There's been alot of talk on these forums about important gameplay mechanics, teamplay mechanics, gun mechanics, vehicles mechanics, and every other type of mechanic in between. What I have seen a disturbing lack of, however, is talk about one of the most important mechanics in any game that all of us encounter all too often- death.
So, from what I hear and see, in PS2, you will die. Alot. This means that death should be tolerable. Now what do I mean by "tolerable"? I mean that you shouldn't feel as though your death doesn't matter, but you should also not want to throw your mouse through your monitor every time you die.
Now for the examples, every one of us is familiar with the CoD series. Those games are the perfect examples of the worst death system in any game ever made, ever. Forgive me for asking you to do this, but please watch this example.
.....and as another bad example of dying/spawning, this next one
Notice how it has all of the things that make dying both frustrating, and in other instances, not matter at all. First off, it has the dreaded "bloody screen so real", to such an extent that it severely obscures your vision whenever you are close to death, meaning that whenever you die, you can't see ANYTHING, which adds to the frustration of you dying in the first place.
Second, it offers no penalty to death, meaning that when you die, you don't think twice about it. Death should make you ask questions, among these "What did I do wrong?" and "How do I correct this?". Penalty can be in the form of a spawn timer, a walk back to the battle, or even the loss of the battle, but the catch is that the penalty cannot be too great, in which case you come to number 3....
CoD deaths add too much of a penalty, in certain situations. There are times in the CoD games when you have just killed 5 people in a row, and you just need that sixth to get that 1337 gunship and....you die. That stimulates a response in us that can be compared to someone teasing a small child with candy. You make them believe they can have the candy, then you take it away. It makes them, and you, angry.
This can also take many forms. For example, in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (which is the second worse game of all time relating to death rage), if you and 1 other guy are defending an objective, and you die, you know for a fact that you lost that objective, because that other guy can't defend it on his own, and you can't get back to it in time. That, combined with the TERRIBLE bloody screen, makes you want to quit every time you die, which should NOT happen.
tl;dr PS2 needs to have a balance between the two extremes, death should make you think about why you died and how not to die in the future, while also giving you sufficient penalty. The penalty, however should not be too great as to make you feel as though your death was a crippling blow and make you want to quit.
Wow, that was alot longer that I thought it would be
2012-07-08, 01:39 PM
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