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(Poll) Harsh Death Penalty: Yes or No
RemyVorender
Member RarePosts: 4,005
After reading the great article concerning how harsh death penalties should be in MMOs, I found it strange that they did not put a poll into the thread, so I will do so here.
Here's the article:
Frank Mignone: It used to be, back in the days when your choice was either Ultima Online or Everquest, that there was one constant between them. They were hard! One of the key factors that made it so was their death penalty. The death penalty made the games exciting! Everything was not a cakewalk; you really had to consider your actions. You could lose all of the stuff that you had in your possession with one false move. This added a lot of tension and a bit of white-knuckle-mousing to the experience. How many of you back in the day found yourself, at some point, running for your life shouting 'REDS!' with your heart pounding? It was good times.
Now, it seems most games are about coddling the weak. The penalty in WoW is a joke. If I die, my only penalty is walking back to my body, which no one can loot. When I spring back to life, I still have all of my XP. Even SOE has seriously softened the penalty for dying with EverQuest. Where is the challenge? What am I risking by walking up to players 20 levels higher than me and just running my mouth like a five-year-old? I have absolutely nothing to lose, and therefore nothing to gain by playing. Reward has no value without risk.
Garrett Fuller: With all the hours of hard work players put into these games, why penalize them? Building your character takes time and effort. Games should allow players the chance to continue that fight with little to no penalty for getting killed. There was nothing worse than getting ganked in Ultima by a player while at the bank. This led players to quit that game.
In WarCraft, you suffer enough humiliation just getting killed and being forced to go resurrect. There is no reason to make the player lose money or items they have worked hard to get. Allowing players to loot corpses would turn the world into a total mess. Youd have huge zergs running around farming random players who are just trying to complete quests. WarCraft holds up with the danger factor that they have established. Players are still fearful. I say forget the harsh death penalty and let players compete on an equal field.
Frank Mignone: The stricter death penalty not only applies to those poor players getting killed while they are simply trying to quest, it also applies to those zergs. Zerging is a tactic that is a lot easier to partake in when you have no real penalty for it. Arguments about the morality of the tactic aside, it is unpopular. There is nothing to fear by earning a reputation as a zerger, ganker or whatever, because no one can do anything about it. Even if I were to avenge the activity and kill you, whats the point? Whats more, fear of this tactic in an environment where the death penalty was unforgiving, encouraged community. People needed guilds in UO, and reached out to others for support. Playing solo in UO was a sure-fire way to get yourself killed
a lot.
MMORPGs are trying to attract more and more single-player gamers into their medium. These games are used to the security of a save game button and are not used to real consequences, except perhaps the occasional death where you must load the game from five minutes before. When these gamers enter the realm of MMORPGs and see that there is no reset button, they freak out and run away. As such, we are getting more and more MMORPGs with limited death penalties, if any at all, to accommodate this style of risk-nothing gamer. The more this happens, the more the MMORPGs are moving away from the first three letters in their acronym.
Garrett Fuller: I couldnt disagree more. Frank, what is wrong with drawing in the single player element to MMORPGs? Many of the games have solo quest lines that encourage this type of play. Having to go back and start a quest over because you are killed and looted just creates more issues for players. Killing other characters or lower level characters is called "griefing" for a reason. It causes grief! We do pay to play these games. No one wants to pay money, spend hours working on something only to have some PKer come along and ruin their fun. Game companies are trying to discourage this type of play to get more people involved.
WarCraft has enough annoying elements in it to have to worry about player looting and deaths. Faction grinding is annoying. Whoever came up with that idea should be fired! The death system in WarCraft helps players accomplish long and difficult goals that the developers have set before them. The best part about MMORPGs is the ability to log on at 4:00 in the morning and get something done. There were times when I have done this on purpose in order to avoid the penalties involved with griefing by other players. Should there be a harsh death penalty in MMORPGs? Heck no! Developers have made it enough of pain in the neck for players to develop their characters without having the community add to that pain. I say keep the death penalties light and the competition open.
Frank Mignone: There is nothing wrong with single-player gamers coming to MMORPGs. However, they should expect a different type of gameplay. The MM means massively multiplayer. They would change it to MAORPG, Massively Anti-Social Online Role-Playing Games. The acronym used to me that the sole purpose in this genre is cooperation and interdependency. Doesnt making the game solo-player intensive defeat the purpose?
Besides, even those solo missions are just turning a crank with no death penalty. I can die a thousand times and all I need is the stubbornness to keep running at that brick wall. Death penalties make you think, "Okay, I don't want to die again, maybe I should get some help," and the MMO aspect of the game are then reinforced. Griefing is still present in WoW, with its limited death penalties; I think it is even worse. There are no consequences to obnoxious behavior. If all you can do is kill me, and that has no real penalty, I can just run back in three minutes and resume being a gerbil.
Ok, I am asking the general community to get in on this, what do you think? Are death penalties a real means of adding tension and a sense of accomplishment, not to mention a set of consequences that make players think? Or do you agree with Garrett, that its just a way to anger players and that light death penalties are the best direction MMORPGs can take? We are opening this for debate and hope you will join us. Do not just say whose name you agree with, speak your mind.
Now vote! 
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Comments
Yes on a harsh death penalty, no a perma death.
It will actually make death something instead of the usual junky PvP, die, requip, and respawn, and lose a little cash and so on as if it was like a Quake style of PvP.
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Give me lights give me action. With a touch of a button!
I got an awesome idea, when you die you go to the underworld and you have to do this hard ass quest just to get out (the entire time you make exp, but only in the dark arts). Also in the underworld you can learn greater specialization in the dark arts, or even change your class to be its dark version. If you do make it out, then you have to dig your way out of your own grave. Also if you took too long to do the quest in the underworld you turn into a skeleton and can be killed by people still living (but you can kill them now).
I believe you have to strike the right balance. Death should be painful, but not catastrophic (unless you failed to take proper precautions, like insurance and an adequate clone in EVE). Perma-death is not workable as long as you can die because your ISP went down. I voted for "harsh" because I believe most MMORPGs these days are too easy. EVE Online and Final Fantasy XI have death penalties that seem about right to me.
Chris Mattern
I agree with ChrisMattern and would only add that a semi-harsh death penalty puts the spice in gaming!
Yes, IMO the death penalty in FFXI was perfect. A substantial loss of exp if you die, and the amount of exp lost increased as you leveled up. Also, the added penalty that if a healer was no where to be found to give you a raise you would have to respawn at your homepoint.
The death penalty was perfect, not to harsh but not to weak. It really made you use your head before going into battle or questing. FFXI= perfect death penalty/bad economy
In Roma Victor when you die, you have to get out of elysium, which is the afterlife. Depending on your actions in normal life, it will be harder or easier. The more of a dickhead you are in the game, the harder it'll be to get out of elysium.
_______________________________________________________________________
Looking forward (cautiously) to: Age of Conan, Dark Solstice, Armada Online.
Will soon try: Guild Wars
Overall: Amazed and bewhildered at the current sad state of the artform of gaming.
Also RV has a version of permadeath, where you become a legendary character. Only legendary characters can be the generals, the barbarian chieftans, or the emporer of rome. Each of these is possible, for any particular player.
_______________________________________________________________________
Looking forward (cautiously) to: Age of Conan, Dark Solstice, Armada Online.
Will soon try: Guild Wars
Overall: Amazed and bewhildered at the current sad state of the artform of gaming.
I think PvP should have a harsher death penalty the PvE. I don't know many people who find PvE more exciting because of how bad the penalty for dieing is. PvE's excitment comes more from finishing a quest or what not....now if the PvE is too easy that's another story.
PvP on the other hand is about killing the other player ( duh ) if there's no death penalty then there's no real point in doing it. You just end up in a zerg fight.
I look at Death Penalty (inconvenience and loss of playtime) vs. Death Punishment (XP and/or item loss) as two very different dynamics in MMORPGs in the first place.
But, I don't feel you can simply pull your Death Penalty or Death Punishment systems out of some magic hat based on how you "feel" about Ye Olde Game Commandment: "Risk vs. Reward."
Death Penalties or Punishments should be decided on how "easy" or how "hard" it is for a player, exercising "average" caution, to DIE.
Many games simply design "dying" to be "easy" by purposely handicapping players vs. mobs (PvE -- getting "stunned" or "dazed" if trying to escape, etc.) and vs. other players (PvP -- getting "vulned" or "rooted" or "snared," etc).
Many games simply design the game so that superfluous accidental deaths occur for rather trivial reasons (oops, I felt down and died). In games where dying for trivial reasons is the norm, then the death penalties should be light. However, in games where player-characters are strong and resilient and competent to either fight effectively for long periods of time or to escape rather easily, then death penalties or punishments should be more severe.
Simply put, designing death penalties or punishments should be adjusted to the relative ease or difficulty of player-characters succumbing to frequent deaths (while exercising an "average" amount of caution).
Severe death penalties do NOT make games "exciting." That, frankly, is like a page from the book, "The Dummies Guide to Designing Excitment in MMORPGs."
Challenging, interesting and complex games make the excitment. That's far more difficult that simply tossing in some arbitrary and severe death penalty.
~ Ancient Membership ~
I have to pitch my tent squarely on the permadeath side. And before you start screaming like I just cut off your big toe, let me explain why.
Think back, waaaaaayyyy back in time. Think about the first computer and video games. Think Pac Man and Space Invaders. Think Rogue and Wizardry. Know what they all had in common? They were totally hard. They were nailbitingly frustrating and yet you plunked quarter after quarter and hour after hour into them. In the case of Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Rogue, you had a limited number of lives. Once those lives were gone, you had to start all over from scratch. Because of this, Levels and score meant something. To get to the 20th level of the dungeon on rogue was something special because you had to do it all in one go. The game only saved when you exited. If you died, you started all over.
I love some of these "hardcore" so-called anti-carebear types insulting other people for wanting a risk free experience and I just have to laugh anymore. When you suggest permadeath to any of them, they act like you just pissed on a monument or something. Risk = reward, but not if I have to start over again. God forbid that your character level represent your skill as a player.
Trust me, you can have permadeath and people will keep comming back for more. They'll come back to conquer the game. Just like the guy that played Pac Man for eight straight hours until the game crashed, true gamers will not let a game get the best of them. And be honest, aren't you getting a little tired of these soft, submissive games that give it all up and demand only time in return.
I'm sick of hearing little kids spew slang about how "l33t" they are, I want to see just how skillful they really are. You can get around dropped connections by having the server update the character log every few minutes and set up confirmations about whether the player willingly logged off or not. If the server loses connection without getting a logoff request, then we assume that it was an unintentional disconnect. We can go further than that by keeping a backlog of character states and disconnects. If the player has been forcably disconnected more than 5 times with their health at one tenth or lower, then we kill the character for dropping. It's really that simple.
The question I'd like is
Would you like to play a game with Permadeath / significant death penalties?
Yes / No
Because I'm not taking a stance against games that lack them. They are generally boring, but I believe there is more than just the death penalty that could be done about them. And death penalties would be the death (erm...) of games like WoW. Which is not precisely what I want.
But I want a game where a win is permanent. The easiest way to make a win permanent is to make a loss permanent. And of course, I'd accept the possibility of losing all I had won. As long as there is a way back up there again for a good player. (Without weeks of work effort grind)
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
This particular MMOG discussion is one of the things that needs to mature and improve itself in general (industry-wise), a lot of makers are still making the vain Icarus-like attempt to grab every concievable player for their game. Thats obviously a mistake... This is a constant debate between me and a friend of mine, he takes Franks point of view almost to the letter. I happen to take the opposite view but not for all the same reasons posted.
For every aspect of an MMO a decision has to be made as to its function. What is it you, as a game maker are trying to evoke in the player with a particular rule, or aspect of play. What is the point of PVP in your game. What is the point of the death penalty.
Personally Im 100% against perma-death, it has never, and will never make ANY sense in an MMOG in which you are trying to evoke a sense of continuance and growth.
Death in a game must serve a purpose, a recent phenomena in MMOs has been to sharply soften the death penalty. For the most part these games have equated death penalty with an interuption in play. The makers of the games feel that that is irritating enough for the majority of thier players. The subscription base of WoW seems to support that, this is why games which had a much more severe death penalty have scrambled around to lessen theirs. SOE in particular has taken this one aspect and entered it into all of their current MMOs, what SOE fails to realize is that if it wasnt planned to be that way FROM THE BEGINING it cheapens game play instead of enhancing it. The death penalty in WoW is appropriate for the level of difficulty of that game in general. The new death penalty in SWG and EQ2 are in no way appropriate to the style of play those games have.
L2 and Eve-online for example, have about the most strict death penalties around nowadays. They work extremely well for those games because they were design features from the begining. The cost of a death in these games is directly relative to the difficulty level of the game in general.
So my point, is that a Death penalty has to be designed for at the core of the game and evalutate for the players experiance. It is NOT something that you can fiddle around with significantly after the game has gone live, it is integral to the balance of the whole game.
The death penalty should be used for what it is, an oblique way to set the de-facto difficulty level of your game.
-Gooney
I vote for harsher death penalties.
Yes, permadeath COULD work... but I disagree with having such a penalty, due to the simple fact of ISP brown/blackouts.
But simply having a penalty where you could lose everything you have on your lootable corpse when you die, would make the game more interesting. You could lose a bit of XP, or owe a debt of some sort. Or simply do it like it was in 97/98 version of Ultima Online.
Such a simple thing, but now it's just a laughable thing, especially with something like WOW.
On the other side of the coin, in my opinion, something like FFXI's high EXP penalty seems a bit overkill. In my experience, a game that seems to take forever to level up suffers with a high death penalty. But it's all about everyone's personal feelings in the end on that.
Still, give an open PVM/PVP game like UO used to be, with some sort of good penalty, and it'd make things interesting.
The doll would surely say, "I do not want to be human!" although her master wants her to be even more.
I find almost everything you say to be right and true, Gooney.
What I do not agree with is the 100% against permadeath stance. While your opinion won't ruin my game, I don't think permadeath will ruin continuity either. It exists to enchance another type of continuity.
When somebody recently died you don't have to invent reasons why he's still up and about.
That's primarily it. A consistent storyline requires a) an excuse for resurrection - or b) permadeath. Both may work, and permadeath allows for more world development. It is tough on those who die, but I know I'd sooner permadie after a bit of fun than keep living in a world that makes no sense.
Permadeath isn't a must for a good game, but... Hey:
Game a: Light / No death penalty (Allows for fearless charging in)
Game b: Significant loss upon death (Creates tension and encourages strategy and even escape. Sometimes the braver man will win. Sometimes his bravery will be his death.)
Game c: Permadeath (Assassinating a powerful person will change the social structure entirely. Those who were tied up with him might go after you for pure revenge. While the player might start a new character, that person has another name and social standing. Social advancement could come from local support, being accepted by the high and mighty or any other smart means. The world changes continously and coherently.)
I'd primarily play C category games, but I'd also enjoy B category games, and perhaps some A games at times. Maybe that arena game can be considered A, but it is really another type of game entirely... (Text based thing somebody advertised. Cute enough that I still hang around)
EDIT: Added some descriptions of games (conceptual) within each class (ABC).
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
I disagree. Permadeath can not work in an MMOG. It simply goes against the whole principle of growth and development. When I speak of continuity I do not mean from the games point of view but from the players point of view.
If you have permadeath you are setting up an environment where the player psychologically will avoid building any meaningful connection with their avatar/on-line personality. And if thats the case you may as well simply play a game like Guild Wars or BF1942. You could of course pretend that your new toon is the son, brother, whatever of the deceased toon but that opens a bigger can of worms than the permadeath itself.
Explain to me how you think it would work, Ive got a pretty good imagination but I cant think of one scenario where it could work if you take for granted that you want players to immerse themselves in your world.
-Gooney
If you want permadeath so bad why don't you delete your character if you die and start over ?
Like gooney said before, it depends on the design of the game. Permadeath makes no sense in Guild Wars which is more of a cross between diablo and Counter-Strike. In a game like UO, permadeath makes perfect sense. And yes, I did delete characters after they died in that game. Did the same with Anarchy Online as well.
As far as continuity from the player's point of view, I think that the goal remains the same regardless of permadeath. That goal is still to get to the level cap and "beat" the game. Permadeath simply makes that goal harder to reach. Only the most skilled players would ever get to that point. The focus becomes survival rather than killing monsters, to get money, to buy cool stuff, to kill bigger monsters, to get more money, to buy cooler stuff, ad nauseum.
To get an idea of what this would be like, check out TomeNET. Despite the fact that the game's "graphics" are all ASCII characters, this is still a very compelling game. There is absolutely no reason why this wouldn't also work on an MMORPG. It's all a matter of perspective.
No. It's a game. Not a ultra realistical real life effort work pain in the ass death simulator.
i strongly disagree. that is my goal on single player games, but not on mmorpgs. there has to be something else than reaching the level cap and win the game, or else i will not be interested on that game.
but agree about permadeath. i would like to try a game with that kind of feature. it will have to be completely integrated on the game, or it would fail. you can not add permadeath to an already working game, it has to be there from scratch.
You must have thought that was a real fast and smart response. You must have thought 'no way he would do it'. In some games I wouldn't do it, but those would be games I didn't care much about.
In Adellion there's permadeath, but a three life buffer. The two first "death's" you may survive, to protect you from griefing and lag death. However, the fan base has requested and received confirmation for a prompt that asks if you wish to let the character die completely on death 1 or 2. Because the extra lives are mainly to handle accidents, policy breaches and some learning time.
Also, Gooney: All the game needs is players willing to carry that burden. They may not be obvious in the MMORPG world, but that is primarily because there is no game for them there. There are a few on FiranMUX. (Roleplaying game where the roles are everything, and where death is final with no extra life, text based)
People die there. I had a character who was cruxified through no fault of his own. Take a step back, look at the story, the continuity, and you'll see what these players want. (The other reason they are there is because text gives such immense freedom compared to the limited capacity of visual artwork. You can't have full arrays of personalized emotes, the capacity isn't there).
Not saying you should play it.
Saying it is plain wrong that the game couldn't work, and that the continuity of a single character is what an MMORPG is about only if you make an MMORPG about the continuity of a single character. If you state that what you want from an MMORPG is the continuity of a single character, then it is no longer a matter of agreeing or not, it becomes as simple as preference.
I believe you've stated your preference. I've stated my preference (and firm belief that permadeath can work - and is currently working, although for a very small crowd).
A little question just on the end: Have you ever played a game with permadeath (MMORPG)?
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
Sure some of that is personal prefrence, and yes belief. I simply dont believe that a game with permadeath can be comercially viable. I dont believe that it would be fun. And I will preserve that belief up and until I see it actually working.
I'm not bashing your idea, I just dont believe it will work like you think it will. Theres a lot of reasons that Ive given for that, one I havent named and one that should be painfully obvious. What do you do about a griefer? What do you do about a guild of Player Killers?
Its all fine and good to say that the system is self adjusting and that people will gang up into rival guilds to police and reverse pk. The reality of it will be far more grim and far more drama inducing. You can see this in L2, an alliance or big guild can literaly force players from playing. Which works too, but if that system had perma death; we'll youd be able to create a new term for the RL violence that would accompany online violence.
I belive that deaths in game should server a purpose. Either to teach you something with force or to provide an artifical tension that adds excitement.
I dont believe that permadeath has a place in MMOs mostly because I dont believe that players actually want to start over everytime they die. I'll readily admit that I may be wrong about it, and I am all about breaking the mold so if you can get it to work kudos. I just think that there are better innovations to spend time on.
-Gooney
I dislike a harsh death penalty. I'm glad the trend has been to make it trivial. Corpse runs and losing levels is a quick way to lose me as a customer. I have no idea what the overall consensus is about death penalties but games seem to be leaning towards very light penalties and even lightening the ones they have, so I would assume that they must believe that's what the majority wants in an MMO. I don't need to be taught a lesson and would rather find clever things in a game to challenge and excite me. I like my entertainment to be... well... entertaining.
As for permadeath... big thumbs down from me. I'd give it a go, just to see... but I have a feeling I wouldn't like it a bit. If I want to play another character, I'll just start an alt.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I believe in harsh death penaltys. It gives you an adrenaline rush like no other when you're going into battle. If you lose, you're gonna be hurting for awhile. It also makes you think and equip correctly.
I've played a few games with pretty light penalties and I thought it worked in that environment. In fact, I thought it was pretty funny when a friend kept dying and she had corpses everywhere.
Overall though, I think harsher death penalties are better. Permadeath would prob work in a couple cases as well, but it has to be part of the dynamics. You just have to adapt to how the game works, that's all.