Fear of death, what methods are there?

[Zetsumei]

This is another thread about a popular object fear of death.

Fear of death as the word sais makes you not want to die, the stronger that fear the more realistic you'll start to game. Because you don't want to die.

The best fear of death would afcourse be really getting killed when you die ingame afcourse this is not something most people want. But making death a less pleasurefull and punishing encounter can make people more wanting to try and stay alive and say secure an area before entering and other more realistic methods of gameplay.

There are 3 common methods suggested that will give an increased fear of death. All got their problems, and if something would be implented ingame it most definately should be a server option because it can bring a big change to the experience that the game brings. In a good way for some bad way for others and these opinions should be respected.

Method 1, commonly suggested:
Score, in one way or another inflicting a score disadvantage by dying.
Making people wanting to get a nice score more reluctant to die.
- Disadvantage, alot of people don't care about score whatsoever, especially in more competetive gameplay where people care about a teams reinforcement.

Method 2, commonly suggested:
Respawn, by reducing respawns connected to deaths or making it low from the start will make people reluctant to die.
-Disadvantage, although the longer the respawn gets the more people don't want to die, the more people want to play some other game or another server. People don't like to wait because the tedious part in it. Beside that in some games that only have 1 life (and about 10 minute round lenght) it doesn't change the way how the game is played much. (Mohaa, Cod, CS etc).

Method 3, commonly suggested:
Effects, Because you can't get fear of death let the system give it to you, things like blurring jerked movements and other things when say closer to an enemy or when bullets are raining over you. Force players to act as if they have some sort of fear of death.
-Disadvantage, players will loose some controll of their character, which can result is lots of hatred.

All 3 common options got problems, maybe a mix of the 3 would be nicest, plz gimme your opinions. I doubt we'll see anything like this ever added unless there is a system that beside being able to be turned off is loved by a majority of community aswell.
I'm interested in people their ideas of what could possibly fix it, when someone implies an idea don't try to stay reasonable and don't flame the person and just show what you think are disadvanatages to the system.

 

[Lruce Bee]

There is indeed another thread.

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=188514

 

[[VFD]HH]

I'd say apply Skinner's Psychology to this.

There could be a picture of the Stalin in the corner with a bubble caption saying "You suck" as long as you die to often.

Stop dieing to often and it goes away.


Honestly though, maps like Basovka promote strategies such as never fearing death. There are subtleties like flanking, taking cover, etc...but already we have waaay to many germans on the rocks doing nothing, and the easiest way to win is not to have some coordinated flanking action, or some awesome smoke (all which help), but generally just to get all those rifleman on the rocks to actually attack.

I'd say make reinforcements the winners of most matches. Make capping/time limits options for winning that smart/well coordinated teams can use. For example, on Koniigzplatz, the best Russian teams will win by quickly over running/avoiding the fritzes, and taking all the objectives very quickly. The best german teams will manage to bottle up/delay/etc the Russians, so they win with time. Average teams will win by just killing more than they died, so they win on reinforcements.

A good way to do this would be to change the timer and reinforcements work. Don't make them so linear. ET had a system that whenever complete an objective, you get more time. So instead of having 30 minutes, you start with 10, and get 4 minutes added on every time you cap an objective.

Furthermore, we could make it so a death drains reinforcements based on which objectives have been completed. Again on platz, for example, a death would drain a lot of the defenders and very few of the attackers reinforcements at the first objective, and by the last one a lot of the attackers and less of the defenders. This would encourage fall back defenses unless the defenders know they can win on time, and prevent complete shut outs.

IMO this would do a lot to make a more immersive fear of death. The first objectives represent the start of a fresh attack, with the commisars/NCOs nearby urging men on. The last objectives the men would be disorganized, attacks more worn out, and they are more likely to not be near anyone urging them on, but near people who do not want to go forward/ want to fall back. Just like real life, this would make it so attacks tend to be quickest in the beginning, bog down later on, and how much effort the higher command puts into it once it bogs down depends how quickly it bogged down.

Add this with respawns that promote fear of death the further in the attackers get (or something of that nature) and we could get an accurate system imo.

 

[Zetsumei]

Yep a big problem of getting fear of death is not advancing, and some classes needing to attack more than others and would result in dying more.

although indeed things like captures or possibly kills inside the capzone etc could give you some reinforcements back. Although aslong as people don't see a direct result in reinf being drained to themselves they won't care. and invididual reinforcements might not be the best solution either (although if you get more reinf every cap it wouldn't mean that new players would play the first 5 mins then wait the rest of the say 20 more remaining mins)

 

[[VFD]HH]

Yeah, if there were individual reinforcements, it would mean the people hanging back would be alive a lot longer. No matter how good one is, on a pub, the people actually helping the team (people advancing, mgers, snipers, and anybody else actually giving at all decent suppresive fire/doing anything useful) will be targeted primarily by the defenders, while the people hanging back and trying unsuccessfully to snipe the defenders will be mostly ignored.

If it was made so there were personal reinforcements, and being in a cap zone gave you a lot more, this could work for the most part. It would hurt MGers/snipers but maybe support classes (MG/Sniper/Commanders/Tankers) could be exempt somehow.

 

[Zetsumei]

There are many problems and many solutions some better than others thats why i started this thread, as a big assed brainstorm session

 

[Lruce Bee]

Bioshock deals with pain and death in another way particularly when it comes to inflicting it.
The moral issues are interesting.
There is a psychological edge to the decisions you make in the game but it's cranked up to such a degree that you really question your actions on an emotional level.
Not many games can do this effectively only because they're not allowed to.
There is a difference in mowing enemies down en-mass because that kinda expected in a shooting game but to steer the player towards some sort of emotional involvement in this act is another matter.

The question is as a player do you get more satisfaction taking 20 guys out from a thousand yards with a sniper rifle or bayoneting a single soldier you've tracked for 20 minutes into a corner and watched his face wince as you push the blade in.

Do you really want to simulate that?

 

[[VFD]HH]

From what I've read and seen, this is not about the psyche of killing other people. Furthermore, to a very large extent, WWII eastern front did not have these problems.

Both sides were fueled up on nationalism and racism. Both sides saw it as a hard duty, but both sides painted it (very successfully) as a defense for their homeland, and failure meant subjugation forever.

Sure, the Americans, British, and French did this too, but not nearly as well. The willingess of soldiers to keep on fighting in Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin, in massive pockets for weeks, and to keep on fighting, shows how fueled they were on these feelings.

Many Germans hated slavic people with a level of racism that would put the KKK to shame.

Most of the combat deaths (not disease, etc.) were not from small arms fire, and certianly not from CQB.

Even in CQB, one is usually to busy worrying about his own life, and assaulting, to actually take a moment to look at the dead.

Do questions of morality and ethics come up? Yes. Do soldiers think "That enemy was just a boy." or "I just killed that man." come up? Yes.

The truth is, though, they come up a lot less than we like to think they come up, and most soldiers deal with them by repressing it atm.

Bioshock is a completly different game, in a completly different genre, with a super exaggerated plot that makes these issues scream at you.

Most soldiers are only worrying about themselves, and to a certain extent their comrades. Feelings for the enemy vary from respect to hatred, but very rarely contain much sympathy, especially to the point where the soldier would shirk his duties for them.

 

[Kaneohe]

In all honesty, I think "fear of death" is unnecessary and would not fix any perceived problems with gameplay. Here are a few of my reasons, and some questions I would pose to you.

When you penalize a player for getting killed or putting themselves in dangerous situations, they will get frustrated easily. Rather than continue to risk themselves, they will instead resort to the simplest method of staying alive while scoring kills: camping! People already complain that other players won't run into the capture zone and instead hang back, trying to snipe the enemy. Would this improve at all?

In addition, it is often much easier for defending players to kill attacking players. The attacker not only needs to win the firefight, but also needs to get more of his fellows in the capture zone than the defenders have. The very nature of playing offense precludes the kind of carefulness and patience necessary to avoid death. The result of penalties for dying, in this case, would be that the capture point in question would become continually harder to capture - especially if said point was the last in the level. How is this fair?

Furthermore, one of the biggest reasons Red Orchestra doesn't have more players is its high learning curve. Do you want to increase that - further alienating new players from the game?

Finally, the better players - those getting more kills than deaths - already have the advantage. Why cement that advantage by penalizing others who die more often?

***

My point is simply this. Death, in-game, is its own punishment - you are delayed, your team's reinforcements drain, your team will have more difficulty taking whatever objective they pursue, your score stays stagnant, et cetera. Staying alive, in-game, is its own reward - you have a better chance of getting a high score and your team has a better chance of winning the round.

 

[Nagels]

The psychology of death ingame and the intended application of same would be a great concept to implement.

Limited respawns combined with fewer available artillery strikes would certainly help.
Arty strikes aimed at reinforcement intersections are wiping reinforcements just outside of spawn, think Basovka and many other maps.


How about an extra five points for having a higher kills to deaths ratio?

 

[[VFD]HH]

Ok, after thinking about a lot of different things, here is my solution. It would require some work by TWI to implement, which is one of the biggest problems.

Every map would be divided into different areas. There would be Active Cap Areas, Active Near Cap Areas, and "inactive areas." If you die in an inactive area, you take a hit on your reinforcements. Say it costs 5 reinforcements.

If you die in a near cap area, you take 2x deaths.

If you die in a cap zone, you take only 1 death.

To even it out, we make reinforcements semi-personal (I'll get to that later). For the most part, that means you have your own x number of lives. The total amount will be multiplied by a factor somewhere between 2 or 3, so on your average game reinforcments will run out slower.

The biggest thing is distinguishing areas. I'll give Basovka trench as an example. The Rocks and other common sniper areas would be considered inactive. That means campers would run out of reinf very quickly. However, the area between the rocks and the cap zone would be considered active. This means that if your running at the objective and you get killed (since I at least get killed 90% of the time right before the trench, and only maybe..maybe 1% is on the rocks or before) you will run out of reinforcements at the same speed or slower than you do currently (if your good at getting in the cap) but if you camp you run out much faster.

Active areas will have to be most of the conceivable places you will get shot if your running at an objective, where as inactive areas where will be common camping spots that do not help the team and are far from cap zones. Thus, the campers will run out of reinforcements much quicker, even if they die much less, cause of the sheer weight of dieing in those areas.

However, there needs to be a system so that for the last 5 minutes of a basovka match its not just the same kraut charging over and over, since he has a crapload of lives left.

Here is what I propose. Every minute, it counts how many people have zero lives. It then randomly takes a reinforcement from somebody reinforcements, and gives it to them. A person can only have one drawn per minute (so if there are three people with zero lives, it will find three different random people, and never the same person for 2 or three of hte lives.) Furthermore, if the person is below a certain threshold of reinforcements, (say he only has 5 reinforcements left) he is exempt. If everybody is below that threshold, the people with 0 reinforcements left are dead for good.

These numbers and such can all be tweaked, I was just giving them as an example. I think this would do several things.
1) Its a fear of death system that actively discourages camping.
2) It is a reinforcement system that rewards players for doing their job well. Things like attacking the warehouse repeatedly on Stalingrad will punish you to 1 minute respawns.
3) It makes it so teams are less likely to lose cause of reinforcements because of 1-2 people playing stupid.

Like I said, the biggest drawback, besides any coding, would be having to designate certain areas of certain maps as active zones (depending on what is capped.) Some maps (like Baskan Valley) may need almost none, while others (like Berezina) may need absolutely huge ones.

Also, because this would overall hurt the MGer and Sharpshooter classes, they could have their own set of rules. Using the numbers above, I would say they should always take 3x on a death unless they are in a cap zone, in which they take the normal 1x. This way, they don't get punished for being in support positions that are outside the normal combat areas (like they often are) but they also don't end up with as the two people that have reinforcements at the end (which they would if they were always considered in a cap zone or in an active area.) It may be, because they die less, that they could follow the same rules though.

I will admit this will reward being good, but it also rewards being careful. I do not find it hard to get in a cap zone, and once you get in slowly advance from room to room (or even hold your position) instead of just running from room to room rambo shooting everything. This I do not find a skill, but a matter of patience.

 

[Zetsumei]

Kaneohe

1 life would never work in redorchestra maps to start with if lower reinforcements would be the method to balance where i already added the negative effects of then there are ways to get rid of most problems.

Some classes need to die more than others some sides need to die more than others this could be implented in a system of personal reinforcements.
Say everybody on allies starts with X amount of reinforcement points.
And because the axis are attacking they start with 1.5*X amount of reinforcement points.
Some slots use more reinforcements say a sniper because its a rare weapon, so you'll have less reinforcements using that weapon but you should die less aswell this way possibly the weapon rotates more.
Now if you kill enemies in the capzone or be in the capzone killing enemies or capping could give you some individual reinf. Where the cap itself gives some more reinforcements to the entire team.

Afcourse this is just an example with plenty of flaws, but don't start complaining about a system or how it will effect without any exact system even discribed yet.

Beside camping is a game term, and is actually often a good thing to happen, you want people to camp and play safe because its realistic. But there should be a sufficient push for people to go forwards, and things like gaining reinforcements by pushing forwards could possibly archieve this.

Try to find solutions to problems ^^, don't only bicker about options others give.




If you wait till the end of the match you still lost it, winning of your team should be top priority above all else.

 

[[VFD]HH]

Zetsumei its amazing how similar our solutions are, I don't know if you read mine first before posting.


One quick comment about your system:
I am wary about "adding reinforcements" because it just seems like it would make the timer (which I think is the dumbest thing ever) even more important.
Adding reinforcements to the entire team pool for a cap though is an interesting idea. That I could for, I just don't like the idea of "kill somebody (or maybe a few somebodies) and get an extra reinforcement.

About clearing up my post and camping, I'm only against it when its one side camping when they are on the offensive, should be attacking, and have no reason for camping, like when you see 3/4 of an Axis team picking up rifles and trying to pick off allies from the rocks on Basovka.

 

[Kaneohe]

Kaneohe

1 life would never work in redorchestra maps to start with if lower reinforcements would be the method to balance where i already added the negative effects of then there are ways to get rid of most problems.

Um...what? One life would indeed be disaster. That's why I didn't advocate it.

Some classes need to die more than others some sides need to die more than others this could be implented in a system of personal reinforcements.
Say everybody on allies starts with X amount of reinforcement points.
And because the axis are attacking they start with 1.5*X amount of reinforcement points.
Some slots use more reinforcements say a sniper because its a rare weapon, so you'll have less reinforcements using that weapon but you should die less aswell this way possibly the weapon rotates more.
Now if you kill enemies in the capzone or be in the capzone killing enemies or capping could give you some individual reinf. Where the cap itself gives some more reinforcements to the entire team.

It's a decent solution, but I don't see much wrong with RO the way it is currently. What exactly does this fix? It seems to me players are just getting extra rewards for teamplay, which is a good idea, but doesn't do anything for your core "fear of death" agenda. Of course, I may be missing the point, so don't hesitate to explain it to me if I've missed something.

Try to find solutions to problems ^^, don't only bicker about options others give.

If you wait till the end of the match you still lost it, winning of your team should be top priority above all else.

Not trying to bicker, my apologies. And I believe we are in complete agreement on teamplay.

I still maintain, though, that "fear of death" is not necessary - and heavy-handed attempts to produce it are certainly not desirable.

 

[GaGrin]

I generally agree with Kaneohe; death is its own punishment and life its own reward. I think having a slew of effects to communicate suppressive effects or fear on characters who haven't been hit yet would be fine, and I think promoting teamplay is a good idea, but honestly, why frustrate players more when a game - no matter how realistic in premise - is supposed to be enjoyed.

I don't know about anyone else, but I always get annoyed when I get killed. I realise its normally my own fault, but you can only hide yourself so well and still be playing in the spirit of the game. Deaths are not only unavoidable in this kind of game, but within any single match you are guaranteed to have at least as many deaths (if not more) than kills across the server: IE for each kill one player scores a second player has to die. This is one of the biggest reasons I feel that the best solution to this is to remove death messages for everyone, and only report who killed you to the player who died.

If you make the penalty for death greater than the reward for kills the game as a whole becomes a negative experience. Its worth bearing some of this in mind when attempting to change such core elements in a games design.

 

[Zetsumei]

Zetsumei its amazing how similar our solutions are, I don't know if you read mine first before posting.
.

Your post wasn't there yet when i started to write mine

Gagrin
even with say lower lives you still like killing the enemy because when you're the person secretly hidden defending in that one building. Know that within 30 seconds that guy will be back knowing where you are. There are more advantages

Kaneohe,
I'm not saying the system works there are plenty of faults in it, but making dying crappier although it doesn't give fear of death will make people more reluctant to do suicide charges, when they are completely unneeded for.
Say suiciding to get a full set of grenades or ammo again.
Suiciding to get closer to the cap.
Those small things might change that is the main goal, to let people look around a corner for a second before walking in it. To say throw a grenade in a room before entering it. Slowly cut the pie instead of barging in and hoping your reflexes are fast enough.

One quick comment about your system:
I am wary about "adding reinforcements" because it just seems like it would make the timer (which I think is the dumbest thing ever) even more important.
Adding reinforcements to the entire team pool for a cap though is an interesting idea. That I could for, I just don't like the idea of "kill somebody (or maybe a few somebodies) and get an extra reinforcement.

About clearing up my post and camping, I'm only against it when its one side camping when they are on the offensive, should be attacking, and have no reason for camping, like when you see 3/4 of an Axis team picking up rifles and trying to pick off allies from the rocks on Basovka.

All i'm doing is adding ideas quickly adding some reinforcements for killing people in an important area could make people want to kill people over those areas rather than just waiting at the spawn. But its not as if i think what i posted would be a suggestion its somesort of a brainstorm more. I don't know what things could work towards the end goal of getting players to act more realistic, thats why i'm posting this to see what other people think. If there was a definate answer i'd have posted that as a suggestion.

 

[Mahnsikir]

I like the way the project reality handles death and re spawning, you start off with a re spawn of 30seconds then with every time you die your given a penalty time of 1 second added to your re spawn.

While this is not perfect and would have to be adjusted for RO, the cautious player who is avoiding death will have a low spawn time, while the player who runs off into a hail of bullets and dies 20 times in a row will end up having a much longer wait to re spawn and therefore adding more encouragement for people not to want to die.

Also this avoids personal reinforcements, keeping everyone re spawning and playing (hopfully as a team) till one side looses and not making people fear loosing all thier own reinforcments so that they just hide and hang back only worring for themselves and not working for and with the rest of the team.

 

[[VFD]HH]

IMO we don't want a solution that avoids personal reinforcements. I'm tired of great defense teams which fall back when they need to, and do absolutely awesome defenses, losing by reinforcements, because one person just has to keep charging a position that has been lost.

Konigzplatz and Stalingrad for example. No matter how good your defense is, if one or two people are being stupid, you will almost surely lose, cause they will lose reinforcements sooo fast!

The only way to solve that is personal reinforcements.

Edit: Btw, I think I forgot to say this, but they should make this a server side option. Basically, the server could choose personal reinforcements or team reinforcements, and with either choice variable reinforcements or linear reinforcements.

If its an option that the servers choose, I think everybody will be happy, no matter what the choice is.

 

[Zetsumei]

Personal reinf are things i like myself but kinda controlled in giving out reinforcements to the people. So the server gives out reinforcements to people say every X minutes maybe. So new players and players joining midway can still end up playing + teamcaps for additional reinf.

People should be punished themselves for wasting reinforcements but not in a way that they must end up waiting 20 minutes for a map to end or whatever. So the server handing out reinforcements slowly to the people could solve this issue.

But making the actual spawn time longer per death might be nice aswell but, i like people spawning together, although a logical answer to that could be something like letting people skip spawns when they die or whatever.

Keep ideas flowing ^^.

 

[SchutzeSepp]

a good system, is a system where you don't penalise but reward players.

players must be rewarded for staying alive as long as possible.
why not make a system where, if a player stays alive for 2 minutes in battle, a message pops up saying "shutzesepp was awarded the bronze close combat badge" after 4 minutes you get a silver one, and after 6 a golden one.

and like, once you have a bronze medal after 2 minutes, when you die your team doesn't lose a reinforcement point.
so staying alive at least 2 minutes, will greatly help your team. and everytime you see ".......... was awarded the bronze medal" you know he just allowed your team to fight longer.

and when you get a silver medal, your team gets +1 reinfircement!
and when you get a golden medal your team gets + 5 reinforcements!!!!!
but you need to at least get 1 kill per minute to activate this, otherwise afk players would would get medals for doing nothing!
and maps would need to be tweaked, so that you need those extra reinforcements to win.

this would also reflect the positive influence that veteran soldiers have on a battlegroup, the more veterans there are, the better a batlegroup fights

immagine on konigsplatz, the germans are out of reinforcements. the remaining soldiers decide to pull back to win time. as soon as one of them gets a medal, more friendly soldiers will spawn in again to help them. and the personal score would have to take in account the kills you made and the time you stayed alive.