An open discsusion on the consequences of death

[Kallera]

seriously, why the hell do we need "consequences" for death anyway? Think about it! It's a f***ing VIDEO GAME! And since when have any FF's beside XI or any other games besides these relatively new MMO's you are all whipped by had permanent consequences for dying??!!

I say NO! That is why The Lord Jiminy Christmas invented the goddamn RESET BUTTON!!! ...So that people could have FUN playing video games, not make them an extension of their crappy real lives. Wake up, folks; real people play games to have fun.

Part of making a game fun is to make it challenging, have it be easy to learn but hard to master. Real people gamble too, entire sports legends have been made on mere poker faces.
Does your game have its own live feed of tournaments? Some fiercely competitive MMO games do. Ever wonder why that is?

[DannyBlue]

Yeah the diff between this and poker is that nobody is losing real money when you fail... So hardcores should freakin relax and live with reckless play, because video games are supposed to be about having a place where you can be reckless. Challenge has nothing to do with that... the obstacles are still challenging, you're just allowed infinite attempts at clearing them -- and that should stay free of things that just waste your time --- I have enough things in my life that waste my time, thanks.

And you said easy to learn -- well if there is SP loss no one will stick around for the mastery who isn't already hardcore -- it makes no business sense whatsoever to build a game structure that appeals only to people who already like it. Hyper-competitiveness has its place, sure -- high school gym class. The rest of us just want to enjoy ourselves for a few hours a day, so quit trying to frack with our progress, and if you want another super-competitive game so damn bad, go freakin build your own.

[Preypacer]

What do you all think?

Beautifully stated and I absolutely agree.

Adventure and exploration in XI meant something because of that ever-present danger. You had to respect the environment, you had to respect the creatures around you. Carelessness could be fatal, which made it all the more important to plan, use caution and be ever-aware of your surroundings. Understanding mob aggro was important - especially navigating those tight bottle-neck areas.

In newer MMOs, including FFXIV, that sense of fear and "respect for your surroundings" is considerably reduced because - unless you go *way* off the beaten path and aren't hitting aetheryte nodes along the way, you're not likely to encounter anything that's going to pose anything more than a minor setback if you die... and that's only assuming you don't manage to out-run its tether and it drops aggro.

I've been in many guildleve parties where the leves were set at higher difficulty than we were really able to handle, and it was actually disappointing. Why? Because the people had no interest in using tactics or strategy, but preferred to just repeatedly kept zerging the thing 'til we won. Classic WoW-style approach.... "fail your way to success". They didn't care if they died because repairs were easy/cheap and there was no greater impact than a few minutes of weakness. I suggested using a bit more strategy and the response was along the lines of, "What's the point? There's no need for it. Just keep zerging the things down and we'll be fine".

That kind of care-free attitude should never be taken to something that's supposed to be a challenge. If there were some kind of greater penalty for dying, I guarantee, people would be far less likely to behave that way and would become much more careful and strategic in their playstyle. In my 7+ years of playing XI, I never saw people behave that way... at least not for long. In other MMOs without any kind of real penalty, I saw people behave that way constantly. And, likewise, I'm seeing them behave that way now in XIV.

Your example about the run to Jeuno is a perfect illustration to this that I think most anyone could relate to who played XI. My first run to Jeuno on foot was epic; something I'll never forget... even though it happened over 7 years ago now, right around the PC launch in the US. It was a scary run that could have ended very badly... I got all the way to Sauromugue Champaign and was standing right near the zone line to Meriph. Mtns. when my friend - who had been leading the way on Chocobo - ran out of riding time and was killed by a nearby Yagudo. A high level JP player (an Elvaan Ranger) happened by and, quickly realizing my plight, led me to the front gate of Jeuno... cheered me on, bowed, waved goodbye and ran back off into Sauromugue.

That first journey is something that I would get excited about for other people on their first trek... because it really was/is a milestone journey - probably the first truly epic journey a player ever takes in that game - and the payoff (chocobo license and a whole new city, new xp'ing zones nearby, etc) is so worth it. I remembered how awesome it was to get there for the first time.

And so much of that excitement and those memories is derived from the fact that it was such a dangerous trip. Even following the roads, there was constant danger that you could not take lightly.

By comparison... the trip to Ishgard in XIV left me feeling rather underwhelmed. Other than being a long run, there was nothing special or remarkable about the trip. I felt no sense of danger the entire way. The road was mostly clear of any mobs, and those I did see were easily avoided. I did the trip at level 14.. something that I wouldn't have dreamed of doing for the first time to Jeuno in XI... at least not without an escort.

That sense of urgency and danger is notably missing from XIV and I think it is due as much to the lack of a meaningful death penalty as it is to how "safely" the world is designed traveling from one city to another.

Now, for those who will say I'm "in favor of penalizing players for dying"... that's not the case. I hate dying as much as the next guy, especially when there's something to lose. It's not the penalty for dying I'm into... it's the way it fundamentally changes players' approach to the game that is the payoff of it. When there's something to lose for dying, people tend to be much less careless and much more attentive to what's going on, to developing strategies, to using their knowledge of the game, of their job/class and others' in their group to succeed at a given task *without* dying.

In every MMO I've played without a meaningful penalty, it's resulted in pretty much the same thing... careless bum-rushing of enemies, dying, running back in.. doing more damage... dying... running back in... doing more damage... dying.. and eventually winning through a purely "success by repeat failure" approach. That simply isn't fun to me, at all.

So, I am totally in favor of a harsher death penalty, and I think losing xp, but not losing levels would be a great compromise between XI's system and XIV's.

[Xzen]

Hmmm one time sink for another. Nah. How about they give us content that is challenging over a superficial game mechanic that tries to artificially achieve the same thing.

[Preypacer]

Hmmm one time sink for another. Nah. How about they give us content that is challenging over a superficial game mechanic that tries to artificially achieve the same thing.

Because adding challenging content is only half the equation.

Taking a leve at a higher difficulty than you're prepared to "safely" handle is very challenging. Beating it by simply zerging it over and over again, instead of devising a strategy to do so while dying as little as possible, if at all, renders that challenge moot because the players are simply shrugging it off.

Adding more difficult NM type encounters means very little if zerging it down 'til it's dead is an "effective approach" and there's no penalty for dying.. much less dying repeatedly.

Say there was a corridor riddled with traps that were potentially deadly and the only way to get through safely was to disable them, or find a way to divert or avoid them. If dying had a significant bite to it, players would find ways to get through that corridor as safely as possible, without losing too much HP or, of course, dying. With no meaningful death penalty, you know what would happen? I can tell you, 'cause I've seen it happen first-hand in a similar scenario.. Players just bum-rush through it, setting off the traps, dying in the process. They didn't care 'cause there was a raise right near by and they didn't lose anything for dying. What was designed to be a challenge was rendered a joke because players could simply "fail their way" through it without penalty.

Again, the point of a death penalty isn't to "encourage the penalizing of players for failure". It's to encourage players to play more strategically in order to avoid dying in the first place. That's the key.

Death should royally suck. It should not be something taken lightly or shrugged off.

[Xzen]

Because adding challenging content is only half the equation.

Taking a leve at a higher difficulty than you're prepared to "safely" handle is very challenging. Beating it by simply zerging it over and over again, instead of devising a strategy to do so while dying as little as possible, if at all, renders that challenge moot because the players are simply shrugging it off.

Adding more difficult NM type encounters means very little if zerging it down 'til it's dead is an "effective approach" and there's no penalty for dying.. much less dying repeatedly.


Again, the point of a death penalty isn't to "encourage the penalizing of players for failure". It's to encourage players to play more strategically in order to avoid dying in the first place. That's the key.

Death should royally suck. It should not be something taken lightly or shrugged off.

But the only reason people don't run leves on higher difficulty is because it doesn't reward them proportionally to the level of difficulty.

Zerging down an NM wasn't possible until SE nerfed them.

Death penalties have not encouraged players to get better in the past and it wont do it here either.

Failing an encounter and not making progress is punishment enough for most people and forces them to learn or never complete it.

[Akumu]

Not this thread again... Everything that could have been stated already has been by both the majority and the niche.

Majority: Would rather have a challenge which requires tactics, efficiency, and positioning.
Niche: Would like to add timesinks because they enjoy getting kicked in the nuts and want everyone else to feel it.

Just let this thread sink back down already.

[Preypacer]

Death penalties have not encouraged players to get better in the past and it wont do it here either.

Failing an encounter and not making progress is punishment enough for most people and forces them to learn or never complete it.

Ohhhhh I strongly beg to differ.

In my time playing XI, I hardly *ever* saw people playing caressly or not trying to improve their strategies or tactics to succeed at something.

Of course, this is also before having Power-levelers in a "standard party setup" became the norm and players actually worked through things themselves without any outside help to keep them alive... I suppose that could have changed things. I know at some point, the mindset changed from being "okay, we wiped... let's change our tactics" to being "okay, we wiped, let's get a PL", and further to "the Dunes is impossible without a PL". A PL allowed players to play carelessly and make mistakes that would have certainly wiped them were a PL not there. PLs were one of the worst things to happen in FFXI.

Prior to that, though, if a groupI was in died due to a poor strategy or bad decisions,, changes were made to correct it. If one player consistently kept screwing up or being careless, they were told to knock it off or be kicked because they were screwing it up for everyone else. In most cases, they stopped screwing around.

Your last statement often comes up and sounds wonderful in theory... In reality, though, the only people I've seen consider wiping as "punishment enough in itself" are the serious raiders and those who pride themselves on being able to take things down without wiping, etc. Aside from that, more times than not - in MMOs with no real penalty for dying (and I've played myriad of them) - people simply don't care if they die because they know there's nothing more to deal with than a negligible repair fee and maybe a few minutes of running time. Hell, in some of them people will die on purpose to get around faster; they call it "graveyard hopping" among other things in WoW.

Again... that should never happen. With a meaningful death penalty where something is actually at risk... it would happen *a lot* less.

[Xzen]

Not this thread again... Everything that could have been stated already has been by both the majority and the niche.

Majority: Would rather have a challenge which requires tactics, efficiency, and positioning.
Niche: Would like to add timesinks because they enjoy getting kicked in the nuts and want everyone else to feel it.

Just let this thread sink back down already.

lol

I once thought about how having another gamer tell me they like death penalties was like having a friend tell me they like to be tied up and kicked in the privates by a woman in leather.

[Kidkaze]

Dont know if it has been mentioned in this thread already (really do not feel like reading 60 pages of arguments at 1 in the morning...) but I was just wondering if it would be viable to have monster aggro when weakened, to give that sense of "oh SHHHHHH-----" that the niche audience want (in essence, a timesink), but also provide a sense to NOT want to die?

Thoughts? yay? nay? is it possible? Is that a unicorn? (wut?)