SWTOR

[Lantyssa]

I'm already applying a car battery to my nether regions by solo-leveling from 1 to 59 (and likely into my 70's) for the vast majority of my time.  I actually don't need the additional kick in the teeth from a death penalty.

On the surface, it's light.  But you don't spring back fully healed, and for mana classes you're down that, too.  I actually don't care about the equipment hit that much, but the 75% stat reduction is a bother.

Maybe I can better illustrate with the times it's caused me to log off.  1) Killing some guy in Arathi.  Stormhold or whereever.  I sneak in and find my target and his bodyguard.  The mobs are pretty dense, but if I can isolate them, I'll do fine.  Start in a corner and unfortunately it also aggros a nearby caster.  I'm okay, but one of them flees... into more mobs.  Die.  Find the best spot to res.  Wanderer and aggro before healed up.   Flees into caster.  Caster flees into casters.  Dead.  Repeat, although this time I manage to pull through with five fresh corpses at my feet and about 30 health.  Log off pissed.

2) Finally reach Outland to discover the aggro radius I'm comfortable with has changed, my equipment is sub-par, and mobs are a bit higher.  Densely packed again.  Oh look, we die a few more times in a similar situation.  Upset but realizing the gear and level problem will be rectified soon I push on.  End up in another epic battle with six dead mobs... and a level 80 flagged Horde DK deciding it would be fun to flap around and get in my way.  Did I mention my bear form is glyphed so maul hits two targets?  (Ironically I think I shifted to cat form before tagging him, but trying to get the last hit in the mob died, auto-target picked him up, and <wham>)  There's not even an equipment hit and I'm pissed.  Respawn to get my loot.  Oh, but now he plays with me by continuously throwing chains of ice on me as I try to run.  Then kills me, then camps.  So the light dead penalty combined with the stupid PvP mechanics means I'm cursing like a sailor and logging off in disgust.  Again.  (Really it's a combination of factors in this case, but the death is what I was really pissed about -- death is in and of itself failure to me, I don't need more.)

Maybe you need the kick in the groin to find worth in death, but I don't.  Especially not when I'm just trying to reach a point I can play with my friends.  That I haven't been able to do for four months.

[Surlyboi]

It never ceases to amaze me that people keep falling back on the "U WANT NUTSACK PUNCHING LIKE 1999 EQ BECAUSE YOU NEED TO FEEL BETTER THAN GAMERS WITH LIFE LLOLL" canard in any situation where someone opposes removing all inconvenience and penalty in an MMO.

Amazingly, there are reasons OTHER than latent EQ/Vanguard sadomasochism and/or poopsocker narcissism to not design MMOs where you can teleport anywhere instantly and respawn at full health 1 second after you die in the exact same spot and max to full level in two hours.   Hint:  retaining people for more than one month.  Super secret free extra hint:  try playing all single-player PC games you buy on invincible instakill godmode only and tell me how satisfied you are.  

Is there a spectrum?  Sure.  Its possible to have penalties that unnecessarily shade into 1999 EQ land.  But its possible to go to far the other way, which almost nobody on this site can acknowledge or discuss without trotting out the "u want your nads shocked by a car battery when ur char dies hur hur hur i just want to have fun" nonsense.    

Fuck that noise. I like running through in god mode on occasion. I also occasionally like getting bitchslapped by a game for being stupid enough to try something spectacularly dumb. It's the context of the penalty or lack thereof that makes the difference. I don't want WoW's bore me to tears easy mode, but at the same time, I don't want EQ's nut-crushing all the time either. But if the story keeps me interested, I'll take six of one a half dozen of the other as long as there's a good balance.

[Triforcer]

Given you just agreed with me, I'm confused by the "fuck that noise" reference.  See the part where I said using god mode "only" in a single-player game.  I stand by my assertion that if that was the only mode in a game, you wouldn't have fun, much less pay 4 years of sub fees for it. 

As you say, balance is the key.  All I'm saying is that most people here won't acknowledge that it is possible to have too little difficulty or penalty in an MMO. 

[Ratman_tf]

Maybe you need the kick in the groin to find worth in death, but I don't.  Especially not when I'm just trying to reach a point I can play with my friends.  That I haven't been able to do for four months.

Maybe it's not the death penalty, but the pace of the game? We all knew WoW was going to become top heavy, it was written into the game with levels and gear. I had to grind 4 months on a new character to start raiding on a new server. That's 4 months of gameplay that I really didn't care too much about, as I'd already done it multiple times. But there's no easy way to balance that with the progression mentality of the game design.

[Sheepherder]

Every competitive game, whether against an environment or against a player, has a penalty for failing. And every single system ever developed was an evolution from a prior one. WoW's the current result of years of lessening the punitive damage from failure. ... But imagine a game without any penalty at all. Or better yet, point to one in any competitive genre that doesn't have it.

Stop it with the reductio ad absurdum, you might be smarter than that.

Amazingly, there are reasons OTHER than latent EQ/Vanguard sadomasochism and/or poopsocker narcissism to not design MMOs where you can teleport anywhere instantly and respawn at full health 1 second after you die in the exact same spot and max to full level in two hours.   Hint:  retaining people for more than one month.  Super secret free extra hint:  try playing all single-player PC games you buy on invincible instakill godmode only and tell me how satisfied you are.

Hint: most modern games when you "lose" you lose nothing of consequence, and can continue with no delay.  By that measure, respawning at full health a second after you die (with the fight reset) is exactly what is supported by the system in a shit ton of games.  There are no limits on quicksaves in HL2, In Prince of Persia you can reverse time, in Fable II you can be killed endlessly in the same fight (and can opt out of the cosmetic penalty for a price), skirmish games in any shooter are completely inconsequential win, lose, or draw.

"Consequences" as a determining factor in retention is a crock of shit anyways, and absolutely nobody will be operating under the misconception that death = win, so driving the point home with a cockpunch is redundant and detrimental to the enjoyment of your playerbase.  On the other hand, emotional attachment to a character is a massive target that has heretofore been left untouched as a way of punishing players.

As you say, balance is the key.  All I'm saying is that most people here won't acknowledge that it is possible to have too little difficulty or penalty in an MMO.

Insofar as nearly every penalty explored in a live game so far points to magnetic wrong and actively degrades their ability to perform well in the future for not learning the opaque intricacies of the various flavours of DIKU I'd say you're kind of defending the indefensible.  Most people would argue that WoW is utterly carebear in all respects, but it is the first MMO I had the internet connection capable of playing, and in hindsight the most retarded thing I have ever thought in my life is that a warrior would be an easy first class.  I still remember being unable to buy new abilities on numerous occasions, because no escape mechanisms, exceedingly high repair costs, no worthwhile ranged attacks, and learning on the fly what is easily the toughest role in a group prior to the advent of the defensive stance thunderclap and multi-target threat meters left me utterly destitute and wearing the most shittacular gear possible.

[WindupAtheist]

Obligatory WUA UO observation:  When I would die I would usually lose a few minutes farming worth of insurance gold, possibly a couple of minor items that hadn't been worth insuring, and a chunk of fame. Fame dictated what title showed up next to my name, but had absolutely no mechanical effect upon the game whatsoever. The fame loss is what would drive me straight up the wall when I would die a few times in a row.

[Sky]

Obligatory rebuttal: that was which revision of UO's death penalty system? After how many years of mudflation?

 

[Mrbloodworth]

And now for a comical interruption.



We now return you to your regularly scheduled 1990's conversation.

[tmp]

The wow death penalty is weak enough, continuing to dilute it further would take it to the point of having no penalty whatsoever for losing.  Which means losing doesn't really exist anymore, and how much fun are games in which you cannot lose?

Not having some additional penalty attached to failure does not remove the existence of said failure. Which means yes, losing certainly still exists.

[Malakili]

Insofar as nearly every penalty explored in a live game so far points to magnetic wrong and actively degrades their ability to perform well in the future for not learning the opaque intricacies of the various flavours of DIKU I'd say you're kind of defending the indefensible.  Most people would argue that WoW is utterly carebear in all respects, but it is the first MMO I had the internet connection capable of playing, and in hindsight the most retarded thing I have ever thought in my life is that a warrior would be an easy first class.  I still remember being unable to buy new abilities on numerous occasions, because no escape mechanisms, exceedingly high repair costs, no worthwhile ranged attacks, and learning on the fly what is easily the toughest role in a group prior to the advent of the defensive stance thunderclap and multi-target threat meters left me utterly destitute and wearing the most shittacular gear possible.

Sorry to hear that.  I do agree that WoW actually does a really terrible job of explaining its threat mechanics.  If you want anything more than a totally rudimentary understanding of how threat works, you've got to spend time researching outside the game.  They have done a lot in Wrath to make threat much less of an issue, but not by explaining the mechanic.  Anyway, if you want to be grumpy with WoW for how the game played four years ago, feel free, but it seems to me you are actually upset about warrior more than the death penalty.  

[Triforcer]

Goddamn, Scott Johnson is unfunny.  I mean, every single time.  I enjoy Achewood more than I do him, and Achewood is like AIDS-flavored diarrhea.

[Lantyssa]

I have to agree.

Maybe you need the kick in the groin to find worth in death, but I don't.  Especially not when I'm just trying to reach a point I can play with my friends.  That I haven't been able to do for four months.

Maybe it's not the death penalty, but the pace of the game? We all knew WoW was going to become top heavy, it was written into the game with levels and gear. I had to grind 4 months on a new character to start raiding on a new server. That's 4 months of gameplay that I really didn't care too much about, as I'd already done it multiple times. But there's no easy way to balance that with the progression mentality of the game design.

There's a lot of things I'm not happy with in my goal to play with others in an MMO.  Death by itself interrupts that flow.  Adding penalties on top of it during a purely transitory period and forcing downtime magnifies the annoyance by several orders of magnitude.  As has been said by others, it's about context and balance.

In a discussion we had several months ago, a game should never seek to force a player into downtime.  Offering a wide variety of things to do in downtime is excellent, but it should be up to the player on whether they're in up or down mode.  Death as a failure is fine, but simply adding a slight travel time is generally sufficient incentive to stay alive.

The other important thing is how the player perceives the recovery.  A corpse run means a player is actively doing something, even if I think it's harsh.  WoW's spirit run is doing something, even if it's trivial.  Waiting to regen or a debuff to wear off is sitting on your ass, which is boring, and every second spent waiting is noticeable.  I die in Fallout and a quickload means I lose some work but I'm right back in the action... and I don't even notice it because I'm more interested in playing than I am in recovering from catastrophic losses, but I still know I fucked up and that's enough.

So I guess to bring this back to SWTOR, I hope they have a negligable death penalty.  I'm interested in the story, not in being punished.  Find a way to prevent zerging something to death sure, but there's no need for it to be significant.

[WindupAtheist]

Obligatory rebuttal: that was which revision of UO's death penalty system? After how many years of mudflation?

 

Well there was the familiar "Everything sits on your body unless/until you get it!" routine for the first five years, and the "Pay 600 gold for every item that you don't want sitting on your body!" system ever since. I guess the 6k or whatever per death wouldn't bother some super-rich slob with tens of millions of gold, but I was never that rich. The money factor was still relevant to me, but the fame hit was more annoying.

It's a solid idea that would work as well in a diku as anywhere else. Say they put something like it into WoW. You gain fame points for killing stuff, more points for things above your level and less or none for stuff below, same as XP. Fame points allow access to titles and maybe other fluff junk. Points are lost when you croak. Suddenly there's incentive to not die, even without corpse-running and repair costs and all that junk.

Hell, I guarantee a good chunk of the playerbase would find that a BETTER reason to not die than the prospect a brief run and a little coin lost.

[DraconianOne]

A fame system like that is sound but is still a penalty and would just end up pissing more people off because that's what happened.  LOTRO has a title rewards for not dying for the first 20 levels. People who want those titles will play ultra conservatively, won't play with other people in groups (in case of a group wipe caused by someone else) and generally get far more stressed about the game than those who don't give a shit. I vaguely remember someone in my guild pretty much up and quitting because they died at level 18/19 after a lag spike or some other bug caused them to run off a cliff with inevitably fatal consequences.

Anyway, fame works in mysterious ways, Leeroy Jenkins being a case in point: he's famous for getting killed.

[Mrbloodworth]

I was number 52 on my server in EQ2 for most deaths. Fuck you people. I enjoy testing the odds. Sometimes, i even win.

[Sky]

Since I like to play EQ2 exp-locked, debt doesn't bother me. I always like to roll the dice and see what happens. Sometimes death, sometimes win, sometimes quick portal (mostly c).

[Soln]

[WindupAtheist]

A fame system like that is sound but is still a penalty and would just end up pissing more people off because that's what happened.  LOTRO has a title rewards for not dying for the first 20 levels. People who want those titles will play ultra conservatively, won't play with other people in groups (in case of a group wipe caused by someone else) and generally get far more stressed about the game than those who don't give a shit.

Yeah, but we're not talking about "DIE ONCE AND WE'LL SMASH YOUR DICK!"

I'm thinking of something where if you die three or four times in a row at the top tier you'll have to farm a little while to make it up. Enough to keep people from going kamikaze, but that's it.

[stu]

I was number 52 on my server in EQ2 for most deaths. Fuck you people. I enjoy testing the odds. Sometimes, i even win.

You're a fucken wildman!

just messin'

[Mrbloodworth]

I was number 52 on my server in EQ2 for most deaths. Fuck you people. I enjoy testing the odds. Sometimes, i even win.

You're a fucken wildman!

just messin'

You too can see me in action on the LOTRO brandywine server! 

[Ghambit]

I better be able to be a glowy, floating ghostlike Force-creature when I die in this game.  And I wanna be able to haunt people 'n stuff, er at least interact with the environment in some way.

[HaemishM]

You really like being sorely disappointed by life don't you?

[schild]

That. Is. Awesome.

[ashrik]

This isn't the adjective you're looking for

[Surlyboi]

Move along...

[Sheepherder]

I'm thinking of something where if you die three or four times in a row at the top tier you'll have to farm a little while to make it up. Enough to keep people from going kamikaze, but that's it.

Throw a ~6 hour (played) grief title on their name if they do something particularly stupid enough to warrant massive repair bills and exp debt in other games.  No need to make them farm it off even, just so long as others get the chance to laugh at your folly.  Throw a temporary visual wound effect like smears of blood or gaping lacerations on the character every time they die, likewise with scuff marks on their armor and tears in their cape.  Probably a tall order in the graphics department, either requiring deformable model parts via animations, shader effects, or multiple renders of the same piece with modified textures and models, but on the upside you would have a lot of resources for your vendor trash items and wouldn't have spent the last four years tweaking graveyard positioning worldwide.

[Malakili]

Throw a temporary visual wound effect like smears of blood or gaping lacerations on the character every time they die, likewise with scuff marks on their armor and tears in their cape. 

I would die all the time to keep that 

[Triforcer]

BETA ALERT!!  BETA ALERT!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=36710&page=1

Check out both the tentonhammer and gophn links. Also, Ashen Temper says on page 6 or 7 that information on beta is coming in the "Near Future."

Already fully playable?  Hundreds of hours of story for EACH class?  Either we are witnessing cracksmokery at David Allen-like levels, or this one is finally the real deal    

EDIT:  at the very least I hope this makes a 2011 or 2012 release less likely.

[Sky]

That. Is. Awesome.

The. Three. Word. style of advertising is ridicutarded. And old. You're getting old, schild. We've got a rocker out here on f13's veranda just for ya.

[schild]

That. Is. Awesome.

The. Three. Word. style of advertising is ridicutarded. And old. You're getting old, schild. We've got a rocker out here on f13's veranda just for ya.

What was I advertising?

[Montague]

BETA ALERT!!  BETA ALERT!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=36710&page=1

Check out both the tentonhammer and gophn links. Also, Ashen Temper says on page 6 or 7 that information on beta is coming in the "Near Future."

Already fully playable?  Hundreds of hours of story for EACH class?  Either we are witnessing cracksmokery at David Allen-like levels, or this one is finally the real deal    

EDIT:  at the very least I hope this makes a 2011 or 2012 release less likely.

I smell bullshit. If that thing was fully playable EA would have been spewing game footage all over E3.

Unless of course it's playable but still total crap, which seems likely.

[Sky]

What was I advertising?

It's a device mostly used in advertising.

[Stormwaltz]

I'd guess that what they mean by "fully playable" is less "the game's completely done and in polish" and more "the game engine runs reliably and you can play through the portions of content (classes/skills/areas/quests) that have been implemented."

There are many subtle shadings of "fully playable." It's the industry equivalent of "smurf." Some games are smurf, but others are smurf.

[lesion]

Well smurf me up, dammit.

[UnSub]

I can't wait for the inevitable raft of changes awaiting SWOR when players testers actually get their hands on it.

BioWare's history of balancing powers / abilities isn't great (it's not bad, but it isn't great) so it will be interesting to see how they deal with this kind of input.