Thread: Death
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Old 04-14-2008, 08:32 PM   #10
Threshold
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Threshold RPG
Posts: 1,260
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Re: Death

I hear what many of you are saying, and I can sympathize. Please don't take any of my ranting and theorizing as anything personal. I am speaking about players in general, and some trends that I think are harmful to MMOs and MUD.

I think the growing trend of players wanting death that doesn't hurt is actually hurting their overall gameplay experience. Most players do not really take the time to analyze their overall experience. I can understand why, since that isn't their job. They want to play and have fun, and that's fine. But the problem is they look at the feeling they have at a single instant, and tend to make excessive generalizations for the whole game based on that short term feeling.

If dying in a game has the power to "ruin your day", then WOW, that game has clearly connected to you in a very powerful way. Conversely, think about how incredibly exciting a win by the skin of your teeth is in such a game. In WoW, winning with 5% hp left is a big fat "so what." Dying wouldn't have really mattered anyway. But in a game where you lose a level, or lose even 10% of your total xp when you die, well suddenly that close victory means something. When the battle is over, and your pulse is racing, and you have beads of sweat on your brow, you actually realize the game was creating a meaningful experience.

Unfortunately, I don't see this trend reversing. Far too many players only look at the extreme short term. They only look at the "wahhh I died and now I have to work to get it back." The fact that they even call it work is evidence of an extremely warped sense about what it means to PLAY a game. So I think those of us who look at the overall gaming experience from a macro standpoint are destined to be disappointed. But in the end, it is everyone who suffers. Everyone who much later ponders "gee, these MMOs/MUDs just don't seem to have the same oomph as they did a long time ago. I guess the games just aren't as good any more." No, the games are better. But overwhelming, short sighted player demands are a significant factor making them seem worse.

It reminds me of an excellent article by Dr. Richard Bartle titled, .

I can understand why people THINK a minor death "penalty" is a good thing. I understand why they THINK it is more fun. But I firmly believe that in the long run, it dumbs down and numbs the game such that the overall experience is less. The peaks can only be as high as the valleys are low.
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