Invariably these sorts of people love sandbox games, where one has the freedom to decide how their character acts, how much risk to take, where to travel...so on and so on.
Yes somehow when these same sandbox players are thrown into a themepark, their ability to actually take charge of their character evaporates -- through no fault of the game mind you. They are utterly incapable of pulling themselves off the rails.
You want more serious death penalties? Then make a commitment to yourself that whenever you die, you will erase your character. Oh, that's too harsh? Okay. Pick a piece of equipement you own. When you die, delete that piece of equipment.
There's your harsh death penalty.
But I suspect that isn't what you really care about...you really want to know, deep in your heart, that OTHER players are suffering when their character dies. You want the heady feeling of being at the top of the masochistic heap.
Sorry, but you are the minority.
I could name a thousand games, successful games, in which the penalty isn't harsh. For most of us, for most of gamers, it is enough to have lost. When I play chess, I don't need to have my opponent also punch me in the face as part of my loss. When I play a FPS game, when I die, that death is enough of a loss to inspire me to do better next time. The same goes for any modern MMO. When I lose against a boss...it is enough that I lost. I learn from that loss and try again. I don't learn any MORE from making that loss a punch in the face.
Your analogies are a bit flawed in my mind. If you die in an MMO you don't get punched in the face, In older MMO's if you died it was the equivlant of having to start over a game of chess and try again. In current MMOs its the equivlant of getting to redo your last move.
Nah, I don't believe that's an accurate portrayal of an MMO loss. Now granted my use of chess is a bit troubled as an anology becuase chess can take a long time to complete a game, whereas a boss fight might be max of ten minutes? Anyway, when you loose a boss fight, you start over and play again. Same as with chess. In both cases, all of one's faulty moves can be analyzed post-mortum. There is no harsh penalty other than the feeling one gets for loosing. Nor is there an intrinsic need for a harsh penalty for one to enjoy the game.
Now granted, some people thrive on harsh penalties. Take high stakes poker for example. But the vast majority of people can have fun playing a five dollar buy in on New Years Eve.
While I totally agree with the OP as I started my MMO days with the original release of EQ1 I can say with full confidence those days are gone for a reason. Just like the real world goes through cultural changes based on generations so has the world of MMO's. Today's generation (as a whole, not individuals) is just not tolerent of setbacks. They want the instant access to everything from the get go and once they've got it, they'll be damned if someone is going to take it away from them. You may or may not agree with me but in the case you don't, I suggest you ask yourself why games that fit the mold I just described thrive while those with harsh penalties don't (when compared to one another).
Because games like WoW attract non gamers and are made by corporate publishers trying to cash in on the casual gamer market. The Wii Sports Angry Bird market are the type that get hooked on WoW and its clones.
The games that are actually challenging are fewer and fewer because publishers don't see any value in aiming for core gamers. They instead try to copy WoW and fail. It'd probably be a hell of a lot more profitable to copy DAoC than WoW, but Publishers aren't MMo designers. They're morons who just invest in whatever is working at the time. They force good game devs to make bad MMOs.
I know this is hard for a LOT of people to wrap their minds around but investors make their decisions based on case studies that show them where the best chance to make money is. You're right of course, they don't generally use the products they invest in, that is not what they are good at. What they are good at is turning a profit based on market trends. Obviously not everyone hits the mark, if they did why the hell would anyone do anything else. Fact is they could care less what the hell is produced with their money, as long as it turns a profit. They don't invest to intentially lose money.
I just want to make a minor correction here. Investors make their decisions based on case studies that show them the safest chance to make money.
Everything "successful" that exists today was once considered new and/or different. The next big success will also be considered new and/or different by today's standards. It just takes a company with the experience and funds to step up to the plate and have the grapes to break away from the pack for that to happen. Until that happens, things will continue to stagnate.
In the early MMO's (I am mostly considering UO, EQ1, etc.) the fear of losing was the driving force behind the excitement of the game: the fear of losing your hard-earned gear and the fear of losing your hard-earned experience/time.
[snip]
Of which I am happy to announce that GW2 has a system in place that damages your gear permanently eventually breaking it from dying too much. Yes there is a minor repair but there is a permanent damage marker on gear which means you can eventually lose gear and have to replace it.
Permadeath is over-rated, it was fine in sandparks but not in anything else.
I am not aware of the red part. I know eventually the gear will not be useable. I do not know they will destroy the gear.
Invariably these sorts of people love sandbox games, where one has the freedom to decide how their character acts, how much risk to take, where to travel...so on and so on.
Yes somehow when these same sandbox players are thrown into a themepark, their ability to actually take charge of their character evaporates -- through no fault of the game mind you. They are utterly incapable of pulling themselves off the rails.
You want more serious death penalties? Then make a commitment to yourself that whenever you die, you will erase your character. Oh, that's too harsh? Okay. Pick a piece of equipement you own. When you die, delete that piece of equipment.
There's your harsh death penalty.
But I suspect that isn't what you really care about...you really want to know, deep in your heart, that OTHER players are suffering when their character dies. You want the heady feeling of being at the top of the masochistic heap.
Sorry, but you are the minority.
I could name a thousand games, successful games, in which the penalty isn't harsh. For most of us, for most of gamers, it is enough to have lost. When I play chess, I don't need to have my opponent also punch me in the face as part of my loss. When I play a FPS game, when I die, that death is enough of a loss to inspire me to do better next time. The same goes for any modern MMO. When I lose against a boss...it is enough that I lost. I learn from that loss and try again. I don't learn any MORE from making that loss a punch in the face.
Your analogies are a bit flawed in my mind. If you die in an MMO you don't get punched in the face, In older MMO's if you died it was the equivlant of having to start over a game of chess and try again. In current MMOs its the equivlant of getting to redo your last move.
Nah, I don't believe that's an accurate portrayal of an MMO loss. Now granted my use of chess is a bit troubled as an anology becuase chess can take a long time to complete a game, whereas a boss fight might be max of ten minutes? Anyway, when you loose a boss fight, you start over and play again. Same as with chess. In both cases, all of one's faulty moves can be analyzed post-mortum. There is no harsh penalty other than the feeling one gets for loosing. Nor is there an intrinsic need for a harsh penalty for one to enjoy the game.
Now granted, some people thrive on harsh penalties. Take high stakes poker for example. But the vast majority of people can have fun playing a five dollar buy in on New Years Eve.
You do understand the a raid isn't comparable to a chess game because a raid is not the entirety of an MMO right? So the proper analogy would be perma death vs losing at chess. Thats part of the disconnect, players who think a raid is comparable to a whole game.
The problem is that losing gear and XP is just adding grind. It is boring and doesn´t really scare me either.
Perma death is scary but hard to add in computer games, and is so scary that you might stop playing for good when a beloved character dies.
As I see it, locking your character out for a while after death is the only scary thing that doesn´t add a boring grind to dying, and the gods know that we don´t need more boring grinds.
So your saying that things that lengthen your journey are bad? Grind is a personal definition, loosely you can call MMO games grinds because they try to keep you playing. Is losing exp and having to gain it back really that bad when you are grinding the same dungeon in a current MMO 20x to get a single item to drop (while not getting xp cause you are already at the max level)?
On the same coin is running a dungeon 20x better than spending that time in a group in a dungeon socializing with people and getting to know them and helping to foster a community? An MMO could be defined as a giant grind anyways, its all how you perceive it.
IN EQ there was exp loss on death as well. You could negate most of that with a ressurection spell (certain classes only). You had an xp buffer at max level (basically you could get 1xp point shy of the level cap +1 in total xp). Unless you really died alot you didn't really have to worry about losing your level unless you were way in over your head or had a deathwish. And even if you died you could regain that xp through normal play (and with the introduction of AA points you could direct what % of your xp went towards your normal xp or your AA exp so as to maintain a buffer you were comfortable with)
In short xp loss really doesn't add to the grind, not adding xp loss just makes it so you waste your xp when you finally hit max level..
MMO's should be about the shared journey, not about the loot. But the current generation of players seem to have not learned that. You can take friendships out of the game, you can't take your phat lewt out of it..
In terms of sticking with something, community interaction, fine tuning how to be civil and keep my calm during stressful moments, yes it did make me a better man. I kept those skills when i left the game.
It probably helped me alot more than any MMO where you are basically another fish in the sea & can't even remember the name of the people you grouped with 15 minutes ago cause it doesn't matter. If being impatient, complaining things are too tough, and wanting to coast through life are things that you want to take out of the game. I wish you luck
Interesting take. I was under the assumption that we had those traits embedded in us before we started playing EQ. Those who didn't could stomach the game at all. I was wrong and to each his own, though.
Careful when telling people that outside these forums.
There is a little thing called "D.I.D" - dead is dead. Not sure where it originated from, but I first noticed it as something the Fallout community was doing.
Basically, if your character dies even once that's it, game over and you must start again.
Now if you're someone who really wants a death to mean something, maybe give applying that concept a try. Making up your own rules is likely going to be the only way any game from now on will really punish a player, they are just too concerned about their games being for any/everybody now.
Interesting take. I was under the assumption that we had those traits embedded in us before we started playing EQ. Those who didn't could stomach the game at all. I was wrong and to each his own, though. Careful when telling people that outside these forums.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
You do understand the a raid isn't comparable to a chess game because a raid is not the entirety of an MMO right? So the proper analogy would be perma death vs losing at chess. Thats part of the disconnect, players who think a raid is comparable to a whole game.
That's a big part of the disconnect. People cannot agree on how to divide the action into seperate 'sessions'. MMORPGs are complex games with many different parts and few players want to have all the parts interacting all the time. PvE players don't want PvP to interfere in what they are doing while PvP players don't like the fact that they have to do PvE in order to be competive in PvP. crafters don't like that raiders can get better gear, etc.
Because MMORPGs are persistant there is an expectation that actions you make today will still affect you a month from now and few players are willing to fully embrace that philosophy. We prefer clean slates in our gaming sessions. Just because we had a bad gaming session last week, we do not want to still suffer penalties for it this week. So we prefer it that the game does not have that long a memory and if we fail we can just reset and try again. We want our past mistakes to be forgotten so we can prove that we learned from them and can move on. If I have fixed the mistake and learned from it, there does not seem to be a point to keep penalizing me for it.
The problem is that losing gear and XP is just adding grind. It is boring and doesn´t really scare me either.
Perma death is scary but hard to add in computer games, and is so scary that you might stop playing for good when a beloved character dies.
As I see it, locking your character out for a while after death is the only scary thing that doesn´t add a boring grind to dying, and the gods know that we don´t need more boring grinds.
So your saying that things that lengthen your journey are bad? Grind is a personal definition, loosely you can call MMO games grinds because they try to keep you playing. Is losing exp and having to gain it back really that bad when you are grinding the same dungeon in a current MMO 20x to get a single item to drop (while not getting xp cause you are already at the max level)?
On the same coin is running a dungeon 20x better than spending that time in a group in a dungeon socializing with people and getting to know them and helping to foster a community? An MMO could be defined as a giant grind anyways, its all how you perceive it.
IN EQ there was exp loss on death as well. You could negate most of that with a ressurection spell (certain classes only). You had an xp buffer at max level (basically you could get 1xp point shy of the level cap +1 in total xp). Unless you really died alot you didn't really have to worry about losing your level unless you were way in over your head or had a deathwish. And even if you died you could regain that xp through normal play (and with the introduction of AA points you could direct what % of your xp went towards your normal xp or your AA exp so as to maintain a buffer you were comfortable with)
In short xp loss really doesn't add to the grind, not adding xp loss just makes it so you waste your xp when you finally hit max level..
MMO's should be about the shared journey, not about the loot. But the current generation of players seem to have not learned that. You can take friendships out of the game, you can't take your phat lewt out of it..
I played MMOs since Meridian 59 released, that was pre UO even. I seen plenty of death penalties and XP penalty is just annoying, nothing else. If you want a long journey don´t make me level so fast.
Lineage did have the same but it also sometimes let you dropp a random item that if untended got picked up be the next mob passing by and that actually did give a rush, because you could loose something if you were unlucky. The XP loss was just annoying there too.
Scared and annoyed are 2 very different feelings and XP loss does not add any fun to me and never ha.
Then I agree that MMOs is a shared journey and not about loot but I fail to see what that has to do with XP loss for death penalty.
I played MMOs since Meridian 59 released, that was pre UO even. I seen plenty of death penalties and XP penalty is just annoying, nothing else. If you want a long journey don´t make me level so fast.
That is another discussion entirely , I actually enjoyed slow leveling, getting to take in the scenery. Actually feeling like every level was an accomplishment and not a roadblock to max level.
I want to be afraid to die but some of the consequences that I've seen employed by MMOs have been really poor. Sometimes the consequences you can have are limited to the kind of MMO that it is. For example, experience loss when you die... really stupid idea if you have a theme park MMO, especially if it's light on quests. If you have an MMO that is fairly linear with just enough quests to get you through to the end, and there's a penalty of XP loss when you die... guess what? You eventually hit a wall where you can't pick up anymore quests and you've already done all of the quests available to you, so you grind it up. If monsters aren't giving a lot of XP, there's a fundamental flaw at play.
If the MMO is sandbox and you lose XP when you die, it's a little more reasonable... there probably aren't any quests to pick up so at worst you'd be returning to an area you've been to already to gain back your XP. There's no wall potential there.
I'm not a fan of most of the current methods employed to punish a player for dying.
- I think gear durability is easily not enough to deter someone from dying, eventual oversaturation of the economy(it happens in every game) will make the costs a joke.
- XP loss... not reasonable for a themepark game in my opinion.
- Gold loss... not bad, but this is where very smart game design comes into play in terms of figuring out an appropriate amount and how it's going to really affect the player in the long run. If you have a game that's very highly item dependant, with a chance to break(irreparably) your equipment via some sort of means like item enchantment or whatever, and the gold cost for dying is significant enough, a player could be in a situation where they're gearless and goldless. Kiss that brick wall!
- Gear loss... I'm personally not a fan of it but I can compromise. I don't want to lose my weapons and armor... the things I have equipped, but I think it's fair for anything in your bags to be free game.
- Returning to town sometimes can be a good punishment depending on how quickly you can make it back to where you were. If it takes you awhile to travel then just returning to town can be enough motivation to survive. This is true for games like Minecraft where the last bed you've slept on is your spawn point and if you've gone exploring through a natural cave formation and have just really lost yourself in terms of immersion and haven't been thinking about how to come back there or go back home, dying and then trying to go back there would be a challenge.
PvP related deaths... I dunno, I think for pure PvP servers the death cost should be the same as a PvE death, but PvE servers that have the option for PvP you shouldn't lose anything other than time spent travelling back. Then again if people are going to lose things for dying in PvP there has to be rules in place to prevent high level characters from griefing low level characters. Of course this is alleviated if everyone is equal regardless of how much time has been spent in the game world, since everyone would have a fighting chance against each other.
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
I played MMOs since Meridian 59 released, that was pre UO even. I seen plenty of death penalties and XP penalty is just annoying, nothing else. If you want a long journey don´t make me level so fast.
That is another discussion entirely , I actually enjoyed slow leveling, getting to take in the scenery. Actually feeling like every level was an accomplishment and not a roadblock to max level.
Me too, I remember when being max level actually was something that impressed people. but it have nothingto do with death penalty and when you make a game with slow leveling you hopefully make enough content for every level, when you take away XP you never do that and we need to stand and farm mobs a long time if you die often.
Not fun, not creative, not scary. Being locked out from your character for a who'ile on the other hand is scary without forcing me to farm.
I played MMOs since Meridian 59 released, that was pre UO even. I seen plenty of death penalties and XP penalty is just annoying, nothing else. If you want a long journey don´t make me level so fast.
That is another discussion entirely , I actually enjoyed slow leveling, getting to take in the scenery. Actually feeling like every level was an accomplishment and not a roadblock to max level.
An exp penalty does, in effect, not make you level so fast.
You die and lose exp. You have to get more exp to level.
I'd much rather lose exp and continue playing the game than to be rendered completely useless for 10 minutes and have to stop playing for that time.
Interesting take. I was under the assumption that we had those traits embedded in us before we started playing EQ. Those who didn't could stomach the game at all. I was wrong and to each his own, though. Careful when telling people that outside these forums.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
You seem pretty smart and I believe you take your gaming serious. There are a lot of you out there. I also know tons of idiots who lost 'lives' and mind because of EQ and the serious nature and dedication they took in it. The game created bums just as well as normal people and their difference in play style was minimal.
i think the main difference here is between the hardcore gamers and the Casual. Casual probubly thinks its retarded to have death set you back or even set you to the Character create screen. where as hardcore see it as a challenge and are abit more serious about their characters.
Adding casual into the equasion brings in things like Lol deaths.
IE. That monster is a good 30 levels higher then me. lol i'm gonna attack it.
any hardcore gamer would shake their head and call the kid a moron then back off before he gets caught in the aggro range.
the casual gamers would go help him and i qoute "for the lols"
we need to seperate ourselves, we need a developer to bring in the truly great things that have been done in games for the hardcore gaming community, i feel that is all we are missing.
if possible aswell i think the best thing we could do is have set factions and a player based economy like FoM. because when your part of a army that has wins and losses that give and take territory, suddenly you have much more pride in your faction.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Interesting take. I was under the assumption that we had those traits embedded in us before we started playing EQ. Those who didn't could stomach the game at all. I was wrong and to each his own, though. Careful when telling people that outside these forums.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
You seem pretty smart and I believe you take your gaming serious. There are a lot of you out there. I also know tons of idiots who lost 'lives' and mind because of EQ and the serious nature and dedication they took in it. The game created bums just as well as normal people and their difference in play style was minimal.
The same could be said of WoW, or even Ragnarok Online, or even completely non video game related hobbies.
Interesting take. I was under the assumption that we had those traits embedded in us before we started playing EQ. Those who didn't could stomach the game at all. I was wrong and to each his own, though. Careful when telling people that outside these forums.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
You seem pretty smart and I believe you take your gaming serious. There are a lot of you out there. I also know tons of idiots who lost 'lives' and mind because of EQ and the serious nature and dedication they took in it. The game created bums just as well as normal people and their difference in play style was minimal.
The same could be said of WoW, or even Ragnarok Online, or even completely non video game related hobbies.
I agree. It also means the game...or hobbie...doesn't make you a better person
You do understand the a raid isn't comparable to a chess game because a raid is not the entirety of an MMO right? So the proper analogy would be perma death vs losing at chess. Thats part of the disconnect, players who think a raid is comparable to a whole game.
That's a big part of the disconnect. People cannot agree on how to divide the action into seperate 'sessions'. MMORPGs are complex games with many different parts and few players want to have all the parts interacting all the time. PvE players don't want PvP to interfere in what they are doing while PvP players don't like the fact that they have to do PvE in order to be competive in PvP. crafters don't like that raiders can get better gear, etc.
Because MMORPGs are persistant there is an expectation that actions you make today will still affect you a month from now and few players are willing to fully embrace that philosophy. We prefer clean slates in our gaming sessions. Just because we had a bad gaming session last week, we do not want to still suffer penalties for it this week. So we prefer it that the game does not have that long a memory and if we fail we can just reset and try again. We want our past mistakes to be forgotten so we can prove that we learned from them and can move on. If I have fixed the mistake and learned from it, there does not seem to be a point to keep penalizing me for it.
In the sense that MMOs were originally intended to be virtual worlds, the real world does indeed penalize you for mistakes you made a long time ago.
As I am designing TTS I am looking at ways in which even though progression is limited by diminishing returns, you can stack up quite a bit of power in various manners. Primarily by storing power like mana to power magic. So you can store up power and then release it all at once later. And in general certain things letting you be more powerful such as creature taming and being able to move around quicker and have large storage for res and crafts.
The thrill of defeat. Basically, that's the only thing keeping me playing video games the last few years. Buy a single player game, crank up the difficulty to max, run around naked with a melee weapon and see what happens.
I don't really know what point there is to a video game that rewards me infinitely without consequence. "I can't get no satisfaction" from a game that will not challenge me to improve how I play.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Just as an example, the death penalty in TOR is so light that I often get my characters killed on purpose to abuse the recall to medical facility feature. I know, weird huh? People abusing a system that should be punishing them for losing, rather than promoting their continual failure or abuse of the mechanic.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Comments
Nah, I don't believe that's an accurate portrayal of an MMO loss. Now granted my use of chess is a bit troubled as an anology becuase chess can take a long time to complete a game, whereas a boss fight might be max of ten minutes? Anyway, when you loose a boss fight, you start over and play again. Same as with chess. In both cases, all of one's faulty moves can be analyzed post-mortum. There is no harsh penalty other than the feeling one gets for loosing. Nor is there an intrinsic need for a harsh penalty for one to enjoy the game.
Now granted, some people thrive on harsh penalties. Take high stakes poker for example. But the vast majority of people can have fun playing a five dollar buy in on New Years Eve.
I just want to make a minor correction here. Investors make their decisions based on case studies that show them the safest chance to make money.
Everything "successful" that exists today was once considered new and/or different. The next big success will also be considered new and/or different by today's standards. It just takes a company with the experience and funds to step up to the plate and have the grapes to break away from the pack for that to happen. Until that happens, things will continue to stagnate.
I am not aware of the red part. I know eventually the gear will not be useable. I do not know they will destroy the gear.
You do understand the a raid isn't comparable to a chess game because a raid is not the entirety of an MMO right? So the proper analogy would be perma death vs losing at chess. Thats part of the disconnect, players who think a raid is comparable to a whole game.
So your saying that things that lengthen your journey are bad? Grind is a personal definition, loosely you can call MMO games grinds because they try to keep you playing. Is losing exp and having to gain it back really that bad when you are grinding the same dungeon in a current MMO 20x to get a single item to drop (while not getting xp cause you are already at the max level)?
On the same coin is running a dungeon 20x better than spending that time in a group in a dungeon socializing with people and getting to know them and helping to foster a community? An MMO could be defined as a giant grind anyways, its all how you perceive it.
IN EQ there was exp loss on death as well. You could negate most of that with a ressurection spell (certain classes only). You had an xp buffer at max level (basically you could get 1xp point shy of the level cap +1 in total xp). Unless you really died alot you didn't really have to worry about losing your level unless you were way in over your head or had a deathwish. And even if you died you could regain that xp through normal play (and with the introduction of AA points you could direct what % of your xp went towards your normal xp or your AA exp so as to maintain a buffer you were comfortable with)
In short xp loss really doesn't add to the grind, not adding xp loss just makes it so you waste your xp when you finally hit max level..
MMO's should be about the shared journey, not about the loot. But the current generation of players seem to have not learned that. You can take friendships out of the game, you can't take your phat lewt out of it..
In terms of sticking with something, community interaction, fine tuning how to be civil and keep my calm during stressful moments, yes it did make me a better man. I kept those skills when i left the game.
It probably helped me alot more than any MMO where you are basically another fish in the sea & can't even remember the name of the people you grouped with 15 minutes ago cause it doesn't matter. If being impatient, complaining things are too tough, and wanting to coast through life are things that you want to take out of the game. I wish you luck
Interesting take. I was under the assumption that we had those traits embedded in us before we started playing EQ. Those who didn't could stomach the game at all. I was wrong and to each his own, though.Careful when telling people that outside these forums.
There is a little thing called "D.I.D" - dead is dead. Not sure where it originated from, but I first noticed it as something the Fallout community was doing.
Basically, if your character dies even once that's it, game over and you must start again.
Now if you're someone who really wants a death to mean something, maybe give applying that concept a try. Making up your own rules is likely going to be the only way any game from now on will really punish a player, they are just too concerned about their games being for any/everybody now.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
That's a big part of the disconnect. People cannot agree on how to divide the action into seperate 'sessions'. MMORPGs are complex games with many different parts and few players want to have all the parts interacting all the time. PvE players don't want PvP to interfere in what they are doing while PvP players don't like the fact that they have to do PvE in order to be competive in PvP. crafters don't like that raiders can get better gear, etc.
Because MMORPGs are persistant there is an expectation that actions you make today will still affect you a month from now and few players are willing to fully embrace that philosophy. We prefer clean slates in our gaming sessions. Just because we had a bad gaming session last week, we do not want to still suffer penalties for it this week. So we prefer it that the game does not have that long a memory and if we fail we can just reset and try again. We want our past mistakes to be forgotten so we can prove that we learned from them and can move on. If I have fixed the mistake and learned from it, there does not seem to be a point to keep penalizing me for it.
I played MMOs since Meridian 59 released, that was pre UO even. I seen plenty of death penalties and XP penalty is just annoying, nothing else. If you want a long journey don´t make me level so fast.
Lineage did have the same but it also sometimes let you dropp a random item that if untended got picked up be the next mob passing by and that actually did give a rush, because you could loose something if you were unlucky. The XP loss was just annoying there too.
Scared and annoyed are 2 very different feelings and XP loss does not add any fun to me and never ha.
Then I agree that MMOs is a shared journey and not about loot but I fail to see what that has to do with XP loss for death penalty.
That is another discussion entirely , I actually enjoyed slow leveling, getting to take in the scenery. Actually feeling like every level was an accomplishment and not a roadblock to max level.
I want to be afraid to die but some of the consequences that I've seen employed by MMOs have been really poor. Sometimes the consequences you can have are limited to the kind of MMO that it is. For example, experience loss when you die... really stupid idea if you have a theme park MMO, especially if it's light on quests. If you have an MMO that is fairly linear with just enough quests to get you through to the end, and there's a penalty of XP loss when you die... guess what? You eventually hit a wall where you can't pick up anymore quests and you've already done all of the quests available to you, so you grind it up. If monsters aren't giving a lot of XP, there's a fundamental flaw at play.
If the MMO is sandbox and you lose XP when you die, it's a little more reasonable... there probably aren't any quests to pick up so at worst you'd be returning to an area you've been to already to gain back your XP. There's no wall potential there.
I'm not a fan of most of the current methods employed to punish a player for dying.
- I think gear durability is easily not enough to deter someone from dying, eventual oversaturation of the economy(it happens in every game) will make the costs a joke.
- XP loss... not reasonable for a themepark game in my opinion.
- Gold loss... not bad, but this is where very smart game design comes into play in terms of figuring out an appropriate amount and how it's going to really affect the player in the long run. If you have a game that's very highly item dependant, with a chance to break(irreparably) your equipment via some sort of means like item enchantment or whatever, and the gold cost for dying is significant enough, a player could be in a situation where they're gearless and goldless. Kiss that brick wall!
- Gear loss... I'm personally not a fan of it but I can compromise. I don't want to lose my weapons and armor... the things I have equipped, but I think it's fair for anything in your bags to be free game.
- Returning to town sometimes can be a good punishment depending on how quickly you can make it back to where you were. If it takes you awhile to travel then just returning to town can be enough motivation to survive. This is true for games like Minecraft where the last bed you've slept on is your spawn point and if you've gone exploring through a natural cave formation and have just really lost yourself in terms of immersion and haven't been thinking about how to come back there or go back home, dying and then trying to go back there would be a challenge.
PvP related deaths... I dunno, I think for pure PvP servers the death cost should be the same as a PvE death, but PvE servers that have the option for PvP you shouldn't lose anything other than time spent travelling back. Then again if people are going to lose things for dying in PvP there has to be rules in place to prevent high level characters from griefing low level characters. Of course this is alleviated if everyone is equal regardless of how much time has been spent in the game world, since everyone would have a fighting chance against each other.
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The Secret World - Deathmatch PvP. Not to the extent that some people might want, but it's something.
Me too, I remember when being max level actually was something that impressed people. but it have nothingto do with death penalty and when you make a game with slow leveling you hopefully make enough content for every level, when you take away XP you never do that and we need to stand and farm mobs a long time if you die often.
Not fun, not creative, not scary. Being locked out from your character for a who'ile on the other hand is scary without forcing me to farm.
An exp penalty does, in effect, not make you level so fast.
You die and lose exp. You have to get more exp to level.
I'd much rather lose exp and continue playing the game than to be rendered completely useless for 10 minutes and have to stop playing for that time.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
You seem pretty smart and I believe you take your gaming serious. There are a lot of you out there. I also know tons of idiots who lost 'lives' and mind because of EQ and the serious nature and dedication they took in it. The game created bums just as well as normal people and their difference in play style was minimal.
i think the main difference here is between the hardcore gamers and the Casual. Casual probubly thinks its retarded to have death set you back or even set you to the Character create screen. where as hardcore see it as a challenge and are abit more serious about their characters.
Adding casual into the equasion brings in things like Lol deaths.
IE. That monster is a good 30 levels higher then me. lol i'm gonna attack it.
any hardcore gamer would shake their head and call the kid a moron then back off before he gets caught in the aggro range.
the casual gamers would go help him and i qoute "for the lols"
we need to seperate ourselves, we need a developer to bring in the truly great things that have been done in games for the hardcore gaming community, i feel that is all we are missing.
if possible aswell i think the best thing we could do is have set factions and a player based economy like FoM. because when your part of a army that has wins and losses that give and take territory, suddenly you have much more pride in your faction.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
The same could be said of WoW, or even Ragnarok Online, or even completely non video game related hobbies.
True, many of us did have those traits in us, but reinforcing those traits is like practicing them. People are creatures of habit if you stop trying to reinforce those values some people will faulter.
If you let someone be lazy all the time, it becomes harder to change them, when easy mode becomes the norm then you have a big problem down the road..
You seem pretty smart and I believe you take your gaming serious. There are a lot of you out there. I also know tons of idiots who lost 'lives' and mind because of EQ and the serious nature and dedication they took in it. The game created bums just as well as normal people and their difference in play style was minimal.The same could be said of WoW, or even Ragnarok Online, or even completely non video game related hobbies.
I agree. It also means the game...or hobbie...doesn't make you a better personIn the sense that MMOs were originally intended to be virtual worlds, the real world does indeed penalize you for mistakes you made a long time ago.
As I am designing TTS I am looking at ways in which even though progression is limited by diminishing returns, you can stack up quite a bit of power in various manners. Primarily by storing power like mana to power magic. So you can store up power and then release it all at once later. And in general certain things letting you be more powerful such as creature taming and being able to move around quicker and have large storage for res and crafts.
Why?
If we wipe on a boss, i want to jump back in and try again.
Replay the leveling game for another day before trying again .. is just no fun.
The thrill of defeat. Basically, that's the only thing keeping me playing video games the last few years. Buy a single player game, crank up the difficulty to max, run around naked with a melee weapon and see what happens.
I don't really know what point there is to a video game that rewards me infinitely without consequence. "I can't get no satisfaction" from a game that will not challenge me to improve how I play.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
If its a game, there is no reaon to be afraid to die in it..... period!
Just as an example, the death penalty in TOR is so light that I often get my characters killed on purpose to abuse the recall to medical facility feature. I know, weird huh? People abusing a system that should be punishing them for losing, rather than promoting their continual failure or abuse of the mechanic.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
I have no such problems as the OP becuase i still play a MMO where dying is not fun and something you really want to avoid.
It's called Vanguard and contrary to belief,it's not dead. or dying,it's just ticking along but has a new dev team working on it.
Pretty sure it will be FTP within the next couple of months.