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Death Penalties in MMOs
rionkm
Member Posts: 15
Why do we have death penalties in MMOs? Most of them have harsh death penalties and you're hard work and time earning those experineces gets wasted... what's the point? Single Player RPG's don't have this penalty because many MMOs have the RPG element found in Single player games, it's a bit strange for single player RPGs, NOT to have it.
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I wrote a long piece about this almost a year ago in my blog.
And in fact single player RPGs have a death penalty, just a very mild one. It's called "Reload from the last save game." And if you're smart about saves (or maybe I should say "paranoid"), that reload will never cost you more than a minute or two. In single player games my rule of thumb is, "If I don't want to do the stuff I just did over again, save!" This is true whether it's a long, theatrical, Bioware-esque conversation, or just killing a bunch of easy but mind-numbing enemies that I don't feel like re-killing. If I don't want to repeat the content, I save.
You can't realistically create a save game in MMOs, so the "death penalty" is their way of dealing with it. It's also a hold-over from the days of pen-and-paper RPGs, where death meant you lost your character (usually) -- so-called "permadeath." They can't do that (realistically) in a video game without the very strong chance of losing most of their subscriptions, so they try to find a way that makes dying unpleasant enough that you avoid it, but yet is not so unpleasant that you quit the game after the first death.
Personally I think teleporting you back to your last bind point and making you re-play the content (which is almost exactly equivalent to a reload from a save game) is sufficient. All this garbage with corpse runs or item degradation or "loss of morale" in LOTRO is just put in there to make the "hardcore" players happy, because they like big death penalties for some reason.
C
It's also about unintended behavior. If there's no "death" what mechanics keep the player from completing everything in the game with no risk at all? If I can't die it basically means I should be able to go anywhere, fight anything, if the limitation is fights taking 24 hours, that's what auto attack is for right?
Perhaps I don't exactly understand what alternative the OP is stating, but death mechanics are in place to add risk to the world to make it challenging and interesting, and secondly to stop a great deal of exploitive or unintended gameplay.
I think he was talking about death penalties and not about dying and I agree with the OP.
Some games like EVE seem to work with a rough death penalty but in a game like Lineage 2 I didn't really care for it. Lineage 2 was a grind to the top and if you got a lag spike you could probably lose a good 5 hours of xp, as well as possibly dropping your equipment that cost another couple hours. At least in EVE it was made clear you are just a guy in space and there are precautions to avoid death.
And the only risk vs reward is the risk of losing the time you spend grinding xp vs the chance you'll get more xp faster...
Most games that use harsh death penalties are too shallow to be using them and tend to have a cash shops for xp recovery.
Make games you want to play.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RavikAztar
I guess it depends on what you consider a "risk." Really the only thing you can "risk" in a video game where it's just a bunch of pixels you are choosing to believe is a character, a world, etc, is something of value to yourself, whether it's time or some particular gear or what have you. If you don't value the thing being risked, there is no risk.
For example, if you are rich and have tons of money, and you play a game where you are charged money each time you die, there's really no "risk", because you don't value money. On the other hand if you like to put cool clothes on your character and a clothing item is irrevocably deleted each time you die, then that might be a huge risk to you -- although someone who doesn't mind being naked wouldn't consider death a risk.
When people disagree about death penalties they are really disagreeing about what is valuable and what isn't... about what is worth trying to avoid dying for, and what isn't.
To me, time is valuable and repitition very undesirable. So forcing me to repeat content by respawning back a few maps, is a HUGE penalty. You don't need anything else. To someone who doesn't mind wasting time or repeating things, they might consider this hardly any risk at all, and would say you need "more risk" like gear degradation or loss of XP or something like that. So it all depends on what you value.
C
I generally tend to debate against the harsh Death Penalty folks. But I do think a death penalty that works in the context of the game is a good thing.
I played STO back when it didn't have a death penalty, and it 100% absolutely didn't feel right to have your ship go up in a massive fireball to then rematerialize 3km away, unscathed.
On the other hand, I don't see the point in having to ghost it back to your body, or end up with massive combat penalties for a half hour, etc. I don't see the point in making the players game screech to a halt for some developer mandated period of time.
Item damage, respawns in other areas, minimal but significant XP loss is fine, IMO.
Harsh death penalties are teaching people to play better next time so they are good thing. So I'd love to see the return of corpse runs, xp and lvl loss.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
They also teach people not to attempt challenging content unless they feel like gambling.
I played a game called Baroque and it's 'death' penaliy drone me crazy, though it was the whole point of the game. You just run through a tower to the top over and over again, and every time you die or beat the game it sends you back to the bottom at level 1, with no gear beyond what you banked from inside the tower (by throwing it in some orb). Was fun at first, but then I just stopped playing once I was going back in after the 5th death.
It's a game of attrition where you need stats/gear to clear floors and survive till the top one, but you are not going to do it any time in the beginning, and the only way to do it eventually is to make it far enough to bank awesome gear that will get you through the first floors on the next run easily. It doesn't work, at least for me.
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That is because if you die in a single player RPG it is game over (at least if all party member does). You can save your game in those and they often have autosaves but you wont just respawn unless it was Planescape torment and the whole point of that game was that you were immortal.
In FPS games you usually lose all gear.
Ïf there is no death penalty you just do suicidal things all the time and if the risk of losing something is zero it takes away the kick you get when you actually make it.
On the other hand if the death penalties are to severe people quit when they die.
I wouldn't mind a MMO where you saved your character at taverns and if you died (and no one rezzed you) you started over from that point. It would make dungeons more interesting, at least for me. Of course it would lead to problems with bad internet connection and crashes but it would work.
My favorite death penalty was old Lineage, you lost some XP and at times a random item. If you lost an item it was left at the place and any passing monster would pick it up.
Anyways, the answer to your question is: To make things more exiting. Same reason you play poker with real money or climb mt Everest without oxygen tanks.
I could be negative about this over and over again, however what's makes it's unfair is that considering that many single players RPGs don't have it, there a reason behind it, like MMOs are hiding it for a reason. If Single player games would take that idea and apply that to the whole party if they ever get KO'ed, which is possible, however companies don't do that. If I was a very nice guy and I designed the concept and say 'Getting KO'ed means it would stun the characters grown and all the brain cells wouldn't grow and it would mean that the grown would shrink, which the logic is that the character would lose EXP'... why shouldn't that be in a mainstream single player RPG aswell?
I don't think it's gambling and taking risks, the whole point of gambling is to take risks, if it's a case of an RPG, it would mean running into a field full of creatures more powerful then the player and having a fight to the death with low stats. Winning would make it rewarding for the player. It's a gamble and a reasonible one. If I'm aware of heavy death penalties and I would lose 10 hours worth of work... what's the point of playing those hours and where did those hours go? I'm sure those hours went onto the server to get the MMO hosts some money, if that's the case, why shouldn't I take it personality?
Even if it's about preventing characters to enter an area, what ever happened to barriers? SMT: Imagine has barriers in some areas and still gives you EXP penalties for death.
Even if a player does try to challenge a creature 30 or 40 levels higher then the character, I could battle that creature until my character can get exhausted and waste all my ammo I've spent money on or the low stats would make me defeseless. I would lose and waste my time. I wouldn't call it 'gambling', because I'm sure no one will run out into the battlefield unprepared or low on equipment to fight anyone. Which is why I'm against the idea of it called 'gambling' or 'risk and reward'. Maybe 3 or 5 levels higher, but in this case, I'm not buying into that idea. The interesting thing is that the situation exsit in almost every MMO.
On the note of pen and paper games, I haven't been around when pen and paper games were mainstream or back in the 1970s and also MUD, however I have played a server emulator of it recently, I'm aware it's much more harsher as losing one character would result in that character getting wiped off the servers and having to type in your email address over and over again in order to get yourself a new character. My theory is that servers back in the 1980s weren't big enough to store hundreds of characters however that idea seems to have vanished since the modern MMO has come in. Also considering that death also means the Game Over screen in many single player RPGs and seems to have continued that tradition, which I have no problem with.
All I can say, I'm getting the idea that hosts abuse it to monolopize the market and keep players online and getting killed means those heavy penalties, even if you're careful, it still takes times to plan your strategy and being careful and it still takes times. I'm sure in this day of age, there other MMOs that I want to play aswell. Personality, I don't mind if a game presents a challenge and does try to find ways to stop me completing the game, however the death penalty mechanic is extremely unfair because it doesn't give me a realistic reason for me to believe this mechanic should exsit in any MMO other then a companies own gain and doesn't benifit the player. With all the reasons above, I've come to the conclusion that no MMO needs a death penalty.
Thank anyway, I asked because I wasn't sure myself.
I remember playign that game. I tried so hard to avoid dying and beat the tower twice when I died. I then realized things were different and I started progressing. The tower got a lot longer and I learned more about the story but there was no character development, you stayed "clueless" the whole time and your stats/equipment were reset. I had fun trying to figure out what was going on and dying was a quick way of progressing since you lost everything regardless of death or beating the tower. Game was interesting.
Make games you want to play.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RavikAztar
Yes someone had to mention it but i preferred the pre-NGE SWG death penalty system, armour and weapons took damage to their condition as they were used, meaning a good solid economy for the traders and lower cost for things because of the repeat custom.
Death itself was a little harsher than what it is now as well, very similar but instead of paying upto 5,000 credits to remove DP you had to watch an entertainer in order to remove it.
The reason i use SWG is because i still play it and will continue to do so till SW:TOR comes out.
i must be getting old because i remember eq1 death penalty.1 wrong move = hours to retrieve your body,many hours of grinding exp lose,a long run back and naked unless you want to risk your back up gear in a bank and even low con mobs will attack you and might even kill you.
sorry but i think that was a bit too much.however,nowadays death penalty leaves no excitement in the mmo and might as well not exist.
Personally, I think Death Penalties are all about getting an emotional reaction and a tie to your character. For example, let's say there's a harsh death penalty. You enter a dungeon that's filled with tough creatures and you have to get deep into this dungeon to kill a boss of some kind. Immediately you're going to start feeling nervous, fear, whatever it might be, as in the back of your mind you know that if you die it's going to hurt. The group you're with feels the same and you're all trying to make sure that each person knows what they have to do.
Okay, so you get to the boss, you defeat it, you survived the entire dungeon and came out on top. Now you feel happiness, elation, a feeling of success and relief. You probably had some tough battles and now have stories to tell other people about how you went down to minimal hitpoints and the Cleric just managed to get a heal in time and.. whatever the story is.
Now compare that to a death penalty that doesn't exist. Let's say you respawn and are invulnerable for a few moments, with no loss of XP, no damaged equipment, nothing of the sort. You enter the dungeon, run through the tough creatures, die a few times, respawn, keep running, get to the boss, die a few times fighting that too and eventually kill it. Congratulations. How does that feel?
It's an interesting concept if emotion is tied to it. It's may of changed my prespective of what it may be about. As I mentioned, it's doesn't appear in Single Player RPGs. It's an MMO and if the developers intended to have players group together, not just for raids and dungeons but as the main gameplay core, then it makes alot of sense and would mean having to rely on surviving as a group.
Even if it's Soloing and losing experience points, it's getting that emotion that I would need to get some friends or a group to explore the world and grow. If it's from that perspective, then maybe it's understandable and encourages it (before I call it a design flaw or something again).
Sometimes I run around healing players or sometimes they heal me whenever I'm in trouble because of the awareness of the penetly, party or not, an interesting way of someone to interact or form a party. Imagine that happening in a 256 player crowd, maybe that's the first small step.
Anyways, I suppose 'emotion' answered my own question... because it sounds close to what an MMO could be about and how the developer could encourage it, so it has changed my mind alittle bit.
Thanks usualsuspects. Thanks for everyone else that's commented, it was worth debating about.
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I dislike the idea of gaming with minimal death penalty. To me the idea of a game is challenge, so playing a game with little or no death penalty is like playing poker with "pretend money."
-- Ambros.
I don't agree that playing poker with pretend money is not a challenge. I used to do it with my friends all the time. The winner of the night was the guy who cleaned out everyone else's chips. Are you trying to say that it would be harder to "bet correctly" and win chips if those chips were worth real money? Since ALL of us liked to win, regardless of money, we all tried as hard as we could to win. And since nobody wanted to be taken out early and have to sit around watching but not playing, nobody made stupid bets. Those chips were worth something to us, even though they weren't worth anything to anyone else.
As I said above, "risk" depends on what you value. My friends and I valued winning and being able to lord the win over each other, rather more than we valued a few bucks. Maybe you value money more, and that's your choice. But it's up to each individual person.
I don't like to lose. To me, my character dying is losing. It means I made a mistake. I incorrectly assessed the situation and put my character into a losing fight. That's a failure on my part, and I don't like it. THAT is a bigger deal to me than losing some gear I can just get back or losing XP or any of that crap.
There's no realy death penalty in COH ("xp debt" which is trivial with the reduced xp cureve now). I still try not to let my character die, and for no other reason than that I don't like it when my character is beaten. That's all the incentive I need (and indeed, she hardly ever dies).
C
The second scenario would feel better to me.
In the first case if I did not die then that would mean that I was already too good for the encounter and thus it would be less of a challenge. If I died and the death penalty stopped me from trying again, I would be frustrated since I could not apply what I learned right away and would losemost of that information by the time I got back to try again. When I try it again the rush is gone.
In the second case I am attempting content that I am not skilled enough to beat and through my failures I am learning to be a better player. I can attempt it over and over so I learn fast and the rush only gets better and better until I finally succeed.
Some people are wired to get a rush out of gambling and others get a rush from ramping up an intellectual challenge until you beat it. Death penalties feed the first group and starve the second.
Extremely well said. You've hit the nail on the head, and like you seem to, I fall firmly into the second group.
C
Ah the good old days of camping a cleric nearby if you were going to do something risky... /sigh
I have always thought a PvP game built to where death is a common thing could work for Perma-death. First few levels would be easy to obtain and gear wouldn't be a big deal to lose. However, when you started to get past the generic soldier levels you could branch into leadership, elite infantry, assassin, etc. Having it be difficult to achieve that level would make you play carefully, think smart, and assassinations and guarding people actually matter.
However, in traditional MMO's were it takes months to get to max, perma-death/stiff penalties are frustrating.
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You also took wounds which could only be fixed by medical professions and entertainers. It's also important to note that items in SWG don't get fully repaired. They only last for so long, and degrade in effectiveness as they slowly get damaged/repaired over and over. I know that's what you meant, I'm just clarifying for those who haven't played.
It was fairly harsh, actually. But it was offset by the fact that you usually only got knocked unconcious for a few minutes. But if you went down again after 10 minutes or so, you had to be cloned, which is where you would get all these penalties.
Despite it tending to break my rule of shutting people down and making them sit things out for a given amount of time, I thought it was a great death penalty because it worked well in the context of the game. It made the health and entertainment professions more useful, and added more value to an already terrific crafting system.
In the second case I am attempting content that I am not skilled enough to beat and through my failures I am learning to be a better player. I can attempt it over and over so I learn fast and the rush only gets better and better until I finally succeed.
But in the second case there is no actual challenge. You're not facing an enemy that can defeat you. You're not risking anything. You don't worry about what you're walking into. All you're doing is walking into an encounter and getting killed repeatedly until eventually you win. It's not a case of skill, the first case shows more skill than the second, as the first case needs to balance risk with ability, they need to be cautious of what enemies they face, they need to ensure that the healer has enough spells ready before launching into a new encounter, that the wizard has the mana ready to throw spells, that the fighter is able to draw enemies in to defend the others. They have to be careful of how many enemies they face at one time, they have to be sure they don't take a wrong turning and walk into another batch of enemies, etc..
How can you possibly learn to be a better player by repeatedly walking into enemies and dying until you respawn enough times to win? There is nothing to learn. Attack. Die. Attack. Die. Attack. Die. That's it. All you learn is that your character is in the wrong place and should be trying other content.
If you can't lose then you cant win either.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
What are you talking about? I will only beat the enemy if I get better at fighting the enemy. If I do not learn from my mistakes I will never beat it. The challenge is in learning and getting better.
I really do not understand how people keep thinking that if they 'beat their head' against a boss long enough they will beat it by sheer willpower alone. What kind of badly designed games are they playing?
Heck, with harsh death penalties you also keep walking into an encounter repeatedly and getting killed while learning. The challenge of the fight does not change if you put a harsher or lesser penalty on it. The challenge is decided by the design of the fight.
Maybe some people are just not able to 'do their best' unless there is lots on the line. Personally, if I am serious about a challenge I will do my best to beat it no matter what the rewards or panalties are. Anything else is just slacking off. Just because they stop playing skillfully when there is nothing much on the line, does not mean that others will.