I enjoy wow very much, I quit lineage because I couldn't advance past level 11 because it was so F-ing hard, and someone would PvP me every time I actually did almost advance to the next level. I believe that wow's death penelty is appropriate because in all honesty some classes are made to survive and others aren't. Also me being a mage allows me to basically sacrafice myself and take my target down with me through sheer damage. For instance, warriors don't die, priests don't die, rouges DO die, and mages DO die. The game is set up in a way so that this can be easily offset it. Priests and paladins get shields, warlocks can create items to rez themselves or others (1 in use at a time only). I believe that while exp and loot penelties were "intreging" aspects of the games in the past, they no longer hold any draw for me along with many other players.
Posted this topic also on a WoW forum. This is what they had to say:
Micheal: "This has been debated before....I've had people complain about what the current death penalties are because they're money sinks....
I played Everquest mainly along with a few other MMORPGs. I played WoW in testing and they did have xp loss for a while, sort of like diablo 2. One of the reasons I like WoW so much is because I'm not putting my life into the game to have fun with it. It's more for recreation rather than a job.
Bottom line, if you guys want experience penalties for dying then go play games that have that. Personally, I think the money loss is one of the best things I've ever seen. It makes the game faster paced and you're not loathing your healer if they lag and don't get a heal off in time."
Silvy:"True. Very true. The lack of exp losses is what keeps me playign this game above others. The deterrent for death in WoW, for me, is that I lose the quality of my gear and every time I rez and get killed again (camped) it just gets worse and worse. Then I pay up to get it fixed which is such a waste of gold. To me, that's a good enough reason to keep alive."
I just have one thing to say and to me this clears up the whole conversation and proves that harsh death penalties need to be in place. Singleplayer games have them, when was the lasttime you played a singleplayer game that when you died nothing happend? and if you have which I doubt, was it any fun? was there any point? could you even consider it a game? did it keep your attention?
Seems to me the main differance between singleplayer games and mmos is this... It takes skill to beat most singleplayer game (heck most ppl cant even do it without cheating(sad)) where as mmos are games that anyone can beat ooo and they have chat rooms YAAA! (ya i know you cant beat them, but end content is the same thing)
I just don't understand how mmo's these days attract ppl they are all the same game over and over and over, nothin new or different, heck they even get easier and easier and easier... humm ya sounds like fun to me, NOT!
Don't get me wrong though some mmo's are fun (it's all personaly opionin) DAOC I did get into for awhile probably would even be willing to go back to it if it didn't take so much time away from rl, no mmo out there has elements or the gameplay I'm personally looking for, they probably never will...
When there is no point there is no reason, When there is no reason there is no point. I gave up my mmo days when tram was invented, but not my hope.
"Sticking with what works doesn't make good games, it remakes them, I quit playing that a while ago. After all, no artist got anywhere from repainting the Mona Lisa as a black women in a white dress...
It's about the paintin man, it's about the paintin..." -Goply
You shouldn't be thinking of PVE and PVP as two seperate things, this is what is ruining MMO's nowadays, an MMO is supposed to be a huge world where anything can happen, not two seperate games disguised to look like one. When you login, you should have to venture out into the world and decide what challenges you wish to take on or run from, you should not have to go into a world where only grinding to level up will happen until your high enough to go into the pvp area, i cant believe they even started making MMO's like this, its a disgrace.
An MMO is "supposed to be a huge world where anything can happen" thats opinion and thats something you care for.
As far as grinding *gasp* some people actually like doing that. Even though some people might not admit to it. I do :-P I actually like just killing shiat and getting xp for it. The reason why they are starting to make mmo's about this...because some people actually like it.
But to go along with what your saying.....to get to a pvp for higher lvl. In my eyes ...gaming gives you goals that you need to met. I guess some people want to do that...gives them something to reach for.
But looking into the future there are so many new MMO's coming out and Im sure Game Designers are all going to go in different directions(far as game play) to please the gamer. Fore example: Some hate large scale areas and would rather jump from one area on a map to the other ...rather then ....book it on a boat...then mount and ride 15mins to another zone. All Im saying is everybody likes something different. Even when it comes to Penalty lose....some people would like.... that they lose everything on their characters....others would rather have Penalty lose towards item damage/repair. It really depends on the gamer and what they want to "pay" for.
Originally posted by Goply I just have one thing to say and to me this clears up the whole conversation and proves that harsh death penalties need to be in place. Singleplayer games have them, when was the lasttime you played a singleplayer game that when you died nothing happend? and if you have which I doubt, was it any fun? was there any point? could you even consider it a game? did it keep your attention? Seems to me the main differance between singleplayer games and mmos is this... It takes skill to beat most singleplayer game (heck most ppl cant even do it without cheating(sad)) where as mmos are games that anyone can beat ooo and they have chat rooms YAAA! (ya i know you cant beat them, but end content is the same thing) I just don't understand how mmo's these days attract ppl they are all the same game over and over and over, nothin new or different, heck they even get easier and easier and easier... humm ya sounds like fun to me, NOT!
When there is no point there is no reason, When there is no reason there is no point. I gave up my mmo days when tram was invented, but not my hope.
Dude chill out. MMO's are about "playing with others."
For example FFXI was healvy made for communtiy. You had to group to get any were in game. It was a pain in the arse to do it...but once you pull off a battle ..."as a team" you felt like you accomplished something.
Another reason why people play MMO's...duh PVP. NOt just MMORPG...but MMO. Look at Halo and first person shooters. Its cool that you are fighting a Real Life player rather then AI.
As far as MMORPG's being the same thing over and over again. I doubt that........I give a lot more credit to those people that make MMORPGs. I see alot of them on this website to see what we would like to see in the up and coming games.
As far as just "chat window" to talk in.....hmm guess you have never heard of TS?
I dont even like going to console games anymore! Call me crazy but I like to be social with other gamers.....And that is why IM a MMORPG player.
I could not agree more with Frank Mignone. The more people coming and playing MMORPG's the more we get different personalities. Unfortunatly we have more immature players then mature, and sometimes you just need to beat them up to get the point across not mess with you. However now we have 10-13 year old adolescent idiots coming again and again taunting our mature players with just the fear of diing, then coming back again. I really hope that games will get the point that death in games should be as real as death in Real Life.
Theres enough penalty to death in life without our games having it.
Want a sim? go build a mmo sim. or just stab yerself in the butt with a big poker everytime you die ingame. Realy, if you want to be punished ingame and feel that strongly about it then police yourself.
Next time you die , give some newbie all yer gear ;p
Originally posted by Goply I just have one thing to say and to me this clears up the whole conversation and proves that harsh death penalties need to be in place. Singleplayer games have them, when was the lasttime you played a singleplayer game that when you died nothing happend? and if you have which I doubt, was it any fun? was there any point? could you even consider it a game? did it keep your attention?
It's called saving. In single player RPGs when you die you just reload, and if you save often that might mean you're set back 10-15 minutes or less. Usually the only way you die in them is on a boss fight, and 95% of the time there are save points right before the bosses.
Do they keep the player's attention? Well I'd say so considering how many people play them.
I don't feel equipment loss is a fair penalty. Often in these games you will be wearing hard to find items, sometimes taking weeks to get. Dying and losing something like that is just unacceptable.
Another thing to consider is risk vs. reward. One of the fun things to do in MMOs is to explore new areas, in games with harsh death penalties the risk is not worth it. You die and you could be set back countless hours from lost equipment. That's a major bummer when there are some really cool areas you want to check out. Or in games with no con system you take a risk every time you attack something new. High penalties and instead of going out and trying yourself (fun) your stuck in town or looking at websites to check what level is safe for them (not fun).
This is an issue I am still undecided on myself. Unlike many of the other posters I see here, I am an old school MMORPG player. I remember looking forward to UO and beta testing EQ, being amazed at its size. My first MMO was Meridian 59, followed by the realm. I have much fonder memories of these games, and recall much more exciting adventures than I have yet to experiance in modern day MMOs.
Part of me wants to say it is because of the death penalties, there certainly was a real thrill in exploring the world knowing that I was risking my virtual life. I remember back in Meridian, it was fairly easy to roll an effective PKer, and all a players loot dropped on death. We would get them from time to time, and then a posse would form up in one of the cities and the hunt would begin. As much as I hated getting killed by them at my lower lvls, being in those revenge posses following the priests armed with tracking spells made for some great nights of gaming. Hell there was even and end game faction system, one for the Lich's army and one for Hunters. If you chose to serve the lich, you got some damn nice benefits. But if the hunters ever managed to kill that lich, every one of his followers fell over dead, all their loot would appear on the Lich's body. Ahh, that sure as hell would never fly these days. That is not necessarily a bad thing either, but it certainly made one think before deciding to join a faction
However I am also afraid these memories may be more of a nostalgia than due to a death penalty system. My first discovery of the MMO world was in the days where dying was a serious setback, and turning your pvp flag off meant that you would not accidently hit your friend when you were out hunting together. I am honestly not sure if I would be just as happy going into a new MMO with the old death penalty system. I think alot of the people on one side of the fence or the other, are heavily influenced by when they came into the MMORPG genre. If WoW or CoH is your first game, then it is difficult to really convey the feelings from those old days. It is like listening to some old timer try and convey what life was like before the internet, cable TV and microwaves
I think there needs to be the option for compromise, a middle ground. I don't care for how easy MMOs like WoW have become, but I do not believe the initial, experimental, rule sets of days gone by are the answer. I agree that when I play an MMO, I want to be playing and not working, but there still needs to be some feeling of danger and risk. At the risk of sounding repetative, I have seen similiar cliches posted throughout this thread, there is no good without bad. The MMO genre will not advance to the next level, or generation, without a new and intuitive approach to the death penatly system.
I think the death penalty should be more severe with non-pvp games. I don't mind losing something if i die to a mob. But i think in a pvp setting, it's ideal to have very little to no penalty at all. I really hate it when i play a pvp game, and when i'm just running along and minding my own business in the level 15 area or so, and then all of a sudden "bam" i just got wtf owned by a level 60 that can only get his jollies by killing someone half his level or lower. And i've played many games where this happens all the time. It's not fun, it's a pain in the A**. I wouldn't mind it so much if it was someone my level and i got the chance to turn around and fight back, or even run away. But when it's someone that kills you in one hit you don't have the opportunity to fight back, or run in most cases. It's ganking which is griefing which when done constantly makes most ppl decide to quit. It's not carebear or weak, it's the new player realizing they generally aren't going to get anywhere cause the "leet" level 60's who happened to start the game before you and spent the time to get to 60 who can't fight someone within their range cause they have no skill and can't take the chance that they'll lose because of the death penalty.
I play a game to relax and have fun, not to be annoyed and angry. And if a game supports griefing, i won't play. That includes a game that has a death penalty that allows for and encourages griefing of this kind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The pen is mightier than the sword, and authority is mightier than the pen, but the sword is mightier than authority.
If you can't beat 'em, hold 'em off 'till you come up with a better plan.
Hey mates. I am glad to see so many peope have turned out to discuss this topic. I am equally glad to see that, for the most part, everyone is being very mature in discussing Death Penalties. I have seen threads locked, players banned, and even pets running away from home over this one. Keep it up!
While I stated I enjoyed the death penalty in UO, that does not mean I would be a fan of a open-PvP per se. In Ultima, if you killed someone, there were consequences...for example, town guards would kill you on site, forcing you to live the life of a bandit. Ultimately, the fear was still of death, which the guards would despense without mercy. If you play a PvP sever in WoW, the contested areas are an ideal example of PvP without purpose or consequence. In UO, if you killed a player, you could loot his corpse and take items to sell...in WoW..you get honor points that can get you stuff that every other player is wearing. The difference is in the actual fight andf the emotion that it invokes. In UO, i am literally fighting for my life, my property and my xp. In WoW, I have nothing to loose really, and nothing to gain. perhaps the minor inconviencence of a walk back to my body. IN UO, if I want my stuff back, i have to go get it...dangerous to say the least. In WoW, i can just ask the angel to raise me, hearth back to Ironforge, and get my items repaired in less time than it took my dead Ultima ghost to find a priest. I realize there is expense involved with repairing your items in WoW. however, i tend to find the expense is rather trivial as far as cost. So, its not much in the way of a deterent to me, just another minor bump in the road of fearless grinding to the top.
While it may seem I have a beef with World of warcraft, this is not the case. It just happens to be the most popular MMO that has very soft penalties for death. That said, developers of new MMORPGs are very likely to look at WoW when seeking their own formula for success. This could breed a growing ever escalating tread of soft mmo's making the concept of consequence in the virtual world obsolete.
Open PvP puts the morality of deciding how your toon will behave in your hands, and then enforeces consequences for your actions. This is the aspect I miss most. Run your mouth, and get beat down...watch the person you were harrassing loot your bodyand give your items away to people. THAT is a fine anti-griefing policy. Without consequence, open PvP looses it's appeal to me. I have spent plenty of hours in FPS deathmatches and know where to go when I need a fix for that kind of fragfest funzies.
I totally respect garretts opinion, and those of you who agree with him. Yes, this is a game, and I can understand that a lot of players loath the idea of having to relive the last 2 hours of your virtual life, earning xp back, farming gold to replace equipment. I just cannot understand HOW to draw excitement from a game where nothing you do has any real consequence. If you are gonna make me a hamster on the wheel, at least make it sting if I fall off.
Cheers mates!
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone www.spankybus.com -3d Artist & Compositor -Writer -Professional Amature
The problem I see with alot of the current MMORPGs is the way the worlds are set up. I used to love Dark Age of Camelot's RvRvR frontier, as well as Darkness Falls. I didn't mind the fact that PvE was "PvP" free, notice I did not say risk free though. Death in DAoC was penalized, lose of stats that needed healing as well as experiance loss caused you to think out your battles and not rush into things because of that risk. I enjoyed this, and it worked. I'm all for leaving the PvE'rs to their realm, let them PvE if that is what they enjoy doing, there is no need to force them into PvP situations if they do not wish to participate in them.
The only thing I believe Dark Age of Camelot didn't do right was penalties in PvP. I don't think Experience loss should be a penalty in PvP. You don't gain experience for winning so you shouldn't lose experience for losing. There should have been some sort of loot penalty. If you die you should lose your equipment on your character (not things in your inventory), or even the cash you had on your body at the time of death.
However, all of that is rather pointless in this thread. One of the major problems I see in MMORPGs is the grind-time it takes to actually acheive these items. Even some of the hardcore players take at least a month to get their full set of equipment they want. This is where the problems begin. Losing items that took you over a month to attain is harsh, and probably causes some people to quit the game. A Medium needs to be found between time needed to achieve items and the death penalty of losing items. Until that medium is met it will be a war between the hardcore the casual...and most likely the casual players will win.
I think LineageII does it best and SB does it worst In L2 you just get moved to a safe town where you cant be attacked and you lose exp it kinda too much though considering the Grind in L2. Sb i remember getting killed again right after i respawned thats so wack lol. In WoW you get to run back to you body and see your enemies around yor corps thats kinda cool but its like cheating .
I've played all three games Everquest, Ultima Online, and World of Warcraft and I think they both make some good points in regards to death penalty. It's both good and bad and depends on the situation which makes more sense. I'll explain game by game.
In Ultima Online or UO as most refer to it as the death penality made perfect sense it gave a sense of danger and brougt the community together. It's easy to point the finger and say PK's ruined UO. That's only a half truth. Many of us loved hunting down PK's or stealing from them I mean they a reason disadvantage at times. PKing was just as much fun tho who didn't enjoy killing some punk mouthing off. In UO I either did or saw it all while I played the game so I understand it from a broader point of view than some. As a miner PK's were troublesome but on the other side of the story Pking a miner was pretty darn fun especially if you had a miner/smith yourself UO was misuderstood in alot of aspects because it was by no means a newbie friendly game. Mastering that game was part of the engeniousness of it once you did you could either help newbies or hurt them or both. It was by far the most realistic in terms of community. It's very much similar to our own lives. People are killed and stolen from in real life all the time rich, poor, innocent, or guilty it doesn't matter it's happening right now. UO brought as sense of immersion I guess it was a little too real perhaps for some and you were able to get away with this you could only dream of doing in real life but would never dare nor perhaps want to do. Anyways that ends my thoughts on UO.
In Everquest or EQ as it's often refered things became different than in UO. For one it was class based. You were essentially stuck and assigned a role where as in UO you could play the part of many different roles. Things slowed down the level grind was implimented and the game had it's own form of death penality experiance loss. Basically in exchange for not losing items from dieing instead you lost skill or at least the time it took to increase your skills as well as being limited to one role instead of the option of being able to be the jack of all trades essentially. The bard class in that sense was perhaps the most diverse class in that game. EQ touched back on more traditional rpg roots as well by making items and quests feel much more important. In fact UO really didn't offer any quest that I can think of aside from escorting npc's back and forth or saving them occasionally and as for loot it was pretty limited and standard not a ton of diversity like some players were used to from rpg's of the past. Questing was obviously a major role in EQ so much in fact that it's apart of the title itself. Rewarding players for questing became a big part as well and how do you do that items and experiance of course or apparently anyways I wish there were a better solution or at least some different ones. Anyways EQ's major flaw to alot of players was it's experiance penality for death. Casual players just didn't like it because it made the game hard for them to get into and hardcore players disliked it because it was well sort of harsh and would often die multiple times doing raids to receive new "uber" items. Once you reached the level cap items were the only thing that set players apart really. PvP was very limited in EQ. Anyways that's about it for EQ.
Last but not least World of Warcraft or WoW as most call it. WoW basically borrowed many different ideas from previous mmo's and try to improve upon them and the end result is what alot have come to enjoy. It mostly borrowed from EQ largly and probably because from a business standpoint it was simply the more successful game of the two in terms of popularity. However that's semi-debatible which I dicuss in the next and last paragraph. Anyways WoW got rid of the experiance penality from death which made both the casual and hardcore players alike happy since many felt it unessary and frankly I'm inclined to agree all tho personally I think just not being able to lose your level like in dark ages of camelot (another mmorpg) was enough but that's just my opion. It also expanded on the raiding features EQ became known for and made the game more solo friendly early on which I think everyone liked. The only downside is they made it too solo and quest orientated early on in the game and didn't promote grouping the way EQ did with a exp bonus so leveling a new character after you've done the quests and seen the game once it's pretty unbarable if you ever decide to make a new character especially toppled with the fact that they more or less did away with twinking characters which is the art of equiping a low level character with high level items by making items soulband as well as implimenting level caps something EQ did eventually after a few expansions and WoW borrowed. Another major thing it did was instanced dungeons borrowed from Anarchy Online which basically eleminated spawn camping that was so rampent in EQ and to a extent UO but more of a problem in EQ since in UO you could just attack the person if you felt like it if it really bothered you enough part of the beauty of that game Anyways the major reason behind EQ initiating level caps on items to prevent twinking was a well known thing in mmo's now was to help prevent ebayed items/currency essentially however in WoW with spawn camps no longer being a major issue items aren't as rare and sought after and thus twinking shouldn't really be as severe a problem like it was in EQ not to mention making items bind on pickup and equip. I'm really not sure completly why they've tryed to deterr twinks in WoW but they have and not like I can change it. Another sly thing they did was make travel easier compared to EQ but for some reason not as easy as UO I think just because it's a timesink so they can keep players from finishing there content as quickly and thus keep customers paying longer. The thing is anyone who's played UO I'm sure it annoys the heck out of but just the same was a knotch better than EQ's travel or at least intially it's become better with expansions. Now the last thing I can think of that WoW did was made it easier to level in general but especially for the casual players sort of to lure them in. Alot of casual players have become disappointed with the end game however since it's heavily guild centric as was EQ but unlike UO where a guild was in no way nessary but definatly added to the fun of the game.
I mentioned earlier that it was debatable the success of EQ compared to UO and so forth and I'll try to explain a little what I meant. My nubmers are probably off but EQ I think had around 2-4mil at it's peak and UO I think had around 1-1.5mil but also came out sooner and thus the mmo market was newer and the internet and computers weren't quite as common in the home as they were when EQ arrived or as they are today hence partially WoW's success compartively to EQ. I think graphics aside if the games had been released in reverse order perhaps UO might be the game with 5 mil subscriptions at at it's peak not sure if WoW has even hit it's peak yet and WoW with 1.5mil but you get the point. You see the mmorpg market is growing each year and more and more players are playing them thusly. Anyways that about wraps it up and I think alot of people might have a better understanding of mmorpg's as a result of this post. One last thing tho I'd just like to give thanks to the creaters of Ultima Online for being the first widely succesful mmorpg as well as meridian 59 which I never played but was really the 1st mmorpg and thus deserves equal props.
First off, EVE's pvp is too carebear for my liking. Too easy to avoid things. Most of it is also shooting fish in a barrel. Sometimes it is really fun, but I also kindof dislike scripted conflict for some reason. Death also doesn't hurt that much in most cases.
My ideal world has permadeath. (Bizarre word. Death is death.) Also, it ignores the marketting department and doesn't subscribe to the trend of making the player stronger slowly over time in order to stretch out the average subscription.
Every bit of equipment should basically be basic. Every +1 demands a -2. Everyone just has to minmax by default.
If anything should be built up over time, it should not be mere avatars, but instead, the environment which groups of players shape and defend.
I like a sharded world, because then you can delay creation of a new character for a day or so on a particular shard, but the defeated can still play elsewhere. Skills I think should have to be earned pretty much, but once found or bought, can be trained to the peak competence level within a very short frame of time. Short enough to make the designer question even creating such a downtime. Also, no xp from mobs, only quests. Maybe let groups of players make questions or contract systems as well.
As for PvP, I think a game could be made to where pvp is not THE central activity or telos of gameplay, but still have "perma"death. (That's death. Finitude.) I think I rather like the idea of groups of players succeeding accidentally. Like someone somewhere on the server does an activity for the 1,056,798th time and suddenly a cloud shifts in the sky and looks like something. (The ultimate way to prevent macroing in my book.) If nobody nearby notices, the Iron Age does not commence or something. For MMOGs that tell a story as fast as the population is able to push it, they might have a shelflife until a new shard is opened, though it is probably only persistent for a few months or so.
As for shiny cool stuff, and losing it, I think we need to see systems of inheritance in place, but not quite for individuals. Groups of players would hold their own sort of "banks." In most mmogs, you see some sort of limited bank slot system. This is to spare the server somewhat and also to somehow encourage trading and selling of items. Mostly it just annoys generalist crafters. In EVE you get inifinite banking, but the small size of the ship hold can still be annoying. The possession or home of the group should be everything it has. Losing it is catastrophic for all. (This is why I also kindof like the idea of shards which are only open for a couple hours a day at a regular time.) Theft within the group can also occur, which serves to keep people honest and to prevent groups from growing too large. If a system could exist where practically everyone was in debt all the time, and on the run from prowling creditors, that would be even better.
Every character should also have a lifespan of some sort. The first day or two of a new avatar, you should be a child (and fast, low targetting signature) or something. You should also eventually get old and feeble at some point (but with different advantages), even in a really persistent world. Some mechanism for rewarding groups for taking care of these street urchins seems like it would have some interesting effects on the collective behavior of the players.
No one should be completely independent. You shouldn't be able to walk for leagues in the snow, nor march or row with your army for days without supplies, nor camp away from a home base where enormous number of non-spectacular tasks must be accomplished on a daily basis just to keep the group functioning.
I think it all depends on your approach to the games themselves. If you have have no affinity to your character dying is irrelevant. I found teh system in Guild Wards got quite painful when you were not earning much XP for your kills it made it harder to play the game, unless you went back to a city and got fixed up. WoW's system can have quite a sting, having died in an instance fighting the boss mob just it died meant a long from outside as a ghost hoping to get back in time before the respawn as I would not have full health or mana and be stuck right in teh thick of it.
If a system existed in a game where you could choose the death penalty how many would opt for losing there hard fought for armour and weapons? Would you want to pay 20 gold when you only had 2? Try this, get a low level character and jump of teh damn in Loch Modan (WoW) this will take you to teh graveyard in the Wetlands. Now you will have to choose between running back to your corpse at the foot of the damn or ressing with the sickness penalty and making your way all the to Menethil Harbour. You will not survive contact with anything and will therefore have to start again. It gets painful when this is a choice between going back into the thick of things to complete that quest or turning tail until the next time.
You pay the money for the play time its up to you how you spend your time. I like the system in Wow it keeps the momentum of the game free flowing. I tried Everquest 1 & 2 but they just frustrated me with the poor interfaces, combat systems etc and they are just plain ugly. Eve was good but took ages to get anywhere. A game must cater for solo players as that is how you start out!
Death need not be the end there is always a penalty, games are after all not reality no matter how real the graphics and sound get. Different penalty systems hurt in different ways. The choice is ours to make.
My story in MMORPGs starts with Ultima Online. I enjoyed hunting with my guild, made of a half a dozen people, and the Death Penalty there was a pain. Imagine we had found some precious item, and that by any chance the team died. We had to find a resser NPC or player, then move all the way back to the corpse in the hope that the mob that killed us didn't looted it, or some passing by player...From years of playing that game I only mastered 1 character, the progress was very very slow, toke years sometimes, unless there was some exploit like fighting agains't summoned blade spirits to improve Parry, or killing stuff from a safe spot to increase Archery.
Even on WOW, it's hard to get a good number of people playing for real on a guild. So, even on a game with more then 5 million people, most guilds have only a dozen members and some aren't always online. The developers better have this under consideration before they plan something that requires 40 players, because it's almost undoable. Takes so long to gather random players for that, that when we gathered about half, some start to leave the group tired of waiting. Sure there are about 4 strong guilds by server, but most are still made by 10 to 20 people that already knew each other from other games, and work in sincrony, with unsincronised play times and often diferent levels.
Best Death Penalty is the one from WOW, were the items decay a bit, you don't lose xp nor your loot, and even that one sometimes breaks groups, because the armour can take so much damage that one more time might mean they will be virtualy destroyed. Though we can still repair it on a Smith, they would offer 0 protection, and so ends another instance run that didn't go too well. This is a good penalty from my point of view. I personaly hate xp debt implemented on a few games in combo with item decay and stats loss (for example EQ2), or the possibility you can even drop lvl (FFXI).
You make some interesting points, Frank, but you forget that people play MMORPGs for many reasons. This site has had surveys on the subject. I hate PK with a vengeance and consider it antisocial and I won't play any game with PK fairly evident. However, I won't play a MMORPG which is purely solo - the interaction is a key aspect of the game.
Your type of MMORPG will suit some but not all. The likes of WoW need to cater for many, many types of players of all ages and backgrounds and I think they do a decent job. I actually feel WoW has too much PK for me, but I still play avoiding the PK elements.
WoW is a mainstream game and could not do what you suggest in a modern MMORPG environment. However, I do think they could offer a chance with characters to make them "Ironman" characters, as in Gothic 2 - when you die you die and have to start again - purely as an option to "increase the thrill". There are also other ways too - for instance they could have mobs which "ate the corpses" preventing a rezz. Players going against these would have to be very well prepared and also they would have to have some form of "lag protection" too.
Lastly, I would like to see WoW and its ilk to explore non-fighting games, or where fighting is a sideline. If we did this, then the arguments raised on death would be irrelevant - death would be very infrequent, but very important. Many would die through old age, not someone forgetting to heal them)
When I started with MMORPG's it was with Everquest. I was also much younger had a lot of time to devote to playing the game and recovering from the death penalty. Now that I'm older and have more responsibilities I don't have the kind of time I would like to have to devote to game play of this nature. I still love the MMORPG game play because it give me an opportunity to play with my friends all over the country without having to make an actual trip to visit them.
I like games without a death penalty or with a minimal death penalty. Guild Wars has a good death penalty system and I have heard that WOW has a good one as well. Ones that don't take away all that I have worked for in my limited time to play. Nothing hurt worse than playing in EQ for an entire night only to die at the end of a game session and loosing all you earned in the past 2 - 3 hours. I hated it and after a while it drove me away.
As I said when I was younger death penalty didn't really effect me, but now I would prefer to find games that appeal to me without one.
Originally posted by scytaleMMORPG You make some interesting points, Frank, but you forget that people play MMORPGs for many reasons. This site has had surveys on the subject. I hate PK with a vengeance and consider it antisocial and I won't play any game with PK fairly evident. However, I won't play a MMORPG which is purely solo - the interaction is a key aspect of the game. Your type of MMORPG will suit some but not all. The likes of WoW need to cater for many, many types of players of all ages and backgrounds and I think they do a decent job. I actually feel WoW has too much PK for me, but I still play avoiding the PK elements. WoW is a mainstream game and could not do what you suggest in a modern MMORPG environment. However, I do think they could offer a chance with characters to make them "Ironman" characters, as in Gothic 2 - when you die you die and have to start again - purely as an option to "increase the thrill". There are also other ways too - for instance they could have mobs which "ate the corpses" preventing a rezz. Players going against these would have to be very well prepared and also they would have to have some form of "lag protection" too. Lastly, I would like to see WoW and its ilk to explore non-fighting games, or where fighting is a sideline. If we did this, then the arguments raised on death would be irrelevant - death would be very infrequent, but very important. Many would die through old age, not someone forgetting to heal them) Esteril L60 Warrior - Stormreaver
I really dont understand why people who who no clue insist on calling PKing antisocial behaviour. In most games that support playerkilling you are forced to group to do so. I have been in countless of guilds througout various mmo's, but the one i remember most is my PK guild from the old UO days. I still talk to some of the guys, the friendship you form in a PK guild is impossible to form in a PvE guild. Thank you.
_____________________ I am the flipside of the coin on which the troll and the fanboy are but one side.
Victories in WoW are not decided by killing, it is decided by the person who decides to leave the area first. Take the whole southshore battle area as an example. These fights would go on and on between the sides rubber banding one way, then the other. The only reason one side ever got an advantage is because the other decided to go do something else. You have no way to remove someone from a territory with the current death system in WoW. Having a safe place to gain xp and quest should not be a right, it should be earned.
Players should be more upset about the way that weapons are upgraded patch over patch then they are. When gear is upgraded 5 - 10% or more each patch, that is a waste. It is a waste of previous effort getting other weapons. It is a waste because the powerful become more powerful and the casual become more distant. The difference between a character in WoW with a full set of the best gear and someone with a set of gear two ranks lower is huge.
I'm not saying that having uber weapons doesn't have its place in MMORGs. I'm saying that the way to have PvP and uber weapons is to have every item weigh something and to have full loot. Bottomless storage, or even multiple slotted backpacks allowing for 50+ items is just too much. If a game had bottomless storage and full loot, nobody that was killed by me would have any gear, as I could make off with everything someone had over and over again. Restricting how much can be carried can limit what can be taken from your corpse when you die. Allowing equipped weapons to change hands as you succeed or fail in PvP is the way to equal the battle field.
Sure, if you quest for months to get the gear you want, it will hurt if you lose it, but it will make for a more even battleground. It will make players actually think to make good decisions. It will make running away a valid strategy, not just a cop out. It will make someone who is lucky enough to find a corpse in the woods, doubly blessed. Whether you guard the corpse until the dead returns or take the gear is up to you. That is what MMORGs is all about, isn't it, making choices that has an effect on how others interact with you? More options leads to a more diverse world.
My first MMORPG was Ultima Online, approximately 6 months after the games release. Since that game, I have played Asheron's Call, Everquest II, WoW, Asheron's Call II, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons and even worked with Mythic developing DAoC.
The age old debate of death penalty.. I recall the thrill of logging into UO. Every minute of playing UO was a test of life or death, not just for adventurers but for crafters alike! You couldn't go out to adventure without careful watch for murderer players. You couldn't go just outside of town to mine ore or chop wood without fear of murderer players killing for no good reason. You couldn't go inside town without fear of thieves taking your house keys or that new sword you JUST purchased off a player merchant for nearly all the money you had. Thief players could even kill you in the middle of town and have a neutral friend stand next to you to loot the dead bodies after the guards were summoned.
The addiction formed from playing games that intense is very strong. After nearly 2 years I finally realized that I had developed a love-hate relationship with UO. I loved to login and accomplish something, gain a point or two in this or that or gain some gold by crafting or adventuring. I hated logging in and being instantly killed by a murderer or loggin in to find a thief standing right next to me having taken several items out of my pack before my screen even loaded (over dialup).
The harsh death penalty did allow for heroes to be bourn. I slowly became one of those heroes. I hated the feeling of loosing what I had so much that I vowed to defend others and joined a guild composed of friends that all wanted to hunt down every last murderer and thief and bring them to justice. Our bonds were formed by necessity and due mostly to the harsh nature of the death penalty. I remember spending entire evenings training new players on ways to defend themselves and protect themselves from thieves and exploits.
Of course, the down side to this is that I spent most days being extremely paranoid and irritable. I'm not talking about just in game. I mean outside of the game. The more I read studies and articles about MMORPG's and addictions and the games of the time, UO and EQ, I found that this was actually somewhat of an epidemic among gamers.
So after leaving UO and going to AC there was a complete transformation in my game experience along with my life in general. There was no need for paranoia or irritability because there was no parameter for getting griefed, ganked, thieved or exploited. Does that mean I didn't have the same reason to get together with like-minded people and form a guild? No, on the contrary my friends from UO came to AC with me and we all formed a guild that grew to over 80 times the size of our original guild. The game addiction was every bit as prevalent, but the negative aspects were removed. For the first time, as a gamer, I had a choice. To go PK or not go PK.
This brings me to my point... Do I miss the challenge of a more realistic world that has persistant PK/Thievery? Yes, I do miss some of that thrill. But, there is so much more to gain without having the looming worry of whether or not I have to constantly watch over my shoulder. What I value most right now is the choice I have. In most new generation games players have the choice to play on a PvP server or a standard server (without harsh death penalty).
So that answers the question of PvP or not PvP, but what about the death penalty specifically? I can tell you, no game is perfect. It's one thing to die in a fight you engaged in and simply lost. It's a whole different story to die due to a game bug or lag or an exploit used by your opponent. Unfortunately, these negative issues are prevalent in all games. Games lose subscribers over these negative issues already. If the game has a harsh death penalty like UO does, those same subscribers will leave much sooner and not be lured back to the game. From a business standpoint, it is a necessity to reduce death penalties to be a minor inconvenience. It is my opinion that the only real way to handle this debate and appease the largest customer base is to give them the choice. Make hardcore servers, PvP servers, standard servers and roleplay servers. Give gamers the choice and you'll quickly see where the majority lies. I can guarantee you it won't be on the PvP or Hardcore servers. Perhaps therin lies the answer to this debate. Does the majority rule, or the most hardcore player?
After reading this debate, oh btw AWESOME topic to start off with, I find myself leaning towards the penalty. I do however feel that the penalty shouldnt be TOO HARSH/SOFT and the griefing issue DEFINATELY needs very VERY close monitoring. When I used to play SWG, i felt that the perma-death was rather extreme a penalty for the amount of time put into the Jedi player (pre CU), but i also felt that the BH griefing issue (post pub 9) was not implemented with any consideration for the player being hunted SPECIFICALLY, thus making every playing second almost seem wasted if you were being hunted A LOT ! I prefer a PvP system that is voluntary, either by duel commands, guild wars, or player declaration when logging in either by in game option or specific server choice.
I have nothing against pvp or the solo player, but neither should be a MAJOR part of a MMORPG, after all it is supposed to be a social/interactive game. Their should be someway for a group of designers/developers to have a penaty system that maybe increases in severity everytime you are proven to be griefing another player, also an increase if you die often attempting the same quest ---but a definate penalty of some type!
Let me put it this way to you. I'm not gonna play anymore more of these new MMORPGS. None of them have reproduced the thrill UO gave me back in 1998. Stealing at banks, looting of corpses, my miner being player killed by a Red on a daily basis, the constant question of friend or foe? when you saw someone. I miss the Griefing, Scamming, Stealing, Looting of my corpse and limited safe areas (i.e. only towns). Its not that I did those things to other players all the time, its just risk factors and fear factor that kept me playing. I've since found a player run server for UO that is based on the 1998 version of UO. I love it again. I die, I run, I hide, I fight ......... Its all there. I"m in a guild for security and help. There is a real sense of community again. So, all these new games can kiss my ***. They offer nothing I can't do in a Solo game.
Garrett, you have no clue. Did you ever play UO back then? If not, just listen to Frank. He's speaking words of wisdom. Frank, your right on. I won't be playing any new MMORPGS till something comes along that has the balls of UO back in the day.
Death penaltys are allways going to be on debate, and whichever way you look at it, people are allways going to love or hate death penalty systems. To be quite honest, the issue will never be resolved by the one allmighty "perfect" death system.
"Why?" do you ask? Because quite simply, both sides on the death penalty debate are both such viable options for any mmorpg. Both sides of the equation have as much griefing, pk'ing, and smack talking kids as the other... issues such as these are never going to be solved by any single death system; thinking that you can solve these issues with/without death penalties is a very naive way to think about it. Rather, a game has to solve these problems in other ways. Both versions have its pros and cons, and even the "pros and cons" are upto who the adventurer is and what he would prefer.
Comparing the 2 different death systems is like crossing game genres and saying a Sports Game is better than an Action Game, or vice-versa. Both sides deserve merits, and its why the end user is given the choice of picking a Sports Game and/or an Action Game. Even if you do pick With or Without death penaltys, i can guarantee that 99% of the poplulation will wish at some point that that they were in the opposing death scheme for at least 5 seconds. Its all apples and oranges i'm afraid.
I've taken the time to list some of the features that each system generally brings to the table, this is just a brush on the surface, however, and i'm sure there are many situations that could be added to this list. Please note that this is an argumentative list, and even if i should see somthing as a pro, it isnt allways the case. Like i said before, apples and oranges, not everyone loves the same thing.
WITH HEAVY DEATH PENALTYS
Gaming is much more exciting for those who enjoy it
Great risks ensure a much greater appreciation for the rewards
Often much more unpredictable by nature
In most pvp situations, the stronger are only getting stronger, while the weak are left behind with nothing to account for their losses, ultimately, only becoming worse-off.
Pvp can generally be much more frustrating with people who refuse to want to take some sort of risk in losing what they worked hard to earn.
Dieing in pve situations can often lead to others taking advantage of your misfortune without having to do anything directly.
Can be abused by those with power, IE Guilds or characters much higher level. Guildless or solo players dont merit a change to "Anti-Social Online RPG". There is still allways a degree of social interaction, even if its as simple as talking in general chat, it still exists.
Griefers / PK'ers / Smart ass's are around in force
WITHOUT HEAVY DEATH PENALTYS
Gaming is much more pleaseant for those who'd rather explore other aspects of the game rather than deal with hefty death penaltys
Not everyone is a white-knuckle thrill seeker like the majority of the other half who enjoy enormous risks
Often a more viable system for those who would rather engage in more "civil" types of gameplay, and work with groups to overcome more puzzle-like situations. For these types of people "death" is merely a save/load and retry of a given adventure, not a costly one-time affair.
Pvp Conflict can either be seen as pointless or as much more engaging and "epic" forms of battle in some situations. (Heavy Death Penalty games often relax their rules in large-scale pvp in order to promote a less risky battlefield to entice more people to pvp)
Can be abused by anyone with nothing to lose
Griefers / PK'ers / Smart ass's are STILL around in force
As i said before, this is just scratching the surface of how any given game can be affected by either death system. Both schemes have a considerable list of pros and cons which are weighed and trialed only by the end-user and what he likes at heart. They can even be considered 2 different genres completely because they can both work so well depending on the game. Which brings me to my final and perhaps most important point...
Its NOT the death penalty alone that makes or breaks a game, but how the game surrounding the "Death Penalty" compliments its chosen death scheme. Its the way the game interacts with its death system that makes it the "best" death penalty for a particular game. Whether its a Heavily weighted death penalty, or a non-existant one all together; theres a time and place for each scheme, and its the reason why we pick up new games or try different ones to tailor our needs. Simply put, no 2 players are going to think the same thing, because they might find enjoyment in 2 completely different aspects of an mmorpg.
The point behind an mmorpg is to create a versatile world that lets you decide what you want to do next, this is the reason why we see such a diverse population of people playing the games, and they are often very opinionated, with very different morales to the next Joe. One person might play to pvp, another might play to socialise, whilst little john next-door might wanna play to solve perplexing puzzles; everyones goals in an mmorpg are extraordinarily different. This topic cannot be debated because nobody can win... all death penalty schemes have their own comprehensive list of pro's and cons which is upto the end-user who is playing the game. Its a battle that cant be won, because people just like what they want to like; you cant force an opinion when its based on such a personal preference.
Comments
I enjoy wow very much, I quit lineage because I couldn't advance past level 11 because it was so F-ing hard, and someone would PvP me every time I actually did almost advance to the next level. I believe that wow's death penelty is appropriate because in all honesty some classes are made to survive and others aren't. Also me being a mage
allows me to basically sacrafice myself and take my target down with me through sheer damage. For instance, warriors don't die, priests don't die, rouges DO die, and mages DO die. The game is set up in a way so that this can be easily offset it. Priests and paladins get shields, warlocks can create items to rez themselves or others (1 in use at a time only). I believe that while exp and loot penelties were "intreging" aspects of the games in the past, they no longer hold any draw for me along with many other players.
Posted this topic also on a WoW forum. This is what they had to say:
Micheal: "This has been debated before....I've had people complain about what the current death penalties are because they're money sinks....
I played Everquest mainly along with a few other MMORPGs. I played WoW in testing and they did have xp loss for a while, sort of like diablo 2. One of the reasons I like WoW so much is because I'm not putting my life into the game to have fun with it. It's more for recreation rather than a job.
Bottom line, if you guys want experience penalties for dying then go play games that have that. Personally, I think the money loss is one of the best things I've ever seen. It makes the game faster paced and you're not loathing your healer if they lag and don't get a heal off in time."
Silvy:"True. Very true. The lack of exp losses is what keeps me playign this game above others. The deterrent for death in WoW, for me, is that I lose the quality of my gear and every time I rez and get killed again (camped) it just gets worse and worse. Then I pay up to get it fixed which is such a waste of gold. To me, that's a good enough reason to keep alive."
Info found on:http://groups.myspace.com/WoW
I just have one thing to say and to me this clears up the whole conversation and proves that harsh death penalties need to be in place. Singleplayer games have them, when was the lasttime you played a singleplayer game that when you died nothing happend? and if you have which I doubt, was it any fun? was there any point? could you even consider it a game? did it keep your attention?
Seems to me the main differance between singleplayer games and mmos is this... It takes skill to beat most singleplayer game (heck most ppl cant even do it without cheating(sad)) where as mmos are games that anyone can beat ooo and they have chat rooms YAAA! (ya i know you cant beat them, but end content is the same thing)
I just don't understand how mmo's these days attract ppl they are all the same game over and over and over, nothin new or different, heck they even get easier and easier and easier... humm ya sounds like fun to me, NOT!
Don't get me wrong though some mmo's are fun (it's all personaly opionin) DAOC I did get into for awhile probably would even be willing to go back to it if it didn't take so much time away from rl, no mmo out there has elements or the gameplay I'm personally looking for, they probably never will...
When there is no point there is no reason, When there is no reason there is no point.
I gave up my mmo days when tram was invented, but not my hope.
"Sticking with what works doesn't make good games, it remakes them, I quit playing that a while ago.
After all, no artist got anywhere from repainting the Mona Lisa as a black women in a white dress...
It's about the paintin man, it's about the paintin..." -Goply
An MMO is "supposed to be a huge world where anything can happen" thats opinion and thats something you care for.
As far as grinding *gasp* some people actually like doing that. Even though some people might not admit to it. I do :-P I actually like just killing shiat and getting xp for it. The reason why they are starting to make mmo's about this...because some people actually like it.
But to go along with what your saying.....to get to a pvp for higher lvl. In my eyes ...gaming gives you goals that you need to met. I guess some people want to do that...gives them something to reach for.
But looking into the future there are so many new MMO's coming out and Im sure Game Designers are all going to go in different directions(far as game play) to please the gamer. Fore example: Some hate large scale areas and would rather jump from one area on a map to the other ...rather then ....book it on a boat...then mount and ride 15mins to another zone. All Im saying is everybody likes something different. Even when it comes to Penalty lose....some people would like.... that they lose everything on their characters....others would rather have Penalty lose towards item damage/repair. It really depends on the gamer and what they want to "pay" for.
For example FFXI was healvy made for communtiy. You had to group to get any were in game. It was a pain in the arse to do it...but once you pull off a battle ..."as a team" you felt like you accomplished something.
Another reason why people play MMO's...duh PVP. NOt just MMORPG...but MMO. Look at Halo and first person shooters. Its cool that you are fighting a Real Life player rather then AI.
As far as MMORPG's being the same thing over and over again. I doubt that........I give a lot more credit to those people that make MMORPGs. I see alot of them on this website to see what we would like to see in the up and coming games.
As far as just "chat window" to talk in.....hmm guess you have never heard of TS?
I dont even like going to console games anymore! Call me crazy but I like to be social with other gamers.....And that is why IM a MMORPG player.
I could not agree more with Frank Mignone. The more people coming and playing MMORPG's the more we get different personalities. Unfortunatly we have more immature players then mature, and sometimes you just need to beat them up to get the point across not mess with you. However now we have 10-13 year old adolescent idiots coming again and again taunting our mature players with just the fear of diing, then coming back again. I really hope that games will get the point that death in games should be as real as death in Real Life.
"I say, MaryAnn!"
These are games. Not real life.
Theres enough penalty to death in life without our games having it.
Want a sim? go build a mmo sim. or just stab yerself in the butt with a big poker everytime you die ingame. Realy, if you want to be punished ingame and feel that strongly about it then police yourself.
Next time you die , give some newbie all yer gear ;p
It's called saving. In single player RPGs when you die you just reload, and if you save often that might mean you're set back 10-15 minutes or less. Usually the only way you die in them is on a boss fight, and 95% of the time there are save points right before the bosses.
Do they keep the player's attention? Well I'd say so considering how many people play them.
I don't feel equipment loss is a fair penalty. Often in these games you will be wearing hard to find items, sometimes taking weeks to get. Dying and losing something like that is just unacceptable.
Another thing to consider is risk vs. reward. One of the fun things to do in MMOs is to explore new areas, in games with harsh death penalties the risk is not worth it. You die and you could be set back countless hours from lost equipment. That's a major bummer when there are some really cool areas you want to check out. Or in games with no con system you take a risk every time you attack something new. High penalties and instead of going out and trying yourself (fun) your stuck in town or looking at websites to check what level is safe for them (not fun).
This is an issue I am still undecided on myself. Unlike many of the other posters I see here, I am an old school MMORPG player. I remember looking forward to UO and beta testing EQ, being amazed at its size. My first MMO was Meridian 59, followed by the realm. I have much fonder memories of these games, and recall much more exciting adventures than I have yet to experiance in modern day MMOs.
Part of me wants to say it is because of the death penalties, there certainly was a real thrill in exploring the world knowing that I was risking my virtual life. I remember back in Meridian, it was fairly easy to roll an effective PKer, and all a players loot dropped on death. We would get them from time to time, and then a posse would form up in one of the cities and the hunt would begin. As much as I hated getting killed by them at my lower lvls, being in those revenge posses following the priests armed with tracking spells made for some great nights of gaming. Hell there was even and end game faction system, one for the Lich's army and one for Hunters. If you chose to serve the lich, you got some damn nice benefits. But if the hunters ever managed to kill that lich, every one of his followers fell over dead, all their loot would appear on the Lich's body. Ahh, that sure as hell would never fly these days. That is not necessarily a bad thing either, but it certainly made one think before deciding to join a faction
However I am also afraid these memories may be more of a nostalgia than due to a death penalty system. My first discovery of the MMO world was in the days where dying was a serious setback, and turning your pvp flag off meant that you would not accidently hit your friend when you were out hunting together. I am honestly not sure if I would be just as happy going into a new MMO with the old death penalty system. I think alot of the people on one side of the fence or the other, are heavily influenced by when they came into the MMORPG genre. If WoW or CoH is your first game, then it is difficult to really convey the feelings from those old days. It is like listening to some old timer try and convey what life was like before the internet, cable TV and microwaves
I think there needs to be the option for compromise, a middle ground. I don't care for how easy MMOs like WoW have become, but I do not believe the initial, experimental, rule sets of days gone by are the answer. I agree that when I play an MMO, I want to be playing and not working, but there still needs to be some feeling of danger and risk. At the risk of sounding repetative, I have seen similiar cliches posted throughout this thread, there is no good without bad. The MMO genre will not advance to the next level, or generation, without a new and intuitive approach to the death penatly system.
I think the death penalty should be more severe with non-pvp games. I don't mind losing something if i die to a mob. But i think in a pvp setting, it's ideal to have very little to no penalty at all. I really hate it when i play a pvp game, and when i'm just running along and minding my own business in the level 15 area or so, and then all of a sudden "bam" i just got wtf owned by a level 60 that can only get his jollies by killing someone half his level or lower. And i've played many games where this happens all the time. It's not fun, it's a pain in the A**. I wouldn't mind it so much if it was someone my level and i got the chance to turn around and fight back, or even run away. But when it's someone that kills you in one hit you don't have the opportunity to fight back, or run in most cases. It's ganking which is griefing which when done constantly makes most ppl decide to quit. It's not carebear or weak, it's the new player realizing they generally aren't going to get anywhere cause the "leet" level 60's who happened to start the game before you and spent the time to get to 60 who can't fight someone within their range cause they have no skill and can't take the chance that they'll lose because of the death penalty.
I play a game to relax and have fun, not to be annoyed and angry. And if a game supports griefing, i won't play. That includes a game that has a death penalty that allows for and encourages griefing of this kind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The pen is mightier than the sword, and authority is mightier than the pen, but the sword is mightier than authority.
If you can't beat 'em, hold 'em off 'till you come up with a better plan.
Hey mates. I am glad to see so many peope have turned out to discuss this topic. I am equally glad to see that, for the most part, everyone is being very mature in discussing Death Penalties. I have seen threads locked, players banned, and even pets running away from home over this one. Keep it up!
While I stated I enjoyed the death penalty in UO, that does not mean I would be a fan of a open-PvP per se. In Ultima, if you killed someone, there were consequences...for example, town guards would kill you on site, forcing you to live the life of a bandit. Ultimately, the fear was still of death, which the guards would despense without mercy. If you play a PvP sever in WoW, the contested areas are an ideal example of PvP without purpose or consequence. In UO, if you killed a player, you could loot his corpse and take items to sell...in WoW..you get honor points that can get you stuff that every other player is wearing. The difference is in the actual fight andf the emotion that it invokes. In UO, i am literally fighting for my life, my property and my xp. In WoW, I have nothing to loose really, and nothing to gain. perhaps the minor inconviencence of a walk back to my body. IN UO, if I want my stuff back, i have to go get it...dangerous to say the least. In WoW, i can just ask the angel to raise me, hearth back to Ironforge, and get my items repaired in less time than it took my dead Ultima ghost to find a priest. I realize there is expense involved with repairing your items in WoW. however, i tend to find the expense is rather trivial as far as cost. So, its not much in the way of a deterent to me, just another minor bump in the road of fearless grinding to the top.
While it may seem I have a beef with World of warcraft, this is not the case. It just happens to be the most popular MMO that has very soft penalties for death. That said, developers of new MMORPGs are very likely to look at WoW when seeking their own formula for success. This could breed a growing ever escalating tread of soft mmo's making the concept of consequence in the virtual world obsolete.
Open PvP puts the morality of deciding how your toon will behave in your hands, and then enforeces consequences for your actions. This is the aspect I miss most. Run your mouth, and get beat down...watch the person you were harrassing loot your bodyand give your items away to people. THAT is a fine anti-griefing policy. Without consequence, open PvP looses it's appeal to me. I have spent plenty of hours in FPS deathmatches and know where to go when I need a fix for that kind of fragfest funzies.
I totally respect garretts opinion, and those of you who agree with him. Yes, this is a game, and I can understand that a lot of players loath the idea of having to relive the last 2 hours of your virtual life, earning xp back, farming gold to replace equipment. I just cannot understand HOW to draw excitement from a game where nothing you do has any real consequence. If you are gonna make me a hamster on the wheel, at least make it sting if I fall off.
Cheers mates!
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
I'll throw in my own two cents.
The problem I see with alot of the current MMORPGs is the way the worlds are set up. I used to love Dark Age of Camelot's RvRvR frontier, as well as Darkness Falls. I didn't mind the fact that PvE was "PvP" free, notice I did not say risk free though. Death in DAoC was penalized, lose of stats that needed healing as well as experiance loss caused you to think out your battles and not rush into things because of that risk. I enjoyed this, and it worked. I'm all for leaving the PvE'rs to their realm, let them PvE if that is what they enjoy doing, there is no need to force them into PvP situations if they do not wish to participate in them.
The only thing I believe Dark Age of Camelot didn't do right was penalties in PvP. I don't think Experience loss should be a penalty in PvP. You don't gain experience for winning so you shouldn't lose experience for losing. There should have been some sort of loot penalty. If you die you should lose your equipment on your character (not things in your inventory), or even the cash you had on your body at the time of death.
However, all of that is rather pointless in this thread. One of the major problems I see in MMORPGs is the grind-time it takes to actually acheive these items. Even some of the hardcore players take at least a month to get their full set of equipment they want. This is where the problems begin. Losing items that took you over a month to attain is harsh, and probably causes some people to quit the game. A Medium needs to be found between time needed to achieve items and the death penalty of losing items. Until that medium is met it will be a war between the hardcore the casual...and most likely the casual players will win.
I think LineageII does it best and SB does it worst In L2 you just get moved to a safe town where you cant be attacked and you lose exp it kinda too much though considering the Grind in L2. Sb i remember getting killed again right after i respawned thats so wack lol. In WoW you get to run back to you body and see your enemies around yor corps thats kinda cool but its like cheating .
I've played all three games Everquest, Ultima Online, and World of Warcraft and I think they both make some good points in regards to death penalty. It's both good and bad and depends on the situation which makes more sense. I'll explain game by game.
In Ultima Online or UO as most refer to it as the death penality made perfect sense it gave a sense of danger and brougt the community together. It's easy to point the finger and say PK's ruined UO. That's only a half truth. Many of us loved hunting down PK's or stealing from them I mean they a reason disadvantage at times. PKing was just as much fun tho who didn't enjoy killing some punk mouthing off. In UO I either did or saw it all while I played the game so I understand it from a broader point of view than some. As a miner PK's were troublesome but on the other side of the story Pking a miner was pretty darn fun especially if you had a miner/smith yourself
UO was misuderstood in alot of aspects because it was by no means a newbie friendly game. Mastering that game was part of the engeniousness of it once you did you could either help newbies or hurt them or both. It was by far the most realistic in terms of community. It's very much similar to our own lives. People are killed and stolen from in real life all the time rich, poor, innocent, or guilty it doesn't matter it's happening right now. UO brought as sense of immersion I guess it was a little too real perhaps for some and you were able to get away with this you could only dream of doing in real life but would never dare nor perhaps want to do. Anyways that ends my thoughts on UO.
In Everquest or EQ as it's often refered things became different than in UO. For one it was class based. You were essentially stuck and assigned a role where as in UO you could play the part of many different roles. Things slowed down the level grind was implimented and the game had it's own form of death penality experiance loss. Basically in exchange for not losing items from dieing instead you lost skill or at least the time it took to increase your skills as well as being limited to one role instead of the option of being able to be the jack of all trades essentially. The bard class in that sense was perhaps the most diverse class in that game. EQ touched back on more traditional rpg roots as well by making items and quests feel much more important. In fact UO really didn't offer any quest that I can think of aside from escorting npc's back and forth or saving them occasionally and as for loot it was pretty limited and standard not a ton of diversity like some players were used to from rpg's of the past. Questing was obviously a major role in EQ so much in fact that it's apart of the title itself. Rewarding players for questing became a big part as well and how do you do that items and experiance of course or apparently anyways I wish there were a better solution or at least some different ones. Anyways EQ's major flaw to alot of players was it's experiance penality for death. Casual players just didn't like it because it made the game hard for them to get into and hardcore players disliked it because it was well sort of harsh and would often die multiple times doing raids to receive new "uber" items. Once you reached the level cap items were the only thing that set players apart really. PvP was very limited in EQ. Anyways that's about it for EQ.
Last but not least World of Warcraft or WoW as most call it. WoW basically borrowed many different ideas from previous mmo's and try to improve upon them and the end result is what alot have come to enjoy. It mostly borrowed from EQ largly and probably because from a business standpoint it was simply the more successful game of the two in terms of popularity. However that's semi-debatible which I dicuss in the next and last paragraph. Anyways WoW got rid of the experiance penality from death which made both the casual and hardcore players alike happy since many felt it unessary and frankly I'm inclined to agree all tho personally I think just not being able to lose your level like in dark ages of camelot (another mmorpg) was enough but that's just my opion. It also expanded on the raiding features EQ became known for and made the game more solo friendly early on which I think everyone liked. The only downside is they made it too solo and quest orientated early on in the game and didn't promote grouping the way EQ did with a exp bonus so leveling a new character after you've done the quests and seen the game once it's pretty unbarable if you ever decide to make a new character especially toppled with the fact that they more or less did away with twinking characters which is the art of equiping a low level character with high level items by making items soulband as well as implimenting level caps something EQ did eventually after a few expansions and WoW borrowed. Another major thing it did was instanced dungeons borrowed from Anarchy Online which basically eleminated spawn camping that was so rampent in EQ and to a extent UO but more of a problem in EQ since in UO you could just attack the person if you felt like it if it really bothered you enough part of the beauty of that game
Anyways the major reason behind EQ initiating level caps on items to prevent twinking was a well known thing in mmo's now was to help prevent ebayed items/currency essentially however in WoW with spawn camps no longer being a major issue items aren't as rare and sought after and thus twinking shouldn't really be as severe a problem like it was in EQ not to mention making items bind on pickup and equip. I'm really not sure completly why they've tryed to deterr twinks in WoW but they have and not like I can change it. Another sly thing they did was make travel easier compared to EQ but for some reason not as easy as UO I think just because it's a timesink so they can keep players from finishing there content as quickly and thus keep customers paying longer. The thing is anyone who's played UO I'm sure it annoys the heck out of but just the same was a knotch better than EQ's travel or at least intially it's become better with expansions. Now the last thing I can think of that WoW did was made it easier to level in general but especially for the casual players sort of to lure them in. Alot of casual players have become disappointed with the end game however since it's heavily guild centric as was EQ but unlike UO where a guild was in no way nessary but definatly added to the fun of the game.
I mentioned earlier that it was debatable the success of EQ compared to UO and so forth and I'll try to explain a little what I meant. My nubmers are probably off but EQ I think had around 2-4mil at it's peak and UO I think had around 1-1.5mil but also came out sooner and thus the mmo market was newer and the internet and computers weren't quite as common in the home as they were when EQ arrived or as they are today hence partially WoW's success compartively to EQ. I think graphics aside if the games had been released in reverse order perhaps UO might be the game with 5 mil subscriptions at at it's peak not sure if WoW has even hit it's peak yet and WoW with 1.5mil but you get the point. You see the mmorpg market is growing each year and more and more players are playing them thusly. Anyways that about wraps it up and I think alot of people might have a better understanding of mmorpg's as a result of this post. One last thing tho I'd just like to give thanks to the creaters of Ultima Online for being the first widely succesful mmorpg as well as meridian 59 which I never played but was really the 1st mmorpg and thus deserves equal props.
Hmm, can't resist an "ideal mog" type thread.
First off, EVE's pvp is too carebear for my liking. Too easy to avoid things. Most of it is also shooting fish in a barrel. Sometimes it is really fun, but I also kindof dislike scripted conflict for some reason. Death also doesn't hurt that much in most cases.
My ideal world has permadeath. (Bizarre word. Death is death.) Also, it ignores the marketting department and doesn't subscribe to the trend of making the player stronger slowly over time in order to stretch out the average subscription.
Every bit of equipment should basically be basic. Every +1 demands a -2. Everyone just has to minmax by default.
If anything should be built up over time, it should not be mere avatars, but instead, the environment which groups of players shape and defend.
I like a sharded world, because then you can delay creation of a new character for a day or so on a particular shard, but the defeated can still play elsewhere. Skills I think should have to be earned pretty much, but once found or bought, can be trained to the peak competence level within a very short frame of time. Short enough to make the designer question even creating such a downtime. Also, no xp from mobs, only quests. Maybe let groups of players make questions or contract systems as well.
As for PvP, I think a game could be made to where pvp is not THE central activity or telos of gameplay, but still have "perma"death. (That's death. Finitude.) I think I rather like the idea of groups of players succeeding accidentally. Like someone somewhere on the server does an activity for the 1,056,798th time and suddenly a cloud shifts in the sky and looks like something. (The ultimate way to prevent macroing in my book.) If nobody nearby notices, the Iron Age does not commence or something. For MMOGs that tell a story as fast as the population is able to push it, they might have a shelflife until a new shard is opened, though it is probably only persistent for a few months or so.
As for shiny cool stuff, and losing it, I think we need to see systems of inheritance in place, but not quite for individuals. Groups of players would hold their own sort of "banks." In most mmogs, you see some sort of limited bank slot system. This is to spare the server somewhat and also to somehow encourage trading and selling of items. Mostly it just annoys generalist crafters. In EVE you get inifinite banking, but the small size of the ship hold can still be annoying. The possession or home of the group should be everything it has. Losing it is catastrophic for all. (This is why I also kindof like the idea of shards which are only open for a couple hours a day at a regular time.) Theft within the group can also occur, which serves to keep people honest and to prevent groups from growing too large. If a system could exist where practically everyone was in debt all the time, and on the run from prowling creditors, that would be even better.
Every character should also have a lifespan of some sort. The first day or two of a new avatar, you should be a child (and fast, low targetting signature) or something. You should also eventually get old and feeble at some point (but with different advantages), even in a really persistent world. Some mechanism for rewarding groups for taking care of these street urchins seems like it would have some interesting effects on the collective behavior of the players.
No one should be completely independent. You shouldn't be able to walk for leagues in the snow, nor march or row with your army for days without supplies, nor camp away from a home base where enormous number of non-spectacular tasks must be accomplished on a daily basis just to keep the group functioning.
I think it all depends on your approach to the games themselves. If you have have no affinity to your character dying is irrelevant. I found teh system in Guild Wards got quite painful when you were not earning much XP for your kills it made it harder to play the game, unless you went back to a city and got fixed up. WoW's system can have quite a sting, having died in an instance fighting the boss mob just it died meant a long from outside as a ghost hoping to get back in time before the respawn as I would not have full health or mana and be stuck right in teh thick of it.
If a system existed in a game where you could choose the death penalty how many would opt for losing there hard fought for armour and weapons? Would you want to pay 20 gold when you only had 2? Try this, get a low level character and jump of teh damn in Loch Modan (WoW) this will take you to teh graveyard in the Wetlands. Now you will have to choose between running back to your corpse at the foot of the damn or ressing with the sickness penalty and making your way all the to Menethil Harbour. You will not survive contact with anything and will therefore have to start again. It gets painful when this is a choice between going back into the thick of things to complete that quest or turning tail until the next time.
You pay the money for the play time its up to you how you spend your time. I like the system in Wow it keeps the momentum of the game free flowing. I tried Everquest 1 & 2 but they just frustrated me with the poor interfaces, combat systems etc and they are just plain ugly. Eve was good but took ages to get anywhere. A game must cater for solo players as that is how you start out!
Death need not be the end there is always a penalty, games are after all not reality no matter how real the graphics and sound get. Different penalty systems hurt in different ways. The choice is ours to make.
I came, I saw and in Azeroth I made my home.
My story in MMORPGs starts with Ultima Online. I enjoyed hunting with my guild, made of a half a dozen people, and the Death Penalty there was a pain. Imagine we had found some precious item, and that by any chance the team died. We had to find a resser NPC or player, then move all the way back to the corpse in the hope that the mob that killed us didn't looted it, or some passing by player...From years of playing that game I only mastered 1 character, the progress was very very slow, toke years sometimes, unless there was some exploit like fighting agains't summoned blade spirits to improve Parry, or killing stuff from a safe spot to increase Archery.
Even on WOW, it's hard to get a good number of people playing for real on a guild. So, even on a game with more then 5 million people, most guilds have only a dozen members and some aren't always online. The developers better have this under consideration before they plan something that requires 40 players, because it's almost undoable. Takes so long to gather random players for that, that when we gathered about half, some start to leave the group tired of waiting. Sure there are about 4 strong guilds by server, but most are still made by 10 to 20 people that already knew each other from other games, and work in sincrony, with unsincronised play times and often diferent levels.
Best Death Penalty is the one from WOW, were the items decay a bit, you don't lose xp nor your loot, and even that one sometimes breaks groups, because the armour can take so much damage that one more time might mean they will be virtualy destroyed. Though we can still repair it on a Smith, they would offer 0 protection, and so ends another instance run that didn't go too well. This is a good penalty from my point of view. I personaly hate xp debt implemented on a few games in combo with item decay and stats loss (for example EQ2), or the possibility you can even drop lvl (FFXI).
You make some interesting points, Frank, but you forget that people play MMORPGs for many reasons. This site has had surveys on the subject. I hate PK with a vengeance and consider it antisocial and I won't play any game with PK fairly evident. However, I won't play a MMORPG which is purely solo - the interaction is a key aspect of the game.
Your type of MMORPG will suit some but not all. The likes of WoW need to cater for many, many types of players of all ages and backgrounds and I think they do a decent job. I actually feel WoW has too much PK for me, but I still play avoiding the PK elements.
WoW is a mainstream game and could not do what you suggest in a modern MMORPG environment. However, I do think they could offer a chance with characters to make them "Ironman" characters, as in Gothic 2 - when you die you die and have to start again - purely as an option to "increase the thrill". There are also other ways too - for instance they could have mobs which "ate the corpses" preventing a rezz. Players going against these would have to be very well prepared and also they would have to have some form of "lag protection" too.
Lastly, I would like to see WoW and its ilk to explore non-fighting games, or where fighting is a sideline. If we did this, then the arguments raised on death would be irrelevant - death would be very infrequent, but very important. Many would die through old age, not someone forgetting to heal them)
Esteril
L60 Warrior - Stormreaver
When I started with MMORPG's it was with Everquest. I was also much younger had a lot of time to devote to playing the game and recovering from the death penalty. Now that I'm older and have more responsibilities I don't have the kind of time I would like to have to devote to game play of this nature. I still love the MMORPG game play because it give me an opportunity to play with my friends all over the country without having to make an actual trip to visit them.
I like games without a death penalty or with a minimal death penalty. Guild Wars has a good death penalty system and I have heard that WOW has a good one as well. Ones that don't take away all that I have worked for in my limited time to play. Nothing hurt worse than playing in EQ for an entire night only to die at the end of a game session and loosing all you earned in the past 2 - 3 hours. I hated it and after a while it drove me away.
As I said when I was younger death penalty didn't really effect me, but now I would prefer to find games that appeal to me without one.
I really dont understand why people who who no clue insist on calling PKing antisocial behaviour. In most games that support playerkilling you are forced to group to do so. I have been in countless of guilds througout various mmo's, but the one i remember most is my PK guild from the old UO days. I still talk to some of the guys, the friendship you form in a PK guild is impossible to form in a PvE guild. Thank you.
_____________________
I am the flipside of the coin on which the troll and the fanboy are but one side.
Victories in WoW are not decided by killing, it is decided by the person who decides to leave the area first. Take the whole southshore battle area as an example. These fights would go on and on between the sides rubber banding one way, then the other. The only reason one side ever got an advantage is because the other decided to go do something else. You have no way to remove someone from a territory with the current death system in WoW. Having a safe place to gain xp and quest should not be a right, it should be earned.
Players should be more upset about the way that weapons are upgraded patch over patch then they are. When gear is upgraded 5 - 10% or more each patch, that is a waste. It is a waste of previous effort getting other weapons. It is a waste because the powerful become more powerful and the casual become more distant. The difference between a character in WoW with a full set of the best gear and someone with a set of gear two ranks lower is huge.
I'm not saying that having uber weapons doesn't have its place in MMORGs. I'm saying that the way to have PvP and uber weapons is to have every item weigh something and to have full loot. Bottomless storage, or even multiple slotted backpacks allowing for 50+ items is just too much. If a game had bottomless storage and full loot, nobody that was killed by me would have any gear, as I could make off with everything someone had over and over again. Restricting how much can be carried can limit what can be taken from your corpse when you die. Allowing equipped weapons to change hands as you succeed or fail in PvP is the way to equal the battle field.
Sure, if you quest for months to get the gear you want, it will hurt if you lose it, but it will make for a more even battleground. It will make players actually think to make good decisions. It will make running away a valid strategy, not just a cop out. It will make someone who is lucky enough to find a corpse in the woods, doubly blessed. Whether you guard the corpse until the dead returns or take the gear is up to you. That is what MMORGs is all about, isn't it, making choices that has an effect on how others interact with you? More options leads to a more diverse world.
My first MMORPG was Ultima Online, approximately 6 months after the games release. Since that game, I have played Asheron's Call, Everquest II, WoW, Asheron's Call II, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons and even worked with Mythic developing DAoC.
The age old debate of death penalty.. I recall the thrill of logging into UO. Every minute of playing UO was a test of life or death, not just for adventurers but for crafters alike! You couldn't go out to adventure without careful watch for murderer players. You couldn't go just outside of town to mine ore or chop wood without fear of murderer players killing for no good reason. You couldn't go inside town without fear of thieves taking your house keys or that new sword you JUST purchased off a player merchant for nearly all the money you had. Thief players could even kill you in the middle of town and have a neutral friend stand next to you to loot the dead bodies after the guards were summoned.
The addiction formed from playing games that intense is very strong. After nearly 2 years I finally realized that I had developed a love-hate relationship with UO. I loved to login and accomplish something, gain a point or two in this or that or gain some gold by crafting or adventuring. I hated logging in and being instantly killed by a murderer or loggin in to find a thief standing right next to me having taken several items out of my pack before my screen even loaded (over dialup).
The harsh death penalty did allow for heroes to be bourn. I slowly became one of those heroes. I hated the feeling of loosing what I had so much that I vowed to defend others and joined a guild composed of friends that all wanted to hunt down every last murderer and thief and bring them to justice. Our bonds were formed by necessity and due mostly to the harsh nature of the death penalty. I remember spending entire evenings training new players on ways to defend themselves and protect themselves from thieves and exploits.
Of course, the down side to this is that I spent most days being extremely paranoid and irritable. I'm not talking about just in game. I mean outside of the game. The more I read studies and articles about MMORPG's and addictions and the games of the time, UO and EQ, I found that this was actually somewhat of an epidemic among gamers.
So after leaving UO and going to AC there was a complete transformation in my game experience along with my life in general. There was no need for paranoia or irritability because there was no parameter for getting griefed, ganked, thieved or exploited. Does that mean I didn't have the same reason to get together with like-minded people and form a guild? No, on the contrary my friends from UO came to AC with me and we all formed a guild that grew to over 80 times the size of our original guild. The game addiction was every bit as prevalent, but the negative aspects were removed. For the first time, as a gamer, I had a choice. To go PK or not go PK.
This brings me to my point... Do I miss the challenge of a more realistic world that has persistant PK/Thievery? Yes, I do miss some of that thrill. But, there is so much more to gain without having the looming worry of whether or not I have to constantly watch over my shoulder. What I value most right now is the choice I have. In most new generation games players have the choice to play on a PvP server or a standard server (without harsh death penalty).
So that answers the question of PvP or not PvP, but what about the death penalty specifically? I can tell you, no game is perfect. It's one thing to die in a fight you engaged in and simply lost. It's a whole different story to die due to a game bug or lag or an exploit used by your opponent. Unfortunately, these negative issues are prevalent in all games. Games lose subscribers over these negative issues already. If the game has a harsh death penalty like UO does, those same subscribers will leave much sooner and not be lured back to the game. From a business standpoint, it is a necessity to reduce death penalties to be a minor inconvenience. It is my opinion that the only real way to handle this debate and appease the largest customer base is to give them the choice. Make hardcore servers, PvP servers, standard servers and roleplay servers. Give gamers the choice and you'll quickly see where the majority lies. I can guarantee you it won't be on the PvP or Hardcore servers. Perhaps therin lies the answer to this debate. Does the majority rule, or the most hardcore player?
After reading this debate, oh btw AWESOME topic to start off with, I find myself leaning towards the penalty. I do however feel that the penalty shouldnt be TOO HARSH/SOFT and the griefing issue DEFINATELY needs very VERY close monitoring. When I used to play SWG, i felt that the perma-death was rather extreme a penalty for the amount of time put into the Jedi player (pre CU), but i also felt that the BH griefing issue (post pub 9) was not implemented with any consideration for the player being hunted SPECIFICALLY, thus making every playing second almost seem wasted if you were being hunted A LOT ! I prefer a PvP system that is voluntary, either by duel commands, guild wars, or player declaration when logging in either by in game option or specific server choice.
I have nothing against pvp or the solo player, but neither should be a MAJOR part of a MMORPG, after all it is supposed to be a social/interactive game. Their should be someway for a group of designers/developers to have a penaty system that maybe increases in severity everytime you are proven to be griefing another player, also an increase if you die often attempting the same quest ---but a definate penalty of some type!
Let me put it this way to you. I'm not gonna play anymore more of these new MMORPGS. None of them have reproduced the thrill UO gave me back in 1998. Stealing at banks, looting of corpses, my miner being player killed by a Red on a daily basis, the constant question of friend or foe? when you saw someone. I miss the Griefing, Scamming, Stealing, Looting of my corpse and limited safe areas (i.e. only towns). Its not that I did those things to other players all the time, its just risk factors and fear factor that kept me playing. I've since found a player run server for UO that is based on the 1998 version of UO. I love it again. I die, I run, I hide, I fight ......... Its all there. I"m in a guild for security and help. There is a real sense of community again. So, all these new games can kiss my ***. They offer nothing I can't do in a Solo game.
Garrett, you have no clue. Did you ever play UO back then? If not, just listen to Frank. He's speaking words of wisdom. Frank, your right on. I won't be playing any new MMORPGS till something comes along that has the balls of UO back in the day.
Death penaltys are allways going to be on debate, and whichever way you look at it, people are allways going to love or hate death penalty systems. To be quite honest, the issue will never be resolved by the one allmighty "perfect" death system.
"Why?" do you ask? Because quite simply, both sides on the death penalty debate are both such viable options for any mmorpg. Both sides of the equation have as much griefing, pk'ing, and smack talking kids as the other... issues such as these are never going to be solved by any single death system; thinking that you can solve these issues with/without death penalties is a very naive way to think about it. Rather, a game has to solve these problems in other ways. Both versions have its pros and cons, and even the "pros and cons" are upto who the adventurer is and what he would prefer.
Comparing the 2 different death systems is like crossing game genres and saying a Sports Game is better than an Action Game, or vice-versa. Both sides deserve merits, and its why the end user is given the choice of picking a Sports Game and/or an Action Game. Even if you do pick With or Without death penaltys, i can guarantee that 99% of the poplulation will wish at some point that that they were in the opposing death scheme for at least 5 seconds. Its all apples and oranges i'm afraid.
I've taken the time to list some of the features that each system generally brings to the table, this is just a brush on the surface, however, and i'm sure there are many situations that could be added to this list. Please note that this is an argumentative list, and even if i should see somthing as a pro, it isnt allways the case. Like i said before, apples and oranges, not everyone loves the same thing.
WITH HEAVY DEATH PENALTYS
WITHOUT HEAVY DEATH PENALTYS
As i said before, this is just scratching the surface of how any given game can be affected by either death system. Both schemes have a considerable list of pros and cons which are weighed and trialed only by the end-user and what he likes at heart. They can even be considered 2 different genres completely because they can both work so well depending on the game. Which brings me to my final and perhaps most important point...
Its NOT the death penalty alone that makes or breaks a game, but how the game surrounding the "Death Penalty" compliments its chosen death scheme. Its the way the game interacts with its death system that makes it the "best" death penalty for a particular game. Whether its a Heavily weighted death penalty, or a non-existant one all together; theres a time and place for each scheme, and its the reason why we pick up new games or try different ones to tailor our needs. Simply put, no 2 players are going to think the same thing, because they might find enjoyment in 2 completely different aspects of an mmorpg.
The point behind an mmorpg is to create a versatile world that lets you decide what you want to do next, this is the reason why we see such a diverse population of people playing the games, and they are often very opinionated, with very different morales to the next Joe. One person might play to pvp, another might play to socialise, whilst little john next-door might wanna play to solve perplexing puzzles; everyones goals in an mmorpg are extraordinarily different. This topic cannot be debated because nobody can win... all death penalty schemes have their own comprehensive list of pro's and cons which is upto the end-user who is playing the game. Its a battle that cant be won, because people just like what they want to like; you cant force an opinion when its based on such a personal preference.