Originally posted by RamenThief7

We like suffering middle-severe penalties for dying, it teaches us not to repeat it. It also gives us adrenaline during the times that we are in danger, because now we are putting our 100% effort into not dying.

I don't get that mentality.

It assumes that without penalty people would not try to avoid losing or try as much as they could to avoid losing.  Of course I don't think people need to be taught that losing is bad or not to do the same thing again, they would naturally seek to succeed and try to as best they can, given the proper motivation, but I don't think negative reinforcement is good motivation.

In a way it reminds me of the whole to spank or not to spank children debate.

Originally posted by Miner-2049er

You're forced to run through a higher level zone:

 

No penalty version:

Run into the zone without a care in the world. Just hope you make it. Even if you die a couple of times you probably won't waste much time. I suppose if it's really tricky you might have to stop the friend chat for a moment and stop reading the texts you're getting on your mobile. The zone is just a pointless time sink anyway.

 

EXP loss version:

Carefully check the map first and get a feel for the route because if you're running for your life you may not have time to look again. Now carefully edge into the zone, look at the mobs and watch their paths. Damn, that Goblin's getting closer, back off a little but be careful as there's another mob behing you, hug the wall, wait, look around, then quick run. That's three times now without a death, you're getting better.

 

I know which game I'd rather be playing.

I really see no difference between these scenarios.  In either case when you die you have failed to cross the zone and have to start again.  The only way to cross the zone is to navigate the dangers correctly.  Just because there is a death penalty does not make the zone more dangerous in itself.  If crossing the zone is so easy that you can do so while chatting or using your cell phone, it will be just as easy as if there were death penalties.  WIth a harsh death penatly you will simply stop trying sooner and miss out on the excitement of actually beating the challenge.

Originally posted by Goragg

Originally posted by RamenThief7

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by SwampRob

Now, while I can appreciate that some have a different point of view on death penalties, do you truly enjoy it when you have to run your character across hills and dales back to the dungeon entrance and down all the little windy hallways to get back to where you were?   Do you actually find that fun?    I'm not mocking, I'm just curious.    I find it difficult to understand how someone could enjoy that.

 

Oh God no, of course I don't enjoy that sort of thing.  I also don't enjoy losing two or more hours worth of experience gain or anything else.  But for me the -not enjoying- the penalty is the whole point of having it.  If the penalty is enough to make me slam my fist on my desk and shout a few expletives then it's also enough to give me a little excitement when I'm facing possible death and a little thrill when I cheat death.

Maybe people like me are like the gaming world version of the adrenaline junky.  You know, the people in real life who do risky things just for the excitement.  Ask one of those guys if they enjoy getting bruised and battered and having their bones broken and I'm sure they would say no.  Yet they do insanely risky things anyway knowing that they could get hurt and it's the possibility of getting hurt that makes it exciting. 

Neanderthal, you prove an excellent point. See, in general Goragg, no one likes the penalties. But us rogue-likes (and I'm guessing the middle-core crowd as well) love to hate the penalties, if that makes any sense to you. We like suffering middle-severe penalties for dying, it teaches us not to repeat it. It also gives us adrenaline during the times that we are in danger, because now we are putting our 100% effort into not dying. That is where we get our adrenaline rush. And so far, I haven't seen that in many games so far, with the exception of EVE (and at one point, Runescape).

 

Actually I understand that thrill. I remember it from EVE and AC Darktide. It was fun for awhile but the frustration from trying to do simple tasks resulting in loss of stuff I have already done ended up with my cancellation. This is why death penalties need t be variable. I would love to set them on high once in awhile when I am in the mood for a challenge and then turn them low when I am grinding stuff or just looking to relax.

Sometimes I want to chat and text while playing - or maybe tend to a kid. Other times I can pay 100% attnetion and can afford the extra thrill.

I'm with that really. I like extreme death penalties but I 100% understand why other people don't and even I don't like them all the time so what i'd like is an option like switching a PvP flag on and off.

The best example of why death penalty is currently a non issue is what is known as the fighter teleport. You go through a zone and do all the quests and are bound back to a town. You use your port stone/book etc to get back to town. You get a new round of quests and run out and complete them. Rather than running back to town as your stone/book is not back up you jump off a cliff and die.

You repair for a minimal expense and go turn in. In this way we see the two biggest problems with MMO’s. Time sink vs. Content and accountability.

The first is best illustrated by the way they put a character out there and making him run from quest to quest zone to zone instead of just giving him a mount. It artificially inflates the time it takes to play the game and gives the dev’s a carrot to put out there for each segment of play. Get to level 10. Then get to 20 and get mount. Get to 30 and get X. Get to 40 and get X. Etc.

The first will remain an issue until someone comes up with a better system to run quests for players in a way that lets them more affect the world around them. Something between Eve player made content and what we have now. (No I don’t have more than that, but then I am not a dev.)

Now the second is part of what a lot of complaints about MMO’s stem from. He killed me in PvP and the guards did nothing. She stole my stuff and didn’t take a faction hit, or if she did it was not equal to what she gained. This group corpse camped the newbie’s all day long. This guy killed the flight guy all night and no one could get into the zone. Now while none of these should be stopped from happening there should be consequences for acting like this. Many of the people complaining about this behavior are really looking for accountability in the games. If a hero acts less than heroically there should be real world like consequences. It stops being fun when you can burn a village to the ground and no one calls you on it. Until we have a developer truly grab this ball and run with it we are going to end up having the same issue in every game that comes out.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Originally posted by RamenThief7

We like suffering middle-severe penalties for dying, it teaches us not to repeat it. It also gives us adrenaline during the times that we are in danger, because now we are putting our 100% effort into not dying.

 

I don't get that mentality.

It assumes that without penalty people would not try to avoid losing or try as much as they could to avoid losing.  Of course I don't think people need to be taught that losing is bad or not to do the same thing again, they would naturally seek to succeed and try to as best they can, given the proper motivation, but I don't think negative reinforcement is good motivation.

In a way it reminds me of the whole to spank or not to spank children debate.

Well, Cactusman, once again you have to be a rogue-like gamer (or at least a middle-core leaning towards rogue-like) to understand that mentality. You do not like harsh punishments I am guessing, so you see our mentality as odd. But as a rogue-like gamer, I see your mentality of not liking middle-severe death penalties as odd.

Like I said before, the best reinforcement to discipline others is one that combines both positive and negative reinforcement elements. Some people simply learn differently best, and no single reinforcement works for everything. If you use too much positive reinforcement, then the person being disciplined will be unprepared for bad consequences or be completely naive of those situations. And if you use too much negative reinforcement, the person will only do good things because they seek to avoid punishment instead of seeking rewards, so they are ruled by fear. You need a striking balance between the two for a good disciplinary reinforcement, one that teaches people to seek rewards (instead of seeking to avoid punishment) to avoid bad consequences. That is in my opinion a good reinforcement type.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Miner-2049er

You're forced to run through a higher level zone:

 

No penalty version:

Run into the zone without a care in the world. Just hope you make it. Even if you die a couple of times you probably won't waste much time. I suppose if it's really tricky you might have to stop the friend chat for a moment and stop reading the texts you're getting on your mobile. The zone is just a pointless time sink anyway.

 

EXP loss version:

Carefully check the map first and get a feel for the route because if you're running for your life you may not have time to look again. Now carefully edge into the zone, look at the mobs and watch their paths. Damn, that Goblin's getting closer, back off a little but be careful as there's another mob behing you, hug the wall, wait, look around, then quick run. That's three times now without a death, you're getting better.

 

I know which game I'd rather be playing.

I really see no difference between these scenarios.  In either case when you die you have failed to cross the zone and have to start again.  The only way to cross the zone is to navigate the dangers correctly.  Just because there is a death penalty does not make the zone more dangerous in itself.  If crossing the zone is so easy that you can do so while chatting or using your cell phone, it will be just as easy as if there were death penalties.  WIth a harsh death penatly you will simply stop trying sooner and miss out on the excitement of actually beating the challenge.

Well actually there is a huge difference between the scenarios. It doesn't matter that the zone will be no harder with either punishment attached, what matters is that you'll be more aware of not wanting to die, so you'll guage the situation with more precaution. Fear is an element used inside those situations, but it creates adrenaline rushes for those who like those situations, which is why people will play these scenarios. Lights, on the other hand, simply want to accomplish something because they simply want to win, few obstacles apply. Harsh punishments will scare lights away, but middle-cores and rogue-like gamers will instead see the risk and challenge and accept them with anticipation and excitement (most of the time).

Whoa, three posts in a row. I would like to quickly say that I am not bumping my own thread, it's just that there's so much to say that I need that many posts.

Goragg: I do see your point. Why not have adjustable difficulties and death punishments? A game like that would attract gamers from all death punishment perspectives.

One issue is that it's difficult to implement this idea that games that have been running for a while. For example, let's say Blizzard put rogue-like servers in WOW. The majority of gamers on that game would not like it, as a result, the server wouldn't last long (or it might, but it would have a small crowd). This idea has to be put into a game right when it's created, so that fresh new gamers will instantly choose what they want to do. I've heard of a few cases where rogue-like servers were put into an existing game, and they did well (I think Diablo2 follows this, not sure). But, those cases are few and between.

You do have an excellent thought. My question is, why haven't we seen many games with this idea?

I'm not sure you'd need different servers - though it might be better. You could possibly have a system where you could flag yourself e.g there might be three options, the first setting was the default one with a low penalty, the second might be more hardcore with a 5% exp bonus and the third setting would be perma-death with a 10% exp bonus.

edit: btw these settings wouldn't have to be permanent - you could unflag yourself with time delays etc.

Originally posted by DoomsDay01

Originally posted by Dark-Asylum

 if it hasn't been painfully obvious for all these years the "harsh" death penalties are usually more inclined to the "niche", if you will, market and will probably not see any real application, for good reason.

I hardly think EQ1 was ever a niche game. They had sold 100,000 copies in the first month. Heck they were just hoping to get 5k people in the first month for them to feel successful. Its not WoW numbers but then again, the computers that could run EQ with good quality cost 2-3x more than one of todays standards. Computers have gotten better and cheaper which has allowed many more people to get online and play the new mmo's. They dont even know what it was like back then let alone even comprehend what a death penalty is for. And yet, all I keep seeing everywhere is, every game after wow is just a wow clone. nothing new. Bored and quit within the first month of gameplay. You never hear (with the exception of eve) "oh that game was to tough, I couldn't figure it out so I quit". No, What you hear is, I got bored and quit before my first 30 days were up. Reintroduce some of the "old ways" back into an mmo and I guarantee you will not hear "I was bored so I quit". You may hear that it was to tough and they couldn't hack it. But at least they wouldn't be bored.

EQ1 is not a good example. It is the 2nd real MMO on the market and players have no choice then. Now they do.

There really isn't a way to describe how danger and risk can really make games memorable and bring people together aside from experiencing it for yourself.  Unfortunately there aren't many games these days that can do this, and certainly none that will ever live up to EQ.

Here is a quote from a player, posted a few months ago in the EQ forum. The poster describes in detail events in a video game session he played over 10 years ago.  You don't remember a video game session for 10 years unless it was simply an outstanding experience.

Originally posted by Doomsday01

Oh I got so many stories, They are all my best memories of EQ. This one may be very long, but I think it will be worth reading.

Setting: Classic EQ, about 2-3 weeks after the game launched.

Location: Unrest

Ok, this was probably one of my all time favorite zones, at least as a cleric.

We were not in a guild and we did not have any affiliation with anyone other than ourselves. We were the Dwarven Wrecking Crew!

5 dwarven clerics and a dwarven Warrior, (We also had 1 hobbit that played with us from time to time). What we lacked in dps, we made up for with ingenuity.

 

We had been in unrest for a few days now, there was a group of folks that was just slightly ahead of us in levels and we got to see many wonderful and horrible things coming from inside that house. The big bad ass was the hag! We saw them fight one every now and then and boy did it look nasty. We had already taken our fair share of deaths from the random ones that would walk around in the yard so we were amazed to watch them go at her and some of the other creatures from inside the house. Well, one night it happened. They pulled from the house to the courtyard to fight. They had accidently pulled several hags from the house at the same time and had a few other creatures in tow.

It looked like 4th of july over there with all the fireworks going on, then BAM! every single one of those guys were charmed by the hags and ever so slowely taken back into the house to be killed one by one as their charm wore off. I swear to god, you could actually see the fear in their faces as they lumbered unwillingly back into the mansion. Oh my god was that an awesome sight to see.

 

If that wasn't enough, just a couple days later, our group was now pulling from the mansion and we got our first hag pull. Everything was going right, It was taking us a long time as we were not very dps heavy if you know what I mean. Here was our mistake, we was fighting her right in the center of the courtyard. During this time, a bad pull from another group sent them running to the zone. We had JUST killed the hag when another hag showed up from that bad pull and jumped us. We fought her for all it was worth, just before she died we had another hag jump in, Boy were we sweating bullets at this time. We were rotating cleric heals trying to conserve every last drop of mana and all of our mana was starting to go down fast. Now before this third hag went down, we had a mummie jump in (also from that other groups bad pull). Well, to make this a shorter story, this continued for right at 30 minutes straight. One long string of fights that we thought was never going to end! For the last 15 minutes of the fight it was touch and go, we could all die any second now but I do believe the gods were watching us that night. Every cleric at this point was almost bone dry of mana, we were trying to rest and get just enough back for that next heal, our warrior had not seen his hitpoints be above 50% since the second fight and many times he was down to just a sliver of health and remained that way for the almost the entire fight. We had what seemed like the entire zone watching us during the fight and some of them would grab the random beetles that would jump in on the clerics trying to rest to get back more mana. When we got done with that fight, I swear I was soooo tired afterwards. I was absolutely emotionally drained at that point and all we could do at that point was sit back, rest, and laughed about how we just cheated death and survived a 30 minute long fight. The crowd on the other side of the courtyard was cheering us, telling us how great of a job we did and one of them asked, How were you able to do that? Our reply was: Its simple, we ARE the Dwarven Wrecking Crew!

 

That my friends has never been matched in any other game. And the truely great part about that story is that there are many many more just like it from our adventures together. Show me a game today that can give you that kind of feeling!

Without any danger or risk, this memory / story would not even exist.  That memory would likely have been simply not having been very impressed with the graphics, and maybe complaining about the other group pulling adds on them, and forgotten within a week.

Originally posted by RamenThief7

Well, Cactusman, once again you have to be a rogue-like gamer (or at least a middle-core leaning towards rogue-like) to understand that mentality. You do not like harsh punishments I am guessing, so you see our mentality as odd. But as a rogue-like gamer, I see your mentality of not liking middle-severe death penalties as odd.

Like I said before, the best reinforcement to discipline others is one that combines both positive and negative reinforcement elements. Some people simply learn differently best, and no single reinforcement works for everything. If you use too much positive reinforcement, then the person being disciplined will be unprepared for bad consequences or be completely naive of those situations. And if you use too much negative reinforcement, the person will only do good things because they seek to avoid punishment instead of seeking rewards, so they are ruled by fear. You need a striking balance between the two for a good disciplinary reinforcement, one that teaches people to seek rewards (instead of seeking to avoid punishment) to avoid bad consequences. That is in my opinion a good reinforcement type.

I think that developers of MMOs focus too much on creating an ulterior motive for everything.  I mean you don't just do dungeons for fun but for some shiney sword and you don't just win a fight in PvP for fun but to avoid being looted.  Developers put too much effort trying to train the players when I just want to enjoy the game for its own sake, the result is really exact and practiced players but it also creates a more tense mood I think, one where players take the game too seriously for me to enjoy it, and that goes for both positive and negative reinforcement.

Originally posted by heremypet

You guys need to see past all of the changes that competition in this industry has brought to the table and realize that these are hardly RPGs anymore, but instead just a colorful waste of time.  All of the MMO developers want to be the one who rewards the player the most, and then players get where they want to log on and just win win win, no matter what they are doing.  I've actually seen people argue that since they pay a monthly sub, they should not have to lose at anything in the game.. Well I'll tell you what, I'll make a game where you click your mouse on a big red button and win, it's that easy.  Just pay me $15 a month and click click click and you can win win win until your fingers bleed.

 

If you game actually have content .. sure. There are plenty of people using God Mode to go through SP games for the same reason. They want to see and experience the content.

When are people realize that games are now more like movies. Players are entertained by CONTENT, not challenges.

Originally posted by RamenThief7

Well, Narusselda, first off WOW is one of the hugest reasons why rogue-likes aren't seen as often. Also, a game should be successful for the reasons it become successful in the first place. EVE Online should not be forced to cater to casuals to make more income, it should stay the way it is to offer a unique experience. And the developer of EVE Online obviously agree with this idea, which is why they have not changed the death punishment system (you lose your ship, and only get money back if you had the ship insured). This is why I am highly considering playing EVE Online soon. The developers are not greedy and change important aspects of the game just to net in more people, they instead build upon their original idea and keep the original concept in mind, all the while keeping their fanbase happy.

Also, to answer that second post about wondering why dying to get free transport back to town with no penalty is so bad, well, read the entire thread to get a good feel of why I said that...

And that is why i tried Eve and decide not to subscribe (not to mention the horribly skimpy and boring PvE) and people like me prob outnumber you by a factor of 10.

And sure, if the developers want to settle on a niche game, it is their perogative. Just don't expect people flock to it.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by heremypet

You guys need to see past all of the changes that competition in this industry has brought to the table and realize that these are hardly RPGs anymore, but instead just a colorful waste of time.  All of the MMO developers want to be the one who rewards the player the most, and then players get where they want to log on and just win win win, no matter what they are doing.  I've actually seen people argue that since they pay a monthly sub, they should not have to lose at anything in the game.. Well I'll tell you what, I'll make a game where you click your mouse on a big red button and win, it's that easy.  Just pay me $15 a month and click click click and you can win win win until your fingers bleed.

 

 

If you game actually have content .. sure. There are plenty of people using God Mode to go through SP games for the same reason. They want to see and experience the content.

When are people realize that games are now more like movies. Players are entertained by CONTENT, not challenges.

 

 

"Players are not entertained by challenges"
I'm sorry but that is the most ridiculous crap I've heard all week. 

"Games are now more like movies"
So what do you suggest?  we put down the controller and watch our video games?

Originally posted by RamenThief7

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by SwampRob

Now, while I can appreciate that some have a different point of view on death penalties, do you truly enjoy it when you have to run your character across hills and dales back to the dungeon entrance and down all the little windy hallways to get back to where you were?   Do you actually find that fun?    I'm not mocking, I'm just curious.    I find it difficult to understand how someone could enjoy that.

 

Oh God no, of course I don't enjoy that sort of thing.  I also don't enjoy losing two or more hours worth of experience gain or anything else.  But for me the -not enjoying- the penalty is the whole point of having it.  If the penalty is enough to make me slam my fist on my desk and shout a few expletives then it's also enough to give me a little excitement when I'm facing possible death and a little thrill when I cheat death.

Maybe people like me are like the gaming world version of the adrenaline junky.  You know, the people in real life who do risky things just for the excitement.  Ask one of those guys if they enjoy getting bruised and battered and having their bones broken and I'm sure they would say no.  Yet they do insanely risky things anyway knowing that they could get hurt and it's the possibility of getting hurt that makes it exciting. 

Neanderthal, you prove an excellent point. See, in general Goragg, no one likes the penalties. But us rogue-likes (and I'm guessing the middle-core crowd as well) love to hate the penalties, if that makes any sense to you. We like suffering middle-severe penalties for dying, it teaches us not to repeat it. It also gives us adrenaline during the times that we are in danger, because now we are putting our 100% effort into not dying. That is where we get our adrenaline rush. And so far, I haven't seen that in many games so far, with the exception of EVE (and at one point, Runescape).

Interesting.  I think, for some of us, dying itself is enough of a penalty.   First off, it reminds me that, at least on that attempt, I have failed.    Second, I have to stop doing what I enjoy (playing the game) and now have to deal with whatever consequences have arisen from my failure, be it a corpse run, a wait period (a la Wow) or something more harsh.    But, for some of us, the severity of harshness is irrelevant.     The only incentive I need to not die is: dying will force me to stop playing and have to do some punishment until I can continue playing.    Even if that punishment is walking across a field, it's enough for me.

Question:   if a game had an option to choose either a mild death penalty or a harsh one, how many of you can honestly say you'd choose the harsher one as your default?

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by heremypet

You guys need to see past all of the changes that competition in this industry has brought to the table and realize that these are hardly RPGs anymore, but instead just a colorful waste of time.  All of the MMO developers want to be the one who rewards the player the most, and then players get where they want to log on and just win win win, no matter what they are doing.  I've actually seen people argue that since they pay a monthly sub, they should not have to lose at anything in the game.. Well I'll tell you what, I'll make a game where you click your mouse on a big red button and win, it's that easy.  Just pay me $15 a month and click click click and you can win win win until your fingers bleed.

 

 

If you game actually have content .. sure. There are plenty of people using God Mode to go through SP games for the same reason. They want to see and experience the content.

When are people realize that games are now more like movies. Players are entertained by CONTENT, not challenges.

 

 

"Players are not entertained by challenges"
I'm sorry but that is the most ridiculous crap I've heard all week. 

"Games are now more like movies"
So what do you suggest?  we put down the controller and watch our video games?

FWIW, I have played games almost entirely in God Mode just so I can watch them uninterrupted.   Sometimes I'm enjoying the story so much, the game gets in the way.   Think of it this way:   watching a video can be like reading a book.  You're enjoying the story as it unfolds.   But suddenly, around the end of chapter 5, a message tells you that you did not play well enough and have to replay chapter 5.   It's like being told I didn't read the chapter well enough, and have to read it again.     I don't want to read it again, I want to see what happens in chapter 6.   The game Indigo Prophecy was an excellent example of this.   Great story, but awkward gameplay that made you die much too often.

Originally posted by RamenThief7

One issue is that it's difficult to implement this idea that games that have been running for a while. For example, let's say Blizzard put rogue-like servers in WOW. The majority of gamers on that game would not like it, as a result, the server wouldn't last long (or it might, but it would have a small crowd)....  I've heard of a few cases where rogue-like servers were put into an existing game, and they did well (I think Diablo2 follows this, not sure). But, those cases are few and between.

You do have an excellent thought. My question is, why haven't we seen many games with this idea?

Actually, I don't see why they wouldn't.  The  thing stopping most demands for "different server types" is that each type of server requires different CODE VERSIONS.  And it's not just the cost of adding a block; it's the ongoing cost of reviewing and troubleshooting it every time you do a patch - and that gets bigger as the codes evolve apart.  And that cost is the same whether you add a dozen servers or just one.  That's a really big deal for adding PVP servers, so you need to make sure you have a significant chunk of players interested before you add that feature.

But it seems that permadeath would be pretty darned trivial to add, and patching should be very little if any problem.   With as many servers as WoW has, I'm sure that at least a few "hard core" servers would fill up in no time.  

Sure, the game wouldn't be "balanced" for permadeath.  But you'd assume the players would be aware of that.

On the other hand, even the best designed game code is still going to occasionally cause a character's death through no fault on the part of the player.   And glitches that go unnoticed on the regular servers might be seen as a gigantic problem by the small number of "hard core" players, who would then demand fixes.  Which, in turn, would then require a separate set of code, with separate patches, bug testing, etc....

I think MMORPG.com summed it up well in their review of The Chronicles of Spellborn. It likely has the best light death penalty system. In addition to your normal  XP  to gain levels, you also gain personal experience points. (PeP) You can level your PeP  to 5 and you gain stunning bonuses like 30% movement speed, 30% damage increase and 15% attack speed at level 5.  It takes quite a bit of grinding to work up to 5. When you die, you lose an entire PeP level and the bonuses lower. Once you experience what it's like to go from PeP level 5 to 1 or 2, then you suddenly realize how much of a huge difference it makes. After that, you attempt to preserve your PeP  levels like you would your gear in a hardcore MMO.

Originally posted by SwampRob

Question:   if a game had an option to choose either a mild death penalty or a harsh one, how many of you can honestly say you'd choose the harsher one as your default? 

If there was a seperate server with a harsher penalty, absolutely, I would go for it.

Having a toggle between harsh and light all on one server, it depends and I honestly doubt that that idea would work out very well.  If there wasn't some noticable benefit to playing on the harsh setting you'd just end up feeling stupid, like you're self-gimping yourself, and you really can't expect people to do that.  On the other hand if there were a noticable benefit to it (like better loot drops) then everyone would feel like they had to play with the harsher penalty and it would become the default.

I used to play a game called Everquest and the death penalties brought the game to a whole different level. Loosing exp when you died, the hell levels where you would loose more exp, corpse runs and  NO armour on corpse runs in the REAL enviroment( not a ghost). I thikn Everquest was the perfect game :)Im hoping to go back soon.