death-penalties
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Ditching the Death Penalty
About ten days ago, Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum posted in the EU forums on a thread about removing the death penalty. While this may sound like a political hot potato that WoW Insider would do best to avoid, Taepsilum was actually responding to a post calling for the removal of resurrection sickness from the game. The original poster asserted that it was outdated, no longer necessary, and flatly inconvenient. That it detracted from the game's experience. Taepsilum's post was as follows. Taepsilum The death of a character should be something important, the death penalty is there to make sure players don't disregard it, in my opinion it's actually already too easy and too fast to resurrect. It's because of the penalty and the lost time when doing a corpse run, that players will be more cautious about their character. If you decide to resurrect at the spirit healer, it's because either your character died in a very weird place (and you should be more careful), or you just don't want to corpse run. I think we should all be glad that there's no experience loss as death penalty, that would probably be a bit too harsh, but I do think we need something to keep death from being meaningless. We're always open to good and new ideas of what that might be; as long as it's not "removal of the death penalty", feel free to chip in ;) source
Second Embers of Caerus feature week video introduces Dynamic Events Team
Who doesn't love unique live events guided by real people interacting directly with the participants? If you don't, then there is no need to read further. But if you do, have we got some news for you -- a sandbox promising just that! As Embers of Caerus' feature week for Kickstarter continues, Forsaken Studios released the second video blog, this time highlighting the Dynamic Events team. After a few minutes of answering viewer-submitted questions brought on by the first video feature about death, Technical Director Dave Belcher introduces the star of the clip. What exactly is the Dynamic Events Team? Dave likens this group to pen-and-paper Dungeon Masters; they will have tools to run dynamic stories in-game on both a small, local scale and world-wide. They will also work around the clock to monitor the health of the world, using events for such things as encouraging players to disperse from overly populated areas or to replenish resource-depleted areas. This whole system is meant to really bring the game world to life. To illustrate an example, Dave reads through a sample event. Catch his remarks after the break. [Thanks to Flintwick for the tip!]
Embers of Caerus death system revealed in video blog
With a plan of cranking out as many features as possible during this final week of its Kickstarter campaign, Forsaken Studios has released a video blog with over 17 minutes of video detailing the planned death system in Embers of Caerus. Technical Director Dave Belcher explains how Embers of Caerus is going well beyond death as a slight inconvenience. Death in EoC is actually a three-stage process: First, incapacitation (health bar drops to 0); second, a restricted state with its own health bar (10% of your main health pool); and third, body destruction (no resurrection, only respawn). Your body can also be looted at each stage of death. If your body is destroyed, you will drop gear, which can be picked up for up short time or become buried in the world. Embers of Caerus is also implementing two types of stat penalties upon death, one temporary and the other permanent (along with a system to counter the permanent loss). Dave continues on to discuss the karma system, body mutilation, and the chance of repentance. With so much important information, don't miss the video after the break. [Thanks to all who sent in the tip!]
Embers of Caerus reaches Kickstarter funding goal with 22 days to go
Just a few days ago we reported that Forsaken Studios was launching a Kickstarter campaign for Embers of Caerus and set a goal of $25,000. After hitting 92% of its goal in only five days (including one confirmed $10,000 donation), developers released a video update thanking all supporters, large and small. The update also offers more tidbits of information, including the addition of a jobs page to the official site for those aspiring to work on Embers of Caerus and a reward matrix that better spells out what donors will receive for their contributions. Technical Directer Dave Belcher also gives some insights into why the game supports harsher death penalties and will not consider going free-to-play. Now that the game has officially reached its Kickstarter goal this morning, we can't wait to see what else the Forsaken Studios team will offer up in the game's development as it still has over 22 days to go for its funding! Will it reach $100k? $300k? One meeeellion dollars? We'll certainly keep our eyes on its progress. [Thanks to everyone for the tip!]
The Perfect Ten: Death penalties
Death penalties belong in that tier of MMO discussion topics that is reserved for the most controversial subjects, along with skimpy armor and the New Game Enhancements. Death, as we know well, comes for us all with big, nasty, pointy teeth. But for some reason, we are not fans of it, neither in real life nor in online games. One of the reasons death penalties continue to be a divisive subject is that they used to be brutal beyond belief in MMOs back in the olden days of yore. As the MMO genre progressed, the penalties were lightened and experimented with in an effort to avoid driving players barking mad because of them. So we've ended up with two camps: one group of gamers who campaign for harsh death penalties to make the world seem exciting and dangerous, and another group that campaigns for lenient penalties in the interests of sanity. So today we're going to go through 10 of the most-used types of death penalties in MMOs, starting with the most brutal and ending with the most lenient. Stay for the after-column party as well, as you'll get a taste for this debate in the comments section!
Revelations of Gipat goes live for Allods Online
It was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." While it would be more than three-quarters of a century after that when Allods Online was released, he certainly could have been referring to the Fear of Death penalty that caused quite a bit of fear and rage among players. But that tortured analogy no longer applies, as today sees the release of the newest patch for the game, Revelations of Gipat, which removes Fear of Death for good and puts a new death penalty into place. For many of the game's players, removing the unnecessarily cash-shop-based penalty would be enough to make the patch laudable. But as was revealed when the team released the patch notes last week, the update also sees the addition of a new zone, a raise in level cap, and new content for everyone to enjoy. After the marathon maintenance session, Allods Online is live again and ready for play -- it's worth checking out, even if the size of the patch might scare you off. You can also check out our gallery, showing off some of the new content players can expect as well as mounts. %Gallery-97106%
