I think a 72 hour wait would be an instant twinkie denial situation.
Any game forcing such a wait on me would be uninstalled before the time is up.

A forced delay might work if there was something entertaining to do in the meantime. Maybe respawning could work in a kind of 'dead man's boots' fashion; after death you take control of a monster of roughly similar level and have to kill a player of equal or greater level than yourself before you can respawn your main character. As a monster of course, you can respawn indefinitely.

Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Death in most combat-oriented video games is a small matter, at most a fifteen-second delay before you can rejoin the fray. I've been reading the "No tactical thought" and other threads, and am wondering what the reaction might be to an MMO where "death" results in a crushingly long (like 72 hours) "respawn time".

Yet Another Reason To Hate MMORPGS.

So a lot of what we're seeing here is "three days is too long for X reasons". And some people have come up with alternative punishments. For those who don't believe that the player should be punished, well, risk enhances rewards. When there's more on the line, the gameplay is tenser, and achieving your goals becomes more meaningful. Now, if you're going to punish the player for things outside their control, that's a different matter. Thus, having major punishments for death means, among other things, making certain that it's difficult to accidentally die. It also means, as mentioned above, that if the player gets into a fight that he cannot win, then he needs to have an alternative to dying to end it.

Why do people engage in PVP in MMOs? I haven't played them much at all myself, so I'm guessing here, but I'm going to say at least one of 1) stealing gear/loot, 2) gaining prestige, 3) griefing, and 4) politics. Obviously 1 only counts in a system where it is possible to steal other players' items. 2 may not actually take anything from the killed player, 3 is difficult to control, and 4 can mean a lot of different things depending on the game and the guilds. So the way I see it, the player should have at least two choices - either a) surrender, avoid the death penalty, and give up the full "lost a battle" penalty (e.g. lose some items from inventory / enemy player gets full prestige gain for having "killed" you / your guild trades influence to his guild), or b) die, avoid the "lost a battle penalty" at least in part, but suffer the death penalty. Assuming you do a decent job choosing the penalties, these should actually be balanced options.

Quote:Original post by Sneftel

Quote:Original post by DerakonFor those who don't believe that the player should be punished, well, risk enhances rewards. When there's more on the line, the gameplay is tenser, and achieving your goals becomes more meaningful.

That's one of the things that happens, yes. Another thing is that players throttle back their playing style, playing more conservatively and advancing through the game more slowly. And a third thing that happens is that players get pissed off.

That really depends on the game, though. For example, if I'm playing Devil May Cry and I die, then I lose my progress on the current mission. To a certain extent I can play more cautiously, for example by spending more time shooting things and less time in melee, but a) I have to take risks to finish the mission, regardless of how I play, and b) a more "cowardly" playstyle has hidden risks, too. For example, the longer I spend in a given fight, the more likely I am to make a mistake and get hit; thus, it's in my own best interests to kill the enemies as quickly as possible. However, cautious play by shooting enemies is a slow way to kill them, so I'm increasing my exposure. In other words, no matter what I do, there will always be danger, so the game retains its tension and excitement.

Now, it's certainly the case that in many modern RPGs, the player can simply retreat to a "safe" zone (where "safe" is defined as "can't be killed unless I leave the computer to go make dinner, without logging out") and beat on fluffy bunnies until they're a lot more powerful. I contend that that's an issue with the game design you've chosen, that you can remove risks by grinding. Certainly in a system like that, a heavy death penalty will make players so risk-averse that they'd rather experience boredom than danger. So one of two things will have to happen - either you change your game so that death is always a possibility, but can be mitigated through skillful play, or you remove the death penalties so that players are willing to risk their skins.