Originally posted by Meowhead

Originally posted by onehunerdper

Originally posted by elocke

About my sig, thanks, yeah it cracks me up too, even after all this time of seeing it every day.

maybe some bears, yeah with freakin lasers. Hilarious

The most hilarious part of this is that I watched a Chinese dub of Lord of the Rings, and they subtitled Gandalf as being a ninja.  Yes.  That's right.  Gandalf IS a ninja wizard.  There are reasons to watch pirated versions of stuff you own legitimately, and HILARIOUSNESS is definitely part of it. :D

LOL, I almost spit water all over my desk when I read ninja LOL

To be on topic, I think MMOs should have death penalties that fit the game itself, the economy and the gameplay.  No more, no less.

You can't just slap a giant heavy death penalty into every game as a one size fits all solution.  Just like anything else, death penalties should be a part of the game design.

You couldn't just change the death penalty, if you want to make it truly meaningful or useful to the game, you have to change parts of the ways the game works at a very fundamental level.  You can make a much more crafting friendly game if items either deteriorate (Permanently) or get lost/destroyed during combat.

With the ridiculous amount of time-wasting and repeating and grinding you need to do to get the 'right' tier of equipment for WoW, the whole gear treadmill would break down if  WoW items got lost/destroyed when you die.

Death penalties should fit and complement the game they're in.

I agree there needs to be tweaking, but I think it needs to exist in a deeper way in MMO's not what it has become.

Wouldn't mind harsher death penalties if death in MMO's wasn't always the failure outcome in EVERY encounter. It's the only mechanism currently.

Currently in MMO's, if the NPC guards catch you stealing? They kill you.

That rabid bear that you ran across in the woods? It kills you.

Ambushed by bandits? The kill you.

and so on...

Now imagine that instead of all guards being bloodthirsty psychos, that they may just knock you unconscious, deposit your thieving self outside town, post a notice about you being a thief, and keeping you from coming into that town for a month of in game time. or maybe they just throw you in jail or make you pay a penalty.

That rabid bear, he knocks you unconscious, he MIGHT kill you, but more likely he might just paw at your food stuffs, eating all your food, and trashing your armor, oh and when you wake up, he left you with rabies. Back to the healers with ya!

The bandits? They don't necessarily kill, as the know, murdering bandits are hunted more fervently than the robin hood types. So they just kosh ya, take your stuff and you armor. Yes all of it. Surely you don't keep ALL your money on you?Or maybe they ransom you, not sure how that would work in game.

Want to make someplace mysterious, make certain areas deadly. You die in there, no coming back unless someone goes in to get your corpse. Certain dungeons, lost lands, and the like would fit here.   Nobody would go to these if they were that hard! put in mechanisms to assist in getting back your lost char, rescue missions from churches to recover your lost soul, hope you have been tithing to the right gods.... or maybe you get a recall device. Expensive and you better hope you get it off before dying.

In short, a lack of imagination is what is currently the problem with death penalties or failure penalties for that matter. As long as Wow and others have millions of players, it's not likely to change.

I don't think it was just death penalties that made the games "more fun". I think it was a variety of things stacking up that made it a much different experience.

Old School MMO's:

Group Content: Basically, almost exclusively, grouping was the best way to level and progress in older games. This made community, and forming groups a large part of the game, and the fastest way to progress. In EQ, I was grouping from level 4 or 5 on, and only soloed sometimes when I had troubles finding a group. This helped establish bonds and friends in the game quickly, as you always depended on these people to level up and progress through the game.

Pace of the Game: The games were a little slower and less twitchy than games of today. There were not 5,000 hot keys to memorize. It was more focused on strategy, slotting the correct spells and using them effectively. Also, the difficulty of mobs was at a much greater level, as there were really no "solo" mobs, unless you were some kind of kiting class which could avoid being damaged all together. Then there is also mana regen being slow, travel being slow, all this enhanced the group experience, relying on others for ports and buffs. The slower game pace also allows more time for chatting and getting to know people.

The Grind: Leveling up kind of goes hand in hand with the pace of the game, but it took MUCH longer to progress than newer games. This took the focus somewhat off of simply leveling and more on exploring and simply having fun. Sure, people wanted to get experience, but not anywhere as close to as rabid as it feels like in games of today. I consider the death penalty part of the grind, as dying is basically just lost time. This again tightens the community, relyin gon eachother for faster progression, less deaths and an overall less stressful experience.

The Game World: This is one of the biggest things that has changed recently. Open world vs. instanced content. There were SO MANY times in EQ where another group was camping an area, or a spot in a dungeon, and you would have to "deal with it". Sure sometimes it could get ugly if a place got overcamped, but more often than not, people were pretty respectful of camps, and even established places to camp in certain parts of the world. All these interactions are something that simply have not existed in games in a LONG time. There is hardly any fighting over mobs or spawns, or named, as it is literally almost ALL instanced.

I could go on and on, but lets move on to the next section.

New MMO's:

Solo Content: This is basically the entire focus of these games, from the very start. If you actually broke down the quests, and the vastness of the areas in a game like WoW, and compared "solo content" to "group content", I am sure it would be something crazy like 80-90% solo, 10-20% group/raid. This alienates everyone from eachother and does not entice the making of friends in game, as you really don't need them. This is a horrible thing, especially for an "MMO", which is why I personally hate most of the gaming communities of many newer games. Sure, many will say, "the game doesn't start until 50/60/70/80/85", but I will get to that.

Group Content: Next to none? When compared to solo content, it isn't even close. Grouping is more of a "I need to do it to finish this quest, or get gear". You do it out of selfishness, not because you actually care about any of the people you are grouping with. Grouping is much diffferent than it used to be. I have heard comments from people like, "I wish I could clone myself 5 times and do this myself". I mean really? That is what "MMO gaming" has come to?

Pace of the Game: It is super fast these days. There are always things to purge, cleanse, AoE's you have to dodge. The GCD is only a second long and you have 50+ skills to use all the time. You are constantly mashing buttons, looking at cool downs, looking at health bars, looking at the UI ... there is very little time for socialization. I remember in some of the WoW dungeon finder groups I have been in, you literally plow through the entire dungeon without one person saying a word sometimes ... that is an MMO?

The Grind: Leveling up is literally, a total joke in most games these days. WoW took basically no time. I recently started playing RIFT, I was 50, and have done over half of the end game content before the free month was up. There are many games where I could level close to max level in the trial period, it is just stupidly easy. Also, usually soloing and doing solo quests is the fastest way to level up. So you are hardly talking ot anyone, until you "get to where the game starts at max level". In my book, the game starts at level one, and my favorite thing is to level up. I want the game to be interesting, have depth and be involved all the way from 1-max. Why is 90% of the game world blown through in a couple weeks, and then you are forced to rerun the same 10% over and over again? A little lame, don't you think?

The Game World: This is something that I think has probably changed the most since 15ish years ago. Instances has removed the entire concept of social, open world dungeons. There is no interaction between players. Some games even have ways to find groups and automatically port you into the dungeon ... with people not even on your server? Talk about staabbing the server's community in the heart.

After all that, basically, I think newer games have become less fun for me because of the lack of friends and social aspects in the games. There are definitely always exceptions, but for the most part, you always feel detached from the game. You never feel immersed, you just blow through everything and quit 2 months later. I played EQ for years, and met a TON of people playing it. In most games recently, even the friends I have made are easily forgotten as people swap games and what not.

Then you also have the anonymity associated with these newer games. Cross server everything? A grind that takes no more then a month to get to max level? You can basically do whatever you want. Be an asshole. A Ninja Looter. Or just a douche bag. Your reputation doesn't matter because there are millions of other people that don't know you. Hell, everyone on your server could hate you and you can still do group dungeons in WoW. There is just no accountability for anything, which again, hurts the community more.

If I am playing an MMO, I want a community I enjoy and I feel is strong. Otherwise, I get bored and quit fast. All the reasons above I think attribute to these issues with community and the overall "funess" of the game. Why is it that the most boring thing ever in EQ is 10x more fun than the most exciting encounter in WoW? Because you are not pugging it ... or you have grouped and talked with these people for years, instead of 5 days, or never?

A lot has changed, and I know I have too as a gamer. I still think a kick back to the old school days would be awesome. I enjoy my time playing on the EQ progression servers, though even that has become easy mode over the past 10+ years of changes. Sorry for the long post, but those are some of my thoughts :)

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

The harsh penalty for dying, in early MMO's, was a strong source of the fun.  The reason is it made the game world more alive, made foreboding areas more spooky and fun, and made surviving a long journey or dungeon all the more exciting.

Take out the harsh death penalty and you have empty MMO gaming; just not that fun.  Add a quest grind and you have a game that = work, just mundane boring work.

We need to get harsh death penalties back into games.  There will be more fun and less dying, because folks will be more careful and cooperative.  Helps to build community too.

Nah. May be fun for you .. obviously NOT fun for the majority. Just look at how fast it has been eliminated.

Originally posted by Meowhead

Originally posted by Anubisan

I think its despicable that games have come to the point where people die on purpose just to fast travel. Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of a GAME!? I mean what is the point of anything if nothing has any consequences? If there is one thing I could change about the formula modern MMOs have adopted, it is most definitely the death penalty.

... man, I'm not playing chess with YOU.

'Sorry, you lost, I'm going to have to kick you in the face'

'What?  I gave up because I saw I was at a significant disadvantage, and wanted to try another game, because I think I could do better restarting!'

'... you're totally missing the purpose to a GAME.  Now duck your head, I can't kick very high.'

Most games, the penalties for losing are trivial.  In games with serious penalties, they often far, far outstrip anything any MMO has ever had for a death penalty.  Ever.  MMORPG death penalties are pretty pointless in general.  They're punishments of time, that's it.

LOL. Thanks for the good laugh.

I think you're missing the point though. In other games, there are consequences. The penalty for playing badly is that you LOSE the game. You never lose in an MMORPG. And if there are no penalties at all, then there is no incentive to play smart. At that point, it is just a glorified chat room with a bunch of easy repetitive tasks added on. If there is no way to lose and no consequence for doing so, there is no point in my opinion...

Originally posted by Anubisan

 

LOL. Thanks for the good laugh.

I think you're missing the point though. In other games, there are consequences. The penalty for playing badly is that you LOSE the game. You never lose in an MMORPG. And if there are no penalties at all, then there is no incentive to play smart. At that point, it is just a glorified chat room with a bunch of easy repetitive tasks added on. If there is no way to lose and no consequence for doing so, there is no point in my opinion...

Nah .. you can get exact violence on a bunch of npcs in satisfying ways. You dont always need a huge challenge to have fun. Diablo is fun to plow through hordes and hordes of baddies, and get cool loot. A large part of the game is pretty easy .. but very fun.

COD4 & 5 are pretty easy, but the campaign is still mightily enjoyable. Heck, watching Avatar is a great experience, and there is zero challenge.

It is a mistake to assume people will only have fun if there is a challenge. They can have fun gathering stuff (farmville!), killing stuff, or just gonig through stories.

Originally posted by Anubisan

LOL. Thanks for the good laugh.

I think you're missing the point though. In other games, there are consequences. The penalty for playing badly is that you LOSE the game. You never lose in an MMORPG. And if there are no penalties at all, then there is no incentive to play smart. At that point, it is just a glorified chat room with a bunch of easy repetitive tasks added on. If there is no way to lose and no consequence for doing so, there is no point in my opinion...

I think you don't understand how games work. :)  ESPECIALLY video games.

Okay.  Let's take some random games.  Okay, not so random, I'll pick a bunch of games that I can see next to me, right?

Civilization IV, Sid Meier's Pirates, Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter IV, Starcraft 2 and Dragon Age Origins.

Feel free to supply your own games for a counterpoint, but I just grabbed the nearby games.

First of all, Civ IV, Sid Meier's Pirates, Starcraft 2 and Dragon Age Origins ALL allow saves.  That's right.  You can save your game.  Arbitrarily and at almost any point.  Then, any time you lose, you can reload from one of those saves.  You can even have multiple saves, in any one of those games, allowing you to pick any previous point to restart from.  In fact, all of them have autosaves!  That means even if you FORGET to save, you can reload the autosave, and have not lost much progress at all.

In Starcraft 2, even if you die completely, there is no 'you lost, game over man, start from the beginning!' screen, you simply retry the mission.

Sid Meier's Pirates, in fact, out of all of those games, is the only one that has a legitimate 'death penalty'.  You can lose your crew/ship/get older, and any player with real balls will live with their death penalty and try to struggle back up to infamy again. :)

Super Mario Bros., you have multiple lives, and even if you lose them ALL, you merely start over from the beginning.  The game doesn't even take more than a few hours to beat if you do well.

Street Fighter IV, you can continue from any death (On the same fight), and even if you don't want to continue, you start from the beginning, and it only takes about 30 minutes to completely beat arcade mode.

Here's an interesting point.  Even with limitless lives in SFIV and the ability to play ENDLESSLY in Super Mario Bros.... no matter how many times you repeat, if you can't learn how to beat a part of it, you will NEVER be able to beat it.  Ever.

Having a million continues doesn't help you if you're just simply not good enough to beat Street Fighter on the hardest difficulty.

Death penalty >< Difficulty.  The two aren't even the same thing.

If you punished a loss at Tic-Tac-Toe by setting the other player on fire, that wouldn't make Tic-Tac-Toe any harder, it would just mean I'm not playing Tic-Tac-Toe with you either.

You can have the world's harshest death penalties, on a trivially easy game, and it's still trivially easy.

You can have the world's laxest death penalties, on an incredibly difficult game, and hey, it's still incredibly difficult.

Difficulty >< Death penalty.  Yes.  I just repeated myself, but it bears repeating.

If something was too hard for you before, making somebody lose 5 levels and all their equipment isn't going to make that encounter any harder, it just means you have to spend a lot more time and patience to get back up to par to try that encounter again.

There's actually a COUPLE death penalties I can think of in games that make a game more difficult, but it's a fairly uncommon model.  For example, in Guild Wars 1, because everything is instanced, the death penalty of a reduction in energy/health can actually make an already difficult encounter impossible to do.  You must reset the whole encounter to try again and not try to die.  In this case (It's uncommon), death penalty actually serves as a physical obstacle to you beating an encounter.

@Meowhead

"If you punished a loss at Tic-Tac-Toe by setting the other player on fire, that wouldn't make Tic-Tac-Toe any harder, it would just mean I'm not playing Tic-Tac-Toe with you either."

ROFLMAO!  I about choked on my pizza slice just now.  The imagery, rofl!  Love it!

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

The harsh penalty for dying, in early MMO's, was a strong source of the fun.  The reason is it made the game world more alive, made foreboding areas more spooky and fun, and made surviving a long journey or dungeon all the more exciting.

Take out the harsh death penalty and you have empty MMO gaming; just not that fun.  Add a quest grind and you have a game that = work, just mundane boring work.

We need to get harsh death penalties back into games.  There will be more fun and less dying, because folks will be more careful and cooperative.  Helps to build community too.

Ohmagosh.

I agree.. I remember the years in FFXI and watching raid members delevel as they died and hoping the exp defecit wasn't so harsh that a Rez (or Rez 2, Rez 3--restored more exp) would put them back to 75 so they could re-equip their gear.

Also in a later patch they added in a 5 minute sickness that made you about worthless after a rez (because rez's could be used in combat)--they only did this because players were just doing zombie runs on tough bosses.

There was nothing funnier, nothing funnier at all, than Byakko using claw cyclone on a tank and as a frontal aoe, it hitting the 3 dps behind him and seeing

Kensei has fallen to level 74.

Goober has fallen to level 74.

Jimminycricket has fallen to level 74.

(Names have been changed to protect all the idiots that insisted on naming their character some version of xxSeffirawthxx and Clowwwwed.)

@Meowhead

First of all, having harsher death penalties does not always have to mean 'you lost, game over man, start from the beginning!' as you put it. It simply means that you will have to re-euip your armor and set out from town again. Your character is still intact and you can still go about doing what you were doing before, but it does add an element of risk to the equasion. It makes you actually think about what you are doing and weigh the risks and rewards of every action.

You are talking about the games you listed from a single-player perspective, but MMORPGs are by definition multiplayer games and multiplayer games DO have consequences for losing. In a competitive Starcraft 2 match, if you lose, you have to start over from the beginning in your next game. Everything you built up in the previous battle is gone and you have to start over. It makes you think about everything you are doing and it gets your blood pumping and adrenaline flowing because you know you could LOSE at any moment. Even in the single-player games you mentioned, you can lose the game at any moment if you play stupidly. Sure, you can start over from a save game, but everything you did from the time of that save to your death has been lost. The possibility of losing something is always present.

That is never the case in an MMORPG. There is no way to lose... your character simply exists forever. In modern games, your character doesn't even lose the items and objectives completed since your last bind point. If you die, you literally have LESS consequences than you would in a single-player game with save points. At the same time, there is also no way to win... so really nothing matters at all. Adding harsher death penalties actually makes you care about what you are doing because loss on some level is actually possible.

EDIT: I of course realize that all of this comes down to personal preference. I just personally can't enjoy games with no risks anymore. If its not competitive or difficult on some level, I feel absolutely no satisfaction from completing any objectives. MMOs without risks just feel like a monotonous grind... and one that I have done many times over at this point. 

The harsh penalty was never "fun" when you died despite best efforts to stay out of danger. Anyone who ever ran from Queynos to Freeport (or vise versa) in EQ1 as a low level character to be able to group with friends who were from the other area (due to race/class starting area reasons) knows how absolutely painful it could be to lose your corpse (and any equipment, if not naked) 75% of the way there.

I like the idea of progressive penalties. Your first death should be a short-term debuff. Die again in a certain amount of time and the debuff gets more serious. Compound this a few times and you start losing experience points and/or reduce the character's stats to near useless.

Losing experience points on each death is wrong to me. It isn't just a penalty, it is a loss of achievement. Losing equipment is the same, it creates a negative sense of achievement. Losing a level was the worst game design in history - end of story.

I do like creating a system where accountability is important and players do not treat death as a triviality. I do want players (PvE AND PvP) to be wary of allowing their characters to die and to be unhappy when it happens, not to use it as a way to re-spawn in a convenient location as others noted.

In an MMORPG when you lose, just like in many games, you lose that particular encounter.  That fight, that mob, that NPC, that PC when you engage them and you lose, than you lost that encounter.  The loss itself is enough of a deterrent.  To win you either need to play better or get a higher level or skill.

Thats all that most games have, you lose that encounter, nothing further happens to you.

Venge

Originally posted by Anubisan

EDIT: I of course realize that all of this comes down to personal preference. I just personally can't enjoy games with no risks anymore. If its not competitive or difficult on some level, I feel absolutely no satisfaction from completing any objectives. MMOs without risks just feel like a monotonous grind... and one that I have done many times over at this point. 

The problem we have here is that I consider your 'harsh penalties' to be meaningless and trivial wastes of my time.

Sort of like playing chess with a computer and it decides the punishment for losing a game is that you can't actually play the game for another 30 minutes before starting a new one.

For me, the penalty of losing is enough, I hate being a loser, I don't need to have 'and you waste your time' added to it. ;)

A REAL death penalty would be something like 'Oh, and we deleted your character.  ... but thanks for playing our MMORPG, and we hope you enjoy rerolling a new one'.

Even something like EVE manages to have a decent penalty... as long as you're flying something that took months of effort to achieve. ;)

I'm in an unusual category, where I feel death penalties should be PURPOSEFUL, and that if they're not big enough to actually matter, you shouldn't bother at all.

Still, penalties in MMORPG, no matter how hard your game, are basically completely trivial and meaningless and boil down to 'Spend a little more spare time'.  You want real penalties?  Try something like... oh say... joining the local highschool basketball team.  What's the penalties to losing?  Not being state champion... or whatever.  That's harsh!  You don't even get more than a couple chances at this in your ENTIRE LIFE.  Failure is absolute, permanent, and applies to almost everybody who tries these games.  That's some real serious punishment. :P

Punishment in MMORPGs is, in comparison, petty and pointless.  Unless it actually contributes to the game somehow (Helping enhance the crafting economy), most of these 'harsh' death penalties just simply don't impress me.  All they do is make me think 'Huh.  This wastes my time, and keeps me from having fun.  I'm playing the game to have fun, so I don't see the point'

The only death penaltys i didnt care for in games was loss of XP. I didnt like loseing the actual playtime it took for me to get the XP.

But the lack of any kind of death penalty what so ever is just another form of games being dumbed down. Games arnt made better anymore they are made " easyer ".

Originally posted by Talin

The harsh penalty was never "fun" when you died despite best efforts to stay out of danger. Anyone who ever ran from Queynos to Freeport (or vise versa) in EQ1 as a low level character to be able to group with friends who were from the other area (due to race/class starting area reasons) knows how absolutely painful it could be to lose your corpse (and any equipment, if not naked) 75% of the way there.

I like the idea of progressive penalties. Your first death should be a short-term debuff. Die again in a certain amount of time and the debuff gets more serious. Compound this a few times and you start losing experience points and/or reduce the character's stats to near useless.

Losing experience points on each death is wrong to me. It isn't just a penalty, it is a loss of achievement. Losing equipment is the same, it creates a negative sense of achievement. Losing a level was the worst game design in history - end of story.

I do like creating a system where accountability is important and players do not treat death as a triviality. I do want players (PvE AND PvP) to be wary of allowing their characters to die and to be unhappy when it happens, not to use it as a way to re-spawn in a convenient location as others noted.

Didn't we have several billion threads discussing this ? :D

Anyways, a very good example of why harsh death penalty is bad is Diablo 2. In softcore you didn't care that much if you died (well if you are 90+ you did care but nothing worthh dying over). However, when you played a hardcore character the cost was much higher and that's what you can call the ultimate price - aka perma death. This made people play the game in a very different way and it was not for the good. I was sick of people leaving all the time, all the griefing, cheating, basically all the crap you can think of and using mods to save their hides. People were just super careful and there were lots of things people would never do simply because of the insane penalty if you died.

Harsh death penalty makes people behave in a very different way, ofetn cowardly way. 

Also this creates huge time sinks and if you can't play long hours, do you really want to spend your time on grinding back the progress you lost.

Harsh death penalities definitiely make MMO" more exciting, but that doesn't make it fun.

We all have different tolerances for death penalties, what I think is acceptable someone else may totally hate.

I found EVE acceptable, pretty sure DF wouldn't be. 

I like some penalties for dying, but some folks want zero while others want the game to hit them with a hammer.

Is not exploration more fun when it's a little bit scary, like sneaking through Kithicor Forest in EQ1 and trying to get to the other side without getting lost before dark came and spawned all sorts of high level undead?                                                                                                                             I agree with the OP  BIG TIME. The pamls on my hands would sweat from the excitement in EQ1 trying to sneak past ceertain zones or getting to a raid group from the fear of dying and loosing 2 hours of grind time and having to retrive your corpse fvor your items. It does force people to group more which is actually a good thing. I wish they would redo EQ1 with AOC graphics.

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

In an MMORPG when you lose, just like in many games, you lose that particular encounter.  That fight, that mob, that NPC, that PC when you engage them and you lose, than you lost that encounter.  The loss itself is enough of a deterrent.  To win you either need to play better or get a higher level or skill.

Thats all that most games have, you lose that encounter, nothing further happens to you.

Venge

in games thats called trainer++,cheats on,unlimited lives etc.

in todays mmos its called death penalty

Some people might disagree, but some of the most fun I had in my first MMO (asheron's call), was going on guild corpse runs.  I remember they'd get organized later at night sometimes, and anyone who had a corpse they couldn't get to was invited.  I lost a corpse in one of the acid pits in a quest dungeon once, and had to jump down while people spam healed me long enough to grab my stuff and portal out.  Then, we'd go from place to place gathering other guildmates corpses.

I know people may not think of that as 'fun' to lose your body and need help getting it back, but honestly it made for a great sense of community where people helped other people even if they didn't gain anything from it.