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A recent point-counterpoint discussion brought a few of us to blows on the subject of what penalty should be imposed when your character dies in an MMO. I found it strange that I was one of the only people I knew who took the stand of defending a noticeable death penalty.
Many claimed there should be no death penalty in these games, with a variety of arguments: "I'm paying for this game, I shouldn't have to pay for a death penalty" - I beg to differ. You want to play a fun game, don't you? When you sit down to play Half-Life or Grand Theft Auto, do you immediately enter in cheat codes so that you'll never take any damage? No. You enjoy the challenge of the game. If players were only interested in success without challenge, then game companies would never implement a player's health bar, or they'd simply just skip to the victory screen when the player started up the game. "I don't want to suffer because some idiot in my group killed us all" - playing with an idiot is never fun. It's not fun when they steal all the loot, it's not fun when they delay the game because they can't figure out the instructions, and it's not fun when they can't figure out how to pitch in and help the team. Heck, most of the time it's not even fun to hear them attempt to talk. I'm not surprised it's not fun when they get the entire team wiped out. "The designers just want to punish us, because we're playing in their world" - and this just isn't fair. The designers first and foremost want you to keep playing the game for months and months (and possibly years) because that's how the game makes money. One of the facts with MMOs is that friends keep each other on MMOs more than anything else in the game; and challenges shared makes for strong friendships. I know many people (myself included) that have become good friends with complete strangers because they helped/were helped out of dire situations. In the end, the game designers know that amount of people who will continue to play the game because they made friends will outnumber the number of people who quit the game because of death penalties. "I end up worse than I started" - sure, in the short run. If this were true all the time people would never get to max level in any game -- if debts were both this harsh and frequent players would instead be working backwards towards being an infant rather than progressing up in levels. Sure, a couple bad deaths and things look grim... and that's actually a serious problem for some MMOs (as people often just quit rather than recover at that point). The perception that the game has completely screwed you (when, in reality, things aren't that bad off) is bad, and many games have flailed about when they realize they're losing players to it. Now, just to put the record straight, I'm not for implementing perma-death, or complete item loss of death, or any of the wacky old-school death penalties. But I do believe there should be some sort of debt incurred with dying in game. People play Poker not only to get rich, but also because there's a certain thrill in placing your own money on the line. Risk is sexy and spicy. The trick is to make sure that the debt isn't so severe that it will drive away casual players, and yet strong enough to keep people from throwing their lives away heedlessly. In my humble opinion, a death in game should put you back 15-30 minutes of play time (about 2-5% of a player's average playtime per week). And that's active play time... not sitting in a jail, or wandering through limbo. Players should have to pay for this debt via their normal experiences (paying the amount of gold you'd earn in 15-30 minutes of adventuring, or as a taxation on future XP), or some special activity that only occurs in death but is always entertaining (Ok, I've yet to see this implemented). This isn't a terrible burden, yet it's enough to make players a little more cautious. Of course, I have some caveats to this, but let me first, briefly, detail the four main penalties for death:
Item Loss - Since the loss of virtual goods is one of the few things the player can be threatened with some MMOs take them away when the player dies. Some take everything currently on the player away, some just take away the most powerful things the player has, and some take away everything but the most powerful. Some of the games let the player get the items back if they can fight their way back to where they died (always tough without some or all of your equipment) and others are even harsher, letting who or whatever killed the player to keep the equipment.
I'm not against item loss, provided it's something replaceable. I think the repair cost that high level World of Warcraft players face is ok, but probably not really something the player would think about when they were dieing ("Oh crap, another death, I wonder how much that will put me back" is not something on the forefront of their minds when they're mowed down in the depths of Molten Core). If it's not in their minds when they die, why implement it at all? It serves no purpose. Experience Loss - This has its roots with the pen and pencil version of Dungeons and Dragons. In days of yore, characters who were resurrected suffered a level loss or more. Some of the old time MUDs carried this concept forward, and it's had a lot of fine tuning since the earliest versions. Today there are still some MMOs that take away avatar experience on death -- some even allowing the player's character to drop in levels like the old D&D games did. Where some MMOs might allow the player to gain some of the lost XP back if they managed to fight their way back to their corpse, a few kinder MMOs have simply imposed a tax on future XP gain until the player pays off the debt they incurred with their death. I'm particularly partial to the XP taxation implementation -- after accruing it the player continues to advance, so they don't feel like they're slipping backwards. And the threat of non-optimal XP earnings is a healthy reminder that all combat includes the risk of personal loss. Time Loss - Most MMOs implement this in some form, usually with the player either having to travel back to his corpse... or with the player having their current mission reset. A few games even place the player in a sort of Limbo for some duration, although this is rare. I'm not a big fan of this because the player is paying for their failure in wasted time. There's nothing enjoyable about running back to your body as a ghost or waiting around in limbo. I'm a little more forgiving of this punishment when the players have something exciting to do - like fighting their way back to their body. Ability Loss - Some games reduce the player's effectiveness for a duration after they die. In some implementations the player recovers after a spell is cast on them, or a set amount of time has passed. In others the player must earn some set amount of XP to free themselves of the performance curse. In general I'm not a fan of this at all -- as a gamer this usually feels like the game designer is saying "if you couldn't accomplish this mission perfectly the first time, you shouldn't attempt it again until you've better." And that feels like they're trying to come between me and my game. I have seen two more subtle versions of this that I did rather like, though. In Planetside, if you are dieing too quickly you can't keep asking for the same weapons outfit, and you have to pick some other load-out with successive resurrections -- this adds a dynamic gameplay variety to what is, at heart, an FPS. And I didn't mind the ability loss in Guild Wars that much, as it was the only form of death debt in the game and it went away completely if you finished or gave up on an instance. The following are some concepts with MMO death that I think are tried and true, or that I think would be neat to see:
A self-resurrection potion that players could buy for some bold expenditure of gold. Each potion would take up a space in their inventory, and allow them to come back into the fight instantly. Many of the Never-winter Nights (I know, not an MMO, forgive me) adventures have this concept, as does City of Heroes. I'd like to see a game that implemented death debt shared over an entire party. If the team is letting the tank die over and over, maybe they should be in some part responsible for that. You could implement it automatically, or as an opt-in (where a mage might cast a spell that would even out the loss over the whole group). It would be neat to see someone implement a game where the player could pick their own severity of death debt, and have them earn experience at a faster rate for the more aggressive plans (say five times as fast for players who risk playing in iron-man mode, where any death is permanent). Have no death debt for deaths you can't reliably avoid with common sense and caution. This may seem like a strange statement, but it's perfectly valid when we're talking about PvP on most games. There's no way your average player can keep themselves from being ganked by a zerg horde, or an aggressor who's twice their level. Yet there are PvP games that can have the appearance of being balanced, and I think it might be good to have a modified form of debt there. If you have a duel between evenly matched players, or a battle between evenly matched teams, why not have the players ante in some minimum bid, to be claimed by the victors? Could be gold, could be minor magic items, what have you... Anyways, that's enough of a rant for now. |