An MMO’s death penalty is an oft discussed topic. Some games, like Champions Online have such a slight penalty, it might as well not even exist. Technically, Champions has a live bonus instead of a death penalty. Other games like Darkfall, Eve or Final Fantasy XI are known for steeper penalties. (FFXI more-so in its earlier days) Death in Darkfall and Eve means a likely loss of all the items you had on you.  Critics say Death Penalties Are Stupid. That’s a valid, albeit blunt, opinion. Penalty or no, what’s the one thing that all these games have in common? Death.

Why are we so accepting of a mechanic that mirrors such an unnatural process in real life? Repeating death and resurrection is a bizarre mechanic for a medium that, generally, tries to mimic the real world. Why do all the players’ characters get saved by the spirit healer in World of Warcraft and yet truely important individuals like… I just realized where respawns come from.

My point here is that death is a rare thing for an individual to experience in real life, and I think many games would be better off if death were a bit less frequent in-game. I don’t mean to say that MMOs should be so easy, it’s difficult to die. I mean that the games should promote a mentality that dying is bad or rare instead of just something that happens every day. I think running an instance would be a bit more interesting if you could only die once, or if it were a bit more like Left 4 Dead 2 where a bit of teamwork would be required to get someone back.

Some games have a more unusual take on death. It’s not an MMO but the FPS Prey had a fun and unique mechanic of resurrection. Tommy, the protagonist, had to fight wraiths to replenish his health and energy. Diablo II was well known for its hardcore mode, where your character could only die once. After that, said character was unplayable. Designing a game with such an philosophy on in-game death would certainly require ground-up planning, but the rewards for such a design concept would include a richer gameplay experience and deeper player-character bond.

Overused is a new column where I will point out a device that has been overused in MMOs. These mechanics and gameplay features may be used as a crutch, the status quo, or just plain too much. Overall, they’re used when they don’t have to be, and often shouldn’t be.

Don’t bother trying to dodge that arrow. Zig-Zag all you want, you can’t avoid it. Taking cover from that fireball flying through the air won’t do anything. You’ve been targeted.

There are many reasons for using a targeting system like that, but that doesn’t make that physics-defying arrow any less aggravating. Escape from the sticky target is rarely a possibility once You’ve been clicked on, tabbed to, assisted to, or victimized by “/target”. One moment in line of sight is all that’s needed for projectiles to phase through matter and strike you or send a swarm of pets your way despite your best escape efforts.

It’s a lot easier to create a system that determines valid targets when you don’t have to consider the physics of projectiles in your code; easier and less strenuous to calculate. The alternatives include systems that are more resembling of a first person shooter, and are often considered to be more skill based in gameplay. Personally, I’m a fan of the way Fallen Earth seems to have done it. In a sort of hybrid of the two systems, targets are determined by checking what target is in the crosshairs when the attack is made.

This is all well and good for weapons whose projectiles cover their ground nearly immediately, but what about those slow moving arrows and fireballs? Are the only options for projectiles a sticky targeting system or heavily physics based collision system? I say no. It seems to me that you could determine if a projectile hits or not based on if a target intersects the projectile’s motion vector or arch at the time projectile reaches that same point. The projectile would just be animated along that path, and hit detection becomes a matter of a simple linear or quadratic equation rather than a more complicated physics reaction and collision. There you have accuracy of a shooter combined with the CPU usage of a typical sticky targeting system.

Let me know what you think. Do you like the common tab and sticky targeting in many MMOs? What are your favorite targeting systems used in MMOs?