Very Interesting Article on the Death Penalty in MMORPGs

Wizardry

@op
Reading your post above there i see you did break down the varied sections of design and also seem to understand what is really going on but you didn't really cover your own topic idea ,the death penalty.
I think MOST already know the varied ways the death penalty exists so the topic is basically a question of "what about it?"

I feel it is not handled well enough,i want to see more penalty that matches the reward,this shouldn't need to be a case of "everyone wins",everyone gets  a trophy,nobody really ever loses.

I think i also stated how i rather see it handled and that is to claim we are KO'd and NOT actually dying.That doesn't mean the idea of dying and being resurrected isn't a plausible idea,it is just that we belittle the idea so much it comes across as not really dying but a dainty slap on the wrist.


A simple analogy....If you fell off a roof at 20 feet,do you think you would get back up,walk away and go about your business as if nothing happened?of course not ,so why do games treat DEATH,a result FAR worse than an injury as nothing more than a scratch?

Ancient_Exile

cheyane said:

Ancient_Exile said:

cheyane said:

I especially loved it when Fancy charmed the Priest of Discord.

Sounds interesting.  Please elaborate.

You never played Everquest ? I never played on a PvP server but when I played everyone I knew who played Everquest knew who Fansy was.

Sorry Fansy not Fancy. It was a play on pansy the name.

Sullon Zek where there were mainly evil aligned players was synonymous to scum and villainy but there was one rule you cannot kill a level 5 player. He was a bard or troubadour as he called himself and he was level 5 but he was armed with Selo Accelerendo a level 5 song that speeds your movement. So he trained a whole bunch of Sand Giants on players but only those players he had talked to and although always polite he would annoy them enough or deem them evil and kill them. Of course after awhile they were on to him but he was level 5 so they could not kill him.

He also managed to charm the Priest of Discord in Riverdale and set him to attack all the players in Riverdale.

Mind you when you die in Everquest you can lose a lot of experience. Experience you might need days to grind back up so needless to say he pissed off a lot of players.

Cool.  Thanks for taking the time to explain. 

And, no, although I was quite old enough, I was not yet playing MMORPGs when EQ was released.  Nor for many years thereafter.

Ancient_Exile

Wizardry said:

@op
Reading your post above there i see you did break down the varied sections of design and also seem to understand what is really going on but you didn't really cover your own topic idea ,the death penalty.
I think MOST already know the varied ways the death penalty exists so the topic is basically a question of "what about it?"

I feel it is not handled well enough,i want to see more penalty that matches the reward,this shouldn't need to be a case of "everyone wins",everyone gets  a trophy,nobody really ever loses.

I think i also stated how i rather see it handled and that is to claim we are KO'd and NOT actually dying.That doesn't mean the idea of dying and being resurrected isn't a plausible idea,it is just that we belittle the idea so much it comes across as not really dying but a dainty slap on the wrist.


A simple analogy....If you fell off a roof at 20 feet,do you think you would get back up,walk away and go about your business as if nothing happened?of course not ,so why do games treat DEATH,a result FAR worse than an injury as nothing more than a scratch?

@Wizardry

The Death Penalty

This can be tied to Challenge, though it is perhaps more connected to the element of Risk vs Reward.  Am I risking a little time, a moderate amount of time, or a great amount of time if my character dies?  How valuable is the reward that my character will reap if I succeed and how much will my character (and perhaps I) suffer if I fail?

The severity of a Death Penalty (or lack thereof) can then create (or eliminate) the need to make different or better choices, employ different or better tactics, and formulate different or better strategies in a game.  Though there are some other factors involved.  Such as an individual player's skill, knowledge, and experience in relation to a particular game.  The longer I have played a game, the easier it should become for me to make better choices by which will lead to my character being rewarded (reward = positive consequence).  As opposed to making fooling choices or taking unnecessary risks which will bring negative consequences for my character.

Some players complain about other factors such as lag or disconnects which may cause a death.  And so they think they shouldn't be penalized for dying in this case.  However, such occurrences will hopefully be rare.  And if they do happen, well, sometimes things happen which are beyond our control in the real world as well.  And so, perhaps we can as players, can simply resign ourselves to the fact that such occurrences, while hopefully rare, are not impossible in the virtual world either.

Types of Death Penalties

Massive

Permadeath - This could work on certain kinds of Hardcore Servers w/ Specialized Rules.  Possibly the only MMORPGs could be turned into an Esport.  This could also work in a specialized sort of MMORPG, but I won't go into the details here.

Large

Limited # of Deaths/Lives - This is what many Tabletop/Pencil & Paper RPG systems use.  As in D&D, the number of times a character is able to be revived can be based on how much Constitution the character has.  Each time the character is raised, his/her Constitution decreased by one point.  Once his/her Constitution reaches zero, the character can no longer be revived.  Methods of revival include items (w/ auto-revive or the ability to cast a raise spell), resurrection prayers/spells/divine intervention, and reincarnation (possibly due to divine intervention).  If a priest is not ready at hand, the character's corpse may need to be dragged (by companions or a passing stranger) to a priest, temple, shrine, or other location where mystical or supernatural powers/properties are present which will allow the character to be raised. 

AD&D also had an optional rule called Death's Door or Death's Doorstep - https://www.tribality.com/2017/07/06/hit-points-dying-and-death/

Potentially Catastrophic Regression

XP Loss (w/ the Possibility of De-leveling)

Moderate

Regression - This is probably the type of Death Penalty that most players who want more Risk vs Reward in their MMORPGs would prefer. 

XP Debt

Stat Loss or Reduction

Skill Loss or Skill Power/Level Reduction

Equipment Loss or Damage (damage w/ the possibility of destruction) - Note:  Equipment Loss can be Catastrophic in the case of many MMORPGs in which Combat Power is greatly dependent on gear and in which powerful gear requires a considerable amount of effort in order to obtain and/or replace.  I, personally, am not in favor of MMORPGs which place such a huge emphasis on gear.

Small

Equipment Damage

Major Injuries - Injuries are only a small death penalty if the injuries are easily healed.  As in Neverwinter.

Minimal

Small amount of Debt

Minor Injuries

Practically Non-Existent

Respawning/Teleporting to Respawn point - Losing nothing but the time it takes to go back to what a player was doing upon death

cheyane

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

Ungood

cheyane said:

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

EQ was brutal, and, even the "Casual" player of EQ would be akin to what would be a Hard Core player of today.

A trip down memory lane! 

AlBQuirky

Ancient_Exile said:

cheyane said:

I especially loved it when Fancy charmed the Priest of Discord.

Sounds interesting.  Please elaborate.

The link I gave for Fansy the Bard that you said, "bookmarked."

Scorchien

Ungood said:

cheyane said:

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

EQ was brutal, and, even the "Casual" player of EQ would be akin to what would be a Hard Core player of today.

A trip down memory lane! 

That really is a matter of perspective , When i went from UO to EQ i felt EQ was a carebeart joke ..

   I get to know if i can beat a mob .. lol

   I get 24 hours to get my corpse ..  i got 7 minutes in UO...  lol

  What the mobs dont loot my corpse ... lol

  EQ really felt like a walk in the park right up to 60 which i think was the cap at the time ...

cheyane

Scorchien said:

Ungood said:

cheyane said:

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

EQ was brutal, and, even the "Casual" player of EQ would be akin to what would be a Hard Core player of today.

A trip down memory lane! 

That really is a matter of perspective , When i went from UO to EQ i felt EQ was a carebeart joke ..

   I get to know if i can beat a mob .. lol

   I get 24 hours to get my corpse ..  i got 7 minutes in UO...  lol

  What the mobs dont loot my corpse ... lol

  EQ really felt like a walk in the park right up to 60 which i think was the cap at the time ...

Was the gear you lost in UO difficult to replace ?

Ancient_Exile

AlBQuirky said:

Ancient_Exile said:

cheyane said:

I especially loved it when Fancy charmed the Priest of Discord.

Sounds interesting.  Please elaborate.

The link I gave for Fansy the Bard that you said, "bookmarked."

Yes, I forgot about it.

Scorchien

cheyane said:

Scorchien said:

Ungood said:

cheyane said:

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

EQ was brutal, and, even the "Casual" player of EQ would be akin to what would be a Hard Core player of today.

A trip down memory lane! 

That really is a matter of perspective , When i went from UO to EQ i felt EQ was a carebeart joke ..

   I get to know if i can beat a mob .. lol

   I get 24 hours to get my corpse ..  i got 7 minutes in UO...  lol

  What the mobs dont loot my corpse ... lol

  EQ really felt like a walk in the park right up to 60 which i think was the cap at the time ...

Was the gear you lost in UO difficult to replace ?

some of it ... lost some good stuff over the years ..

cheyane

Scorchien said:

cheyane said:

Scorchien said:

Ungood said:

cheyane said:

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

EQ was brutal, and, even the "Casual" player of EQ would be akin to what would be a Hard Core player of today.

A trip down memory lane! 

That really is a matter of perspective , When i went from UO to EQ i felt EQ was a carebeart joke ..

   I get to know if i can beat a mob .. lol

   I get 24 hours to get my corpse ..  i got 7 minutes in UO...  lol

  What the mobs dont loot my corpse ... lol

  EQ really felt like a walk in the park right up to 60 which i think was the cap at the time ...

Was the gear you lost in UO difficult to replace ?

some of it ... lost some good stuff over the years ..

The gear that I had in Everquest some of it anyway, took me months to camp. Or it took a raid of 50 over people to obtain. The jewellery I had took me months of saving to pay for and I definitely cannot raid without it. I could not imagine losing it. Most of my gear were obtained with DKP and I really was very, very afraid when things got bad and you could not recover a corpse.

If gear was easy to get I would not have minded dying. Lots of times it was the fear of losing the items on my corpse rather than the experience I lost that kept me trying to get my corpse. Of course in a raid there will be people rezzing and dragging your corpse so things were not bad but dungeon runs can turn bad if you're in deep. Then you have to get a Necromancer to use the small coffin to summon them to the entrance and it was costly. This was an option that was only available later to me. So lots of times I really dreaded dying.

Of course if the things you have can be replaced and were not so valuable like an epic from quests that cannot be repeated or other difficult items that take months to complete you can be cavalier about losing them.

It is also a question of what type of game one is playing. If a PvP game allows corpse looting then most people will not go about with their most precious or hard to get items. In all probability if there is a chance they might lose it they will probably bank it before venturing out.

PvP games often don't make gear all that valuable to encourage more PvP so that people will not hesitate to play. Also if they make getting gear replacement a horrible chore and grind that will defeat the overall PvP structure of the game. So of course the perspective of someone coming from a game like that would be quite different and you might not understand why it was terrifying for most of us that our corpse may decay in Fear over 24 hours real time.

I have seen people quit Everquest for good over the complete decay of a corpse that had all their good stuff. It is all about what one can afford to lose and the mentality of many players in Everquest that I played with was real terror of losing everything. That is why we actually did corpse retrieval and often as a guild effort even when some members had lost their corpse while joining another guild on Plane trips. It was impossible to get a corpse back alone in Planes.

Ungood

Scorchien said:

cheyane said:

Scorchien said:

That really is a matter of perspective , When i went from UO to EQ i felt EQ was a carebeart joke ..

   I get to know if i can beat a mob .. lol

   I get 24 hours to get my corpse ..  i got 7 minutes in UO...  lol

  What the mobs dont loot my corpse ... lol

  EQ really felt like a walk in the park right up to 60 which i think was the cap at the time ...

Was the gear you lost in UO difficult to replace ?

some of it ... lost some good stuff over the years ..

Can't speak for anyone else, but for me, gear farming in EQ was the most insane grind I ever faced. 

Ancient_Exile

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/challenge

"challenge noun

Definition of challenge (Entry 2 of 2)
1 : a stimulating task or problem"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/difficulty

"Definition of difficulty

1 : the quality or state of being hard to do, deal with, or understand : the quality or state of being difficult

// underestimated the difficulty of the task"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/difficulty

"1 something that is a cause for suffering or special effort especially in the attainment of a goal

// the many difficulties that he encountered on the road from poor orphan to head of a major corporation"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/difficult

"Definition of difficult

1 : hard to do, make, or carry out : arduous

// a difficult climb"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous

"Definition of arduous

1a : hard to accomplish or achieve : difficult

// an arduous task

// years of arduous training"

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/difficult?s=t

One of the synonyms of "difficult" is "challenging".

Scorchien

cheyane said:

Scorchien said:

cheyane said:

Scorchien said:

Ungood said:

cheyane said:

I had this experience in Everquest on P99 the private server. I was in the Northern Desert of Ro which is less travelled by the time I was playing. P99 is quite close to how the original Everquest was except for the highly generous players that often give away real nice gear to newbies but you can of course not take it and play it like how it was originally. Yes the gear does give you a leg up but not a whole lot because you will still die easily in the game. The game is brutal and can be very challenging.

So anyway I took on a spider and the spider poisoned me and my bandaging wasn't good enough and my life bar went purple I fell unconscious and then I may have made it if not for a wandering mummy.

So I had to go get my corpse since I am brought back naked. No weapons, armour nada. So I go back and that mummy is camping my corpse. I cannot do anything because it was scowling at me and it was a red con. So I start shouting for anyone in the area to come kill it so I might get my corpse. No one around so I wait. 30 minutes still no one around. So I go to Freeport which is the town close to this desert. I finally get someone to come and kill it. Took me 90 minutes.

Yeah it is hard fighting the creatures that poison because the poison will tick away and kill you very often and it is a very high risk. The game made you really scared of some mobs and be wary and play carefully. Many people will say that is no fun at all. However I always run and help people when I see them fighting and getting poisoned and the minute I read people asking for help to get rid of a mob as I grew stronger I rushed to help them. I feel it creates an atmosphere where people help one another and go out of their way like the guy who came from town to help me.

Also you have keep up your bandaging in the bind wound skill which has caps depending on your class. The mummy I spoke off can disease you (rabies) and that is another annoyance because it lasts for hours. You won't regenerate your mana or hitpoints and it will take forever. If you happen to get knocked out and are unconscious you will lie like that for hours unless someone comes and cures you of the disease. So classes were really needed as you can see why.

One can say this is a very harsh game and the reason WoW was so successful.

EQ was brutal, and, even the "Casual" player of EQ would be akin to what would be a Hard Core player of today.

A trip down memory lane! 

That really is a matter of perspective , When i went from UO to EQ i felt EQ was a carebeart joke ..

   I get to know if i can beat a mob .. lol

   I get 24 hours to get my corpse ..  i got 7 minutes in UO...  lol

  What the mobs dont loot my corpse ... lol

  EQ really felt like a walk in the park right up to 60 which i think was the cap at the time ...

Was the gear you lost in UO difficult to replace ?

some of it ... lost some good stuff over the years ..

The gear that I had in Everquest some of it anyway, took me months to camp. Or it took a raid of 50 over people to obtain. The jewellery I had took me months of saving to pay for and I definitely cannot raid without it. I could not imagine losing it. Most of my gear were obtained with DKP and I really was very, very afraid when things got bad and you could not recover a corpse.

If gear was easy to get I would not have minded dying. Lots of times it was the fear of losing the items on my corpse rather than the experience I lost that kept me trying to get my corpse. Of course in a raid there will be people rezzing and dragging your corpse so things were not bad but dungeon runs can turn bad if you're in deep. Then you have to get a Necromancer to use the small coffin to summon them to the entrance and it was costly. This was an option that was only available later to me. So lots of times I really dreaded dying.

Of course if the things you have can be replaced and were not so valuable like an epic from quests that cannot be repeated or other difficult items that take months to complete you can be cavalier about losing them.

It is also a question of what type of game one is playing. If a PvP game allows corpse looting then most people will not go about with their most precious or hard to get items. In all probability if there is a chance they might lose it they will probably bank it before venturing out.

PvP games often don't make gear all that valuable to encourage more PvP so that people will not hesitate to play. Also if they make getting gear replacement a horrible chore and grind that will defeat the overall PvP structure of the game. So of course the perspective of someone coming from a game like that would be quite different and you might not understand why it was terrifying for most of us that our corpse may decay in Fear over 24 hours real time.

I have seen people quit Everquest for good over the complete decay of a corpse that had all their good stuff. It is all about what one can afford to lose and the mentality of many players in Everquest that I played with was real terror of losing everything. That is why we actually did corpse retrieval and often as a guild effort even when some members had lost their corpse while joining another guild on Plane trips. It was impossible to get a corpse back alone in Planes.

Ive  lost like i said really god stuff over the years , UO loot system allows for one of a kind items , That no one else could have another of , truly Unique items .. EQ everyone has that same Epic sword , that if you die you could go get it again  .. by camping the same mobs ...

  Not so in UO

  I always use the stuff i get , my thought was why have it sitting in bank .. stupid imo

Ancient_Exile

Scorchien said:

Ive  lost like i said really god stuff over the years , UO loot system allows for one of a kind items , That no one else could have another of , truly Unique items .. EQ everyone has that same Epic sword , that if you die you could go get it again  .. by camping the same mobs ...

  Not so in UO

  I always use the stuff i get , my thought was why have it sitting in bank .. stupid imo

There should be Legendary Artifacts of which only one exists in a game world.  But only if the game allows for those Artifacts to be lost, looted, or otherwise stolen.  If someone loses it, it should stay where it was dropped.  Though a Mob or NPC should be able to take it if no PC finds it.  Some of these might be found in a dragon's hoard.  Or eventually end up in one.

Ancient_Exile

cheyane said:

The gear that I had in Everquest some of it anyway, took me months to camp. Or it took a raid of 50 over people to obtain. The jewellery I had took me months of saving to pay for and I definitely cannot raid without it. I could not imagine losing it. Most of my gear were obtained with DKP and I really was very, very afraid when things got bad and you could not recover a corpse.

If gear was easy to get I would not have minded dying. Lots of times it was the fear of losing the items on my corpse rather than the experience I lost that kept me trying to get my corpse. Of course in a raid there will be people rezzing and dragging your corpse so things were not bad but dungeon runs can turn bad if you're in deep. Then you have to get a Necromancer to use the small coffin to summon them to the entrance and it was costly. This was an option that was only available later to me. So lots of times I really dreaded dying.

Of course if the things you have can be replaced and were not so valuable like an epic from quests that cannot be repeated or other difficult items that take months to complete you can be cavalier about losing them.

It is also a question of what type of game one is playing. If a PvP game allows corpse looting then most people will not go about with their most precious or hard to get items. In all probability if there is a chance they might lose it they will probably bank it before venturing out.

PvP games often don't make gear all that valuable to encourage more PvP so that people will not hesitate to play. Also if they make getting gear replacement a horrible chore and grind that will defeat the overall PvP structure of the game. So of course the perspective of someone coming from a game like that would be quite different and you might not understand why it was terrifying for most of us that our corpse may decay in Fear over 24 hours real time.

I have seen people quit Everquest for good over the complete decay of a corpse that had all their good stuff. It is all about what one can afford to lose and the mentality of many players in Everquest that I played with was real terror of losing everything. That is why we actually did corpse retrieval and often as a guild effort even when some members had lost their corpse while joining another guild on Plane trips. It was impossible to get a corpse back alone in Planes.

That is a problem with games that are so gear-dependent for power.  Which to me is kinda silly.  Like saying King Arthur would be nothing without Excalibur.  Gandalf would be nothing if he didn't have Glamdring.  Luke would be nothing without a Light Saber.  Etc.

cheyane

I'm not saying this is true for every PvE player but part of the appeal is getting that item or spending a lot of time and effort obtaining that epic. Some of the camps like cleric is 7 real time days of camping the mob spawn for the required item to drop and other players seeing it will recognize that effort.

 It is part of the pride and acknowledgement. If all the items in UO are unique so how does one tell if it is special or does that not matter.

You have to buy into the idea of obtaining the gear for it to matter. That is how gear dependence works and the whole system depends on people grinding and obtaining them. 

Ungood

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

Ancient_Exile

cheyane said:

I'm not saying this is true for every PvE player but part of the appeal is getting that item or spending a lot of time and effort obtaining that epic. Some of the camps like cleric is 7 real time days of camping the mob spawn for the required item to drop and other players seeing it will recognize that effort.

 It is part of the pride and acknowledgement. If all the items in UO are unique so how does one tell if it is special or does that not matter.

You have to buy into the idea of obtaining the gear for it to matter. That is how gear dependence works and the whole system depends on people grinding and obtaining them. 

But in such gear-dependent systems, a character is only worth as much as what the character has equipped.

Quitting a game due to lost gear (or due to suffering some other catastrophic loss) could be equivalent to a man killing himself because he got divorced, lost all his money, got fired from a job, or his house burned down. 

A man might kill himself for the aforementioned reasons because his entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in those things.  And he feels it is way too difficult or practically impossible to ever replace that which he lost.  Hence, in his own mind, he has become worthless and no longer has a reason to go on living. 

A player might quit a game because he feels his character has become worthless after suffering a catastrophic loss.  And the player has no desire to put in the effort to regain what was lost.

The question is, should a game ever actually put a player in such a position?  Or should a player be made to feel that his character is still worth something no matter what that character may lose during the course of play?  And that a character has a good chance of regaining whatever was lost.  This, of course, may depend on how time consuming it is to regain what was lost and how much fun it is to go about rebuilding or regaining the lost things.  The lost things could be objects.  But the lost things might also be territory or any kind of wealth, power, or influence.  Anything that enables to the character to compete and cooperate in the game at an effective level.

So, taking all this into consideration, it is probably better if a character's attributes, skills, abilities, proficiencies, and talents are of the greatest importance in an MMORPG.

Ancient_Exile

Ungood said:

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

But he would still have been a Knight and a great warrior. 

Ungood

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

But he would still have been a Knight and a great warrior. 

Why would he have been either of those things?

Ancient_Exile

Ungood said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

But he would still have been a Knight and a great warrior. 

Why would he have been either of those things?

I didn't say that he never had Excalibur.  I mean if he lost Excalibur later.

Ungood

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

But he would still have been a Knight and a great warrior. 

Why would he have been either of those things?

I didn't say that he never had Excalibur.  I mean if he lost Excalibur later.

I wager he would have then been dethroned like his father, as he was never known for being a great fighter, and spent almost all his life hiding behind the prestige of his sword and the loyalty of his knights.

Of course that depends on which legends/stories you opt to read.

Ancient_Exile

Ungood said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

But he would still have been a Knight and a great warrior. 

Why would he have been either of those things?

I didn't say that he never had Excalibur.  I mean if he lost Excalibur later.

I wager he would have then been dethroned like his father, as he was never known for being a great fighter, and spent almost all his life hiding behind the prestige of his sword and the loyalty of his knights.

Of course that depends on which legends/stories you opt to read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur#Geoffrey_of_Monmouth

Ungood

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Ungood said:

Just for the record.. without Excalibur, Arthur would not have been King.

But he would still have been a Knight and a great warrior. 

Why would he have been either of those things?

I didn't say that he never had Excalibur.  I mean if he lost Excalibur later.

I wager he would have then been dethroned like his father, as he was never known for being a great fighter, and spent almost all his life hiding behind the prestige of his sword and the loyalty of his knights.

Of course that depends on which legends/stories you opt to read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur

Exactly as I said.. it depends on which legends or fables one opts to read or follow.