Risk vs Reward

[andrewprofit]

I would like to see an element of risk to the game. I believe the best games actually contain some risk. I would like to see a few missions which a player has a small chance of dieing. Those missions would have much higher rewards than usual and they would be identified as missions with a chance on failure of permanent character death.

[Rgoodfel]

Sorry friend not going to happen. As the Devs have put it we are past the days of harsh death penalties because they are not fun. I think harsh penalties make things more exciting when you play. I blame my Eve experience if you blow up there your ship is gone. However, I do feel that character death is a bit too much. People work sometimes hundreds of hours on their character it would be such a huge loss people would give up playing the game. That is something a business would not want.

[Thibor]

Sorry friend not going to happen. As the Devs have put it we are past the days of harsh death penalties because they are not fun. I think harsh penalties make things more exciting when you play. I blame my Eve experience if you blow up there your ship is gone. However, I do feel that character death is a bit too much. People work sometimes hundreds of hours on their character it would be such a huge loss people would give up playing the game. That is something a business would not want.

Agreed.
TBH, if people want these penalties then they can take it upon themselves that when they die, they can delete their character and start over.
The reason is that permanent loss does not carry the same weight across the board, depending on your perspective.
Let's say max rank in the game takes on average 300 played hours to reach.
One could argue that two people dying are in the same boat as they've lost the roughly the same thing.
Now, let's say that for those two players, one can play on average 10 hours a day, the other 2 hours a day. One just lost only a month's time investment, the other person 5 months.

It's that last perspective that hits people when something like permanent loss sits in. Not how many in-game hours it took them, but how long in RL weeks/months/years it took and is now wasted.

[auutumn]

Perma death is not an option and I hope not to see it again for a long time.

[Varrangian]

The gamers who are die hard in favor of Perma death are a dying breed. Perma death cannot sell anything, but a niche MMO.

[Awarkle]

its been said in a lot of mmo development forums that only the smallest minority of players want any form of perma death.

The other issue is that internet is not a 100% guarenteed thing neither is your PC or console, if you had perma death in the game and your power went out how would you feel to log in and find that your character perma died.

Or that your mum accidentaly unplugged your network router.

You will never see perma death in a pay for play mmo the developers would have to assign resources from customer support to deal with perma death issues that wasnt their faults.

So its easier to not have it.

i personally always felt that the City of heroes debt system was one of the better death penalties implemented into the game. You died and you had to effectivly earn twice the EXP to get past your debt.

OR You could lower your level and help out lower level peeps to clear it twice as quickly.

Ive started to play ffxi and i feel that the delevel is the worst out of all the death penalties in any game because you risk loosing an entire level.

However i really do hate traveling in ffxi i always see traveling as a waste of exp i dont want to spend an hour of my gaming time walking through the same landscape bypassing mobs and monsters that may or may not kill me. MAke things fast and fun and allow me to log in do somthing and log off feeling ive acomplished somthing. DONT make me have to wait 2 hours for that exp group to have it disband after a pull, nor do i want to queue up to do end game encounters or be class XYZ.

Just give us the unverse and let us do what we will with it.

[thefreshjedi]

Two acronyms some of you are familiar with.

SWG NGE.


(= fail)



-Avery

[jayrelo]

I would like to see an element of risk to the game. I believe the best games actually contain some risk. I would like to see a few missions which a player has a small chance of dieing. Those missions would have much higher rewards than usual and they would be identified as missions with a chance on failure of permanent character death.

nope. i heart you andrew, but there is not a good argument to justify perma death or stringent death penalties.

and for those who would come into this thread and argue a 'real life' point to me, please, accidently shoot your kneecap and tell me if thats zesty.

[rayljr]

Just give us the unverse and let us do what we will with it.


NUFF SED!!

[jayrelo]

NUFF SED!!

/concur +indeed

[Trekkie]

I definitely like the idea of having good rewards for when a character takes huge risks, but permanent character death is a terrible idea because no matter what, errors always happen - some of which are outside a player's control. It would be terrible to have your game lag or have your computer crash only to log back in to find that your character is gone permanently, wouldn't it?

[Loekii]

While I think Perma-death is far too harsh, and I am not really a fan of harsh death penalties, I do think games need to have more 'risk' involved.

You don't need to be punished with a harsh death penalty. How about just making success harder to achieve?

Current MMOs are extremely easy, and often 'reward' players for playing poorly. Instead of designing the entire game around Monday's Crossword (easy), make it around Thursday's Crossword Puzzle (rather difficult). Instead of having a simple mission of beaming down to a planet and find the bright Red Egg in the snow, make it more like you beam down to find the Red Egg, buried in a cave, with clues available in the local village. Make it so that don't always defeat that Romulan Ambush, but rather you lose a lot of them if you are not playing at 80% of your game.

Make the 'Risk' = not winning, and having to start anew. Make the risk = a Dungeon wipe (ie you don't play smartly, you over pull, you over nuke, you move too fast, etc = you fail).

[andrewprofit]

Here is what you guys are missing. Those uber elite players that have played for 3 years could die aswell. What that would mean for the rest of us is that we could compete.

Infact the higher the perm death chance the more likely casual players can compete with people who live in the game. Mean while those people who live in the game +50 hours a week they will get to have the opportunity to start over.

[Silverspar]

Here is what you guys are missing. Those uber elite players that have played for 3 years could die aswell. What that would mean for the rest of us is that we could compete.

Infact the higher the perm death chance the more likely casual players can compete with people who live in the game. Mean while those people who live in the game +50 hours a week they will get to have the opportunity to start over.

Wow, if your argument was a boat, it would of sunk faster than the Titanic. Sorry, but you do not present an argument that even remotely begins to address the issues. No one really cares about the uber players, except others who want to be the uber player. End of story, in a game where skill is going to be the bottom line, it won't matter.

[Freejack]

Here is what you guys are missing. Those uber elite players that have played for 3 years could die aswell. What that would mean for the rest of us is that we could compete.

Infact the higher the perm death chance the more likely casual players can compete with people who live in the game. Mean while those people who live in the game +50 hours a week they will get to have the opportunity to start over.

Déjà vu (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=11900) :confused:

[Silverspar]

:rolleyes:

Yea, anyways, Andrew to put facts down, griefers enjoy things like permadeath and the like. Not because it prevents them from griefing, far from it. You give them the tools and they will make everyones life miserable. End of the story. You can keep saying that permadeath will balance everything, not by a long shot. It will just make it easier for griefers to grief and cause no end of frustration to a lot of legitimate players.

[Tranchera]

PvP won't last long if you perma die.

However, I think having the option is good. I never use it, but if idiots think they're so good they can use it, more power to them.

[jayrelo]

profit didn't even reply to his own thread, he just started a new one.

yo, andrew, come back here bro, where'd ya go lover? :p

[Thibor]

PvP won't last long if you perma die.

Yep. Because it won't be about who is the better player but who can roll with the bigger gang.

[lorrelion]

Perma-death is exactly what the mmo industry needs to help remove idiots. It would be perfect for the casual gamer, and would allow him to jump in and play. It would discourage the annoying 12 year old who's only intent is being a dick to everyone from playing.

The problem is most gamers are unwilling to experiment with something new. Look at DnD. DnD is a horrible system compared to World of Darkness. Way to much math, way to many rules, and there are many rules that even go against basic common sense. Yet DnD has up until now outsold World of Darkness, because people don't want to change.

I want MMOs to evolve and become better. This game itself so far has promised a lot of evolution, such as ship combat that isn't point and click. In favor of getting to try a mmo that isn't completely point and click, like wow, I would prefer not to scare people away with perma-death.

To sum up my argument, Perma-death is a good idea, but too many new ideas will scare away people and I would really rather see the other ideas STO has popping up in other mmos instead of being forgotten by the wayside because people are afraid of perma-death.

[Silverspar]

Lorrelian, your argument lacks weight. Perma death is the perfect tool for griefers. Don't believe so? May I suggest you review history then. Take a look at UO, there wasn't perma death, but losing your loot was easily achieved in UO just by either killing, or preventing others from running and then dry looting ac orpse, even if the items were complete crap.

Take a look at Everquest for the corpse run. Griefers would easily lure monsters onto other player sjust to let them get killed in impossible places to do their corpse run. You give griefers the tools they won't care if they lose a **** character. They will make another one and gather in groups just to make sure they can kill other people and grief them. This cry for perma death ranks up there in unthought out and obviously short sighted belief it would make things better.

[_Pax_]

DnD is a horrible system compared to World of Darkness. Way to much math, way to many rules, and there are many rules that even go against basic common sense. Yet DnD has up until now outsold World of Darkness, because people don't want to change.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ...!

Please, PULL THE OTHER ONE!

I'll let you in on a little secret: I own some $3,000(US) worth of Third-edition D&D books. I used to own the entirety of the First Edition as it existed in hardcover, and about 3/4 of the Second edition. The systems in 3.XE bears very little resemblance to 1E, except at the most superficial levels.

Furthermore ... I am an eclectic gamer; sometimes, it seems ot me like it would be easier to list the systems I have NOT tried, than to list the ones I HAVE. A very, very few highlights, though:


Exalted
Aftermath!
The World of Darkness
GURPS
Mutants and Masterminds 2E
Expendables
Shadowrun (all editions)
Brave New World
Legend of the Five Rings (all editions)
Rolemaster & Spacemaster
Mechwarrior (multiple editions)


Obviously, I'm not afraid of change. Heck, I'll occasionally buy a game system's core rules just to explore what they've done differently, and how, and why.

Yet, my first "home" in terms of PnP RPGs ... is Dungeons and Dragons. Well, 3.5E D&D, and eventually the Pathfinder version ("3.9E", if you will). 4E just doesn't appeal to me - though I do like how some of the new systems work.

You see ... different people simply have different tastes when it comes to RPGs. As I have often said - THERE IS NO "ONE, TRUE WAY" ... one man's fun is another man's garbage - and vice versa. Some of us LIKE the amount of math in D&D ...!

And really, you want math? Try designing a robot from the ground up, using the GURPS 3E "Robots" sourcebook ... without using a spreadsheet. I dare you. No, I defy you...!

[andrewprofit]

All I am trying to say is the trill of perma death possibility with each encounter will add alot to the game. It could be structured so that someone playing constantly for 5 years never dies. I just mean the chance that 1 character dies per day might add to the game. They could be mourned throughout the galaxy etc. It could be an honor to die in the game. Ones exploits could be chronicled in a great hall of explorers. It could be posted in the servers news etc. It could be worn by all new characters created by that person as a relative achievement.

[Hagon]

As someone mentioned earlier, if you think the risk of permadeath is a "thrill" then make a commitment to yourself that when you die (or when you die in a certain situation or type of mission) you will delete your character and start anew.

[Inquizitor]

I don't know abuot perma death. I would like to see a system where there is a CHANCE you didnt get to the escape pod and such. However If you do "Die" I think the only penalty would be you go back to chargen and make a enw cahracter and appearance while maintaining all of your stats and equipment. Basically you would be reborn as a new captain but wouldn't be penalized harshly.

[Tranchera]

Maybe perma-death for everyone except Vulcans and Trill. >_>