There are many ways death could work in MMOs...

Actually, that increases immersion on several levels:

1. Wow, people have actually died here. In a dangerous world, why is it surprising there would be dead people?

2. This tells you that the area you're entering is some kind of serious. Seeing a bunch of dead people lying around and no one has been able to clear the corpses yet is like someone planting a huge quarantine sign down... DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

I'd have to go with a harsher penalty than most games have now but not quite as much as in EQ used to have. I I have no problem with the death penalties in EQ. Some of my most vivid memories involve corpse recoveries. I just don't think that most people would put up with it after being subjected to almost no penalty at all for so long.

XP loss, even to the point of loosing levels. Perhaps the loss is increased each time to a specific cap of % per death. Deaths are going to happen. You also don't want to discourage groups from trying content that may be a little risky. So, a small experience loss for the first death or two won't hurt if a group is progressing. And resurrect spells could return a portion of the lost XP.


Gear stays on corpse when you die. You can resurrect at certain points, and recover your body there but will could possibly need to reclear content to get back to where you were. Healer classes should have a self res on timer that will allow for the occasional wipe without needing to start over again. In open world content, a corpse would vanish after a given time and speaking to an NPC would allow you to recover it so that you don't have bodies littering the landscape and so that a healer could resurrect for some XP regain.

Empower the players. Abilities and skills designed to reduce the pain of death. Ressurection spells return some XP. Spells can be used to summon a body. Spells could produce basic gear for group members to assist in a "naked" corpse recoveries.

Still voting less harsh, there is a lot that we truly don't know about this game, I mean levels/sandbox nature/time commitment, exp from kills/quests, any exp, no exp. Just saying there is too much I don't know to just say hard or light on the penalty.

I do miss that sense of danger, the need for teamwork, polite helpful community, friends, making friends instead of running a dungeon hearing go go go , faster faster faster, hurry, you are going to slow as the only conversation had during the run.

Time is valuable, I'd rather be having fun instead of re leveling, or working off tons of debt.
thx

I'd personally like something similar to the old WoW system except without the ghost run. So on death you have a choice between a corpse run or some unpleasant penalty like a loss of xp or major armor damage. I would say just straight corpse run, but I have unpleasant memories of having to recruit someone to help me recover my body from the Qeynos sewers that I would really not ever want to repeat.

The every class in the game has tiers. To move up to the next tier costs experience.

My answer really depends on the design of the mechanic. I think each option is viable depending on the game and how it's implemented. That said, I really don't need another barrier to play a game.

Example 1:

EQ1 - I played a cleric, but didn't have time to put a lot of hours into the game and I fell behind the crowds (no groups), resulting in a lot of solo'ing. Soloing as a cleric, my character died a lot. Losing levels over and over again eventually caused me to just give up trying to play that game.

Example 2:

EQ1 - Playing with a partner, fell down Befallen and died (having never been there before and no idea about how the place worked). Everything I owned was on that corpse, and I had no way of getting my stuff back.

Asked around for a couple hours until a friendly guild agreed to clear it out, get the keys, and guide us to our corpses. Was frustrating, traumatic, and fun in retrospect. I think there is a place for this kind of play (great example of community coming together to help people out), but not sure I'd want to play it regularly. Not sure if I'd have raged-quit from losing everything I owned, but I doubt I would have stuck around playing for as long as I did.

Permanent death - I've long had a concept where the abilities and achievements follow the player, not the character. Character dies, generate a new one. Heck, they could just grow old and die. The abilities follow the player, so no big deal. I think a game actually created mechanics like this, but not sure if it ever did well in the U.S. Not a fan of putting in hundreds of hours into an MMO and losing everything though.

Ghost corpse run / time sink - why? Ultimately, just let me play the game with my friends without having a bunch of time sinks. The concept of making a death penalty hurt is an old one, and I used to agree with it, but over the years I just want to play a game without needless time sinks. Any mechanic that is designed to "waste your customer's time" should never be implemented. Games should have time sinks, but they should never be perceived that way by the players. Adding experience debt, and/or other penalties is just an old concept - why do it? What does it really achieve? I just want to play the game and have fun, I don't need penalties added to make my game time more difficult.

Come on SOE, give us some real choices please!

I have no qualms in saying that perma-death, while great in games made for it, wouldn't work in EQN, not unless maxing out your class tiers and collecting classes takes a much much shorter amount of time than most of us expect, or actually dying is very hard.

Corpse runs illustrate perhaps the best level of penalty that I'd like to see with death, but corpse runs themselves are something I think wouldn't fit well.

As we have no levels or exp in EQN deleveling and exp loss is something that can't happen. Equipment damage is not a harsh penalty and not on par with exp loss, not unless gear repair doesn't exist or is so rare or expensive that it may as well not exist. (That there might actually be something: if when equipment breaks it is gone for good then equipment damage on death is a nice penalty).

Exp debt can be a very, very punishing penalty depending on how it is implemented, even if it only is a time-based penalty. This, however, is moot because there is no exp in EQN. A ghost run is a much, much weaker penalty than exp debt unless it is paired with something else, like repair costs.

No penalty for death works if the game it is in is made to facilitate no death penalty. I doubt that EQN would be made to have no penalty for death, because keeping your character alive is a very basic tenet of MMO design and the foundation of almost all epic MMO stories.

Myself, I chose the corpse run option not because I want corpse runs (I really, really do not want corpse runs), but I do want a penalty that is as punishing as a corpse run.

This doesn't work because corpses typically disappear after just a few minutes. It's a mechanic that saves on video processing.

True, but I just don't agree with "might need group" component because I fear might will turn into need.

I am not the greatest player but I am not unskilled either and dying thanks to a lag spike really sucks. There is one day almost every week I have to deal with a connection which is not constant enough. I find corpse runs fine to a certain degree. I am not okay with losing months of progress though. I think that is just a bit over the top. It will make too many players too scared to attempt anything.

For me, the main reason I am against corpse runs is, put simply, bad groups happen.

If I am in a bad group, and we fail on an epic level, the last thing I want to do is have to group up again to recover from that group. If I have just got out of a bad group, I want to go off somewhere by myself while I am brooding quietly to myself about how pickup groups suck and I'll never ever do another pickup group again... until at least tomorrow.

I don't want the death penalty to be coin related - because as the game goes on that means some players have a proportionally greater death penalty than others. I also don't want to see any situation where we can work on a death penalty before we have died.

That said, any activity in the game that can be done solo should be able to be done faster in a group. So, in my opinion, while a group shouldn't be necessary in order to deal with a death penalty, it should still give you an advantage.

You say time is valuable, and yet you -don't- want to hear 'go go go, faster'? *snort* My advice would be to not die. But true, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the game.

WoW's death "penalty" is sorta like having the bottom of your feet tickled. It probably annoys you a little bit after a while - but it's a tickle... so who cares.

If they don't have a very steep price for dying then I hope they will at least have severe Rez effects. Otherwise the group just become a zerg. Please no GW2 - die and then come running back to join the fight.

Not all the time. Ever run back for 3 minutes? Try to find your corpse in a mountain? It's not a foot tickle all the time.

From an RP stand point it completely breaks immersion. Yeah, in eq1 it did serve as a bit of a warning sign. I'm all for a hardcore throwback server with extreme penalties. But for the love of god SOE don't make them all like that.

Are you being sarcastic about the three minute bit? I mean, is that something you're saying as 'Oh, three minutes. Who cares.' or 'Ugh, it took three minutes to run back here.'? I'm confused on the wording there. Either way, three minutes is nothing at all. Some corpse runs in EQI could take hours or days. *snort* Although that was admittedly uncommon, usually.

It better not be extreme. EQ was way way way too extreme in death penalties. Anything more extreme than EQ2 is not ok. Do not go backwards.

Extreme penalties like corpse runs, loss of levels, or loss of experience are the one thing that will guarantee that I will not play the game. i love EQ but this is the truth. Keep in mind that only the most hardcore gamers see this poll and answer it. If you want a large user base then you cannot have large penalties. The general public will not except it and will move on to a different game.

The average person will not be ok with anything more extreme than EQ2. No corpse runs, no level loss, no experience loss. Respawn at a respawn location. Repairing armor after 10 deaths is fine. If you have gear repair costs then it should not be super expensive. Experience debt is iffy. It better not be much and you should be able to wait it out. People won't try hard stuff if it screws them.

This is a game not a job. It should be about having fun.

yep didn't like this.

Honestly there is no good way to deal with death in a game. Some people want corpse runs, some want huge exp losses etc. Both are time sinks. One you can get started on right away, the other could take hours or 5 secs to do.

Could also have it, you die, you go back to where you started the game and all your waypoint (if they have that) progress removed. But just like portals, EVERYONE will have to have a res skill for whatever reason in the game. So either way, corpse runs (if with friends or even a 2 person party ) is somewhat meh. If you are alone thats a different story.

Can we have hardcore servers, some like EQ1, no map*, no action house, no teleport, same death penalty.

*no Map like just a compass and a world map without current location.

This is my other post about why I don't have a problem with CR being a time sink, and why I support it as a penalty. It really just expounds on my original post here, but I think it's apropos: