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Alternative to death penalties
Arclan
Member UncommonPosts: 1,550
Since humans respond better to positive reinforcement, please consider the following.
Create a new stat. Call it "synergy." Over time, this goes up as a player generates aggro (by healing, CC, dps, taunt). At certain thresholds, the player's power increases or perhaps gets special finishing moves or whatnot. Death or logging off resets the value to zero.
Ok cool, that's on an individual basis.
Now, for groups, add a new stat called "group synergy." This will be the sum of all group member's synergies. And higher group synergy brings with it significan benefits.
Now we have a pretty powerful incentive to avoid death of ourselves and group mates; while at the same time not burdening people with xp loss or xp debt.
/edit. You know, the benefits could be as simple as xp bonuses.
/edit. Re death penalties. They don't really exist in today's MMOs. I personally miss them but would welcome the alternative mentioned above.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Comments
So you have a five minute debuff that makes you only 95% as effective as normal?
Tell me more about how harsh dying is.
Sounds like a good idea on face value, even sounds good to me..
But here's what would happen.
LFtank: synergy must be at 50%+
great so now we have to grind/do quest for 20 minutes before we can join a party.
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Mmmm, it is a good start but could use some improvement. If the objective is to provide an incentive for players to keep their party members alive (and by association, to make them feel good about keeping their party members alive), then you can do this a lot more directly by just applying a death penalty (xp debt or whatever) to the whole group when someone dies. No need to make up a new synergy system.
But then the first obvious question is "What if someone in my group dies and it's not my fault? Why should I get punished?" This question is relevant whether we use your system or mine, but it stands out more in my system because the penalty is applied so directly. When you think about it, this is just a reversal of a common gripe (from tanks, mostly) about traditional death penalties: "What if I die and it's the fault of someone in my group? Why should I get punished?" Before trying to tackle any of these questions, you want to figure out what purpose parties serve in your game. How do you want party members to feel about each other in terms of their shared responsibilities and rewards? Is that feeling different for pickup groups compared to groups of guildmates? You've got to give these things some thought before you come up with a new system.
It's also worth thinking about how you want people to think about death. Sacrificing yourself to save the party is a pretty noble thing to do. Should it be punished? To tell you the truth, even though the game as a whole doesn't appeal to me, I like what GW2 did with death. When you "die", you're just knocked down. You become a liability to the party because now you can't really contribute much to the combat and someone needs to stop performing their role if they want to get you back on your feet mid-combat. This allows players to die strategically, as in "I got downed, and it was the right thing to do so we could win the fight" or "I let this party member get downed, and it was the right thing to do so we could win the fight." Having players die and feel good about it (while still feeling bad when they're actually defeated) is a difficult thing to pull off.
Been a bit since I've played, but doesn't GW have something similar to this with the morale system?
After multiple wipes, group performance dwindles, eventually making it difficult to continue. Killing bosses and other things (?) reduces the penalty and can provide bonus.
Rather than tweak existing death penalties or living bonuses, I'd prefer to see large systems designed around it.
For example, a system where if your character dies that character is no longer playable. Your new character would be the offspring of the first, and would get certain things handed down such as the family (player) housing, and a large portion of the money. Perhaps some skill or stat bonuses would carry down as well. This could allow over time a record of your characters and their achievements, allow specialization (I come from a long line of swordsman/blacksmiths/farmers), or allow changing ones profession without something silly like paying gold to respec talents. After many generations of your characters, your new characters would be a bit better off. Instead of starting over, it'd be starting better than before.
Tons of opportunity with such a system for not only specializing your character, but also roleplaying, incentives to not die but also encourage playing afterwards.
Or you know, people could just get an XP buff for all those inn deliveries they made.
i want a zombie apoc survivor sandbox mmo where if you die, you die... and your character becomes an NPC with x4 the stats you had when you died.
meanwhile your new character gets 1/4th the skills and stats you had when you died as starting stats.
I think a death penalty where you are cursed for a set duration similar to resurrection sickness would be preferable. The penalty could vary depending on what mob actually killed you or what area you died in, or both. If you had a system setup where each class had abilities that greatly benefited people of other classes, you could have the removal of this penalty be something a Necromancer or Cleric has. Such as system would be far better than simply having armor damage and going to a merchant to repair it.
You can get the best gear in DayZ in a couple of hours, or in ten minutes if you are lucky.
A simple and elegant solution. I like it. It's actually the approach pinball machines used to use.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
That is a WEAK death penalty, then again its all about opinion. I personally am playing Diablo 3 on hardcore right now, lost 2 characters, my third and a monk and I am doing much better now.
I am niche, I want the old school version, dropping everything, exp loss. I want my adrenalin to shoot up with my character is suffering a beat down, just like it does in D3 now my character has so much invested into it.
HOWEVER I do understand that some people respond badly to an adrenalin respose, not a mark on their character just a bodies reaction. But there are LOTS of games out there that offer up tame death penalities, play those instead!
One of the things I really liked about Eve's mechanics is that although your character was immortal (give or take forgetting to update your clone), the ship you choose to fly in was subject to permadeath. It made every expedition involve a little risk-reward decision.
(I realize that's still a death penalty, but it's one where the player has a lot of control over how large or small the penalty will be before setting out)
Other games have this. It's called death penalty. The only difference is between those who die.
In your plan:
So those who die less get a better writ on life? How about those that afk a bunch, so they also get that same luxory (of decreased death ramifications)?
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
If it hasn't spawned on the server then you're shit out of luck. I play Dayz+ though, finding high end stuff is so hard, haven't found much for a month now lol.
So many great posts; can't quote them all but thanks for your time and thoughts! Chiming in to say that I like death penalties. They don't exist in most games today.
Eve's death penalty was simply too much. Either spend half your money on insurance for your ship(s) or risk losing everything upon death.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit