Death in SWTOR to be neither a "cakewalk," nor overly harsh

Damion Schubert, lead combat designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, has taken to the game's forums to discuss how death will work in the MMO.

While death in any game is inevitable, how hard or easy it is to die is another, and BioWare isn't interested in making the game overly difficult or a "cakewalk."

"Miscalibrating your death penalties can very insidiously destroy your game from the inside out," said Schubert. "We don't want people to ignore the cost of death, but at the same time, we also don't want players to avoid taking chances. We want them to take risks. We want them to try wacky new strategies, and exotic new builds. We want them to wonder if maybe they can solo that boss creature. In the name of creating a sense of fear and risk, overly harsh death penalties can inadvertently make people stop taking them.

"Too harsh death penalties can create grinding. If death sucks too much, players will stop taking on higher level creatures or even equal level creatures, and instead only take on creatures that are lower level than them - even though those creatures carry far less reward, the fact that they offer far less risk, might make them seem safer and more efficient to the player. Of course, now the player is fighting boring, ultimately non-threatening enemies, and is being bored to death.

"Harsh death penalties can disincentivize grouping. I'm sure we've all been in some pretty bad groups in our MMO playing. How likely are you to group with a healer or tank that you don't know if the penalty for failure is disastrous? How hard is it for new players to learn the skills they need to contribute to groups if other group members feel they can't risk taking on a new guy?"

Schubert said the developers want players to play the game, enjoy it, group up, and get rad gear; therefore, players need to be able to experiment with builds, and explore the full game without being afriad of death.

"We want to make really hard stuff for them, and we most assuredly want them to seek out challenges bigger than themselves," he added. "Does that mean we want the game to be a cakewalk? No, we want there to be tough fights. We want there to be complex fights that might take multiple tries to get right. We want to put in challenges for groups of players that require good tactics, good teamwork and flawless execution to pull off.

"But I would separate the idea of 'challenge' and 'punishment'. I would rather our challenges be gated by whether or not you have the skill, the gear, and the teamwork to succeed than whether or not you have the credits and/or time to wait out the forced downtime in between, you know, the fun part."

SWTOR is out sometime this year, with recent reports rumoring a September release.