Death in Videogames

I'm thinking for quite some time now about consequences and meanings of death in games and I have the feeling I need a little input for it from other minds. Sooo as far as I have noticed, alot of games have death mechanics, but it's bothering me that they make death somewhat meaningless and I don't mean that they are not punishing enough. I mean that it's not "death". It's not finite.
Instead "death" is being used for all kinds of purposes to show players failure, to give them a challenge, to punish, to slow down progress in a game and maybe also for consistency reasons that other entities might die in games also easily. It is used as measurement for boss fights (it's hard boss if you die more often) and probably to give players a reason to treat more carefully.
But it very often feels more of a nuisance than a proper consequence for actions, specially when looking at MMOs.
It seems that games that somewhat simulate worlds that are like the real world but different, they still use death mechanics like in arcade games.
Other games like survival games are using death actively as the main thing to avoid, but then usually you also "just respawn" and try again.

Interestingly enough I've played games with extremly hard punishing death mechanics like loosing everything and skillloss or having to restart the game completely and those games usually make me very anxious because it is way too easy to die in them and too difficult to prevent it without having died a few times already...
These kind of games have their followers and it seems it's polarizing players alot.
Then I have played games with no death mechanic at all and even though I like that it felt less anxious, but they usually felt also more boring, as if drive is missing. It's as if simulated death would be the only way to give me an incentive to thrive, but it's not in all games like that and I don't think it's the death itself but something about it's mechanics.
And it makes me wonder, if there is maybe a better or different way of doing it? I have merely heard of a game an MMO where players were just fainting with stars above their heads for a while instead of dying and (also because of graphics) alot of people thought it was childish game, silly, non challenging, even though it seemed those who did like it were not thinking that way.
Is it just all about different player types?

I would really like to come up with something different, but I lack the input from outside, like as example I could imagine that it would be very interesting for a game if every character that get's deleted by a player would leave behind a corpse. In that sense death would be real then, for that character.
Of course it would add nothing to the actual game mechanics, but rather it would make death just differently experienced.
I was also thinking about the permanence of things, like as example, if characters wouldn't be able to die, can their houses be destroyed? if they are standing inside the flames of a dragon but don't die, how does it make players feel? mighty?epic? or just stupid, because there is no feedback?
what about immersion and attachment to your character? How is death, that serves as a penalty of some sort, making you feel towards your character?
How does "having death", but you die easily and alot, make it better than no death at all?
What other purposes is death having in games that I'm maybe not seeing?

Please discuss away

 

I once stumbled upon a flash game, where you had only one chance to play it. As soon as you died the game would constantly show a picture of a grave with no option to restart, ever after refreshing the page. The interesting thing is, this didn't make death more meaningful. It was a platformer so I died quickly, thought it's a neat mechanic and moved on to other games. I think it's because it happened so fast that I had zero investment in that character or the story to really care.

Also in games like DayZ death wasn't that meaningful as one can imagine. At least not the n-th time. Of course you loose all your gear, but loosing is a part of the game and you don't get attached to any of it.

A game that does death good is in my opinion Darkest Dungeon. At first your characters are pretty much disposable and you don't care that much, but as you progress you get attached to them. And I think the main reason for that is not because they become more valuable, but because more often then not you really had to take effort to keep them alive during previous missions. And you were somewhat experiencing emotions with them.

So, I think to make death mean something without being overly frustrating the player needs to permanently loose something he got attached to that isn't really that much punishing. Here's a few examples that quickly come to my mind:

1. Each time you start a new game you have to name your character. When you die you can respawn but then you have to name your second character again and it cannot be the same name as previous ones.

2. Let's say you have a pet in your game, which doesn't really do anything except for being cute and it cannot be killed by other characters (is ignored by NPCs and other players can't target it). But each time you die there's a random chance that it will be killed too and when it dies it's permanent.

 

good points.
You also mentioned something else that I think is important, that alot of games who have permadeath are keeping the games "easy to die", which I think is also part of the frustration.

 

Actually, in permadeath games (like my favorite, Nethack), it's important that a new player die quickly at first. This teaches you that, first, death is permanent, and second, that it's OK, and you are expected to simply play again.

This is an especially important lesson nowadays, when the vast majority of the games are designed to be played in one play-through that lasts 20-40 hours. A roguelike is quite different from both that and from arcade games, which are multiple-playthroughs but typically lasting only a few minutes. They sit in the middle: multiple playthroughs, each lasting maybe an hour.

Hmm, but thinking of arcade games brings up a death mechanic you didn't mention: finite but limited lives. Death matters when you only have 3 lives, but it doesn't matter quite as much as when you have only 1... until, of course, you have already spent two of them. But I think this would just be frustrating in a longer game.

Another old favorite of mine was this space trading game on PalmOS where death was permanent in the early game, until you could afford to buy an escape pod. Then if your ship was destroyed you would lose everything except money in the bank, but you could keep playing. And if you bought insurance, then you would even get a payout to help buy a new ship — but you had to pay the insurance premiums every turn, whether you used it or not. But it all boiled down to, you really couldn't lose in the late game unless you did something insanely stupid. And I think that worked well.

 

Death is a nuisance. I mean, you don't actually want the player to stop playing. So like you said it's just a penalty. What else can it be?

Now I'm not a fan of roguelike style play-the-beginning-a-hundred-times design, so maybe I'm just lending support to the "player types" theory, but I feel better about cumulative success that gives you a better shot at getting further next time. That's why Don't Starve had the effigies that let you resurrect. Similar to the Escape Pod mechanic Joe mentioned where survival becomes easier later in the game, making actual progress possible and meaningful. Because if I can lose everything at a single moment, progress has very little meaning. And if I can't make progress so that I can experience all of the game eventually, I don't really know why I'm playing.

Dying in Dark Souls happens a lot, which causes the player to lose all his unspent money/experience. However, the player can gain it all back after respawning at the last save point he used by finding the spot he died before. This encourages the player to be cautious as he explores, staying aware of the geography, and trying not to get himself killed in a spot that will be difficult to get back to. It also creates a natural tension curve upwards as the player gets further from his last save both physically and in terms of all the unspent "souls" he has.
That's all run of the mill stuff, but then they add in that after death the player "goes hollow" and requires a humanity to get back to normal. While hollow, (in the first Dark Souls) the player cannot get "invaded" by other players/characters, which is like an unpredictable attack. But he also cannot summon other players/Characters to aid him. So death becomes a part of the adventure, rather than just a penalty.

Also in terms of pacing, death makes a natural downbeat or rest in the action- a chance for the player to take a breath, reflect on what went wrong before, and think about what he will do differently this time. This isn't possible in an MMO, since the world must persist for all the other players. If you aren't going to send defeated players anywhere, making them wait still allows them to keep tabs on the action around them, so they aren't totally clueless when they get back up.

 

I agree with your latter point here, but it's worth pointing out that blocking a player from further progress can be just as bad as sending them back to the beginning.

I've had any number of games where I got partway through, then got completely stuck on some challenge. I wasn't able to get past it, so after retrying half a dozen times, I gave the game up. Some of these were so hard I wondered why the game designers even bothered to make any content after that point, since (it seemed to me) nobody would ever see it anyway.

Obviously many players do see it; I'm not a hardcore gamer and haven't much patience for twitch tests. Also obviously, progress is still possible in theory: I could keep beating my head against the challenge again and again, and perhaps in a few weeks gain enough skill to pass it. But the point is, they lost me. I have better things to do.

What's interesting in this comparison is: when I play Nethack or FTL, where losing the game is common and expected, I get annoyed and put the game down... but the next day, pick it up again and have another go. But when it's a (now traditional) single-playthrough game, and I get stuck, I put it down permanently. I never play it again. What would be the point? These games tend to be very linear and scripted, so a second play-through would be exactly like the first, likely resulting in being stuck in exactly the same spot.

So, when considering how to handle character death, I think it matters a great deal what sort of game you're making. And though it's not quite the same issue, consider also how to handle the "player is stuck" problem — because if you don't have a solution, then some players are never going to see most of your game (and they're certainly not going to recommend it to their friends).

 

I actually got an idea now, how I want to handle it in my own game, but nontheless I think it's very interesting topic, since as example in survival games it seems that death is very important to actually make the player care about it enough that they WANT to survive. It's also interesting that you bring the "die as early as possible to learn about permadeath" Joe, mainly because thats something I didn't consider yet, but it's important since I don't want to send players through large tutorials where they don't remember most of it afterwards and then die "surprisingly". What does a game with permadeath do regarding character creation? go through whole process again? or having a "dummy" character they start with to experience the permadeath? other solutions?

oh and then there is the several lives thing...I never thought about it that those games are actually having partial permadeath, it's just depending on how good you play on how long it takes to reach that death.
And I wonder if things like that could be implemented into different game types like RPGs or if it would feel completely out of place there...and when yes, why?

one thing that also baffles me is how many games that include things like permadeath don't seem to acommodate for it...I mean having gamble elements in a game like that can make it very very frustrating if the player has no chance of predicting it to avoid it.

and yes...it seems heavily dependant on the game type and what effect one wants to achieve...as example for my own game I want consistency, if you can kill animals, players must be able to die also. I want to use "grounded" magic in the game, so everything needs a counterbalance and make sense within the universe. In other words just respawning isn't sufficient. and then i want to give players all the tools necessary so that they can see their characters environment with the characters senses, like in form of thoughts so that they can get good heads up of possible dangers...and as I figured for myself also, is that death can be a heavy motivation for plot/story. So far I only knew the people in my game should wander from desert into lush rainforest, but I did not actually know why they would make that journey. Now with death being a topic, they have a reason (I can elaborate further if someone wants to hear it XD but it's still just ideas)

 

Permadeath is a scary thing for many players. I suggest thinking about your audience and get them involved in this decision. You may find that hundreds of people, maybe thousands, want to play your game. But..if you add permadeath, that number might change.

Make sure you have an audience because without them, there is no game.

 

You might enjoy reading this thread:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/stakes-and-tragedy-in-games.365294/

 

I think you meant "without them"

but yeah...I have not told everything of what the permadeath mechanic involves (it's practically only partial) but in general I would like to involve players but I have no idea where to go with such a question tbh :O so I went here first, also because I had no clear idea before, now I have a clear idea that I could present for discussion.

 

Yeah, I have had that discussion before. lol I am sure you will enjoy it.

 

any ideas where such forums/communities could be? I was thinking of asking on steam, but none of the forum categories were particularly screaming "question from devs to gamers" XD or non steam discussions, but also not nonsense

 

The ones I've played have you go through character creation again, but make that a very quick process — choose a race, class, and name (which defaults to whatever you picked last time) and hit Play.

As for tutorials, a well-designed game usually has that integrated in the game in some non-annoying way. For experienced players, there should be a way to skip it. For example, you could have an initial area that teaches you the basics and lets you collect a small amount of loot, but after you've done it once, you're shown a hidden shortcut that lets you bypass that area completely (and gives you a similar amount of loot).

Good questions!

Agreed, if death has such serious consequences then the effect of luck should be downplayed, and skill increased. I think this is why roguelike games remain so popular after so many years; they are extremely deep. Even something as simple as discovering what a wand does can kill you if you're foolish about it, but is relatively safe if you know what you're doing and take precautions. And that results in a strong sense of achievement once you learn how to do it.

I'd love to hear more of your ideas for your game. We could take this discussion from a more abstract one about game design in general, to something more focused on your game... and that will probably be educational for all of us.

 

I'd worry about making any game first and then ask the people that play that game how they like it. For general data about how much people like certain approaches you could take a look at the relation of charts for concurrent players and total copies sold. Just as an example:
http://steamspy.com/app/234390
http://steamspy.com/app/113200
http://steamcharts.com/app/234390#1y
http://steamcharts.com/app/113200#1y

My opinion is, that Teleglitch is more frustrating than anything else and Binding of Isaac is designed a lot better around the whole permadeath roguelike concept. Also an imho interesting metric to look out for, is how big the percentage of people is, that have certain achievements for level progress in a game. Last time I checked barely anyone managed to get past level 3 in Teleglitch according to the achievements. Of course there always are many many factors, making it hard to come to clear conclusions and in fact it can be dangerous to look at successful games and try to "find the magic formula". Plenty of people have tried that and failed.
Comparing Teleglitch and Binding of Isaac I prefer theme, aesthetics and controls of Teleglitch, but I just have to admit that Binding of Isaac is more fun to play, and probably also to watch others play (huge factor in the age of let's plays).

 

I wonder if there are games about trying to kill yourself when game won't let you by smooth game means, and not some "you're unconscious and wake up in hospital".

Like you try to jump from building... And land into tree. Next try... You got accidentally caught by plane. Next try... Someone pushes you back and lectures you. Next try... Demons take you to netherworld and you try to die there next.

Or you get beaten by boss. He prepares a finisher. His hand slips and he misses. Next try. Roof falls on his head. Next try. Some neutral hero comes and distracts him and starts fighting him. Next try. Something teleports you(or him) somewhere.

Not sure where is gameplay in that, if you think of some...

 

sadly that wouldn't help me much since those charts are based on the whole games, not a single game mechanic.

I actually had a movie idea at some point including something like that Practically I thought it would be fun to watch a catastrophy movie(apocalypse) where you constantly (every 10 minutes?XD) change the main actor, because the last one died in a tragic way just giving everyone long enough time to be somehow introduced and then killed off again
I mean so many apocalypse movies are about that one survivor, but no one talks about all those other people around that didn't survive.


edit: I can try to collect the info I have for my game (or that specific part) and post it here, probably tomorrow would be interesting to hear what you guys think (even if that means possible critique for the size of it *gulps*)

 

Imho you can't judge a single game mechanic in isolation anyway. Everything has context and interacts with other things. You will never find an answer like "this is the perfect way to implement permadeath: [...] ". You will however find games where the majority of players agrees that it is solved in a good way and games where many players have complaints about the way (perma)death is integrated into the game.

 

Oh death, one of those topics where on any given day you could have a totally different stance on it.

Sadly it's one of the few ways, and in a lot of cases the only way, people know of to generate negative stimuli. Classically in Dark Souls, every death is the game saying "you're doing it wrong," and as most explorers find out early, "you're going the wrong way" is a common variant. This is a topic though that will just send me on a rant about how bullshit and contradictory the beginning levels are in actually establishing what the intended player behavior is (largely because they are the only levels that do it).

Death as negative stimuli is still predicated on having a right and wrong way to playing the game. It's based more on "proper" puzzle solving, with the primary puzzle being combat. Even in roguelikes, death is largely a test of your systems mastery, which is also compounded by procedural level generation that prevents relying on anything that isn't your systems mastery.

Look at Mount and Blade where "death" isn't an end, your character's story keeps going even if you completely wipe in combat. It works largely because combat isn't the focus of the game. Outside combat, there is very little that is right or wrong, and just about every action can carry consequences in some form.

The reliance on death is built upon the reliance on combat, and combat is, and will always be, the single most accessible form of (generic) conflict within a spatial simulation. There are few forms of conflict that impede on the player's "progress" (forming conflict in the first place), are directly interacted on by the player, and directly interact on the player (making the conflict very apparent, ergo accessible). This isn't even getting into how easy and intuitive it is to make combat deep (case in point, shooters that can heavily rely on space and time as the only two important variables). Without breaking away and focusing on purer, but more obtuse system simulations, there isn't a way to engagingly break away from death.

 

agree

 

You didn't get it. I mean game that actually will force you survive by some bizzare reasons no matter what you do... Basically a game about "How to fail while trying to die".

 

The game ZombiU has something sort of like that. Whenever you die, you respawn as another random character with none of the inventory items or experience that your previous character had. If you go back to where your previous character died (and turned into a zombie), you could kill it and take its backpack containing your old stuff. It was clever, but somewhat annoying.

Anyway, another option to consider is to leave it up to the player how "hardcore" they want to be. That wouldn't work in many types of games, but for MMO or dungeon crawler RPG's it can work.

In Diablo III, when you create a normal character, death has a minimal penalty. Some time (often just a few seconds) and a slightly higher repair cost is about it. The time thing can be a factor in the timed "greater rift" events though. But you can also create hardcore characters if you want to, that will be permanently deleted from the server when they die. Some players like that, but most don't.

 

At this point in my gaming career I almost exclusively play games that feature perma-death. It takes all kinds!

 

so, regarding my game and it's death mechanic and the rewards. Currently (since it's still a WIP) the idea is, that it's a multiplayer game (let's say mini morpg) in which crafting, building and survival are the main aspects/content of the game. It is PVE only and I want to make sure that players are having an easy time roleplaying their character through game mechanics.
Despite that it's not combat focused, the main objective is survival and that includes dragons. But I didn't want them to be those mega creatures which you can defeat by poking them with a sword long enough, but instead that they are such a big threat that players would prefer to avoid fighting with them. This is also where the permadeath comes in. It's not meant as a punishment for the player but more like those invisible walls in games, it's meant for those who want to play hardcore and it's meant to make death something meaningful and scary. I have not decided yet if it will also include that after dying you can reincarnate with a new character and gain some stat bonuses, but it might be something I consider, when I can test how dying feels.
The permadeath is only partial though, in that sense that every character gets an amulet when they start the game, it's an artifact given to act as some sort of "last grasp" when someone is close to dying that they are being teleported (with magic) wounded, with scars and naked to the nearest village that has some sort of a homestone. This "homestone" does not resurrect you and I hope through the character still needing medical help and such, that it will make clear that it is a near death experience, awful and should be avoided.
This Homestone can be build once for every village and they have a limited radius of effect, if you are outside of that effect permadeath is on, same applies if you take off the amulet.
Here is the hook now: you can do almost everything to play the game within this radius, you don't need to leave it to survive, but if you want to expand, let's say want to have your own village with it's own homestone THEN you need to go into dragons territory to collect the materials necessary. You don't need to kill dragons for it, but it of course is the incentive for players to even go towards the danger.
Then further rewards for risking permadeath are things like: possible loot from other players that died, rare materials etc. aaaand theoretically you can try and befriend a dragon and even go a very long journey of becoming a dragon (this has it's own little things that I won't elaborate for now)

I was thinking about it long and hard, I first wanted to go for just unconcsiousness like in free realms, but it didn't make much sense to me if a dragon would have swallowed or breathed fire on a players character. And it seemed inconsistent if you can kill animals for food, but players can't die. (Actually I noticed that the respawning of mobs in other games is making it consistent that players spawn too )
Then I thought about permadeath, but this seemed so hardcore and I'm not really a fan of permadeath myself BUT I asked myself why? And my answer is that usually there is no counterbalance. The games are made mechanic wise the same way as games without permadeath, so you die as easily as if you wouldn't have permadeath. And when I compare that to real life as example, it's unbelievable frustrating that then random elements that can not be foreseen are being used to kill a player permanently....not to mention that most games that offer permadeath ALSO have PVP and in my opinion that is an uncontrollable element.
Not to mention that in real life, sure we can die very fast and easily, but usually we live a long time and whatever could kill us ends up in getting to hospital or other ways of just resting and regenerating/healing etc.
Also, most games usually are so combat focused and when adding permadeath to that, you do things in games you wouldn't do in real life, so it's in my opinion taking away from the game, if you are forced into situations like that.
Thats why I thought I want a different approach. I want death to be meaningful and not something to take lightly, also to accompany the roleplayability of the game, to make the character more important to the player.
Of course this could heavily backfire, but I'm not developing games to become famous or rich

I don't know if I got everything now, so I might add a few things if some questions come up XD
so go and rip it apart ;D

 

Sounds interesting, Farelle! You have given this a lot of thought and it shows.

 

Post is so long even quoting it is useless.
In short: Build, craft, survive with
1. "multiplayer game (let's say mini morpg)"
2. Safezone where you don't have permadeath(either with amulet or maybe always); permadeath otherwise.
3. There are epic creatures called Dragons that you don't want to try to kill and inhabit the outside of safe zone.
4. No PVP as it leads to uncontrollable permadeaths
5. You want player to survive long enough to feel attachment to character.

Um... Did I forget something? I think that's all I can take out of that whole wall of text in terms of 'features'. If you know what you're saying, you can say it shorter

Now for my opinion...
Those features haven't been done properly yet in this combination - true. There are tons of "Build, craft, survive" but I'll just state questions I see:
* Survivability 1: How do you expect player that encountered dragon to survive without fighting it? Right now I find dragons being very powerful and not wishing for players to die often as opposite.
* Survivability 2: You say about amulet, one free save... But how will player actually get attached to character if he just died? That means he will die again, and that'll be permadeath now. Homestones will be almost useless. If you have those amulets with infinite charges - why not make it a game mechanic instead of item mechanic?
* MMORPG: How will your world cope with 100 people trying to get resources that are in safezones? How will you cope with building system when all 100 people are building castles somewhere? Will people ever play with each other for some reason or will they just go somewhere, get "chunk" and build a useless house?
* NPCs(it's PvE, right?): What is it exactly that building gives to your game? What is role of those villages? Are there NPCs? What can those NPCs do?

P.S.

I see griefers pushing you into dragon den... Or just destroying your buildings/making it impossible to build further/etc if they can't.

 

hm...you forgot that homestones can be build by players and therefore new safezones being created.
Second amulets stay on you, so it's infinite, no point in making it having charges, when it's already limited in range.

To your points:
Survivability1 : You run from a dragon or you pay attention to all those little hints the game/character is giving you that you are coming closer to a dragon, it should be very obvious. Also, players CAN deafeat dragons, just not alone and not very easy.
Survivability 2: infinite charges, also character doesn't die, thats what I tried to make clear with that they will be teleported heavily wounded and close to death and maybe thats then also the point on where I should somehow tell the player that this has a limit to it
And I'm not sure I understand how using an item is making it NOT a game mechanic. Using an amulet is just the visualized feedback kind of system for the game mechanic in my opinion. but maybe you need to elaborate what you mean with that.
mmorpg: honestly, no idea yet, it's a good point though(or good points even) some things can be only found out though by having an actual game to see what players are doing with it.
Npcs are every creature living in that world that's not controlled by players. No Villager NPCs were planned so far except for cattle or other farm like animals for food etc.
What building gives to my game....uhm shelter from elements I guess, creative freedom, community, a feeling of belonging somewhere, place to store your items, crafting that requires stationary elements, trade etc. and of course the homestones. Even territory since it expands the safe area to live in.
Dragons are btw. not interested in destroying buildings and other players can't destroy buildings either.

and honestly, I can try to consider griefers now, but it's impossible to make a game griefer safe without cutting into the freedom and convinience of non griefer players. Not to mention that I can not possibly foresee what kind of players the game will attract.

 

I think maybe the OP was just sharing an idea she has for one concept in her game design. She is not really saying that this is her entire game or that there isn't more to it.

As to the purpose of villages...well, lots of game players like to have villages, a place to store their stuff, role play, hang out with friends. I am rather surprised someone has to ask but I guess it depends on the types of games you play.

With the zones she mentioned...near villages, sent to hospital, farther away...permadeath, I would think that most folks who couldn't defend themselves properly would stay near the villages. Similar to a PVP zone in most games, only those who want to engage in PvP...or risk permadeath..would partake. Therefore, griefer players are not going to be able to prey on low level player characters, thus a lot of the fun of grieving is not going to be there.

Betcha if a griefer could die and lose all his stuff and his character's accomplishments, that he will think twice about engaging a dude out in the "dangerous" zone.

I don't think this is a bad idea, and honestly, it is not all that different from many games out there, just a more creative way of implementing it. Most games have harder, more dangerous zones as you radiate out from the "villages". She just has a very cool reason for it and a reason why it is safer near to home.

I rather like it.

 

It's been done before. Classically there was the PvP "wilderness" in Runescape, and The Division is coming out with a PvP zone that marks you and effectively puts a bounty on your head.

 

yeah I know that zone and I liked it's concept the only difference I have in my idea that there wouldn't be pvp, but all the badass mobs instead, that wouldn't just jump out of nowhere to attack you, but instead they would come from lairs and they would warn you (like growling) if you come close to their "aggro range" that way it's a bit more predictable.

 

A lot of stuff has been done before. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it again and she at least as a unique twist.

 

Yep, I like it. And I think this system will be really great for role playing. Permadeath can make for some great stories; a good role player will be upset when her long-time character dies, but in this game, that pretty much only happens when you knew you were taking risks, probably for some very good reason. So you create a new character, and join in those telling tales of the old one — with a properly spectacular or useful death, your old character could become a legend in the game.

As @Teila said, it's clear you've put a lot of thought into this concept. I would certainly enjoy giving it a try!

 

Good thread. The games that I've been most affected by death are not actually involved in player death. Player death is just an inconvenience. If it's permadeath you restart the game over. Otherwise you go to the last spawn point. Either way it's just an inconvinience. The only difference is the degree of inconvenience. The player doesn't really experience or understand death.

Death has most effected my in games where it was a significant NPC. In Diablo 2 it was loosing a mercenary who had followed you from act 1 (before they introduced resurrecting mercenaries). In Skyrim it's accidentally shooting a follower in a big boss fight. In KSP it was loosing Jebadiah on re entry after a long mission.

These sorts of deaths can give the player some tough choices. Do they revert to a save and loose progress, or do they accept the loss of a key companion that's been with them for ever?

The penalty is often insignificant. Replacing a mercenary or a follower or a kerbalnaught is simply a small financial penalty. Insignificant in terms of the money that will flow through the players hands in game.

So forget about using death as a penalty. Think about meaningful ways you can make death a part of the experience. Have the player experience death and the sorrow and grief and guilt associated with surviving.

 

So you can take it off. But will anyone ever do it? That's why I'm talking about making it a game mechanic: do you really want players to choose whether to have safezones or have some buff?

Ton of games with that, unfortunately. It can't be considered as attractive point anymore.

I meant not only villagers, but monsters too. Will they be organized? Will they raid villages? Will they mess with you while your team is fighting a dragon?

I think it's good idea too, but no matter how I look at it there's no way to implement it so features harmonize with each other. So I ask to clear misunderstandings I have, create a picture of how it should play like and make OP understand those problems and make sure OP actually solves them.

What I see in disharmony:
1. Mmorpg(on scale of 100 people) doesn't like building. In the end there's ton of buildings with noone to inhabit them. Also players tend to separate and build on their own when not in small groups of friends reducing communication further (and, thus, fun from it being multiplayer). Besides it requires a lot of dev resources.
2. Running from dragons is good and all, but it needs to be immersive. Make player feel like he's being hunted, but don't let him die easily. I honestly don't see how this can be done without very good graphics, music, story which require a lot of dev resources. When I will start running from dragon in 20th time I won't really care if I die now. It's already routine task with risk. Besides, at that point I would've memorized whole dragon A.I. by heart.
3. What features harmonize with building? Building requires a lot of dev resources yet again, but unless it harmonizes into game it will just suck them into creating minecraft2 or copy of some other game you can find in search depending on type of building. I've seen tons of projects(a lot even went to steam to get "mixed" or "mostly negative" reviews) which didn't think about that.

 

Maybe you should approach the question from the other side. Don't think about punishing a player for dying, think about rewarding them for staying alive. Take H1Z1 for instance where you pretty much have a last man standing scenario in multiplayer. Death match setup on a huge map with 150 or so players. You don't respawn, when you die and there's no real punishment either, but your chances to win the game increase the longer you manage to stay alive by any means neccessary (killing, fleeing, hiding, healing - in general: planning your survival).

 

thats my goal It's exactly why I opened this thread also, to see what other ways there are to approach death, without having it only as an onconvinience or penalty (which is why I'm also thinking about a reincarnation system, that allows you to get something back after dying, if your character was progressed enough)

about taking it off: why would I not let them choose? It's also part of the: I don't want magic to be something unexplainable, that's being used in every occasion to explain something that has no foot in reality or in that sense in that world. My magic is achieved by using runes, materials and alchemy, so it's important for me to have something "physical" ingame representing it. Also, it allows me to use a faint glow in those amulets to make it visible for players that they are out of their security zone (this is not fully designed yet)

If I would go for whats there already I probably wouldn't have much game genres to choose from I just stick with what I like myself also, but I'm gonna try and make it different. (and I have not seen MMOs using the survival mechanic as much as singleplayers)

For monsters or creatures so far I know I want AI that makes very clear that every animal is behaving like animals (I consider dragons as animals too) Which means there is no reason for raiding a village and certainly they will not attack you while you fight a dragon. In general they won't attack you really...except you are provoking them....

regarding the harmonize again, thats why I joined the forums, thats why I'm talking about that stuff, so I will try to figure out solutions. I did "brood" that game idea for quite some time now, but I know I need outside input to complete it.

regarding disharmonies:
1. I have seen mmorpgs be able to work with that, it all depends, as example wurm online, the building takes very long and alot of resources, also decay, which means that abandoned buildings are falling apart after some time and they are not easy to build in the first place, the lower quality, the faster it decays. I don't have a solution for that yet, but I'm maybe gonna use something similar. (I feel some of this is going way past the threads original topic though)
2.Hm...In general it's not easy to die and even though I think I may have fire breathing dragons, they are probably rare. Did you hear about recent scientific findings that t-rex COULD be outrun by a human?
Somehow I'm not even sure if this is an actual issue, why does it need to be non repetitive or include story and graphics and all? the way you describe it, it almost sounds like events being triggered when reaching a cave, when I actually meant, that dragons are territorial, behaving like animals, roaming around for food and the minerals they need to survive etc. Imagine running into a grizzly in real life.
3. What dev resources are you talking about? The models?the implementation? why do you emphasize it's dev resources neediness over other mechanics? And then again, minecraft is not only about building, no one who played ark survival as example has said that it would be like minecraft, even though you can build in it. Minecraft wasn't the first game to do it either, minecraft has also a very specific style, which I definitely don't want.
And then there is the copy thing again...no I'm not gonna go and copy something from another game, but I also know it won't be a completely new experience, since my whole frame of reference is based on the real world, which means it can not be avoided to repeat some things.

yes, exactly it's a good point to mention the reward for staying alive longer. Since I'm planning on making it skillbased, it is given, that it will become easier the more you train your skills. And hiding and fleeing are probably some of the most trained skills XD

 

I'd like to try out the idea of having a pool of 'things' that can happen if the player dies. Could be context bound or bound to the 'real' players skills. The 'pool' could for example consist of: you loose your weapon, you respawn at a boring place, you have to watch a 'boring' cut scene, your walk speed goes down to 50% for 60 seconds, you gain information, you gain experience e.t.c. This would allow us to balance and pace the game for the player in a manner that keeps up the motivation. A kind of game experience feedback (frequent dies, infrequent dies, e.t.c). This idea has to be tested and probably justified to individual styles to get a good effect.

My main point is that I believe 'variety in depth' will improve the experience.

 

*Variety in Deths

 

Making death an interesting experience in and of itself. I like it.

For everything else, there is the edit button.

 

Um... So whole dragon thing will be about "you see dragon, you just turn around and run"? I see no immersion or fun already.

Yeah, you look at it. It looks at you. You're afraid it will do something bad. You know, average human stamina(unless sportsman maybe) won't allow to outrun a bear anyway so you just act to calm it down as much as you can. For example you're trying to show bear that you're already leaving and don't want to fight it. Maybe intentionally showing fear to gamble that it will calm it down as you're not a threat? Or maybe it will just show that it is easier for it to kill you and it will do so? It's a huge gamble with high stakes. And then it just turns away and you understand it doesn't care about you... How exactly are you supposed to show that in your game? Can you imagine UI for that in your head? How exactly it looks and feels? How does it change depending on death penalty?

Note: that was a bit of roleplaying here to imagine game situation. I suggest you do it a lot with simulating opponent's(player/AI) thoughts and actions while designing. I can write a small roleplay page or two how I imagine myself playing that game if you want.

I'm emphasizing on profit(at least in terms of satisfaction from finished game) from cost(or dev resources used, that's time and maybe money used). You can make game with 10 mechanics and use 10 years of your life making it... But it just won't play. But you can make just one full mechanic and outline it with several small side mechanics and use 1 year and it will play. Mechanics and features must harmonize with each other meaning three things:
1. Increase pros of each another
2. Decrease cons of each another
3. Interact with each other to bring out new experience for player.
If they don't, that's wasted time that won't bring you profit as it's better to make 2 harmonizing mechanics than 3 that do not.

I want to at least see that game. Not yet sure if I want to play it as I don't see anything enticing in gameplay yet. That's why I'm emphasizing on it. If you don't work it out, I won't even see it.

As of description of game you've made I see no core in this game. Death, MMORPG and building are just features still. You didn't turn death into core mechanic - it would take a much less default approach to make it core of game.

P.S. if you ever consider something offtopic don't be shy to tell me so, I tend to drift away like most.

 

@Teravisor
I have no problem with it, that you may not enjoy this game

 

I don't think this is the entire game. Unfortunately, many games use combat and death (in a magical way) as the only reason to play the the game. Everything in the game is focused on combat. Every other purpose in the game is to support combat.

So..yeah, you are off topic. You are critiquing a game rather than discuss one aspect she is considering putting in the game. The topic is regarding death...not...will this game be fun?

Also, why discourage her from spending "ten years of her life" building a game and worrying about costs when you really don't know why she is building this game? Maybe she is more a hobbyist, who doesn't care about the money and is willing to give the time.

Give her time to round out her design. Stick to the discussion about death. lol

And.maybe it is a niche game and not your niche.