It depends on the game design. Lets take gear loss as an example.
In a leveling game, where gear is a reward as you pass through levels, the gear loss means you have to make that quest run again to get back to where you were. That's ok once in a while, but it can get very old pretty quickly.
However, in a game like UO, gear was much less tied to skill gains. You usually ran with less than your best gear (call it "adventuring gear"), unless it was a GM event. And you usually had extra sets of your "adventuring gear."
I loath full loot games where the death penalty means players rarely wear their best gear for fear of loss.
Shadowbane had a good system, what you had equipped couldn't be taken, only what was being carried.
EVE was decent, rule was never fly what you couldn't afford to lose but I certainly never flew my pirate hulls or mods if the chance of loss was anything but quite low.
So how was Eve different than UO then? My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal. Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling. Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
You should be required to install a USB pneumatic striker which punches you in the nuts when you die. Then you character is deleted and your account permanently banned forcing you to buy another copy of the game if you want to reroll and try again. All your gear drops as you die, but this is also just a trap because now it's all cursed with death plague and anyone who picks up a single coin or item also immediately dies with all the above penalties.
Anything less is carebear and weak and leads to the downfall of not just gaming but society in general.
I think I've covered all the hardcore discussion points. You may now move on from this thread.
Oh man!... <pant> <pant>
"LOL" is not sufficient for my reaction to this post. Great good God, what a series of tortures
Really, what do we choose from for a "penalty?"
- Loss of Time (travel, recovery, healing)
- Loss of Advancement (levels, XP)
- Loss of Items (looting, breakage)
- Loss of Money (equipment repair, healing)
All are annoying
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
You should be required to install a USB pneumatic striker which punches you in the nuts when you die. Then you character is deleted and your account permanently banned forcing you to buy another copy of the game if you want to reroll and try again. All your gear drops as you die, but this is also just a trap because now it's all cursed with death plague and anyone who picks up a single coin or item also immediately dies with all the above penalties.
Anything less is carebear and weak and leads to the downfall of not just gaming but society in general.
I think I've covered all the hardcore discussion points. You may now move on from this thread.
Oh man!... <pant> <pant>
"LOL" is not sufficient for my reaction to this post. Great good God, what a series of tortures
Really, what do we choose from for a "penalty?"
- Loss of Time (travel, recovery, healing)
- Loss of Advancement (levels, XP)
- Loss of Items (looting, breakage)
- Loss of Money (equipment repair, healing)
All are annoying
Lets just get down to it really.
All Death Penalties are just Time Loss.
Gear/Gold/Exp/Etc = Time it took to get it.
Everything boils down to time loss to the player if their character dies.
The question is, simple as this, how much time should a player lose, if their character dies.
This can be anything from "All the time they put into that character" IE: Perma Death (Example being: DDO's Hardcore League)
To just a repair/respawn fee, which can vary depending on how profitable that player is with their time spent in game. (Example being: GW2, where you just pay the Respawn To Waypoint Fee, or lay around dead till someone raises you)
But at the end of the day, what is lost, is the players time it took to get whatever it was they lost upon death.
With that as a benchmark, I guess the question should be, how much time out of your gaming time do you want to lose, each time you die.
That is the at the end of the day, the real question. How much time should a death cost you in the MMO you are playing.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
It should be tied into the game's lore and setting. If you are just a "man/woman" in a normal world with no magic or super-tech... Then death means you died. Hand down your equipment and maybe have a backup character or two in "training" behind you that gets a percentage of your skills/levels. But in such a world, death must be rare and thus.. actually fighting to the death must be rare. We would have to find other ways to grow... like building, training, exploring, socializing...
Game would fail today... obviously. Need more pew-pew.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
It depends on the game design. Lets take gear loss as an example.
In a leveling game, where gear is a reward as you pass through levels, the gear loss means you have to make that quest run again to get back to where you were. That's ok once in a while, but it can get very old pretty quickly.
However, in a game like UO, gear was much less tied to skill gains. You usually ran with less than your best gear (call it "adventuring gear"), unless it was a GM event. And you usually had extra sets of your "adventuring gear."
I loath full loot games where the death penalty means players rarely wear their best gear for fear of loss.
Shadowbane had a good system, what you had equipped couldn't be taken, only what was being carried.
EVE was decent, rule was never fly what you couldn't afford to lose but I certainly never flew my pirate hulls or mods if the chance of loss was anything but quite low.
So how was Eve different than UO then? My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal. Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling. Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
Probably wasn't, but I've never played UO so can't say.
One major change over the years was when I first played EVE High Sec space was actually quite safe but about 5 years later became more dangerous than null sec, at least when it came to flying expensive ships.
Unless your corporation was in a wardec rarely were you killed as the penalties for flagrant piracy were steep and quite difficult to work off.
A single kill 1.0 or 0.9 space could mean a month of solo grinding in null sec to get the necessary pirate seals to return.
At this time one could fly their best ships with little fear of loss as long as some reasonable care was taken.
As the years moved on CCP made a number of changes to ostensibly "encourage" players to leave the safety of high sec which in short meant players could gank in using cheap, throwaway ships and return to action the next day to do it all again.
It worked in one sense, I did move my activities to null sec as it was definitely safer, but by no means as safe as high sec used to be of course.
As such I began flying T2 ships, good but not great for both PVE and PVP, and sold off all of my Pirate gear since I would never think of undocking in them.
I still kept playing and of course, some braver souls still risked their best, but not many and rarely if there was even a reasonable chance their fleet might lose the fight somehow.
So yeah, I don't like this design much, what good is having BIS in any game which can be easily taken from you by others who have to put in far less time and effort to do so?
Just clutters up the inventory with stuff which never sees the light of day.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It depends on the game design. Lets take gear loss as an example.
In a leveling game, where gear is a reward as you pass through levels, the gear loss means you have to make that quest run again to get back to where you were. That's ok once in a while, but it can get very old pretty quickly.
However, in a game like UO, gear was much less tied to skill gains. You usually ran with less than your best gear (call it "adventuring gear"), unless it was a GM event. And you usually had extra sets of your "adventuring gear."
I loath full loot games where the death penalty means players rarely wear their best gear for fear of loss.
Shadowbane had a good system, what you had equipped couldn't be taken, only what was being carried.
EVE was decent, rule was never fly what you couldn't afford to lose but I certainly never flew my pirate hulls or mods if the chance of loss was anything but quite low.
So how was Eve different than UO then? My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal. Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling. Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
Probably wasn't, but I've never played UO so can't say.
One major change over the years was when I first played EVE High Sec space was actually quite safe but about 5 years later became more dangerous than null sec, at least when it came to flying expensive ships.
Unless your corporation was in a wardec rarely were you killed as the penalties for flagrant piracy were steep and quite difficult to work off.
A single kill 1.0 or 0.9 space could mean a month of solo grinding in null sec to get the necessary pirate seals to return.
At this time one could fly their best ships with little fear of loss as long as some reasonable care was taken.
As the years moved on CCP made a number of changes to ostensibly "encourage" players to leave the safety of high sec which in short meant players could gank in using cheap, throwaway ships and return to action the next day to do it all again.
It worked in one sense, I did move my activities to null sec as it was definitely safer, but by no means as safe as high sec used to be of course.
As such I began flying T2 ships, good but not great for both PVE and PVP, and sold off all of my Pirate gear since I would never think of undocking in them.
I still kept playing and of course, some braver souls still risked their best, but not many and rarely if there was even a reasonable chance their fleet might lose the fight somehow.
So yeah, I don't like this design much, what good is having BIS in any game which can be easily taken from you by others who have to put in far less time and effort to do so?
Just clutters up the inventory with stuff which never sees the light of day.
Good points. I think a way to fix that is to have magical or technical means where your best gear can be "teleported" at death to a safe vault. With on spot Resurrections, maybe it would be better to have a "Summoning" system to use if you need it.
My next point may not be taken well. But I think games are too easy and made for spoiled brats. I think that such "teleports" or "summons" of gear should take some time, maybe a RL day, to complete. Because that adds game play like collecting spare gear (2nd best), and making death hurt a little bit so it's not "nothing."
Edit: By the way, I'm thinking of this as something like a spell cast at a temple in advance, before taking this gear out on adventure. With one use per.
I like a system where you get very light penalty as long as your party wins the encounter and rezzes you afterwards: Parties should be able to treat one member dying like a consumable as long as the party wins. Especially with boss fights, even the members killed mid-fight should celebrate the success.
Then additional penalty to that if your party fails to win that fight. A death like that should hurt somewhat.
Then additional penalty to those if you can't rez at your corpse. I don't think corpse runs are good idea (except WoW-style when done as ghosts), but the game should encourage continuing where you died.
I think you got at a key point: death penalties should be severely lessened or eliminated by having Allies around to revive you in place.
Maybe only healer types can revive in combat, but anyone should be able to revive out of combat. Helps encourage cooperation by removing a penalty if you have a friend and they survive the fight. Only true group wipes would result in anyone actually suffering the death penalty. Safety in numbers.
I like a system where you get very light penalty as long as your party wins the encounter and rezzes you afterwards: Parties should be able to treat one member dying like a consumable as long as the party wins. Especially with boss fights, even the members killed mid-fight should celebrate the success.
Then additional penalty to that if your party fails to win that fight. A death like that should hurt somewhat.
Then additional penalty to those if you can't rez at your corpse. I don't think corpse runs are good idea (except WoW-style when done as ghosts), but the game should encourage continuing where you died.
I think you got at a key point: death penalties should be severely lessened or eliminated by having Allies around to revive you in place.
Maybe only healer types can revive in combat, but anyone should be able to revive out of combat. Helps encourage cooperation by removing a penalty if you have a friend and they survive the fight. Only true group wipes would result in anyone actually suffering the death penalty. Safety in numbers.
It depends on the game design. Lets take gear loss as an example.
In a leveling game, where gear is a reward as you pass through levels, the gear loss means you have to make that quest run again to get back to where you were. That's ok once in a while, but it can get very old pretty quickly.
However, in a game like UO, gear was much less tied to skill gains. You usually ran with less than your best gear (call it "adventuring gear"), unless it was a GM event. And you usually had extra sets of your "adventuring gear."
I loath full loot games where the death penalty means players rarely wear their best gear for fear of loss.
Shadowbane had a good system, what you had equipped couldn't be taken, only what was being carried.
EVE was decent, rule was never fly what you couldn't afford to lose but I certainly never flew my pirate hulls or mods if the chance of loss was anything but quite low.
So how was Eve different than UO then? My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal. Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling. Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
not to split hairs but don't' you play a person "inside" a ship?
That always seemed apparent to me.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
And what if the problem is not really "death penalty" but "combat consequences"?
A trend in many games and especially in low effort MMOs, is kill, kill, kill.
I mean like any other player, I like shooting, stabbing, cutting, crushing innocent weasels and boars and occasionally save the universe in the process.
MMOs carried with them the promise of digital worlds, and most of them jail us instead in the same massive slaughterhouse.
However, if combat would have consequences, it would not be the same. What if after a combat that I won, I came out injured, and I had that special ability locked for 3 days? Well, maybe I could still fight without it but not as efficiently.
Now, what if I had a more severe injury reducing my max hitpoints by half for a day? Well I would probably avoid any fight for this duration.
What if there would be a dangerous monster in this cave terrorizing the
village next to it? Well maybe I would feel like a hero and fight it for
glory. And if I would indeed kill it, for sure I would grab the
attention of many. Or I would bring all my friends... Or I would find a more creative way to solve the problem without any fight.
What if I am PK, backstab some wanderer for fun and receives in return a severe injury? Well maybe I would reconsider my murderer's habits...
So, all of this could work at the very condition that combat would not constitute the core gameplay element of the game. That would force devs to go beyond the usual:
fight/gather/craft/make_money and it would be good.
It should be tied into the game's lore and setting. If you are just a "man/woman" in a normal world with no magic or super-tech... Then death means you died. Hand down your equipment and maybe have a backup character or two in "training" behind you that gets a percentage of your skills/levels. But in such a world, death must be rare and thus.. actually fighting to the death must be rare. We would have to find other ways to grow... like building, training, exploring, socializing...
Game would fail today... obviously. Need more pew-pew.
This is the core of the games I prefer. Haven & Hearth and Salem (not the "Town of Salem", but the real Permadeath Salem). Both games would be considered failures by this community, it seems (not you Slapshot, I get what you are saying).
I love this topic whenever it comes up which is usually 3 or 4 times a year.
It's fascinating to watch people explain their favorite form of punishment
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
It depends on the game design. Lets take gear loss as an example.
In a leveling game, where gear is a reward as you pass through levels, the gear loss means you have to make that quest run again to get back to where you were. That's ok once in a while, but it can get very old pretty quickly.
However, in a game like UO, gear was much less tied to skill gains. You usually ran with less than your best gear (call it "adventuring gear"), unless it was a GM event. And you usually had extra sets of your "adventuring gear."
I loath full loot games where the death penalty means players rarely wear their best gear for fear of loss.
Shadowbane had a good system, what you had equipped couldn't be taken, only what was being carried.
EVE was decent, rule was never fly what you couldn't afford to lose but I certainly never flew my pirate hulls or mods if the chance of loss was anything but quite low.
So how was Eve different than UO then? My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal. Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling. Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
not to split hairs but don't' you play a person "inside" a ship?
That always seemed apparent to me.
Yes, shame they got rid of the Captains Quarters where you really could see your character.
Even bigger shame they didn't expand further like everyone had hoped into actual walking in stations which ended when they closed down their planned Vampire title.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It depends on the game design. Lets take gear loss as an example.
In a leveling game, where gear is a reward as you pass through levels, the gear loss means you have to make that quest run again to get back to where you were. That's ok once in a while, but it can get very old pretty quickly.
However, in a game like UO, gear was much less tied to skill gains. You usually ran with less than your best gear (call it "adventuring gear"), unless it was a GM event. And you usually had extra sets of your "adventuring gear."
I loath full loot games where the death penalty means players rarely wear their best gear for fear of loss.
Shadowbane had a good system, what you had equipped couldn't be taken, only what was being carried.
EVE was decent, rule was never fly what you couldn't afford to lose but I certainly never flew my pirate hulls or mods if the chance of loss was anything but quite low.
So how was Eve different than UO then? My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal. Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling. Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
not to split hairs but don't' you play a person "inside" a ship?
That always seemed apparent to me.
Well, you can assume that your character escaped in a pod or something.
But the real thing in my speculation is the psychology involved. We see a cute little animal get hurt and it bothers us, but seeing a rock get smashed doesn't. Seeing a building demolished with explosives is even kind of cool. Expand this idea to a human/humanoid character, and it even starts to add some personal links. Just speculation, though.
I love this topic whenever it comes up which is usually 3 or 4 times a year.
If it comes back so frequently, there must be a good reason.
In games we are supposed to win or lose. In MMOs it is more debatable. Hence the problem.
Moreover, players complain about mainstream WOW-like games, but as soon as we bring the topic of loss nobody's there anymore... Most of people like the carebear experience.
Fortunately some got bored of it and bought Elden Ring. At least it shows that there is a public for challenging games.
Maybe something like Bloodborne where the monster that killed you has a small % to take your stuff(souls/exp). When you go back to your gravestone you can identify the monster that has your things by its glowing eyes. You can only get your stuff back by killing that monster.
Something like this could be repurposed to work in an mmo environment.
I love this topic whenever it comes up which is usually 3 or 4 times a year.
If it comes back so frequently, there must be a good reason.
In games we are supposed to win or lose. In MMOs it is more debatable. Hence the problem.
Moreover, players complain about mainstream WOW-like games, but as soon as we bring the topic of loss nobody's there anymore... Most of people like the carebear experience.
Fortunately some got bored of it and bought Elden Ring. At least it shows that there is a public for challenging games.
Ah there we go again, right on schedule.
Challenging =/= harsh death penalties. They are unrelated concepts. One is about having to use your brain and/or reflexes and the other one is just some random token punishment for failing.
If something is challenging and it takes you 4 or 5 tries to figure it out and succeed at it whatever happens between those 5 tries is irrelevant to the encounter's challenge level.
Death penalties are just imposed pauses between tries. Something superfluous to the encounter and boring time wasters.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I tend to be on the wrong side of the pack with this one. I tend toward harsher penalies than most people like. I think a death penalty need to be such that most people will dislike dieing. Whether there is some item loss, item decay, monetary, time, or something else, it needs to be such that people wish to avoid it. I've been in games where there is a certain 'chain' where people will engage some boss, and the players try to wear it down by keeping 1 person alive so that people can die and run back, until the boss is taken down. I personally don't like that. I've been in games where your sword of ultimate killing breaks and it costs 30 gp to repair.
I find that a harsher mechanic makes success a bit sweeter and failure a bit more bitter. When I look at peoples favorite stories, they usually seem to be from times where they had to work for success and had terrible setbacks while adventuring. You don't seem to get that when the penalty is too weak. I am not saying it needs to be full loot or permanent death. Just more than most games now at days.
I love this topic whenever it comes up which is usually 3 or 4 times a year.
If it comes back so frequently, there must be a good reason.
In games we are supposed to win or lose. In MMOs it is more debatable. Hence the problem.
Moreover, players complain about mainstream WOW-like games, but as soon as we bring the topic of loss nobody's there anymore... Most of people like the carebear experience.
Fortunately some got bored of it and bought Elden Ring. At least it shows that there is a public for challenging games.
Challenging =/= harsh death penalties. They are unrelated concepts.
True when the penalty for death is trivial but not necessarily if it is significant.
If the death penalty is severe and recovery from it difficult or the process lengthy things could be more difficult for the character until what was lost is restored.
I love this topic whenever it comes up which is usually 3 or 4 times a year.
If it comes back so frequently, there must be a good reason.
In games we are supposed to win or lose. In MMOs it is more debatable. Hence the problem.
Moreover, players complain about mainstream WOW-like games, but as soon as we bring the topic of loss nobody's there anymore... Most of people like the carebear experience.
Fortunately some got bored of it and bought Elden Ring. At least it shows that there is a public for challenging games.
Challenging =/= harsh death penalties. They are unrelated concepts.
True when the penalty for death is trivial but not necessarily if it is significant.
If the death penalty is severe and recovery from it difficult or the process lengthy things could be more difficult for the character until what was lost is restored.
Right. Great design that "Hey this dude just died in that fight. Let's make him do it again but this time with less gear and 20% less health... haha."
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I tend to be on the wrong side of the pack with this one. I tend toward harsher penalies than most people like. I think a death penalty need to be such that most people will dislike dieing. Whether there is some item loss, item decay, monetary, time, or something else, it needs to be such that people wish to avoid it. I've been in games where there is a certain 'chain' where people will engage some boss, and the players try to wear it down by keeping 1 person alive so that people can die and run back, until the boss is taken down. I personally don't like that. I've been in games where your sword of ultimate killing breaks and it costs 30 gp to repair.
I find that a harsher mechanic makes success a bit sweeter and failure a bit more bitter. When I look at peoples favorite stories, they usually seem to be from times where they had to work for success and had terrible setbacks while adventuring. You don't seem to get that when the penalty is too weak. I am not saying it needs to be full loot or permanent death. Just more than most games now at days.
I agree. But the problem is that games have a wide scale of player gaming skill, and you don't want too harsh of a penalty for those in the bottom half. This makes any kind of penalty really hard to come to terms with.
I like the idea of losing loot to MOBs and then to corpse decay. UO had that. It added so much more to the game. First and foremost, you had players helping each other out. Lots of guilds built up their membership with this, and friendships formed too.
Plus, sometimes you killed a MOB and got their loot, plus extra loot from players they had looted. It was a nice bonus if those players weren't still around, guilt free.
--------------- I always remember this fun story. Not all players were fun to be around. Some were abrasive. I ran across one player in a dungeon, he was fighting a MOB, and he was a little outclassed. He was slowly working his way towards a death robe. (Player's ghosts wore only a death robe, which appeared with them when resurrected as a sort of gift.) I asked him if he wanted help, and his response was "NO!"
So I stood around watching as his health bar slipped dangerously low, and asked again, "Do you want help?" Again, his response was "NO!"
Then he died.
Now, UO ghosts had two things about them. One was that they were invisible until they spoke, and two was that their words were jumbled up and it took a Spirit Speak skill to understand them (most players didn't build that skill because of limits to overall skills). After a few seconds they'd disappear again and have to speak again to be seen.
So I finished off the weakened MOB and stood there waiting for his ghost to speak and reveal his ghostly form. That's when you could hit them with a Resurrect spell. So he spoke and revealed himself right in front of me, he wanted a Res. That's when I asked for the final time, "Do you want help?"
Comments
My take is that in UO you play a character, and things feel more personal.
Where in Eve, you're playing a ship, and it doesn't have that same feeling.
Probably only a poll of gamers who played both games might answer this question.
Once upon a time....
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Godz of War I call Thee
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
Lets just get down to it really.
All Death Penalties are just Time Loss.
Gear/Gold/Exp/Etc = Time it took to get it.
Everything boils down to time loss to the player if their character dies.
The question is, simple as this, how much time should a player lose, if their character dies.
This can be anything from "All the time they put into that character" IE: Perma Death (Example being: DDO's Hardcore League)
To just a repair/respawn fee, which can vary depending on how profitable that player is with their time spent in game. (Example being: GW2, where you just pay the Respawn To Waypoint Fee, or lay around dead till someone raises you)
But at the end of the day, what is lost, is the players time it took to get whatever it was they lost upon death.
With that as a benchmark, I guess the question should be, how much time out of your gaming time do you want to lose, each time you die.
That is the at the end of the day, the real question. How much time should a death cost you in the MMO you are playing.
Game would fail today... obviously. Need more pew-pew.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
One major change over the years was when I first played EVE High Sec space was actually quite safe but about 5 years later became more dangerous than null sec, at least when it came to flying expensive ships.
Unless your corporation was in a wardec rarely were you killed as the penalties for flagrant piracy were steep and quite difficult to work off.
A single kill 1.0 or 0.9 space could mean a month of solo grinding in null sec to get the necessary pirate seals to return.
At this time one could fly their best ships with little fear of loss as long as some reasonable care was taken.
As the years moved on CCP made a number of changes to ostensibly "encourage" players to leave the safety of high sec which in short meant players could gank in using cheap, throwaway ships and return to action the next day to do it all again.
It worked in one sense, I did move my activities to null sec as it was definitely safer, but by no means as safe as high sec used to be of course.
As such I began flying T2 ships, good but not great for both PVE and PVP, and sold off all of my Pirate gear since I would never think of undocking in them.
I still kept playing and of course, some braver souls still risked their best, but not many and rarely if there was even a reasonable chance their fleet might lose the fight somehow.
So yeah, I don't like this design much, what good is having BIS in any game which can be easily taken from you by others who have to put in far less time and effort to do so?
Just clutters up the inventory with stuff which never sees the light of day.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think a way to fix that is to have magical or technical means where your best gear can be "teleported" at death to a safe vault.
With on spot Resurrections, maybe it would be better to have a "Summoning" system to use if you need it.
My next point may not be taken well. But I think games are too easy and made for spoiled brats.
I think that such "teleports" or "summons" of gear should take some time, maybe a RL day, to complete. Because that adds game play like collecting spare gear (2nd best), and making death hurt a little bit so it's not "nothing."
Edit: By the way, I'm thinking of this as something like a spell cast at a temple in advance, before taking this gear out on adventure.
With one use per.
Once upon a time....
Maybe only healer types can revive in combat, but anyone should be able to revive out of combat. Helps encourage cooperation by removing a penalty if you have a friend and they survive the fight. Only true group wipes would result in anyone actually suffering the death penalty. Safety in numbers.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
What one feels they should be doesn't change what they are.
A better question is what death penalties is one willing to abide and does the MMORPG in question fall in the range of that acceptable.
It's fascinating to watch people explain their favorite form of punishment
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Even bigger shame they didn't expand further like everyone had hoped into actual walking in stations which ended when they closed down their planned Vampire title.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
But the real thing in my speculation is the psychology involved.
We see a cute little animal get hurt and it bothers us, but seeing a rock get smashed doesn't. Seeing a building demolished with explosives is even kind of cool.
Expand this idea to a human/humanoid character, and it even starts to add some personal links.
Just speculation, though.
Once upon a time....
Challenging =/= harsh death penalties. They are unrelated concepts. One is about having to use your brain and/or reflexes and the other one is just some random token punishment for failing.
If something is challenging and it takes you 4 or 5 tries to figure it out and succeed at it whatever happens between those 5 tries is irrelevant to the encounter's challenge level.
Death penalties are just imposed pauses between tries. Something superfluous to the encounter and boring time wasters.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I find that a harsher mechanic makes success a bit sweeter and failure a bit more bitter. When I look at peoples favorite stories, they usually seem to be from times where they had to work for success and had terrible setbacks while adventuring. You don't seem to get that when the penalty is too weak. I am not saying it needs to be full loot or permanent death. Just more than most games now at days.
If the death penalty is severe and recovery from it difficult or the process lengthy things could be more difficult for the character until what was lost is restored.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
This makes any kind of penalty really hard to come to terms with.
I like the idea of losing loot to MOBs and then to corpse decay. UO had that. It added so much more to the game.
First and foremost, you had players helping each other out. Lots of guilds built up their membership with this, and friendships formed too.
Plus, sometimes you killed a MOB and got their loot, plus extra loot from players they had looted. It was a nice bonus if those players weren't still around, guilt free.
---------------
I always remember this fun story.
Not all players were fun to be around. Some were abrasive.
I ran across one player in a dungeon, he was fighting a MOB, and he was a little outclassed. He was slowly working his way towards a death robe. (Player's ghosts wore only a death robe, which appeared with them when resurrected as a sort of gift.)
I asked him if he wanted help, and his response was "NO!"
So I stood around watching as his health bar slipped dangerously low, and asked again, "Do you want help?"
Again, his response was "NO!"
Then he died.
Now, UO ghosts had two things about them. One was that they were invisible until they spoke, and two was that their words were jumbled up and it took a Spirit Speak skill to understand them (most players didn't build that skill because of limits to overall skills). After a few seconds they'd disappear again and have to speak again to be seen.
So I finished off the weakened MOB and stood there waiting for his ghost to speak and reveal his ghostly form. That's when you could hit them with a Resurrect spell.
So he spoke and revealed himself right in front of me, he wanted a Res.
That's when I asked for the final time, "Do you want help?"
Once upon a time....