y dont yu implement it on yurself? perma death is easy 2 make just delete n start again when yu die n bam yu got perma death
loss of items on death also easily done just throw something away problem solved
mself im not fond of tht sortta penalty i can accept loss of durability damage to weapons sothat after a cpl o deaths yu ave to go repair maybe even lowered stats for a time but then one will just wqait out the penality in a safe spot somewhere
For those who just don't get it regarding the need for a stinging death penalty and what it does for immersion:
Dying in WOW (minor irritation at best, dungeons not really respected, sometimes zerg behavior, little immersion)
Dying in Real Life (absolutely terrifying, the ultimate penalty, VERY IMMERSIVE)
A stinging death penalty in an MMO (somewhere between the two examples above)
The more punishing the death penalty the more you "feel" (heart pounding, adrenaline rush, alertness) while playing your character. Naturally, one must balance this design with frustration tolerance to find a sweet spot.
The reason why wow dungeons are no longer interesting is because they dumbed them down so anyone can complete them. Its like playing a game on easy, just no challenge so you can simply rush forward without any strategy. Noone made those kinds of complaints during TBC launch when heroic dungeons could kill you.
Full loot drops and exp loss is something that was taken from Mud's, and it only had one real effect, it slowed down progress forcing people to grind more if they died, and by doing that it promoted low risk grinding and not playing high risk content.
I realize that lots of people that played everquest loves grinding spots and I suppose the death penalties fits that kind of content but once you do progression content only thing those death penalties provide is lots of downtime. I want to beat down the hardest content the game has to offer without doing menial work in between. The 10 minute run simulator was bad enough.
Edit. However, I am not sure if we will actually see really difficult content in eqn, considering how much they talked about how they disliked trinity, roles and raiding.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
If you fit a normal distribution curve over gamers say roughly 25% below average, 50% average and 25% above average it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that the numbers of average and below are what pays the bills so very few businesses are going to focus on the above average.
I like games to be difficult however I'm also a realist - we will always get selectable difficulty in solo games but its going to be very rare indeed to get a hard difficult in an MMO applied to the masses. Moreover it will be selectable such as Heroic raiding is.
The reason why wow dungeons are no longer interesting is because they dumbed them down so anyone can complete them. Its like playing a game on easy, just no challenge so you can simply rush forward without any strategy. Noone made those kinds of complaints during TBC launch when heroic dungeons could kill you.
I've played WoW since 2004 and am in a Heroic raiding Guild. I remember when Cata came out and we hit the new Heroics in blues and had to work as a team to clear them. CC was back, smart pulls where back, mana management was back we absolutely loved it. We all know what happened though? The huge mass of average gamers cried their heart out on the forums until they go nerfed. Unfortunately the power is where the money is and that's the mass of average players. I'm not saying its wrong or bad its just nature at work. I may be good at gaming and some other things but I'm equally bad at others.
Originally posted by Bannuk ...After WoW launched death only means a few coins are needed to repair damaged equipment. What did that lead to? More solo play and drastically reduced grouping which has absolutely destroyed the "Multiplayer" aspect of MMORPGS.
Very excellent point. Stronger death penalties lead to stronger communities. Sadly, game companies only care about the size, not quality, of the community.
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
Originally posted by iridescence To me it's an immersion thing. Any normal person would fear and do everything they could to avoid dying so a game that makes dying have no consequence is not very immersive. Sure you can negate the death penalty in single player games by "save scumming" but it doesn't mean that is what you are meant to do in those games.
Agreed.
Originally posted by lizardbones I played DOOM. I played a LOT of DOOM. There were no penalties for dying at all.
If you mean you don't lose xp in DOOM, ok; but then you also don't gain xp. I do think you lose loot upon death; and you are forced to start over.
As an aside, can you imagine any game in history that does not have a penalty for failure? I can't. So why do you want MMOs that don't penalize you for losing? PVE games are a competition -> between player and the environment.
In DOOM, like most FPS/RPG even now, you only 'lose' what you haven't saved to one of your save game slots. In DOOM you don't even have "loot" as such. Just guns and ammo, which are both pixelated and plentiful. The penalty for failure was the failure itself. You couldn't progress on to the next level, where there were better guns. You just had to keep trying that particular bit of the game until you managed to get past whatever it was that killed you. This type of game play continues as recently as Fallout: New Vegas, where you only lose what you haven't saved when you die.
I never said I wanted MMORPGs that don't penalize you for failure. I've stated some facts about DOOM, which I played far more of than was probably healthy. I've stated a few times that you can't just drop a "harsh" death penalty in any game and expect it to be beneficial.
But again, for most people having the penalty of failure be that failure and an inability to move beyond that point is sufficient to drive them to improve their game play and finally get past a particular encounter. The penalties incurred are largely to prevent people from failing to pass encounters and then turning that into a profitable game play strategy. i.e. You can't get to the boss, die and make enough gold to buy better gear (or sell that gold to another player), otherwise the players never actually kill the boss. In MMORPGs, players need to come up against hard stops just like they do in single player games. Having an in-game economy complicates things a little bit, but having things like gear degradation and minor corpse runs offsets any possible profit from failure.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Any death penalty other than permanent death is for casuals. diablo 2 hardcore > EQ pansy corpse runs. Give us permanent death, then death will really matter cause you will freaking stay dead.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
In DOOM, like most FPS/RPG even now, you only 'lose' what you haven't saved to one of your save game slots. In DOOM you don't even have "loot" as such. Just guns and ammo, which are both pixelated and plentiful. The penalty for failure was the failure itself. You couldn't progress on to the next level, where there were better guns. You just had to keep trying that particular bit of the game until you managed to get past whatever it was that killed you. This type of game play continues as recently as Fallout: New Vegas, where you only lose what you haven't saved when you die.
+1
Skyrim arguably the most popular single player RPG ever made....no death penalty what-so-ever. You can hit F5 at any point and if you die you just pop right back to that point.
The game doesn't even have consequences for the choices you make. You can get in good with one side then walk right up to the "king" of the other side and start up a conversation and even do his quest line. That didn't seem to bother people enough to pass on the game. If anything people begged for more.
For example make exp loss on death optional (and the percentage lost of current level optional too). Then if people wanted to make dying a bit less of a non-event they could make it cost them say 10% of their exp for the next level and if someone wanted to play where they couldn't die at all they could make it 100% i.e. they lost all exp for the current level.
Something like that.
edit: and if a player didn't want it at all then they could leave it switched off
Originally posted by Telondariel Nothing about EQ:N is going to be harsh. Nothing. Dave has made it quite clear it is going to be "accessible", with lots of Station Cash conveniences. Even the original EQ game has been tamed far beyond it's original roots to make it easier for new and old players. I am still in a "wait and see" frame of mind, but the more I see as I wait makes me feel more and more that Dave Georgeson has killed the original spirit that was EQ.
Holy crap! 10 pages long thread where it should have ended on page 1 with this ^^^^ comment.
SOE has been babysitting people for quite a long time now and they will keep on babysitting until they find their WOW size populated game. Even if EQN has new features, etc, etc, they're still going to babysit.
Sure, I'm going to buy it, try it and then most likely say thanks but no thanks. EQ1 and EQ2 these days bore me to death because it's in easy mode. EQN will most likely also bore me to death, but, I have to at least try it and make my own opinion. That's where they will make money off me. (The cost of buying it.)
Originally posted by lizardbones In DOOM you don't even have "loot" as such. Just guns and ammo
Ok then I guess MMORPGs don't have loot; they just have swords, rings, armor, and such.
See what I did there?
/edit Storm-Cloud, above, and Telenderiel are of course correct.
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
Originally posted by Horusra The overwhelming success of WS has shown us that going back to the hardcore ways of past MMO's is odviously the future for MMO's.
I've played an MMO that had corps runs, it didn't last long as players complained.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Originally posted by lizardbones In DOOM you don't even have "loot" as such. Just guns and ammo
Ok then I guess MMORPGs don't have loot; they just have swords, rings, armor, and such.
See what I did there?
/edit Storm-Cloud, above, and Telenderiel are of course correct.
If your swords, rings armor and such in MMORPGs were the same at level one as they were at whatever the max level is, and you could equip them at any time, then you might actually have a point.
**
Either way, whether you consider DOOM a game with loot or not, there are no death penalties, just like there are no death penalties in most FPS and RPG. If you do forget to save, just follow the same path you followed before and you get your "loot" back.
An MMORPG with no death penalties is not DOOM in God Mode. DOOM is a bad example in general because even the minimal death penalties in WoW exceed the non-penalty in DOOM. This is because the "death penalty" as such wasn't necessary. The desire to simply not fail was all it took, coupled with the challenge of killing tons of things. Death penalties in MMORPGs are only necessary to keep players from profiting off of failure. Death still serves as a hard stop against progression. Anything more than keeping players from profiting off of failure is down to preference, nothing more.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yeah there will be none of that tension inducing type stuff that would make you fear death. This game is as far away from any of that stuff as you can go. From various forums it is starting to be evident that people are realizing that SOE is just plain making something that EQ fans didn't want and aren't being sold on.
Won't matter a bit either, this thing is going to launch with people having done multiple rounds of founder packages and having slogged through Landmark's confused transformations. I have to admire SOE for hiring P.T. Barnum and changing his name to Dave Georgeson. Big smile, Big smile
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
Either way, whether you consider DOOM a game with loot or not, there are no death penalties, just like there are no death penalties in most FPS and RPG. If you do forget to save, just follow the same path you followed before and you get your "loot" back.
Saving systems in RPGs are a form of adjustable death penalty. You can do anything from saving every minute in which case it's a meaningless penalty to never saving at all in which case it's perma-death. Many people find a happy medium between these two extremes such as allowing one save before you enter a dungeon.
I think the best thing MMORPGs could do is find a way to implement this kind of varying death penalty as it is something players have widely varying opinions and desires about. You obviously can't have saving in an MMO but why not clickable toggles to make death penalties more or less harsh?
Either way, whether you consider DOOM a game with loot or not, there are no death penalties, just like there are no death penalties in most FPS and RPG. If you do forget to save, just follow the same path you followed before and you get your "loot" back.
Saving systems in RPGs are a form of adjustable death penalty. You can do anything from saving every minute in which case it's a meaningless penalty to never saving at all in which case it's perma-death. Many people find a happy medium between these two extremes such as allowing one save before you enter a dungeon.
I think the best thing MMORPGs could do is find a way to implement this kind of varying death penalty as it is something players have widely varying opinions and desires about. You obviously can't have saving in an MMO but why not clickable toggles to make death penalties more or less harsh?
I don't think very many people would take advantage of that feature. The person who doesn't save their game in e.g. Fallout is a rarity. If the adjustable death setting also affected loot, then most people would find the setting that returned the most loot for the time spent. If that setting did not affect loot at all, then most players would just crank the setting down to 'Minimal' and never think about it again. It's probably also why there are so few difficulty sliders in MMORPGs. People would just find the one setting that returns the most loot and then never think about it again.
It would also interfere with group content. If your tank dies and takes an XP hit such that they are no longer eligible for a dungeon, the group cannot go on until they've recouped the tank's XP deficit. Or waited for them to make the miles long corpse run. It's fine if everyone has opted in to the same set of rules, but if each player can have a different set of rules then it has effects on other players who did not sign up for the "harsh" or "easy" rule sets. Force all the players to opt in to the same rule set before running the dungeon and someone is always going to be playing under a set of rules they don't like. Better to decide the rules you want to play under before starting a game, not two-thirds of the way into the game.
Developers might have other reasons, but those are the two that stand out to me. The feature would be largely unused, and the effects of the feature on groups of players.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't think very many people would take advantage of that feature. The person who doesn't save their game in e.g. Fallout is a rarity. If the adjustable death setting also affected loot, then most people would find the setting that returned the most loot for the time spent. If that setting did not affect loot at all, then most players would just crank the setting down to 'Minimal' and never think about it again. It's probably also why there are so few difficulty sliders in MMORPGs. People would just find the one setting that returns the most loot and then never think about it again.
Most people do not play single player RPGs as perma-death that is true but they also do not play on the very easiest settings and save every minute to take all risk out of the game. Most people fall within the middle of these two extremes and I think MMOs would probably be similar.
I do not support giving better loot for a harder difficulty setting. The reward for playing with harder death options is that the game is more challenging and gives more of a sense of accomplishment. Maybe you and some other people don't care about that and are just after the easiest way to play but a lot of players do seek a challenge.
It would also interfere with group content. If your tank dies and takes an XP hit such that they are no longer eligible for a dungeon, the group cannot go on until they've recouped the tank's XP deficit. Or waited for them to make the miles long corpse run. It's fine if everyone has opted in to the same set of rules, but if each player can have a different set of rules then it has effects on other players who did not sign up for the "harsh" or "easy" rule sets. Force all the players to opt in to the same rule set before running the dungeon and someone is always going to be playing under a set of rules they don't like. Better to decide the rules you want to play under before starting a game, not two-thirds of the way into the game.
Simplest way to solve the mechanical issue here is to let anyone enter a dungeon regardless of level. You're level 30 and want to go into a lvl 50 dungeon? go ahead, you'll probably die but nothing should stop you (it's a different topic but I think MMOs should take that approach in any case). The corpse run issue is valid though. Probably a reason why XP penalties are preferable to corpse runs in this kind of game.
As far as different players liking different styles of death penalty it would likely require a bit of communication if it's something you feel strongly about. It might indirectly lead to better groups if it encouraged people with similar playing styles to group together and avoid groups with those with radically different attitudes.
Respawn naked where you are bound. Possibly with an experience loss. A game without consequences to death will destroy itself. Bring back corpse runs!
Developers target a different mass majority of players now, especially a company called SOE.
If you want harsh penalties in your mmorpg's, your going to have to go to a independent company for your fix. As we see now, DF, EVE and AA are niche crowd mmo games and don't play out to the masses here to the westerns. I doubt the new EQ will go into this direction since their already classified for the following WoW and SWToR generation of gamers.
Why do you think that people like harsh penalties? How does that contribute to the longevity of the game anyway?
EQ had harsh death penalties. WoW introduced the concept of no significant penalties for dying. What happened next? WoW singlehandedly changed the whole industry and dwarfed all the MMOs before Wow COMBINED! COMBINED! EQ is like a small indie game on linux that no one plays in comparison to WoW.
Tons of people LEFT EQ and went to play WoW. EQ2 which was supposed to be the next big thing? Marginalised to insignificance. If EQ was so much better with its harsh death penalties, why did both new players and existing EQ players rushed to play WoW?
WoW is still the most successful MMO of all time with its 6-7 million. No MMO has even reached 3-4 million subs. EVER! WoW hit 12 million. How is that in the grand scheme of things?
Ultimately WoW was the better game in my opinion. YOu can put your stupid rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and tell me how EQ owns but it doesn't. WoW at launh was better than EQ in almost every way for people who actually have lives outside of MMO gaming.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Why do you think that people like harsh penalties? How does that contribute to the longevity of the game anyway? It can be argued that having a harsh dp encourages more social interaction, and community awareness.. Plus there is nothing wrong with harsh risk / reward systems..
EQ had harsh death penalties. WoW introduced the concept of no significant penalties for dying. What happened next? WoW singlehandedly changed the whole industry and dwarfed all the MMOs before Wow COMBINED! COMBINED! EQ is like a small indie game on linux that no one plays in comparison to WoW. Yes, and McDonald's dwarfed all mom and pop burger joints in the world.. Does size matter?
Tons of people LEFT EQ and went to play WoW. I left EQ, but not because WoW was better, it was because EQ pushed me away.. When PoP came out, the community and gameplay changed too much.. It definitely took a turn in the wrong direction IMO.. EQ2 which was supposed to be the next big thing? Marginalised to insignificance. If EQ was so much better with its harsh death penalties, why did both new players and existing EQ players rushed to play WoW? DP had little to do with people leaving EQ, or people playing wow..
WoW is still the most successful MMO of all time with its 6-7 million. No MMO has even reached 3-4 million subs. EVER! WoW hit 12 million. How is that in the grand scheme of things? Apples and oranges.. Different markets, different times.. It's unrealistic to compare the two eras and games..
Ultimately WoW was the better game in my opinion. YOu can put your stupid rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and tell me how EQ owns but it doesn't. WoW at launh was better than EQ in almost every way for people who actually have lives outside of MMO gaming. <<< is all your opinion and preference.. It doesn't make it fact that one game is "better" then the other.. It is nothing more then personal preference..
Personally, I think EQ was more social and community driven then most games today, including WoW.. Now that might mean that EQ is better at social game play.. However, it can be said that WoW is better at solo game play.. Yes, mechanics can be argued that one is better then another as long as they are doing the same purpose.. IMO EQ was more complicated allowing one to be invested in their character more.. Whereas, WoW was more casual and laid back..
Given that EQN will have a free entry point I don't think SoE, nor any company, would have the CS ready for a naked corpse run penalty. Not the complaints of how bad the DP is but the behavior of others when death happened. Even when the setback is a couple minutes or less there can be jerky behavior going on. I can't imagine how magnified this would be if it was back to old EQ standards.
That said there has to be some sort of penalty to keep the content from being trivialized. Once death happens that should be the end of that encounter until it is started new again. A content filled Ethermere is one idea, where the initial encounter is stalled but a different one is presented.
I don't think very many people would take advantage of that feature. The person who doesn't save their game in e.g. Fallout is a rarity. If the adjustable death setting also affected loot, then most people would find the setting that returned the most loot for the time spent. If that setting did not affect loot at all, then most players would just crank the setting down to 'Minimal' and never think about it again. It's probably also why there are so few difficulty sliders in MMORPGs. People would just find the one setting that returns the most loot and then never think about it again.
Most people do not play single player RPGs as perma-death that is true but they also do not play on the very easiest settings and save every minute to take all risk out of the game. Most people fall within the middle of these two extremes and I think MMOs would probably be similar.
I do not support giving better loot for a harder difficulty setting. The reward for playing with harder death options is that the game is more challenging and gives more of a sense of accomplishment. Maybe you and some other people don't care about that and are just after the easiest way to play but a lot of players do seek a challenge.
It would also interfere with group content. If your tank dies and takes an XP hit such that they are no longer eligible for a dungeon, the group cannot go on until they've recouped the tank's XP deficit. Or waited for them to make the miles long corpse run. It's fine if everyone has opted in to the same set of rules, but if each player can have a different set of rules then it has effects on other players who did not sign up for the "harsh" or "easy" rule sets. Force all the players to opt in to the same rule set before running the dungeon and someone is always going to be playing under a set of rules they don't like. Better to decide the rules you want to play under before starting a game, not two-thirds of the way into the game.
Simplest way to solve the mechanical issue here is to let anyone enter a dungeon regardless of level. You're level 30 and want to go into a lvl 50 dungeon? go ahead, you'll probably die but nothing should stop you (it's a different topic but I think MMOs should take that approach in any case). The corpse run issue is valid though. Probably a reason why XP penalties are preferable to corpse runs in this kind of game.
As far as different players liking different styles of death penalty it would likely require a bit of communication if it's something you feel strongly about. It might indirectly lead to better groups if it encouraged people with similar playing styles to group together and avoid groups with those with radically different attitudes.
You asked why developers haven't implemented variable death penalties in games and I gave you a couple of reasons that seemed obvious to me, with the caveat that actual developers might have a different take on it. Obviously developers are either not interested in implementing a "slider" feature for death penalties, or they haven't come up with a way to actually solve the problem that would work. You would really need to ask them why such a feature hasn't been implemented though. I can only give you my take on the reasons why I think they haven't done it.
My biggest input into this conversation has been that having weak or not death penalties is not at all like playing DOOM in God Mode. It may be similar to playing DOOM (seems like it to me anyway), but not in God Mode. There was some quibbling about "loot", but it's not relevant.
My second input has been that death penalties, past a certain minimal point in MMORPGs, are really down to a preference and the rest of the game's mechanics. Death penalties do serve the purpose of preventing players from profiting off of failure to clear content, fulfilling the "hard stop" to progression that is necessary for players to see their own progress. There is no "one size fits all" and there is no inherent value in harsh or easy death penalties.
I did note that the majority of gamers seem to prefer the less harsh death penalties, and I think this is because it is what players are accustomed to in their single player games. They are accustomed to a hard stop to their progression, but with no real loss of gear, money, etc. A light death penalty simulates this effectively.
I don't think I've mentioned my personal preferences on death penalties in this thread though. It doesn't seem terribly relevant.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
y dont yu implement it on yurself? perma death is easy 2 make just delete n start again when yu die n bam yu got perma death
loss of items on death also easily done just throw something away problem solved
mself im not fond of tht sortta penalty i can accept loss of durability damage to weapons sothat after a cpl o deaths yu ave to go repair maybe even lowered stats for a time but then one will just wqait out the penality in a safe spot somewhere
The reason why wow dungeons are no longer interesting is because they dumbed them down so anyone can complete them. Its like playing a game on easy, just no challenge so you can simply rush forward without any strategy. Noone made those kinds of complaints during TBC launch when heroic dungeons could kill you.
Full loot drops and exp loss is something that was taken from Mud's, and it only had one real effect, it slowed down progress forcing people to grind more if they died, and by doing that it promoted low risk grinding and not playing high risk content.
I realize that lots of people that played everquest loves grinding spots and I suppose the death penalties fits that kind of content but once you do progression content only thing those death penalties provide is lots of downtime. I want to beat down the hardest content the game has to offer without doing menial work in between. The 10 minute run simulator was bad enough.
Edit. However, I am not sure if we will actually see really difficult content in eqn, considering how much they talked about how they disliked trinity, roles and raiding.
If you fit a normal distribution curve over gamers say roughly 25% below average, 50% average and 25% above average it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that the numbers of average and below are what pays the bills so very few businesses are going to focus on the above average.
I like games to be difficult however I'm also a realist - we will always get selectable difficulty in solo games but its going to be very rare indeed to get a hard difficult in an MMO applied to the masses. Moreover it will be selectable such as Heroic raiding is.
I've played WoW since 2004 and am in a Heroic raiding Guild. I remember when Cata came out and we hit the new Heroics in blues and had to work as a team to clear them. CC was back, smart pulls where back, mana management was back we absolutely loved it. We all know what happened though? The huge mass of average gamers cried their heart out on the forums until they go nerfed. Unfortunately the power is where the money is and that's the mass of average players. I'm not saying its wrong or bad its just nature at work. I may be good at gaming and some other things but I'm equally bad at others.
Very excellent point. Stronger death penalties lead to stronger communities. Sadly, game companies only care about the size, not quality, of the community.
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
In DOOM, like most FPS/RPG even now, you only 'lose' what you haven't saved to one of your save game slots. In DOOM you don't even have "loot" as such. Just guns and ammo, which are both pixelated and plentiful. The penalty for failure was the failure itself. You couldn't progress on to the next level, where there were better guns. You just had to keep trying that particular bit of the game until you managed to get past whatever it was that killed you. This type of game play continues as recently as Fallout: New Vegas, where you only lose what you haven't saved when you die.
I never said I wanted MMORPGs that don't penalize you for failure. I've stated some facts about DOOM, which I played far more of than was probably healthy. I've stated a few times that you can't just drop a "harsh" death penalty in any game and expect it to be beneficial.
But again, for most people having the penalty of failure be that failure and an inability to move beyond that point is sufficient to drive them to improve their game play and finally get past a particular encounter. The penalties incurred are largely to prevent people from failing to pass encounters and then turning that into a profitable game play strategy. i.e. You can't get to the boss, die and make enough gold to buy better gear (or sell that gold to another player), otherwise the players never actually kill the boss. In MMORPGs, players need to come up against hard stops just like they do in single player games. Having an in-game economy complicates things a little bit, but having things like gear degradation and minor corpse runs offsets any possible profit from failure.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
+1
Skyrim arguably the most popular single player RPG ever made....no death penalty what-so-ever. You can hit F5 at any point and if you die you just pop right back to that point.
The game doesn't even have consequences for the choices you make. You can get in good with one side then walk right up to the "king" of the other side and start up a conversation and even do his quest line. That didn't seem to bother people enough to pass on the game. If anything people begged for more.
Or make it optional.
For example make exp loss on death optional (and the percentage lost of current level optional too). Then if people wanted to make dying a bit less of a non-event they could make it cost them say 10% of their exp for the next level and if someone wanted to play where they couldn't die at all they could make it 100% i.e. they lost all exp for the current level.
Something like that.
edit: and if a player didn't want it at all then they could leave it switched off
Holy crap! 10 pages long thread where it should have ended on page 1 with this ^^^^ comment.
SOE has been babysitting people for quite a long time now and they will keep on babysitting until they find their WOW size populated game. Even if EQN has new features, etc, etc, they're still going to babysit.
Sure, I'm going to buy it, try it and then most likely say thanks but no thanks. EQ1 and EQ2 these days bore me to death because it's in easy mode. EQN will most likely also bore me to death, but, I have to at least try it and make my own opinion. That's where they will make money off me. (The cost of buying it.)
Ok then I guess MMORPGs don't have loot; they just have swords, rings, armor, and such.
See what I did there?
/edit Storm-Cloud, above, and Telenderiel are of course correct.
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
*snorts coffee through nose*
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
If your swords, rings armor and such in MMORPGs were the same at level one as they were at whatever the max level is, and you could equip them at any time, then you might actually have a point.
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Either way, whether you consider DOOM a game with loot or not, there are no death penalties, just like there are no death penalties in most FPS and RPG. If you do forget to save, just follow the same path you followed before and you get your "loot" back.
An MMORPG with no death penalties is not DOOM in God Mode. DOOM is a bad example in general because even the minimal death penalties in WoW exceed the non-penalty in DOOM. This is because the "death penalty" as such wasn't necessary. The desire to simply not fail was all it took, coupled with the challenge of killing tons of things. Death penalties in MMORPGs are only necessary to keep players from profiting off of failure. Death still serves as a hard stop against progression. Anything more than keeping players from profiting off of failure is down to preference, nothing more.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yeah there will be none of that tension inducing type stuff that would make you fear death. This game is as far away from any of that stuff as you can go. From various forums it is starting to be evident that people are realizing that SOE is just plain making something that EQ fans didn't want and aren't being sold on.
Won't matter a bit either, this thing is going to launch with people having done multiple rounds of founder packages and having slogged through Landmark's confused transformations. I have to admire SOE for hiring P.T. Barnum and changing his name to Dave Georgeson. Big smile, Big smile
Saving systems in RPGs are a form of adjustable death penalty. You can do anything from saving every minute in which case it's a meaningless penalty to never saving at all in which case it's perma-death. Many people find a happy medium between these two extremes such as allowing one save before you enter a dungeon.
I think the best thing MMORPGs could do is find a way to implement this kind of varying death penalty as it is something players have widely varying opinions and desires about. You obviously can't have saving in an MMO but why not clickable toggles to make death penalties more or less harsh?
I don't think very many people would take advantage of that feature. The person who doesn't save their game in e.g. Fallout is a rarity. If the adjustable death setting also affected loot, then most people would find the setting that returned the most loot for the time spent. If that setting did not affect loot at all, then most players would just crank the setting down to 'Minimal' and never think about it again. It's probably also why there are so few difficulty sliders in MMORPGs. People would just find the one setting that returns the most loot and then never think about it again.
It would also interfere with group content. If your tank dies and takes an XP hit such that they are no longer eligible for a dungeon, the group cannot go on until they've recouped the tank's XP deficit. Or waited for them to make the miles long corpse run. It's fine if everyone has opted in to the same set of rules, but if each player can have a different set of rules then it has effects on other players who did not sign up for the "harsh" or "easy" rule sets. Force all the players to opt in to the same rule set before running the dungeon and someone is always going to be playing under a set of rules they don't like. Better to decide the rules you want to play under before starting a game, not two-thirds of the way into the game.
Developers might have other reasons, but those are the two that stand out to me. The feature would be largely unused, and the effects of the feature on groups of players.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Most people do not play single player RPGs as perma-death that is true but they also do not play on the very easiest settings and save every minute to take all risk out of the game. Most people fall within the middle of these two extremes and I think MMOs would probably be similar.
I do not support giving better loot for a harder difficulty setting. The reward for playing with harder death options is that the game is more challenging and gives more of a sense of accomplishment. Maybe you and some other people don't care about that and are just after the easiest way to play but a lot of players do seek a challenge.
Simplest way to solve the mechanical issue here is to let anyone enter a dungeon regardless of level. You're level 30 and want to go into a lvl 50 dungeon? go ahead, you'll probably die but nothing should stop you (it's a different topic but I think MMOs should take that approach in any case). The corpse run issue is valid though. Probably a reason why XP penalties are preferable to corpse runs in this kind of game.
As far as different players liking different styles of death penalty it would likely require a bit of communication if it's something you feel strongly about. It might indirectly lead to better groups if it encouraged people with similar playing styles to group together and avoid groups with those with radically different attitudes.
Developers target a different mass majority of players now, especially a company called SOE.
If you want harsh penalties in your mmorpg's, your going to have to go to a independent company for your fix. As we see now, DF, EVE and AA are niche crowd mmo games and don't play out to the masses here to the westerns. I doubt the new EQ will go into this direction since their already classified for the following WoW and SWToR generation of gamers.
Why do you think that people like harsh penalties? How does that contribute to the longevity of the game anyway?
EQ had harsh death penalties. WoW introduced the concept of no significant penalties for dying. What happened next? WoW singlehandedly changed the whole industry and dwarfed all the MMOs before Wow COMBINED! COMBINED! EQ is like a small indie game on linux that no one plays in comparison to WoW.
Tons of people LEFT EQ and went to play WoW. EQ2 which was supposed to be the next big thing? Marginalised to insignificance. If EQ was so much better with its harsh death penalties, why did both new players and existing EQ players rushed to play WoW?
WoW is still the most successful MMO of all time with its 6-7 million. No MMO has even reached 3-4 million subs. EVER! WoW hit 12 million. How is that in the grand scheme of things?
Ultimately WoW was the better game in my opinion. YOu can put your stupid rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and tell me how EQ owns but it doesn't. WoW at launh was better than EQ in almost every way for people who actually have lives outside of MMO gaming.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Personally, I think EQ was more social and community driven then most games today, including WoW.. Now that might mean that EQ is better at social game play.. However, it can be said that WoW is better at solo game play.. Yes, mechanics can be argued that one is better then another as long as they are doing the same purpose.. IMO EQ was more complicated allowing one to be invested in their character more.. Whereas, WoW was more casual and laid back..
That said there has to be some sort of penalty to keep the content from being trivialized. Once death happens that should be the end of that encounter until it is started new again. A content filled Ethermere is one idea, where the initial encounter is stalled but a different one is presented.
You asked why developers haven't implemented variable death penalties in games and I gave you a couple of reasons that seemed obvious to me, with the caveat that actual developers might have a different take on it. Obviously developers are either not interested in implementing a "slider" feature for death penalties, or they haven't come up with a way to actually solve the problem that would work. You would really need to ask them why such a feature hasn't been implemented though. I can only give you my take on the reasons why I think they haven't done it.
My biggest input into this conversation has been that having weak or not death penalties is not at all like playing DOOM in God Mode. It may be similar to playing DOOM (seems like it to me anyway), but not in God Mode. There was some quibbling about "loot", but it's not relevant.
My second input has been that death penalties, past a certain minimal point in MMORPGs, are really down to a preference and the rest of the game's mechanics. Death penalties do serve the purpose of preventing players from profiting off of failure to clear content, fulfilling the "hard stop" to progression that is necessary for players to see their own progress. There is no "one size fits all" and there is no inherent value in harsh or easy death penalties.
I did note that the majority of gamers seem to prefer the less harsh death penalties, and I think this is because it is what players are accustomed to in their single player games. They are accustomed to a hard stop to their progression, but with no real loss of gear, money, etc. A light death penalty simulates this effectively.
I don't think I've mentioned my personal preferences on death penalties in this thread though. It doesn't seem terribly relevant.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.