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Ok I think I fgured out what's wrong.......
morg2625
Member UncommonPosts: 32
With this game and to be fair with all Fantasy MMOs.
It's FEAR.
Your not afraid of dying. In the two MMOs I like best EVE and Secret World there is an element of fear. In EVE if your ship gets blown up you loose it.
In Secret world you don't loose anything when you die but the whole world is right out of H.P Lovecraft, ( He's the guy that screwed up Clive Barker ) It's scary as hell If you recogonize the Genre.
In real life if you get attacked by a five foot wasp and stung you are gonna look like hell, if you survive. Giant swollen deformed limbs filled with pus, gross things like that. If a zombie pukes on you your gonna get sick, septis alone could kill you. If you die someone is gonna loot your corpse. ( I can almost feel you smiling at that ) Hell i would loot you too. Fear will lead to other players playing dirty tricks on you which can backfire as well. PVE doesn't have to be boring.
But if you kill something say for instance in some lucky way you actually manage to kill a bear solo you should be rewarded your loot should include A) A big damn bearskin. 
400 pounds of bear meat , sinew, bones, organs, claws and teeth C) Arrows ( if you used em ) D) experience points enough to make it worth while. E) skill points for the weapons you used F) experience for butchering and processing the meat G) everything else That would be rellevant to the encounter.
That's the key I believe that all fantasy MMOs miss. it's dangerous as hell swinging a sword a something. No sane person would do it. But if your crazy enough to do it. you benefit greatly from the single encounter and take a long time to recover. And if you die.....
your dead.
But I suppose if they could do it and make money they would have already. /facepalm
NVM I don't have a clue.....
Comments
This is true.
I play EvE but i am also playing themeparks. The ellement i miss mostly is the adrenaline rush when you are close to die. This is something i can taste only in EvE and makes it unique.
Btw besides fear and adrenaline, dying in EvE hurts your wallet too
Well the first 2 zones in TSW are great and more Lovecraftian....the rest of the zones were okay but didn't have the same pull for me. And I agree that there need to be more bears to kill in Eve.
Yes its true most MMOs are completely trivialized "games" whose only real attraction gambling addiction and carrot on a stick treadmills.
But Secret World is in no way scary. Not a bad setting but scray? No. And just because a setting has things with tentacles and what not does not make it like an HP Lovecraft story. Like almost all modern attempts at it SW does not even come close to capturing the HP Lovecraft feel even if they ostensibily use aspects of the mythology. And frankly if they made a serious attempt at it they would be called racists.
Very little "fear" in modern mmos; companies want to hold on to their customers.
I thought a Game of Thrones reviewer used the term well last week though saying that viewers watched the show:
OP is actually only describing a possible symptom of a necessary factor not the factor itself
What a game needs, all games, are consequences. You have to be careful with "fear", fear leads to the dark side of piss-poorly design death penalties.
What you need is for your gameplay to have real consequences within the game, without undermining the actual gameplay itself.
In, for example, Super Mario brothers you started with three lives. I personally did experience what I would call fear, but I was certainly motivated not to due and also highly motivated to find green mushrooms to get more lives. Every move I did in the game had consequences that would affect my later gameplay.
But be careful of analyzing this issue in the context of "fear" because then you will most likely be lead to the idea of silly death penalties that undermine the mechanics of the game itself.
In a game where you incrementally and reliably slowly accumulate XP to raise your level, taking away said experience will simply destroy your game and not accomplish your goal of real consequences. This is exactly why we are in the mess that we are previous death penalties in MMOs (which were taken from MUDs ) basically undermined their entire system of gameplay. This, of course, collapsed as it was contradictory and was basically taken out.
You get a lot of people advocating for going back to an obviously flawed and failed implementation because they understand that the goal of the implementation was a necessary component of the game. Unfortunately they simply won't admit that the previous implementations were failures.
You must have a consequences or the game is completely trivialized and becomes something that is not a game. But you also cannot under any circumstances undermine your base gameplay with however you decide to implement the consequences.
As for fear, apprehension, substance what have you. Those reaction take care of themselves once you have consequences. Different people will react differently. For example huge level loss death penalties do not cause me fear. I find them pointless and depressing. But they definiitely cause fear in others.
Thus when you analyze from the standpoint of the personal reaction you get confused. What you need are consequences that make sense. One way you can tell that your consequences don't make sense if when you get weirdly random divergence in behavioir to it implementation.
Almost everyone behaves similar to a death in Super Mario Brothers because the consequences fit in a sufficiently appropriate manner. You get wildly varying reaction to the EQ death penalty because it is poorly designed in the context of its RPG system.
Your probably right. At least your analysis sounds better thought out than mine.
But ( for me ) what removes the boredom is apprehension. If I am going to fight a monster I want a good build up to it. I want it to feel like my immersion is complete by taking place in the story at a risk. I don't want to be an exterminator. i want to be a hero. You can't be a hero without facing adversity.
In Secret World I was familiar with the heavy HP Lovecraft influences and recognized Towns, buildings, street names and people from his stories. The fear and apprehension was subjective because I was familiar with his writings. I killed a lot of Zombies and wasn't too bored by it. However If I had died more, if the MOBs where really hard It might be as you say and I would just be frustrated.
It's a hard balance I'm not sure how game developers make them as good as they are. But I would like to see a game where the monsters are rare and hard to kill and an option to play it in a hardcore mode. I would like to see all of the risks and all of the benefits of slaying a single monster to be an achievement in itself.
Thanks for the great reply!
True words!
While I agree with the OP that games that provide a certain level of fear and difficulty add to a games potential, This is an Action-RPG.
To me Fear of death and a tremendous amount of loss would only hinder the true selling point of the game, which is fun and engaging combat. You can jump right into the world and fight anywhere you like, and if you lost experiance or even permanently died, it would slow the progression to a mind-numbing halt.
I applaud the idea, but I disagree that its something "Wrong" with ESO, because the game wasnt designed to utilize the system that you want or are presenting.
You determined it was wrong based on your own bias, not on the validity that it would in turn "Fix" that game. Again not trying to come off as dickish, but if you want a harsh death penalty or fear of death go find an MMO on Kickstarter thats doing something to that extent, instead of lamenting over what features were not put into this game.
I can't tell if you are a recent convert to the cult of the sandbox or an old member of the clergy just preaching the doctrine.
In any case, its nice to hear some words from the good book.
I think what you want OP is what a lot of people thought ESO would be: a sandbox.
Imagine the world of Tamriel completly open, where the war isn't restricted in a battleground but is present in every zone of the world. Imagine that you can take keeps everywhere on Tamriel, and that taking keeps restrict people from doing things in that zone (questing, trading, dungeon, ...) until they re-capture that keep. Of course, there would be a death penalty.
A lot of possibilities.
I don't think it's wrong that the game has chosen a full-themepark path, I'm not one of those people that think "sandbox > themepark", but I think some sandboxy mechanics could have been good in ESO
It's a very fine line between making a game challenging and pissing off your clientele.
For example, having your quests locked because the other alliance took a keep. If you can only play at certain hours and during these hours the other side outnumbers yours by 10:1 - read: no chance to ever retake that keep while you are online - you'd be stuck in your progression without control over it. You might be forced to get up at 3am to play through your quest line before the hordes arrive. How often can you do this before it stops being fun?
or
While attaching a penalty to dying sounds good, because it adds some element of danger to every battle, do you really want to go back to the days of corpse runs or full-loot for any dead body you come across, even in PvE? That would certainly focus your mind and you'd make sure not to die. But is that still fun?
Some examples about dying, without serious consequences like losing a level:
GW1 - each death gave you a cumulative 15% stat reduction up 60% max. You had to rezone to get rid of it, use a consumable or kill a bunch of mobs. No big deal, unless you were in a dungeon, or trying to clear a whole zone in hard mode. Respawn at a shrine. If you died with 60%DP you got kicked from the area and lost all progress. This is actually the roughest in the list.
GW2 - armor gets damaged progressively, once it breaks you lose all benefit like stats and armor value from it; repair it at a smith (no cost) or use a somewhat expensive consumable. Respawn at an open waypoint, which sometimes is a heck of far away..
Wildstar - armor gets badly damaged, repair at any vendor for some coin, or lose armor piece (never had one go to zero endurance, so I don't know if it breaks permanently, or what). Respawn for coin in place, though each death increases the CD for this, or at a crypt. (And I kid you not:) Get mocked by "the caretaker" hologram at the crypt, e.g.
"Don't want to die? All your best friends are doing it!"
"Death has many mysteries... such as: why do you keep returning here?"
“Next time you die I am going to steal your shoes.”
There are really great one liners the writers came up with. After you die for like the third time you find yourself talking smack back to him.
It's all what you prefer I'm giving an opinion nothing more. I'm stating what I prefer. Stating what I prefer is Bias.
Don't quite follow what your saying. If It's about EVE and their wildly successful sandbox then yes I'm a vet. Or at least a carebear with a vendetta itch.
Dammit I wish there weren't so many smart people here.
I agree with all the points both you and Ghestalt and really everyone who's talked about this topic have made. There are so many fantasy MMOs out there that they sort of all run together and get repeative.
Maybe I just need to go hunting.
poor little Carebears
The problem is making death an inconvenience that players want to avoid, without punishing the player for dying. I've played games where dying is a punishment for the player, rather than the character. Players soon get pissed off with that and won't play. On the other hand I agree, many people don't care about dying in game if there is no real consequence beyond having to spend a few gold repairing stuff.
I suppose the extremes were the early games like UO and EQ. In UO if you died your body slowly decayed, other players could take things off your corpse after a while, and if you didn't get to your corpse in time literally everything you had on you at the time had decayed away, meanwhile you had to run around as a ghost trying to get resurrected by an npc priest or player before running back to your corpse. In EQ, we had the classic corpse runs, that usually lasted around half an hour depending on how far you had to run from your bind spot to recover your stuff. Usually it was in some dangerous place (the reason you died in the first place) and you would probably get killed again since you had no items or armour. Of course in EQ you lost xp as well and could even drop a level if you were close to level cap. The most fun was getting a mate to drag your corpse out of a dangerous spot.
I do find in ESO though death can be a problem because if you don't have a soul gem you will end up back at a waypoint and then probably have to run back to where you were questing. I'd rather not do that, so I try to avoid dying and to me it matters if I die. So buying soul gems cost money, and of course repairs cost money. I can't think what else they could do to make death avoidable but not punish the player.
The problem is theres nothing that gives an emotional response. The characters one doesnt really care about, they are stiff, wooden, and the same. Once you see one you see them all. Limiting the character to 5 slots for basic skills means less impact as far as character progression is concerned. You are forced to give up many skill options just to make a 1-5 key combo.
Scratch the surface its an extremely shallow game that has practically no variety in method of play. Its one of the issues GW2 had...and at least with GW2 the environments were far more varied.
Dungeons are NOT challenging nor are they even remotely interesting. Each dungeon is the same one you have seen a thousand times already. Each one has nearly the same play pattern. Top top it off, everyone is running around killing everything anyway, so whats the point? No challenge. Just walk through, tag the boss with one hit, grab the skyshard and leave.
The onlything worth while to do in ESO is grind for the same gear over and over, get some money or mats from it..and then wonder whats there to actually use the money on besides a horse, repairs or increased bank slots.
ESO feels under developed, both on a intellectual level and in diversity of gameplay. There is very little to care about with ESO, very little that makes you feel unique or even interested in the outcome of most of the stuff you encounter.
I dont think ESO will last.
Eh well, one can also want to play to relax, not necessarily to enjoy a ultra competitive environment - especially after a hard day at work which melted your brain. Then you just want to mouse click and win.
What about all the players who don't like "fear" and are enjoying the game because of "no fear"?
It's like saying "I've figured out what's wrong with Dark Souls... you die a lot".
"But what about the people who want to die a lot if they make a stupid mistake?"
I personally would prefer a harsh death penalty but "there it is".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Yes, and in PvP what is wrong with the game is FEAR.
People are afraid to die in PvP. It is like trying to push a cow up into a trailer in which they do not want to go. They are stubborn, too scared to rush unless they see 100 other people rush first.
People are scared of innovation. "Looking for people to take So and So castle while the main force is taking so and so castle"... No one wants to come, the zerg is safe..the zerg is warm...the zerg..is my home.
But yes I totally agree with the OP.
FEAR makes the game 1000% more fun. Sure it does suck to die...lose your items (or ship)...lose experience... but that is what the game is about!!!!!
With no risk, the reward is bland and stale. There is a reason people farm the bosses in Open dungeons, THEY ARE EASY! Hell, I can't even get loot usually on the boss (just credit) because by the time I try to get a hit in, it is dead and I didn't get "Loot Credit".
FEAR, Risk/Reward, it is NEEDED.
If you can't handle it, then go play...Hello Kitty Online Adventure (AKA WoW).
Sorry, had to Jab at WoW. It is the whipping boy for the mmo world
(Also for some very very very strange reason, the MMO that people most compare other mmos to, which is very strange because WoW really didn't do anything great, except commercialism/advertisement.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.