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WildGoose
Member Posts: 2
Hello everyone!
I thought I might kick off my first posting with a topic that I've been meaning to broach to all of us who enjoy MMORPGs. For myself, however, I've become a little jaded lately.
I play Eve Online and WoW. Recently I stopped playing Champions Online after only a couple of months of play because there is no real penalty for getting defeated (superhero language for dying). Okay, you lose a combat bonus in the form of stars, each star from 1 to 5 represents a slight bonus to your combat abilities, but you can easily replenish that by "making a charitable contribution" at a certain vendor. At least in WoW if you die there is some sort of penalty involved; you can either talk to the spirit to be rezzed right at the cemetery, taking a huge hit to all of your gear and getting considerably weakened as a result, or you could ghost-walk back to your corpse.
I personally hope that how Champions handles player-character defeat/death doesn't become a trend, but I am in a beta test of another upcoming super-hero game that shall remain nameless where there is really no penalty for defeat. At all. I hope this trend is only limited to just this one game.
It quickly becomes boring for me if there is little to no penalty for getting killed. While it's nice to see your character rise in level and abilities and all, and seeing what all the new stuff looks like and how they work, I'd like the thrill that comes from knowing that you overcame a great deal to achieve all that.
For me, I'm looking for a game with a lot more challenge and something that changes the combat and social dynamic of the game itself. I don't think what I propose will happen, but it might be interesting to see something new.
I want a game where character death is permanent, or at least, if it's fantasy, where you can be raised from the dead but that would require another character to do it, either a PC or even an NPC. If nobody raises your character, he's dead. Make a new character. And don't limit that to just PvE, either.
Maybe most people probably wouldn't play a game like this. Maybe that penalty is a bit too extreme, but it might make you think a little bit more about going into combat, and change the way one fights on the whole.
Would you play a game like this?
Comments
Perm death have some technical issues making it impossible right now. There is still too much lagging on the 'net and windows have a habit of crashing, particularly Vista. It might be possible in the future however.
I can see why you play Eve, but Wow have really wussy death penalty as well as CO.
Lineage and EQ used to at least have pretty tough death penalty. I n Lineage you lost a lot of XP and sometimes a random item. In EQ you needed to make a corpse run or loose your gear, so dying in lava really sucked.
The toughest death penalty in a modern game without full looting right now is probably Vanguard. You can loose a lot of gear dying in the wrong place there.
Not really because to me its a video game,something I do for fun not to try to live some life in an alternate universe to escape my real one.I am not a glutton for punishment.That almost seems catholic to me hehe ,"i have failed in a game so I need to be made to suffer because of it" penance type thing.Sorry not trying to turn this into a religious thing.But hey I guess that is some peoples idea of fun just not mine.I feel bad enough about failing or dying in game I dont need to be made to suffer more IMO.
I don't disagree with you about WoW's death penalty. It's fairly tame when you consider the whole spectrum of games out there, but at least it's something rather than you just appearing at the nearest spawn point like it does in Champions Online. I understand Star Trek Online does something similar, but I don't know since I don't play that game.
I guess where I'm coming from with all this is the dynamics of the way a lot of these games play. They all sort of feel the same because of it. You go on quests, healers heal, tankers tank, controllers do their thing, rinse, lather, and repeat. PvP does change this up a little bit in some games but even that gets a bit old too. I think that when your character dies permanently, however, you might see a shift in the way an MMORPG is played.
I can't really speculate on what those changes might be, but I have a few ideas. I think if resurrections are permitted as a spell or something, they'll make the character classes that can do that all that much more valuable. I can see maybe they might start reaping ancillary benefits in-game from other players of other character classes. One thought would be selling Life Insurance; similar in the way Star Wars Galaxies had this, where PCs can arrange a deal with each other to raise their character's to life in the event of their untimely demise.
It was kind of my hope that when Age of Conan appeared they might go along these lines, given that this is a game based on the works of Robert Howard. I was rather hoping for a game where combat had more risks involved, but, again, you just respawn at the nearest spawn point.
On the other hand I don't see things turning around any time soon. As for perma-death; don't hold your breath for that one. Perma-death will never work in a game which is all about progression. It just wouldn't work. Maybe, just maybe, some form of gradual, eventual perma-death could work. But not the "BOOM--you're dead. Start over" type of perma-death.
There was a vapor-ware game I followed once upon a time which had the idea of giving players 100 lives and when you lost your last life you perma-died. Something like that might possibly work. But the game would have to have more to it than just mindless progression for the sake of progression.
I think that, while it may add challenge, dying permanently would become a real pain in the butt. Mostly because many MMO's are pretty static. With each new character you do the same tutorial quests, the same plot line quests, the same side quests. The most that would change is certain class based quests. Imagine repeatedly dying right around level 30. It would take the fun out of the game, IMO.
Instead of perma-dying you might have all your gear/gold stolen from you by humanoid enemies or real players in PvP. Now you have nothing to wear and need to craft/find/buy your epic gear back. Maybe, to add a little more depth, the humanoid enemy that stole your gear will have a marker over its head to indicate you can loot it for your gear, supposing you can kill it. But if another player (unable to see the marker) kills it first, they'll have a pleasant surprise: some new gear. Just a thought. If any animal/beast kills you, you might make it away with badly damaged gear that costs a lot to have repaired. Because I find it unlikely that a wolf is going to care about your shiny armor and it lacks opposable thumbs to remove it from your person.
Whatever the penalty may be, permanently dying and losing all your progress would not be very fun.
Still believe old UO:R had a quite challanging D-P. Run around as ghost, hope for wandering healer, player to resurrect you, or find a town with healer. And with skill-loss / loot loss if you dident have any account bound items. Wich wasnt too common back then. Hence most PvPer's (like myself) only had a mount, Reagents to cast spells ( or a weapon ) and naked character toon.
miss that stuff.