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The death of the MMORPG
Jasz
Member UncommonPosts: 67
I've played MMORPG's since EQ1 and have been a fan from the beginning but it seems some trends are turning off hardcore gamers like myself and bringing in new breed of player.
I welcome change and fully understand what games like World of Warcraft and EQ2 have done for the modern day MMORPG but one thing I'd like to see come back is the good, old fashioned, painful death penalty.
The kind of penalty that makes you cringe in fear. The kind of penalty that makes you play it a little bit safer.
EVE Online has a penalty that is fierce but it's a space game (A great one) but a space game none the less.
I propose that all you game developers look at a game like that and try to put some fear in your old sword and spell MMORPG.
You may be surprised...people like a little fear.
Comments
I like fear too but sometimes other things besides skill or lack of skill will get you killed. For instance, I was trying to get this title in LOTRO by not dying for first 20 levels. I was at level 14 and the game crashed. By the time I logged in, I was dead. Now I can accept when I die because I did something stupid, but when lag or a crash kills you, being penalized on top of that is not fun or challenging.
Also, since you are hardcore, imagine you are about 7 hours into a 10 hour raid, and a few people die. Why should scores of other players be penalized because someone lost their connection, lagged, or were momentarily careless. That kind of situation is not challenging, it's irritating.
I think the 'idea' of a death penalty is better than it is in actual practice.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/320/setView/overview
http://shaiya.aeriagames.com/info/selection
You're welcome.
Like in the good old UO?
Vanguard goes some similare, dropping a tombstone where Soulbound things stay togehter with some xp at the spot u die....
But for lameness you can port the stone back to you only thing u lose is xp.
Should stay where it is, better should "vanish" after an hour and be lootable on pvp servers...
WUAAAAAAA i feel my toes itching *sinister grin*
The problem with punishment and fear is that, while it attracts many players, it turns twice as many off.
Hardcore gamers aren't a company's priority, money is.
Look at Face of Mankind. It was an awesome concept, but it died a rather slow and painful death because it was just too 'real'.
Forgot to clone yourself? permadeath!
Griefers at the chemical mines? Permadeath!
Lag? Permadeath!
If you logged into WoW one day to find your level 70 Shaman, Paladin, and Rogue all gone, would you even bother starting new ones?
While permadeath could be avoided via a CHOICE of cash penalty and a fair bit of hassle, it's inevitable that one day, be it days, months, years, you WILL be down to your last life with no cash to get any more because you just loaned your last 20k to a good friend who permadied and needs to restart.
Then BAM, you get shot in the back by a newbie griefer in the area nobody shoots in via unspoken rule.
While permadeath is an extreme, the higher the severity, the more likely people are to quit. Hell, a lot of people we don't hear about quit WoW because running back to your corpse when you have no money is just too time consuming.
It comes down to whether you want a successful MMO, or an immersive one, and no level of immersion is worth playing by yourself.
I'm not talking about permadeath just some nice lost loot or experience. Last time I checked EVE Online was still going strong and it has the harshest death penalty I've seen for a long time. There is no reason why you can't devote a server to people who like death penalties and or (if need be) permadeath
not everybody likes the fear. i love it. i want my heart to throb in every battle of skill. anyway, op, i suggest you check out Mortal Online if you want a hardcore game.. it'll be a year's wait though. the players that like the safe zones and all that can keep their games, and finally we'll have ours. www.mortalonline.com
Permadeath was just an example in the context of FoM, which died.
As i said, the higher the punishment, the more likely people are to quit.
Even by just setting up one server with much harsher punishments someone could foolishly start on that server because they think they can handle it then find out too late they really, really can't and don't want to start over elsewhere.
I mean, a friend and I agreed we would be joining a PvP server on Age of Conan months before it came out.
We were both bored of the game within a week because the ganking was a pain in the ass, but the carebear servers just weren't interesting enough to switch to.
The same concept would apply to making different rules surrounding death on different servers. You feel like you can't handle the intensity of the hard server, but on the other one you just suicide to get back to town 2 minutes quicker. It gets boring and irritating on both sides.
Every enterprise does it for the money as said earlier but maybe one day they will create a mmorpg like that...
*Dreams about it*
thats stupid, death penalties suck
Playing:WoW,Guild Wars
)
Used to play: Vanguard, Anarchy Online (got to lvl 6 and quit
Waiting for: Warhammer, Aion
The only thing I can see kill MMO right now is micro-transactions.
If MMO get a bad reputation from not only being addictive, but an addictive money sink, that could kill MMO.
But not something as a gameplay issue, that doesn't hurt MMO reputation really.
Not necessarily. Entropia Universe is still going strong, and even its Wikipedia page states it's not unusual for the majority of members to pay $100-$200 a MONTH. Which I can confirm is actually true.
They've set it up so that ingame money is hard to obtain unless you pay real money.
You spend 10 PED worth of ammo on a mob? You'll loot 4 PED off it.
Nonetheless, they're wealthy enough to give the game a graphical overhaul with the Crytek engine this year.
I don't know if it will kill it, although I do not support micro-transaction type games, this is a possible trend that does have me worried about the Mmorpg future.
I'm inclined to agree with the posters who say that if games had harsh death penalties, people would quit. rather than roll another toon and start over. With regard to EVE (which I play), the game is successful even with a harsh death penalty. However, if they were ever to set up a PVE only server I suspect they would double or triple the number of subscriptions.
Daily thread tying WoW to the death of MMORPGs? Check.
Did you even read the OP? Read it before you comment please. It's about death penalties not about WoW being the death of the MMO
I agree that a harsh death penalty makes things more exciting and I get somewhat annoyed that 'death' is barely even an inconvenience in so many games. I mean, why bother with hit points at all. In the last six months I've been playing lots of FFXI again because at least in this game there is some genuine (game) danger.
You sometimes have to run through zones where most of the mobs will aggro you, they will chase you till they catch you (or you zone) and they will kill you. Now this means as you go through the zone you have to be reallly careful. It is possible to do, but you actually have to take care. The fact you have to take care makes the game so much more interesting and just travelling in certain areas is a real sense of achievement.
Sorry to stick with FFXI stories, but sometimes when I die I am really annoyed and fed up that I blew it. I really get angry and have to cool down for a few minutes, but I'm only really annoyed with myself. Other times I just avoid death by a handful of hitpoints and I'm shaking my fist with the joy of victory. The game provokes genuine emotion. It is also a group game so sometimes your success or failiure depends on others and sometimes you're the one keeping others alive.
I guess I'm now one of the minority that enjoys the levelling and likes a long challenge to reach max level. I don't consider myself 'hardcore' - and I'm rather tired of the assumption that players are either hardcore or carebrears - but I'd have no problem playing a PvE game where I lost a level with every death. With PvP this wouldn't work, but you could have PvP games or duels where EXP was both won and lost.
Some people say that harsh death penalties just encourage people to play safe, but all you need is a few extra tough mobs guarding a good exp zone, or resources, or a short cut and players can make the choice if they are prepared to take the risk. This is how EVE works so well, people can avoid the low security space, but the greater rewards come with greater risk. MMOs should be designed this way in my opinion.
PS.
I notice that many games (and players) are really into titles that players can have for themselves, like 'sergeant' or 'beast killer' or whatever, I think games should limit certain titles to players who avoid death. Perhaps you can get a certain title if your group completes an instance within a set time and no-one dies. Perhaps you could lose the honour of calling you character general... if you fail too often.
Did you even read the OP? Read it before you comment please. It's about death penalties not about WoW being the death of the MMO
Yes, I read the OP. This thread has been done before, many many times. Your points have been made before. The entire thread is over used. That's what I was pointing out, even if my post was jokingly misleading (which was a response to how your title was also misleading). Level of satire.
*yawn*
MMORPG's were saved by less-harsh death penalties.
There's a difference between "a deterrant to using zerg tactics", and "being afraid to die at all".
Harsh death penalties create a fear of death, and that is not good. Players will then turn to anything, including exploiting and cheating, to prevent death.
Funny, EVE has the harshest death penalty I've seen and I don't see people cheating to avoid death and turning to exploits.
Sorry m8..you make no point at all with that comment. On the other side I do see people using death even as a speedy way to travel.
If you prefer to be bored with death then why have hitpoints at all.
I like harsh penalties..I like having something to lose. It's exciting and fun. I may get mad when I lose but it makes winning all the more rewarding
10six has the hardest death penalties of any mmo ever. You could lose your stuff while you were offline.
It was also the most fun ive ever had in a mmo. First thing you did in the morning was log on to see if you lost anything. There was no insurance, the bank for all your items was in your base and i could take it from you.
Own, Mine, Defend, Attack, 24/7
I think that the problem with this sort of discussion is that people tend to draw battles lines and that's it. I'm right and you are wrong.
There is no right or wrong about it. It is all a matter of opinion. That's why we don't all read the exact same books, or enjoy the same music.
However, I will have to say that the current state of the genre is a curious thing.
Sometimes the unknown or less popular works in all forms of expressionist arts are truly gems. When I was a kid, I liked Black Sabbath. Now, the fact that Elton John may have sold more records than Sabbath was irrelevent to my enjoyment of the band. If music had attempted to emulate the current state of mmorpgs, then everyone would have been attempting to emulate the big money bands. We would have had 9000 versions of Elton John or some other person or group. How boring!
Same in the world of books. Just because some trashy romance novel is on the NY Times best seller list, and the book you are currently reading isn't even on the radar screen, does that make you an idiot? Only if you use the logic applied to the discussions we find at mmorpg.com.
While there have certainly been some Grand Theft Auto clones out there, I hardly see every single game manufacturer trying to emulate that model for single player games.
And that's what I find curious here in the world of mmos. Almost every other sector has room for the less popular stuff. But not here. With a few notable exceptions like EVE, of course.
Personally, I loved the tenseness and fear that I felt in EQ1. That doesn't mean that YOU should. However, if one wants to make the statement that "WOW saved mmorpgs", well, I can only look around and say "this is what you called saved? A completely one-dimensional market?"
Sorry, but I can't agree. If you consider anything that can be created as being art in some form, then I must say that I have never seen such a limited and one-dimensional art form in my life.
I fully realize that I am no longer in the target market of your average mmo maker. It merely seems a shame that more tastes are not catered to *as they are in every other sector of the arts*!
That doesn't make anyone who disagrees with me wrong or an idiot. It is what it is.
You're right, sadly.
Just look at Korean MMOs. Hundreds of them, all identical.
We've reached a Logan's Run scenario where MMOs are targeted at a specific age group.
Sure, you're bound to find the odd 13 year old in Age of Conan, or 50 year old in Maple Story, but by and large the games are designed purely to hit the wallet of the midde mark.
The middle mark being anyone young enough to still be living with their parents with access to their own bank accounts and plenty of time to get sucked into a game, immune to all real world responsibility.
Once the player matures to a state where they want something more, they'll find little to suit their tastes because they're now too busy in their life to justify fitting in a subscription based game amidst work, cooking, cleaning, and keeping their kids happy.
The diversity of the games themselves aren't in question (in this post, at least) so much as the overall maturity level of the game itself is.
That isn't a stab at immature communities however. I've met plenty of calm collected 8 year olds, and plenty of grown men crying about unfair guild rules. It's a stab at the games themselves by design.
How many MMOs do we have that contain serious graphics? Compared to those with a cartoonish design? What about blood, violence, gore, or deeper rooted accomodations such as alternative subscrition models?
Just out of curiosity you don't think that that has happened to music? Theory of a Nickelfault anyone? How many grunge bands all sounding the same came out in the late 90's and are still coming out. how many eminem clones are there?
There is a radio station up here called the Beat, and they play about 40 songs a day and 38 of them are clones of each other.
how many tolkien rip offs are there. Even another big name the Shanarra series the first book was almost word for word the lord of the rings. Or even the real difference between dragonlance and forgotten realms (prolly going to get flamed for that one, but I think dragonlance is a better anyway).
All these things get copied till we all puke from boredom. I'm not quite there with MMO's yet but it's coming.
And your right it is entirely a matter of opinion.
Venge Sunsoar
Sure, there are copycats everywhere. But that doesn't mean that new and fresh work doesn't continue to emerge in most arts.
Who is copying The Red Hot Chili Peppers?
For every clone of Sword of Shanara there's a Dragonlance.
There are copycats and yet fresh work still emerges in most forms of artistic endeavor. Just not this one. In my humble opinion, of course.
EDIT: Not a flame. I don't know forgotten realms, but I do know Dragonlance intimately. Dragonlance has got some mighty interesting characters in it and that's what made it great for me. I was floored when they killed Tanis.
Hard to imagine another work capturing that flavor.
MMORPG's are versatile.... we never know what the game developers are thinking .