{"id":1565,"date":"2010-02-18T14:59:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T21:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2010-02-18T14:59:56","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T21:59:56","slug":"does-sto-need-a-meaningful-cost-of-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/2010\/02\/does-sto-need-a-meaningful-cost-of-dying.html","title":{"rendered":"Does STO need a “meaningful” cost of dying?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"StarIn a recent interview<\/a>, Star Trek Online’s exec producer Craig Zinkievich indicated that STO might need a more significant “death penalty” than just going back to the nearest respawn point.\u00a0 Or at least, that’s what some players are clamoring for.<\/p>\n

Zinkievich explained Cryptic’s feelings on death penalties, saying that they are usually just a time penalty, preventing players from getting straight back into the game and having fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get that people want to feel a sense of risk when they\u2019re fighting in battles, but if the only emotion you feel when you\u2019re playing a game is fear that you\u2019re going to lose some time due to an arbitrary gameplay mechanic, we\u2019re probably not doing something right, \u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, the game’s developers aren’t against the principle entirely; \u201cwe 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m of two minds here, of course.\u00a0 I don’t know about anyone else, but seeing my beloved ship blow up and suffering for 30 seconds of cooldown before getting back into action does feel meaningful.<\/p>\n

And what are the alternatives?\u00a0 Thinking of CoX and CO and (I believe) WoW …<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Loss of experience or slowdown of experience gain (CoX):\u00a0 You could justify this as saying that Star Fleet looks askance on ships being driven to (“near”) destruction, and so your meteoric rise to the admiralty is slowed for a bit.\u00a0 I find this irksome, but not horrifically bad.\u00a0 (By the way, when is STO getting a “Level Pact” feature?)<\/li>\n
  2. Loss of capability (CO):\u00a0 As you succeed in CO missions, you get stars, up to five, which provide a buff.\u00a0 As you get killed, you lose the stars.\u00a0 This has the paradoxical effect of making you less effective against the things you have to go up against again.\u00a0 I don’t like it.<\/li>\n
  3. Loss of swag (WoW):\u00a0 I’m thinking here of the mechanic of having your body looted, etc.\u00a0 This is perhaps the most realistic — a finite chance of some system or feature on your ship getting wiped out, or inventory lost — even (perhaps with successive failures) the death of a Bridge Officer.\u00a0 Eek.\u00a0 Most realistic, but I’d be seriously hating it.\u00a0 It suffers from the disadvantage of #2 (making you less effective against a foe you’ve already established is dangerous), unless you delay it until after the battle\/mission is over (you survived, but those great twin disruptor cannons that your engineer kept together with spit and baling wire have finally given up the ghost — time to return to Star Fleet for a refit).\u00a0 Losing a BO, though — yeah, I can see it game-wise, but I’d hate it play-wise.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So the variation on #3 perhaps makes most sense if you have to do something about deaths. And, yes, it adds some “realism.”\u00a0 I’m still not convinced it’s necessary, or that folks who take untoward risks now will be all that much less likely to do so even with penalties.<\/p>\n

    Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In a recent interview, Star Trek Online’s exec producer Craig Zinkievich indicated that STO might need a more significant “death penalty” than just going back to the nearest respawn point.\u00a0 Or at least, that’s what some players are clamoring for. Zinkievich explained Cryptic’s feelings on death penalties, saying that they are usually just a time … Continue reading “Does STO need a “meaningful” cost of dying?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gameplay","category-resources-rules","category-star-trek-online"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}