Permanent death doesn't make games more fun, it merely makes people play in a hugely cautious fashion. You avoid anything even faintly risky, because the penalty for failure is so high.
Then of course, you end up just getting screwed anyways, because permadeath games don't kill you by making mistakes, they kill you when your ISP drops. Which, in the world that we all live in, is simply too common of an occurance.
Vitae as a death penalty works well. Remember that playing time is a resource, and if I have to spend time operating at reduced effectiveness, then you've decreased that resource. If my character is weaker, I'm not going to be able to deal with the same maximum threat level I could have been otherwise, won't be able to work on my high end quests, goals, whatever. Instead, I have to spend time earning back the ability to be at full effectiveness.
Most people seem to accept that, and as such, Vitae penalty style systems work pretty well.
Originally posted by scaramoosh I don't see how xp loss makes a game fun :S Games are meant to be fun not about gaining xp : thats my problem with mmorpgs, i can think of better things to do with my time!
Like incoherently post here about 100 times a day?
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
In PVE you can't die, monsters knock you out and you lie there until someone heals you, or you regenerate enough HPs to wake up. If you die in a tough area, you can play dead until you've built up enough HPs to make a run for it.
The only way you can die is in PVP, which of course would be totally open. Another player upon knocking you out would get the option to kill. If they take it you die and they are marked a murderer and can be hunted down and killed.
If you are killed then you wake up in reserected somewhere with a little less gear and a little less cash, if a murderer is killed he doesn't wake up and his possesions are collected by the killer.
In PVE you can't die, monsters knock you out and you lie there until someone heals you, or you regenerate enough HPs to wake up. If you die in a tough area, you can play dead until you've built up enough HPs to make a run for it.
The only way you can die is in PVP, which of course would be totally open. Another player upon knocking you out would get the option to kill. If they take it you die and they are marked a murderer and can be hunted down and killed.
If you are killed then you wake up in reserected somewhere with a little less gear and a little less cash, if a murderer is killed he doesn't wake up and his possesions are collected by the killer.
I think it would work great!!! }}}} gattm99
That would work for a game that was based on pve, but alot of people a fans of pvp and a sence of war in clan battles and rades and a system like that would really interfear in battles like that it would be a good idea for a pve serve for a game while other pvp severs would have a different system
Originally posted by Johnark Just cause there's no XP debt in World of Warcraft doesn't mean we're all just gonna kamekaze attack everything we see and if we win or lose, we don't lose anything cause we DO LOSE SOMETHING: TIME!!!
I did a lot of suicide runs in WoW. Why not? Drop the gold and go at it again!
No death penalty means that any dork with enough time on their hands (me, for instance) can eventually get to be high level through sheer stubborn determination, even if they suck. And that, of course, is what everybody wants.
... This is where I draw the line: __________________.
And while your at it, take away time it takes for character advancement, and take away having to grind for that weapon. And take away all MOB skill, so they just stand there and done die. Please take away other people competeing against me, so I have almost no interaction. Also, i definently dont want to spend the time exploring and walking places, please make me able to teleport anywhere. I want to log into the game for the first time, kill a mob, get a uber-leet rare sword, and gain 20 levels.
Originally posted by gattm99 The only way you can die is in PVP, which of course would be totally open. Another player upon knocking you out would get the option to kill. If they take it you die and they are marked a murderer and can be hunted down and killed. If you are killed then you wake up in reserected somewhere with a little less gear and a little less cash, if a murderer is killed he doesn't wake up and his possesions are collected by the killer.
I'd be pretty much in favour of this sort of thing. However, I would take the ability to resurrect out of the hands of players altogether. Every character would have to gain faction with his/her own city's/race's temple in order to guarantee resurrection and the penalties for resurrection would be dependant upon the amount of faction achieved. So players who have gained high standing with their temple (e.g. by defeating players of enemy groups, making donations of crafted items, running temple quests etc) would suffer minimal rez penalties, whilst those with lower temple faction would have greater XP penalties, less immediate resurrection etc. Those who killed players from their own side would automatically become outcasts and be cut off from their own kind. They would be unable to progress because they would be denied training by their military, and they would eventually suffer permadeath because the temple would refuse to ressurrect them.
So if you were given a choice, Would you pick a game that offer very small amount of experience debt or a game that make you lose experience, so if you had 1000 exp you would drop 900?
Tho my answer wasnt fully answered on my orignal post. Do you guy all think that games with lose of experience when you die is being phased out from the industry in favor for experience debt of minor temporary lose of stats?
Note to MMORPG.com this would be a very good poll to ask everyone. Id be interested what everyone would pick.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
Originally posted by gattm99 The only way you can die is in PVP, which of course would be totally open. Another player upon knocking you out would get the option to kill. If they take it you die and they are marked a murderer and can be hunted down and killed. If you are killed then you wake up in reserected somewhere with a little less gear and a little less cash, if a murderer is killed he doesn't wake up and his possesions are collected by the killer.
I'd be pretty much in favour of this sort of thing. However, I would take the ability to resurrect out of the hands of players altogether. Every character would have to gain faction with his/her own city's/race's temple in order to guarantee resurrection and the penalties for resurrection would be dependant upon the amount of faction achieved. So players who have gained high standing with their temple (e.g. by defeating players of enemy groups, making donations of crafted items, running temple quests etc) would suffer minimal rez penalties, whilst those with lower temple faction would have greater XP penalties, less immediate resurrection etc. Those who killed players from their own side would automatically become outcasts and be cut off from their own kind. They would be unable to progress because they would be denied training by their military, and they would eventually suffer permadeath because the temple would refuse to ressurrect them.
Ew.. No penalty means no effort. The penalty is there so it encourages you to think about what you're doing. Penalties are so that when you screw up, it costs you something, so that motivates you not to screw up. Yes, there will be glitches that will make you die through no fault of your own. So what, S*it happens. Deal with it. NPCs and players should be treated no differently by the game mechanics. You should suffer the same if you are killed by either. If you want a player-only game, what you want is one big arena with no plot, no lore, and coincidentally no point other than being the reigning champion. I like a bit more depth in my games.
And I will never play another mmorpg that doesn't have a good guild system in it, but I don't want to play one that FORCEs you to be part of a guild. A guild should be something special, an organization of players AND NPCs designed for a purpose besides safety in numbers. You can get safety in numbers just by adventuring with other people, which everyone does. Joining a guild should mean something more and be slightly more difficult, and therefore NOT be the only way to play. The one thing I didn't like about the SB guild system is that you're in a guild, or your a random spawner shunned by society, especially on the Lore server. There should be something in between. The game shouldn't penalize you for not joining a guild.
Without a significant battle loss penalty, MMOG's become too easy to advance in and no one respects the environment and there is no fear of taking risks.
Give me a serious experience loss or a random item loss for losing in battle, and keep it real.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it." Brad McQuaid Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc. Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes www.vanguardsoh
Actually, in response to an earlier post, Time can be a very nasty factor for dying. In Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, death cost you two things. A chunk of experience (not a huge amount, but definately a really inconvenient one) and time. A lot of time. Most people don't think to set up warp pipes to often, so you would have to trudge all the way through the dungeon back to where you were before. Depending on the style of game =/ time can definately be something you don't want to have to make up.
As for what I prefer in an MMO...I would have to say I like penalties, but not penalties that make you groan, roll your eyes, and log out because you just don't want to deal with them right now. Permadeath is a thing I would almost never want to play. Months of work down the drain in a few unlucky encounters. Yay, what fun, time to start over again! Item loss bites also, while not as bad as permadeath. A good item can take days to farm, then you get unlucky, and byebye item! Yay! Not fun at all. Generally, XP loss (without level loss) and equipment damage is fine for a penalty, at least to me. But hey, if you want to go out and play a permadeath game, be my guest. Just not for me.
I can understand not liking the experience penalty on FFXI, that was borderline crazy due to the fact that as it is the game was a complete grind fest, then if you die you lose 1/10 (is that right?) of your experience when you die, so that's like a few hours gone to hell in the later levels.
As for other games, I don't think you have a point. There needs to be a death penalty, and if it isn't experience, then you're left with other options like max HP loss for a temporary time, losing durability on armor, chance to lose an item, etc... Either way you look at it, you're not going to like the death penalty. And that's the point of a death penalty, to make it so you don't to die. FFXI may have gone a bit too far, but most MMORPGs are spot on with the death penalty, I see no reason to change it whatsoever.
Further more, I don't think your assumption is sound either. Developers need to bash people for dying, that's what you deserve for dying, just like everyone else who dies, all of us. It's to show the simple fact: "don't die". Sure there are exceptions in open PvP games when you get ganked for no reason, but other than that, no exceptions really. And I don't think the "majority" of the MMO population would agree with such conservative thinking, but I could be making assumptions as well.
I've been following a game that intends on having Perma-death. Which is fine with me. It's not perma-death for everyone, though. The game has non-consentual combat. So basically I can run up to you anytime I want and stab you in the face. Only problem is if I do, and you come back to kill me..you can perma-death me. YOU aren't perma-deathed because you're an innocent person. I, however, would be classified as a "murderer" and open to perma-death.
To me that sounds wonderful. It gets rid of all the "0mgtehpwnz0ry" kids who just want to run around mindlessly killing anyone and everyone. It takes people who truly want to RP a bad guy and gives them the thrill of being chase, and doing the chasing.
Yes, it's very RP oriented. The game is being created FOR RPers, not for "0mgtehpwnz" kids.
One of my bigest complaints with the latest batch of MMORPG's is the way death is handled. The debt system of EQ2 and CoH is bad enough but WoW is just a joke. I have never played a game as easy to level as WoW, nor one where leveling felt so anti-climactic. If there is no penelty for dieing then there can be no sense of achivement on reaching a new level. You are going to level no matter what - it is guarenteed. If you were to group with the worst players on earth whilst playing WoW, then you will still make exp and at suffer no ill effects ( ok ok, you lose some armour durability - which is so cheap to fully repair that again it offers no penelty at all ) . The way things are going they might as well just automatically give players a new level every 24 hours regardless of how crap they are at playing. This should at least please the mummys boys and the Powerlevelers who have no interest in the game anyway but honestly belive everyone auto-respects them because they are max level.
As for other games, I don't think you have a point. There needs to be a death penalty, and if it isn't experience, then you're left with other options like max HP loss for a temporary time, losing durability on armor, chance to lose an item, etc... Either way you look at it, you're not going to like the death penalty. And that's the point of a death penalty, to make it so you don't to die. FFXI may have gone a bit too far, but most MMORPGs are spot on with the death penalty, I see no reason to change it whatsoever.
Read my post again. I never said there shouldnt be any death penalty. You made that one up. I wasnt even making a point, I was asking a question and nobody including you answered. So read again and answer it.
Further more, I don't think your assumption is sound either. Developers need to bash people for dying, that's what you deserve for dying, just like everyone else who dies, all of us. It's to show the simple fact: "don't die". Sure there are exceptions in open PvP games when you get ganked for no reason, but other than that, no exceptions really. And I don't think the "majority" of the MMO population would agree with such conservative thinking, but I could be making assumptions as well.
I dont call getting some experience debt or minor stats loss bashing players, really I dont really mind that. What I dont like and everyone here is lossing experience debt or lossing an item. That is something alot of people consider unacceptable while playing their game. I also never made an assumption, again I asked a question for people to think what we will see in the future on line games. Also I wanted to see what people thought about lossing experience debt and I got that.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
Yes I may have contradicted myself a TAD jd, but I still want some sort of argument from you instead of bolding 2 paragraphs. Fact is yes, I do like a strict death penalty, provided that you can realistically gain it back in a decent amount of time. FFXI may have been a little bit to hard, maybe not. In fact, now that I look at it, I think it was the right move. Stop dying people, simple as that.
I fully agree with Rikimaru_X, and a few others on this post. Don't die, if you don't die that means u havce skillz and you will lvl faster. There should always be some type of death penalty or where is the challenge? There has to be a death penalty and WoW was so easy to lvl it wasn't even funny...
Personally i dont like loosing items and experience when i die in a online game , most mmorpgs are big enough time sinks without that. I do not see the fun in grinding my arse off killing 10000 badgers just to have the xp lost if i happen to lag out/crash during a fight
I mean aint just knowing you'd been bested enough?, having to run/drive/ride or whatever back bad enough? , as someone said previously you'd be loosing time .
--- "you lost " , "you where beaten" ....dose'nt that sting enough?
would it work if you just hit yourself if you lost?
I at least cannot understand why you`d willingly want to be punished for dying , resulting in you having to invest tons of hours to get something you`d worked hard for back... unless you where seriously sadomasochistic
Some of you need to go play a single player game and get a quick refresher.
You have several forms of DP in single player; 1) Game Over..meaning congrats you get to start over from the very beginning ( ie perma death ), 2) Game over Continue?..meaning you continue from a typically auto saved point with a finite number of lives, 3) Game over Return to last save point..This can be easy or painful depending on the game..sometimes you die almost immeditally after saving..sometimes you are in the middle of that uber hard 2 hour boss fight, after 3 hours of picking your way through a maze and you die..thus 5 hours of your time are gone, or better yet you just got that rare Item off an creature or found that rare creature and bad luck you died and the last time you saved was..oh yea well before that.
Ironically noone complains about these death penalties, some of them being Far FAR harsher then anything in an MMO. Alot of them requiring just as much time in alot of instances. Why do you suppose that is? Oh yes its because once the game is bought there is no more support so People do not have a place to cry about how the computer *cheated* them.
My god, people wake up the Death penalties in MMO's are Pitiful at best. the OP complaining about the DP in FFXI, oh my god it set you back what? 30 minutes tops? and you lost nothing? Cry me a River. Feel free to go play wow where there is no penalty we will not miss you. Nothing personal people but some of you need to get a grip and realize that Death penalties are necessary to prevent rampant stupidity of players in upper tiered area's. Amazing thing about single player games is Dumb people never reach the end..Why? Because dumb mistakes will keep them trapped until they figure it out. Now obviously for a MMORPG that is bad for business so they scale back the penalty slightly. But to remove it completely is about absurd.
Do not get me wrong, I have no objections to the penalty in MMO's being alot lighter then in single player. but This argument is getting very old and very pathetic, the amount of whining from both sides is getting revolting. Simple solution, Don't like the penalty? Don't die.
Originally posted by amra Personally i dont like loosing items and experience when i die in a online game , most mmorpgs are big enough time sinks without that. I do not see the fun in grinding my arse off killing 10000 badgers just to have the xp lost if i happen to lag out/crash during a fight I mean aint just knowing you'd been bested enough?, having to run/drive/ride or whatever back bad enough? , as someone said previously you'd be loosing time . --- "you lost " , "you where beaten" ....dose'nt that sting enough? would it work if you just hit yourself if you lost? I at least cannot understand why you`d willingly want to be punished for dying , resulting in you having to invest tons of hours to get something you`d worked hard for back... unless you where seriously sadomasochistic
Lagging out and dying is never fun. True.
But.
No, just having the "knowledge" that you were just kicked is not really enough. There has to be a consequence for your failure. And XP loss is simply one of the most used penalties. I admit it is not the best, but essentially the time you need to go back to your corpse in WoW is also an XP penalty since you don't get XP (for obvious reasons) while travelling around as ghost. It works indirectly, but its there.
The problem with a "soft" to non-existent death penalty is that the game gets boring very fast, and that there is no real challenge, since the danger of dying is usually the only thing that makes things interesting (no matter if PvP or PvE). If on the other hand the game would have non-repeatable quests then then the death penalty could be way lower, though that would still leave us with the problem of PvP, disconnects and urget RL issues - I hope we agree that RL is more important than a game
So all in all a death penalty (be xp loss or whatever) is a needed "tool" to keep you on the edge and make the game generally more interesting. Its not about masochism, its about bearing the consequences of a failed action, and learning from it. Mistakes are an important way to learn, in life and in game. Make the best of it.
P.S.: The thing you mentioned with your example of the 10.000 badgers is another matter. I don't like games that require me to grind my butt off to that extent . So *I* would not play a game that requires me to do that. Death penatly in itself needs also to be viewed in relation to other traits of the game in question, also how much a level grind the game is.
------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
Originally posted by ZivaDomini I've been following a game that intends on having Perma-death. Which is fine with me. It's not perma-death for everyone, though. The game has non-consentual combat. So basically I can run up to you anytime I want and stab you in the face. Only problem is if I do, and you come back to kill me..you can perma-death me. YOU aren't perma-deathed because you're an innocent person. I, however, would be classified as a "murderer" and open to perma-death. To me that sounds wonderful. It gets rid of all the "0mgtehpwnz0ry" kids who just want to run around mindlessly killing anyone and everyone. It takes people who truly want to RP a bad guy and gives them the thrill of being chase, and doing the chasing. Yes, it's very RP oriented. The game is being created FOR RPers, not for "0mgtehpwnz" kids.
Pray tell what game is this and how can I play it. It sounds awesome.
Here is a really good question
Why do all failed encounters have to end in death? Death is a big deal, shouldn't be just thrown around so much. I wish death made a more lasting mark on characters.
Here's an idea, what if armor had HPs and when you took damage the armor took 75% and you took 25%. So you get beat on real bad and your armor gets destroyed. Now you have to run away and either craft, buy, or steal some more armor. Substitute magical robes for casters.
Originally posted by Jd1680a Didnt really like the idea of losing experience especially when it causes me to delevel. Felt like the game was bashing me over the head because I made a mistake. I prefer the nice death penalty over losing experience any time.
I understand your grief, and as a player, I actively dis the exp loss in games such as FFXI; but I am also a developer, and as such, I feel there needs to be some type of penalty for death. This is to prevent many things, such as people who enjoy griefing and PKing fellow players repeatedly, since if they're was no penalty, it would be even easier to lead a large group of enemies to the victims' group and allow themselves to die (un punished) and leave those monsters to destroy those left behind. I do believe, however, that even though a punishment is needed for death in MMOs, it is more of a question of how. The exp subtraction was, imo, a bit harsh for FFXI players. Instead, maybe there could be a temporary stat reduction, similar to the 'weakened' status that comes with being raised in FFXI, but not limited to only reducing the player's HP and MP, but all stats by a certain factor, and this factor could increase as the player dies more and more within a given time (possibly repeatedly griefing others, dying, then griefing again). In my own project, I have gone with the exp loss as a penalty to death, but that is where the similiarty to FFXI ends. The loss itself is based on level, but it is also based on the level of the entity that killed the player. If the player was killed by a very high monster/player/etc. the loss is miniscule, as compaired to if that same player was killed by one that was very, very low. Also, opposite of FFXI, exp loss, great or small, doesn't lead to level down (nothing does), but rather negative exp values. While you still have to gain back the lost points, you dont have any less ability to do this than you would have before, since your level has not changed since before the death nor after.
Originally posted by Jd1680a Im wondering if this feature in games is quickly being phased out by giving death penalties by newer games that are coming out? Do alot of developers are understanding the need not to bash players for dying? Instead do these developers understand the need to continue having the game fun enough if you die?
My opinion on 'To Punish for Death, or not to Punish' is stated above
Comments
Permanent death doesn't make games more fun, it merely makes people play in a hugely cautious fashion. You avoid anything even faintly risky, because the penalty for failure is so high.
Then of course, you end up just getting screwed anyways, because permadeath games don't kill you by making mistakes, they kill you when your ISP drops. Which, in the world that we all live in, is simply too common of an occurance.
Vitae as a death penalty works well. Remember that playing time is a resource, and if I have to spend time operating at reduced effectiveness, then you've decreased that resource. If my character is weaker, I'm not going to be able to deal with the same maximum threat level I could have been otherwise, won't be able to work on my high end quests, goals, whatever. Instead, I have to spend time earning back the ability to be at full effectiveness.
Most people seem to accept that, and as such, Vitae penalty style systems work pretty well.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
My idea of death penalty.
NO DEATH PENALTY
In PVE you can't die, monsters knock you out and you lie there until someone heals you, or you regenerate enough HPs to wake up. If you die in a tough area, you can play dead until you've built up enough HPs to make a run for it.
The only way you can die is in PVP, which of course would be totally open. Another player upon knocking you out would get the option to kill. If they take it you die and they are marked a murderer and can be hunted down and killed.
If you are killed then you wake up in reserected somewhere with a little less gear and a little less cash, if a murderer is killed he doesn't wake up and his possesions are collected by the killer.
I think it would work great!!!
gattm99{{{{My idea of death penalty.
NO DEATH PENALTY
In PVE you can't die, monsters knock you out and you lie there until someone heals you, or you regenerate enough HPs to wake up. If you die in a tough area, you can play dead until you've built up enough HPs to make a run for it.
The only way you can die is in PVP, which of course would be totally open. Another player upon knocking you out would get the option to kill. If they take it you die and they are marked a murderer and can be hunted down and killed.
If you are killed then you wake up in reserected somewhere with a little less gear and a little less cash, if a murderer is killed he doesn't wake up and his possesions are collected by the killer.
I think it would work great!!! }}}} gattm99
That would work for a game that was based on pve, but alot of people a fans of pvp and a sence of war in clan battles and rades and a system like that would really interfear in battles like that it would be a good idea for a pve serve for a game while other pvp severs would have a different system
I did a lot of suicide runs in WoW. Why not? Drop the gold and go at it again!
No death penalty means that any dork with enough time on their hands (me, for instance) can eventually get to be high level through sheer stubborn determination, even if they suck. And that, of course, is what everybody wants.
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
I think a penalty is a good thing, but to much of a good thing turns bad.
I think you SHOULD lose exp, but only the amount of exp you would have gained from the encounter had you won it - however you should NEVER de-level.
I do not think items should require repair ONLY when I lose an encounter. I think items should ALWAYS need repairing. Everything wears down.
Take away death penalty please.
And while your at it, take away time it takes for character advancement, and take away having to grind for that weapon. And take away all MOB skill, so they just stand there and done die. Please take away other people competeing against me, so I have almost no interaction. Also, i definently dont want to spend the time exploring and walking places, please make me able to teleport anywhere. I want to log into the game for the first time, kill a mob, get a uber-leet rare sword, and gain 20 levels.
[/sarcasm]
So if you were given a choice, Would you pick a game that offer very small amount of experience debt or a game that make you lose experience, so if you had 1000 exp you would drop 900?
Tho my answer wasnt fully answered on my orignal post. Do you guy all think that games with lose of experience when you die is being phased out from the industry in favor for experience debt of minor temporary lose of stats?
Note to MMORPG.com this would be a very good poll to ask everyone. Id be interested what everyone would pick.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
Ew.. No penalty means no effort. The penalty is there so it encourages you to think about what you're doing. Penalties are so that when you screw up, it costs you something, so that motivates you not to screw up. Yes, there will be glitches that will make you die through no fault of your own. So what, S*it happens. Deal with it. NPCs and players should be treated no differently by the game mechanics. You should suffer the same if you are killed by either. If you want a player-only game, what you want is one big arena with no plot, no lore, and coincidentally no point other than being the reigning champion. I like a bit more depth in my games.
And I will never play another mmorpg that doesn't have a good guild system in it, but I don't want to play one that FORCEs you to be part of a guild. A guild should be something special, an organization of players AND NPCs designed for a purpose besides safety in numbers. You can get safety in numbers just by adventuring with other people, which everyone does. Joining a guild should mean something more and be slightly more difficult, and therefore NOT be the only way to play. The one thing I didn't like about the SB guild system is that you're in a guild, or your a random spawner shunned by society, especially on the Lore server. There should be something in between. The game shouldn't penalize you for not joining a guild.
Without a significant battle loss penalty, MMOG's become too easy to advance in and no one respects the environment and there is no fear of taking risks.
Give me a serious experience loss or a random item loss for losing in battle, and keep it real.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
Actually, in response to an earlier post, Time can be a very nasty factor for dying. In Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, death cost you two things. A chunk of experience (not a huge amount, but definately a really inconvenient one) and time. A lot of time. Most people don't think to set up warp pipes to often, so you would have to trudge all the way through the dungeon back to where you were before. Depending on the style of game =/ time can definately be something you don't want to have to make up.
As for what I prefer in an MMO...I would have to say I like penalties, but not penalties that make you groan, roll your eyes, and log out because you just don't want to deal with them right now. Permadeath is a thing I would almost never want to play. Months of work down the drain in a few unlucky encounters. Yay, what fun, time to start over again! Item loss bites also, while not as bad as permadeath. A good item can take days to farm, then you get unlucky, and byebye item! Yay! Not fun at all. Generally, XP loss (without level loss) and equipment damage is fine for a penalty, at least to me. But hey, if you want to go out and play a permadeath game, be my guest. Just not for me.
I can understand not liking the experience penalty on FFXI, that was borderline crazy due to the fact that as it is the game was a complete grind fest, then if you die you lose 1/10 (is that right?) of your experience when you die, so that's like a few hours gone to hell in the later levels.
As for other games, I don't think you have a point. There needs to be a death penalty, and if it isn't experience, then you're left with other options like max HP loss for a temporary time, losing durability on armor, chance to lose an item, etc... Either way you look at it, you're not going to like the death penalty. And that's the point of a death penalty, to make it so you don't to die. FFXI may have gone a bit too far, but most MMORPGs are spot on with the death penalty, I see no reason to change it whatsoever.
Further more, I don't think your assumption is sound either. Developers need to bash people for dying, that's what you deserve for dying, just like everyone else who dies, all of us. It's to show the simple fact: "don't die". Sure there are exceptions in open PvP games when you get ganked for no reason, but other than that, no exceptions really. And I don't think the "majority" of the MMO population would agree with such conservative thinking, but I could be making assumptions as well.
I've been following a game that intends on having Perma-death. Which is fine with me. It's not perma-death for everyone, though. The game has non-consentual combat. So basically I can run up to you anytime I want and stab you in the face. Only problem is if I do, and you come back to kill me..you can perma-death me. YOU aren't perma-deathed because you're an innocent person. I, however, would be classified as a "murderer" and open to perma-death.
To me that sounds wonderful. It gets rid of all the "0mgtehpwnz0ry" kids who just want to run around mindlessly killing anyone and everyone. It takes people who truly want to RP a bad guy and gives them the thrill of being chase, and doing the chasing.
Yes, it's very RP oriented. The game is being created FOR RPers, not for "0mgtehpwnz" kids.
One of my bigest complaints with the latest batch of MMORPG's is the way death is handled.
The debt system of EQ2 and CoH is bad enough but WoW is just a joke. I have never played a game as easy to level as WoW, nor one where leveling felt so anti-climactic.
If there is no penelty for dieing then there can be no sense of achivement on reaching a new level. You are going to level no matter what - it is guarenteed. If you were to group with the worst players on earth whilst playing WoW, then you will still make exp and at suffer no ill effects ( ok ok, you lose some armour durability - which is so cheap to fully repair that again it offers no penelty at all ) .
The way things are going they might as well just automatically give players a new level every 24 hours regardless of how crap they are at playing. This should at least please the mummys boys and the Powerlevelers who have no interest in the game anyway but honestly belive everyone auto-respects them because they are max level.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
There is a lesson with losing experience:
A. Don't pick on somthing you can't chew
B. Don't get cocky
C. Don't show off
D. Everything that got you killed...
blah blah blah
-In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08-
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RISING DRAGOON ~AION US ONLINE LEGION for Elyos
Yes I may have contradicted myself a TAD jd, but I still want some sort of argument from you instead of bolding 2 paragraphs. Fact is yes, I do like a strict death penalty, provided that you can realistically gain it back in a decent amount of time. FFXI may have been a little bit to hard, maybe not. In fact, now that I look at it, I think it was the right move. Stop dying people, simple as that.
I fully agree with Rikimaru_X, and a few others on this post. Don't die, if you don't die that means u havce skillz and you will lvl faster. There should always be some type of death penalty or where is the challenge? There has to be a death penalty and WoW was so easy to lvl it wasn't even funny...
for info if anyone does like death penalties, watch out for Vanguard.
Personally i dont like loosing items and experience when i die in a online game , most mmorpgs are big enough time sinks without that. I do not see the fun in grinding my arse off killing 10000 badgers just to have the xp lost if i happen to lag out/crash during a fight
I mean aint just knowing you'd been bested enough?, having to run/drive/ride or whatever back bad enough? , as someone said previously you'd be loosing time .
--- "you lost " , "you where beaten" ....dose'nt that sting enough?
would it work if you just hit yourself if you lost?
I at least cannot understand why you`d willingly want to be punished for dying , resulting in you having to invest tons of hours to get something you`d worked hard for back... unless you where seriously sadomasochistic
Some of you need to go play a single player game and get a quick refresher.
You have several forms of DP in single player; 1) Game Over..meaning congrats you get to start over from the very beginning ( ie perma death ), 2) Game over Continue?..meaning you continue from a typically auto saved point with a finite number of lives, 3) Game over Return to last save point..This can be easy or painful depending on the game..sometimes you die almost immeditally after saving..sometimes you are in the middle of that uber hard 2 hour boss fight, after 3 hours of picking your way through a maze and you die..thus 5 hours of your time are gone, or better yet you just got that rare Item off an creature or found that rare creature and bad luck you died and the last time you saved was..oh yea well before that.
Ironically noone complains about these death penalties, some of them being Far FAR harsher then anything in an MMO. Alot of them requiring just as much time in alot of instances. Why do you suppose that is? Oh yes its because once the game is bought there is no more support so People do not have a place to cry about how the computer *cheated* them.
My god, people wake up the Death penalties in MMO's are Pitiful at best. the OP complaining about the DP in FFXI, oh my god it set you back what? 30 minutes tops? and you lost nothing? Cry me a River. Feel free to go play wow where there is no penalty we will not miss you. Nothing personal people but some of you need to get a grip and realize that Death penalties are necessary to prevent rampant stupidity of players in upper tiered area's. Amazing thing about single player games is Dumb people never reach the end..Why? Because dumb mistakes will keep them trapped until they figure it out. Now obviously for a MMORPG that is bad for business so they scale back the penalty slightly. But to remove it completely is about absurd.
Do not get me wrong, I have no objections to the penalty in MMO's being alot lighter then in single player. but This argument is getting very old and very pathetic, the amount of whining from both sides is getting revolting. Simple solution, Don't like the penalty? Don't die.
Lagging out and dying is never fun. True.
But.
No, just having the "knowledge" that you were just kicked is not really enough. There has to be a consequence for your failure. And XP loss is simply one of the most used penalties. I admit it is not the best, but essentially the time you need to go back to your corpse in WoW is also an XP penalty since you don't get XP (for obvious reasons) while travelling around as ghost. It works indirectly, but its there.
The problem with a "soft" to non-existent death penalty is that the game gets boring very fast, and that there is no real challenge, since the danger of dying is usually the only thing that makes things interesting (no matter if PvP or PvE). If on the other hand the game would have non-repeatable quests then then the death penalty could be way lower, though that would still leave us with the problem of PvP, disconnects and urget RL issues - I hope we agree that RL is more important than a game
So all in all a death penalty (be xp loss or whatever) is a needed "tool" to keep you on the edge and make the game generally more interesting. Its not about masochism, its about bearing the consequences of a failed action, and learning from it. Mistakes are an important way to learn, in life and in game. Make the best of it.
P.S.: The thing you mentioned with your example of the 10.000 badgers is another matter. I don't like games that require me to grind my butt off to that extent . So *I* would not play a game that requires me to do that. Death penatly in itself needs also to be viewed in relation to other traits of the game in question, also how much a level grind the game is.
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Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
Pray tell what game is this and how can I play it. It sounds awesome.
Here is a really good question
Why do all failed encounters have to end in death? Death is a big deal, shouldn't be just thrown around so much. I wish death made a more lasting mark on characters.
Here's an idea, what if armor had HPs and when you took damage the armor took 75% and you took 25%. So you get beat on real bad and your armor gets destroyed. Now you have to run away and either craft, buy, or steal some more armor. Substitute magical robes for casters.
Project Delta