Originally posted by demc

Originally posted by Josher

 People who prefer harsher death penalties can ALWAYS make them harsher.  Why don't you do that?  Is that rush dependant on YOUR playtime or on what everyone else has to suffer through?  Can you play a single player game on hard-mode knowing others are playing it on easy and does that thought ruin the experience for you?  I wouldn't think so.  SO how is a MMO different?  You die, you get an EXP penalty but you ALSO drop some gold or drop some gear to make it HURT more.  If your friend dies, he still gets hit with the EXP penalty, but he doesn't drop anything.  You got your rush, he got his.  How does his penalty effect yours?   Does it make it unfair?  Unfairness is just another penalty for you.  

So which is it?  Is the heavy penalty about YOUR need for excitement or is it really about your need for EVERYONE to feel the same pain?   If it was about YOU feeling a rush, you shouldn't care about anyone else.  So if you claim you need a penalty to make the game fun, JUST DO IT;)   Nothing is stopping you.  Why don't you just play on hard mode?  People play golf all the time with handicaps.  The better players get penalized in a way, while still playing against others.  I don't see them complaining;)  In a MMO, a heavy penalty always translates to time anyway, so why not impose that time penalty on yourself?  It doesn't effect anyone else except you.  But its not about you.  Its about imposing the penalty on EVERYONE. 

 

I read all the post here and judging form the comments I would say everyone has their own idea as to what is the best death penalty for them.

I myself am hardcore. The avatar dies then game over. end of sentence.

well this won't cut it from a development point so I make a penalty that is somewhere between extremes. Then I read this post again and got to thinking. You know as a game designer, why not make it so every player can just choose there own level of suffering. Let them decide on character creation.

1 - I want to be hardcore.

2 - I want to suffer experience loss and item loss

3 - I want to suffer experience loss but not equipment loss

4 - I want to suffer only res sickness

5 - I don't want to suffer anything.

 

Yeah that's an interesting idea. More like Diablo, etc whereas players can choose a hardcore mode and get a special statue, etc. Such an option is nice for Achievers.

However, it does not in any form the same as a global death penalty. I'm not saying this route you're choosing isn't good mind you (it is). However, when you have a global death penalty whereas you have permadeath or item loss now we incur all the benefits. Guild vs Guild PVP for instance will enjoy great realistic wars that actually end (unlike WoW's world PVP).

What you might want to consider as well is having optional servers with different rulesets as well. And so forth. There's other ways to arrive at voluntary death penalties as well.

For instance in EVE Online players choose their level of risk a wide variety of ways

Originally posted by FikusOfAhazi

Death penalty completely depends on the game. Each game should have their own death penalty, and the game should dictate what the DP is and how its implemented. I think the problem is companies trying to add whats "most popular" previously, rather than the game dictating what would be most popular for their game. No Idea how they decide though.

Yep agreed there is for sure not a 'one size fits all'. There should be different types of MMOs for different people. Instead of all these jack-of-all-trades MMOs I think instead I'd love to see these newer games focus on doing something really well in areas WoW is weak on (there are many, many things WoW does very crappy for a lot of people).

For instance, WoW has shitty Guild vs Guild PVP. And crappy World PVP where battles never end. EVE Online trumps on both accounts flawlessly in my humble opinion

Originally posted by PatchDay

Originally posted by demc

Originally posted by Josher

 People who prefer harsher death penalties can ALWAYS make them harsher.  Why don't you do that?  Is that rush dependant on YOUR playtime or on what everyone else has to suffer through?  Can you play a single player game on hard-mode knowing others are playing it on easy and does that thought ruin the experience for you?  I wouldn't think so.  SO how is a MMO different?  You die, you get an EXP penalty but you ALSO drop some gold or drop some gear to make it HURT more.  If your friend dies, he still gets hit with the EXP penalty, but he doesn't drop anything.  You got your rush, he got his.  How does his penalty effect yours?   Does it make it unfair?  Unfairness is just another penalty for you.  

So which is it?  Is the heavy penalty about YOUR need for excitement or is it really about your need for EVERYONE to feel the same pain?   If it was about YOU feeling a rush, you shouldn't care about anyone else.  So if you claim you need a penalty to make the game fun, JUST DO IT;)   Nothing is stopping you.  Why don't you just play on hard mode?  People play golf all the time with handicaps.  The better players get penalized in a way, while still playing against others.  I don't see them complaining;)  In a MMO, a heavy penalty always translates to time anyway, so why not impose that time penalty on yourself?  It doesn't effect anyone else except you.  But its not about you.  Its about imposing the penalty on EVERYONE. 

 

I read all the post here and judging form the comments I would say everyone has their own idea as to what is the best death penalty for them.

I myself am hardcore. The avatar dies then game over. end of sentence.

well this won't cut it from a development point so I make a penalty that is somewhere between extremes. Then I read this post again and got to thinking. You know as a game designer, why not make it so every player can just choose there own level of suffering. Let them decide on character creation.

1 - I want to be hardcore.

2 - I want to suffer experience loss and item loss

3 - I want to suffer experience loss but not equipment loss

4 - I want to suffer only res sickness

5 - I don't want to suffer anything.

 

 

Yeah that's an interesting idea. More like Diablo, etc whereas players can choose a hardcore mode and get a special statue, etc. Such an option is nice for Achievers.

 

However, it does not in any form the same as a global death penalty. I'm not saying this route you're choosing isn't good mind you (it is). However, when you have a global death penalty whereas you have permadeath or item loss now we incur all the benefits. Guild vs Guild PVP for instance will enjoy great realistic wars that actually end (unlike WoW's world PVP).

What you might want to consider as well is having optional servers with different rulesets as well. And so forth. There's other ways to arrive at voluntary death penalties as well.

For instance in EVE Online players choose their level of risk a wide variety of ways

Well now that is also good idea. how about when they choose 1 to 5 they get tossed on a server with that ruleset?
 

Originally posted by demc

Originally posted by PatchDay

Originally posted by demc

Originally posted by Josher

 People who prefer harsher death penalties can ALWAYS make them harsher.  Why don't you do that?  Is that rush dependant on YOUR playtime or on what everyone else has to suffer through?  Can you play a single player game on hard-mode knowing others are playing it on easy and does that thought ruin the experience for you?  I wouldn't think so.  SO how is a MMO different?  You die, you get an EXP penalty but you ALSO drop some gold or drop some gear to make it HURT more.  If your friend dies, he still gets hit with the EXP penalty, but he doesn't drop anything.  You got your rush, he got his.  How does his penalty effect yours?   Does it make it unfair?  Unfairness is just another penalty for you.  

So which is it?  Is the heavy penalty about YOUR need for excitement or is it really about your need for EVERYONE to feel the same pain?   If it was about YOU feeling a rush, you shouldn't care about anyone else.  So if you claim you need a penalty to make the game fun, JUST DO IT;)   Nothing is stopping you.  Why don't you just play on hard mode?  People play golf all the time with handicaps.  The better players get penalized in a way, while still playing against others.  I don't see them complaining;)  In a MMO, a heavy penalty always translates to time anyway, so why not impose that time penalty on yourself?  It doesn't effect anyone else except you.  But its not about you.  Its about imposing the penalty on EVERYONE. 

 

I read all the post here and judging form the comments I would say everyone has their own idea as to what is the best death penalty for them.

I myself am hardcore. The avatar dies then game over. end of sentence.

well this won't cut it from a development point so I make a penalty that is somewhere between extremes. Then I read this post again and got to thinking. You know as a game designer, why not make it so every player can just choose there own level of suffering. Let them decide on character creation.

1 - I want to be hardcore.

2 - I want to suffer experience loss and item loss

3 - I want to suffer experience loss but not equipment loss

4 - I want to suffer only res sickness

5 - I don't want to suffer anything.

 

 

Yeah that's an interesting idea. More like Diablo, etc whereas players can choose a hardcore mode and get a special statue, etc. Such an option is nice for Achievers.

 

However, it does not in any form the same as a global death penalty. I'm not saying this route you're choosing isn't good mind you (it is). However, when you have a global death penalty whereas you have permadeath or item loss now we incur all the benefits. Guild vs Guild PVP for instance will enjoy great realistic wars that actually end (unlike WoW's world PVP).

What you might want to consider as well is having optional servers with different rulesets as well. And so forth. There's other ways to arrive at voluntary death penalties as well.

For instance in EVE Online players choose their level of risk a wide variety of ways

Well now that is also good idea. how about when they choose 1 to 5 they get tossed on a server with that ruleset?
 

Yes a lot of people would love to have this. This is a great way to split off 'flock collisions'.

Originally posted by Wharg0ul  

One way of doing things might be to have "offspring".

At a certain "checkpoint" in your character's development, maybe you could do a short quest or pay an amount of coin to have a "child", with a different name, but all of your current "skill points", which could be allocated should you ever die and need to activate this "child" as your new character. You would have a different name, and the pool of points would allow you to set the character up differently.

For a fee, maybe your character's belongings could be "willed" to your "child", giving it access to your bank, and / or house, minus a tax.

I dunno...I'm not a game dev, but there are ways of doing things other than the cookie-cutter systems that we see in the current crop of games.

In other words, it's not permadeath, it's "clone-a-character"?  If you end up with another character with the same basic set up and all the same gear, is it really permadeath?  What's to stop people from saying "oops, screwed up this character, let's go do something stupid, get killed, and do a big reset with the next character!"

Originally posted by PatchDay

Game developers have ways to tell if it was a server-side failure or client-side (you instantly disconnected and thus the transmissions of packets immediately stopped). For example, EVE GMs can look at logs and tell if you are lying or mistaken.

Lag spikes are detectable server side. They have ways to measure server side CPU and measure the stress/load

 

Thus, the issue you speak of is true to some extent but yet- players will take some comfort in knowing devs can easily datamine the truth

But just because devs can determine the truth doesn't mean much unless devs can instantly fix the problem.  Say there is a massive lag spike and 500 people on a server die because of it.  How long is it going to take the customer service people to put all 500 people back where they started?  Days?  Weeks?  What do people do in the meantime?  Not only are players seriously inconvenienced, but the company has to incur extra costs fixing all these accounts for something they may or may not have any control over.

Seems rather counter-productive.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Wharg0ul  

One way of doing things might be to have "offspring".

At a certain "checkpoint" in your character's development, maybe you could do a short quest or pay an amount of coin to have a "child", with a different name, but all of your current "skill points", which could be allocated should you ever die and need to activate this "child" as your new character. You would have a different name, and the pool of points would allow you to set the character up differently.

For a fee, maybe your character's belongings could be "willed" to your "child", giving it access to your bank, and / or house, minus a tax.

I dunno...I'm not a game dev, but there are ways of doing things other than the cookie-cutter systems that we see in the current crop of games.

 

In other words, it's not permadeath, it's "clone-a-character"?  If you end up with another character with the same basic set up and all the same gear, is it really permadeath?  What's to stop people from saying "oops, screwed up this character, let's go do something stupid, get killed, and do a big reset with the next character!"

Well, you would have to assume the design of the game would be different from what is currently available. I think if you could do that you may be able to think of ways in which it would work fine. Whether or not millions of people would play it is another thing, and irrelevant.

Originally posted by FikusOfAhazi

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Wharg0ul  

One way of doing things might be to have "offspring".

At a certain "checkpoint" in your character's development, maybe you could do a short quest or pay an amount of coin to have a "child", with a different name, but all of your current "skill points", which could be allocated should you ever die and need to activate this "child" as your new character. You would have a different name, and the pool of points would allow you to set the character up differently.

For a fee, maybe your character's belongings could be "willed" to your "child", giving it access to your bank, and / or house, minus a tax.

I dunno...I'm not a game dev, but there are ways of doing things other than the cookie-cutter systems that we see in the current crop of games.

 

In other words, it's not permadeath, it's "clone-a-character"?  If you end up with another character with the same basic set up and all the same gear, is it really permadeath?  What's to stop people from saying "oops, screwed up this character, let's go do something stupid, get killed, and do a big reset with the next character!"

Well, you would have to assume the design of the game would be different from what is currently available. I think if you could do that you may be able to think of ways in which it would work fine. Whether or not millions of people would play it is another thing, and irrelevant.

Meaning it's entirely possible that it would go down in a ball of flame and millions of dollars of development money would be flushed down the drain.  That's not much of an impetus for developers to actually give it a shot, but lots of players obliviously assume development money grows on trees.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by FikusOfAhazi

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Wharg0ul  

One way of doing things might be to have "offspring".

At a certain "checkpoint" in your character's development, maybe you could do a short quest or pay an amount of coin to have a "child", with a different name, but all of your current "skill points", which could be allocated should you ever die and need to activate this "child" as your new character. You would have a different name, and the pool of points would allow you to set the character up differently.

For a fee, maybe your character's belongings could be "willed" to your "child", giving it access to your bank, and / or house, minus a tax.

I dunno...I'm not a game dev, but there are ways of doing things other than the cookie-cutter systems that we see in the current crop of games.

 

In other words, it's not permadeath, it's "clone-a-character"?  If you end up with another character with the same basic set up and all the same gear, is it really permadeath?  What's to stop people from saying "oops, screwed up this character, let's go do something stupid, get killed, and do a big reset with the next character!"

Well, you would have to assume the design of the game would be different from what is currently available. I think if you could do that you may be able to think of ways in which it would work fine. Whether or not millions of people would play it is another thing, and irrelevant.

Meaning it's entirely possible that it would go down in a ball of flame and millions of dollars of development money would be flushed down the drain.  That's not much of an impetus for developers to actually give it a shot, but lots of players obliviously assume development money grows on trees.

We're speaking from a theoretical standpoint in this thread, really.
 

And...not really cloning.....but kind of taking a "snapshot" of a character along it's development. Say you take this snapshot, and then play six more months and die....that's six months of skills and development down the drain (since the "snapshot" was made) and you are going to feel that sting.

But Hell, you could attend your character's funeral with your "child" character.

Edit: and, it's "entirely possible" that ANY game can go down in a "ball of flame". Considering the rate at which MMORPGs based on the established formula are crashing and burning though, I'd say that it's time to try something new.

 This is a good thread, and I agree death penalty is important.

I think UO did aggression and death penalty the best, but maybe for the newer generations it was too harsh.  If you don't know UO had a color coded system which if you attacked someone unprovoked, you turned grey or red and anyone could attack you.  when you died you could also be looted of everything.  Personally I loved that system.

Death penalty is important to keep the game exciting.  Even a minor death penalty like dropping a small amount of gold will curtail suicide runs with no risk.   

Otherwise it's just a suicide run over and over again.  You might as well go play an fps.  That's how a lot of these MMOs are turning out.  Boring.  WoW is a good example of what not to do, although early on, the 5 minute walk back to your body what a decent enough penalty.

 WoW has one of the harshest death penalties around these days.

You're equipment is damaged when you die and die enough times you'll need repair.  This can cost a large chunk of gold if you're are a plate wearer.

You have to run back to your corpse -- OR -- you can rez at the graveyard suffering a 25% damage to your equipment and a 10 minute debuff that renders you pretty much useless.

I find this ironic.

Originally posted by uquipu

 WoW has one of the harshest death penalties around these days.

You're equipment is damaged when you die and die enough times you'll need repair.  This can cost a large chunk of gold if you're are a plate wearer.

You have to run back to your corpse -- OR -- you can rez at the graveyard suffering a 25% damage to your equipment and a 10 minute debuff that renders you pretty much useless.

I find this ironic.

I don't think you suffer durability loss in pvp though do you?

 You do somewhat.

I don't think it's as bad as when you die during PvE.

I know I still have repair bills when i just PvP.

I am so surprised that no one even brought up the death penalty in Conquer online/Eudemons online.    Although the game is primarily about pvp the way the mechanics work is like this.

If you have a white name and you die you lose a bunch of exp, items your carrying and gold

If you have a blinking blue and white name *Aka you just killed a player*  If you get killed you lose much more exp, items,possible gear you are wearing, killed by any guards, and you go to jail until your "PK points"  lower allowing you to leave.  Although it only lasts like 20 seconds.

If you are red named the same as above applies but you lose far more stuff and a greater chance to drop your worn gear

If you pk a shitload you'll become black named, this allows you to be killed anywhere by anyone, instant killed by guards, lose all items and gold carried, a possible few items you are wearing, a shitload of exp, and you go to jail for a few hours.

Generally when you die you get teleported back to the previous town, if you have a special in game item you can res where you died.   

In my opinion that death penalty would be pretty fair and rather risky.   People would think far better strategy when attacking other players and not go kill crazy as the risk to lose your almost non-replaceable gear is really high.    This allows you to choose your poison and be able to get amazing gear without the risk of losing it if you don't want to.

Originally posted by DeadagainBob

Here is the dilemma, death needs to matter or the game is boring.  If there is nothing to lose, then there is nothing to protect or care about.  Yet... you are going to die, and if the punishment is too sever, or just done wrong, then you don't feel like playing the game until this penalty is gone. 

Example: you die and cripple the character's stats.  Now they can't take on anything and are therefore likely to die of they try to continue, so they just exit the game to wait it out. 

This isn't fun. 

So how do you keep it fun, yet make the penalty for death bad enough that players care?  This is an important design issue, and one that I haven't seen handled perfectly in the games I have played.  I'm not sure about the answer, but I'd love to hear some possible suggestions on solutions. 

The only way to make death matter is to not straddle the fence. Either have a tough death penalty or dont have one.

In my opinion the only death penalty that has any significance is experience loss with possibility of level loss. The only way this works is if there is enough meaningful content at every level of the game. As of right now though designers dont have either.

It seems the vast majority of dev dollars ends up going to end game content that happens only after you stop leveling. I am to the point if the game has no significant death penalty why not simply make the trip to max level short(say 20 levels) then just concentrate on things people can do endlessly.

As to the question of keeping it fun. There are as many different definitions of fun as there are people playing MMOs. Some people will never find a game with any significant death penalty fun. Other people will never find a game with an insginificant death penalty fun. Instead of worrying about that,  identify your market and build your game to suit their needs and wants and make sure your budget stays in line with the size of your target audience. The games that crash and burn the quickest in today's market are those who try to please everyone....they end up pleasing very few people.

It seems to me that almost all posters see perma-death or very harsh penalties to be firmly in the domain of a PvP centric game. I don't necessarily agree with that.

A PvE game that with a death penalty like Warghoul describes (love it, was about to post it myself until I got to yours :) ), could potentially create a great community. With good risk vs. reward quests/missions, you could be as risk-averse or -affine as you want. You die, you'll be mourned by the community and your son/daughter takes your place. Maybe having received some heirloom or something. Sounds like a game I'd love to play.

 The Diablo games were pretty mediocre death penalties, but effective.

You could lose experience and gold when you are killed, pve/pvp.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

Many people are afraid to have their actions actually carry consequence....that is becoming quite evident from what I see in this thread. They insist that those of us who are willing to go that route are somehow flawed, or are some kind of miscreants or bullys just wanting to harm them in some way.

But the fact remains that more and more people are becoming sick of games with no "real" danger...no real risk, and therefore no real excitement (not to mention the effect that real consequences can have on how players and clans relate to one another).

This is why of course games like Darkfall and MO are gaining so much attention now...people are looking for something different, and wanting to get away from the cookie-cutter Disney experience where everything is soft and padded, and no one can get hurt.

 

 

Many people are playing a video game.  Say it with me... video game.  They are not trying to live some ridiculous vicarious life in a fantasy world.  It's been pointed out to you that you can enforce any consequence on yourself that you want, if you want your actions to have consequences, go ahead.  Nobody is stopping you. What you cannot do is enforce consequences on other people who don't want to have them.

If you're an adrenaline junkie who only gets your jollies from an online video game, go ahead, I suppose.  Just stop trying to control everyone else.

You are being a bit near sighted with your recommendation.

MMO by their very nature are games based on competition with other players. PvP gives us direct competition and PvE actions give indirect competition like leveling, gaining, completing quests, etc.

The OP is asking for the game to become more challenging, which includes completing with other players that are up for the challenge.   Like playing poker where there are online games for fun with no money bets and high stake games at the casino that require all players to put up $ 1,000 to get in the game. The idea that a player can enjoy the “rush” by playing with a self imposed risk that the other players don’t play under is foolish.

At the end of the day some players want to relax and play a game that doesn’t challenge them and other players that want the thrill of risk and challenge. Sadly these two type of players should not be playing the same game on the same server, the game developers should add a hardcore ruleset server to better focus on the game styles their various players want.