I don't miss corpse runs, but I miss the fear of dying that they brought with them and the overall danger they added to games that had them.
That's the way I look at a lot of things that have been taken out of MMOs in the last decade. Yeah, having to do them sucked, but when you take them out of a game, you realize that they actually added something to the game that you can't replace when they are gone.
Challenge is the measure of how much skill is necessary to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens if you fail.
Note that penalty only occurs after the challenge has ended. It has no significant influence on how difficult the challenge was.
There's nothing casual about wanting games to get back to the roots of being about the challenge not the penalty. Interesting, hard challenges are what we need more of, not to waste time dealing with penalties. There's really no reason to want to engage with shallow systems devoid of challenge (like corpse runs) when we could be playing the deeper game systems instead.
Back to the roots?. Really?.. Where would those roots be?.. UO ? EQ? DAoC? where? From my experience, soft penalties came later.
Even single player games used to have fewer check points. You had to play through the entire level and then beat the boss to continue. And that was if you still had lives left.. lose all of them and its back to level one.
You pulled out Civilization earlier as an example, So I will use it again.. what happens if you lose a fight. You lose the army and you will have to rebuild that army and you might even have to do it with less resources than before.
Originally posted by Chuckanar I agree, it showed you whom the men were.
No doubt.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
I am surprised to see a few suggest losing an item rather than doing a corpse run. Is loot THAT easy to come by in WoW, lol.
Originally posted by WW4BW I miss them... Of course having to get your corpse back sucks. But I want both highs and lows in my story. If its all highs then it is not interesting.
As another poster said (on another site, years ago), "Happiness is not simply the constant flow of good things." It is the net change in emotion that is felt the most; and that can't occur without occasional set-backs.
Originally posted by munx4555 ...I wouldnt be suprised if we started seeing mmo's with a infinite healthbar.. *Sigh*.
LOL this is so true. I found it amusing to play DOOM in God Mode for about an hour, but some folks would play the entire game that way.
Originally posted by Barrikor I'd go with having a 1 in 3 chance of having to do a corpse run after death. That would keep the risk, but limit the grief-ability.
This might be a nice compromise. Every other death = a corpse run.
Originally posted by jesad ...All of these things were singular events that were taken away with the removal of one game mechanic. I don't know, I just think that it is extremely short-sighted to just say "Yeah I hated it" without really thinking about all that you lost and how little you actually gained when it went away.
Absolutely brilliant summation.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
As another poster said (on another site, years ago), "Happiness is not simply the constant flow of good things." It is the net change in emotion that is felt the most; and that can't occur without occasional set-backs.
You don't need a corpse run to get a set back. Wasting 3 hours without downing the boss is a set-back.
And when does random musing on the internet becomes the gospels?
Back to the roots?. Really?.. Where would those roots be?.. UO ? EQ? DAoC? where? From my experience, soft penalties came later.
Even single player games used to have fewer check points. You had to play through the entire level and then beat the boss to continue. And that was if you still had lives left.. lose all of them and its back to level one.
You pulled out Civilization earlier as an example, So I will use it again.. what happens if you lose a fight. You lose the army and you will have to rebuild that army and you might even have to do it with less resources than before.
When you died in Super Mario Bros,dying reset the level you were on, which you immediately started playing again.
When you died in nearly every early PC game, it was a reset back to your previous save.
When you die in IWBTG and similar hyper-challenging games, it's an instant reset which sends you back maybe 20 seconds tops (usually 0-5 seconds, because that's how fast you die.)
None of these pre-MMORPG games sent you to a shallow purgatory because you failed. There's just no purpose to that type of mechanic.
Your examples are all different from corpse runs in that you are still actively engaged in the core gameplay where the deepest decisions are found.
Civilization is about more than military decisions, and the core game continues if you let an army get wiped out. Importantly, the game is basically back-to-back interesting decisions. If you have fewer decisions in a turn, turns are shorter. So the pace of meaningful decisions doesn't slow just because you lose an army.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
None of these pre-MMORPG games sent you to a shallow purgatory because you failed. There's just no purpose to that type of mechanic.
And this failed idea was weeded out by the market. Few players enjoy a corpse run. It is not fun for me. I doubt i would ever play a game with a devs stupid enough to put in a corpse run mechanics like that in EQ.
Wouldn't touch a game with EQ-like corpse runs. Not with a 10-foot pole. I remember limited play time occasionally being eaten up almost entirely by corpse runs. Job and college courses. What little time I have for entertainment I'd rather not spend on jumping through hoops so I can get back to the entertaining part. Perma-death? Delete your character. Corpse-run? Unequip your armor and weapon, go back to your place of death. If successful, reequip. The choice is there.
My favorite memory regarding corpse runs involves sitting in EC market listening to a player beg for someone to help him retrieve his corpse from Lower Guk as the last minutes of his corpse timer ticked away....the guy was literally in tears as he lost everything.
My favorite memory regarding corpse runs involves sitting in EC market listening to a player beg for someone to help him retrieve his corpse from Lower Guk as the last minutes of his corpse timer ticked away....the guy was literally in tears as he lost everything.
Yeah...corpse runs are great!
GS had permadeath, after a fashion (you could stave it off by puchasing "deeds" from Lorminstra ahead of time--life insurance, more or less). I sat with a very nice lady who had just lost an 8-year time investment in a character through simple inattention, while she cried in my office space for five hours. She had let her deeds run out without noticing.
I get that there are folks who can't feel accomplishment without also feeling failure viscerally. But there are limits to what a human being should have to endure for "entertainment".
Not sure that the punish-me advocates understand just how rare and valuable a eight-year customer is...suppose she ever paid one more cent to any game producer, anywhere, following that night?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
As another poster said (on another site, years ago), "Happiness is not simply the constant flow of good things." It is the net change in emotion that is felt the most; and that can't occur without occasional set-backs.
You don't need a corpse run to get a set back. Wasting 3 hours without downing the boss is a set-back.
And when does random musing on the internet becomes the gospels?
I wouldn't say that not progressing is going backwards..While it may feel that way when everyone else keep moving forward it is only by comparison.
And it isnt like I wasted 3 hours. I would spent a lot of that time gaining xp, gold, and drops from trash mobs and minor bosses. I would have spent it learning more about what does not work for beating a particular boss. I may have to do some of that content again or maybe I wont.. depends on respawns and if I can try again straight after.
It is like playing a racing game with no collision damage.. you can run straight into a wall or smash into other cars and at worst just reset the car and keep going.. no real need to get good at breaking and slowing down in chicanes.. what you lose in resetting or reversing after runnning into something is handsomely compensated by not having to take your foot off the accelerator.
Look I know its not for everyone. But it is important in the flow of a story and that is why it is important to me and many others. We are likely in the minority but we wont accept that every game has to be aimed at a demographric that excludes us.
My favorite memory regarding corpse runs involves sitting in EC market listening to a player beg for someone to help him retrieve his corpse from Lower Guk as the last minutes of his corpse timer ticked away....the guy was literally in tears as he lost everything.
Yeah...corpse runs are great!
Wait, was that me?
I remember on a raid there, I was the guy who bound by the Master Frog to get additional regents if needed as we raided his home. Multiple hours later or maybe even the next day I of course had zoned out and was playing my game and I so happened to die. Er um, guess where my bind point was? They weren't very happy to see me back. So they killed me and I er um, popped up again naked. Dead, pop, dead, pop, until I finally realized this was a bad event that would not end. So I logged on my alt to ask guildies for help. Took time and we ended up getting me out of there, but to this day that's a story I both dread and remember fondly.
With that story said though, I think there needs to be a penalty. These after all are essentially Role Playing Games and there should be a penalty for death. I don't have the answer and I am not sure the EQ1 corpse run days are right, but easy mode has to stop at least in 1 or two games. You state that a death penalty doesn't create the challenge, I disagree. It creates the right level of fear to get it right. You may be right in that I could attack big bad mob and HOW I fight may not change, but if the penalty wasn't there I would create an out, bring an extra healer, know my exit strategy, res points, etc. I may wait another level before attempting.
I thought corpse runs were a stupid mechanic. Firefall has it right with some fairly bad equipment damage that is not repairable on the good stuff. Even repairable has it's limitations.
It creates the right level of fear to get it right.
So now we're supposed to fear our games?
Well, it'll certainly make you complain so much more loudly about any death-to-die-roll you may experience.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Look I know its not for everyone. But it is important in the flow of a story and that is why it is important to me and many others. We are likely in the minority but we wont accept that every game has to be aimed at a demographric that excludes us.
What story? There is no story in corpse run.
And more importantly, you can decide "not to accept" anything but there is little you can do about it. You don't think there will be niche games for corpse run, do you?
For those who enjoy the challenge of having to retrieve your corpse, I'm with you. For everyone else who wants easy mode, I'll get right to work on a game that plays for you. That way, you can spend more time on MMO forums complaining about how the game is still too inconvenient for you.
Comments
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
Nope, i don't miss them.
They're 'the worst' kind of death-penalty right alongside xp/level loss, wouldn't really even call them penalty, more like tedium.
permanent duraloss, gold loss, item loss = i like more.
I don't miss corpse runs, but I miss the fear of dying that they brought with them and the overall danger they added to games that had them.
That's the way I look at a lot of things that have been taken out of MMOs in the last decade. Yeah, having to do them sucked, but when you take them out of a game, you realize that they actually added something to the game that you can't replace when they are gone.
Back to the roots?. Really?.. Where would those roots be?.. UO ? EQ? DAoC? where? From my experience, soft penalties came later.
Even single player games used to have fewer check points. You had to play through the entire level and then beat the boss to continue. And that was if you still had lives left.. lose all of them and its back to level one.
You pulled out Civilization earlier as an example, So I will use it again.. what happens if you lose a fight. You lose the army and you will have to rebuild that army and you might even have to do it with less resources than before.
No doubt.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
i appreciated corpse runs in EQ1 - fighting naked for your gear was fun
sometimes it was a hassle too,
when your corpse was too deep in a dungeon for recovery without a team or a stealthy corpse dragger, or a necro
CR was also a time sink and would probably turn off many casual players
who dont want to spend 30min to 1 hour on "just" recovering their corpse
do I miss corpse runs? yes but i dont need them
do i miss mob trains ? bigger yes and want them back
EQ2 fan sites
You don't need corpse runs to get the fear of dying. D3 hard core mode did it with much more fear than corpse run.
I am surprised to see a few suggest losing an item rather than doing a corpse run. Is loot THAT easy to come by in WoW, lol.
As another poster said (on another site, years ago), "Happiness is not simply the constant flow of good things." It is the net change in emotion that is felt the most; and that can't occur without occasional set-backs.
LOL this is so true. I found it amusing to play DOOM in God Mode for about an hour, but some folks would play the entire game that way.
This might be a nice compromise. Every other death = a corpse run.
Absolutely brilliant summation.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
You don't need a corpse run to get a set back. Wasting 3 hours without downing the boss is a set-back.
And when does random musing on the internet becomes the gospels?
Just to make the Pro-corpse run people happy: Have corpse runs.
Offer Stones of Recovery in the Cash Shop 10 for $10.
Players can choose which way they would prefer to recover their corpse/items.
There ya go.
Lol ...
although seriously .. corpse run is not coming back. This thread is pretty much moot, and one of those un-ending ranting topic.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And this failed idea was weeded out by the market. Few players enjoy a corpse run. It is not fun for me. I doubt i would ever play a game with a devs stupid enough to put in a corpse run mechanics like that in EQ.
My favorite memory regarding corpse runs involves sitting in EC market listening to a player beg for someone to help him retrieve his corpse from Lower Guk as the last minutes of his corpse timer ticked away....the guy was literally in tears as he lost everything.
Yeah...corpse runs are great!
GS had permadeath, after a fashion (you could stave it off by puchasing "deeds" from Lorminstra ahead of time--life insurance, more or less). I sat with a very nice lady who had just lost an 8-year time investment in a character through simple inattention, while she cried in my office space for five hours. She had let her deeds run out without noticing.
I get that there are folks who can't feel accomplishment without also feeling failure viscerally. But there are limits to what a human being should have to endure for "entertainment".
Not sure that the punish-me advocates understand just how rare and valuable a eight-year customer is...suppose she ever paid one more cent to any game producer, anywhere, following that night?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I wouldn't say that not progressing is going backwards..While it may feel that way when everyone else keep moving forward it is only by comparison.
And it isnt like I wasted 3 hours. I would spent a lot of that time gaining xp, gold, and drops from trash mobs and minor bosses. I would have spent it learning more about what does not work for beating a particular boss. I may have to do some of that content again or maybe I wont.. depends on respawns and if I can try again straight after.
It is like playing a racing game with no collision damage.. you can run straight into a wall or smash into other cars and at worst just reset the car and keep going.. no real need to get good at breaking and slowing down in chicanes.. what you lose in resetting or reversing after runnning into something is handsomely compensated by not having to take your foot off the accelerator.
Look I know its not for everyone. But it is important in the flow of a story and that is why it is important to me and many others. We are likely in the minority but we wont accept that every game has to be aimed at a demographric that excludes us.
Wait, was that me?
I remember on a raid there, I was the guy who bound by the Master Frog to get additional regents if needed as we raided his home. Multiple hours later or maybe even the next day I of course had zoned out and was playing my game and I so happened to die. Er um, guess where my bind point was? They weren't very happy to see me back. So they killed me and I er um, popped up again naked. Dead, pop, dead, pop, until I finally realized this was a bad event that would not end. So I logged on my alt to ask guildies for help. Took time and we ended up getting me out of there, but to this day that's a story I both dread and remember fondly.
With that story said though, I think there needs to be a penalty. These after all are essentially Role Playing Games and there should be a penalty for death. I don't have the answer and I am not sure the EQ1 corpse run days are right, but easy mode has to stop at least in 1 or two games. You state that a death penalty doesn't create the challenge, I disagree. It creates the right level of fear to get it right. You may be right in that I could attack big bad mob and HOW I fight may not change, but if the penalty wasn't there I would create an out, bring an extra healer, know my exit strategy, res points, etc. I may wait another level before attempting.
So now we're supposed to fear our games?
Well, it'll certainly make you complain so much more loudly about any death-to-die-roll you may experience.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
What story? There is no story in corpse run.
And more importantly, you can decide "not to accept" anything but there is little you can do about it. You don't think there will be niche games for corpse run, do you?
We are supposed to:
Fear our game
Get frustrated with our game
Feel pain from our game
Fight through tedium to prove our manhood in game
Lol .. aren't we sarcastic today?
Seriously the only thing we are "supposed to" .. in our games .. is to have fun.