[WoW] Death System: Presentation, Problems, Solution

[Szlia]

Yes this is nothing new, this is an old topic. But if anything, it's a matter of concern, that after 10 months of WoW beta, such a basic game play element could still be a topic of discussion. The current implementation of the death system, is for me the single most frustrating element in WoW's design. That's the one thing that makes me want to throw my wireless mouse across the room and beat on my monitor with my keyboard. Basically, that's one of the key reasons I do not want to play the game in its current state.

Presentation

For the people not familiar with WoW, let's take a look at its death system. When your hit points reach 0, you die. At this point, you can choose to wait lying on the floor until someone rez you, or you can send your ghost to the graveyard of the area. Note that after 5min of lying, your ghost is sent to the graveyard automatically. Once in the graveyard as a ghost, you can ask a npc to rez you. This put you back to life with all your gear at the graveyard for the cost of something like 5% of the xp you need in your current level. You can also run back as a ghost to you corpse. Note that as a ghost you run faster than normal, you do not see anything other than the game world, other ghosts and the mobs, when you are in the vicinity of your corpse. Note also that ghosts follow the same navigation rules than regular player characters (you are blocked by trees, walls, building and are slowed down when swimming). Once in the vicinity of your corpse, you can choose to come back to life at half hp and half mana.

That sounds like a very light death penalty isn't it? Just a little run and no xp loss most of the time.

Problems

The problem is that the "little run" is often not little at all. The problem is that your ghost is not a ghost. The problem is that 90% of the game time is spent in conditions where you do not have access to a rez when you die (soloing, grouping without rez'er, rez'er dies too). The problem is that dying on one spot often means you will die again once or twice to be able to reach a safe area since mobs respawn very fast. The problem is that running for 5 min several times in an empty game world is about as fun as fishing without beers (to quote AL's home page). And you have to be there, in front of your screen for the whole 5 min, every time, because the magnificent game world is filled with trees and rocks and cliffs and slants too steep to be climbed. You are punished with non-game. Punished with full servings of unavoidable tedium.

"Just take the xp hit if you hate running around so much" I hear you say. I did more than once. But the problem is that for every level there is a set quantity of xp that can be gained through quests. So if you take too many xp hits, you are forced to grind (or if you are low level, you can also travel across the world to an area of similar level of another race to do their quests).

"Just stop dying then you loser!" I hear you say. Well... doing quests often means taking risks and if it is possible to solo, unexpected add(s) in a fight very often means you have to die or run away. And running away is also often a problem considering that even after 10 months of beta it is still very common to have mobs chase you forever, which is not too hot in a seamless world. So basically, the easiest way to stop dying is to take less risks. Welcome to grind world! Which is super rewarding in xp, skill points and even items, since just about every type of mobs have random rare drops that are on par with quest rewards. And you will get them, since you will kill 100 mobs while others will kill 20. Is it fun? Not really, but it's less frustrating than 5min runs in the woods.

One of the silliest aspect of this death system is that the punishment changes based on how far away from a graveyard you are. It is totally absurd, since it does not correlate with any idea of risk versus reward. And even if it did, higher risks should mean better reward on a success, not harsher penalties on a failure.

Solution

Oddly, it is completely trivial to adjust the death system and make it a hundred times less annoying. Just decide on a delay that sounds appropriate for a death penalty (2min? 3min?) and after this time is spent as a ghost, make a window pop that asks you if you want to be brought near your corpse (just like a soulstone). People that want to run hoping it will be faster still can, people that want to scout the world as a ghost still can (a dumb side product of the death system btw) and people that are not found of "dodge the tree" can just go afk a couple minutes without going insane (dying repeatedly will still be annoying, but hopefully not enough to drive someone insane). That simple change will not magically transform WoW into the second coming of Jesus, but, as far as I am concerned, it will change it from a game I would not play at release into a game I would play at release.

Closing comment

"How comes you more than once bashed WoW for being too solo friendly and now you want to reduce even more the incentive to group?" I hear you say. The group versus solo problem in WoW is not a simple one because it involves many different aspects of the game. But at the end of the day, I think people should be motivated to group because of the benefits associated with grouping, not because they are punished when they play solo. This little modification I propose does not reduce the fact it can be cool to be grouped with a rez'er or the fact it can be cool to have a warlock to hand soulstones or simply the fact that the power of a group will make you die less. Anyway, it's a core aspect of WoW that all classes are able to solo their way from 1 to 60, so I doubt it will ever change.

[taebin]

So you're saying the death penalty is too frustrating because you have to run on average 3-4 minutes back to your corpse and also not have to worry about equipment loss, experience loss, or anything of that sort? And you want an auto res at the graveyard after 2-3 minutes? Wow and I thought there was no reason to fear dying now. How about a blowjob too? Is that too much to ask? IS IT?!?!?


<----- Looking forward to Vanguard!

-Smoke

[Tolanin]

i think you should get phat loot for dieing, penaltys are gay, rewards are much better... i mean who likes dieing? no one

who likes getting phat loot? everyone

so why not make dieing give you phat loot so people actually LIKE it, games are suposed to be fun after all.

[Whyme]

My god...

Are you... serious?

The WoW death penalty is ALREADY the lightest death penalty of ANY MMO I've ever seen, how in the world could you possibly want it to be LESS punitive? If anything, it should be more!

[FoghornDeadhorn]

I'm not on board with this one. While the death penalty can be tedious and does not involve real risk, there is definite incentive to not die. Those are the things listed. It is a boring, short, pain in the ass that slaps you on the wrist. Some times it leaves you in a fucked position. If you're me, you work your way through zones when soloing in a methodical fashion such that progressing your pull points can be done when necessary and you always have a little bit of room to your back before respawn. When I die I often lose that in a place it is not easy to begin the process again from. Sometimes you die after killing a quest mob and can't get back safely to loot the corpse. Sometimes you lose your progression to a quest objective because you needed to kill your way to something and it's respawning, or your pull spot is now populated. Sometimes you die in an instance. Sometimes you die in an instance... The death penalty is boring and light, but there is a dissuasion to death. The latter half is good.

[softwillow]

I read the entire post and applaud you for thinking it out, but I have to disagree. The argument here centers around your dislike of running back to your corpse. You have other options at the graveyard, but you dismiss them as forcing you to grind (which is a serious overstatement of the facts). So this argument doesn't sound like an argument at all...it sounds like a whine about the inconvenience of dying. If they make the penalty any lighter, people are going to use death more often as a means of transportation.

[Daerath]

I'll trust Blizzard on this one. After all, they're the professionals, and not the starters of yet another "I can fix the problemz!!!" thread.

[Sorran]

I'd agree with the above posters - the death penalty in WoW is, at best, weak, in my mind. Perhaps it's a legacy of my many years in EQ, but I much prefer MMORGP death to have a decent sting. I die in WoW and it barely even registers - 95% of the time it's a MAX run of 5 minutes back to your corpse (there are a few zones that have bloody stupidly placed graveyards - Wetlands before it's graveyard change comes to mind, but Blizzard seems to be gradually moving the few really badly placed graveyards). Some of the higher level instanced dungeons have an annoying ass run back to them, or so I gather (I haven't been there yet).

Dying in an instance can be frustrating, because of respwan and the fact that you "rez" as soon as you zone back into the instance, meaning you have to fight your way back in. I'd like to see the bulk of mobs in instance areas moved to much longer respawns, with perhaps just some roamers on a faster respawn (or perhaps let you run all back to where you died in the instance in ghost form, but I don't know if that's technically possible), so that dying in an instance without a rezzer can potentially be a slightly less frustrating experience.

I think a death penalty that is simply a time sink (in the form of a corpse run) and nothing else is weak. Obviously, whatever the penalty is, it eventually boils down to a time sink (but then again, what doesn't in a MMORGP?), but I prefer systems that include unavoidable xp loss, item loss or decay, stat loss, or whatever system makes sense given the existing game mechanics - something more than just having to run back to my corpse. Even the xp hit you take for taking a rez at the graveyard barely registers, given how easy it is to get xp in WoW.

Having said that, I think the current death system is fine for PvP encounters - one way to encourage people who normally don't engage in PvP is to make sure that dying in a PvP fight is not a huge pain in the ass.

Cheers,

Sorran.

[Fer0x]

death penalty? there hardly is a penalty. I fkn hate the penalty, cuz it's too weak.

[Szlia]

I did not pretend to redesign a mmorpg death system from the ground up, nor make an analysis of the impact the death penalty can have on the way a game is played. The only thing I propose right here is a very simple adjustement, given the current implementation of the death system.

The question at hand here is not trying to estimate if the penalty is too harsh or too light, it is trying to make it better in a gameplay point of view.

Basically, in a progression driven game, a death penalty will always be something that will slow down your progression in a direct or indirect way. What I do not like is the way WoW chose to slow you down: a variable time sink with an evil twist ("dodge the tree"). My proposition is only to cap the superfluous variation and remove the evil twist.

[Bizanich]

I see what you're saying and suppose it wouldn't hurt things. The difference between running back and having an option to automatically warp back after 5 minutes..I don't see why that should be a bad thing.

If it is a max of 5 minutes anytime you die as some claim....then it shouldn't matter.

I do disagree that being able to look around and scout as a ghost is bad, though Was fun in Ultima Online.

If only they had spirit speak....

[xar]

I don't see how your solution fixes anything. It just makes death 100% trivial. Welp I died, time to go make a sandwhich to kill 3 minutes so I can auto rez myself back to my corpse with zero xp loss.

You probably shouldn't be playing Mmo's if you sincerely can't handle running for 3-5 minutes after you die, or taking a minute xp loss.

[Szlia]

Let's aproach the issue with different angle then, it might make my point more clear.

Currently, the death penalty in WoW is forcing the player to endure long minutes of horrid gameplay. I do not think it is appropriate to affect the quality of the gameplay as a form of penalty. Would you like a death penalty where you are forced for 5min to hit every key twice for them to register? NNoo iitt wwoouulldd bbee llaammee..

I agree that replacing 5min of poor gameplay by 5min of nothing is reducing the penalty (even if it was poorly designed penalty in the first place) and pushing the players away from the screen is also poor design (allready present in WoW with the flights to travel though). It's a band-aid fix, but again, I propose this because it is probably the easiest to implement in the game.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Sorran, the whole point of having you pop as soon as you hit the instance line is that if you fuck up in an instance you chance losing. Most instances have relatively slow respawn times, allowing you to run back to your corpse would make screwing up in an instance completely meaningless. Instances in this game is where the difficulty is supposed to get serious, and it is where the most risk is associated with dying.

If you only have a few roamers pop up, and your party wipes, what are a few roamers to a full party? Nothing. Oh, you fucked up? It's OK, hack through these roamers and you will be right where you were when you died. No, to hell with that. Trivialize death in instances and you pussify the game, once and for all.

[Sorran]

Oh I understand why it works as it does - I just don't like it. Essentially, the penalty for dying in an instance a simple time penalty - ie. you have to spend another hour or two, or whatever, getting back to where you died. What I would *prefer* to see is a different penalty - one that hurts your character in some way, instead of simply penalising the player directly by having my time have been "wasted" (and I use the word loosely, as I realise you still have the xp you earned, any loot, etc).

Basically, in instances, I'd prefer to be able to run all the way back to where I died (or increase the spawn time of non-roamers, or some other method that lets me get back to where I died), in exchange for some other, character related, death penalty.

Cheers,

Sorran.