Quote:

Original post by Kest The threat is what it's all about. That's why it's nearly as effective to implement a possibility of loss instead of absolute loss. A 10% chance to lose something is nearly just as good to encourage success as a 100% chance of loss. The threat may never actually be delivered to a certain player, but that doesn't stop it from doing what it was intended to do. What matters is that the player continues to believe that it could be delivered, upon any death. The only way to ensure that is to make it real.

I agree here. This is partly what I was trying to say when talking about story consequences and the reaper example - The 10% chance is almost as good as the 100% chance, and I think that some form of story or setting advancement is a good way to further push the percentages before the player continues to believe.

By including some form of scripted sequence, story advancement, etc, that gives the impression of "that was a close one, you were nearly done for!" you can reinforce and remind the player of the threat without needing to actually follow through on it just yet. It doenst have to be a whole sequence like the reaper example, that was just what came to mind - it could be something much quicker and simpler so long as it gives the close-call feeling. You could push it down from needing 10% chance of loss, to 10% chance of a reminder event and only 5% to actually lose something.

I've been thinking about the old-school design concept of extra-lives. In some old games (Gradius III for one), losing an extra-life doesn't reset your level progress, but players still try their best to avoid it, because they only have so many before a real loss is inflicted.

In reality, they are only losing security. As they lose each one of these security layers, the possibility of a real loss becomes more threatening. That doesn't need to change anything that's been discussed regarding death. It can be added as another layer on top of whatever design is chosen. IE, it still isn't necessary to reset or reload the game upon final death. Any moderate loss, or even a small chance of loss, will do the job.

The security layers could be made to seem more realistic than extra lives. Such as a machine's armor layers, or a person's willpower. But I think they need to be difficult to recover in a short time to be really effective. So the person's willpower may only return when they sleep, for example. This is important, because it would otherwise be another health bar.

A game could allow players to buy expensive items that will restart their heart upon death, giving them the ability to add their own security layers. As long as money is a vital commodity, it would be just as effective as any other loss.

I'm just wondering how many security layers and random chances for loss it would take to remove the fear of death to the point of the game not being challenging fun anymore. Probably not a lot.

I just finished playing Prey yesterday. In that game dying is a minor inconvenience at most and is actually a chance to restore health and ammo. I don't think that it diminished the game at all. Although, when playing FPS games, I tend to employ the 'shoot an enemy and save/die and reload' paradigm anyways. Prey just eliminated the constant saving and loading from the cycle (though a bug forced me to reload once from an autosave point).

The whole problem with death seems to arise from the fact that, unlike real life, death in most games is not permanent. When you die, you reload, start at the beginning of the level or from the start of the game. Having to start all the way from the beginning just makes you want to drop the whole game. Nethack is the only game I can think of where death is really permanent and you can't start over (with the same dungeon and the same character).

Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six also had rather nice ways of dealing with death: Unless all team members die, you can continue the game, but the dead team members remain dead, which is a loss if you lost someone like Chavez Ding. Using this model, death could be something that doesn't force the player to replay anything, but inconveniences the player somehow, possibly for the rest of the game.

Always remember:

Games are (normally) designed to entertain.

The consideration of what way to punish the player as part of a gameplay dynamic is entirely the wrong approach, and goes against the overall aim. Instead, look at what the best way to enhance the experience of the player is - not what the best way to improve the gameplay dynamics, as the sole objective of any 'death penalty' is almost always the psychological manipulation of the player, requiring a different approach that is completely separate from balance.

Quote:

Original post by Captain Griffen Always remember: Games are (normally) designed to entertain. The consideration of what way to punish the player as part of a gameplay dynamic is entirely the wrong approach, and goes against the overall aim. Instead, look at what the best way to enhance the experience of the player is

Staying alive is a huge part of the entertaining experience. If there is death in a game, then there is always a punishing death penalty. Not "considering" a way to punish the player for death is simply to not care about improving it.

Sorry, I missed this reply.

Quote:

Original post by Sneftel 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.

Returning to a last save point is a negative consequence for dying. Like I mentioned in the original post, I'm looking for options to avoid saving to counter death. There will be no reloading, so being reloaded will not be an automatic negative.

In my own project, there will be no real death. The player literally can not die. When the player loses all of their health, something negative happens, and they immediately regain some or all of their health. They don't necessarily have to be transported to another area, but they may be able to choose to do so if they're really screwed. So there is no automatic punishment system put in place for death (or near death). I have to come up with one that makes it meaningful.

Quote:

Original post by Kest Quote: Original post by Captain Griffen Always remember: Games are (normally) designed to entertain. The consideration of what way to punish the player as part of a gameplay dynamic is entirely the wrong approach, and goes against the overall aim. Instead, look at what the best way to enhance the experience of the player is Staying alive is a huge part of the entertaining experience. If there is death in a game, then there is always a punishing death penalty. Not "considering" a way to punish the player for death is simply to not care about improving it.

Do not quote out of context. Actually read the whole post and think about it before writing a reply.

Do you ACTUALLY want to punish the player? Or do you want to enhance the entertainment? If it is the former, then, really, you have some issues. If it is the later, then you should get out of the idea of punishing the player and start thinking about it from the angle of more complex player psychology than 'make them suffer so they don't like dying and prefer not dying'.

Quote:

Original post by Captain Griffen Do you ACTUALLY want to punish the player?

As a player, is it possible to die without being punished? If so, let me know how that is possible, and this discussion may start to have meaning.

Quote:

Or do you want to enhance the entertainment? If it is the former, then, really, you have some issues. If it is the later, then you should get out of the idea of punishing the player and start thinking about it from the angle of more complex player psychology than 'make them suffer so they don't like dying and prefer not dying'.

Like I said, it is impossible to avoid punishing players for dying without removing all meaning from the goal of staying alive.

Quote:

Original post by Kest Quote: Original post by Captain Griffen Do you ACTUALLY want to punish the player? As a player, is it possible to die without being punished? If so, let me know how that is possible, and this discussion may start to have meaning. Quote: Or do you want to enhance the entertainment? If it is the former, then, really, you have some issues. If it is the later, then you should get out of the idea of punishing the player and start thinking about it from the angle of more complex player psychology than 'make them suffer so they don't like dying and prefer not dying'. Like I said, it is impossible to avoid punishing players for dying without removing all meaning from the goal of staying alive.

...really, think about what I'm saying? Am I saying that you SHOULDN'T have negatives to death? No. I'm saying that you should make sure to aim those negatives at psychological effects to enhance their overall enjoyment, and avoid falling into the trap of focusing on punishing the player.

A good example of thinking properly about it is Fable 2 - you can either suffer scars, or pay a gameplay penalty.

Quote:

Original post by Kest Quote: Original post by Way Walker Why not encourage success and let not succeeding be discouragement enough? How would you go about doing this? If death inflicts no loss, then death doesn't impend success. That means death has no consequences, which also means that staying alive is no longer a rewarding goal.

(You mean impede success, right? "Impend" would mean something quite different.)

Are you making a survival horror game? Does staying alive count as success? Then it was very easy to succeed in Myst: just turn on the game and don't do anything. Actually, if staying alive was success, then you couldn't really do anything but succeed in Myst.

And, actually, I'm not even sure you need to encourage success. Success is reward enough. Isn't there an article warning against giving employees monetary awards for good work since you're replacing the intrinsic joy of doing good work with the extrinsic hope for more money?

Quote:

Original post by Trapper Zoid King's Quest VII was probably the best method of dealing with the Sierra adventure style game over deaths. It was typical of the other Sierra adventure games where you died all the time, but it dealt with the saving problem for you.

But, at that point, it's not really death, it's just a cute animation saying, "that doesn't work," instead of it simply not working.