Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Perma Death is the best death penalty IMO.

 I would like to see some kind of an inheritance system in an MMO one day :3 in other words, a Perma Death system, but all the time you put into your character would not go to waste. Lets say you have a close to max lvl character, you've earned a lot of ingame money and gear and such. Then you are unlucky and your character dies and you'll have to start over. But your new character will get a letter with the money, (and maybe the chosen items) he inherits from your old character

This system would give you the fear of Perma Death, but you wouldn't lose everything you've worked for, if something were to happen.

Not sure this system would work though, but personally, I would like to see something like it someday :)

EDIT: lol just saw that Sorrow beat me to it xD funny though, seems like we have had kind of the same idea for years xD

Here's my take on death penalties. Death should be something that is relevant as to incentive players to act smart at all times. However, it shouldn't be extremely punishing that you don't wear your best equipment. My ideal implementation would consist of the player losing all of his items in his backpack while keeping all the items he is currently equipped with. That way, the player still takes a serious blow when dying but is not afraid of using his best items.

I  actually have an entire game developed in my head centered around and inheritance system and community evolution.

Basically everyone starts as primative man, in random locations, they can live and try and progress solo, or to give them better odds and greater evolution they can come together into clans.

As you discover things, you can keep those discoveries to yourself, share them with your clan, or trade them as commodities..

Exploring discoveries advances that knowledge, so the more people exploring it advances it faster and further, to encourage community development.

Example, you discover smashing two rocks together gives you : noise percussion and  rock fragments.

Exploring rock fragments gives you the open to shape rock  which in turn opens flint.

Flint opens tools, flint weapons, fire...

While this is going on you have clans warring on your clan for lands, resources, and knowledge,,

My concept goes deeper into optimal mate selection, as your child ( future you ) will have a portion of your knowledge as well as your mates.. so as you die your children are better than you, smarter stronger...

Any game which gives an advantage to the winner of a PvP fight (or penalizes the loser) is unfair and ultimately boring.  It leads to a stagnant PvP system in which only the winners end up having fun while everyone else is "fodder" for their e-peen score.  Instead of offering a challenge for the best players, they simply slaughter everyone else while the players being slaughtered bang their heads against the keyboard in frustration.  I got tired of it pretty quick in World of Warcraft, back when the PvP system was first introduced.  Modern Combat 3 showed me just how far game developers have taken the exponential winning system.  Not only did you unlock significantly better weapons, but you also gained abilities to kill almost everyone on the map.  Sure it is fun for that one guy, but everyone else hates it.

I think a PvP system needs to challenge the victor rather than make it easier to keep winning.  In real life, you don't gain skill by performing easy tasks;  you gain skill by being challenged.   That's why I'm a fan of games like Guild Wars.  It takes away the gearing component of PvP and puts everyone on a level playing field.

Any kind of permanent death or crippling penalty for dying in an MMO will immediately put it into a tiny niche catagory and most gamers won't touch it. If your a dev who creates a game like this, don't be surprised when you don't make enough sales/subs to stay in business.

Gah.

Why are threads like this always so painfully stupid ?

The point of having a death penalty is to give death a meaning. It is NOT to discourage players from taking any risks, ever.

For example, Lineage 2 has an extremely stupid death penalty. Dying once means you have to literally kill HUNDREDS of mobs before you have regained your loss. Unsurprisingly, taking risks is very unpopular in L2.

I like the way the death penalty was done in Vanguard. You die once, you get a debuff. It lasts 5 minutes. You die in that time again, you get a greater debuff. After doing this 5 times in a row, you are reduced to nothingness. But if you wait those 5 minutes, the debuff is gone. Its a relevant penalty, but its not so strong that you never take risks. You can even try instantly again with a small debuff, but if you fail again, you better take a small pause.

Sadly they now want to remove that. Typical for SOE. All they can think of is making games stupid easy. For THAT will TOTALLY attract new players, grrrrrmpft !

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Perma Death is the best death penalty IMO.

That means its a carebear game where you create a character, fool around, die, rinse and repeat until you lose interest. Because there is nothing to be gained, ever, the game has no meaning, you always lose everything again.

The only other variant is how its done in Diablo 2 - you have a normal mode and a hardcore mode. As people can train how to play the game correctly in normal mode, after a while and good training they can try hardcore mode.

Even so, hardcore mode still means everyone is playing extremely defensively and tries to avoid risks at all cost. This is exactly the kind of behavior you want to avoid for normal gaming. People should be able to take risks so they can test their limits.

Originally posted by Volkon

Is a death penalty fun?

 

No. Therefore GW2 is getting rid of it. IMO best death penalty idea to date.

Yes because GW2 is the promised utopia of mmorpgs, no I dont think so.

I enjoy harsh death penalities, it gives me the feeling of "OH FUCK OH FUCK IM GOING TO DIEEEEEEEEE!!" (panic). This makes a game exciting for me and stories to tell of.

EDIT: Also Adamantine you're wrong, a lot of players take risks in l2 and the pvp system is very successful as almost all players that keep playing that game in the west is due to the pvp system and features. GoD made death less painful and it killed part of the game for me thus i quit. Dont assume everyone thinks the same as you.

I havent played L2 for long, but I have seen that kind of behavior in really all players I met.

Originally posted by FreeBooteR

Any kind of permanent death or crippling penalty for dying in an MMO will immediately put it into a tiny niche catagory and most gamers won't touch it. If your a dev who creates a game like this, don't be surprised when you don't make enough sales/subs to stay in business.

Depends on the game. Death penealties have zero to do with success unless your game is the same game people have played before. Which it sounds like you're doing here. When using addiction based design as in themepark mmos, then I can see why there is such a hatred. The reason given is it's not fun. If only the fun rule applied for real in mmo's.

Eve is still paying the bills btw. Death penalty is at the bottom of the list of complaints. Just like any game.

Originally posted by bloodbone
...

 

Anyways my idea is that each class in a game would have 1 or 2 major buffs that could only be placed on themselves.  Theses Buffs would be enough that it would fundamentally effect your play if you do not have them on.

 

Nothing new so far right? The catch would be you would only receive (e.g 6,10 or 15) Buffs over a 24 hour period.  Meaning that if you died X number of times you would be kind of useless in competitive PvP or PvE.

 

...

       

Good model for a F2P game, in fact I think this has been used (or very similar). Not such a good model for a P2P game.

Originally posted by Adamantine

 

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Perma Death is the best death penalty IMO.

That means its a carebear game where you create a character, fool around, die, rinse and repeat until you lose interest. Because there is nothing to be gained, ever, the game has no meaning, you always lose everything again.

The only other variant is how its done in Diablo 2 - you have a normal mode and a hardcore mode. As people can train how to play the game correctly in normal mode, after a while and good training they can try hardcore mode.

Even so, hardcore mode still means everyone is playing extremely defensively and tries to avoid risks at all cost. This is exactly the kind of behavior you want to avoid for normal gaming. People should be able to take risks so they can test their limits.

 

But you act as if there is no way for people to test their skills to the limits AND have a more severe penalty. Every mmo must be personal progression and gear? The entire game must be kill stuff for xp and loot?

How about the crpg mod for M&B warband? You can kill your char, then heirloom an item to your heir.  It doesnt count since it's a choice?

The arguement against DP so far is themepark based. Where dying is a tactic. What other types of games do you purposely die?

Originally posted by Adamantine

I havent played L2 for long, but I have seen that kind of behavior in really all players I met.

 

If you havent played it long then thats why, I played the game for 8-9 years and with this latest expansion/patch they ruined the pk system as well as some other things we vets liked. Before it wasnt such a big deal to pk someone if he took your spot, now he will simply not flag because the guy who pks is the one who loses most. Broken system.

Originally posted by FikusIII

Eve is still paying the bills btw. Death penalty is at the bottom of the list of complaints. Just like any game.

EVE has a great solution to death, though. You can play EVE with ZERO risk for death, or you can keep taking high risks and get, in the case of success, high rewards.

Originally posted by stealthbr

Death should be something that is relevant as to incentive players to act smart at all times.

I think this sums it up pretty nicely.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Originally posted by FikusIII

Eve is still paying the bills btw. Death penalty is at the bottom of the list of complaints. Just like any game.

EVE has a great solution to death, though. You can play EVE with ZERO risk for death, or you can keep taking high risks and get, in the case of success, high rewards.

 

It's not really a great solution. It's the virtual world (galaxy) the game is in. The DP makes total sense. It's accepted as the rules and it applies to everyone. It's not some amazing fix, it's immersion. It's common sense.

The same can be applied to any mmo in development.

Originally posted by bloodbone

Hi all,

 

Well maybe this isn’t the best idea and I’m almost certain someone has proposed this before but I was thinking of it last night and had to whip off a post about it.

 

So When it comes to death penalty I have always thought mainstreams MMO’s offer far too little in the way of any meaningful penalty (e.g. Wow, TOR, AoC, WAR etc.). On the other hand “full looting” in some of the more “hardcore” MMO’s is fairly extreme and often leads to people never wearing there good gear.  In my opinion full looting often has a negative effect on how people play, although this certainly depends on the game and is totally debatable. 

 

To my knowledge there isn’t many MMO’s that offer much in-between the above 2 models (although I very well could be wrong).

 

Anyways my idea is that each class in a game would have 1 or 2 major buffs that could only be placed on themselves.  Theses Buffs would be enough that it would fundamentally effect your play if you do not have them on.

 

Nothing new so far right? The catch would be you would only receive (e.g 6,10 or 15) Buffs over a 24 hour period.  Meaning that if you died X number of times you would be kind of useless in competitive PvP or PvE.

 

This in my mind would make Raiding Deaths and Open world PvP meaningful enough that it would sting to die but not to the point where you quit the game and throw your computer out the window.

 

Obviously this system could be exploited and you would need to have safe guard to protect lower level or less powerful avatars.  Overall though I think (if done right) this type of system could be spectacular.

 

What do you guys think?

       

umm no!

The best death penalty is one where you are sent to retrieve all your inventory and suffer a small XP reduction over the course of 10-15 mins.  FFA looting is a niche and is stupid, and WoW style Themepark deaths are nothing short of a free trip back to town.  Having a Death penalty similar to DAoC with a bit of Shadowbane/Asherons Call is the best IMO.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Gah.

Why are threads like this always so painfully stupid ?

The point of having a death penalty is to give death a meaning. It is NOT to discourage players from taking any risks, ever.

For example, Lineage 2 has an extremely stupid death penalty. Dying once means you have to literally kill HUNDREDS of mobs before you have regained your loss. Unsurprisingly, taking risks is very unpopular in L2.

I like the way the death penalty was done in Vanguard. You die once, you get a debuff. It lasts 5 minutes. You die in that time again, you get a greater debuff. After doing this 5 times in a row, you are reduced to nothingness. But if you wait those 5 minutes, the debuff is gone. Its a relevant penalty, but its not so strong that you never take risks. You can even try instantly again with a small debuff, but if you fail again, you better take a small pause.

Sadly they now want to remove that. Typical for SOE. All they can think of is making games stupid easy. For THAT will TOTALLY attract new players, grrrrrmpft !

 

The problem is that the 5 minute penalty is adequate only for people of your playstyle and expectations, it is completely inadequate for people WE actually want to pk less and/or think about attacking or not.

A high level "disruptive element" will have to always consider the penalty going to pk lowbies, because there is always the chance that he will be zerged to death, without a permanent penalty he has no reason to not do it over and over again.

A adequate system has to be tuned right (in l2 you have resurrects offering a part lost exp back, blessed rez scrolls, clan wars offering a lower penalty to participants...), but that does not mean that it should only fit the expectations of people which are not likely to be its "victims" often.

As for PvE, you can take plenty of risks on low levels, where the penalty is low, in l2 specifically the game does not (or didnt, when i played it) offer significantly different pve play style while leveling and at maxlevel, in the end its about learning the game system in the first place.

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by murrance

How about a setup like this.

You die in world pvp, you are forced into another realm where you are required to farm up a set amount of resources for the other player, or their faction, or something.

Benefits for the victor in extra resources.

The loser wouldn't have to pay or lose anything but time. Although they are forced to assist the opposing faction before being allowed back into the main game. It may reduce corpse camping too since the loser would be out of that world for a bit.

 

This could actually work as long as the player could also benefit at the same time. Like still getting xp/loot/etc.

It would be sorta like being forced to run a dungeon whether you wanted to or not. Maybe you would get half the xp/loot than if you were playing normaly.

Or instead of porting the player to a different realm, they could just get an xp and lower chance of item drop debuff for awhile. Although I kinda like the idea of the player being thrown into a dungeon, having to fight their way out.

Why would raid deaths need to be more "meaningful"?

Isn't it enough to fail to receive a reward because you died?  (or rather: because one of your teammates got the raid wiped...)

Excessive penalty adds nothing to games.

Make a game nice and challenging with the death penalty being a simple, instant reset*, and you'll have the best death penalty possible.  (* and in the case of dungeons/raids, this reset could potentially take you back several mob packs)   The result is a death penalty focused on gameplay rather than non-gameplay.

Because (surprise!) players play games for gameplay, not penalty.

I think when you die you should die for good and have to reroll. Would make the game meaningful and challenging. Granted, many would quit but I'd stay. That's like the one feature that would keep me playing an MMO.