Many role-playing games penalize players when their characters die. Penalties include experience loss, level loss, item loss, and returning to a starting location (which may include repopulated spawns besides the extra travel hassle). Some games penalize with experience debt, splitting experience between "positive XP" and "debt XP."

These knock-offs of Dungeons & Dragons penalties may have seemed appropriate in paper and pen games, but they are often unnecessary in modern real time MMOGs--in many MMOGs, travel penalties are often enough punishment for the recently resurrected.

Rather than compound character death with additional frustrations, I would like to see a game that rewards players for successful play rather than heap extra punishment on them when things have gone bad.

Imagine a game where a character is never punished for dying and instead, for example, is rewarded with a "perfect record" experience bonus if it goes undefeated for a certain amount of time.

A real world equivalent for this kind of positive reinforcement might be a certificate for achieving perfect attendance.

This "perfect attendance" bonus is essentially a different spin on debt/loss, albeit one that never penalizes your XP. The goal would change from avoiding death to striving for life. A semantic change, perhaps, but a change that could certainly affect the personality of the game.

No punishment for dying helps diminish the frustration of the poor choices bad luck, or connection problems that often lead to character death. At the same time, this kind of "perfect attendance" bonus should reward players who throw themselves into the game's challenges and through skill and perseverance continue to survive.

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