the thrill of victory

Jason repeats a common criticism of MMOs post-Everquest. He thinks they need harsher penalties for failure in order to make victory feeling like a bigger accomplishment.

I would deepen the thrill of accomplishment another way. Instead of making penalties harsher -- and I've written before on that subject -- make challenges more difficult. And make some so difficult that those victories are not inevitable.

I'm not against player setbacks. In fact, I wrote another article about getting players to accept setbacks. Of particular importance is the section on power:

....The other ingredient, keeping the gameplay fun despite the loss, is more difficult, largely because of an inherent importance of optimization in current MMO models. In the player's eyes, it's not the character's circumstances which have been reduced; it's the character. If the player's character is merely a medium of power, then the loss of power is a loss of identity. The character is diminished, rather than the same character having to approach challenges in a different way.

Think about running out of ammo for your favorite gun in Halo, Goldeneye or some other first-person shooter. You probably cursed your luck and thought about how much more difficult the gameplay was going to be without that weapon. Maybe you were even asking yourself how long you'd have to fight with an inferior weapon before regaining your prized instrument of destruction. But you didn't turn off the console. Why? Because the weapon was just something your character was using...it was not representative of your character. Bond loves his PP7, but he's still James Bond without it. The Master Chief is equally the Master Chief with an assault rifle, pistol or needler.

Whether or not the penalties for failure in combat should be more severe than merely respawning depends largely on other systems in a specific game, as demonstrated above. There are also many penalty systems, like this, which haven't been explored deeply.

In other words, the question "Should a game/MMO have penalties for failure beyond death?" is not a simple yes/no question. But, generally speaking, I still believe in two basic principles: (1) players should experience low moments as well as high moments; (2) the main penalty for failure should be a player's disappointment in him or her self, rather than a judgment made on the player by the game.

Room for the reckless

Ever noticed that "berserkers" in video games are never encouraged to go berserk? Their rage can make them faster, more powerful, or open up special attacks, but it never really sends them into a frenzy.

Games usually emphasize strategy and thoughtful play for a number of reasons. For one, many people like to be challenged intellectually. Also, it's easier for a developer to control a game's pace and intensity if the game is focused on overcoming set obstacles in controlled ways.

But there's something to be said for reckless gaming. I like intellectual challenges, but I also enjoy careless mayhem in wild environments. Some people have first-hand experience of my reckless habits, like charging into the midst of five Halo 3 brutes so I can smack one in the face with the butt of my assault rifle.

Sometimes, I want to play without a seatbelt. Sometimes, I want to drive off-road... in a sportscar. Sometimes, I don't want to worry about death penalties, health bars, mana bars, etc; I just want to play in the experential, unfocused way that we all enjoyed when we were little kids.

The first game I can remember that was devoted to this sort of play is Rampage. Here's your giant monster. Here's a city full of terrified citizens and skyscrapers. Now, go eat people and smash buildings.

Spore will certainly involve more strategy than Rampage, but it also is devoted to experential play. I, for one, expect to be spending more time in the editors than in any other part of the game. When I take my custom creature out into the wild, I can expect the environment to be wild... to be strange and untamed. When my creature meets another, there will be no name coloration to tell me, "This thing's going to spank you, then laugh at you, then eat you. Run away!" That's because the game isn't about victory and defeat. It's about enjoying the moment, and exploring.

Should there be more games like this? Definitely. But perhaps a better question is: Can there be room for the reckless in games that also include strategic play? Can an MMO, for example, allow my berserker to truly be a berserker, while also allowing my wizard friend to play thoughtfully to conquer fixed achievements?

Humiliation

Damianov raised an interesting idea in a comment to my last article:

"Taking advantage of vengeance: how about a death penalty which can be largely recaptured/recovered by achieving revenge?"


You fight an orc. The orc kills you. There's no corpse for you to leave behind (no corpse-runs), but the orc takes some symbol of you or your faction/guild and displays it proudly. Everybody knows... he beat you.

Public humiliation.

Perhaps the orc stole the faction badge that once decorated your shoulder or hung over your breastplate. Now it decorates his armor; a joke at your expense.

Or perhaps he hangs it on a spear, like a banner. You might be able to steal it while he's not looking, but the action takes time.

Perhaps his trophy is kept in a nearby bag or chest. Any other player who digs through that chest will see your emblem, along with every other victim's. The emblem will remain there, a sign of your defeat, until you recover it or weeks pass and the orc throws it away.

Take it back. End your public humiliation, and avenge your death! =)

Defeat is penalty enough

Over at Eyes Like Ours, Ryan raises the old question of death penalties in MMOs. Here are my thoughts on that.


NATURAL PENALTIES
"I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed." --General George C. Patton

You gotta love ol' George. For most people, any defeat, any failure to accomplish a goal that is desired (and not merely required) is quickly followed by a natural sense of shame. The degree of shame varies considerably from person to person, but it's nearly universal where the goal is personally relevant (again, actually desired by the individual).

Not only has the player lost face (in his own eyes, if not in the eyes of others), but he's also lost time. He just wasted the time spent in combat, and probably some time getting back to where he was when he died (assuming he was sent back to some place of safety; I'm not talking about a corpse-run).

And then there's consumables. No, they're not present in every game, but they are common. If you spent a health potion in battle and died anyway, then that potion was wasted. The same goes for purchased buffs, as I recall were common in EQ1.

If the player is pursuing something they really want to do, there's already at least one penalty (shame), if not more. The player's desire is the key: he or she must want to win, not just feel compelled to win by some demand the player feels has been imposed upon him. Hence, developers should focus on ensuring that players are playing, as opposed to grinding. Further penalties are typically just a cop-out, strong-arming the player to care about a gameplay system that is not sufficiently engaging.

The players should care as much about individual battles as they care about becoming more powerful or any other long-term goal. When players perceive their momentary experiences as mere barriers to progression, that's when additional penalties become necessary to instill fear of defeat.


TRY AND TRY AGAIN
What's wrong with the possibility of a player who keeps throwing himself at the same powerful enemy, only to die and die again, possibly winning in the end just by luck? In single-player games, that's allowed regularly. What makes an MMO setting different? The player has surely not gained some advantage over other players by acting so.

In fact, lack of additional penalties... like temporary debuffs, corpse-runs, xp loss or debt... seems to encourage a number of beneficial gameplay behaviors.

Redemption: The shame of defeat is not a fun feeling. Many players are interested in a challenge, yes, but defeat only equals fun when that defeat can be redeemed through victory. There must be hope of regaining one's honor, in a sense. Lost battles can be swallowed only if they don't cost you the war. Harsh penalties can wear away at hope (particularly xp loss/debt), even if just by pushing the chance for redemption beyond the immediate future.

Revenge: Let's face it, it can be an extremely fun feeling in a game. Personal vendettas are discouraged by harsh penalties.


CHALLENGE
Personally, I hate systems that allow players to weigh challenges with a high degree of accuracy, but some awareness is good. When people raise the debate over difficulty in MMOs, I'm almost tempted to laugh, because most of these games are already so conducive to the player choosing his or her own preferred degree of challenge (though it requires breaking from the maximist culture that has overtaken MMO communities, and social pressures are not always easy to shrug). Using EQ as an example: If you want a tough fight, try a yellow-con. If a yellow-con's too easy, for whatever reason, just step up to the red-con. If you want an easy fight, try a blue-con. Degrees of challenge are painted for players with sickening precision in most MMOs.

Hence, some players have already been playing at a very different level of difficulty than others. I like to pick fights I can barely win, while I watch many others pick battles they're certain to win. Those different styles have coexisted in MMOs for a decade without any great problem. The players who choose a high difficulty level are often rewarded with higher-value items, because they took on NPCs of a higher stat level.

However, I won't go so far as to say there's no logical grounds for this debate at all. Gamers quite often spoil their own fun, and one way they can do that is by failing to challenge themselves at all.

The catch is that the same gamer may be attracted to different degrees of difficulty from one play-session to the next. There are times when I want a tense encounter to drive adrenalin through my veins, and there are times when I want to calmly use my acquired skills and weapons to walk over my enemies like cockroaches.


MIX IT UP
Contrary to the article's title, I'm really not suggesting that those "natural" penalties are enough for every situation. However, I am saying that making additional penalties regular, applied to all or most encounters equally, is just not sensible. Additional penalties should be applied sometimes and sometimes not. The penalties might even be divided by category of encounter.

The most interesting additional penalties seem to be the ones most MMO designers have been loath to apply; but perhaps that's mainly because they've been thinking in terms of universal application, instead of one type of penalty here and another type there.

In a Battle for Middle Earth 2 war campaign (War of the Ring mode), losing just one battle can mean losing troops, losing critical Power Points (which the player uses to purchase useful, timer-based skills) or any one of a variety of other bonuses, allowing the opponent to upgrade units and/or heroes, and losing an easily defensible position (perhaps even allowing the enemy access to a completely defenseless territory)... all in addition to the shame of defeat. That's quite a smack in the ass! But a typical loss is more forgiving.

Likewise, it would be alright for an MMO player to be punished much more harshly in one battle than in another. A "boss" NPC might be capable of breaking a weapon, causing a temporary injury (a debuff that's lasts "x" amount of gametime after player resurrection), or even setting a bounty of revenge on players it defeats (some of its minions try to hunt you down). Losing to a particular enemy might cause the player to lose face with the faction that put him up to the fight (sometimes there's animosity for failed saviors).


RAIDS
One situation that might require a different take on death penalties is raiding. If a player or group can't get back to a fight before the opponent fully regenerates (which a game can make automatic at the moment of player/group defeat), then additional penalties aren't definitely necessary. But when the encounter involves an NPC fought by a large militia of players, and the first players to die can rejoin the fight before the last players are defeated, then that's a problem.

Of course, one obvious solution is level design: place the encounter far from resurrection sites, so it's impossible for players to rejoin the fight quickly enough. But the developer might desire to have an epic encounter like this close to civilization. Even then, something like the injury-debuff penalty I suggested earlier would suffice.


It's been a long time since I've engaged in a conversation on this topic. So if there's something obvious I'm missing, please point it out.