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Penaltys are a form of Challenge
zethcarn
Member UncommonPosts: 1,558
I see this agruement quite often so I just want to respectfully give my opinion on the subject. Corspe Runs, XP debt, and travel times TO your corpse are a challenge. Ok, I understand there is very little skill involved in pressing auto-run to get back to your body and recover your items. Likewise, there is very little skill involved in "grinding" back your lost XP.
The challenge is to your patience and will to continue on. It's really that simple. If you don't like that idea then why even play MMO's in the first place? It's these challenges or "timesinks" that will directly influence the community of the game that differs it from a community like WoW. Ask yourself, do you want a WoW community? No? Then the game can't be as assecisible and easy as WoW.
Comments
-W.
There are words that describe "challenges to patience".
Annoyance, frustration, burden, pain-in-the-neck. . .
Sound fun?
However, with the ever increasing lean towards little to no penalties in MMOs today, I don't know how successfull a game will become with the penalties many of us remember from EQ1. That's not saying a game with a heavy handed death penalty won't draw 100k, 200k, perhaps 300k subs. What I am saying is what will the publisher and other money lenders say when a game with a heavy handed penalty system tops out at those numbers?
However, with the ever increasing lean towards little to no penalties in MMOs today, I don't know how successfull a game will become with the penalties many of us remember from EQ1. That's not saying a game with a heavy handed death penalty won't draw 100k, 200k, perhaps 300k subs. What I am saying is what will the publisher and other money lenders say when a game with a heavy handed penalty system tops out at those numbers?
1st) Completely agree about the danger. It adds the risk so that challenges can't be cheesed. You don't care about the challenge if there is nothing negative coupled with failure.
2nd) 300k subscribers is DAMNED GOOD. I really don't understand why everyone...and I do mean EVERYONE seems to act like Success = 6.5 Million Subscriptions. It just isn't so. It may be the new bar. It may be the new aspirations of development and production companies....but it is NOT a necessity to success.
It's like saying your resturaunt is going to fail if it doesn't match McDonalds revenue.
100-300K sub at $15 a month = excellent work. Since when did a game need to get millions of subs to be successful? I agree with the post above- just because you do not reach the revenue of the top in the market does not mean you failed.
-W.
Timesinks should be avoided at all costs in MMO's, it's what drives so many away. Not saying there shouldn't be a penalty, but corpse runs don't strike me as a penalty, just a straight up timesink. May as well ask me to diconnect and stare at the wall for 20 minutes if I die, it's just silly. Basically you just want death to have a sting, so people don't exploit it (such as a means of travel). Debt does that, it serves it's purpose and allows you to move on. Losing xp does the same, as long as it's reasonable. Most of the penalty for death (for me anyhow) comes from having to travel back to where I was to continue xp'ing, or even to a new place since all of a sudden i'm at a spawn point. This is also when most parties break up (if you all have corpse runs, usually those who need it will go back and retrieve it only to leave shortly after because hey, if your group just wiped then it must suck right?) so that in itself is a penalty.
this is not a crap grinding game
all mmo's are time sinks, all the successful ones at least. also time sinks are what keep players playing the game and paying that subscription fee.
without the time sink it would be just another console game that people beat in a week or two and then move on to the next console game.
yeah its going to be a sink but a really fun sink
i know that your not going to get bored
-----Zero Punctuation Eve Online Review-----
I agree with the O.P. fully.
I just started playing EQ again, and I forgot just how unforgiving that game can be, and how ADDICTIVE!
All these games that are so freaking easy, so everything besides EQ and Lineage2 and a tiny handful of others, they just don't have the challenge level to keep me wanting to play. I now had to un-install Everquest because in about 3 days it completely eclipsed just about everything in my life! I've been off work for a couple weeks and I need to get some stuff done around the house and with Everquest on my computer that just can't happen. It's too addictive, even after all these years.
The difficulty is what compels me to press onward. So glad Vanguard won't be kowtowing to the easy button MMORPG crowd.
The old school mechanics which you are probably refering to weren't really intended to become a "drag" so to say...it just ended up being like that. Well...learn from your mistakes right? Some games, recently have decided to "throw the baby out with the bath water" so to speak...get rid of the source of the problem instead of fixing it. Camping and Competition with mobs in dungeons? Get rid of the other people! Travel time too long? Teleports and Fast Train Rides!
That is one option available to fix problem mechanics that add tedium to a game. Another option is to identify WHY something is tedius and attempt to change the way it works instead of just throwing it away. That is what Sigil has charged themselves to do. They see the older games like EQ and Ultima...and they the see how newer games like EQII and WoW have sidestepped the problems but lost the depth that EQ and Ultima had, and they are trying to regain those lost paradigms of "Meaningful Travel" and "Harsher Death Penalties" only make them fun.
...and really...we won't know if it is fun until we play it, so far they say that Beta shows that it is fun and they don't have to resort to Plan B =P
Had an amusing idea while i read this thread, so ill post while its still bubbling...
Why not combine Corpse Runs with the short lived ability to Monster Play in old EQ?
So upon death, you are transformed (re-incarnated?) into a mob/monster from the surrounding zone you died in. This would give you safe passage from the areas spawn population, making it easier to get to your body and transfer your soul back into your body. Get back to your body safely and get only a temp (5 mins?) stat debuff.
But... during your Monster Run you would be open to attack from other players and, in turn, them to you. If you die from player attack, or your attack upon a player, you would appear back at your real body. After this you would get the same stat debuff, but also recieve a minor exp penalty (well, you died twice
)
Ill probably read this tomorrow and apologise for taking this off topic, but you know how it is when you think you've had a tiny spark of inspiration.
Ta Ta
Tam
I see this being very much like the WoW ghost run...no mob agro run, yet you can still get camped by buttholes.
Visually you would appear to be a normal Mob (except to your groupmates if in a group?) so you would be unidentifiable to your 'camper', plus your spawn point would be at a random location but within a preset maximum distance from your corpse.
anyway, like i said, just an idea
I see this being very much like the WoW ghost run...no mob agro run, yet you can still get camped by buttholes.
Visually you would appear to be a normal Mob (except to your groupmates if in a group?) so you would be unidentifiable to your 'camper', plus your spawn point would be at a random location but within a preset maximum distance from your corpse.
anyway, like i said, just an idea
Yeah, I know what you meant... I was just looking at it mechanics wise.
It would be an agro free run to your corpse, much like WoW's ghost retreval system, only you would be able to attack people along the way.
Although you wouldn't appear as a PC, it would be pretty easy to tell which monsters are and which ones aren't. The one that is a PC is the one that is haulin' tail towards the corpse and isn't on any sort of pathing.
nah, you fool them by wandering up a down past the same tree for a few minutes
I still thinks its an amusing solution though...
Although this is true, I like the reincarnation as a MoB idea. Either way, you have to make the dreaded corpse run. I think by dieing and turning into a MoB, it would at least make it a bit more fun. And you could try other methods of sneaking around.
Out of curiouity, why did they take that out of EQ? It must not have been in place long, as I joined that game around August of 1999 and it was not in place.
-W.
Although this is true, I like the reincarnation as a MoB idea. Either way, you have to make the dreaded corpse run. I think by dieing and turning into a MoB, it would at least make it a bit more fun. And you could try other methods of sneaking around.
Out of curiouity, why did they take that out of EQ? It must not have been in place long, as I joined that game around August of 1999 and it was not in place.
The dread from the corpse run doesn't come from the actual run....it was the fact that you had to know where your corpse was and you had to get past the mobs to get to your corpse while nekkid. The mob respawn corpse run thingy would eliminate the nekkid really (cause you have the moster stats) and there wouldn't be mob agro...and we already know there is gonna be a "corpse sense" sorta trail/marker thingy to lead you to your corpse.
This system would fuction exactly like the WoW corpse run, only along the way you could PvP. It would soon lose it's novelty. It wouldn't really change anything except the ease of running to your corpse.