its not the possible consequences but if i know im gonna lose all my equipment becaue i die im not gonna try to take down a mob 2-3 levels higher.
comparing dp to not making playoffs isnt a relative argument. If they dont make the playoffs they can still play basketball the next week as long as season isnt over.
In mmos if u lose all your stuff u have to go kill lower level shit for hrs to slowly build up your gear again. So u can run the dungoens that got u good gear in the first place to run raids or whatnot.
A dp penalty where u can be lootd is more like a basketball team loses so all there equipment is taken away until they can find equipment they cant play games in that league anymore.
If a team knew the risk of losing was never playign again theyd never play to start.. Missing the playoffs hurts but u can still play again nex season and u still have all your equipment.
The challenge isnt iin losing or not losing. The better team is gonna win its in knowing the other team is more talented and busting your butt to win not because if u lose u dont make playoffs but because winning the game makes u feel good.
The fact is what makes sports so great is the feeling u get win or lose. Not some penalty inposed for failing. If a team knew playing a better team meant they couldnt play next year then theyd never put thos teams on the schedule.
Wheras knowing they can stil play the game even if they lose the real challenge is in taken on a team better then u and doing everything u can to beat them not in the penalty ud incure for losing.
I agree with you overall on the reasoning, as far as PvE is concerned.
However, many of the people making arguments about Risk and Reward are approaching this in PVP terms.
No one wants to lose their stuff in PVE I would beleive.
But many would like to feel that there is a danger lurking around and that going after the mob may expose you to the ambush of a player that will kill you and take your stuff.
Some others are proponents of Risk vs Reward because they are the ones that ambush the unsuspecting guy that is in the process of killing an NPC.
Yet others feel that there is more purpose in a battle between two guilds if the winner gets to loot the losers.
The problem in this thread is that there is a question but there is no context, and we have answers that come from different contexts, and this means there will never be a trully satisfactory answer.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
The only thing a death penalty does in video games is it kicks casuals out, ie. the MAIN $$$$ SUBs, of the game.
I get the feeling that you meant to talk about penalties associated with the state of dying as simulated in a RPG, rather than death penalties as a generic attribute of all games that involve "lives."
Death penalties should not be described as such in an RPG. It is simply death, and with death comes certain things that are bad and a few things that are good (in fantasy-based games, anyway).
For instance, dying in Dungeons & Dragons Online allows your spirit to explore a short distance around your "soulstone." So dying would allow someone to explore into dangerous traps or walk through them and then get rezzed on the other side (effectively bypassing the trap). This could be considered a fairly significant benefit to dying, and has actually been used significantly throughout the history of the game.
The "penalties" ascribed to death are simply there to simulate the negative effects of having been dead. Stop thinking of it as punishment or penalty. Is getting hit with a debuff or a crowd control spell a "punishment?" No, it is simply a mechanic of the game that is meant to be utilized or avoided as necessary.
Failure conditions need to be in place however, for any goals, whether given in the game rules or self-defined in a roleplaying simulation. Otherwise there is no metric by which you could fail, and therefore no way to win.
Being looted by a pker at death is a much greater rush than not being looted.
Being hit by a car because you didn't run fast enough has an even greater rush than the MMO high.
I would much rather enjoy the adrenaline from a good siege of property than the possibility of having a bike land on me or have my parachute fail to open. Just because we seek that risk / reward in our MMOs it doesn't mean we all wish to go and play russian roulette with a loaded gun, perhaps in game, with another player stood waiting to loot us if we died...
thankfully you only speaking for yourself.
why not self inflict the DP on your self when you fail?
I dont understand why you Pro-HDP dont do this in games without HDP
Again the worst suggestion that casual gamers love to throw out there. "Hey guys I died in dead mines so I need to drop my armor and wait 10 minutes for my 'self inpossed death penalty to wear off'". It causes others to enjoy a good laugh at you. The main problem however is that it's like cutting your arm off then playing a few sets of tennis against a two armed opponent.
We aren't for disadvantages against everyone else. We want a world where the stakes are higher for everyone involved. I want the guy who has just run me down to be just as worried of dying as I am because it means a trip to the bank to stock up on potions and another throw away set of armor.
THATS THE SAME THING HDP DOES!!!
oh damn, I lost my gear cause I died... iam at a disavantage!!!! QQ
thats the same shit you discribed
Two players in a high risk situation fight. They are even they both have something to lose and gain. I lose, I am happy with what I have lost. I win I am happy with what I won.
Two players in a low risk situation fight. I don't care if I win or lose beyond my E-peen, neither does me opponent.
One player takes on a "High death penalty" other player continues to play by games carebear rule set. Carebear doesn't care about dying so simply spams himself on the other player. Other player has something to Risk with nothing to gain.
There are people here with some pretty strange notions. Of course the death penalty is related to the difficulty of a game. It's the defining aspect of the difficulty of the game. The death penalty is what happens when you fail a game. Without it, there is no failure and the game immediately becomes trivial. Invulnerability is the most god-like cheat code, because no matter how weak your attack or problem-solving abilities, the inability to fail can generally provide eventual, if ugly and uneducated, success.
Having said all that, death penalties in MMOs should not be about difficulty or defining failure. MMOs are meant to be simulations, and so the death penalties are simply there to simulate what would happen. It's really that simple. The AD&D rule of losing CON due to a death was meant to simulate the loss of health that occurred due to being raised from the dead. It wasn't there because it made a good MMO game mechanic or increased the difficulty of playing the game (though that penalty clearly did make the game more difficult). It's pure simulation.
Future MMO developers would do well to realize that little piece of information.
Failure still exists without excessive death penalty.
We're not talking about literally zero penalty. We're talking about the difference between the minimum required penalty (a fight reset) and the excessive penalty that exists in a lot of MMORPGs (time-consuming corpse runs; time-consuming XP penalties; item loss)
You're never going to beat a hard boss fight -- even if the penalty for failure is an instant fight reset back to the start of the fight (what MMORPG players would call "no penalty") -- until you have the skill to beat it.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
A death penalty doesn't increase the difficulty, it will only provide a sense of risk by lose or whatever the penalty is. The only solution I see to increase the difficulty is just that, increase the difficulty, and improving the AI. I seems like most enemies play with the mindset of a player with no risk, basically standing there trying to get as much dps to me as I am to him, oblivious to his well being and seeing as how I wiped out the other members of his mob. If I'm fighting what is supposed to be a real (in game) person/creature let them behave as one would, and not like a robot programmed to repeat the same four task at random.
There are people here with some pretty strange notions. Of course the death penalty is related to the difficulty of a game. It's the defining aspect of the difficulty of the game. The death penalty is what happens when you fail a game. Without it, there is no failure and the game immediately becomes trivial. Invulnerability is the most god-like cheat code, because no matter how weak your attack or problem-solving abilities, the inability to fail can generally provide eventual, if ugly and uneducated, success.
Having said all that, death penalties in MMOs should not be about difficulty or defining failure. MMOs are meant to be simulations, and so the death penalties are simply there to simulate what would happen. It's really that simple. The AD&D rule of losing CON due to a death was meant to simulate the loss of health that occurred due to being raised from the dead. It wasn't there because it made a good MMO game mechanic or increased the difficulty of playing the game (though that penalty clearly did make the game more difficult). It's pure simulation.
Future MMO developers would do well to realize that little piece of information.
Failure still exists without excessive death penalty.
We're not talking about literally zero penalty. We're talking about the difference between the minimum required penalty (a fight reset) and the excessive penalty that exists in a lot of MMORPGs (time-consuming corpse runs; time-consuming XP penalties; item loss)
You're never going to beat a hard boss fight -- even if the penalty for failure is an instant fight reset back to the start of the fight (what MMORPG players would call "no penalty") -- until you have the skill to beat it.
Then what do you propose as death penalty?
Seem you don't like any penalty that include lose of any time. So no xp-loss (have to spend time in order to regain it), no corpse-run (requires time), no lose of items (have to get new items or gold to buy new items), even simple durability hit is essentialy time-loss (you lose gold, in order to get more gold = time). Even minimum "required penalty" as you say is just time lost.
Actually all things in a game can be translated to time.
Noone is saying that having death penalty will make fight itself harder. It won't, as when you'll start fight it will be same thing as before difficulty wise(provided you have same kind of gear on you).
Like I said all things in game, all kind of difficulty can be just transalted to time. If fight mechanics are more complicated and /or AI better most of the time result is just that player die more times until he / she learns how to beat it.
Going by that definition every fight in game that is not insta-win is just simply time-sink.
Anyway most of things that is discussed here on this forum and this topic is semantics.
For all I care, you can have you definition of what is "hard" and what is not. I don't really care. If it makes you feel better then ok.
I want to suffer consequences of bad choices in games I play (no self-deleting my items after defeat is not a replacement for item loss on defeat), you don't want to as you feel that it just detracts you from playing.
We just simply looking for diffrent games, and that's it.
Its tiring seeing threads like this. People who don't understand what a harsher death penalty does. Its risk/reward, a very simple concept to understand.
If you take a group of the top PVPer's from a game that has a harsh death penalty and faced them off against a group of the top PVPer's from a game like WoW or Rift.. who is going to win? Looking at the question in the most broad of manners. Lets try to keep the nitty gritty details out of it.
Obviously the players that are in that harsher condition. Why? They have grown as PVPers because of those harsher conditions. They have to continually gain in skill if they want to keep there hard earned gear. They have to analyze fights and see how to go about it to give them the highest percentage of success.
The PVPer's from WoW or Rift? There is nothing like this there. They get into a fight and lose...............exactly. There's no adapting, no running to regear. Pushing yourself so it doesn't happen again. Theres nothing.
And directly at the OP:
Nobody wants to hear about your experiences in life. Nobody cares about the rushes you feel outside of an MMO and how your undermining the rush people feel in an MMO. I could go run in the middle of traffic and feel a huge rush, way more then I'd ever get out of an MMO...or you'd get by doing tricks on your little bike..... would that be a smart choice? Hell no.
Now why do you get a bigger rush when playing on your little bike then when you do playing an MMO? Well there's higher risk involved. You fall off that bike and you could get seriously injured. You get a bigger rush doing tricks on your little bike then when you just drive it to work or wherever. The same logic can be applied to an MMO. You will get a bigger rush with a harsher death penalty then without. Its simple. Why do we ask for a harsher death penalty... well.. theres your answer.
Not all of us want to go run in traffic or go base jumping. So we look to MMO's...
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Obviously the players that are in that harsher condition. Why? They have grown as PVPers because of those harsher conditions. They have to continually gain in skill if they want to keep there hard earned gear. They have to analyze fights and see how to go about it to give them the highest percentage of success.
This is completely false. Totally and utterly.
In Darkfall, the way to get good at the game is mock battles with fellow clan members. There is no risk. There is no failure. You don't lose anything but maybe a few seconds running from the bindstone if you accidentally get auto-ganked. And you will fare much better in risky fights than those who have spent their game time traveling and fighting at the University of Hard Knox.
A game is a game. People who would get all uptight about losing their in-game items are going to be just as scared to get good in mock battles. It's just nested virtualization. And people who don't care about losing mock battles to get good, aren't going to be honed in any regard by losing battles in an actual "risky" scenario.
Don't confuse a game with real life. I know it's hard for some of the so-called "hardcore," but it is ALL just a game.
No one is hexxing your real death in an MMO, either. Death "penalties" are all just part of the game.
i wouldnt mind losing a mock battle to get better at something . I would hate losign my gear i spent 3 months aquiring just because some jack wagon ganks me while i fighting an npc
Im sorry but in a game where pvp is present all the time this shit happens.
I just dont think losing gear or losing xp is a way to go it doesnt make me a better player it just makes me avoid the risk in the first place.
Now i dont mind corpse runs never have , I dont mind gear degradation i dont mind having to spend money to fix my gear. Dying and having my gear break after so many deaths is not a bad thing. I have no problem with it in fact.
My issue is that the people who want a harsh penatly want either perma death where u lose everything, or u lose equipment because u can be looted.
that doesnt make a player better if those are the risks it means 90 pct of population will never try a fight they cant win. It also means if u have a ffa pvp game that u wont have more then 500k subs no matter how good your game is.
No one wants to spend 3-5 months building a ship and getting money and stuff only to lose it because the turn the wrong way or some one they think is a freind ala eve decides to betray them to enemies and sets them up to be killed and looted of all there stuff.
that doesnt make a player better if those are the risks it means 90 pct of population will never try a fight they cant win. It also means if u have a ffa pvp game that u wont have more then 500k subs no matter how good your game is.
Not fighting when you can't win should be standard practice. FFA, full loot, or permadeath is not about making players better at the game. It's about making the game better for the players. More meaningful, more exciting, more emotional. Remember, nobody can save anyone else if no one can kill anyone else. They can't return their belongings, they can't sacrifice themselves so that their partner can stay alive.
Permadeath is a style of death penalty. It is extremely harsh, yet many people choose to use that style. The reasons have been sung a hundred times in this thread alone.
EDIT: And oh yeah, if 90 percent of your playerbase will leave because they might lose some pixels - that's a very good sign you don't have the right playerbase for your roleplaying game.
i wouldnt mind losing a mock battle to get better at something . I would hate losign my gear i spent 3 months aquiring just because some jack wagon ganks me while i fighting an npc
Im sorry but in a game where pvp is present all the time this shit happens.
I just dont think losing gear or losing xp is a way to go it doesnt make me a better player it just makes me avoid the risk in the first place.
Now i dont mind corpse runs never have , I dont mind gear degradation i dont mind having to spend money to fix my gear. Dying and having my gear break after so many deaths is not a bad thing. I have no problem with it in fact.
My issue is that the people who want a harsh penatly want either perma death where u lose everything, or u lose equipment because u can be looted.
that doesnt make a player better if those are the risks it means 90 pct of population will never try a fight they cant win. It also means if u have a ffa pvp game that u wont have more then 500k subs no matter how good your game is.
No one wants to spend 3-5 months building a ship and getting money and stuff only to lose it because the turn the wrong way or some one they think is a freind ala eve decides to betray them to enemies and sets them up to be killed and looted of all there stuff.
I laugh at the idiot who takes something out in Eve that he cannot afford to lose. In Eve my usual pvp ships I can have 100 of them fit the same.
I laugh at the fool who spends 3 months getting anything in darkfall/uo/mortal online. After three months I will have so many sets of the gear I use I will give them away.
In a game like Darkfall or Eve it is not a case of getting a full set of tier 11 gear after trying for 3 months to aquire it all. I made a gamble when I started Darkfall way back in the day. I went red with my newbie gear and killed other newbies who were fighting goblins. I lost alot but won occasionally. Those fights I won were against people who had spent way to long killing goblins with full leather sets and loads of arrows and gold and swords and shields. I had enough sets of garbage after an hour that I didn't care about killing the other newbies anymore. I just moved onto harder enviroments to get better gear from killing complacent farmers.
To many people speak about a game genre before they have properly explored it and understood it.
The problem is there are alot of gamers out there who dont have the tiem to redo everything if they lose everything. The people who have the time to replace all there stuff might not mind losing everything
the real challenge is in trying something to see if u can do it or u need to get another level or 2 to take it on. I dont see a challenge in the death penalty.
U can spout all your reasons none of them actually increase the challenge of a fight or the difficulty. All it does is penalize u harshly for failure
Harsh death penalties teach people to quit . People seem to think they make games more challenging when in fact they dont.
I dont mind penalties for losing a battle. I just dont wanna lose all my shit or die for good.
if u want to get more then 500k subs into a game u cant have a death penalty so harsh players who only have between 10-20 hrs a week to play cant ever afford to lose cause they can never get there stuff back.
The reason for less harsh penalties are sane and well thought out .There are still games out there for those that like a harsh death penalty but why should every game have them.
I know salem online is gonna have perma death u want to play a game with harsh death penalty go play that or even online where if u lose u lose all your shit.
The problem is there are alot of gamers out there who dont have the tiem to redo everything if they lose everything. The people who have the time to replace all there stuff might not mind losing everything
the real challenge is in trying something to see if u can do it or u need to get another level or 2 to take it on. I dont see a challenge in the death penalty.
U can spout all your reasons none of them actually increase the challenge of a fight or the difficulty. All it does is penalize u harshly for failure
Harsh death penalties teach people to quit . People seem to think they make games more challenging when in fact they dont.
I dont mind penalties for losing a battle. I just dont wanna lose all my shit or die for good.
if u want to get more then 500k subs into a game u cant have a death penalty so harsh players who only have between 10-20 hrs a week to play cant ever afford to lose cause they can never get there stuff back.
The reason for less harsh penalties are sane and well thought out .There are still games out there for those that like a harsh death penalty but why should every game have them.
I know salem online is gonna have perma death u want to play a game with harsh death penalty go play that or even online where if u lose u lose all your shit.
Again please stop spouting rubbish about games you know nothing about.
In Eve Online if another player blows me up I have a chance to warp away. If I don't and they pod me I am still safe because I am born again in a medical bay with my clone. I have lost that ship and the implants my character had. All my money is safe and all my assets throughout the galaxy are safe.
Factoid. Few MMOs these days have over 500k subs.
Death penalties only teach those to quit who cannot face losing or adversity.
There is no challenge in gaining two more levels to take down a mob you couldn't before.
In Darkfall like I've already said no one spends more than an hour aquiring several sets of gear.
Lastly please read the OP. This thread was created to have a go at people who enjoy harsh penalties to their games. We don't want to have all games with harsh death penalties. Keep your WoW and your Rifts. We just want our games left alone and a few more games supporting the sub-genre.
I'm utter confused as to why people want it in a virtual world. I ride a CBR600RR and have a spare CBR125R to play with. I decided to practice stunting on the CBR125R earlier in the summer with a few friends. The difficulty involved with popping a wheelie, maintaining a stoppie, doing back flips off the bike while it's running, and other incredibly eye pleasing tricks are FAR BEYOND what the virtual environment can or will ever provide you, but here's the most important part: PENALTY OF FAILURE.
You want real penalty? Consider this: A friend of mine shattered his wrist doing a failed stoppie, my bike flipped onto me when I overestimated how much brake power I needed to do a stoppie. In the end, I'm physically hurt, and my partner, the bike, needed mass repairs. In the end, I learned how to control my bike further but there was physical pain, and mental pain involved.
Reread that and explain to me why you want this in an MMO? You can do the above with cars, sports, paintball, and just about everything in real life. Do you lack the ability to? Unless you're handicapped, which then I'd understand, just why do you want to "challenge" yourself with time sinks and other. How about in WoW for every time you get hit by a fireball you burn yourself, every time you get stabbed you smack yourself with a stick, there you go, penalities.
Because a challenge can be presented in any form, in any medium, in any variety of ways.
Your entire post is a rambling mess of strawman arguments, non-sequiturs and horrible analogies wrapped in absurd hyperbole.
If you:
Truly don't understand it (which it's clear you don't)
Are truly interested in understanding why some want challenge and appreciate the role of harsh death penalties in video games (which is not, incidentally what you and many others mischaracterize it as)
Are going to ask the question - ostensibly seeking an answer to it...
How about letting others provide those answers, instead of assuming and asserting your own and then responding to it.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Seem you don't like any penalty that include lose of any time. So no xp-loss (have to spend time in order to regain it), no corpse-run (requires time), no lose of items (have to get new items or gold to buy new items), even simple durability hit is essentialy time-loss (you lose gold, in order to get more gold = time). Even minimum "required penalty" as you say is just time lost.
Actually all things in a game can be translated to time.
Noone is saying that having death penalty will make fight itself harder. It won't, as when you'll start fight it will be same thing as before difficulty wise(provided you have same kind of gear on you).
Like I said all things in game, all kind of difficulty can be just transalted to time. If fight mechanics are more complicated and /or AI better most of the time result is just that player die more times until he / she learns how to beat it.
Going by that definition every fight in game that is not insta-win is just simply time-sink.
Anyway most of things that is discussed here on this forum and this topic is semantics.
For all I care, you can have you definition of what is "hard" and what is not. I don't really care. If it makes you feel better then ok.
I want to suffer consequences of bad choices in games I play (no self-deleting my items after defeat is not a replacement for item loss on defeat), you don't want to as you feel that it just detracts you from playing.
We just simply looking for diffrent games, and that's it.
The key distinction is how time is wasted, not whether it's wasted.
Is it wasted with gameplay, or non-gameplay?
Gameplay: Contra was a blast because death (even your last life) meant you immediately jumped back into gameplay.
Non-Gameplay: MMORPG DP proponents would take Contra and say that when you died you should have to run back through the entire level from the start -- without monsters or having to jump pits -- until you reached the prior point you were at. Or perhaps the monsters exist but you can't shoot until you reach the previous point (there's a tiny bit more gameplay here, but you're still only getting half a game.)
MMORPGs should take a hint from early games (and really most games ever made) and focus on keeping players constantly in gameplay rather than excessively punishing them. There's just no reason to take players completely out of gameplay.
So if you die in a MMORPG boss fight, you should immediately respawn at full health (as will the boss; and possibly a bit of trash mobs in front of him) so that you have the option of jumping immediately back into gameplay to make another attempt. But it's still going to take skill to beat the guy, so if you throw yourself recklessly at the problem you're probably going to repeat that encounter an awful lot.
Whether or not we see eye to eye, death penalties which keep players in gameplay (and avoid non-gameplay) are inevitable. Because gameplay is what players are after, and devs who cater to those desires will inevitably make more money (and more games) while only a niche set of companies will chase the niche audience of masochists who wants harsh 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
To OP: Bcs its a different challenge that drives different emotions and different interests. For some years i drove cart races - which is a damned expensive sport but very satisfying - and at my level i won races, championships and overcame many a challenge. I am intrepid, strong-nerved, cool, calculating, concentrated, i came out nearly unhurt from some serious accidents bcs i did the right thing the right time to avoid injuries and also a few times i had a very very good guardian angel which deserves me to think only good of it: "Thank you very much my Guardian Angel - hope you will never stop your good watch!" One time another vehicle missed my head maybe about 10 inches and if it had hit me i would not have had a head on my shoulders anymore. I drove races for many more years totally unaffected by this accident physically or mentally until i ran out of money. Ahhh, i totally liked for fun to drive curves the way that i made my cart have the inner side in the air with only two wheels on the ground and and angle of 20, 30 or more degrees to the street - i never rolled over. One time i had my inner front wheel hooked with some binding of a tire staple that was a track border and the cart skipped. I was thrown out of the seat at high speed...well maybe not more than 100 kmh and when i hit the road i was rolling along the road spinning around my bodys long axis until i slowed finally down. I only had some road burn on my ellbow bcs i could not put them alongside but only b4 my chest crossed. I have to say i miss it but its not the one and only thing that is fun in live. Even that time i played computer games bcs they offer different things/challenges i like too and i want a action and consequence system in place as every action would be meaningless if there would be no consequence - It is as easy as that!
PS: When i was young and had muuuuuuuuch time i played games the hardest possible level and rpgs die hard with death meaning me to start the game all over again if it was not Darklands where you only have to breed another char for your party which makes sense in the games context
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
I want challenge and death penalties because I like mental challenges. I like having to put time and effort into doing the best I can, and finding tactics that work against whatever challenge is placed in front of me. I don't understand the point of playing a game that is so easy there is no thought - all you're doing is pushing buttons. Seriously, following the glowy sparkles and hitting buttons when you get to the end of the path.
For all you people who say self impose - why don't you self impose your own easy games? Fight monsters that are lower level than you. Why is it always incumbent upon those who want challenge to impose our own? There are plenty of easy, non challenging games out there. You can have your own easy time by fighting easy monsters. There's no need to rob the challenge from those of us who enjoy it. I'm tired of being told that if I want a challenging game I should take off my armor. If you want an easy game, go fight monsters who are lower level than you and stop trying to steal my fun.
If there is no major death penalty to pvp or pve then there is no risk vs reward. Which is why I hate WoW because it took all that away and many other MMO's followed suit.
When I fight in pvp I want it to have some meaning which is why I like Eve Online. You the player can effect thousands of people within that universe its the only MMO that can do this. PvP has meaning and is harsh and I love it. PvE is easy enough but still a lack of attentions and you loose your ship and equipment.
I liked UO and EQ1, UO for the full looting rights and EQ for the corpse runs.
And when I blow someones ship up in Eve Online and kill their pod I like the feeling it gives me that they spent a few weeks getting that money together to buy it and their clone. While I scoop their equipment up and sell it back to them.
Risk vs reward is a naturally sought after aspect in all human endeavours. Most people feel that MMOs are fairly easy because they've "seen" most of what the genre has to offer.
The next step is to make the content "smarter" or "harder" or at least act as a real test.
When things are too easy we get bored generally.
I mean there are those who like to do easy things over and over for vanity reasons. That's probably more common than it needs to be now a days.
Yet people minimize the risk...Shouldn't the reward be reduced too?
What if people don't value the reward? Does your concept of risk vs reward hold up to that?
People want reward but want it as easily as they can get it. Anyone who has attempted to minimize the risk falls into that category.
Minimal risk in a game, any game, should reap minimal reward.
That's easy.
Put greater risk in there and allow those who want it to try for it. If someone think it's too hard, let'em whine at the gate.
That's how everything is.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Its tiring seeing threads like this. People who don't understand what a harsher death penalty does. Its risk/reward, a very simple concept to understand.
If you take a group of the top PVPer's from a game that has a harsh death penalty and faced them off against a group of the top PVPer's from a game like WoW or Rift.. who is going to win? Looking at the question in the most broad of manners. Lets try to keep the nitty gritty details out of it.
Obviously the players that are in that harsher condition. Why? They have grown as PVPers because of those harsher conditions. They have to continually gain in skill if they want to keep there hard earned gear. They have to analyze fights and see how to go about it to give them the highest percentage of success.
The PVPer's from WoW or Rift? There is nothing like this there. They get into a fight and lose...............exactly. There's no adapting, no running to regear. Pushing yourself so it doesn't happen again. Theres nothing.
Fear of failure does not make better players - repetition and pushing your limits does. With this in mind, the players with competitive PvP background will win. They generally have more repetition, because they don't spend their time recouperating from death. They also know their limits, because they've died a lot. Infact, the best way to learn how not to die, is to die a lot. The freedom from harsh deathpenalties also lets them to experiment and without any penalty plus they are generally "braver".
Like the guy who said he practiced fighting games with dummy opponents which didn't fight back, I have a friend who was a top-level Counter Strike player and he practiced against bots and with instant respawn when he died. He could play 4 rounds in a minute in a very small, custom map if he died right away. Repetition. He also raised and lowered the skill level of the bots according to his success. Pushing your limits. The fact that he practiced against opponents who had inhumane accuracy and reflexes made him a very serious opponent in Counter Strike.
Competitive PvP players would win.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I'm utter confused as to why people want it in a virtual world. I ride a CBR600RR and have a spare CBR125R to play with. I decided to practice stunting on the CBR125R earlier in the summer with a few friends. The difficulty involved with popping a wheelie, maintaining a stoppie, doing back flips off the bike while it's running, and other incredibly eye pleasing tricks are FAR BEYOND what the virtual environment can or will ever provide you, but here's the most important part: PENALTY OF FAILURE.
You want real penalty? Consider this: A friend of mine shattered his wrist doing a failed stoppie, my bike flipped onto me when I overestimated how much brake power I needed to do a stoppie. In the end, I'm physically hurt, and my partner, the bike, needed mass repairs. In the end, I learned how to control my bike further but there was physical pain, and mental pain involved.
Reread that and explain to me why you want this in an MMO? You can do the above with cars, sports, paintball, and just about everything in real life. Do you lack the ability to? Unless you're handicapped, which then I'd understand, just why do you want to "challenge" yourself with time sinks and other. How about in WoW for every time you get hit by a fireball you burn yourself, every time you get stabbed you smack yourself with a stick, there you go, penalities.
Actually here's the thing, regardless of the penalty encountered in game it will have no RL effect at all. People are looking for penalties in between RL harshness and nothing. Even with perma death the penalty is still much lesser than what you can encounter in RL because once out of the game the penalty doesn't affect you in the slightest. Your wrist won't be shattered because your corpse got looted and you lost all your gear.
And that's actually the beauty about games, once you get back in RL-mode nothing that happened in the game even matters anymore, regardless of how harsh the game is. While with all the sports/cars/etc well, hard to suddenly "forget" you fell off your bike and died in a horrible crash.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
...The difficulty involved with popping a wheelie, maintaining a stoppie, doing back flips off the bike while it's running, and other incredibly eye pleasing tricks are FAR BEYOND what the virtual environment can or will ever provide you...
I strongly disagree. For instance, a virtual environment can provide you with the problem of proving the "Riemann Hypothesis". That task is far more difficult than the one you presented.
Come back and tel me MMOs can be more difficult. And fyi, i cannot do half the shit he is doing in that video; partially because I am scared, but mainly because I have NO WHERE NEAR his amount of control.
Dude, we get it. You're a super cool bike guy who's harder core than the rest of us. That doesn't change the fact that not everyone has a ricer and a 1/4-mile of track to go dick around on 24/7, especially not on a moment's notice during lunch or late in the evening.
There's nothing lifethreatening about building a house of cards, but the penalty for failure is massive and, for some, the rush of adding each card can be just as great if not greater than what some dude on his VCR500KTHX is experiencing during a wheelie.
You don't get a rush from video games, but others do. All you're really showing here is a lack of ability to understand another person's perspective or point of view. Your follow up comments show you really can't understnad it no matter how it's explained.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I don't like anything that keeps me away from playing the game. Whenever I'm playing a game and it's so quiet /easy that I can do it while barely paying any attention (like in most kinds of in-game travel, including corpse runs) or don't need to pay attention at all (as is the case with non-interactive travel time or flat out locking the player away until he can respawn), I pick my old DS and start playing. If I find myself reaching for my DS too much in the game, I stop playing.
I also dislike harsh death penalties for a couple other reasons:
I like to push myself. My usual way of playing is to throw myself at any and every challenge that pops in front of me to see if I can beat it - or at least anything that is not outright suicide. If I feel like I have at least one chance in 10 of surviving, I'm usually already half way to starting the combat (and I'm going to keep doing it until I either beat the challenge or convince myself that I really have no chance to succeed). It's what I like to do in order to have fun - and harsh death penalties make this kind of play style completely unfeasible.
Also, I hate to feel like I just wasted time. If the death penalty feels like grind time pushed unto me, and said grind time starts to feel like too much of a burden (considering my completely reckless play style, which means I usually die a lot), I leave the game.
The only thing I would take issue with on death penalties is the idea that you just add a harsher death penalty to any game and it would improve the game.
If you add an XP penalty to WoW, the game will improve. If you add player looting in WoW, the game will improve. Taken to an extreme, a harsh death penalty in Hello Kitty Adventure Island would somehow make the game 'better'.
I'm all for applying game mechanics to games that make sense, and in some games, a harsh death penalty makes sense and even makes the game 'better'. It's just not a universally applicable game mechanic.
I think that's what most of us old school and proDP players are wanting. Just a fraction of the games that come out to be harder with a DP, but in a way that makes sense within the game. Yes, I enjoyed WoW when it was slightly more difficult, but I don't want to slap on a harsh DP and double the difficulty of every mob arbitrarily, in WoW or any other already existing game. However, I would like to see an occasional release that forces people to play together more, since there are monsters out there.
Bah, it's a difficult balance to make us happy, though. I can understand why a lot of companies don't want to bother.
Comments
I agree with you overall on the reasoning, as far as PvE is concerned.
However, many of the people making arguments about Risk and Reward are approaching this in PVP terms.
No one wants to lose their stuff in PVE I would beleive.
But many would like to feel that there is a danger lurking around and that going after the mob may expose you to the ambush of a player that will kill you and take your stuff.
Some others are proponents of Risk vs Reward because they are the ones that ambush the unsuspecting guy that is in the process of killing an NPC.
Yet others feel that there is more purpose in a battle between two guilds if the winner gets to loot the losers.
The problem in this thread is that there is a question but there is no context, and we have answers that come from different contexts, and this means there will never be a trully satisfactory answer.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I get the feeling that you meant to talk about penalties associated with the state of dying as simulated in a RPG, rather than death penalties as a generic attribute of all games that involve "lives."
Death penalties should not be described as such in an RPG. It is simply death, and with death comes certain things that are bad and a few things that are good (in fantasy-based games, anyway).
For instance, dying in Dungeons & Dragons Online allows your spirit to explore a short distance around your "soulstone." So dying would allow someone to explore into dangerous traps or walk through them and then get rezzed on the other side (effectively bypassing the trap). This could be considered a fairly significant benefit to dying, and has actually been used significantly throughout the history of the game.
The "penalties" ascribed to death are simply there to simulate the negative effects of having been dead. Stop thinking of it as punishment or penalty. Is getting hit with a debuff or a crowd control spell a "punishment?" No, it is simply a mechanic of the game that is meant to be utilized or avoided as necessary.
Failure conditions need to be in place however, for any goals, whether given in the game rules or self-defined in a roleplaying simulation. Otherwise there is no metric by which you could fail, and therefore no way to win.
Two players in a high risk situation fight. They are even they both have something to lose and gain. I lose, I am happy with what I have lost. I win I am happy with what I won.
Two players in a low risk situation fight. I don't care if I win or lose beyond my E-peen, neither does me opponent.
One player takes on a "High death penalty" other player continues to play by games carebear rule set. Carebear doesn't care about dying so simply spams himself on the other player. Other player has something to Risk with nothing to gain.
Is this getting through your head yet?
Failure still exists without excessive death penalty.
We're not talking about literally zero penalty. We're talking about the difference between the minimum required penalty (a fight reset) and the excessive penalty that exists in a lot of MMORPGs (time-consuming corpse runs; time-consuming XP penalties; item loss)
You're never going to beat a hard boss fight -- even if the penalty for failure is an instant fight reset back to the start of the fight (what MMORPG players would call "no penalty") -- until you have the skill to beat it.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
A death penalty doesn't increase the difficulty, it will only provide a sense of risk by lose or whatever the penalty is. The only solution I see to increase the difficulty is just that, increase the difficulty, and improving the AI. I seems like most enemies play with the mindset of a player with no risk, basically standing there trying to get as much dps to me as I am to him, oblivious to his well being and seeing as how I wiped out the other members of his mob. If I'm fighting what is supposed to be a real (in game) person/creature let them behave as one would, and not like a robot programmed to repeat the same four task at random.
People want to feel like their virtual escapades actually mean something.
In reality, it's all pixels and it doesn't improve your quality of life in any way. In some cases, it harms it.
Then what do you propose as death penalty?
Seem you don't like any penalty that include lose of any time. So no xp-loss (have to spend time in order to regain it), no corpse-run (requires time), no lose of items (have to get new items or gold to buy new items), even simple durability hit is essentialy time-loss (you lose gold, in order to get more gold = time). Even minimum "required penalty" as you say is just time lost.
Actually all things in a game can be translated to time.
Noone is saying that having death penalty will make fight itself harder. It won't, as when you'll start fight it will be same thing as before difficulty wise(provided you have same kind of gear on you).
Like I said all things in game, all kind of difficulty can be just transalted to time. If fight mechanics are more complicated and /or AI better most of the time result is just that player die more times until he / she learns how to beat it.
Going by that definition every fight in game that is not insta-win is just simply time-sink.
Anyway most of things that is discussed here on this forum and this topic is semantics.
For all I care, you can have you definition of what is "hard" and what is not. I don't really care. If it makes you feel better then ok.
I want to suffer consequences of bad choices in games I play (no self-deleting my items after defeat is not a replacement for item loss on defeat), you don't want to as you feel that it just detracts you from playing.
We just simply looking for diffrent games, and that's it.
Its tiring seeing threads like this. People who don't understand what a harsher death penalty does. Its risk/reward, a very simple concept to understand.
If you take a group of the top PVPer's from a game that has a harsh death penalty and faced them off against a group of the top PVPer's from a game like WoW or Rift.. who is going to win? Looking at the question in the most broad of manners. Lets try to keep the nitty gritty details out of it.
Obviously the players that are in that harsher condition. Why? They have grown as PVPers because of those harsher conditions. They have to continually gain in skill if they want to keep there hard earned gear. They have to analyze fights and see how to go about it to give them the highest percentage of success.
The PVPer's from WoW or Rift? There is nothing like this there. They get into a fight and lose...............exactly. There's no adapting, no running to regear. Pushing yourself so it doesn't happen again. Theres nothing.
And directly at the OP:
Nobody wants to hear about your experiences in life. Nobody cares about the rushes you feel outside of an MMO and how your undermining the rush people feel in an MMO. I could go run in the middle of traffic and feel a huge rush, way more then I'd ever get out of an MMO...or you'd get by doing tricks on your little bike..... would that be a smart choice? Hell no.
Now why do you get a bigger rush when playing on your little bike then when you do playing an MMO? Well there's higher risk involved. You fall off that bike and you could get seriously injured. You get a bigger rush doing tricks on your little bike then when you just drive it to work or wherever. The same logic can be applied to an MMO. You will get a bigger rush with a harsher death penalty then without. Its simple. Why do we ask for a harsher death penalty... well.. theres your answer.
Not all of us want to go run in traffic or go base jumping. So we look to MMO's...
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
This is completely false. Totally and utterly.
In Darkfall, the way to get good at the game is mock battles with fellow clan members. There is no risk. There is no failure. You don't lose anything but maybe a few seconds running from the bindstone if you accidentally get auto-ganked. And you will fare much better in risky fights than those who have spent their game time traveling and fighting at the University of Hard Knox.
A game is a game. People who would get all uptight about losing their in-game items are going to be just as scared to get good in mock battles. It's just nested virtualization. And people who don't care about losing mock battles to get good, aren't going to be honed in any regard by losing battles in an actual "risky" scenario.
Don't confuse a game with real life. I know it's hard for some of the so-called "hardcore," but it is ALL just a game.
No one is hexxing your real death in an MMO, either. Death "penalties" are all just part of the game.
i wouldnt mind losing a mock battle to get better at something . I would hate losign my gear i spent 3 months aquiring just because some jack wagon ganks me while i fighting an npc
Im sorry but in a game where pvp is present all the time this shit happens.
I just dont think losing gear or losing xp is a way to go it doesnt make me a better player it just makes me avoid the risk in the first place.
Now i dont mind corpse runs never have , I dont mind gear degradation i dont mind having to spend money to fix my gear. Dying and having my gear break after so many deaths is not a bad thing. I have no problem with it in fact.
My issue is that the people who want a harsh penatly want either perma death where u lose everything, or u lose equipment because u can be looted.
that doesnt make a player better if those are the risks it means 90 pct of population will never try a fight they cant win. It also means if u have a ffa pvp game that u wont have more then 500k subs no matter how good your game is.
No one wants to spend 3-5 months building a ship and getting money and stuff only to lose it because the turn the wrong way or some one they think is a freind ala eve decides to betray them to enemies and sets them up to be killed and looted of all there stuff.
Not fighting when you can't win should be standard practice. FFA, full loot, or permadeath is not about making players better at the game. It's about making the game better for the players. More meaningful, more exciting, more emotional. Remember, nobody can save anyone else if no one can kill anyone else. They can't return their belongings, they can't sacrifice themselves so that their partner can stay alive.
Permadeath is a style of death penalty. It is extremely harsh, yet many people choose to use that style. The reasons have been sung a hundred times in this thread alone.
EDIT: And oh yeah, if 90 percent of your playerbase will leave because they might lose some pixels - that's a very good sign you don't have the right playerbase for your roleplaying game.
I laugh at the idiot who takes something out in Eve that he cannot afford to lose. In Eve my usual pvp ships I can have 100 of them fit the same.
I laugh at the fool who spends 3 months getting anything in darkfall/uo/mortal online. After three months I will have so many sets of the gear I use I will give them away.
In a game like Darkfall or Eve it is not a case of getting a full set of tier 11 gear after trying for 3 months to aquire it all. I made a gamble when I started Darkfall way back in the day. I went red with my newbie gear and killed other newbies who were fighting goblins. I lost alot but won occasionally. Those fights I won were against people who had spent way to long killing goblins with full leather sets and loads of arrows and gold and swords and shields. I had enough sets of garbage after an hour that I didn't care about killing the other newbies anymore. I just moved onto harder enviroments to get better gear from killing complacent farmers.
To many people speak about a game genre before they have properly explored it and understood it.
The problem is there are alot of gamers out there who dont have the tiem to redo everything if they lose everything. The people who have the time to replace all there stuff might not mind losing everything
the real challenge is in trying something to see if u can do it or u need to get another level or 2 to take it on. I dont see a challenge in the death penalty.
U can spout all your reasons none of them actually increase the challenge of a fight or the difficulty. All it does is penalize u harshly for failure
Harsh death penalties teach people to quit . People seem to think they make games more challenging when in fact they dont.
I dont mind penalties for losing a battle. I just dont wanna lose all my shit or die for good.
if u want to get more then 500k subs into a game u cant have a death penalty so harsh players who only have between 10-20 hrs a week to play cant ever afford to lose cause they can never get there stuff back.
The reason for less harsh penalties are sane and well thought out .There are still games out there for those that like a harsh death penalty but why should every game have them.
I know salem online is gonna have perma death u want to play a game with harsh death penalty go play that or even online where if u lose u lose all your shit.
Again please stop spouting rubbish about games you know nothing about.
In Eve Online if another player blows me up I have a chance to warp away. If I don't and they pod me I am still safe because I am born again in a medical bay with my clone. I have lost that ship and the implants my character had. All my money is safe and all my assets throughout the galaxy are safe.
Factoid. Few MMOs these days have over 500k subs.
Death penalties only teach those to quit who cannot face losing or adversity.
There is no challenge in gaining two more levels to take down a mob you couldn't before.
In Darkfall like I've already said no one spends more than an hour aquiring several sets of gear.
Lastly please read the OP. This thread was created to have a go at people who enjoy harsh penalties to their games. We don't want to have all games with harsh death penalties. Keep your WoW and your Rifts. We just want our games left alone and a few more games supporting the sub-genre.
Because a challenge can be presented in any form, in any medium, in any variety of ways.
Your entire post is a rambling mess of strawman arguments, non-sequiturs and horrible analogies wrapped in absurd hyperbole.
If you:
Truly don't understand it (which it's clear you don't)
Are truly interested in understanding why some want challenge and appreciate the role of harsh death penalties in video games (which is not, incidentally what you and many others mischaracterize it as)
Are going to ask the question - ostensibly seeking an answer to it...
How about letting others provide those answers, instead of assuming and asserting your own and then responding to it.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
The key distinction is how time is wasted, not whether it's wasted.
Is it wasted with gameplay, or non-gameplay?
Gameplay: Contra was a blast because death (even your last life) meant you immediately jumped back into gameplay.
Non-Gameplay: MMORPG DP proponents would take Contra and say that when you died you should have to run back through the entire level from the start -- without monsters or having to jump pits -- until you reached the prior point you were at. Or perhaps the monsters exist but you can't shoot until you reach the previous point (there's a tiny bit more gameplay here, but you're still only getting half a game.)
MMORPGs should take a hint from early games (and really most games ever made) and focus on keeping players constantly in gameplay rather than excessively punishing them. There's just no reason to take players completely out of gameplay.
So if you die in a MMORPG boss fight, you should immediately respawn at full health (as will the boss; and possibly a bit of trash mobs in front of him) so that you have the option of jumping immediately back into gameplay to make another attempt. But it's still going to take skill to beat the guy, so if you throw yourself recklessly at the problem you're probably going to repeat that encounter an awful lot.
Whether or not we see eye to eye, death penalties which keep players in gameplay (and avoid non-gameplay) are inevitable. Because gameplay is what players are after, and devs who cater to those desires will inevitably make more money (and more games) while only a niche set of companies will chase the niche audience of masochists who wants harsh 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
To OP:
Bcs its a different challenge that drives different emotions and different interests.
For some years i drove cart races - which is a damned expensive sport but very satisfying - and at my level i won races, championships and overcame many a challenge.
I am intrepid, strong-nerved, cool, calculating, concentrated, i came out nearly unhurt from some serious accidents bcs i did the right thing the right time to avoid injuries and also a few times i had a very very good guardian angel which deserves me to think only good of it: "Thank you very much my Guardian Angel - hope you will never stop your good watch!"
One time another vehicle missed my head maybe about 10 inches and if it had hit me i would not have had a head on my shoulders anymore.
I drove races for many more years totally unaffected by this accident physically or mentally until i ran out of money.
Ahhh, i totally liked for fun to drive curves the way that i made my cart have the inner side in the air with only two wheels on the ground and and angle of 20, 30 or more degrees to the street - i never rolled over.
One time i had my inner front wheel hooked with some binding of a tire staple that was a track border and the cart skipped.
I was thrown out of the seat at high speed...well maybe not more than 100 kmh and when i hit the road i was rolling along the road spinning around my bodys long axis until i slowed finally down.
I only had some road burn on my ellbow bcs i could not put them alongside but only b4 my chest crossed.
I have to say i miss it but its not the one and only thing that is fun in live.
Even that time i played computer games bcs they offer different things/challenges i like too and i want a action and consequence system in place as every action would be meaningless if there would be no consequence - It is as easy as that!
PS: When i was young and had muuuuuuuuch time i played games the hardest possible level and rpgs die hard with death meaning me to start the game all over again if it was not Darklands where you only have to breed another char for your party which makes sense in the games context
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
I want challenge and death penalties because I like mental challenges. I like having to put time and effort into doing the best I can, and finding tactics that work against whatever challenge is placed in front of me. I don't understand the point of playing a game that is so easy there is no thought - all you're doing is pushing buttons. Seriously, following the glowy sparkles and hitting buttons when you get to the end of the path.
For all you people who say self impose - why don't you self impose your own easy games? Fight monsters that are lower level than you. Why is it always incumbent upon those who want challenge to impose our own? There are plenty of easy, non challenging games out there. You can have your own easy time by fighting easy monsters. There's no need to rob the challenge from those of us who enjoy it. I'm tired of being told that if I want a challenging game I should take off my armor. If you want an easy game, go fight monsters who are lower level than you and stop trying to steal my fun.
If there is no major death penalty to pvp or pve then there is no risk vs reward. Which is why I hate WoW because it took all that away and many other MMO's followed suit.
When I fight in pvp I want it to have some meaning which is why I like Eve Online. You the player can effect thousands of people within that universe its the only MMO that can do this. PvP has meaning and is harsh and I love it. PvE is easy enough but still a lack of attentions and you loose your ship and equipment.
I liked UO and EQ1, UO for the full looting rights and EQ for the corpse runs.
And when I blow someones ship up in Eve Online and kill their pod I like the feeling it gives me that they spent a few weeks getting that money together to buy it and their clone. While I scoop their equipment up and sell it back to them.
Minimal risk in a game, any game, should reap minimal reward.
That's easy.
Put greater risk in there and allow those who want it to try for it. If someone think it's too hard, let'em whine at the gate.
That's how everything is.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Fear of failure does not make better players - repetition and pushing your limits does. With this in mind, the players with competitive PvP background will win. They generally have more repetition, because they don't spend their time recouperating from death. They also know their limits, because they've died a lot. Infact, the best way to learn how not to die, is to die a lot. The freedom from harsh deathpenalties also lets them to experiment and without any penalty plus they are generally "braver".
Like the guy who said he practiced fighting games with dummy opponents which didn't fight back, I have a friend who was a top-level Counter Strike player and he practiced against bots and with instant respawn when he died. He could play 4 rounds in a minute in a very small, custom map if he died right away. Repetition. He also raised and lowered the skill level of the bots according to his success. Pushing your limits. The fact that he practiced against opponents who had inhumane accuracy and reflexes made him a very serious opponent in Counter Strike.
Competitive PvP players would win.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Actually here's the thing, regardless of the penalty encountered in game it will have no RL effect at all. People are looking for penalties in between RL harshness and nothing. Even with perma death the penalty is still much lesser than what you can encounter in RL because once out of the game the penalty doesn't affect you in the slightest. Your wrist won't be shattered because your corpse got looted and you lost all your gear.
And that's actually the beauty about games, once you get back in RL-mode nothing that happened in the game even matters anymore, regardless of how harsh the game is. While with all the sports/cars/etc well, hard to suddenly "forget" you fell off your bike and died in a horrible crash.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
Dude, we get it. You're a super cool bike guy who's harder core than the rest of us. That doesn't change the fact that not everyone has a ricer and a 1/4-mile of track to go dick around on 24/7, especially not on a moment's notice during lunch or late in the evening.
There's nothing lifethreatening about building a house of cards, but the penalty for failure is massive and, for some, the rush of adding each card can be just as great if not greater than what some dude on his VCR500KTHX is experiencing during a wheelie.
You don't get a rush from video games, but others do. All you're really showing here is a lack of ability to understand another person's perspective or point of view. Your follow up comments show you really can't understnad it no matter how it's explained.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I don't like anything that keeps me away from playing the game. Whenever I'm playing a game and it's so quiet /easy that I can do it while barely paying any attention (like in most kinds of in-game travel, including corpse runs) or don't need to pay attention at all (as is the case with non-interactive travel time or flat out locking the player away until he can respawn), I pick my old DS and start playing. If I find myself reaching for my DS too much in the game, I stop playing.
I also dislike harsh death penalties for a couple other reasons:
I like to push myself. My usual way of playing is to throw myself at any and every challenge that pops in front of me to see if I can beat it - or at least anything that is not outright suicide. If I feel like I have at least one chance in 10 of surviving, I'm usually already half way to starting the combat (and I'm going to keep doing it until I either beat the challenge or convince myself that I really have no chance to succeed). It's what I like to do in order to have fun - and harsh death penalties make this kind of play style completely unfeasible.
Also, I hate to feel like I just wasted time. If the death penalty feels like grind time pushed unto me, and said grind time starts to feel like too much of a burden (considering my completely reckless play style, which means I usually die a lot), I leave the game.
I think that's what most of us old school and proDP players are wanting. Just a fraction of the games that come out to be harder with a DP, but in a way that makes sense within the game. Yes, I enjoyed WoW when it was slightly more difficult, but I don't want to slap on a harsh DP and double the difficulty of every mob arbitrarily, in WoW or any other already existing game. However, I would like to see an occasional release that forces people to play together more, since there are monsters out there.
Bah, it's a difficult balance to make us happy, though. I can understand why a lot of companies don't want to bother.