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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

50 First Deaths - On Designing MMO Respawning 105

Posted by simoniker from the grim-reaper-is-a-keeper dept.
Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free reg. req.) discussing the nature of death and regeneration in massively multiplayer gaming. The author points out: "Designing death is not a simple matter", explaining: "If the 'death penalty' in the game is too severe... you may stop playing the game and, even worse, stop paying the monthly subscription fee for it. But if the penalty is too light... what's to stop you from engaging in reckless behavior... and then growing bored and dropping out anyway?" It also reveals, courtesy Turbine Entertainment's CEO, that "The online role-playing game Middle-Earth Online, expected later this year, will exclude death entirely" - instead, characters "will collapse into unconsciousness and wake up in a safe place."
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50 First Deaths - On Designing MMO Respawning More

50 First Deaths - On Designing MMO Respawning

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  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:26AM (#8474237) Homepage
    I don't like the idea of not dying. I think it would be a lot more interesting for all involved if death were permanent in these games.

    In that case, the new guy wouldn't be at such a disadvantage to everyone who's been playing for years. The advantage to playing for a long time would be to build skill at the game, instead of acquiring items.

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:37AM (#8474301)
      permanent death may sound like a great idea, until the griefers start coming after the newbies. Imagine you're paying $15 a month for the following: You've played for a couple hours, gotten your first new Shiny Short Sword of Light +1 and Leather Armor of the Cow from some zombies you just killed. Maybe you've even leveled up once or twice. You're on your way back to town and along comes Mr. Eight Level AssClown who kills you (or better yet, is dragging a 5th level monster along who you have no chance of defeating). Bam, you're dead. start again. You've literally spent 2 hours with nothing to show for your character.

      Permanent death is nice in games like Diablo, where once you've finished it normally, you can take on the challenge of being hardcore like that. But permanent death on a server filled with not only lag, but also griefers is not a way to entice people to pony up X dollars every month.

      Now imagine you've spent a couple months on your character, collecting quite a range of unique powerful weapons and then you die. That's like a Ph.D. being sent back to kindergarten and forced to take school all over again, before anyone will hire him. furstrating to say the least.

      • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by (trb001) ( 224998 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:54AM (#8474387) Homepage
        This is exactly why MUDs had newbie, or level restricted, areas. One area might restrict PvP for level 5 or above characters. Other areas may not allow anyone in who hasn't reached level 10 yet. Others may not allow level 20 and above characters in because they'll walk in, cast "Blazing Death Cloud of Might" and kill everything, including players, without thinking twice.

        Frankly, there *should* be a penalty to being somewhere you shouldn't, whether you're too high or too low level. The trick is how to communicate that to players without affecting the roleplaying aspect.

        --trb

        • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)

          by sweetooth ( 21075 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @11:07AM (#8475742) Homepage
          Most games do have penalties for being in a place you shouldn't be.

          Lets take Turibines Asheron's Call. Part of the story line talks about lifestones created by Asheron to protect the Isparians in Dereth from dying, however there is a cost for dieing. If you die at any level you recieve 5% vitae penalty and drop X number items on your corpse. The vitae penalty is a temporary reduction in your stats that goes away as you earn more experience points (XP). The amount of XP you need to reduce your vitae by one point is a percentage based on your current level. The number of items you drop is also based primarily on your current level. Now, the noob areas have giant floating markers as a boundry that basically tell you if you go past this your chance of death increases. Which is great as far as monsters go because it's a clear warning. If you go past this place and die you might not be able to get back to your corpse and recover your items. So there is definite risk involved in going to those areas. Now, at higher levels most people carry enough high value junk items as death items. These items are almost 100% gauranteed to drop before anything you care about. This reduces the risk of dying significantly, but there is still some risk. If you don't recover those items you have to get new death items, this could be expensive or time consuming. Especially if you spent a lot of time getting very high valued death items to cover your equipment that is also very expensive. A second or third death could start costing you items. There are/were also some items which would always drop on death (Aerfalls Pallium comes to mind). I should also mention that when you are returned to a lifestone you are temporarily protected from harm. This is in part because some lifestones have monsters spawned on them, and also due to a dynamic on the full time PvP server.

          Now, this is a decent system, and I have yet to hear anyone complain about it. Of course this is the dynamic on the carebear or non PvP servers. On the PvP server (Darktide) there are no protections from other players. If you are sufficient level to own a house you have a safe zone. Other than that you are safe only briefly right after dieing. Initially there was no lifestone protection and it was extremely common for some players to camp the lifestones and repeatedly slay people. Not exactly fun for the person on the recieving end of this dynamic. To keep the game realistic you can't really restrict areas of the game world based on level. With dungeons that is easy, and is done all the time, but in the game world outside the dungeons invisible barriers that ristricte based on level would be hard to explain in the games lore. It also prevents interaction between high and low level characters, and in the case of games like AC, it would prevent the creation of large monarchies and reduce the already minimal value of a Patron/Vassal relationship.

          The biggest problem with perma death is that most players like to see that they are getting something for thier money. A lot of people don't like spending twenty or thirty hours a month leveling a character and learning the game system only to die one day because the devs changed the rules or the content change in an unexpected way. There have been numerous times in every MMOG I've played where the newest game additions have changed the dynamic in some way that made it harder either for the entire player base or, more often just for specific classes. Then those classes die more often as they readjust to the new dynamic or patiently (hah, right) wait for the devs to fix whatever they broke. With perma death you are going to see people losing interest if they achieve high levels and then one day loose everything. Why bother going through all of that again? You already know what the game is like at the low levels, it will take you a similar amount of time to get back to where you were so you can advance again. What is the motivation to continue playing at that point? There isn't much in my opinion.

          • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Tofino ( 628530 )
            It's important to note that carrying around death items in AC1 doesn't mean that you are eliminating the consequences of death. Good death items are a combination of expensive and hard to find. (Sure, you can carry around a pack of master robes, but these are heavy and don't always cover non-armor items). If you die and drop a bunch of DIs, you are going to be doing a corpse recovery to get them back. The carrying of DIs just ensures that the first time you die, you don't lose any of your valuable weapo
            • Well, between master robes, portal gems, thorstens armor and some of the high value loot that drops these days DI's are relatively easy to come by. With the large amount of gold items that drop and tinking you can easily amass quite a number of DI's. So the penalty is significantly reduced.

              • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

                by Tofino ( 628530 )
                Yep, it's reduced. But I'm not going to leave 8 100k+, under 100 bu items all of which I've tinkered up 5+ times over the course of months, plus two sets of Thorsten's Armor (boring quest), Ursuin Rugs (very rare), and so on, to rot. You need a corpse recovery.

                I like my 180k value, 83bu atlatl, which will cover my bows forever, almost as much as my major life helm. Oh wait, maybe not... :)

                • I'm with you, I don't leave bodies behind. I can't count how many times I've seen other people leave behind corpses though. Especially in the 80+ Matron Hive.
                  • Yeah, I've seen 3 bodies piled up there. Given that there are ALWAYS people there, you think they'd ask for help. I've helped people recover in that place a bunch of times.

        • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Derkec ( 463377 )
          I always hated level restricted areas. It just didn't feel right. What we did instead was make a rule that if high level players were *responsible* for the deaths of lowbies, they would be punished. That included direct player killing which we tried to make impossible with hardcoding, but also dragging high level aggressive mobs into areas with lowbies and casting the blazing death clouds.

      • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lightwarrior ( 73124 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @09:08AM (#8474501) Journal
        > permanent death may sound like a great idea, until the griefers start coming after the newbies.

        If that's the only barrier, why not implement a system to discourage griefers from coming after newbies? Seriously, why don't we have bullies _actually killing people_ in real life? Because they'd be carted off to Kiddy Prison.

        One of the reasons people don't break laws is because of the punishments. If you don't want your players engaging in anti-social behavior, prevent those players from being a part of society. Have actual character jails, where offenders can be "helled" (to borrow a MUD term) for a period of time proportional to the severity of their crime.

        Couple that with a character death system that "respawns" permanently dead characters as offspring (children, clones, whatever) that inherit the possessions of their parent-figure, and you've got a way to pass on the material goods from character instance to character instance.

        You'd still lose all of the dead character's experience, but in a non-"level-oriented" system, you can make that a hell of a lot less painful (heck, you could even have the "children" start with a certain percentage of inherited skill).

        Part of the populace's reluctance to engage in PvP is that, generally speaking, these games have immature PvP systems. I think the majority of the problem, however, is the totally anti-PvP crowd's desire to harp on any potential negative experience to their gameplay.

        -lw

        • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mcmonkey ( 96054 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @10:42AM (#8475470) Homepage
          If you don't want your players engaging in anti-social behavior, prevent those players from being a part of society.

          The issue there is the ultimate goal is not to provide a safe, fun gaming environment, but rather to make money for the parent company. No one (or very very few people) is going to pay $15 a month to sit in jail (unless someone comes out with a MMO version of OZ (hmmm...that's not such a bad idea...)) so companies try to balance being strict enough so the griefers don't run off all the newbies, but no so strict as to drive off all the griefers.

          So a legal system cannot following the real world courts and jails too closely.

          Couple that with a character death system that "respawns" permanently dead characters as offspring (children, clones, whatever) that inherit the possessions of their parent-figure, and you've got a way to pass on the material goods from character instance to character instance.

          That is a great idea.

          • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Lightwarrior ( 73124 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @11:03AM (#8475693) Journal
            > So a legal system cannot following the real world courts and jails too closely.

            Well, it depends on what we're looking for. Part of what the generic "griefer" looks for is suspense. With actual punishment, it increases the suspsense. It's true that you probably can't jail griefers "for life", but what's the odds that the society in a MMOG would _want_ to jail him/her/it for that long? It's much more likely they'd just execute the criminal (and, heck, depending on the type of society, there might be a death penalty for less serious crimes).

            We could even treat jailed characters as "dead" (albeit temporarily), and allow the player to create an "offspring" character to play (without the asset transition). That's a little more harsh than the victim gets, but it's pretty fair retribution.

            I imagine such a system could be extensively tinkered with until the right balance of risk, reward, and pending legal action is reached (it could even vary area to area).

            -lw
            • What would be interesting is if there were certain areas of the game that were only accessable via griefing. Kinda like an "Escape from NY" type scenario.
              If you are caught griefing, bounty hunters can track you down, and haul you to jail lands you then have the options of fighting/organizing and ruling the jail lands, or fight your way back out to the rest of society.
            • How about the griefers get the same punishment as those they "kill"? Eg. % loss of XP/HP/items/whatever, temporary or permanent?

              Then again I've always been on the receiving end, not the giving end of griefers - and it has caused me to give up on some MMOGs. Or find their non-PVP servers.

              8-PP

          • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by EllF ( 205050 )
            So, you're saying that if someone spends their time in jail, they'll stop playing?

            We're talking about a game, and because it is a voluntary act of participation to play, we don't need to be "fair" in a broad legal sense. We create a set of rules and post them, saying something like, "If you kill players, or if a player severely damaged by you dies within X number of seconds of your attack, you will be put on a wanted list for an in-game police force, who have the ability to hell you for Y minutes, double

            • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

              by mcmonkey ( 96054 )
              My point is there are competing interests. Or rather parties who often are working together, but occasionally have a divergence in purpose.

              There's the goal of sustaining an enjoyable gaming environment--having a fun game. There's the goal of 'realism,' or keeping events logical and consistent to promote roll-playing. And in the case of commercial MMO games, there's the goal to keep enough people paying a monthly subscription to keep the game going.

              In regard to death, generally we want some sort of pena
            • Most games tried this in one or the other way. Either by in game police and wanted lists or by outside company control.

              It simply deos not work.

              Roughly 30% of the player base of an online game has only one goal: "compromizing the game rules". Abusing what they can to be the first ones to reach a certain goal. Abusing the game rules to have most pvp kills. And basicly you cant do anything about it.

              A lot of rogue players do not really care if they get banned from game after 4 weeks as long as they have thei
            • The problem with that system is that it would attract non-griefer "bandit" players who would play for the fun of being a fugitive.

              Admit it, it would kick ass being a high level wanted character. If you could kill the "police force" members (who would, let's say, respawn at the dept.), instead of being just a griefer-penalty, it could be a whole new dimension in the gameplay. Rob banks, mug characters, run from the police... you could become a famous criminal! Even some of the griefers might play by the r

        • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by wgnorm ( 163220 )
          Although Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com] doesn't include player death of any kind, there is a clever system for discouraging unbalanced attacking of inexperienced ships. Each ship you encounter is highlighted by a color representing its ability level relative to your own (determined by stats). Red is far more advanced, green is equal in skill, and blue is much less experienced, with a spectrum of colors in between to help you decide whether to attack. Attacking reds can be a fun challenge, but most battles take place betwe

        • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by fireduck ( 197000 )
          Any system designed to punish player killing will be beaten. We can abstract this to "almost any rule you establish to prohibit a player from doing something, will be prodded and bent as far as the player's can."

          Perhaps we institute a law saying: you kill another player you go to jail. There's always going to be a portion of the population that says to hell with laws (and they will go to jail), and then there's another more subversive population who is going to figure "well, I won't kill the newbie, but
        • why not implement a system to discourage griefers from coming after newbies?

          Because theres no effective system currently available at the moment.

          Take a step out of the MMORPG scene and just look at standard FPS games, whats to keep people from TKing? A voting system? Can't be done on the MMO scale. A '3 strikes, you're out' system? Can be easily bypassed or ineffective (just get some super monster to follow you and get it to kill the newbie for you). The use of moderators? May damage RPG aspect of game,

        • Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Drawkcab ( 550036 )
          No matter how strict the game's system, you always have the option to quit the game, go on with your life, play another game or not. In real life if you go on a killing spree, your life is over and you don't ever get another chance. In a game there is always plenty of fresh starts, in other games or outside the game. In a game, everyone quits eventually, and when they do quit, if they're jerks, they can grief with impunity. In real life, few enough people are both evil and suicidal enough to cause many
        • There's actually alot they could borrow from MUD systems. How about setting up level restrictions on player killing. In the few MUDs that I played you couldn't attack anybody more than 5 levels below you unless they attacked you first. Also when you pk'd, you were flagged with a killer flag and town guards would do their damnest to take care of it :)
      • "You're on your way back to town and along comes Mr. Eight Level AssClown who kills you (or better yet, is dragging a 5th level monster along who you have no chance of defeating). Bam, you're dead. start again. You've literally spent 2 hours with nothing to show for your character." Well this little problem could be solved by having no permadeath to you hit a certain level (maybe 5 or 10). Gives newbs a break and stops griefers for a little while. Of course that won't stop a level 20+ griefer from hammerin

      • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bluesman ( 104513 )
        This happens anyway, and I'd bet it would happen to a much smaller extent if a greifer risked permanent death by killing newbies.

        Not to mention, if death were permanent, even the most advanced player would have to start over as a "newbie" occasionally.

        If your character ages or you risk permanent death every time you play, odds are you're going to spend more time exploring and playing than picking on newbies. And permanent death means by picking on newbies, you're more likely to be picking on an experienc
      • I've often wondered why someone hasn't integrated griefer penalties into the game world (or maybe they have, I don't know). Instead of noob areas or "combat dampening fields" or other weirdly artificial solutions, how about a police force that will come after you if you start knocking off other players for thrills? Or maybe killing other humans carries a karma penalty that brings bad luck or something. The specifics would depend on the game world itself, but I'd like to see someone try to account for bad

      • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by b0r0din ( 304712 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @11:07AM (#8475739)
        I think the biggest problems with MMORPGs have always been their size. They are games trying to appeal on a massive scale, 1000+ people on a server at any time, 10-20 servers, with not enough people to support all the griefing, not a way to deal with newbies on a day to day basis, no way to advance anything interesting. Permadeath seems the least of the problems.

        On the MUD I played, we had a pretty simple rule. Sure, it doesn't correspond with reality, but it was interesting nonetheless. We had alignments and reputation. If you killed too many humans, you can't go into the human city. If your alignment was evil, you couldn't go into the bastion of light city. If you were chaotic evil, you could kill anyone anywhere, but you could only take 10 deaths before you perma died. Anyone could go into special 'player killer areas,' where you could kill or be killed by anyone. This created a dark vs light sort of story, but people would incorporate their religion and alignments into play and actually roleplay. CE characters were few and far between, but they existed and were interesting to see people play. This is something I rarely saw on most MUDs, the integration of roleplay which i found to be the most interesting part.

        Neverwinter nights is a starting point, but when are we going to see more games that allow creative people to build the games and police them themselves? When are the 'Gods' (Implementors) of the game going to play an active role, coming down and saying, 'You're exploiting a bug, stop' or 'welcome to my world. I am Lothar of the Hill People.'

        Making money is very simple. You sell clients and servers. Servers are more expensive. You sell server space on one of your large mainframes. A server will support, say, 200 people tops before you'd need an upgrade. Mostly you don't care though, you get people to go to your server in groups of 30-50. These people interact with each other much more and the community is more interesting. The people who have the servers and the space pay a monthly fee, which they can then change and charge back to others if they wish. They make their own rules regarding the selling of items, etc.

        Maybe it's difficult to program for one, but you'd find that a lot of open source and other programmers would latch on to this model and the worlds would get more interesting. If you own a client, you can go to Hell World one day and Happy Fun Rabbit Land the next. Maybe you'd charge them a monthly fee to allow access to all worlds, maybe not. Probably you'd make enough money off of selling server space and upgrades/server packs.

        But instead, we have all these same retread MMORPGs which change like two things in their environment to distinguish themselves from the other dumb fantasy MMORPG. Which is too bad, really. I don't want to play an MMORPG because I rarely feel like I'm part of a tightly-knit community. I don't feel I can roleplay because everyone else is 'lol' and talking about their dog jumping on their keyboard. So I end up just bored.

        • We had alignments and reputation. If you killed too many humans, you can't go into the human city. If your alignment was evil, you couldn't go into the bastion of light city.

          Yep, Everquest has this. I suspect all the MMORPGs have this. And in fairly complex fashion... not everyone in the same city is necessarily on the same faction, so you may need to be careful even once you are in a city.

          Mostly you don't care though, you get people to go to your server in groups of 30-50.

          So lets say you get you

      • You've literally spent 2 hours with nothing to show for your character.
        Hopefully, you had two hours of fun to show for the monthly subscription you're paying. If you weren't having fun during those 2 hours, why were you doing it?
      • ...are two separate (though related) problems.

        If you take away PD, you still have the griefer problem. If you solve the griefer-harrassing-newbie problem, difficulties still remain with PD. Doing one to "solve" the other is Just Plain Bad Game Design.

        The best discussion of this issue is still "Designing Virtual Worlds" in which Richard Bartle discusses all the issue quite thoroughly. He does not come up with a definitive answer, although he does suggest the MMORPG industry's consensus against PD is premat
      • permanent death may sound like a great idea, until the griefers start coming after the newbies.

        At which point griefers get a bounty placed on their head equal to some constant times the difference between their level and the level of the player they killed.

        Couple this with a "non-disappearance" type of game, where if you log off your character lays down and goes to sleep.. (hope you did so in a safe hotel.. which of course would not be open to known killers), and all a griefer is doing is setting themsel

        • At which point griefers get a bounty placed on their head equal to some constant times the difference between their level and the level of the player they killed.

          So the griefer keeps a high level "innocent" character around to powerlevel his "griefer" char up when he gets killed. In Everquest right now it's not a big deal to get to level 20 in a couple of hours with the right gear and the right help.

          Or the griefers get together to defend each other.

          I don't think you are going to find any simple soluti

          • Or an even simpler way around it... instead of having a high level character kill newbies, just equip a lowbie with nice gear and use that char. Unless you put a VERY restrictive level limit on gear, there's no way to prevent this, and that easily gets around any level difference based bounties.
            • This is only a problem if your game is not player-skill based.

              And if your game isn't skill based, you're basically in a glorified chat-room anyway.
              • Hmmmm... so you are saying that maybe the newbie to the game has better skills than the griefer who is trying to kill him?? I'm having a little trouble following the logic here.
    • That's what a first person shooter like Quake III is for. Almost the whole point of the RPGs is to gain items and build up your character over time.
      • Almost the whole point of the RPGs is to gain items and build up your character over time.


        Whoa, easy with the generalizations there. What you're talking about is generally known as "Hack & slash" RPGs. Actual role playing games aren't like that at all, most of the time.
    • Maybe if you were allowed a certain number of deaths, instead of just one, and after you ran through your allotted 10 deaths (or whatever) you were then officially dead. This might be a way to give the newbies a chance, not punishing them too severely, but making it fair by not promoting totally reckless behavior.
    • Interesting? Yes. Fun? No.

      Firstly, as nobody would ever want to die, you would find people at level 20 still wacking away at the rats to get that 1 xp, so that by the time they progress to tougher mobs it is just as easy... Part of the fun in an MMO is getting yourself into a situation a little bit tougher than you can handle and hoping for the best :-)

      Secondly, what happens the first time your net connection drops? Or you get a power outage? Or your wife/girlfriend/kids/parents demand your attention imme

  • collapsing and waking up.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:28AM (#8474245) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only one who is having hard time seeing what's the difference between this and just losing your head and spawning up at a safer place?

    It's just a matter of few words on the status line(you die/you collapse), seriously, whats the difference? hyping up you to get into it?

    playing a troll would really suck though, especially after getting stoned...

    though maybe those wussies should just play more nethack instead. that would teach them that a mere @ sign gets much more meaningful if you can't get it back when you die.
    • The biggest difference I would see is that you get no free trip to a safe location.
      The problem I see with this is that if you wander into a really dangerous location you will constantly dieing(err sleeping) as you attempt to get back to a safer area, talk about fustrating.
      I still think Turbine had the best system of any MMORPG with AC1. Thier when you died you lost a few of the highest cost items(number based on level) in your corpse, theses were filled in with "death items" basicly high cost items of no
      • huh?

        "will collapse into unconsciousness and wake up in a safe place." in my head means that there is a free trip to a spawning place(that the place where you lose consciousness and the place where you wake up are a different place).

      • Re:collapsing and waking up.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @11:40AM (#8476157)
        'theses'?
        'thoses'?

        Wow, I didn't know that Jar-Jar had a Slashdot account!
      • So the whole point of the AC1 death system was the make you afraid of death with the possibility of losing your expensive items.

        The whole "death item" thing was a work-around that basically broke the system. I remember when my char was too poor to have death items and having to make corpse runs in the Obsidian Hills(I think that is what it was called).

        Having to sneak past all those Tuskers and Virindi half-naked made you afraid of dying!

        -prator

    • Re:collapsing and waking up.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @10:06AM (#8475063) Homepage Journal
      Am I the only one who is having hard time seeing what's the difference between this and just losing your head and spawning up at a safer place?

      Well it would be pretty interesting to be able to spot people who died all the time (they're the ones RUNNING AROUND WITHOUT A HEAD.)

      Although one thing I thought would be cool would be sort of a karmic reincarnation scenario--where you come back as a better or worse character depending on how bad you've been, what you've done, etc.

      playing a troll would really suck though, especially after getting stoned...

      Yeah that's the idea--if you've been pkilling too much, you come back as a troll.

      Or if you didn't have a head anymore, you'd have to go to a head shop (ba-dump) to buy a new one.

      though maybe those wussies should just play more nethack instead. that would teach them that a mere @ sign gets much more meaningful if you can't get it back when you die.

      Good call, same with Angband & friends. But to be honest, I never really minded dying in those for more than 5 minutes, because (a) they were free and (b) I could play them any old time on my laptop.

  • Um . . . Death? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smothra ( 725684 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:40AM (#8474318)
    The fact that everyone is essentially immortal has always bugged me about online games too. Yes it would be a bummer to lose all of your hard earned skills and baubles, but the absence of perma-death sure ruins the already tired stories these games have. If everyone in Dereth/Velious/Rubi-Ka/etceteraland can come back from the dead, the concern about being overrun by the bad guys seems, well, less than concerning.

    And by the way, Middle Earth Online developers:
    What is the difference (in MMOG terms) between "death" and "collaps(ing) into unconsciousness and wak(ing) up in a safe place"?

    • Re:Um . . . Death? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Monofilament ( 512421 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @09:07AM (#8474492) Homepage Journal
      Would you play these games if they had Perma - Death? .. my guess is not.

      So for people who do in fact like leveling up characters in pokemon/tomigatchi sorta pet ways and take pride in the accomplishments... we kinda like the fact that bad luck won't ruin everything we've worked countless hours on.

      There is way too much in these games to say death is permanent. If it was permanent .. they'd have to make the games so easy .. that it would suck ass. The whole point of being able to die and come back is so that you can learn from the specific encounter you died at, and figure otu how to do it better.

      There is a certain amount of pride in not dieing a lot. I know in DAOC they have a running talley of PvP deaths.. So people see that. It really is all about pride in ownership/imaginary accomplishments.

      • Re:Um . . . Death? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by smothra ( 725684 )
        Would you play these games if they had Perma - Death? .. my guess is not.

        Depends on how it was done, I suppose. If death was permanent and common then it probably wouldn't be much fun. But if death was a very unusual outcome, then I'd probably play because I would expect the developer had found something more interesting for players to do than mash on the keyboard and kill hordes of imaginary Tolkien knock-offs.

        If it was permanent .. they'd have to make the games so easy .. that it would suck ass
        • welcome to your opinion.. I was just pointing out why perma-death is kinda foolish idea for the target audience these games are trying to appeal to.

          I kinda don't like the foolish risk idea. My example of DAOC .. is you loose in game gold when you die. It gets expensive if you die too much .. many times taking away the money you made from fighting if you made any at all. Thats a pretty good penalty for not dieing.

          However .. the allure of some of these games for large Epic encounters is working as a team
        • "Depends on how it was done, I suppose. If death was permanent and common then it probably wouldn't be much fun. But if death was a very unusual outcome, then I'd probably play because I would expect the developer had found something more interesting for players to do than mash on the keyboard and kill hordes of imaginary Tolkien knock-offs."

          I agree that would be the ideal situation, however, if death was permanent but uncommon, it would not be all that dissimilar to having non-permanent death.

          IE: It's ra

      • Re:Um . . . Death? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by wgnorm ( 163220 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @11:51AM (#8476271)
        I've already hyped the great features in Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com] elsewhere here, but I'll do so again, because it has clever solutions to so many of these issues.

        In Puzzle Pirates, there is no death to speak of, but the closest you can come is having your ship sunk. This is a fairly rare occurence, since it requires that your flag be declared "at war" with the other ship's flag - a consensual act voted on by the leaders of both parties. Most of the time battles result in simply boarding the losing ship and pillaging their goods and money.

        Although losing an expensive ship is a pretty big negative, the other penalty of having a ship sunk from under you is actually one that is desired by players. When your ship is sunk, the whole crew washes up on the shore of the island they set out from. Although the characters experience no actual injury or harm, on very rare occasions some characters will have a resulting eyepatch, pegleg or a hook from injuries experienced in the sinking.

        This is the only way to acquire these desirable marks of distinction, and this makes getting sunk - and warfare in general - a double-edged sword, and something that players both desire and fear at the same time. As yet I don't believe there is anyone in the game world who has any of these physical attributes. This is probably because there have so far been very few declared wars. A pending update will introduce colonization of islands, which will require warfare, so there should soon be a number of pirates walking the docks with peglegs and hooks...
      • > Would you play these games if they had Perma - Death? .. my guess is not.

        Most certainly I would. You probably weren't addressing me specifically, but let's look at the MUD I played most with permadeath: Gemstone III.

        In GS3, you had Deeds to your soul. If you died, you lost a Deed. At that point, you're a corpse laying on the ground. If you're resurrected, you're just out the Deed. If you decay (a corpse has a 20min timer or whatever), you lose another Deed and respawn at your home temple. If y
        • what you describe isn't quite the idea of perma death i was referring too.

          I think conditional perma death is a good idea.. In fact i like the way the GS3 handled it. (i never played it myself ... but from what you say. the idea intrigues me).

          Though something to be taken into account .. is the massivity of current MMORPG's... the amounts of people involved in epic encounters... as well the sheer hours of gameplay.. involved in getting characters to high high levels .. and even then there's more to do. I
    • If the quasi immortality thing is an irritant, then might I suggest you try this one [gamespot.com] out? I have been playing it for a while now. It can be pretty though at times, with occasional treadmilling, but so far I havn't died once.

    • Re:Um . . . Death? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Enfors ( 519147 )
      What is the difference (in MMOG terms) between "death" and "collaps(ing) into unconsciousness and wak(ing) up in a safe place"?


      For a game mechanics standpoint, there is no difference. But from the roleplaying standpoint, there is. In Lord of the Rings, people couldn't be resurrected. If they could in the game, people would complain. This solution is easier to accept, from a roleplaying standpoint.
    • Which is why the first time you die in any FPS game it sends you back to the start huh?

      And why when Mario falls down a hole, he has to begin over from the first level?

      Or why when PacMan gets hit by that first ghost, game over for good?

      Of course not! All games for the last decade or longer (and most before that) have accepted that players make mistakes and die, and saying it will "ruin the story" if you let them continue is missing the fact that it will "ruin the fun" if you don't...

      If you really want to
      • Well, I'm not looking for the same thing in an RPG that I am from Doom or Super Mario World.

        I never said that the absence of death will ruin the story. What I said was making everyone in the world of Dereth (or wherever) immortal puts a lie to the premise that the world is in danger. It takes me out of the story, and that, IMHO, is a shame.

        If you really want to pretend that the story is consistent, do what the new Prince of Persia game does when you die and have the Prince say "No, that isn't how it

  • UO has a pretty good 'death penalty' (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MacBrave ( 247640 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:52AM (#8474373) Journal
    Sorry for the pun. When I played Ultima Online back in 97-00 when you died some of your stats and skills you worked hard to improved were reduced. Get killed too often in a short period of times and you pretty much went back to a 'newbie' in terms of skills and stats.

    Of more concern was that fact that the items you carried did not 'respawn' with you. They were frequently looted and you had to buy/acquire new equipment.

    This was several years ago however, so the rules may have changed.
    • I'm not sure about the new rules, but I generally like the old (pre-Age of Shadows) rules that a lot of the free public UO servers are using - you die, your items can be looted, you lose some stats, nothing too harsh, but still frustrating enough to not want to die too often.

      What I /do/ like, and other systems should implement is that UO has areas that are obviously meant for stronger players, but also areas where there's simply no player-killing, so that newbies and everybody else for that matter, can go
    • Umm,

      You almost got it right. If you chose to come back to life instantly where you had just died, (in order to hopefully retreave your items) then you lost a fairly large chunk of your skills.

      But, if you chose to stay a ghost and go into town to be resurected by a cleric, or by a friend then you incurred no penalty what so ever other than the loss of your items, which if you do things quickly enough you could still manage to get back to and recover.

      btw, I played UO non stop for 4 years so yes I know w

  • bleh (Score:4, Funny)

    by Deleted ( 301806 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @08:52AM (#8474375) Journal
    And instead of using swords in this game, why will use "Long sharp pieces of steel"

    Also, they don't like the idea of guns. So they're going to use "lead that flies at opponent extremely quickly" .. i "wake up" in a cloning facility nightly in SWG...

  • SWG and evolving death (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kherr ( 602366 ) <kevin&puppethead,com> on Friday March 05, 2004 @09:11AM (#8474515) Homepage
    In Star Wars Galaxies when you die, you get cloned back into a cloning center somewhere in a city. If you store your clone data you can choose which city to clone to. If you do not store your clone data you end up in the nearest cloning center but you wake up with massive wounds, which you heal by sitting in a medical center and hanging out in a cantina (must do both). That can easily be a 15-30 minute penalty.

    When SWG originally launched, you had to do the classic "naked run" out to your body to retrieve your items. Or you could give consent to someone to get them for you. There were bugs with bodies disappearing, so SWG was changed to eliminate the need to run out. When you were cloned, you had all your items.

    The latest incarnation of SWG has you keeping your items when you clone, but they decay. Die enough and your items become useless. You can avoid the decay by buying insurance on your items beforehand.

    During the period of no penalty to death, player-player combat was rampant. It really changed the experience. Kind of fun to do some dueling, but the cities became all dueling, all the time. The day item decay was introduced dueling virtually disappeared. The gaming experience is much more in line with the Star Wars experience now.
    • There were bugs with bodies disappearing

      Is that like the Brendelfly guy from "The Fly" remake with a transporter device?
    • Although now they've got back to no penalty. In a recent patch, there is no decay when you die from a PvP related event. So when there's a large Raid or Battle, everyone just clones nearby (to prevent the wounds), and zerg's the battlefield. It's entertaining, but not terribly realistic. But it is a game afterall.

  • Death as part of the game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05, 2004 @09:17AM (#8474577)
    Designers need to get out of their heads that death in a MMORPG or MUD is merely an inconvenience. Like anything else in the game world, it should have a function. In ME online, that function is merely to take the 'dead' character away from the action for a while.

    In EQ, death is a pain in the butt not only because it takes you out of the action and sucks your XP, it creates a whole new aspect to the game-- the corpse retrieval. In hardcore MUDs that have this (with NO rezzes), this creates panic as ALL the loot you have could be down in lvl 50 of the mines or wherever. Yeah it can suck but its a great way to have drama.

    Same with perma-death. I like the idea of 10 lives, and once you lose the last one you have to 're-roll' to a less powerful char of say 1/2 your xp. The game changes from death 1 to 10 as you go from relatively brave to a coward.

    I could also say the same about pvp looting. Nothing like getting ambushed and looted in a dungeon and then grabbing your buds and hunting down the poor SOB mercilessly as they try to exit the place.

    Most new games that you pay $15 bucks a month for feel that such a penalty outweighs the 'investment' us suckers make. But I do think that the games are much, much less interesting as a result.
    • I agree with you 100%, half the fun of PvP is epic 12 on 12 battles where the winner takes home the loot. You have to put your balls on the line, and some people show their true feathers in these situations (ie they log off or use a trash character as opposed to the one with real gear).
    • I hate to pander to any particular MMORPG, but in World of Warcraft, Death is an experience in itself.

      The designers decided to add a "Ghost Mode" to the game so where, yeah, you had to get your corpse, but you were a ghost, and you can talk to ghost NPCs and stuff. Mobs can hurt you until you get back to your body.

      I personally think this is a good idea, or at least something that enriches the experience.

      There's a penalty, but you'll enjoy it.

  • Death in A Tale in the Desert (Score:5, Informative)

    by Teppy ( 105859 ) * on Friday March 05, 2004 @10:09AM (#8475101) Homepage
    Ironically, the game without combat has permanent death. The only way to get yourself killed right now is through addiction to drug called "Speed of the Serpent."

    Here's how it works: When you're not playing the game, you accumulate "offline travel time" which allows you to instantly warp places. It's as if your character had been running the whole time you were offline. This offline time is very precious, and short of logging off, the only way to get more is to ingest Speed of the Serpent.

    A single dose is the equivalent of being offline for 24 hours. The only catch is that you must then drink a shot of cabbage juice at least once every 30 RL days. If you ever fail to do this (including forgetting to log in), you die. Game over, we won't bill your credit card any more :)

    You can drink a 2nd shot of Speed of the Serpent a day later for an additional 24 hours of travel time, but then you'll have to drink cabbage juice every 29 days.

    So far there have been 8 deaths.
  • I think MMORPG's should adopt the standard MUD design where you die with minimal stat impact (maybe some XP loss) but come back naked. Having to run back into a nasty area to retreive stuff from your corpse was the single biggest reason why everyone played carefully and tried not to die. Contrast this with the PS2 Everquest game. No one cares the least little bit about dying. The XP debt is too small to be significant and after you can coach everywhere the walking time back to the area isn't significant eit

  • Why SHOULD there be a huge death penalty? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DarkFencer ( 260473 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @12:24PM (#8476611)
    The consensus (of the higher modded posts so far) seems that death penalties in games should be considerably higher. Maybe some games will exist for these 'hardcore' people.

    I am not one of them. I want to have fun in a game. I don't want it to be more then an inconvenience.

    In Dark Age of Camelot, it was best IMHO. You died in PvE, you lost some experience (but could never de-level), and had to pay to have some constitution points restored. This cost went up as you went up in level. Also, if you went back to your death site you could 'pray' at your grave to get back half of your lost experience.

    I don't want to lose items I worked hard for. I don't want to de-level. I don't want to go on a run for my corpse. I CERTAINLY do not want to die and have the servers to an rm on my character.

    These games should be about fun, plain and simple. An inconvenience is needed, perhaps, but nothing more. There is a very small percentage of gamers that want perma death. For those that do, spend some time playing on a full on PvP server like Darktide in AC, or Mordred in DAoC. Most of those then would change their minds.
    • I'm curious - do you have a feeling of trying to be competitive when you play? One of the hardest things to get right in an online game is the enormous difference in time between the hardcore and casual players. Every designer would like to create a world where casual players can have just as important a role as hardcore.

      There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to make games more player-skill based, instead of character-skill based. This can be frustrating for people with lots of time but not much
    • A third solution is to try to tweek the game rules so that advancement requires exponentially more time at higher levels. Say you need 1M experience to get from level 50->51, and 10M to get from 51->52, and 100M to get from 52->53, etc. Of course this is just a way to pretend there's not much difference between a L50 and a L53 player - it won't be long before everyone catches on that a L53 character is far "better" than a L50 character. This could be fun for casual players, but sends a terrible mes
  • Way back when, I used to play a MUD [armageddon.org] that had a permadeath system (One life - you die, you restart). By far, I had more fun on that MUD than any other. Sure, it sucked losing your character of 100 hours, but dang the gameplay was awesome - exploring meant something, the adrenaline rushes were great, and the players treated the game with far more respect. I would join a permadeath MMORPG in a heartbeat.

    Regarding griefers, I never experienced that problem on the permadeath mud. Players that caused proble

    • I think they need to break it into two distinct parts. The complaint about permadeath is loss of all your stats and items, which translates to loss of time and money in RL. The complaint about immortality is that you get a game that's pure level grind with no risks.

      SWG has made players immortal but with penalties to items. Many games have in-game monitary penalties. I think it should be the other way around. Something like a family line or the like should be in place. The individual can suffer permad

  • A neverending question (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jaeph ( 710098 )
    I don't think this issue will ever be fully resolved. Many mmorpgers can be split into two categories: puzzle-solvers and competitors. Obviously, some have aspects of both and others are more interested in other areas, but the two categories are reasonable as a rule.

    Now, your problem is that the puzzle-solvers can't tolerate being forced to redo something they've already solved. They want to hold-onto their accomplishments.

    The competitors, otoh, aren't worried about that and can deal with resets, lost i
    • Actually it's more like cleavland winning 50 games in a row, then loses one game, which resets their season record to 0-0-0 again.
      • Actually it's more like cleavland winning 50 games in a row, then loses one game, which resets their season record to 0-0-0 again.

        Cleveland's record doesn't affect how they play any one game; it's simply an indicator of how well they play. In MMORPGs, your level affects your next fight, and that's a major difference.

        But again, you just prove my point. You're more interested in preserving your accomplishments (record), while others are more interested in a fair game each time even if they lose each time
        • I think I only disagreed with your analagy. I doubt anyone would read this by now anyways but for what its worth...

          In a pve game, where players aren't directly killing one another and competing, I wouldn't like to pay for a game where I monontonsly beat on monsters for 200 hours to get to level 50, then because I had to go get a soda or had to go to the bathroom or someone called me mid fight, lose it all. That's not the right solution for a game like that. In that case yes, I want to preserve my accomplis
  • You will blink for about 10-15 times during which you will be immortal...
  • I play on a MUD called arctic and the system is really pretty simple yet effective. First off, the maximum amount of any sort of equipment is limited so there are not endless drops as in something such as everquest. Second, the guards are quite powerful in cities and there is a wanted board system. Should you continually attack someone who is a great deal lower than yourself you will get on the wanted board and be hunted by NPC Guards. Finally, when you die your corpse is left where you died and you los
    • I played on Arctic from 96-99. The Shriners were the games death method then. After they left there was an uneasy peace between players (and occasional pkill) that no other game I've played matched. Good times.
      • Other clans have come and gone since those days, I've played on and off since about 97. The game is a lot different these days, larger world ... smaller player base. It's sorta become elitest but such is life, the days of the Grand Poohbahs of the Tarsis Shriners are long gone. No longer are you charged to drink from the tarsis fountain nor killed because you did not bow to one of them. Ahh fun times :)
  • How about auto-creating "unknown" zones, where one is dropped should one die, or for that matter, when one is punished for whatever reason. It doesn't stop the game... But whoever is affected loses the opportunities of wherever they were... And might face some kind of risk/danger on landing? Or perhaps a sphinx with some questions to answer or else you die?

  • I like this idea but.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05, 2004 @01:53PM (#8477594)
    Instead of waking up in a Safe Place why not have you wake up inprisoned by things you were fighting. Then you have to fight your way out of there.
    This could even force people to group in order to get out of the prison.

    Equipment you ask? Make it so you have to find some weapons to get out of the prison but once you exit it you get all your old stuff back.

    Of course MMORPG's are going to suck until someone comes up with a true dynamic world, creatures, weather, cities, all of it. No more "lets go to orc camp 5 to hunt" now you have to find the orc camp. Wouldn't it be nice to stay away from one area for a long time and then come back and the city that was there is no longer there, just some ruins.

  • A fond memory.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin@gmail . c om> on Friday March 05, 2004 @03:17PM (#8478493) Homepage Journal
    Off topic if you like, but it did remind me of something...

    Eons ago when I had a compuserve account and the world was text over a 300baud modem I would dial in to play a networked hack-like game that I wanna say was called Island of Kesmai. There were actually a bunch of similar games over the years and I'm not sure if that is the one I'm thinking of.

    Anyway, you start out in this village and wander around looking at the different text characters roam about with you. This dog, represented by a . or something like that, starts bugging me. I'm bored, unable to figure out what the point of the game is, so I shoot the dog. Suddenly the sheriff kills me dead with a single arrow.

    But wait...the game doesn't stop. I stare in fascination as a symbol comes over to my body. "Holy cow," I think, "They're going to rob my corpse." Then my symbol starts moving across the screen with this other one.

    The two symbols walk across town into what I'm told is a church, and presto, I'm alive again, the other player having paid to get me resurrected.

    "Yeah," he says, "Don't shoot the dog. The sheriff hates that."

  • -1, Redundant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday March 05, 2004 @03:25PM (#8478579) Journal
    If the 'death penalty' in the game is too severe... you may stop playing the game and, even worse, stop paying the monthly subscription fee for it.

    Well, I certainly hope you stop paying the fee for it when you stop playing it.

    Rob
    • PFah.. for the gaming company, their fondest wish is that you don't play, but continue to pay so that you have the privelege of playing whenever you get around to it.

      After all, if they can get money simply for giving you the idea that you might use their service.. that's awesome.

      Kind of like how the insurance agency works.. but their payouts are soemtimes better.

  • Perma-Death would cut down on griefing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Friday March 05, 2004 @04:38PM (#8479367) Journal
    Anyone should be able to PvP anytime, anywhere. The penalty for dying should be perma-death + loss of whatever items you have but you come back as your characters son/daughter who has rights to anything they had in the bank/storage.

    A person should not be able to look at someones profile and see what level they are. This will actually make PvP a risk. Why? Say you have 2 level 15 griefers. Lets also say that New players spawn with a basic outfit and backpack. Sure they could just go around attacking people with the basic outfit, but if there are no safe zones they wouldn't have a good place to camp. On top of that, what is to stop a level 50 wizard from throwing on some newb garb and ganking the griefers?

    If a gaming company wants to take advantage of an untapped market, they should make a PvP with no rules. I'm looking foward to darkfall [darkfallonline.com] which will allow a bit more freedom.

    MMO's strike me now as games that have little risk for dying, and it takes forever to get any rewards (ie they are timesinks) not to much fun to me, seems more like a chat room than a game. Obviously, there is a market for these games, but there is also a market for people who want freedom, and all the risk that comes with it.
  • So far the only game I've seen get death right is an old but still popular mud called Dragonrealms. There were clerics who could raise dead. When you died, usually the monster knocked you unconscious, but if it could think, it might kill you, or you might bleed to death. There were empaths who could heal you, but in order to be brought back to life you needed a high enough level cleric. You also had to do a quest several times to get 'deeds' which were used up while being rezzed, and if you didn't have
  • I think a better idea for death in a MMPORPG should be quite different:

    Instead of creating, for example, a single character.. you create a Family, with a surname. The point would be to increase your Family's fame. Each character you create has the same surname, and owns a holding. Perhaps you begin with a hovel, and can make your way up to a wizard's tower or a keep. People will say, "Oh, that's owned by the Higraf family," not "Oh, that's owned by rEdK1ller."

    Certain things, like wealth would be transferr

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