Fear of Death

[4th Reich]

To create a greater incentive for team work, there needs to be a "Fear of Death". This would make RO:O more realistic, as well as more fun to play (IMHO).

Perhaps the best way to create a "Fear of Death" would be to have longer respawn times? Or every individual that dies has to wait a certain amount of time (50 second) before rejoining the game? Or maybe, as I've always suggested, make the maps larger, and make the distance between the spawn and the battle longer; thus creating both incentive, as well as maps that have more tactical possibilities.

What do you guys think? Any other ideas?

 

[dogbadger]

To create a greater incentive for team work, there needs to be a "Fear of Death". This would make RO:O more realistic, as well as more fun to play (IMHO).

Perhaps the best way to create a "Fear of Death" would be to have longer respawn times? Or every individual that dies has to wait a certain amount of time (50 second) before rejoining the game? Or maybe, as I've always suggested, make the maps larger, and make the distance between the spawn and the battle longer; thus creating both incentive, as well as maps that have more tactical possibilities.

What do you guys think?

I agree with your sentiments, however I'm sorry I don't go for longer walks from spawn to action- i'd rather sit out in a longer spawn than have my finger stuck on 'w'
And the problem with longer spawn times can be that sometimes they destroy the illusion of busy battlefields, although i appreciate the game is about to increase dramatically on some servers.

When raised before some have suggested introduction of a death counter to the scores- but i've always thought a kills/death ratio ( ie 22 kills, 8 deaths = 2.75 ) is best solution if you go this way.

It is a perfect reflection of someones contribution to reinforcements, and while it will make people more cautious as you request, it wont penalise those who get stuck in.

 

[4th Reich]

I agree with your sentiments, however I'm sorry I don't go for longer walks from spawn to action- i'd rather sit out in a longer spawn than have my finger stuck on 'w'
And the problem with longer spawn times can be that sometimes they destroy the illusion of busy battlefields, although i appreciate the game is about to increase dramatically on some servers.

When raised before some have suggested introduction of a death counter to the scores- but i've always thought a kills/death ratio ( ie 22 kills, 8 deaths = 2.75 ) is best solution if you go this way.

It is a perfect reflection of someones contribution to reinforcements, and while it will make people more cautious as you request, it wont penalise those who get stuck in.

Although I disagree with you on spawning, I love the ratio idea.

 

[jedinstven-o crni Wuk]

we had already a "test" in the mod days with long respaws. The map Warsaw, with 45sec. before spawing again.

And ... everyone hated it, really. And no one cared more about his players-life more then usualy.

There is only one real way, how to create fear of death. A guy, behind you, with a gun, that will shot you in the exact same spot, where you have been hit in game. Or a simple option that formates your system after every death. That might work also.

 

[4th Reich]

we had already a "test" in the mod days with long respaws. The map Warsaw, with 45sec. before spawing again.

And ... everyone hated it, really. And no one cared more about his players-life more then usualy.

There is only one real way, how to create fear of death. A guy, behind you, with a gun, that will shot you in the exact same spot, where you have been hit in game. Or a simple option that formates your system after every death. That might work also.

I can see how long respawns can be damaging for a game with a 32 player limit. However, the other ideas are worth looking into.

 

[Zetsumei]

Warsaw was my fav map in the mod because of the reinf time but it only works when you play with a team as individual a long spawn time is just annoying. If you're with a clan you base tactics around it.

The only real punishment people can have is inability to spawn, a kill death ratio will only get people that will optimise that mostly rather than play the objectives.

What i would like most is individual reinforcements, that get reinforced everytime your team archieves something. And those reinforcements based on class aswell. Some classes are supposed to die more than others. (a smg is supposed to be in the middle of the action a sniper is way back etc, so a smg should be able to respawn more or a death with the sniper should eat more of your lives)

For defenders the amount of reinforcements they get is based on the amount of mins they defended a capzone, once its capped they get X reinforcements for their archievement. Unless somebody knows a better way for defenders

 

[6y6JIuK_IZM]

Kill/death ratio is a good idea.

Kill/death ratio is a good idea.

Deaths MUST be shown to allow for kicking some dumb asses who repeatedly run into enemy arty (hoping they will be more lucky this time I wonder?).

 

[Funker42]

Perhaps you should add 15 seconds of spawn time every time you die.

So if you have died once you will spawn in 15 seconds. Die twice you will come back in 30 seconds. Three times will get you 45 seconds....

Basically, that would make you really try very hard at one point not to die, but not so much if you die once or twice that it ruins the game.

 

[dogbadger]

Not sure about that ,Flunky- leaving the 2 snipers increasingly lonely as the game progresses. It would also be tempting for people to simply re-join once they got to say 6 deaths (1 min 30 secs wait!!)

Not wanting to disagree without contributing another idea- how about you respawn time is long, say 25secs, but it gets reduced by say 5 secs for every guy you killed during that life. So kill 4 before you die and you only wait 5 secs for example.

Doesn't have to be 25sec/ -5secs, whatever - I'm just using numbers off the top of my head here to illustrate an idea

 

[Kaneohe]

I don't like the idea much at all. Besides increasing the already steep learning curve, it also penalizes players that go out and do the fighting (as opposed to hanging back and camping or sniping.)

 

[Solo4114]

SEARCH is your friend. This issue has been discussed to death. Fear of death cannot be created by game mechanics. Either you feel it personally, or you don't. No game change will alter this.

 

[KrazyKraut]

"You cannot do this is. Period." is hardly a constructive answer. Besides since noone ever tried to achieve this in RO, how can you be so certain?

I have played many games where I almost felt like ****ting myself when I was in a desperate situation. That might not be fear of death, but it was waaaay closer than what I'm experiencing in RO, where my ingame life doesn't matter at all to me.

 

[SgtThompson]

Long walks and long respond times will make this game incredibly boring. I enjoy a slow(er) paced battle than most run-n-gun games, but that would slow the game down too much and just plain piss people off.

 

[Solo4114]

"You cannot do this is. Period." is hardly a constructive answer. Besides since noone ever tried to achieve this in RO, how can you be so certain?

I have played many games where I almost felt like ****ting myself when I was in a desperate situation. That might not be fear of death, but it was waaaay closer than what I'm experiencing in RO, where my ingame life doesn't matter at all to me.

That's all well and good that YOU felt like that. That's because YOU get into the game and this is part of what makes you enjoy games like this. But not everyone plays FPS games this way.

This is entirely a mental thing on the part of the individual player and all of the possible changes that could be suggested have been suggested in the past. Increased spawn times, one-life-to-live, your gun shaking because you're scared, etc.

None of these things will make all PLAYERS feel the same fear you feel. Most of them will simply annoy them or make them feel like control has been taken out of their hands (IE: the gun shaking idea).


Put simply, the MENTAL experience of the player depends entirely on the player. While you may have a particular mindset or mental experience when playing, that doesn't mean that (a) everyone else has the same experience, nor does it mean (b) that everyone WANTS the same experience.


I tend to view these "fear of death" suggestions as either:

- Requests by players for features that let THEM get more into the game (while assuming that other players want the same experience), or

- Request by players for features that FORCE other players to experience the game the same way (IE: so as to make someone less likely to charge them).


So again, fear of death is a fantasy in video games. You either willingly buy into the fantasy, or you don't, and changing game features won't alter a player's willingness or interest to indulge in the fantasy.

 

[KrazyKraut]

It has nothing to do with fantasy. I don't feel for my in-game avatar like he was a real person.

I don't want to die because if I do I get punished by the game. That's it. That's how every single game handles it.
And RO, while aiming at the hardcore gamers rather than the casual-15min-attention-span-kids, is surprisingly forgiving when it comes to being killed.

"You're dead again? Oh my, just wait 10 seconds and you can get yourself shot again."

In my opinion that's something where RO lacks. Simple as that. It's not mental and it's no magic. Just simple game mechanics. Increasing spawn times isn't necessarily my cup of tea, because it punishes you in an annoying rather than an encouraging way, but it's a starting point for debate.

 

[Solo4114]

Ah, but it is mental. It's the game mechanics' effect on your attitude while playing.

You say "I don't want to die because if I do I get punished by the game." That right there is mental: you don't WANT to die.

As far as respawn times go, that's something controlled on a map-by-map basis. Some maps spawn you quickly, others spawn you slowly. It's something that I think should be left up to the mapper so they can determine the pace and flow of their maps.

If the issue is that YOU don't feel that you're punished enough, well, you can always punish yourself instead. Wait out an extra spawn round if it'll make you feel better. But if the issue is that you don't feel OTHER people are punished enough, again, I have to say that this is simply some players wanting to shape the attitudes of other players in the game and change how other players think and feel during the game.

Ask yourself something. Why does it matter how much players are punished by the game for dying? My bet is the answer is "Because it shapes their behavior in game".

I think people who make these claims often want others to be playing more tactically, more cautiously, etc. But I can promise you, no amount of engine change would do this with the players you hate the most. There will always be rambo players in an FPS, or at least that game's equivalent. You think long respawn times will make people more cautious? Consider the +5min "respawn" times of a round of CS:S. If you die in that game, your avatar is dead for the remainder of the round (anywhere from 0 seconds to 6 minutes). And yet, people play that game like lunatics, racing around using "spammy" tactics or whathaveyou.

I remember playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein on servers with One Life to Live enabled. Know what? People still didn't take their virtual lives seriously and would do stupidly brave things that people would NEVER do in real life. And in those games, you had something like a 10 minute round limit so if you died early, you wouldn't "respawn" for another 9 minutes or whathaveyou.

You can't change the way people play. So in the end, excessive punishing of death to the point where people actually FEAR it becomes a fruitless endeavor.


If you disagree with me, fine. I really don't care. People are still gonna complain that there isn't enough fear of death in video games, probably, no matter what I say. I just think that continuing to ask for this or that change, often changes that would be detrimental to the rest of the game either comes from selfish motivations (IE: "I want the game to be more realistic for me, by my definition of realism"), or comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how other people play games (IE: "Well, I'M careful with my life, so if we did X, Y, and Z, other people would be careful the same way"), and often comes from both places. As such, requests like this are better left for mutators than fundamental changes to vanilla gameplay.

 

[KrazyKraut]

Stop with this mental stuff, it's just plain rediculous. If run-and-gun is a successful way to play this game than that is what people will do. If it would require more caution and thinking than that's what people will do. People want to win. Right now you can play this game just like DoD and be pretty successful.

I wonder. How is it that people play much, much more cautiously in games like Raven Shield or OFP? Somehow they must do something inherently better than RO. Maybe it is because spawn-run-kill-die doesn't work in OFP as it does in RO?

CS is a poor example as the game is has much smaller maps with more or less fixed routes and requires players to play fast, fast, fast. The game is just different and hardly an example to show that this or that element can't work.

But you are right, I don't agree with YOU. But just because YOU think that way doesn't mean it's fact.

 

[Mauser98k]

In all honestly, I won't be afraid of dying in RO unless someone attaches electrodes to my nipples and zaps me every time I die.
You are aiming in the right area, but in all honestly, instead of making it "scarier", it will piss off a lot more people and cause a large percentage to stop playing altogether. There is only so much we can do in the gaming world to prevent run and gun tactics, we have to live with what we have.

 

[Reise]

Stop with this mental stuff, it's just plain rediculous. If run-and-gun is a successful way to play this game than that is what people will do. If it would require more caution and thinking than that's what people will do. People want to win. Right now you can play this game just like DoD and be pretty successful.

I wonder. How is it that people play much, much more cautiously in games like Raven Shield or OFP? Somehow they must do something inherently better than RO. Maybe it is because spawn-run-kill-die doesn't work in OFP as it does in RO?

CS is a poor example as the game is has much smaller maps with more or less fixed routes and requires players to play fast, fast, fast. The game is just different and hardly an example to show that this or that element can't work.

But you are right, I don't agree with YOU. But just because YOU think that way doesn't mean it's fact.

In Raven Shield, movement reduces weapon accuracy so much that you have a better chance taking your time instead of rushing. The only way for run and gun to be successful in RS is to be <2 feet away. And that's if you're really lucky. Also, the same penalty to accuracy happens with any fast movement of the mouse, and whenever you go prone, crouch, or lean. And when you're hit with a non-lethal shot, you're doomed to severely reduced accuracy and you're forced to limp slowly until you either die or win.

IIRC, OFP and RS use similar accuracy modeling.

 

[Perlovka]

In some maps, such as Smolensk, if you DO die, it takes awhile to get back into the action because of longer travel distances (with only 1 halftrack on one team).

The battlefield was plenty busy, but the distance between objective/spawn was perfect in keeping you fearful of death because you knew it would take awhile to get back into action - ultimately enough time to lose an objective, or worse. But at the same time was close enough (with enough people) to have constant action, and by constant action, I mean the killscore on the top right rarely had less than 3 kills shown.