It would seem Frank is one of those Out Of Touch Hardcore Players.
These are games, there are supposed to be fun.
I played EQ, yet never got any adreniline rush when I was about to die. You ever do a Plane of Hate/Fear raid pre-kunark? A wipe could cause possibly hours of corpse retrieval. Without gear, the melee types were crippled unable to do anything. That was not "fun" nor did add to the "experience" of the raid.
I read a post on another forum about a new player to EQ. Died and was unable to get to his corpse. Now 2 weeks worth of playing and developing his character seemed down the tubes. The community's solution was (1) make a new characater or (2) wait a week for corpse to appear in Shadowrest. If this had been me, I would of done option (3) Not waste time and cancel play different game. Certainately not a good first impression that player now has of EQ.
If it were possible to check numbers of all MMOG players, probably less than 10% of them are the Hardcore Types that enjoy/want/need harsh death penalties. As I said before, these are games and are supposed to be FUN not WORK. Many players have other real life stuff to do and cannot spend the time to play for several hours to recover from a harsh death penalty (either from regaining xp or items).
I do not mind xp debt systems or like in DAoC where you lose some xp but cannot lose level or gear. The main point is death penalties should be something that is undesirable, but will not distract from the fun of the game.
Yes WoW has a very "light" penalty, but it is a bit more than "walk to corpse that no one can loot to revive" penalty. You get a 10% durability loss on items per death. That Phat Lewt gear you have costs more to repair, so a bigger hit in your wallet per death if you are a hardcore player with lots of raid gear. If you were doing an instance, you revive at the beginning having to go all the way back to where you were.
I havent read all the post here, but i LOVE that this topic has been brought up, because we need all the different mmorpg:s out there. I think the main problem today, is that games are to item based, ppl are putting in month to get just ONE item, and when they hear about "full loot" they scream NO. What we need is a game thats not just killing and get new gear, what hapend to the trading crafting and housing, let crafters make rare and legendary weapons to not 100s a day ofcourse but then rare wont be that hard to get. Mobs should drop good weapons to slightly better not much... My point is, if the game isnt just about uber rare gear and items ppl wont cry that much about it, ofcourse they will cry someday but another day they will cheer as much
I truly enjoy the thrill of the EVE universe in the death penalty/interaction aspect. I love warping into low sec space and looking at local to see who is there. Then trying to decide who is friend or foe.
EVE can be very humbling in the death aspect. You lose your ship, mods and if you are engaged in PvP possibly your implants. At the same time it is very rewarding, especially in PvP. You never know when you are going to come across that group of industrial ships bringing a large supply of rare minerals to market. You also never know when you are going to pop a scan probe out and find someones cargo can floating near a moon that they have not recovered. I have found some nice goodies scanning for PvE players that have died.
Point is I think death penalties should serve a purpose. EVE managed to develop a great economy with its death penalty. People die in a game, it's a fact. If nothing else have death penalties serve the in-game economy. SWG had a vibrant economy until they took decay out of the game. EQ2 you can decay your items to 0 and still get them repaired. As I understand it WoW is the same way. Having a 0 loss 0 decay, destroys the economies of game at the basic level and detroys the whole risk v. reward at its highest level.
I hope my disjointed thoughts make some sense to someone
First off I will agree with Frank that MMORPGs should have death penalties because they bring the community together. My personal experience with MMOs are Mu online,SWG and FFXI and I've also played tons upon tons of single player RPGs in both consles and PCs. What makes this genre of games so great compared to single players is that they are all communities with players who interact with each other on many levels. People make guilds and these guilds make alliances and enemies. It's all part of a real world community as well. When someone accomplishes a certain goal (i.e level up,complete a quest etc) he gets a reward. The same thing should happen when something bad happens to that person (i.e dies,doesn't complete a quest on time etc.) and that is called a penalty. This is what creates balance in the world and it also brings balance to the gaming worlds. I know alot of people feel mad when they die and lose xp and have the notion they are not getting their money's worth but see it this way: if you don't want to have it that hard on yourself then just play single players. There you and only you have the control of what's going on and not another 5000 people who access the same server. MMOs like UO promoted the existence of both "good guyz" and "bad guyz" who made the world alot more interesting and gave people the edge to play and get out of their everyday work/school stress. Dying is an element of these games and this element should bring upon the players some consequences. I have never actually played WoW but I know someone who plays it 10-15 hours a day and once or twice I've been to his place and everytime he died he didn't even flinch. It was like NOTHING at all really happened. All he basically cares about is becoming a Grand Marshal (if that is what they call it). On the other hand, in FFXI, although there is no real PvP going on I still have a strong sense of what dying leads to and I should do everything to avoid that happening to me. On the other hand I believe in there being games for all kinds of people and if there is a good majority of them who just want to play their game without alot of hustle then I don't have a problem with games like WoW. Everyone has the right to a preferrence and I am for that 100%.
Yes, you make a good point. I'm not saying every game should be as harsh as UO was back in the day. I'm just upset there is nothing like it being produced. So the type of MMORPG I want to play (UO pre-trammel) isnt even being developed anymore.
But honestly, whats the point if there is no risk to dying other than a little time wasted. You can just pick up and solo rpg and become the God you want to be.
I've played all three games Everquest, Ultima Online, and World of Warcraft and I think they both make some good points in regards to death penalty. It's both good and bad and depends on the situation which makes more sense. I'll explain game by game.
In Ultima Online or UO as most refer to it as the death penality made perfect sense it gave a sense of danger and brougt the community together. It's easy to point the finger and say PK's ruined UO. That's only a half truth. Many of us loved hunting down PK's or stealing from them I mean they a reason disadvantage at times. PKing was just as much fun tho who didn't enjoy killing some punk mouthing off. In UO I either did or saw it all while I played the game so I understand it from a broader point of view than some. As a miner PK's were troublesome but on the other side of the story Pking a miner was pretty darn fun especially if you had a miner/smith yourself UO was misuderstood in alot of aspects because it was by no means a newbie friendly game. Mastering that game was part of the engeniousness of it once you did you could either help newbies or hurt them or both. It was by far the most realistic in terms of community. It's very much similar to our own lives. People are killed and stolen from in real life all the time rich, poor, innocent, or guilty it doesn't matter it's happening right now. UO brought as sense of immersion I guess it was a little too real perhaps for some and you were able to get away with this you could only dream of doing in real life but would never dare nor perhaps want to do. Anyways that ends my thoughts on UO.
In Everquest or EQ as it's often refered things became different than in UO. For one it was class based. You were essentially stuck and assigned a role where as in UO you could play the part of many different roles. Things slowed down the level grind was implimented and the game had it's own form of death penality experiance loss. Basically in exchange for not losing items from dieing instead you lost skill or at least the time it took to increase your skills as well as being limited to one role instead of the option of being able to be the jack of all trades essentially. The bard class in that sense was perhaps the most diverse class in that game. EQ touched back on more traditional rpg roots as well by making items and quests feel much more important. In fact UO really didn't offer any quest that I can think of aside from escorting npc's back and forth or saving them occasionally and as for loot it was pretty limited and standard not a ton of diversity like some players were used to from rpg's of the past. Questing was obviously a major role in EQ so much in fact that it's apart of the title itself. Rewarding players for questing became a big part as well and how do you do that items and experiance of course or apparently anyways I wish there were a better solution or at least some different ones. Anyways EQ's major flaw to alot of players was it's experiance penality for death. Casual players just didn't like it because it made the game hard for them to get into and hardcore players disliked it because it was well sort of harsh and would often die multiple times doing raids to receive new "uber" items. Once you reached the level cap items were the only thing that set players apart really. PvP was very limited in EQ. Anyways that's about it for EQ.
Last but not least World of Warcraft or WoW as most call it. WoW basically borrowed many different ideas from previous mmo's and try to improve upon them and the end result is what alot have come to enjoy. It mostly borrowed from EQ largly and probably because from a business standpoint it was simply the more successful game of the two in terms of popularity. However that's semi-debatible which I dicuss in the next and last paragraph. Anyways WoW got rid of the experiance penality from death which made both the casual and hardcore players alike happy since many felt it unessary and frankly I'm inclined to agree all tho personally I think just not being able to lose your level like in dark ages of camelot (another mmorpg) was enough but that's just my opion. It also expanded on the raiding features EQ became known for and made the game more solo friendly early on which I think everyone liked. The only downside is they made it too solo and quest orientated early on in the game and didn't promote grouping the way EQ did with a exp bonus so leveling a new character after you've done the quests and seen the game once it's pretty unbarable if you ever decide to make a new character especially toppled with the fact that they more or less did away with twinking characters which is the art of equiping a low level character with high level items by making items soulband as well as implimenting level caps something EQ did eventually after a few expansions and WoW borrowed. Another major thing it did was instanced dungeons borrowed from Anarchy Online which basically eleminated spawn camping that was so rampent in EQ and to a extent UO but more of a problem in EQ since in UO you could just attack the person if you felt like it if it really bothered you enough part of the beauty of that game Anyways the major reason behind EQ initiating level caps on items to prevent twinking was a well known thing in mmo's now was to help prevent ebayed items/currency essentially however in WoW with spawn camps no longer being a major issue items aren't as rare and sought after and thus twinking shouldn't really be as severe a problem like it was in EQ not to mention making items bind on pickup and equip. I'm really not sure completly why they've tryed to deterr twinks in WoW but they have and not like I can change it. Another sly thing they did was make travel easier compared to EQ but for some reason not as easy as UO I think just because it's a timesink so they can keep players from finishing there content as quickly and thus keep customers paying longer. The thing is anyone who's played UO I'm sure it annoys the heck out of but just the same was a knotch better than EQ's travel or at least intially it's become better with expansions. Now the last thing I can think of that WoW did was made it easier to level in general but especially for the casual players sort of to lure them in. Alot of casual players have become disappointed with the end game however since it's heavily guild centric as was EQ but unlike UO where a guild was in no way nessary but definatly added to the fun of the game.
I mentioned earlier that it was debatable the success of EQ compared to UO and so forth and I'll try to explain a little what I meant. My nubmers are probably off but EQ I think had around 2-4mil at it's peak and UO I think had around 1-1.5mil but also came out sooner and thus the mmo market was newer and the internet and computers weren't quite as common in the home as they were when EQ arrived or as they are today hence partially WoW's success compartively to EQ. I think graphics aside if the games had been released in reverse order perhaps UO might be the game with 5 mil subscriptions at at it's peak not sure if WoW has even hit it's peak yet and WoW with 1.5mil but you get the point. You see the mmorpg market is growing each year and more and more players are playing them thusly. Anyways that about wraps it up and I think alot of people might have a better understanding of mmorpg's as a result of this post. One last thing tho I'd just like to give thanks to the creaters of Ultima Online for being the first widely succesful mmorpg as well as meridian 59 which I never played but was really the 1st mmorpg and thus deserves equal props.
Well first off, the games that tend to cheapen death penalties to the point of "lay down - 10 seconds - stand back up" are the ones that tend to focus on uber items that can take literarily months to gather/make. Which causes alot of frustration on the one who just got looted for all their gear.
There in lies alot of the problem.
If game companies would not focus so hard on leet items that take weeks to assemble and you absolutely must have to compete, then getting dry looted isn't the end of the world to the gamer, but it is a deteriant to try and keep yourself from dieing or acting like an arsehat.
Needless to say, I agree with Frank. Death penalties are a must, but you have to tailor the game around the consequences of that penalty.
This is from the point of view of a player that really isn't interested in PvP unless it is RvR and no one is attacked w/o agreeing to it. I have no desire to ruin someone else's day and consider peple that do to have questionable moral and social values.
I believe in a death penalty but never so harsh that players never try anthing without a gang behind them. Make it harsh enough so it is to be avoided, but never so harsh as to overly limit exploration or stretching your char to see if you can take that mob that is a tad more powerful than you.
Retreiving your corpse should remove some of the penalty, but never should it involve depending on another class (ie cleric). Clerics should never have huge rez powers, it just results in people playing clerics for the social power, and not because they enjoy a support class.
As for the solo part of the discussion, I believe the "It's a MASSIVLY MULTIPLAYER game" arguement is so weak and overused that anyone stating it should be ashamed of themselves. Solo is a necessary part of MMORGs if you want any independance..the ability to come on-line and instantly start playing.
Solo is the only really challenging way to play (not counting raid leaders), demanding use of ALL abilities, not just the ones your fellow gamers pigeonhole your class as fulfilling and is definitly the only way to achieve any immersion.
Forced grouping and raiding only results in excess power for the maga-guild which results in isolationism for it's members at best and abuse of power by the inner core installing recruitment and looting guidelines that guarantee themselves of getting first shot at all loot at worse.
This ties into the Death Penalty discussion in that heavy death penalties results in a gang mentality....if in doubt zerg it with a guild with ample clerics/priests to guarantee no deaths.
Every time I see this topic discussed in a forum thread some place you can count on people showing up and saying that they cant get it up unless there is a harsh death penalty in the game they play. What I suspect is they dont care for one second if the person they kill loses experience or not, as much as they want free loot. This same type of person seems to be only too willing to seek out and use exploits to avoid consequences for their actions. If you allow that you have an opposing viewpoint to treating people in this manner they call you a care bear for having the common decency to treat other people in a fair manner.
I myself have a limited amount of time I can invest in playing these games due to real life commitments and obligations. I feel fortunate if I can put 3 or more hours a day into my game of choice and while I dont mind losing items open death Id prefer not to lose weeks worth of work in item value. I enjoy immersing myself in the game world and thinking about how my character would act in situations not about how to beat the system and Id rather not be looked at like a piñata to break open for a prize.
Just for the record, my experience with MMO's dates back to their ancestors -- text muds. For those of you too young to remember, text muds work very much like any MMO, except instead of a graphical client where you click on things and see what happens around you as pictures, you logged in using telnet and typed commands, and the world around you was described in prose.
The first mud I played was called WileyMUD II. My friend dragged me into the computer lab and sat me down at a vt220 and had me telnet to the game. I created an elven fighter/mage and was given my n00b starting equipment -- a club and a torch. Walking out of the inn, I was told to always "consider" everything I saw and be prepared to run. I attacked a villager. OW! Hey, why are the other villagers joining in? Hey, what's with them calling for help from adjacent rooms? What's the town guard getting involved for? Dead.
The death penalty in WileyMUD was simple. You left a corpse wherever you died, and all your stuff was on the corpse. This included all your gold. Anyone who felt like it could wander by and take it, and if you died in a city, there were janitor mobs who wandered around to purge junk left on the ground, so you had to remember where you died and sprint back there quickly!
In addition, you lost half your experience. Wiley used the traditional AD&D 2nd edition experience tables (modified a bit for the level range), and so each level too more experience than the last one. If you were 10th level and had something like 75,000 experience, when you died, you'd have 37,000 experience... if you died again, you'd have 18,000 experience and lose a level. Losing levels lost you whatever hit points you had gained, and whatever skills you had trained.
There was even a spell called "energy drain" which stripped a level from the victim. The first mage who reached level 16 in Wiley vowed that no other mage would ever reach that level. Since the game was open PK, he patrolled the game and hunted down anyone level 14 or higher and hit them with energy drain a few times.
It was scary, and it was fun!
So.... I think it's safe to say that I'm firmly in the came that thinks harsh death penalties are a good thing, and that they keep the game exciting and encourage smart gameplay, regardless of cooperation. If you know you can lose everything, you tend to plan ahead and keep your eyes open. Games like WoW are fun to play, but they lack the urgency. In that old text mud, I'd see something big and run 30 rooms away hoping it hadn't noticed me yet, heart pounding. In WoW, I've used death to nudge closer to quest objectives (run up near the quest item and die, so that you can respawn right on top of it without any mobs in range) -- and I've used it to travel quickly (crossing the wetlands? die outside of town and you're halfway across the zone instantly). Yawn.
I sympathize with those who complain about not having much time to play. However, I have to say that the game shouldn't be watered down for you. In real life, I enjoy archery, even though I suck at it. My eyesight is not very good, but I don't want them moving the targets closer because I don't have the ability to see clearly. I accept that I will never go very far, and likewise... if you can't devote many hours a week to playing your chosen MMO, you won't go very far in it either. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it though.
The death penalty just needs to corespond to the type of mmorpg you are playing then it will be no shock. Let's say you are playing a game where its mostly socializing and exploring but when you die you lose all your items and 5 levels most people would be like omg wtf just happend, also if you are playing a hardcore pvp game but when you die you revive with all your health and you actually get +1000 bonuses to your health str agility and int and all other stats would just be really strange. So basically death penalty just needs to fit the type of game created.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
For all you 'hardcore' players out there, the next time you die in WoW, EQ2, or any other 'carebear' game delete your character. Or, in the least destroy all your gear and shut down for the evening.
Having said that, I wouldn't mind seeing the rez timer increased in WoW. This is mostly in context to PvP deaths to prevent the all mighty zerg.
Ico Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
What strikes me as the TRUE driving force behind real death penalties becoming an endangered species is the need for players to be UBER as fast as poossible.
For me, it is about the journey and not the destination. Those of you who MUST get to the level 60 as fast as possible...THAT is the persona who is most heavily effected by a harsh penalty. Any delay in their acscension to the top is unacceptable. If they make the road to greatness lined with picket fences to keep the monsters out, how rewarding is the trip? IF you really enjoy the game, how long it takes to get to the end shouldn't matter, right? Just so long as it challenges you.
Let me hack my way through the wilderness on my own path to greatness. I find that the glory that comes with my achievements to be equally proportional to the magnitude of the challeges I had to overcome. It doesn't matter how long that takes, just so long as the time spent challenges me, as a game should.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone www.spankybus.com -3d Artist & Compositor -Writer -Professional Amature
i think making games easier is great..some people just want a light game..people with very busy lifes that still wanna play Mmorgs...i dont wanna have to worry about everything..i want it to be fun..not frusterating..i can play other games if i wanted that..WoW is what i play now...its very easy..very fun..then when i get tired of it ill move to something else..but while in collegeand tryin to work and take care of everyhting..i dont wanna be worrying about other things..i just wanna play..u know what i mean?
Ok, it's fair to say that I'm kinda new as an MMORPG player, having only played City of Heroes and WoW... so I don't have all of those old hangups about how things used to be, or anything like that - I think that death penalties serve a purpose, and it would be pointless to have death meaning absolutely nothing at all, I mean you need to ensure that players put at least a little thought into their actions. HOWEVER, I also think that making the penalties too harsh (losing XP, equipment, money, etc...) can be detrimental to the player too. Who wants to slave away at tackling a particularly tricky quest / mission only to be killed at the very end and lose everything you achieved up to that point, forcing you to start again and hope that the same thing doesn't happen? Now you could say that if you die, then you need to change your strategy - which is a fair and valid point, but who knows exactly what the right strategy might be? You can only learn by your mistakes, but if your mistakes are punished too severely, will you bother to learn at all?
The best answer, imo, is to have a fairly simple and light death penalty to begin with, which gets progressively more intense as your character levels up, after all the amount of XP needed to go up a level expands, so why shouldn't the penalty for dying go up proportionally too?
There is one thing that I don't agree with in the debate started by Frank and Garrett, and that's Frank's emphasis on getting a team together, in order to overcome a certain obstacle... now, in principle, that's a great idea, just call up your friends and kick butt! However, it's not always possible to do so, what if none of your friends are online at the time? What if nobody wants to team with you? Yes, these are Massively Multiplayer games, but that surely shouldn't mean that you NEED to be in a team at all times?
For me, the MMO means a world populated with many, many players - I don't always want to team with them, it can be just as much fun questing as a solo player, and seeing others doing the same around you. I agree that teaming up is a big part of a) why MMOs exist at all, and b) why they're so good to play, but do I have to constantly team up? MMOs are worlds to explore, peopled by thousands of real people - just like the world we live in everyday, but you can't tell me you always knock on your neighbours door and enlist them to come help get the shopping from the local supermarket? Sometimes it's good to have your own space in a crowded world.
Was this a debate on death penalties in general or death penalties in PvP?
Fact of the matter is... they can be different. In Lineage 2, you lose xp and stand a chance of dropping items upon death. If you are killed in PvP then you wont drop your items. However, if you just PK'd (killed someone who didn't fight back and therefore wasn't PvP'ing) then YOU stand a darn good chance of dropping multiple items if someone kills you before you work off the bad karma you got from killing someone.
There are still MMO's out there which allow you to gank, grief and then loot the corpse of the player. But there are also a lot more player friendly games which have none of that. Thus lies the problem all those Gank boys who love this sort of game no longer have anyone to gank because they're no longer forced to play 1 of the 2 available games.
As you may have guessed from the above I'm not a fan of harsh death penalties and loot rights. I like to PvP but I don't like to lose hours worth of play from being killed that's why I quite playing UO and Everquest, but why I still play planetside.
I couldn't agree more with Frank. I'm so sick of where mmorpgs are going. Back in the days, UO, EQ+AC pvp servers, those were the days.
Mmorpgs used to be fun. When you entered a mmorpg you entered a living breathing world, with tons of other people and with so many things to do - your imagination being the limit. Most often it would lead to exciting wars between guilds, the players themselves created the content, and when sometimes went pve'ing it was in order to gain the upperhand over your enemy guilds, and it would again lead to more fighting over ressources. That was a fuck'n good time imo.
Trends in current mmorpgs that absolutely disgust me:
No freedom Players are being held by the hand all the way, there are so many restrictions in place that it is impossible to be griefed. But it is also impossible to have any fun. There is no risk and no rewards, unless you count the uber magic items that developers want you to spend 95% of your time grinding for, and pay your monthly subscription, so that they can put in slightly better stuff next month that you can grind for again, killing the same mindless AI mobs over and over.
No winners or loosers. There are no winners and no loosers. When you die nothing happens, when you kill someone nothing happens. There are no rewards and no losses. You can't affect anything or anybody, devs want you to go grind, and keep paying your montly bill, luring you with even more uber equipment in next months grind race.
Instances. Now adays when you enter a mmorpg like wow, you enter an empty world, where everyone are playing their own lan games in groups of 4-40.
Currently there is not a single mmorpg I want to play. It's unbelieveable it has come to this. I thought mmorpgs would evolve and become better and better, I used to say to my fellow gamers, aint this great, and its only the beginning. How could I have guessed that in Mmorpgs where to dumbed down and streamlined to the masses, in some sort of mc donald'ish mass consumer philosophy.
There are so many mmorpgs on the market now, and even more coming, and the only one that interests me at all is Darkfall Online. What the hell happened to competition in an online game, winners and loosers you know, Counterstrike ring a bell? Why would I want to fight some stupid AI when I can fight real human opponents?
I think a small death penalty should be involved, like the Runescape one as an example. They have a penalty system were it is fair to both the attacker and the one who is being attaced in the wilderness. It is part of a gamer's choice to whether or not to go to PK zones, and therefore, they should know the risks. Having a penalty adds to excitement, although, it shouldn't be too harsh like starting from level 51 and respawning becoming level 1 again.
This debate was on death penalties in MMORPGS, but it is obvious the main concern for players is PvP deaths. The only circumstances that players do not have control over is the server lags, power interruptions, and various other causes of service interruptions. Players should not pay dearly if they suffer lag death. Yet, I do not know if they cannot act because their connection is weak or severed.
That being said, death should be a thing to be avoided is the common byline by all games. Unfortuantely, as evidenced in this thread, there is no universal answer to what is a reasonable incentive to play smart and protect your character.
I thought there was a game that was thinking outside the box, but I can't find it. They would minimize the death penalty issue by creating means for the best of both worlds. You want PvP and risk more/greater reward? Play a "main character"- permadeath, looting of each other, faster exp rate, greater rewards..
Play a support character and you get standard risk/reward features, no permadeath, no looting of others but no premium features would be available to you.
This might be worth a look. For those who love the pulse pounding experiences, danger around every corner, pick a "premium" type of character. You know the risks going in and you should not complain if you get PKd.
It also should be worth noting that permadeath rarely means one death and you have to remake a new character. Resurrections, revivals, maybe death wards should always be available for a resourceful group. Permadeath would usually fall upon the unprepared.
I would agree and say this is an awesome and original idea (other that hardcore D2) but.... Many players grow sooo attached to their characters and items earned and status gained, people just do not want to lose that. Especially status with a toon that has a reputation of owning, would be a painfull loss to many players that beat the odds outnumbered in PvP, low on HP, gets finished off while medding by a complete noob or lowbie, and then ultimately loses that status holding toon forever.
Reputation earned is what keeps me playing these games, otherwise its FPS where no matter how hard you own you will never be remembered.
ok, so, first i'll actually answer the post then I'll give you all my opinion on some of the smaller points i have seen made.
Death should be penalised if there is a good reason to actually not die, the mobs shouldnt be imposible to kill, xo shouldnt be hard to get , and the rewards should be good to decent, I Should no be penalised on a game taht is too difecult to play, the mobs can never be soloed walking in an area means death, why in gods name would i want to play this game, that in a nutshell is my view on death penalties, i tried not to slant it towards any side byut i think i did anyways,
now onto some of the things that bothered me about the reasons people liked or disliked penalties,
an online world is just that, a world online, if i choose to go off and do something by myslef, i stil lwant to be able to talk to my freinds in the same world, it adds a sence of realism, i feal like i am actually there if i am doing a quest by myself and decide to talk to my freinds about curent afiars or who said what to who, etc.,etc.. as in real life you can choose to see a movie by yourself or go with your freinds ,its about choice , not about if its online i should group and if its single player i should be playing quake 4 , or something.
now for you powerleveling player killers,...i am sorry you have small...i mean large cars .
mmmm i think i mised some points ..but i got the 2 that bothered me the most
online games are about freedom of moevment and choices
there HAS to be some type of penalty fr dying or theres no reason to stay alive , i played DAoC for years and i think maybe they have the right idea as far as death and the penalty .. there is no penalty for PvP other than rezurection sickness and having to travel back to whereever you wanted to be and if you chose you were able to stay in areas where PvP was not allowed .
as far as penalties for death in PvE there was an XP loss and honestly afetr grinding for an hour or two who wants to lose XP ?
money and items gained were never in jeopardy and considering how hard it can be to earn money and get that item you want i see no reason for another player to be able to take either from you.
thats just the way i see it ,im sure there are people who disagree with me but this is the way i like things .
Ive play FFXI for two days before I quit. That game is a major grindfest, could take your days if not a week to level once. God forbid if you died, losing 10% of your experience is losing hours of grinding. Losing any amount of experience on a game that is unacceptable.
For a game like WoW that have successfully gained five million people on its servers, is going to get more MMOGs copying its style. One area would be copying its style of death penalty. A game developer would need to make the game fun but yet be gentle enough when a player dies. Players have already let most Western (American and European) game developers know that losing items or experience is unacceptable, and MMOG could lose thousands of players all because of one bad moment. Asian game developers will have to learn from WoW and not make the death penalities more relaxed.
Most of anyone here that is complaining about WoW death penalties is too easy, isnt providing the majority of the opinions. Nobody isnt going to listen to the small minority. Any future games will be as relaxed in the dps because that what the majority of what people want. If you really think WoW is too easy, maybe you could try playing lineage 2, silkroad online, FFXI, or any other asian MMOG, they still have experience and item loses.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
Comments
It would seem Frank is one of those Out Of Touch Hardcore Players.
These are games, there are supposed to be fun.
I played EQ, yet never got any adreniline rush when I was about to die. You ever do a Plane of Hate/Fear raid pre-kunark? A wipe could cause possibly hours of corpse retrieval. Without gear, the melee types were crippled unable to do anything. That was not "fun" nor did add to the "experience" of the raid.
I read a post on another forum about a new player to EQ. Died and was unable to get to his corpse. Now 2 weeks worth of playing and developing his character seemed down the tubes. The community's solution was (1) make a new characater or (2) wait a week for corpse to appear in Shadowrest. If this had been me, I would of done option (3) Not waste time and cancel play different game. Certainately not a good first impression that player now has of EQ.
If it were possible to check numbers of all MMOG players, probably less than 10% of them are the Hardcore Types that enjoy/want/need harsh death penalties. As I said before, these are games and are supposed to be FUN not WORK. Many players have other real life stuff to do and cannot spend the time to play for several hours to recover from a harsh death penalty (either from regaining xp or items).
I do not mind xp debt systems or like in DAoC where you lose some xp but cannot lose level or gear. The main point is death penalties should be something that is undesirable, but will not distract from the fun of the game.
Yes WoW has a very "light" penalty, but it is a bit more than "walk to corpse that no one can loot to revive" penalty. You get a 10% durability loss on items per death. That Phat Lewt gear you have costs more to repair, so a bigger hit in your wallet per death if you are a hardcore player with lots of raid gear. If you were doing an instance, you revive at the beginning having to go all the way back to where you were.
I havent read all the post here, but i LOVE that this topic has been brought up, because we need all the different mmorpg:s out there.
I think the main problem today, is that games are to item based, ppl are putting in month to get just ONE item, and when they hear about "full loot" they scream NO. What we need is a game thats not just killing and get new gear, what hapend to the trading crafting and housing, let crafters make rare and legendary weapons to not 100s a day ofcourse but then rare wont be that hard to get. Mobs should drop good weapons to slightly better not much... My point is, if the game isnt just about uber rare gear and items ppl wont cry that much about it, ofcourse they will cry someday but another day they will cheer as much
I truly enjoy the thrill of the EVE universe in the death penalty/interaction aspect. I love warping into low sec space and looking at local to see who is there. Then trying to decide who is friend or foe.
EVE can be very humbling in the death aspect. You lose your ship, mods and if you are engaged in PvP possibly your implants. At the same time it is very rewarding, especially in PvP. You never know when you are going to come across that group of industrial ships bringing a large supply of rare minerals to market. You also never know when you are going to pop a scan probe out and find someones cargo can floating near a moon that they have not recovered. I have found some nice goodies scanning for PvE players that have died.
Point is I think death penalties should serve a purpose. EVE managed to develop a great economy with its death penalty. People die in a game, it's a fact. If nothing else have death penalties serve the in-game economy. SWG had a vibrant economy until they took decay out of the game. EQ2 you can decay your items to 0 and still get them repaired. As I understand it WoW is the same way. Having a 0 loss 0 decay, destroys the economies of game at the basic level and detroys the whole risk v. reward at its highest level.
I hope my disjointed thoughts make some sense to someone
First off I will agree with Frank that MMORPGs should have death penalties because they bring the community together. My personal experience with MMOs are Mu online,SWG and FFXI and I've also played tons upon tons of single player RPGs in both consles and PCs. What makes this genre of games so great compared to single players is that they are all communities with players who interact with each other on many levels. People make guilds and these guilds make alliances and enemies. It's all part of a real world community as well. When someone accomplishes a certain goal (i.e level up,complete a quest etc) he gets a reward. The same thing should happen when something bad happens to that person (i.e dies,doesn't complete a quest on time etc.) and that is called a penalty. This is what creates balance in the world and it also brings balance to the gaming worlds. I know alot of people feel mad when they die and lose xp and have the notion they are not getting their money's worth but see it this way: if you don't want to have it that hard on yourself then just play single players. There you and only you have the control of what's going on and not another 5000 people who access the same server. MMOs like UO promoted the existence of both "good guyz" and "bad guyz" who made the world alot more interesting and gave people the edge to play and get out of their everyday work/school stress. Dying is an element of these games and this element should bring upon the players some consequences. I have never actually played WoW but I know someone who plays it 10-15 hours a day and once or twice I've been to his place and everytime he died he didn't even flinch. It was like NOTHING at all really happened. All he basically cares about is becoming a Grand Marshal (if that is what they call it). On the other hand, in FFXI, although there is no real PvP going on I still have a strong sense of what dying leads to and I should do everything to avoid that happening to me. On the other hand I believe in there being games for all kinds of people and if there is a good majority of them who just want to play their game without alot of hustle then I don't have a problem with games like WoW. Everyone has the right to a preferrence and I am for that 100%.
Yes, you make a good point. I'm not saying every game should be as harsh as UO was back in the day. I'm just upset there is nothing like it being produced. So the type of MMORPG I want to play (UO pre-trammel) isnt even being developed anymore.
But honestly, whats the point if there is no risk to dying other than a little time wasted. You can just pick up and solo rpg and become the God you want to be.
I've played all three games Everquest, Ultima Online, and World of Warcraft and I think they both make some good points in regards to death penalty. It's both good and bad and depends on the situation which makes more sense. I'll explain game by game.
In Ultima Online or UO as most refer to it as the death penality made perfect sense it gave a sense of danger and brougt the community together. It's easy to point the finger and say PK's ruined UO. That's only a half truth. Many of us loved hunting down PK's or stealing from them I mean they a reason disadvantage at times. PKing was just as much fun tho who didn't enjoy killing some punk mouthing off. In UO I either did or saw it all while I played the game so I understand it from a broader point of view than some. As a miner PK's were troublesome but on the other side of the story Pking a miner was pretty darn fun especially if you had a miner/smith yourself
UO was misuderstood in alot of aspects because it was by no means a newbie friendly game. Mastering that game was part of the engeniousness of it once you did you could either help newbies or hurt them or both. It was by far the most realistic in terms of community. It's very much similar to our own lives. People are killed and stolen from in real life all the time rich, poor, innocent, or guilty it doesn't matter it's happening right now. UO brought as sense of immersion I guess it was a little too real perhaps for some and you were able to get away with this you could only dream of doing in real life but would never dare nor perhaps want to do. Anyways that ends my thoughts on UO.
In Everquest or EQ as it's often refered things became different than in UO. For one it was class based. You were essentially stuck and assigned a role where as in UO you could play the part of many different roles. Things slowed down the level grind was implimented and the game had it's own form of death penality experiance loss. Basically in exchange for not losing items from dieing instead you lost skill or at least the time it took to increase your skills as well as being limited to one role instead of the option of being able to be the jack of all trades essentially. The bard class in that sense was perhaps the most diverse class in that game. EQ touched back on more traditional rpg roots as well by making items and quests feel much more important. In fact UO really didn't offer any quest that I can think of aside from escorting npc's back and forth or saving them occasionally and as for loot it was pretty limited and standard not a ton of diversity like some players were used to from rpg's of the past. Questing was obviously a major role in EQ so much in fact that it's apart of the title itself. Rewarding players for questing became a big part as well and how do you do that items and experiance of course or apparently anyways I wish there were a better solution or at least some different ones. Anyways EQ's major flaw to alot of players was it's experiance penality for death. Casual players just didn't like it because it made the game hard for them to get into and hardcore players disliked it because it was well sort of harsh and would often die multiple times doing raids to receive new "uber" items. Once you reached the level cap items were the only thing that set players apart really. PvP was very limited in EQ. Anyways that's about it for EQ.
Last but not least World of Warcraft or WoW as most call it. WoW basically borrowed many different ideas from previous mmo's and try to improve upon them and the end result is what alot have come to enjoy. It mostly borrowed from EQ largly and probably because from a business standpoint it was simply the more successful game of the two in terms of popularity. However that's semi-debatible which I dicuss in the next and last paragraph. Anyways WoW got rid of the experiance penality from death which made both the casual and hardcore players alike happy since many felt it unessary and frankly I'm inclined to agree all tho personally I think just not being able to lose your level like in dark ages of camelot (another mmorpg) was enough but that's just my opion. It also expanded on the raiding features EQ became known for and made the game more solo friendly early on which I think everyone liked. The only downside is they made it too solo and quest orientated early on in the game and didn't promote grouping the way EQ did with a exp bonus so leveling a new character after you've done the quests and seen the game once it's pretty unbarable if you ever decide to make a new character especially toppled with the fact that they more or less did away with twinking characters which is the art of equiping a low level character with high level items by making items soulband as well as implimenting level caps something EQ did eventually after a few expansions and WoW borrowed. Another major thing it did was instanced dungeons borrowed from Anarchy Online which basically eleminated spawn camping that was so rampent in EQ and to a extent UO but more of a problem in EQ since in UO you could just attack the person if you felt like it if it really bothered you enough part of the beauty of that game
Anyways the major reason behind EQ initiating level caps on items to prevent twinking was a well known thing in mmo's now was to help prevent ebayed items/currency essentially however in WoW with spawn camps no longer being a major issue items aren't as rare and sought after and thus twinking shouldn't really be as severe a problem like it was in EQ not to mention making items bind on pickup and equip. I'm really not sure completly why they've tryed to deterr twinks in WoW but they have and not like I can change it. Another sly thing they did was make travel easier compared to EQ but for some reason not as easy as UO I think just because it's a timesink so they can keep players from finishing there content as quickly and thus keep customers paying longer. The thing is anyone who's played UO I'm sure it annoys the heck out of but just the same was a knotch better than EQ's travel or at least intially it's become better with expansions. Now the last thing I can think of that WoW did was made it easier to level in general but especially for the casual players sort of to lure them in. Alot of casual players have become disappointed with the end game however since it's heavily guild centric as was EQ but unlike UO where a guild was in no way nessary but definatly added to the fun of the game.
I mentioned earlier that it was debatable the success of EQ compared to UO and so forth and I'll try to explain a little what I meant. My nubmers are probably off but EQ I think had around 2-4mil at it's peak and UO I think had around 1-1.5mil but also came out sooner and thus the mmo market was newer and the internet and computers weren't quite as common in the home as they were when EQ arrived or as they are today hence partially WoW's success compartively to EQ. I think graphics aside if the games had been released in reverse order perhaps UO might be the game with 5 mil subscriptions at at it's peak not sure if WoW has even hit it's peak yet and WoW with 1.5mil but you get the point. You see the mmorpg market is growing each year and more and more players are playing them thusly. Anyways that about wraps it up and I think alot of people might have a better understanding of mmorpg's as a result of this post. One last thing tho I'd just like to give thanks to the creaters of Ultima Online for being the first widely succesful mmorpg as well as meridian 59 which I never played but was really the 1st mmorpg and thus deserves equal props.
Well first off, the games that tend to cheapen death penalties to the point of "lay down - 10 seconds - stand back up" are the ones that tend to focus on uber items that can take literarily months to gather/make. Which causes alot of frustration on the one who just got looted for all their gear.
There in lies alot of the problem.
If game companies would not focus so hard on leet items that take weeks to assemble and you absolutely must have to compete, then getting dry looted isn't the end of the world to the gamer, but it is a deteriant to try and keep yourself from dieing or acting like an arsehat.
Needless to say, I agree with Frank. Death penalties are a must, but you have to tailor the game around the consequences of that penalty.
This is from the point of view of a player that really isn't interested in PvP unless it is RvR and no one is attacked w/o agreeing to it. I have no desire to ruin someone else's day and consider peple that do to have questionable moral and social values.
I believe in a death penalty but never so harsh that players never try anthing without a gang behind them. Make it harsh enough so it is to be avoided, but never so harsh as to overly limit exploration or stretching your char to see if you can take that mob that is a tad more powerful than you.
Retreiving your corpse should remove some of the penalty, but never should it involve depending on another class (ie cleric). Clerics should never have huge rez powers, it just results in people playing clerics for the social power, and not because they enjoy a support class.
As for the solo part of the discussion, I believe the "It's a MASSIVLY MULTIPLAYER game" arguement is so weak and overused that anyone stating it should be ashamed of themselves. Solo is a necessary part of MMORGs if you want any independance..the ability to come on-line and instantly start playing.
Solo is the only really challenging way to play (not counting raid leaders), demanding use of ALL abilities, not just the ones your fellow gamers pigeonhole your class as fulfilling and is definitly the only way to achieve any immersion.
Forced grouping and raiding only results in excess power for the maga-guild which results in isolationism for it's members at best and abuse of power by the inner core installing recruitment and looting guidelines that guarantee themselves of getting first shot at all loot at worse.
This ties into the Death Penalty discussion in that heavy death penalties results in a gang mentality....if in doubt zerg it with a guild with ample clerics/priests to guarantee no deaths.
Anwar/Geezer
Every time I see this topic discussed in a forum thread some place you can count on people showing up and saying that they cant get it up unless there is a harsh death penalty in the game they play. What I suspect is they dont care for one second if the person they kill loses experience or not, as much as they want free loot. This same type of person seems to be only too willing to seek out and use exploits to avoid consequences for their actions. If you allow that you have an opposing viewpoint to treating people in this manner they call you a care bear for having the common decency to treat other people in a fair manner.
I myself have a limited amount of time I can invest in playing these games due to real life commitments and obligations. I feel fortunate if I can put 3 or more hours a day into my game of choice and while I dont mind losing items open death Id prefer not to lose weeks worth of work in item value. I enjoy immersing myself in the game world and thinking about how my character would act in situations not about how to beat the system and Id rather not be looked at like a piñata to break open for a prize.
Just for the record, my experience with MMO's dates back to their ancestors -- text muds. For those of you too young to remember, text muds work very much like any MMO, except instead of a graphical client where you click on things and see what happens around you as pictures, you logged in using telnet and typed commands, and the world around you was described in prose.
The first mud I played was called WileyMUD II. My friend dragged me into the computer lab and sat me down at a vt220 and had me telnet to the game. I created an elven fighter/mage and was given my n00b starting equipment -- a club and a torch. Walking out of the inn, I was told to always "consider" everything I saw and be prepared to run. I attacked a villager. OW! Hey, why are the other villagers joining in? Hey, what's with them calling for help from adjacent rooms? What's the town guard getting involved for? Dead.
The death penalty in WileyMUD was simple. You left a corpse wherever you died, and all your stuff was on the corpse. This included all your gold. Anyone who felt like it could wander by and take it, and if you died in a city, there were janitor mobs who wandered around to purge junk left on the ground, so you had to remember where you died and sprint back there quickly!
In addition, you lost half your experience. Wiley used the traditional AD&D 2nd edition experience tables (modified a bit for the level range), and so each level too more experience than the last one. If you were 10th level and had something like 75,000 experience, when you died, you'd have 37,000 experience... if you died again, you'd have 18,000 experience and lose a level. Losing levels lost you whatever hit points you had gained, and whatever skills you had trained.
There was even a spell called "energy drain" which stripped a level from the victim. The first mage who reached level 16 in Wiley vowed that no other mage would ever reach that level. Since the game was open PK, he patrolled the game and hunted down anyone level 14 or higher and hit them with energy drain a few times.
It was scary, and it was fun!
So.... I think it's safe to say that I'm firmly in the came that thinks harsh death penalties are a good thing, and that they keep the game exciting and encourage smart gameplay, regardless of cooperation. If you know you can lose everything, you tend to plan ahead and keep your eyes open. Games like WoW are fun to play, but they lack the urgency. In that old text mud, I'd see something big and run 30 rooms away hoping it hadn't noticed me yet, heart pounding. In WoW, I've used death to nudge closer to quest objectives (run up near the quest item and die, so that you can respawn right on top of it without any mobs in range) -- and I've used it to travel quickly (crossing the wetlands? die outside of town and you're halfway across the zone instantly). Yawn.
I sympathize with those who complain about not having much time to play. However, I have to say that the game shouldn't be watered down for you. In real life, I enjoy archery, even though I suck at it. My eyesight is not very good, but I don't want them moving the targets closer because I don't have the ability to see clearly. I accept that I will never go very far, and likewise... if you can't devote many hours a week to playing your chosen MMO, you won't go very far in it either. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it though.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
For all you 'hardcore' players out there, the next time you die in WoW, EQ2, or any other 'carebear' game delete your character. Or, in the least destroy all your gear and shut down for the evening.
Having said that, I wouldn't mind seeing the rez timer increased in WoW. This is mostly in context to PvP deaths to prevent the all mighty zerg.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
What strikes me as the TRUE driving force behind real death penalties becoming an endangered species is the need for players to be UBER as fast as poossible.
For me, it is about the journey and not the destination. Those of you who MUST get to the level 60 as fast as possible...THAT is the persona who is most heavily effected by a harsh penalty. Any delay in their acscension to the top is unacceptable. If they make the road to greatness lined with picket fences to keep the monsters out, how rewarding is the trip? IF you really enjoy the game, how long it takes to get to the end shouldn't matter, right? Just so long as it challenges you.
Let me hack my way through the wilderness on my own path to greatness. I find that the glory that comes with my achievements to be equally proportional to the magnitude of the challeges I had to overcome. It doesn't matter how long that takes, just so long as the time spent challenges me, as a game should.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
i think making games easier is great..some people just want a light game..people with very busy lifes that still wanna play Mmorgs...i dont wanna have to worry about everything..i want it to be fun..not frusterating..i can play other games if i wanted that..WoW is what i play now...its very easy..very fun..then when i get tired of it ill move to something else..but while in collegeand tryin to work and take care of everyhting..i dont wanna be worrying about other things..i just wanna play..u know what i mean?
Good,Bad, I'm the guy with the gun!-Ash
Ok, it's fair to say that I'm kinda new as an MMORPG player, having only played City of Heroes and WoW... so I don't have all of those old hangups about how things used to be, or anything like that - I think that death penalties serve a purpose, and it would be pointless to have death meaning absolutely nothing at all, I mean you need to ensure that players put at least a little thought into their actions. HOWEVER, I also think that making the penalties too harsh (losing XP, equipment, money, etc...) can be detrimental to the player too. Who wants to slave away at tackling a particularly tricky quest / mission only to be killed at the very end and lose everything you achieved up to that point, forcing you to start again and hope that the same thing doesn't happen? Now you could say that if you die, then you need to change your strategy - which is a fair and valid point, but who knows exactly what the right strategy might be? You can only learn by your mistakes, but if your mistakes are punished too severely, will you bother to learn at all?
The best answer, imo, is to have a fairly simple and light death penalty to begin with, which gets progressively more intense as your character levels up, after all the amount of XP needed to go up a level expands, so why shouldn't the penalty for dying go up proportionally too?
There is one thing that I don't agree with in the debate started by Frank and Garrett, and that's Frank's emphasis on getting a team together, in order to overcome a certain obstacle... now, in principle, that's a great idea, just call up your friends and kick butt! However, it's not always possible to do so, what if none of your friends are online at the time? What if nobody wants to team with you? Yes, these are Massively Multiplayer games, but that surely shouldn't mean that you NEED to be in a team at all times?
For me, the MMO means a world populated with many, many players - I don't always want to team with them, it can be just as much fun questing as a solo player, and seeing others doing the same around you. I agree that teaming up is a big part of a) why MMOs exist at all, and b) why they're so good to play, but do I have to constantly team up? MMOs are worlds to explore, peopled by thousands of real people - just like the world we live in everyday, but you can't tell me you always knock on your neighbours door and enlist them to come help get the shopping from the local supermarket? Sometimes it's good to have your own space in a crowded world.
-=-=-
Comebyu
Was this a debate on death penalties in general or death penalties in PvP?
Fact of the matter is... they can be different. In Lineage 2, you lose xp and stand a chance of dropping items upon death. If you are killed in PvP then you wont drop your items. However, if you just PK'd (killed someone who didn't fight back and therefore wasn't PvP'ing) then YOU stand a darn good chance of dropping multiple items if someone kills you before you work off the bad karma you got from killing someone.
There are still MMO's out there which allow you to gank, grief and then loot the corpse of the player. But there are also a lot more player friendly games which have none of that. Thus lies the problem all those Gank boys who love this sort of game no longer have anyone to gank because they're no longer forced to play 1 of the 2 available games.
As you may have guessed from the above I'm not a fan of harsh death penalties and loot rights. I like to PvP but I don't like to lose hours worth of play from being killed that's why I quite playing UO and Everquest, but why I still play planetside.
I couldn't agree more with Frank. I'm so sick of where mmorpgs are going. Back in the days, UO, EQ+AC pvp servers, those were the days.
Mmorpgs used to be fun. When you entered a mmorpg you entered a living breathing world, with tons of other people and with so many things to do - your imagination being the limit. Most often it would lead to exciting wars between guilds, the players themselves created the content, and when sometimes went pve'ing it was in order to gain the upperhand over your enemy guilds, and it would again lead to more fighting over ressources. That was a fuck'n good time imo.
Trends in current mmorpgs that absolutely disgust me:
No freedom
Players are being held by the hand all the way, there are so many restrictions in place that it is impossible to be griefed. But it is also impossible to have any fun. There is no risk and no rewards, unless you count the uber magic items that developers want you to spend 95% of your time grinding for, and pay your monthly subscription, so that they can put in slightly better stuff next month that you can grind for again, killing the same mindless AI mobs over and over.
No winners or loosers.
There are no winners and no loosers. When you die nothing happens, when you kill someone nothing happens. There are no rewards and no losses. You can't affect anything or anybody, devs want you to go grind, and keep paying your montly bill, luring you with even more uber equipment in next months grind race.
Instances.
Now adays when you enter a mmorpg like wow, you enter an empty world, where everyone are playing their own lan games in groups of 4-40.
Currently there is not a single mmorpg I want to play. It's unbelieveable it has come to this. I thought mmorpgs would evolve and become better and better, I used to say to my fellow gamers, aint this great, and its only the beginning. How could I have guessed that in Mmorpgs where to dumbed down and streamlined to the masses, in some sort of mc donald'ish mass consumer philosophy.
There are so many mmorpgs on the market now, and even more coming, and the only one that interests me at all is Darkfall Online. What the hell happened to competition in an online game, winners and loosers you know, Counterstrike ring a bell? Why would I want to fight some stupid AI when I can fight real human opponents?
The state of MMORPG's is sad indeed ;(
Khael[SUN]
SUN - peekayin since pong
Webdeveloper on:
http://www.guildofsun.com
http://www.bloodmonarchy.com
This debate was on death penalties in MMORPGS, but it is obvious the main concern for players is PvP deaths. The only circumstances that players do not have control over is the server lags, power interruptions, and various other causes of service interruptions. Players should not pay dearly if they suffer lag death. Yet, I do not know if they cannot act because their connection is weak or severed.
That being said, death should be a thing to be avoided is the common byline by all games. Unfortuantely, as evidenced in this thread, there is no universal answer to what is a reasonable incentive to play smart and protect your character.
I thought there was a game that was thinking outside the box, but I can't find it. They would minimize the death penalty issue by creating means for the best of both worlds. You want PvP and risk more/greater reward? Play a "main character"- permadeath, looting of each other, faster exp rate, greater rewards..
Play a support character and you get standard risk/reward features, no permadeath, no looting of others but no premium features would be available to you.
This might be worth a look. For those who love the pulse pounding experiences, danger around every corner, pick a "premium" type of character. You know the risks going in and you should not complain if you get PKd.
It also should be worth noting that permadeath rarely means one death and you have to remake a new character. Resurrections, revivals, maybe death wards should always be available for a resourceful group. Permadeath would usually fall upon the unprepared.
I would agree and say this is an awesome and original idea (other that hardcore D2) but.... Many players grow sooo attached to their characters and items earned and status gained, people just do not want to lose that. Especially status with a toon that has a reputation of owning, would be a painfull loss to many players that beat the odds outnumbered in PvP, low on HP, gets finished off while medding by a complete noob or lowbie, and then ultimately loses that status holding toon forever.
Reputation earned is what keeps me playing these games, otherwise its FPS where no matter how hard you own you will never be remembered.
I think they should do a public execution in game to characters banned for hacking/exploiting. That would be funny as hell.
ok, so, first i'll actually answer the post then I'll give you all my opinion on some of the smaller points i have seen made.
Death should be penalised if there is a good reason to actually not die, the mobs shouldnt be imposible to kill, xo shouldnt be hard to get , and the rewards should be good to decent, I Should no be penalised on a game taht is too difecult to play, the mobs can never be soloed walking in an area means death, why in gods name would i want to play this game, that in a nutshell is my view on death penalties, i tried not to slant it towards any side byut i think i did anyways,
now onto some of the things that bothered me about the reasons people liked or disliked penalties,
an online world is just that, a world online, if i choose to go off and do something by myslef, i stil lwant to be able to talk to my freinds in the same world, it adds a sence of realism, i feal like i am actually there if i am doing a quest by myself and decide to talk to my freinds about curent afiars or who said what to who, etc.,etc.. as in real life you can choose to see a movie by yourself or go with your freinds ,its about choice , not about if its online i should group and if its single player i should be playing quake 4 , or something.
now for you powerleveling player killers,...i am sorry you have small...i mean large cars
.
mmmm i think i mised some points ..but i got the 2 that bothered me the most
online games are about freedom of moevment and choices
people who kill people on line have isues....
THE END..
ok heres my take
there HAS to be some type of penalty fr dying or theres no reason to stay alive , i played DAoC for years and i think maybe they have the right idea as far as death and the penalty .. there is no penalty for PvP other than rezurection sickness and having to travel back to whereever you wanted to be and if you chose you were able to stay in areas where PvP was not allowed .
as far as penalties for death in PvE there was an XP loss and honestly afetr grinding for an hour or two who wants to lose XP ?
money and items gained were never in jeopardy and considering how hard it can be to earn money and get that item you want i see no reason for another player to be able to take either from you.
thats just the way i see it ,im sure there are people who disagree with me but this is the way i like things .
Ive play FFXI for two days before I quit. That game is a major grindfest, could take your days if not a week to level once. God forbid if you died, losing 10% of your experience is losing hours of grinding. Losing any amount of experience on a game that is unacceptable.
For a game like WoW that have successfully gained five million people on its servers, is going to get more MMOGs copying its style. One area would be copying its style of death penalty. A game developer would need to make the game fun but yet be gentle enough when a player dies. Players have already let most Western (American and European) game developers know that losing items or experience is unacceptable, and MMOG could lose thousands of players all because of one bad moment. Asian game developers will have to learn from WoW and not make the death penalities more relaxed.
Most of anyone here that is complaining about WoW death penalties is too easy, isnt providing the majority of the opinions. Nobody isnt going to listen to the small minority. Any future games will be as relaxed in the dps because that what the majority of what people want. If you really think WoW is too easy, maybe you could try playing lineage 2, silkroad online, FFXI, or any other asian MMOG, they still have experience and item loses.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online