General Discussion

I would argue that there is also NO immersion with masochism.

The problem with early MMORPGs and old MUDs is they never really understood that there are two sides to the coins.  They just kicked everyone in the nuts and told them to love it.  That only works for crazy codependents or whatever other pop psychology term you want use for people who stay in abusive relationships.

Originally posted by pencilrick

I have said this before, but feel it really needs to be emphasized in its own thread.  The glory of the earlier MMO's was because you truly felt "fear", "relief", and "elation."

There was a stinging death penalty where you lost experience points or your gear was looted by someone else that may the prospect of dying scary.   To be killed in a deep dark dungeon was really frightening.  How would you ever get your gear back from your corpse.  Going to a nasty dungeon required not just being of a certain level, but required a certain amount of courage from the player.

If you take "fear" out of the equation, then everything becomes relaxed and boring.  Rewards don't feel like rewards.  Whether you are in a town or the wilderness or a dungeon doesn't feel much different.

Death needs to sting.  Towns need to feel safe.  Being in a group for mutual survival needs to feel safe.

When Blizzard eliminated the death penalty in early design because dying wasn't "fun", they failed to realize that staying alive in a world with a stinging death penalty is VERY fun.  Even watching someone else bite the bullet in such a game world has its own wicked fun built in.  (Oh, don't tell me that you early EQ'ers never chuckled when someone else was killed by a train.)

There is a giddy excitement and a feeling of immersion in a PVE game world in which death stings.  This may be why PVP has such a following.

 

Their is no immersion when you have to read everything in an MMO.  I was in the beta for Conan and the first area you had 99% of the NPCs talk to you and it was awesome and you felt a little more like you were in a real world.  After you finished the main quest and went to your home land you had to read 99% of the quest and story and you only heard the main story NPC's talk.  It got to the point where I would just pick the quest and go do it without reading it (just like in most MMO's).  When I'm playing a game I don't want to read, I want to hear NPC's talk to me.  I'm not sure if in the gold version if every NPC talks and maybe they just didn't put the voice in the Beta because it would have been to much of a download.  I'll still probably buy the game, but I think if they were going to have you read most of the quests and such in the game they should have just made it all instead of giving us a carrot and say "look at what we're doing" then take it away...all or nothing.

Immersion is anything in the world that makes the game feel more realistic.  So a full eco system, talking NPC's, a realistic weather system...etc. 

Originally posted by pencilrick

 

Originally posted by ianubisi

That's your opinion.

I think both my opinion and somewhat true.

 

When you are afraid, you are exicted. When you are excited, you are not bored.  When the fear passes, you feel elated.  If you achieved something, a reward perhaps, from whatever experienced caused you this fear, then that reward is probably more valued than if you had aquired it while being bored.

Are not the above statements generally true?

An example:  Take a couple of  different haunted houses during Halloween?  Is not the one with the chainsaw wielding maniac who jumps out at you from the darkness more fun than the one that has Casper the Friendly Ghost?

There has to be something to what I'm saying.

Still doesn't change the fact though.  What you MAY like won't be the same for others.   Annoying death penalties and being punished for someone else's mistakes (i.e a train in EQ that would cost you experience just for being in wrong spot at wrong time) are long since gone.  All I can say is good riddance.  I play games to relax and have fun.  Stuff like that was fun back in the day, when I had plenty of spare time.  If I really wanted to be tortured, I would put my 15 bucks back in my pocket, and just ask my girl how her day was.  That's all the torture I need, don't need it in my chosen form of entertainment.

I agree 100% with the OP about death and it should be stinging.I also agree that it makes all your efforts feel that much more rewarding.The part i don't like is equating it to PVP.EQ2 had a decent death penalty and yes you would lose your gear until you could return to retrieve it.I felt it was decent but could go a step even further.Much to my dismay the player base thought it was too harsh and vetoed it until the death penalty became a joke.I discontinued playing as i didn't want to play a game that felt kiddish in it's design.Eq2 was about PVE so the immersion can certainly be felt in PVe.

If they made death harsh enough THEN and only then would it make levelling seem a little more like a skill and not just someone putting in time.If you die enough you would actually lose levels.Games have created a huge grind,that is why peeps scoff at dying they feel too much effort is lost,but in reality it was no effort but merely time involved.If game developers could make a brilliant game design where you would also have a huge death penalty,then they could relieve the GRIND effect in games.Make there MOBS flexible so they don't always do the exact same things and react in the exact same way.I mean c'mon going into an epic fight where you do nothing but line up 10 players to constantly stun the mob is anything but skillfull,it's more predictable and not even fun IMO.

So ya i agree bring on the fear of playing.I still to this day remember playing an expansion pack for quake[the NIN soundtrack one] and i was literally on the edge of my seat playing because the mobs would jump outa no where and were deadly in a fast fashion and the sound track added to the fear ,that it had me sweating while i played.This game left me extremely satisfied after playing it.

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Originally posted by Gameloading
 

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Originally posted by Arclan

Totally agree with the OP.  Perhaps more and more FPS and console-game types are playing MMOs, and posting here on the forums :P.   People from those games/genres are used to dealing with, at most, a few seconds wait while spawning.  Any set back other than that is unacceptably harsh.
Hey, we won't go ruin your genres; if you don't ruin ours.  MMkay?  Thanks.  We like an element of risk with our reward.

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Excuse me, YOU like an element of risk with your reward, the vast majority of mmo gamers apparently do not.
 
Nobody has ruined any genre, nobody went up to a developer and said "Do it like this or else..". World of Warcraft came out, did its own thing regarding death penalty, and look at that, a huge numbers of mmo gamers approved of that.
What, should all those people stop playing games like WoW just because you don't like it? Please, get over yourself.

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Ok WoW is a unique animal, primarily because of the Blizzard Brand name and it's proliferance in Asia. Aside from that, the MMOs which came out using that same easy-quest formula have been utter failures. Vanguard, PoBS, AoC (give it a few weeks). All three of these games follow the same easy, hand-holding formula of WoW. No one disputes that Vanguard and POBS were failures; and a lot of people are ALREADY calling AoC a failure and it JUST came out. So, your idea that everyone loves such easy gameplay does not show true. What DOES show true is that a lot of people (mostly kids and Asians) love WoW.

Originally posted by pencilrick

I have said this before, but feel it really needs to be emphasized in its own thread.  The glory of the earlier MMO's was because you truly felt "fear", "relief", and "elation."

There was a stinging death penalty where you lost experience points or your gear was looted by someone else that may the prospect of dying scary.   To be killed in a deep dark dungeon was really frightening.  How would you ever get your gear back from your corpse.  Going to a nasty dungeon required not just being of a certain level, but required a certain amount of courage from the player.

If you take "fear" out of the equation, then everything becomes relaxed and boring.  Rewards don't feel like rewards.  Whether you are in a town or the wilderness or a dungeon doesn't feel much different.

Death needs to sting.  Towns need to feel safe.  Being in a group for mutual survival needs to feel safe.

When Blizzard eliminated the death penalty in early design because dying wasn't "fun", they failed to realize that staying alive in a world with a stinging death penalty is VERY fun.  Even watching someone else bite the bullet in such a game world has its own wicked fun built in.  (Oh, don't tell me that you early EQ'ers never chuckled when someone else was killed by a train.)

There is a giddy excitement and a feeling of immersion in a PVE game world in which death stings.  This may be why PVP has such a following.

 

What about a video game would ever cause me to fear?  Doesn't make sense.

Probably the fear of losing some type of progress.

I agree with the OP, enough with the carebear death penalties.  I honestly can't think of one MMO which has actually made me fear death and I can think of several in which allowing my toon to be killed simply aided in speeding up travel.

That's pathetic game design.

The only reason some people want to be punished so badly with terrible death penalties is because rewards are so out of control that they mean almost nothing anymore other than a means to addict people via OCD colleciton behavior.

Its well known that well controlled positive reinforcements work better than negative reinforcements.  That people's postive responses have been deadened by over-indulgance to such an extent that they actually yearn to be punished should say something to people.

If all you do is run on a treadmill all day for carrot after carrot, then it no longer seems like you are rewarded just grinding over and over.