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MMO Mechanics: Exploring death mechanics
They say death must come to us all, and that inevitability extends to our characters in MMOs. The death of our characters may be inconvenient when we want to plough through content, but penalising failure is an essential part of any MMO and further incentivises success by making you learn from your mistakes. As much as players crave gratification through rewards and progression, they also need to feel that such progress has been well-earned and greatly deserved. Rewards become that much sweeter when we must risk something to secure them, and failure without consequence would render the gains made in our favourite MMOs insignificant. Without a considerable death penalty, it becomes possible to mindlessly crush content through brute force. I don't know about you, but I don't find fun in bashing my skull repeatedly with a rock in an attempt to crack it! In this week's MMO Mechanics, I compare various death penalties and the effects they have on the MMOs that employ them. I'll explore just how tangible death penalties such as corpse running, gear durability loss, and XP drain make our character's demise feel.
The Daily Grind: What kind of death penalty do you want in EQ Next?
SOE hasn't mentioned much about about what it has in mind for the death penalty mechanic in EverQuest Next. You might recall that the original EverQuest was famous for its unforgiving death penalty, which included corpse runs and XP loss. EverQuest II, on the other hand, did what most newer MMOs do and reduced the death penalty to an inconvenience, and in some cases, a preferred form of fast travel! So what'll it be for EQN? Inquiring minds want to know. A lot of inquiring minds, if an article and the resulting discussion on fan site EQ Nexus are any indication. What say you, Massively readers? What kind of death penalty do you want in EQN? [Thanks Maclypse!] Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
ArcheAge's fifth closed beta to feature XP loss, trial system, and more
ArcheAge's fifth, yes fifth, closed beta test kicks off this week. XLGAMES recently released the latest patch notes, which have been helpfully translated from the original Korean via Google. ArcheAge Source has the full list, and perusing them brings a few interesting points to the fore. For one, there seems to be a form of XP loss on death (though not for avatars below level 10). CBT5 also marks the introduction of the game's trial system, so all you naughty-by-nature folks will likely find out what sort of crime and punishment await you in XL's fantasy sandbox. Finally, there are bits about crop growth and how climate affects it as well as some verbiage about certain regional tradeskill specialties. Massively's got a couple of folks patching up CBT5 as we speak, so look for some up-to-the-minute ArcheAge impressions in the coming weeks. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
