I'm confused on this one. Wouldn't the only form of immersive death penalty be, I dunno, a funeral bill sent to your descendants?
There are levels of immersion. A perfectly realistic game would obviously have nothing but permadeath (perhaps high level cleric resurrection spells in fantasy game) which clashes completely with the way MMOs are typically designed.
But a harsh death penalty is still a lot *more* immersive than a game where death just results in respawning because it causes ou to act more like a real person (who would presumably not be suicidal).
But a harsh death penalty is still a lot *more* immersive than a game where death just results in respawning because it causes ou to act more like a real person (who would presumably not be suicidal).
As far as 'acting as a real person would', the problem with that is that a real person would be out plowing the fields, not delving into dungeons hacking and slashing at powerful monsters -- a borderline suicidal activity to begin with. The point of the game is not to act as a 'real person' would, quite the opposite, trying to justify a mechanic on that basis frankly seems rather silly.
A harsh death penalty may be desirable for various reasons, but I can't see how it is in any way, shape, or form 'immersive'. It's a game tool, a 'rule', nothing more. It impacts player's actions, to be sure -- in my experience, harsh death penalties to the extreme detriment of group play -- but then so does any other rule or skill design decision made by the devs.
Immersion, IMHO, can be based on adherence to the 'real world' -- in which case permadeath is the only option -- or, assuming the systems are relatively well thought out, any internally consistent set of rules for the universe in which the game occurs -- in which case it's open to just about anything, as long as the creators are reasonably clever and bother with internal consistency.
As far as 'acting as a real person would', the problem with that is that a real person would be out plowing the fields, not delving into dungeons hacking and slashing at powerful monsters -- a borderline suicidal activity to begin with. The point of the game is not to act as a 'real person' would, quite the opposite, trying to justify a mechanic on that basis frankly seems rather silly.
OK "real person who happens to be the hero of an epic tale" if you prefer For me immersion is about losing myself in the world and developing a bond with my character that's deeper than just a bunch of pixels on a monitor. Like you said elsewhere in your post I don't think immersion requires total realism as much as internal consistency but it does mean that I should fear and try to avoid my character's death and if he does die, something unpleasant in the game should happen. I suppose you could design a world around the idea that everyone is immortal and death is no big deal but most MMO worlds aren't aren't like that. The game lore makes it feel like death should have a bad effect but the game mechanics make death trivial.
Death penalty should be enough to make people avoid deadly dangers, but not that much that it's not worth the challenge.
If it's up to me everything could work. XP penalty, repair bills, inconvenient spawn locations far from where you died. I'm not in favor of losing stuff from bags though, unless the game is designed in a certain way were your stuff isn't worth so much.
But I'm pessimistic. I don't think you can appeal to the mass with this kind of penalty. These death penalty features belong to a genre that is dying, or dead already.
It's MMORPG v 2.0 now, or 3.0. Focus has been shifted.
I usually die due to having some rl thing I need to deal with. I wouldn't play a game with a harsh death penalty unless it also came with some method for me to instantly 'pause' it.
well considering that in today's "Death norm" people have an absolute melt down on a single dungeon wipe I'd have to say that everyone should just be immortal.
As stated earlier, no death is really that "meaningful" unless it is a reset. As I play A GAME I know that in the current meta of super fast leveling and item drops death, even a harsh one doesn't mean much of anything to me as all it takes is another hour or two to basically get it all back.
Death isn't the issue, to make death seem important you have to slow the game down.
Current leveling - 1 level loss on death, not that big of a deal I'll get that level back in a short play session
1/2 speed leveling - 1 level loss on death. yeah that is getting annoying but any dedicated player will get that back in short standing
1 week to get from level 20 to 21 - 1 Level loss, yeah, I better learn my fights or not take on 15-1 odds
Death penalties by itself mean nothing, Fix the whole of the leveling system and death starts to mean a heck of a lot more.
Play what you Like. I like SWOTR, Have a referral to get you going! --> http://www.swtor.com/r/nBndbs <-- Several Unlocks and a few days game time to make the F2P considerably easier
...entirely dependent on the mechanics of the rest of the game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
If I made an mmo the death penalty would be heaven, hell, or you would have to restart from scratch a new character. I would allow that your friends could summon you back to the land of the living for a short time as a ghost partner.
Depends on the game. But there's plenty of ways to do it.
What about waking up at the closest hospital and having to pay a hospital bill based on your play-style and death circumstances?
If you don't have enough money it could garnish 25% of the gold you get, until it's paid. Or the hospital doesn't accept you anymore, so you have to respawn far away if you keep dying in the same area.
The perfect death penalty system would install a virus into your HD as soon as your character dies, which would then start deleting every single piece of data you have in there.
"EVE is likely the best MMORPG that you've never really understood or played" - Kyleran
You never forget your first one. So for me, original SWG did it just fine.
Within a certain time frame, you could get "dropped" two times without much worry. But a third time meant death.
On top of that, some creatures would "death stroke" you. So if you dropped and they closed the distance before you got up... death.
Death meant you were spawning at a cloning facility. If your clone data was paid up, no big deal. If your gear was insured, also no big deal. But if you weren't taking care of that (just a basic money sink really), than you'd start getting wounds on one of your key attributes and would need a doctor to help, or just spend time in a hospital.
Meanwhile, you'd accumulate battle fatigue no matter what. You'll eventually need to come in and relax with some entertainment to get rid of that. The fatigue would negatively affect your rolls.
So to sum up, if a player was careless they would face some pretty severe penalties. But if they took care of things and didn't act foolishly, than the penalties weren't as severe.
What I liked about it too: there was interdependency between player professions. It didn't force social behavior beyond maybe just a one or two line exchange. But it did build up a community. You'd have a favorite entertainer or a doctor that you liked to visit. You'd provide tips for services which made it worthwhile for those in such roles to continue improving. Degrading gear meant you'd need to be smart or else lose it.
It was a lot to take in, and the decay of items was too fast in some cases. But I felt it was fair, immersive, believable and customizable based on how you approached your adventures.
The perfect death pennalty is loosing all the bonus you gathered for staying alive..
the longer you stay alive, the more bonus you gain... Slowly and ever slower the higher you get.. But for not dieing in a very long time, you could get up to 50% or even 100 % stat bonus...
you would not ever want to loose such a huge bonus.....
All your gear stays on your corps, if you regain your corpse, you get your gear back... But its old fashioned EQ style corpse runs..
if you combine this with a system that gives great xp to people that take challenges, and very low xp to people that play things safe....
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
How about a 3 point system? (Because I like old games that gave you 3 lives)
You have 3 "chances" so to speak. The first time you die it applies a debuff and a timer of 10mins. If you die again within the 10mins it resets to 20 and the debuff increases. If you die a third time within the 20mins... buh bye.
Anarchy online. I'm near leveling so should I insure my xp or risk it? I'll risk it. Bollocks.:) Would love to see this done more(not sure how you'd get it to work in a fantasy setting though.
Other than that planeshift has an interesting penalty that I'd like to see expanded upon. When you die you have to escape the 'deathrealm'.
Edit: Wanted to add that I found the 'you die = you lose all your gear' with nothing else(darkfall etc style) lazy and annoying as opposed to anything else.
The perfect death pennalty is loosing all the bonus you gathered for staying alive..
the longer you stay alive, the more bonus you gain... Slowly and ever slower the higher you get.. But for not dieing in a very long time, you could get up to 50% or even 100 % stat bonus...
you would not ever want to loose such a huge bonus.....
All your gear stays on your corps, if you regain your corpse, you get your gear back... But its old fashioned EQ style corpse runs..
if you combine this with a system that gives great xp to people that take challenges, and very low xp to people that play things safe....
No idea if this would work, but love hearing a unique idea. My imagination is sparked:) Thank you sir.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I play games to have fun and the death in game is no fun so the death itself is penalty enough. And I think you should respawn near where you died and the mob who killed you has not heald at all.
Originally posted by Vidir I play games to have fun and the death in game is no fun so the death itself is penalty enough. And I think you should respawn near where you died and the mob who killed you has not heald at all.
You should try mmorpgs.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Originally posted by iridescenceDepends on the game really. For most games I'd say some XP loss and a heavy repair bill. In a game focused around PvP I think it makes sense to have some areas where the winner can take at least something from corpse of the loser (although *not* in the whole game world). Actually I think a game where a mob could be programmed to take and equip some of your stuff and you'd have to fight and kill the mob that killed you before to get it back would be pretty cool but probably hard to program.]
Pulls out grumpy old gamer card....
This was done in Legends of Kesmai 20+ years ago. If you died, mobs could loot your corpse then you would have to either enlist others to help recover your death pile or get back up gear from your lockers and try to recover your gear yourself.
If you fought a big bad lair crit (the Ice Dragon the players called MAMA) they could eat you and send you to the underworld where you had to do the underworld quests to get back to the moral realm.. meanwhile all of your gear was strewn about her lair..... ah fun times. Dying from fire was fun too. Your corpse is all burned up and all of your gear was on the ground for any mob or player to pick up
You could also pick up a dead player and take them back to town to get revived or move them to a safe spot to be revived by a Priest.
Games theses days have "no fire no energy no nothing!"
Comments
I'm confused on this one. Wouldn't the only form of immersive death penalty be, I dunno, a funeral bill sent to your descendants?
There are levels of immersion. A perfectly realistic game would obviously have nothing but permadeath (perhaps high level cleric resurrection spells in fantasy game) which clashes completely with the way MMOs are typically designed.
But a harsh death penalty is still a lot *more* immersive than a game where death just results in respawning because it causes ou to act more like a real person (who would presumably not be suicidal).
As far as 'acting as a real person would', the problem with that is that a real person would be out plowing the fields, not delving into dungeons hacking and slashing at powerful monsters -- a borderline suicidal activity to begin with. The point of the game is not to act as a 'real person' would, quite the opposite, trying to justify a mechanic on that basis frankly seems rather silly.
A harsh death penalty may be desirable for various reasons, but I can't see how it is in any way, shape, or form 'immersive'. It's a game tool, a 'rule', nothing more. It impacts player's actions, to be sure -- in my experience, harsh death penalties to the extreme detriment of group play -- but then so does any other rule or skill design decision made by the devs.
Immersion, IMHO, can be based on adherence to the 'real world' -- in which case permadeath is the only option -- or, assuming the systems are relatively well thought out, any internally consistent set of rules for the universe in which the game occurs -- in which case it's open to just about anything, as long as the creators are reasonably clever and bother with internal consistency.
OK "real person who happens to be the hero of an epic tale" if you prefer
For me immersion is about losing myself in the world and developing a bond with my character that's deeper than just a bunch of pixels on a monitor. Like you said elsewhere in your post I don't think immersion requires total realism as much as internal consistency but it does mean that I should fear and try to avoid my character's death and if he does die, something unpleasant in the game should happen. I suppose you could design a world around the idea that everyone is immortal and death is no big deal but most MMO worlds aren't aren't like that. The game lore makes it feel like death should have a bad effect but the game mechanics make death trivial.
Death penalty should be enough to make people avoid deadly dangers, but not that much that it's not worth the challenge.
If it's up to me everything could work. XP penalty, repair bills, inconvenient spawn locations far from where you died. I'm not in favor of losing stuff from bags though, unless the game is designed in a certain way were your stuff isn't worth so much.
But I'm pessimistic. I don't think you can appeal to the mass with this kind of penalty. These death penalty features belong to a genre that is dying, or dead already.
It's MMORPG v 2.0 now, or 3.0. Focus has been shifted.
well considering that in today's "Death norm" people have an absolute melt down on a single dungeon wipe I'd have to say that everyone should just be immortal.
As stated earlier, no death is really that "meaningful" unless it is a reset. As I play A GAME I know that in the current meta of super fast leveling and item drops death, even a harsh one doesn't mean much of anything to me as all it takes is another hour or two to basically get it all back.
Death isn't the issue, to make death seem important you have to slow the game down.
Current leveling - 1 level loss on death, not that big of a deal I'll get that level back in a short play session
1/2 speed leveling - 1 level loss on death. yeah that is getting annoying but any dedicated player will get that back in short standing
1 week to get from level 20 to 21 - 1 Level loss, yeah, I better learn my fights or not take on 15-1 odds
Death penalties by itself mean nothing, Fix the whole of the leveling system and death starts to mean a heck of a lot more.
--> http://www.swtor.com/r/nBndbs <--
Several Unlocks and a few days game time to make the F2P considerably easier
...entirely dependent on the mechanics of the rest of the game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Depends on the game. But there's plenty of ways to do it.
What about waking up at the closest hospital and having to pay a hospital bill based on your play-style and death circumstances?
If you don't have enough money it could garnish 25% of the gold you get, until it's paid. Or the hospital doesn't accept you anymore, so you have to respawn far away if you keep dying in the same area.
"EVE is likely the best MMORPG that you've never really understood or played" - Kyleran
You never forget your first one. So for me, original SWG did it just fine.
Within a certain time frame, you could get "dropped" two times without much worry. But a third time meant death.
On top of that, some creatures would "death stroke" you. So if you dropped and they closed the distance before you got up... death.
Death meant you were spawning at a cloning facility. If your clone data was paid up, no big deal. If your gear was insured, also no big deal. But if you weren't taking care of that (just a basic money sink really), than you'd start getting wounds on one of your key attributes and would need a doctor to help, or just spend time in a hospital.
Meanwhile, you'd accumulate battle fatigue no matter what. You'll eventually need to come in and relax with some entertainment to get rid of that. The fatigue would negatively affect your rolls.
So to sum up, if a player was careless they would face some pretty severe penalties. But if they took care of things and didn't act foolishly, than the penalties weren't as severe.
What I liked about it too: there was interdependency between player professions. It didn't force social behavior beyond maybe just a one or two line exchange. But it did build up a community. You'd have a favorite entertainer or a doctor that you liked to visit. You'd provide tips for services which made it worthwhile for those in such roles to continue improving. Degrading gear meant you'd need to be smart or else lose it.
It was a lot to take in, and the decay of items was too fast in some cases. But I felt it was fair, immersive, believable and customizable based on how you approached your adventures.
The perfect death pennalty is loosing all the bonus you gathered for staying alive..
the longer you stay alive, the more bonus you gain... Slowly and ever slower the higher you get.. But for not dieing in a very long time, you could get up to 50% or even 100 % stat bonus...
you would not ever want to loose such a huge bonus.....
All your gear stays on your corps, if you regain your corpse, you get your gear back... But its old fashioned EQ style corpse runs..
if you combine this with a system that gives great xp to people that take challenges, and very low xp to people that play things safe....
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
There is no "perfect" death penalty. It is up to the player, up to the mood.
How about a 3 point system? (Because I like old games that gave you 3 lives)
You have 3 "chances" so to speak. The first time you die it applies a debuff and a timer of 10mins. If you die again within the 10mins it resets to 20 and the debuff increases. If you die a third time within the 20mins... buh bye.
Someone, give this man a cookie!
Anarchy online. I'm near leveling so should I insure my xp or risk it? I'll risk it. Bollocks.:) Would love to see this done more(not sure how you'd get it to work in a fantasy setting though.
Other than that planeshift has an interesting penalty that I'd like to see expanded upon. When you die you have to escape the 'deathrealm'.
Edit: Wanted to add that I found the 'you die = you lose all your gear' with nothing else(darkfall etc style) lazy and annoying as opposed to anything else.
No idea if this would work, but love hearing a unique idea. My imagination is sparked:) Thank you sir.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
You should try mmorpgs.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Pulls out grumpy old gamer card....
This was done in Legends of Kesmai 20+ years ago. If you died, mobs could loot your corpse then you would have to either enlist others to help recover your death pile or get back up gear from your lockers and try to recover your gear yourself.
If you fought a big bad lair crit (the Ice Dragon the players called MAMA) they could eat you and send you to the underworld where you had to do the underworld quests to get back to the moral realm.. meanwhile all of your gear was strewn about her lair..... ah fun times.
Dying from fire was fun too. Your corpse is all burned up and all of your gear was on the ground for any mob or player to pick up
You could also pick up a dead player and take them back to town to get revived or move them to a safe spot to be revived by a Priest.
Games theses days have "no fire no energy no nothing!"
Why do you care if people use it as a means for quick travel?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky