Why MMOs Need A Harsh Death Penalty
Playing EVE Online again has made me feel something I haven’t felt in quite some time. Fear. It’s a strange emotion to feel when playing a computer game but it’s also quite a welcome one. I’m by no means a masochist who enjoys punishing myself but I do like feeling emotionally connected and immersed in the online worlds that I inhabit and when I take my ship out for a spin in EVE and embark on a tough mission or venture into low sec space, the hairs on the back of my neck stir ever so slightly. Will this be the time when the Grim Reaper comes calling? Am I prepared to meet my maker? Will I punch my monitor if my prized ship explodes into a million tiny pieces?
Death in EVE isn’t the end of the game but it does comes with a nasty sting, accompanied by a rollercoaster feast of the senses. Fear and trepidation are your appetizers, shock and awe are your entrées and desert is a healthy portion of regret and anger. You certainly don’t want to die in the world of New Eden and that’s exactly the point. We should be scared of death, after all it’s the most terrifying concept human beings can deal with.
I felt these emotions back when I played the original Everquest. Death in that game was not something to be taken lightly and players and groups would avoid it at all costs. Which, kinda obviously, is exactly how it should be. It wasn’t just about losing experience and the resulting time you’d put into it though, it was also the fear of losing your body, your items and everything that you’d work so hard to achieve and make yourself unique. It was a game mechanic designed to invoke emotion and bond you with your character and, certainly for me, the thought of my corpse being stranded at the bottom of some treacherous dungeon made me wince.
I can remember every time I’ve died in EVE and I can recount fantastic stories of comradery based around death, the fear of it and overcoming it, in Everquest. Death mechanics in these games are an integral part of the design and the fear of it is used to leverage our emotions. Would players have the same stories to tell in EVE if they never had anything to lose? Would the Universe even be worth fighting over if pain could never be inflicted upon the enemy?
Death in newer MMORPGs is almost, if not completely, meaningless. Why does it even exist as a mechanic in WoW or EQ2 or AoC or WAR? There is no emotional response, no fear or anger, and no resulting immersion so what purpose does it serve other than to set us back a few seconds in our gameplay? The death mechanic here could simply be replaced with a 30 second countdown followed by the avatar resurrecting automatically in the same spot they died in. At least that way there wouldn’t be a redundant illusion of mortality.
The meaning behind death penalities has been lost in many MMORPGs and replaced with a false sense of accessibility. There’s the misguided idea that taking the sting out of death makes the game more suitable to the casual or new player. Accessibility and a healthy fear of death are not mutually exclusive though and, I believe, the two can co-exist in the same game if there’s impetuous to design it that way.
We need harsh death penalties in MMORPGs because they give us risk and emotions. Without risk we cannot possibly appreciate the fruits of our labours and without emotion we cannot bond with the environment and other players. WoW is infamous for it’s antisocialness and I have absolutely no doubt that if players were scared to die, if they were forced to work together to keep each other alive, to truly help each other avoid the sting of death, it would be a game over-brimming with conversation and comradery. Instead, we’re left existing in a hollow shell of an online world in which one cares if they live or die.
Just like in real life, we need to feel the exhilaration of accomplishment in our games and that cannot happen as long as there is nothing to risk and nothing to lose. Death needs to matter, it needs to hurt, because without it we’re nothing more than bored, spoilt immortals living in emotionless worlds.
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Well there are a few types of fear in other MMOs, just not as drastic as Eve. Fear of a long walk back, fear of losing in PvP. Fear of repair bill.
Sure Eve has the worst penalty, doesn’t make it so I don’t mind dyeing in other MMO’s in fact I still hate it.
I never really found the repair aspect of death very meaningful. In fact, I would actually question the existence of durability completely. It’s often so inconsequential it doesn’t act as a proper money sink plus if items can’t ever actually be destroyed, what’s the point?
Any chance you can add an RSS feed for comments, or better, the ability to be notified via email if there’s more comments on a post?
Sure thing, will check it out. Not entirely sure how to do it though…
I never played EvE or EQ, but I’ve always hated dying in WoW, not because of the penalty, but more because of the sense of failure I feel when I do. They might as well replace the “Release Spirit” button text with “LOL U SUCK”, because that’s what it feels like to me.
It’s not a physical loss in any way, it’s mental.
Mental loss is a good point actually, something I’d not considered. I guess I just never cared too much about losing or being embarassed
I largely agree with you. It can go too far, though. I was mad into Diablo 2 before I discovered MMOs, I loved that game. So I tried playing hardcore. And wow, no doubt about it, the adrenaline rush of a near-death experience, the exhilaration of survival, the agony of defeat, they were unlike anything I’d experienced in a game before or since.
But you know what? After playing it a bit, I realized it was sucking a lot of the joy out of the game. Diablo 2 is a game of frenetic reckless action, of charging headlong into an army of monsters and cutting loose. Playing hardcore, you don’t do that any more, you creep forward carefully and engage a minimum number of enemies at a time. Ultimately I went back to softcore, the highs weren’t as high, but the base level of fun was a lot higher.
The sweet spot for a game like that, I think, would be something like a lost level, a destroyed piece of gear, something like that. Enough to hurt (especially as you get higher level with better gear, the stakes get higher) but not enough to make you never take a risk.
It’s absolutely a tough thing to balance correctly. I think EQ’s death penalty was maybe too harsh in some respects because it really terrifying if you lost your body down a dungeon. I think they changed it a few years ago so you could summon your corpse to a graveyard and it went there automatically after a period of time. I left before that came into play but it sounds like a pretty good compromise.
I agree with you, but I’m not sure what the ideal death penalty is. Back in the days of MUDS, we had corpse runs, often on timers. Get to your corpse before it decays… or lose all your gear. Those corpse runs could get pretty frantic, considering you had to do them naked and unarmed!
Death penalties now just range from nearly mildly irritating (WAR/WoW) to incredibly annoying (like Aion’s stupid money sink). In EQ2, I just get cranky when I die for the 10th time because it means I finally have to go repair my gear.
Kids today… they don’t know what a REAL death penalty is! Back in my day…
Hehe, yep those kids!
I remember they nerfed the death penalty a lot in EQ2 and it’s very different now to when it come out. I remember wracking up huge exp debt that took ages to pay off but now it’s pretty meaningless. Even the repair costs are so low it serves no point.
I think death should be scary and having the mechanic there but without fully commiting to it seems a little… strange.
This is your best article to date Gordon!
The feeling of fear is what is missing from today’s sanitized MMOs and that is because we’ve all but removed the penalty for dying. You are absolutely correct. The sense of fear that results from the consequences of death bring a sense of drama and immediacy to virtual worlds.
When players are truly afraid to die, suddenly the game world becomes more gripping and meaningful. Players bind together to avoid even the possibility of death. Those social bonds formed by this need to survive taps into the same need that we as humans have felt for thousands of years.
The problem as I see it is that we have spineless MMO devs that are all too eager to give in to players and the result is a meaningless death penalty or no death penalty at all.
Of course players hate to die but the MMO designer should not give in to such players. The monkeys should never be allowed to run the zoo.
Somehow modern day MMO designers have become like today’s school system where teachers are afraid to to punish bad students and where failure has become a dirty word.
We don’t need better graphics and animations to make our MMOs come to life, rather we need to initiate more risk and less reward. Or at least have them somewhat more balanced then they are in this currently loot bloated MMO world.
Outstanding article! Keep it up
After the school reference I can only say, “No gamer left behind” hahaha. The Devs are designing for the casual gamer that will quit the game if the death penalty is too severe, which really is a shame. EvE will always be my favorite MMO. Nothing makes your heart jump out of your chest more than jumping into a gate camp of 20 hostiles in a cloaking recon and watching them try to frantically decloak you. You survive and realize that your death clone was out-of-date and you would have lost skill points!
Thanks! The praise means a lot coming from you, Wolfshead!
I agree with you school analogy. I’d definitely like to see some more risk taking with MMOs and less emphasis on just pleasing the player. Plus, I don’t think removing the challenges in a game or the emotions is actually connected to making the game suitable for casual gamers. You can still have a fun game that doesn’t require a huge investment of time but also offers risk.
I am glad I paid your blog a visit, else wise I had missed this article.
Besides the emotional reasons you mentioned for actual losses in a game, there are also content reasons.
In a loss free environment there is only straight development. Take Armor for instance. Once you have upgraded your armor, their is no use for basic armor. Same occurs for content, once you have passed a certain content, there is no need to go back to previous or lower content.
The Idea of actual loss, stops the vicious cycle of extreme progression creating extreme gaps.
On the other hand, loss experience must also offer ways of protection or reduction of the actual loss, otherwise it might be daunting to cuddling player.
In a Fantasy World this could be a small period of time, your comrades have to rescue your hero after he fell.
In a Science Fiction Environment, you might be able to recover my Spacecraft thus help me save most parts. Or a sort of insurance policy that enables me to buy replacement. There are various ways to make cautious players familiar with the actual loss.
I think the repairing Idea would work if it had real consequences. In case the repair bill is a real problem I might consider, when to wear my basic armor and when I can wear my high value armor without ruin myself.
Glad to have you here!
My theory is that hardcore PvP is, essentially, gambling. If you like gambling, like the idea of gambling, you’ll probably like hardcore PvP. If you don’t like gambling, or the idea of gambling, you probably will not like hardcore PvP.
It’s an interesting theory and I can definitely see the connection. I suppose any situation with risk and reward is a lot like gambling. One could argue that doing exteme sports is even a way of gambling with death.
There is nothing like losing a faction/deadspace fit Redeemer to make your emo-rage quit and not touch a game for months! With the whole plex trading, you can actually put an actual dollar pound or euro) amount on what you just lost. I think it was roughly $100 US dollars for a billion back when I was selling GTC’s. So that uber fit redeemer set me back roughly $200. I was so afraid to fly it!
Hehe, that sounds absolutely terrifying
Nothing like a 7 hour (yes, really) corpse retrieval run into the Plane of Hate or Fear in the original EQ to make you FEAR dying. Not to mention the possibility of losing levels if you died too many times or died too soon after leveling. That in my opinion was well done. Although, come to think of it… 7 hours was a tad bit excessive for a corpse run
Yeah, some corpse runs were excessive in EQ
One of my favourite memories is dying on the way to the Lake of Ill Omen with my High Elf Enchanter and having to ask a high level Cleric to help me reclaim my corpse and rez me. He graciously accepted and I loved him for it. I will never forget that mix of emotions of terror as I died and pure joy as he helped me out. That sort of thing forms bonds rarely found in todays MMOs.
This topic is sooooo January. Just kidding, but I did do a topic on death penalties on my blog back in January. I laugh at people who get all pissed off dying in WoW and end up losing less than 5 minutes of their time.
I think I have you all beat with the worse death penalty. Tibia is a 2d, smaller MMORPG that you guys might not have heard of. You lose up to 10% of your ENTIRE xp gained in all your levels. You can reduce this with expensive “blessings” and you can end up getting the penalty down to 1.5% of your total xp (yes you can lose levels and often times did). Now mind you I played this game for an entire year, making it to level 208 (no level cap). Even at 1.5% I would lose over 1 million xp and 100k. That would take me a minimum of 4 or 5 hours to get back of constant grinding. Boy it sure did suck when you connection goes.
In EvE I was once podded and didn’t realize that my clone was out of date. I lost Electronic Upgrades 5. I believe that is rank 2 skill, so roughly 7 days before I could fly any ships that required that skill at 5 (covert-ops frigs). I was not happy. I knew of a person that lost Fighters 5, I think that is at least a 50 day skill!
Sounds a bit like the original EQ although in that game you could get 99% rezzes which would return 99% of the experience lost… so long as you knew or could afford a Cleric. Neverh eard of Tibia but it sounds extreme though
Yep, nothing like a cleric with his/her epic that gave back 99% of your xp. Still, unless you were lucky enough to be guilded with one or two of these lucky folks, AND they were willing to trek out to whatever hell-hole you had gotten yourself killed in, you often times had to shell out quite a bit of plat to get one to come out to rez you or just suck up the xp loss and move on. Luckily for me, I played a dark elf enchanter in my later days and could afford the rezzes due to my ability to sell KEI (crack) to the mana users
I didn’t find it too difficult to get a the aid of a Cleric when I needed one but then my friends list was always full of Clerics
As a tank, I alwas tried to get to know Clerics and Encs and Bards… it made my life a lot easier 
From the flip side of the coin, while a harsher death penalty would appeal to more “hardcore” players in MMOs, it would hurt the social/explorer/achiever types.
For example, I like to play Dragon Age on easy, because the combat is secondary to the story/interactions for me. My husband plays on hard, because the story/interactions are secondary to the combat for him. We are glad there are multiple difficulty settings, because otherwise we both wouldn’t be playing the same game.
Perhaps offering “hardmode” or “permadeath” servers, so that those of us playing to see the story or environments or achievements would still play.
Great point. I wonder why developers don’t do more with their servers and have different rulesets on each. For instance, I think it would be really interesting to see a WoW server that had a really tough death penalty on it. I really wonder what type of gamers and community it would have.
Then again, would a tougher death penalty even fit a game like WoW? Or… pretty much any of the Diku-based MMO’s released since 2003? EVE is doing its own thing, and the whole “fear” and “hardcoreness” fit that game. Perhaps Darkfall too. But WoW or LOTRO or EQ2? I just don’t feel they are set up for in from perspective of their core, intrinsic design. Saying “here’s a special server with hardcore rules” would most likely make that even more obvious, and it wouldn’t surprise me that over testing session after testing session playing with rulesets internally, that became obvious to the developers as well, which is why we don’t see “hardcore servers.”
This is why I dislike titles phrases that state or imply that “ALL MMORPG’s NEED [THIS]” instead of “I wish *more* MMORPG’s had *more* of [This].”
I don’t think I’d care for the EQ method at all. Vanguard was annoying enough. WoW’s death was inconvenient. For that matter, making me run and pick up a tombstone in any game (looking in Conan’s direction) is retarded. At least old-school Vanguard and DDO had XP loss (though I don’t think they would actually let you de-level) and that was enough fear of failure for me, and something I feel got lost in translation when they updated to the new mechanics.
I do agree that it would be strange to have a tough death penalty in a game like WoW but, having said that, there’s nothing stopping Blizzard from trying different rulesets on different servers to appeal to different audiences. Apart from anything, I think it would be an interesting experiment.
Also, your last paragraph about the death penalty is interesting and I agree that runnning back to pick up tombstones etc is pretty silly. So why do these games even have a death penalty? They are meaningless. Why does WoW even bother with one? Why not just make the characters immortal or have them auto-revive after 30 seconds?
[...] Gordon calls for harsher death penalties for all [...]
[...] Gordon wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, and Darren a few days ago. I’ve written about it too. And if you search around the Internet on the gaming blogs you’ll probably find hundreds of posts. [...]
[...] When we sit down in front of our computers to play a game we are taking on the role of a functionally immortal character. Our on screen avatar may die a horrendous death one minute, however within seconds we are almost always back to normal, with some minor penalty attached to our failure. Even if we are killed by an invisible gorilla, we spring back to life almost immediately nearly unscathed. (In fact, there is a valid argument that death penalties in MMOs are too light at present.) [...]
This article is so true, it reminds of being afraid to die in runescape because you would lose all items and other players could loot them! But they nerfed all that now and theres pretty much no point in killing other players they just drop random items