The Daily Grind: To die, to sleep no more...

by Eliot Lefebvre on Feb 13th 2010 8:00AM

Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, The Daily Grind

There's one way in which MMOs universally mirror life -- in the words of William Shatner, you are going to die. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sooner or later your character is going to expire. Unwanted aggro, environmental damage, unmatched PvP, misuse of skills, healer AFK... there are a lot of ways you can bite the dust time and again.

Of course, death in real life is a lot more permanent than that of an MMO -- but dying still carries consequences, ranging from losing your hard-won equipment to a slightly longer delay before your next level. On the one hand, harsher penalties make cheating death that much more satisfying, and they help encourage teamwork and community in hopes of avoiding that fate. On the other hand, you are going to get hit by those harsh penalties sooner or later, and it makes experimentation much less feasible when you're constantly on guard for death.

Where do you prefer a game's death penalty? Do you want to cautiously avoid falling, or would you rather get hit with a slap on the wrist so you can get back in the game quickly?

Tags: death, death-penalty, dying, equipment-damage, equipment-loss, experience-loss, opinion, penalty, tdg, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (23)

Death penalties in MMOs are detrimental; you're going to die, punitive measures do nothing but detract from fun. It's a game.

The only way I'd be in favor of a harsh penalty for dying in an MMO would be if combat wasn't a core mechanic of the game, and if even the winner took some kind of harsh penalty as well.

I could easily imagine a game with, crafting, or collectables trading, or some other core mechanic where therer were circumstances where you could kill someone and make them start over one or more levels back, and without their weapons (if any), tools, and resources ... if drawing a weapon on another player also made you an outlaw, and from then on you had to deal with ever-increasing numbers of hostile "cop" NPCs hunting you. If I were designing a cyberpunk-themed game, or a conspiracy-theory MMO, that is exactly how I'd do it.

But if you make combat the core mechanic of the game, if what people are supposed to be doing all day is fighting, and you penalize them for losing a fight, it makes them behave in ways that are both unpleasant and boring, in order to make sure that they lose as few fights as possible. That's when you get giant mega-blobs, because the game actively punishes you for being out-numbered. That's when you get organized griefing, because if you don't shoot first, your odds of losing go up, and besides, every lowbie you persuade to quit the game is one less person trying to kill you. That's when you get large-scale organized 24x7 spawn camping, because if your side and people you trust don't monopolize the source of the uber loot, the uber loot will be used against you.

Not my idea of a good time.

Death should be death.
You loose that character, all the kit it was wearing and loot it was carrying.
Have it so you have to role a new character, with a different name and at a slightly lower level than the one you died at, and begin again at the start of that quest.
Have you're own private/guild graveyard for all your fallen comrades.
Think twice before diving in feat first.

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