oneADseven said:A big part of feeling that sense of accomplishment is achieving something with that kind of death penalty in tact. I understand where you are coming from Naunet but it's not really the same thing. I'm not sure if you actually read that article on loss aversion but it's a very powerful article and one that really resonates with a lot of people following this game. I think the dreadful feeling of XP loss is magnified when acquiring that resource (XP) is deemed tedious and boring. I think it's imperative that "the grind" is fun, challenging, and has a lot of replay value. As long as you maintain a positive buffer you'll be able to take calculated risks.
Look, telling me that the feelings of exhilaration, elation, and success I've experienced in the past were worth less because they didn't come with an XP loss-style death penalty is never going to work. I know what I've felt and what I've experienced, and I know how I feel about XP loss and deleveling. The least you could do is acknowledge that XP loss is NOT necessary for such emotions, because my own experience and others' proves that it isn't.
bobwinner said:Imagine the game with weak death penalty... it would be another fast-food mmo where you reach max level in less than a month after release, then you clear content and get fully geared in two months, and then you people start crying because "no content" when you clear content faster than the developpers can expand the world...To be honest, I would play the game, with a "natural" slow progression due to high difficulty, rather than an artificial slow progression from cheap mechanisms such as wow's timed-instance lockouts, or worse, archeage's infinite grind from item-break regrades, etc...
It took almost a year for Avatus (the final boss in the first two raids in WildStar) to be killed for the first time. Death penalty had nothing to do with it - only the pure challenge of the content. The group I raid with took about a year and a half to fully clear Genetic Archives and Datascape. And honestly, a number of the elemental pairs in Datascape can STILL cause trouble (we don't completely overgear that raid yet like we do Genetic Archives heh.)
I never said your feelings were worth less. I said they weren't the same thing. Loss aversion is an important aspect of the death penalty being discussed and if that isn't something you can relate to then we are discussing two fundamentally different things. You said you have probably died hundreds of thousands (millions?) of times over the years while raiding and how overcoming those countless wipes with an eventual victory felt deliciously sweet. That cannot be compared to an experience that revolves around a meaningful death penalty where every single death matters. I mentioned that I understand where you are coming from -- I have also enjoyed that sense of accomplishment after beating an encounter with incredibly complex mechanics that required hundreds of wipes before it could be mastered. It's not the same thing. The stakes are different and it's a different kind of challenge.
And since it may not have been said for quite a few pages in this long thread I will remind everyone that even in the most stable and best coded MMOs death sometimes results from crashes and bugs.
That is especially infuriating if the penalty is *too* severe or if there is no reasonable way to get to the corpse by the time one can come back.
Thus whatever penalty is adopted needs to be a bit milder than if the only way people died was when they were careless or took risks.
@Naunet,
I dont think anyone is trying to tell you what would make YOU feel more accomplished. Rather, I see people explaining why THEY like the death penatly. I have stated a few reasons why I like the death penalty, and you have stated reasons you do not like it. Neither of our opinions on the topic are going to change by chatting on these forums and we will choose to play a game that caters to what we like.
I will add that I have played games with and without a death penatly and find the difference to be night and day. For me, a death penalty makes the game feel like more than just "a game"... Like there is something at stake each and every time you venture out of a city. I'm not into end game raiding and instances. I want to feel like I'm part of a dangerous, open world, when I log into Terminus. Where as, the MMOs you have discussed may be very difficult but they feel like just arcady games(my opinion!). You may not feel that way about the MMOs you like, but that is why this is a large market with games that cater to various types of players. I could not play a game that is like one of those games you have described and I understand if you would not want to play a game with some of the mechanics that are likely in Pantheon.
Also, I could be wrong but based on previous comments I have read of yours, in this thread and others, you did not play any of the older MMOs that had a death penatly(my apologies if that statement is incorrect), so how do you know you would not like that feature until you try it?
Naunet said:Look, telling me that the feelings of exhilaration, elation, and success I've experienced in the past were worth less because they didn't come with an XP loss-style death penalty is never going to work. I know what I've felt and what I've experienced, and I know how I feel about XP loss and deleveling. The least you could do is acknowledge that XP loss is NOT necessary for such emotions, because my own experience and others' proves that it isn't.
I feel very differently. So much so that I want to share my opinion.
Like all of us I'm sure, I have played many mmos over the last 20ish years. Sure I am always happy when I lvl up or achieve a difficult goal.
None of those games has ever come close to comparing to the satisfaction I derived from gaining a lvl as it did in EQ. I attribute that largely because of the harsh death/exp penalty.
It just hasn't ever been the same feeling of accomplishment. I don't think it is a coincidence that there has also never been a game I played that offered a similar challenge to gain those lvl.
dorotea said:And since it may not have been said for quite a few pages in this long thread I will remind everyone that even in the most stable and best coded MMOs death sometimes results from crashes and bugs.
That is especially infuriating if the penalty is *too* severe or if there is no reasonable way to get to the corpse by the time one can come back.
Thus whatever penalty is adopted needs to be a bit milder than if the only way people died was when they were careless or took risks.
Are you saying the game code should detect that you crashed, and apply a lighter penalty? Or are you saying that the penalty should be lighter all around to account for out of game circumstances?
philo said:I feel very differently. So much so that I want to share my opinion.
Like all of us I'm sure, I have played many mmos over the last 20ish years. Sure I am always happy when I lvl up or achieve a difficult goal.
None of those games has ever come close to comparing to the satisfaction I derived from gaining a lvl as it did in EQ. I attribute that largely because of the harsh death/exp penalty.
It just hasn't ever been the same feeling of accomplishment. I don't think it is a coincidence that there has also never been a game I played that offered a similar challenge to gain those lvl.
And fear. Actual no kidding "pleasepleasepleaseplease dont let me die pleaseplease... ".
That nail biting was important. And when you did die, and you felt that sting of the penalty, it escalated the elation that was possible when you succeeded. They are interwoven, and scale together.
The bottom line is everyone will do the absolute most to mitigate risk... maybe not everyone but most will. MMO's are about min/max which results in risk mitigation. Some people who take on hard content and die because they enjoy that. Once I hit level 60, then 65, in EQ that's what I did. However I had enough playtime to recoup that exp loss. The two popular camps in EQ were the ones that had items worth a lot of money... or that had decent EXP with no risk. Do you know why Enchanters and Monks were required at most camps? It wasn't just the buffs or DPS. We mitigated risk. We made content safe.
A typical raid night in EQ when pushing content... Raid for 6-8 hours. If it's new content we're pushing I'm probably looking at 8-10 deaths. Even with a 96% rez that's 32%-40% of my level lost. I was lucky, I was an enchanter. After the raid was over a few of us would go and do an AE group for 4-5 hours to earn all that exp back. Even if you have the time to play that much that simply isn't healthy and I don't think we should be building the game around the premise.
I'm all for a death penalty that makes people consider their mistakes. I don't want one so harsh that it deters people from trying difficult content or forces you to play the game 12 hours a day just to make up for lost raid exp.
EppE said:The bottom line is everyone will do the absolute most to mitigate risk... maybe not everyone but most will. MMO's are about min/max which results in risk mitigation. Some people who take on hard content and die because they enjoy that. Once I hit level 60, then 65, in EQ that's what I did. However I had enough playtime to recoup that exp loss. The two popular camps in EQ were the ones that had items worth a lot of money... or that had decent EXP with no risk. Do you know why Enchanters and Monks were required at most camps? It wasn't just the buffs or DPS. We mitigated risk. We made content safe.
A typical raid night in EQ when pushing content... Raid for 6-8 hours. If it's new content we're pushing I'm probably looking at 8-10 deaths. Even with a 96% rez that's 32%-40% of my level lost. I was lucky, I was an enchanter. After the raid was over a few of us would go and do an AE group for 4-5 hours to earn all that exp back. Even if you have the time to play that much that simply isn't healthy and I don't think we should be building the game around the premise.
I'm all for a death penalty that makes people consider their mistakes. I don't want one so harsh that it deters people from trying difficult content or forces you to play the game 12 hours a day just to make up for lost raid exp.
Just a little correction : If a death cost 10% exp and you had 96% rezzes, you lost 0.4% exp per death. So 10 death would result a 4% loss of total experience ^^;
Just for the math fix !
MauvaisOeil said:EppE said:The bottom line is everyone will do the absolute most to mitigate risk... maybe not everyone but most will. MMO's are about min/max which results in risk mitigation. Some people who take on hard content and die because they enjoy that. Once I hit level 60, then 65, in EQ that's what I did. However I had enough playtime to recoup that exp loss. The two popular camps in EQ were the ones that had items worth a lot of money... or that had decent EXP with no risk. Do you know why Enchanters and Monks were required at most camps? It wasn't just the buffs or DPS. We mitigated risk. We made content safe.
A typical raid night in EQ when pushing content... Raid for 6-8 hours. If it's new content we're pushing I'm probably looking at 8-10 deaths. Even with a 96% rez that's 32%-40% of my level lost. I was lucky, I was an enchanter. After the raid was over a few of us would go and do an AE group for 4-5 hours to earn all that exp back. Even if you have the time to play that much that simply isn't healthy and I don't think we should be building the game around the premise.
I'm all for a death penalty that makes people consider their mistakes. I don't want one so harsh that it deters people from trying difficult content or forces you to play the game 12 hours a day just to make up for lost raid exp.
Just a little correction : If a death cost 10% exp and you had 96% rezzes, you lost 0.4% exp per death. So 10 death would result a 4% loss of total experience ^^;
Just for the math fix !
That's for the assist. :)
That also makes it really depressing knowing I've lost 50% of level 60 in raids before. AoW took a lot of deaths to get down.
EppE said:The bottom line is everyone will do the absolute most to mitigate risk... maybe not everyone but most will. MMO's are about min/max which results in risk mitigation. Some people who take on hard content and die because they enjoy that. Once I hit level 60, then 65, in EQ that's what I did. However I had enough playtime to recoup that exp loss. The two popular camps in EQ were the ones that had items worth a lot of money... or that had decent EXP with no risk. Do you know why Enchanters and Monks were required at most camps? It wasn't just the buffs or DPS. We mitigated risk. We made content safe.
A typical raid night in EQ when pushing content... Raid for 6-8 hours. If it's new content we're pushing I'm probably looking at 8-10 deaths. Even with a 96% rez that's 32%-40% of my level lost. I was lucky, I was an enchanter. After the raid was over a few of us would go and do an AE group for 4-5 hours to earn all that exp back. Even if you have the time to play that much that simply isn't healthy and I don't think we should be building the game around the premise.
I'm all for a death penalty that makes people consider their mistakes. I don't want one so harsh that it deters people from trying difficult content or forces you to play the game 12 hours a day just to make up for lost raid exp.
So what I hear is the game mechanics, including the death penalty should consider a players misuse of there own time. That the Death penalty should be small to save them that additional 4 hours of time they would waste recovering lost experiance.
On that same platform, wouldn't it be even more efficient if the death penalty was 1/3 of a level of experience lost, with no avalable rez% and Level Loss.
This would give a raid force 3 strikes and there out! They would no longer be appropriate level, and it would be the next Guilds turn to try, this solves some of the "open World" concerns raiders have as well as now you and your guild would be home in time for dinner.
I don't think you have anymore valid of a point than I do here.
Naunet said:It took almost a year for Avatus (the final boss in the first two raids in WildStar) to be killed for the first time. Death penalty had nothing to do with it - only the pure challenge of the content. The group I raid with took about a year and a half to fully clear Genetic Archives and Datascape. And honestly, a number of the elemental pairs in Datascape can STILL cause trouble (we don't completely overgear that raid yet like we do Genetic Archives heh.)
I don't think Wildstar is a good example for a comparison, for the following reason :
-Wildstar had instancied raids, which were 20-man or 40-man
-Pantheon raids will not be instancied, which means you can come with whatever number of people you want : 20, 40, 300, whatever.
And that's where it becomes tricky : a raid that can be sucessful with 20 people with the right gear and strategy, will also be clearable with 300 people with less gear and flawed strategy... does that mean the raid is easy ? no, the raid is difficult, but the players compensated by zerging it.
My point is, we cannot have raid difficulty as the only difficulty factor in the game, it won't work if we only rely on it, since compensating raid difficulty will be possible, in a non-instancied, or rather, unlimited-slots raid zones.
So, the overall difficulty of the game has to be dispatched in various ways, such as (non-exhaustive list) : levelling difficulty, travelling difficulty, gearing difficulty, crafting difficulty, etc...
Death penalty plays a role in some of those difficulty assets. Making it trivial will certainly have a negative impact on the game on the long run.
Now, I understand that Death Penalty is annoying, sometimes frustrating. But that is the part of the CHALLENGE.
Do you want :
-a difficult, challenging game that gives you a sense of accomplishment when you achieve something,
or,
-an easy game, that will run out of content too fast, feel that you did nothing special, and will become boring real quick ?
bobwinner said:I don't think Wildstar is a good example for a comparison, for the following reasonDo you want :
-a difficult, challenging game that gives you a sense of accomplishment when you achieve something,
or,
-an easy game, that will run out of content too fast, feel that you did nothing special, and will become boring real quick ?
You specifically said:
it would be another fast-food mmo where you reach max level in less than a month after release, then you clear content and get fully geared in two months, and then you people start crying because "no content" when you clear content faster than the developpers can expand the world
Thus my reference to a game where content was challenging enough that it was not possible to just rush through things.
As for your dichotomy at the end, I maintain that it is false. You can have a "difficult, challenging game that gives you a sense of accomplishment when you achieve something" and not have such a harsh death penalty (XP loss, de-leveling). Simply easing off on the death penalty will not make a truly challenging game somehow "an easy game, that will run out of content too fast, feel that you did nothing special, and will become boring real quick".
You know what would become boring real quick? Bosses that can be zerged down and grinding mobs endlessly for XP.
As others have said, however, we clearly have different opinions on this that won't be changing.
I have played a LOT of mmorpg's over the years, all different types Etc, For the most part i enjoyed most of them but i found myself annoyed or bored with the easyier rush to the max level kind. Those kind of games kind of annoy me, I mean the game designers Spent Years designing all this content, all those zones, only to have people blow threw them and then rarely visit them again. Sometimes it makes me think they might aswell just design a game where people start at max level and can raid stright away, at least then all that hard work on those zones wouldnt be wasted...Anyway getting off topic here LOL
Personally I prefer a Death Penalty that Stings, one that Hurts and makes you think twice, one that makes you Stop and Think about What happened, Why it happened and what i can do to avoid dieing again. I prefer a death penalty that makes me want to avoid Death at all costs.
I do not like a death penalty ( or lack there of ) that is basicly OH i died whoop de do run back get my body, just got a little repair bill that i can cover after killing 1 or 2 mobs. To me that makes me feel Why even Bother having a penalty like that in game? why even bother? I mean people even use it to go back to town faster when they cant be bothered to travel, and also use it as a tactic to kill mobs rather than LEARN how to kill the mob and learn how to get better, they just attack, die, run back, attack die repeat until its dead without actually learning anything or improving. i tend to leave groups with people like this in, but thats just my preferance, it just annoys me when people are too lazy to figure things out, so they just attack the mob and die, run back Etc until its dead.
I am not to fond of Exp dept either to be honest, it always made me feel like Oh well whoopee i have a little exp dept "So what" there was no sting, Nothing that made me feel like i should avoid it. The Only time i felt exp dept was *ok* and i mean only JUST *ok* was with Exp Loss right up until you would have lost a level and THEN you got Exp debt, you could lose Levels worth and it could take Ages to get it back, you couldnt level up until you had paid back ALL the exp debt.
But Personally for me, the Best is Exp loss With Level loss, it makes Death meaningfull, or makes you Fear it and want to avoid it at all costs, it IMHO makes for better gamers because it forces you to learn what you did wrong, and think on how you can improve to avoid dieing again ( well most of the time, there are always a few that dont learn, but then i think they have bigger issues than dieing a lot LOL ) I think it helps to Spread the population out, because with a wide veriaty of skill levels, Some people will natually die Less than others and so will progress faster and thus the population will spread out more.. unlike with certain games where Death basicly means nothing, you can just die, run back and keep going, without hardly losing much time at all.
These are just my observations and opinions of course. VR have already said Death is going to sting, and make you want to avoid it, We will just have to wait and see what form that takes. I for one Cant wait :)
I think maybe some of the misunderstanding is that a large part of how many people define "challenge" in an mmo is based around how extreme the penalty for failure is and also the length of time it takes to achieve success (ie the amount of dedication involved to reach a specific goal).
My opinion is that the above ^ is at least as important as how challenging the actual gameplay itself is, if not moreso, because with minimal consequences any amount of challenging gameplay is also minimized.
EppE said:A typical raid night in EQ when pushing content... Raid for 6-8 hours. If it's new content we're pushing I'm probably looking at 8-10 deaths. Even with a 96% rez that's 32%-40% of my level lost. I was lucky, I was an enchanter. After the raid was over a few of us would go and do an AE group for 4-5 hours to earn all that exp back. Even if you have the time to play that much that simply isn't healthy and I don't think we should be building the game around the premise.
I'm not sure what premise you refer to, but the premise that The End Game has to mean raiding encounters so difficult that dying again and again is to be expected, and that the death penalty therefore has to be tuned accordingly, I just don't buy.
Ideally, there is no reachable level cap in an MMORPG built around leveling throug XP, but achieving that is probably too much to ask of the game designers and content creators. Nevertheless, I think it should to be possible to come up with some other means of horizontal progression while we're waiting for the next expansion without resorting to mobs so challenging that dying and dying is the only way to approach them.
This is my hope, at least.
Jabir said:Nevertheless, I think it should to be possible to come up with some other means of horizontal progression while we're waiting for the next expansion without resorting to mobs so challenging that dying and dying is the only way to approach them.
What, then, would you suggest? In a game designed around fighting monsters, it makes sense that as you play through, you face off against tougher and tougher monsters. Though, this is why most of the successful MMOs have a variety of options at "end game" - in both PvE and PvP flavors. But even ignoring PvP folk (sorry, y'all!), PvE end game is just different iterations of fighting more and more powerful bosses, be it in small-group content or larger raids.
(To be clear, I love dungeons and raids.)
Naunet said:Jabir said:Nevertheless, I think it should to be possible to come up with some other means of horizontal progression while we're waiting for the next expansion without resorting to mobs so challenging that dying and dying is the only way to approach them.What, then, would you suggest? In a game designed around fighting monsters, it makes sense that as you play through, you face off against tougher and tougher monsters. Though, this is why most of the successful MMOs have a variety of options at "end game" - in both PvE and PvP flavors. But even ignoring PvP folk (sorry, y'all!), PvE end game is just different iterations of fighting more and more powerful bosses, be it in small-group content or larger raids.
(To be clear, I love dungeons and raids.)
There is a lot of potential for Pantheon to have horizontal progression, and keep players from getting stuck at "end game"
VR recognizes that "end game" is one of the big issues witih current MMOs and, I believe, the progeny system is one of the ways they plan to combat it. If they provide good incentives to use progeny, like some horizontal progression or unique class/race combos etc, then I could see end game not even being a thing anymore, and it shouldnt be part of the game. All the aspects of "end game" in current games should be incorporated through the entire game.
For example, a level 10 dungeon could drop a SUPER rare sword that is actually an epic weapon that will scale up with you as you level. If you are lucky enough to get the drop at lvl 10 then it will scale up to its full potential as you level. Each dungeon could have items like this, so there would be no need for anyone to rush to "end game". Maybe each time you do progeny your drop % for some of those weapons increases by a few percent? People would have incentive to retire their character and start over because their chance for these weapons would be greater each time they do it.
The key would be that the items would need to be so rare, so the progeny benefit is a desired reward.
My two main ideals for an MMO are:
1.) Leveling to max takes several months.
2.) Getting BIS gear takes years! :)
EDIT: Adding to my example above. I realize some may think that such rare weapons/gear dropping in lower level dungeons would cause high levels to camp it, which would probably be true, but that could be easily solved by making the drop rate of those items decrease for each level a player is above the dungeon level. A level 50 could go camp that boss for the rare sword, but he may only have a 0.50% chance at drop with no progeny buff.
Naunet said:Jabir said:Nevertheless, I think it should to be possible to come up with some other means of horizontal progression while we're waiting for the next expansion without resorting to mobs so challenging that dying and dying is the only way to approach them.What, then, would you suggest?
AAs, Progeny. Systems like these have been utilized in other games as a form of horizontal progression for a long time. They keep people playing when they would have otherwise have run out of content.
I think I may have mentioned that in EQ I was fortunate enough to have bound myself in Timorus Deep right above the Pot Room on the night Kunark opened. Next day the servers were brought down and the entire zone was made No-Bind. But since I had already bound myself... etc.
It was an amzing benfit. I could pop around city to city in very short order. I had a delivery service used by many oif the servers players while selling their goods. It was awesome. I loved it.
And in all that time I only ever got completely destroyed by Faydedar twice. So what does that mean? It means my bind point was Faydedar's spawn point. So he one-shot killed me - and I respawned in the same spot - where he one-shotted me and I respawned - where he one-shotted me and I respawned - etc. Really, there was not much I could do about that. I knew the risks and accepted them. The first time this happened I lost over 3 levels before I got out of the loop. To this day I still feel like I cheated by disconnecting. Waited a couple of minutes and reconnected and logged in on another character - and informed the server that he was up. Poor old dragon didn't last long after that - must have been a half dozen guilds rallying to kill him. The second time I died i did not disconnect. i wanted to see what would happen. I was chatting in general telling others about it and a guide took pity on me and summoned me just out of range of the dragon. I still feel like I cheated on that and dont think the guide should have done that. That death loop lasted almost 2 complete de-levels.
Some folks would find that type of death penalty too heavy. I personally felt it was fair in every way. The benefit of that spawn point was worth the levels lost when the dragon spawned. Eventually though, that dragon spawn was permanently camped and i never had an issue with the poor dragon again.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that a heavy penalty SHOULD exist for certain reasons. But in some cases we might want to consider a review process. Something the analytics team should review every day (number of deaths over time, % of XP gained over time (as a negative), etc. things like that.
But there are plenty of situations you have not addressed here. Believe it or not, many of our young men and women are deployed into some not-so-friendly areas. They can be playing one moment and then suddenly a 4 day "event" happens in real life and they are no longer able to log in for a few days. Do we punish them for something beyond their control? What about medical events? I know a young man who slipped into a diabetic coma for nearly a week. Do we make some kind of exception for someone like that? How? Did Nephretiti die to Faydedar 47 times in one log-in session? Was it too much? Did Nephretiti make an absolute FORTUNE on th server by being bound in that specific spot? What about risk vs reward?
Everything is situational. We can only hope that we get it right, then we analyze what is actually happening during game, and then adjust accordingly. I trust these guys. They have a LOT of experience behind them. Let's let them get the game up and operational before we start making nasty assumptions.