Very Interesting Article on the Death Penalty in MMORPGs

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:
Really? You behave a certain way in a game for fear of negative consequences and you don't see a parallel with behaving IRL for fear of punishment? Seems pretty obvious to me especially when so many in this thread have equated lack of death penalty with playing like a careless goofball.

Actually "no." You've read something into it that's not there.

This isn't a slap on the hand because "you're" bad deal.

It's a "do I or don't I" scenario.

Like when I play Darkest Dungeon and I only have a few rooms left but I went in without a healer because my healers were not the appropriate level or had to "go to hospital" and yet I'm "almost done and might get more money because I'm desperate for more money."

Do I continue and risk losing the everything I've earned and possibly risk losing the party or do I go and see if I can finish the map, get more treasure and of course get the financial reward for "investigating 90% of rooms."

It's not the morality thing.

Of course it's not a morality thing. Parallels are similar not equal.

If I didn't care about whether I lived or died, if there was no "downside" to dying, I would have blithely just walked in, made my way through and then hit "return" when I died again.

Because there was a downside, because I did have to retrieve my headstone if I died, everything was carefully done, always looking around the corners, going slowly, patiently waiting for the spiders ahead to move away. It was my own little "shelob's lair."

That sure sounds to me like you're saying your motivation for being careful is avoidance of negative consequences.

And that's exactly the same process that might cause some to not rob that liquor store or to be extra careful when they do for fear of getting caught and going to jail. Caught and jail being the negative consequences.

Others just don;t rob liquor stores. Period.

You're also saying that it's black and white. If there are no consequences the only option you see is "blithely" walking in. How about not? Doesn't the possibility of being careful regardless exist? I know you're intelligent enough to know that it does. Wouldn't further your argument to admit it though

Whether Sovrath is careful or not in that scenario, at most he risks losing a little time in a game which has no death penalty.

Kyleran · May 2020

Iselin said:

tzervo said:

Player A tries to find the most efficient way to get gold in a game. He finds out that way "Bla" of grinding is better. His satisfaction does not come out of the grinding act itself, but:

1) out of figuring out the strategy: that this method is better
2) out of the result. This is his reward and his confirmation that the effort he put into coming up with this strategy had a good result.

Those are the alien meta gamers who have invaded my MMOs. Them and the ones who are ecstatic when a double XP event is announced

Except that, I / we were probably here first, on my Trash-80 no less.

I've always played RPGs and later MMORPGs with the thought of maximizing my progression, the means wasn't never really important, nor did it have to be "fun," just rewarding which in my mind are two totally different things.

Over the long haul my decisions are largely to do whatever is most likely to provide the greatest reward vs the chance of risk.

I lost over $20B ISK in losses over 5 years in EVE by pursuing a more risky strategy of living in null sec. (Death by recliner was always an ever present risk)

I made a profit of $65B during the same time, so I considered worth the risk.

This compares to me earning about $20B or so, (about $5B in losses) in my first five years which was mostly in Hi Sec.

No regrets....well except I no longer can enjoy it anymore, can't seem to find the "fun" in it.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

Kyleran said:

Iselin said:

tzervo said:

Player A tries to find the most efficient way to get gold in a game. He finds out that way "Bla" of grinding is better. His satisfaction does not come out of the grinding act itself, but:

1) out of figuring out the strategy: that this method is better
2) out of the result. This is his reward and his confirmation that the effort he put into coming up with this strategy had a good result.

Those are the alien meta gamers who have invaded my MMOs. Them and the ones who are ecstatic when a double XP event is announced

Except that, I / we were probably here first, on my Trash-80 no less.

I've always played RPGs and later MMORPGs with the thought of maximizing my progression, the means wasn't never really important, nor did it have to be "fun," just rewarding which in my mind are two totally different things.

Over the long haul my decisions are largely to do whatever is most likely to provide the greatest reward vs the chance of risk.

I lost over $20B ISK in losses over 5 years in EVE by pursuing a more risky strategy of living in null sec. (Death by recliner was always an ever present risk)

I made a profit of $65B during the same time, so I considered worth the risk.

This compares to me earning about $20B or so, (about $5B in losses) in my first five years which was mostly in Hi Sec.

No regrets....well except I no longer can enjoy it anymore, can't seem to find the "fun" in it.

Cool.

Being able to evaluate Risk vs Reward and make important choices based on that evaluation makes a game much more interesting IMHO.

Also, the more important choices a game offers me, choices which can significantly effect my character, other player characters, non-player characters, mobs, and (hopefully) the game world itself, the more interesting that game will be. To me anyway.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

Image: https://blackcomicguy.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/red-pill-or-blue-pill1.jpg

immodium · May 2020

Kyleran said:

It's an unrelated analogy, akin to being in the middle of a dungeon when a serious bug prevents you from completing the run forcing you to wait for the devs to fix it before continuing.

Both are examples of unintended activities interfering with your progression, which death penalties are almost always willfully implemented by the developers to slow down or even reverse progression for "reasons", be it more challenge, to make you play longer or pay more, etc.

You don't have to enjoy death penalties, in fact you aren't supposed to, their purpose to to force you to avoid them by whatever means given to you.

Which I realize of course, sometimes the way players avoid them is to quit or never start playing the game.

Yes they are both unintended activities but dying in combat is also an unintended activity interfering with your progression, is it not?

Unless the encounter is designed to be unbeatable.

I'm not surprised people would quit if the combat is designed to be unbeatable.

The analogy was just used to explain to others how much of a nuisance dying is in games with death penalties by making you do mindless activities. For me it doesn't add "challenge", just time.

It just makes no sense to me to punish failure. Why are you intentionally prolonging the experience? Starting the encounter at the beginning is more than enough for me to think about what went wrong and try something new.

I remember playing Jet Set Willy II on my spectrum as a kid. It was a plat former with 9 lives. I thought it was tough as I never completed it as I'd lose the 9 lives and start from the beginning. Played it for years.

Played it again through emulation that allowed you to save progress, completed it with 5 hours.

So it was only "hard" because it made me regurgitate the parts I found easy over and over again just to get to the challenging bits.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

It's an unrelated analogy, akin to being in the middle of a dungeon when a serious bug prevents you from completing the run forcing you to wait for the devs to fix it before continuing.

Both are examples of unintended activities interfering with your progression, which death penalties are almost always willfully implemented by the developers to slow down or even reverse progression for "reasons", be it more challenge, to make you play longer or pay more, etc.

You don't have to enjoy death penalties, in fact you aren't supposed to, their purpose to to force you to avoid them by whatever means given to you.

Which I realize of course, sometimes the way players avoid them is to quit or never start playing the game.

Yes they are both unintended activities but dying in combat is also an unintended activity interfering with your progression, is it not?

Unless the encounter is designed to be unbeatable.

I'm not surprised people would quit if the combat is designed to be unbeatable.

The analogy was just used to explain to others how much of a nuisance dying is in games with death penalties by making you do mindless activities. For me it doesn't add "challenge", just time.

It just makes no sense to me to punish failure. Why are you intentionally prolonging the experience? Starting the encounter at the beginning is more than enough for me to think about what went wrong and try something new.

I remember playing Jet Set Willy II on my spectrum as a kid. It was a plat former with 9 lives. I thought it was tough as I never completed it as I'd lose the 9 lives and start from the beginning. Played it for years.

Played it again through emulation that allowed you to save progress, completed it with 5 hours.

So it was only "hard" because it made me regurgitate the parts I found easy over and over again just to get to the challenging bits.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/why-we-all-have-fear-of-failure/

https://www.success.com/why-failure-is-good-for-success/

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-punishment-2795413

https://psychologenie.com/reward-vs-punishment-which-one-is-more-effective

The benefits of punishment

https://phys.org/news/2008-12-benefits.html

https://classroom.synonym.com/advantages-punishment-classroom-8570426.html

https://medium.com/rpg-design/rethinking-failure-9a84005486cb

"Failure is often the most interesting outcome of conflict and driver of compelling narratives. So why punish failure and reward success?"

immodium · May 2020

I'm not arguing against failure. Not being able to complete the content is failure and I'm ok with that.

Why punish failure? All that does is it to deter people from experimenting/using their imagination and coming up with new ways to beat the content.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

AAAMEOW said:

KnightFalz said:

Ancient_Exile said:

tzervo said:

KnightFalz said:

tzervo said:
It is not about the encounter's difficulty, it is about making interesting decisions with their corresponding consequences and/or rewards.

If the loss mechanics are not paired with interesting decisions, then they are a mere annoyance and the design is bad.

Decisions relating to how to, or even whether to, regain what I already had don't sound all that interesting to me. For me it is simply an annoyance that wastes time that could otherwise be spent productively.

This is a rationalization.

A quote from a blog that put it succinctly in words with an example:
So the player has a choice to grind X hours to get emblems or to get lucky with a low chance drop to get the upgrade. Or, he can engage in a risky mission that can give him the same upgrade in a single hour if he succeeds but Y hours of grind to get back where he is if he loses.
The time cost of the grinding choice is obviously X hours. For the risky choice, the time cost is: 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) where C is the chance of success. The “1” part is the one hour for the risky mission. The (X+Y) part comes from the assumption that after he failed, he just gives up and grinds. It’s easier to calculate with this than with repeated attempts and the result is the same. The player wants to minimize time to reward, so chooses the shorter one. The risky is shorter if X > 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) which can be solved into C > (1+Y)/(X+Y). Assuming the death penalty is 10 hours and you need to grind 100 hours, you should take the risk if your chance is bigger than 11/110 = 10%.
It’s a straightforward formula. Where is the “interesting decision”? It comes from the fact that your chance cannot be measured, it can only be approximated and it lies on the elusive self-consciousness. The question comes down to “how good I am/the team is in this game”? This is always an interesting thing to think about.
https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/the-interesting-decision-around-death-penalty/
As far as I am concerned, the rest of the blog post also makes some interesting points, even though they sting.

In accordance with my vow, I have read the article which you graciously chose to share with the rest of the class. I found it to be interesting, intriguing, enlightening, and entertaining all wrapped up and rolled into one.

"...Why did the death penalty diminished, along with the whole MMO scene? Because it’s hard to deny that the MMOs are in horrible shape. The most successful one, WoW is stagnating/losing players for years and there are no serious contenders with even 1/10 of its playerbase.

This is because they made the wrong choice of including entitled punks. Not casuals, not even socials. Casuals, like a middle aged mum who plays while the kids are asleep is aware of her limited skills. She is fine with the grinding. Actually, she likes the easy and interruptible entertainment of being in a magical world. The social is fine being around, being involved with the group instead of being at the tip of the spear. This is crucial: death penalty isn’t a problem to low-skill players as long as they are self-aware and have a grindy alternative path of progression...

...Please realize the catch: by removing death penalty, neither the skilled, nor the casual/social players got help. The entitled punks did, the group that you really don’t want in any group game. By removing death penalty, the devs invited the most toxic people: those who look down on fellow players based on oversized ego and blame and curse them for their own frequent failures..."

I think it's simpler than that. The less harsh death penalties became the less people complained about them, so they kept easing them more over time as new game came to the market to the point they are largely trivial in most MMORPGs.

Death penalties are a problem for "low-skill" players as they are inhibit what that player is inclined to do. Without they can attempt more and accordingly learn more, leading to an experience less laced with drudgery.

It's funny thinking about it. I was playing legend of aria and when you die you loss all your gear and inventory. But since gear is easily replaceable, you don't really loss much of anything.

Basically what I am saying is usually what I loss isn't much different from a long corpse run in a generic themepark game.

People have low tolerance level. People can tolerate 30 minutes of progress loss. But if people are lossing tens/hundreds of hours of progress, they are very likely to quit.

I beg to differ. Some people have a higher tolerance for pain than others. Others have a higher tolerance for tedium/repetition than others. For example, it seems that a certain percentage of players are more willing to put up with grinding or say they actually enjoy grinding (huh?). As opposed to those of us who are less willing to put up with grinding and are reasonably annoyed when that is one of the few options available to us. Especially when it is the only option. (Just because the game developers can't figure out anything else for us to do at End Game. Or because it's just easier to make us grind than to come up with other ways for high/max level player characters to spend their time.)

Btw, I still haven't downloaded Legend of Aria. I actually forgot it about for the last couple days or so.

AlBQuirky · May 2020

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

It's an unrelated analogy, akin to being in the middle of a dungeon when a serious bug prevents you from completing the run forcing you to wait for the devs to fix it before continuing.

Both are examples of unintended activities interfering with your progression, which death penalties are almost always willfully implemented by the developers to slow down or even reverse progression for "reasons", be it more challenge, to make you play longer or pay more, etc.

You don't have to enjoy death penalties, in fact you aren't supposed to, their purpose to to force you to avoid them by whatever means given to you.

Which I realize of course, sometimes the way players avoid them is to quit or never start playing the game.

Yes they are both unintended activities but dying in combat is also an unintended activity interfering with your progression, is it not?

Unless the encounter is designed to be unbeatable.

I'm not surprised people would quit if the combat is designed to be unbeatable.

The analogy was just used to explain to others how much of a nuisance dying is in games with death penalties by making you do mindless activities. For me it doesn't add "challenge", just time.

It just makes no sense to me to punish failure. Why are you intentionally prolonging the experience? Starting the encounter at the beginning is more than enough for me to think about what went wrong and try something new.

I remember playing Jet Set Willy II on my spectrum as a kid. It was a plat former with 9 lives. I thought it was tough as I never completed it as I'd lose the 9 lives and start from the beginning. Played it for years.

Played it again through emulation that allowed you to save progress, completed it with 5 hours.

So it was only "hard" because it made me regurgitate the parts I found easy over and over again just to get to the challenging bits.

Would you throw away your crossword puzzlebook, never to return simply because you had get out of your Lazy-Boy and grab another pencil just to keep going? Or would you get that pencil and grab 2 more just in case it happened again?

Ever play an alt? Were you one of those players crying on message boards for "some way" to make your new alt nearly top level? If the content was so bad the first time, of course you'll dread doing it again. If the content is not fun, a harsh death penalty will make it even worse.

Again, no one is right or wrong here, but some folks seem to be trying to belittle (change) others preferences. Sorry, but I am neither you nor Iselin. I'm AlBQuirky. Good to meet ya

PS: Iselin confused me before because they usually talk about enjoying challenging content and here vehemently despise harsh death penalties, which I would think is the epitome of challenging. Instead, they prefer no consequences play, which is perfectly fine.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

Ancient_Exile said:

tzervo said:

Ancient_Exile said:

I'm not finding many (as I'm in hardly finding any/not really finding any) great games myself.

It is hard to recommend anything without knowing your tastes. If you really like loss on your death sandwich, EVE, Albion, Naval Action, Screeps, One Hour One Life and Foxhole (though in the two last ones the consequences are more "communal") are fun games. Note that the three first ones are mostly EVE, EVE light with swords and EVE light with ships. None is perfect but all good or at least interesting games.

Then again, I also consider GW2 a great game and sunk thousands of hours there so who am I to judge :P

But I kinda feel that you and those that ask for these mechanics want a more EQ-sty kind of game, you are out of luck there :P

I think I'll try Albion. Downloading it now.

Don't want to play EVE. If you insist that I explain why, then I shall attempt to do so in the most brief, rational, and coherent way possible. Tried Albion the other day and was not terribly impressed. Didn't like GW2 though I tried it more than a couple times.

Kyleran · May 2020

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

It's an unrelated analogy, akin to being in the middle of a dungeon when a serious bug prevents you from completing the run forcing you to wait for the devs to fix it before continuing.

Both are examples of unintended activities interfering with your progression, which death penalties are almost always willfully implemented by the developers to slow down or even reverse progression for "reasons", be it more challenge, to make you play longer or pay more, etc.

You don't have to enjoy death penalties, in fact you aren't supposed to, their purpose to to force you to avoid them by whatever means given to you.

Which I realize of course, sometimes the way players avoid them is to quit or never start playing the game.

Yes they are both unintended activities but dying in combat is also an unintended activity interfering with your progression, is it not?

Unless the encounter is designed to be unbeatable.

I'm not surprised people would quit if the combat is designed to be unbeatable.

The analogy was just used to explain to others how much of a nuisance dying is in games with death penalties by making you do mindless activities. For me it doesn't add "challenge", just time.

It just makes no sense to me to punish failure. Why are you intentionally prolonging the experience? Starting the encounter at the beginning is more than enough for me to think about what went wrong and try something new.

I remember playing Jet Set Willy II on my spectrum as a kid. It was a plat former with 9 lives. I thought it was tough as I never completed it as I'd lose the 9 lives and start from the beginning. Played it for years.

Played it again through emulation that allowed you to save progress, completed it with 5 hours.

So it was only "hard" because it made me regurgitate the parts I found easy over and over again just to get to the challenging bits.

Dying in a game may be unintentional for you but the designers most certainly put death and all its penalties in the game on purpose, unlike the first two scenarios we discussed.

Your new analogy also doesn't well correlate, platformers have no long term progression, unlike MMORPGs so other than measuring how far you got before having to start over there's no real comparison to building a character from the ground up in the most efficient manner possible while avoiding death and its associated penalties is usually very important (or at least should be)

Well, one other correlation between your platform game and MMORPGs, once your emulator removed the only real death penalty you had, starting over, you finished up and put the game aside in a very short time, much like many gamers do with easy mode MMORPGs today.

Whether you like them or not, whether you realize it or not, your games need death or other penalties of some sort to keep them interesting over the longer term.

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Almost every competitive activity in life uses fear of failure and associated punishments to motivate you to be better, be it sports, your job, or what have you.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

immodium said:

I'm not arguing against failure. Not being able to complete the content is failure and I'm ok with that.

Why punish failure? All that does is it to deter people from experimenting/using their imagination and coming up with new ways to beat the content.

Why does a team lose its place in the league/rankings if it loses two many games?

Why does an athlete not get a medal if he/she doesn't perform well enough in a competition?

Why do I get a bad grade if I make two many errors on a test or in an assignment?

Why do I get detentions if I fail to follow the rules in school?

Why lose money if I make the wrong bet? Why don't casinos just let me keep playing even after I go broke?

Why do kids get grounded if they refuse to obey their parents?

Why does a nation (in times past) lose its sovereignty if its armies can't adequately defend its territory in a war?

Why does the milk jug get empty if I accidentally spill its contents all over the kitchen floor?

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

Kyleran said:

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

It's an unrelated analogy, akin to being in the middle of a dungeon when a serious bug prevents you from completing the run forcing you to wait for the devs to fix it before continuing.

Both are examples of unintended activities interfering with your progression, which death penalties are almost always willfully implemented by the developers to slow down or even reverse progression for "reasons", be it more challenge, to make you play longer or pay more, etc.

You don't have to enjoy death penalties, in fact you aren't supposed to, their purpose to to force you to avoid them by whatever means given to you.

Which I realize of course, sometimes the way players avoid them is to quit or never start playing the game.

Yes they are both unintended activities but dying in combat is also an unintended activity interfering with your progression, is it not?

Unless the encounter is designed to be unbeatable.

I'm not surprised people would quit if the combat is designed to be unbeatable.

The analogy was just used to explain to others how much of a nuisance dying is in games with death penalties by making you do mindless activities. For me it doesn't add "challenge", just time.

It just makes no sense to me to punish failure. Why are you intentionally prolonging the experience? Starting the encounter at the beginning is more than enough for me to think about what went wrong and try something new.

I remember playing Jet Set Willy II on my spectrum as a kid. It was a plat former with 9 lives. I thought it was tough as I never completed it as I'd lose the 9 lives and start from the beginning. Played it for years.

Played it again through emulation that allowed you to save progress, completed it with 5 hours.

So it was only "hard" because it made me regurgitate the parts I found easy over and over again just to get to the challenging bits.

Dying in a game may be unintentional for you but the designers most certainly put death and all its penalties in the game on purpose, unlike the first two scenarios we discussed.

Your new analogy also doesn't well correlate, platformers have no long term progression, unlike MMORPGs so other than measuring how far you got before having to start over there's no real comparison to building a character from the ground up in the most efficient manner possible while avoiding death and its associated penalties is usually very important (or at least should be)

Well, one other correlation between your platform game and MMORPGs, once your emulator removed the only real death penalty you had, starting over, you finished up and put the game aside in a very short time, much like many gamers do with easy mode MMORPGs today.

Whether you like them or not, whether you realize it or not, your games need death or other penalties of some sort to keep them interesting over the longer term.

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Almost every competitive activity in life uses fear of failure and associated punishments to motivate you to be better, be it sports, your job, or what have you.

immodium · May 2020

Kyleran said:

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Imagine someone takes an entrance exam and fails it. The failure of not being accepted isn't enough, they should be punished on top of that?

I'm all for failure. I don't want everything to be easy.

Kyleran said:

Well, one other correlation between your platform game and MMORPGs, once your emulator removed the only real death penalty you had, starting over, you finished up and put the game aside in a very short time, much like many gamers do with easy mode MMORPGs today.

They were already easy, they just got rid of the time sinks. (Long travel times, slow xp gain, corpse running etc).

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Imagine someone takes an entrance exam and fails it. The failure of not being accepted isn't enough, they should be punished on top of that?

I'm all for failure. I don't want everything to be easy.

Yes, he/she gets punished by not being admitted into the school/college/university of his/her choice and being forced to try again with a different institution of higher learning.

Or to give up, get a job, join the military, or just go back home and play video games.

immodium · May 2020

Ancient_Exile said:

Yes, he/she gets punished by not being admitted into the school/college/university of his/her choice and being forced to try again with a different institution of higher learning.

Or to give up, get a job, join the military, or just go back home and play video games.

But that's not a death penalty. That's just failing/death.

A death penalty in that scenario would be to remove knowledge from their brains (xp loss). Destroy their writing implants (item loss) and then kick them 30 minutes away just to travel back and try again.

AAAMEOW · May 2020

Ancient_Exile said:

AAAMEOW said:

KnightFalz said:

Ancient_Exile said:

tzervo said:

KnightFalz said:

tzervo said:
It is not about the encounter's difficulty, it is about making interesting decisions with their corresponding consequences and/or rewards.

If the loss mechanics are not paired with interesting decisions, then they are a mere annoyance and the design is bad.

Decisions relating to how to, or even whether to, regain what I already had don't sound all that interesting to me. For me it is simply an annoyance that wastes time that could otherwise be spent productively.

This is a rationalization.

A quote from a blog that put it succinctly in words with an example:
So the player has a choice to grind X hours to get emblems or to get lucky with a low chance drop to get the upgrade. Or, he can engage in a risky mission that can give him the same upgrade in a single hour if he succeeds but Y hours of grind to get back where he is if he loses.
The time cost of the grinding choice is obviously X hours. For the risky choice, the time cost is: 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) where C is the chance of success. The “1” part is the one hour for the risky mission. The (X+Y) part comes from the assumption that after he failed, he just gives up and grinds. It’s easier to calculate with this than with repeated attempts and the result is the same. The player wants to minimize time to reward, so chooses the shorter one. The risky is shorter if X > 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) which can be solved into C > (1+Y)/(X+Y). Assuming the death penalty is 10 hours and you need to grind 100 hours, you should take the risk if your chance is bigger than 11/110 = 10%.
It’s a straightforward formula. Where is the “interesting decision”? It comes from the fact that your chance cannot be measured, it can only be approximated and it lies on the elusive self-consciousness. The question comes down to “how good I am/the team is in this game”? This is always an interesting thing to think about.
https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/the-interesting-decision-around-death-penalty/
As far as I am concerned, the rest of the blog post also makes some interesting points, even though they sting.

In accordance with my vow, I have read the article which you graciously chose to share with the rest of the class. I found it to be interesting, intriguing, enlightening, and entertaining all wrapped up and rolled into one.

"...Why did the death penalty diminished, along with the whole MMO scene? Because it’s hard to deny that the MMOs are in horrible shape. The most successful one, WoW is stagnating/losing players for years and there are no serious contenders with even 1/10 of its playerbase.

This is because they made the wrong choice of including entitled punks. Not casuals, not even socials. Casuals, like a middle aged mum who plays while the kids are asleep is aware of her limited skills. She is fine with the grinding. Actually, she likes the easy and interruptible entertainment of being in a magical world. The social is fine being around, being involved with the group instead of being at the tip of the spear. This is crucial: death penalty isn’t a problem to low-skill players as long as they are self-aware and have a grindy alternative path of progression...

...Please realize the catch: by removing death penalty, neither the skilled, nor the casual/social players got help. The entitled punks did, the group that you really don’t want in any group game. By removing death penalty, the devs invited the most toxic people: those who look down on fellow players based on oversized ego and blame and curse them for their own frequent failures..."

I think it's simpler than that. The less harsh death penalties became the less people complained about them, so they kept easing them more over time as new game came to the market to the point they are largely trivial in most MMORPGs.

Death penalties are a problem for "low-skill" players as they are inhibit what that player is inclined to do. Without they can attempt more and accordingly learn more, leading to an experience less laced with drudgery.

It's funny thinking about it. I was playing legend of aria and when you die you loss all your gear and inventory. But since gear is easily replaceable, you don't really loss much of anything.

Basically what I am saying is usually what I loss isn't much different from a long corpse run in a generic themepark game.

People have low tolerance level. People can tolerate 30 minutes of progress loss. But if people are lossing tens/hundreds of hours of progress, they are very likely to quit.

I beg to differ. Some people have a higher tolerance for pain than others. Others have a higher tolerance for tedium/repetition than others. For example, it seems that a certain percentage of players are more willing to put up with grinding or say they actually enjoy grinding (huh?). As opposed to those of us who are less willing to put up with grinding and are reasonably annoyed when that is one of the few options available to us. Especially when it is the only option. (Just because the game developers can't figure out anything else for us to do at End Game. Or because it's just easier to make us grind than to come up with other ways for high/max level player characters to spend their time.)

Btw, I still haven't downloaded Legend of Aria. I actually forgot it about for the last couple days or so.

It is kind of why I never really believe your philosophy of making games more interesting would do anything. Most of the popular games are just a bunch of grind and repetition.

I think very few people have high tolerance level. I dont' play Eve but I presume it have harsh death penalty because you don't die all that much. I think at most 1 hour of wasted time is enough for a death penalty.

AAAMEOW · May 2020

immodium said:

I'm not arguing against failure. Not being able to complete the content is failure and I'm ok with that.

Why punish failure? All that does is it to deter people from experimenting/using their imagination and coming up with new ways to beat the content.

I think people are talking about "easy" content which isn't all that hard and make some depth into it.

And there are always ways to tweak things and incorporate death penalty. For example give mobs in raid enormous amount of exp to make up of exp loss on death.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Yes, he/she gets punished by not being admitted into the school/college/university of his/her choice and being forced to try again with a different institution of higher learning.

Or to give up, get a job, join the military, or just go back home and play video games.

But that's not a death penalty. That's just failing/death.

A death penalty in that scenario would be to remove knowledge from their brains (xp loss). Destroy their writing implants (item loss) and then kick them 30 minutes away just to travel back and try again.

Students who fail one entrance exam are going to have to take another exam if they want to get admitted to a different school. Or they might be allowed to try the exam again at the same school. But they might even need to study more (yikes!) before taking the next exam. Probably gonna need to find some way of going back and forth from home to the same school or a different school. Extra time spent doing the same things over because they couldn't get it right the first time.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

AAAMEOW said:

Ancient_Exile said:

AAAMEOW said:

KnightFalz said:

Ancient_Exile said:

tzervo said:

KnightFalz said:

tzervo said:
It is not about the encounter's difficulty, it is about making interesting decisions with their corresponding consequences and/or rewards.

If the loss mechanics are not paired with interesting decisions, then they are a mere annoyance and the design is bad.

Decisions relating to how to, or even whether to, regain what I already had don't sound all that interesting to me. For me it is simply an annoyance that wastes time that could otherwise be spent productively.

This is a rationalization.

A quote from a blog that put it succinctly in words with an example:
So the player has a choice to grind X hours to get emblems or to get lucky with a low chance drop to get the upgrade. Or, he can engage in a risky mission that can give him the same upgrade in a single hour if he succeeds but Y hours of grind to get back where he is if he loses.
The time cost of the grinding choice is obviously X hours. For the risky choice, the time cost is: 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) where C is the chance of success. The “1” part is the one hour for the risky mission. The (X+Y) part comes from the assumption that after he failed, he just gives up and grinds. It’s easier to calculate with this than with repeated attempts and the result is the same. The player wants to minimize time to reward, so chooses the shorter one. The risky is shorter if X > 1+(1-C)*(X+Y) which can be solved into C > (1+Y)/(X+Y). Assuming the death penalty is 10 hours and you need to grind 100 hours, you should take the risk if your chance is bigger than 11/110 = 10%.
It’s a straightforward formula. Where is the “interesting decision”? It comes from the fact that your chance cannot be measured, it can only be approximated and it lies on the elusive self-consciousness. The question comes down to “how good I am/the team is in this game”? This is always an interesting thing to think about.
https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/the-interesting-decision-around-death-penalty/
As far as I am concerned, the rest of the blog post also makes some interesting points, even though they sting.

In accordance with my vow, I have read the article which you graciously chose to share with the rest of the class. I found it to be interesting, intriguing, enlightening, and entertaining all wrapped up and rolled into one.

"...Why did the death penalty diminished, along with the whole MMO scene? Because it’s hard to deny that the MMOs are in horrible shape. The most successful one, WoW is stagnating/losing players for years and there are no serious contenders with even 1/10 of its playerbase.

This is because they made the wrong choice of including entitled punks. Not casuals, not even socials. Casuals, like a middle aged mum who plays while the kids are asleep is aware of her limited skills. She is fine with the grinding. Actually, she likes the easy and interruptible entertainment of being in a magical world. The social is fine being around, being involved with the group instead of being at the tip of the spear. This is crucial: death penalty isn’t a problem to low-skill players as long as they are self-aware and have a grindy alternative path of progression...

...Please realize the catch: by removing death penalty, neither the skilled, nor the casual/social players got help. The entitled punks did, the group that you really don’t want in any group game. By removing death penalty, the devs invited the most toxic people: those who look down on fellow players based on oversized ego and blame and curse them for their own frequent failures..."

I think it's simpler than that. The less harsh death penalties became the less people complained about them, so they kept easing them more over time as new game came to the market to the point they are largely trivial in most MMORPGs.

Death penalties are a problem for "low-skill" players as they are inhibit what that player is inclined to do. Without they can attempt more and accordingly learn more, leading to an experience less laced with drudgery.

It's funny thinking about it. I was playing legend of aria and when you die you loss all your gear and inventory. But since gear is easily replaceable, you don't really loss much of anything.

Basically what I am saying is usually what I loss isn't much different from a long corpse run in a generic themepark game.

People have low tolerance level. People can tolerate 30 minutes of progress loss. But if people are lossing tens/hundreds of hours of progress, they are very likely to quit.

I beg to differ. Some people have a higher tolerance for pain than others. Others have a higher tolerance for tedium/repetition than others. For example, it seems that a certain percentage of players are more willing to put up with grinding or say they actually enjoy grinding (huh?). As opposed to those of us who are less willing to put up with grinding and are reasonably annoyed when that is one of the few options available to us. Especially when it is the only option. (Just because the game developers can't figure out anything else for us to do at End Game. Or because it's just easier to make us grind than to come up with other ways for high/max level player characters to spend their time.)

Btw, I still haven't downloaded Legend of Aria. I actually forgot it about for the last couple days or so.

It is kind of why I never really believe your philosophy of making games more interesting would do anything. Most of the popular games are just a bunch of grind and repetition.

I think very few people have high tolerance level. I dont' play Eve but I presume it have harsh death penalty because you don't die all that much. I think at most 1 hour of wasted time is enough for a death penalty.

How many options do players have if they want to play a newer/more modern AAA MMORPG with decent/better graphics?

immodium · May 2020

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Yes, he/she gets punished by not being admitted into the school/college/university of his/her choice and being forced to try again with a different institution of higher learning.

Or to give up, get a job, join the military, or just go back home and play video games.

But that's not a death penalty. That's just failing/death.

A death penalty in that scenario would be to remove knowledge from their brains (xp loss). Destroy their writing implants (item loss) and then kick them 30 minutes away just to travel back and try again.

Students who fail one entrance exam are going to have to take another exam if they want to get admitted to a different school. Or they might be allowed to try the exam again at the same school. But they might even need to study more (yikes!) before taking the next exam. Probably gonna need to find some way of going back and forth from home to the same school or a different school. Extra time spent doing the same things over because they couldn't get it right the first time.

That's not punishing failure, that's just a consequence of failing.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Imagine someone takes an entrance exam and fails it. The failure of not being accepted isn't enough, they should be punished on top of that?

I'm all for failure. I don't want everything to be easy.

Kyleran said:

Well, one other correlation between your platform game and MMORPGs, once your emulator removed the only real death penalty you had, starting over, you finished up and put the game aside in a very short time, much like many gamers do with easy mode MMORPGs today.

They were already easy, they just got rid of the time sinks. (Long travel times, slow xp gain, corpse running etc).

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/7wibch/what_was_the_original_everquest_like_how_is_it/

https://www.wolfsheadonline.com/project-1999-classic-everquest-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/30/ultima-online-retrospective/

immodium · May 2020

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Imagine someone takes an entrance exam and fails it. The failure of not being accepted isn't enough, they should be punished on top of that?

I'm all for failure. I don't want everything to be easy.

Kyleran said:

Well, one other correlation between your platform game and MMORPGs, once your emulator removed the only real death penalty you had, starting over, you finished up and put the game aside in a very short time, much like many gamers do with easy mode MMORPGs today.

They were already easy, they just got rid of the time sinks. (Long travel times, slow xp gain, corpse running etc).

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/7wibch/what_was_the_original_everquest_like_how_is_it/

https://www.wolfsheadonline.com/project-1999-classic-everquest-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/30/ultima-online-retrospective/

I played EQ at launch. I know what it was like. Didn't touch UO.

Ancient_Exile · May 2020

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Kyleran said:

Finally, of course it makes sense to punish you for failure, another poster shared with you the multitude of evidence proving how failure drives us to succeed.

Imagine someone takes an entrance exam and fails it. The failure of not being accepted isn't enough, they should be punished on top of that?

I'm all for failure. I don't want everything to be easy.

Kyleran said:

Well, one other correlation between your platform game and MMORPGs, once your emulator removed the only real death penalty you had, starting over, you finished up and put the game aside in a very short time, much like many gamers do with easy mode MMORPGs today.

They were already easy, they just got rid of the time sinks. (Long travel times, slow xp gain, corpse running etc).

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/7wibch/what_was_the_original_everquest_like_how_is_it/

https://www.wolfsheadonline.com/project-1999-classic-everquest-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/30/ultima-online-retrospective/

I played EQ at launch. I know what it was like. Didn't touch UO.

Cool. I was old enough, but I wasn't playing MMORPGs at the time. Though I remember defeating Ganon on NES (a proud moment) and putting an end to the foul machinations of Zeromus on SNES. Had to borrow FF II from my friend because I made the mistake of asking for Sega Genesis instead of Super Nintendo. Boy did I ever live to regret that decision. Final Fantasy II/IV > Phantasy Star III.

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

immodium said:

Ancient_Exile said:

Yes, he/she gets punished by not being admitted into the school/college/university of his/her choice and being forced to try again with a different institution of higher learning.

Or to give up, get a job, join the military, or just go back home and play video games.

But that's not a death penalty. That's just failing/death.

A death penalty in that scenario would be to remove knowledge from their brains (xp loss). Destroy their writing implants (item loss) and then kick them 30 minutes away just to travel back and try again.

Students who fail one entrance exam are going to have to take another exam if they want to get admitted to a different school. Or they might be allowed to try the exam again at the same school. But they might even need to study more (yikes!) before taking the next exam. Probably gonna need to find some way of going back and forth from home to the same school or a different school. Extra time spent doing the same things over because they couldn't get it right the first time.

That's not punishing failure, that's just a consequence of failing.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/punishment

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/punishment

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-negative-punishment-2795409

https://www.psychestudy.com/behavioral/learning-memory/operant-conditioning/reinforcement-punishment/negative-punishment

"The term “negative” sounds pretty redundant, as punishments, by nature are always negative consequences that are the result of any certain action."

There can be good, bad, or indifferent consequences for choices and actions in games just like there are in real life.

Good/Positive Consequence = Gain, Reward, Benefit, or Advantage. Advancement/Growth/Improvement/Progression/Increase

Bad/Negative Consequence = Loss, Punishment, Hindrance, or Disadvantage.

Demotion/Decay/Decline/Regression/Decrease

Indifferent Consequence = Negligible Effect

EDIT: Making mistakes/failing, and enduring the consequences thereof, can sometimes (or even often) help us learn faster than making the correct decisions/succeeding.

immodium · May 2020

Ancient_Exile said:

EDIT: Making mistakes/failing, and enduring the consequences thereof, can sometimes (or even often) help us learn faster than making the correct decisions/succeeding.

Fair enough I'm just not a fan of the arbitrary way developers have implemented mechanics when dealing with death.

When you fail an encounter or keep failing an encounter you're going to have to re-evaluate your tactics/strategy regardless of whether there's a penalty or not. If you keep doing the same thing over and over and not succeeding that's enough punishment.

I'm a fan of allowing people to get back into the encounter learn the game mechanics and adjust asap. That's the fastest way of learning IMO.

EDIT: However we do live in an age where people watch youtube videos now to learn so if they can't even repeat content to learn it you've got no chance of making the learning experience longer with death penalties.

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Very Interesting Article on the Death Penalty in MMORPGs

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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Very Interesting Article on the Death Penalty in MMORPGs

Comments

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV