Death penalty

There are a ton of AVs, GMs, scripted events, and even bosses that can kill players in one hit. Just because they only named Recluse doesn't mean more don't exist. I have a widow with about +40% total HP, who is over soft-capped at all times, and she can still die. Not generally due to me being a blithering idiot who refuses to learn how to play, but because the game just works that way sometimes.

Off the top of my head, the following things can all kill her in one or two shots: Lord Recluse, Ghost Widow, Statesman, Bobcat, Goliath War Walker, Battle Maiden, Battle Maiden's blue patch, Back Alley Brawler, Citadel, Positron, Hamidon, Weakened Hamidon, Honoree, Romulus, Thorn Tree, rikti Pylons, and basically any AV or turret from the new trials. Heck there are plenty of EBs that can, like Longbow Ballista, and even regular boss Bane Spiders, Cimerorans, and Knives can one-shot her if they crit.

So despite having 50-60% DEF, self heal temps, Smoke Grenade, hide, and Placate, unless my character is at 100% full HP at all times during all this content, there's always a risk of me just dying randomly. There's also nothing I could really do to prepare myself or pay more attention in those situations other than spam greens as fast as possible every time I take any damage of any kind. Or just don't fight and hide behind a rock. I don't believe that a harsher death penalty would serve to teach me anything, other than "death really sucks a lot more than it used to," and maybe "I should play a sturdier AT or perhaps another game." And it certainly wouldn't go very far against lower level, less prepared characters and players. Especially those running around Praetoria.

It would certainly take all the appeal out of Vengeance, and make me hate the character and even the game. She died last night when I was playing the game while cooking, and had no access to a mouse, and couldn't reach a green when a Cim boss hit me. I just rezzed when the coast was clear and kept moving. Had I been severely punished, all I would've learned is "Um, don't play CoH while cooking I guess." Maybe that's the moral you're going for though, I dunno. Personally, I like that I can play CoH while cooking and not get stressed over it.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I think my biggest problem is with seeing things in terms of "penalty for death." UbiSoft did something I REALLY love with their next-gen Prince of Persia game ("that cell-shaded thing," as Yahtzee calls it), in that you never die. If you fall to your doom or get crushed in combat, your constant NPC companion saves you and either brings you back to the last stable platform you were on, or otherwise wakes you up with the enemy you were fighting having regenerated most of his health. They explained this as trying to look past the old days of "Game Over" screens from the coin-op era, and that they wanted their game to flow seamlessly from action to action even when you fail. Which it does, and I live the game for it.

I don't believe in "penalty for death" in any sense of the word, because I don't believe a player should be allowed to fail and yet still succeed. The worst "penalty" I want to see is having to try again AT NO LOSS OF ANYTHING. Simply make people try and try and try again until they get it right, or otherwise until they memorise the encounter and game the system. That's how I beat the Arishook in single combat.

If you want people to learn from their mistakes, then the easiest way to do that is to let them retry the same encounter they lost again immediately. You can only die so many times to a single tough fight before you pinpoint what's killing you, at the very least. And if you end up eventually STILL not able to beat that fight... Well, this IS an MMO, and there ought to be other people who can help.

City of Heroes isn't even as lenient as I describe. You can stock up on, say, large inspirations over a long period of time, but if you blow all of those on a single fight AND STILL LOSE, you're ******. No more large inspirations, no really good, dependable way to obtain more, no good way to retry at your original level of power. You can maybe scrounge up enough for a second attempt off the Market and off your own stores, but suppose you lose again? Then what? SOL. You lose performance, because you can consume your consumables, die and have to retry the same encounter again, only without your consumables. That's pretty punishing, though I'm thankful for Hospital Nurses. At least you're not COMPLETELY naked if you fail hard.

Generally, I don't want people to be "punished" for failing, because being punished causes people to get angry and shut down the game. And I've lost count of the number of games I've "forgotten" to get back to once I quit in a huff.

To you it was trivial, because you apparently did well than I did. I wasn't very good at the game, so I kept dying and dying and dying again, losing experience and being stuck at the same level with things only getting worse and worse. This did not motivate me to get better. It motivated me to hate the game with such passion that I've not had a single good thing to say about Diablo 2 for as far back as I can remember. There are very few games I HATE more than that one, and if I never see this atrocity ever again, it will be too soon.

Any game system which cane - through my lack of skill and knowledge - completely screw me over can keel over and die in a fire. Furthermore, any system of direct LOSS of anything can go to hell, too. I don't appreciate my games taking my stuff. I am not a petulant child to be punished. I pay good money for my entertainment and the least I expect from it is that it doesn't actively seek to piss me off.

That's a selfish stance to take, and one easily countered: Other people ruin my fun by sticking their noses into my business and telling me how to play so that they can have more fun at the expense of me not having any. This has happened to me in a lot of multiplayer games - one person will go ahead and do his thing at his leisure, expecting the rest of the players to sort of converge around him and craft a great gaming experience for him. We're all here to have fun, so one person's entertainment shouldn't take precedence over another person's.

The bottom line is that you are free to simply not play with people who don't appear to be as good as you require them to be, just as I'm free to rush headlong into trouble with wanton disregard for safety. This is an MMO, yes, but nothing says we, specifically, have to play together. I firmly believe in a "live and let live" policy. Let other people play as they will and be as good or as bad at the game as they will. I'm sure you'll still find people who want to do well on principle.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I agree with both of these statements.

I want to go on record as saying, that I don't care even the slightest amount how my reckless zerg-minded style impacts you. Not even a little bit. If you don't like it, don't team with me. I'm confident you not being on my team won't even be worth noticing to me.

That thing that he said right there.

It's no more selfish than the attitude that what you do in a multiplayer game has no effect on anyone else. You're not the only one in the game world. And even if you don't team much or at all, there are a lot of others who do. Given that multiplayer is at the base of the design, then it makes sense that those who play most with other people would be the first considered when making design decisions ( That's not to say that the soloists are wrong. I primarily solo myself ). A system that encourages the player to learn to work toward success and avoid failure for the benefit of the team seems only natural.

Going back to your statement about "failing but still succeeding", isn't that inherent in any system that allows you to revive after a defeat, even without any death penalty? If you get your butt kicked by the bad guy, you've failed. Yes, for some, that in itself is incentive enough to not die. For others, they need the extra incentive of avoiding a penalty.

There's also what I said a couple posts up: There is another group of players for whom the risk of losing something upon failure makes success that much better.

So, in the end, the only logical choice is to come up with a system that penalizes failure without being so harsh it drives most players away. I think the debt system strikes that right on. Sure, it won't please everybody, but that is, of course, impossible. It pleases enough to be a good decision. As I've said, opposite to a harsh penalty driving people off by creating too much frustration, too light or no meaningful penalty at all drives people off by trivializing the game and making accomplishments basically meaningless. Kind of becomes "we don't bother keeping score and both teams get trophies"

And I'm the one being called "selfish"......

That's pretty much the way she goes. Can't avoid death by just being a good player.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Mutation

Throw a little Fallout in there, man.

Heck, I remember people doing this in The Hollows before it got the field hospital to get a free ride back to Atlas Park.

Obviously. But Fallout isn't a buff

"The Death Penalty is fine" translates to "I don't want to be challenged"?
Really?
I think I'm going to have to leave this thread now because any response I could give to this would be inflammatory at best.

Have fun everyone!

Rise of the Pheonix \o/

With regard to the subject of the thread, I'm not really in neither camp.

I don't consider death penalties as a form of challenge. It can be a challenge, but it's more of a time-sink in the examples brought up by the OP. Death (or a sound pummeling that puts you in a state that seems like death on the outside) is something that should be a hinderance. I mean, when we in the real world do something that puts us in a similar state, we're going to take a while to recover.

I'm mainly arguing realism in that, when playing a game or in real life, you should *NOT* want to die merely because death should have consequences.

Someone brought up the terms 'selfish' and 'hypocrite', and I think it's an apt description considering all the complaints about how they want to feel super, how they don't want their immersion broken, how they want their actions to have more tangible consequence. That's very selfish in that you simply want your way and screw any other considerations of consequence and it's hypocritical to want your actions to make a difference while ignoring the actions of the foe making a difference on you.

Yeah, Skyway being destroyed one minute, then walking out of the mission to find Skyway is fine *totally* breaks immersion. And so does 'dieing' and marching right back into an alerted base 2 minutes later.

I'm not the only one in the game world, but I'm the only one paying my subscription fee, and I take slight with people who tell me I'm playing wrong and should either be playing differently, or that the game should force me to play differently without simultaneously offering to pay my subscription for me. I team with other people, despite what the forum drones may have you convinced, I just choose the people I play with such that I try to only play with people whose personalities and playstyle I like. This works fine for me, because I get to play how I like, they get to play how I like and we all get to have fun our own way.

You take slight with being called selfish, yet you don't fail to come off a supposed moral high ground just the same. You team and I don't (purportedly), therefore the game should ignore me and be designed after you. You put your own playstyle and preference as some kind of objective truth and then hold game design accountable for that, to the point where you advocate excluding playstyles because they aren't the kind of playstyles you personally want to play with.

Let's ignore the propaganda for a second and admit that I, too, team fairly frequently. In fact, I was in a mission with a friend of mine a couple of hours ago. Suppose for a moment that I prefer to play with people who aren't cautious, who are willing to take risks, fail spectacularly, laugh about it and try again anyway. Suppose for a moment that I'm bored to tears when I get on a team that insists on pulling every spawn one enemy at a time. Suppose I dislike being on a team where one person is convinced he knows how I should play my character better than I do and keeps informing me of this. Suppose I dislike being on a team with edgy people who explode in profanity the first time they fall in battle and then proceed to leave the team in a huff.

It's clear you and I will never see eye to eye and should never team, not out of any specific feeling of malice or discontent, but simply because out playstyles are simply too radically different. I have no problem with this, and applaud your willingness to excel even when the game doesn't punch you in the gut every time you fail. So why do you act as though one of us has to die before the other can have some fun. Why are spastic monkeys a problem for you, yet stuck-up jerks simultaneously not a problem for me? Why is your preferred playstyle of able and calculated team dynamics any "better" for the game than my preferred playstyle of "making it up on the spot?"

This isn't about teaming and not teaming. It's about letting people play as they will and then picking and choosing your team-mates. You don't get to dictate how people "should" play, only who you play with.

No.

When you fail to defeat an elite boss, that elite boss regenerates before you come back. You can try as many times as you want, but unless you defeat that elite boss, you are not making any headway. Any content which resets when you lose is content that must be beaten proper in one stretch. Flinging your own dead body at the enemy doesn't work, because progress only "counts" when you succeed. You lose nothing and you gain nothing for failure. You are free to choose a different task and return to your current task later, possibly stronger or better prepared, you are free to enlist help and you are free to simply pick another task to do. This is not a linear game.

I have an arcade system emulator at home, and it allows me to play arcade games with virtually unlimited credits. What this means is I can beat any and every game by simply hitting my enemies as much as I can before they kill me, dying, entering another virtual credit and continuing from where I left off. I don't condone this kind of gaming, because it requires nothing of the player but the knowledge that buttons exist. My solution to that has been to limit myself to one or two credits only. If I die, I start from the beginning of the game. I lose nothing for dying, because my ability to start from scratch exactly as strong as I was last time is not impeded, and my ability to progress through the game on my second, third, fiftieth try is not impeded in any way.

I personally have no problem at all with seeing content bits self-reset when a team-wipe occurs. That AV gets his spawn back and all his triggered ambushes recharge. That large spawn returns to its original number of fully-healed enemies. That ambush which killed you resets when it kills you, and keeps doing so until you defeat it or get past it. I'd take that over "punishment" every time.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

But what you're talking about here is another form of death penalty. Some degree of what you describe exists in CoH now ( The mobs return to full health ). However, full-on what you describe would actually be HARSHER than the penalty CoH invokes presently, even if debt were removed.

It comes down to the same thing, though: You're being penalized for failing. As it stands now, the "reset" is softened in favor of a temporary reduction of future xp gain ( debt ). And it's only xp being reduced - drops, inf, and badge credits remain the same ( In fact, you get even more badge credits by the end of the fight in terms of the damage received badge and such, not to mention the one specifically for paying off debt ).

The point I'm trying to make is it's not the same for most people. And, as I said, the accomplishment is more meaningful to a lot of people when failure risks some form of loss. Feelings on this go across the spectrum, and the current penalty is a reasonable compromise for all of them.

I don't see that as a penalty at all. I see that as a requirement. You cannot enter Cimerora until you have finished the Midnight Club arc on the side you are on. This is irrespective of whether you feel you are capable of finishing this arc. Finishing this arc is a requirement, plain and simple. You cannot get Vanguard Merits until you've finished the first mission from Levantera. That's not negotiable, it is a requirement. I see this in the same way.

A penalty is something you are slapped with IN ADDITION to failure, and for the most part it is something that either makes it hard to try again, or otherwise slows you down. It is what keeps you from trying again, or makes the whole attempt that much less useful. Penalties are not designed to balance, they are designed to hurt and force players to avoid dying out of fear and discomfort.

A reset, by contrast, is a balancing mechanic. It simply ensures that a player is capable of tackling a specific bit of content as it is designed to be tackled before it hands out its reward. It's not a system that's intended to make a player fear death. Quite on the contrary, it's a system that's intended to make a player NOT CARE about death and instead focus on success. It's a system that's intended to provide as benign an environment as possible while forcing the player to take no shortcuts just the same.

In essence, a penalty is intended to make a player fear failure by making it suck more. A reset system is one which encourages the player to care about success by making defeat trivial. Obviously, such resets can't reset TOO much, or that WOULD suck, but the idea is sound nevertheless.

There's also the fact that resets are much more compatible with keeping a player's sense of flow, if a player is liable to reach that. A penalty makes you stop, it makes you slow down and it takes you out of the experience, because you need time and effort to recover. A reset system simply throws you back into the encounter IMMEDIATELY, allowing you to keep on retrying until you succeed. To my eyes, this is a far better way to make people better at the game. The more times you can retry the same action, the better you learn it. The harsher the penalty for an action is, the less likely you are to try and repeat it and the more rare the repetition, thus the harder it is to actually learn from your mistakes.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Why can't it be both? I accept that I can be quite selfish. If my style doesn't work for a team or it's leader, I'm not gonna change it to appease anybody(in the overwhelming majority of cases). Instead I'll just move on from the team. They don't have to deal with a style they don't like, and I can do what I want. It's a win-win.

Except that this is not how it is. And thank a merciful God for that.

You get to decide how other people play when you are paying their monthly fees. But you don't do that, so.... etc.

I agree with the statement that harsh penalties encourage not "learning," but extremely conservative gameplay which actually avoids challenges. Next we'll be hearing about how the mission drop feature advocates non-learning, or some such thing.

Maybe you like endless frustration when faced with a boss that you cannot possibly defeat. Good for you. I just think back on my poor baby [I call level 19 "baby"-time] Clockwork girl trying to defeat 10 Vanessa DeVores, and her with no mez-protection. Before you start, a level 19 cannto possibly carry enough BFs to defeat 20 Vanessas. I don't like these situations. It incentivizes me to do nothing but avoid Praetoria. Creates a Pavlovian response, not some massive lightbulb going off over people's heads as they "learn." I learned, all right. I learned to not roll anyone else in Praetoria.