Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Meowhead

This is why slot machines offer some of the toughest gameplay around.  All those little old white haired ladies going to the casinos?  Hardcore gamers.

I mean, what's the 'harsh death penalty' in an MMO?  You waste a couple hours maybe?  There's not many MMOs that go so far as to even use permadeath.

Look at a slot machine.  The harsh death penalties of even a couple hours of play can run into the hundreds of dollars.

You could buy a fully leveled character to replace your permadeath lost character, right there.

Slot machines have a harsher death penalty than MMORPGs = Slot machines are definitely way more challenging and engaging than the easy weak sauce MMORPG games.

When you're all older and grown up and can appreciate TRUE difficulty, you'll all be going to casinos too. :<

You seem to place high value on money. Not everyone does. For some, time, reputation, resources and other factors may be of greater value and thus offer greater risk for their actions or encounters.

 So in a risk reward situation, do you like ot increase the rewards?    Do you like to decrease the risks?  I think the whole reward risk point is really about getting more reward.  People tend to make the risk as low as possible.

Originally posted by Cecropia

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cecropia

My take on this is that people seem to have a tough time coming to terms with the fact that some styles of games are more challenging than others. Especially when they are enjoy a style of game that some consider "easier". Frankly, I don't know why anyone would give a shit, but there it is.

You don't seem to understand the terms "hard" and "easy".

Walk over a bridge.  Easy, right?

Walk over a bridge with lava underneath.   It's still easy.  The increased risk has done nothing to change the underlying difficulty of walking over a bridge.

Oh no, it's definitely not still easy. In the first case if I fell I'd be landing in water (I'm assuming), and I can swim very well. In the second case a nearby volcano has erupted and if I fell I would most likely be a dead man, and again, there's a volcano erupting nearby. Sure, it's still physically easy to walk across the bridge, but now I'm nervous and scared, and I have the added difficulty of avoiding any lava that could land on the bridge.

 

 your basically making the same event harder to do. That is skill?

Like taking a math exam. Do you know the math better because someone is screaming at you while taking the exam or do you know it better when blood is floowing to the proper locations of your brain when it nice and quite?

I think the risk actually REDUCES your baseline skill level, not increases it.

Originally posted by UOlover

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cecropia

My take on this is that people seem to have a tough time coming to terms with the fact that some styles of games are more challenging than others. Especially when they are enjoy a style of game that some consider "easier". Frankly, I don't know why anyone would give a shit, but there it is.

You don't seem to understand the terms "hard" and "easy".

Walk over a bridge.  Easy, right?

Walk over a bridge with lava underneath.   It's still easy.  The increased risk has done nothing to change the underlying difficulty of walking over a bridge.

 Walk over a bridge, easy, right

Walk over a bridge with lava underneath and holes in the bridge that require you to jump over and 75% of your player base is not good enough to jump over those holes. Is not easy.

Now you're getting it. It sounds like to me that you are one of these people who think everything is easy in a game, which might be the case for you, but is not the case for the majority of gamers out there.

Remove the lava from the holey bridge and 75% of players still won't make it.

Which is exactly the argument I've made repeatedly in this thread:

• Increasing risk = no increase in skill required to achieve success.
• Increasing difficulty = more skill is required to succeed.

I like the bridge analogy. For a great gamer, the bridge has no holes in it for you to fall in through. So it doesn't matter what's underneath. For a terrible gamer, there are holes everywhere, including the possibility that there are entire gaps that you will never be able to avoid in your current state. That is why skill may not be a factor in your ability to avoid a harsh death penalty but it certainly is in there's.

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

When I played EQ 1. I would almost cry if I died, especially if I had just leveled. That was the only game that would get my blood pressure up in PvE. Ultima Online was the only game to get my blood up in PvP, because of losing everything.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Really? Wow.

And I always thought risk triggered problem solving techniques through practice and patience. I suppose we'd just be better off in the future with easier games that don't stress us out and cause possible brain injury/trauma.

Originally posted by Zekiah

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Really? Wow.

And I always thought risk triggered problem solving techniques through practice and patience. I suppose we'd just be better off in the future with easier games that don't stress us out and cause possible brain injury/trauma.

 no, its the practice while not under stress that pushes your 'muscle memmory' to 'still' work well under stress. So that is why in sports people practice like crazy, then practice as a game (simulated a real game) to measure how well the practice has gone.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Hmmm... not sure I can agree.

Are you saying that humans are constructed in such a way that if one were faced with great real life danger that the decision to flee or fight cannot be made as well as it would be if they were perfectly calm?

Stress and adrenaline get us prepared to face danger.  Don't they?

Both have the potential to create challenge and tedium.

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Hmmm... not sure I can agree.

Are you saying that humans are constructed in such a way that if one were faced with great real life danger that the decision to flee or fight cannot be made as well as it would be if you were perfectly calm?

Stress and adrenaline get us prepared to face danger.  Don't they?

 Stress and adrenaline make you do very limited skills extreemly well and beyond what your body can normally do but it actually does that my reducing you ability to think as well as you can while not under stress. Most importantly stress primarly is to get your body into motion which in a video game is simulated so it doesnt do you a lot of good that your body is saying run while you are sitting in a chair, thus confusing your thinking.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Hmmm... not sure I can agree.

Are you saying that humans are constructed in such a way that if one were faced with great real life danger that the decision to flee or fight cannot be made as well as it would be if you were perfectly calm?

Stress and adrenaline get us prepared to face danger.  Don't they?

 Stress and adrenaline make you do very limited skills extreemly well and beyond what your body can normally do but it actually does that my reducing you ability to think as well as you can while not under stress. Most importantly stress primarly is to get your body into motion which in a video game is simulated so it doesnt do you a lot of good that your body is saying run while you are sitting in a chair, thus confusing your thinking.

I suppose that's a fair point.  I will follow up with this question. :)

Why do people like horror movies?

Originally posted by Axehilt

Difficulty = how much skill is required to avoid failure.

Penalty = what happens if you fail.

Therefore death penalty doesn't make games harder.  It just makes them more painful or inconvenient.

I think addressing this helps solidify the argument a bit more. The two go hand in hand. That is, if a game is challenging, you will "die" (or whatever the game mechanic may be) fairly often. If the penalty is high as well, it makes sure that players are avoiding death even more. Being reckless and lucky can get you through some "difficult" games if the penalty is light, while an easy game with a harsh death penalty suddenly seems more difficult merely because you have to focus a little more. For console gaming, IMO, it's important to balance the two, since the idea is that most people will want to see your entire game, but it needs to last a bit.

MMOs are a different beast though. Harsh death penalties are needed for some content. Look at WoW's pvp. It's largely considered a joke because no matter how many times you kill someone, they can come back and get round 2, sometimes before you even have a chance to heal up, which can lead to pvp degrading into a simple zerg fest. On the other hand, too harsh of a penalty may drive players away from a game (I can't get your average gamer to even give EVE or Darkfall a try because the idea of losing items is devastating to them). 

Let's try some concrete examples.

The Pokemon Colosseum series was frustrating as hell (and apparently cheated in some cases by making low accuracy moves more accurate for the NPC trainers). I would literally have to leave the room and take a walk at times because I'd get so angry. Losing meant having to start all over again, which cost time, but I didn't, say, lose poke-levels or anything. The game had a high difficulty, but low punishment.

Switch to FF11. The game wasn't hard IMO, but the penalty was high. I had trouble finding people to group with me, so I soloed in the wilds. Every once in awhile, someone would train mobs on me and I'd die and lose a chunk of xp. I actually spent a weekend bouncing between level 11 and 13, until finally swearing off the game. I wanted to see more of FF11, but the high death penalty and inability to progress brought additional challenges to the simplicity of the core game.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Originally posted by Zekiah

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Really? Wow.

And I always thought risk triggered problem solving techniques through practice and patience. I suppose we'd just be better off in the future with easier games that don't stress us out and cause possible brain injury/trauma.

 no, its the practice while not under stress that pushes your 'muscle memmory' to 'still' work well under stress. So that is why in sports people practice like crazy, then practice as a game (simulated a real game) to measure how well the practice has gone.

Football practice is stressful as well, I'd argue even more so at times. Ever been through two-a-days?

If we've come to the point where challenging aspects of MMOs are too stressful for the average gamer that could lead to possible brain injury or trauma, we've got bigger issues to be concerned about besides computer games.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by UOlover

Harsh death penalty just takes your player base and cuts it by like 75%. The vast majority of players out there are not skilled enough to deal with such a thing and they are necessary to actually make a profit. Now hard gameplay can easily be included in a game and in such a way so these people are never abused by it

As mentioned many times in this thread, there's nothing "skilled" about a harsh death penalty.

 If you are speaking strictly in terms of combat, then yes, you are right. But when you factor in survival instincts, social skills, and game experience, all used specifically to avoid death, once there is no penalty, those "skills" become largely irrelevant in my opinion.

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Hmmm... not sure I can agree.

Are you saying that humans are constructed in such a way that if one were faced with great real life danger that the decision to flee or fight cannot be made as well as it would be if you were perfectly calm?

Stress and adrenaline get us prepared to face danger.  Don't they?

 Stress and adrenaline make you do very limited skills extreemly well and beyond what your body can normally do but it actually does that my reducing you ability to think as well as you can while not under stress. Most importantly stress primarly is to get your body into motion which in a video game is simulated so it doesnt do you a lot of good that your body is saying run while you are sitting in a chair, thus confusing your thinking.

I suppose that's a fair point.  I will follow up with this question. :)

Why do people like horror movies?

 well liking something and skill are two different things. People like horror movies the same reason they like risky games, adrenaline gets you high

Originally posted by Axehilt

Difficulty = how much skill is required to avoid failure.

Penalty = what happens if you fail and to have counter balance.

Therefore death penalty doesn't make games harder.  It just makes them more painful or inconvenient.

Let me fix Penalty for you.

You have to weigh the good with the bad to have balance. A death penality is the balance for character death. It's only inconvenient to usually the wow players or new age players.

Originally posted by Zekiah

Risk vs. Reward

 

Without a reasonable death penalty, there is no reasonable reward. For those who have never played a game with a strong death penalty, you just wouldn't understand. There's nothing fun about having everything handed to you without any reasonable risk involved.

MMOs used to produce a sense of danger and caution but the new generation of MMOs are hollow and shallow. Anyone who remembers the heart-pumping action of PvP in UO can attest to that.

Theres really no way to quantify that in a game:  Risk vs Reward.

Scenario:  You're in a group with a guild and you gank 1 lowbie.  So the computer tells you that since your risk is LOW then so will be your reward, which would be what?  An I-Win Emote?

Guys: I think its pretty clear that skill and risk factor are two different things. That said which game is more enjoyable I think COMPLETELY depends on different personality types.

I like buidling, be it empire building, skill building and laying out some home architecture plans. I have zero intrest in that building process being interupted by risk.

Risk however is a different feeling and in my view (not sure about this) usually applies to people who are more competititve.

So its a different game framework for different personalities.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Risk creates stress, stress make the brain not work as well as it does when its not stressed. It take more practice to train your mind to do the same thing under stress that you can do while not under stress.

therefore risk actually REDUCES your skill level but the perfecting your baseline skill level to work while under risk increases your skill in that skill but to perfect that skill to that level you actually train while NOT under stress.

 

Hmmm... not sure I can agree.

Are you saying that humans are constructed in such a way that if one were faced with great real life danger that the decision to flee or fight cannot be made as well as it would be if you were perfectly calm?

Stress and adrenaline get us prepared to face danger.  Don't they?

 Stress and adrenaline make you do very limited skills extreemly well and beyond what your body can normally do but it actually does that my reducing you ability to think as well as you can while not under stress. Most importantly stress primarly is to get your body into motion which in a video game is simulated so it doesnt do you a lot of good that your body is saying run while you are sitting in a chair, thus confusing your thinking.

I suppose that's a fair point.  I will follow up with this question. :)

Why do people like horror movies?

 well liking something and skill are two different things. People like horror movies the same reason they like risky games, adrenaline gets you high

Exacty my point. I don't really think stress is a factor just because of the presence of a severe penalty.  However, I think there is a possibility of becoming stressed and frustrated if something bad repeatedly happened to you.  But just because of its presence?  No... I don't think so.

In the same way horror movies are fun, so it is that danger adds spice to a game.

There is probably such a thing as taking the concept too far, however.  For example, the very real possibility that you could be in a situation where your corpse was quite literally unrecoverable no matter how much help you got (EQ1).