Would you rather play a game where you had to spend hours upon hours of killing mobs just to gain a single level, and dying gives you an XP debt? That is a classic definition of "grinding", and I can name a number of MUDs and MMOs that do that. The thing is, most players in that type of game tend to go after the weakest mob that will still give them XP because, while humans like getting rewarded for what they do, they are also risk-adverse. Why go after a golem at your level that can potentially kill you and set back your progress when the mushrooms four levels lower can be slaughtered by the dozens before you need to stop and refill your HP, and they give XP at a faster rate?
False Choice Fallacy - A type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemmaI never said that this was a better solution. The fact that I'm playing Guild Wars at all, when I normally hate MMOs with a fiery passion, means that their system is a bit better than what has come before, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
Also, there are other penalties that MMOs use to punish dying. Item durability loss is a gold penalty, weak at early levels, but painful at high levels. Corpse running is a time penalty, time you could have spent towards advancement. Worse, a party wipe in a dungeon means you have to do much of it all over again. EVE Online is one of the biggest punishers: lose your ship, its equipment, its cargo, all the costly implants you stuck in your character's head and have to buy a new clone to avoid skill loss.
I think corpse running is definitely a little silly, and really only acts as a time tax for messing up, but for example having to reset the dungeon after so many deaths seems fair to me. The alternative, which is just being able to respawn over and over until you blunt force the dungeon trivalizes the importance of it. Whatever happened to the gamers that loved a challenge? When we were young we played all kinds of games that made you restart a whole level when you lost, and we loved them. I think games have become much the worse for straying away from that.
Eve Online is actually a very popular and successful MMO BECAUSE of how much it emulates reality. Literally the entire Universe it is built on is completely run by the players. Every quest, story, and situation is only based on the Universe of the game, and the players almost completely dictate that. Even the entire economy of the game is run by players. This kind of player-driven realism is unheard of in any other MMO, and I think it makes Eve Online a wonderful and unique game to add to the genre.
Unless you're one of the few who has gone into e-sports, video games fall squarely into this. People don't play them to put food on the table or a roof over their heads. They fulfil the esteem needs of Maslow's hierarchy: you feel great when you beat a hard boss, solve a challenging puzzle or go up a level. But there are other ways of fulfilling those needs. Obsessing over a game can be dangerous, as seen in those gamers who have died by ignoring their physiological needs. Was the potential reward worth dying for? I doubt it.
Once again you're committing a logical fallacy by making a Straw Man Argument.
It is actually taking your position that most people become obsessed with a game and die from it. Professional gamers who take their job very seriously (hence huge stakes) typically do not commit suicide. They play and become successful, or quit and find something else to do. These are driven people with goals, and I don't think you can call using video games as your profession an unhealthy thing to do.
The people who are using video games as an escape from reality are the people you'll find committing suicide; but video games that are used to escape from reality are typically games that don't emulate reality. There's a reason why the stereotypical World of Warcraft player is an 800 pound virgin with acne and and no social life. Is he using World of Warcraft as a healthy source of entertainment, or an escape from reality?
It's ironic we're having this discussion in this forum because in AI War, the stakes are
extremely high. Once the player dies (unless you're playing with a friend), it's OVER. And even if you are playing with a friend, you take a heavy penalty for losing your home base in the cost of AIP. This is the kind of healthy game which (in my opinion) emulates the stakes of reality, and which challenges the player to push themselves and improve. There are no levels for your character, there's no exp for your ships (that's changing with Champions but for the last 3 years there hasn't been), there's no hot girls shaking their breasts at you for killing an AI Command Station (hopefully that's in the next expansion); the value you get out of the game comes from your own sense of personal achievement.
As I said before, levels in an RPG create an
illusion of achievement. Deep down inside we all know we haven't achieved anything. A 3 year old kid could level up in an RPG; I'm not exaggerating. My cousin was successfully playing Counter-Strike at the age of 2, I watched him do it, and games like Counter-Strike require much more personal skill than an MMORPG. If a 3 year old can do what you're doing, then you aren't achieving anything, I'm sorry. It's the illusion of achievement.
Using a game to escape from reality, typically by removing the stakes of the game, is, in my opinion, a very unhealthy thing to do. At least when you take a nature walk you're intimately connected with the trees, the forest, the lakes, the rivers, and natural places of the world. The things people do to ESCAPE reality, such as chemically altering their brain by drinking excessive alcohol, partaking in drugs, having promiscuous sex, and playing mindless video games - these are all ways of chemically altering your brain to escape reality.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html - Here's an article about how MMORPGs put you in a Skinner Box. They literally use the same formula we use on rats to dictate their behavior.
In my view, an emotionally and intellectually healthy person will not receive enjoyment from these arbitrary cues, and would much rather spend their time playing something which is fun but which actually challenges them as a person at the same time.