You are doing the same mistake over and over again: you do not define any "objective". Without any objective, you cannot really start talking about how challenging something is, unless there is some consensus about an ultimate objective that everyone agrees on.
Sure, if the objective is to simply kill all bosses in a dungeon, then a strong death penalty may not affect the difficulty of completing that objective. However, as I said in my earlier post, if the objective is to achieve a certain amount of exp per hour groupwise, then yes it can matter., which I showed in the mmorpg-example in an older post.
So let me reiterate: define the objective/goal/mission before you start talking about the difficulty/challenge.
For maximizing exp per hour and completing a dungeon, mission or a quest all have the same thing to avoid: DO NOT DIE. If you die, your exp rate will suffer. If you die, you will not complete the encounter. So on so forth.
It really doesn't matter what that objective is. Most common goal is to advance in the game - consume content. Most common way to fail in that is to die. I really don't think I have to define the objectives in any more detail than that in order to get my message across.
You say that death penalty comes into play when you are trying to achieve a certain amound of exp per hour. I disagree. When you die, you've already failed. Death penalty is punishment for failure. How do you avoid punishment can be difficult.
In other words, if the game is too hard for you and you fail - most often, you die. What comes after death is no longer difficulty but punishment for failure. You have already failed in your goal and harsh death penalty is just rubbing it in.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
HDP doesnt make a game harder rofl, it only makes it a pain in the six.
People wont think twice before attacking, they just wont, afraid of loosing too much... People who will think before will be pretty rare. HDP, kill the fun.
Give me Gameplay challenge! Something that requires me to think hard before a fight, put up a tactic, come up with friend and working together in order to win! This is what i want. I dont want to die killed by an elite boar and loose armor xp cash some back hair and my virginity.
HDP doesnt make a game harder rofl, it only makes it a pain in the six.
People wont think twice before attacking, they just wont, afraid of loosing too much... People who will think before will be pretty rare. HDP, kill the fun.
Give me Gameplay challenge! Something that requires me to think hard before a fight, put up a tactic, come up with friend and working together in order to win! This is what i want. I dont want to die killed by an elite boar and loose armor xp cash some back hair and my virginity.
This isn't the forum of some new game in development and we're all trying convince them to add or to not add a harsh death penalty. You don't have to sell us. This is a hypothetical discussion about the gameplay mechanic. Anyone's personal bias is irrelevant. You hate HDP, that's great, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it makes a game more challenging or not.
Now if someone can tell us why trying to get your corpse back when you're naked, in the dark, and vulnerable to anything isn't challenging and isn't more challenging than trying to get your corpse back as an invulnerable ghost in broad day light. And do so without their reasoning being some variation of "I don't like it", then we're getting somewhere
HDP doesnt make a game harder rofl, it only makes it a pain in the six.
People wont think twice before attacking, they just wont, afraid of loosing too much... People who will think before will be pretty rare. HDP, kill the fun.
Give me Gameplay challenge! Something that requires me to think hard before a fight, put up a tactic, come up with friend and working together in order to win! This is what i want. I dont want to die killed by an elite boar and loose armor xp cash some back hair and my virginity.
This isn't the forum of some new game in development and we're all trying convince them to add or to not add a harsh death penalty. You don't have to sell us. This is a hypothetical discussion about the gameplay mechanic. Anyone's personal bias is irrelevant. You hate HDP, that's great, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it makes a game more challenging or not.
Now if someone can tell us why trying to get your corpse back when you're naked, in the dark, and vulnerable to anything isn't challenging and isn't more challenging than trying to get your corpse back as an invulnerable ghost in broad day light. And do so without their reasoning being some variation of "I don't like it", then we're getting somewhere
Look dude i aint selling any idea here, i stated my opinion as to HDP doesn't make a game harder, and i though a forum was open for wider discussion and i made a statement on what i like to have as for difficulties in a game. Sorry if you can't see that and feel the need to answer in this fashion to my post! Anyway i stand by my post, HDP sucks and doesn't make a game better. Better gameplay, tactic and matchmaking makes a good and hard game!
HDP doesnt make a game harder rofl, it only makes it a pain in the six.
People wont think twice before attacking, they just wont, afraid of loosing too much... People who will think before will be pretty rare. HDP, kill the fun.
Give me Gameplay challenge! Something that requires me to think hard before a fight, put up a tactic, come up with friend and working together in order to win! This is what i want. I dont want to die killed by an elite boar and loose armor xp cash some back hair and my virginity.
This isn't the forum of some new game in development and we're all trying convince them to add or to not add a harsh death penalty. You don't have to sell us. This is a hypothetical discussion about the gameplay mechanic. Anyone's personal bias is irrelevant. You hate HDP, that's great, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it makes a game more challenging or not.
Now if someone can tell us why trying to get your corpse back when you're naked, in the dark, and vulnerable to anything isn't challenging and isn't more challenging than trying to get your corpse back as an invulnerable ghost in broad day light. And do so without their reasoning being some variation of "I don't like it", then we're getting somewhere
Look dude i aint selling any idea here, i stated my opinion as to HDP doesn't make a game harder, and i though a forum was open for wider discussion and i made a statement on what i like to have as for difficulties in a game. Sorry if you can't see that and feel the need to answer in this fashion to my post! Anyway i stand by my post, HDP sucks and doesn't make a game better. Better gameplay, tactic and matchmaking makes a good and hard game!
I understand that you think it sucks but perhaps now you'll tell us why it doesn't make the game harder without telling us that is sucks.
HDP doesnt make a game harder rofl, it only makes it a pain in the six.
People wont think twice before attacking, they just wont, afraid of loosing too much... People who will think before will be pretty rare. HDP, kill the fun.
Give me Gameplay challenge! Something that requires me to think hard before a fight, put up a tactic, come up with friend and working together in order to win! This is what i want. I dont want to die killed by an elite boar and loose armor xp cash some back hair and my virginity.
This isn't the forum of some new game in development and we're all trying convince them to add or to not add a harsh death penalty. You don't have to sell us. This is a hypothetical discussion about the gameplay mechanic. Anyone's personal bias is irrelevant. You hate HDP, that's great, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it makes a game more challenging or not.
Now if someone can tell us why trying to get your corpse back when you're naked, in the dark, and vulnerable to anything isn't challenging and isn't more challenging than trying to get your corpse back as an invulnerable ghost in broad day light. And do so without their reasoning being some variation of "I don't like it", then we're getting somewhere
Look dude i aint selling any idea here, i stated my opinion as to HDP doesn't make a game harder, and i though a forum was open for wider discussion and i made a statement on what i like to have as for difficulties in a game. Sorry if you can't see that and feel the need to answer in this fashion to my post! Anyway i stand by my post, HDP sucks and doesn't make a game better. Better gameplay, tactic and matchmaking makes a good and hard game!
I understand that you think it sucks but perhaps now you'll tell us why it doesn't make the game harder without telling us that is sucks.
You are doing the same mistake over and over again: you do not define any "objective". Without any objective, you cannot really start talking about how challenging something is, unless there is some consensus about an ultimate objective that everyone agrees on.
Sure, if the objective is to simply kill all bosses in a dungeon, then a strong death penalty may not affect the difficulty of completing that objective. However, as I said in my earlier post, if the objective is to achieve a certain amount of exp per hour groupwise, then yes it can matter., which I showed in the mmorpg-example in an older post.
So let me reiterate: define the objective/goal/mission before you start talking about the difficulty/challenge.
For maximizing exp per hour and completing a dungeon, mission or a quest all have the same thing to avoid: DO NOT DIE. If you die, your exp rate will suffer. If you die, you will not complete the encounter. So on so forth.
It really doesn't matter what that objective is. Most common goal is to advance in the game - consume content. Most common way to fail in that is to die. I really don't think I have to define the objectives in any more detail than that in order to get my message across.
You say that death penalty comes into play when you are trying to achieve a certain amound of exp per hour. I disagree. When you die, you've already failed. Death penalty is punishment for failure. How do you avoid punishment can be difficult.
In other words, if the game is too hard for you and you fail - most often, you die. What comes after death is no longer difficulty but punishment for failure. You have already failed in your goal and harsh death penalty is just rubbing it in.
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
--------------
If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I want both harsh death penalty and hard gameplay. They both make the game more difficult. But in different ways...
Personally I respect the environment more and feel more danger if I know there will be a xp-penalty, a long naked corpse run and possible de-levelling if I fail. Of course I will be more afraid to die and I will be more careful if I know that will happen.
I guess you will have to accept and understand that some players feel like that. And for them a harsh death penalty makes the game more fun. People have different opinions and different taste. I can understand that typical action-gamers and people that think everything that they do when not fighting is a waste of time dont want it and feel its frustrating. But there are other types of gamers that play MMO:s.
Most popular games today are made for action-gamers. But I think there is still a market for more traditional hardcore MMORPG:s. But such games will of course never again be popular mainstream games.
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
The mobs offer the challenge. If someone dies, the short handedness increases the challenge.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
How did you affect the difficulty? How did you affect the challenge at all? Same amount of skill is required to pass the encounter than before. You just raised the stakes.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
--------------
If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I am simplifying because this matter is simple. Simplifying only shows the error of the argument "harsh death penalty increases challenge". When it is false with a simple example, it fails in a MMORG aswell.
Difficulty is not wheter you lose exp or not because you can repair that in time. It is whether you pass the encounter or not. In your later example, it is just harder to recover from failure, so you really want to avoid dying. It does not increase difficutly i.e. same amount of skill is still required to avoid death and succeed.
Since we are quoting ourselves...
Lets say your goal is to pick up 5 apples. Everytime you fail to pick an apple i.e drop one, you have to pick up an additional apple. Essentially what you are saying that picking up 10 apples is "harder" than picking up just 5 apples. The penalty does not apply challenge to this task. It does not make it harder - it only makes it more time-consuming like Axehilt said.
The point of difficulty is not the goal or the labor you put into it, it is whether you succeed or not and improving your skill in order to succeed. Getting to the max level or getting enough money is an eventuality. You either do it fast or slow, but you'll reach your goal in the end.
Game is difficult when there is a chance that you will not succeed - that if you do not play properly, you will not beat that boss, and will not advance in the game. In no way does any form of experience penalty or money loss make that boss or encounter any harder to beat. Only way to pass that encounter is to plan, try again and play better.
Most people do not need further motivation to play well other than to advance in the game. Like I wrote earlier, I try my best not because I fear the death penalty, but because I want to win.
Harsh death penalty offers a cheap thrill for those who have a tendency to gambling, but it doesn't add challenge to those who find it only irritating. Whole games are based on this thrill like Blackjack. Infact the game is rather boring if there are no stakes. However the stakes do not make counting cards any more difficult than it is without them. Adding decks, on the other hand, do make it more difficult.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
The mobs offer the challenge. If someone dies, the short handedness increases the challenge.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
How did you affect the difficulty? How did you affect the challenge at all? Same amount of skill is required to pass the encounter than before. You just raised the stakes.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
--------------
If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I am simplifying because this matter is simple. Simplifying only shows the error of the argument "harsh death penalty increases challenge". When it is false with a simple example, it fails in a MMORG aswell.
Difficulty is not wheter you lose exp or not because you can repair that in time. It is whether you pass the encounter or not. In your later example, it is just harder to recover from failure, so you really want to avoid dying. It does not increase difficutly i.e. same amount of skill is still required to avoid death and succeed.
Since we are quoting ourselves...
Lets say your goal is to pick up 5 apples. Everytime you fail to pick an apple i.e drop one, you have to pick up an additional apple. Essentially what you are saying that picking up 10 apples is "harder" than picking up just 5 apples. The penalty does not apply challenge to this task. It does not make it harder - it only makes it more time-consuming like Axehilt said.
The point of difficulty is not the goal or the labor you put into it, it is whether you succeed or not and improving your skill in order to succeed. Getting to the max level or getting enough money is an eventuality. You either do it fast or slow, but you'll reach your goal in the end.
Game is difficult when there is a chance that you will not succeed - that if you do not play properly, you will not beat that boss, and will not advance in the game. In no way does any form of experience penalty or money loss make that boss or encounter any harder to beat. Only way to pass that encounter is to plan, try again and play better.
Most people do not need further motivation to play well other than to advance in the game. Like I wrote earlier, I try my best not because I fear the death penalty, but because I want to win.
Harsh death penalty offers a cheap thrill for those who have a tendency to gambling, but it doesn't add challenge to those who find it only irritating. Whole games are based on this thrill like Blackjack. Infact the game is rather boring if there are no stakes. However the stakes do not make counting cards any more difficult than it is without them. Adding decks, on the other hand, do make it more difficult.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
The mobs offer the challenge. If someone dies, the short handedness increases the challenge.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
How did you affect the difficulty? How did you affect the challenge at all? Same amount of skill is required to pass the encounter than before. You just raised the stakes.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
--------------
If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I am simplifying because this matter is simple. Simplifying only shows the error of the argument "harsh death penalty increases challenge". When it is false with a simple example, it fails in a MMORG aswell.
Difficulty is not wheter you lose exp or not because you can repair that in time. It is whether you pass the encounter or not. In your later example, it is just harder to recover from failure, so you really want to avoid dying. It does not increase difficutly i.e. same amount of skill is still required to avoid death and succeed.
Since we are quoting ourselves...
Lets say your goal is to pick up 5 apples. Everytime you fail to pick an apple i.e drop one, you have to pick up an additional apple. Essentially what you are saying that picking up 10 apples is "harder" than picking up just 5 apples. The penalty does not apply challenge to this task. It does not make it harder - it only makes it more time-consuming like Axehilt said.
The point of difficulty is not the goal or the labor you put into it, it is whether you succeed or not and improving your skill in order to succeed. Getting to the max level or getting enough money is an eventuality. You either do it fast or slow, but you'll reach your goal in the end.
Game is difficult when there is a chance that you will not succeed - that if you do not play properly, you will not beat that boss, and will not advance in the game. In no way does any form of experience penalty or money loss make that boss or encounter any harder to beat. Only way to pass that encounter is to plan, try again and play better.
Most people do not need further motivation to play well other than to advance in the game. Like I wrote earlier, I try my best not because I fear the death penalty, but because I want to win.
Harsh death penalty offers a cheap thrill for those who have a tendency to gambling, but it doesn't add challenge to those who find it only irritating. Whole games are based on this thrill like Blackjack. Infact the game is rather boring if there are no stakes. However the stakes do not make counting cards any more difficult than it is without them. Adding decks, on the other hand, do make it more difficult.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
It will make it more difficult. Because high stakes makes people nervous. And most people make more mistakes when they are nervous. Its common that people can do something when they are calm and perfectly relaxed. But when there is pressure and there is alot to lose or win they fail. This happens in sports, games and when people compete in general. Often they guy that can stay cool and calm will beat someone that is normally better but gets nervous.
The same people that fail in sports and other types of competition will get more nervous when raiding in a MMORPG. If they know they will need to do a 2 hour corpse run if they make a mistake they will feel pressure and get nervous. And they know the whole raidforce will need to do that 2 hour corpse run if they make a stupid mistake. And people in the raid will probably get angry if that happens. That pressure and potential drama will not be a huge problem if you can try the boss again 5 minutes later if you fail. And with no other penalty.
Imagine a very good guild that can learn how to kill a raid boss after wiping 5 times. Imagine a bad guild that need 50 tries to learn how to win. With 2 hour corpse runs they will have to give up... This means that only the best guilds can do that content.
So in a way it makes it more difficult because less guilds will be able to do it.
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
The mobs offer the challenge. If someone dies, the short handedness increases the challenge.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
How did you affect the difficulty? How did you affect the challenge at all? Same amount of skill is required to pass the encounter than before. You just raised the stakes.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
--------------
If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I am simplifying because this matter is simple. Simplifying only shows the error of the argument "harsh death penalty increases challenge". When it is false with a simple example, it fails in a MMORG aswell.
Difficulty is not wheter you lose exp or not because you can repair that in time. It is whether you pass the encounter or not. In your later example, it is just harder to recover from failure, so you really want to avoid dying. It does not increase difficutly i.e. same amount of skill is still required to avoid death and succeed.
Since we are quoting ourselves...
Lets say your goal is to pick up 5 apples. Everytime you fail to pick an apple i.e drop one, you have to pick up an additional apple. Essentially what you are saying that picking up 10 apples is "harder" than picking up just 5 apples. The penalty does not apply challenge to this task. It does not make it harder - it only makes it more time-consuming like Axehilt said.
The point of difficulty is not the goal or the labor you put into it, it is whether you succeed or not and improving your skill in order to succeed. Getting to the max level or getting enough money is an eventuality. You either do it fast or slow, but you'll reach your goal in the end.
Game is difficult when there is a chance that you will not succeed - that if you do not play properly, you will not beat that boss, and will not advance in the game. In no way does any form of experience penalty or money loss make that boss or encounter any harder to beat. Only way to pass that encounter is to plan, try again and play better.
Most people do not need further motivation to play well other than to advance in the game. Like I wrote earlier, I try my best not because I fear the death penalty, but because I want to win.
Harsh death penalty offers a cheap thrill for those who have a tendency to gambling, but it doesn't add challenge to those who find it only irritating. Whole games are based on this thrill like Blackjack. Infact the game is rather boring if there are no stakes. However the stakes do not make counting cards any more difficult than it is without them. Adding decks, on the other hand, do make it more difficult.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
It will make it more difficult. Because high stakes makes people nervous. And most people make more mistakes when they are nervous. Its common that people can do something when they are calm and perfectly relaxed. But when there is pressure and there is alot to lose or win they fail. This happens in sports, games and when people compete in general. Often they guy that can stay cool and calm will beat someone that is normally better but gets nervous.
The same people that fail in sports and other types of competition will get more nervous when raiding in a MMORPG. If they know they will need to do a 2 hour corpse run if they make a mistake they will feel pressure and get nervous. And they know the whole raidforce will need to do that 2 hour corpse run if they make a stupid mistake. And people in the raid will probably get angry if that happens. That pressure and potential drama will not be a huge problem if you can try the boss again 5 minutes later if you fail. And with no other penalty.
Imagine a very good guild that can learn how to kill a raid boss after wiping 5 times. Imagine a bad guild that need 50 tries to learn how to win. With 2 hour corpse runs they will have to give up... This means that only the best guilds can do that content.
So in a way it makes it more difficult because less guilds will be able to do it.
only healers have to corpse run, everyone else is lazy and waits 4 res nub
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
The mobs offer the challenge. If someone dies, the short handedness increases the challenge.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
How did you affect the difficulty? How did you affect the challenge at all? Same amount of skill is required to pass the encounter than before. You just raised the stakes.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
--------------
If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I am simplifying because this matter is simple. Simplifying only shows the error of the argument "harsh death penalty increases challenge". When it is false with a simple example, it fails in a MMORG aswell.
Difficulty is not wheter you lose exp or not because you can repair that in time. It is whether you pass the encounter or not. In your later example, it is just harder to recover from failure, so you really want to avoid dying. It does not increase difficutly i.e. same amount of skill is still required to avoid death and succeed.
Since we are quoting ourselves...
Lets say your goal is to pick up 5 apples. Everytime you fail to pick an apple i.e drop one, you have to pick up an additional apple. Essentially what you are saying that picking up 10 apples is "harder" than picking up just 5 apples. The penalty does not apply challenge to this task. It does not make it harder - it only makes it more time-consuming like Axehilt said.
The point of difficulty is not the goal or the labor you put into it, it is whether you succeed or not and improving your skill in order to succeed. Getting to the max level or getting enough money is an eventuality. You either do it fast or slow, but you'll reach your goal in the end.
Game is difficult when there is a chance that you will not succeed - that if you do not play properly, you will not beat that boss, and will not advance in the game. In no way does any form of experience penalty or money loss make that boss or encounter any harder to beat. Only way to pass that encounter is to plan, try again and play better.
Most people do not need further motivation to play well other than to advance in the game. Like I wrote earlier, I try my best not because I fear the death penalty, but because I want to win.
Harsh death penalty offers a cheap thrill for those who have a tendency to gambling, but it doesn't add challenge to those who find it only irritating. Whole games are based on this thrill like Blackjack. Infact the game is rather boring if there are no stakes. However the stakes do not make counting cards any more difficult than it is without them. Adding decks, on the other hand, do make it more difficult.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
It will make it more difficult. Because high stakes makes people nervous. And most people make more mistakes when they are nervous. Its common that people can do something when they are calm and perfectly relaxed. But when there is pressure and there is alot to lose or win they fail. This happens in sports, games and when people compete in general. Often they guy that can stay cool and calm will beat someone that is normally better but gets nervous.
The same people that fail in sports and other types of competition will get more nervous when raiding in a MMORPG. If they know they will need to do a 2 hour corpse run if they make a mistake they will feel pressure and get nervous. And they know the whole raidforce will need to do that 2 hour corpse run if they make a stupid mistake. And people in the raid will probably get angry if that happens. That pressure and potential drama will not be a huge problem if you can try the boss again 5 minutes later if you fail. And with no other penalty.
Imagine a very good guild that can learn how to kill a raid boss after wiping 5 times. Imagine a bad guild that need 50 tries to learn how to win. With 2 hour corpse runs they will have to give up... This means that only the best guilds can do that content.
So in a way it makes it more difficult because less guilds will be able to do it.
only healers have to corpse run, everyone else is lazy and waits 4 res nub
Unless the healers need support to survive. If its difficult they cant do that alone. They need help from tanks, dps and classes that can CC...
There is a couple very simple reasons why Death Penalty is a poor tool for adding a sense of danger and therefore fun to a game (asside from the many valid points raised already)
1. Lag spikes
2. Dying because you are in a group and someone else fails causing your death. That is going to encourage a very mercenary approach to grouping
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
There is a couple very simple reasons why Death Penalty is a poor tool for adding a sense of danger and therefore fun to a game (asside from the many valid points raised already)
1. Lag spikes
2. Dying because you are in a group and someone else fails causing your death. That is going to encourage a very mercenary approach to grouping
I can agree lag spikes are a problem. And I guess everyone would think it is bad. But they should try to prevent lag spikes as much as possible. Good servers and graphics that most computers can handle.
It will be more difficult for bad players to find a group/guild/raid if they want to do high end content and play with the best players. But not everyone would agree that is bad or think its a problem. They can do less difficult content and/or play with other "less skilled" players. If the game is intended for hardcore players and is intended to be a unforgiving dangerous virtual world this must be expected. Not everyone will be able to do all content. Or be welcome to play with everyone. But a game like that can still be fun for everyone. They just need to find the right friends and the right guild. And focus on roles, progress paths and content they can handle. It can all be fun, interesting and rewarding. But people will need to have the right attitude.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
It will make it more difficult. Because high stakes makes people nervous. And most people make more mistakes when they are nervous. Its common that people can do something when they are calm and perfectly relaxed. But when there is pressure and there is alot to lose or win they fail. This happens in sports, games and when people compete in general. Often they guy that can stay cool and calm will beat someone that is normally better but gets nervous.
The same people that fail in sports and other types of competition will get more nervous when raiding in a MMORPG. If they know they will need to do a 2 hour corpse run if they make a mistake they will feel pressure and get nervous. And they know the whole raidforce will need to do that 2 hour corpse run if they make a stupid mistake. And people in the raid will probably get angry if that happens. That pressure and potential drama will not be a huge problem if you can try the boss again 5 minutes later if you fail. And with no other penalty.
Imagine a very good guild that can learn how to kill a raid boss after wiping 5 times. Imagine a bad guild that need 50 tries to learn how to win. With 2 hour corpse runs they will have to give up... This means that only the best guilds can do that content.
So in a way it makes it more difficult because less guilds will be able to do it.
To Malcanis... Everyone doesn't get that thrill.
To Hurvath... So some people make mistakes under pressure and some people panic more easily that is true. At the same time, many people don't do that. And many people don't need further encouragement to do their best other than to succeed. Harsh death penalty just annoys them. Unlike tuning up gameplay difficulty which makes the game challenging for everyone.
Exp/money loss for death is just anal. You are forced to recouperate your losses usually by doing something that is unrelated to the task and in no way improves your chances with your next try. Even the military doesn't allow (atleast where I've been) unrelated punishment from a failed task anymore. The punishment should be related to the task i.e. most often you have to try again until you get it right and succeed. Otherwise it could be understood as hazing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
It will make it more difficult. Because high stakes makes people nervous. And most people make more mistakes when they are nervous. Its common that people can do something when they are calm and perfectly relaxed. But when there is pressure and there is alot to lose or win they fail. This happens in sports, games and when people compete in general. Often they guy that can stay cool and calm will beat someone that is normally better but gets nervous.
The same people that fail in sports and other types of competition will get more nervous when raiding in a MMORPG. If they know they will need to do a 2 hour corpse run if they make a mistake they will feel pressure and get nervous. And they know the whole raidforce will need to do that 2 hour corpse run if they make a stupid mistake. And people in the raid will probably get angry if that happens. That pressure and potential drama will not be a huge problem if you can try the boss again 5 minutes later if you fail. And with no other penalty.
Imagine a very good guild that can learn how to kill a raid boss after wiping 5 times. Imagine a bad guild that need 50 tries to learn how to win. With 2 hour corpse runs they will have to give up... This means that only the best guilds can do that content.
So in a way it makes it more difficult because less guilds will be able to do it.
To Malcanis... Everyone doesn't get that thrill.
To Hurvath... So some people make mistakes under pressure and some people panic more easily that is true. At the same time, many people don't do that. And many people don't need further encouragement to do their best other than to succeed. Harsh death penalty just annoys them. Unlike tuning up gameplay difficulty which makes the game challenging for everyone.
Exp/money loss for death is just anal. You are forced to recouperate your losses usually by doing something that is unrelated to the task and in no way improves your chances with your next try. Even the military doesn't allow (atleast where I've been) unrelated punishment from a failed task anymore. The punishment should be related to the task i.e. most often you have to try again until you get it right and succeed. Otherwise it could be understood as hazing.
I think the task is being able to survive, make progress and find a role you can enjoy in the virtual world. Killing a raid boss is only part of that. I mean the penalty you get when you die is not only related to not being able to kill that raid boss...
And, of course, there can be long corpse runs without a money or xp penalty. IMO, if you can attack the boss, get killed, run back and attack him again over and over it removes the need for skill and thinking. If you faill you should have to do some work and prepare before you can get a new chance. Work as a team to kill respawns and protect everyone on the way back to the boss....
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
No, but that's only because you narrowly defined the "goal" to which the difficulty applies. Also, "raised stakes" isn't the greatest analog for death penalty because it implies increased reward...for sake of argument let's assume that "raised stakes" means you can lose more, but not necessarily gain more from winning.
Now ask yourself, is the goal of the person counting cards to count cards or to make money? I'm pretty sure it's to make money, otherwise there would be no reason for them to do this in a Casino, they could just count cards at home if they are doing it for fun. Put in this context, does raised stakes make it more difficult for the card counter to achieve their goal of making money? Yes.
Once again, this is because they stand to lose more money from failing, so in order to make money they need to win fairly consistently. Thus, the task becomes more difficulty.
There is no reason to waste time training for something that has no real penalty for failure. Because you can just do it over and over again (in real practice) until you finally succeed.
That's assuming that the task at hand is not difficult.
Much as Scrog was saying, there is no reason to waste time training if you could get up, go to the bathroom, come back and find your character has auto attacked an orc to death. And the most insidious Death penalty will do little to change that.
Now, if you amp up the mobs, give them some nasty "tell-nukes", etc, a player will learn, "He's glowing red, I better interrupt him before he TPW's us!". And they'll learn that faster if they don't have to grind or corpse walk every time they fail...
On the other hand, if you amp up the DP, they'll just get fed up with corpse walking and quit.
I totally agree with your statement...but, your statement HAS A DEATH PENALTY IN IT.
You say "And they'll learn that faster if they don't (want to) have to grind or corpose walk everytime they fail."
Negative on your addition. They'll learn faster if they don't have to. Because they won't be wasting their time on the stupidity of corpse walking. And they can use that saved time to figure out how they were beat in the first place.
Well what do you think grind or corpse walking is? A DEATH PENALTY!
Yes. As Axe has mentioned multiple times regarding himself, I too support a death penalty. On this very thread I endorsed Eve's death penalty, which I wouldn't consider a slap on the wrist, would you?
What I don't support are harsh ones, meant to punish beyond what makes sense for a game. I endorse Eve's penalty because it fits the lawless, pirate feel of the game and you can choose to avoid most of it. And most people do.
Would you not agree, that if we take your scenario, but we remove the death penalty entirely, that it would be easier? In other words, when you die, you instantly respawn where you just died with full health and mana and no losses at all. Wouldn't this be easier than having to walk back to your corpse when you die? Also, wouldn't this completely remove any incentive for players to train? They could just bang their head against a hard mob until it died.
Again, no, it would NOT be easier. It would be LESS TEDIOUS. Grinding XP back is not difficult. Waiting for rez sickness to pass is not difficult. Corpse walking IS difficult but is an excrutiatingly LAME way to spend your time playing a game.
This is an extreme example, it's basically the opposite of permadeath. But it illustrates a point. Death penalties DO contribute to the difficulty of the game.
This DOES NOT mean that you can just increase the death penalty arbitrarily and make the game more challenging through that mechanism alone. At some point, it will just become frustrating.
But on the same token, increasing encounter difficulty can do the exact same thing. Imagine a game with a WoW death penalty where the MOBs are so difficult that it takes about 20 tries to kill one. This would be ridiculously frustrating, no one would play it.
Actually, such things exist, and exist in most MMO's. They're usually called "raids". When new raids are introduced, players can fail them many, many, MANY times. But I assure you, if you require corpse runs, or those failures lead to DP's dropping them a level? They'll stop trying. Not because it's "harder", but because it's not worth doing if you have a hefty challenge that you're trying to meet.
You have to strike a balance between the cost of failure (death penalty) and the risk of failure (encounter difficulty) to have a good, challenging game.
And most MMO's have already done that, IMO. Death is a PITA in every game I've played(except STO, which is too light, IMO). I still think "rez-sickness" is anti-productive, but being ported, item repair, etc... I think those things are just fine.
Ah, I misunderstood your post...late in the day and all . Sorry about that my apologies.
I still sit firmly on the "death penalty does increase challenge" camp though.
And, of course, there can be long corpse runs without a money or xp penalty. IMO, if you can attack the boss, get killed, run back and attack him again over and over it removes the need for skill and thinking. If you faill you should have to do some work and prepare before you can get a new chance. Work as a team to kill respawns and protect everyone on the way back to the boss....
You didn't think that one through, did you? You are implying that trying again and again does not make you a better player. Even further, they don't need skill and thinking to pass the encounter. Really?
I might comment that often grinding to recouperate your losses is the stuff that doesn't need skill and thinking, but that is irrelevant, isn't it?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
You didn't think that one through, did you? You are implying that trying again and again does not make you a better player. Even further, they don't need skill and thinking to pass the encounter. Really?
I would think there's probably games where you can beat any content simply by trying mindlessly over and over again, without improvement, but those games are generally considered to be poorly designed.
In a good game, it requires an improvement of skill to pass certain gates.
You never hear about anybody winning a chess tournament simply by playing thousands of games without improving themselves. It's not like you randomly do really well in chess and it's just a matter of time...
(edit: Some might say that being able to repeat the same task allows you to practice a lot of times, and therefore removes challenge... but it's not that the game is less challenging, it's that the players have gotten better. If a game only lets you try a task every few days, it's not a more difficult game because of it, it's just a game that doesn't let you practice as much. You shouldn't count non-game time, or meaningless game time (Grinding on low level monsters that aren't difficult to recover xp/get money back) as being part of the meaningful game play, so it's not that it's harder, it's just that it takes more time to get a certain amount of meaningful gameplay.)
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
No, but that's only because you narrowly defined the "goal" to which the difficulty applies. Also, "raised stakes" isn't the greatest analog for death penalty because it implies increased reward...for sake of argument let's assume that "raised stakes" means you can lose more, but not necessarily gain more from winning.
Now ask yourself, is the goal of the person counting cards to count cards or to make money? I'm pretty sure it's to make money, otherwise there would be no reason for them to do this in a Casino, they could just count cards at home if they are doing it for fun. Put in this context, does raised stakes make it more difficult for the card counter to achieve their goal of making money? Yes.
Once again, this is because they stand to lose more money from failing, so in order to make money they need to win fairly consistently. Thus, the task becomes more difficulty.
Perhaps increased stakes does imply a reward but the gambler's rush is same for both games. Perhaps it was bad to bring up gambling since it is so widely misunderstood.
Counting cards is done to win money - it is a job. You do not gamble with your work. Sensible, successful, professional gamblers would only bet a portion of their bankroll. That portion is small enough that they can afford to lose to "bad luck" but high enough to make good money. Therefore even during a "down swing" (losing streak) they can still maintain their level of play and recover from their losses.
Card counter's task is to count cards and counting cards is difficult. If you succeed in counting cards, you will win in the long run. It is not a gamble. It is just mathematics and good memory. You raise the difficulty by adding cards, not by raising stakes.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Comments
For maximizing exp per hour and completing a dungeon, mission or a quest all have the same thing to avoid: DO NOT DIE. If you die, your exp rate will suffer. If you die, you will not complete the encounter. So on so forth.
It really doesn't matter what that objective is. Most common goal is to advance in the game - consume content. Most common way to fail in that is to die. I really don't think I have to define the objectives in any more detail than that in order to get my message across.
You say that death penalty comes into play when you are trying to achieve a certain amound of exp per hour. I disagree. When you die, you've already failed. Death penalty is punishment for failure. How do you avoid punishment can be difficult.
In other words, if the game is too hard for you and you fail - most often, you die. What comes after death is no longer difficulty but punishment for failure. You have already failed in your goal and harsh death penalty is just rubbing it in.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
HDP doesnt make a game harder rofl, it only makes it a pain in the six.
People wont think twice before attacking, they just wont, afraid of loosing too much... People who will think before will be pretty rare. HDP, kill the fun.
Give me Gameplay challenge! Something that requires me to think hard before a fight, put up a tactic, come up with friend and working together in order to win! This is what i want. I dont want to die killed by an elite boar and loose armor xp cash some back hair and my virginity.
This isn't the forum of some new game in development and we're all trying convince them to add or to not add a harsh death penalty. You don't have to sell us. This is a hypothetical discussion about the gameplay mechanic. Anyone's personal bias is irrelevant. You hate HDP, that's great, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it makes a game more challenging or not.
Now if someone can tell us why trying to get your corpse back when you're naked, in the dark, and vulnerable to anything isn't challenging and isn't more challenging than trying to get your corpse back as an invulnerable ghost in broad day light. And do so without their reasoning being some variation of "I don't like it", then we're getting somewhere
Look dude i aint selling any idea here, i stated my opinion as to HDP doesn't make a game harder, and i though a forum was open for wider discussion and i made a statement on what i like to have as for difficulties in a game. Sorry if you can't see that and feel the need to answer in this fashion to my post! Anyway i stand by my post, HDP sucks and doesn't make a game better. Better gameplay, tactic and matchmaking makes a good and hard game!
There should be some concrete reason not to die, rewards for not doing so, in an environment that is fun and dificult to master.
I understand that you think it sucks but perhaps now you'll tell us why it doesn't make the game harder without telling us that is sucks.
because I am doing the exact same task
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
there is a reason not to die. that reason is so you dont fail
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
That is however exactly what my previous example showed: to reach the goal of the example, "not dieing" was not a necessary requirement if there was no death penalty. You simplify way too much if you think that all strategies that have a significant risk of death, will always be significantely slower on average than strategies that do not have a significant risk of causing death.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
I will quote my own example in case you conviniently forgot about them:
Originally posted by InFaVilla
"To the rest of the readers I have a good example from a recent mmorpg in closed beta:
There is this endgame 5-man instanced dungeon in this game. For players, you can construct following highly relevant objective:
A. To, on average, reach a small interval near the number "X " of total exp per hour groupwise.
Now, to complete that objective, we need to take probabilities into account; because we are only interested in the average result. Sure some strategies may sometimes yield low exp compared to other strategies, but at the same time they may yield significantely higher exp on average.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is absolutely no penalty for death other than having to wait for the mob to die, before your healer can resurrect you. In this game the downtime due to the tank dying because of a mob killing him in 2 critical hits, is minimal. Let us call this scenario A-I.
In scenario A-I, to achieve the goal of A, we can accept a few tank deaths against some mobs (not against bosses though) since the downtime is minimal and there is practically no exp loss. Most runs, the tank will not die, but during a few runs he will die if someone in group isn't paying enough attention or the mob gets 2 lucky criticals.
Let us now regard a scenario where there is a penalty of lets say 20% exp loss; let's call this scenario A-II. Suddenly, we cannot reach the goal of A, if the tank even dies once. We must make absolutely sure that in every run the tank does not die. This means, that specially the healer and tank need to focus 100% of the times against the more difficult mobs; they cannot do things that have a decent probability of causing the death of the tank. Suddenly, the tank has to dance around the mob, to make sure that the mob does not hit him twice on a row quickly, and thus avoiding the death by 2 lucky crits.
Now, you have to agree that it is more challanging to achieve A in scenario A-II compared to A-I. The only major game mechanic difference was the death penalty. So what is the conclusion? Well, the nature of the death penalty can affect the challange of different objectives in mmorpgs."
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If you pay attention to the example, you will realize that in that case dying will not necessarily cause auto-failure of the objective. When you die, you necessarily fail at keeping yourself alive, but that was not the objective. Death penalty is necessarily punishment for failing to stay alive, but that doesn't mean it is punishment for all forms of failure and it doesn't automatically imply that you failed the important objective.
You make it easy for you, by ignoring to actually analyze my example and give rational and logical comments on it. However, if you feel that it is better to just pretend that things are just black and white, then sure go ahead and continue to ignore. It is also fine if you avoid further relevant discussion with the excuse of not being able to deal with abstract and statistical rationalization.
I want both harsh death penalty and hard gameplay. They both make the game more difficult. But in different ways...
Personally I respect the environment more and feel more danger if I know there will be a xp-penalty, a long naked corpse run and possible de-levelling if I fail. Of course I will be more afraid to die and I will be more careful if I know that will happen.
I guess you will have to accept and understand that some players feel like that. And for them a harsh death penalty makes the game more fun. People have different opinions and different taste. I can understand that typical action-gamers and people that think everything that they do when not fighting is a waste of time dont want it and feel its frustrating. But there are other types of gamers that play MMO:s.
Most popular games today are made for action-gamers. But I think there is still a market for more traditional hardcore MMORPG:s. But such games will of course never again be popular mainstream games.
I am simplifying because this matter is simple. Simplifying only shows the error of the argument "harsh death penalty increases challenge". When it is false with a simple example, it fails in a MMORG aswell.
Difficulty is not wheter you lose exp or not because you can repair that in time. It is whether you pass the encounter or not. In your later example, it is just harder to recover from failure, so you really want to avoid dying. It does not increase difficutly i.e. same amount of skill is still required to avoid death and succeed.
Since we are quoting ourselves...
Lets say your goal is to pick up 5 apples. Everytime you fail to pick an apple i.e drop one, you have to pick up an additional apple. Essentially what you are saying that picking up 10 apples is "harder" than picking up just 5 apples. The penalty does not apply challenge to this task. It does not make it harder - it only makes it more time-consuming like Axehilt said.
The point of difficulty is not the goal or the labor you put into it, it is whether you succeed or not and improving your skill in order to succeed. Getting to the max level or getting enough money is an eventuality. You either do it fast or slow, but you'll reach your goal in the end.
Game is difficult when there is a chance that you will not succeed - that if you do not play properly, you will not beat that boss, and will not advance in the game. In no way does any form of experience penalty or money loss make that boss or encounter any harder to beat. Only way to pass that encounter is to plan, try again and play better.
Most people do not need further motivation to play well other than to advance in the game. Like I wrote earlier, I try my best not because I fear the death penalty, but because I want to win.
Harsh death penalty offers a cheap thrill for those who have a tendency to gambling, but it doesn't add challenge to those who find it only irritating. Whole games are based on this thrill like Blackjack. Infact the game is rather boring if there are no stakes. However the stakes do not make counting cards any more difficult than it is without them. Adding decks, on the other hand, do make it more difficult.
I need to ask, does raising the stakes make counting cards more difficult?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that it's more exciting to do it for high stakes.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Can someone please emperically operationalize the term "challenge" in a generalizable manner?
And data girls sing
doo doo doo doo do doo doo doo do doo do doo doo
Take a walk on the subjective side.
It will make it more difficult. Because high stakes makes people nervous. And most people make more mistakes when they are nervous. Its common that people can do something when they are calm and perfectly relaxed. But when there is pressure and there is alot to lose or win they fail. This happens in sports, games and when people compete in general. Often they guy that can stay cool and calm will beat someone that is normally better but gets nervous.
The same people that fail in sports and other types of competition will get more nervous when raiding in a MMORPG. If they know they will need to do a 2 hour corpse run if they make a mistake they will feel pressure and get nervous. And they know the whole raidforce will need to do that 2 hour corpse run if they make a stupid mistake. And people in the raid will probably get angry if that happens. That pressure and potential drama will not be a huge problem if you can try the boss again 5 minutes later if you fail. And with no other penalty.
Imagine a very good guild that can learn how to kill a raid boss after wiping 5 times. Imagine a bad guild that need 50 tries to learn how to win. With 2 hour corpse runs they will have to give up... This means that only the best guilds can do that content.
So in a way it makes it more difficult because less guilds will be able to do it.
only healers have to corpse run, everyone else is lazy and waits 4 res nub
Unless the healers need support to survive. If its difficult they cant do that alone. They need help from tanks, dps and classes that can CC...
There is a couple very simple reasons why Death Penalty is a poor tool for adding a sense of danger and therefore fun to a game (asside from the many valid points raised already)
1. Lag spikes
2. Dying because you are in a group and someone else fails causing your death. That is going to encourage a very mercenary approach to grouping
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I can agree lag spikes are a problem. And I guess everyone would think it is bad. But they should try to prevent lag spikes as much as possible. Good servers and graphics that most computers can handle.
It will be more difficult for bad players to find a group/guild/raid if they want to do high end content and play with the best players. But not everyone would agree that is bad or think its a problem. They can do less difficult content and/or play with other "less skilled" players. If the game is intended for hardcore players and is intended to be a unforgiving dangerous virtual world this must be expected. Not everyone will be able to do all content. Or be welcome to play with everyone. But a game like that can still be fun for everyone. They just need to find the right friends and the right guild. And focus on roles, progress paths and content they can handle. It can all be fun, interesting and rewarding. But people will need to have the right attitude.
To Malcanis... Everyone doesn't get that thrill.
To Hurvath... So some people make mistakes under pressure and some people panic more easily that is true. At the same time, many people don't do that. And many people don't need further encouragement to do their best other than to succeed. Harsh death penalty just annoys them. Unlike tuning up gameplay difficulty which makes the game challenging for everyone.
Exp/money loss for death is just anal. You are forced to recouperate your losses usually by doing something that is unrelated to the task and in no way improves your chances with your next try. Even the military doesn't allow (atleast where I've been) unrelated punishment from a failed task anymore. The punishment should be related to the task i.e. most often you have to try again until you get it right and succeed. Otherwise it could be understood as hazing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I think the task is being able to survive, make progress and find a role you can enjoy in the virtual world. Killing a raid boss is only part of that. I mean the penalty you get when you die is not only related to not being able to kill that raid boss...
And, of course, there can be long corpse runs without a money or xp penalty. IMO, if you can attack the boss, get killed, run back and attack him again over and over it removes the need for skill and thinking. If you faill you should have to do some work and prepare before you can get a new chance. Work as a team to kill respawns and protect everyone on the way back to the boss....
No, but that's only because you narrowly defined the "goal" to which the difficulty applies. Also, "raised stakes" isn't the greatest analog for death penalty because it implies increased reward...for sake of argument let's assume that "raised stakes" means you can lose more, but not necessarily gain more from winning.
Now ask yourself, is the goal of the person counting cards to count cards or to make money? I'm pretty sure it's to make money, otherwise there would be no reason for them to do this in a Casino, they could just count cards at home if they are doing it for fun. Put in this context, does raised stakes make it more difficult for the card counter to achieve their goal of making money? Yes.
Once again, this is because they stand to lose more money from failing, so in order to make money they need to win fairly consistently. Thus, the task becomes more difficulty.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Ah, I misunderstood your post...late in the day and all
. Sorry about that my apologies.
I still sit firmly on the "death penalty does increase challenge" camp though.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
You didn't think that one through, did you? You are implying that trying again and again does not make you a better player. Even further, they don't need skill and thinking to pass the encounter. Really?
I might comment that often grinding to recouperate your losses is the stuff that doesn't need skill and thinking, but that is irrelevant, isn't it?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I would think there's probably games where you can beat any content simply by trying mindlessly over and over again, without improvement, but those games are generally considered to be poorly designed.
In a good game, it requires an improvement of skill to pass certain gates.
You never hear about anybody winning a chess tournament simply by playing thousands of games without improving themselves. It's not like you randomly do really well in chess and it's just a matter of time...
(edit: Some might say that being able to repeat the same task allows you to practice a lot of times, and therefore removes challenge... but it's not that the game is less challenging, it's that the players have gotten better. If a game only lets you try a task every few days, it's not a more difficult game because of it, it's just a game that doesn't let you practice as much. You shouldn't count non-game time, or meaningless game time (Grinding on low level monsters that aren't difficult to recover xp/get money back) as being part of the meaningful game play, so it's not that it's harder, it's just that it takes more time to get a certain amount of meaningful gameplay.)
Perhaps increased stakes does imply a reward but the gambler's rush is same for both games. Perhaps it was bad to bring up gambling since it is so widely misunderstood.
Counting cards is done to win money - it is a job. You do not gamble with your work. Sensible, successful, professional gamblers would only bet a portion of their bankroll. That portion is small enough that they can afford to lose to "bad luck" but high enough to make good money. Therefore even during a "down swing" (losing streak) they can still maintain their level of play and recover from their losses.
Card counter's task is to count cards and counting cards is difficult. If you succeed in counting cards, you will win in the long run. It is not a gamble. It is just mathematics and good memory. You raise the difficulty by adding cards, not by raising stakes.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky