Indeed, it always amazed me that, when playing such games as Civilization and Master of Magic (which were, to a great extent, influenced by old boardgames), you don't get the option to change perspective on dying. Inner Space offered this choice, letting one shift his personality from one spaceship to another, and while it meant losing a number of bonuses, it also allowed one to continue the game with the overall storyline intact (not that there was much of a storyline in that game, to be honest).

Think of the consequences in such games as Medieval: Total War if, after being wiped out by crusaders, you were transferred into their own role, tasked with guarding the very dominion they swiped from your former incarnation. It would make things deeply insteresting, to carry out the game from the perspectives of several nations; Starcraft, the Disciples series and its rip-off Warcraft 3 pulled it off admirabily, but not in a way that avoided the consequences of losing the game.

Some feel a game should be about being rewarded or scolded for mashing a bunch of buttons or gaining the skill and knowledge to master a given technique. I disagree, rather strongly; so long as one cannot apply this skill and knowledge in most real-life scenarios (including moments of tranquil reflection), the whole operant conditioning phenomenon of games is wasted. When leaving the keyboard, one gains nothing but the satisfaction of having won... Something. Definitely nothing meaningful, however.

You don't see the history books shouting "game over" in full caps when the British fail to retake America, or when Napoleon gets captured after Waterloo. Perhaps, most games should avoid this as well. Right now, nearly every game conceived works on the principle that if you die, you lose, and must therefore restart or load; this forces games to offer avenues for reaching such outrageous goals as conquering the world (Rise of Nations) or gunning down marauding hordes of troops (Operation Flashpoint). Such games could still work splendidly if players were allowed to die, considering how their protagonists had little character, and were more easily distinguishable by their military functions than their general mentalities.

I'll mention that, in Neurofeedback games, no player is ever truly "punished" for performing poorly. These games are, after all, meant to educate the mind and relieve stress, rather than inspire some false sense of victory. Instead, the game simply goes slower or faster based on how well the player is approaching the required state of mind. I've seen this happen in SimEarth and other sandbox games, as well as most adventure games, and I do wish the concept could be integrated throughout RPGs and RTSs, rather than forcing less skilled players to go through certain missions over and over again. One could also argue the same thing happens in SubSpace and Counterstrike: on losing, you merely have to "green up" (increase your score by flying into bonuses) or wait until the round is finished before being allowed to play again.

There is a MOD in Operation Flashpoint that handles very well dying. The MOD is Capture the Island (CTI). In that mod, the players have a base and is respawned there if he (and his entire platoon) dies. So its like the player get control of a new commander. The final GAME OVER comes if the command center is destroyed. But the "command center" was a very powerful but slow tank that could build buildings (like an RTS), and could be relocated.

But there is a problem to allow dying/game over: The game must punish death to make the player avoid it. A nice strategy I had in CTI was relocating the command center to near a neutral city (where you must capture to get incoming money)and going by foot and fighting a entire batalion of enemies (like 10 soltiers+ 3 tanks) alone. I didnt cared about dying because I was respawned in the command center, near the city, with full ammunition.

As the idea to give you the control of the enemy that destroyed you, it couldnt be more wrong :P Youre actually rewarding the player for his loss. So a weak player could ami to die in the hands of the most powerfull nation to have control of it.

However, Civilization 3 multiplayer showed a better way of integrating a civilization's death in a continuous world. Then you die (or join a game already started), You has been given control of a weaker non-player civilization. If there are no computer civilizations, you must start with just a settler.

How about this: When you get defeated, you retain most of your resources and property, but are considered to be under the control of the conquering force.

Your objectives change, so that instead of trying to get that tricky space-warp engine built, you now have to produce rigidium ore for the tank factories of Neo-Rome. As long as you make your quota, though, they don't look too closely at what you're doing. If you "play nice" long enough, they'll pull out their occupying force and you can start a space-warp skunkworks in the ore refinery, keeping up your ore production and quietly stirring a mutiny until you can declare independence and get back to your "real" game objectives.

Getting conquered has the obvious penalty of killing off a chunk of your population and destroying a lot of your buildings and such, and each time it might get worse to discourage defection, but it woudn't end the game.

I always wished that I could capture resources in StarCraft, so after I've defeated a player I could actually use his buildings, rather than sending in valuable troops to "mop up" all the little supply depots and science facilities.

I actually tried doing that in Rise of Nations, turning people into "vassals" after wiping out their armies. It didn't quite work as planned, unfortunately. Too bad - it would've made for some interesting strategies, as well as open completely new avenues of cunning and diplomacy. Imagine what would happen if a player's former ally was suddenly forced to turn on him, supporting his new masters; would the player try to oust his captive ally from the game, or steadily help him reclaim his territories? Romania would often find itself divided between three great empires, which helped develop its complex historical background - there was not a day when local rulers weren't plotting to either gain the emperors' favor, or remove their influence completely.

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As the idea to give you the control of the enemy that destroyed you, it couldnt be more wrong :P Youre actually rewarding the player for his loss.

I don't see why this would be wrong in any way. I try to stay well outside of the "reward/punishment" concept, so other than letting the world's greatest kingdom fall due to the player's continued incompetence, I don't see what the issue would be. Placing you in control of a powerful force automatically lowers your difficulty level, making it easier to try new strategies now that the hassle of protecting your kingdom is over. I believe that, while under stress and harried by outside constraints, humans are fairly reluctant to experiment.

And I assume that, in a game that lets you switch perspective when you die, you can do so at any time. I believe the Alpha Centauri scenario editor works well in that regard - it's possible to play all seven factions symultaneously, in fact.

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I don't see why this would be wrong in any way...

It is the same issue as cheating. You would be very easily strong. It is cool to play with that strongest civilization for a while, but it make your game boring very fast, as the player would easily get the best tecnologies, and would aways win in the end.

Besides, doing that would be like a sandbox game, like sim city. You could lose a civilization and dont give a damn about it.

As a player I would hate it. I think the "pay to be free" idea much better.

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I believe the Alpha Centauri scenario editor works well in that regard - it's possible to play all seven factions symultaneously, in fact.

There are better ways to make perspective changes in the game. I personally love how they did this in Age of Wonders (1). In the beginning you only choose between light or darkness. But as the game advanced, you could changed wich race were favored by you, each one with unique perspective of the world. For example: the orcs were war minded, and loved to conquer and destroy. But then you could change later to the dark elves, who prefer to plot on shadows. Or the undead, who seeked wipe out all life. You could even turn in the end to neutral forces like humans, lizardman, etc...

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Original post by The Senshi So, to answer your original question, what makes dying palletable to me is when it's part of the gameplay experience itself, not a corrective mechanism hacked on to a game where dying is strictly forbidden by the story/laws of the universe.

So would you (or--open question--anyone else for that matter) be opposed to the laws of the story / universe being overridden in the name of keeping you playing? I'll refer to this as the "grenade in the face that just missed me by THAT much" problem. [grin] That is, there are some situations or risks or fears you can't expose the player to without resorting to the near ridiculous.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Your objectives change, so that instead of trying to get that tricky space-warp engine built, you now have to produce rigidium ore for the tank factories of Neo-Rome. As long as you make your quota, though, they don't look too closely at what you're doing. If you "play nice" long enough, they'll pull out their occupying force and you can start a space-warp skunkworks in the ore refinery, keeping up your ore production and quietly stirring a mutiny until you can declare independence and get back to your "real" game objectives.

That sounds so cool. But what happens after the eight/twentieth/umpteenth time?

Let's say that you're forced to become a puppet by the conquerers, and after some gameplay to discourage them to drop their guard, you get back to (greatly reduced) business. You're more cautious and meticulous, but still manage to trigger another invasion. Like I've asked a post ago, would you be in favor of never being able to fall below some level? Or should the game cheat and give you a big break after some (unknown) number of losses?

For the record Lego Starwars was incredibly fun to play, and yes, you were completelly invincible, weird things.

Anyways a challenging game is a good game to one extends, if there wasn't a chance of losing then you wouldn't get enough satisfaction for winning.

But some games exceed into what is losing.

As a personal experience: Single Player Diablo 2 was excesively fun to play on normal and nightmare, but in hell it suddenly became just a frustrant and boring game because of losing. In my case I used a sorceress and for some reason, in hell every single monster had mana burn and freeze and things like that, you would die even before thinking about fighting.

The issue was that you would lose tons of money, experience and all your equipment items were droped in your body.

The frustant thing is that without money you can't get items, without items you can't kill monsters without dying and your old equipment is trapped just where the bunch of invincible monsters that already killed you once when you had the items lie.

And the only options are to surrender completelly, or go back to normal for boredom hours until you get good money or try and try until you no longer have time to play and luckily recover your body after a bunch of guerilla tactics against the monsters.

I eventually got completelly tired of diablo 2 which I considered to be one of my favorite games because of this excesive punishment for dying.

If the fights were as challenging but you could recover without too much problem or time waste from a death , I would have fun that much more enjoyable to play.

The purpose of (nearly) every game is winning, that is its logic. So that entails the possibility of loss. Personally, I sometimes don't mind losing if I did well - put up a good fight - and especially if my opponent did well. For example, when I play chess and lose if it was a good game, I can see the beauty of the game and feel good for the winner because it was such a good game. Still, there have to be victory conditions.
Now in computergames its much more difficult to feel empathy for the victory of your opponent when talking about A.I. But mostly, I see longer games as a series of mini-games, which create some story. Even when losing the whole game, I can have won some episodes of it and it could make a nice story so to speak. So then I don't mind losing. The problem with losing long games lie, as is already mentioned, in that replaying is boring. And especially when you come at a point when it's clear who will be the winner, that totally ruins a game. Furthermore, computergames are mostly designed with victory for the player in mind above everything else, that's where the fun should come from. That makes it harder to detach yourself from the role of loser and see the whole game, or let alone enjoy that role. Even most RPG's don't do this, I don't know why.
I think that a game should have clear victory conditions, but the gameplay itself should involve more detailed and richer challenges, so that playing a game wouldn't be so much about simply winning / losing in the end.
For example, I do hate losing a civilization game, but in civ 3 there are some funny taunts / statistics and a 'movie' in the end which are like a history of that one world you created by playing. That makes up for some of the loss, as then it's more of a role you have played. And in role-playing, such as acting for some theatrical play, I do like playing the role of a loser.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by The Senshi So, to answer your original question, what makes dying palletable to me is when it's part of the gameplay experience itself, not a corrective mechanism hacked on to a game where dying is strictly forbidden by the story/laws of the universe. So would you (or--open question--anyone else for that matter) be opposed to the laws of the story / universe being overridden in the name of keeping you playing? I'll refer to this as the "grenade in the face that just missed me by THAT much" problem. [grin] That is, there are some situations or risks or fears you can't expose the player to without resorting to the near ridiculous.

Actually, I think that in general having a feature like that would be a good thing, I honestly wish more games had that (but, maybe that's just because I suck at most games? [wink]). I think it's better to err in favor of keeping the player alive, assuming it's not *too* contrived. In a way, some games already do this to an extent, like being able to take out loans in Sim City when you're losing, or having a medic revive you in first person shooters if you're incapacitated (well, Medal of Honor:PA had that, at least). I know thats not exactly what you're talking about, but my point is that most players don't tend to get upset if you bend the rules in their favor. Really, the onlt time bending the rules is bad is if it's against the player, in which case they tend to go "*gasp*! the computer is cheating!".