Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
choose your death penalty in a mmo
Typhado
Member Posts: 177
In mmo's we tend to have a wide variety of death penaltiese from insta respawn, summoning sickness to full loot and perma death systems. Now I was wondering what if there was a way to combine these by allowing the player to get more and more bonuses for risking a higher and higher death penalty.
One thing you would need for a system like this to work is the ability for lower level (or lower death penalty) players to be able to compete with higher players by use of numbers. Simplest example is some form of crowd control which would allow numbers to overwhelm players much higher than themselves.
Does anyone think this could work in a game?
Into the breach meatbags
Comments
Not a bad idea actually, though if you include permadeath I would think you'd have to put in game mechanics to make said players nigh unkillable except by other permadeath folks.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It would have to be death penalties that were'nt group dependent imo. Imagine a group wipes. 1 person is gone forever. 1 person has a 5 min 'ghost' run to their corpse, 1 person needs the rest of the group to fight to his corpse and do a CR, 1 person had all his stuff looted after the wipe and the last person is rolling his eyes because he had no death penalty, yet is somehow having to deal with everyone else's 'leet' issues.
It would definately have to have some kinks worked out.
This is for PvE only games? If not, how would this work for PvP?
Permadeath. Make it so you can start a family or adopt children. Adopted children will have radom skills. By marrying and making children they will have a combination of your skills and your partner. When you get killed, you will spawn as one of the kids.
This will make so you will try to get farther in game before you make children as to get them highly skilled as possible in case of death. By adobting you will always have a fresh supply of new bodies but the quality will differ greatly.
I like the idea
+1
SexuaLobster's Grease Portal
To some extent original Jedi were similar in SWG. There was the holo grind (and non-existance at the very start) which meant you couldn't just start as jedi. But once that was done and you started your jedi path there was an element of pwnage to be had but it was permadeath and maybe not a total god skill set. It was as though that was their original plan but then changed their mind.
Personally I thought this was an excellent way to introduce a supperior character to a game and they should have stuck with it. The strange thing is, the first Jedi I watched die didn't complain on the boards and there wasn't much made of it at all apart from the epic fight that took place. The ability for him to get out of the fight was there but he chose to stand his ground and leave his corpse on the floor, awsome.
So yes imo it is feasable if done well. Having the choice from character creation however I think would come with some scope for abuse so I would have it with pre-req's.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Assuming you're talking PvE, my choice for death penalty will always be the least harsh. I'd prefer a 5 second delay, followed by respawn at the nearest safe location, fully healthy.
To me, its dependent on the type and style of game, where the emphasis is at. One comes to mind thinking in terms of sandbox where there isn't an forever chain of tiered gear to follow (think Ultima where everyone made sure they wore GM armor sets etc.), I would say a mix of permadeath, losing all your equipment and being able to bind a very limited amount of items to yourself that you deem important.
This should vary depending on the person's role like blacksmith hammers for blacksmiths, or a sword and shield for a knight etc. Maybe these are like custom-made and forged for your charcter and blessed by the gods sort of deal so they stick with you for life. But make it be an important choice hence the limit to like 2-3 items.
For me, I think changing from live to dead is already penalty and could be respawned in a far away place. That would be enough for penalty.
Nods, its a long list of MMOs that I won't return to because death is a big time sink. And frankly I like to explore and challenge myself so... I die. EQ2 has it about right, Aion has it very very wrong.
My idea for pvp death penalty: u can turn on one of few lvls of risk while doing pvp, for example level one penalty would be just ressing in nearest safe area, second losing some amount of xp, third u can get full looted if u die, and fourth permadeath. So when players meet in pvp combat the death penalty depends on the player which has selected lower level death penalty, for example if you have chosen level two (xp loss if you die) death penalty and ur opponent has level four (permadeath) death penalty activated he's actually not risking to get permadeath because you have activated lower lvl death penalty, and if he dies he just loses some xp, because that's the death penalty of player who had lower lvl death penalty activated. Also it's possible to include higher honor (or whatever) points to higher lvl risk combats, for example u could get sick amount of honor points (or whatever is reward) if you permakill your opponent, and u get like nothing if u just kill him to respawn. Btw all party members should have same death penalty level activated (the leader chooses it, when u get invited it says what level of death penalty party has activated so you can accept or decline). And last thing, maybe it would be useful and maybe not, but u should be able to change death penalty level only once per like 15mins.
Just idea from nowhere when i saw this thread and replied asap.
OFF TOPIC RANT START
I got this idea after another thread we where asked what our ideal game would be and I started imaging my perfect version of what dynasty warriors could be as an mmo. Basically it would let you control armies of npc' going up in multiples of 5 (5, 25, 125, 625, 3125) with players being able to take any spot among those eg. a high level player controls 625 units but 2 groups of 125 are actually other human armies under his command. Humans would have the advantage of being smarter easier to control and just being stronger than the npc versions (thx to things like death penalty). Default would be around 5 units (yourself and 4 bodygaurds) with up to 125 for average player going commander.
These npc's are used for adding attacking as well as abilities, eg. a squad of 5 bomber troops can lay bombs or throw bombs at your enemy, or a bodygaurd with net launchers can stop enemies from running away. Using these troops would be similar to using abilities in other games, of course a player could just do any of these himself. These npc's would be trained up by training schools that you could share between characters on the same account (possibly train new character in these schools to get through first few 'levels'). Skill based system that allows you to train everything on one character but limits what you can currently do by weopon, armour, spirit configuration.
The skill system split up into 3 main areas + any number of smaller ones (like crafting)
minion muncher - good aoe, great for cutting through large armies, weak aggainst other generals
Assassin - Good at taking out other generals, weak against armies
Commander - Good at controlling armies, can give them buffs control more units, not good at attacking himself
OFF TOPIC RANT END
One thing you see a lot in dynasty warriors is there's often around say 20-30 low level generals with generic faces a few high level generals (with proper names, faces and usually playable) and then there's a few extremely tough generals who are important characters like the leader of a nation or best warrior in the nation etc.
This is the sort of gap I'd like to fill out by letting a person increase in strength with higher death penalties. You would be able to get up to the low level general level with training skills but to push above that you'd need to start increasing your death penalty which would unlock new skills (you could train some of these before switching to higher death penalty). You can increase or decrease it however much you want (and are trained to be able to do) at the start of a battle or by going to main camp and hitting respec (this would be a good reason to protect the main camp). The low level generals can get thrown into the center of the battle again and again like little zerglings cause thats how to best use that death penalty. Higher level generals tend to think more carefully about how they go into battle.
This doesn't mean that death penalty just gives you more units to control. For example Lu Bu at Hu lau gate and Zhang Fei at Chang Ban bridge (2 of the toughest characters in game) both just whent out with no backup and just sat in the middle of the only path blocking off half the map whent into super mode and held off an entire army for a while. Choosing to do this however doesn't pay off if you get zerg swarmed by guys who come straight back (unless you where protecting something very valuable).
Into the breach meatbags
I started in EQ and the chance to lose all your items really had a positive effect of most of the players, made you really weigh your chances at doing something potentially stupid.
But personally DAoC if fine for me, can only bind in certain area's and these were usually pretty far from where you would be dieing, and you lose xp that you can only get back by going back to your tombstone(corpse), and even then i think you still lost some.
XP debt, as in when you die, you get an XP debt (not a loss) where for the next small percentage of your exp you will put 50% towards the debt, and 50% towards your actual exp (or maybe 25% towards debt and 75% towards actual exp)...this will also disappear over time (even faster when logged off...so much as a night off line would remove several deaths worth of xp debt). Healer resurrections would provide you with reduced XP debt, and you will respawn far away, near the biggest capitol city (just not in the same zone so you can be back to where you died within seconds).
That would be my ideal, those who are just out looking for PvP won't get too harsh of a penalty, and it's something that will go away with time anyway.
XP
Gold
Chanse to lose item
I don’t know why they all use a uniform system. You can script the npc to inflict any penalty you want when a player is defeated by that mob. Can take level, experience, account age, recent defeats, faction, inventory, phase of the moon, time of day, any variables to adjust the penalty and result.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Before answering this question you have to first figure out what you value more, gear-based or character-based MMOs. For example, in UO my pride was my character, not necessarily the gear or clothes I had on. I took pride knowing that I was a Grandmaster with a blade, so it didn't matter too much what weapon I had with a blade I could do some serious damage. Of course better gear helped, but if I was to die and to lose the gear I wasn't too upset because the most important thing, my character, remained. On the flip side, when I played WoW I took pride in my teir 3 gear, not really my character because I was already maxed out level wise, like everyone else. So in WoW if I was to die and lose my gear I would flat out quit because that was essentially the main goal, raid hours on end until you get the right drop of gear.
I am a gamer who values my character. I liked the fact that I could where nothing but a robe and some shoes walking around town and people would never know how bad ass my character actually was unless they clicked on my paperdoll and saw that I was a GM swordsman. I don't think someone should always be able to just look at the gear someone has on and know what their game experience is, like you can do in most MMOs seen today.
For death penalty, I choose, lose your gear except for rare circumstances. But don't penalize your character's hard earned skill for dying.
Selectable death penalty can work alright.
On version of selectable death penalty already exists in EVE. Fly a big ship, have big risk, but also big rewards (big guns). Fly a small ship, low risk, low rewards (weak guns.)
Another version exists in Haven & Hearth, where you get a slider with "faster progression" at one end and "reduced death penalty" on the other. It was workable, but not an optimal tradeoff choice for players really, given how rare death was in the game.
Personally I'd rather games focus on gating rewards behind true challenges. It's more fun to have a very difficult challenge placed in front of you with a large reward for success than to experience substantial penalties for failure.
In games like I Wanna Be The Guy, it's very difficult to simply make it through the whole game successfully, even though the death penalty is quite light (you experience no delay: you're immediately playing again, but you're set back to the previous checkpoint which might be 1-30 seconds of gameplay back from where you died.) A MMORPG with similar structure would be quite appealing to me.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That sounds really challenging. I would really like to see something like that get developed. I mean, I love taking huge risks when I play games. There is no bigger risk than that of perma death if you make one mistake in your gameplay when you are trying to earn bonuses by having this death penalty chosen.
www.ryzom.com
I don't like extreme death penalties, especially in games where I die to bugs a lot. It seems unfair.
That said, Lord of the Rings Online has nerfed their death penalty to the point where it's meaningless. If you die in LotRO you can rez right on the spot with a mild debuff. You don't even have to corpse run.
Seems like all the major titles are competing to see how easy they can make MMOs.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Old Anarchy Online death penalty.
You used Insurance terminals to save the XP you have gained. But if you died and haven't saved in a while (say you gained 200k XP since the last visit to the Insurance Terminal) you lost that 200k XP. And with 200 levels (later levels requireing a few million XP) it was a penalty that could really hurt if you played carelessly, but could be easily avoided if you made sure to use the terminals every chance you got.
Hell, some people would play 'Hard Mode' and never use the terminals at all. One person in out guild sat at level 199 for almost 6 months because he would get within a few thousand XP of hitting 200 and something bad would happen, wiping him down to zero XP. And he loved it, because when he finally reached 200 he did so without ever using the Insurance Terminal.
The only thing that sucked was that when he hit 200 we had 30+ people on the guild vent who all went nuts cheering and screaming at like 3am. And I was wearing headphones
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
It depends on the game type.
If its like WoW where you had to grind for a weapon (i don't mind the instance runs its the rolling afterwards where i gain nothing for doing the instance that annoys me) then i don't want to lose my weapon.
However, i liked SWG where weapons would break but all you had to do was buy another one from a shop. I like the idea of the best weapons being made by people not all simply luck rolls.
I wouldn't be against xp loss (i liked the idea of the xp debt but that wouldn't work when you hit max lvl) but it should be capped for a day or so maybe only 5 deaths or something with 10% a lvl each death. I've been in groups that can wipe themselves around every corner and I don't want to pay too much for others faults.
perma death is a no for me i find the idea of losing all my time just too much of a price to pay. I don't like the idea of of super powerful perma death option guys running around and killing lower option guys because i can see a scared little rogue hiding around trees and killing people as they quest and not having the balls to stick around for a real fight. I think it would only lead to a lot of griefing.
I like this, but I'd tie it in with a slight percentage of skill loss in the same way. Like Vitae in AC. When you die you'd also drop a certain percentage of your items based on value, no binded items, and all of your gold. You then have an hour per ten levels to retrieve your corpse before it becomes open for free looting. No corpse tracking utility.
I like my death penalties to be... well, penalties and not just minor inconviences. Makes the game more exciting to play.
I wouldn't mind a penalty where say you died to a monster.. they would bash your armor a bit reducing its effectiveness. Also say a human NPC or bandit killed you and took your stuff. Once you came back where you died or down the road since he is running off with your stuff. Then the bandit would be wearing your stuff so you could tell. Heck I wouldn't mind if everyone could see that this one mob had your stuff on and could take it form you, it might be interesting.
Full loot is always a good death penalty