[dev1002] The entire world lacking as a battle environment.

[Shiyo]

Death penalties don't exist to "slow you down", they exist to make you not want to be bad, not want to play with bad players, to be afraid of dying, and to actually feel scared and stuff. FF14 is "oh oops I died oh well!" "oh let me go suicide i don't care if I die!". No one tries to survive because it doesn't matter, your life is not on the line and it's VERY boring.
Rift suffers from the same thing, you lose 10gold if you die(less than 1 monster worth of money, a soloable monster)and I never care if I die in that game.

[Dragonhand]

Death penalties don't exist to "slow you down", they exist to make you not want to be bad, not want to play with bad players, to be afraid of dying, and to actually feel scared and stuff. FF14 is "oh oops I died oh well!" "oh let me go suicide i don't care if I die!". No one tries to survive because it doesn't matter, your life is not on the line and it's VERY boring.
Rift suffers from the same thing, you lose 10gold if you die(less than 1 monster worth of money, a soloable monster)and I never care if I die in that game.

That, that and that!

I've played Lineage 2 for years, to die usually meant losing 1 peace of gear to the first guy who piked it and a 4% xp lost (that could be recovered by 70% with healer's resurrection). We would go to the trouble of teach our clan m8s how to play in order not to die uselessly, cus the price could be a week of xp worth x9 (9 players per party) and a month of crafting work. Ok i give you that it was not fun when it appended, but it was the reason I enjoyed staying alive, cus dieing was rly rly bad.

If dieing is not bad, and all u have to do is a 2-5 min bio break... or pay a little money and move on... whats the point of avoiding death. In wow when i need to go afk i leave my character where it is, if it gets killed there is no problem... ill just res when I get back, In l2? afking out of town without 8+ guys backing you up? got to bad mad.

I'll tell you a particular episode that you will NEVER see in a game without death penalty. These happened in L2 c3 i think, I was lvl 70ish with a group of 8 more guys in the highest area of the game, the mobs spawned constantly it was hard enough. My role was support buffer (BD) my buffs would double the party's dmg. Suddenly I stopped buffing, it was 4am and yah... I fell asleep, my clan m8s stayed there around 30 min until I woke up and dragged my character to a safe zone with them escorting me. They could left me to die, but they knew that if they did, I would probably lose a peace of gear and a lot of xp. So they stayed there when they wanted to leave, for my sake. That sort of commitment for a friend, a clan m8 or even a random guy you find struggling on the road will never happen in a game without drawbacks. In wow if a player gets afk? kick him, Drag mobs and fake death on him, who cares... No one gives a damn.

I'm not hereby demanding xp penalty on death, but a significant drawback on death that will make us actually avoid dieing.

In a game where the item has not gear requirements but recommendations, losing 1 lvl will not completely downgrade you. Also if you reach rank 50 and die more then 10 times in the same day, its because you are extremely bad or some one leveled the character for you, cus I don't believe that you will make 10 partys with only bad guys nor that during the 50 ranks you haven't learned anything.


But the death penalty is only a fragment. What is mostly laking in the game is the surprise effect, at the exception of storyline quests, you already know everything that is going to happen from the start. It's like wow raids, you know them before you actually do them... It's like a spoiled movie... not fun at all.