Lenient versus Harsh Death - What Should Be Used?

or those of you who are MMO Veterans - that is individuals who have played two or more titles previously - have you ever written off a game completely because of the death penalty? This wasn't the case for myself, per se, but I know a number of people who refused to play Final Fantasy XI because of the 10% experience point loss at death. Oh, and for those who don't know, this sometimes resulted in negative experience point gain in a play session (fortunately too the title has taken steps into rectifying this glaring problem). Point in case is this: there are some players who do not care for a game that has a harsh death penalty. Alternatively, a good number of players want a harsh death penalty for the risk vs reward factor. In Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LotRO:SoA) we will either have a lenient, average, or harsh death penalty. That's it. So which one will it be? I wish to discuss that today.

Though before I even touch any death penalty discussion - be it in a general MMO sense or specific to LotRO:SoA - I wish to state that we will not "die" in the game. It has been said repeatedly that instead we will be "defeated", but past that information is unavailable. That said, I will continue to use the term "death penalty" in this editorial despite the fact that we are in fact defeated.

To start this discussion I want to remain in the realm of general MMO philosophy as I look at the casual and hardcore gamers. Simply defined, the casual gamer plays part-time - maybe a few hours a day at most - where the hardcore [gamer] can play up to six or eight hours a day. So what does playtime have anything to do with the death penalty? It doesn't have anything direct, but it often seems that casuals prefer a lenient and hardcore a harsh death penalty. But why?

In the case of the casual player it is rather obvious: this [player] wants to be able to accomplish a goal in the short time they have online and harsh death penalties don't allow this. Whether it is the much despised corpse runs or the equally undesirable experience point loss proposition, such systems drastically impact a players accomplishment. Take a look at experience point loss specifically: depending on the system, a casual player could be on for thirty minutes, die, then the penalty would wipe out all the experience points gained. So much for accomplishing a single thing in-game.

Now what about the hardcore gamers? Why do they seemingly prefer a more harsh death penalty? This one is not so easy for me to answer - not just because I'm a casual gamer myself - but because hardcore gamers are typically about doing everything possible in the shortest time, or being the first to do everything. With that in mind, should they not want a lenient death penalty so they can accomplish their goals much sooner? I'd think so anyway, but there is also a crowd within the hardcore gamers (I think at least) who want sufficient risk versus reward, who wants death meaningful. It is this group that often clashes with casual players and creates the conundrum that is death penalty debates.

So then the next question we must ask in this sequence is this: who is right? Casuals or hardcore? Which makes for a better game experience? To answer these questions sufficiently I wish to spend the next portion of this editorial looking at the "evolution" you could say, of the death penalty; looking at titles from the first, second and third generation.

First Generation - Asheron's Call

Asheron's Call is my game of preference for referencing the first generation of MMOs - the titles that launched this industry forward - and it provides a very unique look into any death penalty debate. In that game, death was two-fold: you dropped a few of your most valuable items (measured strictly by in-game currency worth) and had your stats reduced (temporarily) by 5% on each death (with experience point gain you could work it off). Many observers and players have noted that this is not a lenient, nor harsh death penalty but somewhere in between. While I do agree with this assessment I think it is closer to lenient then anything else.

Closer to lenient? Am I serious? Yes, completely. I will explain why. In Asheron's Call we had something called "death items." These were essentially clothing, armor, weapons or whatever that had a very high value. So when you accumulated a large number of these, they dropped on death as opposed to your valuable weapons and armor. It is to be mentioned that most players were able to accumulate at least some, and as long as you weren't reckless, few items were lost. Oh and as for the temporary stat reduction? Once you reached the higher levels it became easy to kill off.

Despite this penalty being rather lenient, you could say, it did create in players, as I mentioned, a hesitation to being reckless. That is to say, no one jumped off places where you couldn't get your corpse or flew into a nest of mobs without help. It meant that death had some meaning in dangerous situations and created a general fear of the higher level areas (which is an unbelievable feeling, to be scared in an online world). Of course the game has evolved (or rather de-volved) today where that fear is no longer evident; arguably one of the many tragedies that the game has suffered. Though I wish to leave this for now as I will pick it up again when I describe my ideal death system.

Second Generation - Final Fantasy XI

No matter which game you look at in the second generation - Final Fantasy XI and Star Wars Galaxies for instance - you see evidence of a harsh death penalty, almost building off what the first generation did in some respects. It seemed to be a closely held development belief at the time that death had to mean something, to bring some realism to the world and provide some punishment for reckless players. Of all the second generation titles, Final Fantasy XI embodied this completely.

In Final Fantasy XI there was one punishment to death: a 10% experience point loss. It is to be noted that combat in the game was often slow and experience point totals to advance to the next level was quite small. So often times (at least in the mid level game) 10% of your total experience points needed to advance was very, very significant - at times an hours worth of work. This, in my view, is the very definition of a harsh death penalty. Oh and did I mention that the game was more or less forced grouping? Yes so if that tank or healer didn't do their job it meant you lost an hour worth of work. Tons of fun huh?

Still, players bought into it and not surprisingly Final Fantasy XI was as hardcore as you can get. That is, it was an incredibly long grind and the top level players often put in six to eight hours a day (or more) to get where they are. But that doesn't tell the full story either. Star Wars Galaxies, another second generation title, used to have a very harsh death penalty back in its early days. You'll recall, as well, that Star Wars Galaxies was, and still is, very casual friendly so my aforementioned logic only goes so far. Despite that I do believe one thing: harsh death penalties were something of great preference in the second generation.

Third Generation - EverQuest II and World of Warcraft

I'll preface this section with this: I do consider EverQuest II and World of Warcraft as third generation MMOs. Others - be they players or industry media - do not slap on that title to the aforementioned titles and insist games like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and our very own LotRO:SoA will be the third generation. While they are entitled to their opinion I very much disagree. Due to the impact that World of Warcraft has had on this genre - and to a lesser extent EverQuest II as well - these games do deserve the title of third generation. Whether you like World of Warcraft or not, you recognize that it has changed the MMO landscape permanently. With that said, let us begin our discussion of the third generation.

I wish to start with EverQuest II and its death penalty at launch. When the game first hit stores it had a modified version of the experience point loss death system. The only difference is, when you died you accumulated a few percentage points of "experience point debt." This appeared on your experience point bar in red and required a certain amount of experience points to kill it off. So, as you can well imagine, when you accumulated experience points some of it went towards the debt, others to what was needed to advance to the next level. Under this system, while it did not result in level loss, if your group wasn't being very efficient it made leveling very, very slow. Oh, and did I mention if you were in a group and one member died, everyone shared in the debt? Yeah, it had that too.

Fortunately for fans of EverQuest II (myself included) they changed the death system quite significantly down the road. Experience debt still remained but the amount you gained per death was less (so that it took only a few kills to get rid of it) and you no longer accumulated debt if a group member died. But why such a drastic change? I attribute it to two things: the first being subscriber demand for a much more lenient penalty and the "WoW factor." So yes, it is time to reference everyone's 'favorite' MMO: World of Warcraft!

World of Warcraft is best known for its sheer gigantic number of subscribers (last I checked it was over 5.5 million and rising) but their death system is pretty well known too. When you die in the game, you lose 10% durability on your items (all items have a total of 100% durability and when they reach zero they must be repaired in order to be used again) and then you had to either run back to your corpse as a ghost or use the spirit healer (which, at the higher levels, resulted in a 25% durability loss to all items and 10 minutes of "resurrection sickness" which is a 75% reduction in stats). Though it needs to be noted that most players don't have to use the spirit healers; unless of course their body is being camped in player versus player (PvP) or simply is too difficult to reach again.

Some readers who have never played World of Warcraft before may say "Magi, isn't that a pretty harsh death system?" I would then reply with a "no, the cost to repair (for the vast majority of players) is a drop in the hat." In fact many critics have proclaimed that the "death system in World of Warcraft is so insignificant it may as well not have one altogether!" I won't go too much further on this than to say: the most popular game in this business - by a very large margin - has the most lenient death system ever witnessed in this industry. Dare I say "5.5 million players can't be wrong?"

OK, so that is a little foolish to say in any professional sense, but what can't be denied is that the vast majority of players subscribing to games enjoy a lenient death penalty. This, of course, is going to carry over into other titles and a game like EverQuest II has already acted on it. So are we seeing a trend towards a more lenient death penalty? I think we are without a doubt but there are still some loud advocates of a harsh death penalty so it is not gone yet.

This then puts us in a very unique position: what should be done for LotRO:SoA? Should the developers continue with the trend that World of Warcraft set, that EverQuest II followed and surely many more titles? Or maybe the team should return to the roots of the business - ones they had a serious hand in forming - and employ a harsher death penalty? While I have my own opinion on what they should do (don't worry, it's coming) the team has a different one in mind. In an interview published from E3 this past May by LotroSource, Turbine's Lead Production Artist 'Floon Beetle' alluded to the fact that while no death penalty has been decided upon, the team wants to avoid a harsh one and experience point loss.

There you have it: it seems like we may be looking at a very lenient system that World of Warcraft employed in its very successful title. Though I am not suggesting by any means we'll see ghosts running back to defeated bodies - that certainly won't happen - but it wouldn't be surprising if it is in fact very lenient. I will say this: just because Floon Beetle said that the team would like to avoid a harsh death penalty, that doesn't mean what I want to see in this title will change. So without further ado, I will present my ideal death system that should be strongly considered by the community and developers of LotRO:SoA.

Situational Differential Death Penalty

Abbreviated simply as "SDDP", the Situational Differential Death Penalty is a very unique and complex system of death, depending on your point of view. Essentially it combines the needs of the casual and hardcore players - that is the want for both a lenient death penalty and meaningful death - and ends up improving the game experience tremendously. Some of you may stop and ask: "lenient but meaningful death penalty? How in God's name are you able to conjure up such a combination?" Not being one to back down from a good argument, I will explain it in detail.

What I wish to portray with SDDP is to allow for different death penalties or consequences in different situations. For instance, if you're just traveling the fields of Eriador, doing a quest or simply grinding, I would offer up a lenient death penalty, similar to that of World of Warcraft. This caters to the casual player specifically; they can accomplish things (experience, quest rewards) and not be bogged down by unfortunate death, by someone else's idiocy, lag or otherwise. Alternatively, if you have a large fellowship venturing through the Mines of Moria, the death penalty should be much more drastic - maybe experience or item loss - to make death more meaningful, to have people scared to die in the darker places of the world and to create an overall fear of particular areas: something, I think many players want as it makes the world that much more alive and immersive.

The obvious problem, however, with such a proposition would be the viability and not being a programmer myself there is only so much I can say. That said, using the example I provided, we can have the default death penalty lenient but then when you enter the instance for the Mines of Moria, your character is flagged for the harsh penalty. World of Warcraft does this very same thing in Battlegrounds, so depending on how it is conjured up in LotRO:SoA, it certainly could work.

I don't see any other particular problems - outside player rejection of course - but it is an effective way of both allowing for a lenient death penalty for casual players while at the same time creating a meaningful death system that creates fear of the darker enemies and places of the world: something Tolkien certainly would approve of.

Though I suppose the last question to be considered is whether we will see my SDDP system in LotRO:SoA? My guess is a no. In fact, I think we will see a continuation of the lenient death system trend, so Turbine will cater to the casual gamers. Not that I can blame them either; they make up a sizable amount of not only total and potential subscribers, but those that the title may end up appealing to. That said, time will tell but something is telling me it will be lenient: too many people these days like it that way.