I was looking through my RSS feeds today when I saw this gem linked through Kotaku. It's a fairly interesting look at the concept of the death penalty in MMO design. While the article is well written, I don't exactly agree with article on a few points which I'll post after the link itself, so please check this out first:
What's In a Death Penalty: Via Elder Game
My comments in:
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Ok here goes:
Death Penalty Punishment
I actually don't think WoW's death penalty is actually much less punishing. The main point of running back to your corpse is to be able to circumvent the dangers en route to the point where your character perished. With a game like EQ2, yes, you start off in a safe zone, but the pain of having to travel back without the benefit of invincibility is more of a time waster in and of itself.
Blizzard did think about this and added in two more things:
-Well defined (as in level and difficulty) zones so that players wouldn't be wandering around in places that they shouldn't unless they were exploring. If that danger occurs, then the graveyard system works around that.
-Players are able to spawn in a fairly large area from where they actually died. This is done in case there is still a very real and present danger there, the player can find somewhere to hide and heal before another attempt, or to run away as soon as they spawn.
WoW is well designed so that "hardcore" features such as dungeons and raids, which require groups, sometimes of an exceedingly large numbers have a similarly more "hardcore" death penalty. This time, when the party wipes, they have to start from the beginning of the instance they were in. Factor in a time pressure where monsters may have already respawned and the hardcore factor just jumped up. This is not to say there is no time pressure for random spawns on the normal world map. However, the player has a limited choice on where to spawn and multiple choices on direction and action (Fight or Flee?). In an instance, there is really only one option, a straight line back.
Grouping
I'm not sure it's the death penalty that forces people to group up "for safety" in an MMO, but how the game is designed for the player to gain experience points and level up. With an MMO like WoW, the game is designed for solo play, yes, players will group up, but the end goal of that is to earn:
Experience Points and Better Items
that the player couldn't do by themselves. The same is for a game like Final Fantasy XI, where the death penalty is amazingly hardcore, yes, players group up for safety while earning experience points. However, I can guarantee you that if there was a way to level in Final Fantasy XI solo, but with the same harsh death penalty, the majority of players would choose to do so. Similarly, raids in WoW are for safety, but also because that players are after better gear and the only way to get that is to group up. If there was a way to do a dungeon with a smaller group or no group with the same death penalty, it would be done.
Similarly, In a game with a "hardcore" defined death penalty like Ragnarok Online, players still play solo to earn exp and are then "forced" to group up when they hit a plateau where they need other players for exp and items. A prime example of this is the Clock Tower area in Al De Baran. The only players that are looking group up are Priests/Acolytes because they cannot solo the area on their own for exp. Long range classes like the mage/wizard and the hunter/archer are sought after by them so that they are able to level, and in the case of these two classes, level faster. Otherwise, after spending significant time in this game, and looking at this zone particularly as an anomaly, I'd say 95% of the people there are soloing because they can.
Experimenting
While parts of this argument are true, particularly concerning play that involves loss of resources of more than one player, whether funds, experience points, and most importantly, time. Which in essence is the most important currency of any game. However, I think that activities that involve personal currency is actually more rewarding and sought after in games with a "harsher" death penalty, exploration for instance. Part of the lure of exploring unknown places and discovering new places is the penchant for danger and the players own feel of self-satisfaction and prowess for overcoming these challenges. In a game like WoW where death is less punished, especially for explorers out poking in the nook and crannies of Azeroth, discovering a new place is exciting, but the feeling of danger, of being an explorer, of accomplishment is dampened by the ease of access. This being compared to a game like Final Fantasy XI where being able to explore and poke around certain areas is as much a feat as defeating a boss or completing a mission.
Does anyone have comments for this particular topic? This is one of the biggest "hidden" design issues with MMOs these days, and I'm glad that the people at Elder Game decided to take a look at it.