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A New Look at Death
poman313
Member UncommonPosts: 35
I have been playing MMorpgs for Years now I feel like game have no real death penalties. I mean early in games you didn't want to die because of exp loss / de-leveling / breaking armor , but I feel like now you die and just respawn no big. I don't feel any real consequences in MMos now when you bite it. So I'm asking the question what are some ways you think would make death huge again. Like what new or old penalties do you think would work in bring back that life or death feel in a fight?
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You have to find your corpse which is currently camped by your killer or you can simply respawn at a safe spot and get a 10 minutes debuff. Your equipment will also take a 10% durability reduction.
The problem with most death penalties is that they just add some grind to the game, you loose some XP or gold which you need to grind up. That isn't particularly fun and it wont make you fear death at all.
And we do know that sometimes in EQ you couldn't actually find your corpse since it dropped in lava or something. Not great when the MMOs today or so incredible focus on finding gear. And if you don't find it you need to get new good gear which can be months of grinding.
The only death penalty that would work would be if your character couldn't log in for a certain time, it would make people fear death without adding any boring grind.
Now, if the game were more focused on your character and less what he/she wears things would be different.
Not sure why people perpetuate this falsehood other than to further there own agenda to trivialize games.
Death penalties, by design, make players fear death. The less of a death penalty, the less people worry about dying. Its not rocket science. In arcade games, you dont want to lose because it costs you more money and you start over. In MMOs they started with this same principle and it created a very different feel to game worlds.
That feel is gone, you feel me?
If games were to revolve around the notion of 'adventure' and not 'grind', then death could probably be a meaningful thing in alot of ways.
A game of 'Ludo' don't have grinding, and appear to be a mix of adventure and competition.
Game devs probably suck.
If a game instilled a sense of sentimentality, then the 'death' of a beloved character would have special meaning. E.g some character that:
• looked unique, or at least had a unique name
• had some story associated with it
• lived somewhere particular on the map
• that had other advantages (powers, gear or whatnot)
And game devs probably suck.
Obviously, the nature of "death" in a game DEPENDS on the game mechanics themselves, so focusing on simply doing something about 'death' for a game, is probably woefully shortsighted as far as game design goes.
The best, and imo, the only way to go about it, is to have some balls and alot of ideas for the game itself. I can't help but think that any attempt at "trying to solve death in mmo games" for sake of the genre is like painting oneself into a corner, by perchance risk bringing the half assed ideas of the genre into some elevated state of 'an ideal', where change and inspired work don't fit, or isnt' possible. It would be terrible imo if game devs simply entertained the notion of there being some "way" to design their game, as if doing it one way from the very start made good sense.
I felt the vitae system in Asheron's Call 1 and 2 worked pretty well. When you died your character was statistically weaker until they could clear their vitae penalty, which was done with earning experience. If you died a number of times in a row, your vitae penalty meant your character was pretty weak and you needed to kill some easier mobs to clear your vitae before going back to what you were doing. AC1 also had item drop, but that could be circumvented by carrying death items (items with high value that you didn't mind losing).
I liked the vitae system. Death was more than a minor annoyance, but it also wasn't completely debilitating either. It was enough of a penalty that you didn't want to die.
Additionally, you had to bind yourself to a lifestone in both Asheron's Call games, and that's where you spawned when you died. Forgetting to bind near where you were hunting could result in one hell of a walk back...especially in AC1.
If a game is to be profitable then it should minimize punishment and everything that could make the player feel bad(Even the truth) and maximize undeserved rewards and achievements.
Yes, death should be something big but it is not, because the majority of players are casuals who will die often and if they get punished a lot for it like usual they will blame the game(and not themselves) and leave thus not profitable.
Now if you try to make them feel better for every tiny unskilled thing they did there is a higher chance they ll be happy and stay there.
Honestly, game design these days are rarely about game design. It is more about how will i make the player feel better even if he is a complete buffoon and make him feel great even though he is not so i can take his money.
At the end of the day it does really sound like games: "You are awesome and super skilled and deserve to feel good for yourself" and the person is simply paying to hear that
Challenge is what make games fun. The game demands certain skills from the player, and if they aren't good enough they are forced to reset the fight and start over.
A fight reset is the minimum penalty for failure, and is mandatory.
Any penalty beyond that is masochism. Excessive death penalties don't make a game harder, they simply make a game more painful. I play games for fun. Engaging in challenging activities is fun, being punished is not.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
When a fight reset is the only penalty I just kill my party if anything bad happens. No punishment removes all the challenge, because you no longer have to apply yourself if a bad situation arises.
If I'm playing an rpg that resets the fight, and a boss crits one or more of my party members and kills them, i just let my party die and restart the fight if that is the only consequence.
Of course if I was threatened with actually losing something like items or money if my party wiped, I would be inclined to drop healing items and do my best to not die.
Waiting for:
The Repopulation
Albion Online
Even with the bare minimum penalty, you're just wasting your own time if you wipe rather than attempt to beat the challenge.
Also the bare minimum penalty doesn't remove the social penalty associated with being an asshole who intentionally wipes the group when victory is possible.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Just a matter of being creative IMO, what happened to being creative?
Asheron’s Call had the best Death penalty.
You lost 2-3 of your most expensive Items on your corpse. If it was lost in the open world, you could retrieve it pretty easily. But if you died deep in a dungeon you had to enlist some help to get it back.
Most people would keep some death items on them, such as expensive portal gems, so if they their corpse decayed it wasn’t a huge deal.
You also suffered a Vitea penalty. (A debuff only cured by getting a certain amount of exp, or waiting for it to expire)
One death wasn’t a huge debuff, but a couple in a row really gimped you till it went away.
--
You wanted to avoid death in AC, was really fun and intense.
The best part was, if a corpse was left for a few days, (I think 48 hours) you could loot it!
Was like finding treasure when you found a decayed corpse!!!
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
A couple of things come to mind. The first being that there's a shift that's occurred in games period in relation to time.
Table-top games, Video Games, everything has become about brevity and quality therein.
That being said, wasting all the time that you would "recovering" from harsh death penalties will not go over well I think. People have less time than ever, and don't want to waste it. Now, that could work both ways, being that you don't want to waste it perhaps you have to be more careful....but is it REALLY worth it at the end of the day?
The second thing is gear acquisition. I have not played a game in oh, I don't know....12+ years? Where you were not handed gear as you level up from quests, plus the ones you get from dungeon runs. Even IF you had a death penalty like what people have mentioned....nobody cares, it was handed to them, they can just go get another (or probably something better) from a vendor on the cheap.
If people want harsh death penalties and higher level difficulties I believe they should have them. Obviously you don't want a lot of casual players playing this game, however.
Which leads me to ask, why do MMO's not offer levels of difficulty? If you can have a PvE server and a PvP server, why can you not have a casual and a hardcore server?
If you plan it into the original game design, it seems a no brainer way of keeping the wolves and the sheep happy.
Why does this not happen?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I would have to disagree. I think experience loss penalties are a good way to stop people from be reckless or careless. People like to say how useless it is, but it's almost impossible to die in MMOs these days unless you are doing group or raid content. The part of the game where a death penalty would matter is when you are in the outside world soloing a lot. I would personally like to see a much more difficult solo/outside world portion of the game.
Well if you think you can convince other casuals that this is a good idea then I wish you luck.
The point is you have a choice Enbysra. And choice is always a good thing.
Oh and once again it appears that if it is what YOU want it is what we all must want.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
There are many ways to handle death in a game. In the end it has to fit into the game. Actually it's rather a bundle of features that have to mesh in together.Todays's MMORPGs are too combat & gear centric. A punishing death penalty would only make most people cry out loud. This isn't the right target audience for such a feature.
If I would make a RPG I would make it like this:
1) Not so combat centric (lots of non-combat activities)
2) non lethal combat (e.g. duels, wrestling) as well as lethal combat.
3) item decay (with permanent damage and item destruction)
4) After dying a character will be a ghost (unseen by most). A reanimation would be possible if taken to a temple or raised by another player (only within a certain time frame of up to several weeks). A reincarnation would also be possible (which would be possible at any time) with some random results to race, gender, looks, etc.. A reincarnated character will start at level 1.
5) I'd build some parallel world for the ghosts. With lots of activities.
6) I'd implement character aging as well. Certain rituals and spells will cost the caster and/ or target of the spell years (e.g. raise ages the caster, haste ages the target, etc.). After a certain point players will be forced to start a new character (due to permanent death due to old age), but they will be able to leave a will and some money and items to their new character.
Shouldn't you be working on that and not wasting your time here?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Big fan of 1, 2, 3
4, 5, 6 Not so sure.
4 almost sounds like permadeath. A Reroll. No go for me on that one.
5 I don't think I want to live in a parallel world. I want to live in the real world. A parallel world would be like 2 different games. Which one do I want to play?
6 yea not a big fan of the aging thing as this more or less puts a time limit on your gameplay. You are going to feel rushed to do stuff before you die. Or you might just say screw it, I am going to die anyway and just do nothing.
I guess I am just not a big fan of death in games period. Hard to play them when you are DEAD.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!