How can gamers be made to fear ingame death?

[Slayer_2]

The easy way: limit saves, long respawn times, other such annoyances. The player isn't fearing death really, they're just annoyed by it. Not allowing quicksaves can help a lot, but only if it's done well, sometimes checkpoint systems and such get cocked up badly by some devs.

The hard way: make the player connect with the character. This is really hard to do, and one of the games you gave as an example does it really well, I think: Red Orchestra 2. You want stuff like injury animations, screams of the dying, the gurgling of the dying drowning in their own blood, hardened soldiers screaming for mommy, bullets whizzing and snapping, loud and terrifying weapon sounds and impact effects. Suppression mechanisms help a ton, too, it can bring the player close to death without ending there immediately, giving them time to try to evade and react, while still suffering temporary negative effects from the experience. Animations are critical, since two visual/gameplay states (alive and perfectly healthy or ragdoll) don't really add much to realism. Also, a generally realistic game helps, but isn't necessary (see Dead Space, which is unrealistic, but very gruesome and horrifying when you die). Battlechatter will help, in RO2 hearing my soldier go from "DIE FOR STALIN COMRADES!" to whimpering "I don't want to be a hero" after taking a grazing hit really adds to the feeling of not wanting to die.

At one point in RO2, I had shot an attacking German in the chest as he came through the door, and I spent the next 30 or so seconds listening to his screams of pain as a pool of blood spread around him. Finally, he wheezed a death rattle and was silent. Not only did I feel bad about killing him, I became scared of my character ending up the same way. Better camera work and animations could make such experiences even more traumatic. Also, sometimes if you blow up a tank, you can hear the screams of people burning alive inside, which is pretty gruesome, and when you see your tank crew die it's brutal.

The real problem is how sterile death is in games. Make it bloody, violent and horrifying and gamers will stop treating it like math (5 kills for 1 death = 4 profit + 5 second wait time) and more like real life (I don't want to die or kill!). It's about the experience, not the math.

 

[dimensional]

Well you could get gamers to register all their details before playing the game and have it all checked special ID s etc and they have to have a camera watching them play and be online at all times then if they die in game someone makes a call and they die out of game as well that should make them fear death, just tie it into real life.

Other ones are of course wipe all your data when you die, make you replay a crap ton of stuff if you die, lose lots of bonuses, lock you out of playing the game for a while/ever etc although in my experience these dont make me fear death so much as hate it because the only consequence is wasted time which annoys me rather than scares me. I dont think I have ever feared death in a videogame its just most of the time I try and actively avoid it as it almost always sets you back if only a few minutes.

 

[frobalt]

You already have that option, you're just ignoring it by calling it "You can rolepay or limit yourself" like it's a bad thing.

It's funny, cuz your answer is given by your own text.

Failing to have that self control, self imposed limit, is another issue for another thread, me thinks.

I agree completely with this; If you want added losses for dying, feel free to impose them on yourself.

Personally, I don't see the point in penalising the player for what could have been just a small mistake. After all, you can't really just say "Well it's their own fault, they should really have thought ahead more." as that just pissed people off, when your goal is to give them a good time.

However, I do think you're over exaggerating the problem some what. As far as I'm aware, Skyrim has no auto-save feature, so if you go a while without saving (Which you'd be a fool for) and then get killed, you could find yourself set back hours.

In Left 4 Dead 2, in realism mode if you die you are out for the round, leaving your team 25% weaker. Same for Vs mode - For the survivors anyway.

So, basically, I think that losing things when dying only works if it fits in to the game. Adding in a high cost for death is just adding artificial difficulty to a game, as if a player genuinely is struggling at a point, constantly making them weaker isn't going to help things, and forcing them to replay long bits over and over is just going to frustrate them.

 

[Baralak]

Simply put, put in a real penalty for dying. In EverQuest, if you died, you not only had 1 day to get to your corpse, or else lose it forever (1 week if you logged out), but you'd lose a hefty chunk of XP.

 

[Squilookle]

In multiplayer, we shouldn't have to fear death, it should be as momentary as the equipment/spawn location process allows. Multiplayer is for fun, not contemplation.

In singleplayer though, it's different. Anything that forces you to really sit back and think about how you, the player, screwed up and died, does it well enough.

 

[zumbledum]

Everquest death penalties were a pretty severe disincentive you lost 10% of the current levels XP which meant hours of grinding to recover or finding res that offset it. then you simply had the problem of spawning naked at wherever you were bound to and the small problem of running back to your corpse which you had to do to get your items back, which with the huge non instanced dungeons and raid zones was often an issue by itself.

 

[Yopaz]

You already have that option, you're just ignoring it by calling it "You can rolepay or limit yourself" like it's a bad thing.

It's funny, cuz your answer is given by your own text.

Failing to have that self control, self imposed limit, is another issue for another thread, me thinks.

You got the right of it. When developers add a frustrating aspect of dying (some games have permanent deaths) then they accomplish to make us not wanting to die, but only because the result is so frustrating. Developers should NOT be ENCOURAGED to add frustrating features to games. We should just be better at roleplaying. A way to make this productive for all the students out there. Every time you die take half an hour and read up on your subjects you lazy bum! (Me included...)

 

[excalipoor]

Anarchy Online is an MMORPG that has plenty of ways of punishing players for deaths.

First of all, you have to save your character at insurance terminals located in cities and outposts. When you die (and you will), you'll be resurrected at the last terminal you saved at. You'll also lose all experience towards your next level earned after your last save.

Instead of losing that experience, however, it goes into a pool. Whenever you earn experience by killing a mob or completing a quest, you also get some of your pooled experience back. So in the worst case scenario, dying might put you back almost a level, but nothing is REALLY lost. I like it. You're punished for death, but it's not so frustrating to make you want to throw your hands up in the air and quit.

A mechanic I DON'T like is resurrection sickness. Anarchy Onliny is based on a massive amount of skills, which range from 10~ at level 1 to 3000~ at level 220. Everything is based on these skills. All equipment requires a certain amount of skill to wear, and the hit chance of your abilities are based on your attack skills versus the target's defense skills. You can twink your character to wear items far beyond it's level, but if your stats fall too far below the requirements, the equipped items gain 25%/50%/75% penalties to their effectiveness.

What resurrection sickness does is, it lowers all your skills by 75% for about 10 minutes. Your skills will gradually rise up to the level they were prior to your death, but essentially this means that all you'll be doing in the meantime is sit on your ass. Because you're useless with rezz sickness. The game also has a crapton of buffs on different classes, and some classes can take up to 10 minutes to buff themselves/get buffed by others before they're combat ready. But you can't buff yourself, because with rezz sickness your skills are likely too low to cast them!

Another mechanic they had was that all items in your inventory were moved to a reclaim terminal after your death, meaning that you'd have to go pick them up before getting back into the thick of things. They've since removed this mechanic, because quite frankly it was stupid and pointless.

Also, Anarchy Online is a game with brilliant ideas and atrocious execution.

You got the right of it. When developers add a frustrating aspect of dying (some games have permanent deaths) then they accomplish to make us not wanting to die, but only because the result is so frustrating. Developers should NOT be ENCOURAGED to add frustrating features to games.

You can't just take gameplay elements, look at them outside context and call them objectively good or bad. There's no one size fits all. Permanent death works for roguelikes, because they're built around it.

 

[Syzygy23]

Most MOBAs can impart SOME fear of death. Myabe not the first two deaths, but after your third things can get kinda worrisome since they're MOBAs, and therefore incorporate some form of snowball effect.

 

[Karoshi]

Hardcore Diablo. Once you die, you lose that character forever.

Adrenaline boosts and panic mode included.

 

[Joccaren]

There really isn't a good way to do this.

Wipe the save file on death?
Its not going to make me fear death, just make dying more annoying. In addition to that, I will generally have copy/pasted the save file anyway and just replace it.

Long Respawn times?
Its not going to make me fear death, just get more annoyed when I do die as I'll have more time out of the game.

Single life per round policy?
Doesn't make me fear death, just makes it more annoying.


These are all incentives not to die, but they work in the way that they will try to annoy you if you die, rather than making the player fear death. The one life per round policy is the one I find works best, as rather than just adding boredom it also adds some tension to the game - though still not a lot. In a 1 life policy game, I'd still run in and grab those 5 kills if it meant I died because I would still come out on top. I take 5 players out for the round, and they only take out one. The tension comes from the fact that I don't want to die without taking out at least one other person, as I won't get a chance to gain that back.


What needs to be done is to add fear or tension to dying so that a player doesn't want to die not because they'll have to wait 5 minutes to respawn, but because its a more stressful situation for them. Then again, this largely only works in Single Player games. In multiplayer games, that sort of thing would likely just get annoying.

Hence, in multiplayer, you need to up the tension in each round, as well as providing an incentive to win. Two things that would need to happen is to almost force each match to be a close one. No absolute slaughter of the other team, a close match. This increases tension. The incentive not to die could be something along the lines of an achievement or, dare I say it, a killstreak that the player gains [Though I would make them more support than something significantly powerful]. Whilst not game changing, such incentives encourage the player to stay alive, whilst also not punishing them for dying.
Hence, the tension in the match as well as a players want to stay alive for that achievement, that bonus, that something, work together. The tension ties in with their want, and adds to it. It becomes more stressful to die, but dependent on how hard it is to not die in a round, and how coveted the achievement/killstreak is [Honestly I'd probably just use killstreaks that do very little, and ditch achievements as when one person ruins your chances of getting it it breaks the tension until the next round] it shouldn't be annoying. A minor nuisance, but nothing that you'll throw your hands in the air over after it happens for the 50th time.

Now, this is really the best method I can think of. There is no good way to do this for multiplayer games like BF3, and in Single Player it requires very good execution to avoid becoming tiresome rather than entertaining [See Slender. My friends play it over and over and are scared of dying in it, though they don't get annoyed when they die. Its all part of the atmosphere and fun in the game].

 

[AntiChri5]

I can't think of a game where i ever actually feared death. Not even Dark Souls, in which i found it more of an inconvenience then anything. Or Minecraft, where i also found it an inconvenience.

All a game can do to punish a player is waste their time. Either taking away experience or progress through the game. In my opinion, wasting a players time is a really bad move. When i start to feel a game is wasting my time, i simply move on. If the game has enough there to be worth sticking with, like Dark Souls, i will keep playing without giving much of a shit, but in a game with less solid mechanics it's a death sentence (for the game, not the player).

Those "hardcore" enough to bother with harsh penalties for death should also be "hardcore" enough to stick to self imposed limits. I honestly don't see the problem.

 

[Olas]

See sonic the hedgehog 2 for your answer.

or if that's not enough

Spoiler

This movie sucks by the way.

 

[Amaror]

Roguelike mechanics, you die your save file is wiped and start from scratch. I personally love the mechanic most people don't though. I can understand why.

This. But it doesn't even have to be that, well, hardcore.
You can just make it like minecraft. I fear death in Minecraft the most, because it means loosing a lot of items i worked hard to get.

 

[teisjm]

Diablo has hardcore mode, would be supprized if no other games had it.

The only game where i've ever been afraid of death in a way that actually added to the experience is EVE online, because you loose your ship and all the shit on it when you die, if they kill your pod (your pod ejects when your ship dies) you have to buy a new clone as well, and if your clone is not set the right place, travel halfway across the universe to get to where you where. If your clone is not up to date, you can loose anything form days to months of skill training (skills train passively whether you're logged in or not)
It was unforgiving if you didn't take your precautions, and made roaming around in a small group looking for someone to pop and steal their gear, while still keeping an eye out for people who might do the same to you more interresting than i've ever experienced in any other game.

If i'm playing BF with my friends, and we're on different teams, i'm nervous about them stealing my dogtags, or we just get compettitive with our score or K/D ratio, but i guess thats not what you're looking for.

 

[VoidWanderer]

It all depends on the game genre.

FPS = Lose all guns except starting weapon with 2 clips
RPG = Lose 2 levels

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Fear of death is best induced in games like Minecraft and Dark Souls, where you lose all of your items/souls upon death and have to go all the way to your death point to recover them. The amount of time it takes along with the possibility of losing all your stuff makes you not want to die.

 

[xPixelatedx]

snip

Games today act like they are hand-leading *special* children through musical chairs, where no one can lose and everyone gets a banana sticker at the end, of course no one fears death now. Sorry if this is just too obvious, but making death have actual consequences again might solve this issue? The only current game I fear dying in is Minecraft. You know why? Because I don't want to spend 6 hours mining for diamonds only to lose all that work and all the items I had on me... and it happens, it has happened.

Another thing is bring back graphic death animations. People are detached in this day and age, true, but some of us still have imaginations and can imprint on the characters we play. When characters die horribly, don't fade to white, show it... show it continually. Show monsters pick at the flesh of your corpse, show players bleed out when being shot, etc. Castlevania: SotN didn't have graphic death animations, but for some reason the character's scream and the creepy music that played afterwards were very alarming. It did add in my drive to keep Alucard Alive.

Also, some of these are pretty creepy and make me want to stay alive.

 

[Loonyyy]

In competitive FPSes, the fear of death is that of lowering your overall ratio of kills or score to deaths. You want to keep that up, and the hike back lowers it, as well as the actual death. Any more punishment (Especially in frag-fests like Battlefield 3 or any CoD) would be excessive, and reduce the scale of encounters. The motivation is there to do better with each life, rather than be unduly afraid of losing it.

In RPGs, the best way of making a player fear "Death" is to remove it entirely. No-one is afraid of it, and it's pointless: They load and start again. Artificially screwing with saves etc is just silly in my mind, I'd rather not have that all gone. Making the player live with choices and actions is more effective, and giving them difficult or non-trivial choices. The Witcher 2 is meant to do some good choices, and doesn't always let you know the outcome immediately. Fable has systems which keep player actions on record, and affect your character directly. Fable 3, for instance, doesn't let you die, but falling in battle loses you experience, and can cause scarring (Although with my many deaths, I haven't yet got one), and changes your signature weapon (Which was poorly implemented, but an ok idea, I guess). KOTOR also had some interesting choices, which would vary the path you took, and could be based on failures etc. Alpha Protocol had many interweaving aspects of plot which affected who survived etc. Mount and Blade keeps track of your honor and respect etc, and you lose your companions (Who take a long time to train etc) as a consequence of surrender, and if you win poorly, you'll take heavy casualties. It's a consequence in keeping with the game, rather than an external one implemented as punishment. It's incentive to do better, as opposed to punishment for doing poorly.

I guess I feel adding a sense of permanancy and effect to actions ingame has a much more dramatic effect than punishing the player. I'm more immersed and feel more connected to the story when it changes based on my actions, or when I cause unintended consequences, than when I press F9, or I lose experience and gold in Torchlight.