In their attempts to become more accessible i think modern MMOs have tended to become rather bland and uninteresting. The reduction of the death penalty is a fractional part of that development but certainly the whole of it.

I don't see how a death penalty would lighten up an MMO. Not saying I would vote against it, but still.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Actually I think newer MMOs didn't do as good, though most of them didn't do bad at all, just not WoW good, which is a unreasonable standard anyway. Anyway they didn't do as good because a lot of them were rather short on content especially for higher levels. And when people speed through games as fast as possible they get bored with the ones that don't have tons of content.

About death penalties though I don't think they will make games more exciting. The reason is, and I am sure I am not the only one that does this, people don't think about the death penalty when they are fighting. It isn't like people are about to die and think "well the death penalty is really harsh in this game I should adjust my ammount of effort to avoid this harsh death penalty," They are think "oh crap I don't want to die," likewise when they survive they don't think "glad I avoided the harsh death penalty this encounter is more exciting than it otherwise would have been," more like "Yay not dead". So I don't think it makes it more exciting for most people nor does it make people try to avoid death more, because they are already trying as much as they can in the first place and they never think about the death penalty.

The only time I think people do think about the death penalty is when they die and are burdened by the penalty and when they are planning what they want to do, which leads to frustration.

So I think most people can have just as much fun, if not more, without a death penalty as with.  Just have some way to keep people from rushing head long into something over and over and win by respawn zerg cause that is cheap and you should be fine.

The thing about risk and reward is the reward don't become better to people if they risk a lot while getting it, well not all people.  The concept of risk and reward is that if you are compensated with increasing reward you are more willing take on increasing amounts of risk, to get the best stuff you risk more and such, not that people automatically like something more if they had to risk more to get it.
 

Exactly, A death penalty isn't going to make death any more or less of a, "Oh S**t" scenario unless it is a crippling penalty that will make some say to heck with this game. I, for one, find having to walk all over creation back to my body a pain enough let alone damage to my equipment that I have to pay for nasty enough. I never could stand the games that allowed the free looting of your body in this situation as well. I AM one of those, apparently few, people that still remember that games are supposed to be fun, not a job. I have one of those, and a wife, I don't need another pain in my backside...lol

Pencilrick (the OP), I completely agree with you.

Without a severe death penalty (that affects everyone, and isn't just self imposed), PvE MMO's are extremely boring, for some of us. I understand that many people don't agree - I think they feel threatened by people like you and I who want to take them out of their comfort zone, and who like games played at a whole different level that is apparently beyond their ability to understand.

Originally posted by Bluefish

Pencilrick (the OP), I completely agree with you.

Without a severe death penalty (that affects everyone, and isn't just self imposed), PvE MMO's are extremely boring, for some of us. I understand that many people don't agree - I think they feel threatened by people like you and I who want to take them out of their comfort zone, and who like games played at a whole different level that is apparently beyond their ability to understand.

 

I don't believe it is beyond our ability to understand, it is simply a question of if a company wants to have a small base of "hardcore" players, or whether it wants to actually make money and keep a steady base of both those hardcore players that have places to rend each other to shreds and those who would rather enjoy a story or a less stressful grind. Unfortunately, I have not found the game that allows a player to do both well. I do enjoy jumping into PvP and kicking some butt, and I like crafting and PvE too. WoW was about the best I've found so far, but that is not saying much...I do not think that a company will totally cater to one side or the other anymore since it is obvious there is a huge market for casual players as well as "hardcore" players. I think we will all have to get used to this idea. There are always PVP servers on every game.

Originally posted by KhurryFlav

Originally posted by Bluefish

Pencilrick (the OP), I completely agree with you.

Without a severe death penalty (that affects everyone, and isn't just self imposed), PvE MMO's are extremely boring, for some of us. I understand that many people don't agree - I think they feel threatened by people like you and I who want to take them out of their comfort zone, and who like games played at a whole different level that is apparently beyond their ability to understand.

 

 

I don't believe it is beyond our ability to understand, it is simply a question of if a company wants to have a small base of "hardcore" players, or whether it wants to actually make money and keep a steady base of both those hardcore players that have places to rend each other to shreds and those who would rather enjoy a story or a less stressful grind. Unfortunately, I have not found the game that allows a player to do both well. I do enjoy jumping into PvP and kicking some butt, and I like crafting and PvE too. WoW was about the best I've found so far, but that is not saying much...I do not think that a company will totally cater to one side or the other anymore since it is obvious there is a huge market for casual players as well as "hardcore" players. I think we will all have to get used to this idea. There are always PVP servers on every game.

I've played games where there were inventory and monetary losses to just getting killed, and it was the most miserable experience in my gaming life. I can't stand games where a high level player decides to be a complete D*bag and kill someone starting out that is just getting used to the game. It might be fun for the complete A*hole doing the killing, but it runs off new subscribers. I believe the invention of PVE and PVP servers pretty much took care of this.

getting rid of death penalty is why WoW became #1 and older games are in the shadows. final fantasy xi should been top three mmo but the hardcore nature including lose exp upon death has turned of casual gamers which there is alot of. yeah everqeuest and FFXI still have alot players but most mmo gamers seem to be casual and move on every couple years.

Errr, no, PvE games need puzzles, catacombs, big fire trails chasing your party, ambush events inside dungeons...something  This L2esque lose-XP-so-you-can-grind-2-more-months or some REALLY annoying penalty won't do anything good. Dungeon difficulty, exciting puzzles/events inside the dungeons...these are enough for a death penalty. "COME ON, WE FINALLY DID THIS, LET'S FOCUS NOW, I DON'T WANNA DO THIS AGAIN" with some minor penalties works great.

Originally posted by pencilrick

Thoughts?

That you're wrong. It's not all about the death penalty.
It's all bout the complexity, challenge and enjoyability of the PVE content.

No death penalty ever made a bad PVE game into a good one.

A proper death penalty is a balance.

Too trivial and people don't care if they die, taking some of the fun out of surviving.
Too harsh and people will actively try and avoid dangerous situations.

And no death penalty should actively punish a player by regressing their character. Losing resources is fine. Slowing progression by means of a debuff (or a loss of buffs) is fine. Making the player run around with a humongous flag proclaiming "Cuthbert the Brave was slain by a Dire Mouse. That's right, people. A freakin' MOUSE made this guy its bitch" is fine.

XP or level loss? Not fine.

Originally posted by Thenarius

Errr, no, PvE games need puzzles, catacombs, big fire trails chasing your party, ambush events inside dungeons...something  This L2esque lose-XP-so-you-can-grind-2-more-months or some REALLY annoying penalty won't do anything good. Dungeon difficulty, exciting puzzles/events inside the dungeons...these are enough for a death penalty. "COME ON, WE FINALLY DID THIS, LET'S FOCUS NOW, I DON'T WANNA DO THIS AGAIN" with some minor penalties works great.

I would love for there to be more truly epic events in MMOs as well as epic battles that could be fought to determine something meaningful every so often in the worlds. Give both sides something to strive for. This does not have to be a completely one or the other thing. I think a truly great game would have both. However, that being said, you can't have them mixed together all at once. I think that it is a good thing to have the PvP and PvE separate within a world, just maybe not as they have done recently. Or if a game is mixed, do not have any benefit for the players who kill others, other than their giddy pleasure of killing those who can't fight back like they so love to do...lol

What I look for in a Pve game is content.

Not just raid content but dungeon, quest and other things like features similar to Lotro's lorebook.

A pve focused game needs to give me constant updates always tossing new zones, epic quest chains, dungeons and new reasons to play like Crafting specs and other stuff.

I don't give a rats ass about death penalty.

guidl wars has death penalty and i really like it :D hope Guild wars 2 wills till have it.Feels more competive that way.

Originally posted by metalhead980

What I look for in a Pve game is content.

Not just raid content but dungeon, quest and other things like features similar to Lotro's lorebook.

A pve focused game needs to give me constant updates always tossing new zones, epic quest chains, dungeons and new reasons to play like Crafting specs and other stuff.

I don't give a rats ass about death penalty.

Yes, there needs to be all of this stuff too...Alot of the crafting systems I've seen are complete crap. I think EQ2 about had it with the complexity, but it was too much of a B**ch. So many are just another grind with nothing better than a little counter going across the screen. I think that is it in general, you. as developers, need to engage us, make us feel like we are doing something instead of just wasting our time. I can't hardly play WoW anymore because it feels like a complete waste of time. Engage Me!!!!...lol

Originally posted by KhurryFlav

Originally posted by metalhead980

What I look for in a Pve game is content.

Not just raid content but dungeon, quest and other things like features similar to Lotro's lorebook.

A pve focused game needs to give me constant updates always tossing new zones, epic quest chains, dungeons and new reasons to play like Crafting specs and other stuff.

I don't give a rats ass about death penalty.

 

Yes, there needs to be all of this stuff too...Alot of the crafting systems I've seen are complete crap. I think EQ2 about had it with the complexity, but it was too much of a B**ch. So many are just another grind with nothing better than a little counter going across the screen. I think that is it in general, you. as developers, need to engage us, make us feel like we are doing something instead of just wasting our time. I can't hardly play WoW anymore because it feels like a complete waste of time. Engage Me!!!!...lol

And now I'm completely off topic, pardon me...lol
 

Death penalty usually equals time. Time to make enough gold to repair the item that was damaged if you use item damage. Time to get over rez sick. Time to whack the mobs to make up the lost xp. Time to run back from bind spot.

But, that time can be more or less painful. Whacking the same mobs you just whacked to make the same xp you just made can be excruciating. It was certainly enough to make you log off in games like EQ where it happened a couple of times in a row.

How about a death penalty that regenerates offline?

If you get to frustrated, log off and when you log back on the next day your death penalty is gone. OR, you can keep playing and work it off much faster, it's up to you.

Like you lose xp, and it would take you a couple of hours to make it back. OR it would take 8 hours offline and it would be back. You feel the sting, but it's never enough to frustrate you into quitting because the next time you log on it will be gone.

Originally posted by Bluefish

Pencilrick (the OP), I completely agree with you.

Without a severe death penalty (that affects everyone, and isn't just self imposed), PvE MMO's are extremely boring, for some of us. I understand that many people don't agree - I think they feel threatened by people like you and I who want to take them out of their comfort zone, and who like games played at a whole different level that is apparently beyond their ability to understand.

Threatened?

It's widespread knowledge that excessive death penalty is only fun for the tiniest of niche audiences.  As a result, the overwhelming majority of MMORPGs won't have excessive death penalty.  The ones that do are easily avoidable.

So I can only assume the use of "threatened" here is purely intended as flamebait, because excessive death penalty isn't a threat at all.

LOL

Someone shot me,because I'd like to fill like I just had a $ 100.00 night in J.....  hoe house.

Death separates boys from men. A boy will run from death, a man will stand upto it and spit it in the eye.

Are you a boy or a man?

Originally posted by lisubab

Originally posted by dodsfall

 None of these games stop players from invoking their own, more severe, death penalty. Let's say, every time you die, give a decent item and some cash to a newbie, then go chop down grey mobs for an hour for no exp reward.

Are we having fun yet?

 

No, these death penalty champions have no guts deleting their own character, or deleting gear and money when their characters die.  They want others to suffer, so that they can feel the cruel pleasure of seeing others die.  In other words, they want to ruin the fun of other games in the name of a "fun" they pretend to champion.

Most likely, they are the ones who will never venture out of safe spot, or find a hack to stay alive.

That's exactly the point that I've made many times before.  If these people want to delete their characters, they can.  They just don't want to.  They want to impose a cruel playstyle on everyone around them so they can share the pain and that's completely absurd.

Personally, I won't play games with harsh death penalties.  I play to have fun, not to be punished when something goes wrong.  Having to re-do whatever I was doing is punishment enough for me.

Originally posted by Mr.Hyde

Death separates boys from men. A boy will run from death, a man will stand upto it and spit it in the eye.

Are you a boy or a man?

Cute and so false.

A 'boy' will rush in to death without judging the consequences and thinking whether the outcome is really worth dying for.  A 'man' will think about the consequences and fight the battles worth fighting and feel sorry for the 'boys' who throw their lives away.

Sigh, it's not about death penalties... you're looking at the wrong place in order to find something that can rekindle your joy of early MMOs.

MMO is like an old dishwasher now... everything that comes out always has some sort of stain left on it, there is nothing wrong with it - you just feel dirty eating from the same plate that was once clean and spotless

Nostalgia calls, either find a niche game or wait until something you can tolerate comes out, don't put words into the dying horse.

Death penalty is one of the factors that makes a game hard. I like hard games but others don't.

Personally I think there should some servers with little penalty and some with high, it is not that much extra work and egveryone should be happy. You could of course increase the droprate slightly on the hard servers to balance things a little.

But I don't think thatt is the main reason the games have been failing so much lately. There are other factors:

* Bad AI. Mobs are stupid and the whole tank, healer & DPS thing makes combat easy and boring.

* Bad story. I just picked up Dragon age, I was shocked how much better story it have than any MMO. It seems like the companies use interns to write the crap.

* To similar to eachother. Almost every single game uses the same mechanics. Talk about "clone wars". They also often have the same races and very similar story.

* Easy.  MMOs get easier all the time and that gets boring. It is fine for a kid game like freeworld but it is bad for games aiming for adults like AoC.

* Expansion problems. As soon as the expansion pack comes will all the old stuff get useless. All the new stuff from the same level is about 20% better than the old stuff. All the old zones will offer less rewards. The new levelcap will also make the lower level gameplay boring and fast. Games should either have the same levelcap during its whole lifetime or no levels whatsoever. There should be a rule on how good an item can get depending on what kind it is. A legendary item should only be able to be that good and they should keep that to the expansion so not all the old stuff will be useless.

* Games should use more ideas from pen and paper RPGs. These games have been out since the early 70s and they have evolved a lot. MMOs have changed little since the last 10 years and use the same rules as pen and paper games did in the 70s.

These are some of the most common problems in MMOs. If a game is a sandbox or a themepark is not something I talk about here, both those ways too handle stuff can be good or suck badly. 

Little girls cry.

Boys think about what thay can get away with.

Woman think about fillings.

Men do what needs to be done.

33 year old Male from London

So that make you one of those new age men, that is intouch with your fillings, based on your age, I would say yes.

How is that island doing after WWII. Do you still live there, and don't thay have any online sites that talk about MMOs?

No you just thought you'd check us old flat foots out.

In this county men drink coffee not tea.

And that statment about death got this country through WWII and if I remeber correctly your country also.

 
First: I agree with the OP.

I think many MMO players these days have created their "own private hell", so to speak, through the demands they've made on MMO developers over the past several years.

What have those demands been?

Well, I've mostly seen the following:
- Faster leveling
- Access to better gear with less effort
- Greater rewards for less effort
- Lower Death Penalty, if one at all
- More guidance in quests to help get through them without having to read the quest dialog (e.g. "reading isn't fun")
- More emphasis on end-game, less emphasis on low and mid level games... which seems to exacerbate a few of the above items.
- More soloable, less dependence on other players to do almost anything (except end-game raids, etc)

In large part, developers have been trying to introduce or increase each of those items, in one variety or another... You would *think* that with many gamers getting what they seem to want, that newer releases that increase each of those elements would do better... yet, it seems players are only becoming more and more bored with each new release, more quickly than the last in some cases. Players start a new MMO already looking to move on to the next... to repeat the process again... as the OP states, they're nothing but a stop-gap. You can measure most people's time in a given MMO these days in months, even when they like the MMO otherwise in many cases I've seen.
 

Yet... you look at the older MMOs (ie. pre-WoW)... they had many of the elements people complain about... slower leveling, less guidance in quests, more grouping, harsher death penalties... yet they have maintained a loyal playerbase for *years*.


Just taking FFXI as one example... Here's a MMO that stands for everything many "post-WoW" gamers don't like. It has a slow leveling curve, is not highly soloable, has xp/level loss for dying, has dated tech/graphics, has an obtuse control system (for some new players) and a steep learning curve. By all rights, it should be falling on its face based on what "popular demand" dictates a MMO should be like these days. Yet, it's alive and kicking after 7+ years and maintains a subscription number around 500k. Many of the newer MMOs (WoW notwithstanding) can't reach, much less sustain those numbers even a mere 2 months after they're released; that is despite incorporating several of the things I listed above. SE continues to expand on FFXI, and has never had to do a server merge due to lacking or decreasing population.
 

So... is SE doing something right with FFXI? Personally, I'd say yes, they are.
 

I definitely think there's a connection there... and it's not that the "pre-WoW" gamers "have no life and live in their parents' basement" - so I really hope no one tries to go there, because it's an absurdly over-used stereotype that needs to go away. Plenty of people had full-time jobs, families and other responsibilities that limited their time to play those "old-school" MMOs. They played and enjoyed them nonetheless.


In a nutshell... I think that even though faster leveling, more soloability, slight death penalties, more guidance/hand-holding *sounds* great on paper and many players seem to believe it's what they really want... I think that in execution, it results in a game that people burn through, become bored with and unsubscribe to in pretty short fashion, because there's not a whole lot else the game offers to keep them playing once they're maxed out, other than rolling an alt and doing it all again.

PVE Games: It's really all about the death penalty

No, its about having fun with friends and participating in a shared experiences without some dick from the internet getting his jollies by teabag you.

The only people that care about the death penalty are those that play for far to long, and hinge to many thing on the accomplishments in a video game.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

PVE Games: It's really all about the death penalty

 

No, its about having fun with friends and participating in a shared experiences without some dick from the internet getting his jollies by teabag you.

Errr what?

I think you're mistaking "PvE" with "PvP".  There's no point to tea-bagging a player who's died in a PvE MMO, other than random shits and giggles. I see it in PvP MMOs all the time... which is not what this thread is about.

Also, what does the harshness of a death penalty have to do with tea-bagging someone? People do that a lot in WoW after PK'ing someone, and there's hardly any death penalty in that game.

The only people that care about the death penalty are those that play for far to long, and hinge to many thing on the accomplishments in a video game.

Thank you Dr. Phil. Any other psychoanalysis you'd like to perform today?  

Seriously... That is one of the most ignorant over-generalizations I've seen here in a long time.

It's not unusual for you to make bold assertions, bloodworth... but I don't think you thought your post through very well at all.