How can gamers be made to fear ingame death?

[Froggy Slayer]

One way I had thought of doing this was based around a game idea I have in my head.

The idea of the game is that you are investigating some sort of supernatural occurrence in a small town with surrounding countryside area. Each game would only last around 3-4 hours, but each time you play, the town, area and thing that you are investigating are different. For example, in one playthrough you may be investigating a murder cult who operate out of a basement, and in another you might search the forests around a snowy Alaskan town for a werewolf while being hunted by the very same beast. A key feature would be that if you died in a playthrough, that would be it for that mystery; you would never solve it. Charging straight in would probably leave you dead, meaning that you would have to be intelligent in your investigation. It also adds much more horror and real fear to the game. To a lesser extent, the damage system would also be based around this; if you were hurt you couldn't just walk it off. A broken leg would pretty much be a death sentence. Another key feature would be subtlety; you probably won't get a good look at your enemy until the end of the game, if ever. You might, say if the creature is some sort of demon, only ward the creature back to its realm without ever getting to stare the monster down in battle. The only problem is the most AAA developers wouldn't want to do a game based around so much subtlety, and with the slow (though tense) pace that would be needed.

 

[Spartan448]

One diffifulty level, no save feature, ever, until you beat the game, in which case it records that you cleared the game.

That or just make everything an IWBTG clones.

 

[Snowblindblitz]

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.

I love how more and more, game companies (and worse, gamers) are asking us to make our own fun with an entertainment medium.

Depends on the game/genre. In the Elder Scrolls examples, they are a sandbox meant for you to experience in any way you see it, including making your own rules and what-not.

If I was playing, say, Dungeons and Dragons, and you made that comment, I couldn't help but laugh at you, no offense. And board/roleplaying games are an entertainment media.

 

[unreal51]

Well if the creators went all SAO on our asses and made it so if our characters died so did we I would be a bit scared to say the least.
But that's just fiction anyway so I would be scared if you had only one life to go through the whole game.

 

[Bad Jim]

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.

One way to mitigate the frustrating aspect could be to introduce an element of chance. Say when you die, you lose an item at random. The threat of losing that uber sword makes you want to avoid death. But it's less frustrating, because you usually just lose something trivial like a potion.

 

[Yopaz]

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.

One way to mitigate the frustrating aspect could be to introduce an element of chance. Say when you die, you lose an item at random. The threat of losing that uber sword makes you want to avoid death. But it's less frustrating, because you usually just lose something trivial like a potion.

Well personally I try to die as little as possible no matter the reason simply because I don't like dying. I can't see the reason why we have to penalize death in games more than the death itself. I thought Yahtzee made a really good point here once, if you screw up in a game the last thing you would want is to make things harder. Dealing out penalties for not being able to survive making it even harder to survive puts you in a vicious cycle. Fearing death shouldn't be mandatory. I stay by my view that game developers should never be encouraged to add frustration to a game.

 

[clippen05]

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...)

Of course you didn't read my original post, where I said this should be optional and a seperate gamemode...

 

[beyondbrainmatter]

Yes. Make it horrible.

 

[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...)

Of course you didn't read my original post, where I said this should be optional and a seperate gamemode...

I did, but I still don't see a need to make games more frustrating. I am constantly trying to avoid death in games without the need to penalize deaths. When game developers add things like this there's always something about it to make you play it. so if you want the full experience of how the game is you pretty much have to play through the frustrating game mode. Good example is Fallout New Vegas and its hardcore mode. All it added was some frustration and made the game more tedious. We do not need to encourage developers to make games more tedious.

 

[clippen05]

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.

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...)

Of course you didn't read my original post, where I said this should be optional and a seperate gamemode...

I did, but I still don't see a need to make games more frustrating. I am constantly trying to avoid death in games without the need to penalize deaths. When game developers add things like this there's always something about it to make you play it. so if you want the full experience of how the game is you pretty much have to play through the frustrating game mode. Good example is Fallout New Vegas and its hardcore mode. All it added was some frustration and made the game more tedious. We do not need to encourage developers to make games more tedious.

So you NEEDED F:NV's achievement which provides nothing but a little bit of internet bragging rights... wow. Why include difficulties at all if they're too much of a bother to complete for those 125gamerscore of internet glory? There was absolutely nothing in-game that forced you to play hardcore mode. (Which for the record, was almost just as easy as regular. Food is everywhere, drink is everywhere, and you could go 3 days without sleeping. IF that's too much of a bother... wow. IF the stimpack thing was too hard for you, lower the difficulty... I wouldn't want your game to be tedious)

 

[Matt King]

i think games like dark souls do it well, it gives a punishment for death aswell as redoing the last level or so

 

[Tjebbe]

I don't think there is one easy fix for this; you want to have some form of punishment, but you do not want it purely in terms of time, loss of items, or re-grinding lost XP without changing anything else in the game. IMO, there are fundamental things in the game that need to support it.

As said, Dark Souls does it pretty well; you lose your humanity and your souls (which you can recover), and you'll need to replay a certain part. But this is supported by the fact that you can 'save' in quite a few places, but each save has its own penalty (enemies respawn). And, more fundamentally, the gameplay is such that, save for a few exceptions, it is actually your own fault most of the time if you die. And each death is a lesson, and brings you experience in the real sense of the word.

Roguelikes do it with permadeath; die, and you can start ALL over again. I happen to like this (though I only played 2, Nethack and one of the Mystery Dungeons, which doesn't even have full permadeath; you can store items to keep them). But again, I think this is possible because of the core concept that these games are not real-time, and if you come into a possibly dangerous situation, you can go over your options at your leisure and figure out how to save yourself.

I'm not saying there aren't many more ways to achieve it, but simply giving some direct penalty will only result in frustration, and much, much more so if death can be (or seem) quite random.

 

[unoleian]

Built up quite a tolerance to it now, but I do agree with everyone who mentioned Dark Souls thus far. No other game since the limited-lives/limited-continues days has given me as much anxiety of even simply putting one foot in front of the other and looking around the next corner.

I'm not entirely certain that there exists a death mechanic that can work without just punishing the player for his time. Even a perma-delete is just frustration waiting to happen, as I'm sure more than one of us have lost a hardcore character in a game to that unbeatable monster of death and disease we collectively refer to as "lag." That nasty fucker is beyond our control, and nothing hurts worse than losing a character to his toothy maw, and not at all through faults of our own design.

 

[Jfswift]

By making it permanent (after a few tries). Case in point, I was showing a friend the other day just how insane the last level of NFS: The Run was, and what I had to do to complete that bastard of a game. I also pointed out that if I had crashed one more time I would have been forced to start over (pretty far back anyway). That was enough incentive to make me really concentrate on what I was doing.

 

[shrekfan246]

I've also heard the game gets harder every time you die, but I didn't notice anything like that, it might've been Demon's Souls they were on about, but still.

Yeah, Demon's Souls has a 'World Tendency' system, by which the further you get in a world without dying/while helping out whatever friendly NPC you might come across/killing bosses or Phantoms, the easier it will become (going toward 'White' Tendency), enemies having lower attack and defense stats and slightly reduced health, at the cost of enemies dropping less souls and less useful loot but more healing items. The more you die/kill friendly NPCs/I'm not sure what else but I think there was more, the harder it will become (going toward 'Black' Tendency), with enemies having higher defense, health and attack power, while dropping more souls and more useful/rare loot, but less healing items.

So effectively, to really search out the best gear you needed to increase the difficulty of the game even further.

More OT:
And that game was rated 'E'.

 

[The_Darkness]

I think Dead Space 2 got it right. Hardcore mode was an unlockable - you had to finish the game at least once before you could play hardcore, and I'd recommend finishing it twice. This meant that the player would have some prior awareness of any cheap kills that the game could throw at them, and plan accordingly.

Then?

3 Saves. That's it. That's all. A 12 to 15 hour game, and you have to divide it into 4 segments for survival runs.
Seriously, that game made me fear death. But nothing compared to the rush from pulling off the halo jump with two and a half hours on the clock... Or the rush from finishing hardcore mode...

 

[Angelblaze]

Multiple ways within 'game loss':
Loss of money, gold, 'experience', items.

Multiple ways that are just annoying:
Making a player haul ass back to where they died (Too Human)
Long ass death scene (Too Human)
Just plain annoying game (Too human)

 

[lithiumvocals]

I don't think that every game needs to have you fear death. RPGS and Survival-Horror games obviously need death to carry weight, but I don't think people playing stuff like Call of Duty should have to really worry too much. I think it's impossible for death in Multiplayer to carry weight besides "When you die, your team is put a disadvantage". I also don't think that permanent death is very good besides in very short games or if the game is specifically designed around it. However, I do have a few ideas to give death a bit more meaning.

No auto-saving/checkpoints. Only Save points or manual saving. This will encourage players to be cautious and save diligently. To combat save scumming and abuse of the save system, put a time limit on saving. For example, if a player makes a save, then they can't save for, say, the next ten minutes. Once those ten minutes are up, they are free to save again whenever they feel like it. When they next save, the countdown will start again. Again, it will make players be far more cautious when playing but also it will force them to save more strategically. If players just save whenever, they might accidentally save themselves into a corner. Just in case someone does make a bad save, make it so they can access and load their 3 most recent saves. When a new save is made, the oldest one is deleted to make room for the new one.