How bad can (should) death be?

[zukor]

Lol, Dr Z. Thought I was going to be first here. Your post was there as I posted mine, and lo and behold, we put forth nearly identical arguements in the pro-DP column, tho I am much more wishy washy than you. Such synchronicity.

You know what they say about great minds.....

Doctor Z.

[zukor]

Heh, it probably doesn't get said often in these forums, but thx guys for disagreeing with me. It's not too difficult to argue in favor of no DP, but arguing against is harder than it seems.

Dr Z, I'd be interested to see you develop your objections a bit more. I don't want to agree with you or disagree with you yet on whether you might be right, but I want to give you a series of hypothetical yes-but's:

Thanks for the tone of your comments qmodal. Agree or disagree doesn't matter, I respect your opinions and I think people enjoy reading this kind of discussion. I'll try to flesh out my points in answer to your questions.

Well, the game would be different, but even if it is perceived as "heaven-like" how does that prevent immersion? Paradise might be quite immersing.

Yes, but it's not SoR. I might or might not enjoy a "heaven" type game, but it makes me think of the sims, not an RPG.

In an exciting contest, wouldn't survival be thrilling because you *survived* and not because you avoided DP? Wouldn't dying be a disappointment because you failed to stay alive, not because you gained DP?

I believe that the thrill would be largely lost if there were no consequences for failure. After all, you could just fight the critter again and again until one time you lucked out and won. What is the thrill there? Why care if you die if it doesn't mean anything?

>>*No incentive for careful playing to avoid dying.

This is the really difficult one, because it involves a change of mindset amongst careful players. If you care about careful playing (and I do too), what truly goes wrong if some other players don't care? How does it impact you? Sure, perhaps some idiot gets a break, so to speak, but does it really affect my gameplay, unless I feel like competing against the idiots?

The problem here, IMO, is that the definition of careful playing changes. If there is no consequence to dying, then avoiding death is actually foolish, and merely slows you down. Why bother? The whole dynamic of how people would approach the game would change. I would feel stupid working hard to avoid death when/if there is no penalty.



Overall, I think the most important part of this for me is the immersion factor. My toon represents me in this world; for him to really be alive, there have to be consequences for dying. Otherwise, it all just doesn't matter.

Doctor Z.

[lariva]

I think different DP would be good. In ultima online faciton wars, on death, skills were cut to 80% temporarily, then the player would come back to normal in 20 min.

That also worked awesome for PVP, in group-on-group combat a lot of people would get killed, if killed by an opposite faction, on death a player would enter the stat loss, even if team mates would rez the avatar, that avatar could now perform only auxilary role as my 100 pts skill has been reduced to 80 for everything except skill gains.

If something like that is implemented, - i think it would be a winner. Except i'd make you loose in primary and secondary skill branches, not all of them. This way you could still train other skills while enjoying the "time out". Or go auxilary with others.

Imo, the dp should be worse, the more that you fear death the better the game experience. There should also be dp in all circumstances, especialy events.

[mboeing]

None of the death punishment systems I know have truely made ppl play more carefully and avoiding death.

One solution would be perma death. Or irreversable Stat loss. But no sane MMO developer will ever dare to implement this.

So in the end its all a calculation how long does it take to recover the effects of one death.

What I absolutely don't like is the dependancy of DP on the max lvl but the recovery on the used lvl. Make them the same. Either both max, or both used.

[lupine04]

Thanks for the tone of your comments qmodal. Agree or disagree doesn't matter, I respect your opinions and I think people enjoy reading this kind of discussion. I'll try to flesh out my points in answer to your questions.


Yes, but it's not SoR. I might or might not enjoy a "heaven" type game, but it makes me think of the sims, not an RPG.


I believe that the thrill would be largely lost if there were no consequences for failure. After all, you could just fight the critter again and again until one time you lucked out and won. What is the thrill there? Why care if you die if it doesn't mean anything?


The problem here, IMO, is that the definition of careful playing changes. If there is no consequence to dying, then avoiding death is actually foolish, and merely slows you down. Why bother? The whole dynamic of how people would approach the game would change. I would feel stupid working hard to avoid death when/if there is no penalty.



Overall, I think the most important part of this for me is the immersion factor. My toon represents me in this world; for him to really be alive, there have to be consequences for dying. Otherwise, it all just doesn't matter.

Doctor Z.

/agree completely.

In my view, if you're going to be rewarded for success, it's fair that you're punished for failure, otherwise both have no meaning.

I'll use my own experiences in three different games to illustrate why I say this.

In FFXI, death has a pretty hefty penalty. You lose XP and possibly levels if you die. As a result, people are *real* careful not to die, to think and work strategically, and not take foolish risks.

In WoW, the death penalty is pretty much (IMO) a joke. Your gear gets damaged and you have to repair it. Yay. That happens through regular wear and tear when you're out adventuring anyway. Dying carries no penalty that ever made me feel that I had to really watch out and plan what I was doing because it had no meaningful negative effect on my character.

SoR, to me, is okay on the DP. I wouldn't mind at all if it were a little harsher.

As for the whole "heaven" bit.. well, that doesn't really mesh well with the setting of Ryzom.. "I'm trying to help rebuild the homin population from near extinction, while under the constant threat of Kitin hordes whom can attack and wipe us all out again at any time... It's like Heaven!"... Just doesn't sound right, ya know?

[jackmor]

Oh please. Isn't there anything you can think of. No DP. There are other posts like this one. They talk about swimming losing stam and food and drink. The game is what it is and thats it. These sort of questions are just silly because they add no real value to the game. They are like saying, What if Monopaly used a round board.

[sydius]

Imo, the dp should be worse, the more that you fear death the better the game experience. There should also be dp in all circumstances, especialy events.

I fully agree with this.

[aylwyne]

In the last game I played (Earth and Beyond), if you had a death penalty (XP debt, it was called) half of all experience you gained went towards your death penalty and half went to normal level gain. I liked this because even if you had a huge DP, you still felt like it was worthwhile to play because you were still gaining xp, just at a slow rate.

When I'd rack up a huge DP in that game, I'd still usually play because my char wasn't at a standstill. In Ryzom, I find that if I rack up a huge DP, it often drives me to log off for a while out of frustration because it's so annoying to have everything at a standstill.

[madnak]

More dp only discourages exploration and experimentation. Since that's why I play the game, I dislike dp. And getting to other lands solo is harder than all that - frankly, if you think dp is the only downside to travel you've never done it. I haven't experienced the frustration of going through the same area over and over again for hours just trying to get to the other side like this since my NES days.

I don't get thrill based on risk. I get a thrill out of defeating a challenge. No matter how many tries I get. I love solving puzzles. I get plenty of thrill out of winning a tough battle in a single-player game where I can simply reload and have literally no penalty for losing. Biggest thrill I've ever gotten in this whole game was at the last event (when dp was disabled).

When I soloed my way to Fyros at low level, I got an incredible sense of accomplishment. My dp had been maxed out for 10 hours, but making it was amazing. Beating Halo on legendary was a lot of fun for me - though I could restart a few feet from where I died usually. Getting "007" status in Goldeneye is something I'll always have fond memories of (and my greatest sense of satisfaction came from a level that took under 3 minutes to beat). Beating some of the "weapons" in the final fantasy games was also very satisfying for me. Maybe it's different for some people, but I definitly don't need dp to get a thrill or a sense of accomplishment.

And while the no dp may give good luck higher value, it also gives bad luck a lower importance. I would rather see some people making the trip from one land to another easily through good luck than see people losing a week of grinding just because of bad luck.

FFXI had a harsher death penalty. What did that do for the game? I would start a group and then let on that I was going to explore a new area instead of grinding at Qufim yet again, and nobody would even stay in my party. Valkurm, Qufim, Kazam, Crawler's Nest... Almost nobody was willing to take any risk at all. I read a touching story once about a japanese player who had an explorer friend. And part of the reason it was so touching is because she was dedicated to exploring even in a game like FFXI that seems to discourage it. Not only did everyone stay in the same areas all the time except when doing quests, but everyone was supposed to have the best equipment, inefficient class combinations were shunned, I met some level 65+ players who had never traveled to certain game regions. There was bickering and often anger when a party wiped. When I went to Jeuno solo at low level (much easier than sneaking anywhere in Ryzom) people thought I was crazy.

I want a fun game with a friendly community. Not a game where I have to be careful and avoid disaster at every step. I've played plenty of games where people play it safe, and one of the greatest things about Ryzom is that people are willing to take risks, go new places, try new things.

A harsher dp would ruin that, IMO.

[angus858]

None of the death punishment systems I know have truely made ppl play more carefully and avoiding death.

One solution would be perma death. Or irreversable Stat loss. But no sane MMO developer will ever dare to implement this.
.

My own experiences have been quite different. I can remember conversations from every mmorpg I have ever played where people chose not to attack an enemy because of the potential consequences of death. SoR has the lightest penalty of any game I've played but I still won't enter a fight if my odds are less than even. Why? It's because of concern about DP. Without that concern and those difficult decisions I wouldn't enjoy the game.

As for perma death, there are mmorpg developers who plan to implement just that. Mourning and Trials of Ascention are two games that come to mind. There are lots of gamers like me who can't wait to try such games. I'm not advocating for perma death in SoR. That would be totally inappropriate for a game where predators can one-shot us so easily. But I'd hate to see the death penalty reduced.

My preference on death penalties would be a significant stat loss (enough to halve your combat effectiveness) for a significant period of time (10 minutes).