Tyger42

Having been playing for 7 years, MMOs in general for 11, this is the first I've seen that abbreviation. Sorry it's so shocking that the term your little group of friends use isn't universal....

What the #$%^ is a "pod"?

There's an answer to that, though: Keep out of melee and don't dump damage so fast you're pulling aggro off of the taunters. "Don't overburn" is a key piece of wisdom that "glass cannon" classes have held to as far back as EQ1 and farther. The "damage is king" attitude leads to some disturbingly careless playing...

Some people are more easily frustrated than others. *Shrug* Having no death penalty can lead to people quitting because they're bored. No risk to them makes the game too trivial. So, it goes both ways. I'd be willing to bet, though, that I'd be able to turn up more people who quit over the game being too easy than you can turn up who quit over the debt being too harsh.

I've also seen plenty of posts on this forum over the years from people who intentionally played in perma-debt because they felt leveling was too quick. ><

Oh, hey, let's pick one specific example and try to use it as a universal rebuttal for my statement!

ROFFLE

Depends on how harsh the penalty is. There's such thing as going too far in EITHER direction, though. If there's no penalty for failure, then for most people, it's a non-issue. If the penalty is too harsh, yes, people will get frustrated by it. As I said before, I think CoH's system works fine. I'm just arguing with the point that you and some others seem to be trying to make that death penalties are bad in every form and that being defeated in itself is enough of a penalty. It's not, except maybe for the most dedicated players.

Seriously? That game's penalty was trivial. Hell, I played for a couple years before I even noticed it, and only then because someone happened to mention it to me.

Given that this is a multiplayer game, what makes you think that other people not learning to improve themselves doesn't affect me? When I'm grouped with a reckless zerg-minded player, you can be sure his not learning better is affecting me. When another player is on my team, it becomes my businesses right away.

When the reality is "I want death to have enough of an impact that you're motivated to learn from it rather than simply shrug it off".

The end result is the similar, though. An excessively complicated "game" full of what seem to be completely arbitrary terms, limitations, and so on. Just lacking the spontaneity of Calvinball. If that's what he enjoys, cool, but it just boggles me that anyone COULD enjoy that.

*Snrk* Sounds like it. Sounds like he has a -LOT- of free time, too. Not saying that's a bad thing, but wow...

WHo said one specific instance? People do it in that game on a regular basis.

What I'm saying is that's not universally true. Not all players view dying as "losing", especially when there are no meaningful consequences for it. Yes, to you and other players, the death in itself may be a meaningful consequence, but to others, it's not. I just feel when it's viewed as a free teleport to save < 5 minutes of running, it indicates that the penalty isn't meaningful.

The point is, when it's regarded as just "free transportation", it shows how meaningless death is in the game.


Real staggering technological achievement right there.

ANd provided examples of games that do penalize death ( by making you start over from your last save, which means all the progress since was lost. Which, by the way, I listed specifically as an example of the way other games penalize death ) and spouting some delusion about them not having a penalty. And before that part? You gave me some tripe about how death penalties would make players quit games ( which, funnily enough, is never given as a reason for quitting when people make "I quit" rants.... ).

Remember, sparky, you got hostile with me without due cause. Now shut up and sit down. We're done, whether you are or not.

In all those games, the penalty is lost time/progress. Without the debt in CoH, you could pop a wakie ( or have a team member rez you ) and keep on going without any real loss.

From what I've seen in the few other MMOs with lighter penalties, it's obvious NOT its own penalty. In Rift, for instance, I've seen players using "suicide" as a free teleport...

Bill, sweetie, do read my conversation before making yourself look this stupid again, kay?

When I'm on a team with them, it is "my own damn business".

Doesn't make it an inherently bad idea, either. What it does do is make it worth looking at WHY they're doing it.

Well, as I've said, I found CoH's death penalty to be fine. It's the notion that there should be none at all that I take exception too. I honestly think it's been softened up TOO much from where it started, though I'll grant the original may have been a bit much. What I definitely wouldn't want to see is EQ's xp loss and de-leveling. >< Blah. It's the difference between a stern lecture when you screw up and being kicked in the balls with a steel-toed boot.

But, like I said, a meaningful penalty to failure encourages improvement. Without one, people tend to get too careless in regards to risks. If there's no chance of losing anything, why plan ahead and think about what you're doing. And I kinda think when death isn't penalized at all, they may as well just be handing you the xp and drops and such.

Cute. But the point I was trying to make is that there's a good reason for it. Accomplishment is meaningless if there was no risk of any sort of meaningful loss to failure.

That's kinda the point of death penalties, though. When death is meaningful, it tends to encourage people to get better.

Again, I ask, why is it so abhorrent to some people for MMOs to penalize failure when every other genre of games does so?

I think for a lot of people, the concern is more about motivating other people than themselves. It can get frustrating ending up on too many teams where the attitude of the whole team is to just barrel on in carelessly and if you die, "Oh well...". Zerg tactics are only entertaining for so long...

Hmm, I dunno. The base values of most of our powers go up at the same time as the classic enhancements' values go down. There's also a change in hit and damage penalties/bonuses. So, against a 40 mob, we're more effective at 41 than we were at 40 even after the change in SO contributions. So, I wouldn't say we're becoming weaker at all.

But things going horribly wrong is meaningless if there are no consequences. With no consequences, risk is irrelevant. Every game has consequences for failure. In some, you're one step closer to "game over" ( Or flat-out "game over" on the first death ). In others, you're reverted back to your last save. In still others, you "respawn", losing everything that you gained before you died. Why is the idea of an MMO having consequences for failure so intolerable to some people? And I mean consequences that go beyond "Oh, darn, I died. Oh well..."

As the old saying goes "nothing ventured, nothing gained". It sounds to me like you want "nothing ventured, everything gained". May as well just add a god mode code and have done with it.

It is. With no motivation to choose your battles carefully, the content becomes trivial. Rather than considering "What's the best way to take down that target while avoiding as many deaths as possible", a team becomes "throw people at it pouring all-out DPS until it dies. If you die, just respawn and run back in" ( aka "zerg fests" ).

My condolences.

THis. I drift away to other games from time to time, but something about CoH always brings me back. Part of it is the modern setting makes for a nice RP change from the glut of fantasy games, but that's not all of it.