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Lack of any death penalty
Stormwave1
Member Posts: 18
Does this bother anyone else?
My first MMORPG was Everquest 1. The death penalty in EQ was very harsh. Corpse runs, lost equipment, massive xp hit. Then WoW turned up and toned it down a lot, simple short corpse runs, slight money hit. I personally prefered EQs style since it made the game incredibly tense, with real strategy required. I can see why some people thought it was too hard however, and WoW was certainly more accessible because of this.
However, there is no death penalty at all in SWTOR (waiting 10 seconds isn't a punishment). This makes the game so easy, I may aswell just be clicking for 50 hours or so. I only die when I forget to heal after 50 or so enemies, and then I just get to respawn on the spot, stealthed, no xp hit, no stat damage, nothing. I play games for the challenge, but I find very little challenge in SWTOR, which is a shame because it has lots of great features and ideas.
I personally feel that devs making games easier to appeal to more people is ruining the games, at least for me.
Am I alone in this?
Comments
ill just post here real quick that i agree with you even though i forsee axehilt posting here soon saying something about rose colored glasses and how those were worthless timesinks
They're aiming for the lowest common denominator of player type and ensuring that they enjoy the game in order to maximize subscriber numbers. #profit
No you're not alone.
You are obviously not an end-game player running Hard Mode flashpoints, sounds like you are just soloing in regular zones.
By design the death penalty is very light early in the game, but at the end-game learning the flashpoints the hard way, you very rapidly rack up enormous repair bills if you are a mongo player, the encounters can be brutal until you figure out what to do & then practice it.
No death penalty? Oh boy are you wrong, just because you aren't wasting hours trying to recruit a Necromancer or Shadowknight to summon your corpse for you, or die trying to recover it doesn't mean no penalty exists.
Go level up, do Hard Modes or Nightmares in high end gears & then come back & say this uninformed garbage you're trotting out.
Considering how many post i have seen on here saying how ridiculas easy it s to make money it basically becomes null and void penalty then huh.
What else were they? How can people not see them for what they were, they kept you playing (read paying) longer.
It's no secret that most MMO players (fans) will finish out the leveling game, been that way since the start. The longer you make that, and the more you set back those trying to achieve and the more you give them to "achieve", the longer they will play.
They do the same thing today, except instead of grinding numbers, you're grinding for items ( gear) (read: MMO companies learned a thing or two from diablo).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It was called motivation to make friends. need to travel get with a druid or wizard to get somewhere, build a good list of tanks healers dps and pullers (i was an enchanter and a damn good one) and group came easy and fast and i got to run around seeing lots of places trading services to get where i need to do things i wanted. or as others might call it being part of the community
Man, I think of Ultima Online with harsh death penalties. Corpse run, people can loot your body, wind up losing everything. Also, chop up your corpse and take your head :P
The time it takes to resurrect in a useful spot gradually increases. You won't really notice this unless you walk into a Heroic area and try to take down 'Champion' level mobs solo though.
So the time sink does increase if you keep dying. Dying once isn't a real big deal, but dying 3 times feels like it takes forever to rez in a useful spot.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
They were created for exactly the purpose you describe. That doesn't mean it didn't have positive side effects alongside the negative one
I could explain to you about the sense of danger and risks where you had to make calculated decisons based on what you were willing to lose but then It would just turn into a pointless argument about opinions.
I guess since i accepted and got used to a harsher death penalty i can't see where you are coming from. ill just agree to disagree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_person_syndrome
fits quite well here, so used to abuse and the game shitting on you, you simply can't understand when a game treats you nice
It's right in line with modern trends in society.
"Punishment" is considered to be outmoded, because it reduces people's self-esteem, and may turn them into serial-killers later in life. So positive reinforcement is all the rage, and it's considered better to reward people for doing the right thing.
Similarly in game design, it's considered bad to punish players with negative consequences, because penalties are not "fun". And games are supposed to be fun. So instead, players must always be allowed to gain things, never to lose them. It's the size of the reward that matters most.
/*Disclaimer:
The above are not the opinions of the author, simply a reflection of popular culture
I'm aware of the positives, such as SWG's healing system (ents/docs) this created a community environment which bred a highly social game. That's nothing I don't already know. Just like DAOC's RVR system bred a very tight knit group of PVPers which fought for realm pride rather than rewards. All of this blazes from just one match, social players, which is what filled older MMO's before they were taken over into the mainstream. This isn't the case any longer.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
First you will have to explain how a death penalty = being shat on before we accept any armchair psychologist theories
Try it yourself instead of relying on other people. It definately is not a 'null and void' penalty then huh? It is ridiculas easy to burn through a weeks worth of farming in one bad night of wipes.
...and I guess you can tell that I didn't like DP's in EQ/DAOC/UO - they bring nothing to the game but another time sink. You want a death penalty - delete your character everytime you die.
Yes, because Death Penalty is a must for every MMO released!
I'm a veteren of the UOEQSWGAO and I demand that every game is played like my old school ones.
funny story i do want a system like that again but i dont demand it in every game. but i do demand it in at least one updated game.
How exactly is not having to wait a long time between attempts at something making the game easier? It's not like an enemy retains the damage you inflicted on it when you die and come back. Getting another shot at an enemy that killed you quickly doesn't make that fight any easier. You can't zerg it by yourself. I get the argument that a game where you lose something when you die makes you more cautious. But let's think about that. That means I will never ever EVER take on something that I'm not sure I can beat. I will never go into a fight without full hp. I will never get that invincible feeling of tearing through one pack after another. Every single area will take longer to get through. And this would only work if mobs were less clustered together. Otherwise, every time a patrol wandered by in mid battle, I would almost have to run away, instead of taking a chance and fighting it out. The risk would substantially outweigh the reward.
Playing like a coward is not particularly fun and I have no desire to do so.
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.
I remember the lead Dev talking about this during production. He said "MMOs do not have a reset button like consoles".
Further proof they intended for this game to have a single player feel to it. And made it for kids.
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I don't get it, how does this make it "for kids"? WHen I was a kid I actually had the time to spend losing stuff or xp and getting it back, I don't have that kind of time any longer, nor does my guild, we're all working adults with real responsibilities..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Well you got one thing right, you wont zerg a place with something on the line. Playing like a coward though? If thats how you would play in that kinda system then im sorry, really i am. But most people used to it would have back up items. Plus i mean its only a game so if you pride gets wounded that much for an invisible, imaginary thing i dont know what to tell you.
You are not alone, but you're definitely in the minority.
SWToR is a story driven game. The idea isn't to challenge the player by punishing them when they die, the idea is to entertain them by telling a story.
Even way back 'in the day', developers suspected that adding a punishment on top of the player's failure was a turn off for a lot of people. That's why the systems are shifting (have shifted?) to more of a rewards based system versus a punishment based system. It's more effective at getting people to keep playing.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I agree, it may seem easy to make credits in this game, but it slips through your fingers just as easily. Item damage may be a mild death penalty, but it's still a death penalty and isn't exactly new to the genre for it to be the penalty of choice.
I'll try to explain this sloooowly. Most kids do not want a challenge. Nor do most of themepark MMO players. Notice I said "most of", so this means the majority.
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