Quote:
Originally Posted by Aeolwind
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I don't see this as a bad thing. EQ made you pay, dearly, for being curious. The punishment should be as severe and rewarding.
Hill giants in WC, Sand Giants in NRo/Oasis.
Lord Shinree.
Gryphons in EC.
Babinsbort in Befallen.
Kithicor Forest at night.
Kizdean Gix
Make the game feel like it is actively out to 'get' the player. Adversarial confrontation with a AI. Example: You got killed by a HG in WC while camping dervs, and then on your CR you get gaffled by a gryphon in EC so you hug the wall on your 3rd trip only to aggro the god awful rare spawn of Lord Shinree and take another face plant. It 'feels' like the game is out to get you.
Getting curb stomped by something 20 levels above you for example, should be less punishing than getting taken out by 'appropriate' encounters. Also, corpse retrieval, it needs to be there.
The sense of urgency of rez and rot timers were awesome. The guild I was in rescued a pickup raid that Nilbog was apart of on EMarr from Fear. It was at the 23rd hour for some of those folks, so corpse rot was staring them in the face and, what they had killed had repopped already. The sense of urgency & excitement we felt jumping in with 12 to break Fear I think during Kunark was astounding. I still get stoked when I think about it.
That feeling was created by a difficult zone and a sense of urgency. Clearing TOV was nothing compared to that Fear rescue. AOW wasn't even there. Me yelling "dick in yo ass bitch" in the middle of LOIO and getting reported after finally downing Xenovorash after several failed tries because of bugs was REALLY close 2nd however. But, that is associated with the game being 'out to get you' scenario.
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Goal setting is what causes people to do these things, not punishment or "urgency". All punishment and/or urgency do is cause adrenaline to fire up which is not necessary to make a good game. You still would have helped your friends in hate even if the only impediment was numbers or intelligence, if only to achieve the goal of helping them and maintaining a high status in the game. Danger, as a driving force to make you help them, is not the reason you do. You don't need the danger to act, you just need the goal.
You know why there're risk takers in history? It's not because they liked adrenaline. Risk takers are not the same thing as thrill seekers or adrenaline junkies. Risk takers are successful at it. It's because they set smart goals and strive always to achieve them. We know from research that established successful risk takers have high amounts of dopamine. Dopamine is explicitly linked to goal setting. We also know people who're addicted to adrenaline make terrible explorers and/or risk takers because they do not calculate risk. Adrenaline is only a limited function and is only a short-term response to a life or death situation. Being an effective risk taker means not being addicted to adrenaline and thinking clearly about the risks.
What I'm saying is we need games with environments that sprout goal setting, not environments that trigger adrenaline. It's not adrenaline that makes us strive or have purpose, it's goals. We can effectively remove all adrenaline from the MMORPG equation and still have a successful game based on goals. In fact, if you examine EQ, you'll find most of the complaints have to do with the high level of punishment and "urgency".
Did you know constant exposure to adrenaline has negative health effects? Why play a game which will expose you to this and make you unhealthy when you can choose a game which won't do that?
Ever seen one of those "casual" games where people play and strive to achieve goals and yet there's no obvious danger or threat posed to them? Here you see: witness the power of dopamine. Dopamine doesn't need risk. Goals don't need risk. They just need an interesting world and interesting things to accomplish.
BUT living in a dangerous world does lend benefits to people who're good goal setters. This allows htem to better survive. However, goal setting itself doesn't require danger to exist.
People who like danger are thrill seekers. They're not comparable to Christopher Columbus or Neil Armstrong or Ferdinand Magellan or the bold travelers who ventured outside of africa 60,000 years ago. In fact, it's a slap in the face to compare reckless dumb f**** to people who molded the face of the modern world.