What would it be like to play a game where you are unable to die? Would it be something like playing a game with unrestricted saving that recommends players to save often? For the single player RPG genre, if players can instantly die a horrible death at any given unknown moment, and that death causes them to be thrown into a game over screen where they lose everything, they would have to be a little bit crazy to do anything other than save around every corner. Is that a bad assumption? No one wants to repeat a long sequence of events just because they made a mistake on the very last event. It doesn't seem meaningful to do so. The previous events often have nothing to do with the mistake that lead to the cause of death. Is that a punishment for death, is it a punishment for not saving the game, or is it a punishment for not knowing when and where the game should be saved? Since players often have no idea (in new situations) which event is likely to lead to their death, the only way to avoid the unmeaningful punishment for death is to save around every corner. As far as I'm concerned, games that promote and encourage this type of saving have no punishment for death, other than losing a few minutes (possibly seconds) of play where the mistake was made. My reason for posting is to look for other options. If it is impossible to truly die in a game, what type punishment could be inflicted when health reaches zero that would make it seem as dangerous (and still as convenient) as a game with unrestricted saving? I'm just looking for general ideas and concepts, so anything goes.

Once again, without risk of loss, there is no danger.

If there is no loss, the only thing that you can suffer is inconvenience:
- WoW's corpse-running and repairs
- Being slowed down in a racing game

When you get to this point, you never actually feel 'danger', but instead only want to avoid the inconvenient consequences. That's one of the (positive) powerful emotional effects of a severe death penalty: you actually feel danger and risk. That's also a reason for the feeling you get while 'invincible' in a game (like the mario star power).

At the same time, too harsh of a death penalty pretty much only infuriates the player. I'm definitely not a fan of permadeath.

I guess my point is that you have to have a risk of loss to feel any danger. Anything 'lighter' will only rob you of convenience.

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Original post by Kest What would it be like to play a game where you are unable to die? Would it be something like playing a game with unrestricted saving that recommends players to save often?

Maybe.

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For the single player RPG genre, if players can instantly die a horrible death at any given unknown moment, and that death causes them to be thrown into a game over screen where they lose everything, they would have to be a little bit crazy to do anything other than save around every corner. Is that a bad assumption?

Yes, it is. It is predicated on the bad assumptions that (a) every replay would be exactly the same, and (b) the player's goal is to minimize risk and difficulty.

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No one wants to repeat a long sequence of events just because they made a mistake on the very last event. It doesn't seem meaningful to do so.

The conception of games as a series of decisions, where one or more bad decisions leads to death, is critically flawed. It's what killed Sierra adventure games the moment something better came along. It's a fatalistic model that ignores decades of improvement.

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Since players often have no idea (in new situations) which event is likely to lead to their death, the only way to avoid the unmeaningful punishment for death is to save around every corner.

This right here was exactly the problem. Failure was considered necessary to eventual success. It was assumed that players would do things wrong the first time, die, reload, and do them right eventually. Didn't figure out how to get the atomic vector plotter in time? Screw you, three hundred turns from now! Forgot to inspect your cruiser before getting in? Kaboom!

So yes. If you make death a necessary part of figuring out how to succeed, you have to either allow frequent, no-punishment saves or risk pissing off your players. If there is no punishment for constantly saving and the game punishes you for not constantly saving, your players are going to constantly save. And if your players are constantly saving, you have to account for that by making encounters that are difficult to get through the first five times without dying. It's a cycle of stupid game design decisions that has no one-part solution. That's not to say that there are no solutions, just that simplistic mechanics like "punish the player for dying" aren't going to do anything except piss peolpe off.

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Original post by Sneftel That's not to say that there are no solutions, just that simplistic mechanics like "punish the player for dying" aren't going to do anything except piss peolpe off.

That's expected, isn't it? If there is no negative emotion, then it's impossible to discourage failure. Players failing anything with negative consequences will obviously trigger some type of negative emotion. Just be clear, I consider not getting a reward to be a negative consequence or punishment, so I'm referring to both concepts here. It's just that it's a little difficult to give rewards for not dying, since it would lose meaning after so many deaths.

Instead of trying to completely avoid causing negative emotion, it would be more meaningful to keep the negative emotion just high enough to discourage failure.

Personally, I think the best strategy would be to focus on a penalty that can be restored by performing the action considered to the most fun part of the game. Losing money is a decent example.

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Original post by Kest If there is no negative emotion, then it's impossible to discourage failure.

Failure creates its own negative emotion. You just have to make sure that players don't get jaded about it.

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Original post by Humble Hobo Once again, without risk of loss, there is no danger.

I don't see your point. Loss is what I mean by punishment. That doesn't mean all forms of punishment work the same way. It is possible to have loss that will simply require more fun gameplay to recover from, and not something that's tedious to recover from.

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If there is no loss, the only thing that you can suffer is inconvenience: - WoW's corpse-running and repairs - Being slowed down in a racing game

Anything negative will cause some amount of fear of death. The only way players can avoid that is by not caring about the negative impact.

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When you get to this point, you never actually feel 'danger', but instead only want to avoid the inconvenient consequences. That's one of the (positive) powerful emotional effects of a severe death penalty: you actually feel danger and risk. That's also a reason for the feeling you get while 'invincible' in a game (like the mario star power).

Personally, I think unrestricted saving already destroys those feelings. I'm trying to capture something of equal value that makes more sense. I'm not that worried about geniune frantic or fear surrounding death. I want players to have a lot of reasons to try their best without having to replay any portion of the game that they don't want to.

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Original post by Sneftel Quote: Original post by Kest If there is no negative emotion, then it's impossible to discourage failure. Failure creates its own negative emotion. You just have to make sure that players don't get jaded about it.

Failing without a designed negative consequence in the case of death would be losing all of your health, having a message on the screen that says "you died" [optional], and just carrying on like nothing happened. I doubt anyone would feel anything seriously negative about that. It would be essentially pointless to really care how well you're performing.

For example, even being knocked down can be a negative consequence. It's just not enough to put any meaningful effort into avoiding death.

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No one wants to repeat a long sequence of events just because they made a mistake on the very last event. It doesn't seem meaningful to do so.

This is an example of bad game design, and is sadly something we still see today (*cough*Doom3*cough*). Players shouldn't be forced into situations they have no chance of winning, its an arbitrary punishment thats overridden with quick-loading.

When thinking of save system's and death options i think back to games like Ultima Underworld and System Shock(1). Those games DID have perma-death, but also gave players more of an option than to just reload or die, such as retreating to safer area's in order to heal, or circumventing death altogether. For example by using the Silver Sapling found on Lvl 1 of the Abyss, or activating local Resurrection Chambers on each floor of Citadel Station.

This gave the final decision to the players themselves as to how they wanted to play it, instead of forcing them to play one way or another. In methods like this the challenge for players would be to see how far they could go without these safety features, like playing through Doom on Ultra-Violence using only the shotgun without saving.

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Original post by Kest Failing without a designed negative consequence in the case of death would be losing all of your health, having a message on the screen that says "you died" [optional], and just carrying on like nothing happened. I doubt anyone would feel anything seriously negative about that. It would be essentially pointless to really care how well you're performing.

I'm not saying that the game would go on like nothing happened. You'd die, and have to return to the last save point. I'm saying that even though players have the ability to quicksave their game every three seconds, and thus lose only three seconds of progress at most per death, nevertheless they can be made to--hell, they will by default, unless you screw it up--feel bad about dying.

I think youre looking for negative emotion in the wrong place.

Think about the purpose of the negative emotion: you want people to fear death, so that theres a sense of challenge and tension in avoiding death, and therefore a positive emotion and feeling of accomplishment from not dying.

Now have a think about when you want the player to be mindful of that negative emotion. When should the player feel challenged and tense? Before death.


After death, the player has already failed. Negative emotion at that point doesnt give any benefit. The player will associate later deaths with that negative emotion and have the potential for positive emotion by avoiding them... but they arent in any way related to the current death, and there is zero potential for positive emotion in the current death. So why choose the current death as the point to generate the negative emotion towards later deaths? Its somewhat easier because of tradition, but it comes with the problems youre facing - for the most part its a completely arbitrary place to target the negative emotion.


The other problem with a death system is that they are largely meta-game consequences. Things such as moving slower, xp loss, having to reload, etc, depending on genre. How do you convey those things in game?... You cant, really. So the first death the player experiences doesnt hold fear of those things. The player hasnt been exposed to the consequences yet, so they dont fear them. They fear death simply because it is death. Which leads to my preferred death option -

Death as a plot device.

In (most) games, what is the most common way of controlling emotion, perception, etc? World design, setting, and storyline. From the heartbreaking loss of a sidekick, to monsters jumping out of shadows, its design, not mechanics. I think death should be treated the same way.

If death is to be feared, then it needs to be made a part of the world. NPCs speaking about a soul's eternal torment after death and whispered sightings of the Grim Reaper, etc. Then introduce those elements when the player is near to death. You dont need to actually kill the player to have them begin to experience death. eg - Near to death, the player falls to the ground, and the shimmering form of the grim reaper begins to form out of the shadows; As it approaches, suddenly bullets tear through it and it disperses; an allie approaches and helps you to your feet, urging you to retreat with him back to a nearby safer area.

Each death should advance the story in some way. If mechanical penalties are the only result of death, then you have no control of the emotion of the player - they could be fearful, or they could be just bloody annoyed with the game - and you have only the one place to make players aware of the penalties.

edit: And, to make myself clear - what I term a "death" I dont necessarily mean in a literal sense. A "death" in the traditional game sense is often more effective as a near-death, such as my example above. The more times you really die, the less there is to fear, and the more frustration there is to experience.

[/ramble] I hope I made some useful points... *scratches head*