Okay, maybe not death, but I sure do want to wound it a bit.
What am I talking about? Removing the death cycle from gaming. Some gaming.
Player characters don't lose. They keep fighting until they reach the maximum level, the top of the mountain, the bottom of the cave system, whatever. Or until they get bored. Oh sure, player characters lose hit points and fall down. Then they get a new body back in town, or in the nearest graveyard, or in Limbo, whatever. Then they're right back into action. It's all just a fiction for removing your character from the scene of combat and forcing you to drive back to it again. Unless somebody in your group has a resurrection ability or you have a self-resurrect ability. In which case, you're back on your feet in almost no time.
So why have the fiction of such a weenie form of death? Lots of players will say that it's a consequence of losing a battle. That it fits the fiction of the game world. It's not really much of a consequence, is it? Very few players want real consequences, such as permanent character death. With permadeath, the character is killed and that's it. The player goes off and creates a new character. In systems where characters are the embodiment of the player's achievements, loss of a character is just silly. A tiny fraction of players ask for character permadeath, so the vasty majority of us are really not interested in serious consequences. But people still like the idea of their character dying, for some reason.
Me, I think character death is a waste of time. I want to be in battle until I don't want to be in battle anymore. I want to be playing the game, not rebooting another life or sightseeing on the way back to the scene of my death. So let's just drop this whole death thing, okay?
But where does that leave us? Am I going to have limbs hacked off of my character, its head mushed to jelly and still have my character happily claiming that he'll defeat his opponents by biting them on the leg? Shades of Monty Python, eh? No, the goal is to go a bit more like a Toon, as in "Who Killed Roger Rabbit?" or a martial artist, as in "The One" or perhaps even "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". It's the Timex theory of combat - player characters take a licking, but they keep on ticking.
Imagine a big old troll coming along with a club and casting five player characters aside with a single swipe of his weapon. The player characters ragdoll off into the nearby rocks and trees, but then spring right back into battle despite the fact that they would normally have taken 50% damage or more from such a vicious blow. The players switch to ranged weapons, knowing that trying to go toe to toe with such a beast is just going to send them on another trip courtesy of Club Troll. That, or they're going to have to pull a Legolas move and leap on the monster's back somehow. Agility test anyone?
The monsters on the other hand, can be killed. That's their job - to die in interesting ways and to provide challenges to players. They don't always die, however. When a monster is too tough for the player characters, the players have to accept defeat. They can't bring it down and it will just keep knocking them around. That, instead of the die, resurrect, rinse, repeat cycle that games currently use.
How many times have you learned that a particular monster was too tough - or that it was even there - by "dying" to it? Or how about when you forgot to bind/hearth/whatever near to the place where you were travelling? What an incredible waste of time.
The system I'm thinking of is decidedly next generation. It requires the combat system to be far more entertaining than it is today. Instead of two characters standing in front of each other, running their attack animations at each other, ablating away hit points, the goal would be for physical combat to ensue. Lots of blunt force attacks, involving knockbacks, flips, rolls, dodges, trips, kicks and so on. I don't mean knockback, flip, roll and dodge animations. I mean physics. The developers over at Simutronics once wanted to build a combat system that resulted in a kind of dance using inverse kinematics, and that's the sort of thing that I envision. It requires physics. It requires collision detection. It's next generation suff.
If that troll is standing in the entrance to the cave you want to enter, you had better either defeat him, fake him out or sneak past somehow.
When combat is that interesting and entertaining, players won't want to be ejected from it, regardless of the fictional rationalization. The only time when I can imagine the fiction of death coming to bear is with PvP. Removal of the opposing player characters from the field of battle is the very goal of some types of PvP, and that means having some kind of ejection mechanism. It needn't be death, just ejection.
Imagine entering a dungeon, working your way halfway through. You're in combat in the next room and suddenly a monster patrol bumps into your group's rear. Healer goes down despite the best efforts of the team. The team recovers and takes down the rest of the monsters, but the healer is dead. Getting the healer back to the group is going to involve either clever design by the developers (no respawn behind the group) or the group fighting their way back out to get the healer and then back in again. It's boring either way. You've gotta wait for the healer.
Now imagine entering a dungeon, working your way halfway through. You're in combat in the next room and suddenly a monster patrol bumps into your group's rear. Your support guy gets knocked all over the place, possibly gets pinned to the ground, and is unable to do any support work (he's probably not a healer because characters don't die), requiring your fighters to take on the new threat in addition to the prior one. Try as you might, there are just too many of them and you have to fall back to the hallway. There, at the chokepoint, you can at least start to get their advantage of numbers under control. You start to get an advantage after taking down a few more monsters and get back to a conventional fight.
The idea is that combat continues, but that you may have to give ground in order to deal with changing circumstances. If a big nasty troll shows up and you don't have the horsepower to take it down, you don't just die, you retreat. If you don't want to retreat, use your 'outta here' ability to get out of the encounter entirely. As you can see, I don't worry about the fiction excessively.
In that vein, and per my instancing blog article, I want to be able to suspend the game if everyone in the instance agrees. What's the harm? Bob has to let his dogs out and we're in the middle of a fight. A quick vote by the players to supend the instance and everything freezes while Bob lets out his dogs. Bob comes back, we unfreeze the instance and get back to having fun. Downtime only when we want it, and downtime exactly when we want it.
So I'd like to see a game fiction that simply doesn't need to include character death. Defeat, yes, but that doesn't have to mean death.
Death just gets in the way of having fun. And you can quote me on that.
User Comments
Well said. I just hope gaming companies soon realize this and start implementing changes in the "death" system in upcoming MMORPGs.
Dont agree at all. If I cant die I wont get the same kick as I get when I defeat a hard oponent or do a tough raid. It would not be a challange. I think that most MMos today are far to easy already.
The character doesnt nescesary have to die all the time, a first aid or spell on a down teammate could stabilise him if youre quick but if deaths impossible then the challenge is too small.
I don't agree either... without consequence, there is no sense of accomplishment.
YOu use an example of not being able to win a fight, so you need to fall back.. why? It's not like I'm going to suffer any consequences.. hell, I could train an entire dungeon to a single location, and enjoy the carnage, because.. well, I won't get hurt.
Loke, your character doesn't die. That's the whole point of the article. It gets knocked back to town and then comes back to fight again. Or it gets knocked unconscious and a friend shakes it awake (resurrection). If you want character death, try a game with permanent character death.
NetSapiens, let's say you're fighting that troll or ogre or whatever. You don't get to run right through it. That's because there are consequences to the solidity of matter. You also can't beat that guy because he's three times your size and tough as nails. The consequences of physics. The fact that he always drives you back is the same consequence that you get when your character is 'killed'. You are driven back to town, or the nearest graveyard. And what do you do? You run back for another try. I'm just taking out the silliness of the trip to and from the graveyard.
As for training, you're assuming that you can run through monsters, which is another idiocy that must stop. Physical solidity is a key consequence that I want to get into MMOs. Having a wall of warriors barring the way should be a standard engagement tactic. But in current games, when a healer builds up too much 'aggro', monsters run right through the warriors to attack the healers, which is ludicrous.
The implications of eliminating character death continue. If a character cannot die, then physical opposition is a requirement. If physical opposition is present, then there must be a reason for wanting to get past an opponent. At that point, the reason for getting past the opponent is of greater importance than the kill-loot-level cycle. There's no real reason to be killing stuff, only eliminating it as an obstruction. The player is after the Sword of Doom, or the captured prisoner, or the valley on the other side of the pass. Whatever the goal, the consequences of not being able to get past that big nasty monster(s) is the inability to complete the task.
Consider too that equipment death can stay. Do you really want to have that dragon breath fire on you? It's going to trash your equipment and turn you charcoal black for a week.
I'll be doing a "Death to Levels!" article next time. That may give a better sense of what I'm shooting for in the larger picture.
But if your character just get knocked back to town, that would be the same as dying in many games... Sure, you use different words for it but the effekt is the same.
The only real difference would be that combat rez is impossible. Sure I can buy that in a game, it would not make it worse but not better either.
Death to levels sounds good though, your character should get better while you play but its stupid to think that a character can die from a rat bite but after some playing he could take a bite from a dragon with a minor scratch. Of course he would be tougher to hit with more experince but able to take a 100 time as much damage?
Loke, being knocked back to town was my glib way of referring to the current death mechanism. That's what the current death system does - it knocks you back to town. I'm saying that player characters should just stay where they are. They can be knocked back 10 or 20 feet, but there's no reason to completely uproot them.
I'll have to write the levels article because levels are a lot like death. They are an unnecessary illusion. In the case of levels, they have a detrimental impact on the potential of MMOs.
Huh?
Death in these games prevents zerging. What is your proposal to prevent zerging? Oh nevermind, you're in favor or zerging. That's fun. (sarcasm)
this has reminded me of the only reason i like a good RTS game once in a while. in an RTS your units die, and its final. ive always thought that someone should create something along the lines of an MMORTSRPG. something where you yourself arent a character, but you manage a group of characters and you instill your gained XP into the how you want. or something. . . .
Imagine your dungeon scenario again. you've been campaigning in the area for a while, some of your units learning new tecniques, and you feel your squad is ready to take on the dungeon. you enter, working your way halfway through. you're in combat in the next room and suddenly a monster patrol bumps into your group's rear. healer goes down despite the best efforts of the team. without a healer the rest of the squad soon dies. now you need to hire new recruits with no battle training or experience.
grimfall, please reread my original article because you missed my comments on PvP.
You bring up the topic of zerging, which is one of the worst aspects of PvP and clearly is something that needs to be addressed. One solution happens to lie with the same systems that could make PvE combat interesting - tactics inspired by collision detection, physics and such. Note that levels also interfere with PvP because unless you are the top level permitted to PvP, you are at a significant disadvantage.
ppetty, I'm sure there are lots of people who would enjoy such a game,but I'm not one of them. It's all I can do to manage one character, let alone a herd of them. That's why I don't play RTS games anymore. To much frantic clicking.
I recall Superman (xbox360, EA game) had the mechanic you couldnt die it was interesting and probably helped the title get higher scores then it deserved.
What is interesting you appear to be attempting to cut away the death penalty since we really dont die anyway.
I can see it making sense in a title built with concept in mind. Very experimental stuff though here.
PVP is problematic too this for reason grimfall ponted out. If we treat PVP different then we are not a virtual world but rather a "game". A Game will have to fight against the huge IPs like World Of Warcraft, AoC, and Warhammer licenses.
I understand your concept of 'exile' when PVP occurs that u hinted at. Interesting concept you get 5 stars for originality here
vajuras: PVP is problematic too this for reason grimfall ponted out. If we treat PVP different then we are not a virtual world but rather a "game".
And that's acceptable to me because the games will entertain far more people than the virtual worlds will. Virtual worlds are best left to productive work, where the fidelity of the environment as a simulation of the real world has great value. As an entertainment medium, the simulation of the real world just gets in the way. As a result, the environment is altered to permit direct access to the entertaining activities that players enjoy.
I want the NPCs living in a virtual world, not the players. Consider the movie Westworld.
The funny thing about MMOs is that I think a lot of people use them as a means of dealing with a lack of satisfaction in their work in the real world. I think that people want real-world fidelity because they want as much of a sense of accomplishment as possible. That's why they work so hard at the games.
World of Warcraft tells us that there is a vastly larger audience of people who just want a Disneyland experience. Disneyland has always been my design goal. Not literally, mind you. Only the "play ethic". It's about games, not virtual worlds, contrary to what some of the genre intelligentsia might have to say:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/11/do-virtual-worl.html
I personally find virtual worlds a scary notion. It's like unsupervised psychotherapy.
Well, Age of Conan should have the phisics you describe: You wont get past a wall of people/monsters anymore.
Actually i remember something similar to this in starwars galaxies... incapacitation, you were out cold for between 5-30seconds depending on how much you get incapacitated, and then most monsters and npc would have the courtesy to let you be just that, incapacitated, while the most evil npc, and of course real players wouldn't and would kill you, making you respawn in the nearest cloning facility with a significant toll unless you were insured, although you could say alot of stuff was tedious there, dying was absolutely not one of them and that worked, and didn't pay much attention to how much time dying took before i tried WoW. although it isn't as radical as your idea i thought it worked perfect, any thoughts of this? Have you tried swg out btw? before the NGE:P
"I personally find virtual worlds a scary notion. It's like unsupervised psychotherapy." haha, this is one of the reasons that i like virtual worlds. so i'm not much for the fantasy design as wow, prefer the attempt at trying to make it look real.
I want to add here MMORPG is still young and still niche. neilsens quote about only 8% of PC gamers play World of Warcraft. So then, what is the other 92% of what gamers are playing? They play games like "The Sims", GTA, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and so forth. Sandbox has successfully penetrated other areas well. We have yet to see a well funded Sandbox MMO Effort come out. EVE Online was developed by an independant company. Started out at 5k and grew to 200k (estimate).
Thus, I would not be so eager to use World Of Warcraft as any proof whatsoever or indicator of what 'mainstream' wants. WoW is just that- WoW. No other publisher has gotten close to their mass success.
In the end, I would say Sandbox games are totally kicking linear games butts. Nielsens reported "The Sims" is #2 most played along with Sims 2 and GTA
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