Originally posted by Robokapp

 

I think death should be an inconvenience.

 

I am looking at the statement i jsut wrote and i'm not sure how to describe it any more clearly. Perhaps a reference to "the curse of immortality" is in order...but how can one appreciate life if it's permanent ? we don't care a whole lot for the air we breathe other than "huh, we should stop polluting it. I'm going to do nothing about it". Yet if we'd wear an astronaut suit every time we step outside we'd perceive it as important.

 

the inconvenience of death is in the interest of preservation of life.

 

it's hard to encourage something you already have without resorting to adversity of alternatives.

 

can't like living unless you dislike dying. if you don't care about dying, you don't care about living.

 

As I wrote in an eve topic once...

 

you're in high-sec. a capsule appears next to you on a gate. Probably a pilot grabbing a ship. good for him. Moving on.

you're in low/null-sec. a capsule appears next to you on a gate. Is he someone who, like me, 5 minutes ago had a ship? is he a scout? a spy? he has insta-warp, he can follow me anywhere. Maybe he's the warp-in. Maybe he's bait. I can kill him in one shot but would take so long to lock him his friends can drop on me. I BETTER GET AWAY FROM HIM.

 

note, above is a capsule. no weapons and no way to do damage. yet the sense of preservation of life instantly kicks in. because it'd suck to die to a retard-magnet capsule.

No I don't think you get it: There is no sensible death penalty you can implement to make me avoid death any more than I do now, except now everyone around me turns into cowards. Everyone. No one takes risks, not in PvE, certainly not in PvP. Infact, PvP turns into this "cat 'n' mouse game" where nobody wants to engage in a fair fight, or even a near fair fight. An overwhelming majority of engagements would be "ganks" or "zergs". Any sort of fun PvP, for me, would become all but extinct.

No one scouts in a capsule. No one is an warp in with a capsule. Can't fit a cyno on it either, and even if a small ship like that had a cyno, it would be dead before anyone would bridge through. Capsule is hardly a bait, and go right ahead, shoot the bastard. If you're standing on a gate without knowing what's on the other side you should be dead. Eve is not a hard game, its just full of less than average gamers.

Don't try to mystify Eve to me. I know what Eve is like. And I don't care whether I die in Eve either. I don't get the gambler's rush. Not everyone does.

Originally posted by LadyEuphei
Remove the death penalty and implement perma-death. Problem solved!

I propose the PacMan solution...three deaths, and your toon is deleted ("lives" regenerate slowly).

But then, for a  lot of gamers, or 80s developers; only Draconian solutions need apply. Playing those titles makes me an e-man (my manly properties only manifest themselves in games).

Originally posted by Goatgod76

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

Ugh...the inconvenience rebuttal again.

Death penalty with some substance (xp loss or gear damage) makes that fight that much more exciting and scary for many people. That sense of what could happen if you lose, Sure, if you die it really sucks...but if you win, it's that much more gratifying.

Death penalty with some substance makes you think before you act. Otherwise you can just Rambo into a fray because if you die nothing happens. That's just boring...to me anyways. Should be consequences for stupidity...like rushing a group of 6 enemies solo and expecting to come out unscathed.

Yeah like it is better when nobody takes ANY risks and only take on engagements they are absolutely sure they will win. How exciting is that?

Death penalty is a cheap thrill. I'd rather have the game rely on gameplay for fun. Gameplay, atleast, is fun for everyone.

I have a hard time with MMO death penalties.  I know many old schoolers consider them vital as a game mechanic, but personally I'm not so sure I agree.

It's going to happen that I get my butt stomped.  In SP that means restoring from the last save and trying again, or zoning back to the last checkpoint without penalty.  Obviously saves don't work in MMORPGs because they open up exploits where gear can be duplicated.

From what I've seen most death penalties are already kind of minor.  Lose some time and a bit of money, but nothing from progression.  I'm okay with that.  On the other hand I don't want to see death trivialized to the point it is in some FPSs where you just run back into the same battle that killed you.  I think a group wipe should be an annoyance.

Death soloing might be something I consider too harsh as it is.  Rez at the closest respawn point is okay in my eyes.  Spawning several zones away and then having to travel after healing up and repairing seems a bit excessive.

Overall, I guess it depends on the game.  In a game where death is frequent, I don't thing high penalties are a good thing unless it somehow fits the design.  In games that are already faceroll easy, where you have to seriously screw up in order to get killed, I'm okay with a stiffer penalty if it fits the game.

If anything I'd be best with a design where death was a financial hit rather than consuming a large amount of time.  I don't think players want to spend a bunch of time in penalty, they'd rather be out fighting.

If I made an mmo the death penalty would be so weird.  I'd make a heaven and hell.  Design would be like Fable where your choices could lead to good or bad results, including where you went in the afterlife.  

I'm into fantasy set in realism.  There would be no swinging at a mob for ten minutes in a turn base using weapons that if you accidently touched in real life you'd be bleeding for hours.  I would have accurate damage.  If getting hit in the head once with a blunt weapon stuns you and a second time kills you in real life that would be my game price as well.  And there would be blood and bruises; not the stupid graphics that make splatters that vanish.  

And people would DIE in my game (that sounded creepier than I meant).  Then you'd go to nirvana or underworld for ghost game play the rest of the game or restart a new character if you wanted to live on the surface world.  Resurrection would be a high class mage spell hard to come by.

I would also have a 100 player-character limit per account and a custom creation art program screen with unlockable items including clothing and furniture designable for the player that could be game implemented.  In other words, my character creation screen would be as much a game as the game itself.

Staying alive on the surface world would be decided by a town or city's ability to cooperate and defend; just like real life.  Caravans would need heros and not everyone is born a hero.  Your player character wud have to study an art to develop into a hero.  Player char would work jobs if they wanted game money; not quest and kill.  Just like real life.

There wouldn't be one damn rabbit in my game that dropped armor, coins, and shiz a rabbit shouldn't have.  They'd be skinned cause that's what a rabbit is for!!!

Jem, mmos haven't done much tapping into the afterlife since the very bgining.

would be cool.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by LadyEuphei
Remove the death penalty and implement perma-death. Problem solved!

I propose the PacMan solution...three deaths, and your toon is deleted ("lives" regenerate slowly).

But then, for a  lot of gamers, or 80s developers; only Draconian solutions need apply. Playing those titles makes me an e-man (my manly properties only manifest themselves in games).

E-Man: Master of the Virtual Universe

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by FallguyArmy

Originally posted by supertouchme 

jesus christ. there's no masochism involved in valuing death penalties

So why do you value death penalties in MMOs? What would be the benefits? You said it yourself previously that you don't like them, they frustrate you, and that you admitted they're an inconvenience. Yet, you said you appreciated their purpose. So what purpose does death penalties serve? 

 They punish stupidity. Always a laudable goal. There hasn't been a significant death penalty in MMOs for years. Even EVE has insurance.

Realm of the Mad God

Salem

Wizardry Online

death should play an integral role in mmos. in eq, you had to run to your corpse while naked and it was sometimes an adventure in itself. it even promoted player interaction because you had to ask other people for assistance. death doesn't just serve as a deterrence. it helps to slow the game down a bit. nowadays, people want to log on for 20 minutes and make significant progress and that's part of the reason these games don't have longevity.

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by Zorgo

Whether it is a death penalty to me is irrelevent.

There should be real and tangible motivation for living.

If the game lacks incentive for staying alive and winning battles, I'm not sure it meets the requirements of being a game anymore.

 What other games penalize you for losing.  They lose, they don't advance till they win.  Sometimes they may have to wait for the next competition but they don't make the competition harder just because you lost.  Thats it.

I didn't say anything about being penalized for losing.

I said a game needed incentive to stay alive.

Think outside the box.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by FallguyArmy

Originally posted by supertouchme 

jesus christ. there's no masochism involved in valuing death penalties

So why do you value death penalties in MMOs? What would be the benefits? You said it yourself previously that you don't like them, they frustrate you, and that you admitted they're an inconvenience. Yet, you said you appreciated their purpose. So what purpose does death penalties serve? 

 They punish stupidity. Always a laudable goal. There hasn't been a significant death penalty in MMOs for years. Even EVE has insurance.

May not be in a MMO. But D3 has perma-death. So online games do have harsh death penalty. In fact, you can't get harsher than perma-death.

Originally posted by Zorgo

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by Zorgo

Whether it is a death penalty to me is irrelevent.

There should be real and tangible motivation for living.

If the game lacks incentive for staying alive and winning battles, I'm not sure it meets the requirements of being a game anymore.

 What other games penalize you for losing.  They lose, they don't advance till they win.  Sometimes they may have to wait for the next competition but they don't make the competition harder just because you lost.  Thats it.

I didn't say anything about being penalized for losing.

I said a game needed incentive to stay alive.

Think outside the box.

 No but you did say you weren't sure it meets the requirements of a game.  The incentive for not dying in an MMO is the same as any other game, you don't advance till you successfully complete the encounter, or do a different encounter.  Simple. 

The incentive is dying sucks, having to redo the content sucks, not advancing sucks.

Just saying think outside the box means you are trapped in the box.

Originally posted by apocoluster
 Depends on the game. 

 Likely yes.

Other than video games can you think of a game with a penalty other than not advancing when you lose?

I remember old school games where you had lives and there were no save points, you simply got as far in the game as you could on the lives you had and HOPEFULLY there existed some mechanic to earn more lives and extend your play session.

Anyone remember Battletoads and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on the Nintendo? Brutally hard. Never beat them. Never came all that close.

But I also remember my first video game RPG - Dragon Quest also on Nintendo. You could save in that game. I played that game a lot, lot more. I enjoyed it a lot, lot more as the game remembered my progress. I could actually walk away from the console, do other things, and come back to the same game!

Amazing.

I also remember dying and being brought back to my latest save. Losing sometimes hours of grinding levels.

Aint no body got time for that.

Reward skillful play, reward staying alive, discourage zerg tactics but don't penalize repeated attempts.

For PvE anyway.

For PvP? Well, open world PvP mostly sucks anyways. MMO PvP has never really been good to be honest.

Usually it's a lot of time traveling, a usually quick death due to the odds being stacked against you NOT your skill as a player, and then a penalty for dying on top of that?

Please.

I put up with it in UO way back in the day. No longer.

Give me large scale open world PvE that rewards staying alive and playing with skill, but I'll take my PvP in small, instanced match format where my skill as a player/team matters more than my skill at recruitment and herding cats.

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by apocoluster
 Depends on the game. 

 Likely yes.

Other than video games can you think of a game with a penalty other than not advancing when you lose?

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by apocoluster
 Depends on the game. 

 Likely yes.

Other than video games can you think of a game with a penalty other than not advancing when you lose?

Fraternity Drinking games? All I could come up with, of the top of my head, outside the realm of video games.

 Haha.  You win.

They already have.........

Death Pens need to come back.

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

 Haha.  You win.

Log Rolling? Loser get pneumonia, in addition to getting teased and called names by the other lumberjacks.