Some good questions, I think.
What is the point of the game?
Why should dying be punished?
Why should killing be rewarded?
Most ORPGs seem to focus on numerical advancement. You kill things to earn points to let you kill more things. Death is sort of a counterbalance to perhaps control power inflation or discourage poorly thought out behavior. Of course it also encourages lots of strange behavior like point farming and the like. Really harsh death penalties seem to make very little sense in an advancement game driven by combat. OTOH, if lethal combat were highly optional, and combat wasn't the core of the game it might not be so bad. Consider, for example, a game where players are mice. They can dig holes, scavenge materials and food, etc. But death is permanent- the goal is survival. Fighting other mice is very risky as crippling injuries can be almost as bad as death. And enemies can't really be meaningfully fought- engaging the cat is suicidal. Here, perma death might make sense as it is core to the design of the game. Life is probably pretty short anyway for our poor mice, so it's not like it is devastating. Making a new baby mouse means you probably re-hook up with the group that shares burrows or you pick back up in your own little den.
Death isn't your fault in the real world either, but last I checked, there is at least a little punishment involved there.
If death in games didn't carry punishments, there would be no balancing factor, no point, etc. Of course, I am a personal fan of limited permadeath, so :P | |
I'm failing to see how punishing a player for dying suddenly makes the game have a point. Dying already has the implicit punishment of having failed whatever you were attempting to accomplish. Why is further punishment needed?
I'm reminded of me playing Metroid Prime (the third one) recently. The game has some jumping "puzzles," where if you miss a jump you'll fall to your "death." What's the punishment for this death? You lose 2 energy (out of potentially 2000 I think, if you have all the energy tanks), and are placed back where you last had stable footing. Does that mean the jumping has no point? No. It means that it's not stupidly frustrating because you don't have to re-do ten minutes of things you've done before just to attempt a stupid jumping puzzle again. | |
Not really! According to most religions, provided you are a good person when you die you go to some sort of Heaven (and Heaven is this totally amazing place apparently!). You only get punished for dying IF you are a bad person, but in general being a bad person will get you punished regardless of what you are doing.
And for those people who don't believe in Heaven and Hell. If you die that is it, nothing else happens. Technically not punishment or a bad thing, provided that if you don't exist nothing bad at all can ever happen to you (in comparison, living might actually be easier to consider a punishment than not existing anymore!). Personally if I knew Hell existed and that I definately wasn't going to it when I died... I wouldn't even be alive right now! (Who wants to live a cruddy life when you can either be in Heaven or not exist!??) Being serious though. If you do punish people for dying then it shouldn't be too harsh. Making them lose those hard earned items or hard earned exp isn't really fair (and I have seen plenty of people quit games outright for things like this). If you ask me simply making them waste some time (which in my opinion is an unforgiveable sin) is more than enough of a punishment. | |
Oh yeah, the punishment for the death should always fit the scenario.
I still think the best system is an afterlife based off a karma system to determine the possibility of resurrection, with a chance of permadeath, but not a very great one. | |
I think the best punishment for death would be to force the player to play a round of Tetris.
Why must they play a round of Tetris? Because they died. What are you, stupid? | |
I think permadeath is gonna be better, although people have a different opinion of things, once someone comes and plays, theyll learn how to play it, and its just like any game, and being permadeath would piss people off a bit, including me after they die, but it would be a good curve to any game, as then a lvl 500 dies or so, and now your set back to #1, and where anything can take a turn for the better or worse at any time, i like games that hang on by a thread like that, and anyone who likes something similar (not considering the permadeath) should at least give it a try if it were to be made to one, because it would be so challenging.
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No, actually, you do NOT want a game like that at all.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that when players start talking about game design, they have no clue what they're talking about. Case in point: permadeath. Absolutely boneheaded idea, and yet people continually suggest it's great. Perhaps it's because what they mean to say is, "I want permadeath for everybody else. Invincible, unkillable juggernaut for me, though, thank you." | |
I know how the system works in World of Warcraft, thank you very much. And I have to say, getting rez sickeness and taking 75% damage to all your gear can really be tough, especally if a bunch of stuff breaks because everything was damaged to begin with. Every have to spend a handful of gold just to fix your EQ? I have.
Why do I punish players for dying? Because death isn't supposed to be a good thing and it isn't supposed to be a fun thing. I don't want people to go, oh well, I died, big deal. I want them to go, wow, that wasn't a good idea, maybe I should try this...? Perhaps I have thought about death in the wrong light, but I am certinally going to enforce some sort of penality for dying, even if that result is nothing more then having raggamortis from death and being revived, so you suffer a negative agility bonus for awhile, I don't know. I have played Perma-Death games before, I myself enjoy them, but I know many people do not. If the game ever really gets off it's feet, I may have two servers, Normal and Hardcore. Hardcore having double rates for everything, but perma death. | |
Death is most often there to provide a sense of risk, not to punish a player. Sub-mechanics of death such as economic drain (repaircosts) are secondary and not primary functions of death, in almost every case you can find.
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Baladin wrote:
Why do I punish players for dying? Because death isn't supposed to be a good thing and it isn't supposed to be a fun thing. I don't want people to go, oh well, I died, big deal. I want them to go, wow, that wasn't a good idea, maybe I should try this...? Please explain why you are attempting to make your game not fun. I mean, that's just insane. | |
Hmm, you need to understand that I am not making a game to amass a huge player base. I am doing it mostly out of bordedom and free time. There is almost always a aspect of a game people do not enjoy. The problem here is, I don't care. I am asking for design philosophy on death, not if you LIKE it or not.
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Baladin wrote:
Hmm, you need to understand that I am not making a game to amass a huge player base. I am doing it mostly out of bordedom and free time. There is almost always a aspect of a game people do not enjoy. The problem here is, I don't care. I am asking for design philosophy on death, not if you LIKE it or not. Okay, here's some design philosophy: Designing your game to not be fun makes your game not-good. | |
There is a reason why I try to reinfoce negative feedback with death for the players, so it makes them think some times. That dosen't mean they have to think all of the time. While it is just a ORPG, I am still trying to be a LITTLE realistic and when you die, you don't go unscathed.
Listen Garthor, you aren't being any help, unless you can be postive and actually say something you haven't said already a few times, just stop responding to this thread. You are like a broken, old record. | |
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that "help" has been redefined to mean, "tell me exactly what I want to hear."
Okay, here's some "help:" When somebody dies in your game, permanently ban them. Log their IP address, then call their ISP and tell them that they've been using their service to hack into your game. Then get their street address and hire a couple of thugs to break their legs. There should be REAL PENALTIES for dying in the game. Seriously. This is REALISM here. | |
He's NOT trying to make his game not fun, he's just trying to make one aspect of it not fun, so that they will avoid it and actually use their brains to figure out a better way of doing it.
I give him props, that's exactly the kinda game I want to play. | |
What's so hard to believe in that they have a difference of opinion and actually want there to be real risks involved?
Some people actually do like hardcore roleplay. | |
Garthor wrote:
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that "help" has been redefined to mean, "tell me exactly what I want to hear." I understand you're very adamant about this, but consider the fact that there are other opinions on this which are valid as well. Its obvious from your posts that you heavily oppose death penalties, but they happen to be utilized in games for a large number of reasons. One of the very first unofficial laws that game design garnered itself on the MUD-Dev list is that misery bonds. Its a fine line to tread, but if you get it right then its a huge positive for the social aspect of your game. And the more people are social with one another, the longer they tend to stick around. Misery can potentially lead to longer player retention, or scare players off, depending on how things are done. | |
Firstly, I died plenty of time in WoW, playing on a PVP server and all. Ressurection sickness and having to pay a little bit of gold to fix my equipment (which only took me a few minutes to earn anyway) was annoying. But you know what would have been more annoying? If that shiny new sword I just got by grinding on a monster for 2 weeks suddenly dissapeared because someone decided to gank me.
And like I said. In an online game there is hundreds of reasons why a player could die, none of them the players fault. Lets use lag as an example. You want players to say "wow, that wasn't a good idea, maybe I should try this...?", with lag involved that would look more like "wow, playing this game wasn't a good idea, maybe I should play this other one...?". And, you yourself said it. The way death in WoW is handled is annoying, but not particularly harsh, at worst you lose maybe 10-15 minutes of gameplay. It is a good enough system and it works, so why not use a similar system? It is much preferable to a system that makes players lose valuable items they probably spend weeks earning. Also, in WoW death even without those penalties is enough of a punishment. You and your friends fight through a dangerous dungeon, killing lots of beasties, using all sorts of items to help along the way. You finally get to the mountain of treasure at the end of the dungeon (which is why you went to it in the first place), only to be confronted by a DRAGON! It slaughters you and your friends, you get no treasure, and you've wasted a lot of time (and possibly resources) in said dungeon. If you ask me, something like that is a more than good enough punishment for dying, and it is the sign of a well designed game (as it doesn't rely on silly little tricks to make the game balanced). As for permenant death. As I said, in some games it works, but in games where you can spend days, weeks or even months working on a single character then it isn't advisable. And the same applies to death and losing hard earned things. Because NO ONE at all wants to lose that shiny sword they spent two whole weeks grinding for. | |
Anyway. If you ask me unless the game calls for it you shouldn't punish players for dying (because 99% of the time it isn't even their fault), in a Roguelike where usually very little time is spent playing before death then even things like permenant death aren't too bad. But in a RPG that usually involves a lot of time and effort, punishing players is totally the wrong way to go about things.
Think of it this way. The longer a person has to play the game to become strong and earn nice items, the less they should be punished. Personally, if I spend more than an hour doing something only to lose it when I die then I simply wont bother playing the game anymore (I despise grinding as it is, anything that increases the need to grind is for me just another reason why I wont bother with a game).
In short, stop punishing people for stupid things. It does nothing but subtract from the fun of the game. At worst you should only ever force a little bit of downtime on players (such as teleporting them back to town, so they have to walk back to where ever).
If you want an example of a game that did player death right then go play WoW. In WoW when you died you had two choices, one was to walk back to your corpse (as a ghost) and be revived with no penalties, generally after this you had a little bit of downtime (revived with low Hp/Mp) and it is risky because whatever killed you is still around, but other than that there is no punishment. Or you could revive at a graveyard, which would incure a short time out from the game (ressurection sickness, which makes it practically impossible to do much in the way of combat in the game) and your equipment would be damaged, which would require a small fee to fix (but you would never lose equipment, and the gold lost fixing the equipment was usually very small). If you ask me this system was pretty great because you were never really punished for dying, you would simply end up losing a bit of time (but you could still do other stuff while waiting, so you never really lost any time).
Maybe you should take a page out of WoWs book, afterall, it is not the best selling and most popular MMORPG ever for nothing.