Very Interesting Article on the Death Penalty in MMORPGs

KnightFalz

immodium said:

I'm guessing everything is a waste of time, its whether you're finding it fun or not.

Ultimately.

AAAMEOW

KnightFalz said:

Ancient_Exile said:

tzervo said:

KnightFalz said:

tzervo said:

It is not about the encounter's difficulty, it is about making interesting decisions with their corresponding consequences and/or rewards.

If the loss mechanics are not paired with interesting decisions, then they are a mere annoyance and the design is bad.

Decisions relating to how to, or even whether to, regain what I already had don't sound all that interesting to me. For me it is simply an annoyance that wastes time that could otherwise be spent productively.

This is a rationalization.

A quote from a blog that put it succinctly in words with an example:

So the player has a choice to grind X hours to get emblems or to get lucky with a low chance drop to get the upgrade. Or, he can engage in a risky mission that can give him the same upgrade in a single hour if he succeeds but Y hours of grind to get back where he is if he loses.

The time cost of the grinding choice is obviously X hours. For the risky choice, the time cost is: 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) where C is the chance of success. The “1” part is the one hour for the risky mission. The (X+Y) part comes from the assumption that after he failed, he just gives up and grinds. It’s easier to calculate with this than with repeated attempts and the result is the same. The player wants to minimize time to reward, so chooses the shorter one. The risky is shorter if X > 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) which can be solved into C > (1+Y)/(X+Y). Assuming the death penalty is 10 hours and you need to grind 100 hours, you should take the risk if your chance is bigger than 11/110 = 10%.
It’s a straightforward formula. Where is the “interesting decision”? It comes from the fact that your chance cannot be measured, it can only be approximated and it lies on the elusive self-consciousness. The question comes down to “how good I am/the team is in this game”? This is always an interesting thing to think about.

https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/the-interesting-decision-around-death-penalty/

As far as I am concerned, the rest of the blog post also makes some interesting points, even though they sting.

In accordance with my vow, I have read the article which you graciously chose to share with the rest of the class.  I found it to be interesting, intriguing, enlightening, and entertaining all wrapped up and rolled into one.

"...Why did the death penalty diminished, along with the whole MMO scene? Because it’s hard to deny that the MMOs are in horrible shape. The most successful one, WoW is stagnating/losing players for years and there are no serious contenders with even 1/10 of its playerbase.

This is because they made the wrong choice of including entitled punks. Not casuals, not even socials. Casuals, like a middle aged mum who plays while the kids are asleep is aware of her limited skills. She is fine with the grinding. Actually, she likes the easy and interruptible entertainment of being in a magical world. The social is fine being around, being involved with the group instead of being at the tip of the spear. This is crucial: death penalty isn’t a problem to low-skill players as long as they are self-aware and have a grindy alternative path of progression...

...Please realize the catch: by removing death penalty, neither the skilled, nor the casual/social players got help. The entitled punks did, the group that you really don’t want in any group game. By removing death penalty, the devs invited the most toxic people: those who look down on fellow players based on oversized ego and blame and curse them for their own frequent failures..."

I think it's simpler than that. The less harsh death penalties became the less people complained about them, so they kept easing them more over time as new game came to the market to the point they are largely trivial in most MMORPGs.

Death penalties are a problem for "low-skill" players as they are inhibit what that player is inclined to do. Without they can attempt more and accordingly learn more, leading to an experience less laced with drudgery.

It's funny thinking about it.  I was playing legend of aria and when you die you loss all your gear and inventory.  But since gear is easily replaceable, you don't really loss much of anything.  

Basically what I am saying is usually what I loss isn't much different from a long corpse run in a generic themepark game.  

People have low tolerance level.  People can tolerate 30 minutes of progress loss.  But if people are lossing tens/hundreds of hours of progress, they are very likely to quit.    

KnightFalz

tzervo said:

KnightFalz said:

I think it's simpler than that. The less harsh death penalties became the less people complained about them, so they kept easing them more over time as new game came to the market to the point they are largely trivial in most MMORPGs.

Death penalties are a problem for "low-skill" players as they are inhibit what that player is inclined to do. Without they can attempt more and accordingly learn more, leading to an experience less laced with drudgery.

Devs do respond to data. Same as with login rewards. No matter how some players decried them as zero-effort rewards, numbers showed that they increased retention and they are now everywhere.

The problem is not the lower-skilled players who are no more inhibited by fear, do their homework and go tackle the harder content since they are now able to train on it freely. And the blog post does miss this aspect, and including those players is one of the pros of removing the death penalties. But alongside them you get:

- The guy that comes in registering as tank while he is a DPS
- The guy that keeps complaining that they should make the encounters even easier because they do not want to spend time training on the boss
- The guy that comes in a team, messes up and starts flaming the healer, the tank, the "noobs"

These people have a much harder time surviving in a game with death penalties, they get filtered out.

It's a trade-off.

Login rewards are not zero effort. The cost of time and effort is minimal, but not zero. Whether the related rewards are worth that minimal cost depends on the game.

That such improves player retention is no surprise. After all, once there you've already committed your presence. Why not a bit of your time as well.

It's like impulse purchases in the checkout line. You've already committed your presence. What's a little coin in addition.

Death penalties will likely weed out the stupid, and may be even the annoying. I rather doubt the latter. I am more inclined to believe they will get better and then even more annoying. But that comes at a cost.

Some that are neither stupid or annoying will also be lost. The harsher the death penalty the larger that number will be. I may be wrong, but I think a sizable majority of MMORPG players prefer lighter death penalties to heavy.

So yes, it is a trade-off. The harsher the death penalty the less a game will attract, and accordingly the more niche it will be. That may not be a bad approach if the game caters well to that niche, but it is riskier and has less profit potential than a game that casts a wide net for players instead.

Kyleran

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

A death penalty won't make the content harder or easier but it will make progress "harder" and that's what people are speaking to.

Nailed it. As far as I'm concerned at their core RPGs and MMORPGs are all about progression as their game play is rarely ever challenging.

What makes one game "hard" compared to another is how difficult is it to progess in them.

Whether it be through slower grinds, longer travel times, lost or broken gear, inventory management, group only content, lack of maps / compasses, darkness, or regressive death penalties all serve to impede progress to one degree or another.

The reason many gamers feel modern MMORPGs are much easier or watered down than the "old school" ones is they've largely removed or greatly reduced some, if not all of the above elements.

Many of those clamoring for more challenging MMORPGs are almost always asking for a return of most of the same mechanics but in varying degrees depending on their tastes.

True, there is are players looking for increased difficulty in the actual game play itself, more action oriented combat, better AI, etc. but still without adding back in more of the mechanics meant to retard progression I think they would still find the experience not much of a challenge.

Humans in general actually enjoy struggling and feel a great sense of accomplishment when they overcome a challenge, whether in sports, work, games, financially or just life itself... and of course, bragging about it to others. (HA! I outlived all you  bastards)

Anyone who claims they don't enjoy such, all I can say is, "Welcome back Lord, it is good to see you've returned, can you show me that water walking trick?"

Kyleran

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

It's an unrelated analogy, akin to being in the middle of a dungeon when a serious bug prevents you from completing the run forcing you to wait for the devs to fix it before continuing. 

Both are examples of unintended activities interfering with your progression, which death penalties are almost always willfully implemented by the developers to slow down or even reverse progression for "reasons", be it more challenge, to make you play longer or pay more, etc.

You don't have to enjoy death penalties, in fact you aren't supposed to, their purpose to to force you to avoid them by whatever means given to you.

Which I realize of course, sometimes the way players avoid them is to quit or never start playing the game.

AlBQuirky

Amathe said:

The naked corpse run is kind of a myth. If you soulbound next to a bank, and stored back up gear there, you never had to run back naked. You just would need to make the run with your second best stuff. Better to catch a rez of course, but sometimes those aren't available.

Yet you had to keep enough inventory space open to actually pick up all your old gear. I liked playing Monks in EQ because they had very little "gear" that they needed. If you died running back from a dungeon, you may be fully loaded

I did many times get soulbound near a bank for just your reasons, though

AlBQuirky

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

Nope. Just shorter and more concentrated dungeon run experience without having it interrupted by the death penalty mini games. Longer and interrupted by other things does not mean harder to me.

"...to me..." That's really the crux of the discussion, isn't ?

AlBQuirky

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

But your analogy is flawed.  Because I have no power over whether the pencil breaks or not in that scenario.

If you're using a pencil it might brake. If you engage in combat you might die.

If you think your pencil is going to brake, replace it. If you think your character will die, flee.

Beside, whether you have power over the pencil braking is irrelevant to the discussion of death penalties as that's combat mechanics.

The purpose of the analogy was to explain how I find death penalties in MMO's. Something that doesn't add any depth to the game play.

Most death penalties in old MMOS add nothing more than a time sink as they were sub only and they wanted you to keep paying for as long as possible.

It's not a coincidence death penalties died when mandatory subs did.

When I play a game (and yes, these are games to me. Not a virtual life in a virtual world.) and I'm finding the content fun, engaging and challenging, what I don't want to happen when I die is to take me away from that experience for up to 30 minutes just to get back to it.

I would like to get back to it pretty mush ASAP so I can try different tactics/strategies.

So what isn't a time sink in an MMORPG?  I asked that question of another person a little while ago.  He told me something like, "anything that helped his character to progress wasn't a time sink." 

So, that basically means that anything not directly related to the acquisition of wealth and power, principally power (as wealth is a form of power), is a time sink.  And I suppose that's understandable.  Because, in the end, all that matters in 90%+ of MMORPGs is personal power.  Thus most players begin to value power above all else in MMORPGs, subconsciously or no. 

But the sad thing is, there isn't much that players can do with all the wealth and power their characters acquire besides the same things they did to acquire that wealth and power in the first place.  This is made even more blatantly obvious now that getting to max level is so relatively fast and easy in comparison to the older MMORPGs.

I'm guessing everything is a waste of time, its whether you're finding it fun or not.

The problem with death mechanics they don't engage you into thinking why you died or how you could prevent it from happening.

I don't know... I went over the fight 3, 4 maybe 30 times on my way to my corps, finding help if needed, and getting geared back up

Sovrath

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

To put it another way,

In Vanguard I was making my way into a cave that was filled with Giant Spiders.

If I didn't care about whether I lived or died, if there was no "downside" to dying, I would have blithely just walked in, made my way through and then hit "return" when I died again.

Because there was a downside, because I did have to retrieve my headstone if I died, everything was carefully done, always looking around the corners, going slowly, patiently waiting for the spiders ahead to move away. It was my own little "shelob's lair."

If there was no downside to "dying" then the scene in the Lord of the Rings in Shelob's lair would have been a funnier, slap my knee laugh  riot.

KnightFalz

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

Some find the risk of consequence to be engaging with the absence the opposite. Such is hardly unheard of in real life. In an artificial environment where the stakes are comparatively negligible regardless of harshness it is no surprise that even more find it to be compelling. It is to be expected more so than a matter of interest.

cheyane

You don't have a one size fits all mechanic for 'risk and consequence'. What you need is one that works to keep a majority of the players engaged. That's a fine balance and many players may be completely turned off by the mechanic but if you find you have enough players still willing to stay and play and the goal of the game is to create something tangible and effective in building a community then a game should employ it in my opinion.

Iselin

tzervo said:

Kyleran said:

What makes one game "hard" compared to another is how difficult is it to progess in them.

Whether it be through slower grinds, longer travel times, lost or broken gear, inventory management, group only content, lack of maps / compasses, darkness, or regressive death penalties all serve to impede progress to one degree or another.

It is more nuanced than that. Going back to this scenario of either getting the same progress (if that's the word we are using now) grinding for X hours or for 1 hour doing challenging content but with C chance of success based on the player's skill:

The risky is shorter if X > 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) which can be solved into C > (1+Y)/(X+Y). Assuming the death penalty is 10 hours and you need to grind 100 hours, you should take the risk if your chance is bigger than 11/110 = 10%.
It’s a straightforward formula. Where is the “interesting decision”? It comes from the fact that your chance cannot be measured, it can only be approximated and it lies on the elusive self-consciousness. The question comes down to “how good I am/the team is in this game”? This is always an interesting thing to think about.

Paired with options that take into account risk vs reward decisions, death penalties force the player to self-evaluate their skills more honestly. If they don't, they force loss on themselves and progress more slowly.

You could possibly argue that the same scenario could play out similarly in a no-loss-on-death game. Easy content: X hours, hard content: 1 hour, chance C to succeed based on player skill, Y=0.

There is no loss discouraging the player to try many times. Remove the assumption that they give up if they fail after the first attempt, assume they keep trying until they eventually succeed. Then the cost to progress is: 1/C and you compare it to X. If 1/C < X, then they should go for the challenging content.

So going back to what @Iselin argued, you could say that there is no extra choice, it all comes down to time spent. You could think of the choice being the same both for a loss-on-death and a no-loss-on-death game: how to progress faster.

But fear of loss forces the player to make this decision: do I keep doing the challenging content and risk more loss? Or do I give up and go for the grind. This question is less urgent in no-loss games. Y does not exist to act as an amplification factor. Loss on death forces Greedy Goblin's assumption of:

The (X+Y) part comes from the assumption that after he failed, he just gives up and grinds.

which does not exist in no-death-penalty games.

What it really boils down to is how an individual wants to spend his/her gaming time. I absolutely detest grinding easy content to level faster and anything that steers me in that direction is shit design in my book. Some love that though and are always on the lookout for the fastest and most efficient way to grind.

"Or do I give up and go for the grind."

And that is one of many things wrong with the death penalty. It encourages the easy grinding path to leveling by beating you over the head when you fail at the challenging content you actually want to do.

Does it slow down leveling and is that a good thing?

Yes it slows it down just like giving the players low amounts of XP per mob kill or quest would. If a developer wants to slow you down they have hundreds of ways to do it. Death penalty is just one of those.

Slowing you down by whatever means is only a good thing if the game lets you go too fast to begin with and as usual, there really isn't much worthwhile to do in the "end game." But there's a happy medium in game design between allowing you to chew up content too fast and making you go too slow. Trying your best to balance that is what good game design is all about... individual fetishes notwithstanding

Iselin

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

Some find the risk of consequence to be engaging with the absence the opposite. Such is hardly unheard of in real life. In an artificial environment where the stakes are comparatively negligible regardless of harshness it is no surprise that even more find it to be compelling. It is to be expected more so than a matter of interest.

Yeah that's a bit too close to the concept of being a good citizen because you'll go to jail if you're not.  I have way more respect for people who are good because they understand that it's the best path.

But you're right, both types exist.

Iselin

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

To put it another way,

In Vanguard I was making my way into a cave that was filled with Giant Spiders.

If I didn't care about whether I lived or died, if there was no "downside" to dying, I would have blithely just walked in, made my way through and then hit "return" when I died again.

Because there was a downside, because I did have to retrieve my headstone if I died, everything was carefully done, always looking around the corners, going slowly, patiently waiting for the spiders ahead to move away. It was my own little "shelob's lair."

If there was no downside to "dying" then the scene in the Lord of the Rings in Shelob's lair would have been a funnier, slap my knee laugh  riot.

The mere fact that I already died once there would make me more careful the next time - death penalty or no death penalty.

Sovrath

Iselin said:

The mere fact that I already died once there would make me more careful the next time - death penalty or no death penalty.

Sure, but there is a type of "fun" feeling a sense of danger with ramifications.

This goes back to my original post where I say that different people respond to death penaltites differently.

It's sort of like horror movies. Some people love them and love "being scared." Other people "like them" but aren't really scared unless the movie really "earns it." Still others will watch placidly, feel nothing and turn the channel. 

This is also like those pvp players who want to feel "the adrenaline" and can't understand why others don't appreciate the same feeling. Some people love to get their blood pumping in different ways or not at all.

Iselin

tzervo said:

Player A tries to find the most efficient way to get gold in a game. He finds out that way "Bla" of grinding is better. His satisfaction does not come out of the grinding act itself, but:

1) out of figuring out the strategy: that this method is better
2) out of the result. This is his reward and his confirmation that the effort he put into coming up with this strategy had a good result.

Those are the alien meta gamers who have invaded my MMOs. Them and the ones who are ecstatic when a double XP event is announced

KnightFalz

tzervo said:

KnightFalz said:

tzervo said:
...
But alongside them you get:

- The guy that comes in registering as tank while he is a DPS
- The guy that keeps complaining that they should make the encounters even easier because they do not want to spend time training on the boss
- The guy that comes in a team, messes up and starts flaming the healer, the tank, the "noobs"

These people have a much harder time surviving in a game with death penalties, they get filtered out.
...

...
Death penalties will likely weed out the stupid, and may be even the annoying. I rather doubt the latter. I am more inclined to believe they will get better and then even more annoying. But that comes at a cost.
...

What are you basing this on?

The way I see it:

- MrCrappyPerson joins a group. He messes up and they fail. He flames the rest of the team either to hide his incompetence or because he does not realize it.

- They all fail together eventually and get a hit on death due to the loss mechanic.

- Next group MrCrappyPerson joins he does the same. He now suffers twice the loss. The rest of the team now get a competent person in his place. They succeed. They only lost once.

- Repeat and you have MrCrappyPerson either being left behind or leaving in frustration. The rest of the team progress just fine.

Essentially you have the death loss actingas a filter similarly to ranking in PVP ladders.

I am basing it on my expectations just as you are in your scenario. Neither of us is speaking from an incontestably solid foundation on this matter.

KnightFalz

Iselin said:

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

Some find the risk of consequence to be engaging with the absence the opposite. Such is hardly unheard of in real life. In an artificial environment where the stakes are comparatively negligible regardless of harshness it is no surprise that even more find it to be compelling. It is to be expected more so than a matter of interest.

Yeah that's a bit too close to the concept of being a good citizen because you'll go to jail if you're not.  I have way more respect for people who are good because they understand that it's the best path.

But you're right, both types exist.

What does finding engagement in the risk of consequence have to do with morality? Nothing about it depends on the nature of the action that leads to that risk.

It can range from virtuous to vile, so long as there is risk of consequence.

I have no idea how what I wrote would suggest an aspect of morality.

Iselin

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

Some find the risk of consequence to be engaging with the absence the opposite. Such is hardly unheard of in real life. In an artificial environment where the stakes are comparatively negligible regardless of harshness it is no surprise that even more find it to be compelling. It is to be expected more so than a matter of interest.

Yeah that's a bit too close to the concept of being a good citizen because you'll go to jail if you're not.  I have way more respect for people who are good because they understand that it's the best path.

But you're right, both types exist.

What does finding engagement in the risk of consequence have to do with morality? Nothing about it depends on the nature of the action that leads to that risk.

It can range from virtuous to vile, so long as there is risk of consequence.

I have no idea how what I wrote would suggest an aspect of morality.

Really? You behave a certain way in a game for fear of negative consequences and you don't see a parallel with behaving IRL for fear of punishment? Seems pretty obvious to me especially when so many in this thread have equated lack of death penalty with playing like a careless goofball.

Sovrath

Iselin said:

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

Some find the risk of consequence to be engaging with the absence the opposite. Such is hardly unheard of in real life. In an artificial environment where the stakes are comparatively negligible regardless of harshness it is no surprise that even more find it to be compelling. It is to be expected more so than a matter of interest.

Yeah that's a bit too close to the concept of being a good citizen because you'll go to jail if you're not.  I have way more respect for people who are good because they understand that it's the best path.

But you're right, both types exist.

What does finding engagement in the risk of consequence have to do with morality? Nothing about it depends on the nature of the action that leads to that risk.

It can range from virtuous to vile, so long as there is risk of consequence.

I have no idea how what I wrote would suggest an aspect of morality.

Really? You behave a certain way in a game for fear of negative consequences and you don't see a parallel with behaving IRL for fear of punishment? Seems pretty obvious to me especially when so many in this thread have equated lack of death penalty with playing like a careless goofball.

Actually "no." You've read something into it that's not there.

This isn't a slap on the hand because "you're" bad deal.

It's a "do I or don't I" scenario.

Like when I play Darkest Dungeon and I only have a few rooms left but I went in without a healer because my healers were not the appropriate level or had to "go to hospital" and yet I'm "almost done and might get more money because I'm desperate for more money."

Do I continue and risk losing the everything I've earned and possibly risk losing the party or do I go and see if I can finish the map, get more treasure and of course get the financial reward for "investigating 90% of rooms."

It's not the morality thing. 

KnightFalz

Iselin said:

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

KnightFalz said:

Iselin said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sounds like the concept of easy with no death penalty, easy with death penalty, hard with no death penalty and hard with death penalty is a much more difficult concept to understand than I ever imagined

That's because you aren't speaking about "the same thing."

People who talk about difficulty often do so by how much skill something requires.

I've used this example before but "climbing mount Washington" isn't difficult. You put one foot in front of the other. Not hard.

But not everyone is in shape to do it. What does that mean then? It means there is another axis to that difficulty. Call it endurance, perseverance, tenacity or "pick your poison" adding road blocks to any endeavor creates a "difficulty" but a difficulty that is not measured in skill.

So unless you and others are are on board and talking apples to apples of course you are going to think it a difficult concept to imagine.

I'll add as an example, the difficulty setting in Morrowind. Does it make the opponents fight better, better AI, use more and varying skills?

No, it makes it so they do more damage and you do less damage. Oh sure, it makes it more difficult but it doesn't affect "skill."

Encounters in a game without difficulty settings have their own intrinsic value on a difficulty scale. What you're talking about is extraneous factors that can make completing the encounter a bigger chore and there is no end to what could affect that.

RPG fighting games have easy encounters or hard encounters. You might consider how convenient or inconvenient it is to actually arrive at the encounter and how many things can make you go back to the beginning and travel there all over again a difficulty axis - I don't. It's a convenience or inconvenience axis, Something separate.

Expanding the meaning of what is hard or what is easy by lumping in every conceivable extraneous thing into it just dilutes the meaning. And it is also infinite and can go into what HW you use, whether you have visual or hearing impediments, and anything else you can think of.


PS: Mountaineers do rank mountains on a difficulty scale by assuming all other extraneous factors are equal

So what you are basically doing is defining difficulty on your terms and won't accept anything else.

Which goes back to exactly what I just said. Unless you are sure you are talking about the "exact same thing" you will then encounter difficulty in the conversation.

to that point, there were people who would say that leveling in Lineage 2 was "difficult." Of course it was time consuming and required endurance as well as tenacity. That wasn't an extraneous component. That was a part of of the game play.

No. What I'm doing is trying to stomp down the fallacy that death penalty = hard and no death penalty = easy.

Have you actually read how many times in this thread people have jumped to that conclusion?

Yes, a game as whole can be thought of as easy or hard but so can be pieces of it. I've very deliberately talked about the difficulty of specific encounters, i.e. fights, in games being unrelated to death penalties.

Just how the SAC mountaneering scale gives Mount Washington a specific rating without concerning itself with your physical fitness or lack thereof. They even give it different ratings for different climbs and trails.

So the fact that I could die several times in a dungeon in certain MMORPGs without having to A) Replace lost gear or B ) Repair damaged gear or C) Recover lost XP/Pay XP debt doesn't make that game easier?

When I'm doing a crossword and my pencil snaps, does hunting down a pencil sharpener add anything to the crossword, or make it harder?

And that's the issue I have with death penalties in MMO's. It only adds tedium.

Yes, it's tedious to care about whether our characters live or die.

You need the threat of punishment to care? Interesting.

Some find the risk of consequence to be engaging with the absence the opposite. Such is hardly unheard of in real life. In an artificial environment where the stakes are comparatively negligible regardless of harshness it is no surprise that even more find it to be compelling. It is to be expected more so than a matter of interest.

Yeah that's a bit too close to the concept of being a good citizen because you'll go to jail if you're not.  I have way more respect for people who are good because they understand that it's the best path.

But you're right, both types exist.

What does finding engagement in the risk of consequence have to do with morality? Nothing about it depends on the nature of the action that leads to that risk.

It can range from virtuous to vile, so long as there is risk of consequence.

I have no idea how what I wrote would suggest an aspect of morality.

Really? You behave a certain way in a game for fear of negative consequences and you don't see a parallel with behaving IRL for fear of punishment? Seems pretty obvious to me especially when so many in this thread have equated lack of death penalty with playing like a careless goofball.

Not particularly. Risk can be taken in a plethora of activities that don't invoke punishment. It has no inherent connection to morality whatsoever.

People do all kinds of things in a game that has a death penalty that would be seen as absurdly dangerous in real life. The lack of a death penalty simply removes the constraint of doing the slightly more absurd.

Iselin

Sovrath said:

Really? You behave a certain way in a game for fear of negative consequences and you don't see a parallel with behaving IRL for fear of punishment? Seems pretty obvious to me especially when so many in this thread have equated lack of death penalty with playing like a careless goofball.

Actually "no." You've read something into it that's not there.

This isn't a slap on the hand because "you're" bad deal.

It's a "do I or don't I" scenario.

Like when I play Darkest Dungeon and I only have a few rooms left but I went in without a healer because my healers were not the appropriate level or had to "go to hospital" and yet I'm "almost done and might get more money because I'm desperate for more money."

Do I continue and risk losing the everything I've earned and possibly risk losing the party or do I go and see if I can finish the map, get more treasure and of course get the financial reward for "investigating 90% of rooms."

It's not the morality thing. 

Of course it's not a morality thing. Parallels are similar not equal.

If I didn't care about whether I lived or died, if there was no "downside" to dying, I would have blithely just walked in, made my way through and then hit "return" when I died again.

Because there was a downside, because I did have to retrieve my headstone if I died, everything was carefully done, always looking around the corners, going slowly, patiently waiting for the spiders ahead to move away. It was my own little "shelob's lair."

That sure sounds to me like you're saying your motivation for being careful is avoidance of negative consequences.

And that's exactly the same process that might cause some to not rob that liquor store or to be extra careful when they do for fear of getting caught and going to jail. Caught and jail being the negative consequences.

Others just don;t rob liquor stores. Period.

You're also saying that it's black and white. If there are no consequences the only option you see is "blithely" walking in. How about not? Doesn't the possibility of being careful regardless exist? I know you're intelligent enough to know that it does. Wouldn't further your argument to admit it though

KnightFalz

Sovrath said:

Like when I play Darkest Dungeon and I only have a few rooms left but I went in without a healer because my healers were not the appropriate level or had to "go to hospital" and yet I'm "almost done and might get more money because I'm desperate for more money."

Do I continue and risk losing the everything I've earned and possibly risk losing the party or do I go and see if I can finish the map, get more treasure and of course get the financial reward for "investigating 90% of rooms."

It's not the morality thing. 

Weighing whether you should risk human life for material gain might be seen as a wee bit immoral. Oh well, it is only imaginary immorality.

ChildoftheShadows

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Really? You behave a certain way in a game for fear of negative consequences and you don't see a parallel with behaving IRL for fear of punishment? Seems pretty obvious to me especially when so many in this thread have equated lack of death penalty with playing like a careless goofball.

Actually "no." You've read something into it that's not there.

This isn't a slap on the hand because "you're" bad deal.

It's a "do I or don't I" scenario.

Like when I play Darkest Dungeon and I only have a few rooms left but I went in without a healer because my healers were not the appropriate level or had to "go to hospital" and yet I'm "almost done and might get more money because I'm desperate for more money."

Do I continue and risk losing the everything I've earned and possibly risk losing the party or do I go and see if I can finish the map, get more treasure and of course get the financial reward for "investigating 90% of rooms."

It's not the morality thing. 

Of course it's not a morality thing. Parallels are similar not equal.

If I didn't care about whether I lived or died, if there was no "downside" to dying, I would have blithely just walked in, made my way through and then hit "return" when I died again.

Because there was a downside, because I did have to retrieve my headstone if I died, everything was carefully done, always looking around the corners, going slowly, patiently waiting for the spiders ahead to move away. It was my own little "shelob's lair."

That sure sounds to me like you're saying your motivation for being careful is avoidance of negative consequences.

And that's exactly the same process that might cause some to not rob that liquor store or to be extra careful when they do for fear of getting caught and going to jail. Caught and jail being the negative consequences.

Others just don;t rob liquor stores. Period.

You're also saying that it's black and white. If there are no consequences the only option you see is "blithely" walking in. How about not? Doesn't the possibility of being careful regardless exist? I know you're intelligent enough to know that it does. Wouldn't further your argument to admit it though

I would have to say it's probably rather rare that people are careful if there are no consequences. I would argue people who are careful in a scenario where there are no actual consequences are actually thinking there are or are conditioned in some way to think they are. Like traveling through a low level area when you are weak you avoid the monsters so you don't die before reaching the other side, then when you come back through later you still avoid them out if conditioning until you realize it's for nothing and plow through the middle because it's faster. 

The problem is that there are some consequences to death in every game, namely time. If you travel to a spawn and die you have to travel back. People who don't want to travel again will be more careful than those that don't care. In GW2 I dropped to the ground and still fought and killed the monster. I was severely disappointed in the lack of consequences and realised I could go through even more mindlessly than just losing time. In Age of Conan there were spawn points nearby so your return time was minimal. Again severely disappointed that I could mindlessly kill with so little consequence. BDO monsters were a faceroll so even if there were consequences you still didn't have to think and just plow forward.

If there are no consequences then there are no reasons to be careful. The more consequences there are the more careful people will be. 

Scorchien

Its really very simple , many players want the easiest and fastest route to there shiny ..

  The Path of Least Resistance.. hmph ( that could be the name of there game )