Death penalty

Or frustrate them and make them quit. "Here, you died, now you're WEAKER and get to try the same thing!" is irritating beyond measure.
Let me load from my save... oh. MMOs don't have that? Most every other genre of games has it. Why shouldn't an MMO?

And COH *does* penalize. It slows your leveling for a short time. That's perfectly fine. Going farther than that does nothing but get *irritating,* into "You're not getting my $15/mo any longer" territory. Given an MMO's goal is "Keep people playing long enough to keep paying the publisher/studio money every month," I'd say not irritating and driving away customers is a pretty big goal.

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

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

That's called "being a leader," not "Alter the game to penalize people." You have tools in your *own* arsenal - "lightening up" for one, playernotes and friend/global friend lists for another. Team chat and tells.

Take the time to help them *yourself* in a *social* game.

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To be honest, I don't care. In my opinion, GW's death penalty is excessive and badly designed. Your reward for taking any kind of risk (or even just bad luck) is to be completely crippled against an enemy that *already* stomped your face in. In my case, overly punitive death penalties don't cause me to be "more cautious" when I play. They cause me to play another game entirely, and be more cautious about which games I buy in the first place. (I've experienced GW, and so I won't be buying GW2. I've read about EQ, and have no intention of wasting my time with either it or it's offspring.)

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...

Stupid? You're the one going "Other genres of games penalize you, why don't MMOs?" in this portion of the conversation. (Paraphrased.)

Meanwhile - hmm.

Portal 2: No penalty other than starting over, and if it's too far back, you can start from where you left off.
Most RPGs: Save games. maybe you wander around a bit. Bypassing any penalty other than a bit of time... rather like an MMO.
Flight sims - You crash. You start over from a save, or are starting over from a point partway through.
Driving/racing sims - Crash? Most start you within a few feet of where you crashed.
RTS - Again, save games. Or you start from the beginning or a predetermined point.

Now, are you sure you want to, oh, make yourself look stupid by essentially saying "Other games penalize the player more than MMOs?" MMOs, with "corpse runs," losing equipment (and not being able to get it back, sometimes permanently losing it if something like a disconnect happens,) deleveling, debuffs and the like, have been the *most harsh* of any genre. Especially for something you don't (in most instances, Guild Wars being an exception) pay for just once, but are paying for *time* to play.

Yes, I know you've said you're generally fine with how COH does it - but you DID ask the question. Don't like the answer, don't ask in the first place.

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What's wrong with that?

Did I respond supporting "no penalty at all?" Or was I replying to the "Other genres have a penalty" bit - you know, the thing I quoted?

Or are you having trouble reading?

Here, let me show you what I quoted from YOU that I replied to:
Hmm. Looks like I was answering that.

Here's a suggestion:

If you don't want a question replied to, DON'T ASK IT.

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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.

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.

And yet, it's given in this very thread as a reason... including by me.

Scroll back to the beginning. You'll see others giving the same sort of thing ("this is the reason I don't play X game/X unnamed game any mroe.")

Like it or not, "popping a wakie" still gives lost time - the XP debt slowing down leveling slightly. Die more, more time is lost to it. Lost time in an MMO is more of a penalty - you're paying for the time to access in most cases. Single player? You *generally* have the option to minimize that lost time. "This looks like a tough fight - save game." The penalty is minimal.

Funny, I don't see your name in red. Seems you have exactly zero right to tell me to "shut up and sit down." And there was nothing hostile before YOUR replies, sparky. Unless you somehow think "stupid" is a term of endearment. Or, of course, think trying to *order* me is somehow nice.

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So that's why you do it. See, I can *quote* something to *give an opinion* on that part. Especially when the part quoted is a *question.* It's not, like you seem to think, a personal attack.

Oh, thought "you were finished," by the way.
Yeah, there it is right there. Hint for you: If you want to be taken seriously when you say you're done, *be done.*

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But is it *the* reason to quit those games? I can't say I have too much experience with all the different death penalties listed but -xp and deleveling from FFXI wasn't the reason I quit.

Heck, that was the least reason I quit. I actually did like the game and its quirks, but it eff'ed my Beastmaster, it eff'ed my Thief NM camper and as I looked on to the future of my character, it only made me depressed. I quit because all I'd have to look forward to is signing my life over to a group of campers that I'd have to join for a chance at good gear and very little fun.

But that you delevel and lose xp for dying? Well, it was one thing that made quitting easier along with the slow leveling, non-solo content, soul-sucking crafting, HOURS travel time and difficulty forming teams.

You'd be hard pressed to expect me to believe many quit some games just because the death penalty was too harsh. If that were the case, and the rest of the game was great then why not just *NOT* die?

At times, yes.

If it's a bad enough penalty - or, rather, annoying enough - that it makes the rest of the game not fun because you don't want to take risks, or want to avoid teaming (bad in an MMO) because you can get penalized for other peoples' mistakes or what have you - then that penalty is outweighing the rest of the game and can be a reason to quit.

Is it common? I don't know. I don't have the exit surveys and "I quit" posts from every MMO to answer that.

I can contrast two MMOs (well, one I'd call MMO-lite) for my own experience, Guild Wars and Aion.

Guild Wars, yes, the death penalty is frustrating enough for me to quit. Deal with the debuffs - which stack - each time you die... even though it (as I recall) sets you on a corpse run? I dont' want to take risks, then. The game, to me, is somewhat dull admittedly, but I'd go through some "dull" for what looked like an interesting set of storylines. I've complained about movement (IE, not being able to hop over a small rise - or "skip over a pebble," as I tend to put it,) but I've put up with that in other games. Those are minor and overlooked. The futility of trying to do a corpse run while debuffed (not the corpse run in and of itself to me) - and being penalized STILL afterward - is what really did it in for me. It is the main reason.

Aion, the death penalty is irritating in that it costs you money on top of *everything else* costing far too much money - but it's a minor thing on a list. I wouldn't call it "the" or even "a major" reason for quitting.

As far as "why just not die?" well... show how to ensure doing that 100% of the time in every game, and I'll be happy to.

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Well for one, absolutes are setting yourself up for failure and knowing your tone, failure = frustration = rage-quit.

There's no reason to 100% eliminate the chance of death, you just need to minimalism it. Remember, we're talking about a game that's so fun and great but with an annoying death penalty that you want to get around to keep enjoying the game. The game doesn't spontaneously combust with one death.

With any game, you'll have to learn it. Most likely, many of your deaths will come early and luckily any penalties thrown at you will either be dampened or ignorable (you're most likely near a town, you don't have lots of currency to lose or expensive gear to repair anyway). So die and learn.

In the upper levels, it's just a matter of emphasizing certain abilities/equipment, so rezzes, self-rezzes, teleportation, phase-out, etc. When you have other players around, this tends to help decrease the penalty. Losing xp solo is harsh but losing xp teamed will get that back sooner than solo. You don't have to take no risks (but you can, and that'd further minimalism chance of death) but not at the cost of fun, which is what we're playing this hypothetical game for.

That's different from Death in combat. You aren't trying to accomplish anything (other than move back to your bind point/the hospital/what have you).

We used to do that all the time with the last game I played (particularly if you were at the bottom of a dungeon, it was just easier to "death train" out than have to fight your way all the way back to the entrance) and it DID have XP and Equipment durability loss penalties (and rez sickness if you released instead of getting a player rez).

I personally HATE getting defeated, even with how utterly negligible the penalties are in CoH. Doesn't matter if I have an awaken, or even a self rez, so I'll do everything possible to prevent it.

GW2 actually won't have a death penalty at all. The Devs laid that out in one of their articles month ago. (Plus you'll be able to JUMP!)

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

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.

I must admit, I was bemused by the amount of emphasis they seemed to have put into the fact that you could jump in GW2. I may have been reading into it, but it seemed like they were making jumping out to be the holy grail of MMO technology. :3

No, it only means that there's no harsh penalty for defeat.

With regards to the "death express", it's a completely different context from just losing a fight. In the "free ride" example, you're willingly letting yourself be defeated. You're achieving your goal. You're still in control. When you lose a fight, you're not willingly relinquishing control of your character. It's being forcibly taken from you, because you've failed.

It's a completely different thing to be sitting at your desk with a pencil and paper trying to objectively quantify a proper punishment for losing, and actually experiencing that loss yourself. You think that just because the player suffers no numerical loss for defeat, it's meaningless, but the player sees it differently; he lost, he died. And players hate to lose.

They're just tapping into the in-joke of the GW1 community, with that kind of hype. It's a tongue-in-cheek thing.

In one specific instance, yes. If you want to stretch it to all death in said game as meaningless, you're going to need to come up with more anecdotes.