Fear of Death

[LJFHutch]

All good points, I didn't really think too much about how it would integrate into a respawn system to be honest, it was originally intended as a way to have 1-life super hardcore games of coop/pvp missions in ArmA2 without having everyone quit the server the minute they died

A set number of lives per player would be interesting (and slightly frustrating), but the problem with that is that toward the end of the game the people who have been saving their lives up will go rambo like there's no tomorrow Likewise however, everyone who has been dying a lot will camp like there IS a tomorrow.

The method of 1 life per cap is probably pretty good for that fear of death though. In any case, I'm sure Tripwire will do a good job.

 

[dogbadger]

now i don't know about TWi's proposed heroes XP ranking up points system, but how about this-

the 'points' you aquire while playing increase exponentially the longer you are alive.
So for example, you would gain almost nothing for ten lives @1 min each, but a fair amount for 2 lives @ five mins each.
But 4 times as more than that say for 1 single life of 10mins.
Then you can keep reasonable respawn time so ppl don't get frustrated, but add a real incentive for survival.

However, you would of course have to be doing something to earn points while you're alive - but whatever points you get are multiplied by this factor determined by your time since spawning,

 

[Zetsumei]

A set number of lives per player would be interesting (and slightly frustrating), but the problem with that is that toward the end of the game the people who have been saving their lives up will go rambo like there's no tomorrow Likewise however, everyone who has been dying a lot will camp like there IS a tomorrow.

As I said reset the lives per cap but do not have many lives per cap. This means if you have say 3 lives per cap zone. That everybody at the end will have only 3 lives at the final cap.

Aka if you have 3 lives left and then cap something you do not get 6 lives, when something is capped the counter is reset and you are back at 3 lives. So with 3,2,1 or 0 lives you're back at 3.

Generally players get smart pretty quick, and adapt their playing style really quickly to adapt to the lives. In the arcade game Return to castle Wolfenstein, players adapted their playing style from running and gunning. So I do not see why it wouldn't happen as well in a game that's slower and less arcade from the get go.

 

[OneBloodyHero]

Well they already have the reinforcement system which depletes per death of a team-mate (squad leader representing more than others).

So, maybe you can modify so reinforcements deplete quicker for some objectives and not others to implement that fear of death factor. Or, increase how much a players death in percentage proportional to reinforcements; so a riflemens life is 5% rather than 0.5% of the total reinforcement pool. That way, the game can at least try to have a fear of death because if reinforcements deplete quickly, and as we all know, other players who already died have to wait it out.

 

[Zetsumei]

Well they already have the reinforcement system which depletes per death of a team-mate (squad leader representing more than others).

So, maybe you can modify so reinforcements deplete quicker for some objectives and not others to implement that fear of death factor. Or, increase how much a players death in percentage proportional to reinforcements; so a riflemens life is 5% rather than 0.5% of the total reinforcement pool. That way, the game can at least try to have a fear of death because if reinforcements deplete quickly, and as we all know, other players who already died have to wait it out.

If its a team based reinforcement pool you can't use it for those purposes as it doesn't touch the player too close (in clan/unit/community based game play with a select group of players it does work). For feedback to work in public games there must be direct consequences to your actions. A lot of people that perhaps initially try to save reinforcements will stop doing it when its futile because everybody else doesn't. Similarly to a system like communism it only works if everybody follows it. In public games you cannot control who you play with and it only takes one person to completely ruing it for everybody. Imagine a sniper taking up more reinforcement points than other players, a sniper when he's ramboing won't care that he uses the reinforcements of the rest of the team as long as he can continue going on with it.

People just don't use things sparingly if its shared with a big group of people they do not know, while those do not use it sparingly either. So pretty much using reinforcements as balancing method only works if generally your actions got direct consequences to yourself as an individual. You only need 1 person to mess things up with team based reinforcements, which is why it only works in a controlled environment where you know with whom you play.

Which is why I personally want to see individual reinforcements for public play and teambased reinf for clanplay, with some anti EGO measurements in place for individual reinfs. Like making sure that if someone runs out of reinforcements he won't have to wait longer than 5 minutes tops and that you won't have 2 people with loads of reinforcements while the rest of the team is out of it.

@ one bloody hero
Squadleaders take similar amounts of reinf as regular soldiers upon spawning. Just make a 1 player local server on a map and kill yourself you'll see that the reinf depletes equally sized steps. Killing or teamkilling a squadleader takes more points in the scoreboard, but spawning one just takes 1 reinforcement out of the pool.

 

[OneBloodyHero]

Squadleaders take similar amounts of reinf as regular soldiers upon spawning. Just make a 1 player local server on a map and kill yourself you'll see that the reinf depletes equally sized steps. Killing or teamkilling a squadleader takes more points in the scoreboard, but spawning one just takes 1 reinforcement out of the pool.

Yeah that's right. Mixed it up.

I think the system in place now works perfectly fine, pending some minor adjustments.

 

[Welcome_To_Hell]

Being a soldier means overcoming fear of death, putting it aside while you do the job, fear when you are back in the barrack or going out.

There a many fundamental flaws with current suggestion.

1) As a player i don't want to be scared, this isn't a "horror" game. This is shooter and it is realistic i, want to shoot people and see their body hit the ground and bleed out, or see them get shredded by my satchel charge or a grenade.

2) If i want to play deathmatch i go play COD. And if i play deathmatch than all of a sudden i am interrupted saying hey there stop messing around and do the obj.

3) Waiting 5 mins after a single death is crazy. I will get bored and quit the game. After the end of the match it may be acceptable, but still... that last player alive usually gets a kick vote because people are bored and they want to play the game and not wait around for respawn.

 

[Lucan946]

No. Hell no. Simulating fear of death for me in this game is not possible. My guy has no face; I don't care what happens to him. I don't even think about him. He's just something I use to kill the guys other people are playing as. He has no character. Therefore, I will never fear death, I'll just be really bored and annoyed waiting for a 5min respawn. Now, that being said, I think a "Everybody-gets-1-life" gamemode type might not be too bad.

 

[OneBloodyHero]

The problem with one-life game mode, even though it would help simulate fear of death, is that it would surmount to camping by opposing sides.

 

[Lucan946]

The problem with one-life game mode, even though it would help simulate fear of death, is that it would surmount to camping by opposing sides.

What I'm suggesting for one life would be kinda like firefight, just with 1 life. So your objective is to kill the opposing team. It wouldn't be objective-based.

 

[Zetsumei]

Countdown is the one life gametype...

 

[<animal>INSTINCT]

the only way to conceivably recreate a "fear of death" is to utilize a neural interface like in The Matrix minus the real people dying of course

when you control every movement of your in-game avatar, you also inherit their sensory inputs, albeit toned down a bit. So you see what they see, feel what they feel, and hear what they hear.

Now when someone gets shot, you can't actually transmit the sensation of being shot to that person's mind, they would die from the pain-induced spasms. But if you switched that incredible pain with something equivalent to a numbing electric shock. That would definately make people less ballsy in the game




Or you could just invent a new mouse that shocks you with the same voltage as an electrical socket every time you die

On second thought, the second idea might be a lot cheaper...

 

[Zetsumei]

i think the goal is not so much to make people actually fear death, as to make people play more cautious. And that can be achieved by both punishments and rewards.

 

[RO.Player]

I'm curious how it would go if each person had a number of respawns / reinforcements.

So in ROOST, each player would have on average 10 lives, if you have 160 total spawns for reinforcements on a 16v16 server.

If instead, each player gets 10 respawns, people might be more careful about getting killed, since they can't leach from the pool.

You could even incentivise different roles by giving them fewer or higher spawns - like less spawns for snipers (makes sure they stay back and do their job).

100% agree with this post
and nice sig, btw

 

[FlyXwire]

And that can be achieved by both punishments and rewards.

Onerous death penalties or respawn delays just end up turning most players off. As I mentioned on the first page of this thread, it's through the rank-up system where "fear of death" can be encouraged by rewarding staying-alive behavior.

Many have maligned FPS rank-up systems, but actually these have the potential of being a positive method for interjecting "fear of death" into gamieplay, and are a means for encouraging the use of authentic tactics which can follow when players actually worry about trying to stay alive.

Other FPS games allow ranking-up by assessing a player's overall kills only, even if it takes more deaths to achieve these. Unfortunately, what follows is gameplay where no consideration for "fear of death" applies. This is why kill/death ratios need to be considered in assessing individual performance, so that players equate success with not dieing too, and are rewarded when their performance also incorporates self-preservation into the achievement process.

 

[LJFHutch]

Onerous death penalties or respawn delays just end up turning most players off. As I mentioned on the first page of this thread, it's through the rank-up system where "fear of death" can be encouraged by rewarding staying-alive behavior.

Many have maligned FPS rank-up systems, but actually these have the potential of being a positive method for interjecting "fear of death" into gamieplay, and are a means for encouraging the use of authentic tactics which can follow when players actually worry about trying to stay alive.

Other FPS games allow ranking-up by assessing a player's overall kills only, even if it takes more deaths to achieve these. Unfortunately, what follows is gameplay where no consideration for "fear of death" applies. This is why kill/death ratios need to be considered in assessing individual performance, so that players equate success with not dieing too, and are rewarded when their performance also incorporates self-preservation into the achievement process.

The problem with that is it doesn't make them fear death as much as it makes them try to get points, which is the opposite of realistic gameplay. The same thing happens in BC2 all the time, you don't fear death, you just get irritated when someone interrupts your "kill spree" - even I got this today when playing.

On a general note, without fear of death you play like you do in Call of Duty: you run around and shoot, you take ridiculous risks you would not in real combat and dying doesn't matter anywhere near as much as killing the other guy does. Last I checked HoS is trying to be realistic, so they will have to have some kind of fear of death.

RO has that at the moment, but whether or not it is enough ... who knows.

 

[Zetsumei]

Other FPS games allow ranking-up by assessing a player's overall kills only, even if it takes more deaths to achieve these. Unfortunately, what follows is gameplay where no consideration for "fear of death" applies. This is why kill/death ratios need to be considered in assessing individual performance, so that players equate success with not dieing too, and are rewarded when their performance also incorporates self-preservation into the achievement process.

Kill death ratio is not complete though.

Time plays a major factor in gameplay. Someone with 1 kill in the entire game with 0 deaths isn't better than a person with 10 kills and 1 death. Kills/Minute in a game where there is a strict time limit play an important role.
So both Kill/Death ratio are important as a the Kill/Minute ratio.

Nothing however will give a player true fear of death, but if a player gets appraised and rewarded/punished for his actions he's more likely to play in the way the mapper intends to have someone play him. Logically you need to find the correct balance for allowing a player to do his thing, and steering a team into playing how you want them to play. For clan matches for instance a team shouldn't be steered by any system.

 

[FlyXwire]

I can't see how any game is going to produce real "fear of death", so if you believe in this premise from the beginning, then I guess our understandings about this will always be divergent.

What designers can create in games are systems where you feel invested in the gameplay through wanting to score successes, and this is usually done by gaining victories, or amassing points, or attaining attributes or objects, or just by being able to advance in the game by opening up new levels, missions, or opportunities for play. In this respect, there is an essential difference between a rank-up system that makes no distinction between the kill tallies needed for scoring successes (as in COD/BFBC2), and one which computes personal deaths suffered before kill victories are granted. So a K/D system that requires players to consider staying alive for their kill *streaks* to count differs from one that completely ignores deaths in the equation.

It's through making the connection between killing the enemy/and not dieing in the process for "scoring" to count, is where a game's rank-up system can advance an idea of "fear of loss".

As it is now in games like COD/BFBC2, dieing is easy and mostly irrelevant, and almost everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.

 

[FlyXwire]

Zetsumei, I believe your suggestions are meant to be mission-based solutions, where I see the rank-up system as being a more universal means of introducing "fear of death" through "fear of loss" (and the lack of character progression). I don't want to see rules that limit playing times, or respawns, or punishments for dieing, but instead would like a systems that ranks staying alive with gaining achievements or rewards.

If we are to consider deeper the whole issue of mission-based solutions instead, then I would suggest the whole consideration of force-ratios be looked at first. That is, why do we see online missions where all sides are equal in players to start with? Does this make sense in attack-defend modes where the offensive force should expect to need superior strength/numbers to overcome the defenders? Not really, but it's almost traditional now to expect equal player counts on each side, and it's become assumed that this is the starting point for our thinking about mission-based solutions. What follows are things like mission time limiters, repawning limiters, and a whole host of artifical rules meant to compensate for the gamey results.

It's just by belief that there's simpler solutions for creating a more authentic gaming expereince online, rather than going down the road of placing more timers or limits on our basic ability to play these games.

 

[Zetsumei]

I'm not even talking about the solutions, there are just 2 ways to get things done rewarding behaviour or punishing for behaviour. And the biggest effect can be obtained by doing both.

And there are multiple ways how to reward or punish. These could be things that affect you in game, like you have only 5 lives per cap zone. Or things that affect your ego like affecting your statistics, achievements and points.

The issue with the latter is that a lot of people do not care for points and scores. Now in contrast there are many that actually do care which is why those systems should be used to steer people into a certain way. However a lot of people would remain unaffected.

If dying affect your game personally then people are simply more likely to be more careful. Which is why at least optionally I hope servers can have individual reinforcements.

Unequal sides in combat affects the balance of a map, and thus an unbalanced map can be made balanced. However it doesn't change how cautious people play so it doesn't really have anything to do with the topic of "fear of death".

Limited reinforcements have shown in multiple games that it does make people play more cautious, and if that happened in arcade games then I do not see why it wouldn't happen in RO either. Logically some people prefer more frantic game play which is why server options are good.

Currently there already is a max amount of reinforcements for the entire team, but that number is too distant to an individual player. Most players don't have a clue how many lives he got on average and the pool nearly feels like infinite. Its realistic to have reinforcements as battles weren't fought with unlimited manpower. And what I'm saying is that people should feel a more direct notion to their addition to the depletion of the reinforcements.

The usage of the word authentic gaming experience is a bit odd. As having only 1 life is for a lot of games an authentic gaming experience. Where as having unlimited lives is authentic as well. Trying to find a sweet spot between commonly found authentic gaming experiences, doesn't suddenly make it not authentic.