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WoW is more challenging than EQ2, a realistic analysis of death penalties
Samuraisword
Member Posts: 2,111
What’s in a Death Penalty?
I find it very interesting that WoW’s death penalty is much harsher than the death penalty in EQ2, which goes against our preconceived notions of these two games. Let’s look at the facts:
World of Warcraft Death Penalty:
- Death causes damage to your equipment.
- You are expected to run a long way to your corpse and then reappear in a dangerous area, taking time and risking a second death.
- Your other option is to resurrect at a graveyard, whereupon your equipment suffers serious damage (likely requiring you to trek back to a repair NPC immediately), and you are unable to fight for ten minutes.
Everquest 2 Death Penalty:
- Death causes damage to your equipment.
- You accrue a very small penalty to future earned XP.
- You respawn at a safe spot.
WoW’s “travel back to your corpse or sit for ten minutes” mechanism, combined with the danger of dying again when you reach your corpse, makes it more of a nuisance than EQ2’s penalty. But here’s the real kicker, the reason that puts WoW’s penalty high above EQ2’s: WoW’s graveyard spots are not particularly safe. I remember my first trip to Scarlet Monastery: I got very lost and ended up in extremely dangerous territory, and died. And then I died again and again. Finally I respawned at the graveyard, only to discover to my horror that horrible monsters found me in the graveyard, too! I was instantly killed AGAIN. In WoW, when you’re in an area that’s much too high-level for you, monsters will come for you from miles around, and they are nearly impossible to escape.
In fact, I would have been stuck at that graveyard forever, except for a glitch in WoW that they’ve never bothered to fix: if you log out and log back in, your ghost can then travel to a different graveyard spot and respawn there instead. But you have to log out and log back in first, and you have to know about this trick. This is well-known among a certain part of WoW’s audience, but is certainly not known to everybody playing WoW. And when a game’s death penalty can result in effective perma-death of your character (unless you know how to exploit a bug), it’s hard to call your death penalty “casual”.
Compare it to EQ2, where death is a mild nuisance and then you get on with your evening. It’s much more casual friendly. You don’t have to run out into the same horribly dangerous spot and risk your life a second time. On the other hand, I’ve heard people complain that death in EQ2 is so tame that many people become careless, which gets groups killed.
Just to be clear: I’m not complaining about this. I don’t mind that WoW is more aggressive in punishing death than EQ2 is. (Neither of them are anywhere near as tough as, say, EQ1’s death penalty, which was so punitive that it regularly made people quit the game forever.) But it does go against our stereotyped assumption that EQ2 is more “hardcore” than WoW.
The Purpose of Death Penalties
But what should the death penalty be? What’s the point of a death penalty?
Some games don’t have much of any death penalty at all, such as Dungeon Runners. These games are aimed at players who are looking for a game that engages and entertains them, but doesn’t particularly challenge them.
Most MMO’s, however, have relatively punitive death penalties because they are designed for players that want to be challenged, not just engaged. The theory goes that if a game doesn’t punish you for playing poorly, then your rewards for playing well will be hollow and without much significance. That’s true to an extent … but of course, that’s only true if “playing well” is your motivation for playing the game.
But the death penalty has other side-effects, too. If the penalty is lenient, players find themselves experimenting with more tactics, exploring the landscape more, and poking into nooks and crannies of the game. If the penalty is harsh, they tend to stick with the strategies they know. Good survival strategies become more valuable, and in many games, players find that grouping together makes for a better survival strategy. So we often find that strong death penalties correlate with more grouping.
Correlation of death penalty to other aspects of MMO gameplay.
The exact death penalty should be based on the target audience you want to reach. This is a gross simplification, of course, but it helps point out some of the ramifications of a particular death penalty. There are many other correlations, too, such as Time Expenditure, Opportunities to Zerg, and Rewarding In-Game Knowledge. None of these are hard and fast rules, and will vary depending on the exact details of the death penalty, but I think they hold up pretty well for a large number of penalties and games.
I think both WoW and EQ2 are towards the “lenient” end of the spectrum. But is WoW’s death penalty too harsh or too mild? Well, the current death penalty is obviously not a deal-breaker for 9 million people — then again, we don’t know how many more people they would have if it was harsher or more lenient! If I were making a new game, I’d make it more lenient. EQ2’s more-lenient death penalty was more enjoyable to me than WoW’s, and I’m not exactly casual, so I think going lenient is the safer bet for modern MMO audiences.
I agree with the assessment of harsher death penalties creating challenge. Too many people say they don't, that they are just annoying time consuming inconveniences. These people just like easy games.
I also agree that harsher death penalties promote grouping, which is a good thing, security in numbers. I mostly solo, but I enjoy challenging solo content which I have experienced finding in games designed primarily for small groups, as opposed to solo play.
Unfortunately the author is correct that most new gamers want easy games and that is a safer bet for developers. I only hope that there are still valid choices for veterans like myself that want to be challenged. Bring back the harsh death penalties of classic EQ for me please.
Comments
All of those words and you are still wrong.
Challenge and death are separate entities that have no relationship. Death is, in the simplest terms, a penalty for failure in a task. That task can be challenging or not challenging. How harsh the death penalty is does not make the prior task any easier or harder, it just makes the recovery more or less tedious/frustrating.
If you are trying to kill a dragon and die in the process 10 times, what difference is there in how severe the death was? You still failed ten times - the death penalty did not alter that. You could either respawn instantly intact and try again, or lose all your gear and spend a week gathering it back to try again. The latter is no harder than the former, it just consumes more time.
I played EQ1 since release in 1999 and I have no desire to see its death system resurrected, so to speak. It did not add difficulty, merely frustration. Make games challenging by making encounters challenging, not by making failure a pain in the ass.
Harsh death penalty is also exciting.. Why? If you played old school everquest, you KNOW that feeling when you are down in lower Guk camping some guy and you see the words TRAIN TO ZONE flash across your chat that its going to be one hell of a time.. Heart rates go up, fingers are tapping, because you know that if you get caught in that train and your corpse gets buried in LGuk that you WILL either need a higher level rez class to drag, summon, or rez your corpse OR you will need to find a group to get back down to your corpse..
Risk vs Reward is what makes harsh death penalties fun. You survive one of the hardest dungeons in the game? PAT on the back, you DID it, even with the fear of losing a corpse and ALL your items.. But if you survive a dungeon but end up dying and running back like 20 times, what did you risk? The run? The death animation? Durability hit? Is that really that much of a risk? If you die, I believe your body should at LEAST be lootable in the form of maybe 10% of your total money, and ALL your items should remain on your corpse. Xp hits are kind of pointless...
I just cannot understand why mmo's are turning into FPS when death is concerned.. Run, shoot (fight), die, and respawn with no fear of loss..
This is the only aspect harsh death penalties have going for it - excitement, not that challenge garbage in the OP.
While death penalties do not add any challenge, I do admit that the risk vs. reward aspect can make things more lively. The adrenaline rush that comes with avoiding a painful death is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, that rush soon ends when one finds oneself dead, looking at a wasted night.
It is a fine line, really. You want death to mean something while at the same time not be crippling. Developers have probably erred on the side of making them too gentle, but people who think EQ1 had it right are swinging too much in the other direction, I think.
The really bad thing about EQ1 is that you could easily die to trains that were in no way related to your own error, but yet you still had no escape. It is one thing to die from one's own stupidity, but quite another to die from someone else's.
I disagree. This is also why I despise all instancing.
Playing a MMOG is about interaction with others. This doesn't mean required forced grouping or raiding, it means that the world is shared with others, and that actions made by others can effect your circumstances for better or worse.
I disagree. This is also why I despise all instancing.
Playing a MMOG is about interaction with others. This doesn't mean required forced grouping or raiding, it means that the world is shared with others, and that actions made by others can effect your circumstances for better or worse.
When you die in WoW you can without danger travel back to the place you died as a ghost if i remember it right. In EQ2 you have to travel all the way back fully attackable. Thats much more dificult imo. If the entire group dies, you have to start all over again with a quest. In WoW you can just travel back toghether as a little unattackable ghost army. Dont be shy to correct me if im wrong.
Yes we know WOW is better than EQ2.
The title to this thread is totaly incorrect, ...I think you got it backwards
Yep, nothing quite like being randomly disconnected, dying because of it and losing 2 WEEKS of work.
Harsh death penalties don't add challenge or excitement, they add annoyance and frustration.
Omg you kidding right harsh death penaltys, its in both games carebear penaltys not harsh at all, its a walk in tha park designed so children can play it to.
You absolutely have no clue what harsh death penaltys are
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Thats a totally different subject ..of course disco sux .... but they happen less and less these days ... Harsh Death Penaltys do bring excitement to a game and unless you have palyed a game with it then you wouldnt know all todays MMOs death penaties are a total joke.. there is no risk in dying .. This is game mechanics ..you seem to wanna adress a tech issue and attach it to game mechanics..
Harsh death penalties don't add any challenge that's not there already. I do like harsh penalties for dying though, even though they are a pain in the ass sometimes.
Eve on the other hand has the most severe death penalties of any MMO I've ever played. And the game is better for it - outside of the rookie systems I can safely assume everyone I meet has a modicum of competence, and in low-security areas that people actually know what they're doing. It's quite refreshing actually.
DAOC you didn't lose everything you were carrying like you do in Eve, but there was experience loss, which is worse in my opinion (in Eve as long as you have the money you can just buy everything and keep going again, which is why noobs are constantly advised to not fly anything they can't afford to lose). If you got a reputation as an idiot good luck getting anyone to group with you, or ever getting to max level. And the game was better for it.
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i know hows that feel like. The feeling is something that cant be explain by words . .
death penalties are more of a pain in the ass than challenging. Incidentally EQ's death penalty these days is somewhat tamer with the graveyard zone and npc summoners.
Being randomly disconnected can present a whole other set of problems. I'd be cautious how I'd play till the problem can be addressed. The death penalty has to have some level of consequence other wise it becomes trivial and unnecessary.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
LOL @ this thread, seriously. Have you ever played WoW? Have you ever reached end-game? What about EQII? Even when I was playing the EQII trial, I'd die and have to run about 400 meters back to where I was where I died. Challenging? No. Annoying? Yes.
If you die in World of Warcraft, it could either be a short run back or a long run back, and your dumb if you die in a spot where your SURROUNDED by mobs in the first place.
How are you comparing two games by difficulty simply because of the death penalties?
Both Wow and Eq2 have pretty minimalistic death penalty.
Running back to your corpse without losing anything is a joke imo...
Uo has the best system still, making your items fully lootable from your corpse while you run back.
But the difference between UO and Wow/Eq2 is that Uo never was item based game like Wow/Eq2 is.
That system wouldn't obviously work in Wow/Eq2.
But that is what is wrong with todays mmo's.
No skill needed in fighting, items do that for you...
May Darkfall save us all!
You are comparing apples with oranges; since it takes longer to level in EQ2 than WoW. WoW hand holds players from A to B: EQ2 involves something called thinking. Playing WoW has made me dumber for when I play another MMO, no surprise people go back to WoW because anything else is too challenging and so they go back to safety.
It's like the difference between teaching a child how to draw with crayons to training astronauts how to land a space shuttle.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Yup before Wow most mmo's tend to need some thinking when playing.
But when it comes to death penalty both of these games have nothing really.
However in Eq2 you have to run back to your corpse alive and in Wow you can do it as a invisible ghost.
So i would say Eq2 is more challenging than Wow when it comes to death penalty.
Must have taken you a long time to type all that up eh? too bad all of it is complete and utter crap.
If you can't even understand the simple concept of death penalty =! challenge, I doubt you could bring up an argument about how much more complicated WoW is to XXX.
There seems to be some misconception that I wrote the original article. I did not.
Neither game has what i would calla death penalty. After all do you lose any stuff permanently, ie do items get destroyed forever if you die?
What about XP can you lose it permanently or temporary?
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
You are in an arcade.. You see a game that catches your eye and decide to give it a spin. You reach in your pocket and realize that you only have 2 quarters, yet the game cost one to play. It is a shoot em up.. You throw your quarter in after little debate and start to play. KNOWING you only have 1 quarter left to play and you do not want to stop playing yet, you undertsand that all your skills will be neccesary to survive and make your money last as long as it can.
The death penalties in mmo's should feel JUST like this.. It should make you watch yourself and actually THINK about what you do when you play.. Make you WANT to survive because you know that if you die, it will be hell to pay..
I know when I was a kid and I had contra, trying to beat that game WITHOUT cheats is a skillfull task really. If you are not careful you would certainly see the game over screen and have to start ALL over again, which was never fun..
This guy is obviously a super-newbie. Actually, all he had to do was send an in-game petition. "Help, I'm a newbie who got in over his head. I went into too high a level area and keep getting chain killed by everything. I need help rezzing and getting to a safe area".
Another option he could have done, was either wait for the next group of passing players to visit SM, and slay everything in the area, then rezz. Or send a zone wide message asking for anyone to kill all the MOBs in the SM area so his low level character could stop getting chain killed.
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I have not played EQ2 yet. But I can say this... WoW does NOT have a serious death penalty. In fact, WoW has NO death penalty at all.
And a message to any NEWBIE player playing WoW:
If you have never played a mmorpg before, or a rpg before, pick a Rogue as your first WoW character. They have a special skill that makes them turn invisible ("Vanish" I think it's called). They instantly become invisible to all hostile MOBs. Even while in the middle of battle, they can use this skill. Not to be confused with their regular stealth skill which is also usefull for exploring areas.