Extreme loss of experience/lvls, skills and items upon death. Yay or nay?

Ubradol

What's your opinion on the matter of 'Loss upon Death?

I started my MMORPG-life with a game(Tibia) where you lost ALL items(you still have a depot, ofcourse), 5%ish experience points and same %ish on Skills. A character that's say 10,000 hours in would lose 500 hours of gametime/work along with all items(which also had a huge value). At least.. it was 10% I think

Players of all ages literally cried after a death.. and most deaths were from other players(or lag, old game). What these gamerules created was ofcourse an extremely competitive community but also a LIVING community. A "Playerkiller" was more or less considered an outlaw, at least if he killed the wrong people.. having the right friends was everything. Or to be in the right guild. You could basically be PKed and in the rush namedrop some of the biggest Players and you'd be left alone instantly. An unjust death of a high-ranked/respected player was most likely the trigger of a war or years long "Eye for an eye" battle.. Insane and then some, I bet few of you can even imagine it. The games developers did however ofcourse in time nerf down the Loss to please the players(Amulets protecting you from death,  a % chance on each item you're holding that it will be dropped upon death(instead of 100% of dropping everything)  and less %-loss etc).

After playing DAoC and WoW however I realized how unique this was for this game. And also how utterly BORING it is when you don't lose 5% of all your Exp-points and Skills



But, anyways.. what do YOU think?  What if the devs of the game you're currently playing or your favorite game would come out and say that they would implement something similar. How would you respond? Or, what is your thoughts on the subject in general?

hallucigenocide

i don't think i'd ever consider trying out a game like that.
and if a game i played tried it i'd quit.(most probably would if a game just suddenly switched to something like that.)

Ubradol

Yo, fast response.. nice

Why not? Not chill/relaxed enough? That'd be the nr 1 reason ofc.. for me at least. Getting PKed means you're risking a heartattack(no matter the age)..

Incomparable

It depends on other factors of the game that add value to the experiece.

So lets say if i was new to the game, I would have similar access to the game as an experienced player. The difference would be the advantages, networks, wealth etc that person accumulated.

So if I were to take a game like WoW and this notion it wouldnt be that bad, if there was no lvl system, and a person had access to all content.

Mensur

There should be some punishment for death! Long corpse runs just dont cut it anymore.! 

GG WP

Ubradol

Yeah... corpse-runs.. heee-heee. Such pain

cameltosis

Implementation, as always, is key. 

If you having punishing death consequences, such as item loss, xp loss etc, then death needs to be an extremely rare occurrence, which means your game needs to be really easy for the average player. That's not fun for me. 


A big downside to negative consequences for death is it instills in the players an unwillingness to experiment. For me, that is a downside I would never want in any game I'm developing, let alone playing. I love experimenting. I love pushing myself to the limits (and beyond) just to see how far I can take it. "I wonder if I could kill that?" is a common thought of mine when playing every single game with combat, usually followed by an attempt to kill it. 


Having said that, I do like some negative consequences for death. I liked SWG's approach - you lose your buffs, have some forced downtime, but most importantly, your equipment degraded. 

This would mean the average player would lose between 5 and 20 minutes per death (assuming they had to go to cantina to remove debuffs and get mind buffed, then to doctor to get health and action buffed, then travel again) which could be annoying, but it was the item degradation that was key. It meant financial loss to players, but kept the economy going. 

Squishydew

I dont like permadeath much, but I'll ocasionally give it a try in games i feel like i finished for the rush you get when barely surviving.

What i do like is permadeath with a stash  that remains, so you can collect gear for your next run, I've really been enjoying singleplayer/multiplayer games like that, Magicite, Roguelands, Rogue legacy, etc

In MMORPG's I'm alright with all loot dropped, but I dont think I'd play a permadeath only MMO.

Octagon7711

L2 had a good system with blessed scrolls of escape that could instantly teleport you to town.  Unless you could oneshot someone it was really hard to gank.  So hardcore could work with proper checks and balances or players will rage and leave the game, meaning an end result of empty servers.

Scot

I am not sure the penalty in WoW was anything like as strong as DAOC? I say nay, it is something from old school that we can leave in the past.

centkin

500 hours loss on a death?  PvP ganking deaths included in that?  No thanks. 

I am fine with a death penalty, but to lose that much time is not what I am looking for in a game. 

Nilden

Why not provide players the options?

They have hardcore modes where you die it game overs. Why not have exp loss on death, item loss on death, etc server settings? All depends on how hard coded you want these settings to be.

Then of course you have the should you be giving players penalties, and if so how much, perspective.

Sovrath

Harsh death penalties have been talked about before. The issue is finding some balance.

You don't want people "jumping off of cliffs" to get a cheap ride back to their bind spot but you don't want death penalties to be so harsh that people aren't willing to take chances on hard content unless they can be assured of winning.

I know I experienced just that in Lord of the Rings online (of all games) where members of the group I was in decided that if we couldn't "face roll" the tomb then they didn't want to continue.

edit: I should say that we didn't always have a healer but eventually a die hard portion of the group made it all the way through to the end.

Baitness

Permanent loss upon death is not a good, fun, or balanced mechanic.  Temporary punishments are enough, like debuffs, corpse runs, and respawning far away.  Any kind of punishment should be kept out of instanced pvp and pve, it has no place there.

Nilden

Sovrath said:

Harsh death penalties have been talked about before. The issue is finding some balance.

You don't want people "jumping off of cliffs" to get a cheap ride back to their bind spot but you don't want death penalties to be so harsh that people aren't willing to take chances on hard content unless they can be assured of winning.

I know I experienced just that in Lord of the Rings online (of all games) where members of the group I was in decided that if we couldn't "face roll" the tomb then they didn't want to continue.

edit: I should say that we didn't always have a healer but eventually a die hard portion of the group made it all the way through to the end.

What makes me ponder is the way you died. For instance should you get the same death penalty for jumping off a cliff as dying to a player?

A lot of the times playing Planetside 2 it would say I committed suicide but I was clearly murdered or fell under the world.

Anyway point being they could put in different death penalties based on how you died.

Ubradol

Remember that your enemies will ALSO lose as much upon death..   But in games like WoW, DAoC enemies are NEVER personal.. but try to imagine a WoW-server with 10,000 players(not same time, duh) that ALL stay for YEARS.. and 0 fractions(everyone can kill and chat with everyone) the community wouldn't allow people to go berserk.

would you go and PK if it meant you'd be PKed yourself?

About the adventure/risk drawback... umm.. yeah. I guess that's a strong point against harsh penalty. Single-player and the more relaxed approach of exploring and testing becomes rather lame if you'd lose 100hours+ of work on 1 death.

edit:

"Anyway point being they could put in different death penalties based on how you died."

Yes, that's a good idea. But might be problematic to implement as people would rush into mobs if losing a PvP battle.. which basically means you can and should take out the RPG in MMORPG completely.

BigRambo

lol, the title of the thread made me "lol" and I'm going to type "lol" again.  We got hundreds of these threads so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but I'll only say that Devs have way more things to worry about then finding "innovative" death penalties,  lol, seriously, just try out CoE when it releases and tell the MMORPG universe how it is.  CoE is your MMO if you want more "innovative" ways to die and at the same time piss  players off.   While we're at it, why not make your character have to use the bathroom otherwise it dies of constipation?   The more this damn genre is going "Real Life" the crappier it becomes. Long live WoW & LoL 4 Life~!  

Quizzical

cameltosis said:

If you having punishing death consequences, such as item loss, xp loss etc, then death needs to be an extremely rare occurrence, which means your game needs to be really easy for the average player. That's not fun for me. 


A big downside to negative consequences for death is it instills in the players an unwillingness to experiment. For me, that is a downside I would never want in any game I'm developing, let alone playing. I love experimenting. I love pushing myself to the limits (and beyond) just to see how far I can take it. "I wonder if I could kill that?" is a common thought of mine when playing every single game with combat, usually followed by an attempt to kill it. 

That's two of the big problems right there.  Another is that losing a ton of progress purely because some router is laggy that day is not fun.

Iselin

It's meaningful and fun group activities that create living communities. Harsh negative reinforcement has nothing to do with it.

Margrave

I've played titles with death penalties that were harsh. I hated it. I don't play anything like that any more.

Positive reinforcement works far better than negative.

mmoguy43

As evidence of the direction of the games industry as a whole has proven that players refuse to be arbitrarily punished by permanent penalties, especially the more extreme. Maybe old games got away with robbing people of their time and money without better options but not anymore.

Cothor

I don't think it adds any value to a game. It may make players who cheat, exploit, or simply take no chances feel more elite, but in the end no modern game is going to survive under those conditions. For the most part, only legitimate veterans are even aware that such games existed, and I doubt most want to see the return of that type of game play. It sucked then and it sucks now

DAOWAce

Maybe if I was a kid again when gaming was new.

Don't have the time or patience for anything like that nowadays. Too many games and too little time to play them. I now find games that take away things when you lose are just extremely disrespectful to your time, barring some exceptions (roguelikes).

TwoTubes

cameltosis said:

Implementation, as always, is key. 

If you having punishing death consequences, such as item loss, xp loss etc, then death needs to be an extremely rare occurrence, which means your game needs to be really easy for the average player. That's not fun for me. 

Why do you think this?  A game can offer challenging game play and have exp loss or item loss or other negative affects on death.

Having a death penalty and having easy game play are independent of each other. 
Most mmorpgs just don't anymore because they try to cater to a very wide audience.  (<That conversation is a dead horse at this point.  I don't think we need to get into that.)

waynejr2

Ubradol said:

What's your opinion on the matter of 'Loss upon Death?

I started my MMORPG-life with a game(Tibia) where you lost ALL items(you still have a depot, ofcourse), 5%ish experience points and same %ish on Skills. A character that's say 10,000 hours in would lose 500 hours of gametime/work along with all items(which also had a huge value). At least.. it was 10% I think

Players of all ages literally cried after a death.. and most deaths were from other players(or lag, old game). What these gamerules created was ofcourse an extremely competitive community but also a LIVING community. A "Playerkiller" was more or less considered an outlaw, at least if he killed the wrong people.. having the right friends was everything. Or to be in the right guild. You could basically be PKed and in the rush namedrop some of the biggest Players and you'd be left alone instantly. An unjust death of a high-ranked/respected player was most likely the trigger of a war or years long "Eye for an eye" battle.. Insane and then some, I bet few of you can even imagine it. The games developers did however ofcourse in time nerf down the Loss to please the players(Amulets protecting you from death,  a % chance on each item you're holding that it will be dropped upon death(instead of 100% of dropping everything)  and less %-loss etc).

After playing DAoC and WoW however I realized how unique this was for this game. And also how utterly BORING it is when you don't lose 5% of all your Exp-points and Skills



But, anyways.. what do YOU think?  What if the devs of the game you're currently playing or your favorite game would come out and say that they would implement something similar. How would you respond? Or, what is your thoughts on the subject in general?

What do I think.  I think you enjoyed people crying when they lost stuff.  I believe you got off on it.

IF this game mechanic was so amazing the players would be demanding it and the devs would be putting it in.  Instead, Free to Play is what is being done.  Think about it.

/deadhorse

nariusseldon

MisterZebub said:

Having started MMOs when there were death penalties and item loss, I admit they made the games challenging but on the whole I don't really miss them. However I see no reason why games couldn't have a hardcore mode or even server for those players who enjoy the extra challenge.

Agreed. Just make an optional mode. It works for Diablo 3 and it should work for MMOs.