What if we removed faceplanting?
Some years ago CoH had two defeat poses. The one, which is still the current, is to faceplant. The second was to end up lying on your back with arms and legs spread somewhat. It was random which defeat pose would come up when your character was defeated. I like this as it gave a little bit of varity for a group of PCs all defeat in battle at the same time.
Why the Devs removed this alternate defeat animation I do not know, but I'd love to see it returned to this game.
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Some years ago CoH had two defeat poses. The one, which is still the current, is to faceplant. The second was to end up lying on your back with arms and legs spread somewhat. It was random which defeat pose would come up when your character was defeated. I like this as it gave a little bit of varity for a group of PCs all defeat in battle at the same time.
Why the Devs removed this alternate defeat animation I do not know, but I'd love to see it returned to this game. |
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I played a game called the Longest Journey once (same people that are producing the Secret World, I think). The protagonist, April Ryan, could not die - you know that from the beginning. She suffered setbacks and challenging situations but never the immersion break of a death animation, and I think the game was better for it.
/signed
I'm just thinking, if we changed the faceplant to something else, would it change the way players felt about defeat? I figured it warranted a discussion at least.
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If the visual representation of defeat has the impact you conjecture it does (and it probably does) that would suggest that the presentation of death was providing a significant component of that game design element of psychological avoidance. And that suggests that the mechanical penalty of being defeated can be lower than it would have to be to satisfy the same game design requirement if the presentation of defeat were more palatable.
Something to consider from a holistic perspective. Death/Defeat is there for a reason, and its logical to ask if the way defeat is presented assists in satisfying that requirement, and conversely what removing it would then logically mean. Our death penalty is pretty light as those things go; so light hard core MMO players essentially do not notice it at all. But casual players do, and specifically for them its worth wondering if part of the reason our death penalty can be mechanically low is because the presentation of defeat is enough to motivate them to take combat seriously enough to be meaningful to them.
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ya know, its art intensive, but id like it.
frankly, im wondering if dying in video games(all of em, not jsut mmos) isnt ready to go the way of 25 cent buy ins and 3 lives. It really only serves to break up the narrative, make continuing immersion breaking and, with most major games having checkpoints lots of places, largely an annoyance rather than a real consequence. Worse, in games with persistance like mmos, the explaination as to why death was so minor an inconvenience is almost always awkward and silly. I didnt miss it in fable 2 or 3, and i didnt miss it in kirby's epic yarn. these games still made getting hurt a problem because it interfered with your progress or attainment of higher rewards, but didnt rely on the jarring idea that you died..oops, you are fine now. Really, id say those games actually made it hurt more, because you you were going for a great new ability in fable, or a secret stage patch in kirby, getting tagged and falling short SUCKED, and you couldn't just reload from 5 seconds a go and do it again. it really serves little narrative purpose and is a relic of a bygoen age. (ok, it kind of works in dark/demons souls, but thats because the whole game is about dying over and over again) |
I know, we'd been talking about ideas like this off n on for a while now, so its as much your thought as mine, but when the master of randomly-colored-costumes comments on "breaking immersion," it doesn't sound very genuine.
... then again, you do pretty much the same with RL attire, so I stand corrected.
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Some years ago CoH had two defeat poses. The one, which is still the current, is to faceplant. The second was to end up lying on your back with arms and legs spread somewhat. It was random which defeat pose would come up when your character was defeated. I like this as it gave a little bit of varity for a group of PCs all defeat in battle at the same time.
Why the Devs removed this alternate defeat animation I do not know, but I'd love to see it returned to this game. |
They could add that feature into the custom power section. Would make it easier to chose which one you would like. Also, a few more ideas:
Hissy Fit - you become frustrated that you can't win and you start stomping your feet and waving your arms or you would lay on your stomach and start pounding the floor with your hands while waving your feet
Mid Air (only works if you have a fly power on when you are defeated) - Your body would go limp but you are still floating in the air (when rezzed, you would drop to the floor and land on your feet)
The Spin (only used when defeated with a knockback/up power) - you're whole body does two 360s in the air before you land on your face
Shocking - electricity pulses through your body as you shout into the air before you collapse (best for tech characters who don't want to explode but want to show an overload)
Last words - the same animation as now but once your knees hit, the animation would be extended for a second and you can custom a quote to be spoken in local chat as if you say it before you collapse
That's all I can think of right now.
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Ever since the introduction of patrol xp, I haven't minded dying at all unless I'm on a Tank or completely out of a way to rez without hosping out of mission. And even then its only mildly frustrating.
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I am ALL for "Death Emotes" but they better not need to be bought with points! Unlocked maybe, on an account-wide basis through some in-game activity... but NOT with Paragon Points.
Maybe add them to a Vet Reward? |
You can tell players that they can spend 80 PP to get an emote, or be subscribed for 5 more years to get the emote.
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I like the idea of the 'kneeling' emote for a defeat pose also, and would like to add my /signed to the idea. Definitely gives a more 'down but not out' feeling (plus I believe a Distinct Competitor uses a similar kind of defeat pose as well).
I'd also be up for adding extra 'death emotes' as long as it wasn't too much trouble for them, but I wouldn't change anything about the mechanics of defeat as it stands. Standard code rant aside, I think that probably would be too much work on their part for too little gain.
Also:
I played a game called the Longest Journey once (same people that are producing the Secret World, I think). The protagonist, April Ryan, could not die - you know that from the beginning. She suffered setbacks and challenging situations but never the immersion break of a death animation, and I think the game was better for it.
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Fun game, but my wife and I were so frustrated with it at the end of the game. After digging around about it, we found out it's the middle of a story. We also discovered that the first part of said story is unavailable in any current format, and the end has not been (and probably will not ever be) made. Longest journey indeed...
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I couldn't agree more.
Off the wall idea here. More of a thought exercise.
What if we removed faceplanting from the game? I don't mean that nobody could ever be defeated. I mean changing up the pose for defeat. I've noticed that recently there's been a number of missions where you fight a NPC and then you're given a choice to spare them or strike the finishing blow, etc. At that point they're on their hands and knees on the ground. That is the pose I was thinking of substituting for. Why? Well I've been meditating on the nature of "defeat" in this game. It doesn't represent death, or near death. It doesn't even necessarily represent being knocked out. You'd have to be conscious, because you're making a decision to "tap out" and go to the hospital or wait for a rez. Also, if you were truly out cold, no amount of will power would "Revive" you, for example. Defeat as faceplanting makes some assumptions about your character that, from a RP standpoint, may not be true. Defeat is just your character faltering, for whatever reason. Another reason is, and this may sound petty, faceplanting is kind of humiliating. I've read a bit on the psychology of game design, and if a player is frustrated because they "died", the wrong kind of death animation can only exacerbate their frustration and in extreme cases, you could be looking at a rage quit. Think about it: if slot machines laughed at you when you lost at them, would anyone play them? I'm just thinking, if we changed the faceplant to something else, would it change the way players felt about defeat? I figured it warranted a discussion at least. . |
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
Only if defeated fliers leave Wile E. Coyote-style impact craters.
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vet rewards suck. If you are at tier 9 they are great, but if you are not you can't get them.
You can tell players that they can spend 80 PP to get an emote, or be subscribed for 5 more years to get the emote. |
I.e. add it to the bonus of a lower tier one.
You can have my faceplant pose when you pry it from my cold, dead... oh, hmmm.
More seriously i wouldn't mind more defeat poses, but i personally would prefer they still involve being completely prone and immobile, not some sort of kneeling or upright pose. Unless the pose is incredibly silly and ludicrous, but then i'm a sucker for absurdity. Otherwise i think that being incapacitated beyond being able to take action should be indicated by being flat(tish) on the ground.
Also a defeat pose where you lie straight and flat on your back with a lily clutched in your hands over your chest. Yessssss...
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What's all this I hear about removing facepainting? Don't you know all the little children that go to fairs and parks love facepainting? If it weren't for facepainting, where would we get such heartwarming antics like a little boy facepainted as a zombie telling he likes turtles! C'mon! Think of the children!
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Possibly. There is something to consider from the opposite direction. The game design role of being defeated is to act as an incentive to avoid being defeated. This psychological pressure to avoid defeat (at least most of the time) is generally what gives combat any meaning for most players.
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Prince of Persia 2008 had a VERY good approach to this. Whenever the prince was about to die, Elika - his constant super-powered companion - would save his life. If the prince fell down a pit, she'd pull him back to the last stable platform, thus resetting the current jumping puzzle. If the prince was about to get stomped by a boss, she's blast the boss away and be left exhausted, causing much of the boss' health to recover. In both of these cases, "defeat" was not interpreted in the archaic sense of "Game Over!" Continue?" but more with the explanation that those stumbles were just part of the gameplay. You slash at a boss, dodge a few moves, get knocked down, Elika blasts the boss away, you get up and keep slashing. It's all part of the same flow and it's all part of the game. At no point does the game pretend to "end" and ask you if you want to reload or continue. To me, that's far, FAR superior.
You say that defeat is intended to encourage people into playing seriously, though I'm interpreting loosely. To me, that's the wrong approach. Rather than motivating people by punishing them for doing it wrong, I'd much rather see players being encouraged to do it right, or indeed even forced to do it right, as is the case with Prince of Persia. Gate success behind a certain requirement and simply require the player to perform this requirement, or let the player opt out of success, progress through the story and simply not get rewarded. This way, you don't require anti-incentive for failure because you supply posi-incentive for success.
To make it much simpler, I see defeat penalties as that Penny Arcade comic strip about teaching people to swim by shoving them in the deep end and yelling at them to "OK, now swim more and drown less."
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.
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Something my sister said once: "The mark of a bad game is frustration". To this I agree. A game that has a death or failure screen that is too punishing doesn't encourage a player to play the game better to avoid the screen insomuch as it encourages a player to quit playing that game to avoid the screen. The same can also be said of harsh death penalties: there is a game I am playing right now where death = lose pretty much all of your items, and the game is based around spending sometimes weeks to get these items. When someone has all their items on them, dies, and loses everything, they don't start again and try to play the game better. They just leave the game. The term "ragequit" is thrown around a lot, and rightfully so.
As far as death emotes go, I would gladly pay paragon points to get access to a pack that lets you choose how you die with varying emotes (like exploding, catching fire, dissolving away, disappearing in smoke, ect). The defeat of a hero should itself feel like a spectacular feat.
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Something my sister said once: "The mark of a bad game is frustration". To this I agree. A game that has a death or failure screen that is too punishing doesn't encourage a player to play the game better to avoid the screen insomuch as it encourages a player to quit playing that game to avoid the screen. The same can also be said of harsh death penalties: there is a game I am playing right now where death = lose pretty much all of your items, and the game is based around spending sometimes weeks to get these items. When someone has all their items on them, dies, and loses everything, they don't start again and try to play the game better. They just leave the game. The term "ragequit" is thrown around a lot, and rightfully so.
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Here's the problem, though - video games are not a sport. They can be, there are plenty of video game tournaments, but they don't HAVE to be. I know there are some who treat them like sports where the point of the game is to excel, perform and win. There are games for that. Eve comes to mind. In those kinds of environment, having defeat suck makes sense, since the player is expected to be highly competitive and highly motivated to win. A humiliating defeat is supposed to piss the player off and make him try harder next. People who give up or don't try hard enough don't "deserve" to win.
And that's the problem - these kinds of games are not for every type of audience. As the game market expands and video games become a more widely-accepted form of entertainment, they start attracting people who aren't at all consistent with the hardcore competitive gamers of old, but are instead those looking for relaxing entertainment. There are few better examples of both worlds than City of Heroes, or at least there used to be few. I remember many players who explained that not only was City of Heroes their first MMO, but their first real game at all, aside from Solitaire and Minesweeper. There are plenty of people who admitted they sucked at video games, but came here for the costume creator or the super heroes or because of the community.
What I'm saying is that while you can treat games like a sport, you don't have to, and for many of us games are a leisurely activity, with emphasis on the word "leisure." I agree completely that, for me personally, a frustrating game isn't one I'll keep coming back with the intent to beat it. I'm perfectly fine with giving up and being defeated by a game. I'm sure the victory will look all the sweeter for it from inside my Recycle Bin. To me, a game that has an element to it intentionally designed to NOT be fun so I'll be frustrated if it happens is a game that I don't want to play.
People say that defeat should suck so people don't want to go through it. Why? Why can't defeat be part of the game? That so many people consider self-rez powers to be "useless" because you have to have "failed" to use them confounds me. As far as I'm concerned, no player has ever lost as long as he has the ability to keep getting up where he fell. To me, dropping down and getting back up with Rise of the Phoenix shouldn't be "frustrating," it should be awesome. It's a cool power and a cool ability. Hell, half of Wolverine's coolness comes from the fact that you can keep killing him and he'll just keep getting back up.
I've occasionally been told that my solution to using defeat as a gate rather than a penalty is worse than what the game does now, but I stand by it. If you a spawn takes you down or defeats your whole team, have the spawn "leash" back to its spawn point and return to full health. Elite boss beat you down? You can try again, you just have to start over. Ambush took you down? You can go back to the mission, but the ambush will spawn all over again. Death doesn't have to "cost" anything if you can't use it as a tool. Really, the only purpose to making death "suck" is so that people don't consider it a valid combat strategy to just keep tossing themselves at an enemy, chipping a bit of health and dying over and over again, and there are better ways to prevent this than pissing people off.
I have a very simple rule of thumb - if I log out of a game because I simply don't have the time to play it any more then that's a successful game, but if I log out of it because I'm pissed off and I can't stand to play it any more, then that game failed me. Sure, I might come back, but it really only takes about two or three play sessions that end in frustration before I learn that this game hurts me and I stop trying. A game achieves nothing by frustrating me.
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.
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I've occasionally been told that my solution to using defeat as a gate rather than a penalty is worse than what the game does now, but I stand by it. If you a spawn takes you down or defeats your whole team, have the spawn "leash" back to its spawn point and return to full health. Elite boss beat you down? You can try again, you just have to start over. Ambush took you down? You can go back to the mission, but the ambush will spawn all over again. Death doesn't have to "cost" anything if you can't use it as a tool. Really, the only purpose to making death "suck" is so that people don't consider it a valid combat strategy to just keep tossing themselves at an enemy, chipping a bit of health and dying over and over again, and there are better ways to prevent this than pissing people off.
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However, saying that, there are games out there that use that method... and for some reason or another, it doesn't suck, typically because there is something else that can be tied in to ease the "pain of death".
Case in point: In a story instance in a galaxy far far away... I had to defeat the big bad. I died (rather fast in this case).
However, in the story instance, you had some NPC's that showed up to help you out. Whilst i was there dying, twice overall IIRC, they were keeping the "big bad" in combat. Now as the mob was still in combat, the fight could not reset. Which meant that when i came back from the dead, I was:
1) Not in combat so i could re-summon my companion.
2) able to rest back up to full health.
3) able to use medpacks again! (90 second limitation on the combat).
This made the fight better overall for me, as i was able to carry on as if nothing had happened (bar the repair cost).
I have had a similar occurance happen in the open world as well.
CoX helps with the problem in that you can "zerg it to death" if need be... yes there will still be the occasional mob that you by yourself, can not defeat, even after multiple runs, but although it might take time... you *should* be able to do it.
The resetting "back to full health"... If you fail after 3 attempts of doing everything just right... yeah... it sucks and you are liable to go off and do something different.
*shudders at the 10+ attempts on one boss in a galaxy... until i found a nice alternative which involved of LOSing around pillars so that one move wouldnt hit*
*edit* What i am trying to say, is that there are specific instances where your solution would work...
The resetting "back to full health"... If you fail after 3 attempts of doing everything just right... yeah... it sucks and you are liable to go off and do something different.
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Say I'm unlucky and I run into a room where three spawns have merged and three Sappers are aiming their guns at my head. Say I feel I can't beat that. Then I say "skip it" and all three spawns disappear. I earn nothing from them and I take a hit on the final mission reward because of it. It hasn't stopped me from completing the mission so it hasn't caused me to "fail." I've simply chosen to forfeit the reward for a victory I couldn't achieve.
This is from the mentality that you don't HAVE to win every fight in order to proceed, but being able to do so rewards you with more "stuff." You're not penalised for defeat since you can always just try again with nothing lost, and you're only rewarded if you manage to succeed.
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.
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This is an idea I could get behind. I've got a few characters whose concepts would benefit from an alternate defeat animation. I've got Bluebolt Psi a robotic drone who could explode. I've got Armorbound, an animated suit of armor that could fall apart.
I've even got Amorphous Man, a Spines/Regen Scrapper, a T-1000-esque shapeshifter who could be splattered into a puddle on the floor when defeated.
Or even combine several of this thread's suggestions for a powered armor character. The armor shell gets blown to pieces, leaving the character on his/her knees in his/her underwear, ala Arthur of Ghosts n' Goblins or Samus from Metroid.
Although with some of them, you'd also need a matching "get back up" animation (like Armorbound or Amorphous Man reforming himself), which can be a problem, especially for the "blown to pieces" ones.
And come to think of it, a lot of those might be seen as even more embarrasing than a simple faceplant. Especially the powered armor variant, which would also require you to imagine what your character wears under their armor and create a separate costume for it.
I can also easily imagine some overconfident player dismissing them via the same logic they dismiss self-rezzes with. "Why should I use death emotes? I'm never going to die!"
It would need a lot of work, but if they ever do it, I'll definitely use some of them if they fit my characters.
Currently published Mission Architect arcs:
Arc ID# 70466: From the Abyss.
Arc ID# 403174: The Serpent's Revenge.
Arc ID# 534236: The Clockwork Angel.