Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

No shards you have to pick up ala early EQ2, don"t do the body summoning thing. Xp deficit you have to work off before getting more xp is a decent one, though it might lead to zerging at max level. PS, stay away from durability and durability loss on death. If anything, it should lose durability from wear and tear, not because you accidentally took poison damage at low health.

Rezz said:

No shards you have to pick up ala early EQ2, don"t do the body summoning thing. Xp deficit you have to work off before getting more xp is a decent one, though it might lead to zerging at max level. PS, stay away from durability and durability loss on death. If anything, it should lose durability from wear and tear, not because you accidentally took poison damage at low health.

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But death has and always will be, imo, one of the money sink avenues. I like durability loss upon death.

I think but for the most hard core players the genre is past the exp penalty aspect of dying. Short of that there needs to be implications for dying. At max levels the money in your wallet is more than enough to offset the concern for the $$ cost associated with death, but what things would keep players concerned about death beyond a hard fast penalty of exp loss?

Certainly if you have pride you don"t want to die, but that in and of itself is no deterrent.

Ngruk said:

Certainly if you have pride you don"t want to die, but that in and of itself is no deterrent.

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It perhaps isn"t enough of a deterrent, but it is one. Even in BGs, where dying sometimes leaves you better off than surviving I"ve seen people run away in fights, and the entire phenomenon of bubble-hearthing shows that there are people who would rather not die even if surviving possibly means significantly more wasted time than dying and running back.

In WoW, durability doesn"t really do that much anymore. Below the level cap, repairs are so cheap that they"re pretty much meaningless. In raids, the cost of repairs is pretty minor compared to the cost of consumables for everyone but the tanks. The main effect it has is that I"m completly unwilling to do pickup 5-mans anymore, as unlike when I was in blues, wiping several times is incredibly expensive.

I"ll have to disagree with durability in general. But if you really feel the necessity to have it, I would ask that you at least not implement an additional loss at death. I cannot even come close to wording it in a way that would truly express my disgust for durability/durability loss. I would much rather lose time/experience than money.

On the other hand, if you would like to make available other ways to repair gear besides money, such as having an npc available to repair it, given you had the proper farmable materials, I would be content with that.

Ngruk said:

But death has and always will be, imo, one of the money sink avenues. I like durability loss upon death.

I think but for the most hard core players the genre is past the exp penalty aspect of dying. Short of that there needs to be implications for dying. At max levels the money in your wallet is more than enough to offset the concern for the $$ cost associated with death, but what things would keep players concerned about death beyond a hard fast penalty of exp loss?

Certainly if you have pride you don"t want to die, but that in and of itself is no deterrent.

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Really, you come down to one thing. It"s time loss. How you dictate that time loss is purely up to you. Time loss through lost exp. Time loss through lost items. Or time loss through travel. That"s just a start but you can see where it leads. Ultimately it"s about "time." You can add time loss through skills lost as well. As a friend always says : "Same thing only different."

What becomes important here, imho, is letting players suffer the loss without it diminishing their perception of their worth. Losing items or levels greatly impacts a players perception of their worth in-game. Losing exp. without loss of level (read exp debt) or losing time (due to travel/corpse recovery) does not diminish a players sense of worth. Losing skills, I think, falls somewhere in the middle but that is something that can be fine-tuned around the afore-mentioned.

Just my ramblings from 10 years on-line.

Carry on!

I think there"s a fine line to walk - a combination of durability and xp debt/loss makes death undesirable, but not game-breaking. People shouldn"t dread dying, and want to stop playing for the day if they die once - but at the same time, it shouldn"t be meaningless to the point where any joe average player doesn"t care if he dies at all.

I"d even lean more towards the little penalty, simply because you WANT people to keep playing, and enjoying it. But too little penalty, IMO, removes the undesirability of death.

Death wasn"t a money sink at any point in time in EQ that I can remember. It is an avenue, but it"s one you don"t have to go down.

EQ"s farmers were far less intrusive than the farmers of WoW, for a very special reason. Gold wasn"t only a means of advancement, it was used for maintaining as well in WoW. Which creates a much larger need for gold farmers and other 2nd party asshats who create ever soaring prices on items and generally dominate the economy to the point where buying gold is one of the few sensible choices you have left to you unless you only spend your time online trying to procure gold.

The reason I dislike the loss of durability on death, is that it creates an artificial timer on how long you can stay somewhere away from town. Sometimes it"s several hours, othertimes it"s 20 minutes as you chain die learning a new boss. Then you must stop action and go back repair somewhere, then run all the way back. With xp loss, you can stay somewhere for hours, even if you die more often than not, you aren"t forced to return to "Town" to fix your shit up so you aren"t fighting naked.

Lose the requirement for money as a means of maintaining, and you lose potential goldfarmers. It also means you don"t need as much money in the system, reducing the need of "Grey" items that have no use other than to take up bag space and be vendor fodder and the economy will build more intuitively.

Ngruk said:

But death has and always will be, imo, one of the money sink avenues. I like durability loss upon death.

I think but for the most hard core players the genre is past the exp penalty aspect of dying. Short of that there needs to be implications for dying. At max levels the money in your wallet is more than enough to offset the concern for the $$ cost associated with death, but what things would keep players concerned about death beyond a hard fast penalty of exp loss?

Certainly if you have pride you don"t want to die, but that in and of itself is no deterrent.

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I hate durability, but if you need a money sink, that works pretty well. I am more in favor of harsh death penalties. A permanent xp loss is good and corpse run is pretty much necessary. Use corpse summoning shards as another money sink. Death needs to be godawful, not trivialized.

Death mechanics really depend on the overall gaming world and what you are trying to accomplish with the death penalty. What is your leveling curve like? How are you granting abilities? Is everything available all at once or are you forced into chosing things based on what you think your situation will need? How big is your world? How quick is travel? Are people going to be "bound" to a specific area and return there when they die or will there be revive points? Is dying there as a money sink only? Is it there to prevent people from going through some content too fast? Is it there to try and add an element of "danger"? etc.

While I prefer EQ"s death penalty I wouldn"t want it in WoW. The way death works, the way the game is designed, just wouldn"t support it. I know that doesn"t answer the question but I really think any death penalty should be a reflection of the game world itself, something that enhances it and fits with the overall feel. Not just a mechanic that happens to be there /shrug

Azzikai said:

Death mechanics really depend on the overall gaming world and what you are trying to accomplish with the death penalty. What is your leveling curve like? How are you granting abilities? Is everything available all at once or are you forced into chosing things based on what you think your situation will need? How big is your world? How quick is travel? Are people going to be "bound" to a specific area and return there when they die or will there be revive points? Is dying there as a money sink only? Is it there to prevent people from going through some content too fast? Is it there to try and add an element of "danger"? etc.

While I prefer EQ"s death penalty I wouldn"t want it in WoW. The way death works, the way the game is designed, just wouldn"t support it. I know that doesn"t answer the question but I really think any death penalty should be a reflection of the game world itself, something that enhances it and fits with the overall feel. Not just a mechanic that happens to be there /shrug

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I think it"s important to note that a lot of the questions you initially asked don"t pertain to everyone in a game world. Death does. Death will effect every player that ever plays your game.

Should death be a penalty? Should it be rewarded? I would think you would want to design a world where death is at the edge of your content creation and design, always lurking for the unprepared or overanxious. Death being commonplace makes it, well, common.

You make some good points and ask some good questions.

I guess I wonder what that truly "perfect" death system is, and I think the answer is tied completely and solely to the game you are making. Not that I didn"t already know that, but the feedback, even in just these few answers since the question was posed, are illuminating.

"Hard core" players want the exp loss of EQ, most others don"t. Bottom line is death "allows" you to take away from players, which is something most players don"t and won"t like. The puzzle to solve is how much and what can you take to make it worth risking again, and make it believable and fun.

but dennadyne, harsh deathpenalties while ok to you, would NOT be ok for the vast majority of mmo players in existance- especially when you consider that those people have experience in wow.

eq2 had xp loss/gravestones for recovery and people hated it
vanguard had xploss, durability ANd a corpse run...and people hated it

wow had durability loss & a risk free corpse run via ghost mode-if you choose not to go the gy ress route- and it is accepted by a vast majority as "the standard" now. can this change? sure it can, but Currently if you came out with a mmo with exp loss AND Required corpse runs, the gameplay better fucking blow me away because I wouldn"t play that game.

i played eq and i HATED corpse runs pre-cleric epic. sure my char got duped once or twice this way (zone crash after a wipe, we all login ALIVE fully dressed,,,with corpses on the ground. but WoW changed this.

eq2 had corpse runs- sorta- and exp debt loss (exp loss done slightly differently- at release. it is the same way now? no, because wow has changed what is desired by a player for a death gameplay mechanic.

would i play a mmo with perm death? maybe- again if the gameplay is sufficiently good i"d give it a shot, otherwise, not a chance.

Ngruk said:

"Hard core" players want the exp loss of EQ, most others don"t. Bottom line is death "allows" you to take away from players, which is something most players don"t and won"t like. The puzzle to solve is how much and what can you take to make it worth risking again, and make it believable and fun.

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I am not now and never was "hard core". I"m about as middle of the road as you can get when it comes to these games. I still prefer harsher death penalties.

Take EQ, I liked that you could lose your corpse. It meant that you were not going to be wandering off to places completely above your ability level without back-up unless you were a total idiot. The downside of that, though, is that you may have taken all the precautions in the world and still ended up with a corpse in an impossible spot. Which meant find a necro and pay a lot of cash for them to come get you. Doing that with an entire raid? Ugh.

Later on they added the corpse summoning NPCs and the graveyard instance and I think that was a great happy medium. You still had corpse runs but if you got into an impossible spot, had a raid wipe beyond belief or really just didn"t have time to go back and get your stuff you didn"t have to. It gave you the choice, a riskier retrieval at no monetary cost or a money-sink. Granted, you still have the XP loss to deal with but even the most casual of players could find a rez in the guild hall.

Ngruk said:

I think it"s important to note that a lot of the questions you initially asked don"t pertain to everyone in a game world. Death does. Death will effect every player that ever plays your game.

Should death be a penalty? Should it be rewarded? I would think you would want to design a world where death is at the edge of your content creation and design, always lurking for the unprepared or overanxious. Death being commonplace makes it, well, common.

You make some good points and ask some good questions.

I guess I wonder what that truly "perfect" death system is, and I think the answer is tied completely and solely to the game you are making. Not that I didn"t already know that, but the feedback, even in just these few answers since the question was posed, are illuminating.

"Hard core" players want the exp loss of EQ, most others don"t. Bottom line is death "allows" you to take away from players, which is something most players don"t and won"t like. The puzzle to solve is how much and what can you take to make it worth risking again, and make it believable and fun.

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Gameworld aside~

People in the MMO market place today have little to no patience. I even find myself falling into this trap. Death in EQ2 and WoW is "annoying". Death in EQ1 was "traumatic". When I die in WoW/EQ2, its just travel time and waiting. When I died in EQ1 it was political and emotional.

In eq1, the game was like walking on eggshells at times. You valued a "good healer" or "crowd control" because a death would wipe out your efforts for the past few hours/days. Death forced you to be good. It was a true penalty at a high magnatude. It forced you to care about dying and do all that it took to prevent it. It was a kick in the groin.

In Eq2/WoW, it is just a time sink. Just run back or click a "5 min afk". If you are in a group and wipe, just revive and run back. It is the same mechanic used in consol / single person games. You die/game over - reload save point and/or restart at the beginning of the level. Annoying and basic.

No matter the world, your target audience is what really needs to be the focus. Adding "spirit traveling" is a cool gimik but it is easy for Joe Saturday Player to understand it and not require 2hrs to get his stuff back or take a loss because Tigermob_01 added while he was killing a boar.

Boils down to an audiance. Do you want tough mechanics in to attract "hardcore" people? What is the risk? What is the benefit to the game? Have you ever heard a "hardcore" player say he/she didn"t like a game because the death mechanics were to easy on people?

Easier death mechanics please a lot more people than hard penalties. The game should be a challenge that creates greater emotion when you are successful vs when you are defeated. We hardcore are just messed up and like to get beat with a stick/whips/chains.

Noah EQ2 said:

Gameworld aside~

People in the MMO market place today have little to no patience. I even find myself falling into this trap. Death in EQ2 and WoW is "annoying". Death in EQ1 was "traumatic". When I die in WoW/EQ2, its just travel time and waiting. When I died in EQ1 it was political and emotional.

In eq1, the game was like walking on eggshells at times. You valued a "good healer" or "crowd control" because a death would wipe out your efforts for the past few hours/days. Death forced you to be good. It was a true penalty at a high magnatude. It forced you to care about dying and do all that it took to prevent it. It was a kick in the groin.

In Eq2/WoW, it is just a time sink. Just run back or click a "5 min afk". If you are in a group and wipe, just revive and run back. It is the same mechanic used in consol / single person games. You die/game over - reload save point and/or restart at the beginning of the level. Annoying and basic.

No matter the world, your target audience is what really needs to be the focus. Adding "spirit traveling" is a cool gimik but it is easy for Joe Saturday Player to understand it and not require 2hrs to get his stuff back or take a loss because Tigermob_01 added while he was killing a boar.

Boils down to an audiance. Do you want tough mechanics in to attract "hardcore" people? What is the risk? What is the benefit to the game? Have you ever heard a "hardcore" player say he/she didn"t like a game because the death mechanics were to easy on people?

Easier death mechanics please a lot more people than hard penalties. The game should be a challenge that creates greater emotion when you are successful vs when you are defeated. We hardcore are just messed up and like to get beat with a stick/whips/chains.

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i agree 100%. the only MMO i ever played where death actually "hurt" was EQ1. there were no graveyards or ghost runs. you died somewhere far from your bind point, and it was your ass. you had to pray you could make it back to your corpse and not die again along the way, or that a very kind pally or cleric would come by and rez you. if death doesn"t mean anything, then risk doesn"t mean anything. in wow i used to go exploring all the time just to open up my map. it didn"t matter how many times i died because i could just go in ghost form back to my corpse and continue on until i died again, which still didn"t mean anything. i remember the first time i went from greater fay the whole way to qeynos in EQ1. now that was an adventure. i was scared as hell the entire time because i didn"t know what would happen if i died along the way. there was an actual fear that i may lose my corpse and not be able to get it back.

i believe it"s all about risk vs. reward. if the risk isn"t very great, then the reward doesn"t mean very much.

etchazz said:

i agree 100%. the only MMO i ever played where death actually "hurt" was EQ1. there were no graveyards or ghost runs. you died somewhere far from your bind point, and it was your ass. you had to pray you could make it back to your corpse and not die again along the way, or that a very kind pally or cleric would come by and rez you. if death doesn"t mean anything, then risk doesn"t mean anything. in wow i used to go exploring all the time just to open up my map. it didn"t matter how many times i died because i could just go in ghost form back to my corpse and continue on until i died again, which still didn"t mean anything. i remember the first time i went from greater fay the whole way to qeynos in EQ1. now that was an adventure. i was scared as hell the entire time because i didn"t know what would happen if i died along the way. there was an actual fear that i may lose my corpse and not be able to get it back.

i believe it"s all about risk vs. reward. if the risk isn"t very great, then the reward doesn"t mean very much.

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It did make memories.... /who all cleric 46 50 (looks to see one in the zone I died in). Don"t be fooled in thinking fondly of those days.... getting shot with a BB gun at age 10 by your brother is probably a funny memory you can chat about years later but when it happened, it hurt like a bitch for days but you didn"t keep doing it because "it will be nostalgic".

EQ"s death penalty was fucking retarded and I don"t see how people can defend it. Maybe EXP loss can work, but the way it was done in EQ certainly didn"t. Anything that hurts low-mid level players the most while high-capped players didn"t even flinch is busted, plain and simple.

WoW"s death "penalty" is much more inline with how it should be. The higher level you are and better gear you have, the more death affects you. You go for better rewards and when you fail you pay a higher price as opposed to going for the best rewards and getting a 96% rez when you fail.

As Rezz mentioned earlier, durability loss either via use or upon death places a limit on how long you can stay away from a repair vendor, which is usually in a town. I hate that.

In EQ1 I would log on in my XP area, get a group, grind it out, log back off there. I even bound myself there depending on my class and the location. I would stockpile food and water when I went to town, sell the few gizmos I looted and perhaps turn in some +faction items I got. Then I"d spend the next 60+ hours out in the wilderness again. I really hate having to go "home" every few hours, and I also dislike there being a bunch of small outposts all over the place as well.

I haven"t thought about how to design around this desire and keep modern conveniences like universal respawn points that many games use now (graveyards, tree of life, stations, etc.). I don"t think my desires clash with the modular "log on, get shit done, log back off" mentality MMOs are being designed around now. I acted that way in EQ1. I think it was less hassle to log on in the XP area, get some XP, and log back off nearby than it is to griffin ride/bell/teleport from town to go join the group I signed up with and then head back home at the end of the day. It"s also a lot less fun and "immersive" for me. Fuck towns. They"re annoying. Especially so in queer games that make you visit multiple vendors to offload your shit and, if necessary, repair different pieces of equipment.

Whatever the death penalty is I would like the result to be my continued sustainability in the environment of my choosing. Repair breaks for raiding/grouping/soloing are more annoying to me than xp debt/loss.

I"m not at all hardcore in my feelings on corpse recovery. It was completely retarded in EQ1. It is a little bit too convenient in WoW, but I"d rather err on the side of weaksauce than hardcore. Naked running past assrape mobs to get your stuff is the lowest of low. Losing your ghost form invulnerability in the middle of the area that killed you to begin with is prone to similar issues. Give me my stuff or a secure method of getting it regardless of other penalties inherent to death. Logging off the moment I died to some frustrating battle without fear of losing my equipment and inventory should be an option 100% of the time.

Twobit Whore said:

EQ"s death penalty was fucking retarded and I don"t see how people can defend it. Maybe EXP loss can work, but the way it was done in EQ certainly didn"t. Anything that hurts low-mid level players the most while high-capped players didn"t even flinch is busted, plain and simple.

WoW"s death "penalty" is much more inline with how it should be. The higher level you are and better gear you have, the more death affects you. You go for better rewards and when you fail you pay a higher price as opposed to going for the best rewards and getting a 96% rez when you fail.

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are you serious? you think a few gold is a good penalty? in EQ you lost a ton of exp and you could even lose your level. when i quit playing Wow i had so much gold i could die 400 times before it would even put a dent in my bank account. dying in WoW is a joke. you die, ghost back to your corpse and lose a few coin, or just summon your corpse to a GY. yeah, that"s real risk there.

WoW"s death penalty scales, which is important to remember. For the average player, it"s a PITA but not a game buster. You have to run back, maybe rebuff. The catch is in dungeons, where there is a possibility of respawn. You die for 2 hrs, no biggie. You die beyond that, and shit starts to respawn and you have to reclear.

For raiders, you lose out on LOTS of gold (repairs + consumables) + you risk reclears for certain encounters. This is magnified by your raid force...you might not be bugged by it, but keeping 25+ players motivated to keep playing that night becomes harder and harder.

The golden rule I think needs to be remembered is that, in the end, it"s a game. Games, usually, are supposed to be fun When the game starts to feel like a chore or a job, it"s not fun anymore...and you"re more likely to stop playing. For games like EQ1, this was a problem because the chore/job was a core game mechanic (kill stuff). I do like the freedom in WoW of being able to just log the fuck off when I get really frustrated. No having to stay around for CR, no begging/pleading for a rescue/res, etc. You lose at your present goal, but your guy will still be there in the morning ready to tackle it again (although with raiding, this requires more farming/gold...). EQ1 was always a chore...I hated those damned 4 hour CRs going on past midnight, when I just wanted to goto bed.

you die, ghost back to your corpse and lose a few coin, or just summon your corpse to a GY. yeah, that"s real risk there.

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If you"re just diddling around doing PUG crap, sure. But WoW does have a pretty harsh raider penalty: You don"t get your mob, and you gotta farm alot. In a way, that works well. Raiders usually = hardcore, and hardcore = the ones who want to be punched in the nuts with a hammer.

etchazz said:

are you serious? you think a few gold is a good penalty? in EQ you lost a ton of exp and you could even lose your level. when i quit playing Wow i had so much gold i could die 400 times before it would even put a dent in my bank account. dying in WoW is a joke. you die, ghost back to your corpse and lose a few coin, or just summon your corpse to a GY. yeah, that"s real risk there.

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What do/did people at level cap in EQ risk? Honestly. Raiders faced almost zero penalty. To think otherwise is just silly.

So that whole risk-reward argument is moot. You go for the greatest reward and faced the least risk and frankly that is a busted system. WoW may not be perfect but it"s leaps and bounds better than EQ from a scaling standpoint.