I fail to see what a death penalty is, other than having to redo content.
If the penalty is full loot, I have to redo content to replace that loot, if it is replaceable.
Same if there is an exp. penalty. Go back and farm some mobs you just farmed to get there in the first place.
Corpse run? Running back to the same place only with more chance of death.
Item damage isn't bad, but still just a slow version of full loot. You will have to repair or replace.
All a death penalty can really do is set your progress back. But I really think if it sets you back too significantly or too often, then you really just become more risk averse. You won't go into an encounter with anything but a 99% chance of success.
I see frustration more than fear, in this case.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Ok I am going to jump in here because there is too much BS about harsh Death Penalties being so dam important and it made players better players. In Reality It does not so people who want to be driving the harsh death penalties bandwagon need to jump off it because it will not work. Just watch as some of these new mmos like CrowFall and what not come out with Full Loot PVP and Death Penalties. I can tell you this, you will be playing in a dead world in just a few months.
Let me explain, I played UO, SWG, and FFXI that had some good death Penalties and some harsh Death Penalties. And I can tell you. Today’s MMO gamer will not put up with UO corpse runs, or loose of gear sorry it just will not work. As much fun as I had with UO back in 1998 when I was 18 years old, at 35 your F’in nuts if you think I will do that again. FFXI loosen EXP and Levels great when I was 23 living at home under my parents roof, not so good today when I got bills to pay because I do not want to go back and grind 2 more hours because the group I had sucked. And SWG with Perma death when grinding out 30 other classes was a waste of time and I had many friends that quit after their Jedi died. None of this BS was fun and saying it needs to be in an MMO is just nuts.
Now what Systems have I liked in MMOs with the Death Penalties. Well Vanilla WOW was fairly good before I started raiding. I wanted to not die because it was a pain in the ass to get gold so I did everything I could to learn my role and do what I could not to die. However when you add in Raiding which you could wipe for weeks on a boss (First Boss in BWL when BWL was released and so on) (Pre-Todays WOW) Any type of harsh Death Penalty was pointless because if people didn’t have the gold for repairs and didn’t want to grind to get gold they would quit raiding. So No Durability loss in Raids would be fine because the nature of raiding and how it played a roll in WOW.
Now What about SWG Death system outside the Jedi. After so many deaths my Armor would break and I would have to replace it, or my weapon. What about needing to see an Entertainer or a Doctor to fix my stat loss. None of these death penalties ever put me in a situation where I had to grind just to grind boring content. I had friends who were Armorsmiths who would make me new gear or hey what about the 2 sets of gear I always had in my house? I had a friend who was a Doctor in game and I just need to go to anchorhead to see him patch me up. Bam I am right back out having fun.
It’s ok to go back to games you had fun in and ask why is the reason I had fun in these game. However you have to really think hard on it and need to say to yourself. Can I do these 6 hour a night corpse run, or if I spent 3 months grinding a raid out am I willing to lose this gear to full PVP loot? When you think of them in the contexts of today and having a real life outside of a video game because what if you need to spend 6 hours one night doing a corps run to get your raid gear back just so you can make tomorrows raid. However your job is tired of you coming in dog ass tired and ready to fire you because a video game became more important than life? Guess what you can no longer do what you did when your bills were being paid by mommy and daddy. You are not an adult and need to be responsible like one.
Now if you REALLY want to talk about how to change the genera let’s talk about Class balance, LFR, LFD and all the things that had made the genera more of a Lobby based game than an MMO. Yes Time sinks are needed. Yes it should take you more than 2 weeks to complete a raid instance. Yes Dungeons and Raids are things that should not be randomly thrown together and easy content to become a fast food game. Yes you should have to have some reliance on other players and not be a 1 man god that can do all in an MMO. These things are more MMO Centric than 6 hour corpse runs, Perma Death, or full PVP loot. Why? Because they push the social aspect of an MMO more than things that will just piss people off and make them quit the game.
First and foremost a system where if you are smart and careful and good you ALWAYS escape. You should only die if you screw up in escaping. NOTE: most MMORPGs FORCE you to die if you don't win. This is not the same as escapes. Most MMO actively prevent you from escaping a failed boss fight in an instance or whatever.
Second, given the above mechanic, you should get limited number of lives. Say 10, if you lose 10 lives your character is deleted. Forever.
Third, a possible mechanic to earn extra lives. This should be hard and time consuming. I would also limit the total number of spare live to a hard maximum.
Again I must stress current content in most MMOs simply cannot support this. You have to understand they purposely kill you. Anyone who is actually good at single player roguelikes knows what I mean. Escape is an incredibly important mechanic.
Edit: I also wanted to these games with corpse runs etc, no matter how severe the "death panalty" of losing items/xp is, are inherently neurotic, stupid, and unfun. I understand people want consequences for actions and this is an appropriate intuition for what is necessary in the game. But this mechanic is bad and stupid and it always has been when taken in the context of the actual content of the games.
Keep in mind I played a MUD for over 5 years with a "death penalty" that was literally 10 worse than EQ. Not only did you lose 1/3 or your TOTAL xp (across all level accrued) you ALSO has 30 total deaths before auto delete. All these people think EQ was "hard" make me laugh. I am not saying EQ DP was unpleasant or I couldn't hack such a thing, I am saying its dumb and it doesn't work well.
But its just carebear pussies that get frustrated and ragequit over harsh death penalties!! And we don't want them in our game anyway!
How do you counter this argument?
I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
EQ allowed people to play casually or intensively, but ppl who wanted everything handed to them did get filtered out.
People who refused to group and make friends got filtered out eventually.
People who had a bad attitude got filtered out eventually.
I have no problem with that. Not every game has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I liked corpse runs, they are relaxing, I liked figuring out the best way to recover my corpse, I liked talking to necros and talking to the guild or general how we could best accomplish our recovery, I liked standing before dilemmas, I liked not everything handed to me on a silver platter.
Corpse runs were a game onto it's own, I enjoyed the fact you were vulnerable naked, I enjoyed the fact you had to circumvent danger to get to your corpse.
The fact some couldn't handle it and can't deal with the idea of a setback, just means they're not the same kind of players as EQ players. And that's totally fine, there's games for everyone, I don't think every game needs to cater to everyone.
Well i actually like the idea i stole from your post OP ..lol
First up i don't like the way some games do gear wear n tare ,it should be a lot slower.However what i would like to see is if player's die their gear completely breaks.We already know the word DEATH is FAKE and means nothing,so we need a different way to create the illusion of death.
I would like to see the term Knocked out used instead of death,damage the gear to 0 and suffer a large penalty in xp,like i mean a LARGE penalty not something that again comes off as FAKE dying.
What the damaged gear does is force players to go back to town and fix it,that alone makes them more cautious and less likely to spam impossible fights for the sake of gear knowing they can simply re-raise and suffer no penalty for being a bad player.
I find it ridiculous players can simply PRETEND to die,get back up and start fighting again.I also liked FFXI's way of creating a death sickness,your stats were severely lowered upon death and lasted about 5 minutes.That was sort of a MEDIUM to both sides,it gave the risk factor as well as allowing you to continue if you so choose but under a VERY risk lowered state.
Since levels in games are pretty much a joke,i would like to see 50% of xp lost on death,that would give the weak leveling system a tad more meaning.Actually i would prefer a complete de-level but i know too many non rpg gamer's inside of these games can't accept penalties,they would cry.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But its just carebear pussies that get frustrated and ragequit over harsh death penalties!! And we don't want them in our game anyway!
How do you counter this argument?
I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
EQ allowed people to play casually or intensively, but ppl who wanted everything handed to them did get filtered out.
People who refused to group and make friends got filtered out eventually.
People who had a bad attitude got filtered out eventually.
I have no problem with that. Not every game has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I liked corpse runs, they are relaxing, I liked figuring out the best way to recover my corpse, I liked talking to necros and talking to the guild or general how we could best accomplish our recovery, I liked standing before dilemmas, I liked not everything handed to me on a silver platter.
Corpse runs were a game onto it's own, I enjoyed the fact you were vulnerable naked, I enjoyed the fact you had to circumvent danger to get to your corpse.
The fact some couldn't handle it and can't deal with the idea of a setback, just means they're not the same kind of players as EQ players. And that's totally fine, there's games for everyone, I don't think every game needs to cater to everyone.
H1Z1 like other survival games out there (Breaking Point, Arma, Rust) have certain elements of an MMO like:
- non instanced non-layered single open world
- consequences to your actions
Still H1Z1 have max 200 players playing together and IMHO that is too low to call it an MMO.
Like other survival games H1Z1 is an non-MMO multiplayer game. Main diffrence being H1Z1 have gameplay monetized through microtransaction where most other survival games are one-time-purcharse + no ongoing fees.
But its just carebear pussies that get frustrated and ragequit over harsh death penalties!! And we don't want them in our game anyway!
How do you counter this argument?
I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
EQ allowed people to play casually or intensively, but ppl who wanted everything handed to them did get filtered out.
People who refused to group and make friends got filtered out eventually.
People who had a bad attitude got filtered out eventually.
I have no problem with that. Not every game has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I liked corpse runs, they are relaxing, I liked figuring out the best way to recover my corpse, I liked talking to necros and talking to the guild or general how we could best accomplish our recovery, I liked standing before dilemmas, I liked not everything handed to me on a silver platter.
Corpse runs were a game onto it's own, I enjoyed the fact you were vulnerable naked, I enjoyed the fact you had to circumvent danger to get to your corpse.
The fact some couldn't handle it and can't deal with the idea of a setback, just means they're not the same kind of players as EQ players. And that's totally fine, there's games for everyone, I don't think every game needs to cater to everyone.
I agree and this is also why I prefer PVE. I think PVP is just a game without good PVE AI or difficulty enough to challenge the players. PVP MMORPGs are 3 month chucks and always will be as far as I'm concerned. I play EMUs because of this fact.
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999
You all are so obsessed with adding negatives on death, how about adding bonuses for living the longest and then resetting them to 0 for dieing?
This solves two things, gives an incentive to live in a game and act in a game to receive benefits for it (beyond just a drop and afking) but also fear of dieing and losing the "boons" and "buffs" you accumulated.
You all are so obsessed with adding negatives on death, how about adding bonuses for living the longest and then resetting them to 0 for dieing?
This solves two things, gives an incentive to live in a game and act in a game to receive benefits for it (beyond just a drop and afking) but also fear of dieing and losing the "boons" and "buffs" you accumulated.
Anyway my 2 cents.
Losing a bonus is the almost the same as gaining a penalty(imho it is a bit worse)
At any rate, Earth Eternal did have a death penalty like you are talking about. You gained heroism for every monster you killed and lost half of it on death. Heroism affected things like drop rates, and loot quality, as well as providing extra luck and some extra hit points.
The problem with it is that when you had a TON of heroism, your character became less heroic. The loss was just huge between maximum heroism and half.
Systems where you build bonuses but lose them on death lead to people absolutely paranoid about death once they have reached a critical point.
I happen to consider myself a "casual player," as I no longer pull all night long and two day straight play sessions, and I still would want those harsh death penalties. One has nothing to do with the other.
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.
That is cute. What some people seem to not recognize, is that most of the ideas I am laying out, are not about what is "wanted." But they are actually by way of considering MMORPG from Tabletop RPG design, from the perspectiveS of both players and companies. Take a closer look at the concepts I have thrown out on the table throughout this site, and actually make an attempt to think about "why" I have come to such conclusions. But of course you, nor will others even attempt to do so. The excuse will be "I have been written off," "I am acting like some self-proclaimed authority," "they do not have the time for such nonsense." And yet the majority can not see past their own perspective, be it either from their perspective of a player (and thus from the end of simply "flavors"), or from their perspective of a game maker (and thus from the perspective of the business end). What I deliver, at least the majority of what I deliver, goes well beyond those "self contained perspectives."
Need proof of that? Consider any MMORPG feature that I am opposed to, and I can still see certain qualities in those features such that should be on the market in MMORPGs. Even though I am opposed to those features for my own liking.
Here is another proof. Consider my post that you replied to here. What was stated was a fact about myself, and my own opinion of preference, and nothing else. Nothing at all stating about what anyone else wants. And it is a natural reply to the post you originally made, and thus does prove that "casual" and "harsh death penalties" are not specifically "linked."
It matters not however. I will eventually own the MMORPG Industry. But I have other fields to dominate on my way.
MMORPG design doesn't directly stem from tabletop gaming. The DikuMUD has had more influence over mmorpg design than tabletops ever did. Sure, MUDs might have been inspired by tabletop gaming, but many of the rules were adjusted for the sake of quality of life. Especially if you're looking at it from an AD&D perspective, which was by far the largest influence on many MUD systems.
Things like spells per day, THAC0, spell components, critical failure, etc. Were greatly adjusted in many DikuMUD formats in order to make the game itself more playable. The vast majority of DikuMUDs I played didn't have overly harsh death penalties.
The beauty of the MUD was that the rule sets could be adjusted by those who ran the server, but from all the years I played in the DikuMUD environment, most of them were extremely similar. Everything was designed for the end user experience, to make it as enjoyable as possible. Playing hardcore PvE was leveling the same toon multiple times using a remort system where you could unlock more powerful skill sets at the cost of slower progression each time you leveled 1-50.
DikuMUD was super popular because it was easy to use, easy to understand and was pretty easy to adapt to what you wanted/needed it to do for your own server. It's no surprise to see many DikuMUD elements present in mmorpgs to this day. If you want to understand the "why" behind mmorpgs the way they are, go read some history on the DikuMUD and it will make sense.
H1Z1 like other survival games out there (Breaking Point, Arma, Rust) have certain elements of an MMO like:
- non instanced non-layered single open world
- consequences to your actions
Still H1Z1 have max 200 players playing together and IMHO that is too low to call it an MMO.
Like other survival games H1Z1 is an non-MMO multiplayer game. Main diffrence being H1Z1 have gameplay monetized through microtransaction where most other survival games are one-time-purcharse + no ongoing fees.
The original spirit of MMO stemmed from games with a lot more than the standard game in terms of players in a single shared space. Anything above 128 players is really enough to be counted as an MMO. This seems the most logical cutoff point, given that it's where the largest regular multiplayer games draw the line.
And that mostly proves out your first bullet point.
"Consequences for actions" isn't really a MMO specific trait. In a general sense, all games have consequences for actions (when I fail to do the right rotation in WOW, my character does less damage).
But if you specifically mean harsh consequences for mistakes, then that has nothing to do with MMOs, RPGs, or FPSes. It only really has to do with being a Survival game.
H1Z1's popularity continues to confuse me as 99% of the gameplay is literally running around a near-empty game world collecting trash (mostly running; just a little collecting.) Which seems about as fun as watching paint dry, but there's an audience for everything I guess.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Whereas yes, I did read the rest of the post, and I may actually look into these DikuMUDs. This paragraph I have remaining that you wrote, pretty much reinforces what I have stated.
I stated that "MMORPGs are a continuation of the Tabletop RPG."
You state in this paragraph quoted that, "MMORPGs are a continuation of the DikuMUD. The DikuMUD might have been inspired by Tabletop RPG, and AD&D as having the largest influence on many MUD systems."
Thus, Tabletop => MUD => MMORPG.
If you were me, tell me, how would you approach this? I generally tend to not trust the competence of others. I generally find the foundations and build from there, while possibly picking up information that was a possible extension from the identified foundation.
As being me, I see your words as simply confirming my own initial approach. Why should I assume the translation from Tabletop RPG => MUD was a good translation? Why I should I assume all information worth having was not lost in that translation? How further still am I to assume there were not further "telephone game" issues from MUDs to MMORPGs?
It goes like this:
D&D (in 1974) was about combat, character progression, and a player-created dungeon.
Alkalabeth (1979) was about combat, character progression, and storyline.
Ultima I (1980) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and successive Ultimas)
Rogue (1980) was about combat and character progression. (and all successive Rogue-likes, including Nethack)
Wizardry (1981) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive Wizardries)
The Bard's Tale (1985) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive Bards' Tales)
Might & Magic (1986) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive M&Ms)
Final Fantasy (1987) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive FFs)
Phantasy Star (1987) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive PSs)
The Magic Candle (1988) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive MCs)
Ys (1989) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive Ys)
Champions of Krynn (1990) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive GoldBox games)
Eye of the Beholder (1990) was about combat, character progression, and storyline. (and all successive EOTBs)
Notice how the first videogame RPG is immediately something different (lacking player authorship and the eventual improv storytelling) and every other videogame RPG has the same core features? This continues for 35 total years worth of RPGs. Only a handful of games offer the option of those tabletop RPG features -- the remaining 99% of videogame RPGs were only about combat, character progression, and storyline.
Just accept the fact that right from the start videogame RPGs completely shifted gears from tabletop RPGs, and have been unchanged ever since.
Early D&D had a weak storyline element, but at that point early on (in 1974) it didn't have the improv and collaborative-storytelling focus, as it originated from wargaming. But eventually the tabletop RPG genre evolved towards those strong-points, which means that the tabletop RPGs we refer to today are considerably different from D&D in 1974.
Now that you have the extensive history of why you're wrong, would you consider dropping this foolish notion? How much hard evidence do you need to see that you're wrong?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by SuperXero89 why does there have to be a death penalty? It's not always about the skill of the player. There's plenty of ways MMOs stick you with cheap deaths that can't be avoided. Why lose hours of progress or be forced to AFK for 10 minutes just because extra mobs decided to spawn on top of you?
Without a death penalty, there is no drive to learn, to progress skills, or to gear up before level cap is reached.
A game with a strong death penalty means people reaching level cap are going to be more invested in their characters, more proficient with the game mechanics, and less likely to view zerging as a viable play style.
It also weeds out the players without the patience to learn the game or gear as they level. Those players will quickly grow frustrated with their inability to advance.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
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.
I think that would just make people frustrated. Anything that forces a player "not to play" is a bad thing.
I kind of agree with your last sentence.
The problem with death penalties is that it makes wusses out of people who don't take it in stride. Too many times I've been with a group and we died a few times and then people wanted to quit "naw, we should come back when we are better geared/higher levelled".
In some of those cases a part of the group with continue and actually complete the encounter which gave a real sense of accomplishment.
I'm all for death penalties, even grind penalties, but some people can't cope with them.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I think it would be cool if there was a game that was perma-death but it did have the option to restore your character after a week long ritual but this perk could only be accessed after a grueling end game quest to seal your soul in a vessel. You could double-down on the PITAness of it by requiring that you can only start the ritual with an equal level alt. Bonus: Your main character could be brought back to life with additional perks or debuffs.
Originally posted by SuperXero89 why does there have to be a death penalty? It's not always about the skill of the player. There's plenty of ways MMOs stick you with cheap deaths that can't be avoided. Why lose hours of progress or be forced to AFK for 10 minutes just because extra mobs decided to spawn on top of you?
Without a death penalty, there is no drive to learn, to progress skills, or to gear up before level cap is reached.
A game with a strong death penalty means people reaching level cap are going to be more invested in their characters, more proficient with the game mechanics, and less likely to view zerging as a viable play style.
It also weeds out the players without the patience to learn the game or gear as they level. Those players will quickly grow frustrated with their inability to advance.
I call BS on this.
It is not my problem that you are not motivated enough to try and get better at the game you play so you need extra punishment to force you to become a good player. If I like the game, I will strive to become better at it and failure to complete an objective will motivate me to try different approaches until I succeed. I do not need the threat of having to spend hours grinding pointless content just because my tactics were flawed or my concentration slipped for a second.
Harsh death penalties are a poor attempt to motivate the bad players. For players who want to challenge themselves, they act as a demotivator by making players less willing to experiment and instead settle for safe, boring tactics.
The drive to learn, to get better ir more gear. .. for me as anyways come from wanting something more almost never from failing. Falling itself is punishment enough. Adding a penalty doesn't make me want to try any harder. I was already motivated and still would be motivated to try hard. A penalty did not change that.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Comments
I fail to see what a death penalty is, other than having to redo content.
If the penalty is full loot, I have to redo content to replace that loot, if it is replaceable.
Same if there is an exp. penalty. Go back and farm some mobs you just farmed to get there in the first place.
Corpse run? Running back to the same place only with more chance of death.
Item damage isn't bad, but still just a slow version of full loot. You will have to repair or replace.
All a death penalty can really do is set your progress back. But I really think if it sets you back too significantly or too often, then you really just become more risk averse. You won't go into an encounter with anything but a 99% chance of success.
I see frustration more than fear, in this case.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Ok I am going to jump in here because there is too much BS about harsh Death Penalties being so dam important and it made players better players. In Reality It does not so people who want to be driving the harsh death penalties bandwagon need to jump off it because it will not work. Just watch as some of these new mmos like CrowFall and what not come out with Full Loot PVP and Death Penalties. I can tell you this, you will be playing in a dead world in just a few months.
Let me explain, I played UO, SWG, and FFXI that had some good death Penalties and some harsh Death Penalties. And I can tell you. Today’s MMO gamer will not put up with UO corpse runs, or loose of gear sorry it just will not work. As much fun as I had with UO back in 1998 when I was 18 years old, at 35 your F’in nuts if you think I will do that again. FFXI loosen EXP and Levels great when I was 23 living at home under my parents roof, not so good today when I got bills to pay because I do not want to go back and grind 2 more hours because the group I had sucked. And SWG with Perma death when grinding out 30 other classes was a waste of time and I had many friends that quit after their Jedi died. None of this BS was fun and saying it needs to be in an MMO is just nuts.
Now what Systems have I liked in MMOs with the Death Penalties. Well Vanilla WOW was fairly good before I started raiding. I wanted to not die because it was a pain in the ass to get gold so I did everything I could to learn my role and do what I could not to die. However when you add in Raiding which you could wipe for weeks on a boss (First Boss in BWL when BWL was released and so on) (Pre-Todays WOW) Any type of harsh Death Penalty was pointless because if people didn’t have the gold for repairs and didn’t want to grind to get gold they would quit raiding. So No Durability loss in Raids would be fine because the nature of raiding and how it played a roll in WOW.
Now What about SWG Death system outside the Jedi. After so many deaths my Armor would break and I would have to replace it, or my weapon. What about needing to see an Entertainer or a Doctor to fix my stat loss. None of these death penalties ever put me in a situation where I had to grind just to grind boring content. I had friends who were Armorsmiths who would make me new gear or hey what about the 2 sets of gear I always had in my house? I had a friend who was a Doctor in game and I just need to go to anchorhead to see him patch me up. Bam I am right back out having fun.
It’s ok to go back to games you had fun in and ask why is the reason I had fun in these game. However you have to really think hard on it and need to say to yourself. Can I do these 6 hour a night corpse run, or if I spent 3 months grinding a raid out am I willing to lose this gear to full PVP loot? When you think of them in the contexts of today and having a real life outside of a video game because what if you need to spend 6 hours one night doing a corps run to get your raid gear back just so you can make tomorrows raid. However your job is tired of you coming in dog ass tired and ready to fire you because a video game became more important than life? Guess what you can no longer do what you did when your bills were being paid by mommy and daddy. You are not an adult and need to be responsible like one.
Now if you REALLY want to talk about how to change the genera let’s talk about Class balance, LFR, LFD and all the things that had made the genera more of a Lobby based game than an MMO. Yes Time sinks are needed. Yes it should take you more than 2 weeks to complete a raid instance. Yes Dungeons and Raids are things that should not be randomly thrown together and easy content to become a fast food game. Yes you should have to have some reliance on other players and not be a 1 man god that can do all in an MMO. These things are more MMO Centric than 6 hour corpse runs, Perma Death, or full PVP loot. Why? Because they push the social aspect of an MMO more than things that will just piss people off and make them quit the game.
But its just carebear pussies that get frustrated and ragequit over harsh death penalties!! And we don't want them in our game anyway!
How do you counter this argument?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
What I would like to see is:
First and foremost a system where if you are smart and careful and good you ALWAYS escape. You should only die if you screw up in escaping. NOTE: most MMORPGs FORCE you to die if you don't win. This is not the same as escapes. Most MMO actively prevent you from escaping a failed boss fight in an instance or whatever.
Second, given the above mechanic, you should get limited number of lives. Say 10, if you lose 10 lives your character is deleted. Forever.
Third, a possible mechanic to earn extra lives. This should be hard and time consuming. I would also limit the total number of spare live to a hard maximum.
Again I must stress current content in most MMOs simply cannot support this. You have to understand they purposely kill you. Anyone who is actually good at single player roguelikes knows what I mean. Escape is an incredibly important mechanic.
Edit: I also wanted to these games with corpse runs etc, no matter how severe the "death panalty" of losing items/xp is, are inherently neurotic, stupid, and unfun. I understand people want consequences for actions and this is an appropriate intuition for what is necessary in the game. But this mechanic is bad and stupid and it always has been when taken in the context of the actual content of the games.
Keep in mind I played a MUD for over 5 years with a "death penalty" that was literally 10 worse than EQ. Not only did you lose 1/3 or your TOTAL xp (across all level accrued) you ALSO has 30 total deaths before auto delete. All these people think EQ was "hard" make me laugh. I am not saying EQ DP was unpleasant or I couldn't hack such a thing, I am saying its dumb and it doesn't work well.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
EQ allowed people to play casually or intensively, but ppl who wanted everything handed to them did get filtered out.
People who refused to group and make friends got filtered out eventually.
People who had a bad attitude got filtered out eventually.
I have no problem with that. Not every game has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I liked corpse runs, they are relaxing, I liked figuring out the best way to recover my corpse, I liked talking to necros and talking to the guild or general how we could best accomplish our recovery, I liked standing before dilemmas, I liked not everything handed to me on a silver platter.
Corpse runs were a game onto it's own, I enjoyed the fact you were vulnerable naked, I enjoyed the fact you had to circumvent danger to get to your corpse.
The fact some couldn't handle it and can't deal with the idea of a setback, just means they're not the same kind of players as EQ players. And that's totally fine, there's games for everyone, I don't think every game needs to cater to everyone.
Well i actually like the idea i stole from your post OP ..lol
First up i don't like the way some games do gear wear n tare ,it should be a lot slower.However what i would like to see is if player's die their gear completely breaks.We already know the word DEATH is FAKE and means nothing,so we need a different way to create the illusion of death.
I would like to see the term Knocked out used instead of death,damage the gear to 0 and suffer a large penalty in xp,like i mean a LARGE penalty not something that again comes off as FAKE dying.
What the damaged gear does is force players to go back to town and fix it,that alone makes them more cautious and less likely to spam impossible fights for the sake of gear knowing they can simply re-raise and suffer no penalty for being a bad player.
I find it ridiculous players can simply PRETEND to die,get back up and start fighting again.I also liked FFXI's way of creating a death sickness,your stats were severely lowered upon death and lasted about 5 minutes.That was sort of a MEDIUM to both sides,it gave the risk factor as well as allowing you to continue if you so choose but under a VERY risk lowered state.
Since levels in games are pretty much a joke,i would like to see 50% of xp lost on death,that would give the weak leveling system a tad more meaning.Actually i would prefer a complete de-level but i know too many non rpg gamer's inside of these games can't accept penalties,they would cry.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
How about this... Every time you die, you pick up a new phobia or insanity...
You died to a snake boss... Now you have a fear of snakes.
You died from a fireball... Now you are afraid of fire...
You might get claustrophic and take minuses in dungeons.
---
You can get rid of one insanity per day at a cost.
Snakes
Why did it have to be snakes
H1Z1 like other survival games out there (Breaking Point, Arma, Rust) have certain elements of an MMO like:
- non instanced non-layered single open world
- consequences to your actions
Still H1Z1 have max 200 players playing together and IMHO that is too low to call it an MMO.
Like other survival games H1Z1 is an non-MMO multiplayer game. Main diffrence being H1Z1 have gameplay monetized through microtransaction where most other survival games are one-time-purcharse + no ongoing fees.
I agree and this is also why I prefer PVE. I think PVP is just a game without good PVE AI or difficulty enough to challenge the players. PVP MMORPGs are 3 month chucks and always will be as far as I'm concerned. I play EMUs because of this fact.
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999
You all are so obsessed with adding negatives on death, how about adding bonuses for living the longest and then resetting them to 0 for dieing?
This solves two things, gives an incentive to live in a game and act in a game to receive benefits for it (beyond just a drop and afking) but also fear of dieing and losing the "boons" and "buffs" you accumulated.
Anyway my 2 cents.
Losing a bonus is the almost the same as gaining a penalty(imho it is a bit worse)
At any rate, Earth Eternal did have a death penalty like you are talking about. You gained heroism for every monster you killed and lost half of it on death. Heroism affected things like drop rates, and loot quality, as well as providing extra luck and some extra hit points.
The problem with it is that when you had a TON of heroism, your character became less heroic. The loss was just huge between maximum heroism and half.
Systems where you build bonuses but lose them on death lead to people absolutely paranoid about death once they have reached a critical point.
MMORPG design doesn't directly stem from tabletop gaming. The DikuMUD has had more influence over mmorpg design than tabletops ever did. Sure, MUDs might have been inspired by tabletop gaming, but many of the rules were adjusted for the sake of quality of life. Especially if you're looking at it from an AD&D perspective, which was by far the largest influence on many MUD systems.
Things like spells per day, THAC0, spell components, critical failure, etc. Were greatly adjusted in many DikuMUD formats in order to make the game itself more playable. The vast majority of DikuMUDs I played didn't have overly harsh death penalties.
The beauty of the MUD was that the rule sets could be adjusted by those who ran the server, but from all the years I played in the DikuMUD environment, most of them were extremely similar. Everything was designed for the end user experience, to make it as enjoyable as possible. Playing hardcore PvE was leveling the same toon multiple times using a remort system where you could unlock more powerful skill sets at the cost of slower progression each time you leveled 1-50.
DikuMUD was super popular because it was easy to use, easy to understand and was pretty easy to adapt to what you wanted/needed it to do for your own server. It's no surprise to see many DikuMUD elements present in mmorpgs to this day. If you want to understand the "why" behind mmorpgs the way they are, go read some history on the DikuMUD and it will make sense.
The original spirit of MMO stemmed from games with a lot more than the standard game in terms of players in a single shared space. Anything above 128 players is really enough to be counted as an MMO. This seems the most logical cutoff point, given that it's where the largest regular multiplayer games draw the line.
And that mostly proves out your first bullet point.
"Consequences for actions" isn't really a MMO specific trait. In a general sense, all games have consequences for actions (when I fail to do the right rotation in WOW, my character does less damage).
But if you specifically mean harsh consequences for mistakes, then that has nothing to do with MMOs, RPGs, or FPSes. It only really has to do with being a Survival game.
H1Z1's popularity continues to confuse me as 99% of the gameplay is literally running around a near-empty game world collecting trash (mostly running; just a little collecting.) Which seems about as fun as watching paint dry, but there's an audience for everything I guess.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It goes like this:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
@ Centkin
Nice idea, I like it alot.
Without a death penalty, there is no drive to learn, to progress skills, or to gear up before level cap is reached.
A game with a strong death penalty means people reaching level cap are going to be more invested in their characters, more proficient with the game mechanics, and less likely to view zerging as a viable play style.
It also weeds out the players without the patience to learn the game or gear as they level. Those players will quickly grow frustrated with their inability to advance.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
I think that would just make people frustrated. Anything that forces a player "not to play" is a bad thing.
I kind of agree with your last sentence.
The problem with death penalties is that it makes wusses out of people who don't take it in stride. Too many times I've been with a group and we died a few times and then people wanted to quit "naw, we should come back when we are better geared/higher levelled".
In some of those cases a part of the group with continue and actually complete the encounter which gave a real sense of accomplishment.
I'm all for death penalties, even grind penalties, but some people can't cope with them.
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I think it would be cool if there was a game that was perma-death but it did have the option to restore your character after a week long ritual but this perk could only be accessed after a grueling end game quest to seal your soul in a vessel. You could double-down on the PITAness of it by requiring that you can only start the ritual with an equal level alt. Bonus: Your main character could be brought back to life with additional perks or debuffs.
I call BS on this.
It is not my problem that you are not motivated enough to try and get better at the game you play so you need extra punishment to force you to become a good player. If I like the game, I will strive to become better at it and failure to complete an objective will motivate me to try different approaches until I succeed. I do not need the threat of having to spend hours grinding pointless content just because my tactics were flawed or my concentration slipped for a second.
Harsh death penalties are a poor attempt to motivate the bad players. For players who want to challenge themselves, they act as a demotivator by making players less willing to experiment and instead settle for safe, boring tactics.
Most are some kind of combination depending kn the circumstances. Penalties do not motivate me.