A collection of things as random as my mood and personality.
Death in games
Posted 01/26/2011 at 06:43 by Vaidas B
When we play video games, our first priority is staying alive, right? But when we die, does that change anything?
Death in games is an imminent thing, and can be a real killjoy if you’re up to something important. Being cautious is an important thing if you want to stay alive, it’s not important if you’re ready to snipe someone or if it’s just watching over your health-bar. In some games you can die all you want, you’ll just respawn and nothing’s going to happen to you, but some games want to be as realistic as possible and stop users from dying as often as possible.
For instance, “Runescape” has a rather harsh penalty for people who die, everything you had with you (except for three items that the game rates as high-value) is places in a tombstone, at the location of your death, if you fail the get them before a certain time limit runs out, they will appear on the ground for anyone to pick up. That’s a great encouragement for those who don’t want to die.
“Allods” on the other hand is not as brutal with it’s players, when they get destroyed, they go to the “Purgatory” and have to wait for a certain amount of time, which depends on the players level. On top of that, when a player is resurrected, they are invisible and can’t talk to NPC’s for ten seconds.
But what happens to the people when they slay us? And Vice versa, what happens to us when we slay someone?
Player Killing (or PK as some of you may know it) is not a new thing, and can be found in almost every modern MMORPG. This works as a “mandatory pvp”, a player decides to kill us (or we decide to kill someone) and the bloodbath begins. But don’t think that only the ones who die are punished, killing is a crime, in real life, and in games, and for this you can be punished. PK penalties are very common, but every game has different ways of punishing someone, or limiting player deaths, let’s have a look.
In most games, a player who kills someone without a pvp, is given “PK points”, in this time, his name is colored red, anyone can kill him in non-safe areas, and he can’t talk to any NPC’s. That can lead to some serious problems, luckily these effects wear off over time, and as you die over and over.
Runescape does nothing to stop this, and people have to “sign up” and agree for the “manhunt” there are worlds and locations (like the soon to be revived Wilderness) where players can attack each other and loot dead players, but ganking is not an option in Runescape, as players can attack/be attacked by one player each so combat is mostly 1v1.
Allods on the other hand has rival factions that fight each other, when you kill someone from another faction, you get small rewards (at least you use to get, not sure about now). And you can go into combat mode when you want to, so players can fight you at any time.
Conclusion: Death in games is a big part of gameplay, it’s the GOAL of FPS games, but players want to avoid it in MMORPG games, it’s not important if you are “hunted” or “the hunter”, but be careful, that won’t end well.
Thanks for reading,
TheConArtist
Death in games is an imminent thing, and can be a real killjoy if you’re up to something important. Being cautious is an important thing if you want to stay alive, it’s not important if you’re ready to snipe someone or if it’s just watching over your health-bar. In some games you can die all you want, you’ll just respawn and nothing’s going to happen to you, but some games want to be as realistic as possible and stop users from dying as often as possible.
For instance, “Runescape” has a rather harsh penalty for people who die, everything you had with you (except for three items that the game rates as high-value) is places in a tombstone, at the location of your death, if you fail the get them before a certain time limit runs out, they will appear on the ground for anyone to pick up. That’s a great encouragement for those who don’t want to die.
“Allods” on the other hand is not as brutal with it’s players, when they get destroyed, they go to the “Purgatory” and have to wait for a certain amount of time, which depends on the players level. On top of that, when a player is resurrected, they are invisible and can’t talk to NPC’s for ten seconds.
But what happens to the people when they slay us? And Vice versa, what happens to us when we slay someone?
Player Killing (or PK as some of you may know it) is not a new thing, and can be found in almost every modern MMORPG. This works as a “mandatory pvp”, a player decides to kill us (or we decide to kill someone) and the bloodbath begins. But don’t think that only the ones who die are punished, killing is a crime, in real life, and in games, and for this you can be punished. PK penalties are very common, but every game has different ways of punishing someone, or limiting player deaths, let’s have a look.
In most games, a player who kills someone without a pvp, is given “PK points”, in this time, his name is colored red, anyone can kill him in non-safe areas, and he can’t talk to any NPC’s. That can lead to some serious problems, luckily these effects wear off over time, and as you die over and over.
Runescape does nothing to stop this, and people have to “sign up” and agree for the “manhunt” there are worlds and locations (like the soon to be revived Wilderness) where players can attack each other and loot dead players, but ganking is not an option in Runescape, as players can attack/be attacked by one player each so combat is mostly 1v1.
Allods on the other hand has rival factions that fight each other, when you kill someone from another faction, you get small rewards (at least you use to get, not sure about now). And you can go into combat mode when you want to, so players can fight you at any time.
Conclusion: Death in games is a big part of gameplay, it’s the GOAL of FPS games, but players want to avoid it in MMORPG games, it’s not important if you are “hunted” or “the hunter”, but be careful, that won’t end well.
Thanks for reading,
TheConArtist
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