The Crime of Punishment

[Kaisharga]

The perspective I'm seeing touted from the supposed point of view of the "challenge hounds" is not quite correct, and it borders on straw-man syndrome. I want to talk about the way that challenge has meaning, and why video game deaths and punishments matter, using the principle in another context: driving.

I drive the speed limit. Somehow that's a big confession. I go out of my way to drive the speed it says on the signs, whatever traffic is doing independent of me. As long as I can get into the lanes I need (sometimes this takes considerable planning ahead) for my exits, and cover my butt legally...I drive the limit.

Almost nobody else does. Ever. Barring a traffic jam, where people don't speed because they simply can't, I am the only one on the road--especially the only one in a car, rather than a big rig--who is driving the speed limit.

And what do I get for it? Other people get there faster, don't have to worry about people smashing into their rear bumpers at a speed differential of 30 mph, change lanes easily, and only very, very rarely have to deal with speeding tickets. Best case comparison, I come out about $75 on top once every three years. I am better than all these other drivers, I actually do what I signed my name to saying I would do. Nobody else lives up to their word, and they get away with their indiscretions scot-free. That really and truly pisses me off, that people who are being indiscriminate about such matters are given roughly equivalent experiences to my own, people who put almost no effort into their driving are actually having a better time of it.

That's what's going on, I think, with the issue of challenge. When people do things that are awesome or skillful or difficult, they want props. Super Meat Boy's bandages are extra challenges that give you progressive unlocks--a benefit for having done something extra-difficult. Achievements and Trophies are similar--even if they don't give a mechanical benefit, they at least are proof that you did something extra.

WoW players, to take a fairly generic (ha!) MMORPG example, want that kind of feedback. Everyone thinks about this from the point of view of the dying, but also involved in the discussion are those who didn't die. When the death penalty is lightened, you reduce the reason to be good at the game. Skill stops mattering so much, planning stops mattering so much. And in that environment, why care? Why try?

That, I think, is the issue. That is why people want harsher death penalties. They want their skill to matter, they want their survival to actually mean something. They want props for being sweet. They want a reason, a purpose to mastery. And they can't figure out a way for it to matter besides advocating harsher punishment on those who don't have the skill.

(Edited to avoid awful digression.)

 

[sunpop]

I'm tired of being mistaking hard for memorization. If a game has traps you have no idea are there like "I wanna be that guy" and the only way to beat it is by memorizing where everything is it isn't hard. It's simply a game of memory hard is when you have to time a dodge to avoid a bosses attack.

 

[Seneschal]

Well, the Nintendo Hard trend died with the arcades, but MMOs are the closest thing to arcades we have today. If they don't waste your time, you may (gasp!) reach the endgame too quickly!

Oh wait, NNNOOOO, that's a tvtropes link, run awa-...

 

[Xenominim]

I recall reading an article last year about a reviewer trying out a supposed 'hardcore' MMO which had very strict death penalties (no I can't recall the name) with open PvP and upon death you can be looted. At the same time the game went for a more realistic approach in combat by making stats more skill-based, with gear having smaller bonuses than most MMOs. The result was the vast majority of the playerbase fighting naked with generic swords so they wouldn't lose their loot if they got jumped, which would only be used during particular encounters when they'd be safely grouped up. Obviously, not the best system there is.

One idea games haven't tried I think though is shame. Imagine every time you die, another bodypart of your char turns into a clown for a few hours of gametime. Die again in that time, another bodypart is added and the timer resets. Become a full clown? Then your clown starts turning into a mime. No stats affected, nothing about your ability to fight, you just look like an idiot. Other players could have the choice for a death filter so they can either mock those who keep dying, or keep the game's immersion so they don't see a bunch of clowns running around. But your own char? You always see that damned clown until you learn better.

 

[RvLeshrac]

Also: THere hasn't been a game that allows PVPers to do more then kick someones shins to death, then gain some special PVP currency that allows everyone to know that you kicked a lot of shins when you use stuff you bought from it. Can't there be some actual drops from killing someone? I mean, I don't know about you, but If I were a wizard who just electrocuted a fighter who nearly killed me, I would see to looting him afterwards- if only to afford the healing to remove the damage he caused.

Really? There have attacking player if you lose at <a href=http://www.darkageofcamelot.com>PvP?

I'm tired of being mistaking hard for memorization. If a game has traps you have no idea are there like "I wanna be that guy" and the only way to beat it is by memorizing where everything is it isn't hard. It's simply a game of memory hard is when you have to time a dodge to avoid a bosses attack.

So memorization isn't hard, but memorizing boss patterns is hard?

What?

Read your posts back to yourselves, and you'll see these inconsistencies.

 

[IronCladNinja]

Guild Wars had a pretty good system for death. You die, you get Death Penalty, which cuts your heath and mana by 15% each time you die up to 60%, it is removed by experience from finishing quests or killing stuff, visiting a town or with items. It added pressure not to die, but if the party wipes in a dungeon, its no big deal, until that 60% mark.

 

[mikespoff]

The distinction between challenge and punishment is, I think, an under-appreciated one. Thanks for drawing attention to it.

 

[Firehound]

Also: THere hasn't been a game that allows PVPers to do more then kick someones shins to death, then gain some special PVP currency that allows everyone to know that you kicked a lot of shins when you use stuff you bought from it. Can't there be some actual drops from killing someone? I mean, I don't know about you, but If I were a wizard who just electrocuted a fighter who nearly killed me, I would see to looting him afterwards- if only to afford the healing to remove the damage he caused.

Really? There have attacking player if you lose at <a href=http://www.darkageofcamelot.com>PvP?

I'm tired of being mistaking hard for memorization. If a game has traps you have no idea are there like "I wanna be that guy" and the only way to beat it is by memorizing where everything is it isn't hard. It's simply a game of memory hard is when you have to time a dodge to avoid a bosses attack.

So memorization isn't hard, but memorizing boss patterns is hard?

What?

Read your posts back to yourselves, and you'll see these inconsistencies.

I meant recently, at least none I have heard of. And I think eve counts as a second job, not a MMO.

 

[mikespoff]

Guild Wars had a pretty good system for death. You die, you get Death Penalty, which cuts your heath and mana by 15% each time you die up to 60%, it is removed by experience from finishing quests or killing stuff, visiting a town or with items. It added pressure not to die, but if the party wipes in a dungeon, its no big deal, until that 60% mark.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the GuildWars approach to MMO, including the death penalty during missions. You don't lose XP (which REALLY sucks as a penalty) or gold, but it does become more and more challenging to continue if you keep dying. It's a good balance and I'd like to see it implemented more often.

 

[mikespoff]

There is still one more kind of punishment that can be implemented that works better in MMOs... Rewarding players better if they go through the content more smoothly, giving extra goodies if the party reaches the end of the instance without anyone dieing or without a party wipe, or with a very short time run through. This rewards skill without directly punishing failure.

Wow had this in some instances. I haven't played for a while, but I remember a dungeon in caverns of time, set in Stratholme allowing players to fight an extra boss for a Dragon mount if they reached it within a set time.

LOTRO has the "Challenge" modes(often referred to as Hard Mode)where you get extra rewards for completing an instance in a specific way. Interestingly, sometimes it's a reward for playing strategically better(Forges of Khazad Dum, Fil Gashan, Halls of Crafting), but more often it's a reward for taking on *additional* difficulty. This kind of difficulty varies, but usually involves killing the boss while not killing certain other creatures, such as letting the Adds beat on you while you're trying to take the boss down instead of cleaning them up first. Either way, it's rewarding you for being better players.

Yeah, GuildWars had different levels of reward for the missions: you could just finish it, which completed the story arc and let you continue, or you could try for the silver of gold ranking by doing it faster or whatever, and these gave you extra gold and/or xp. Their were also bonus objectives - entirely optional, but give you bonus XP and gold. This helps in an MMO setting because it still gives experienced players something to aim for if they're helping their friends through a mission that they've already done.

 

[PrinceofPersia]

(Welcome to my world. Do you know hard it is being a fan of good, coherent storytelling these days?)

I feel your pain sir, it hurts like hell. Yeah as someone who played through the Nintendo age I can say with a bit of certainty that a Nintendo hard games suck the enjoyment out of the game like nothing else. The last thing I want to happen after I finish putting down a controller is me being angrier and more frustrated then when I picked it up.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Ah yes the challenge of balancing the level of skill and difficulty and the necessity of death's role in a game. An interesting topic and the subject of much flame and troll. Nobody is ever going to be happy so its always matter of finding the sweet spot where you have the fewest people whining. I hope Biowear finds it, even if they have to tweak the game a little over time.

 

[Shjade]

Now imagine the game without the checkpoints, so that if you die you have to start the entire chapter over from the very beginning. The combat and gameplay mechanics are otherwise identical, it just sets you back more when you fail. If you think about it, this doesn't make the game any more difficult to beat. It takes the same level of skill to reach the end of the game.

Um


In the example you're offering, having no checkpoints would force you to pay more attention and generally be on your toes - it'd take a bit of practice to go through a level without dying. So it's definitely not the same level of skill. In a way, if there were no checkpoints you'd be better at the game - because it would force you to. Unless the game's super easy anyway, but Force Unleashed had some dick move moments.

Punishment DOES add challenge to a game, it's just not the same thing as challenge. But they're intertwined.

In fact, Demon's Souls uses this system. When you die, you have to start the chapter over, and repeated deaths are punished even more heavily. Would the game have been better with checkpoints? Possibly, but the overall difficulty is so high (like in Mario games) that forcing the player to redo large stretches of content will noticeably raise their skill level, so the time isn't wasted.

For a game like Prince of Persia where the difficulty level is very low, forcing the player to backtrack is just wasting her time.

If you keep dying in Section 3 of a 5-section level, restarting at Section 1 is not going to improve your skills any more than restarting at Section 3 each time you die. Ultimately you're going to keep dying at Section 3 until you master that particular encounter (as the aforementioned memorization poster pointed out happens), but in the version with checkpoints you can make attempts at the encounter that's actually giving you trouble more quickly, as opposed to being forced to repeat the previous two sections that don't challenge you over and over again. It doesn't add challenge, it adds time.

Think of another example: you know those boss fights in some games with long cutscenes before you fight them, cutscenes that start over every time you have to re-try the fight? In some games you can skip those cutscenes; in some games you have to watch the whole bloody thing every freaking time. Which version is more challenging? ...neither, the bosses are the same. One just adds the extra punishment of wasting five minutes every time you have to re-try the fight. Doesn't make it any more challenging, just makes the game itself more annoying.

 

[Kanatatsu]

This entire article is based on the premise that every MMO must include lots of grouping to plow through raid-type instances (and thus a real death penalty might frustrate the grouping).

That's not true. MMOs don't need to be that way.

 

[Alphalpha]

I agree that challenge should be balanced with punishment. Super Meatboy, for example, is a very challenging game, but gets away with it because it has a reasonable punishment: try again from the start of the level (instantly). If you had to start at the beginning of the world you would have to play perfectly for minutes (a long time in this game) to gain one attempt at the section you are struggling with, while if you started merely a second or two from your death you could just luck your way through entire levels.

The punishment should be designed to keep the main challenge of the game at the forefront. The challenging levels are the whole purpose of Super Meatboy, and the only reason I play it. This is why it succeeds so brilliantly: each level is a distinct challenge and the punishment sets you back just enough to retry (and continue to enjoy) your current challenge without making you redo previous challenges or aiding you with this one.

An example of poorly executed punishment is in UFC 2010, specifically the career mode. The main challenges are obviously the fights; namely, winning them. One would think the spars and training camps, which you do to increase your skills and learn new techniques, respectively, would be structured so as to either allow you to practice using these skills and techniques, or to encourage behaviour that would allow you to surmount the main challenges(i.e. win fights). Instead, sparring splits all actions into positive or negative and each worth 1 point for you or your opponent, respectively. This means that if you hit him with a jab, that's 1 point; if you hit him with a haymaker and knock him out in one shot, that's 1 point; if you hit him with a haymaker and he blocks but you still do severe damage to him and he falls over dazed, that's 1 point for him. The systems for learning techniques vary but are all equally idiotic, with the result that strategies that win fights earn you nothing in training and strategies that pay off in training get you KTFO in fights (using the techniques you're training in also generally earn you nothing). In this case, the punishment isn't bad because it's too harsh or too lenient, but simply because it's stupid and unrelated to the core game.


As for punishment in MMORPGs I have no idea as I just don't get most of them. I play RPGs for the story, for the sense of accomplishment, for authorship of the world, for the immersion, and yes, for the challenge. MMORPGs seem to throw all of this away except for accomplishment:

There's no real story, as intricate, narrative-driven quests are replaced by thousands of generic monster-hunting exercises.

Accomplishment is both almost solely relegated to your level and material possessions and cheapened by being achieved in a world where the heroes outnumber the civilians.

What authorship can be had in a world that accepts no change but that which the developers create?

As for immersion, playing an MMORPG seems like getting a bunch of LARPers together, but instead of RPing, you have a heated game of badminton instead. Now, I'm not against the occasional badminton game, but I'm sure as hell not going to dress up like a wizard to do it.

While RPGs are not generally very challenging games, and tend more towards strategy than skill if they are, the lack of the above redeeming qualities in MMORPGs make the lack of challenge much more objectionable.

It just seems that for what they are, MMORPGs don't have to be RPGs at all; they share almost no similarities with one, and I find their superficial imitation disturbing, like a bear with a man's face.

 

[neograpeshot]

I do think death in an MMO should mean more than it does in, say, WoW. I've been playing Eve Online for years, and I really like how death is handled in that. I especially like how any surviving modules from your ship can be taken from the wreck by anyone who gets to it. This means most players will be using generic equipment which can be purchased easily and how you use your gear is more important than how big it's bonuses are.
It also makes additional playstyles valid, such as trying to make a living as a pirate preying on other players. This in turn can lead to deeper emergent gameplay, where other players might band together to clear pirates out of a region to make it safer for a while or they might take a different & longer route, leading to different encounters and scenery.

I'd like to see more games treat your gear as throwaway, so it's more player skill and group planning that will matter in a fight, not simply how long you've spent grinding. I would also like to see death in an MMO mean you haven't lost everything, but you've definitely lost something. It gets adrenaline pumping in a tough fight, and forces you to plan your actions a little more. A harsher death penalty than you'll find in most MMOs can lead to a deeper and more complex game, provided (and this is important) the other mechanics in the game support it, such as the ability to loot other players, the reduced need for high-end equipment, and the ability to interact with your fellow players in more complex ways.

This.
I haven't played in a few years, but Eve handled PVP and death almost perfectly. Fighting actually meant something in that game; you could lose a lot when you fought, but at the same time you could gain quite a bit too. You could build an actual reputation, since people remember who caused them significant damage (or saved them from it). And there's nothing like the adrenalin of the first few fights you get into with a shiny ship that you spent a long time working for and you'd really rather not lose.

Stricter (though not game-ending) death penalties make a better game. It teaches players to be cautious and inventive, encourages greater player interaction (since mmo's by definition should not be single-player games), and are hundreds of times more satisfying to succeed at.