tehtawd said:
Failure is fundamentally the ‘tool’ we are talking about.
1. The people I talked with about this feel (including myself) we would rather have a focus on challenging levels/fights/puzzles rather than the focus on … corpse retrieval, item loss, fighting for hours to regain lost xp and sometimes lost levels, and the thought of impending future deaths to repeat the same process … and having somebody tell you ‘because this is fun’.
2. When I fail at something, I feel it. Me personally. I can feel it. And it makes me feel sad, and sometimes angry. Sometimes I don’t want to play after failing a lot only because I realize that I’m not in the right mind-set. Or, I just need to get away from it and do something else. But in any of these cases ‘failing’ is a personal feeling. Something you don’t need to force a player to feel.
3. When you want to go from point A to point B and C is in the way, C becomes your design point. Make C entertaining and difficult. Make C, the obstacle, the reason why the game exists in the first place. B only exists to get players to run into C. Challenge.
4. Fast forward to 2004, World of Warcraft comes out, CRUSHING Everquest and any other MMORPG. What happened?
Tehtawd I edited your post a littke and numbered it so I can reply to those things that impacted me.
1 & 3 - yes, that thinking along the part of game design is what will make pantheon different,.
2. yes,m and I think this was linked in another thread about the psychological impact of precicely this. The same thing children are taught at young ages not to be "spoiled sports" or to be a "sore loser" just because they lost the sports match or ping-pong game, in effect quelling narcisistic behavior. The death penalty is a strong motivator to do better 2.3X more than a reward from being there.- and a harsh tool to learn from. Maybe this area is too tough for the player right now, untill they get better levels. It is more how one reacts to this than the sucessfull mechanic itself. Rather than say I can't do it I am never coming back (A la sour grapes in Aesops fables). It was a hard lesson as a child, and the lesson does not get easier as an adult just more readily identified, causing a more mature reaction because of past wounds or avoidance because of the immature nature of it or put another way, the player gets wisdom.
To your point I was outraged, insenced!, at the air elemental in Ecommons, or the silver griffon in North Karana, what the H*LL is that giant doing here- running!- through the orc camp in Nro and how come the orcs aren't doing anything! and that terrortantula- that...does not belong here in Sro thats wayyy to high, that -poison!! I can't run fast enough.... holly windstalker! OH COME ON -get back to surefall you ....you tree-hugging sonadso! I am trying to succeed and get ahead and IT *points angrily* killed me!
All these things made "verant" a curse word- along with the angst of leveling and the time it took to be able to then conquer those nasties. It almost forced nostalgia on the player to go back and kill it with satisfaciton or- to protect the same newbies as you were from that fate. When I saw a newbie get "purpled" by an orc, I zapped the norc and hurriedly bound the newbies wounds I got there in just enough time to revive him and heal him up a bit- it was awesome. It validate the time it took to struggle to get to that level- again for that very same mechanic. I jumped form Kelethin. Yeah it hurt, but at that level I knew I would not die and I needed to get to him, fast.
4. yes it did and did so and from taking the good from EQ and taking away the bad form EQ and other games as expressed by the player base. It succeeded very well because it was the new thing and not as clunky and with old mechanics as the other MMO's turned out to be. Seamless world, no "zoning", there was much to do. So much to do and nothing ever stopped giving you exp.
I think it is summed up in what is taken away from the southpark eposide spoofing WoW better encapsulates the zeitgeist in the MMO genre while still poking holes in the WoW mechanic. If I recall the southpark team leveled up by killing boars- just level 1 boars. I would say that because South park is a popular cultural icon it is teaching us what to laugh at and scorn, i.e. purchasing in game items/pixls for RL money, the cruel narcisism of some early devs, the self inflicted behavior modification and isolation and putting too much emphasis on the success in game as opposed to RL by the player. To easy by being able to kill boars, to level up and the addictive nature of this reward system.
What makes MMO's so appealing is the relative fariness of it, anyone can create a level 1 and succeed in getting ot the highest level- unlike in RL in the workplace. Not everyone can play for the Yankees or be President. Whereas in RL the potential exists, in MMO's it is a definite fact. Likewise, the opposite- who recalls the fellow that killed himself because he did not get the sorcerors ear. It was that article that got me interested in EQ in 2000 I wanted to know what power such a new "game" could have but instead made me sensitive to the type person that would be affected in such a way.
Thankfully, in the MMO environment/world that is easily found- its amazing how we tend to gravitate towards like minded individuals even in game.
Sorry, I got too deep. I do like your idea on that water sink-hole thing, though! .
Kahzarukkus said:No one that I know has ever said death, or dying, or XP penalties, or item degradation, etc, are "fun". But they add to the anxiety/apprehension/trepidation that make success that much sweeter and contribute to the overall "fun" of the experience. I hate dying. Success completing some particularly difficult challenge unscathed is what makes it fun for me.
And, +1 Sun
HAHA- A "Holla-Back" along the lines of "Don't knock it ' till you try it!"
As "don't knock it' till you try it" is a holla-back for some thing,s so is this, for the death penalty
Balance/equality
Obliquity said:Greattaste said:The agony of defeat vs the ecstasy of winning. Direct relationship.
When you reduce one, it reduces the other. Its basically physics.
Truth^
false
if it were truth, people would not be very excited about winning $400 million dollars winning the lottery. after all, it only costs $2 to play, so no risk there. maybe i am wrong, i have not won the lottery after all. but they sure *seem* happy to win.
Death penalty for me i think is going to be one of the hardest things VR is going to have to deal with, correct me if im wrong but who here actually remembers vanilla eq1, i spent days and days trying to get a corpse at launch, I quit playing toons because i had spent days trying to get my corpse that was almost impossible without help (that wasnt fourth coming) it was not a "good memorable" time for me. now that being said looking back it doesnt "seem" so bad, i did hit max level and when i saw someone in OOC asking for help i just sighed and shivered a little and tried to help... what im trying to get at is there is a crazy balance between discouraging and harsh, harsh is fine. people dont like it, but overall it will not prevent someone from playing. the ghost corpse retrieval is a time sink and thats it. respawning with your gear is the same exact thing IMO slightly more difficult because you have to fight your way from A to B, having a debt stat loss and respawning nekked is IMO to harsh, it basically forces you to run nekked through stuff you had to fight through as a group (in most cases) and retrieve a corpse from a location that stomped your groups A$$ in the first place. its not realistic in any sense. yes it creates memories and gives you a senese of accomplishment.... like 5 years later when the rage has subdued. bottom line is there's a fine line, and as gamers themselfs i have faith that VR will make the right decisions and find an acceptable balance. as for me however, I feel that moderate exp loss and respawning with gear is acceptable. on that note however during the live steam i noticed an auto respawn after deaths, this kind of crushes the rez thing because if the person dies before the battle has ended 1 of 2 things are going to happen, 1.) cleric rezzes, others die or 2.) dead guy is forced respawned and now the group has to backtrack (or force said poor sap to run through respawned group content solo, back to the group)
as an afterthought, i would like to mention I almost "always" play tanks, which is THE most gear dependant class in any (ie dps/healers can still do both w/out gear, as a tank cannot tank w/out it). so CR's (corpse retrieval) is the bane of any tank
alephen said:Obliquity said:Greattaste said:The agony of defeat vs the ecstasy of winning. Direct relationship.
When you reduce one, it reduces the other. Its basically physics.
Truth^
false
if it were truth, people would not be very excited about winning $400 million dollars winning the lottery. after all, it only costs $2 to play, so no risk there. maybe i am wrong, i have not won the lottery after all. but they sure *seem* happy to win.
But what gives that money its value? The fact that it take would blood, sweat, tears and a lot of time to acquire normally.
If failure or hardship was not as possibility, your success would mean nothing, money would have no inherent value and thus, winning the lottery would be inconsequential.
The fact that people are excited by winning is actually evidence that the relationship exists.
Dullahan said:alephen said:Obliquity said:Greattaste said:The agony of defeat vs the ecstasy of winning. Direct relationship.
When you reduce one, it reduces the other. Its basically physics.
Truth^
false
if it were truth, people would not be very excited about winning $400 million dollars winning the lottery. after all, it only costs $2 to play, so no risk there. maybe i am wrong, i have not won the lottery after all. but they sure *seem* happy to win.
But what gives that money its value? The fact that it take would blood, sweat, tears and a lot of time to acquire normally.
If failure or hardship was not as possibility, your success would mean nothing, money would have no inherent value and thus, winning the lottery would be inconsequential.
The fact that people are excited by winning is actually evidence that the relationship exists.
all 3 sentences are demonstrably wrong.
money has no inherent value, it is cotton paper and ink. what gives it value is that people agree it has value. that is why money markets fluctuate. briton leaves the EU and suddenly people think their money is worth 10% less.
the value it has varies from person to person. this is primarily based on the difference it would make in your life. thus mariah carey might spend $100,000 a year on hair/make-up while the vast majority of people would not. not because of the time to make that money, but the oppurtunity cost. the time is just one part of that opportunity cost. i worked as a security guard, worked 40-50 hours a week. then i got a job as a special education assistant, worked 30 hours weeks and had 8 weeks off, but made about the same amount of money ($1500 a month take home.) i spent money nearly identically at both times in my life.
a grand means more to me than, say trump who inherited over 250 million dollars, sure. not because it takes me longer to earn that thousand dollars, but because it can noticeably change my life for a period of time, while it wouldn't for him. imagine someone with 250 million that never works: it would take him longer (eternity) to make $1000 than it would take me. do you doubt that i value that $1000 more?
the relationship that is demonstrated by lottery winners is actually the same between getting a sword that raises your dps by 10% v one that raises it by 1%. you value getting something that greatly improves your life over something that does not.
failure or hardship in the lottery is $2. for most people that is near enough to having it not exist. the value of money is not in anyway tied to failure or hardship. there is surely more failure and hardship in most any 3rd world country, their money is not as valuable as the US dollar, the pound, the euro.
alephen said:Dullahan said:But what gives that money its value? The fact that it take would blood, sweat, tears and a lot of time to acquire normally.
If failure or hardship was not as possibility, your success would mean nothing, money would have no inherent value and thus, winning the lottery would be inconsequential.
The fact that people are excited by winning is actually evidence that the relationship exists.
all 3 sentences are demonstrably wrong.
money has no inherent value, it is cotton paper and ink. what gives it value is that people agree it has value. that is why money markets fluctuate. briton leaves the EU and suddenly people think their money is worth 10% less.
And yet I can demonstrably exchange it for stuff. Not sure if demonstrably means what you think it means.
alephen said:the value it has varies from person to person. this is primarily based on the difference it would make in your life. thus mariah carey might spend $100,000 a year on hair/make-up while the vast majority of people would not. not because of the time to make that money, but the oppurtunity cost. the time is just one part of that opportunity cost. i worked as a security guard, worked 40-50 hours a week. then i got a job as a special education assistant, worked 30 hours weeks and had 8 weeks off, but made about the same amount of money ($1500 a month take home.) i spent money nearly identically at both times in my life.
The above has nothing to do with anything. Personal value is irrelevant. I could exchange my money for the same services as Mariah Carey...
alephen said:a grand means more to me than, say trump who inherited over 250 million dollars, sure. not because it takes me longer to earn that thousand dollars, but because it can noticeably change my life for a period of time, while it wouldn't for him. imagine someone with 250 million that never works: it would take him longer (eternity) to make $1000 than it would take me. do you doubt that i value that $1000 more?
Again, this is irrelevant. The actual value is the same even if a grand means less to Trump than it does to you. Its the same risk vs reward that gives the money that actual value.
alephen said:the relationship that is demonstrated by lottery winners is actually the same between getting a sword that raises your dps by 10% v one that raises it by 1%. you value getting something that greatly improves your life over something that does not.
failure or hardship in the lottery is $2. for most people that is near enough to having it not exist. the value of money is not in anyway tied to failure or hardship. there is surely more failure and hardship in most any 3rd world country, their money is not as valuable as the US dollar, the pound, the euro.
You seem to be entirely missing the point. The point being, that a lottery ticket wouldn't even be worth $2 without the chance of failure in acquiring the money legitimately.
Just play out the scenario in your mind to confirm. You need food? No need to buy it, without chance of failure you could just get some seeds and some animals and scatter them in your yard. No need for fences, stables or medicine, because your animals aren't going to wander off (failure), be killed by predators (failure), or die to sickness (failure). Likewise, your vegetables aren't going to be eaten by bugs (failure), animals (failure) or suffer any other disease (failure).
You can then trade for anything you like because you're so successful without that chance of failure. Repeat the scenario replacing husbandry with any other form of labor. The outcome is the same.
I look at it in the simplest terms... Here are two examples:
Game with no death penalty:
Player runs past you out into the forrest, multiple mobs chasing them, they aggro a few mobs onto another player further out. They get to a camp and claim it because the mobs aggro range turned off and they ran back. Player gets what they need, run off again pulling mobs and zones out.
Game with death penalty:
Player walks up next to you and starts a conversation, "Hey this is a dangerous Forrest, want to team up? I need to eventually get to the stone graveyard for a drop." You pair up and cautiously make your way to destination. Other player stays and helps you get your drop.
Losing time invested, whether it be experience or other means, makes planning, teaming, strategy that much more important. Hands down... For those of you who have not experienced this in gameplay may have a hard time understanding how this relates to a better game overall.
last comment because, well, you want to resort to insults and i don't care enough to dislike you enough to wish to waste my time.
if risk increased the value of money, then why is the most valuable money the least risky?
why are the countries in which there is the least chance of failures the very same countries with the most valuable. the us dollar increased against most, if not every currency in 2008 because even with our economy melting down, it was considered safer than the other countries. if risk of failure increased the value of money then a syrian pound would allow you to retire. at the very least a us dollar would allow you to buy a mansion. http://www.propertiesinmiddleeast.com/Real_Estate/country/Syrian_Arab_Republic/ prices actually higher than i would expect!
if you think money has inherent value and not just whatever value the 2 parties agree to, then I am befuddled. you can 'demonstrably' use that money to buy something. yes, if and only if the other person agrees that your money has value. because the US dollar is so risk-adverse, most everyone around the world does. try and use money to someone that has never seen money before and you will see just how much inherent value it has.
finally, i understand fully, but someone agreeing with anothers error does not make that error true. someone agreeing to anothers opinion does not make that opinion fact.
reality is: facts are facts. and one fact is that the US dollar is worth what people agree it is worth. i suppose there is some inherent value as very bad note paper, or as TP, perhaps but nothing approaching the agreed upon value in trade.
another fact is, that the value of money compared to our work and risk is deeply personal. i am flabbergasted to hear it dismissed. when i was poorer, i tutored for 20 bucks an hour. now, i would charge at least 40, because 20 dollars is not worth as much time as it was *for me.* others would gladly do it for 20. walmart sells MC TV dinners for $2, my corner market charges over 3 dollars. THEY feel money has different values. the connection to risk and failure is secondary. sure higher risks increase costs in things like loans, but that is because of return on investment numbers and again finding someone who is willing to loan you money at a number you will agree to - that is value is dependant on the parties even here. yes, governments can enforce prices/interest rates/loan rules, but one can hardly called government enforced value as inherent.
You're right that currency, in this case printed paper has no inherent value. However money does have value as assigned to it by the powers that be. I don't know if you're just trying to confuse the issue or if you really thought this was relevant. We could call money gold bars instead of paper dollars, as that was what it originally represented.
Economics aside, loss or failure is an important factor in wealth and success in real life. If the chance of failure was removed from the equation, success becomes inevitable. At that point everyone could be successful and it would lose any sense of importance - much like modern MMOs.
I like a good harsh Death penatly, but i hate time sink Death penalty, punish me for dying but don't take away what little time I have to game by making the penalty a huge time sink.
I just hope Brad and the Team can come up with something better than a corpse run, it's been done to Death ( pardon the pun)
I like the old EQ death penalties. That being said, I can recall a few special servers too. Servers that included Ironman rules. What does that mean? The HARSHEST of death penalties - reroll on death. There was once a PvP Ironman server. Holy crap that was intense!
You log in and decdie you want to go explore Toxxulia Forrest to level up etc. You see another lvl 1 Erud and hail him. "Hey! You wanna team up and get some kills etc.?" "Yeah! That would be perfect! Lets go get some spiders and try to get one of those glowstones!" I turned to go hunt spiders and I SWEAR I felt his sword go right through my skull..... LOADING, please wait....
Sometimes a hefty death penalty CAN be fun. I never lolled so hard in my life. Now since I was level 1 it was NOTHING for me to reroll and exact some revenge but after the first hour or so - things calmed down and folks stopped knifing each other. It was a fun server that lasted about amonth. The guy who got the highest level got some uber rewards etc. and life moved on. I LOVED those types of events. But back to this thread. I think he was right. Maybe we need to have different rule-set for different people. I like the old EQ server rules. I hope we have so many players that we have a giant choice of what we want.
Dullahan said:You're right that currency, in this case printed paper has no inherent value. However money does have value as assigned to it by the powers that be. I don't know if you're just trying to confuse the issue or if you really thought this was relevant. We could call money gold bars instead of paper dollars, as that was what it originally represented.
Economics aside, loss or failure is an important factor in wealth and success in real life. If the chance of failure was removed from the equation, success becomes inevitable. At that point everyone could be successful and it would lose any sense of importance - much like modern MMOs.
very interesting who are these powers that set a value to gold bars? and what is that value? are any countries still on a gold standard? (not to mention that when we were, the value of the dollarwas simply worth what the value of that much gold was worth, which still had no relation to risk or failure.
second paragraph is just repeating without any explaination. still not true. if it is, explain why http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/17/pf/iphone-cost-cities/ higher risk areas, greater chances of failure have to work longer to buy the exact same item. why is it that i can take my easily and risk free currency and buy alot more in countries whose currency is made with much more failure and risk? http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp
you are right though, it has nothing to do with gaming. in gaming when you finally kill the mob you still have nothing. you only have virtual currency, that is only, again, worth what people are willing to trade you for it and which can be taken without explaination by the devs.
a heavy death penalty will be the best way to limit failure. the more mind-numbing tedium is needed to make up for a death, the more risk adverse players will be. yay, so much fun being in a group that insists on splitting undercon mobs. /yawn
hard mobs limit success. death penalty limits risk taking.
Also, at the launch of EQ2 - there was "shared XP debt". It was everything you can imagine it was and it was glorious. People learned how to get better at covering for each other. There was a REAL reason for the TANK to taunt off the Illusionist so that he didn't die. It made for better group mechanics.
Unfortunaely it also made for some early black-balling. Meaning folks would scream out "Don't group with [insert player name here]! He dies too often and gave our group 2% XP debt!".
This mechanic was dropped VERY early in the game.
My Vote: harsh exps loss, with loss of level possible (maybe even With armor repair costs), but, no armorless corpse runs/loss of Equip.
alephen said:hard mobs limit success. death penalty limits risk taking.
And both are good and not mutually exclusive, imho.
I thought about that when making a very long post earlier, but came to the thought that hard mobs + a relatively small death penalty = a rapid die-retry-die-retry-die-retry loop which leads to a higher paced, less tactical game that I'm not really into.
Sure, content difficulty can and should limit success, but to balance 'hard' when death penalty is light means balancing toward expecting multiple deaths which results in a very different feeling game.
It was kinda fundamental to my thoughts on the death penalty, but noone addressed it (probably TL;DR hehe).
I think risk taking should be a greatly considered activity. It's much more immersive to look at a dragon and think, right - that looks nasty - I'm going to get some help and ask the others hunters in town or go to the great library and find out what I need to know about that, rather than just throwing yourself against it a few times to see what happens.
I'd be interested to know what you think on that?
tehtawd said:
When I fail at something, I feel it. Me personally. I can feel it. And it makes me feel sad, and sometimes angry. But in any of these cases ‘failing’ is a personal feeling. Something you don’t need to force a player to feel.
-Todd
To me, feeling these things make a game better. It makes me more committed, more persistent. From a social gameplay kind of view it makes me feel more connected. This is of course personal but the bottomline to me is that when a game invokes real emotions (whether they be "good" or "bad"), it is a bloody good game.
I wholeheartedly agree with what people before me have already described: how it forces people into more tactical play, how it makes people more cautious and patient, how it forces everyone to play to the best of their ability as that stick just hurts so bad. Pain can be very functional in that sense, even if not fun. There is fun to be found there tho. I have very fond memories of our naked high elf squad posing on the spire portal thing to Plane of Hate for a screenshot. We had died. Again. We admired each others' bikinis/swimshorts. We waited patiently for our amazing monk to gather up the corpses, and talked and joked around till we'd be rezzed back in there. Moments like those are maybe punishing where your time is concerned, but they bond people together too.
The amount of times where I'd stumble around in a zone trying to find that darn corpse of a sad player, to rez them and be hugged fervently (seriously, as a cleric, you'd be a love magnet). The amount of times where my raidgroup had to stop running because I'd bumped again into a corpse lying around, and I had to check whether that person was online to throw them a surprise rez. The amount of times where we'd gather to get so and so's corpse out of the dangerous bottom of a mob infested place... all because death hurt and everyone knew it.
While maybe painful in itself, it promotes cooperative play and social experiences to blossom. Those feelings are so good. So it's not just a bad feeling, it's a wide range of feelings, all because of one feature. I don't mean by that, that death penalty has to be exactly like it was in EQ but it better hurt, and it better promote social interaction like it did then in my humble opinion :).
@alephan
Ah :) I asked your opinion about die-retry 'tactics' in the other thread and you've addressed your thoughts on 'recovery' times there.
I'm starting to realise that the crux for me is in the "good group properly geared to start progression on the mob, etc" sentence that is part of your set of 'givens'.
When devs balanced these things, certainly it's fair to assume that there is a 'certain level' of group that 'is appropriate'. But for that 'appropriate' group, how often are we expecting them to die? How many attempts before they learn the tactics? How much randomness that even when they've learned the tactics they still might die?
There's a choice there that devs have to make and I believe that choice dictates a lot about the 'feel' of the game.
If devs make the choice that 'appropriate' groups/raids can still die a lot (limited entry factors) then you can't have a harsh death penalty, but then you greatly effect the feel of the game. It's an expected die-retry loop.
If devs make the choice that 'appropriate' groups/raids have a very good chance of success if they are careful then you can have a harsh death penalty. The feel of the game is greatly effected again.
I admit, I haven't studied it or put numbers to it, sorry, but I'm trying to get to a more technical 'crux' of the matter - not sure I'm getting there, but...
To me, it's a mechanic which has a huge effect to the 'feel' of the game. A light death penalty tends toward a faster paced game and has inevitable impact on use of tactics. A heavy death penalty goes the other way.
Of course, it's a choice of the devs. Either way, you still have a game - it doesn't 'break' anything to go one way or the other, but it really effects the kind of game you end up with and not just in a technical manner: for some, in an MMORPG, immersion and socialising is just as important as the number crunching and a slower paced more 'meaningful' (subjective I know) game is what they want.
Me, I want it heavy, but with options to alleviate some of the nastiness that can happen. It doesn't have to be one-size-fits-all. You could have a more 'deadly' encounter where the death penalty is alleviated by a nearby temple providing resurrections - this would provide a differently paced raid. In a modern game, I'm all for variety - it tends to be easier to do for the devs without 'ruining' the whole game everywhere. Equally you could have a less 'deadly' encounter, but one that requires a very careful, slow, long approach (a big old dungeon crawl) where if you die you have to do it aaaaalllll again, to give the opposite pace. You could have different rules for lower levels, different rules for different zones.
If the community is truly split, the devs may have to think on the lines of different server systems.
Some of the contention in these forums is from the assumption that choosing one mechanic over another will "ruin the game", but it's not like everything has to be one-size-fits-all.
Odd point to finish: When I played Doom, I used to creep around being careful and took every bit of damage personally. I used to jump out of my skin when a demon roared upexpectedly from one side. I used to shout in anguish and fall off my seat when ambushed and heavily hurt. When I saw others rush through the game blasting away and barely registering the hits - doing what we now call 'speed runs' - I used to look at them and see they were enjoying it, but they were *not* having as much fun as me - it was just some brightly coloured stop-watch, whack-a-mole event. It was my 'choice' to play like that, sure, but when EQ came along I loved it all the more, because the way I liked to play was the way it was *intended* to be played and the way everyone played it with me.
Sorry if that's not the clear discussion you were after. I kinda think there's maybe more to it than can be analysed with numbers or simple examples. Of course it's a great way to discuss it, thought - what you posted is great :)
Wanted to drop this here should It be of use. Notice how the death penalty was not brought up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxR3zK-unFU
Thanks all for your responses.
I can see how passionate you are all about this. I appreciate everyone being polite.
It feels like a triage to get me to understand, and I do understand. I also finally finished reading all of that wolfshead stuff.
the most important thing I learned was ... everyone has different feelings on the value of the death penalty which is to say, the death penalty is subjective. And I think this is another way to view player tolerance, which is different for everyone. I think it would be an interesting question to ask. "How harsh does a death penalty need to be, before a player stops playing the game to go play another one with a less harsh penalty." Then I think it would come down to ...what keeps a player playing? Is it the loot and gear? The graphics? the community? the combat?
From this discussion I am going to really hope Brad makes a different server for those of us who have a low tolerance for death penalties. We just want to have fun, and we want a good challenge that makes us really get into the game and become engaged. I think the developers know the subjectiveness of the penalty, which is why the balancing act will be a very interesting one as beta's come out.
Fyi, it meant a lot to me how polite everyone was being. I'm very happy about it actually. Thanks a bunch :)
-Todd
tehtawd said:
Hello forums,
Firstly, I’ve battled just never posting this for fear of the kind of attacks I’ve seen on the forums. So lets just polite as possible. Also, feel free to move or delete this Kilsin if it’s taking up room. I see other posts like this but felt like this was a bit more specific.
A lot has been said about death penalties recently, and sadly I’m not on the death penalty boat. Nope. And I’d like to make a space to seriously talk about why to me ‘death penalties’ aren’t as important as some might think.
Failure is fundamentally the ‘tool’ we are talking about. And that is a really broad feeling-Failure. I want to take a step back, to the ‘golden age of Video Games’ (the 80’s & 90’s). Lets look at games like Sonic, Zelda, Street Fighter etc.
Now I know Bomberman and Megaman and Mario Brothers aren’t MMORPG’s, just to clarify, this doesn’t matter when we are discussing ‘failure’ in ‘video games’ because MMORPG’s fit in nicely. Failure in these classics wasn’t that difficult. What WAS difficult … was the ‘gameplay’. Puzzles, Level make-up, the AI of your opponents– all of those things were the ‘meat’ of the game that made ‘challenge’. Also, Dying and Death were not often used as a ‘challenging’ or ‘engaging’ touch to the game.
These games are not ‘worse’ for having little to no death penalty, in-fact when asking people if adding permanent heart container loss & item loss when you die in Zelda is a good idea, it’s quite frankly a common response to get laughed at. (I was, that and a shocked face with a slow ‘no’ with head-shaking back and forth)
The people I talked with about this feel (including myself) we would rather have a focus on challenging levels/fights/puzzles rather than the focus on … corpse retrieval, item loss, fighting for hours to regain lost xp and sometimes lost levels, and the thought of impending future deaths to repeat the same process … and having somebody tell you ‘because this is fun’.
When I fail at something, I feel it. Me personally. I can feel it. And it makes me feel sad, and sometimes angry. Sometimes I don’t want to play after failing a lot only because I realize that I’m not in the right mind-set. Or, I just need to get away from it and do something else. But in any of these cases ‘failing’ is a personal feeling. Something you don’t need to force a player to feel.
When you want to go from point A to point B and C is in the way, C becomes your design point. Make C entertaining and difficult. Make C, the obstacle, the reason why the game exists in the first place. B only exists to get players to run into C. Challenge.
When you played Zelda, was getting the triforce the reason you played? Or was it the challenge of the levels? Does adding in permanent heart loss, permanent character loss, item loss, having to wait a ½ hour till you can play again …does any of these improve the levels in some way? Or just prevent you from doing them?
Fast forward to 2004, World of Warcraft comes out, CRUSHING Everquest and any other MMORPG. The game was terrific! The best MMORPG experience you could have! Now it’s 2016 and players are sick of it, so many that Blizzard stopped releasing their subscription numbers.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-will-no-longer-report-world-of-warcraft-s/1100-6431943/
What happened?
A lot happened.
But it wasn’t the lack of a huge death penalty that ruined WoW. Just like adding one to Zelda, Bomberman, Halo, Soul Calibur, Metal Gear Solid … Tera, Neverwinter, or RIFT won’t make any of those games better. It was how ‘easy’ the challenge was. This is the root of the problem.
I will be satisfied if there are servers which have heavier penalties and servers with lighter penalties as Brad mentioned in a previous thread. I care that everyone have a game they can play … if others find death penalties rewarding in some way, I want them to have that rewarding game also.
I’m sorry if disagreeing with a majority of you really lands me in a fryer. But, I’m being very honest. I’ve never cared for death penalties, and the only reason I’m going to be playing Pantheon is for the lore and the promise the game will be ‘challenging’. I’ve seen too many fun games become easy and played far too many ‘easy’ games which promised to be challenging. I want a challenge. But I sure as hell don’t think there is something meaningful about death penalties and that’s the bottom line.
-Todd
Going to disagree with you here Todd..death penalty makes you more aware of what you are doing, what effect your actions and thinking have on your group. I've played Wow..people run off and do their own thing, don't care if they wipe their group etc. That was my experience with Wow. Played it for 3 months that's all I wanted to know about that game. Free for all, no rules no gaming ettiquette..
There are plenty of Wow clone games out there. And plenty of people play them. We've had a drought in real challenging games without any handholding. This is OUR game..the one we've waited for for forever...let's not make it anything like Wow please. :) Looking for fun, challenge and community..Pantheon fits that bill. :)
Cana
Nanoushka said:tehtawd said:
When I fail at something, I feel it. Me personally. I can feel it. And it makes me feel sad, and sometimes angry. But in any of these cases ‘failing’ is a personal feeling. Something you don’t need to force a player to feel.
-Todd
To me, feeling these things make a game better. It makes me more committed, more persistent. From a social gameplay kind of view it makes me feel more connected. This is of course personal but the bottomline to me is that when a game invokes real emotions (whether they be "good" or "bad"), it is a bloody good game.
I wholeheartedly agree with what people before me have already described: how it forces people into more tactical play, how it makes people more cautious and patient, how it forces everyone to play to the best of their ability as that stick just hurts so bad. Pain can be very functional in that sense, even if not fun. There is fun to be found there tho. I have very fond memories of our naked high elf squad posing on the spire portal thing to Plane of Hate for a screenshot. We had died. Again. We admired each others' bikinis/swimshorts. We waited patiently for our amazing monk to gather up the corpses, and talked and joked around till we'd be rezzed back in there. Moments like those are maybe punishing where your time is concerned, but they bond people together too.
The amount of times where I'd stumble around in a zone trying to find that darn corpse of a sad player, to rez them and be hugged fervently (seriously, as a cleric, you'd be a love magnet). The amount of times where my raidgroup had to stop running because I'd bumped again into a corpse lying around, and I had to check whether that person was online to throw them a surprise rez. The amount of times where we'd gather to get so and so's corpse out of the dangerous bottom of a mob infested place... all because death hurt and everyone knew it.
While maybe painful in itself, it promotes cooperative play and social experiences to blossom. Those feelings are so good. So it's not just a bad feeling, it's a wide range of feelings, all because of one feature. I don't mean by that, that death penalty has to be exactly like it was in EQ but it better hurt, and it better promote social interaction like it did then in my humble opinion :).
And these are memories that you and I still retain. Matter of fact I am STILL in touch online with people I played with in EQ those many years ago. True cameraderie...we got through some tough times, learned a whole lot of things...and came out the other side, feeling that we had been up to the challenge. Modern games just turn me off...nothing to them, no hook to keep you playing. I've tried a few of the betas, and been turned off. My sights are set on Pantheon specifically because Pantheon promises to bring back that kind of challenging game play. I don't want my hand held, if I mess up..I accept the consequences...learning curve. Can't wait for Pantheon. :)
Cana
Evoras said:@tehtewd : It IS worthwhile bringng this up. It IS and will be a major point for the VR DEV team.
I know, and many people have already mentioned it, that death penalties are not fun. They are the 'stick'.
DEATH is the great leveller...
it is meant to put FEAR into players. But for an immersoive world you DO need both 'carrot' and 'stick'. Our job will be to educate the new player-base into seeing that. Hopefully this can be done gradually... with early XP gain just fast enough to mitigate lost xp fairly quickly without cheapening the rise.
Once you grasp that grouping for safety is the way to go... once you grasp that you need tactics ... once you start to be invested in your character and think 'how can i get better', then all becomes much easier.
But, to you and the growing majority of potential players who never played early EQ1...
... think about this: ADVERSITY and a COMMON FOE brings people together
... Ask any EQ player and :
they know a friend they met on a CR run...
they know a friend who saved them from death...
they know a WAR/puller who saved all by sacrificing himself...
they know the FEAR they felt when they saw Spectres trained to the docks
they stayed up into the night to help recover a corpse ...
they were scared pantless running through Kith in case they left a corpse there...
they know people NOW, 17 yrs later, who risked death for them...
PS : There *is* an MMO out there with perma-death ... wish I could recall the name!
Serisously, you DIE you re-roll a character! Now *that* is HARSH!
Exactly as you say Evoras, still know people who pulled my corpse from the pile of corpses in Plane of Fear. :) Can't say that I have memories that long-lasting from any other on-line game I've played. :) And it took us 8 hours to retrieve everyone's corpses. :) I felt included in that battle..and haven't forgotten in all this time. :)
