Good article and responses. What is most amazing to me is the 'harsh penalties' crowd have a peculiar attitude toward this subject. Harsh death penalties are already in virtually any MMO out there! Got killed - then divest your 'stuff' and 'will' it to anyone you want (just like in real life) and then delete the character. Anyone who wants a harsh penalty can do this anytime they die (to the delight of their 'heirs') and thats that. Harsh death penalty, in game, all the time for those who want it. You can even 'loot' your own character by discarding all money and equipment and starting again with whatever you have banked away. The full range of death penalties is already in most all MMOs.
So what is the problem. Hardcore death penalty supporters want not just the challenge for themselves, that is already there. They want everyone else to face the same or get out and play something else. My way or the Highway mentality. As Damion pointed out, in a way, STOR is not a 'niche' game for the hardcore. They can't make enough money from those players to keep it going. I am a PvE centric player (as the majority of MMO players tend to be) and I am looking forward to STOR to join the other two games I play, and pay for. Bioware has to decide whether to satisfy enough of us to support the game's very existance or the smaller group who want to force their views on everyone. Especially since what the lesser group wants is already in the game.
LET ME REPEAT! Perma-death, gear loss etc...is already in the game. Use it if you want it, don't if you don't want it. An option! How wonderful is that. Not satisfactory? Then suggest you check your motives, not mine, since you want no choice for me and I support your ability to choose. QED
This makes sense, BUT...
As they pointed out, people tend to lean towards least resistance. If there is a "get out of jail free card", people will use it. By allowing players to choose their own death penalties, there will be no penalties at all. "If everyone is weird, than no one is weird." The option to be able to cheat your own gaming morals/rules "when you see fit" is the downfall of your logic.
Work for hours and hours to achieve something, investing time, money, and energy into a video game only to die from a fluke... say a mob spawns under the world and is attacking you. There is nothing you can do about it. You can't see the mob and eventually you die. How about you are swimming and your internet crashes. Your characters has drowned to death. How about a GM event spawns a Dragon in the city while you are sitting afk, you die because you had to take a quick bio break.
Do you decide your character is dead and give your stuff away and reroll? Unlikely. Most of the populous would decide it "wasn't their fault" or some other rubbish.
I agree with your statement, but it just won't work for the general populous of the MMO gaming community.
I think there should be servers, with different rules that are enforced, whether we like it or not. We have pvp servers, RP servers, RPpvp servers, why not HC servers? (HC = Hard Core)
Good article and responses. What is most amazing to me is the 'harsh penalties' crowd have a peculiar attitude toward this subject. Harsh death penalties are already in virtually any MMO out there! Got killed - then divest your 'stuff' and 'will' it to anyone you want (just like in real life) and then delete the character. Anyone who wants a harsh penalty can do this anytime they die (to the delight of their 'heirs') and thats that. Harsh death penalty, in game, all the time for those who want it. You can even 'loot' your own character by discarding all money and equipment and starting again with whatever you have banked away. The full range of death penalties is already in most all MMOs.
So what is the problem. Hardcore death penalty supporters want not just the challenge for themselves, that is already there. They want everyone else to face the same or get out and play something else. My way or the Highway mentality. As Damion pointed out, in a way, STOR is not a 'niche' game for the hardcore. They can't make enough money from those players to keep it going. I am a PvE centric player (as the majority of MMO players tend to be) and I am looking forward to STOR to join the other two games I play, and pay for. Bioware has to decide whether to satisfy enough of us to support the game's very existance or the smaller group who want to force their views on everyone. Especially since what the lesser group wants is already in the game.
LET ME REPEAT! Perma-death, gear loss etc...is already in the game. Use it if you want it, don't if you don't want it. An option! How wonderful is that. Not satisfactory? Then suggest you check your motives, not mine, since you want no choice for me and I support your ability to choose. QED
Well said.
I almost never agree with Elikal, but garry has a very good point and I agree with him 110%.
Garry why would someone intentionally delete their character if its not a game mechanic, thats the stupiest thing ive ever heard. thats like saying if you are playing football and you're kicking the other teams ass that you should let them score. The point to harsh death penalties is that it makes achieving your goals all the more sweeter, you dont get the same feeling if you die in an easy game and then just delete your character.
Excellent point made above, can't agree more. You can enact any sort of death penalty you like in any game. Don't subject everyone else to your rules, let them play as they are comfortable.
A harsh penalty does not make a game better. I enjoyed my time in UO and lost mountains of equipment, but that really does not work in today's games well.
No that's a false arguement....if the games mechanics don't support it then they don't support it, period....and the games atmosphere and design doesn't take it into account.
Simple example in a text based MUD I used to play (Gemstone). It was possible for you to drop the equipment you carried in your hands (weapon & shield) if you were killed (or even got your arm cut off) and if you were killed and not "life kept" or resurrected in a certain time your body could decay, leaving your items behind. However items so dropped were not neccesarly gone...they would sit in the same room where they were dropped and they could be picked up by other players or even mobs. It was only after a significant amount of time had passed with no other players in the area that there was a chance that they would disappear.
Even though you could loose items in theory (even perma-die) in practice it was pretty rare (only lost items myself a handfull of times in about 10 years of play). Typicaly if you adventured into a dangerous area you took partners with you to help out in case you got in trouble. If you died, there was also a global chat notification that it had happaned...and typicaly you let people know where you were going if it was dangerous.
What would happen is that if you fell, other players would usualy come out to help rescue your corpse and your gear if you got in trouble and make sure you got everything back..... and the vast majority of the time you did...though it was always a few nervous minutes when you were dead alone on the floor and some mob had run off with your prize sword. However, most of the time you got it back. There were people who made thier entire career in the game out of going out and rescuing downed adventurers. I know some of my most fun and exciting times in the game was when I was on a rescue mission.
Bottom line, no way a game could simulate that experience without the mechanics in place to support it (i.e. items dropping to the floor, or being on the floor for a time without disappearing, mobs picking up items, characters being able to drag each others corpses, etc) and no way a player community would develop those kind of dynamics without similar death mechanics being in place.
Excellent point made above, can't agree more. You can enact any sort of death penalty you like in any game. Don't subject everyone else to your rules, let them play as they are comfortable.
A harsh penalty does not make a game better. I enjoyed my time in UO and lost mountains of equipment, but that really does not work in today's games well.
No, that was not a good point in any way. Handicapping yourself in such a silly and dramatic fashion is pointless. If I need to "pretend" or do something in game that is so far away from how the game was designed to be played, I'm playing the wrong game. If I really wanted to be hardcore I could just uninstall the game, or better yet, take a hammer to my hard drive. Now that's a fucking death penalty, right?
No one is trying to subject you to any specific ruleset, Ozmodan. You are free to enjoy the vast sea of games that already cater to your playstyle preferences, and those who desire something other than that, are as well. Why do you always seem to come across as someone who is being forced to play in these violent and scary games? The majority of modern mmos are quite "safe" with respect to death penalties and PVP design. You can play as you "are comfortable".
Harsh penalties may not "work" for you, but make no mistake, there are many of us that do indeed play and enjoy games that have such a feature. Hundres of thousands of EVE players would definitely disagree with your last sentence. Apparently it can "work" in today's games, even if you don't enjoy them.
I think this would be more accurate. A harsh penalty does not always make a game better for everyone.
Can this be a compromise-solution to those that want harsh death penalties?
Give the hardcore the options to play as though there is perma death(loss). A title(and achivement sys) that you can keep as long as you never die. As part of the server have a tracker for who are the 10 highest level character that has never died. You could even separate it for PvE or PvP.
Theres no reason why you can't cater for both crowds on the same server.
And yet the majority of MMO players do not play EVE. think on that . . .
No, the majority of mmo players play WoW.
However, EVE is the second most successful P2P mmo in the west, and it continues a slow and steady growth even after all of these years. Not many mmos can make such a claim. A lot of people want and enjoy games with "harsh" death penalties. I do not have to think on it, the demographic exists with or without my contemplation.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I prefer playing games and mmo's for that matter where the risk of loss if very high, and prefer failing due to hard game mechanic its spurs me on and motivates me to play the game more. i would rather fail at a difficult game then succeed at an easy one.
i agree, i prefer the game to be more of a challenge. i believe consequences for death make the game a more enjoyable experience. i liked the old swg, when you had to visit the doc, entertainer etc.. made for a more immersive game for me at least.
Well I didn't expect anything other from TOR, but honestly (old MUD player here myself) I prefer harsher death penalties myself. It does a few things....
1) It can actualy help BUILD a sense of community. Many of you who have played MUD's can probably attest to the efforts made to help other players retrieve corpses and gear when they fell (often even those of strangers) and the sense of community this helped create by people banding together to help those who got in trouble.
2) It fosters a sense of adventure. The 20 ft tall Fire Giant King becomes alot less imposing, awe inspringing and frightening if you know the worst thing he can do to you is give you a 30 second time out if he kills you. With a harsh death penalty, the risks and how you deal with them actualy start to matter.
3) It encourages better encounter design. Designers practice what I call artificial hardship in thier designs. They use all sorts of gimmecks to make the encounter so difficult that players tend to have to follow an exact sequence of steps in an exact way in order to defeat the encounter (i.e. step on this square, then cast fireball, then run to this square and cast frost, etc). They do this because they know the players will repeat this over dozens of times (with little consequence for failure) until they find exactly the right combo to win... that isn't combat, it's choreography....and it's not much fun for most players. Nor is it good game design, it's bad game design. A good design should be quite open in terms of the different methods to approach defeating it..... it should allow the players to be able to make a few mistakes and still recover and win...it should also have some chance of the players NOT winning....and that result NOT being a roadblock to progressing in the game. The only thing that current design encourages is a time-sink and mindless repitition.
4) It encourages better and less linear game design overall. Current design is pretty much pass/fail. Either you pass the encounters and achieve the reward or you fail and you don't...often with failure being a roadblock to progressing in the story-line or even the game. That's just plain simple, bad and lazy game design.
Encounters shouldn't be simple pass/fail. There should be gradations of success or failure along with partial rewards for each.... and failing any given encounter should be an expected and accounted for result. In most cases it should NOT act as a roadblock to progress in either the story-arc or the game itself. You should be able to proceede even if you failed....you just proceed in a somewhat different fashion. That makes a player feel allot more like they are actualy a character in a story...rather then simply just "doing content" until you've pressed the lever that the designer told you you had to in order to get to the next scene.
5) It engages players on an intellectual level rather then a pavlovian one. If there is a cost to failing an encounter such that you can't afford an infinite number of swipes at it, then players will spend more time thinking about, preparing, organizing and approaching encounters rather then mindlessly running at them until they happen by chance on the right combination for success...like a thousand monkeys pounding away on a keyboard. When was the last time an MMO actualy made you think about what you were doing?
In short, the attitudes of designers like Mr. Schubert are part of the reason (IMO) why we have such a lackluster series of offerings in MMO's these days. I really wish they had taken more lessons from the designers on text based MUD's or even Strategy or War Games rather then the console based action games that are so apparently thier philosophical design inspiration.
Agree completely. The worst death penatly I ever saw was in EQ (early days, don' t know about today). Corpse runs, experience loss, LOSS OF A LEVEL! And you know what--- the community was the best I have ever experienced. And when I played, I, and usually my friends, planned out what we were going to do. And you know, people would take on dragons where there was a great chance of a TPW. It didn't stop them. The feeling of succeeding was tremendous. And I can remember well failing and being therefore even more determined to beat the encounter. But after doing the end game instances in WoW, I say, so what.
And the dread was always there. Just running through a zone was "interesting".
I submit the real reason for an easy death penalty is a popularity analysis. Harsh death penalty equals fewer subs. End of discussion. Thanks for the rationalizations, heard them all before. Bleh.
Well I didn't expect anything other from TOR, but honestly (old MUD player here myself) I prefer harsher death penalties myself. It does a few things....
1) It can actualy help BUILD a sense of community. Many of you who have played MUD's can probably attest to the efforts made to help other players retrieve corpses and gear when they fell (often even those of strangers) and the sense of community this helped create by people banding together to help those who got in trouble.
2) It fosters a sense of adventure. The 20 ft tall Fire Giant King becomes alot less imposing, awe inspringing and frightening if you know the worst thing he can do to you is give you a 30 second time out if he kills you. With a harsh death penalty, the risks and how you deal with them actualy start to matter.
3) It encourages better encounter design. Designers practice what I call artificial hardship in thier designs. They use all sorts of gimmecks to make the encounter so difficult that players tend to have to follow an exact sequence of steps in an exact way in order to defeat the encounter (i.e. step on this square, then cast fireball, then run to this square and cast frost, etc). They do this because they know the players will repeat this over dozens of times (with little consequence for failure) until they find exactly the right combo to win... that isn't combat, it's choreography....and it's not much fun for most players. Nor is it good game design, it's bad game design. A good design should be quite open in terms of the different methods to approach defeating it..... it should allow the players to be able to make a few mistakes and still recover and win...it should also have some chance of the players NOT winning....and that result NOT being a roadblock to progressing in the game. The only thing that current design encourages is a time-sink and mindless repitition.
4) It encourages better and less linear game design overall. Current design is pretty much pass/fail. Either you pass the encounters and achieve the reward or you fail and you don't...often with failure being a roadblock to progressing in the story-line or even the game. That's just plain simple, bad and lazy game design.
Encounters shouldn't be simple pass/fail. There should be gradations of success or failure along with partial rewards for each.... and failing any given encounter should be an expected and accounted for result. In most cases it should NOT act as a roadblock to progress in either the story-arc or the game itself. You should be able to proceede even if you failed....you just proceed in a somewhat different fashion. That makes a player feel allot more like they are actualy a character in a story...rather then simply just "doing content" until you've pressed the lever that the designer told you you had to in order to get to the next scene.
5) It engages players on an intellectual level rather then a pavlovian one. If there is a cost to failing an encounter such that you can't afford an infinite number of swipes at it, then players will spend more time thinking about, preparing, organizing and approaching encounters rather then mindlessly running at them until they happen by chance on the right combination for success...like a thousand monkeys pounding away on a keyboard. When was the last time an MMO actualy made you think about what you were doing?
In short, the attitudes of designers like Mr. Schubert are part of the reason (IMO) why we have such a lackluster series of offerings in MMO's these days. I really wish they had taken more lessons from the designers on text based MUD's or even Strategy or War Games rather then the console based action games that are so apparently thier philosophical design inspiration.
Frankly you have to go where the money is, and the money is in lighter death penalties. No matter which way you go, too harsh (ala EQ/UO/mud) and you get one set of people complaining.
If you go too light you get the other sect. It's going to be impossible to please everyone, so it's better to please the larger audience, and BW believes that the larger of the two is the light death penalty crowd.
As long as they make the encounter interesting and fun then i'm okay with whatever death penalty they introduce. If i fail the mission cause i died (or in this case get defeated) I still failed the encounter. Now i have to do it again. Which will make me more likely to figure out what i did wrong and fix it. Kinda like what i do in all games.
As to the learning the encounter. Unless you have a complex AI that can learn, all encounters will boil down to do this, go here, do that, go to this place.
I remember clearly in EQ there was a set way of doing things, in most raids there was one person barking orders on where people should stand. Max casting range. standing outside of AoEs. Death in EQ created a downtime in the event. You had to first hope the cleric survived. (cleric camp was the code name in my guild if the raid was about wipe). Then once the encounter failed they had to come back and rez about 50 people. There really wasn't much lose if a party wiped and tried again. Unless you have a complete TPW. which usually killed the raid at that point as noone wanted to go through 4+ hours of reclearing the dungeon to try and beat that creature again.
LIke i stated before i'm okay with either death penalty. I see the plus and minuses in both
Harsh will make you think but is also annoying if you slipped or got lag. I remember once getting a terrible spout of lag in my mid 30s in that game (which was decent level) and slipping down that gigantic hole. Had to wait 3 days on that character (cause a raid was required) before i could get my stuff back. Thats a harsh penalty for lag. But it also allowed for me to make some friends along the way once they did get back to my corpse.
Lighter ones mean you can focus on the gameplay more and not so much on the failure part, which means people are more willing to take risks if the ramifications aren't as deadly. I think most people will try a different tatic even if number 1 works because they want to see if theres a faster way or will try with different combos instead of, okay so we don't wipe and lose our stuff we need X, Y, and 3 of Z. Sorry A this encounter isn't for you, we have to hold your hand through it and we haven't learned it enough to allow for that without a wipe.
I loved the days of EQ, some of the best times i had. But the death penalty was never what made it fun for me. What did make it fun for me was the people in it and the adventures we had. Which i don't think equates to harshness of death penalties but more of the maturity level of the people you are with.
If you find a guild of friends and go exploring i'm quite sure you can get the same measure of fun and friendship as you could in old days.
Just my personal opinion of course.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Well I didn't expect anything other from TOR, but honestly (old MUD player here myself) I prefer harsher death penalties myself. It does a few things....
1) It can actualy help BUILD a sense of community. Many of you who have played MUD's can probably attest to the efforts made to help other players retrieve corpses and gear when they fell (often even those of strangers) and the sense of community this helped create by people banding together to help those who got in trouble.
2) It fosters a sense of adventure. The 20 ft tall Fire Giant King becomes alot less imposing, awe inspringing and frightening if you know the worst thing he can do to you is give you a 30 second time out if he kills you. With a harsh death penalty, the risks and how you deal with them actualy start to matter.
3) It encourages better encounter design. Designers practice what I call artificial hardship in thier designs. They use all sorts of gimmecks to make the encounter so difficult that players tend to have to follow an exact sequence of steps in an exact way in order to defeat the encounter (i.e. step on this square, then cast fireball, then run to this square and cast frost, etc). They do this because they know the players will repeat this over dozens of times (with little consequence for failure) until they find exactly the right combo to win... that isn't combat, it's choreography....and it's not much fun for most players. Nor is it good game design, it's bad game design. A good design should be quite open in terms of the different methods to approach defeating it..... it should allow the players to be able to make a few mistakes and still recover and win...it should also have some chance of the players NOT winning....and that result NOT being a roadblock to progressing in the game. The only thing that current design encourages is a time-sink and mindless repitition.
4) It encourages better and less linear game design overall. Current design is pretty much pass/fail. Either you pass the encounters and achieve the reward or you fail and you don't...often with failure being a roadblock to progressing in the story-line or even the game. That's just plain simple, bad and lazy game design.
Encounters shouldn't be simple pass/fail. There should be gradations of success or failure along with partial rewards for each.... and failing any given encounter should be an expected and accounted for result. In most cases it should NOT act as a roadblock to progress in either the story-arc or the game itself. You should be able to proceede even if you failed....you just proceed in a somewhat different fashion. That makes a player feel allot more like they are actualy a character in a story...rather then simply just "doing content" until you've pressed the lever that the designer told you you had to in order to get to the next scene.
5) It engages players on an intellectual level rather then a pavlovian one. If there is a cost to failing an encounter such that you can't afford an infinite number of swipes at it, then players will spend more time thinking about, preparing, organizing and approaching encounters rather then mindlessly running at them until they happen by chance on the right combination for success...like a thousand monkeys pounding away on a keyboard. When was the last time an MMO actualy made you think about what you were doing?
In short, the attitudes of designers like Mr. Schubert are part of the reason (IMO) why we have such a lackluster series of offerings in MMO's these days. I really wish they had taken more lessons from the designers on text based MUD's or even Strategy or War Games rather then the console based action games that are so apparently thier philosophical design inspiration.
Agree completely. The worst death penatly I ever saw was in EQ (early days, don' t know about today). Corpse runs, experience loss, LOSS OF A LEVEL! And you know what--- the community was the best I have ever experienced. And when I played, I, and usually my friends, planned out what we were going to do. And you know, people would take on dragons where there was a great chance of a TPW. It didn't stop them. The feeling of succeeding was tremendous. And I can remember well failing and being therefore even more determined to beat the encounter. But after doing the end game instances in WoW, I say, so what.
And the dread was always there. Just running through a zone was "interesting".
I submit the real reason for an easy death penalty is a popularity analysis. Harsh death penalty equals fewer subs. End of discussion. Thanks for the rationalizations, heard them all before. Bleh.
I played EQ1 for a long time and loved the game, but the 8 hour CR runs in the plane of fear and what not were really excessive. I think there is a happy medium. Of the games I have played that have really no penalty at all it shows in just the way people interact with each other and the environment. You have to have some reason people do not want to die, otherwise it doesn't really mean anything when you do.
I am not sure why so many games seem to think it is either a brutal horrible death penalty that most people do not care to deal with or nothing it has to be nothing at all. There are other choices.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
I loved the days of EQ, some of the best times i had. But the death penalty was never what made it fun for me. What did make it fun for me was the people in it and the adventures we had. Which i don't think equates to harshness of death penalties but more of the maturity level of the people you are with.
If you find a guild of friends and go exploring i'm quite sure you can get the same measure of fun and friendship as you could in old days.
Just my personal opinion of course.
I agree the death penalty was not fun. Not at all. But I don't think you can conclude (necessarily) that having the death penalty in the game didn't have something to do with the maturity of the people who stayed with the game for any length of time. EQ never got a small fraction of the numbers WoW has...but I think it is possible there was a serious filtering of people who tried it. Sure, there were still some jerks.
Personally, although I have found nice guilds in WoW and in Lotro (certainly less drama!), the "fun and friendship" wasn't the same. Just "go exploring"? Sign up for the next instance. Maybe it's just me --- I was a lot younger then!
To some extent perhaps the whole discussion is a little silly. Separating out one aspect of the whole experience is tricky. I am sure a lot of people liked it when EQ put in the Pok and made travel easy. I think it is was part of several things that degraded the game as a whole.
Just my opinion also...you are certainly welcome to yours.
And yet the majority of MMO players do not play EVE. think on that . . .
No, the majority of mmo players play WoW.
However, EVE is the second most successful P2P mmo in the west, and it continues a slow and steady growth even after all of these years. Not many mmos can make such a claim. A lot of people want and enjoy games with "harsh" death penalties. I do not have to think on it, the demographic exists with or without my contemplation.
That's nice yet it is no where near a majority which was GMan's point. Eve has a steady playerbase. Would it be enough to support the financial responsibilities of those developing TOR? Can TOR afford to sit and wait for a 'slow and steady' growth? There is more to this than simply 'There is a demographic that exists for it!' situation. Plain and simple. Yes, there are folks who enjoy the oh so harsh death penalty but none the less they are a very small percentage of the playerbase for MMO's presently and these folks do not just make games for enjoyment.
So do you make your game 'niche' where you really only open yourself a small market or do you open yourself more to a stronger pulsing market. This is a license that holds appeal to a mass number of individuals which means it has the "opportunity" to obtain a large portion of the market for it's product. But instead should they ignore that and simply go for the smaller market despite investors and the demans of profit that has already stated they would have to aim around 500k in subscriptions to see returns? No. Speaking from a business standpoint that would be rather idiotic.
The market is not saturated with folks able to spend hours upon hours in a game to deal with the harsh dealth penalties. It is full of college students or working adults. Many of us who have full time jobs, spouses and children do not have time to sit there and watch us lose everything we worked hard for in a GAME disappear on us after a death. We have that already. It's called bills.
Full loot is fine if the game isn't all about gear and is more about skills. Or by making everything craftable and not forcing people to raid shit for better equipment that they might lose. People's time is way more valuable to them than in-game money.
Even something as extreme as perma-death is viable, if the rest of the game mechanics support it.
The problem is that there are always contrarians, and in the past developers have experimented with stuff like this only to see that some unknown percentage of the population threatens to rage quit in public places. And publishers don't like that (nor do they understand why this is happening, how empty the threats are, and how insignificant the percentage of complainers really is compared to those who are happily making do, in-game).
The barriers to creating better games (i.e. more risk, more meaningful rewards) are compounded by the simple fact that the guys who print money off their MMO (Blizzard) have done so by following the safest paths possible. It's a copycat industry right now, and so this is the model we see explored by every major publisher.
Nevermind that EVE has proven thousands of times over that people dig meaningful risks for meaningful rewards.
At any rate, when it comes to SWTOR in particular, you can count on things being as miltoast as possible. This game costs too much money not to try to please everyone, all the time. And that means: no real risks, nothing "unfun" happening to your toon.
Much as I think that current death penalties are kinda weak, they make a really good point. A game with harsh death penalties needs to be designed differently than one wish a soft one. You'd really need to not die as often. Consider working on a raid boss where you wipe a dozen times while learning. That experience would really suck with a harsh death penalty. I think I'm slowly changing my mind about what a death has to do in an MMO.
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
Why not give players the choice of which rule-set server they want to play on? A 'hardcore' full-loot death penalty, or a 'regular' with a light penalty. Cater for both crowds. And I agree 100% with GrumpyMel2, there isn't much that compares to the sense of danger, sense of achievement or sense of community in games with harsher death penalties. Give us the choice and I think they'll have more success than just declaring 'light penalty, casual friendly'.
I'd rather not see a harsh death penalty. It's one of those "it's a life, not a game" features. I want to enjoy and relax on my game time, to explore and conquer, have fun with others and so on, not just to make sure that I stay alive at all costs or loose those hard earned goods. If I come home after a tiring day at work, I'd rather relax at my favourite mmo rather than think "oh I shouldnt log in, I'm not at 100% of my game right now and I might end up loosing something important if I die in tor because of that". Or loose something because of lag. Or because you logged in and died being drunk that evening or whatever. "But it's your own fault if you log in drunk" - Yes it is, I know. However, it still makes the game too serious by requiring you to watch your self when to not log in. Key words: When to not log in. "But you are making it too serious to you!" Not serious, it's just annoying to loose important stuff and/or being set back a lot because you didnt watch your self outside the game. Or because of technical glitch. If a game has a feature that makes people to log more rarely rather than often I'm afraid it's not a good feature.
I dont think it's the best option for business either, I had few friends playing EVE who quit because they had forgot to clone them self or something like that and lost a lot at death (does that make any sense to EVE players?), and they said the game felt too serious, work like, to them.
I can totally understand people who wants a system with harsher death penalty, it's simply their piece of cake and enjoy it more for whatever reason. I'm quite sure however there are a lot more people who are not looking for a more daunting game experience. What I'd like to see with TOR is:
a.) Either few of the servers dedicated to a harsh death penalty, so called HC servers.
b.) Let people choose to activate HC mode in game with some bonuses to credits dropped from monsters or something like that, so they can choose to do so if they want and get something out of it compared to an average player.
Good article and responses. What is most amazing to me is the 'harsh penalties' crowd have a peculiar attitude toward this subject. Harsh death penalties are already in virtually any MMO out there! Got killed - then divest your 'stuff' and 'will' it to anyone you want (just like in real life) and then delete the character. Anyone who wants a harsh penalty can do this anytime they die (to the delight of their 'heirs') and thats that. Harsh death penalty, in game, all the time for those who want it. You can even 'loot' your own character by discarding all money and equipment and starting again with whatever you have banked away. The full range of death penalties is already in most all MMOs.
So what is the problem. Hardcore death penalty supporters want not just the challenge for themselves, that is already there. They want everyone else to face the same or get out and play something else. My way or the Highway mentality. As Damion pointed out, in a way, STOR is not a 'niche' game for the hardcore. They can't make enough money from those players to keep it going. I am a PvE centric player (as the majority of MMO players tend to be) and I am looking forward to STOR to join the other two games I play, and pay for. Bioware has to decide whether to satisfy enough of us to support the game's very existance or the smaller group who want to force their views on everyone. Especially since what the lesser group wants is already in the game.
LET ME REPEAT! Perma-death, gear loss etc...is already in the game. Use it if you want it, don't if you don't want it. An option! How wonderful is that. Not satisfactory? Then suggest you check your motives, not mine, since you want no choice for me and I support your ability to choose. QED
I am sorry but your argument is logically invalid. If you *opt* to give away your Items and delete your character, then it's not a penalty. It's a decision you can always ignore, which is why it does not get exciting. If somebody breaks into your house with a gun and tries to kill you, it'll scare you/create (very much) tension. If you have a gun in your closet which is up to you to use if you want to, it will not induce similar feelings.
-> It is an act of free will to wipe yourself out, it's a penalty if somebody else wipes you out. Fear of beeing wiped out creates tension, so: no, permadeath is NOT integrated in most MMO's.
garry's point is not right, the question is about game design, i.e. the parameters within which players have to work.
There always seems to be a tradeoff - it's pretty well established that "hardcore" rules, right up to permadeath, will make for a tighter, more deeply immersed community. That is surely indisputable. However, it's unlikely to be a huge community.
i.e., another way of saying the above is that only those who appreciate the deeper immersion hardcore rules give, will stick with the game, but immersioneers are only a small subset of the MMO playing community. From the devs' point of view that's not necessarily a good thing, if they're aiming for a game with mass appeal. For many players, probably the majority, immersion is of less importance than achievement, light socialising or whatnot.
I envisage a time in the future when the tools for making MMOs will be more readily available to "kitchen table" game designers (think "Hero Engine LE") - then we will see lots of niche MMOs with small but active populations who love to be deeply immersed in a particular world. Permadeath and harsh death penalties will be the rule in those worlds.
There was almost that sort of situation with NWN's PWs, it's just that the tech wasn't quite up to it for a mass market thing.
While I dont expect the game to have FFA looting like Darkfall, Its nice to have some risk in a game..
While Darkfall is exceptionatly harsh, its that harshness that makes it an adrenalin fueled thrill ride of a game and once its fixed some of its issues it will be the best game out there for people who like this thrill.
By the sound of it there basicly saying there aiming this game at casual carebears who want epic loot but dont wanna risk loosing it... They will have to make the PvP somthing special if the death penalty is non existant to keep it intresting.
Havn't read the whole thread but the artical from the PO, that last paragraph listing all the bad points from SWG's death penalty were all very, very big pro's for me, when I was playing it at the time and even moreso now. My guess is as he stated 'when looking back' he didn't see it at the time, now he's been cuddled and canoodled by these new games with abdsolutely no death penalty at all and the thought of planning out your play just seems a bit too much effort.
Also the link to TOR boards for their view on death penalty is a joke, ofc he's going to answer exactly the way he did, he could have just made the posts and subsequent reading a hell of a lot easier if he just wrote "Death Penalty: Exactly like WoW, that's popular, we want popular".
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Not a big fan of harsh death penalties here. But also it would make a game no fun to have it to easy too. SWG now just comes down to paying some creds and its done. That I feel is to easy. I would like to see something along the lines of DCUO has now. When one is killed the toon itself is fine but your gear gets trashed. The way to fix gear is to leave what ever mission you are on and find the closest safe house to repair. It only takes money to fix it but its not cheap and the game has no easy way of gaining more money.
Comments
This makes sense, BUT...
As they pointed out, people tend to lean towards least resistance. If there is a "get out of jail free card", people will use it. By allowing players to choose their own death penalties, there will be no penalties at all. "If everyone is weird, than no one is weird." The option to be able to cheat your own gaming morals/rules "when you see fit" is the downfall of your logic.
Work for hours and hours to achieve something, investing time, money, and energy into a video game only to die from a fluke... say a mob spawns under the world and is attacking you. There is nothing you can do about it. You can't see the mob and eventually you die. How about you are swimming and your internet crashes. Your characters has drowned to death. How about a GM event spawns a Dragon in the city while you are sitting afk, you die because you had to take a quick bio break.
Do you decide your character is dead and give your stuff away and reroll? Unlikely. Most of the populous would decide it "wasn't their fault" or some other rubbish.
I agree with your statement, but it just won't work for the general populous of the MMO gaming community.
I think there should be servers, with different rules that are enforced, whether we like it or not. We have pvp servers, RP servers, RPpvp servers, why not HC servers? (HC = Hard Core)
Garry why would someone intentionally delete their character if its not a game mechanic, thats the stupiest thing ive ever heard. thats like saying if you are playing football and you're kicking the other teams ass that you should let them score. The point to harsh death penalties is that it makes achieving your goals all the more sweeter, you dont get the same feeling if you die in an easy game and then just delete your character.
No that's a false arguement....if the games mechanics don't support it then they don't support it, period....and the games atmosphere and design doesn't take it into account.
Simple example in a text based MUD I used to play (Gemstone). It was possible for you to drop the equipment you carried in your hands (weapon & shield) if you were killed (or even got your arm cut off) and if you were killed and not "life kept" or resurrected in a certain time your body could decay, leaving your items behind. However items so dropped were not neccesarly gone...they would sit in the same room where they were dropped and they could be picked up by other players or even mobs. It was only after a significant amount of time had passed with no other players in the area that there was a chance that they would disappear.
Even though you could loose items in theory (even perma-die) in practice it was pretty rare (only lost items myself a handfull of times in about 10 years of play). Typicaly if you adventured into a dangerous area you took partners with you to help out in case you got in trouble. If you died, there was also a global chat notification that it had happaned...and typicaly you let people know where you were going if it was dangerous.
What would happen is that if you fell, other players would usualy come out to help rescue your corpse and your gear if you got in trouble and make sure you got everything back..... and the vast majority of the time you did...though it was always a few nervous minutes when you were dead alone on the floor and some mob had run off with your prize sword. However, most of the time you got it back. There were people who made thier entire career in the game out of going out and rescuing downed adventurers. I know some of my most fun and exciting times in the game was when I was on a rescue mission.
Bottom line, no way a game could simulate that experience without the mechanics in place to support it (i.e. items dropping to the floor, or being on the floor for a time without disappearing, mobs picking up items, characters being able to drag each others corpses, etc) and no way a player community would develop those kind of dynamics without similar death mechanics being in place.
I think this would be more accurate. A harsh penalty does not always make a game better for everyone.
Can this be a compromise-solution to those that want harsh death penalties?
Give the hardcore the options to play as though there is perma death(loss). A title(and achivement sys) that you can keep as long as you never die. As part of the server have a tracker for who are the 10 highest level character that has never died. You could even separate it for PvE or PvP.
Theres no reason why you can't cater for both crowds on the same server.
No, the majority of mmo players play WoW.
However, EVE is the second most successful P2P mmo in the west, and it continues a slow and steady growth even after all of these years. Not many mmos can make such a claim. A lot of people want and enjoy games with "harsh" death penalties. I do not have to think on it, the demographic exists with or without my contemplation.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
"We don’t actually learn what specifically the death penalty for Star Wars: The Old Republic is."
i agree, i prefer the game to be more of a challenge. i believe consequences for death make the game a more enjoyable experience. i liked the old swg, when you had to visit the doc, entertainer etc.. made for a more immersive game for me at least.
Agree completely. The worst death penatly I ever saw was in EQ (early days, don' t know about today). Corpse runs, experience loss, LOSS OF A LEVEL! And you know what--- the community was the best I have ever experienced. And when I played, I, and usually my friends, planned out what we were going to do. And you know, people would take on dragons where there was a great chance of a TPW. It didn't stop them. The feeling of succeeding was tremendous. And I can remember well failing and being therefore even more determined to beat the encounter. But after doing the end game instances in WoW, I say, so what.
And the dread was always there. Just running through a zone was "interesting".
I submit the real reason for an easy death penalty is a popularity analysis. Harsh death penalty equals fewer subs. End of discussion. Thanks for the rationalizations, heard them all before. Bleh.
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Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
^ The truth ^
Frankly you have to go where the money is, and the money is in lighter death penalties. No matter which way you go, too harsh (ala EQ/UO/mud) and you get one set of people complaining.
If you go too light you get the other sect. It's going to be impossible to please everyone, so it's better to please the larger audience, and BW believes that the larger of the two is the light death penalty crowd.
As long as they make the encounter interesting and fun then i'm okay with whatever death penalty they introduce. If i fail the mission cause i died (or in this case get defeated) I still failed the encounter. Now i have to do it again. Which will make me more likely to figure out what i did wrong and fix it. Kinda like what i do in all games.
As to the learning the encounter. Unless you have a complex AI that can learn, all encounters will boil down to do this, go here, do that, go to this place.
I remember clearly in EQ there was a set way of doing things, in most raids there was one person barking orders on where people should stand. Max casting range. standing outside of AoEs. Death in EQ created a downtime in the event. You had to first hope the cleric survived. (cleric camp was the code name in my guild if the raid was about wipe). Then once the encounter failed they had to come back and rez about 50 people. There really wasn't much lose if a party wiped and tried again. Unless you have a complete TPW. which usually killed the raid at that point as noone wanted to go through 4+ hours of reclearing the dungeon to try and beat that creature again.
LIke i stated before i'm okay with either death penalty. I see the plus and minuses in both
Harsh will make you think but is also annoying if you slipped or got lag. I remember once getting a terrible spout of lag in my mid 30s in that game (which was decent level) and slipping down that gigantic hole. Had to wait 3 days on that character (cause a raid was required) before i could get my stuff back. Thats a harsh penalty for lag. But it also allowed for me to make some friends along the way once they did get back to my corpse.
Lighter ones mean you can focus on the gameplay more and not so much on the failure part, which means people are more willing to take risks if the ramifications aren't as deadly. I think most people will try a different tatic even if number 1 works because they want to see if theres a faster way or will try with different combos instead of, okay so we don't wipe and lose our stuff we need X, Y, and 3 of Z. Sorry A this encounter isn't for you, we have to hold your hand through it and we haven't learned it enough to allow for that without a wipe.
I loved the days of EQ, some of the best times i had. But the death penalty was never what made it fun for me. What did make it fun for me was the people in it and the adventures we had. Which i don't think equates to harshness of death penalties but more of the maturity level of the people you are with.
If you find a guild of friends and go exploring i'm quite sure you can get the same measure of fun and friendship as you could in old days.
Just my personal opinion of course.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I played EQ1 for a long time and loved the game, but the 8 hour CR runs in the plane of fear and what not were really excessive. I think there is a happy medium. Of the games I have played that have really no penalty at all it shows in just the way people interact with each other and the environment. You have to have some reason people do not want to die, otherwise it doesn't really mean anything when you do.
I am not sure why so many games seem to think it is either a brutal horrible death penalty that most people do not care to deal with or nothing it has to be nothing at all. There are other choices.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
I agree the death penalty was not fun. Not at all. But I don't think you can conclude (necessarily) that having the death penalty in the game didn't have something to do with the maturity of the people who stayed with the game for any length of time. EQ never got a small fraction of the numbers WoW has...but I think it is possible there was a serious filtering of people who tried it. Sure, there were still some jerks.
Personally, although I have found nice guilds in WoW and in Lotro (certainly less drama!), the "fun and friendship" wasn't the same. Just "go exploring"? Sign up for the next instance. Maybe it's just me --- I was a lot younger then!
To some extent perhaps the whole discussion is a little silly. Separating out one aspect of the whole experience is tricky. I am sure a lot of people liked it when EQ put in the Pok and made travel easy. I think it is was part of several things that degraded the game as a whole.
Just my opinion also...you are certainly welcome to yours.
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Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
That's nice yet it is no where near a majority which was GMan's point. Eve has a steady playerbase. Would it be enough to support the financial responsibilities of those developing TOR? Can TOR afford to sit and wait for a 'slow and steady' growth? There is more to this than simply 'There is a demographic that exists for it!' situation. Plain and simple. Yes, there are folks who enjoy the oh so harsh death penalty but none the less they are a very small percentage of the playerbase for MMO's presently and these folks do not just make games for enjoyment.
So do you make your game 'niche' where you really only open yourself a small market or do you open yourself more to a stronger pulsing market. This is a license that holds appeal to a mass number of individuals which means it has the "opportunity" to obtain a large portion of the market for it's product. But instead should they ignore that and simply go for the smaller market despite investors and the demans of profit that has already stated they would have to aim around 500k in subscriptions to see returns? No. Speaking from a business standpoint that would be rather idiotic.
The market is not saturated with folks able to spend hours upon hours in a game to deal with the harsh dealth penalties. It is full of college students or working adults. Many of us who have full time jobs, spouses and children do not have time to sit there and watch us lose everything we worked hard for in a GAME disappear on us after a death. We have that already. It's called bills.
Full loot is fine if the game isn't all about gear and is more about skills. Or by making everything craftable and not forcing people to raid shit for better equipment that they might lose. People's time is way more valuable to them than in-game money.
Even something as extreme as perma-death is viable, if the rest of the game mechanics support it.
The problem is that there are always contrarians, and in the past developers have experimented with stuff like this only to see that some unknown percentage of the population threatens to rage quit in public places. And publishers don't like that (nor do they understand why this is happening, how empty the threats are, and how insignificant the percentage of complainers really is compared to those who are happily making do, in-game).
The barriers to creating better games (i.e. more risk, more meaningful rewards) are compounded by the simple fact that the guys who print money off their MMO (Blizzard) have done so by following the safest paths possible. It's a copycat industry right now, and so this is the model we see explored by every major publisher.
Nevermind that EVE has proven thousands of times over that people dig meaningful risks for meaningful rewards.
At any rate, when it comes to SWTOR in particular, you can count on things being as miltoast as possible. This game costs too much money not to try to please everyone, all the time. And that means: no real risks, nothing "unfun" happening to your toon.
Yeah demon's souls death penalty sucks.
I was ready to throw my gamepad on the screen.Cant remember any other game made me so angry.Moderate death penalty is good.
Much as I think that current death penalties are kinda weak, they make a really good point. A game with harsh death penalties needs to be designed differently than one wish a soft one. You'd really need to not die as often. Consider working on a raid boss where you wipe a dozen times while learning. That experience would really suck with a harsh death penalty. I think I'm slowly changing my mind about what a death has to do in an MMO.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Gimmicky or not, a scoff free death penalty does make a game easier and indirectly allows players to be more careless.
Why not give players the choice of which rule-set server they want to play on? A 'hardcore' full-loot death penalty, or a 'regular' with a light penalty. Cater for both crowds. And I agree 100% with GrumpyMel2, there isn't much that compares to the sense of danger, sense of achievement or sense of community in games with harsher death penalties. Give us the choice and I think they'll have more success than just declaring 'light penalty, casual friendly'.
I'd rather not see a harsh death penalty. It's one of those "it's a life, not a game" features. I want to enjoy and relax on my game time, to explore and conquer, have fun with others and so on, not just to make sure that I stay alive at all costs or loose those hard earned goods. If I come home after a tiring day at work, I'd rather relax at my favourite mmo rather than think "oh I shouldnt log in, I'm not at 100% of my game right now and I might end up loosing something important if I die in tor because of that". Or loose something because of lag. Or because you logged in and died being drunk that evening or whatever. "But it's your own fault if you log in drunk" - Yes it is, I know. However, it still makes the game too serious by requiring you to watch your self when to not log in. Key words: When to not log in. "But you are making it too serious to you!" Not serious, it's just annoying to loose important stuff and/or being set back a lot because you didnt watch your self outside the game. Or because of technical glitch. If a game has a feature that makes people to log more rarely rather than often I'm afraid it's not a good feature.
I dont think it's the best option for business either, I had few friends playing EVE who quit because they had forgot to clone them self or something like that and lost a lot at death (does that make any sense to EVE players?), and they said the game felt too serious, work like, to them.
I can totally understand people who wants a system with harsher death penalty, it's simply their piece of cake and enjoy it more for whatever reason. I'm quite sure however there are a lot more people who are not looking for a more daunting game experience. What I'd like to see with TOR is:
a.) Either few of the servers dedicated to a harsh death penalty, so called HC servers.
b.) Let people choose to activate HC mode in game with some bonuses to credits dropped from monsters or something like that, so they can choose to do so if they want and get something out of it compared to an average player.
I am sorry but your argument is logically invalid. If you *opt* to give away your Items and delete your character, then it's not a penalty. It's a decision you can always ignore, which is why it does not get exciting. If somebody breaks into your house with a gun and tries to kill you, it'll scare you/create (very much) tension. If you have a gun in your closet which is up to you to use if you want to, it will not induce similar feelings.
-> It is an act of free will to wipe yourself out, it's a penalty if somebody else wipes you out. Fear of beeing wiped out creates tension, so: no, permadeath is NOT integrated in most MMO's.
Yours truly,
El Gnomig.
garry's point is not right, the question is about game design, i.e. the parameters within which players have to work.
There always seems to be a tradeoff - it's pretty well established that "hardcore" rules, right up to permadeath, will make for a tighter, more deeply immersed community. That is surely indisputable. However, it's unlikely to be a huge community.
i.e., another way of saying the above is that only those who appreciate the deeper immersion hardcore rules give, will stick with the game, but immersioneers are only a small subset of the MMO playing community. From the devs' point of view that's not necessarily a good thing, if they're aiming for a game with mass appeal. For many players, probably the majority, immersion is of less importance than achievement, light socialising or whatnot.
I envisage a time in the future when the tools for making MMOs will be more readily available to "kitchen table" game designers (think "Hero Engine LE") - then we will see lots of niche MMOs with small but active populations who love to be deeply immersed in a particular world. Permadeath and harsh death penalties will be the rule in those worlds.
There was almost that sort of situation with NWN's PWs, it's just that the tech wasn't quite up to it for a mass market thing.
I like this defeated/KOed system. Its family friendly and fits the lore. IMO I am very happy with this news.
While I dont expect the game to have FFA looting like Darkfall, Its nice to have some risk in a game..
While Darkfall is exceptionatly harsh, its that harshness that makes it an adrenalin fueled thrill ride of a game and once its fixed some of its issues it will be the best game out there for people who like this thrill.
By the sound of it there basicly saying there aiming this game at casual carebears who want epic loot but dont wanna risk loosing it... They will have to make the PvP somthing special if the death penalty is non existant to keep it intresting.
Havn't read the whole thread but the artical from the PO, that last paragraph listing all the bad points from SWG's death penalty were all very, very big pro's for me, when I was playing it at the time and even moreso now. My guess is as he stated 'when looking back' he didn't see it at the time, now he's been cuddled and canoodled by these new games with abdsolutely no death penalty at all and the thought of planning out your play just seems a bit too much effort.
Also the link to TOR boards for their view on death penalty is a joke, ofc he's going to answer exactly the way he did, he could have just made the posts and subsequent reading a hell of a lot easier if he just wrote "Death Penalty: Exactly like WoW, that's popular, we want popular".
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Not a big fan of harsh death penalties here. But also it would make a game no fun to have it to easy too. SWG now just comes down to paying some creds and its done. That I feel is to easy. I would like to see something along the lines of DCUO has now. When one is killed the toon itself is fine but your gear gets trashed. The way to fix gear is to leave what ever mission you are on and find the closest safe house to repair. It only takes money to fix it but its not cheap and the game has no easy way of gaining more money.