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Death Penalties
Sinist
Member RarePosts: 1,369
I was reading a bit on the Pantheon forums and they were talking about death penalties.
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty
Rallyd, made a very important point there. That death has to be more than an exp penalty, it has to require you to return to the area you died to recover what you lost. If there is no real loss (ie a need to return), then there is no real threat, no real meaning to dying.
I think this is integral to the issue here. I see posts in that forum about how death should have a sting, but then I see how it shouldn't "ruin a night of play". Thing is, if your death means nothing, then your play doesn't either (which is kind of the problem we are having with games today).
In order for you to really appreciate your successes, you need to have a real threat of failure. That is, and let me use a common term here used by Brad and EQ players in general, you need to have proper risk/reward. If your risk is not real, your reward means nothing. We have years of games where we simply spam a button and are rewarded top gear in a game, a participation trophy if you will. This is a waste of time, it is patting someone on the back for basically drawing breath in and out. It is pointless and why many of us who loved EQ find no meaning or purpose in today's games. We want what we do to mean something, and to achieve such a means, loss has to exist and it has to have meaning.
My point is, if we let our desire to have an evening of no "real" interruptions, for everything to essentially be within an "acceptable" tolerance of failure, what we end up with is no real loss, no real point in success. When I think back to EQ successes, I think of how much of a pain it was to lose, and how amazing it was to win over such. You can not achieve a filling victory if there is no chance of a bone shaking loss. They are tied to each other and without one, the other can not exist.
Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying that every failure should be the result of a 400 lb body builder cracking you in the head with a tree trunk for a bat. There should be tools to alleviate such, to reduce time and effort as well as speed up a given failure. Though this should not be a hand out from the game, it should be a tool that is sought through game play.
In EQ, such features were Necros that could summon a corpse or locate a lost one, classes that could Feign Death drag a corpse to safety or classes that could sneak and do such safely. The point is, make death hard, make it a pain and then make people rely on the community to achieve resolution to such. Make classes matter, make their tools matter, make people earn through participation the reduction of the sting that death provides.
This is what is needed for a truly socially dependent game and for success to truly matter in such.
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2087/let-s-talk-death-penalty
Rallyd, made a very important point there. That death has to be more than an exp penalty, it has to require you to return to the area you died to recover what you lost. If there is no real loss (ie a need to return), then there is no real threat, no real meaning to dying.
I think this is integral to the issue here. I see posts in that forum about how death should have a sting, but then I see how it shouldn't "ruin a night of play". Thing is, if your death means nothing, then your play doesn't either (which is kind of the problem we are having with games today).
In order for you to really appreciate your successes, you need to have a real threat of failure. That is, and let me use a common term here used by Brad and EQ players in general, you need to have proper risk/reward. If your risk is not real, your reward means nothing. We have years of games where we simply spam a button and are rewarded top gear in a game, a participation trophy if you will. This is a waste of time, it is patting someone on the back for basically drawing breath in and out. It is pointless and why many of us who loved EQ find no meaning or purpose in today's games. We want what we do to mean something, and to achieve such a means, loss has to exist and it has to have meaning.
My point is, if we let our desire to have an evening of no "real" interruptions, for everything to essentially be within an "acceptable" tolerance of failure, what we end up with is no real loss, no real point in success. When I think back to EQ successes, I think of how much of a pain it was to lose, and how amazing it was to win over such. You can not achieve a filling victory if there is no chance of a bone shaking loss. They are tied to each other and without one, the other can not exist.
Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying that every failure should be the result of a 400 lb body builder cracking you in the head with a tree trunk for a bat. There should be tools to alleviate such, to reduce time and effort as well as speed up a given failure. Though this should not be a hand out from the game, it should be a tool that is sought through game play.
In EQ, such features were Necros that could summon a corpse or locate a lost one, classes that could Feign Death drag a corpse to safety or classes that could sneak and do such safely. The point is, make death hard, make it a pain and then make people rely on the community to achieve resolution to such. Make classes matter, make their tools matter, make people earn through participation the reduction of the sting that death provides.
This is what is needed for a truly socially dependent game and for success to truly matter in such.
Comments
If I am afraid of a monster whom I encounter (because I am afraid of the xp losing, naked corpse running ass whipping he might give me), then the monster becomes more real. He is a monster, not just a pixilated loot dispenser.
If the consequence of losing the fight is nominal, then I am just playing a game. There is no immersion in a virtual world.
I was fine with the death penalty in original EQ (even back when you could lose xp under level 5). So as far as I go, heavy penalties are fine. Been there, done that.
But I will say this. No matter how much people try to convince themselves that there can be a meaningful, profitable player base for Pantheon with a heavy death penalty, you are kidding yourselves. Back then we accepted it because we had to. There weren't many other mmos. We grew to like it. We missed it when it was gone. Nowadays people can choose from a great many games, and people who did not "grow up" under the old system won't accept it.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
There are limits even for myself. Release EQ I wasn't fond of the mechanics of CR and how it worked. That is, in release EQ, in order to CR, a player had to be able to loot your corpse (you did a /consent) and then they would loot all your items, then drag your corpse back to you.
That I would not want to see again, for obvious reasons.
That said, I agree, death should mean something as it creates a sense of realism in loss.
As for those who won't accept it. Keep in mind Pantheon isn't and does not need to appeal to the masses who would not accept such. As has been mentioned, do the math on subs at 15 bucks a month, read Brads blogs on how many people they need to be successful.
The thing about Pantheon is that they don't need to chase the WoW crowd. They don't need to serve the pockets of investors who want the next big boy band. There are investors who are happy to see a steady return of investment based on a a smaller model of expense and VR has already stated they are content with making a return that allows them to pay their employees, fund future content and return a value to their investors.
So while it will be a "boon" for them to become mainstream popular, it is not the focus and not the audience they are attempting to gather. This is important as it signifies the direction and purpose they seek in this games development.
My only input on death penalties is this:
I'm fine with having to retrieve my corpse. I'm fine with a large exp penalty pending a rez, etc.
What I am not fine with is this possibility of losing literally everything I've worked for because between having a job and trying organize enough people to get together and clear up to your corpse in plane of fear when it's been sitting there for 6 days and 15 hours and 42 minutes, you might not get everything to line up properly, etc...
In all seriousness though. One of the great things about POP was having the "graveyard". I like the idea of after a certain amount of time, preferably more than 48 hours real time, your corpse will pop up in a graveyard where you can loot it.
This doesn't remove the fear of dying and the positive aspects of having corpse retrieval. That being said, you should never ever be able to just lose everything you have in a PVE game (PVP, different story).
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I agree, having the chance of losing everything on a corpse is going too far. You don't need to threaten that to establish fear and consequence. I don't remember anyone ever thinking that was a good thing about EQ and the only reason it existed was a technical limitation anyway. The idea is to make people fear death, not punish them indefinitely.
I am fine with a CR being somewhat automated after a given amount of time such as you mentioned, as there is no way to rush it, and it can't be abused to any real practical effect (if someone wants to use it as a form of travel back to a city and is willing to wait 2 days to be able to get it, well... are they really abusing? ).
But it does tend to make non-raiders second class citizens. That is, if you get waxed as an adventurer you have to suck it up and do the naked run back. But as a raider you get a convenient graveyard. And all the arguments why the two are different are vulnerable to the reply "so you're saying that convenience is ok for raiders but for everyone else it's ez-mode?"
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Unless I am mistaken, I don't think Hrimnir was talking about a "raid only" grave yard. PoP graveyards were just areas placed in every zone which allowed an alternative to retrieving your corpse over a corpse run.
If you take the same concept as PoP with graveyards and then have it be a 2-3 day wait before the corpse spawns there (maybe with a no-rez exp return), this will still give the need for a corpse run, but not permanently punish someone as he was explaining with the loss of a corpse and all of your gear which was an issue in early EQ.
This way, there will always be a need to recover a corpse if you wish to play anytime soon, but there is means of avoiding being continually punished. As I said, a 2-3 day timer is hard to become an abuse mechanic. It doesn't support zerging, it doesn't allow gimmick fast travel, and it comes with full exp loss. Nobody will want to choose such, but it will be available as a last option.
By the way, where did you get this idea for raiders only?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
People should not see such as a practical option. It should make someone "cringe" to have to use the grave yard for recovery and it should be extremely inconvenient (ie have to wait 2-3 days). This way, when you are playing, doing a corpse recovery is the more preferable option of recovery. If you don't make it such, then people will won't want to do a CR.
The last thing I want to see is people go "Bah, we wiped... I am going to grab a bite to eat and be back in an hour to pick up our corpses" as this will become a common behavior, just as WoW raiding and its ease of recovery led to a lot of "Bah, just wipe and we will start again".
I feel since you are KO'd you should remain unconscious for say idk 2-3 minutes sounds right to me.Then upon waking up you should be in a state of weakness,therefor stats should take a serious hit for maybe 30 minutes.Now just as in real life,if you were to take continuous KO's the result should be more severe and again that is up to YOU so don't go blaming anyone else for how you play the game.
Bottom line is you either want a role playing experience or you don't ,if you never want your player to experience any feeling of realism,why are you playing a role playing game?
To prove how pathetic gamer's can get ,i remember people going totally ballistic if they died in FFXI,a death took 3-5 kills to recover the xp.,yeah VERY sad.Now i can see it not being so fun in say an Everquest game with these so called corpse runs but then in those designs they are trying to mimic actual death,so it should be treated as such and i have no problem with that design.
No matter what type of system you use be it to mimic a KO status or actual death,some players will always say it is not FUN,anything that is not handed to you on a golden platter is not going to be fun,as i said play something more suited to your needs if you don't want a role playing experience.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Having timed penalties placed on your character are interesting ones, but in implementation I find that they just cause people to sit and go AFK rather than deal with them. So while more realistic, they are less effective to the purpose of game play they are trying to achieve.
Now it might be interesting to take your idea and apply it to the game play as a recovery penalty that does not go away until the corpse is recovered. That might be an interesting approach making it more difficult in the process of recovering the corpse due to various negatives or random effects that cause problems (ie you occasionally trip and fall, get dizzy and pass out, go temporarily blurry or blind randomly, etc...).
That would certainly add more realism to the recovery process, but as I said, it can't be just basic time element as most would just wait it out and you also have to be careful about overly punishing the process of correcting a failure. That is, having to run back, fight in, and recover your corpse is a healthy penalty as it is, if you hamper that process past such, it may be too much of a negative, more risk than the reward is worth. So there does have to be a balance with some implementations. You can go too far past the mark.
There is nothing realistic, by the way (and I'm not saying you said this), about a corpse run. It's just a mechanic that EQ came up with that has become iconic of the EQ experience. "Oh that's that game where you had to run naked to find your body?" But then most games have death penalties that are not realistic either, because after all you are talking about the dead rising again and again.
EQ had an unconscious state, but it didn't come up very often because normally anything that could knock you out would also kill you. If not on that blow then on the next one.
I also remember there being a "knocked down" state in original SWG, which could be followed by a "death blow." That was ok except players found ways to grief with it; i.e., keeping someone knocked down and thus effectively their prisoner.
I think you are right that any game mechanic, where a player has to wait to recover, is likely a situation where the player will in real life go take a leak or microwave a burrito. So there is no realism that comes from it. Some see it as a penalty. I see it as an opportunity to go take a leak and then microwave a burrito.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
The way I see Corpse Run is like another feature of the game like Dungeon Runs and Raids, except that in this case as a final reward instead of looting the final Boss, you get to loot your corpse and your precious equipment.
I agree that losing everything would be way too punishing, I believe that the graveyard idea is good but I would extend the time from 2 days to 7 days.
You should feel the urge to retrieve your best gear off your corpse if you want to take part to the next Raid wearing your best gear, you should not be tempted to let the time expires before retrieving it.
Corpse Run should be seen as a social feature to create an alternative play style rather than just a punishment system.
7 days makes sense. It is kind of symbolic too as it was the time in early EQ you had to recover your corpse before it would disappear and you would lose everything. This way, it just reappears at the GY after that time.
As you said, the need to retrieve your corpse should be a necessity, not a convenience, otherwise the CR mechanic is pointless.
Personally, I like leaving everything on the corpse. This puts reliance on the classes who have the skills, spells and abilities to recover a corpse. One thing about the monk or rogue was they didn't need gear to do a recovery as FD and stealth were sufficient for a corpse drag. Also, if they have corpse summon spells (which I think will be likely), that is also a means for recovery. So it isn't that harsh for a group to recover naked if they have to. We did it so many times in EQ that honestly, I never even thought it to be "too harsh".
What I don't want to see is corpse recoveries become a mundane task or process with little need. That is, if people retain their equipped gear, then all the CR becomes is just a need to go pick up your baggage. Add in the mechanic of a corpse appearing at a GY, and well... we now see it become a system of "I will pick that up later". The GY is not just a last chance recovery it becomes a lost and found gimmick for the lazy and cleverly timed abusers.
If you lose all of your gear, everything on the corpse, then you must recover it or have an entire gear set back at a bank to continue adventuring. That makes that CR extremely important as with limited bank space, the time it takes to get back to a city, and the difficulty to obtain gear, most people won't have tons of back up gear (remember, EQ style games aren't like WoW where you change out gear every level and it drops like rain).
What this does is make death very meaningful and recovery a necessity as well as making the classes who have the tools for such quite useful. It also avoids people turning the GY into a convenience recovery feature. It is very important for the health and purpose of a given penalty system that it can not be circumvented without an equal detriment. I think having all your equipped gear on you and just having to go pick up your bags, turns the GY into a baggage pickup area, circumventing the full purpose of the CR death penalty mechanic.
XP loss should be balanced for time to regain it, not for percent of level. Highlevels should be able to take risks, too. Maybe make them spent 2 or 3 or even 5 times the time to regain xp than a lowlevel, but not more. Deleveling should also be much less likely, so it doesnt interfere with raids.
Successful corpse runs, or getting your corpse dragged to you, should give the same xp recovery as getting resurrected, which should be something like 90% of the previously lost xp. Getting to your corpse through special player abilities (like a necro corpse summon) should maybe gain 50% of lost xp back, since thats a quick shortcut. Summoning the corpse at an altar/temple/graveyard/whatever you want to call the place you end up if you die and release will cause damage to all damageable items on the corpse and will not gain any xp back.
Deleveling is only OK if the player doesnt lose abilities. That would later also massively simplify mentoring, if that ever gets implemented. If deleveling is solved that way, all xp loss is displayed as xp debt. It is twice as high as otherwise, but can also be regained twice as fast.
Releasing from your corpse sends you to the next altar.
Releasing from your corpse or accepting a rez while not yet released causes a 5 min debuff that lowers all your abilities and skills by 10%. You also receive a 5 minute invulnerability buff that will be canceled before its time the moment you move or otherwise act in any way. If you die within the 5 min again, you do not lose additional xp, but your debuff raises by another 10%. If you die 10 times, you cannot move or act at all for 5 minutes.
After half an hour, there is a 50% chance wildlife has consumed your body, causing damage to your gear and reducing the possible xp recovery by 50%.
After 24 hours, your corpse disappears. You can get your gear back, but it costs ingame money for every piece now, and the item will need maximum repair, too.
Definitely not.
Too harsh death penalties cause players to never take any risks.
Agreed. All resurrection spells should work the same, except healer classes get a battle rez that also works during a fight and may cost more mana, require more time to be cast and be on some extended recast timer, and restores the player on a higher hitpoint percentage (maybe 50% instead of 10% maximum HP), but the xp recovery should be exactly like the normal rez.
Death is death and doesnt depend upon the creature. If at all, I would give raid bosses 50% of the normal xp debt, given that the player is kind of expected to die on raid bosses a lot. But thats all.
Point 3 doesnt make sense to me at all either. So if you get your corpse dragged to you you get 95% back !?!?!?!? But if you get to your corpse you get only 20% back ?!?!!? That should be the same value and the same value as receiving a resurrection spell.
That sounds quite reasonable.
DEFINITELY NOT.
This is an item focused game. Meaning you work hard for your gear - hours, days, months, possibly even years.
Meaning max durability is always 100%, and durability 0% just means its currently not working and needs maximum repair.
If players don't fear death, then they won't treat it with respect. Players who will not take risks get exactly the reward they are willing to take risks for. The entire point of a risk/reward system is that process of weighting the effort and reward. For some skilled players, it will be worth it to take dangerous risks due to the rewards for such while less skilled players will take less risks to avoid the penalties.
An example is how people would approach a dungeon in EQ. Some would sit near the zone line areas because they didn't want to risk the painful penalty of recovery. Those people would also insist on having a cleric with a 97% rez spell and the perfectly balanced group because they did not want to risk a wipe and recovery.
Some took the risks with less than optimal classes and delved deeper into the dungeons. With that increased risk, so was there the reward. That is, while the other people who wanted to play it safe would sit near the zone line waiting for the perfect group and an easy camp, others were exploring, taking great risks, and reaping the occasional great reward in doing so.
If death is not painful, if there is not the chance that some will cower in the risks, then there is no reward for taking risks. In order for their to be great meaningn in a risk taken, there has to be those who are unwilling to take those risks.
He means you get 20% exp back from just looting your corpse, no rez and a cleric rezing you would give back 95%.
I prefer no exp back unless you get a rez and how much you get back depends on the rez type of spell and level cast on you. That is, if you loot your corpse without a rez, no exp.
There needs to be class interdependence and if you allow players to circumvent the need for another class, it defeats the point of that reliance and we are back to the direction of self sufficiency in game design, something that should be avoided in Pantheon unless the class is specifically designed for such boon. Class reliance should always trump convenience.
Bear in mind that there are dangers back then beyond those in the game itself. I played EQ on a dial up modem lol. DCs were commonplace and could easily result in death. So it's not just a matter of playing well or not.
I still favor tough death penalties, but over conservative play is a by-product sometimes.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
As to getting experience back for merely recovering your corpse, that doesn't make sense to me. There is no reason to get both equipment and experience back. The loss of experience becomes superficial if you get it back for recovering your body, because its already imperative to retrieve your gear to continue playing. If you want your experience back, you should need to be resurrected.
If I haven't retrieved my corpse after a day probably means I tried and failed. At which point, making me wait longer than 2 days to actually play again is entering the realm of grief. Maybe 3 days, but definitely not 7. If you are willing to wait 3 days, imo you deserve your body back without doing a CR. Besides that, you already ate an experience loss and probably had to pay a hefty repair bill on top of it.
I am not saying I have a major problem with it being 2 days, if you made it so that zero exp could be recovered if someone decided to wait to do a GY pickup, I think that would be a good balance. This way, there would still be a loss for choosing to use it as a convenience pickup.
The point is, I don't want to see GYs be a "oh, well, no worries, lets not bother..." sort of solution. If they are going to be used like they were in EQ PoP, I don't want them personally.
I am surprise you considered corpse run like something so punitive., for me it was an essential part of the Social interaction that made EQ great.
I am not saying I was happy to die, of course it was inconvenient, but I have fond memories on the frenetic drama surrounding the corpse recovery.
I never felt like "Oh shit I am gonna rage quit".
Beside you are just losing your equipment temporary, nothing stops you having a second set of gear ready in your bank, it might be not the best set, but that would no stop you keep playing the game until you get your best gear back.
I really don't see what the fuss is all about.
However, for those people who do find the process overwhelming for whatever reason (maybe they died in a very problematic place), I think if they're willing to basically lose the ability to play for a few days and accept the consequences, they should be able to get their corpse back. In that scenario, stretching it out for a week doesn't serve any real purpose.