Death

[TheKhakinator]

Actually, my old post doesn't reflect my current opinion.

I think that it would be awesome to only have one life and then you restart in games like the original Doom. Why? Well, you're trying to bust your way out of a place that's infested with aliens and demons, so, if you die, then you clearly didn't make it out, did you? It would also be a lot of fun in a game like Hellgate London (with procedurally generated dungeons). It would be great, cause you'd have to be really careful. If the game didn't make it too hard to build your strength then you'd have an awesome game that would also be uber tense. However, it would SUCK in a game where you can't control combat well, like a whole lot of games. This is really a concept I think we'll only see from either freeware developers or a developer trying something really new.

With save games, I think you should be able to save progress, but if you die, you still have to start again. This is so you can stop and have a break, but not just reload from the same point and have another go.

Looking at games like Prey and Portal, anyone think that jazzing up the tired old FPS with random physics just isn't that great? I haven't played 'em, so... yeah.

[fog]

With save games, I think you should be able to save progress, but if you die, you still have to start again. This is so you can stop and have a break, but not just reload from the same point and have another go.

Dead Rising has quite an interesting save game method although it's not to everyones taste.  You can only have one save game.  Then when you die you can restart from your last save point (nothing unusual about that) or you can restart from the beginning keeping all increased abilities you've aquired so far.  It does wonders for the replayability as each time you start your characters stats are slightly better than the previous time and you can make a bit more progress.

Looking at games like Prey and Portal, anyone think that jazzing up the tired old FPS with random physics just isn't that great? I haven't played 'em, so... yeah.

The FPS genre is looking particularly tired right now.  Portal looks really interesting but that's because of the puzzle possibilities it opens up but it's not the sort of idea we need to revolutionise FPS as it would be totally out of place in most senarios (imagine a WW2 game with a teleport system!)

The main problem with FPS is they are all far too linear.  There are a million and one GTA clones so when are we going to get a Half Life style game with truly open level design instead of the fixed paths we have now?

[TheKhakinator]

I've said it before, but Call Of Duty epitomized the linear nature.

I think death in Trauma Center is kinda crappy, because when you fail, someone else takes over from you, rather than the patient dying. There should be an option to change it so that it says the patient died (which you know they did) rather than some "better" surgeon taking over.

[fog]

I've said it before, but Call Of Duty epitomized the linear nature.

And endless respawning enemies.  Gah.

I think death in Trauma Center is kinda crappy, because when you fail, someone else takes over from you, rather than the patient dying. There should be an option to change it so that it says the patient died (which you know they did) rather than some "better" surgeon taking over.

I'd guess that was an "ethics" decision so they could avoid you actually killing someone in the game (something as simple as that could even effect the games parental rating in some countries)

[las6]

And endless respawning enemies.  Gah.

That was only apparent in Call of Duty 2. There it was kinda like omnipresent, whereas in the original CoD there were only few places where you fought Waves of people. But it wasn't endless, as after beating enough of em would progress the game so that you would get some air support that would take care of the enemies.

But what about randomly spawning (teleporting?) enemies. Someone could argue that some enemies just can teleport at wish, like in doom3, but why don't they teleport to safety after getting hit? This very thing is what ruined otherwise perfectly fine game like Rainbow Six Vegas. There you have a level where you order your team to push a button and suddenly a huge group of really bad-ass, grenade friendly enemies appear from the distance. And as a nice surprise with a slight delay a door opens behind you and a lone soldier walks from there and shoots you in the back. After dying god knows how many times like this, I went on a stakeout and took care of the lone wolf. Then I peeked in. It was a dead end, a storage room. So I quickly returned back to my original place to try and take care of the grenade-friendly enemies up ahead. Only to be shot in the back again.

As it turns out, these enemies just spawn one by one in the room behind me. Room with no other doors or means of access other than the door they use to reach me.

[fog]

And endless respawning enemies.  Gah.

That was only apparent in Call of Duty 2. There it was kinda like omnipresent, whereas in the original CoD there were only few places where you fought Waves of people. But it wasn't endless, as after beating enough of em would progress the game so that you would get some air support that would take care of the enemies.

But what about randomly spawning (teleporting?) enemies. Someone could argue that some enemies just can teleport at wish, like in doom3, but why don't they teleport to safety after getting hit? This very thing is what ruined otherwise perfectly fine game like Rainbow Six Vegas. There you have a level where you order your team to push a button and suddenly a huge group of really bad-ass, grenade friendly enemies appear from the distance. And as a nice surprise with a slight delay a door opens behind you and a lone soldier walks from there and shoots you in the back. After dying god knows how many times like this, I went on a stakeout and took care of the lone wolf. Then I peeked in. It was a dead end, a storage room. So I quickly returned back to my original place to try and take care of the grenade-friendly enemies up ahead. Only to be shot in the back again.

As it turns out, these enemies just spawn one by one in the room behind me. Room with no other doors or means of access other than the door they use to reach me.

Gah don't say that about Rainbow Six Vegas lol.  I'm just about to get that for the 360 and now I'm gonna spend the whole game dreading that moment

And to be fair to CoD2 they only respawn until you advance and in many instances add to the intensity.

[las6]

And to be fair to CoD2 they only respawn until you advance

well that doesn't make it any more okay. See, who the hell in their right minds would advance if you could take the enemies out one by one and then advance safely instead of rushing? Oh wait, this game is all about rushing. I know cos I completed few levels just by running through them. It was very stupid way to play, but it was effective.

Rainbow Six Vegas is a great game (and until that point I kinda liked the single player as well), especially if you play it in Co-op or multiplayer modes. I would imagine it being even greater with headsets (I just played it with my friend in a mini Lan). The terrorist hunts are useless, though. Too many enemies compared to the space (on low enemy count you get like 30 in a miniature size level) AND they all seem to know where you are. So silencers are useless and it's just full on action.

[Banzai]

My personal opinion is: If I already beat a certain part of a game, why in the world should the game force me to play it again?
Even the most entertaining and fun part of games can become the most annoying thing in the world if you have to play them
10 times in a row for an hour just because the game designers didn't let you save right afterwards.
I also think saving at any point is best because without it, you are catering to the people who have longer periods of time in
which to play. I think people who only have 10 minutes at a time to play games shouldn't have to work harder than those who
have several hours at a time.
I don't think we should be trying to come up with different ways to reload when you die, I think we should be coming up with
new ways of handling what happens to you when you die. Who says just because you died, that you have to go back, or stop playing?
My favourite example is Prey, when you die, your spirit simply gets sucked out of your body and you have to play a little mini game of
shooting down these flying creatures. After a set amount of time your soul gets sucked back into your body, and depending on
how well you did at the mini game, you'll have more or less health. So if you died in the middle of a firefight, and you did bad at
the mini game, you'll come back to your body with almost no health, and since you left in the middle of a fight, you come back into
one and die almost right away again, but no worries, it just means you have another shot at the mini game, and you can do it better
this time.
I really liked that because it punished me for dieing, but it didn't do it by making me replay anything, and it made the whole gameplay
experience totally seamless, I never had to see a loading screen when I died.

[fog]

Rainbow Six Vegas is a great game...

And still on my wanted list.  Unfortunately I've just seen the XBox360 release schedule and in the next 2 months there are probably 10 games I definitely want and another 10 I'm more than interested in.  You'd think the PS3 was coming out soon or something.

My personal opinion is: If I already beat a certain part of a game, why in the world should the game force me to play it again?
Even the most entertaining and fun part of games can become the most annoying thing in the world if you have to play them
10 times in a row for an hour just because the game designers didn't let you save right afterwards.

Well as with most elements of game design, what is good for one game isn't necessarily good for others.  The majority of arcade style games such as shmups would lose a lot of their appeal if they didn't force you to play through all the early levels again.

In fact in the vast majority of games released prior to 1990 the main hook was seeing if you could get further than you did the time before. That's something that has all but disappeared from todays commercial games along with highscores.  They've removed pretty much anything from single player games that let you judge yourself against other players.  Thank god for XBLA....but that's a different topic.

I also think saving at any point is best because without it, you are catering to the people who have longer periods of time in
which to play. I think people who only have 10 minutes at a time to play games shouldn't have to work harder than those who
have several hours at a time.

Now that I can totally sympathise with.  The only problem with being able to save literally anywhere though is it removes any sort of challenge from a game so maybe regular checkpoints or saves at the end of every level (yes you New Super Mario Brothers) are the way to go.

I remember one of the early Tomb Raider games allowed you to save anywhere.  It sticks in my mind because it was one of the first games I'd played that let you do that.  Oh and also the fact it almost destroyed the game.  Because you could save anywhere it made the game, in theory, really easy so to compensate for that the level designers made it ridiculously hard.  Not hard as in challenging but hard as in you'd walk through a door and a rock you couldn't possibly have known about would fall on you killing you instantly.  And because there were so many unpredictable and unavoidable deaths you literally saved every few feet.

I don't think we should be trying to come up with different ways to reload when you die, I think we should be coming up with
new ways of handling what happens to you when you die.

Now that I'm in total agreement with.

My favourite example is Prey, when you die, your spirit simply gets sucked out of your body and you have to play a little mini game of
shooting down these flying creatures. After a set amount of time your soul gets sucked back into your body, and depending on
how well you did at the mini game, you'll have more or less health. So if you died in the middle of a firefight, and you did bad at
the mini game, you'll come back to your body with almost no health, and since you left in the middle of a fight, you come back into
one and die almost right away again, but no worries, it just means you have another shot at the mini game, and you can do it better
this time.
I really liked that because it punished me for dieing, but it didn't do it by making me replay anything, and it made the whole gameplay
experience totally seamless, I never had to see a loading screen when I died.

Have to say I liked Prey but I wasn't overly keen on the death/spirit world/rebirth thing.  Not so much the idea behind it but the way it was implemented.  The whole thing just felt very out of place to me.

[TheKhakinator]

I think Steel Battalion has the best approach to death. I would love to try that out sometime.
EDIT: Perhaps not "best" but maybe "most realistic"

[T_M_C]

Yeh,lots of for's and against's.

There is no one solution.  Different players prefer different styles.

I did read an interesting article ages ago on Gamasutra, that stated there were about 6 different types of game players.

The explorer = The person who likes to discover new locations
The puzzler = The person likes an intillectual challenge
The Shooter = The person who just like to blast everything

ect ect

And in fact i would go much further than that and say that everyone has unique tastes which can change on a whim.

I really consider myself an explorer type of gamesplayer first and foremost.  Love discovering new things, it's what really motivates me to continue playing a game, to see all there is to it.

But as some people know, my latest game is going in a slightly different route, in that the player can die, but then enters ghost mode to continue playing.  I don't want to penalise the player by ending the game when he dies. 

This allows the game to enter a different mode of play and take on a different direction for the player.
Switching back and forth between normal and ghost modes are all part of the game design.

This is also slightly as a result of playing World Of Warcraft for long periods of time, whereby you enter ghost mode when you die, but the main goal there is to resurrect yourself in order to continue playing.  In my game i wanted to go slightly further and allow the player to still carry on playing and in fact, entering ghost mode will be essential to completing some quests.

As i see it, the Indie Dev community are at liberty to experiment with different game ideas and concepts whereas the big Corps have to really stick to tried and tested genre's in order to guarantee a return on their investment.

Death and scores are really hangovers from the early days of computer games.  There are still plenty of people that like the concept but there's certainly room for new idea's.

TMC

[fog]

I think Steel Battalion has the best approach to death. I would love to try that out sometime.
EDIT: Perhaps not "best" but maybe "most realistic"

Yeah like I said earlier I wouldn't mind a game where death really did mean death and you have to start all over again.  As long as there was a last ditch option to avoid total death like Steel Battalions eject system then it could lead to some interesting, high risk/reward gameplay.

Death and scores are really hangovers from the early days of computer games.

I also hear a lot of people saying score based gaming is dead but that's simply not true.  Traditional score and highscore based games are certainly becoming rarer but most games are still score driven, it's just that the "scores" take a slightly different format.  Now it's all about being a level 23 Orc in WoW or having thousands of experience points in Final Fantasy.  These different scoring systems are still used to drive the game forward and still used as bragging points

[T_M_C]

I also hear a lot of people saying score based gaming is dead but that's simply not true.  Traditional score and highscore based games are certainly becoming rarer but most games are still score driven, it's just that the "scores" take a slightly different format.  Now it's all about being a level 23 Orc in WoW or having thousands of experience points in Final Fantasy.  These different scoring systems are still used to drive the game forward and still used as bragging points

I take your point, but you're really using the term point to describe all recorded progress.  I think the term Point is really a loaded one, from the early days of gaming to describe progress.

I absolutely hate the idea of a single life game.  And the irony is i have created and played many games which adere to this paradigm.

Thats why i rate mario 64 so highly, havn't played mario galaxy so can't comment.
Mario 64 just dumped you out of a sub level when you "Died" and all you had to do was re enter that level to play again.  The game didn't end and you didn't lose any progress, it was a very forgiving user friendly game that was created with the purpose of keeping the player alive to enjoy what the game had to offer.

I think game challenges should not be restricted to "keeping the player alive" but come from other means.  Puzzles, progression, ect. 
I've no doubt that there would be people willing to play and enjoy the concept of keeping a player alive as the main challenge in a game, but for me, and i would assume the majority of players, that would be too much of a burden.

It's a bit like in some rpg's, where you have to constantly keep track of how hungry your characters are and if they get too hungry they get fatigued and thier health drops until they die.  Yeh, it's realistic, but it isn't fun for most players and is a definite hinderance.

If a game is to have wide appeal, especialy if it's a comercial one, then you really have to cater for what the masses want, which wouldn't be a game with the 1 life and your out concept.  Imho
 
I want to be kept in the game by the game mechanics, not having to worry about how careful i should be and i think most people feel the same way.

TMC

[TheKhakinator]

I thought SM64 had a Game Over if you ran out of lives.

[fog]

I absolutely hate the idea of a single life game.  And the irony is i have created and played many games which adere to this paradigm.

Thats why i rate mario 64 so highly, havn't played mario galaxy so can't comment.
Mario 64 just dumped you out of a sub level when you "Died" and all you had to do was re enter that level to play again.  The game didn't end and you didn't lose any progress, it was a very forgiving user friendly game that was created with the purpose of keeping the player alive to enjoy what the game had to offer.

I think game challenges should not be restricted to "keeping the player alive" but come from other means.  Puzzles, progression, ect. 
I've no doubt that there would be people willing to play and enjoy the concept of keeping a player alive as the main challenge in a game, but for me, and i would assume the majority of players, that would be too much of a burden.

It's a bit like in some rpg's, where you have to constantly keep track of how hungry your characters are and if they get too hungry they get fatigued and thier health drops until they die.  Yeh, it's realistic, but it isn't fun for most players and is a definite hinderance.

If a game is to have wide appeal, especialy if it's a comercial one, then you really have to cater for what the masses want, which wouldn't be a game with the 1 life and your out concept.  Imho
 
I want to be kept in the game by the game mechanics, not having to worry about how careful i should be and i think most people feel the same way.

I can see why you don't think a single life game would work with many game genres and styles but I'm sure, given the right style of gameplay and sympathetic implementation then I could see it working really well.  Something where there are no sudden deaths and a nice risk/reward mechanism where it is essentially always possible to survive but the closer you get to actual death the greater the rewards.  Every game I've released so far is effectively a one life game

I thought SM64 had a Game Over if you ran out of lives.

I can't remember in SM64 but in SMG you certainly can die.  Unfortunately it's one of the most pointless and meaningless deaths I've ever come across in a game.  All that means is you effectively after the end of the previous level with 5 new lives.  And then immediately meet a mail toad who hands you another 5 lives.  Utterly stupid.  Why not just give people unlimited lives and be done with it.