Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Death Penalities in MMO !!
Lucioon
Member UncommonPosts: 819
Death Penalities , the Pro and Cons! The casual and Hardcore takes! The total non existence vs too much existences has been the discussion that everyone has in almost every MMO that is being developed and already developed.
But is it a necessary implication, because most of the times the only penalities you will receive is the corpse run and in my opinion death really have no place in an MMO. Because Death does not mean you are finished, its not the end of your journey in an MMO.
So what other options are there? and why is it even in an MMO?
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Comments
personally
at wow launch, I hated their weak death penalty
part of the fun of mmos is CHALLENGE -- solo or grouped
Everquest went overboard with making you lose your gear and experience, you could even lose levels
but WOW went overboard in the practically no penalty
between those 2 extremes -- theres plenty of room for a more balanced death penalty
EQ2 fan sites
When people say death penality, the term death is not accurate what were all talking about is what happens when you lose or get defeated.
This can come in the form od a death, or being knocked out, or any number of methods to signal the player has lost.
MMO's today in my opinion , in this regard are some of the worst games on their time, in a single player game if you die you lose your place, get shoved back to the last save point, in an rts you could have spent hours building a base only to have it all lost and gone in seconds, in a first person shooter you die and could be forced to sit the rest of the round out and wait for the rest to finish before you can play again.
But in MMO's a genre where I would argue death is far more important and is being treated badly by developers, death should count, and there are lots of ways they can make death count. ways that it actually benefits the game as a whole and not just the winning player or losing player.
Death needs to mean smething to the player, to the winner and to their faction guild or nation, but it simply does not in 99% of mmo's today.
Yes you are correct. This has been quite the discussion topic.......so it needs to be discussed yet again?
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Sure challenge is necessary...but death penalty isn't challenge, it's just tedium.
There are thousands of examples of games which are hard without being tedious.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Sorry but thats bull honky, death is the penalty, the challenge is to NOT DIE. if you cant see that you need to rethink your whole gaming thing.
well, from experience, in ff11 or in eq1 when you saw a high level player, you knew that, if you grouped-up with them (remember, grouping in camps was the way to level-up in these games) they had at least some knowledge about their class/job, beause the game made it difficult for someone who didnt know what they were doing to gain max level... and the exceptions to this rule were all well known to the server.
the above was especially true in ff11, where you couldnt really hide behind an alt, and where you needed to complete a hard quest to even be able to level all the way up....
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
I feel a death penalty is needed in an mmo. It gives you a reason to not die all the time. Depending on the penalty I also like being able to pk players and take their items. In the game I play the skills are seperate from the levels. What I mean by that is your skills aren't based off of what level you are, you train them seperately. So when you die you have a chance of loosing a skill point in a certain area and you lose some exp AND items depending on your status. Death penalties are a huge thing for people that pk for gear and to weaken their enemies.
www.shadowworlds.com
I agree with you. Death penalties do not add to the challenge since they do not afect how hard it is for you to die in the game. They only apply once you actually failed that challenge.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I realize you said personally, but I just wanted to say - I'm the exact opposite. I've got enough challenges in RL, I want to get on my MMO and steamroll things. No penalties. Fat loot. I wish they'd give me GM powers so I could one shot everyone and never worry about death. Heck, just let me generate my own gear.
That is not exactly true for say EQ1.
We have powerlevelling in games, in which the lowbie can skyrocket and practically not knowing about his class. Easiest way to level is to have a max level druid cast barb on you and you go solo.
Agree as well.
Death or defeat should have some consequence. The consequence should mean somehow you will not be as happy as surviving. That can come as lesser loot, less gold, smaller share of xp gain. How harsh the consequence or penalty should be, is a matter of taste.
Difficulty = how much skill is required to avoid failure (this is the "to NOT DIE" part)
Penalty = what happens if you fail (note that this part doesn't involve the words skill, challenge, or difficulty.)
There are seriously tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of examples of very challenging games which involve reasonable penalty for failure. (Although "reasonable" is often called "no death penalty" in MMORPGs, bizarrely.)
Go play IWBTG if you need to remind yourself that games don't need excessive penalty to offer challenge (excessive challenge, in this case.) The penalty for failure? Restart the screen, immediately. Instantly. No grindy XP recovery and no corpse run.
MMORPGs are able to be difficult in exactly the same way, with exactly the same light death penalty.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I've come to accept the fact that most Online RPG players do not find harsh death penalties interesting or fun. It takes away from the progression and the combat, which is what the huge majority finds appealing. While I think these players are selling themselves short of what Online RPGs are about and what they could potentially be, who am I to argue with the development companies whose sole purpose is to give the majority of players what they want?
Death penalties themselves are not challenging and do not make the games more difficult. Combat prowess and memorization make the games challenging and difficult. However, learning to depend on others to avoid or overcome harsh death penalties can be very challenging and difficult, but infinitely rewarding. What most players consider boring and tedious, I consider the heart and soul of online RPGs. Without harsh death penalties, I may as well be playing Pacman or Tetris.
While I do enjoy many games regardless of their death penalties (Fallout 3 basically has no death penaly at all), Online RPGs offer something unique that no other game genre can afford. A big part of that is taken away with light death penalties because the games then become nothing more than single player games where you get to show off your gear or achievements. Working with other players is a means to an end, not the whole reason to play the games in the first place. I may be the minority, but I find that very sad and a huge waste of potential.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Wow, what's with all the common sense on this site today? I was going to say the same thing.
Yes death penalties does add to challenge.
If it takes you 30 minutes to get back into the fight. Needless to say you probably won't be doing it all night if you keep dying. Time is a perfect factor in measuring difficulty. It doesn't make the boss harder it does however decrease your chance of success on that particular night.
Progress becomes harder if you lose more than you earn. Again you can use time as a factor here to measure difficulty
I think it would be fairly obvious, if you could get up right after dying and continue the fight, the fight no longer poses a challenge.
as others have said -- dont necessarily need death penalties
but i do think mmos need DEFEAT penalties
EQ2 fan sites