MMORPG'S- What would you look for?
Hello all, It's Taylor. I'm listening to PCGamerPodcast and I'm just pretty much bored. So I kind of want to start a thread about what you would want to see in a "Hard core" MMORPG experience. This is for all you other people who are bored and/or hardcore mmo'ers and just want to talk.
I can't say I'm a HARDCORE mmo'er(Not to the greatest exstent) but I have played a crap load of WoW (Around 3 years and still actually keeping up on it) and Warhammer online up until level 22. I've played around 10 other free trials of MMO'S along time ago such as Rappelz, Chaos Online...some other dodgy stuff like that. So I guess Iknow most of my stuff.
Most people say WoW ruined the genre and there is a titanic contreversial battle about this. You have to admit, most of the new mmo launches are just terrible. I'm COMPLETLEY against the "WoW ruined the genre because all of the other companies only try and copy it because it's so good" WoW is clearly quite shoddy in terms of gameplay (linear) and such things to educated mmo'ers (Old UO and EQ players know what a hardcore game is)
Launches of WAR, Aion, and *Shudders* Darkfall weren't to bad but still can't catch alot of the market. My personal view on this is not one of the majority, for example, "WoW is so great. I know this because it's got the most subs!" I actually think that it's because WoW has clearly a HUGE majority of casual players due to adverts and such things. I mean, Night elf mohawk? Come on... mainstream for sure
But I have to give Blizz props for the good marketing.
Warhammer wasn't too bad and I actually enjoyed it but it just didn't do it for me. By the time I tried Aion I was incredibly bored of MMO's, you know, it's just all the same and I personally didn't think Aion provided anything new to the market.
So, the question is, what would you like to see in an mmo? (If your a hardcore or educated MMO'er you'll probably have the same stuff as me on my list)
XP loss after death. Item loss after death.
Player Housing.
In depth character creation (Aion did a good job of this)
Great lore.
Sucssefull Open World PVP (Darkfall failed ;P )
Non Linear Questing
Sandbox.
I can't say I'm a HARDCORE mmo'er(Not to the greatest exstent) but I have played a crap load of WoW (Around 3 years and still actually keeping up on it) and Warhammer online up until level 22. I've played around 10 other free trials of MMO'S along time ago such as Rappelz, Chaos Online...some other dodgy stuff like that. So I guess Iknow most of my stuff.
Most people say WoW ruined the genre and there is a titanic contreversial battle about this. You have to admit, most of the new mmo launches are just terrible. I'm COMPLETLEY against the "WoW ruined the genre because all of the other companies only try and copy it because it's so good" WoW is clearly quite shoddy in terms of gameplay (linear) and such things to educated mmo'ers (Old UO and EQ players know what a hardcore game is)
Launches of WAR, Aion, and *Shudders* Darkfall weren't to bad but still can't catch alot of the market. My personal view on this is not one of the majority, for example, "WoW is so great. I know this because it's got the most subs!" I actually think that it's because WoW has clearly a HUGE majority of casual players due to adverts and such things. I mean, Night elf mohawk? Come on... mainstream for sure
But I have to give Blizz props for the good marketing.Warhammer wasn't too bad and I actually enjoyed it but it just didn't do it for me. By the time I tried Aion I was incredibly bored of MMO's, you know, it's just all the same and I personally didn't think Aion provided anything new to the market.
So, the question is, what would you like to see in an mmo? (If your a hardcore or educated MMO'er you'll probably have the same stuff as me on my list)
XP loss after death. Item loss after death.
Player Housing.
In depth character creation (Aion did a good job of this)
Great lore.
Sucssefull Open World PVP (Darkfall failed ;P )
Non Linear Questing
Sandbox.
Replies
It's probably the most hardcore of mmo's (or games) i've ever tried. Took me four tries to get into. Now i'm hooked.
It's a great game to play for an artist. Train your skills while woorking on your folio. Good times!
Just saw your edit. Yeah, I kind of only managed to finish the tutorial months ago. I mean, I love the idea of EVE owning all the little casual noob's and it really does a good job.
Just kind of confused about "It can help your art" lol
I couldn`t say what makes a good MMO, but I can sure as hell point out hte bad points in almost every MMO out there right now (but who couldnt?).
Why WoW ruinded the mmo industry, because they made it popular not because they are making the most money or it has the most subs. I think the games that come before it were and probably are still far superior MMORPGS (dark ages, Everquest to name but two).
"Why WoW ruinded the mmo industry, because they made it popular not because they are making the most money or it has the most subs. I think the games that come before it were and probably are still far superior MMORPGS (dark ages, Everquest to name but two)."
Again, very true.
I haven't said alot of goods and bads around WoW and it would take a while but that is on the pro's of WoW.
EDIT - BUT. It sucks that so many mmo's are copying it.
Yeah, I would love an MMO with gameplay such as the stuff you listed.
I think the numbers on the HUD are a good thing but you clearly get a lot of competition with what "pro" player can get the highest critical hit.
I'd like, probably, a mechanic were there is no/little UI and you attack mobs like oblivion (I forget the the name of the system) but I guess it'd be more primal and savage. I'm pretty sure Darkfall tried something like that with no UI and sensing mobs near you (Again, I'm not so sure, I didn't play DF)
EDIT - I think it's called real time combat. It's alot very emmersive and would be a good plus to an mmo.
Uh... what would my dream MMO consist of? I haven't thought of that in forever. Permadeath, probably, with survival issues that would hopefully lead towards players working together. There would be no "hit points" - just wounds, be they minor, crippling or fatal - and experience gain would be context sensitive, like Elder Scrolls.
Either that or a fully animated and dynamic replica of Urban Dead. Barricades!
Yeah, in terms of the world content and landscapes you have to give a point to WoW since they have done a great job on keeping players busy.
This.
Oh man, Permadeath. Definition of hardcore for me.
I guess, with your added points, I'd say the most ideal MMO world for me would probably be an immersive world with no or little HUD (I loose the feeling if I see loads of stats and chat logs on my screen) The appearence of damage on player models and the ability to sense mobs coming at you with sound and stuff. Just all of the stuff you would feel in real life with no game HUD. That'd be pretty epic.
This sounds like the kind of experience a good single player game should be. Imagine if, somehow, an MMO managed to incorporate all these elements into the game - how would the addition of chat channels, Vent servers and most importantly, other players, add to this experience, unless you were incredibly vigilant and selective with ignore lists / spam blockers etc?
As cool as some of these ideas sound, most of them just simply wouldn't work as soon as you include the massively-multiplayer aspect.
* Skill based hack n clash combat like Monster Hunter
*Crafting or something like it that is useful(enough to keep me busy when not doing core activities)
*Small number of core abilities (I DO NOT NEED 5 hotbars filled with situational/positional abilities) can be customized/enhanced to fit my desired role.
*Few simple core classes (Tank/DPS/Heal/Ranged. Hybrids can suck it)
*Vehicles (so I can roll over you)
*Good simple UI with NO moddability. KISS!!
So Monster Hunter + traditional crafting + vehicles/dino riding = very yes!
Or scrap all that junk and make battlefield or x-wing/tie fighter mmo.
That said, though I don't play anything online much (especially with the expensive internet/bandwidth in South Africa), I do have my eye on The Old Republic. Story-driven (as far as possible) would lure me in.
Shiver: not sure really, but it is a difference you can feel when you play a game like Diablo or Torchlight in hardcore mode. Things are a bit more exciting, there is more of a thrill because you know you just narrowly escaped death when going for the kill on that next enemy, or know you'd better keep aware and on your toes or you might get snuck up on. It's a weird feeling.
You make a good point, danshewan. Minimal HUDs are nice, but greatly change the play style; I'd just as soon turn off the HUD in a regular MMO and be able to fall back on the interface when I need to. For an interface-less MMO, it would have to be integrated into the game somehow - like Dead Space, or at least in-character a la the PipBoy of Fallout.
I'm with ZacD on exploration. That is my number one interest in gaming.
@all: I am personally looking forward to the MMO being made by the makers of Torchlight; it seems really promising, and (optimistically) I imagine it would cover many of the points desired in this thread.
Got nothing to add. All would make an awesome game ;P
I've read the entire WoW website lore and revised all the hero characters for it and had several discussions about them.
Sadly, I've not experienced such a great story in any other mmo that WoW has and probably wont any time soon. Anyone recommend any good story based mmorpg's?
Yup, I wasn't nearly old enough to play that game but it surley sounds legendary.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Malfurion&n=Boboda
What I think WoW fails at is having enough stuff for me to do in the world outside of questing, pvp, and raiding. Sometimes playing feels like a job. I have a set list of thing I do each day when I log on and I just sort of repeat it. They almost lost me before adding Achievements. It's a persistent world, have more events. for instance, I want to be able to customize more than just myself. I'd love to race my mount and have ways to improve it. Doesn't have to be combat related. Vanity stuff is just as fun in my opinion.
I don't know how well "Hardcore" really works for an MMO. At least constant Hardcore. With "Hardcore" I sort of expect some kind of end result/accomplishment. I play console games to get that experience. With an MMO I just sort of want to exist in the world and be able to scale the level of my experience based on how I feel during that play session. I guess GTA is the closes example I can think of off the top of my head. I can get in for 15 minutes and just crash my car into stuff and have fun or I can really get into the story, etc...
So I guess give me GTA but only stylized fantasy and big ass bosses!
- BoBo
Oh and I'll go ahead and point this out about WoW now since it's bound to come up: if you played WoW when it launched and haven't played since you haven't played WoW. So much has changed with the leveling experience that it's really not the same game. A pre-Burning Crusade paladin took me about 24-26 hours to get to level 20 then. Now I could get that paladin to level 20 in 8 hours or less.
Anyway... Disorganized thoughts ahead!
I like a well realized world in an MMO. World of Warcraft is about the only MMO I've tried that really gets this feel down. Baring dungeons/raids the only time you see a loading screen is when you change continents.
Star Wars Galaxies had loading screens for each planet but those planets are so devoid of useful content it's pitiful (a byproduct of their original player housing/harvesting plan).
Dungeons and Dragons Online and City of Heroes/Villans instance too heavily. DDO's main city of Stormreach is instanced by district which gives the whole city a disjointed feel.
Travel within those zones is a big factor in the feel of the world. DDO has no travel except by foot with few rest spot which can make travel tedious (coupled with DnD's spells per day combat system...) Champions Online goes the other direction giving players travel powers (flight, teleport, super jump, ect..) at the end of the tutorial zone. These are rather fast means of travel and make the zones feel much smaller than they are. SWG gives a player a speeder first thing upon leaving the tutorial but with 16km x 16km planets travel can still take some time.
Speaking of SWG... Zone content should be highly weighted towards actual content and not just empty space. Look at this map of the planet Endor. See all that blue in the lower left and center? That's all water. In SWG that means it's completely useless as you can do nothing but swim on the surface in the game. No enemies, no diving, no nothing. 25% of Endor is completely useless. SWG also has no Z axis. Any bit of terrain you can see you can run up.
A MMO needs more to do than just level or pvp. A good crafting/resource harvesting setup, lots of things to harvest, fishing, exploration, and such things are what keep people interested in the world.
A good selection of classes and variety within those classes is needed. Still waiting to see how StarWars: The Old Republic does with only 4 classes per faction.
But the number one things all those classes ABSOLUTELY NEED is the ability to PLAY SOLO! If a MMO is set up so that you MUST group in order to do anything a large number of people will not play the game. No one likes to sit around for 3 hours trying to find a group just to gain a level. *cough*FF11*cough*
XP Loss on death. This in an archaic mechanic that should never be implemented again. This is right up there with giving a console game 3 lives to beat the game. Imagine Assassin's Creed 2 or Uncharted 2 having a limited number of lives.
Questing should be quick and painless. Grinding should be all but eliminated. WoW started out bad at this but Blizzard has learned and questing in WoW now is the main source of XP. Grinding is pretty much eliminated from the leveling process.
If a player runs out of quests at their level in a MMO and has to kill mobs for hours just to gain a level or two in order to move on to the next zone or quest hub then something is wrong. Ideally there should be quests left over in a zone when it's time for a player to move on.
Champion's Online failed at this. There was several places where there were too few quests in a level range and this was exacerbated when the end of beta "level balancing" patch dropped. Bare spots in questing became long tracts of empty content.
The story/lore of a MMO is just as important as the gameplay. A cohesive world with reasons for doing what you are doing. Good story telling. Good characters. StarWars Galaxies rather sucks at this. When it lauched I'm not sure there was even a story outside the Galactic Civil War. Though their biggest offence in that department was setting a Star Wars game in the period where there are no Jedi.
I think story/lore is one area that caused Warhammer Online to not be a big hit. Not that the story/lore is bad but such a grimdarkdeath setting isn't something that a whole lot of people want to stay in for extended periods of time.
PVP... Fun when it's not forced but don't base your game around it and skimp on the PVE.
TO LONG DID NOT READ.
Nah, just kidding. From what I've read so far I completley agree.
What's the first thing you think of when you hear WoW?
Mines is the term "Watered down"... seriously. Back in the day there was no such thing as increased xp!
Now to finish reading your post. lols.
Awesome post, but it's all stuff that just justifies my point that WoW has became a mainstream thing and personally... I find that bad. Call me an elitist or whatever but that's what I think. There isn't anything wrong with your family having fun, nothing at all, but you have to admit you wouldn't like WoW turning into the Wii of mmorpg's? Well I don't.
- BoBo
How is this even going to work? What if you play 10 hours per week, and this person plays 20 hours a week, essentially going through twice as much content as you, then wouldn't he be more skilled and should have more access to loot than you?
The above is exactly why WoW is so huge and succesful year after year, because it can be enjoyed by practically everyone. Too many of the latest MMO and copycats fail to realize that its not all about interface, playstyle niches, graphics, new tools. It's about fun
...Guild Wars? You can do a bit of both, some PVE for example if you want to PvP, unlock a few more things. But nothing's stopping anyone from taking 30 seconds to create a maxed out PvP character, loading up a touch ranger build and kicking the crap out of anyone without having to put any effort into it at all, even so much as glancing in PvE.
...yeah, that's one reason I really, really got tired of GW.
Well, that's after you've unlocked all those abilities in PVE right? Instanced PVP is fun now and then but I prefer open field combat.
I miss the interactive world that many muds have, and that ultima online had, nowadays mmo's are mostly just static worlds with mobs in it.
WoW succeeds because it's pretty, has a marginal learning curve, runs on nearly any system and everyone knows someone that plays. It's very fanciful looking, bright colors, great to look at. It's easy to get drawn in. There is some grim and dark stuff in there, but it's not threatening. It's not trying to be serious about it's lore, that's up to each individual player. The customizing of the UI with third-party addons is also a huge draw.
Skullburn: Actually I find the opposite true. I'm sick of Tolkien based western fantasy that does nothing to mix things up. Rare for them to branch out from archetypes. The tropes are so ingrained that it sometimes feels like Dragon Age isn't too far removed from Dragon Warrior, compared to JRPGs where I'm usually not sure where they are going with it. But to each their own. A balance of the two would be great though!
Random stuff snemmy wants in an MMO:
- *Crazy character customizations, like that police/gangster mmo, that I'm forgetting the name of.
- Lots of races and factions (Characters that look cool and feel badass, both male AND female. WoW failed with their chunky ham-handed human males). I want a variety of player models to be customized by me. I'm not a large burly man, I don't really want to play as one either.
- *Classes that are more than Tank, DPS, Ranged DPS, Heal (wtf did the archetypical Fighter become a meat shield rather than damage dealer and sneaky rogues become the uber dps class!?).
- Maybe something along the lines of Dungeon Siege, where how you actually play determines class.
- *Multiple branching classes: Look at all the classes in Ragnarok Online.
- *Weapons that scale damage based on USE. A dagger in the hands of a skilled user can do more damage than a massive sword.
[edit] Also, if I find a weapon I love the look of, I don't want to drop that weapon in favour of a generic looking one just because it has better stats.A really crappy one that has NO point in even being in the game.
It takes all of half an hour to raise a weapon from 0 to max skill for your level. It has little to no effect on the game since you can level the weapon on grey mobs and have no fear of death.
I believe Warhammer did this. I remember I was able to do pvp right at lvl 1, right as I entered the world I queued up. I leveled to somewhere around lvl16 before I did some pve, and I'm sure you can level to the cap by only pvp'ing
On the topic of XP loss and permadeath, I think it would be interesting to combine character snapshot ('save') or insurance systems in an MMO like WoW. Save your character before a raid, you only keep your progress if you can get out alive or get resurrected on the battlefield (which should be a more extensive process IMO, but with that would come a complete rebalancing of how easily the player can be killed, and how they can actively prevent their own death (beyond simply having gear/levels)).
EVE has something like that; you must insure your brain, and if you die with 12M skillpoints but are only insured for 9M, you'll lose those three million, and thus your skills will degrade. It's easy to stay insured though, or just avoid getting podkilled. The threat is there, however, which makes the game more interesting.
Yeah, I didn't want to say anything cuz I figured people would say I'm biased. I've heard people complain that PVE gear gets more important at the end game. I have a character in T3 so I haven't gotten to that stage yet.
http://www.glitchless.com/dawn.html
The perfect game, it's been under developement for over a decade by game designers with "big ideas". It'll be amazing, probably just taking a lot time to beta test, you know, with the permanent death and all. I'm hoping it'll be almost as good as Diakatana. Keep the cool ideas coming.
Edit:Arg, i always end up feeling like a douchebag when i just post a smarmy comment and not contribute anything, so here goes, my best go at what i'd like to see in future of MMO's:
More random combat events. I don't mind grinding, so long as it's fun. The problem is combat gets boring, skills do predictable things, as do enemies and their loot is fairly predictable. The best games give a wide variety of very rare loot, WOW was very good about this, so in this aspect they did a pretty good job. They need to add the same rare bonuses to combat.
Imagine if 1 in 1000 times when you healed yourself it'd give you a bonus to regen for an hour, just to spice things up from time to time. Now imagine this on a very large scale, with lots of abilities that have truly rare "crits" if you will that do all manner of things other than adding bonus damage or healing as is the fad in MMO's. Imagine a crit that did 10x damage that you might only see once a week.
That's about it, combat's just too predictable, needs more random type bonuses, crits, things that like that you aren't expecting. This'd help break up "cookie cutter" builds as well if enough random crap is going on that no one really always has an upper hand all the time.
P.S. I absolutely love grinding when i'm trying out new combat abilities and such. Levels can go by and i don't even notice because i'm just having fun, it's all about having that magical trait to combat that it hasn't been fully figured out.
Because most of these things are what most people do not want.
The numbers speak for themselves really.
Anyone who talks about levels or levelling in a western mmo isn't a hardcore player. And for eastern mmos there usually isn't anything else to talk about
Most of my memories from wow was raiding everyday, waiting for people to recover mana, wiping, ressing, corpse runs, routinely collecting temporary buffs around the world or AH to repeat the process all over again for the 2-3 items a boss drops and praying for that 5% chance the item you want drops and you beat all your other teammates in the roll/dkp system.
Over time, there'll be lesser and lesser items for you to want per raid instance until 1 day you find yourself doing a whole instance for no personal gain at all, to help out your guildmates that you relied on to get all your items.
Of course my experience from raiding was pretty negative partly due to my guild, I knew there were better guilds in other servers that could complete raids in 10% of the time we spent and with 0 wipes.
But things have changed a lot since then and those days have passed with smaller raids, more high level gear that do not require raiding to get, a more competitive and skillful pvp system (arena) and all sorts of other things to do like daily quests and achievements.
On the topic of eve and its time-based skill learning thing, that is stupid.
Wow rewards players who spend more time playing but eve rewards players who spend more time being subscribed - from a gameplay point of view this is absurd, but financially it is a good idea I must admit.
Anyway duno why I bothered typing all that when its not really relevant to what I'd like to see for future mmos.
I'd like;
* An ever changing world based on the actions of the players. This means destructible environments and completely changing the environment of the world, building your cities wherever you want and destroying cities whenever you want.
Yes this is a very big thing but one guy has kind of achieved it already; http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/index.html
I believe someone, or maybe Eskil Steenberg himself will develop this idea further into the next generation of mmos.
There could be some kinda system that compensates players who lose their homes while they are logged out, such as getting money back (home insurance, yay) or getting some kind of medal/relic/something that can be used in some kind of beneficial way, like cool new weapons or items that look pretty.
* Like others have said, a game where skill is more important than time spent playing (or in eve's case, the time spent subscribed). So not about loot. But loot is one of the main things that keep people playing, what will replace this? How about... fun? Look at TF2, Counter strike and all the other successful FPSes out there who do not use loot as incentive. Its pretty clear that to make a addictive game that people will keep coming back to is to simply make the gameplay fun.
And yes I'm directly implying that the gameplay for most mmos is pretty slow and boring. How about gathering some inspiration from fighting games like street fighter? A completely skill-based game that is fast and fun mixed with a lag free persistent world, that would be pretty cool.
There should still be items of course, for aesthetics. You dont wanna run around in a world with players looking identical.
* Massive range of custom crafted content and gear making every single player completely unique.
No not the same old recipes to make the same armor over and over again like wow. Custom stuff like littlebigplanet.
This kinda stuff would need materials and other ingredients to make, or can be bought in shops (which are opened by players, selling items crafted and designed by players, set at a price determined by the shop owner)
Kind of like the shops in Ragnarok Online (not sure if any of you played this, but people can set up shops wherever and it was actually a interesting gameplay mechanic, I liked shopping at these multiple shops
The bubbles above the heads of those characters are all clickable shops that you can enter to buy whatever they're selling. It could get messy, like this; http://www.everyjoe.com/mmotaku/files/2009/05/rovalkyrie-prontera2.jpg
Probably looks crazy to you, but I still thought it was fun to shop
One of the drawbacks that RO had for setting shops like this was it required you to be logged on all the time. Ideally for my idea you should be able to log off and stilll keep the shop up.
Sure the globally linked magical Auction house that stores items from multiple locations is very convenient, but I gotta say browsing the AH is no where near as fun as shopping in individual shops. Its almost like internet shopping vs real shopping (most of us prefer internet shopping probably due to its convenience, but the good news is that this is a game and it'll still be convenient for us, and we'll get the satisfaction of finding awesome deals for unique items like real shoppers do too
If the idea doesn't attract you from your previous mmo experiences, you gotta remember these shops are made by players so they can sell common materials or unique items they crafted, not a bunch of items that everyone in the world has access to like the Auction houses.
Anyway, there still can be auction houses as well. No one said they can't coexist
I have too many more ideas, I seriously can't be bothered typing them all up so I'll stop here.
If anyone can find the actual quote for me that'd be awesome because it's realllyyy entertaining, haha. I did it no justice.
So basically it will never happen
(Anyone play fallout 2 online mod? Oh the completely setting appropriate horror)
(also bombing second life in a flying shortbus with a penis mounted on top is pretty much as good as it gets)
http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/index.html
I should mention that I haven't played a lot of MMORPGs, so maybe some of this is stuff they do anyway.
- Improve quests with an automated GM system. Like a good gamemaster would do, quest elements and overall difficulty should be determined by the party who's going on the quest so that everyone has something cool they can do along the way. Vary up the enemies and obstacles so they match the playing style and abilities of the group (and because it's online, readjust if the group changes mid-quest), and reward EXP/loot accordingly. A level 2 Thief and a level 54 Paladin should be able to team up if they really want to, and it should be fun for everyone involved.
- Improve quests by letting players GM if they want to. Include a quest editor (or even sell one separately for that matter) that works like a level editor, allowing players who want to to set up new quests and upload them for others to play (and rate for quality control). There are some obvious cheating issues that could arise with such a system, but they could be avoided by auto-limiting rewards in relation to difficulty or just making them a "for fun" only thing that doesn't reward any items or EXP outside of that quest.
- Separate chat and voice chat channels for OOC communication. It's a lot more fun to be able to talk in character when you're in the mood to. What's the sense to an awesome multi-user fantasy land if everyone still talks like they're sitting in front of a computer?
- Extensive customization of everything belonging to a player's character. I want to adjust the proportions and coloration of the dinosaur I'm riding around on so that mine doesn't look just like everyone else's. More functionally, I'd also like to customize my weapons with some kind of point exchange system or something, so that maybe my Vorpal Blade is lighter (faster) with more poison damage, while your Vorpal Blade is maybe a little slower but does more strike damage and less poison damage.
- More fun stuff to do than just combat. Racing and collecting are cool. I'm partial to collectible card games (and what better place to play them than one where rare cards can be won by completing dangerous quests or going on epic journeys to the other side of the gameworld?) and twitch-skill games like maybe an ongoing jousting competition or something.
- That other fun stuff should be somewhat applicable to quests too. Maybe my bard character buffs the party by way of Guitar Hero-esque instrument playing. Perhaps my magic marble collection can also be used to block incoming attacks via 3-second Peggle-like minigame. Or perhaps when I fall in battle, I can challenge Death to a jousting match to be revived with no penalty if I win.