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.
I kept my Vanguard account active for about a year after i had basically quit in hopes they would turn it around. Eventually i unsubscribed after pumping basically all my plat into the guild hall upkeep just incase. The wound from the disappointment still runs deep, its going to take alot more from SOE than promises to get me to resubscribe. Not to say that I'm not open to giving it another chance. But they better have something to show before getting me to invest in the game again...
I would never play another game with the death penalities that the original EQ had, been there, done that, moved on! I can't imagine how anyone gets joy losing a weeks worth of playing time on a death or the possibility of losing all of ones equipment. Hope you that want that can find a game maker to do that for you, just stay away from the games I'm playing please!
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.
I kept my Vanguard account active for about a year after i had basically quit in hopes they would turn it around. Eventually i unsubscribed after pumping basically all my plat into the guild hall upkeep just incase. The wound from the disappointment still runs deep, its going to take alot more from SOE than promises to get me to resubscribe. Not to say that I'm not open to giving it another chance. But they better have something to show before getting me to invest in the game again...
I played Vanguard at launch and it was a good game but too buggy for me at the time. Decided to wait a bit and try it again.
Tried it again about a year later and the game just felt deserted, so I quit.
A couple of years ago I heard of a huge server merger so I thought I'd give the free trial a chance...suddenly it felt very WoW-like, with tons of "kill x of creature y" and other easibly solo "trash quests", and I gave up.
I really wanted Vanguard to be everything it promised to be during development.
Yeah yeah, it's f2p, it's indie, it's asking for donations...but the dev's chat on the forums and welcome all ideas ...and hey....it's something to hope for. Eventually SOMEONE is going to come through, why not them? They seem to have that passion for making a game that so many companies these days seem to lack.....or simply can't see collecting dust behind the $$$$$$ signs.
I used to like harsh death penalties as extra challenge. But slowly over time they just became cumbersome and annoying. So many times when I just had to go afk, or my internet connection hiccupped, the server lagged or other non gameplay reasons that killed my character. In those moments I really didnt like the harsh death penalties. It was just frustrating being good at a game and then still die because of some non gameplay related issues.
At some point I realised that I dont actually need a harsh death penalty as incentive to not die. I always refuse to die in games. It is automatically one of the challenges for me. This is also why I rarely join pugs anymore and always build friendslists full of players that are likeminded and dont rush into combat head first.
Another factor that came into play is that I got bored with mechanics that are just made to slow your character progress down. I see a corpse run as one of those. I want to have fun and now prefer death penalties that dont slow you down. Like debuffs that make you be more carefull, but at least let you continue.
Is that you Axehilt?
On a serious note however, there seems to be 2 different kinds of "old school" players here. The ones who are waiting for someone to make MMORPG's like when they started, and the ones who have overly busy lives but still want to play MMORPG's, so they don't mind them changing to make things faster to suit their schedule.
Sad thing is, BOTH types, as well as many other preferences SHOULD be available. Where is the variety? Oh that's right...it's because like others here have said they are made solely for profit, and because of this they cater to the majority, which is this current generation and it's trends. So everything is fast paced, linear, offer instant rewards, and nearly instant respawns.
Hmmm...you know what else offers those things? Console games. What's big with this generation?...console games. Coincidental?
I would never play another game with the death penalities that the original EQ had, been there, done that, moved on! I can't imagine how anyone gets joy losing a weeks worth of playing time on a death or the possibility of losing all of ones equipment. Hope you that want that can find a game maker to do that for you, just stay away from the games I'm playing please!
^^^ this.
I will never play a game like EQ again. It is great that the genre won't trend back to that anymore.
I like EVE alot because of the risk vs reward scenarios you come across. Sometimes taking that gamble with a top dollar ship pays off and you recieve many times what you risked. other times you lose a lot. Nothing makes you panick more then risking a valuable ship that you spent time working for. Nice thing about this game is you can rebuild if you lose everything. If you play smart and have back up plans stashed away you can recover from most anything . it makes the pvp Very very exciting and keeps the economy flowing. Economy wouldnt work if stuff wasnt blown into space dust haha
I know even is a different genre than say fantasy mmo but I ties in well with what the op was describing.
Anyone who understands what SaxxOn is talking about "shudders" at the thought. And I REVEL in the nostalgia.... What I wouldn't give to play a modern MMO with the same feeling of fear and excitement I got when I had to run through Kithicor Woods in EQ1 at night...
You're completely right of course. But, these threads tend to go only one way.
Those that have played MMOs with risk vs reward AND WoW clones will say that a death penalty brings them into the game, adds tension, makes things memorable and strategic, ect ect.
And those who have ONLY played WoW clones will go on and on about "But you lose money!" or "But dying already sucks!" and emphatically argue that their way is better, even though they've never played any other way, and have no perspective.
Same thing goes when you bring up a non instanced MMO. Hell, some of them say "MMOs can't work without instancing!" or even more hilariously "someone will steal all my kills and grief me!" (but note, if that problem actually existed, it'd exist outside instances too). They just don't understand and cannot comprehend how an MMO would work unless its a WoW clone.
You are completely wrong of course. I have played games with much harsher death penalties than wussy games like UO or EQ. Yet I still am of the opinion that losing large amounts of XP or losing your equipment is simply a really bad thing in many games.
Losing equipment in UO is not the same thing as losing equipment in WoW. Anyone who pretends they have similar consequences is probably selling something.
The death penalty should be tailored to the game and make sense in the game. For some games even permadeath makes sense if the game has a lot of replayability or your investment wasn't huge.
Permadeath in a game like SWTOR would be stupid. Force people to go through the same cutscene over and over just because they died would be really stupid?
Same thing if I lost a level everytime I died in SWTOR. There just wouldn't be enough quests, to make up for it and grinding mobs in that game is not a real past time. How would I recover from a massive XP or money loss? The only way is by playing the game in a way its not really meant to be played or enjoyed.
Even losing XP doesn't have the same consequences in games since the content model and leveling experience may not support it.
Finally excessively harsh penalties are simply not much fun. I never want to lose 1/3 of my total life time earned xp from a death like I did in certain games I have played. That was never fun or good. It could have simply have been 1 level and still been punishing enoug. 1/3 was just plain sadism on the developers part.
Fear of death is a very simple thing to institute into games.
If you die, you lose all your belongings.
But companies are too afraid of losing subscribers to do it.
You have no context to this statement.
Losing all your belongings means something completely different is a game that is completely based on crafting versus a game where you had to grind for 6 months to get the equipment you have.
I mean seriously people get a grip. Comparing UO and WoW death peanlties is almost completely frigging pointless.
But all these people that think MMOs ever had harsh death penalties are kind of cute. The previous genereation of games which much harsher. EQ is actually moderated in death penalty compared to the games which it was based on. Its funny that people don't realize they are just the middle point of the trend of making DP "easier".
First MUD I played in 1993 had 1/3 total xp lost this could be over 10 levels lost at high levels and a corpse run. HUGE xp loss and potential loss of equipment. Then around 1996 they changed it to 1/4 xp loss. EQ released in 1999 which still with corpse run and a very modest xp loss (from a MUD players point of view).
And of course many of the ideas and forms in MUDs came from Rogue-likes many of which originally had perma-death. Another sad thing is some people think Diablo invented this.
Its so sad in a funny sort of way that there is a sort of interet tough guys who think that since they played EQ or UO they had it hard and were somehow the original. When they are just the mid point of the trend.
You want a harsh DP, go play Realm of the Mad God. Its basically a Rogue-like shooter with perma-death set that is massively coop.
Nothing that makes you panic more infront of the keyboard when you are about to get killed, loosing millions (days) of xp, all your equipment and with the possibility of getting a constitution loss which eventually will lead to permadeath!
Full loot PVP? Love it. But it wont usually work in a game unless there is some permanent risk to your character (if not you can just walk around and kill and hope for nice equipment, and just re-equip if you get killed) which can lead to its ultimate death (all the time invested in the character can end up as wasted).
But I can say for a fact that few games I've played makes you afraid of anything. To become afraid you have to loose something that you cant get back............ and most things in MMO's nowadays you can get back and usually with ease.
Loosing gear/ships/equipment is nothing that makes me afraid. Possibility of loosinging my months old char......... Eeeeeeeek!
Older MMOs all in some way had some kind of a penalty after death. Man, do I miss those days. Even though I absolutely hate how L2 turned out, that game probably had one of the best death and karma penalities I've seen in any game. Of course this was all during OBT and Harbingers of War.
I remember playing during C1, when I was just running towards Giran from Dion and on the side of the road was an Elven Long Sword stuck on the ground. Boy was I the happiest person when I picked that up. Then, like 5 minutes later a dude was raging on all-chat about how he died, dropped his Elven Long Sword, and after respawn he ran to the spot he died but the weapon wasn't there. Ahahahahaha, good ol days, good ol days.
Also, when someone went chaotic, holy crap, now was that fun! The whole server becomes a manhunt for the poor guy and people just camp where the dude logs off. EPIC!
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month? Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools? MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Exactly. Most of the people who play MMO's now only know WoW or clones of WoW and they are so used to "Progress" that to go backwards at all in any form may cause them to actually lose some self-esteem and my goodness...we wouldn't want that.
Every game coming out these days is a WoW clone.....sadly.
EQ1 was my first real online game after trashing my UO disk after about 3 hours trying to play it.
I never complained about corps runs it was just a part of the game and if you didn't die in a good place ....tough luck.
Guuk and Black Burrow were always good for corps runs.
AMD Phenum II x4 3.6Ghz 975 black edition 8 gig Ram Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
Most MMO deaths are now akin to FPS deaths. You respawn with all your stuff and no loss, then charge back into the fight. It doesn't mean a thing, it actually encourages stupid play because hell, what have you got to lose? The fear of death in original EQ made for some awesome times, especially when you're deep in a dungeon, get a bad pull and suddenly have a ton of mobs on you. Enchanters are mezzing, Clerics are healing like mad, Wizards are blowing things apart, Tanks are keeping mobs off the Cleric. And then you all come through it with a sliver of health left and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
You won't get times like that in modern MMO's.
EQ , SOL A,B was really in darkie territory but for some reason maybe the proximity to Freeport it was almost exclusivly run by Humans and friends (Vallon Zek pvp server) There would be groups all throughout the dungeon and as soon as anyone shouted "DARKIS" everyone rallied and rushed to the entrance and prepared for a PVP battle.
Those were exciting times.
AMD Phenum II x4 3.6Ghz 975 black edition 8 gig Ram Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
This is why I'm looking forward to World of Darkness. Apparently permadeath is possible. Rare... but possible. I loved how in pre-trammel UO I always had my recall spell ready just incase someone snuck up on me. It gives the game some excitement.
play eve .. a loss of a level is often welcome vs eves toils
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
If someone told me that the only "excitement" in life for them stemmed from a fear of death, I would think they were a grossly ill/misguided individual.
If someone told me that the same holds for the temporary death of an immortal virtual avatar which represents them in a virtual world...well...I'd think they were even more misguided...
I don't fear death or find the prospect of risk of it exciting in reality, why would I in a game (which must, by definition, be of far less significance/consequence)?
Where does this "fear" even stem from? Fear of realizing that you just wasted your time?
Perhaps you're confusing fear of death with anticipation of the unexpected - which might actually legitimately be evoked by a game's virtual world. If anyone really plays games without this sense, it may be because they ultimately have been given no more cause to suspect anything around the next corner will present a unique experience or challenge...
Older MMOs all in some way had some kind of a penalty after death. Man, do I miss those days. Even though I absolutely hate how L2 turned out, that game probably had one of the best death and karma penalities I've seen in any game. Of course this was all during OBT and Harbingers of War.
I remember playing during C1, when I was just running towards Giran from Dion and on the side of the road was an Elven Long Sword stuck on the ground. Boy was I the happiest person when I picked that up. Then, like 5 minutes later a dude was raging on all-chat about how he died, dropped his Elven Long Sword, and after respawn he ran to the spot he died but the weapon wasn't there. Ahahahahaha, good ol days, good ol days.
Also, when someone went chaotic, holy crap, now was that fun! The whole server becomes a manhunt for the poor guy and people just camp where the dude logs off. EPIC!
Oh yeah!! I wanna play in a game with this guy!! Does nothing for a sword that someone probably spent a lot of time to earn and laughs about it. My hero!
And seriously...people camp a spot just so they can kill him when he logs on?? And this is .....let me guess.....hmmm....???fun?
And you people seriously wonder why there aren't more games like this?
Shakes head
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
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 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..
Lengthening the journey arbitrarily is bad. Nothing is added to a game by losing levels on death, or by having it take 100x as much XP to level up.
The interesting journey is all the new stuff you discover. Repetition is an unfortunate side effect, not a desired gameplay trait, of games which try to remain interesting 200+ hours.
MMOs "should be about" whatever the hell players find fun. You don't define that, and I don't define that, but overall players sure as hell don't find excessive punishment fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
I kept my Vanguard account active for about a year after i had basically quit in hopes they would turn it around. Eventually i unsubscribed after pumping basically all my plat into the guild hall upkeep just incase. The wound from the disappointment still runs deep, its going to take alot more from SOE than promises to get me to resubscribe. Not to say that I'm not open to giving it another chance. But they better have something to show before getting me to invest in the game again...
Legendary.
I would never play another game with the death penalities that the original EQ had, been there, done that, moved on! I can't imagine how anyone gets joy losing a weeks worth of playing time on a death or the possibility of losing all of ones equipment. Hope you that want that can find a game maker to do that for you, just stay away from the games I'm playing please!
I played Vanguard at launch and it was a good game but too buggy for me at the time. Decided to wait a bit and try it again.
Tried it again about a year later and the game just felt deserted, so I quit.
A couple of years ago I heard of a huge server merger so I thought I'd give the free trial a chance...suddenly it felt very WoW-like, with tons of "kill x of creature y" and other easibly solo "trash quests", and I gave up.
I really wanted Vanguard to be everything it promised to be during development.
http://legends-of-etherell.com/en/
Yeah yeah, it's f2p, it's indie, it's asking for donations...but the dev's chat on the forums and welcome all ideas ...and hey....it's something to hope for. Eventually SOMEONE is going to come through, why not them? They seem to have that passion for making a game that so many companies these days seem to lack.....or simply can't see collecting dust behind the $$$$$$ signs.
Is that you Axehilt?
On a serious note however, there seems to be 2 different kinds of "old school" players here. The ones who are waiting for someone to make MMORPG's like when they started, and the ones who have overly busy lives but still want to play MMORPG's, so they don't mind them changing to make things faster to suit their schedule.
Sad thing is, BOTH types, as well as many other preferences SHOULD be available. Where is the variety? Oh that's right...it's because like others here have said they are made solely for profit, and because of this they cater to the majority, which is this current generation and it's trends. So everything is fast paced, linear, offer instant rewards, and nearly instant respawns.
Hmmm...you know what else offers those things? Console games. What's big with this generation?...console games. Coincidental?
^^^ this.
I will never play a game like EQ again. It is great that the genre won't trend back to that anymore.
I like EVE alot because of the risk vs reward scenarios you come across. Sometimes taking that gamble with a top dollar ship pays off and you recieve many times what you risked. other times you lose a lot. Nothing makes you panick more then risking a valuable ship that you spent time working for. Nice thing about this game is you can rebuild if you lose everything. If you play smart and have back up plans stashed away you can recover from most anything
. it makes the pvp Very very exciting and keeps the economy flowing. Economy wouldnt work if stuff wasnt blown into space dust haha
I know even is a different genre than say fantasy mmo but I ties in well with what the op was describing.
Anyone who understands what SaxxOn is talking about "shudders" at the thought. And I REVEL in the nostalgia.... What I wouldn't give to play a modern MMO with the same feeling of fear and excitement I got when I had to run through Kithicor Woods in EQ1 at night...
You are completely wrong of course. I have played games with much harsher death penalties than wussy games like UO or EQ. Yet I still am of the opinion that losing large amounts of XP or losing your equipment is simply a really bad thing in many games.
Losing equipment in UO is not the same thing as losing equipment in WoW. Anyone who pretends they have similar consequences is probably selling something.
The death penalty should be tailored to the game and make sense in the game. For some games even permadeath makes sense if the game has a lot of replayability or your investment wasn't huge.
Permadeath in a game like SWTOR would be stupid. Force people to go through the same cutscene over and over just because they died would be really stupid?
Same thing if I lost a level everytime I died in SWTOR. There just wouldn't be enough quests, to make up for it and grinding mobs in that game is not a real past time. How would I recover from a massive XP or money loss? The only way is by playing the game in a way its not really meant to be played or enjoyed.
Even losing XP doesn't have the same consequences in games since the content model and leveling experience may not support it.
Finally excessively harsh penalties are simply not much fun. I never want to lose 1/3 of my total life time earned xp from a death like I did in certain games I have played. That was never fun or good. It could have simply have been 1 level and still been punishing enoug. 1/3 was just plain sadism on the developers part.
You have no context to this statement.
Losing all your belongings means something completely different is a game that is completely based on crafting versus a game where you had to grind for 6 months to get the equipment you have.
I mean seriously people get a grip. Comparing UO and WoW death peanlties is almost completely frigging pointless.
But all these people that think MMOs ever had harsh death penalties are kind of cute. The previous genereation of games which much harsher. EQ is actually moderated in death penalty compared to the games which it was based on. Its funny that people don't realize they are just the middle point of the trend of making DP "easier".
First MUD I played in 1993 had 1/3 total xp lost this could be over 10 levels lost at high levels and a corpse run. HUGE xp loss and potential loss of equipment. Then around 1996 they changed it to 1/4 xp loss. EQ released in 1999 which still with corpse run and a very modest xp loss (from a MUD players point of view).
And of course many of the ideas and forms in MUDs came from Rogue-likes many of which originally had perma-death. Another sad thing is some people think Diablo invented this.
Its so sad in a funny sort of way that there is a sort of interet tough guys who think that since they played EQ or UO they had it hard and were somehow the original. When they are just the mid point of the trend.
You want a harsh DP, go play Realm of the Mad God. Its basically a Rogue-like shooter with perma-death set that is massively coop.
what goes around comes around.
Ahh.... The good old muds.
Nothing that makes you panic more infront of the keyboard when you are about to get killed, loosing millions (days) of xp, all your equipment and with the possibility of getting a constitution loss which eventually will lead to permadeath!
Full loot PVP? Love it. But it wont usually work in a game unless there is some permanent risk to your character (if not you can just walk around and kill and hope for nice equipment, and just re-equip if you get killed) which can lead to its ultimate death (all the time invested in the character can end up as wasted).
But I can say for a fact that few games I've played makes you afraid of anything. To become afraid you have to loose something that you cant get back............ and most things in MMO's nowadays you can get back and usually with ease.
Loosing gear/ships/equipment is nothing that makes me afraid. Possibility of loosinging my months old char......... Eeeeeeeek!
gestalt11 stop making sense and stop making me remember how many times i hit a DT, was DISINTEGRATED or my corpse sunk in the river
Flame on!
Older MMOs all in some way had some kind of a penalty after death. Man, do I miss those days. Even though I absolutely hate how L2 turned out, that game probably had one of the best death and karma penalities I've seen in any game. Of course this was all during OBT and Harbingers of War.
I remember playing during C1, when I was just running towards Giran from Dion and on the side of the road was an Elven Long Sword stuck on the ground. Boy was I the happiest person when I picked that up. Then, like 5 minutes later a dude was raging on all-chat about how he died, dropped his Elven Long Sword, and after respawn he ran to the spot he died but the weapon wasn't there. Ahahahahaha, good ol days, good ol days.
Also, when someone went chaotic, holy crap, now was that fun! The whole server becomes a manhunt for the poor guy and people just camp where the dude logs off. EPIC!
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month?
Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools?
MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Which was easily avoidable by running along the walls when you were in a hurry to meet people.
Every game coming out these days is a WoW clone.....sadly.
EQ1 was my first real online game after trashing my UO disk after about 3 hours trying to play it.
I never complained about corps runs it was just a part of the game and if you didn't die in a good place ....tough luck.
Guuk and Black Burrow were always good for corps runs.
AMD Phenum II x4 3.6Ghz 975 black edition
8 gig Ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
EQ , SOL A,B was really in darkie territory but for some reason maybe the proximity to Freeport it was almost exclusivly run by Humans and friends (Vallon Zek pvp server) There would be groups all throughout the dungeon and as soon as anyone shouted "DARKIS" everyone rallied and rushed to the entrance and prepared for a PVP battle.
Those were exciting times.
AMD Phenum II x4 3.6Ghz 975 black edition
8 gig Ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
Darkfall = MMOFPS I've never liked or played FPS games much. I'll pass and I have a 50ms ping to the game server.
AMD Phenum II x4 3.6Ghz 975 black edition
8 gig Ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
This is why I'm looking forward to World of Darkness. Apparently permadeath is possible. Rare... but possible. I loved how in pre-trammel UO I always had my recall spell ready just incase someone snuck up on me. It gives the game some excitement.
If you die, I'll kill you for it. There. Are you afraid to die yet?
play eve .. a loss of a level is often welcome vs eves toils
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
If someone told me that the only "excitement" in life for them stemmed from a fear of death, I would think they were a grossly ill/misguided individual.
If someone told me that the same holds for the temporary death of an immortal virtual avatar which represents them in a virtual world...well...I'd think they were even more misguided...
I don't fear death or find the prospect of risk of it exciting in reality, why would I in a game (which must, by definition, be of far less significance/consequence)?
Where does this "fear" even stem from? Fear of realizing that you just wasted your time?
Perhaps you're confusing fear of death with anticipation of the unexpected - which might actually legitimately be evoked by a game's virtual world. If anyone really plays games without this sense, it may be because they ultimately have been given no more cause to suspect anything around the next corner will present a unique experience or challenge...
Don't let the devs keep you from having fun ! :-)
Oh yeah!! I wanna play in a game with this guy!! Does nothing for a sword that someone probably spent a lot of time to earn and laughs about it. My hero!
And seriously...people camp a spot just so they can kill him when he logs on?? And this is .....let me guess.....hmmm....???fun?
And you people seriously wonder why there aren't more games like this?
Shakes head
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Lengthening the journey arbitrarily is bad. Nothing is added to a game by losing levels on death, or by having it take 100x as much XP to level up.
The interesting journey is all the new stuff you discover. Repetition is an unfortunate side effect, not a desired gameplay trait, of games which try to remain interesting 200+ hours.
MMOs "should be about" whatever the hell players find fun. You don't define that, and I don't define that, but overall players sure as hell don't find excessive punishment fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver