City of Heroes has a nice system, it gives you XP debt that you have to work off. You still earn XP, but at a slower rate while you pay off the debt. Also, they dont force you to pay off to repair armour or items.
Star Wars: TOR Designer Explains BioWare's Death Stance
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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I don't know really harsh penalties always seemed way too dickish to me, like the developer is mocking you. Example:Tirnor said:
ME: well it took 1000 hours, but I finally got my character to be the best he can be.
Game: Due to no fault of your own, but because of lag, your character walked into a Sarlaac pit and is now dead. You now have to start over at the very beginning with nothing
ME: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-!
I remember one story I heard where my friend, with an excellent internet connection, was leading a massive fleet into battle against a rival corporation in EVE online. The second he got into range his internet connection failed, and all the ships were slaughtered because they didn't do anything without a commander as if the crew vanished. It cost his company a lot, and he was fired.
Then his Squad wasnt well trained, Any good pilot is only as his wingmen.archvile93 said:
Although this does bring up a good point about MMO's with harsh deaths, With EvE as an example, Death means you lose your ship, your gear, and gods help you if you dont have insurance and an up to date clone. This makes massive fleet battles very very Expensive, and thus some players use DC's as a tatic agasnt other groups. Not Naming any Allainces, but a Bullshit tatic of flooding a system with tons of player just to make that server node crash, then bringing in the back up fleet to pick off everyone knocked off line.
That's it? Seriously?
I thought he was going to give us a little bit of detail of how it would work, disappointing.
I thought he was going to give us a little bit of detail of how it would work, disappointing.
Who wants to waste over a 100 hours of work because their connection failed?Tirnor said:
In WoW, death is meaningless, but anything that costs you more than an hour of work is just stupid, as that is MORE than enough incentive to dread death.
So, because I don't find the same things annoying that you do, I have no life, am a masochist and look for my value in life on a video game?Jumwa said:
Really, if you're so uptight about a run back to an instance that you consider it suffering, you're the one taking the game too seriously.
Tirnor said:
I agree that death should mean something, and I also liked the pre-NGE for Galaxies, but I have to disagree with you on Jedi perma-death. Jedi were freakin useless until they got close to master skill. But everytime you popped a lightsaber to play your class, you pinged on some bounty hunter's checklist and he would rape you with 8 of his buddies. Jedi couldn't be played without a powerboost if perma-death were inacted.
And what if the punishment is appealing for say the paying customer? What makes something unpealing for one person, is anothers joy.strangeotron said:
Challenge isn't frustration though. Being unable to overcome a challenge IS the challenge. Mutilating you for failing is just inflating that challenge. This is usually used because challenges aren't very challenging at all, so you need a way to inflate that "challenge" so it looks much bigger.Slycne said:
Off course, challenges in MMOs are usually just as challenging as all combat in MMO tends to be - It's statistics. The combat can be decided entirely before it's even played, and there are rarely any kind of excitement. Thus the "inflation" by introducing the "excitement" in the risk of dying and loosing everything.
It's a mechanic, but to me it's a cheap mechanic that I rather avoid. Anything that has any chance of failure can be brutal by simply inflating the death penalty. Make it delete your account and your membership, and suddenly that starter "go kill 10 spiders" quest seems very fucking hardcore.
Death and Star Wars are a touch weird to me. I'm not sure there's any resurrection that won't seem sorta odd to me, but still, a mild sting beats a harsh one.
It could easily be that you wake up in the nearest clinic to wherever you 'died' fresh from recovering in a bacta tank (I think?) like you see Luke in near the beginning of Empire Strikes Back and you automatically have a small fee deducted for the treatment.
That way you lose out a little monetarily and still have to traipse back across the map to wherever you were and fits in-universe for Star Wars.
That way you lose out a little monetarily and still have to traipse back across the map to wherever you were and fits in-universe for Star Wars.
Well You're saying Being heavly Punished Is a bad desgin choice, correct?strangeotron said:
Im just saying thats an opinon, Not really a bad desgin.
-Seraph- said:
woah there let's not get too drastic, I'm pretty sure forcing someone to watch the Star Wars Christmas Special constitutes a war crime in the field, and I'm sure it's a human rights violation any where else. How about something less drastic? like a flogging?
Otherwise I agree with bioware super harsh death penalties don't really do much for the game in the slightest, just make it more annoying to play
Here is an idea. From Level 1 to 10 invulnerable; when all your health is gone you create zero aggro and current enemy disengages and you regenerate over a short period.
Level 11 to 30 death with no penalty; you die, respawn at graveyard, find body, carry on as if nothing happened.
Level 30 to 40 death with minor penalty; same as above but loss of all non equipped items below elite level.
Level 41 to cap death with major penalty; loss of all non equipped items that aren't legendary.
Here's my twist. All valuable lost equipment is randomly looted from corpses by any member of your current guild and labelled as yours, is unusable by them and has no weight while in their inventory.
You have a penalty system that encourages persistence and growth, and penalties that are debilitating short term, but have no permanent repercussions.
Level 11 to 30 death with no penalty; you die, respawn at graveyard, find body, carry on as if nothing happened.
Level 30 to 40 death with minor penalty; same as above but loss of all non equipped items below elite level.
Level 41 to cap death with major penalty; loss of all non equipped items that aren't legendary.
Here's my twist. All valuable lost equipment is randomly looted from corpses by any member of your current guild and labelled as yours, is unusable by them and has no weight while in their inventory.
You have a penalty system that encourages persistence and growth, and penalties that are debilitating short term, but have no permanent repercussions.
Like all things it depends on the type of game your designing. Death penalties are a system like everything else. In some games the harsh penalty works because the game has been designed with that in mind. For example the full loot death penalty in Darkfall works because gear is relativly easy to find and replace. The death penalty of Eve also works because of the insurance and other backup mechanics in place makes losses and mistakes managable. Both of these games though have a PvP focus and look to promote PvP through potential reward for the victor.
On the other hand PvE focused games don't look to promote PvP as much and so harsh death penalties involving potential item loss don't make sence. Part of the longevety of these PvE focused games is the gear grind/treadmill where you have to run the same content a certain amount of times to get a certain peice of gear. Putting potential item loss on top of such mechanics doesn't make any sence. SWTOR was never going to have much of a harsh death penalty simply because all the other systems didn't add up to making one worth while and Bioware are looking to get a pretty decent chunk of the MMO niche with there game to recoup the 100 million odd dollars it cost to develope the game.
On the other hand PvE focused games don't look to promote PvP as much and so harsh death penalties involving potential item loss don't make sence. Part of the longevety of these PvE focused games is the gear grind/treadmill where you have to run the same content a certain amount of times to get a certain peice of gear. Putting potential item loss on top of such mechanics doesn't make any sence. SWTOR was never going to have much of a harsh death penalty simply because all the other systems didn't add up to making one worth while and Bioware are looking to get a pretty decent chunk of the MMO niche with there game to recoup the 100 million odd dollars it cost to develope the game.
The problem with this ideology is that, by applying a penalty to an action, you tend to prevent that sort of action.The_root_of_all_evil said:Disagree, but I'm used to the Ranger runs in Everquest.
I dunno, putting in a weak death penalty seems to get players in the Statistics frame of mind, rather than actually being scared of things. One hit deaths shouldn't be too harsh but if you're walking through the middle of the Tattooine desert and you stumble upon a Sarlaac, you should be crushed for just being dense.
/Calvin's_Father "It builds character"
I think everyone bar SOE preferred pre-NGE.Tirnor said:
Take Eve Online as an example. Few games offer a harsher death penalty. Should your ship be destroyed in combat, the ship itself is lost forever. The components fitted to the ship (the equivalent of armor or weapons in most MMOs) are either lost in the destruction or quickly looted by the enemy. A system exists that seeks to limit the loss in such a situation (insurance) but insurance only pays a set price for the hull of the ship.
The result of such a system is that people became increasingly afraid of risk of any sort. Their actions at every step served to minimize risk. Solo PVP gave way to gang combat, elaborate fleet battles degraded into sniping matches, and the most expensive and elaborate toys sit unused in hangers across the universe because a player cannot reasonably afford to risk their loss.
To put this in another light, a few years back the mechanics of Eve allowed certain ships to achieve incredible speeds that made hitting said ships incredibly difficult. The speed offered not only incredible protection against return fire but also gave tremendous tactical advantage as well. Should a battle turn sour, an entire fleet of such ships could easily flee from any retribution. The games small scale combat degenerated into roaming gangs of these ships and even a similar group on the other side could do little more than chase them fruitlessly. My own character, well trained in the use of a class of ships and weapons poorly suited to combat such foes, was left with a terrible choice. I could spend months training to use ships better suited to the situation of the moment or I could produce a class of ship entirely dedicated to fighting such ships at the expense of all other utility.
Unfortunately, this left me with but a pair of unsavory choices. I could take a cruiser or a battlecruiser and arm them well under their weight classes and at least be able to scratch the paint of my foes or I could take a single incredibly expensive ship (a heavy assault ship) and fit it for the express purpose of defeating these ultra fast ships. While the former allowed me to at least defend myself in the loosest sense of the word, they had severe disadvantages. I could not, under any circumstances, keep up with the speed of my attackers and in order to fit my ship to even hit them I was forced to use weapons designed for much smaller vessels and fit expensive parts designed exclusively to aid in applying missiles to targets. This compromised the three advantages I had when using such a ship. Such parts were so expensive that the majority of the cost was uncovered by insurance (and thus represented a potential permanent loss of resources), and worse still because so many parts were dedicated to the task of making my ship able to hit my foes my ability to sustain damage was compromised. Worse still, the key advantage of a battlecruiser over the nano-ship (the ultra fast ship) lay in firepower, but the circumstances dictated that I arm myself with guns designed for the smallest ships in the game meaning even though I had more guns, I was actually outgunned by most of these ships.
Eventually, the solution was to fly a ship that, once engaged was committed to battle until either my opponent or I were destroyed or my opponent fled (the most common outcome). In any fight where a ship was not equipped for speed, I would be lacking in both firepower and durability. The situation eventually became so untenable that the developer was eventually forced to brutally nerf the speed mechanics in order to force the players to a new equilibrium.
This process repeated itself time and again in Eve. A particular strategy was deemed to offer the best odds and it was pursued to the exclusion of all else. All of this was the direct and natural result of a death penalty that could steal hours, weeks or even years of effort in the game in an instant.
A death penalty is, of course, necessary to a degree. Most video games still enforce some sort of penalty. If I die in Modern Warfare 2 for example, I am removed from the action for a brief period while I am treated to a replay of the event leading to my death. In WoW, should I die, my progress is delayed directly (I have to find my corpse) and indirectly (it forces repairs earlier than would have otherwise been necessary). A penalty that offers a pause in progress is, generally speaking, perfectly fine. When a penalty instead sets the player back, though the result is the same, the effect on the game is that the harsher the penalty the less prone a player is to experiment.