The big debate these days is whether or not death penalties should exist at all. Players have moved into a new phase of gaming where they want everything to be convenient and their fun unhindered in every way. There are also still players out there who enjoy a risk involved. Where does your enjoyment end if you die? Do you want to have to repair your gear due to a durability hit or regain lost experience? Or, are death penalties something of the past? Should they be abandoned completely?
My personal view on death penalties fluctuates all the time – it seems the mood I’m in plays a large roll in deciding just how tolerant of death I can be. Lately I’ve been in the mood for some risk or at the very least a minor penalty for death. I think given the type of setting can vary an opinion, but a run back to where I died is a given. However, I am no longer a fan of experience loss. Back when I was younger and devoted probably 15 hours a day to Everquest I could deal with experience loss in stride. When I play mmo’s now, my time is slightly more precious to me so the thought of losing that time in an exp penalty does not sound fun. Death penalties should never subtract from your character development. A more passive or indirect approach, such as a time penalty, can work.
In PvE a time penalty can be easy or harsh depending on your particular death. If you were just outside an outpost killing critters or running a quest then the penalty of being sent back to the nearest “graveyard” or even your last “bind bound” won’t be too frustrating. However, if your group was nearing the end of a dungeon (especially a public dungeon, which I prefer), being sent all the way to your last bind or to the nearest town can be considered harsh. It’s worth it though. Death needs to maintain its position of dread. No one should want to die.
In PvP the same penalty works. Fighting out in a frontier or remote region, perhaps sieging a keep, should bring with it a fear of death. In a game focused on PvP (Or RvR) I never want to worry about losing my gear or experience because that’s stupid and the epitome of anti-fun. I should always dread the thought of running all the way back to the fight and missing out on the action. It’s enough to make me second guess being a kamikaze but lenient enough to allow the fun to rule the day.
Time does not equal difficulty. I’m very vocal about that. Just because it takes you 20 minutes to get back into that dungeon does not mean the game is hard. It means that risk is involved and that it is important. Risk can be an amazing tool in the hands of developers to strengthen immersion but it doesn’t have to claim your first born child to be effective.
I’m in favor of very light death penalties, but I see the benefit for harsh ones.
I tend to beat myself up over a death far worse than a game could. Even in WoW where the PvE penalties are so light death frustrated me to no end. As an achiever death means I’m gimp. It means I’m doing something wrong. Two deaths in the same night means a frustrated ending of the gaming for the night. Tag on a harsh experience penalty and it ceases to be fun for me.
But, as I said, for gamers who aren’t as harsh on themselves, I see where there needs to be more risk.
I still basically agree with what I said before, but I think your point about setting is worth noting. There’s no one right answer, even for any one gamer. What penalties make sense really depends on the particular design of each specific game.
Sometimes I favor simply starting the last encounter over (ala a single-player game, like Mass Effect) and sometimes I’m in favor of permadeath. It depends on the game.
One thing that does apply to all games, though, is that there’s inherently more risk where there’s deeper immersion. Grinding (repeating an action for the goal, rather than the experience) is a symptom of shallow gameplay. If a particular challenge truly interests a player, then he’ll care about losing it…independently of any contrived penalty.
I think another big factor is how controllable is death? If you do everything exactly right are you guaranteed a win? Is there luck involved? Are some encounters designed around death ( WoW- Vaelastrasz, Teron Gorefiend to name a few)? Are you likely to be killed by another player much higher level than yourself, with no way to escape?
I agree with WoWs death penalty in WoW. There are unavoidable deaths. The only way to avoid them would be to not play, especially on a pvp server. Which is why they have moderate PvE penalties ( raiders are always spending tons of gold on repairs and consumables from death), and very minor pvp death penalties ( a 125% run back).
Other games are more fun with more risk. I enjoyed FFXIs exp loss. I dont think it would work in WoW though.
I see the pressure for less severe death penalties arising from the increased lethality of what are meant to be difficult encounters. If the only way to learn how to beat the Big Bad is to repeatedly wipe, then death penalties suck. In WoW, there usually isn’t any way to learn the capabilities of the Big Bad other than engaging in what will be a lethal wipe.
There is one exception that comes to mind though, but the exception actually serves to underlines my point: Karazhan’s Opera event. With this, you don’t know which of three operas you’ll be facing that week until the encounter is started. A common stratagem is that everyone will stay out of the room, and then the tank will go naked onto the stage and start the encounter and consequently die. Being naked the tank even avoids the durability loss penalty. This exploiting of the game mechanics (both the everyone else stay outside mechanic and the naked no durability loss mechanic) is totally immersion breaking.
It would have been more interesting if instead the only way to find out the encounter would be if you had to go farm the ghost audience looking for a Programme Guide booklet to drop or some other in-game immersion mechanic.
It also doesn’t help that the way encounters play out are usually so heavily scripted, because then the only way to make the encounter hard is to increase the brute lethality, which only serves to cause more wipes and deaths just for learning opportunities, and thus more clamoring for lighter death penalties.
oh, something extra I forgot .. I agree that a death penalty that causes you to lose hard fought for gains to be quite harsh, but there’s also a middle ground where death doesn’t cause you to go backwards, but it does prevent or slow you from advancing. So, an XP debt rather than an XP loss say. Maybe burn off some of the Rested XP bonus for each death.
Not a penalty of any relevance once you hit level cap, but while leveling it might just be the impetus necessary to teach how not to die.
Hi Keen,
I agree the subject (at least among devs) is pretty popular. I think your article is a bit black/white or “inside the box” as it doesn’t really address the main problem of the dying system in MMO’s.
I did an article a while back on my blog (http://www.r1ft.com/?p=24) called “The Fragile Hero/Heroine” that addresses the issue of why more disabling and incapacitating effects should be put into games.
Take a read and tell me what you think, if you’d like.
I agree with you 100% on time should not equal difficulty. Most current systems seem to think that making you bored out of your mind and/or inconveniencing you is a good death system.
We have to remember that even if you lose items in the end you are losing time, cause gathering items costs you nothing but time, so every death penalty can be equaled to time penalty.
The question is how big it should be to make people care if they are losing or winning. To make them think, to make them flexible and agile and to prevent mindless zerging, afk-ing, etc…
Getting the death penalty right is just as important in single player games and is an equally delicate balancing act. Prey was for me an example of a game which was spoiled by too easy a death penalty. There was no penalty in fact. Instead you were rewarded for dying with an opportunity to recharge your health and spirit before being resurrected in exactly the same spot. On the other hand I have very limited tolerance for games that force you to run through the same hour long level over and over just to be killed once again at the end of level boss.
@Daedren: For me death penalties should be something simple but effective. It really is an “inside the box” concept. Often times I think developers spend far too much time and resources developing systems to punish players and leave their actual reward and gameplay lacking.
I read your article and you have some good ideas. It’s based on a more dynamic experience that we have really yet to see in mmorpgs, but I believe it’s very feasible for the future.
@Dobermann: Correct. Everything in a MMO can be traced back to time, which strengthens my stance that time does not equal difficulty. But, with something like a death penalty, scaling a time penalty back to nearly its most basic element (a run back to the location, losing progress in a dungeon, being out of a fight, etc) can be an effective yet forgiving tool.
Time seems to me to be a good way of slapping you for messing up without ruining the “game” part that makes things fun. If you lose too much it ceases to behave like a game because by my definition, games ought to be “fun”. Now as to whether you should run back as a ghost like in wow or res in the res circle like in lotro or vanguard, or start back in the hospital like in City of Heroes, those details should be decided by your game’s surrounding lore I think. And I don’t have any problem with platers giving loot to other players in pvp as long as it doesn’t actually take your equipped gear. Thats going a bit too far on penalty for minimal gain to others. One simple way to do this is you have a chance to drop any of your non-bound items to a pvp victor. There, simple and done. This would mean you could lose potions and stuff like that and trash you keep in your inventory. You wouldn’t lose it all, just a little. Would add some realism and would depend again on the lore of the game. Some games this just doesn’t fit with. you could have honor points be the thing you lose and they gain, but those could be different from renown points which you never lose. That way ranking can be rewarded but not critical to be competitive and fun. Eh, theres lots of possibilities. They just need to make sure to test everything not on God mode but on newbie mode before they roll out their grand designs.
@Keen
Hi there, thanks for taking a read. I agree that the ideas I presented are very dynamic. Let’s hope to see them in the future – MMO gaming deserves to evolve and become better.
My article was an excerpt from my latest MMO Game Design project: so, if all works out well, we’ll definately see something like it. 🙂
Cheers and keep up the good work.