Craig Zinkievich was interviewed again, and raised an interesting point about a “death penalty” in Star Trek Online (Emphasis mine):
Why isn’t there much of a death penalty? There are a few suggestions around that could be introduced to stop players from carelessly throwing their ships into battles; Your Bridge Officers could be incapacitated for a minute or two after a defeat while they’re healed in sick bay or, after a number of deaths, you may have to return to a star base to get repaired before certain modules stop working.
We currently have a death penalty in-game. When you die, your crew comes back depleted and has to slowly build back up. This means your hull and other systems don’t repair as quickly as if they were at full capacity. And on the ground, you’re forced to retreat to a respawn point behind where you expired.
In terms of traditional death penalties, think about what a death penalty really is: It’s a time penalty. You died; therefore we’re putting you in time out for X amount of time. Or, you died, therefore we’re forcing you to spend X amount of money, which takes Y amount of time to earn. Why would you force people to stop having fun, and sacrifice their free time, just to disincentivize behavior in a videogame? I get that people want to feel a sense of risk when they’re fighting in battles, but if the only emotion you feel when you’re playing a game is fear that you’re going to lose some time due to an arbitrary gameplay mechanic, we’re probably not doing something right. It’s like asking why single-player games have quicksave options. But that said, we are looking into finding a meaningful way to give players a deeper sense of loss when something bad happens. But we want it to feel right, rather than just like an arbitrary penalty.
That actually makes a lot of sense.
One of the better Podcasts/Vids on STO out there interviewed Zinc last week, many good things were covered.
The interview starts at 19:32.
You left off a letter. 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=memtK5ABI8s
It’s a shame that they are seriously looking at “death penalty” stuff “in the next month or so.” Really have to wonder whether that’s a vocal minority on the forums imposing their preferences.
Eeep!
Oh, it has always been the PvPr’s that have been demanding a Death Penalty…and for most PvPr’s, unless it is full looting and loss of levels’ they won’t like it.
So, since they will never be happy, you really shouldn’t do anything that pisses off the majority of your player base. From what i have seen in the Forums, the loudest complainers were the same ones that demanded Klingons, and then complained about how the Klingons were done and have demanded that the Klingons be just like the Fed’s…and then got pissed off and refused to do any of the things brought over from the Fed side because is was jsut the same as the stuff on the Fed side.
My hopes, based on what Zinc has been saying, is that whatever the Death Penalty STO goes with, it is going to be something minor like a 1% ding to XP, nothing major.