valued. (ex. EQ, early EQ2, DAOC)
Balance is the key and it should be set more to the Harsh side IMO.
Plus, I think this goes directly to PVE vs PVP play. If your playing against a machine and it takes your stuff that's an insult, but your playing against another player you want the right to his stuff if you beat him.
"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."
I think this sums up your point very nicely especially in regards to what I've always said. Lots' of players swear by the death penalty being implimented to in some way "force" us as players to be better players or even to group more but honestly why would any dev really care how good a person was at playing the game? Isn't the objective to get people to play the game (make money) and if nothing else the desire for people to enjoy what you created (love of the art). I'm not a dev but I make music and I couldn't for the life of me see myself wanting to deny anyone who wanted to hear my music the right or privilege to and I just don't see that a dev with an artistic soul would be any different and we all know bean counters certainly don't care how good a player you are so long as you pay right?
Death penalties are just a cumulative time sink through the use of time and in game resources and they to me are another big reason why mmo devs are so freaking lazy and uninspired in there development, as long as the community stays in there "know it all role" and keep giving the devs excuses to cut corners like this we will always have new games to complain about.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Originally posted by cukimunga Like if I were exploring a cave and stumbled upon a dragon. If there was no death penalty I wouldn't think twice and zerg in and if I died I died oh well, I can respawn and go on with my business. If there is a harsh penalty I'll think twice before I just go zerg some monster that will eat me alive. I would look at the surrounding get a plan together to either fight it or find a way to get around it.
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
Haha great post and I've wondered this myself I always hear this argument which to me is funny, in the mmo I currently play this is an issue and I always wonder where the opinions come from that say "well with a death penalty people would think twice and not just rush in."(STO by the way), and the funny thing is from open to closed beta til now I have never once just rushed into a situation where I would be facing certain death so why would I want to be penalized because the person who made the above comment doesn't have the self control to not concern themselves with self preservation?
I don't want to "lose" any game so I don't need the devs to add a mechanic that they think is going to make me more careful, but the people who do need to find another hobby if they can't even be bothered with taking the necessary steps to stay alive without the devs giving them a push.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Originally posted by cukimunga Like if I were exploring a cave and stumbled upon a dragon. If there was no death penalty I wouldn't think twice and zerg in and if I died I died oh well, I can respawn and go on with my business. If there is a harsh penalty I'll think twice before I just go zerg some monster that will eat me alive. I would look at the surrounding get a plan together to either fight it or find a way to get around it.
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
Haha great post and I've wondered this myself I always hear this argument which to me is funny, in the mmo I currently play this is an issue and I always wonder where the opinions come from that say "well with a death penalty people would think twice and not just rush in."(STO by the way), and the funny thing is from open to closed beta til now I have never once just rushed into a situation where I would be facing certain death so why would I want to be penalized because the person who made the above comment doesn't have the self control to not concern themselves with self preservation?
I don't want to "lose" any game so I don't need the devs to add a mechanic that they think is going to make me more careful, but the people who do need to find another hobby if they can't even be bothered with taking the necessary steps to stay alive without the devs giving them a push.
All good points, but cukimunga has a strong point here and it's clear if you have been in both situations.
I have gotten toasted in games with HDP even with self control. With no death penalty I wouldn't been hurt, cared, or stopped as soon.
The reason, because with a HDP you stop even though you think you can still win. You drop 3 weeks of work in a failed attempt to help someone, it just brings allot of dynamics in play that aren't otherwise there.
I do agree with the post about time sinks though. If your just playing straight PVE it changes everything.
Originally posted by cukimunga Like if I were exploring a cave and stumbled upon a dragon. If there was no death penalty I wouldn't think twice and zerg in and if I died I died oh well, I can respawn and go on with my business. If there is a harsh penalty I'll think twice before I just go zerg some monster that will eat me alive. I would look at the surrounding get a plan together to either fight it or find a way to get around it.
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
Zerging never works in WOW. That is the beauty of the game design. You can try it again and again with minimal cost, but if you don't think and plan a strategy, you will never win the encounter.
No penalty is actually BETTER in this case because it encourages people to TRY the encounter. It is stupid to design an encounter (very expensive to do) and put a high penalty so no one dares to try it.
yep you're customer this genre is gunning for. the A.D.D. type that cries at the loss of anything.
sorry but the death penalty didn't make the game hard, it made you play SMARTER. it made players stop doing stupid shit in dungeons it made people group up because they had to worry about that if they made one wrong move solo they lost everything. where as grouping up with others they had a bit more room for error as others could back them up.
but obviously the MMOCashgrab genre is gunning for players like you, with their dumbed down mechanics.
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.
Games are meant to be challenging, win or loss. I don't find easy 100% winnable games fun .. I find them mind numbingly boring. Why play a game if it doesn't produce a challenge? Why not just grab a bowl of popcorn and veg out watching the boob tube.
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> WimpyJust Right Too Harsh With "Wimpy" death penalties, risk is absent, achievements and rewards are meaningless, and immersion is lessened. (ex. WOW, Star Trek Online, Free Realms, current EQ2) With "Too Harsh" death penalties, players quit in frustration. (ex. Shadowbane, Darkfall Online, any game with full loot PVP or permadeath) With "Just Right" death penalties, players strive to stay alive and are careful about their choices of combat encounters. Immersion is elevated and rewards are much more valued. (ex. EQ, early EQ2, DAOC)
Yeah, it's too bad games like DF missed it. The PvPers don't really want anything like permadeath or anything retarded. They just want something with a "Just Right" loss. Maybe a 1-2 hour exp loss per death, that is partially recoverable by rezzers.
Comments
Good post and I completely agree.
People keep forgetting that we are different. I don't know how as we are constantly reminded of it every minute of the day!
There are people who, if they die, that is penalty enough. They feel it as actual failure. I am one of those people. I don't really require any death penalty as the idea that i failed is penalty enough and very meaningful.
There are people who need the fear of death, the fear of consequence to force them to play at their A game. They essentially need the spanking.
hmmmm... I wonder if any of this can be tracked to how people were raised in their homes by their parents....
now THAT'S a thought.
But in a game like WoW, nobody is stoping these pro-HDP from deleting their gear or toons whenever they die.
Think about it. We all win, if they would cause their own HDP on themself when they die.
My point in the OP, was that DP doesnt make the game harder. take away the DP but keep the gameplay the same, and you would see.
I would hope that people who enjoy a high death penalty wouldn't be playing WoW in the first place. It's certainly one reason I dont care to play it. That would be like wanting apple pie and ordering cherry pie. Why would I do that? WoW Provides a different game experience to the kind I want. It's not like it's the only option available. So I play EVE, which is the kind of game experience I want, and I'm pretty happy with it. (If I wanted swords and orcs and whatnot, I'd play Darkfall, I guess.)
(Except when those god damb cherry pie eaters come in and whine about the death penalty. Why don't they just photoshop themselves an assets page showing themselves having all the best stuff? That's just a sensible as advising HDP people in LDP games to be deleting their characters, after all.)
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Careful not to say "without" death penalty. Nobody's asking for that -- no game instantly respawns you at 100% hp where you just died, not without some form of time cost.
But beyond that, you're merely stating an opinion. Personally I think both EVE and DF would be amazing massive warfare games if they focused on massive warfare like Planetside did. Instead, both EVE and DF have all these game mechanics (some of which are excessively tedious) which cause battles to be rare, and penalize the losing side with a lot of tedium. A fun-focused, massive warfare-focused variant server for either game would be pretty amazing with the right tweaks to combat.
yeah certainly different opinions. The game you describe sounds awfully boring to me and I would not like it even in the least. So to each their own i guess. I like my games to be more of a simulation. I dont want war all the time that would be horrible. It makes it so when it comes its really special. And also the economy would be pretty weak if no one lost anything taking away my favorite part of online games.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Harsh death penalties tend to turn me off from a game.
I played DFO, and I loved it, and I got to playing for a while, but then... someone killed me.
I had forgotten to bank, and now I was broke once again, and guess what, the guy who killed me didn't even in win a fair fight, he simply two shot me and left me lying in the mud.
I came back to my corpse to find only the useless stuff remaining. I stopped playing for two days because I was so ticked off.
You're right, gameplay makes a game hard, not the death penalty.
And no, I'm not a carebear, I don't want things handed to me, I just don't want them ripped away from me by some jerk who's killing people that are helpless against him.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I can see the attraction to both sorts of Death Penalty. On one had the pretty much instant respawn in WAR scenarios encourages the charge/die/zerg mentality - bit like a fast food fix, good but ultimately bad for your health
At the other end of the spectrum, Eve's harsh punishment for noobie mistakes, and the high cost for PvP, limits the game's "fun appeal". While I accept that it makes for an adrenaline rush everytime you brave low sec space, an off-day where you forget to switch in your micro warp drives and reload your drones - can cost you weeks of gameplay (and yes I do know about limiting losses through insurance, but I still manage to blow up three cruisers in about an hour one day when I was feeling a bit brain dead).
Personally, I feel DAoC earlier death penalty of no loss of gear, but out of the PvP game for 10 mins (I think) was about the best - although I can see why Mythic bowed to player pressure and reduced the time/cost by several orders of magnitude. They are playing to play after all.
Even in my limited four month Eve career, I know of several players who quit as the were killed/conned/podded and they just didn't like the losses they encured. I guess that harsh death penalties are definately not for everyone - although I know that many players feel that this is the hardcore way to play.
Demon's souls was freaking awesome. Game made you think, made you value everything you had, and made you actually fear death. No other game actually made you feel scared like you did in Demon's Souls. If there were more check points or a less harsh death penalty, it would've taken away from the experience entirely.
And the "Why don't you delete your epics" argument is a fallacy, and I don't need to say what others have already said.
And I couldn't stop myself from giggling at the attempted use of a truth-table.
Edit: 7/10.
i'm 100% against your opinion...
Life has a harsh death penalty ... we should nerf it!!
I am for both types of death penaltys, different strokes fer different folks.
I am playing EQ2 at the moment, it has a pretty tame death penalty (expecially compared to EQ1 blasted corpse runs <shakes cane>).
I am also playing Runescape, which has a harsher death penalty than EQ2.
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Wimpy Just Right Too Harsh
With "Wimpy" death penalties, risk is absent, achievements and rewards are meaningless, and immersion is lessened. (ex. WOW, Star Trek Online, Free Realms, current EQ2)
With "Too Harsh" death penalties, players quit in frustration. (ex. Shadowbane, Darkfall Online, any game with full loot PVP or permadeath)
With "Just Right" death penalties, players strive to stay alive and are careful about their choices of combat encounters. Immersion is elevated and rewards are much more valued. (ex. EQ, early EQ2, DAOC)
Balance is the key and it should be set more to the Harsh side IMO.
Plus, I think this goes directly to PVE vs PVP play. If your playing against a machine and it takes your stuff that's an insult, but your playing against another player you want the right to his stuff if you beat him.
So, no death penalty equals carebear.
Sorry just how I see it.
"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."
I think this sums up your point very nicely especially in regards to what I've always said. Lots' of players swear by the death penalty being implimented to in some way "force" us as players to be better players or even to group more but honestly why would any dev really care how good a person was at playing the game? Isn't the objective to get people to play the game (make money) and if nothing else the desire for people to enjoy what you created (love of the art). I'm not a dev but I make music and I couldn't for the life of me see myself wanting to deny anyone who wanted to hear my music the right or privilege to and I just don't see that a dev with an artistic soul would be any different and we all know bean counters certainly don't care how good a player you are so long as you pay right?
Death penalties are just a cumulative time sink through the use of time and in game resources and they to me are another big reason why mmo devs are so freaking lazy and uninspired in there development, as long as the community stays in there "know it all role" and keep giving the devs excuses to cut corners like this we will always have new games to complain about.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
Haha great post and I've wondered this myself I always hear this argument which to me is funny, in the mmo I currently play this is an issue and I always wonder where the opinions come from that say "well with a death penalty people would think twice and not just rush in."(STO by the way), and the funny thing is from open to closed beta til now I have never once just rushed into a situation where I would be facing certain death so why would I want to be penalized because the person who made the above comment doesn't have the self control to not concern themselves with self preservation?
I don't want to "lose" any game so I don't need the devs to add a mechanic that they think is going to make me more careful, but the people who do need to find another hobby if they can't even be bothered with taking the necessary steps to stay alive without the devs giving them a push.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
Haha great post and I've wondered this myself I always hear this argument which to me is funny, in the mmo I currently play this is an issue and I always wonder where the opinions come from that say "well with a death penalty people would think twice and not just rush in."(STO by the way), and the funny thing is from open to closed beta til now I have never once just rushed into a situation where I would be facing certain death so why would I want to be penalized because the person who made the above comment doesn't have the self control to not concern themselves with self preservation?
I don't want to "lose" any game so I don't need the devs to add a mechanic that they think is going to make me more careful, but the people who do need to find another hobby if they can't even be bothered with taking the necessary steps to stay alive without the devs giving them a push.
All good points, but cukimunga has a strong point here and it's clear if you have been in both situations.
I have gotten toasted in games with HDP even with self control. With no death penalty I wouldn't been hurt, cared, or stopped as soon.
The reason, because with a HDP you stop even though you think you can still win. You drop 3 weeks of work in a failed attempt to help someone, it just brings allot of dynamics in play that aren't otherwise there.
I do agree with the post about time sinks though. If your just playing straight PVE it changes everything.
So you zerg the dragon, get curb stomped and respawn with a minimal death penalty. Now you have to look at your surroundings, get a plan together to either fight it or find a way around it. You get the same outcome without a harsh deth penalty.
I can't help but get the feeling that some of the people advocating in favour of harsh death penalties consider themselves idiots who will zerg an enemy over and over even if that does not accomplish anything. It seems to me that they need the harsh death penalty to stop them from continuing their idiocy.
Zerging never works in WOW. That is the beauty of the game design. You can try it again and again with minimal cost, but if you don't think and plan a strategy, you will never win the encounter.
No penalty is actually BETTER in this case because it encourages people to TRY the encounter. It is stupid to design an encounter (very expensive to do) and put a high penalty so no one dares to try it.
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.
Games are meant to be challenging, win or loss. I don't find easy 100% winnable games fun .. I find them mind numbingly boring. Why play a game if it doesn't produce a challenge? Why not just grab a bowl of popcorn and veg out watching the boob tube.
Yeah, it's too bad games like DF missed it. The PvPers don't really want anything like permadeath or anything retarded. They just want something with a "Just Right" loss. Maybe a 1-2 hour exp loss per death, that is partially recoverable by rezzers.