Whenever a new MMORPG is announced, invariably one of the first questions that people ask is “What are the death penalties?”
Death penalties are quite the hot-button topic, especially to those who yearn for more hardcore olden days of yore and scorn what they see as the softening of MMOs in recent years. At their core, a death penalty is not a punishment for dying so much as it is incentive to not die. Unless we dipped our toes into the topic of “permadeath” (no thank you), MMOs differ greatly from reality when it comes to risk and reward. In real life, you don’t regenerate “hit points” after getting stabbed, and you tend to want to avoid death as it’s more or less a permanent fixture. In games, devs can’t make players invincible (where’s the fun?) or throw up “game over” on the screen (unless you’re an arcade title in the late 70’s or early 80’s). They need a compromise, a middle ground… the right touch to make players afraid of their character’s death, but not so much so that it will invariably dish out frustration and anger over such an event.
MMO devs are trending more and more cautious with DPs, not wanting to push away their player base to another title — hence much “softer” DPs such as DC Universe Online (slight time loss, but you rez right where you fell with no other penalty).
Without taking a stance on death penalties (I’m not in the mood for grouchy debates with trolls today, thank you, and besides, Elder Game did a great job with the topic last year), I thought it’d be pretty interesting to look back at past MMOs, and how they’ve handled such penalties, rating them either “Severe”, “Harsh” or “Lax”.
Severe
- Many DikuMUDs – You lose a level.
- Lineage 2 – Possible gear drop/loss.
- Ultima Online – Loss of all your items, mount, etc. on your character. You remain a ghost until someone rezzes you.
- Eve Online – You lose your ship, which can be looted. While there is insurance, you won’t be compensated for any installed components. Additionally, there’s a possibility for skill point loss, if you haven’t updated your clone.
- EverQuest – You rez naked and have to go on a “corpse run” to retrieve your items. XP loss.
- Final Fantasy XI – XP loss (possible level loss through this).
Harsh
- City of Heroes – Less than it used to be, but death incurs “XP debt”, which forces future XP gain to be split between repaying debt and leveling until the debt is paid off.
- Asheron’s Call – loss of an item, slower travel speed, stat drop.
- Anarchy Online – Some loss of XP (couldn’t lose level), could repay XP debt while leveling.
- Dark Age of Camelot – XP loss (which scaled the more you died), but you couldn’t lose a level. HP loss.
- EverQuest 2 – Slight XP loss to future XP gained, item damage, respawn.
- Vanguard – XP loss or XP debt (you can’t lose a level through this). Note that the penalty was softened substantially from pre-release DP announcements.
Lax
- World of Warcraft – Corpse run, some item damage, possible rez sickness if so chosen.
- Warhammer Online – Rez sickness (greater if killed in PvE, less is resurrected by another player or if in PvP).
- Star Wars Galaxies – Item damage (money to repair).
- Auto Assault – One minute time loss to juice back up.
- Guild Wars – You begin to incur a stat penalty for that instance that can stack until you’re pretty weak.
- LOTRO – “Dread” debuff, repair bill.
In EverQuest, you can either accept a rez or respawn at your bind point. If you choose to respawn at your bind point, you land with all your gear on and all your spells memmed and with a slight rez sickness debuff. You leave behind a naked corpse which can still be rezzed, usually with a 96% rez (freely given for donations in the guild lobby) or a 100% rez if you know a willing cleric.
EverQuest currently, with nearly full rezzes available and no concept of item damage or xp debt, has one of the most lenient death penalties imaginable.
There’s even a veteran reward which collects all your corpses from everywhere, summons them to your feet, and gives you 100% rezzes on all of them (usable once a week).
Back when I dabbled in MUDs, the idea of permadeath was appealing, but it came along with two other concepts: 1. That death was rare. 2. Death came with potentially harsh penalties to whomever killed you.
But see, that game treated it more like a murder mystery scenario, where the killers left clues, etc..
Most current MMORPGs are more like amusement parks than virtual worlds, so death is more of an interruption to your ride, or losing your place in line for the next ride.
Pride is a motivating factor to avoid death and for some it’s all that’s needed, but the reason we have other penalties is to create balance with players where pride doesn’t motivate (not much or not at all, such as players who don’t bat an eye killing themselves for travel benefits).
I’d argue, that given the right kind of game, the more severe penalties wouldn’t really be severe at all. It all depends on the formula of how often it occurs, versus how quickly you can pick yourself up and go again.
In Warhammer there is in PvE another form of death penalty..though some people may see it as design flaw.
Fast respawn rates of mobs in dungeons like Gunbad or Bastion Stairs. If you die and don’t have anyone left who can rez you, the whole group will be punished as they have to fight their way back to the person who died and respawned at the beginning of the dungeon. This is a form of death penalty I like for some strange reason. It forces you to concentrate and can be completely avoided if playing good as a team.
Though it’s harsh if you have mob respawns around you when you fight a boss I still think it’s a fun and thrill-element in dungeons when you are running around in a small group.
SWG also had a stat penalty as well IIRC.
nice blog