from a game designers point of view, Permadeath or very stiff death penalties that make you do things you already accomplished over again are just gonna drive people from the game.
Right, but none-the-less, most mmo's have mediocre subscribership compared to the total market, and not one of the mediocre ones has that below-average subscribership because of a harsh death penalty.
Not sever, but there should be 'moderate' death penalties in an mmo. Opposed to using death as a form of travel, as another member mentioned, there needs to be a remarkable reward for accomplishment, and a remarkable penalty for failure.
I dont like entitlements, welfare or hand-outs, and I dont like being rewarded for being a loser. Whatever it may be on either side is fine for me, but if I die 5x trying to accomplish a task, the guy that was able to accomplish it 1x should get a slightly better and remarkable reward.
So yea...lets get real. It seems that the new buzz word is accessability, which to me, is akin to treating everyone like they have special needs. If I have special needs and need some extra help, then my reward for accomplishing a task, or my team, should be representative of the effort and or cruch I used.
I think one person said their had to be winners and loosers in an MMO. Well contrary to what some of you say, losers will not continue to play the game. Shure you can lose a battleground ... and get minimal or no reward, and try again and have a chance to win and get a reward. EVERYBODY who continues to play an MMO considers themselves a winner to some degree, or they would quit. Nobody except some masochistic idiot plays a game as a loser.
Just get real folks.
This is so true. Another way of putting it is all future subscription renewals depend on the losers pulling themselves back together and getting back into the game. Every time you penalize someone for losing you decrease the propensity of the losers getting back into the game. Nobody wants to die once and have a whole day's xp gains wiped out or drop a sword they worked a whole month to get. If the game has PvP then the penalties are even more likely to produce a ragequit.
Sure there is the odd game with a severe death penalty such as Eve but let no one kid themselves. Eve came out in 2003 it is not a new game. Eve came out in a time when death penalties were still seen as acceptable. A modern game like SWTOR is not going to have a death penalty. Just not going to happen.
I like penalties for death, it makes you more alert, become better at the game faster, keeps you on your toes.
If that were true, MMO gamers would be MUCH better than they actually are. On contrary I do not believe beating makes better kids, and penalities don't make better people. Only intelligence and training do.
So I agree with the OP. They make no sense at all. Save making us play longer and pay longer beyond reason.
Not if those MMO players are playing MMOs with next to no penalty at all.
Umm... spend some time in a MMO with a harsher death penalty and see how the average player approaches it (that is, not the super hardcore, but not the super casual either). Then go into a MMO where there's a light, or no death penalty, see how the average player approaches it (again, not super hardcore, not casual), and I guarantee you will see a difference.
I never saw *half* the stupid, careless crap being pulled in FFXI, Lineage 2 or other MMOs with harsher death penalties that I see in any given play session in a MMO where the penalty is next to nothing.
A real life friend of mine used to play Lineage 2, we were in a clan and often would group up, xp and what not... In L2 he was cautious, wary and never took unnecessary risks. He knew what was at stake if something went wrong. He later moved on to WoW and, over time, started doing crap in that game he would *never* do in L2. Racing headlong into bad situations knowing he would die. When asked why he was doing that he'd say "well, just chipping away at it. It's just some coin for repairs if you die and a short run, so no big deal if we wipe. We'll get it eventually".
That one comparison sums it up. People play more recklessly and carelessly in MMOs with low or no death penalty simply because there's no reason not to.
Also, the argument that "death penalties make you play and pay longer beyond reason" is BS.
1. Dying is something that should happen rarely. It should be the exception, not the rule. Therefor, it makes absolutely no sense to say that "death penalties are designed to make you play longer" because, ideally, you shouldn't be dying often enough for it to make a notable difference.
2. MMOs are designed to be played for the longer term regardless. WoW has less death penalty than most MMOs out there... and yet people will invest years into that game, just as others do into MMOs with harsher penalties. There are people who are playing WoW for 5+ years now, since it launchd, just as there are people playing FFXI or L2 or Eve for that amount of time or longer. How harsh or light the death penalty is, or how much or little it affects "how much you have to play" is of absolutely zero relevance. MMOs are games intended to be played for months or even years by design.
2. If someone is dying so often that a death penalty is having that great an impact on their progression and making them have to play that much longer, then it seems there's perhaps something they're doing very wrong. I mean I've seen people complain about WoW's penalty being "too harsh" because you can't just res on the spot and they're spending most of their time running back to their quest/instance spot from a graveyard after dying. I mean seriously... what the hell is someone doing if they're having to run back from a graveyard that much?
When you look at it from a 35,000 foot view, It really paints a picture of how many of the so-called "casual" MMO players approach games these days when, instead of saying "geeze... the death penalty in this game is a little rough. I'll need to be more careful and formulate some better strategies instead of rushing into everything", they say "I'm losing way too much time when I die in this game and it's setting me back... the devs need to make the death penalty lighter".
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I remembered when EverQuest 2 first came out, it had the same death penalities as Everquest and SOE wondered why they were not seeing a lot of sales. Well they were stunned and shocked when they changed the death penalty and saw a nearly 400% rise in sales and subscriptions.
Blizzard use to have harsh penalities and noticed subs dropping and they changed it and subs had a massive increase. Now adays in World of Warcraft you have to worry about the massive repair bills and not worry about the harsh death penalities.
Companies that makes MMO for PVP tends to have harsh penalities and they find out rather fast that thier subs is low. Seems they fail to learn about human nature is that we humans hate to lose and we do not like to play any sort of game be it either PVP or PVE that is unfun or not fun to play. Only players that seems to enjoy these types of harsh death penalities are the so called hard core players.
I like to play MMO's that are fun, having to deal with harsh death penalities is not fun for me, it is a grind and stressful and I get that from real life obligations and do not need that crap in any type of pve or pvp game. I play for fun. Games that are unfun gets accounts cancelled really fast.
The "facebook generation" arrived en masse to mmoland.
That´s all there´s to it.
No need to discuss it further.
Nah. It started well before Facebook came onto the scene. It started with WoW and the whole "casual gaming" movement.
Facebook certainly didn't help, though.
When i say "the facebook generation" i meant the hordes of casual players that feel it´s their birthright to be in the top 10 even tho they play 1 hour a day and believe the whole game should be smoothed and dumbed down in every single way possible to allow such things, ofc destroying any kind of outdoor pvp in the process, because you know, it´s unfair their healer /animal lover toon got killed during their quest time
Did not mean that it started with facebook.
It´s just usually facebook games offer no challenge, it´s impossible to "lose" and even doing a mediocre result rewards you with 5 posts in your profile telling all your friends how awesome you are, and that´s why i compared them.
The "facebook generation" arrived en masse to mmoland.
That´s all there´s to it.
No need to discuss it further.
Nah. It started well before Facebook came onto the scene. It started with WoW and the whole "casual gaming" movement.
Facebook certainly didn't help, though.
When i say "the facebook generation" i meant the hordes of casual players that feel it´s their birthright to be in the top 10 even tho they play 1 hour a day and believe the whole game should be smoothed and dumbed down in every single way possible to allow such things, ofc destroying any kind of outdoor pvp in the process, because you know, it´s unfair their healer /animal lover toon got killed during their quest time
Did not mean that it started with facebook.
It´s just usually facebook games offer no challenge, it´s impossible to "lose" and even doing a mediocre result rewards you with 5 posts in your profile telling all your friends how awesome you are, and that´s why i compared them.
It's not just facebook, its also console gamers, FPS gamers, RTS gamers, etc.
What WOW did (they will even say it themselves) is that they lowered the barrier to entry for gamers in the MMORPG genere.
This can either be viewed as a good or bad thing. It's good in that the simplification of WOW has allowed players from other generes to get some exposure to the MMORPG genere and has expanded the playerbase by the millions.
It's bad in that you now have all these different kind of gamers who play games for reasons that don't neccessarily align with the reasons that traditional MMORPG gamers made the move to MMORPGs (deep & challenging game experience, team oriented game focus, perpetual virtual world, substantial time investment for a long cycle play experience)
While those qualities mentioned above might not sound appealing to a person who has only a few hours a week for gaming, or a person who has an unpredictable play schedule, they are appealing and fun to the niche market that originally settled in that genere in the late 90s.
The conflict we are seeing is because we have so many different player agendas in the MMO playerbase today (thanks to the mainstreaming of the genere) and games like WOW are now challenged with offereing something for everyone. How do you create a game that is deep, challenging and group focused......all while being shallow, easy, and solo friendly? You end up going somewhere in the middle and truely satisfying no one.
If a casual gamer played any one of the old school MMORPG games
I agree with the people that say it depends on what type of game it is!
WoW with a death penalty? silly! it would just be a useless inconvenience.
Origanal EQ's death penalty? worked great! made you fear dying, which made you on edge, which pumped adrenaline through your body.
Myself i love death penaltys, as long as the game feels dangerous and makes me feel like i lost something....i remember some other game having one that i got back within 2 or 3 kills...what was the point?
In EQ there wasnt such an emphasis on levelling, it was to explore the world! Remember the old " your in our world now"? thats how it felt. Games these days all have the slogan " only takes two weeks of powerlevelling to reach max level" what happened to making a vast dangerous and interesting world to explore and live in?
As death penalties go, CoH/CoV is fairly light. XP debt is not even earned until after level 10 which increases your chances of survival. They have also added Patrol XP, that is earned while not playing the game, and Notoriety to maximize your XP gain and further mitigate XP debt which makes leveling that much easier. I’ve played the game for 6 ½ years now and I don’t even pay attention to XP debt anymore. Honestly, the death penalty in CoH/CoV was never really that painful in the first place and it’s become mostly meaningless now.
From a general point of view I do believe that there need to be some consequences in an MMO if players make bad decisions; otherwise there’s no real sense of victory. If you can’t lose then you can’t win. No death penalty turns an MMO into an episode of the Mr. Bill Show (showing my age here) with avatars being thrown into dangerous situations just to watch them die or, more likely, because if they get the timing right they can possibly get their hands on rare gear or loot without having to fight the boss. So what if they die in the process? No real consequences and they got their +5 Ego Lifter of L33tness just before the boss squashed them like a bug.
I agree. Remove the death penalties. They are frustrating. While we're at it, who hasn't gotten frustrated by travel time in mmo's? We should remove travel time too. And how about selecting character types? That can also be frustrating. So there should only be one sort of character to play, and he/she/it should have every possible skill/ability/etc, so you don't have to feel frustrated in making a choice. And equipment.. Sometimes figuring out what to equip yourself with can be frustrating. So every player should have the same equipment.
/snip
Seriously..this needs to be looked at from a sociological viewpoint.. Let's NOT step down the games to match whatever the lowest frustration tolerance is.. that just leads off into darkness, where one lonely brain cell stumbles around, frustrated that it cannot find anyone else. Why breed for incompetence? Instead, make those with a reduced frustration level rise to the challenge, and IMPROVE the human genome.
Think of Darwin, people. Let's not do that to our descendants.
And while we're at it, other players are pretty annoying sometimes too. If I'm paying a subscription I should be able to play offline without anyone in my way!
I like what you have said on the subject sir and I concur in every imaginable way possible.
Call of duty! player A makes 30 kills, dies 60 times! gets 3000 points.
Player B makes 15 kills dies 0 times..gets an achievment to say he had a perfect game....gets 1500 points! whats the point? If they made that game have a penalty for dieing i would pick it back up today. but whats the point in trying to play the game smartly when you get more rewards for running round like a headless chicken with a shotgun and grenade launcher!
Games need to have penaltys for me otherwise they just get plain boring!
...How do you create a game that is deep, challenging and group focused......all while being shallow, easy, and solo friendly? ...
Actually, in concept, the answer is easy and has already been done. In DAoC, the difficulty of the dungeon was adjusted based on the compliment of the party. Additionally since most of the best gear in the game was player made, no one "Had" to run a specific dungeon.
So how is it actualy "a game" if it's impossible to suffer any setbacks?
Part of the definition of a game is that there is some differentiation in outcome between players based upon thier performance. If not, then what's the difference between that and watching a movie?
In MMO's, the game doesn't end when the player looses (i.e. "dies"). So there must be something in place to make loosing/failing undesirable or differentiate that outcome from a player who performs successfully.... even if it's only a small time sink penalty (exp loss, corpse runs, equipment damage, or debuffs all pretty much equate to a time sink penalty in the end).
Personaly, the games with harsher death penalties were the ones I ended up enjoying more.... because it made battles more meaningfull... you actualy experienced some sense of anxiety, outcome or thrill of danger over the outcome. As a community oriented player, it also fostered a greater sense of community in the game...as people desired to work together to overcome the adversity of failure/death.
However, even a casual solo player should be able to grasp the concept of defeat. After all, if you get a low score in Pac-Man or Missle Command or what have you....you don't get to put your initials on the scoreboard and you don't get to progress to the next level until you've beaten that level. Death penalties in MMO's are really no different then that....ultimately it's just costing you a little bit of time to get back to where you were.
I remembered when EverQuest 2 first came out, it had the same death penalities as Everquest and SOE wondered why they were not seeing a lot of sales. Well they were stunned and shocked when they changed the death penalty and saw a nearly 400% rise in sales and subscriptions.
Blizzard use to have harsh penalities and noticed subs dropping and they changed it and subs had a massive increase. Now adays in World of Warcraft you have to worry about the massive repair bills and not worry about the harsh death penalities.
Companies that makes MMO for PVP tends to have harsh penalities and they find out rather fast that thier subs is low. Seems they fail to learn about human nature is that we humans hate to lose and we do not like to play any sort of game be it either PVP or PVE that is unfun or not fun to play. Only players that seems to enjoy these types of harsh death penalities are the so called hard core players.
I like to play MMO's that are fun, having to deal with harsh death penalities is not fun for me, it is a grind and stressful and I get that from real life obligations and do not need that crap in any type of pve or pvp game. I play for fun. Games that are unfun gets accounts cancelled really fast.
So if you are playing Chess against some-one and they capture your Queen do you quit the game because it's now tougher for you to play and win? That is essentialy what you are arguing.
The problem with too many folks today is that they expect a gold medal for simply showing up....then after a short while of this they scratch thier heads and wonder why they are bored with playing that game...and why the 50 gold medals they have stacked up in thier closet seem meaningless to them.
The bottom line is that you can't really fake accomplishment. People are too fragile about thier self-esteem these days. Loosing is not fun, but it's also no dishonor if you played fairly and gave it your best shot.
From my perspective frustration only sets in if you have next to zero chance of winning regardless of how well you perform... or if loosing means you never have a shot at victory again (it's perfectly ok with me if loosing means that you never have a shot at that PARTICULAR quest/battle/scenerio again, as long as there are other ones you can play again in future.).
This was a nice article but I tend a little more towards having some form of death penalty in games honestly whether they are mmorpgs or offline games.
This is not a new concept in video games, it began back in the first arcade games when you knew you had a certain amount of lives (unless you were lucky to have unlimited quarters) or it was game over. Some of the earliest console games had them as well where the worlds were sometimes broken up into sections that if you died you risked potentially being sent back through more than one very difficult level.
I myself can remember more times than I care to playing games like Final Fantasy and forgetting to save after something.
And most recently I had the experience of playing Star Trek Online which released with absolutely no penalty in death. Perhaps it was the mundane feeling of the game as a whole that helped but I found myself more times than I care to blindly flying back into the fray multiple times with reckless abandon, and it really wasn't fun.
The only death penalty I have no desire for are xp death penalties because like it or not it is going to move more noncomittal players away from your game.
It's really not about how "casual" or "carebear" a player is, like most of us we all just want something that we can play and the devs have to know that no one's commitment to their games is absolute.
While some will look at that practice as a good thing that number is far outweighed I'll bet by the number who will just leave your game and go play the next game that offers the most similar to what they seek, and like it or not this hurts even the players who do agree with that practice.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Sure there is the odd game with a severe death penalty such as Eve but let no one kid themselves. Eve came out in 2003 it is not a new game. Eve came out in a time when death penalties were still seen as acceptable. A modern game like SWTOR is not going to have a death penalty. Just not going to happen.
I played for EvE 2.5 years. The death penalty for me wasn't so bad as the worst I ever lost was a faction battleship. And those that were losing titans and carriere and the like in droves were mostly in alliances that had all the latest tech 2 and (3 now) blueprints and massive groups of miners gathering resources. Yes the "winners" in EvE were large groups. With huge resources and taxes to members. 100 billion was a sizeable loss to a large alliance .... but not a game killer. Most capital ship losses were covered by the alliance (sooner or later) and most of the losing pilots had some tech 2 something or other to go out and have some fun with while waiting. Yea it took some time to build a Titan. ..... I remember the first one destroyed ... galaxy wid news.
If everyone who started EvE was ganked repeatedly for a day or 2 (even with free noob ship) Eve would be empty as well.
The "facebook generation" arrived en masse to mmoland.
That´s all there´s to it.
No need to discuss it further.
Nah. It started well before Facebook came onto the scene. It started with WoW and the whole "casual gaming" movement.
Facebook certainly didn't help, though.
I honestly think that there is a basic falacy threading through this argument. I am assuming that one is trying to differentiate between "casual" gamers and "hard core" gamers. What do these terms really mean, and which "group" has contributed more to the advancement of MMO's .. or even computer games in general?
Some definitions I have assumed from comments:
Casual Gamer:
A person who has no skill in a game and is therefore a real pain in th ass to play with.
A person who has a limited time to devote to a game.
A person who does not take the game seriously enough.
Hard Core Gamer
A person who claims to be a player of superior skill and hates it that casual gamers are around and are such easy kills.
A person who can devote the majority of his time to playing the game.
A person who takes the status and mightyness of his game avatar as a very serious part of his life indeed.
There are thousands of more deffinitions .... all are meaningless and falacious (ok I can't spell ... I loose at the spelling MMO)
The only common thread among the adherents to either of these gaming philosophys is that the "Hard Core" gamers are somewhow superior thinkers and have superior game design Ideas. That is probably why there are so many Super Popular Hard Core Games out there,
Just my humble opinion.
Jeeze I don't know why this thread has prompted me to respond so much. Maybe because I am ashamed that I am not a hard core Gamer.
I agree. Remove the death penalties. They are frustrating. While we're at it, who hasn't gotten frustrated by travel time in mmo's? We should remove travel time too. And how about selecting character types? That can also be frustrating. So there should only be one sort of character to play, and he/she/it should have every possible skill/ability/etc, so you don't have to feel frustrated in making a choice. And equipment.. Sometimes figuring out what to equip yourself with can be frustrating. So every player should have the same equipment.
How about combat in mmo's? Sometimes, creatures just don't die fast enough, and this can lead to frustration as well. Perhaps we could make things die instantly, or..hey..we could remove the combat altogether! No more frustrating combat!
Hmm..and how about choosing a game to play? Deciding that can lead to massive levels of frustration. So : (Lame movie reference, I know..) THERE SHOULD BE ONLY ONE It would make choosing what to play SO much less frustrating.
This game is starting to sound somewhat like the games my 9 yr old daughter is playing on the wii.
Seriously..this needs to be looked at from a sociological viewpoint.. Let's NOT step down the games to match whatever the lowest frustration tolerance is.. that just leads off into darkness, where one lonely brain cell stumbles around, frustrated that it cannot find anyone else. Why breed for incompetence? Instead, make those with a reduced frustration level rise to the challenge, and IMPROVE the human genome.
Think of Darwin, people. Let's not do that to our descendants.
had to LOL this one. It is exactly the kind of game you need if you want a severe death penalty. Make it so easy that you don't die. Some said you shouldn't die often. OK easy game .... few deaths. I learn much more from a death fighting something than I learn from 1 shotting it and running on.
Games improving my genes??? heh ... guess i am just in the lower gene pool and should play wizzard 101.
The "facebook generation" arrived en masse to mmoland.
That´s all there´s to it.
No need to discuss it further.
Nah. It started well before Facebook came onto the scene. It started with WoW and the whole "casual gaming" movement.
Facebook certainly didn't help, though.
I honestly think that there is a basic falacy threading through this argument. I am assuming that one is trying to differentiate between "casual" gamers and "hard core" gamers. What do these terms really mean, and which "group" has contributed more to the advancement of MMO's .. or even computer games in general?
Some definitions I have assumed from comments:
Casual Gamer:
A person who has no skill in a game and is therefore a real pain in th ass to play with.
A person who has a limited time to devote to a game.
A person who does not take the game seriously enough.
Hard Core Gamer
A person who claims to be a player of superior skill and hates it that casual gamers are around and are such easy kills.
A person who can devote the majority of his time to playing the game.
A person who takes the status and mightyness of his game avatar as a very serious part of his life indeed.
There are thousands of more deffinitions .... all are meaningless and falacious (ok I can't spell ... I loose at the spelling MMO)
The only common thread among the adherents to either of these gaming philosophys is that the "Hard Core" gamers are somewhow superior thinkers and have superior game design Ideas. That is probably why there are so many Super Popular Hard Core Games out there,
Just my humble opinion.
Jeeze I don't know why this thread has prompted me to respond so much. Maybe because I am ashamed that I am not a hard core Gamer.
It's not about elitism....its about a fundamental change of a genere that was once something unique to what you could experience in other game generes.
You have to remember.....traditional MMORPG gaming came from MUDs and Table Top DnD type games. Like how DnD was far more complex, immersive, and required more attention and time than say Monopoly........traditional MMORPGs were more complex, immersive, and required more attention and time than Super Mario Bros., or even Doom.
Because traditional MMORPGs had a high level of depth, breathe, detail, difficulty, and time required.....you can think of it as more of a Hobby than just a quick fix game experience. And like most other things you'd consider a Hobby.....people people particpating are VERY passionate about all topics in that realm.
It's not a bunch of old school / hardcore elitiests yelling at the new kids to get off their lawn......its a community of passionate hobbiests that are a little miffed that thier hobby has been main streamed and diluted to fit less committed and passionate types.
I personally don't have a problem with gamers that don't appreciate the types of things in games that I appreciate. Different strokes for different folks, and certianly there are enough types of game generes out there to satisfy all of the wants and desires that casual gamers are looking for. I just take issue with the need to "progress" one of the few game venues that offered something different into nothing more than a glorified RPG game with an internet connection.
If I am not mistaken, the paper and pencil MMO's are still available. However I do get your point, though I think you are one of the few mature sincere hobbiest's commenting on this site.
It's not about elitism....its about a fundamental change of a genere that was once something unique to what you could experience in other game generes.
You have to remember.....traditional MMORPG gaming came from MUDs and Table Top DnD type games. Like how DnD was far more complex, immersive, and required more attention and time than say Monopoly........traditional MMORPGs were more complex, immersive, and required more attention and time than Super Mario Bros., or even Doom.
Because traditional MMORPGs had a high level of depth, breathe, detail, difficulty, and time required.....you can think of it as more of a Hobby than just a quick fix game experience. And like most other things you'd consider a Hobby.....people people particpating are VERY passionate about all topics in that realm.
It's not a bunch of old school / hardcore elitiests yelling at the new kids to get off their lawn......its a community of passionate hobbiests that are a little miffed that thier hobby has been main streamed and diluted to fit less committed and passionate types.
I personally don't have a problem with gamers that don't appreciate the types of things in games that I appreciate. Different strokes for different folks, and certianly there are enough types of game generes out there to satisfy all of the wants and desires that casual gamers are looking for. I just take issue with the need to "progress" one of the few game venues that offered something different into nothing more than a glorified RPG game with an internet connection.
IMO, PnP games are an entirely different genre, due to many points that you mention. The social element is an entirely different one.
When if comes to death, PnP is also drastically different. Survivability is much better in PnP games. When every move you make can be a decision made after several minutes of consideration, you're in much better shape to be able to respond in a self preserving fashion.
And you tend to have more options. Most PnP games have a better system for breaking away from combat, fighting defensively, or running for cover. While often, good MMO's have skills which emulate these things to an extent, you also have to respond much more quickly.
In short, situational awareness is greatly heightened for a PnP party than it is your average MMO group. Health bars and status icons to make a split second decision are no match for minutes of deliberation betwixt a DM and their brave party of stalwart die tossers.
Even with that in mind, death in most PnP games isn't permanent, either. Painful, yes. And even when it is permanent, most DM's aren't fool enough to make someone roll a new 1st level character to fight beside their 10th level pals fighting CR 10 encounters.
Heavy DP's work in games like Eve, DFO, and MO because the games were designed that way; sacrifice is mitigated either by insurance mechanics, or simply by gear not being terribly sacred. Other games, like, say, CoX would be silly with heavy DP's. Flat out silly. While CoX kept the system the OP describes, they not only toned it down, but also put in bonus XP advancement with careers. XP penalties now apply to those bonuses now, which effectively removes the DP's altogether, unless you play constantly.
DP's don't make anything more difficult. A 6 foot leap over a sandbox is no less difficult than a 6 foot leap over a spiked pit. All harsh DP's do is discourage developers from making it a 6 foot leap; they'll make it a 2 foot leap, instead.
Comments
LOL, what a whiner. Death penalties are almost non-existent in MMOs already and death is often an accepted form of fast travel.
Seriously, OP columnist guy, all I have for you is a big giant CMN. Unless you're playing EVE you have no right to complain.
Right, but none-the-less, most mmo's have mediocre subscribership compared to the total market, and not one of the mediocre ones has that below-average subscribership because of a harsh death penalty.
Not sever, but there should be 'moderate' death penalties in an mmo. Opposed to using death as a form of travel, as another member mentioned, there needs to be a remarkable reward for accomplishment, and a remarkable penalty for failure.
I dont like entitlements, welfare or hand-outs, and I dont like being rewarded for being a loser. Whatever it may be on either side is fine for me, but if I die 5x trying to accomplish a task, the guy that was able to accomplish it 1x should get a slightly better and remarkable reward.
So yea...lets get real. It seems that the new buzz word is accessability, which to me, is akin to treating everyone like they have special needs. If I have special needs and need some extra help, then my reward for accomplishing a task, or my team, should be representative of the effort and or cruch I used.
Actually earth eternal had an interesting death penalty.
Over time you gained luck which made a significant difference in how good your loot drops were. When you died you lost say half your accumulated luck.
Thing is if you were doing something hard and died doing it that actually did reduce your rewards due to having lower luck when you succeeded.
This is so true. Another way of putting it is all future subscription renewals depend on the losers pulling themselves back together and getting back into the game. Every time you penalize someone for losing you decrease the propensity of the losers getting back into the game. Nobody wants to die once and have a whole day's xp gains wiped out or drop a sword they worked a whole month to get. If the game has PvP then the penalties are even more likely to produce a ragequit.
Sure there is the odd game with a severe death penalty such as Eve but let no one kid themselves. Eve came out in 2003 it is not a new game. Eve came out in a time when death penalties were still seen as acceptable. A modern game like SWTOR is not going to have a death penalty. Just not going to happen.
The "facebook generation" arrived en masse to mmoland.
That´s all there´s to it.
No need to discuss it further.
Rawr.
Nah. It started well before Facebook came onto the scene. It started with WoW and the whole "casual gaming" movement.
Facebook certainly didn't help, though.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Not if those MMO players are playing MMOs with next to no penalty at all.
Umm... spend some time in a MMO with a harsher death penalty and see how the average player approaches it (that is, not the super hardcore, but not the super casual either). Then go into a MMO where there's a light, or no death penalty, see how the average player approaches it (again, not super hardcore, not casual), and I guarantee you will see a difference.
I never saw *half* the stupid, careless crap being pulled in FFXI, Lineage 2 or other MMOs with harsher death penalties that I see in any given play session in a MMO where the penalty is next to nothing.
A real life friend of mine used to play Lineage 2, we were in a clan and often would group up, xp and what not... In L2 he was cautious, wary and never took unnecessary risks. He knew what was at stake if something went wrong. He later moved on to WoW and, over time, started doing crap in that game he would *never* do in L2. Racing headlong into bad situations knowing he would die. When asked why he was doing that he'd say "well, just chipping away at it. It's just some coin for repairs if you die and a short run, so no big deal if we wipe. We'll get it eventually".
That one comparison sums it up. People play more recklessly and carelessly in MMOs with low or no death penalty simply because there's no reason not to.
Also, the argument that "death penalties make you play and pay longer beyond reason" is BS.
1. Dying is something that should happen rarely. It should be the exception, not the rule. Therefor, it makes absolutely no sense to say that "death penalties are designed to make you play longer" because, ideally, you shouldn't be dying often enough for it to make a notable difference.
2. MMOs are designed to be played for the longer term regardless. WoW has less death penalty than most MMOs out there... and yet people will invest years into that game, just as others do into MMOs with harsher penalties. There are people who are playing WoW for 5+ years now, since it launchd, just as there are people playing FFXI or L2 or Eve for that amount of time or longer. How harsh or light the death penalty is, or how much or little it affects "how much you have to play" is of absolutely zero relevance. MMOs are games intended to be played for months or even years by design.
2. If someone is dying so often that a death penalty is having that great an impact on their progression and making them have to play that much longer, then it seems there's perhaps something they're doing very wrong. I mean I've seen people complain about WoW's penalty being "too harsh" because you can't just res on the spot and they're spending most of their time running back to their quest/instance spot from a graveyard after dying. I mean seriously... what the hell is someone doing if they're having to run back from a graveyard that much?
When you look at it from a 35,000 foot view, It really paints a picture of how many of the so-called "casual" MMO players approach games these days when, instead of saying "geeze... the death penalty in this game is a little rough. I'll need to be more careful and formulate some better strategies instead of rushing into everything", they say "I'm losing way too much time when I die in this game and it's setting me back... the devs need to make the death penalty lighter".
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I remembered when EverQuest 2 first came out, it had the same death penalities as Everquest and SOE wondered why they were not seeing a lot of sales. Well they were stunned and shocked when they changed the death penalty and saw a nearly 400% rise in sales and subscriptions.
Blizzard use to have harsh penalities and noticed subs dropping and they changed it and subs had a massive increase. Now adays in World of Warcraft you have to worry about the massive repair bills and not worry about the harsh death penalities.
Companies that makes MMO for PVP tends to have harsh penalities and they find out rather fast that thier subs is low. Seems they fail to learn about human nature is that we humans hate to lose and we do not like to play any sort of game be it either PVP or PVE that is unfun or not fun to play. Only players that seems to enjoy these types of harsh death penalities are the so called hard core players.
I like to play MMO's that are fun, having to deal with harsh death penalities is not fun for me, it is a grind and stressful and I get that from real life obligations and do not need that crap in any type of pve or pvp game. I play for fun. Games that are unfun gets accounts cancelled really fast.
When i say "the facebook generation" i meant the hordes of casual players that feel it´s their birthright to be in the top 10 even tho they play 1 hour a day and believe the whole game should be smoothed and dumbed down in every single way possible to allow such things, ofc destroying any kind of outdoor pvp in the process, because you know, it´s unfair their healer /animal lover toon got killed during their quest time
Did not mean that it started with facebook.
It´s just usually facebook games offer no challenge, it´s impossible to "lose" and even doing a mediocre result rewards you with 5 posts in your profile telling all your friends how awesome you are, and that´s why i compared them.
Rawr.
It's not just facebook, its also console gamers, FPS gamers, RTS gamers, etc.
What WOW did (they will even say it themselves) is that they lowered the barrier to entry for gamers in the MMORPG genere.
This can either be viewed as a good or bad thing. It's good in that the simplification of WOW has allowed players from other generes to get some exposure to the MMORPG genere and has expanded the playerbase by the millions.
It's bad in that you now have all these different kind of gamers who play games for reasons that don't neccessarily align with the reasons that traditional MMORPG gamers made the move to MMORPGs (deep & challenging game experience, team oriented game focus, perpetual virtual world, substantial time investment for a long cycle play experience)
While those qualities mentioned above might not sound appealing to a person who has only a few hours a week for gaming, or a person who has an unpredictable play schedule, they are appealing and fun to the niche market that originally settled in that genere in the late 90s.
The conflict we are seeing is because we have so many different player agendas in the MMO playerbase today (thanks to the mainstreaming of the genere) and games like WOW are now challenged with offereing something for everyone. How do you create a game that is deep, challenging and group focused......all while being shallow, easy, and solo friendly? You end up going somewhere in the middle and truely satisfying no one.
If a casual gamer played any one of the old school MMORPG games
I agree with the people that say it depends on what type of game it is!
WoW with a death penalty? silly! it would just be a useless inconvenience.
Origanal EQ's death penalty? worked great! made you fear dying, which made you on edge, which pumped adrenaline through your body.
Myself i love death penaltys, as long as the game feels dangerous and makes me feel like i lost something....i remember some other game having one that i got back within 2 or 3 kills...what was the point?
In EQ there wasnt such an emphasis on levelling, it was to explore the world! Remember the old " your in our world now"? thats how it felt. Games these days all have the slogan " only takes two weeks of powerlevelling to reach max level" what happened to making a vast dangerous and interesting world to explore and live in?
As death penalties go, CoH/CoV is fairly light. XP debt is not even earned until after level 10 which increases your chances of survival. They have also added Patrol XP, that is earned while not playing the game, and Notoriety to maximize your XP gain and further mitigate XP debt which makes leveling that much easier. I’ve played the game for 6 ½ years now and I don’t even pay attention to XP debt anymore. Honestly, the death penalty in CoH/CoV was never really that painful in the first place and it’s become mostly meaningless now.
From a general point of view I do believe that there need to be some consequences in an MMO if players make bad decisions; otherwise there’s no real sense of victory. If you can’t lose then you can’t win. No death penalty turns an MMO into an episode of the Mr. Bill Show (showing my age here) with avatars being thrown into dangerous situations just to watch them die or, more likely, because if they get the timing right they can possibly get their hands on rare gear or loot without having to fight the boss. So what if they die in the process? No real consequences and they got their +5 Ego Lifter of L33tness just before the boss squashed them like a bug.
And while we're at it, other players are pretty annoying sometimes too. If I'm paying a subscription I should be able to play offline without anyone in my way!
I like what you have said on the subject sir and I concur in every imaginable way possible.
simple console example for me.
Call of duty! player A makes 30 kills, dies 60 times! gets 3000 points.
Player B makes 15 kills dies 0 times..gets an achievment to say he had a perfect game....gets 1500 points! whats the point? If they made that game have a penalty for dieing i would pick it back up today. but whats the point in trying to play the game smartly when you get more rewards for running round like a headless chicken with a shotgun and grenade launcher!
Games need to have penaltys for me otherwise they just get plain boring!
Actually, in concept, the answer is easy and has already been done. In DAoC, the difficulty of the dungeon was adjusted based on the compliment of the party. Additionally since most of the best gear in the game was player made, no one "Had" to run a specific dungeon.
So how is it actualy "a game" if it's impossible to suffer any setbacks?
Part of the definition of a game is that there is some differentiation in outcome between players based upon thier performance. If not, then what's the difference between that and watching a movie?
In MMO's, the game doesn't end when the player looses (i.e. "dies"). So there must be something in place to make loosing/failing undesirable or differentiate that outcome from a player who performs successfully.... even if it's only a small time sink penalty (exp loss, corpse runs, equipment damage, or debuffs all pretty much equate to a time sink penalty in the end).
Personaly, the games with harsher death penalties were the ones I ended up enjoying more.... because it made battles more meaningfull... you actualy experienced some sense of anxiety, outcome or thrill of danger over the outcome. As a community oriented player, it also fostered a greater sense of community in the game...as people desired to work together to overcome the adversity of failure/death.
However, even a casual solo player should be able to grasp the concept of defeat. After all, if you get a low score in Pac-Man or Missle Command or what have you....you don't get to put your initials on the scoreboard and you don't get to progress to the next level until you've beaten that level. Death penalties in MMO's are really no different then that....ultimately it's just costing you a little bit of time to get back to where you were.
So if you are playing Chess against some-one and they capture your Queen do you quit the game because it's now tougher for you to play and win? That is essentialy what you are arguing.
The problem with too many folks today is that they expect a gold medal for simply showing up....then after a short while of this they scratch thier heads and wonder why they are bored with playing that game...and why the 50 gold medals they have stacked up in thier closet seem meaningless to them.
The bottom line is that you can't really fake accomplishment. People are too fragile about thier self-esteem these days. Loosing is not fun, but it's also no dishonor if you played fairly and gave it your best shot.
From my perspective frustration only sets in if you have next to zero chance of winning regardless of how well you perform... or if loosing means you never have a shot at victory again (it's perfectly ok with me if loosing means that you never have a shot at that PARTICULAR quest/battle/scenerio again, as long as there are other ones you can play again in future.).
This was a nice article but I tend a little more towards having some form of death penalty in games honestly whether they are mmorpgs or offline games.
This is not a new concept in video games, it began back in the first arcade games when you knew you had a certain amount of lives (unless you were lucky to have unlimited quarters) or it was game over. Some of the earliest console games had them as well where the worlds were sometimes broken up into sections that if you died you risked potentially being sent back through more than one very difficult level.
I myself can remember more times than I care to playing games like Final Fantasy and forgetting to save after something.
And most recently I had the experience of playing Star Trek Online which released with absolutely no penalty in death. Perhaps it was the mundane feeling of the game as a whole that helped but I found myself more times than I care to blindly flying back into the fray multiple times with reckless abandon, and it really wasn't fun.
The only death penalty I have no desire for are xp death penalties because like it or not it is going to move more noncomittal players away from your game.
It's really not about how "casual" or "carebear" a player is, like most of us we all just want something that we can play and the devs have to know that no one's commitment to their games is absolute.
While some will look at that practice as a good thing that number is far outweighed I'll bet by the number who will just leave your game and go play the next game that offers the most similar to what they seek, and like it or not this hurts even the players who do agree with that practice.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I played for EvE 2.5 years. The death penalty for me wasn't so bad as the worst I ever lost was a faction battleship. And those that were losing titans and carriere and the like in droves were mostly in alliances that had all the latest tech 2 and (3 now) blueprints and massive groups of miners gathering resources. Yes the "winners" in EvE were large groups. With huge resources and taxes to members. 100 billion was a sizeable loss to a large alliance .... but not a game killer. Most capital ship losses were covered by the alliance (sooner or later) and most of the losing pilots had some tech 2 something or other to go out and have some fun with while waiting. Yea it took some time to build a Titan. ..... I remember the first one destroyed ... galaxy wid news.
If everyone who started EvE was ganked repeatedly for a day or 2 (even with free noob ship) Eve would be empty as well.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
I honestly think that there is a basic falacy threading through this argument. I am assuming that one is trying to differentiate between "casual" gamers and "hard core" gamers. What do these terms really mean, and which "group" has contributed more to the advancement of MMO's .. or even computer games in general?
Some definitions I have assumed from comments:
Casual Gamer:
A person who has no skill in a game and is therefore a real pain in th ass to play with.
A person who has a limited time to devote to a game.
A person who does not take the game seriously enough.
Hard Core Gamer
A person who claims to be a player of superior skill and hates it that casual gamers are around and are such easy kills.
A person who can devote the majority of his time to playing the game.
A person who takes the status and mightyness of his game avatar as a very serious part of his life indeed.
There are thousands of more deffinitions .... all are meaningless and falacious (ok I can't spell ... I loose at the spelling MMO)
The only common thread among the adherents to either of these gaming philosophys is that the "Hard Core" gamers are somewhow superior thinkers and have superior game design Ideas. That is probably why there are so many Super Popular Hard Core Games out there,
Just my humble opinion.
Jeeze I don't know why this thread has prompted me to respond so much. Maybe because I am ashamed that I am not a hard core Gamer.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
had to LOL this one. It is exactly the kind of game you need if you want a severe death penalty. Make it so easy that you don't die. Some said you shouldn't die often. OK easy game .... few deaths. I learn much more from a death fighting something than I learn from 1 shotting it and running on.
Games improving my genes??? heh ... guess i am just in the lower gene pool and should play wizzard 101.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
It's not about elitism....its about a fundamental change of a genere that was once something unique to what you could experience in other game generes.
You have to remember.....traditional MMORPG gaming came from MUDs and Table Top DnD type games. Like how DnD was far more complex, immersive, and required more attention and time than say Monopoly........traditional MMORPGs were more complex, immersive, and required more attention and time than Super Mario Bros., or even Doom.
Because traditional MMORPGs had a high level of depth, breathe, detail, difficulty, and time required.....you can think of it as more of a Hobby than just a quick fix game experience. And like most other things you'd consider a Hobby.....people people particpating are VERY passionate about all topics in that realm.
It's not a bunch of old school / hardcore elitiests yelling at the new kids to get off their lawn......its a community of passionate hobbiests that are a little miffed that thier hobby has been main streamed and diluted to fit less committed and passionate types.
I personally don't have a problem with gamers that don't appreciate the types of things in games that I appreciate. Different strokes for different folks, and certianly there are enough types of game generes out there to satisfy all of the wants and desires that casual gamers are looking for. I just take issue with the need to "progress" one of the few game venues that offered something different into nothing more than a glorified RPG game with an internet connection.
If I am not mistaken, the paper and pencil MMO's are still available. However I do get your point, though I think you are one of the few mature sincere hobbiest's commenting on this site.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
IMO, PnP games are an entirely different genre, due to many points that you mention. The social element is an entirely different one.
When if comes to death, PnP is also drastically different. Survivability is much better in PnP games. When every move you make can be a decision made after several minutes of consideration, you're in much better shape to be able to respond in a self preserving fashion.
And you tend to have more options. Most PnP games have a better system for breaking away from combat, fighting defensively, or running for cover. While often, good MMO's have skills which emulate these things to an extent, you also have to respond much more quickly.
In short, situational awareness is greatly heightened for a PnP party than it is your average MMO group. Health bars and status icons to make a split second decision are no match for minutes of deliberation betwixt a DM and their brave party of stalwart die tossers.
Even with that in mind, death in most PnP games isn't permanent, either. Painful, yes. And even when it is permanent, most DM's aren't fool enough to make someone roll a new 1st level character to fight beside their 10th level pals fighting CR 10 encounters.
Heavy DP's work in games like Eve, DFO, and MO because the games were designed that way; sacrifice is mitigated either by insurance mechanics, or simply by gear not being terribly sacred. Other games, like, say, CoX would be silly with heavy DP's. Flat out silly. While CoX kept the system the OP describes, they not only toned it down, but also put in bonus XP advancement with careers. XP penalties now apply to those bonuses now, which effectively removes the DP's altogether, unless you play constantly.
DP's don't make anything more difficult. A 6 foot leap over a sandbox is no less difficult than a 6 foot leap over a spiked pit. All harsh DP's do is discourage developers from making it a 6 foot leap; they'll make it a 2 foot leap, instead.