Fear of death, what methods are there?

[Atomskytten]

Fear of death for the masochistic player!

Fear of death for the masochistic player!

Real world physical pain works better! - Hook up a device to the PC that inflicts pain on the player everytime he/she gets hit/killed (inflicts more more pain when killed) and fear of ingame death would exist in a very tangible and effective way allthough I have an idea that not very many would use such a device for some reason or the other

The paininflicting device could be linked to the PC via a USB port and the way of inflicting pain could be through use of non-lethal electric shock applied to various parts of the body or an automatic softgun that shoots the unfortunate player whenever hit or killed ingame.

On the bonus side we will get the pre battle nerveousnes and the shakes in the anticipation of recievieng pain and that should bring some new and entertaining aspects to the game.

 

[Rak]

IMO, rather than imposing "Fear Of Death", we should find a way to encourage teamplay and thus roleplay. Super-long spawn times, huge score penalties will just throw people away from the game.

My vote is for a Squad system and an advanced communication system to encourage both. You will only get people playing properly when you this. Other wise rambo still will be a rambo even if you use USB electric chargers

 

[Proud_God]

My take on fear of death only involves non-riflemen:

When a you die, you respawn as a rifleman and your role-slot is disabled for a certain amount of time.

For example: you are a MGer and you get shot. You will respwan as a rifleman. After 2 minutes the MG slot becomes available again, at which point everyone on your team can try to select it again (first one gets it).

List of benefits:
* increases fear of death for non-riflemen classes
* further enhances the importance of special weapons like snipers, MGs, tanks,...
* greater feeling of achievment when you take out that pesky sniper/mg/tank..., since you know it will not insta-respawn
* special weapons get more rotation in the team

 

[Tanuki]

Any sort of personal reinforcments, or indeed punishment for dieing would seem to be difficult to manage for public server where players come and go all the time.

As it is you continualy see players come on, who throw themselves on the guns of the enemy and deplete the teams reinforcments. Then leave or change teams once they can no longer spawn. Managing this at an individual level wouldn't in my opinion lessen this. Then there is the question of how you would manage the reinforcment levels of players joining to replace those that have exhausted their reinforcments and left. I'm sure it would be frustrating for a team who has expertly deffended against one group of players and worn down their reinforcments to have to face a whole new wave of fresh players with full reinfocments.

For me mentaly keeping track of my personal Kill to Death ratio is a motivation for me to stay alive. But ultimatly I am motivated by the desire for my team to win, and for me to have played a part in that win. In order to do that I try to balance a strong focus on attacking or holding the objectives, while staying mindful of the teams reinforcment levels.

A team that has a large number of players that play like this usually wins. But more often than not on public servers you tend to see players that are either overly protective of their life, and dont attack re****ing in a team loss, or overly carefree of their life, and the team looses on reinforcments.

Ultimatly if a player is not interested in helping the team win there is very little you can do to force them into a playing style that will help the team win. The only sugestion I can think of is a system that makes them more aware of the state of their force. Some thing along the line of regular bulletins on screen telling them that if the team continues to lose reinforcments this fast for the amount of ground taken they will lose.

It's important to remember that it's the quality of the gameplay in RO that keeps us all comming back. I for one get my gameplay satisfaction from working as a team to capture or hold ground. Not from sitting in a foxhole afraid to show my head for fear of death.

 

[Zetsumei]

Any sort of personal reinforcments, or indeed punishment for dieing would seem to be difficult to manage for public server where players come and go all the time.

As it is you continualy see players come on, who throw themselves on the guns of the enemy and deplete the teams reinforcments. Then leave or change teams once they can no longer spawn. Managing this at an individual level wouldn't in my opinion lessen this. Then there is the question of how you would manage the reinforcment levels of players joining to replace those that have exhausted their reinforcments and left. I'm sure it would be frustrating for a team who has expertly deffended against one group of players and worn down their reinforcments to have to face a whole new wave of fresh players with full reinfocments.

For me mentaly keeping track of my personal Kill to Death ratio is a motivation for me to stay alive. But ultimatly I am motivated by the desire for my team to win, and for me to have played a part in that win. In order to do that I try to balance a strong focus on attacking or holding the objectives, while staying mindful of the teams reinforcment levels.

A team that has a large number of players that play like this usually wins. But more often than not on public servers you tend to see players that are either overly protective of their life, and dont attack re****ing in a team loss, or overly carefree of their life, and the team looses on reinforcments.

Ultimatly if a player is not interested in helping the team win there is very little you can do to force them into a playing style that will help the team win. The only sugestion I can think of is a system that makes them more aware of the state of their force. Some thing along the line of regular bulletins on screen telling them that if the team continues to lose reinforcments this fast for the amount of ground taken they will lose.

It's important to remember that it's the quality of the gameplay in RO that keeps us all comming back. I for one get my gameplay satisfaction from working as a team to capture or hold ground. Not from sitting in a foxhole afraid to show my head for fear of death.

If people change team they keep their own reinforcements,

and new players joining get some reinforcements after some time when their team archieves something or when the timer continues. As in you dont get all your reinforcements at the start of a game you get them devided a bit over the game. Meaning that players can still join midgame, but they might start really low on reinf.

 

[CCCP Kirby]

Hey control freaks, get a life and let people play the damn game (which they paid for).
They bought the game just like you and to do such a drastic change would be very unfair.

-There will never be "fear of death" in a simple video game (without devices etc.)
-Play arma or AAO, even there people do some stupid things and then have to wait for minutes. But guess what? Next round they do the same stupid thing again...
-Why do you think so many people died in WW2? Sure they were all dumb noobs who didn't take cover and camped 24/7. Go learn something about russian strategies/tactics before you open your mouths.
People did rush and pulled some crazy stunts in WW2 because they had to.
Those damn newbies at normandy and iwo jima should have listen to all the uber 1337 internet soldiers here. I mean, why didn't they just camp and wait until the krauts are out of ammo?

 

[[VFD]HH]

Well, that could not work if the two teams do not start with the same amount of reinf.

Say every soviet starts with 200 lives and every german gets 70. You join soviets, get your 200, and switch to germans.

My idea would be whenever you switch teams, join a game...essentially whenever you join a team, you start with the average amount of lives of a person on that team currently. If you were in that server in say the past 5 minutes (either leaving and rejoining or switching teams or whatever cause you were low on reinforcements and wanted them back) it will have a clause..the amount you had before you left/switched teams/etc or the average of that team, whatever is lower.

 

[[VFD]HH]

Played a lot last nght, and it seems like more and more you have the completely cowardly soldier hanging back, and the extreme rambo who will keep on running/not taking cover when an MG is firing straight at him.

 

[Reddog]

Until we have some sort of USB peripheral that shocks your balls when you die there'll never be fear of death in a video game

 

[REZ]

Just make the guns more deadly. Have any of you ever shot one of the standard rifles in real life? The Mosin or Kar? The bullet hits the target at the end of the range almost instantly, but in game I can dodge bullets like nobodys business. That shouldnt be possible. I mean how can you really just sidestep back and forth and make a guy who is right in front of you miss a whole clip.. just not right.

As much as I resist mentioning this game on this forum (because it's still in first release), Insurgency does fear of death pretty good. You can't run out into the open when you know there are guys at the other end of the street - you'll die quickly. Also, another good thing INS does which creates fear is no muzzle flash with every shot - this way you have no idea where the shots are coming from - that one little thing slows the gameplay down. In RO, I'll run out on purpose just to get the other guy to shoot - I'm not terribly scared to get hit, plus the flash gives away his position.

If you want fear of death you need to make the game a LOT harder, which I dont think TWI is willing to do. IMO. Also, you have to realise that if you try to implement a serious fear of death, the game will grind to a halt and have everyone hiding most of the time... which would then require long(er) clock times even for small maps.

 

[Reddog]

Actually Rez the bullet flight time is pretty close to reality, you can notice the delay in reality at 100m and really notice it at 300m with the real things. Hitting a moving target is never easy, even at close range.

The only reason crossing the street in INS can be murder is because it has absolutely zero ballistic modelling. Bullets in that game aren't bullets, they're insta-hit lasers.

 

[Nimsky]

The only reason crossing the street in INS can be murder is because it has absolutely zero ballistic modelling. Bullets in that game aren't bullets, they're insta-hit lasers.

That, and the hitboxes are huge, and there are no muzzleflashes. And you can't strafe, so the player develops tunnel vision when he sprints. But I doubt we'd want all that in RO.

 

[Oldih]

The only reason crossing the street in INS can be murder is because it has absolutely zero ballistic modelling. Bullets in that game aren't bullets, they're insta-hit lasers.

And bullets in RO are nothing more than just almost-insta lazerzzzz also. It is quite hard to accurately simulate that kind of crap inside the monitor. Same applies with some aiming methods, like

 

[Crusher]

well I would like to see the strafing to be slower and I kinda like the no strafing while running in INS since it's quite hard to turn while running. And maybe replace the "swooosh" when a bullet flies by with a "crack".
TBH, I had a couple of times in RO where I had fear of death, like when I'm running from a german with a MP40 while I have a rifle.
AFAIK the chance of you killing a person with an smg who's firing at you while you have a rifle at close quarters should be decreased, maybe by increased swaying or not being able to shoot when hit.

 

[Solo4114]

A few thoughts.

1.) Fear of death is a pipe dream. You can't make people afraid to die in a video game. What you'll make them afraid to do is certain actions, but that's it. And doing so may have wide-reaching negative consequences (IE: "fear of death" is implemented somehow so people leave the game in droves, camp and plink even more than they already do, etc.).

2.) What you want is not fear of death but, as has been mentioned, encouragement of teamwork. Most people piss and moan about fear of death because of things like "I'm sick of rambos running around and hipshooting everything in sight" or "nobody ever works together. If there was fear of death you'd HAVE to move as a squad" and such. You don't want to make people afraid to play the game. You want to encourage them to play the game smarter.

3.) Much as I dislike other aspects of the game (IE: conefire, spammy gameplay, dolphin diving, unbalanced vehicles, etc.), BF2's squad system really is pretty damn cool. At the very least, it gives you the tools to work together, and gives people some extra points for doing so. While the point system could still be abused, without anything other than who has top score at the end of the round at stake, I'd have MUCH less of a problem REWARDING people for doing the RIGHT thing than punishing them for doing the wrong thing.


Someone here mentioned Skinnerian psychology and operant conditioning. I think that's a good idea in general, but remember that positive reinforcement is often more effective than punishment. With that in mind, I'd say give people incentives (IE: points) to work together and complete objectives. In BF2, when your commander says "Take out that tank!" and your squad does it, everyone gets points. The squad leader also acts as a mobile spawn point, which might be an interesting dynamic to include (as a server-side or map-by-map option, of course -- some might want to keep the "human wave" elements of some maps). Regardless, my main point is that Fear of Death, the great white whale of realistic FPS gaming, isn't even the right target. Better to encourage teamplay than discourage actions that SOMETIMES are the right thing to do.

 

[Franc-Tireur]

Well , i think that the problem also lies in the fact that RO is an "occupation" style of game , you have many lives and you have to capture objectives before the timer is over , so that encourage people to rush and die quickly , especially in public server where you meet some players enjoying the game differently , some fighting their own war alone , others more teamworkers .

I don't know if people here know the game "Hidden and Dangerous 2 " , but it was a very nice game back then , close to RO in the gameplay , except that the maps were much smaller , there was an "occupation" mode , like RO , you had to capture zones/flags in WWII scenarios (you could play the British SAS , Germans , Soviets , Americans , Japanese all with their weapons) etc.

But you also had the "Objectives" mode , in this mode , you only had 1 life
, and usually , it was very interesting cause you had to use teamplay and strategy carefully in order to survive and complete the objectives (like taking a fortress , infiltrating an ennemy radio station to send a message , or sabotaging a railway ) and wait/watch about 10 minutes until the round is over . The good stuff about the "objective mode" is that stealth and teamplay were the main ingredient for victory , so it kinda forced you to play smart and cover each other carefully .

I know though , that this mode might not be popular in the RO community , as many people do not like to wait and are not necessarily interested in the more or less realistic/hardcore play that requires more patience and get you less frags/action , but personally , i loved it and you were really "afraid" to die , cause you knew you had only one life and that your teammates needed you alive to complete the objectives .

 

[Solo4114]

I used to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer, and occasionally played on "One life to live" servers. It was interesting, but got old fast. I have no objections to a mutator that folks could run allowing "one life" servers, but I think it'd be best left as a mutator.

The "fear of death" issues that people address usually are more widespread than that. They want the game changed across the board, not simply a mutator (kind of like how some people want AB adopted as part of stock RO).


Like I said, though, I don't think "fear of death" is even really the issue. I think it's more about encouraging the RIGHT behavior (or at least behavior that people believe is right) without punishing folks for doing the "wrong" thing. Besides, there's plenty of instances where you SHOULD rush forward with your PPSh firing full auto from the hip. Sometimes that's how you clear out the enemy from a position while your Riflemen squaddies back you up from long-range and then move in to help you cap.

 

[Zell]

Every copy of RO should come with a large muscular gorilla man with dark sunglasses (for effect) in the box, who stands behind you as you play. Every time you die he would just punch you in the face. Problem solved.

 

[fOgGy]

The only game that makes me fear of dying is GRAW 2 for some reason (when you are shot the whole screen instantly turns blood red) and it also has good suppression effects, the loud explosions and gunshot noises that fly past you are top notch and really do want to make you run or duck for cover. I wish RO: O had these features too.

 

[Pishi]

From what I've played in RO, I've come to the conclusion of how to best make the Player value his/her life. Just make more maps such as Leningrad, in which the player can easily last for 10-15 minutes as long as they don't run into MG fire. The fact that you've been alive for so long makes you not want to die.