Let me toss in just this one idea: in a MMO there is one and only one way to penalize a player: time. You take something away and it takes time to regain it, so you must be fully aware every single penality is a timesink and nothing else. You may defend that or not, but we must not have illusions about it.

Personally, I never felt a penality makes a game better for me. I fight as best as I can and never needed a penality to do my best, but apparently some need the fear of the whip to make an effort. *shrug*

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by nariusseldon

This is totally stupid. You measure you success by how tough the challenge is, not by how much meaningless penalty after a failure.

Then by your logic, jumping a distance of 12 feet on a sidewalk, and jumping 12 feet between rail cars on a moving train are the same.  The challenge is identical.  But tell me, would your preparations for these two feats also be the same? What about the spectators, would they react the same? Would you're pulse be the same while you're jumping? Would you take the same amount of pride in either situation?  No, the only thing that is the same is the challenge, just about everything else is different.

I assume you play FPS where you respawn immediately after dying, what's the point?  I would prefer CS style FPS where when you die you wait until the end of the match.  You know it's funny how that style of FPS makes people play smarter, now why is that?  Doesn't sound "totally stupid" to me.

The difficulty of jumping between rail cars on a moving train is obviously way greater than just jumping the same distance on flat ground. Your analogy is not working at all since the challenges are not identical.

A proper analiogy would be jumping over a hole when in one scenario it is lined with air bags and in the other scenario with spikes.  The jump has exactly the same difficulty and the only difference is the penalty for failure.  If you succeed it does not matter what is inside the pit.

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by heremypet

Sorry for the analogy lol, but I think it fits.  If I overcome a challenge, but there was no risk involved, I would view that victory with indifference.  Where no penalty is applied, you can simply keep losing over and over again until you finally win, but that would not be much of a victory in my mind.

I just don't see this argument at all.  I understand risk is important for some players, but to say you can't have fun at all without risk is extremist, and you are very much in the minority with that sort of opinion.

One angle I could take is pointing out that you're playing a videogame, so there's no risk, so how could you ever have fun playing games?

Another angle I could take is that everything is a small risk -- dying in Halo and being sent back 10 seconds of gameplay just "cost" you 10 seconds of your time. 

I'll take your clown example a few steps further:

• Clown A still has no harness.  Now he's over a pit of molten lava.  With spikes.  But he's just walking a simple tightrope.
• Clown B still has a harness.  Now he juggles.  And ninja-flips between multiple tightropes, some of which are in constant lateral motion, others which are in constant rotation around a central pillar.

Clown B is far more interesting to watch.  The skill involved is many times greater, and the achievement would be many times more impressive.

You can say I'm extremist, minority, etc all you want, but that is largely speculation.

Your second angle answers your first in part, sure It's not life and death, but the risk is still win or lose, but that isn't the argument.  The argument is: what is a win for you isn't a win for me.  If one player beats an equally matched opponent, only to see him respawn and finish his last little sliver of life off, that is not a win to me.  Sure PvP in MMOs aren't fair, but that  is partially why I like it, you can call that extremist if you wish, but killing a level 60 sorc at 40, or taking on 2 or 3 even cons, that's what it's about =P

You ignored my clown scenario, I'll look at your when you at least acknowledge it.

Yeah you are. There are plenty of indirect evidence that no one wants harsh death penalties. If you want penalty so much, may be you should go rock climbing or something and get out of MMOs. The trend is just NOT for harsh penalties for obvious reasons.

The only game that is financially successful, with a somewhat harsh death penalty, is Eve and it only has 300k players .. niche at best. You can argue until you face turns blue, developers are just not going be stupid enough to develop AAA games with a big turn-off for big chunk of their potential market. And sure, there may be niche indep developers who don't care, like Darkfall, but see how it turns out.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by heremypet

Sorry for the analogy lol, but I think it fits.  If I overcome a challenge, but there was no risk involved, I would view that victory with indifference.  Where no penalty is applied, you can simply keep losing over and over again until you finally win, but that would not be much of a victory in my mind.

I just don't see this argument at all.  I understand risk is important for some players, but to say you can't have fun at all without risk is extremist, and you are very much in the minority with that sort of opinion.

One angle I could take is pointing out that you're playing a videogame, so there's no risk, so how could you ever have fun playing games?

Another angle I could take is that everything is a small risk -- dying in Halo and being sent back 10 seconds of gameplay just "cost" you 10 seconds of your time. 

I'll take your clown example a few steps further:

• Clown A still has no harness.  Now he's over a pit of molten lava.  With spikes.  But he's just walking a simple tightrope.
• Clown B still has a harness.  Now he juggles.  And ninja-flips between multiple tightropes, some of which are in constant lateral motion, others which are in constant rotation around a central pillar.

Clown B is far more interesting to watch.  The skill involved is many times greater, and the achievement would be many times more impressive.

You can say I'm extremist, minority, etc all you want, but that is largely speculation.

Your second angle answers your first in part, sure It's not life and death, but the risk is still win or lose, but that isn't the argument.  The argument is: what is a win for you isn't a win for me.  If one player beats an equally matched opponent, only to see him respawn and finish his last little sliver of life off, that is not a win to me.  Sure PvP in MMOs aren't fair, but that  is partially why I like it, you can call that extremist if you wish, but killing a level 60 sorc at 40, or taking on 2 or 3 even cons, that's what it's about =P

You ignored my clown scenario, I'll look at your when you at least acknowledge it.

 

Yeah you are. There are plenty of indirect evidence that no one wants harsh death penalties. If you want penalty so much, may be you should go rock climbing or something and get out of MMOs. The trend is just NOT for harsh penalties for obvious reasons.

The only game that is financially successful, with a somewhat harsh death penalty, is Eve and it only has 300k players .. niche at best. You can argue until you face turns blue, developers are just not going be stupid enough to develop AAA games with a big turn-off for big chunk of their potential market. And sure, there may be niche indep developers who don't care, like Darkfall, but see how it turns out.

Yea, you're probably right, but I still believe that penalties, even if they're a turn off, make the game more interesting   I can appreciate that we have different tastes, but perhaps part of the problem that modern MMOs seem to have keeping subs is that they're just plain boring, well they are to me at least.

Originally posted by Lonestryder

A death penalty is a game mechanic. It is a rule that is part of a game. I don't see MMOs as games anymore, nor do I see those who play them as gamers. When the importance of game mechanics such as travel, death, gear acquisition, and meaningful character progression are either eliminated or sold out of game as a transaction, MMOs become something else entirely.

 

When I think of a game, I think of engaging in an activity where my skill is matched up against another player's or the game mechanics/rules themselves. I stand a chance to lose. If you cannot lose, you cannot win. If neither is possible, one could argue that you are not playing a game. 

 

Take the game out of the MMO and what you see is what you get: entertainment; gamers need not apply. 

    This is correct and wise. I've wondered, recently, why I found myself thinking "Do I want to do an MMORPG, or play a video game today?" They've become two different sorts of activities in my head, and the lack of any risk or penalty for failure is a huge part of the reason why.  MMOs are basically really bad books with really good illustrations. Go to a forum for one of these 'games', and read the inevitable discussion where the few real gamers dispute with the other people about a death penalty. Most people playing MMORPGs will just say "penalties =/ fun", and "Delete your own gear if you want a death penalty, I'm here to run around and enjoy myself".  These are not things people say about games, but they may say them about a pillow fight, or acting out while drunk.

    Consider also. Since we are all mortal, the most primitive type of game, which can never be escaped from, is a race.   Without real death penalties in games,  semi-gamers are forced to challenge themselves by getting through the content as quickly as possible- which makes the developer's lives tougher, and the entertainment less substantive for anybody that's not at the end.

To Maligar,

Are you talking about  WAAAAY back in the old days of playstation 2?  Please.   In the actual old days, when you died, you put in another quarter. Or, if you were playing at home, when you ran out of lives, you were all done. You started over again.  If it DID give you an option to continue, you had a set number of continues, and getting more than that number was a cheat code that not all games had.  I remember when games first started having infinite continues, and it felt patronizing.

 Also, I'd just like to add that I could give a fig about PvP most of the time, and I can accept that death penalties in that may or may not be a good idea.  The Death penalties in high end PVE play need to be increased in MMOs, or yeah, they cease being a game and start being this other kind of entertainment that I'm rapidly becoming tired of.

To Quirhid

Lower death penalties do not encourage people to take chances, don't kid yourself.   First of all, it is not 'taking a chance' when nothing is risked, and secondly, you can never take away the 'challenge' of completing content as easily and quickly as possible.  Do you REALLY see it as a feature of MMOs that a substantial number of people avoid what the forums tell them are the most efficient builds?

To Yavln,

You are another one who gets it right.  Death Penalties should be evaluated from game to game- they should be high in some, low in others. From an artistic perspective, it's a sad thing when the drive to please the most consumers breaks this connection, though.  For example, for a game like Age of Conan to have no death penalty at all is a tragedy that exists only because of their misguided attempt to be the next WoW.   The setting is actually ruined the first time you realize you can zerg yourself at bosses to clear content.  Fallen Earth is another one in which a low death penalty makes a mockery of everything the game is trying to say thematically.   World of Warcraft, on the other hand, which appears (having not played it) to be a cross between 1st Edition Dungeons and Dragons and The Smurfs, is probably fine without any sort of death penalty.

To Aradria,

You've hit upon something important with your 'banging your head' statement.  Without a death penalty, with infinite chances, the only penalty for failure is how irritated you get from havign to try over and over again.  There is a sense of mindlessness to the approach to gaming that says 'sooner or later I'll get lucky' with no regards to tactics or skill.  But this is precisely what death-penalty free gaming encourages.

Go back and play some of these games you played when you were 9 years old. I bet you won;t be able to play them anymore.  The lack of a death penalty, which you consider so 'outdated'  has made you soft.  I'd like to see you reply to Lonestryder's point.  To what degree do you even consider the MMOs of today 'games' at all?  If you make it about an age thing...maybe you're just too old for games?

I think it's ironic you talk about old games making you repeat stuff over and over again if you fuck up, whereas in the current, penalty free games,  they encourage that as the most effective tactic.   I bet you complain about a games lack of content when you get through it in a couple days, even as you complain about how old games were too hard. : ' ( Maybe there's a connection.

Decimatus is another one that should be listened to.  Yes, death penalties are hard in MMOs because they are built against them. Permadeath doesn't make sense in a game in which the purpose is to play forever.   XP loss is actually a good penalty, in theory, but since games are built around the model of "grind red spiders in the castle, then grind blue spiders in the forest, then grind green spiders in the desert",  being set back and having to repeat step 2 rub's the player's nose in the fact of just how shallow the gameplay really is.  They may say they are mad at the penalty, or mad at the game, but on some level, they must be mad at themselves- after all, they'ved just been reminded, mocked, for what it is they've spent their money on.  It's not the death penalties fault, though.

    The best death penalty I've seen is in a game called Deliantra- in it, when you die, you are transported to the Underworld, and you lose a large chunk of XP.  however, you can choose to play a game while you're there (currently a stylized form of minesweeper), and if you win, you get all that XP back.  You can fail, or you can choose to skip the game and take the hit.

   That's risk, it's reward, it's a minigame that lets you escape real penalty MOST of the time, but not quite all the time, so yo ustill do what you can to avoid death in the real game.

Cephus404, The vast majority of people playing games right now aren't gamers, specifically because the games are too easy, and they don't need to know how to play in order to have a good time. So you have a catch 22.  Yes, harsh death penalties will chase away the majority of current MMO players...because they are used to playing without them (thank you WoW).   Maybe the point of the thread isn't that every game, every where, should have stronger death penalties (after all, I don't care about the DP in games I'll never play for other reasons).  Maybe the point is that EVERY game being designed to catch the casual gamer's dollar is becoming a drag for the rest of us, the rest of us being all too happy to acknowledge that we're a minority.

Harabeck, You're mostly right, but for me the discussion is unavoidable because a lack of a death penalty ruins otherwise good games.  Age of Conan comes to mind- yes, it had other things wrong with it, but no death penalty destroyed the setting and everything it was advertised as being.   So what can a person do but talk about the underlying attitudes?  If nobody expresses that they want to see harsher death penalties, developers won't make games with them, not even niche games.

Lansid, You can't have fair permadeath on a game that's content is stored on servers the player doens't have control over.  Accidental deaths of long time characters at no fault of the player will occur, and if they don't occur, they will be claimed. Besides, permadeath drastically alters your content.  The higher the death penalty becomes, the fewer times you have to expect people to do die to beat your content.  Too low, and it becomes a thoughtless grind. Too high, and the target difficulty of your content must be 'people almost never die'.  Not impossible, but you'd have to completely rethink the way the game is designed.  In short, permadeath should probably be optional or non-existent in any game in which the primary way to advance is combat.

Josher, People telling developers what kind of game they'd like to see is 'forcing their playstyle on others'?  How is totally ruining my immersion by insisting that games have consequence  free death  NOT you forcing your play style on me?  What you're missing is, as I said to Lansid, you can't just 'delete your gear when you die' or 'punish yourself', because in any sane game, the difficulty and style of the content is BUILT around an expectation of death, and the amount of times they expect you to die will be linked to how harshly they penalize you for doing so.  Get it?   What you're asking people to do is add an abstraction they made up to a game that took thousands of hours to design and balance around that abstraction NOT BEING THERE.  Of course, you don't care, because you don't really give a shit if people who want higher death penalties have any fun.  That would be fine, except you say it all with your holier than thou 'stop forcing your preferred playstyle on others' routine, which makes you a dirty hypocrite.  I may as well tell YOU to stop forcing your 'easymode all the time' playstyle on others, by playing MMOS as a crafter that never leaves the newbie towns, and leaving the combat-oriented content to people who don't mind risk.

I want a game designed with a harsh death penalty.   I accept that this is unpopular, but I want one anyway.  When a game is billed as having a 'harsh, gritty setting' with an 'emphasis on survival and danger', and it has no death penalty, I feel as though I've been lied to. Why is this difficult to understand?   There are plenty of settings in which dying being absolutely penalty free (or even hilarious and desired) make perfect sense.  BUT THERE ARE ALSO ONES WHERE IT DOESN'T.

My vote for death penalties really depends on the type of MMO. If an MMO is heavy PvE like many are right now, I believe that death penalties should be light. Lets use an XP debt as an example. This is bad for a few reasons:

1. It causes people to play the game overly safe.

          When people play this way, gameplay becomes boring and normal. People end up only going after things the KNOW they will dominate with very few problems.

2. It causes people to NEVER want to pickup groups.

          If harsh death penalties were assessed, people would only play with other people they KNOW are solid players. This makes it less of a social game overall and people that are new end up being shunned because they "suck."

3. It makes people overly angry at other players for making mistakes.

          When there is a strict death penalty, people tend to take the loss personally. People's thoughts ten to go towards: "I DID EVERYTHING PERFECT. Why should I lose XP because someone in the group didn't know how to play?"

In a PvP centric game, I believe death penalties should be harsh. And in many PvP centric games, they are. Loss of everything you have on you is a common theme in some of the popular full PvP games right now. I think this is what makes PvP games great.

Originally posted by Elikal

Let me toss in just this one idea: in a MMO there is one and only one way to penalize a player: time. You take something away and it takes time to regain it, so you must be fully aware every single penality is a timesink and nothing else. You may defend that or not, but we must not have illusions about it.

Personally, I never felt a penality makes a game better for me. I fight as best as I can and never needed a penality to do my best, but apparently some need the fear of the whip to make an effort. *shrug*

    Why do you begin your post by making a strong, objective point, then end it by declaring to the world how superior you are to people who disagree with you?   Maybe there's a less illusory way you could characterize those who like death penalties than 'needing to fear the whip to make an effort'?  It really seems like you have the potential to be a good thinker on this subject, if you can get past your own ego.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

 

Yeah you are. There are plenty of indirect evidence that no one wants harsh death penalties. If you want penalty so much, may be you should go rock climbing or something and get out of MMOs. The trend is just NOT for harsh penalties for obvious reasons.

You don't feel weird, at all, arguing with people who want harsh death penalties by telling them that nobody wants harsh death penalties?  Have you done it in more than just this one thread?

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Yeah you are. There are plenty of indirect evidence that no one wants harsh death penalties. If you want penalty so much, may be you should go rock climbing or something and get out of MMOs. The trend is just NOT for harsh penalties for obvious reasons.

The only game that is financially successful, with a somewhat harsh death penalty, is Eve and it only has 300k players .. niche at best. You can argue until you face turns blue, developers are just not going be stupid enough to develop AAA games with a big turn-off for big chunk of their potential market. And sure, there may be niche indep developers who don't care, like Darkfall, but see how it turns out.

Yea, you're probably right, but I still believe that penalties, even if they're a turn off, make the game more interesting   I can appreciate that we have different tastes, but perhaps part of the problem that modern MMOs seem to have keeping subs is that they're just plain boring, well they are to me at least.

See .. that makes it your problem, not the MMO genre's problem. You think modern MMOs are boring .. I think modern MMOs are fun .. so do 11M people. May be you should play something else, or stick to niche, indie MMOs which cater to your taste.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

 

See .. that makes it your problem, not the MMO genre's problem. You think modern MMOs are boring .. I think modern MMOs are fun .. so do 11M people. May be you should play something else, or stick to niche, indie MMOs which cater to your taste.

 

I'm sure he probably IS doing one of those two things. In the meantime, why shouldn't he talk about what he thinks would make a good game? It's not like this is the WoW forum.

Originally posted by colddog

My vote for death penalties really depends on the type of MMO. If an MMO is heavy PvE like many are right now, I

believe that death penalties should be light. Lets use an XP debt as an example. This is bad for a few reasons:

Your 3 statements are way too generalized and I've seen them not pan out as accurate in a few MMOs.. FFXI and Lineage 2 to name a couple.

 

1. It causes people to play the game overly safe.

          When people play this way, gameplay becomes boring and normal. People end up only going after things the KNOW they will dominate with very few problems.

Not at all. FFXI has very harsh death penalties for dying... you lose xp and possibly a level... But it doesn't stop them from doing the harder, more dangerous content... It simply makes them play it more *carefully*. Being cautious and strategic in how you approach something is not being "overly safe". It's simply using your head and not being careless, going "Leroy Jenkins" on the thing.

 2. It causes people to NEVER want to pickup groups.

          If harsh death penalties were assessed, people would only play with other people they KNOW are solid players. This makes it less of a social game overall and people that are new end up being shunned because they "suck."

Nah. There are pick-up groups *all the time* in FFXI... for normal grinds, for mission runs, for Assault, etc. etc. Guaranteed I could log in right now and there would be people in Whitegate looking for members for something.

3. It makes people overly angry at other players for making mistakes.

          When there is a strict death penalty, people tend to take the loss personally. People's thoughts ten to go towards: "I DID EVERYTHING PERFECT. Why should I lose XP because someone in the group didn't know how to play?"

It makes *some* people overly angry... but those people are found in any MMO. For the most part, people only get "overy pissed" when the death - or a string of them - are the result of someone being overly stupid or careless, causing the wipe.

In a PvP centric game, I believe death penalties should be harsh. And in many PvP centric games, they are. Loss of everything you have on you is a common theme in some of the popular full PvP games right now. I think this is what makes PvP games great.

No argument there. The fear of losing gear and/or xp in a MMO like L2 makes people very careful when going into PvP against anyone they may not be capable of defeating... this was especially true back when gear dropped more easily upon death.

 

Originally posted by Yavln

I wish to open the topic of death penalties for discussion, I know this has been done a shed load of times over the past years, but it's something that is at the fore front of my mind at the moment and it's something I want to talk about.

I have been playing MMO's and online games for well over 10 years, and in all online games I have played I have always been the leader, always the one to organize things , build websites, plan attacks and plot courses of the players under me.

In all the games I have played which is a long list, and over the past 6 or so years I have noticed a disturbing trend in terms of death, back in the early days if you died you almost always lost something of value, exp, money in your pocket, items off your back, your mount or a combination of the above, the point was that death hurt, as a result any time anyone went into combat, they knew fine well what the cost was going to be if they lost, or won.

Games were emotional experiences, walking through that forest you know is close to enemy territory takes on a whole new live when you know that if your found you could lose the shirt off your back, as a result all of your senses are heightened, you have total focus on the game and every little noise coming from it, today they call it total emersion and its true you were totally sucked into the game, aware of every little thing moving, and when you finally and inevitably got pulled into combat, every muscle in your body would be bouncing as your brain dumped a bucket load of adrenaline into your system to cope with the coming battle.

I know that all sounds a bit dramatic, but it's all true, when death has a penalty, the above is only a fraction of the emotional roller coaster that your body and mind would go through while in combat.

Bring the years forward to today, and the game scape has changed beyond all recognition, death penalty for most games is a think of the past, it's something developers have deemed as bad for business, but I think they have it all wrong, when they compare death to older games, and then hold up the player numbers with games like wow, what their failing to account for is the time period involved.

There are more people playing games today, than have ever played games in the past ten years combined, as a result of the massive influx of new gamers and new demographics developers are now scrambling to cut away things from games that they feel will deter all these new gamers.

Sadly to me they are cutting away some of the prime cuts of the games they make, namely death penalties.

You have all slammed DarkFall, as being a failure, and yet it's still got players, and not only that but some of the longest running guilds are playing it and making it their own, sure it has flaws, but it's clear for all to see that with its rule set it's clearly offering something that enough people still want and I praise it for that, take darkfalls rules and put them in something like wow and you have a ground breaking game.

EvE online is another amazing and mega sucessful game, with very heavy death penalty, or so it seems, anyone who has actually played the game for longer than 14 days will show you that not only do they still have sjips left but their making money, and at the same time not being shy with PvP, and it's a credit to CCP and their insurences  and other systems that help reduce the blow of death.

I would like to hold up CCP as a Perfect example of how death should be handled in games, when you die you lose everything on your ships its scattered into space and you escape pod home, where if your not stupid your insurence company has a new shiny ship waiting for you.

Now take games that or on the horizon, Jumpgate Evolution, can easily be looked at as a WoW version of EvE, but with its pruposed death penalty, and no cargo loss, haulers will be taking goods, or miners will be mining and then instead of fighting to protect their ore, thy will simply smile as an enemy comes into range and starts blasting them, what's a small repair bill when it saves you 5 minutes of flight time back to your station.

Developers either need to waken up to the insanity of it all and start offering us PvP servers with death being meaningful or stop making games aimed at 9 year olds who cant handle losing their little shiny sword.

So is this a thread about death penalty or what you lose in PVP,i am confused? Your heading talks about death penalty but your main subject in the thread is

"shirt of your back" and darkfall pvp,which seems to be more about item loss.

Is this just an undercover thread telling us how great Darkfalls PVP is or how EVE is the nuts,i don't know which. Death penalty is alive and kicking in some mmorpg,vanguard would be one of them.

XP loss and corpse runs are their. Are they as harsh as EQ1 ,nope, but to the mmorpg gamer who is not use to it,it would seem very harsh.

Originally posted by Maligar

I can understand the appeal of death penalties.  They do, to an extent, add a touch more "excitement" to the game  that features it.  However, in the large scheme of things, death penalties are far more uncommon than common through the entire gaming realm.  Honestly, think about it.  Think back to a LARGE portion of games, before even MMOs existed.  When you died, and were out of lives, a screen would pop up.  This screen would ask you... "Would you like to continue? ... PRESS START".  This is a common theme found in gaming.  So the whole... "Death penalties are dying out" gripe is a false one at best.  In all honesty, other than a small few games, if you died, you were able to continue on, try again, or re-do it, without any adverse effects.

Yes, some games, a small few in comparison, made it hurt if you died.  But in retrospect, few did this throughout all of gaming.  Failing to complete your task is enough of a failure.  There is no need to rub it in your face that you were not able to succeed with the task at hand.  Adding insult to injury in not necessary and does nothing, in the long run, but to help deter people from trying again and powering through the difficult portions.

First of all, I don't mind a death penalty to some degree. As for people who have been playing MMO's for 10 years and want to wax poetic about death pentalties being a good thing, you need to look no further than the original Ultima Online. You spent 20 hours grinding out fishing to save up enough money to buy a sword to only lose it (along with all of your other possessions) by the hordes of Player Killing groups that would roam outside the cities just to be douchebags. I hate douchebags and I do play MMO's for entertainment, not to be "leet". A good death penalty in my mind would be the classic Dragon Warrior death penalty- when you die, you lost HALF of your gold on hand. Now they had banks where you could store your money, but you had to travel there to do that. LOTRO has a very interesting death penalty where you have a fear effect mechanic that stacks when you die. And wow's "I'm too lazy to walk to my corpse" penalty is pretty painful, but not mandatory. However, permanent death or losing the gear that you worked so hard to get would chase me, and many many other paying customers away. And, much like many of the other MMO players who feel the way I do, am in my 30's. MMO's are SUPPOSED to be for recreation. If you want to be a douchebag, please go to Darkfall and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

Death penalty needs to be steep enough to detour people from exploting it as a warp method or zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win.  I personally think FFXI had the best system You didnt want to die and not get a raise or you lost 2 hours of xp. If you got a raise III it wasnt bad at all.

Originally posted by toddze

Death penalty needs to be steep enough to detour people from exploting it as a warp method or zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win.  I personally think FFXI had the best system You didnt want to die and not get a raise or you lost 2 hours of xp. If you got a raise III it wasnt bad at all.

WoW manages to fullfill these conditions and has a much lower death penalty than FFXI.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Yeah you are. There are plenty of indirect evidence that no one wants harsh death penalties. If you want penalty so much, may be you should go rock climbing or something and get out of MMOs. The trend is just NOT for harsh penalties for obvious reasons.

The only game that is financially successful, with a somewhat harsh death penalty, is Eve and it only has 300k players .. niche at best. You can argue until you face turns blue, developers are just not going be stupid enough to develop AAA games with a big turn-off for big chunk of their potential market. And sure, there may be niche indep developers who don't care, like Darkfall, but see how it turns out.

Yea, you're probably right, but I still believe that penalties, even if they're a turn off, make the game more interesting   I can appreciate that we have different tastes, but perhaps part of the problem that modern MMOs seem to have keeping subs is that they're just plain boring, well they are to me at least.

 

See .. that makes it your problem, not the MMO genre's problem. You think modern MMOs are boring .. I think modern MMOs are fun .. so do 11M people. May be you should play something else, or stick to niche, indie MMOs which cater to your taste.

 

It's a good thing the MMO genre != WoW.  It's the clones that are (probably) the cause of this topic.  Not everyone likes WoW, but since everyone wants to copy WoW, including things like little to no death penalty, we niche players, as you would say, have nothing to choose from.

Originally posted by toddze

Death penalty needs to be steep enough to detour people from exploting it as a warp method or zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win.  I personally think FFXI had the best system You didnt want to die and not get a raise or you lost 2 hours of xp. If you got a raise III it wasnt bad at all.

Nah,eq1 you actually lose levels.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by toddze

Death penalty needs to be steep enough to detour people from exploting it as a warp method or zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win.  I personally think FFXI had the best system You didnt want to die and not get a raise or you lost 2 hours of xp. If you got a raise III it wasnt bad at all.

WoW manages to fullfill these conditions and has a much lower death penalty than FFXI.

Yeah .. you don't need a steep penalty to accomplish either.

1) " to detour people from exploting it as a warp method" - This is easy. Just make the gold cost (repair, or wahtever u call it) more than the time (you need to grind back the gold) to walk between the 2 points.

2) " zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win" - This one is even easier. A simple enrage timer will ensure you will NEVER win if you don't have enough dps. Periodic unavoidable raid dmg will ensure you will NEVER win if your grp dont have enough healing. Staged fight with patterns (like the valkyrie twin fight) ensure the you will NEVER win by just zerging no matter how geared you are.

Originally posted by billynomates

Originally posted by toddze

Death penalty needs to be steep enough to detour people from exploting it as a warp method or zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win.  I personally think FFXI had the best system You didnt want to die and not get a raise or you lost 2 hours of xp. If you got a raise III it wasnt bad at all.

Nah,eq1 you actually lose levels.

Funny how that served as a deterrent for playing like a moron.  That is unlike other games, where any moron can make it to the top, even while acting like a moron.  Why do people currently dislike grouping again?

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by toddze

Death penalty needs to be steep enough to detour people from exploting it as a warp method or zerging a boss untill they get lucky and win.  I personally think FFXI had the best system You didnt want to die and not get a raise or you lost 2 hours of xp. If you got a raise III it wasnt bad at all.

WoW manages to fullfill these conditions and has a much lower death penalty than FFXI.

Ahhh.... not even close.

I've played FFXI since it launched in the US. I've played WoW, though not as much, since it launched in the US. I've witnessed and experienced *far* more reckless and sloppy behavior in less time playing WoW than I ever did in 6+ years playing FFXI.

Lineage 2 and FFXI are a better comparison in that regard. Because the death penalty in each game has a definite 'bite' to it, people are considerably more strategic and cautious in how they approach situations, and aren't nearly as tolerant of screw-ups - at any level - as they are in WoW.