I agree with the OP. But every time I post that I want FFA PvP or 100% corpse looting, people call me "hard core" like it's a bad thing, and they say "most people don't want that."

Can anyone remember the old UO days? When they first created Trammel and Felucca? The game got WAY more subscribers, but it was WAY more boring. Felucca was empty, and Trammel was PACKED with people. That's when the term "carebears" was coined to describe the "trammelites" who were afraid to come to Felucca.

Games are now almost all made numb and without penalty or risk.

- Phos

i think having no death penality in wow caused me to have fun -- although death penalties in eq and ffxi were pretty funny (as long as you weren't dying), no death penalty in wow meant i could do a lot of really stupid crap that i definitely wouldn't do if there was a death penalty, like jumping off waterfalls or cliffs to my death.

If you feel the need for risk and the excitement of not dying - become a firefighter or a policeman or volunteer to fight in real life.  THAT is real excitement when you don't die.

If you can't take the REAL risk in real life, than HOW can you say there was such a relief from not dying in a game where death means that at worst you loose your toon and have to re-roll.  I mean, come on - that's not REAL risk.

Personally, I don't need to risk my life in real life OR in a game.

Originally posted by pencilrick

I have said this before, but feel it really needs to be emphasized in its own thread.  The glory of the earlier MMO's was because you truly felt "fear", "relief", and "elation."

There was a stinging death penalty where you lost experience points or your gear was looted by someone else that may the prospect of dying scary.   To be killed in a deep dark dungeon was really frightening.  How would you ever get your gear back from your corpse.  Going to a nasty dungeon required not just being of a certain level, but required a certain amount of courage from the player.

If you take "fear" out of the equation, then everything becomes relaxed and boring.  Rewards don't feel like rewards.  Whether you are in a town or the wilderness or a dungeon doesn't feel much different.

Death needs to sting.  Towns need to feel safe.  Being in a group for mutual survival needs to feel safe.

When Blizzard eliminated the death penalty in early design because dying wasn't "fun", they failed to realize that staying alive in a world with a stinging death penalty is VERY fun.  Even watching someone else bite the bullet in such a game world has its own wicked fun built in.  (Oh, don't tell me that you early EQ'ers never chuckled when someone else was killed by a train.)

There is a giddy excitement and a feeling of immersion in a PVE game world in which death stings.  This may be why PVP has such a following.

 

As much as i hated dieing in EQ, and as angry and infuriated i would get, it wouldn't stop me from achieving what i wanted. I loved the element of danger, going to Lower Guk for the first time and trying to get past them damn ice bone skeletons without agro'ing. FAIL.....dead! Magical times, never forgotten, unlikely to be bettered.

I get excitied when the odds are against me. When restuss first came to swg and there was still a healthy pop on my server the best part was when the rebs would take restuss with 3 to 1 odds then defending it aganist a much larger imp force for a good 30 mins. The penatly for dieing? losing retuss. It was such a pain to get back and we needed it to run missions. I didnt lose gear or that much money yet i had fun. You dont have to lose personal things for that fear to be there.

I would argue that there is also NO immersion with masochism.

The problem with early MMORPGs and old MUDs is they never really understood that there are two sides to the coins.  They just kicked everyone in the nuts and told them to love it.  That only works for crazy codependents or whatever other pop psychology term you want use for people who stay in abusive relationships.

Originally posted by pencilrick

I have said this before, but feel it really needs to be emphasized in its own thread.  The glory of the earlier MMO's was because you truly felt "fear", "relief", and "elation."

There was a stinging death penalty where you lost experience points or your gear was looted by someone else that may the prospect of dying scary.   To be killed in a deep dark dungeon was really frightening.  How would you ever get your gear back from your corpse.  Going to a nasty dungeon required not just being of a certain level, but required a certain amount of courage from the player.

If you take "fear" out of the equation, then everything becomes relaxed and boring.  Rewards don't feel like rewards.  Whether you are in a town or the wilderness or a dungeon doesn't feel much different.

Death needs to sting.  Towns need to feel safe.  Being in a group for mutual survival needs to feel safe.

When Blizzard eliminated the death penalty in early design because dying wasn't "fun", they failed to realize that staying alive in a world with a stinging death penalty is VERY fun.  Even watching someone else bite the bullet in such a game world has its own wicked fun built in.  (Oh, don't tell me that you early EQ'ers never chuckled when someone else was killed by a train.)

There is a giddy excitement and a feeling of immersion in a PVE game world in which death stings.  This may be why PVP has such a following.

 

Their is no immersion when you have to read everything in an MMO.  I was in the beta for Conan and the first area you had 99% of the NPCs talk to you and it was awesome and you felt a little more like you were in a real world.  After you finished the main quest and went to your home land you had to read 99% of the quest and story and you only heard the main story NPC's talk.  It got to the point where I would just pick the quest and go do it without reading it (just like in most MMO's).  When I'm playing a game I don't want to read, I want to hear NPC's talk to me.  I'm not sure if in the gold version if every NPC talks and maybe they just didn't put the voice in the Beta because it would have been to much of a download.  I'll still probably buy the game, but I think if they were going to have you read most of the quests and such in the game they should have just made it all instead of giving us a carrot and say "look at what we're doing" then take it away...all or nothing.

Immersion is anything in the world that makes the game feel more realistic.  So a full eco system, talking NPC's, a realistic weather system...etc. 

Originally posted by pencilrick

 

Originally posted by ianubisi

That's your opinion.

I think both my opinion and somewhat true.

 

When you are afraid, you are exicted. When you are excited, you are not bored.  When the fear passes, you feel elated.  If you achieved something, a reward perhaps, from whatever experienced caused you this fear, then that reward is probably more valued than if you had aquired it while being bored.

Are not the above statements generally true?

An example:  Take a couple of  different haunted houses during Halloween?  Is not the one with the chainsaw wielding maniac who jumps out at you from the darkness more fun than the one that has Casper the Friendly Ghost?

There has to be something to what I'm saying.

Still doesn't change the fact though.  What you MAY like won't be the same for others.   Annoying death penalties and being punished for someone else's mistakes (i.e a train in EQ that would cost you experience just for being in wrong spot at wrong time) are long since gone.  All I can say is good riddance.  I play games to relax and have fun.  Stuff like that was fun back in the day, when I had plenty of spare time.  If I really wanted to be tortured, I would put my 15 bucks back in my pocket, and just ask my girl how her day was.  That's all the torture I need, don't need it in my chosen form of entertainment.

I agree 100% with the OP about death and it should be stinging.I also agree that it makes all your efforts feel that much more rewarding.The part i don't like is equating it to PVP.EQ2 had a decent death penalty and yes you would lose your gear until you could return to retrieve it.I felt it was decent but could go a step even further.Much to my dismay the player base thought it was too harsh and vetoed it until the death penalty became a joke.I discontinued playing as i didn't want to play a game that felt kiddish in it's design.Eq2 was about PVE so the immersion can certainly be felt in PVe.

If they made death harsh enough THEN and only then would it make levelling seem a little more like a skill and not just someone putting in time.If you die enough you would actually lose levels.Games have created a huge grind,that is why peeps scoff at dying they feel too much effort is lost,but in reality it was no effort but merely time involved.If game developers could make a brilliant game design where you would also have a huge death penalty,then they could relieve the GRIND effect in games.Make there MOBS flexible so they don't always do the exact same things and react in the exact same way.I mean c'mon going into an epic fight where you do nothing but line up 10 players to constantly stun the mob is anything but skillfull,it's more predictable and not even fun IMO.

So ya i agree bring on the fear of playing.I still to this day remember playing an expansion pack for quake[the NIN soundtrack one] and i was literally on the edge of my seat playing because the mobs would jump outa no where and were deadly in a fast fashion and the sound track added to the fear ,that it had me sweating while i played.This game left me extremely satisfied after playing it.

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Originally posted by Gameloading
 

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Originally posted by Arclan

Totally agree with the OP.  Perhaps more and more FPS and console-game types are playing MMOs, and posting here on the forums :P.   People from those games/genres are used to dealing with, at most, a few seconds wait while spawning.  Any set back other than that is unacceptably harsh.
Hey, we won't go ruin your genres; if you don't ruin ours.  MMkay?  Thanks.  We like an element of risk with our reward.

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Excuse me, YOU like an element of risk with your reward, the vast majority of mmo gamers apparently do not.
 
Nobody has ruined any genre, nobody went up to a developer and said "Do it like this or else..". World of Warcraft came out, did its own thing regarding death penalty, and look at that, a huge numbers of mmo gamers approved of that.
What, should all those people stop playing games like WoW just because you don't like it? Please, get over yourself.

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Ok WoW is a unique animal, primarily because of the Blizzard Brand name and it's proliferance in Asia. Aside from that, the MMOs which came out using that same easy-quest formula have been utter failures. Vanguard, PoBS, AoC (give it a few weeks). All three of these games follow the same easy, hand-holding formula of WoW. No one disputes that Vanguard and POBS were failures; and a lot of people are ALREADY calling AoC a failure and it JUST came out. So, your idea that everyone loves such easy gameplay does not show true. What DOES show true is that a lot of people (mostly kids and Asians) love WoW.

Originally posted by pencilrick

I have said this before, but feel it really needs to be emphasized in its own thread.  The glory of the earlier MMO's was because you truly felt "fear", "relief", and "elation."

There was a stinging death penalty where you lost experience points or your gear was looted by someone else that may the prospect of dying scary.   To be killed in a deep dark dungeon was really frightening.  How would you ever get your gear back from your corpse.  Going to a nasty dungeon required not just being of a certain level, but required a certain amount of courage from the player.

If you take "fear" out of the equation, then everything becomes relaxed and boring.  Rewards don't feel like rewards.  Whether you are in a town or the wilderness or a dungeon doesn't feel much different.

Death needs to sting.  Towns need to feel safe.  Being in a group for mutual survival needs to feel safe.

When Blizzard eliminated the death penalty in early design because dying wasn't "fun", they failed to realize that staying alive in a world with a stinging death penalty is VERY fun.  Even watching someone else bite the bullet in such a game world has its own wicked fun built in.  (Oh, don't tell me that you early EQ'ers never chuckled when someone else was killed by a train.)

There is a giddy excitement and a feeling of immersion in a PVE game world in which death stings.  This may be why PVP has such a following.

 

What about a video game would ever cause me to fear?  Doesn't make sense.

Probably the fear of losing some type of progress.

I agree with the OP, enough with the carebear death penalties.  I honestly can't think of one MMO which has actually made me fear death and I can think of several in which allowing my toon to be killed simply aided in speeding up travel.

That's pathetic game design.

The only reason some people want to be punished so badly with terrible death penalties is because rewards are so out of control that they mean almost nothing anymore other than a means to addict people via OCD colleciton behavior.

Its well known that well controlled positive reinforcements work better than negative reinforcements.  That people's postive responses have been deadened by over-indulgance to such an extent that they actually yearn to be punished should say something to people.

If all you do is run on a treadmill all day for carrot after carrot, then it no longer seems like you are rewarded just grinding over and over.

Originally posted by wjrasmussen

Originally posted by pencilrick

I have said this before, but feel it really needs to be emphasized in its own thread.  The glory of the earlier MMO's was because you truly felt "fear", "relief", and "elation."

There was a stinging death penalty where you lost experience points or your gear was looted by someone else that may the prospect of dying scary.   To be killed in a deep dark dungeon was really frightening.  How would you ever get your gear back from your corpse.  Going to a nasty dungeon required not just being of a certain level, but required a certain amount of courage from the player.

If you take "fear" out of the equation, then everything becomes relaxed and boring.  Rewards don't feel like rewards.  Whether you are in a town or the wilderness or a dungeon doesn't feel much different.

Death needs to sting.  Towns need to feel safe.  Being in a group for mutual survival needs to feel safe.

When Blizzard eliminated the death penalty in early design because dying wasn't "fun", they failed to realize that staying alive in a world with a stinging death penalty is VERY fun.  Even watching someone else bite the bullet in such a game world has its own wicked fun built in.  (Oh, don't tell me that you early EQ'ers never chuckled when someone else was killed by a train.)

There is a giddy excitement and a feeling of immersion in a PVE game world in which death stings.  This may be why PVP has such a following.

 

What about a video game would ever cause me to fear?  Doesn't make sense.

Also, I agree with you OP, but it will be very hard with gear/level/stat restrictions because people think time and/or work should = success. As another poster earlier said, he doesn't want harsh death penalties because that would negate all the XP or work he had to do to get his gear. Take the XP/gear away and you have a much more free world. But then by the same sword, the XP/gear is the chief way of determining whether a death penalty is "soft" or "hard". So it's quite a dilemma...for now, I hope a few brave developers (hopefully in the near future) will try to put the feeling of fear or risk back into MMOs...but I'm not holding my breath.

It seems many people do their 9 to 5, come home, have a pizza then start their second job. So we are programmed from school to work hard and you will get such and such and this has transfered over to our hobby. Now, if you want to do the grind and be happy with that then thats good enough for you but to complain about death penalties when you can 95%(5% be in the wrong place at the wrong time during a spawn) of the time be 99% certain of winning and even if you do die it is 99% of the time your own fault..... hmmmm, those odds not good enough for you? Without the risk then it really is a simple question of time served... stamp collectors have more of a challenge than that.

Also, as someone who runs my own business I believe there is a certain mindset that goes with the risk, and that is those who are willing to risk are often more successful than those not willing to take the risk. So, for you guys that do like the steady progression, thats fine, good luck with that, but why not try to be a little bold with your hobby? - who knows what it may open up in you.

Originally posted by wjrasmussen

What about a video game would ever cause me to fear?  Doesn't make sense.

It's difficult to explain (and admittedly, it might even sound silly) to someone who hasn't experienced it before.  I'll use my own experiences to try to convey it. 

Long ago, I used to play Runescape.  It's a terrible game in many ways, but there was one aspect of it that kept me playing for quite a few years - it was called the Wilderness system.  Basically, the Wilderness was a huge, open, desolate area that was used for PvP (which was, at the time, full looting in Runescape) and spanned across the northern game world above the "civilized areas".  It worked like this - the further north you went into the area, the greater the level difference of players was allowed for combat. 

I.E. Wildy 1 - Level 65 can attack/be attacked by 64-66; Wildy 50 - Level 65 can attack/b.a.b. 15-115

The first time I ventured into the deep wilderness in an attempt to seriously PvP (with good gear),  it was terrifying... especially since I was alone.  You had absolutely no idea what you would run into up there - you could get lucky and find one person much weaker than you who was an easy kill, or you might run into a 25+ man guild PK group and have to run for your life at the first sight of them.  Also, you couldn't see for a huge distance due to rendering, so if you spotted someone, they were just a few steps away from getting into magic/arrow range.  If you died, most (or all of your gear if you had attacked someone unprovoked recently) was gone - poof.

This probably sounds crazy to anyone who hasn't played a game with PvP like this, but I can't emphasize how incredibly fun it was.  There was nothing like watching the map intensely as you ventured along to catch any "blip" of players on the radar... or running into a clan war and stalking about just outside the area until some of the dropped equipment was visible (able to be picked up by the non-killer), then hi-tailing it out of there... or fighting for your life in a 3-on-1 knowing that if you lose, your gear is gone.  I really could tell stories about all the fun Wilderness moments that I recall, but that's another thread entirely.

In my opinion, there needs to be both a fear of the unknown and a fear of some sort of death penalty for a game to be truly exciting.  I think this is easily accomplished in terms of PvP, but it can be done in PvE as well; for example, if I'm fighting a monster that I've killed before and it suddenly uses some rarely seen attack that sends me to near death, the fight to stay alive is exciting.  However, if it ever gets to the point of "I know exactly what's going to happen and what to do/avoid" or "Meh, if I die, I only have to take a few minutes to run back here", then the game has become pointless and tedious for me.

I get a kick out of playing Call of Duty 4. I get in, I start shooting people and taking them down left and right and then BAM, someone pops out from behind a corner with a shotgun and I'm gone. DAmn, if I were a little more accurate in closer quarters with that m16... So I go at it again, trying to hunt that sucker down and show him whoose boss, toss a flash bang around the corner and then go in assault style, "You're dead, motherfucka!" spraying bullets at the couch, at the turned over table, anything he might be hiding behind. But he's left by then. Damn.

Maybe if these games were more about skill than time invested, you could get your rush from an intense battle where you have to, y'know, pay attention rather than rely on being rich to provide the right toys or having played forever to give you the stats? If power = time invested, then the only way to get any kind of excitement is to threaten to cut at that time invested.

Eve pvp is pretty awesome because even when you're 2-3 jumps away from a fight the hearts picks up it's pace a bit.  Way back when we had this 12v12 standoff we'd stare at each other 250k apart or so, no one wanted to leave cause the other would chase and we didn't have sniping setups (the only tech 2 at the time was interceptors and mining beams) .  They jump away a bit and we waited a bit while a scout watched them, they came back and we stood off for a while, then we headed back to our homes (no lame hearths)  and they gave chase, the small ships had to battle head to head while the larger ships lumbered about aligning and catching up to anyone that might be tackled.  Stuff was tackled, tacklers were destroyed.  Large ships escaped to safety and all was well.  So 24 people involved roughly, about 4 or 5 ships blown up, probably lasted an hour, so 19-20 people didn't even lose a ship and it was way more fun than a WoW battleground where you might kill over and over and die over and over.  Also it was the best kills/member corp from the old Curse versus the CFS version of m0o, good times.  The standoff would not have happened without fear, a little on both sides I imagine, it wasn't like mind numbing stuff it was just we can't say screw it and try and leave we need a plan to leave so we don't lose our stuff.

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, and leads to hate and hate... leads to suffering."
Yoda

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Bertrand Russel

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
Napoleon

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Frankling D. Roosevelt

Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.
Aristotle

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.
Lloyd Cassel Douglas

I dont want to live my spare-time fun hobby in an environment of constant fear of loss, fear of failure and fear of grief. I dont like it in RL, and less so in my escapism hobby. I can understand the desire for CHALLANGE and DIFFICULTY, but a game of chess is difficult WITHOUT someone cutting you with a knife everytime you loose. To a sensible person the loss of the challange ITSELF is all the "punishment" we need. Period.

Immersion has nothing to do with reward nor with punishment. Maybe you join some pen and paper D&D group a while. Playing a MMORPG is about a good story, the rich lore of a world, its about enjoying the company of other humans in a fascinating fantasy environment. I need neither uber rewards not harsh penalities to enjoy myself alongside others. It is completely sick thinking always driven by GREED to be "better than others" or fear to "loose it all". You guys should really drop this mind-ruining frameset, let GO of this aggressive, competitive thinking and try to enjoy doing things as a TEAM, to enjoy the moment, and let go fear and greed. It makes life so much easier if you leave this restless mindframe behind. a MMORPG is not a shooter.

There is no risk.

There is no reward.

There is no immersion.

These are video games. They are strictly entertainment. To feel such things like risk, reward and immersion means you should probably never be allowed to play video games because you blur the line that seperates reality with fantasy.