On Death (and reading the environment)

Sovrath · August 9

On Death

There is an interesting video on the "Second Wind" channel discussing death. The author of this video does use the Souls games and a "good" example of a death penalty though I did have a disagreement with @Brainy as he thought it was easy and not really a death penalty (if memory serves)

I'm one for a death penalty and I do think a death penalty should cause some fear in the player. It should also be harsh enough that it isn't used as a quick trip to town. Others think that death penalties dissuade players from harder content. It's my thought that this is dependent on the type of player as indeed some players will balk at attempting something difficult while others will rise to the challenge. This happened to me in Lord of the Rings Online as I was in a pickup group for an instance and we failed. I immediately said "let's try again" but the group didn't want to try again as they felt it was too hard and didn't want to die again and pay for the equipment degradation.

On "The Environment"

There is something additional in the video where the author expresses his displeasure on trying to grab a rope. He had difficulty grabbing it and of course fell to his death many times. Death penalty aside, some responses noted that he kept missing a slight bulge in the path where he would have easily grabbed the rope.

I've noticed that there are players who don't seem to "notice" the environment and what clues that environment will give the player in order to advance. One example is from my Skyrim mod where I've had players note that they couldn't proceed because they couldn't figure a way through the first challenge. One expressed great displeasure. Yet, I showed the area to a non-gamer friend of mine and they figured it out in seconds.

I wonder if games have trained some players in such a way that they just don't notice the environment or always look for an obvious mechanical way to advance such as a lever/switch? That maybe developers, in their work t get the player from one encounter to another have inadvertently trained players in such a way that it's more difficult for players to notice the environment and do some hard thinking. Just a thought.

Brainy · August 10

Honestly this guy completely kills his entire arguement, which is my point all along. You cant have difficult content and heavy death consequences.

So this guy claims the game has no consequence to death but is very hard and dies all the time in the game. Yet then he whines how many times he dies because he cant grab a rope.

Now imagine if by dieing each time it completely reset his progress back to zero every time. This guy would have quit this game long before the rope. He cant even take the difficulty when there is no consequence let alone if there was one.

So what this guy really wants is an EZ mode game that has no death, but harsh consequences if by chance you accidently do die.

This is what kind of commentary you get from someone who doesnt even understand the consequences of what they are asking for. Clearly he doesnt want real difficult content & death penalties at all.

Wargfoot · August 10

Brainy said:

This is what kind of commentary you get from someone who doesnt even understand the consequences of what they are asking for. Clearly he doesnt want real difficult content & death penalties at all.

It is hard to read your posts when your baseline premise appears to be: everyone else is stupid.

Brainy · August 10

Its not my fault that the video literally did a 180 on its entire point at around 4 minutes.

Kinda proves many people have no clue what they are talking about. Reasoning skills is like all skills. Some people have more than others. Clearly the video author is lacking, or just going off in a tangent without putting a tiny bit of thought into it.

I am not staying everyone is stupid, but this video certainly is.

Gorwe · August 10

Hardcore ftw! Having death be omnipresent brings such gravitas to the experience. Without Hardcore, it is just too arcadey. Too meaningless.

Sovrath · August 10

Brainy said:

Its not my fault that the video literally did a 180 on its entire point at around 4 minutes.

Kinda proves many people have no clue what they are talking about. Reasoning skills is like all skills. Some people have more than others. Clearly the video author is lacking, or just going off in a tangent without putting a tiny bit of thought into it.

I am not staying everyone is stupid, but this video certainly is.

I believe his issue at the 4 minute mark was that a jump and grabbing the rope should be an automatic thing in that specific case. Given the angle that the camera sits I can see people missing that a lot.

I'm not sure I agree with his assessment at that point as he could have looked at the ground floorboards.

Sovrath · August 10

Gorwe said:

Hardcore ftw! Having death be omnipresent brings such gravitas to the experience. Without Hardcore, it is just too arcadey. Too meaningless.

That's how I feel as well. It's "arcadey."

Elidien_ga · August 10

In every MMO I have played, death penalties are simply time crunches. Time to do a corpse run, time to regain that level (EQ1), time to find a new camp spot, time to replace lost items, etc... Death is a mere inconvenience in MMOs and nothing more no matter how sever it is (except hardcore characters but thats another argument).

I wish a game could find a death penalty that was not solely a time punishment. Or even make that crunch or punishment do other things, like having to watch dancers or listen to musicians in SWG.

Slapshot1188 · October 17

Elidien_ga said:

In every MMO I have played, death penalties are simply time crunches. Time to do a corpse run, time to regain that level (EQ1), time to find a new camp spot, time to replace lost items, etc... Death is a mere inconvenience in MMOs and nothing more no matter how sever it is (except hardcore characters but thats another argument).

I wish a game could find a death penalty that was not solely a time punishment. Or even make that crunch or punishment do other things, like having to watch dancers or listen to musicians in SWG.

Because time was the ultimate currency in the original mmo generation. We are already shifting to a more $$$ based penalty.

Buy your ship for $100. Pay $10 to respawn the ship (with some lane ass insurance concept) to skip the time penalty (wait 48 hours) and turn it into a $$$ penalty.

Some day it will just deduct cash from our bank accounts directly.

The sci-fi based ones seem easier to convert because they have a “technology” to obscure it behind.

Though as I type this guess I am realizing it’s just a return to the old “put a quarter in the arcade machine” to continue after you died. Interestingly CoE proposed something along this mechanism as well. Which is probably another reason to celebrate its demise.

Wargfoot · October 17

It's too bad the more games don't see the opportunities in player deaths. For example, I remember dying in UO and reading the messages "Orc searches through your backpack and takes X"

It meant you could find just about anything on a mob if it had killed someone else.

Think about that, In UO 25 years ago they had more interesting looting/death mechanics than in today's games.

Amaranthar · October 17

Wargfoot said:

It's too bad the more games don't see the opportunities in player deaths. For example, I remember dying in UO and reading the messages "Orc searches through your backpack and takes X"

It meant you could find just about anything on a mob if it had killed someone else.

Think about that, In UO 25 years ago they had more interesting looting/death mechanics than in today's games.

I remember a player posting about a powerful dragon in a frequently visited area (In Ilshenar, North corner ruins). He managed to kill it and the list of things on its corpse was astounding. It had evidently killed many, many players before he managed to kill it. (MOBs didn't loot everything, as you know.)
What a feeling that must have been, to defeat something solo, that so many failed to defeat, and usually in groups.

Amaranthar · October 17

Wargfoot said:

It's too bad the more games don't see the opportunities in player deaths. For example, I remember dying in UO and reading the messages "Orc searches through your backpack and takes X"

It meant you could find just about anything on a mob if it had killed someone else.

Think about that, In UO 25 years ago they had more interesting looting/death mechanics than in today's games.

I loved UO's system. Yeah, sometimes it felt too harsh, when you couldn't get a Res from another player, when you couldn't find an NPC Wandering Healer, or weren't close to a Shrine or City. But that happened less often than normally, especially in active places where Players often helped you out. You could make a lot of friends that way, either being helped or helping another. Most of the loot was replaceable, and that which wasn't had close seconds and you could save your very top end gear (and most rare) for times you were with friends (for Reses).

Scot · October 17

One discussion won't change the difficulty level and death penalty players want in their games, but the more this gets heard the better. A near industry wide direction over the years to every easier games has transformed gaming, we have all been affected by that just to differing degrees.

You hear a lot about why studios are not biting players with new releases as much as they used too, this is one of the reason why, we know (without even consciously thinking about it) that it will be a cake walk.

Angrakhan · October 17

The reason for not losing loot on death in MMOs is they have put too much importance on the loot. Really your character IS the loot in most games. Take WoW War Within. I think the max level is 80. Ok take a character that just finished leveling and hit 80 and have him duel a character that is in full whatever the highest tier raid gear. Who wins? The raid guy, right? Ok, have the raid guy strip completely naked and duel again, who wins? The newbie level 80. Why? The character is the gear. Now look at all the effort the raider put in acquiring the gear. Thousands of hours probably. Now you're going to tell that guy, "oh hey if you're just out picking herbs in the countryside and your Internet goes out there a good chance when you log back on you will have lost one or more of your items. In particular your weapon which is the primary thing you need to generate DPS. You may not even be able to raid with your guild because your gear score will be too low". Yeah that guy is going to tell you to fly a kite.

You can have more consequences for death but first you're going to have to design a game that doesn't take gear progression nearly as far. The primary source of power needs to come from the character themselves. This is even more realistic. Take a modern Kendo master (samurai martial arts) and a complete noob of the street. Give the noob the master's sword. Give the master a practice wooden sword. More than likely who is going to win that fight is the kendo master 100/100 times.

In real life it's far more about the training than the gear. If you could model games similarly I think you would have more wiggle room for death penalties that people would actually tolerate.

Scot · October 19

Angrakhan said:

The reason for not losing loot on death in MMOs is they have put too much importance on the loot. Really your character IS the loot in most games. Take WoW War Within. I think the max level is 80. Ok take a character that just finished leveling and hit 80 and have him duel a character that is in full whatever the highest tier raid gear. Who wins? The raid guy, right? Ok, have the raid guy strip completely naked and duel again, who wins? The newbie level 80. Why? The character is the gear. Now look at all the effort the raider put in acquiring the gear. Thousands of hours probably. Now you're going to tell that guy, "oh hey if you're just out picking herbs in the countryside and your Internet goes out there a good chance when you log back on you will have lost one or more of your items. In particular your weapon which is the primary thing you need to generate DPS. You may not even be able to raid with your guild because your gear score will be too low". Yeah that guy is going to tell you to fly a kite.

You can have more consequences for death but first you're going to have to design a game that doesn't take gear progression nearly as far. The primary source of power needs to come from the character themselves. This is even more realistic. Take a modern Kendo master (samurai martial arts) and a complete noob of the street. Give the noob the master's sword. Give the master a practice wooden sword. More than likely who is going to win that fight is the kendo master 100/100 times.

In real life it's far more about the training than the gear. If you could model games similarly I think you would have more wiggle room for death penalties that people would actually tolerate.

Imagine the reaction if others could loot your P2W items and costumes you had bought from the cash shop!

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On Death (and reading the environment)

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