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I WANT to be afraid to die!
Alasti
Member UncommonPosts: 287
First of all, let me preface my point in that it is highly likely that the majority of the readers of this post will at least partly agree with me because we who frequent this site are more apt to be "looking" for something at the moment as we are obviously not currently playing an MMO while we peruse these forums...
Anyway...enough of my jargon...
I have posted a few threads lately about the demise of MMO's and the impending doom that looms over my preferred choice of recreation: MMO's (okay, I wasn't quite through with the formal jargon). As such, I have concluded that what is missing from todays games that was prevalent in the early MMORPGs is true excitement. In the early MMO's (I am mostly considering UO, EQ1, etc.) the fear of losing was the driving force behind the excitement of the game: the fear of losing your hard-earned gear and the fear of losing your hard-earned experience/time. It is the fear of losing that makes winning feel great! And the fear of losing is what makes winning and even playing EXCITING!
Just so we are clear, I do NOT like losing: either gear or experience/time, however, it is the fear of losing those things that makes progress actually FEEL great. If I had never known the "yucky-icky-horrible-terrible-dread" of losing my corpse or losing a significant chunk of my experience (time=experience), I would not appreciate the days in which I did NOT lose those things at all. There were many days in UO and in EQ1 where I finished the day with either less money or less experience than I started....and believe me when I say, I was not happy at that very moment. But the next day I would vow NOT to let that happen. I would make it a personal quest of mine to make SURE I gained that day and I would feel great knowing I had accomplished something. Gaining a level was HUGE! Remember in EQ1 shouting "DING!!!!" Dozens of people would "Gratz!!!" because gaining a level was NOT A GUARANTEE! Having bad days made me appreciate the good ones. In today's games, by my standards, it is not possible to have a "bad" day. Everyday you gain experience and more money...the game makes sure of that. I want a game that progress is NOT ASSURED! I wan't a game where people progress when they progress in knowledge and skill IN THE GAME. I don't want a game that is so "funnel-minded" that even a retard can get to the final levels and have great gear. (On a side note...I remember the first time I saw someone in EQ1 levitating....I about crapped myself with envy...or in Ultima Online the first time I saw someone come into town with a DRAGON in tow!!...I wanted to be able to do that too! And what was neat was...I was not sure I was going to ever be able to...that way...if I ever did...WOW, I really accoplished something) In todays games, EVERYONE expects to be able to have great gear and be the top levels. This overall concept of funneling people to the end makes me heave.
I am not suggesting that every game become "hard-core" where one death means you have to start over. But I am suggesting that a death be significant. That losing a battle means losing an item or even losing everything until you go back and get it. Oh man...do you remember the days of EQ1 when you died? You woke up naked and your corpse (with all your belonings) were left exactly where you fell. If you were 4 levels deep in a dungeon, thats where you had to go to retrieve your "stuff". Now a lot of you look back on that and cringe---you hated that part of the game. And I'm telling you that THATS the part I MISS. It is the lack of genuine fear that makes playing all these other games feel like eating a plain baked potato tastes -- bland. When I lost my corpse, either in UO or EQ1, I panicked. I would call on everyone of my friends and would plead with anyone who had ever been in my predicament to come help me on my newly self-created quest "Retrieve Alasti's corpse from the depths" quest. THAT WAS FUN!! The fear of losing everything (or even ANYTHING) is what made games exciting...and THAT IS FUN!! In the last 15 MMO's or so that I have played since then, I haven't been "scared" at all. I can die and not even flinch. Death in the former games was (or I should say "could be") catastrophic. Remember in EQ1 when you were resolved to dying, fleeing from a monster that was going to kill you, you only had a chance to partly decide where, so you would run to a "better spot to die", knowing that the difficulties of retrieving your corpse could be ugly? I did that more times than I can count. THAT was fun. Anyway...I think I've made my point.
I know I rant. I rant alot. But I miss being excited playing games. Excitement means dealing with genuine fear, and sometimes the result is positive and sometimes negative, but the excitement COMES from the fear.
The Glory of Victory is directly correlated to the Risk of Defeat. No Risk=No Glory....Little Risk=Little Glory....and a boring as hell game. Give me risk and I'll show you Glory...or die trying.
Comments
You're completely right of course. But, these threads tend to go only one way.
Those that have played MMOs with risk vs reward AND WoW clones will say that a death penalty brings them into the game, adds tension, makes things memorable and strategic, ect ect.
And those who have ONLY played WoW clones will go on and on about "But you lose money!" or "But dying already sucks!" and emphatically argue that their way is better, even though they've never played any other way, and have no perspective.
Same thing goes when you bring up a non instanced MMO. Hell, some of them say "MMOs can't work without instancing!" or even more hilariously "someone will steal all my kills and grief me!" (but note, if that problem actually existed, it'd exist outside instances too). They just don't understand and cannot comprehend how an MMO would work unless its a WoW clone.
Exactly. Most of the people who play MMO's now only know WoW or clones of WoW and they are so used to "Progress" that to go backwards at all in any form may cause them to actually lose some self-esteem and my goodness...we wouldn't want that.
I try to play WoW clones and really... I don't understand how people can enjoy them. Everything is on autopilot. Everything is done for you. It's nearly impossible to fail and, if you somehow manage it, there's no penalty. I had no attachment to my character, nothing sucked me into the game world. I never had to TRY.
But, in DAoC, when I was afraid of losing, every single fight that came down to the wire pulled me more into the world and my character. This was a harsh world meant to try me, not some cushy kiddie ride to make me feel better about myself by awarding me with gold for finding the giant glowing waypoint.
When I explored an uncharted island in the Atlantis seas, I found a bunch of player graves and knew I was in a dangerous place. But I also saw a treasure chest, so I knew with the risk came reward... I was careful, and fearful. In LotRO, in that same scenario, I would have just ran in to suicide and see what was there.
Have you even wondered that maybe topics like these don't go anywhere beacsue of assumptions and arrogance displayed above?
Most MMO deaths are now akin to FPS deaths. You respawn with all your stuff and no loss, then charge back into the fight. It doesn't mean a thing, it actually encourages stupid play because hell, what have you got to lose? The fear of death in original EQ made for some awesome times, especially when you're deep in a dungeon, get a bad pull and suddenly have a ton of mobs on you. Enchanters are mezzing, Clerics are healing like mad, Wizards are blowing things apart, Tanks are keeping mobs off the Cleric. And then you all come through it with a sliver of health left and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
You won't get times like that in modern MMO's.
Nope. Because this isn't assumption based or arrogance, it's simple observation. I've been here many years and I know how it always goes. People with experience will try to talk pros and cons while those with none torpedo the conversation. Ignorance at its finest.
Maybe some people that disagree with you are just as awesome as you are.
I would simply add I agree with the OP 100%. I am guessing there are potentially a Million or more players out there right now like us with no MMO home because the current crop is just so boring.
I think I will enjoy GW2 when it comes out, yet I am still dreading the fact that key components in my mind will still be missing. The death penalties will still be what I consider weak as there is no backwards progression and it appears dungeons will be few and far between and fully instanced.
Other than that I see no other games on the horizon atm that I am excited about.
Many years here? where? i have also been playing MMOS for a long time but i don't think i am in any position to make assumptions regarding million of players. When you start assuming and start generalising, discussion goes down hill fast.
While I totally agree with the OP as I started my MMO days with the original release of EQ1 I can say with full confidence those days are gone for a reason. Just like the real world goes through cultural changes based on generations so has the world of MMO's. Today's generation (as a whole, not individuals) is just not tolerent of setbacks. They want the instant access to everything from the get go and once they've got it, they'll be damned if someone is going to take it away from them. You may or may not agree with me but in the case you don't, I suggest you ask yourself why games that fit the mold I just described thrive while those with harsh penalties don't (when compared to one another).
No indeed you do not. I can remember several PvE fights in my DAoC years, sacrificing myself as the tank so the healer could escape to come back and rez us, or so others don't get the xp hit, trying to control agro because I knew failure meant letting everyone down... traversing dungeons where you had to react to roaming mobs and sudden danger...
One night at 2 in the morning we had a fight that lasted a good 9 minutes because more and more ads kept coming in. Finally put down the last of them, all out of power (remember when you could actually run out of stamina and power in MMOs?) when a giant undead Roman showed up. So, we scattered, flew into unexplored wings of the dungeons. Other groups we passed tried to help, but we just kept running, trying to keep up with the cleric who thought he knew a way out. We stumbled into a secret passage that warped us out into the middle of a field far away from the dungeon entrance, where we then had to fight zombies to escape. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, not wanting to die.
In LotRO? In that situation we would have just stayed in place and fought, and if we died well, oh well who cares, we'll just come back.
That is Exactly what I have been doing in the last several games. "What the hell...lets just see how this goes" is how everyone playes because it makes NO difference whether I die or not.
I want people to fear that place! To die there once and have it be a pain in the arse to get their corpse back! Sound harsh? It's not....Its for their OWN enjoyment I say these things.... Once they die and give the place the proper respect (Lord knows they don't want to lose their stuff) then can come back with a better plan, or more people, or later when they can exact revenge and slay them all. Guess what...now they have a story to tell...Now they Feel Great about an accomplishment they just earned. In the new games...there is very little chance of there ever being a story of an "almost died" or even a brutal death, because dying in games like WoW mean so little you pay it no heed.
I can remember the handful of times in EQ1 where I was honestly uncertain if I was going to be able to get my corple and stuff back. Do you think when I did get my stuff/corpse back I had a story to tell? Do you think I didn't feel great when I donned my gear again? Do you think I would remember those "exciting" times 15 years later in a post I write in a MMORPG Forum? You bet your ass I do. THOSE WERE FUN TIMES! Fear and excitement go hand-in-hand.
Because games like WoW attract non gamers and are made by corporate publishers trying to cash in on the casual gamer market. The Wii Sports Angry Bird market are the type that get hooked on WoW and its clones.
The games that are actually challenging are fewer and fewer because publishers don't see any value in aiming for core gamers. They instead try to copy WoW and fail. It'd probably be a hell of a lot more profitable to copy DAoC than WoW, but Publishers aren't MMo designers. They're morons who just invest in whatever is working at the time. They force good game devs to make bad MMOs.
Fear of death is a very simple thing to institute into games.
If you die, you lose all your belongings.
But companies are too afraid of losing subscribers to do it.
I've been ON THIS WEBSITE for a good 4-5 years, and by my extensive experience on how these forums work, that's how these types of threads go down. Sorry if you're having trouble understanding that.
I know this is hard for a LOT of people to wrap their minds around but investors make their decisions based on case studies that show them where the best chance to make money is. You're right of course, they don't generally use the products they invest in, that is not what they are good at. What they are good at is turning a profit based on market trends. Obviously not everyone hits the mark, if they did why the hell would anyone do anything else. Fact is they could care less what the hell is produced with their money, as long as it turns a profit. They don't invest to intentially lose money.
If you want an adrenalin rush from an MMO then play Darkfall.
Its really that simple.
I would be if it wasn't for 300 ping (to Australia) making it frustrating.
If I was in the US or Europe I would be playing it.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
I used to like harsh death penalties as extra challenge. But slowly over time they just became cumbersome and annoying. So many times when I just had to go afk, or my internet connection hiccupped, the server lagged or other non gameplay reasons that killed my character. In those moments I really didnt like the harsh death penalties. It was just frustrating being good at a game and then still die because of some non gameplay related issues.
At some point I realised that I dont actually need a harsh death penalty as incentive to not die. I always refuse to die in games. It is automatically one of the challenges for me. This is also why I rarely join pugs anymore and always build friendslists full of players that are likeminded and dont rush into combat head first.
Another factor that came into play is that I got bored with mechanics that are just made to slow your character progress down. I see a corpse run as one of those. I want to have fun and now prefer death penalties that dont slow you down. Like debuffs that make you be more carefull, but at least let you continue.
Yet the publishers seem to be good at doing just that. Not a single big budget big publisher WoW clone has been successful. Some crash in glorious flames right away, like AoC. Others limp along in mediocrity like LotRO and WoW.
But the end result is the same. Publishers don't understand why WoW is a success. They only see the dollar sign and try to copy it. It hasn't worked once.
This where I will end my point. No matter what we as the consumer THINKS we "know" about market, its the investors who has paid their dues to figure out what will make them money. Like ever other product they put their money up for, once it's proven to be a loss they pull out, up until that point, they keep investing.
Only because a MMO didn't get 10 million subs doesn't mean those investors didn't make profit. A real failure is when a MMO shuts down but i know people on this website has there own definition of what failure means. These days MMOS generate more profit going F2P so even though for you games like LOTRO and AOC might be limping in mediocrity, investors are making profit out of it and will always make lot more than what majority of old school and sandbox devs can dream of.
No investors like to fund a failed MMO out of their pockets, they wil never do that. Either they will shut it down or think of another way togenerate revenue...so in that sense a lot of WOW clones are up and runnign and making money for their investors.
Age of Conan's failure made 2 of its publishing partners go bankrupt. WAR's failure dissolved Mythic. LotRO's failure got Turbine halved. Sadly the publishers tend to escape while the dev teams take the hit. But see the thing is, more often than not, it's only the MMOs that failed out of the gate that go FTP. No one was playing DDO before it went FTP, because for the first year of launch, it was awful, and so instanced most didn't consider it an MMO (not such a big deal now that most MMOs are entirely instanced).
The end result is we have publishers who look at WoW, and say "make that". The end result is games like WAR which have less subscribers than most MMOs had back in DIAL UP days.
Meanwhile, very few developers look at the success old MMOs had and try to replicate that.
What you forget is that most of the wow "clones" didn't manage to copy lot of things which made people enjoy wow in first place.The worst part in games like WAR and LOTR was the combat - as far as possible from the fun and smooth combat of wow.Aoc was full of bugs when launched,you had to grind monsters or repeat villas because the game was lacking quests,the worse crafting in a game (at least from those I played).
How can you seriously think that WAR failed because it was a wow copy when the developers didn't even try to copy from wow some basic things ?
War :
- lack of a fun and colorful open world - I still remember how people defended War choice for boring and bland colors by saying is a world at war,because people didn't fight wars in some of the most beautiful places on earth /sarcasm
- awful combat
- no epic music
- failed chat system
- awful pve and AI for npcs,public quests were fun for a while but the rest of pve was not
Interesting thing is how the developers who made those games ,trying to copy wow success but failing,are all old mmo developers - maybe too obsessed with "old school" gameplay to even be able to capture the things which made wow fun for so many people.
Oh come on, you don't actually think WoW is succesful because it has fluid animations do you? No, it's the fact that they were the first MMO to have a huge marketing budget and brand name behind them. LotRO and WAR failed simply because they came to the casual game too late.