MMORPG with the best DEATH system?

Jimberfly · September 2004

What game do you think had the best penalty system for dying?

I have always been partial to Asheron's Call, although it was a little too mild I would rather take a penalty to my skills than lose actual XP. Levelling for a few hours just to lose it all to one death would be unbelievably frustrating. I don't think a game should ever take away xp you have earned.

Playing pvp you had to watch your death items closely as well, so that you would not drop valuable armor/weapons. It made it a little challenging.

Tymora · September 2004

I like a mmorpg that has a steep death penalty. To me, it adds excitement and a sense of urgency when my character is facing death. It causes players to be more careful with decisions and use more strategy.

In a game with a light death penatly, you may see players constantly charging at a difficult monster, without a care if they die or not. They'll die, rez, go back and charge again. It makes no difference to them if the penalty is light.

In a game with harsh death penalties, I would be very careful about what I attack. I would move through the gameworld with caution, examining everything around me. This adds to the gameplay, I think. I think it's more fun to play with some fear of my characters death rather than march my character around like his is indestructable, and in some mmorpgs, players can do this.

I agree that it is frustrating to lose experience or even a level due to a death. If it happens because of a disconnect or lag, it is even worse. But there are always bad things happening all around us, and for a game to be immersive and realistic, I think some bad things should happen to your characters as well. If it's XP loss, then I would be angry, but it would make me be even more careful and perhaps think a bit more about how I should proceed. I would look for help maybe, or I would seek new armor or weapons, etc. In my opinion, a mmorpg without a harsh death penatly makes everything in it seem meaningless.

jimothypetro · September 2004

Depends for the type of game IMO.

For a normal PvE mmorpg = CoH
For a PvP oriented mmorpg = Well.. none really.. but something similar to L2 without the XP loss.
For a mmofps = planetside

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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

DarqueLord · September 2004

Gah.... Second try!

The Death Penalties on Ruby of Eventide are pretty cool.

1. The death penalty does NOT apply to any character under level 6. Allowing the person to learn the game without penalties.

2. After level 6, when your avatar dies you drop ALL equipment that is not insured. So you will always have your standard equipment, but if you forgot to insure that uber sword you just got... ::::02::

3. Recovery of the dropped equipment is possible if you return to your place of death. But you must move quickly because a timer has been placed on the equipment... no one can touch that equipment for the 75% of the timer, but after up its up for grabs.

4. Last, you have reduced skills. Your skills are penalized until you pay off a 5% xp penalty of your current level.

Wicked_Edge · September 2004

NONE! I hate dying! Altho World of Warcraft's death system represents UO's somewhat. FFXI had the worst friggin death system! 10% xp loss from ur MAXIMUM total xp needed for next level. If that wasn't bad enough, you could de-level too! in AC u only lost like i think 6% of stats? which wasnt too bad IMO cuz u could recover em once u killed some stuff.

---------------------------------
UO - 4 years
AC - 2 years
AC2 - 6 months
DAoC - 1 month
FFXI - 7 months
Diablo2 - 9 months
Shadowbane - Beta Tested
Lineage2 - Beta Tested
Saga of Ryzom - Beta Tested
Risk Your Life - Beta Tested
World of Warcraft - Beta Testing
mmoRPG'er since October 1997

BigPeeler · September 2004

hmm... CoH seems to be getting alot of votes...

what is the death penalty in CoH anyways?... i've never really looked into it...

anyways, i voted UO... mmm... good times...

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Games Played - Lineage, Lineage 2, Helbreath, RuneScape, EVE Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tale, Tibia, RYL, Dark Eden, Savage Eden, Astonia III, Ashen Empires, El Kardian, Fung Wan Online, Project Entropia, Ultima Online, Ragnarok Online, Redmoon, Star Wars Galaxies, Thesa, Conquer Online, Deloria, Fairyland, MU Online, Legends...

jimothypetro · September 2004

The death peanlty in CoH is just XP debt. About 5% of the next level from what I've seen.

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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

BigPeeler · September 2004

oh... well thats not too bad...

how can that beat UO though?

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Games Played - Lineage, Lineage 2, Helbreath, RuneScape, EVE Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tale, Tibia, RYL, Dark Eden, Savage Eden, Astonia III, Ashen Empires, El Kardian, Fung Wan Online, Project Entropia, Ultima Online, Ragnarok Online, Redmoon, Star Wars Galaxies, Thesa, Conquer Online, Deloria, Fairyland, MU Online, Legends...

Righty · September 2004

World of warcraft, hands down. In Wow you'll never loose anything other then time

Finwe · September 2004

AC1. It hurt, but yet didn't decapitate.

"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis

jimothypetro · September 2004

Originally posted by Righty
World of warcraft, hands down. In Wow you'll never loose anything other then time

Unfortunately many people think that's exactly what is wrong with WoW's death penalty.. nothing lost but a few minutes(which can be good.. but can cause problems in PvP).

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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

BigPeeler · September 2004

well i'll tell you which game has the WORST penalty... Priston Tale, and any other game with carebear penalties of the like...

seriously, there's gotta be a reason to NOT die... remember people, dying is a BAD thing...

btw, WoW = carebear...

you need a descent penalty to keep people from dying...

i like Lineage 2's penalty because its harsh enough to keep you on your toes, but doesnt completely screw you...

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Games Played - Lineage, Lineage 2, Helbreath, RuneScape, Mir3, EVE Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tale, Tibia, RYL, Dark Eden, Savage Eden, Astonia III, Ashen Empires, El Kardian, Fung Wan Online, Maple Story, Project Entropia, Ultima Online, Ragnarok Online, RF Online, Redmoon, Star Wars Galaxies, Thesa, Conquer Online, Deloria, Fairyland, MU Online, Legends...

aeric67 · September 2004

No one has yet done a form of death I think is worthy. I am one of the weird ones where I'd like to see a permanent death system and try it out. Death happens less, but when it does you are dead, but perhaps your belongings and some experience pass on to an heir.

"So where is Vince? Haven't seen him in a while..."
"Well, he.. um, died in Pits of Doom last week, and the high priests couldn't resurrect him in time."
"You're...you've got to be kidding, right?! Oh, by the gods, why did they have to take Vince?!?!" *cries*

Mourning has an interesting idea for death, what with the whole family line thing. I think it was Mourning, anyway.

Juiceman · September 2004

I think Saga of Ryzom has an ok death penalty, and its simple. They just give you death experience that you have to work off by gaining regular experience. And it has a max lvl according to your own. heh, it can take a while to work off a huge debt but u can also not worry about exploring and dyin alot from new creatures. Also not actually losing ur experience lvl is nice... i hate to lose something ive worked hard for and its not like i was tryin to kill my self .

CactusmanX · September 2004

This sounds cool, if you get defeated, unless you get healed by teamates, you wake up in the hospital with bandages on from the wounds, then you have to take it easy for couple of days to heal up, you could still fight but you would be a a fraction of your normal power,

good or too harsh

nonjonron · September 2004

I voted for OTHER in your poll. Eve On-line has a pretty cool system. In a space battle, you are flying in your ship of course. If your ship is destroyed, your character is automatically shifted to command of "the pod". The pod is really an escape pod with its own small set of shields and warp drive capability. You get a chance to warp out of the battle in the pod and make it back to a safe space station so you can buy another ship.

If your pod is destroyed then I believe your character is actually killed. Each player maintains a "clone" in the hospital facilities of a space station. If your pod is destroyed and your character is killed, you wake up at the space station in the clone's body! There are many subtle parts to this system. First, each character has skill points. Your clone has a grade value (A, B, C, etc). The higher the grade, the more skill points your clone is worth. Each player may pay game monetary units to upgrade the value of the clone.

If your character is killed and your clone has a skill point value less than the skill point value of your character, you lose the difference in skill points. Let me tell ya, if you were to lose alot of skill points because you neglected to keep your clone upgraded, it would hurt like an asphalt skin scrape!!!!!

So the bottom line is, there are many levels of death in Eve. The first as I describe above is not actually death but ship loss. As a side note, you can purchase insurance for your ship and recover some of the lost cash. You will lose items if your ship is destroyed. The second level is actual character death, where you lost not only your ship, but your character as well and you must assume the clone's body. FYI

Wickes · September 2004

As much as some like to complain about it, death should be very painful. Thus, the poll doesn't offer the best option: the *original* EQ.

Have to say Eve isn't bad really, as death can be very painful. The only problem there is when people get so much money that it loses meaning.

Serph · September 2004

I personally haven't come accross a death system I am looking for, perhaps its the lack of time I have to search for mmorpg's but I guess mmorpg.com tries to do that for me now .

I enjoy a death system with high penalties, and would even consider perma-death(once you die your character is done) With a perma death game I think it would be necessary for a full out open pvp system, and to get an advantage over another player would require skill and strategy.

Of course to combat this you could have towns off limits to pvp, but have towns fully functional to be able to craft in safety and prepare for the outside world(pvp open)

Perma-Death would add great suspense, and would make people think twice before smiting their opponents, and may choose to retreat and live another day rather than fight and risk dieing.

To tell you the truth I wouldn't personally know how to balance a system like this out, there would have to be so many factors to be taken in consideration. Don't get me wrong I like fighting, I just dislike pvp fests. Perhaps an indepth reputation/morales/ethics system might be the solution.

As well perhaps offer a little mercy by a resurection option, where a friendly would have to take your corpse to some place of worship where a priest could ressurrect you. And it would take a day or two real life time to recover. Religions would then play an important role as well.

Sigh I could go on forever but I think I will cut it here.

Serph,

CactusmanX · September 2004

Hmm I don't know, see where you coming from but if I played a perma death game I probably wouldn't fight, unless I knew I could win, and if I did die then that would piss me off, and I most likely wouldn't play again, games do need to have higher penalties tough

loss of some items (whatever was looted from you) and increased down time ( for healing your HP and stats) that would work, dieing wold give you some XP too, your character learns from his/her mistake

Serph · September 2004

Thinking it over, a bit I agree many would probably quit once their character is dead, especially if they've been playing some time.

A) You lose all items on death that you are holding at the time of death
You are dead until the religious group you are a part of resurects you
--->The time would depend on many factors such as how often you die, how long you've been playing, if you follow the ideals of your religion, if you roleplay according to your religion,
---> The first times you die it would be more forgiving, but if you die frequently you would have to wait longer to be resurected
C) You learn stuff when you die, so next time you have more of a chance of saving vs a style of attacker.
D) Religion would play a huge role in this game, so perma death would be the extreme. When you aren't in some religious organization.
E) Once resurrected you would be fatigued/tired/no stamina for 4 hours real life time.
---> You can be logged off or on.
---> You'd still be able to craft basic things or things that require little physical exertion.
---> Staying online during this time would give you an advantage of recovering faster, ie. doing certain tasks like nurturing yourself, mind exercises, nutrition, body exercises. These would build your character, be it control, stamina, strength, your mind, soul..

Again I could go on forever I think.. almost mapping out a whole new game I think
I guess thats what I would like in a death system.

Serph,

jimhus · September 2004

Originally posted by BigPeeler

well i'll tell you which game has the WORST penalty... Priston Tale, and any other game with carebear penalties of the like...
seriously, there's gotta be a reason to NOT die... remember people, dying is a BAD thing...
btw, WoW = carebear...
you need a descent penalty to keep people from dying...
i like Lineage 2's penalty because its harsh enough to keep you on your toes, but doesnt completely screw you...

If you want a harsher death penalty in a "carebear" game - simply throw all your items away upon death... or even delete your character. You can make it as harsh as you like. Hell, you could even delete your two highest level characters whenever you have a toon die... no game would be that harsh!

But that's not what you really want, what you want is others to have a harsh death penalty.

Why is it that making other people struggle is required for some gamers to get enjoyment?

Dying is bad... it means I played poorly and stupidly. Simply knowing I played my character badly is plenty of penalty - it's far harsher than losing a few items. And I really don't care what penalty someone else "pays" for dying: why should I? It affects me not at all.

I suppose, if you view a MMORPG as a leveling competition with others, you might want a harsh death penalty. But then, you'd only want that if you felt you died less than they did. In which case you are arguing for rules that will benefit you in the competition.

Pretty damn "carebear" IMO.

Given that I've already acquired the items and XP I have at the time of a death - removing either of these simply forces me to re-perform a game aspect I've already completed. Adding tedium to my game is not appreciated. Apparently developers know (or are learning) this and are steering away from this idiocy.

Well, to me it's idiocy - others may actually enjoy performing a quest for special boots every 2 weeks. In which case let the players choose the death penalty they will receive at character creation (for those who say they want a harsh death penalty, but understand they probably couldn't bring themselves to enforce it when the inevitable comes along).

For the truly juvenile, maybe when you inspect someone's character you get to see what death penalty they imposed on themselves. Sort of "pecker length comparison" in a virtual world.

That a good idea?

Finwe · September 2004

Personally either one, they needa get away from this carebear BS or people won't care about dieing anymore. WoW has the most pathetic death system I've ever seen. I mean c'mon. You die, you take 3 minutes and run back to corpse...Whooo...Wow. Thats gonna steer you away from death. Especially if that corpse is where your party is anyhow.

What could be done is a type of Diablo-esque hardcore mode style. Or meter.

At character creation you could have a hardcore meter. Lowest end of it would mean pretty much no death penalty, but you'd level extremely slow, and you'd usually get low amounts of gold, and crap items from monsters.

You put it at 10% hardcore, then you'd say have a vitae style AC1 penalty. It diminshes your stats for either a period of time, or get X amount of experience, and it's off, as well add a little bit of some gold, and maybe one item, which can be recovered if you get your corpse. 20% would be same as 10%, but unlike 10% where first time you die is limit of vitae, 20% would have a much higher bar and more gold and item loss, same with 30%, and 40%(Also higher percentage though, more reward you'd get from monsters, more gold, better items, maybe even better exp). Then there would be 50%, small experience loss, fair amount of gold loss, and even more item loss. 60%, 70%, 80%, would be the same way, climbing in loss of gold/items, but as well climbing in better gold, items, maybe exp from monsters.

Then 90% and 100% would be the big enchilada of it all. Either make it like how the SWG Jedi were suppose to be (Permanent death with X amount of lives) or be like a really harsh EQ loss. Also it'd be loss of all gold, and 80% and 100% of all items. It would also have you get the best items, most gold, and maybe most exp from monsters.

I think this would be a good death system for one reason, the carebearish would go with 10%. Slowly moving their way up the food chain. Where the more hardcoure would pick 100%, fastly moving their way up, but if they died, it'd hurt, badly. What this would cause is, it'd allow people to choose their death penalty. But there would be consequences either way.

"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis

Phatal · September 2004

Wow I can't believe Everquest got even 1% of the vote. How can anyone say the penalty in that game was anywhere near substantial. Death was basically a common day aspect in that game. People would die 10-20 times a day at times and laugh it all off.

Games like L2 and Planetside seem to be the most irritating IMO. I hate having to run extremely long distances just to get back to where I was PvPing and hunting. Also the huge chance to randomly drop a item in L2 was always like a nice game of russian roulette. UO's system was also dumb, insurance took all the risk out of it, all you lost was your stupid title.

Kurtz13 · September 2004

Not sure if Guild Wars counts, but it has likely the best death system. You die, you lose 15% of your health, and I believe damage as well. You die again, you're up to 30%. I forget what the limit on that was, I believe it might have been 60%...And if you get kills, that % is slowly reduced.

So if you died once or twice, you can still do some damage. But die 4-5 times, and there's very little harm you can do to your opponent.

Frankly, I don't know why other MMORPGs don't have this system. Perhaps make the penalty % go down based on a timer rather than/in addition to getting kills, and you have yourself a very good system.

Achiever 73%
Explorer 53%
Killer 46%
Socializer 26%

Cyris · September 2004

Originally posted by Wicked_Edge

FFXI had the worst friggin death system! 10% xp loss from ur MAXIMUM total xp needed for next level. If that wasn't bad enough, you could de-level too!

Erm so don't die... I hate how people whine about death.. Usually those people are the people who die consistantely and just SUCK at the game. thus they end up dying.. Boohoo. This isn't some kids game. There SHOULD be real consiquences. Gets your heart racing when you are very low on health.

Cyris · September 2004

Originally posted by Tymora

I like a mmorpg that has a steep death penalty. To me, it adds excitement and a sense of urgency when my character is facing death. It causes players to be more careful with decisions and use more strategy.

Well said I completely agree.

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