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50 First Deaths - On Designing MMO Respawning
Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free reg. req.) discussing the nature of death and regeneration in massively multiplayer gaming. The author points out: "Designing death is not a simple matter", explaining: "If the 'death penalty' in the game is too severe... you may stop playing the game and, even worse, stop paying the monthly subscription fee for it. But if the penalty is too light... what's to stop you from engaging in reckless behavior... and then growing bored and dropping out anyway?" It also reveals, courtesy Turbine Entertainment's CEO, that "The online role-playing game Middle-Earth Online, expected later this year, will exclude death entirely" - instead, characters "will collapse into unconsciousness and wake up in a safe place."
permanent death may sound like a great idea, until the griefers start coming after the newbies. Imagine you're paying $15 a month for the following: You've played for a couple hours, gotten your first new Shiny Short Sword of Light +1 and Leather Armor of the Cow from some zombies you just killed. Maybe you've even leveled up once or twice. You're on your way back to town and along comes Mr. Eight Level AssClown who kills you (or better yet, is dragging a 5th level monster along who you have no chance of defeating). Bam, you're dead. start again. You've literally spent 2 hours with nothing to show for your character.
Permanent death is nice in games like Diablo, where once you've finished it normally, you can take on the challenge of being hardcore like that. But permanent death on a server filled with not only lag, but also griefers is not a way to entice people to pony up X dollars every month.
Now imagine you've spent a couple months on your character, collecting quite a range of unique powerful weapons and then you die. That's like a Ph.D. being sent back to kindergarten and forced to take school all over again, before anyone will hire him. furstrating to say the least.
The fact that everyone is essentially immortal has always bugged me about online games too. Yes it would be a bummer to lose all of your hard earned skills and baubles, but the absence of perma-death sure ruins the already tired stories these games have. If everyone in Dereth/Velious/Rubi-Ka/etceteraland can come back from the dead, the concern about being overrun by the bad guys seems, well, less than concerning.
And by the way, Middle Earth Online developers:
What is the difference (in MMOG terms) between "death" and "collaps(ing) into unconsciousness and wak(ing) up in a safe place"?
Look ma, no tpyos^H^H^H^H^H^H . . . oh crap.
This is exactly why MUDs had newbie, or level restricted, areas. One area might restrict PvP for level 5 or above characters. Other areas may not allow anyone in who hasn't reached level 10 yet. Others may not allow level 20 and above characters in because they'll walk in, cast "Blazing Death Cloud of Might" and kill everything, including players, without thinking twice.
Frankly, there *should* be a penalty to being somewhere you shouldn't, whether you're too high or too low level. The trick is how to communicate that to players without affecting the roleplaying aspect.
--trb
In Star Wars Galaxies when you die, you get cloned back into a cloning center somewhere in a city. If you store your clone data you can choose which city to clone to. If you do not store your clone data you end up in the nearest cloning center but you wake up with massive wounds, which you heal by sitting in a medical center and hanging out in a cantina (must do both). That can easily be a 15-30 minute penalty.
When SWG originally launched, you had to do the classic "naked run" out to your body to retrieve your items. Or you could give consent to someone to get them for you. There were bugs with bodies disappearing, so SWG was changed to eliminate the need to run out. When you were cloned, you had all your items.
The latest incarnation of SWG has you keeping your items when you clone, but they decay. Die enough and your items become useless. You can avoid the decay by buying insurance on your items beforehand.
During the period of no penalty to death, player-player combat was rampant. It really changed the experience. Kind of fun to do some dueling, but the cities became all dueling, all the time. The day item decay was introduced dueling virtually disappeared. The gaming experience is much more in line with the Star Wars experience now.
"You can drink a 2nd shot of Speed of the Serpent a day later for an additional 24 hours of travel time, but then you'll have to drink cabbage juice every 29 days."
"So far there have been 8 deaths."
Man, if I had to drink cabbage juice every month or die, I think I'd take the easy way out.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice