No this game is not chasing the Mainstream. However if it tries to go back to PreWOW havoc then guess what, it will barely have a few thousand players and will not survive. Lets be honest here, games like what you are talking about exsist today. Mortal Online for example. They just reached 1K users logged in at the same time after they went to steam because no one wants to deal with PRE-WOW garbage. As much as a few form Jockies want to have this, it will not work period. I did the Risk vs Reward from the time I was 18 until 24. When I had no life and I could do that. Today I tried it with ArcheAge, hell I even went back to UO for a few weeks. As much as you people say you want it, you will find out that you dont nor can you. I use to love the idea of having to run back to my corpse to get my gear. I did that in UO without the blessing of my gear. Guess what, after I needed to get off because I had to be up at 2 am one morning I quit. Why? Because real people with real jobs do not have time for that old crap.
As much as you people want to say, well lets get the Indian group to make us a game. Or lets put our servers in the cloud. Every one of you who say that do not work with companies like Cognizant, SmartShift, Compro, Wipro, or countless other Indian firms. You also do not have application servers in the Amazon cloud and are paying A Million Dollars a month just to have Development servers. All this shit cost money. And you will see that you will waste your life and money in a game that when you are 60 years old will not matter. YES its entertainment. I know that I been in MMOs for a long Fucking time. I also know there is a life Hobby Work balance that has to take place that could not be done with corpse runs, or death penalties that will cause you not to play the game you want for hours, or Deleveling. As much as you want to live back in 1999 with these gaming features, they do not work in today's gaming world. You can no longer have a Server sitting on someones desk like you could in 1999.
I am sorry but I disagree with you on the fact that we need arcane death penalties. You are over romanticizing it. I played FFXI and you think Deleveling would make better players. I was in one group that I deleveled twice and was pissed the fuck off. Guess what the healer was not wanting to heal wanted to damage the mobs we were pulling. Guess what it wiped us. That healer deleveled 2 more times after I left that group. Did deleveling make him a better player? NO. The same can be said about a Warrior tank in Vanilla WOW who put Spirit and Int gear on because he said it made his character smarter and faster. No this is no joke the guys name was Hawkeye on Khadgar. The guy was a moron. Did death teach him. No he did the same shit.
The ONLY thing death penalties do is piss people off. I am sorry but in today's world if you do not have around 500K subs your game will not survive and will have to go F2P and likely P2W to make money. This game or any game cannot operate on a lose.
Sounds like your fault for continuing to play with a terrible healer. Better luck next time!
By the way what you are describing is chosen ignorance not stupidity. There is no helping those who chose to be ignorant to their own and everybody else's detriment. Those players are not long term players who stick with a game. Eventually, as happened with yourself, frustration takes over and they go away. There are going to be bad apples. There's no preventing it. There are ways to encourage those bad apples to make sauce of themselves elsewhere though.
Also there are dozens of games that have been running for years and years that haven't touched close to 500k subs in any semblance of what can be construed as recently that are very successful. Please go away with your bad ideas.
He also makes the all too common assumption that all of us who played EQ at release were kiddies living in our moms basements and had all the time in the world. What he does not understand is that many of us were working professionals with families who played EQ. Not only that, be he also assumes that we are just wide eyed dumb animals living on some nostalgia trip, too stupid to realize what we are asking for.
Lots of assumptions, lots of accusations, lots of claims of failure, blah blah blah. It is like they cut and paste this crap because they can't have an original thought to themselves. I mean, seriously, look at it... it is a verbatim cattle call of a specific narrative.
Just watch. You just like the WILDSTAR is going to Kill WOW Crowd will be proven wrong. People wanted so bad a return to the 40 man raid days and Vanilla WOW. Well WILDSTAR happened. It is one step from shutting down. It's making near as much as City of Heroes was when it shut down which is not much. I been telling you people for years going back to certain arcane methods will not work. Just watch some of these Kickstarts will come out and shortly after shut down because they will not make it because they are going off a few forum Jockies for building a game.
Wildstar was just a bad game. That is why it failed. I watched videos of it for 30 minutes before beta and said, yep, that is a bad game that will fail. It did.
Also, I played vanilla WoW pretty hardcore and never thought for a second that the death penalty was anything but weak.
Just watch. You just like the WILDSTAR is going to Kill WOW Crowd will be proven wrong. People wanted so bad a return to the 40 man raid days and Vanilla WOW. Well WILDSTAR happened. It is one step from shutting down. It's making near as much as City of Heroes was when it shut down which is not much. I been telling you people for years going back to certain arcane methods will not work. Just watch some of these Kickstarts will come out and shortly after shut down because they will not make it because they are going off a few forum Jockies for building a game.
Wildstar was a mauinstream MMO that was a gimmick to market to the "perceived" old school crowd. Its entire design was dumbed down mainstream WoW. From its theme park face rolling easy solo world content with "idiot bouncing ball" quest design to its fad based moronic humor. Its combat was an action spam fest for the ADD console crowd. Sure, they made the dungeons hard with all its fancy "Jump here, move here, hop idiot!" style of play, that took some bit of attention and coordination ("hardcore" for mainstream /rolls eyes).
The point is, they sold it as a vanilla WoW and it wasn't even that. It was nothing like Vanilla WoW, it was simply... a WoW mainstream clone with harder dungeons. That is it, so please don't think Wildstar has anything remotely in comparison to this game. This one, unlike Wildstar, Wizardry Online, etc... isn't trying to gimmick off a fad crowd with hype. It is simply making a game in the vein of EQ/VG.
But hey, tell us how the game should be made to be like every other fad gimmick game out there.
Wait.. look... you see that? Its a mobile app game, better hurry and run to it, I hear they have a special in the store!
Also, I played vanilla WoW pretty hardcore and never thought for a second that the death penalty was anything but weak.
Yep, used to infuriate me when I would hear people whine about it in WoW. We would be on a raid that you know, we conveniently scheduled for guilds best time to play, had a private instance for us waiting and when we failed, it was a quick easy jaunt back to the instance invulnerable to harm and short little jaunt through an empty instance to the boss we wiped on in mere minutes of setup where we tried again.
Then, at the end of the night, that real harsh penalty came through, you know the one... where you paid gold to fix your gear, where that evil harsh penalty of having to maybe do a couple of quick "kill 10 mobs" quests where you were handed a bunch of cash which easily paid for it.
WoWs death penalty was not a penalty at all, it was a very minor inconvenience, a complete joke.
Just watch. You just like the WILDSTAR is going to Kill WOW Crowd will be proven wrong. People wanted so bad a return to the 40 man raid days and Vanilla WOW. Well WILDSTAR happened. It is one step from shutting down. It's making near as much as City of Heroes was when it shut down which is not much. I been telling you people for years going back to certain arcane methods will not work. Just watch some of these Kickstarts will come out and shortly after shut down because they will not make it because they are going off a few forum Jockies for building a game.
There's plenty of people that will play Pantheon, whatever death penalty is decided. And, your second sentence is just wrong. Pantheon isn't intending to kill the WOW Crowd. Every game that has been designed to try to kill the WOW crowd has failed - you're correct there.
And, most of the Kickstarts that fail, fail because the game sucked or the Kickstarter sucked or a combination of both (Pantheon's Kickstarter included). Pantheon will be successful as long as the game is "good" and it has a successful launch (no VG launch repeat). Yes, I know good is subjective, but basically if it can produce on it's current tenets.
No this game is not chasing the Mainstream. However if it tries to go back to PreWOW havoc then guess what, it will barely have a few thousand players and will not survive. Lets be honest here, games like what you are talking about exsist today. Mortal Online for example. They just reached 1K users logged in at the same time after they went to steam because no one wants to deal with PRE-WOW garbage. As much as a few form Jockies want to have this, it will not work period. I did the Risk vs Reward from the time I was 18 until 24. When I had no life and I could do that. Today I tried it with ArcheAge, hell I even went back to UO for a few weeks. As much as you people say you want it, you will find out that you dont nor can you. I use to love the idea of having to run back to my corpse to get my gear. I did that in UO without the blessing of my gear. Guess what, after I needed to get off because I had to be up at 2 am one morning I quit. Why? Because real people with real jobs do not have time for that old crap.
As much as you people want to say, well lets get the Indian group to make us a game. Or lets put our servers in the cloud. Every one of you who say that do not work with companies like Cognizant, SmartShift, Compro, Wipro, or countless other Indian firms. You also do not have application servers in the Amazon cloud and are paying A Million Dollars a month just to have Development servers. All this shit cost money. And you will see that you will waste your life and money in a game that when you are 60 years old will not matter. YES its entertainment. I know that I been in MMOs for a long Fucking time. I also know there is a life Hobby Work balance that has to take place that could not be done with corpse runs, or death penalties that will cause you not to play the game you want for hours, or Deleveling. As much as you want to live back in 1999 with these gaming features, they do not work in today's gaming world. You can no longer have a Server sitting on someones desk like you could in 1999.
I am sorry but I disagree with you on the fact that we need arcane death penalties. You are over romanticizing it. I played FFXI and you think Deleveling would make better players. I was in one group that I deleveled twice and was pissed the fuck off. Guess what the healer was not wanting to heal wanted to damage the mobs we were pulling. Guess what it wiped us. That healer deleveled 2 more times after I left that group. Did deleveling make him a better player? NO. The same can be said about a Warrior tank in Vanilla WOW who put Spirit and Int gear on because he said it made his character smarter and faster. No this is no joke the guys name was Hawkeye on Khadgar. The guy was a moron. Did death teach him. No he did the same shit.
The ONLY thing death penalties do is piss people off. I am sorry but in today's world if you do not have around 500K subs your game will not survive and will have to go F2P and likely P2W to make money. This game or any game cannot operate on a lose.
Sounds like your fault for continuing to play with a terrible healer. Better luck next time!
By the way what you are describing is chosen ignorance not stupidity. There is no helping those who chose to be ignorant to their own and everybody else's detriment. Those players are not long term players who stick with a game. Eventually, as happened with yourself, frustration takes over and they go away. There are going to be bad apples. There's no preventing it. There are ways to encourage those bad apples to make sauce of themselves elsewhere though.
Also there are dozens of games that have been running for years and years that haven't touched close to 500k subs in any semblance of what can be construed as recently that are very successful. Please go away with your bad ideas.
He also makes the all too common assumption that all of us who played EQ at release were kiddies living in our moms basements and had all the time in the world. What he does not understand is that many of us were working professionals with families who played EQ. Not only that, be he also assumes that we are just wide eyed dumb animals living on some nostalgia trip, too stupid to realize what we are asking for.
Lots of assumptions, lots of accusations, lots of claims of failure, blah blah blah. It is like they cut and paste this crap because they can't have an original thought to themselves. I mean, seriously, look at it... it is a verbatim cattle call of a specific narrative.
Just watch. You just like the WILDSTAR is going to Kill WOW Crowd will be proven wrong. People wanted so bad a return to the 40 man raid days and Vanilla WOW. Well WILDSTAR happened. It is one step from shutting down. It's making near as much as City of Heroes was when it shut down which is not much. I been telling you people for years going back to certain arcane methods will not work. Just watch some of these Kickstarts will come out and shortly after shut down because they will not make it because they are going off a few forum Jockies for building a game.
Nobody has ever said this game is even trying to compete with WoW. What is wrong with people that they don't understand what niche markets are? Good lord.
I'm fine with having to retrieve my corpse. I'm fine with a large exp penalty pending a rez, etc.
What I am not fine with is this possibility of losing literally everything I've worked for because between having a job and trying organize enough people to get together and clear up to your corpse in plane of fear when it's been sitting there for 6 days and 15 hours and 42 minutes, you might not get everything to line up properly, etc...
In all seriousness though. One of the great things about POP was having the "graveyard". I like the idea of after a certain amount of time, preferably more than 48 hours real time, your corpse will pop up in a graveyard where you can loot it.
This doesn't remove the fear of dying and the positive aspects of having corpse retrieval. That being said, you should never ever be able to just lose everything you have in a PVE game (PVP, different story).
This.
No gear losss. There should be some mechanic that eventually allows for corpse retrieval, be it an NPC that summons for a (substantial) cost or a graveyard where bodies appear after a set period of time (1 hour? 24 hours?).
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
I'm fine with having to retrieve my corpse. I'm fine with a large exp penalty pending a rez, etc.
What I am not fine with is this possibility of losing literally everything I've worked for because between having a job and trying organize enough people to get together and clear up to your corpse in plane of fear when it's been sitting there for 6 days and 15 hours and 42 minutes, you might not get everything to line up properly, etc...
In all seriousness though. One of the great things about POP was having the "graveyard". I like the idea of after a certain amount of time, preferably more than 48 hours real time, your corpse will pop up in a graveyard where you can loot it.
This doesn't remove the fear of dying and the positive aspects of having corpse retrieval. That being said, you should never ever be able to just lose everything you have in a PVE game (PVP, different story).
This.
No gear losss. There should be some mechanic that eventually allows for corpse retrieval, be it an NPC that summons for a (substantial) cost or a graveyard where bodies appear after a set period of time (1 hour? 24 hours?).
No gear loss is a given, in EQ it was never intended, just a limitation of the technology at the time. The idea is to give people a chance to retrieve their corpse eventually, but it should in no way ever be considered a convenience option. That is, most players should see the choice of picking up their body in such a manner as not reasonable in most situations. So, I am thinking a minimum of 48 hours (don't want people going, bah.. wipe.. no worries, lets pick up our corpses easily tomorrow and try again). Its a penalty, not a dry cleaning pick up service.
This is an important issue to me. A principal concern for me in an mmo is immersion. The more real the world feels, the happier I am.
If I am afraid of a monster whom I encounter (because I am afraid of the xp losing, naked corpse running ass whipping he might give me), then the monster becomes more real. He is a monster, not just a pixilated loot dispenser.
If the consequence of losing the fight is nominal, then I am just playing a game. There is no immersion in a virtual world.
I was fine with the death penalty in original EQ (even back when you could lose xp under level 5). So as far as I go, heavy penalties are fine. Been there, done that.
But I will say this. No matter how much people try to convince themselves that there can be a meaningful, profitable player base for Pantheon with a heavy death penalty, you are kidding yourselves. Back then we accepted it because we had to. There weren't many other mmos. We grew to like it. We missed it when it was gone. Nowadays people can choose from a great many games, and people who did not "grow up" under the old system won't accept it.
Nice post. But I disagree people who didn't grow up under it will dislike it. No. Truth is, the vast majority of people don't like it because they don't like tension in a game. This is not generational. It's hard to pin down, but it's not old school or new school or any of that BS. It's psychological.
It's extremly unpopular, so unpopular it's very, very hard to find commercial examples. Players don't want it. Most commercial makers want some confidence before they jump into a risky venture. MMO's are risky. Confidence comes from the tried and true of the mainstream. It comes from game design lectures. Most of the game designers entering into the business are not going to be making anything niche if they want to make any money, unless they're young and naive, in which case you shouldn't trust them, since they'll change it after the first year or two once they encounter the real world.
Wurm Online is one of hte very few commerical MMO's today which has corpse runs AND a death penalty. But its population is 600-1500. It remains unimpressive and a joke to anyone in the business. To a gamer, like myself, Wurm Online is a sanctuary, not a joke. But even it cannot resist the market forces and all of the pressures we face in life. Piece by piece its glory is being cut away and replaced by mainstream features.
I once died on a long exploration of a map in Wurm Online. I had to travle for an hour or two to get back. And then I got hurt. I had to sit down for 30 minutes to heal up. Getting hurt was easy and there was danger everywhere. I LOVED it. That's how I grew up. Believe me, that's the tip of the iceberg what I went through! That was in 2012. Wurm Online was officially launched in late 2012, although it had been playable by anybody since I think 2006. Noobs today have it easier. I can't read the chats without wanting to smack all of them. It's not just noobs complaining. I don't read chat much anymore, since the urge is so strong. I do read it, just bite my tongue until it bleeds.
But it's niche, very niche. I'm an extremist. I accept who I am. I don't expect Pantheon to do this. I hope it doesn't because I want IT to have every chance to survive. Being a hardened bastard is not a good idea for a new MMO in this current environment where most end up dead before they even get out the door. I will gladly accept some mainstream, as I know it'll also be niche and give us some of what we want. Give some, take some!
Praise Allah! Oops, I mean Go Pantheon! I'm not religous. Just a gamer.
EDIT: It may help to understadn why I get so mad if you understand I wasn't one of those complaienrs when I was a noob in Wurm Online. I was actively posting in the forums and I was IN SUPPORT of its features. I wanted some hardship! So years later when I see players complaining about the smallest things, I want to strangle them! You can't win arguments either because they'll twist what you say and if they lose use blanket BS statements. And most plaeyrs arR that way! Some aren't, but are trampled by the herd.
If the death penalty seems fair or reasonable, then it's the wrong death penalty. It should feel unfair and unreasonable.
That is what brought EQ players together originally.
If you saw some guy take a beat down or get himself in a bind, you helped him. Not just because you hope he helps you another day. But because it was the players united against the many unfair things about the game. O.o
You port into a zone and and are deposited right underneath a dragon. Instant death.
You get trained by a dozen mobs pulled by some newbie.
You go to run a dungeon and someone already cleared it out.
The game was full of things that were unfair. But again, that was what created a bond among the players.
If you make Pantheon fair, what you get is EQ II.
This is the type of game where you have to break it to make it work.
Those early games, in all their brutal punishment and so-called
'abuse' of the players actually gave the players something
that instinctively motivated them to form the foundation of a strong
societal framework within the confines of the game world. In layman's
terms: those rats handing you your ass just outside the Freeport
city gates actually made you actively seek out other players for
protection. You would form groups for adventuring because the world was just to tough without them, and the cost of death was too high.
So why is it that I say more modern MMO's have gotten it wrong? Because
for the most part, they do not meet any of these basic needs for forming
strong communities. It is not that they lack players, but rather in
their rush to please everyone they have eliminated the one thing
guaranteed to create a strong community. They have eliminated the
challenge of survival. They have eliminated the need to band together in
order to conquer the environment. Sure, you have raids and other such
end game events that have 'mandatory' participation levels, but that no
more means you have a community than having 1500 Facebook friends means
you are well liked.
Fear Leads to Bonding
The first that has to happen is the game has to be dangerous for the
player's character. No one should be able to go it alone unless they are
damned clever, very lucky, or simply a closet sado-masochist. This
doesn't mean that there cannot be solo content, but generally speaking,
if it is combat oriented or takes you outside of the safety of your city
walls, you had better have a friend with you.
Just a few snippets. It's probably wrong to have so many. Mod can edit.
It also touches on Knowledge Is Power. So survival and knowledge must come together to form the roots of community creation.
It argues MMO's are worlds and shouldn't be treated as games. Players come together under specific conditions, not ad hoc. By treating it like a game, players don't come together. Instead they solo.
Trouble I have is people already have community in RL. Most escape RL into games and MMO's, not to mimic life, but to get away from it!
Everquest and other MMO's suggest players don't want conflict and scarcity. So they don't want a group-oriented MMO. The article says survival needs to be so hard we need each other. And the scarcity in information means players rely on each other for the best information. But players don't want that. It's not a mistake. The direction MMOs are going is intentional.
The cost to create real communities is too high for most players. So they'd rather be entertained with some occasional friendships.
EDIT: Cut out the rest of my post. Too many words.
It is a fine line between a death that crushes your will to play, and something that is disappointing but falls within your tolerance to frustration. For me the worst form of death in a game is the full loot loss permadeath. The penalty is so harsh it is not only not worth the risk of dying, it's not worth the risk of doing anything in the game because you will lose it all repeatedly and hastily.
On the other hand a game with what amounts to a small time delay as the only penalty for death is a game that might as well not have a death penalty at all. There could simply be a message on screen that says, "you died." You wait for health to regen and start again anyway. Why have the dumb death screen at all when you are going right back in the same situation.
The other problem is that death is used as the way to gate content. Since everyone has their day job and their kids and they have lost their will to really play MMORPGs, they need to be able to solo every thing in the game. Every activity needs to be something they can jump on the game and do in 10 minutes by themselves.
So no death penalty, and no content that can't be conquered by the soloist says the industry.
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
This is an important issue to me. A principal concern for me in an mmo is immersion. The more real the world feels, the happier I am.
If I am afraid of a monster whom I encounter (because I am afraid of the xp losing, naked corpse running ass whipping he might give me), then the monster becomes more real. He is a monster, not just a pixilated loot dispenser.
If the consequence of losing the fight is nominal, then I am just playing a game. There is no immersion in a virtual world.
I was fine with the death penalty in original EQ (even back when you could lose xp under level 5). So as far as I go, heavy penalties are fine. Been there, done that.
But I will say this. No matter how much people try to convince themselves that there can be a meaningful, profitable player base for Pantheon with a heavy death penalty, you are kidding yourselves. Back then we accepted it because we had to. There weren't many other mmos. We grew to like it. We missed it when it was gone. Nowadays people can choose from a great many games, and people who did not "grow up" under the old system won't accept it.
Nice post. But I disagree people who didn't grow up under it will dislike it. No. Truth is, the vast majority of people don't like it because they don't like tension in a game. This is not generational. It's hard to pin down, but it's not old school or new school or any of that BS. It's psychological.
It's extremly unpopular, so unpopular it's very, very hard to find commercial examples. Players don't want it. Most commercial makers want some confidence before they jump into a risky venture. MMO's are risky.
I disagree with this wholeheartedly. There are plenty of games that have popularized that same tension that was prominent in older games. Survival games for one. Many single player titles as well such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne. What you are saying is that because it has been done away with in MMORPGs, it must not be wanted. That is a fallacy, because MMOs are not doing well and the current playerbase is not necessarily representative of what everyone wants. While other genres are growing, this genre isn't.
Its only a matter of time before these elements resurface among mmos once again. Whether its with Pantheon, or any number of indie games in development, it will be there and while it may not appeal to many of the current players, I believe there are just as many that have put MMOs aside that will come back - just as many if not more.
Confidence comes from the tried and true of the mainstream. It comes from game design lectures. Most of the game designers entering into the business are not going to be making anything niche if they want to make any money, unless they're young and naive, in which case you shouldn't trust them, since they'll change it after the first year or two once they encounter the real world.
Wurm Online is one of hte very few commerical MMO's today which has corpse runs AND a death penalty. But its population is 600-1500. It remains unimpressive and a joke to anyone in the business. To a gamer, like myself, Wurm Online is a sanctuary, not a joke. But even it cannot resist the market forces and all of the pressures we face in life. Piece by piece its glory is being cut away and replaced by mainstream features.
I once died on a long exploration of a map in Wurm Online. I had to travle for an hour or two to get back. And then I got hurt. I had to sit down for 30 minutes to heal up. Getting hurt was easy and there was danger everywhere. I LOVED it. That's how I grew up. Believe me, that's the tip of the iceberg what I went through! That was in 2012. Wurm Online was officially launched in late 2012, although it had been playable by anybody since I think 2006. Noobs today have it easier. I can't read the chats without wanting to smack all of them. It's not just noobs complaining. I don't read chat much anymore, since the urge is so strong. I do read it, just bite my tongue until it bleeds.
But it's niche, very niche. I'm an extremist. I accept who I am. I don't expect Pantheon to do this. I hope it doesn't because I want IT to have every chance to survive. Being a hardened bastard is not a good idea for a new MMO in this current environment where most end up dead before they even get out the door. I will gladly accept some mainstream, as I know it'll also be niche and give us some of what we want. Give some, take some!
Praise Allah! Oops, I mean Go Pantheon! I'm not religous. Just a gamer.
EDIT: It may help to understadn why I get so mad if you understand I wasn't one of those complaienrs when I was a noob in Wurm Online. I was actively posting in the forums and I was IN SUPPORT of its features. I wanted some hardship! So years later when I see players complaining about the smallest things, I want to strangle them! You can't win arguments either because they'll twist what you say and if they lose use blanket BS statements. And most plaeyrs arR that way! Some aren't, but are trampled by the herd.
So what does a sob do? Give some, take some.
Wurm online was a neat idea, but a crappy game. I'm sorry, as much as I wanted to play it, I simply found it lacking in everything from its UI, design and available forms of gameplay. I felt like it was unintentionally more draconian than than it should have been, only because they weren't capable of bringing the game to life and translating their ideas to playable game.
It seems to me that while you may enjoy what I like (and others here), you've been convinced that because all that has been offered is what we currently have, people must not want anything else. This is false. Its false based on the fact that no one else has created a decent old school game to give any data to the contrary. In short, what you're proposing is completely unsupported by facts. Of course, you could say my position is also based on hope and a lack of factual evidence, but the difference is that as of right now, there is no less than 6 MMOs in development to bring back the older ideals to the mmorpg genre. I believe that speaks for itself. There are people waiting, its only a matter of someone delivering something worth playing.
I don't want my game ruined because I fell off of a cliff, or was pushed off, and now everything I worked hard for is irreversibly lost.
City of Heroes got it right. You die, it takes twice as long to level until your 'XP debt' is paid. once you factor in repair bills, I think there is plenty of encouragement to avoid dying.
Oh, btw, you did not earn XP debt until you hit Level 7 in that game.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
I don't want my game ruined because I fell off of a cliff, or was pushed off, and now everything I worked hard for is irreversibly lost.
City of Heroes got it right. You die, it takes twice as long to level until your 'XP debt' is paid. once you factor in repair bills, I think there is plenty of encouragement to avoid dying.
Oh, btw, you did not earn XP debt until you hit Level 7 in that game.
I don't think anyone wants that. Not even the oldschool EQ fans are pushing permanent item loss with a death penalty. Mostly people just want to see the loss of experience and time to encourage more thought and planning in regard to adventuring.
This is false. Its false based on the fact that no one else has created a decent old school game to give any data to the contrary. In short, what you're proposing is completely unsupported by facts.
Yes. I was predicting the future. As are you. So facts are in short supply for both of us. We will ultimately have to wait and see.
But in the meantime, we can share our respective opinions. Hopefully without yelling "fallacy!" "fallacy!" like has been done so often by another poster who cannot differentiate between opinion and argument.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
They really should be careful of what they do in a situation like this. Remember at the end of the day this is software, and software can be screwy. Nothing makes anyone want to rage quit more than working on something for a long time then have it screw up on them, losing hours of work. In the case of MMO's there is lag, d/c, other players being aholes, in your face spawns, among other things out of a players control.
Not sure where everyone is getting this idea that the games population generally goes around killing themselves just for fun if there is "only" a repair bill or that its not taken seriously but thats not really the case IMO. Frankly too many players take game deaths too seriously, raging at someone, blaming, and/or leaving groups after a single death. More than ever before oddly enough. There will always be "that guy" who doesnt care about any penalty short of perma-death. Some dont even care if theyre banned from the game entirely. Doesnt mean you design the rules based on a few idiots.
That said, Id personally be fine with something along the lines of CoH debt where it slows exp gain, naked runs to recover all your stuff, or anything that wont interrupt your entire game day from some out of control thing or even a mistake every few hours. Docking exp could work depending on how long it takes to recover but id personally draw the line at deleveling. Perhaps even increasing penalties. First time = graveyard, second = debuffs, third = naked run, fourth = exp gain penalty, so on...
Comments
Also, I played vanilla WoW pretty hardcore and never thought for a second that the death penalty was anything but weak.
Wildstar was a mauinstream MMO that was a gimmick to market to the "perceived" old school crowd. Its entire design was dumbed down mainstream WoW. From its theme park face rolling easy solo world content with "idiot bouncing ball" quest design to its fad based moronic humor. Its combat was an action spam fest for the ADD console crowd. Sure, they made the dungeons hard with all its fancy "Jump here, move here, hop idiot!" style of play, that took some bit of attention and coordination ("hardcore" for mainstream /rolls eyes).
The point is, they sold it as a vanilla WoW and it wasn't even that. It was nothing like Vanilla WoW, it was simply... a WoW mainstream clone with harder dungeons. That is it, so please don't think Wildstar has anything remotely in comparison to this game. This one, unlike Wildstar, Wizardry Online, etc... isn't trying to gimmick off a fad crowd with hype. It is simply making a game in the vein of EQ/VG.
But hey, tell us how the game should be made to be like every other fad gimmick game out there.
Wait.. look... you see that? Its a mobile app game, better hurry and run to it, I hear they have a special in the store!
/facepalm
Then, at the end of the night, that real harsh penalty came through, you know the one... where you paid gold to fix your gear, where that evil harsh penalty of having to maybe do a couple of quick "kill 10 mobs" quests where you were handed a bunch of cash which easily paid for it.
WoWs death penalty was not a penalty at all, it was a very minor inconvenience, a complete joke.
And, most of the Kickstarts that fail, fail because the game sucked or the Kickstarter sucked or a combination of both (Pantheon's Kickstarter included). Pantheon will be successful as long as the game is "good" and it has a successful launch (no VG launch repeat). Yes, I know good is subjective, but basically if it can produce on it's current tenets.
This.
No gear losss. There should be some mechanic that eventually allows for corpse retrieval, be it an NPC that summons for a (substantial) cost or a graveyard where bodies appear after a set period of time (1 hour? 24 hours?).
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
It's extremly unpopular, so unpopular it's very, very hard to find commercial examples. Players don't want it. Most commercial makers want some confidence before they jump into a risky venture. MMO's are risky. Confidence comes from the tried and true of the mainstream. It comes from game design lectures. Most of the game designers entering into the business are not going to be making anything niche if they want to make any money, unless they're young and naive, in which case you shouldn't trust them, since they'll change it after the first year or two once they encounter the real world.
Wurm Online is one of hte very few commerical MMO's today which has corpse runs AND a death penalty. But its population is 600-1500. It remains unimpressive and a joke to anyone in the business. To a gamer, like myself, Wurm Online is a sanctuary, not a joke. But even it cannot resist the market forces and all of the pressures we face in life. Piece by piece its glory is being cut away and replaced by mainstream features.
I once died on a long exploration of a map in Wurm Online. I had to travle for an hour or two to get back. And then I got hurt. I had to sit down for 30 minutes to heal up. Getting hurt was easy and there was danger everywhere. I LOVED it. That's how I grew up. Believe me, that's the tip of the iceberg what I went through! That was in 2012. Wurm Online was officially launched in late 2012, although it had been playable by anybody since I think 2006. Noobs today have it easier. I can't read the chats without wanting to smack all of them. It's not just noobs complaining. I don't read chat much anymore, since the urge is so strong. I do read it, just bite my tongue until it bleeds.
But it's niche, very niche. I'm an extremist. I accept who I am. I don't expect Pantheon to do this. I hope it doesn't because I want IT to have every chance to survive. Being a hardened bastard is not a good idea for a new MMO in this current environment where most end up dead before they even get out the door. I will gladly accept some mainstream, as I know it'll also be niche and give us some of what we want. Give some, take some!
Praise Allah! Oops, I mean Go Pantheon! I'm not religous. Just a gamer.
EDIT: It may help to understadn why I get so mad if you understand I wasn't one of those complaienrs when I was a noob in Wurm Online. I was actively posting in the forums and I was IN SUPPORT of its features. I wanted some hardship! So years later when I see players complaining about the smallest things, I want to strangle them! You can't win arguments either because they'll twist what you say and if they lose use blanket BS statements. And most plaeyrs arR that way! Some aren't, but are trampled by the herd.
So what does a sob do? Give some, take some.
http://www.gameskinny.com/9ltw7/mmos-are-not-games-where-mmo-s-go-wrong
Just a few snippets. It's probably wrong to have so many. Mod can edit.
It also touches on Knowledge Is Power. So survival and knowledge must come together to form the roots of community creation.
It argues MMO's are worlds and shouldn't be treated as games. Players come together under specific conditions, not ad hoc. By treating it like a game, players don't come together. Instead they solo.
Trouble I have is people already have community in RL. Most escape RL into games and MMO's, not to mimic life, but to get away from it!
Everquest and other MMO's suggest players don't want conflict and scarcity. So they don't want a group-oriented MMO. The article says survival needs to be so hard we need each other. And the scarcity in information means players rely on each other for the best information. But players don't want that. It's not a mistake. The direction MMOs are going is intentional.
The cost to create real communities is too high for most players. So they'd rather be entertained with some occasional friendships.
EDIT: Cut out the rest of my post. Too many words.
On the other hand a game with what amounts to a small time delay as the only penalty for death is a game that might as well not have a death penalty at all. There could simply be a message on screen that says, "you died." You wait for health to regen and start again anyway. Why have the dumb death screen at all when you are going right back in the same situation.
The other problem is that death is used as the way to gate content. Since everyone has their day job and their kids and they have lost their will to really play MMORPGs, they need to be able to solo every thing in the game. Every activity needs to be something they can jump on the game and do in 10 minutes by themselves.
So no death penalty, and no content that can't be conquered by the soloist says the industry.
It seems to me that while you may enjoy what I like (and others here), you've been convinced that because all that has been offered is what we currently have, people must not want anything else. This is false. Its false based on the fact that no one else has created a decent old school game to give any data to the contrary. In short, what you're proposing is completely unsupported by facts. Of course, you could say my position is also based on hope and a lack of factual evidence, but the difference is that as of right now, there is no less than 6 MMOs in development to bring back the older ideals to the mmorpg genre. I believe that speaks for itself. There are people waiting, its only a matter of someone delivering something worth playing.
City of Heroes got it right. You die, it takes twice as long to level until your 'XP debt' is paid. once you factor in repair bills, I think there is plenty of encouragement to avoid dying.
Oh, btw, you did not earn XP debt until you hit Level 7 in that game.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
But in the meantime, we can share our respective opinions. Hopefully without yelling "fallacy!" "fallacy!" like has been done so often by another poster who cannot differentiate between opinion and argument.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Not sure where everyone is getting this idea that the games population generally goes around killing themselves just for fun if there is "only" a repair bill or that its not taken seriously but thats not really the case IMO. Frankly too many players take game deaths too seriously, raging at someone, blaming, and/or leaving groups after a single death. More than ever before oddly enough. There will always be "that guy" who doesnt care about any penalty short of perma-death. Some dont even care if theyre banned from the game entirely. Doesnt mean you design the rules based on a few idiots.
That said, Id personally be fine with something along the lines of CoH debt where it slows exp gain, naked runs to recover all your stuff, or anything that wont interrupt your entire game day from some out of control thing or even a mistake every few hours. Docking exp could work depending on how long it takes to recover but id personally draw the line at deleveling. Perhaps even increasing penalties. First time = graveyard, second = debuffs, third = naked run, fourth = exp gain penalty, so on...