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Death? What's that? (How many times do you expect to die?)
Daranar
Member UncommonPosts: 392
I don't understand the new-age MMO player. People get so mad if they die, in a world where death no longer has penalties, people still get pissed if they die.
I was playing one of the easiest MMOs on the market, Neverwinter Online, and a cleric dies on a boss fight. We killed the boss just fine, after our only healer abandons us midway through the fight saying she is tired of getting beat up by him. Sure, a tank could hold aggro better (even though aggro control is wacky in NWO) and perhaps other measures could have been taken by other players, not to mention the cleric, to avoid death. But when has it become ok to quit after 1 death? I am finding it seems to be a growing trend more commonly seen in f2p games, but surely not limited to them.
I am not here to say how "hardcore" I am, because i'm not and this would by no means make me "hardcore". What this does make me, as one whom accepts death in an adventure, is a rational video game player. If I go through and take on 50ft demons time and again, surely it seems fit I die my share of times. With death no longer penalized in the new-age of MMOs why are people so upset? Is it wasting their time? If your time is so precious, stop playing a video game..... 
This I know just goes into a common trend around the MMO world of "player entitlement". But expecting to never die and if by some off chance you do, killing a 100ft dragon, not be penalized is down right silly and pathetic. At some point a game seriously becomes pointless if you believe you should never die slaying dragons and demons... Here's to hoping EQ Next challenges us players, making us use teamwork, tactics and caution to have a fun adventure across magical lands with (you guessed it) danger lurking around every corner!
As a poll and to generate comments, because I am curious to see overall what people think of death and the wild and interesting justifications of never wanting to die, I will ask this:
If I want a world in which people can purchase success and power with cash, I'll play Real Life. Keep Virtual Worlds Virtual!
Comments
Doesnt that highly depend upon the circumstances ?
One death if you're maxlevel and cant lose level and the fight is really tough and maybe it was even your own fault that you died
is a LOT different issue than
one death when you're about to maxlevel and this will turn you back to hours of more farming mobs for the xp lost and it was a pickup group and everyone but yourself screwed up.
Also, of cours death should have appropiate penalties. How harsh really depends upon what game it is and what kind of challenge level you are going for.
I don't expect to die much because MMOs are not that hard. Harsh death penalty or no. Then again, there are many situations where death is unavoidable e.g. incompetent team-mates.
Harsh death penalties do not add to challenge. Challenge is something that happens before death may or may not occur. Death is just an end result. To die, is to fail. Harsh death penalty is just further rubbing it in.
Whatever penalties you impose, players don't like to fail. And when failure is punishment enough, recuperating becomes a major inconvenience - a nuisance.
Me? I see harsh death penalty as a cheap thrill. Just like how horror movies have cheap scare moments when they fail to build up any real tension. Now, some movies use them well, just like some games use death penalties well, but in general, harsh death penalties are feeble attempts to make the game "better" for some people. It doesn't work on everyone.
Oh, and posters who use the term "player entitlement" usually feel entitled themselves.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
If I die because of lag it is upsetting, otherwise it just tells me that I need to play better (and possibly upgrade my gear).
Computer games are already far too easy and MMOs difficulty have gone down a lot the last few years.
Then again, sometimes you can get into a really inept PUG. If they are nice fellows I usually stay around a long while helping them with tactics, advice and sometimes gear but if they are whiners I will give up after a while. It is rare that I quit a group anyways but it have happened. Worst are when people are rascist or acting really bad towards a female player (a dwarf saying rascists things about elves is fine though, it is real world stuff that #¤%& me off).
My highest character in NWO is level 50 something. I have multiple alts at various levels. I haven't died yet on one character. It's already making the game seem stale to me. I know it gets more challenging at higher levels, but the only fight that has been tough was the mad dragon. That was more of a grind it out, long fight than actually challenging. I think people get upset because they are not used to death in this game and even the minor penalty NWO has can be frustrating if you're not used to experiencing it yet.
The game has very different agro mechanics. Healers pull more threat than the tanks without even trying. I have been tanking in this game with some friends on vent and, once you understand how to do these fights, it's almost trivial. What we have done is had the tank on the big boss, and everyone else sits on the cleric. The cleric is going to pull agro from the many adds that most boss fights spawn. The DPS peel them off the cleric, kill them and add some damage to the boss when they can. It makes fights a little longer, but also, very easy.
The problem, I think, is when a cleric gets a pug and all the adds run to the cleric during a boss fight and the dps just stay tunneled into the boss. Clerics are going to die and it's not really their fault. I can see how that's frustrating.
Sorry, I kinda rambled off topic there. I'm used to and would like to experience failure a lot more often then in NWO. I voted 100+ but a lot of that has to do with the fact that I would also like to see a game take much longer to reach max lvl and as such the experience would be filled with more deaths.
I voted based on the title (expect to die). 1-5, from character roll to level cap.
I think it has to do with lack of downtime between fights. If I can chain fight 5 or 6 pulls before needing to heal up, there's almost no way I'd expect to die on a single pull.
I'd credit most deaths to sloppy pulls or not paying attention to one's own health and dying by accident.
Why is it not ok? We are talking about a game here. People can quit with any reason.
I quit when i don't like the group.
I quit when i need to have dinner.
I quit when I saw a good tv show starting.
+1 to this.
I voted 100+ because I pull as many mobs as I possibly can on each pull. Now if I were pulling 1 at a time, then I think that the expectation of death is less. I'd like to think that people are doing things that are challenging, though. Otherwise why are you even playing?
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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so you're playing tic-tac-toe (it can be any little game, i don't care) and you lose. are you annoyed? sure. you lost. did you actually take a penalty? no. same with dying in game. it's not a "death" anymore, there's no penalty involved, but that's okay. you know why? because you lost. you lost that dungeon, or to that monster, or to that player, and you are going to penalize yourself.
but how many times do i expect to die? bunches. and it will be annoying every time.
Op is 24...."the new-age MMO player"
I make no assumptions.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It's those 23 year olds you have to worry about.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I was just pondering: "isn't this generation-gap logic something that only The Old Guys are prone to speculating about"?
Apparently, not so.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
When I was at PAX playing Elder Scrolls Online, I died several times in the "tower dungeon".
After the second time one of the "helpers" rushed over to me and was trying to give me tips so I wouldn't die.
I retorted that dying isn't a big deal, it's "ok" that I die.
I'd prefer more "dying" in games.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I played WoW up until WotLK, played RoM for 2 years and now Rift.
I am F2P player. I support games when I feel they deserve my money and I want the items enough.
I don't troll, and I don't take kindly to trolls.
I might be 23, but not for long.
Anyways, that's a false assumption. Just cause I'm young in life doesn't mean I'm young in ideology.
I played WoW up until WotLK, played RoM for 2 years and now Rift.
I am F2P player. I support games when I feel they deserve my money and I want the items enough.
I don't troll, and I don't take kindly to trolls.
I voted 100+ but I have not leveled in a MMO in years that had that kind of difficulty.
However a lot depends on the mechanics themselves. When death is harsh I expect it to be used as a message that you are overreaching from the developers and used very sparingly at that. There is nothing worse than a harsh death system that is gleefully piled on by the content developer. That's just being sadistic and few people really likes to play those kinds of games for any length of time.
On the other extreme when death doesn't matter at all there really is no point even having it in the game as it's just a meaningless mechanic at that point.
It's actually very simple: it's all about making you feel "heroic" when soloing. Same thing with the trend to give you "personal story quests."
In older MMOs surviving was more a function of bringing along a sufficient number of friends. Now that they're all being developed with solo play in mind, they're programmed differently.
The new ones are not even balanced around you being able to kill one mob without dying. Your abilities are now balanced around you being able to take on a group of them all by yourself and surviving.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
In most mmorpg's, I no longer care how many times I die. It doesn't really matter. Nothing is lost, nothing changes, it's barely even an inconvenience. Sometimes it's even useful.
I'm not even sure what the purpose of dying in an mmorpg is anymore. In a game that never ends, where you have infinite lives and backward progress is impossible why even bother with a death mechanic. If they made all characters immortal, what would really change? Many players would probably be happy about it.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
The purpose is to reset your challenge. Fight a boss .. if you wipe, it resets. That maintains the challenge, so you cannot zerg.
It is just a reset. There should be no penalty.
Then why not just have the boss' health reset to full and let the fight continue. The death mechanic is still useless.
To me, death in these games seems more symbolic then anything.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I think my death count when I left Asheron's Call was over 4,000. I couldn't begin to guess how many times I died in WOW on the way to 60.
I don't know how many total deaths I had going from 1-32 in Aion, but I can tell you that it took exactly three deaths from level 60 players to quit the game.
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
I wish there was an MMO with Dark Souls mechanics. Gain xp, and continue getting it but use it as all in-game currency for buying everything, as well as leveling, but if you die, you have to run back to your corpse or you lose all your unspent XP, and if you die again on the way, you leave another corpse with nothing on it.
The difficulty is negotiable, however, if no one wants a crazy hard PvE game.
Death in games is always symbolic. It is usually symbolic of you and/or your group failing the challenge set before you. They could reset all healths to full but in more complex fights that would result in a different challenge so they use the death to reset the starting conditions to the beginning. In group play, the death of a single party member represents the loss of a resource but the group as a whole might be able to compensate and beat the challenge anyway so the game waits for a full wipe before resetting.
i get pissed when i get killed a lot by stupid AI with lots high damage and health. On the other hand, I love when i have to be tactical because a smart AI is giving me a hard time.
With that said, AI needs to be programmed in a way that is very smart (for an AI) so that if you die, or every time you die, you know you made a mistake. AI victories should not be because they had high damage or high health, it should be because they were well programmed.
I hate dumb AI and will always get pissed when i die by a dumb AI. If its a smart AI then im ok dying a million times because i know i am not being cautious enough.