Debate: MMORPG Death Penalties

[Bnm85]

Just something interesting I found that you guys might want to check out:

Death Penalties

Rather than trying to convince you one way or another, the article has two people taking completely opposite sides, so that you can draw your own conclusion in the end.

Personally, I think that excessive death panalties are a waste of a player\'s time. But it\'s just IMO.

Yes, I know this topic has been discussed before in one way or another. However, first one was as an early suggestion. Second, was a discussion of the new DR. I haven\'t seen anyone post a link to this article, so I thought it might be interesting to post it.

I\'m not going to judge you for taking one side or the other. It\'s understandable that people may like or dislike it for their own reasons.

[zanzibar]

It depends on how it\'s handled.  I think that if you kill someone within city limits, NPC guards should swoop down from the sky and kill you, but that\'s only one instance and this is a pretty broad subject.

[Ecolem]

zanzibar that sounds just like the game i play called Eve-online. What there system is that there\'s 1.0-0.0 security sectors. If you attack anyone anywhere who you are not at war with between 1.0-0.5 the police spawn and you pretty much die.

So we could maybe adopt the idea of having different places where you can be attacked with out /challenge and when you cant be attacked.

[Darkblade]

I think it\'s generally agreed that we don\'t want open PvP areas, or at least many of them. There may be some exceptions, ie. an arena or gladiator pit, but the rest of the world should be protected (At least in some fashion).

The Death realm is, well... A compromise. We don\'t lose things like stats and items from death, but the thing we do lose is time. Time in which we need to get out of the realm, which makes staying alive a very good thing. You don\'t use /die to teleport to Akkaio or Hydlaa, now do you? (I know the DR is smallish and it\'s fairly easy to get out if you know how. That\'s not the point)

Killing people in town, yeah, we\'ve had problems with that. Personally, guards and such should deal with mass killers (Ie. People who go on rampant newb killing sprees.).

It has been discussed multiple times before, mainly in the wishlist and the sub-forum for it, Pvp, PK and theiving

[defender43]

Maybe if you attack somebody in a city, the guards attack. And, the guards don\'t have to be invincible. No loot, no experience. Kill one and two come, kill two and four come, kill four and eight come... and if you try to run, the NPC archers get you, get to the city gates and you see these arrows sticking out of you and it says \"As you attempt to flee the city, you are killed by the city archers.\" Then, welcome to the DR.

[Darkblade]

Originally posted by defender43
Maybe if you attack somebody in a city, the guards attack. And, the guards don\'t have to be invincible. No loot, no experience. Kill one and two come, kill two and four come, kill four and eight come... and if you try to run, the NPC archers get you, get to the city gates and you see these arrows sticking out of you and it says \"As you attempt to flee the city, you are killed by the city archers.\" Then, welcome to the DR.

There\'s a simple flaw with that theory. What if someone kills in self-defense, or because of a heated argument?
It could even be something as simple as bashing someone over the head with a chair a tad too hard.

Also, I don\'t exactly like the idea of being able to slaughter the city guard. If you\'re powerful enough to take on multiple ones, the fact that you\'re killing dozens, or can, is an extreme.

Also, cities are big places, guards cannot be everywhere, all the time. Many crimes happen in dark places, places where people hardly wish to go, the city guards included.

But enough of that. This is a dicussion about Death penaties, not PvP and Pking.

On to topic:
Severe death penalties, in my opinion are ridiculous. Yes, dying should not be some simple thing, but not catastrophic either!

The Death Realm is a good example of a good way to penalize death, but not in a permanent fashion, as in reducing stats.
IMHO, reducing stats is one of the most common ways to penalize death. It\'s fairly boring, repetative and plainly annoying.

- The Seffy and the Darky.

[Thoronador]

Death as it is now implemented in PlaneShift is nothing but a (bad) joke. When people die, they get no penalty and don\'t loose anything. I know there\'s the death realm, but that does not change much. I don\'t see the death realm as a penalty, because you just have to find your way out and everything is as it was before.
Earlier, when the death realm still was smaller, some players even used the death realm as a fast way to get to their spawn point. :rolleyes:
To avoid such ridiculous behaviour, there should be a penalty. Not a drastic one like loosing stats or experience, but a moderate one, e.g. players loose a certain percentage of their tria when they die or one (or more) items in their inventory get lost during the travel to the death realm.
This would (hopefully) make people think before they act.

[Kiirani]

Personally, I don\'t like the idea of penalties for death, when the game is finished, people will not want to die because they will spawn from dr back into their racial spawn point, and they will all be tortured like the enki\'s are if we die in the arena...  With that in mind, it\'s actually more of a penalty for higher level players anyway, because they\'re likely to die far from their home city to begin with. Plus, DR will get a LOT bigger in the future, possibly there will not even be a set path, or maybe some challenges?

On another note, as this topic seems to have mentioned it, I\'m also not against open pvp / pickpocketing players, but it has to be done in a realistic way, if you steal from or try to kill players, they can attack/kill/steal from you without penalty.
That sort of thing shouldn\'t be implimented until the game is nearly finished, as the game is now, it would NOT be good with idiots going round killing people etc.

[Nikodemus]

Originally posted by Kiirani
Personally, I don\'t like the idea of penalties for death, when the game is finished, people will not want to die because they will spawn from dr back into their racial spawn point, and they will all be tortured like the enki\'s are if we die in the arena...  With that in mind, it\'s actually more of a penalty for higher level players anyway, because they\'re likely to die far from their home city to begin with. Plus, DR will get a LOT bigger in the future, possibly there will not even be a set path, or maybe some challenges?

On another note, as this topic seems to have mentioned it, I\'m also not against open pvp / pickpocketing players, but it has to be done in a realistic way, if you steal from or try to kill players, they can attack/kill/steal from you without penalty.
That sort of thing shouldn\'t be implimented until the game is nearly finished, as the game is now, it would NOT be good with idiots going round killing people etc.

After reading first paragraph i ask myself again if we really should have what we wan\'t, or rather set some barriers not to pass through. I think the second solution is better, not only because it develop our mind more through forcing us to thinking while playing, but also because we need to leave place for the evil characters in order to provide more entertainment for both groups of people. Why? Because in the land of constant happiness there is no room for he opposite group of people.

And i agree with second one. But we need also vast in size guards forces who will enforce the law and be real pain in the ass for people who break it. It\'s natural element of organized country such as Yliakum. Unless we want land of anarchy where each person care only about his/her guild or only himself and where we all pretend that there is some Octarch and all the goverment, but they are actually doing nothing.

[BlackAcre]

Originally posted by Darkblade

Originally posted by defender43
Maybe if you attack somebody in a city, the guards attack. And, the guards don\'t have to be invincible. No loot, no experience. Kill one and two come, kill two and four come, kill four and eight come... and if you try to run, the NPC archers get you, get to the city gates and you see these arrows sticking out of you and it says \"As you attempt to flee the city, you are killed by the city archers.\" Then, welcome to the DR.

Also, I don\'t exactly like the idea of being able to slaughter the city guard. If you\'re powerful enough to take on multiple ones, the fact that you\'re killing dozens, or can, is an extreme.

One of the most awe-inspiring, jealousy inducing things to watch in Anarchy Online was to watch some 150+ level character duke it out with the city guards.  It was like watching armageddon unfold sometimes.  I think, if you\'re going to have factions (really hope they do), this feature should definitely be in play.  It\'s extreme, but that was sort of why they did it.  To show they can.  They didn\'t win usually.

Involuntary pvp is always a stinker though.  There is enough greifer-lore to know that much.  No pvp is a stinker, too.

[BlackAcre]

To throw in my two cents on death penalties: The Death Realm is one of the  most innovative death \"penalties\" I\'ve heard of in a MMORPG.  Making it even more challenging to figure out is fine, but it should be a puzzler, not an impossible dungeon crawl, or else it really will be onerous on new players.  Fighting your way back from death could be made really adventurous with plots and twists.  My only question would be that of even an entertaining challenge to return to life would become plodding and unhappy for even seasoned players.  the first time you have to fight your way to existance might be nice, but the 3,000th time?  So, maybe it should be about as easy as it is now to find a quick exit, but the one you would prefer might be farther out or something, or maybe like some other MMORPGS do, maybe there could be a mini-game puzzler or something of the sort (riddles?  randomly determined ones, as many as possible to try and avoid repeats) to make coming back from the dead seem important to at least a small degree.

As above poster has mentioned though, reducing stats will piss everyone off to no end.  Losing Experience is acceptable to most people, but the rationale isn\'t convincing to me.

A common fallacy that people tend to fall into when discussing this (which every MMORPG has going on ad nauseum) is that they seem to feel death can be a deterrent for stupid behavior.  the fact is, people still kill other people in Texas.  If the real life possibility that you will get killed by the state if you murder someone does not deter people from that odious crime, its an indicator of how intractable people are when it comes to personal desires.  My two bits.

[Vjorin]

Even so, I\'ve seen MUDs ( bad comparison, I know, but with similar ideals ) where you get killed once, and become a ghost, visible to other players, but unable to communicate with them.  You can either wander around and find a means of ressurection, or pray at a holy site for the same benifit.  However, if you are killed as a ghost, it\'s game over for your character, FOREVER.  You get deleted and have to start over.  This didn\'t happen often, but when it did, it sucked.

A strong penalty, sure.  But people sure as heck didn\'t die too often.  If there was risk, people didn\'t take it.  It really gets your heart pumpin\'.

Still, I very much enjoy the way this game treats death, but I can\'t agree with the idea of having \'riddles\' as a means of returning to the living world.  What happens when someone figures the riddle out?  From then on, you\'d always know the answer, and death wouldn\'t hold the meaning it did.

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by Vjorin
Still, I very much enjoy the way this game treats death, but I can\'t agree with the idea of having \'riddles\' as a means of returning to the living world.  What happens when someone figures the riddle out?  From then on, you\'d always know the answer, and death wouldn\'t hold the meaning it did.

Agreed, definitely :) But I\'m more than sure that this is something the team is aware of and will take into consideration, and the requirements for escaping back into the realm of the living will be various - for example, sacrificing a magical item was also brought up in the past. There will be things to make it both interesting and fair.

[Frank]

acutally i was reading the comment on the one website that the dude posted a link to and i found this posted by someone which i think would be a really good idea once PS has the content and then the resouces



\"\"\"\"Personally, id like to see two types of servers on most MMORPGS. A penalty free, and one with penalties. That way, both types of players can play the game, and enjoy it, without haveing to deal with eachother. I know I wouldnt mind it, hell I might even make a character on both. One to be able to complete the quests, pvp, and just run around with my buddies without worrying about losing hours of work. And then being able to also go on a server where, should I wish it, I could play with the chance of losing exp, money, or items to other players when I get killed, or by monsters when im outnumbered and make a mistake. The fact is, id have that choice, and thats something I think MMORPG\'s should incorporate.\"\"\"\"\"\"

by  Phantom999

***no clue how to quote other people from different websites

[Karyuu]

You just type [QUOTE][/QUOTE] tags around text :)

It has already been decided by the development team long ago that all future servers will connect to the same world. There will be no splitting of the community at all.