Death Penalties

Blizzard is linking their main death penalty to item durability because it is smart. The main addictive hook of this type of game is the little rush of happy chemicals in your brain when you find a rare item. They rely on fun gameplay to keep you engaged so it's more than *press button, get random reward*, but item finding is at the core.

Therefore, I think any death penalty that involves a tedious chore is a big mistake. It breaks the illusion and makes you remember that you're in a pretty Pavlovian experiment, pecking at buttons to get random* little rewards (*which are proven to be the most addictive type).

What I proposed a couple pages back gets around this problem and also engages another addictive behavior: gambling :-)

Sorry for posting this if it has been posted earlier, but new to the forums 58 pages of ideas to read is allot.

An interesting mix would be to have the player who has died build up a "fear" of the creatures race who has slain the player in order to overcome this fear the player has to actively go out and slay this kind of creature to overcome his/her fear of this kind of creature. If the player slays the exact creature who killed the player, he/she could be given some kind of bonus item (memory shard) of his kill, this he/she can then later use (remeber) to confer a buff/bonus to the character which consumes the item, and also clears the creature type of the players fear list.

Looking at this from a parent and husband’s point of view (I have 3 boys)

Maybe the death penalty could mean spending 5 minutes in a hospital room and while you are being treated back to full health by medics this will give you

For the younger players

1) Time to cool down
2) Time to get a drink and or food
3) Make mum/dad cup of tea (hmmm maybe a step to far)
4) Feed the hamster

For the more Mature

1) Time to get a beer and or food
2) Time to talk to kids/wife/husband/partner (at least a grunt)
3) Let the dog out (its sat by the back door with legs crossed long enough)
4) Make the wife/husband/partner a cup of tea (keep them sweet)

posted on behalf of all the diablo/wow and now Poe widows :)

I am still for exp-penalty like old games did it for "softcore".

How much?
It all depends on how long you have to play for a lvl in the .. lets say 80th or 90th..

If one level may be like 3 hours a 10 or 15% exp loss may be ok.
If one lvl does take like 30+ hours ... a 15% exp loss is maybe a bit hard for most players.

But i loved the penalty and slower and slower exp-gain in D2 classic above lvl 85 .. and players with lvl 90+ on early stages of d2 classic you could easy party with as they were 99% really good players.
Most players stopped with 80-87 as the expgain got too slow for them to see enough progress or as they died too much from multi lightning extra strong mobs or iron maiden.
Love the good old times when there was no maxlevel for everyone and "builds" based on lvl 99. Everyone should stop where it gets too slow.
And one time dying with lvl 91 or 92 due to disconnect and not beeing able to get to the corpse was like playing a new char from 1 to 60 or 70. That was "hardcore" enough ;)

Lost items as penalty for softcore are the worst case for my fun.
If you put in dozends and dozends of hours to get/level/optimize your equip and with just one death your best item could be gone ? nope sorry!
If i want this thrill i play hardcore.

Also there will be times where your group just "kills" you with crappy group play and you had no chance of getting out of troubble.

I think a good way of penalty is make them go back to their body. And also punish the player for a certain amount of time like 30 min of gameplay that their chances of finding rare items falls hardcore.

I feel like experience penalties may not be a bad idea at lower levels, but when players reach higher levels and it takes days to level up, experience penalties are simply frustrating. For example, if my internet goes into one of its uncooperative moods and my character dies, I would be rather peeved at losing hours of work I put into leveling up that character.

However, I don't believe that death should go unpunished. A minor stat reduction that lasts for, say, ten minutes, and scales with the number of deaths seems more appropriate to me.

I'm sure it's been covered in the 59 pages (that I didn't read, sorry). But my 2 cents:

Make the penalty something that's a mild inconvenience instead of punishment. The days of the old games like EQ (item + corpse dropping) and Diablo 2 (major exp loss at higher levels) are over. With today's game markets and people's short attention spans, you will only turn people off your game.

Durability loss is acceptable, as is small-medium monetary loss (depending on how much money matters in the game). Maybe having to walk naked back to your copse (which is not lootable by anyone but you) along with durability and monetary. Don't want to feel like you're copying other games, but 10% durability per death seems to be the standard and I don't see many valid arguments against it.

I am not agreeing with annick, I think deat penalty should be harsh. Something like in Diablo were you loose 20% of exp and than if you will pick up your body or tombstone or something you get 10% back. of course it would be good if that would scale depending on how hard is to get 10-20% of exp on higher levels.

or even Demon Souls style where you lost all your exp and you were getting all back if you picked up your soul from your body, but all monsters were respawning in Demon Souls and if you died on a way to your body you were loosing previous body soul hance all the previous lost exp.

above never pushed away gamers, maybe small kids, and this game is not for them anyway. Actually Demon Souls is concidered best RPG for PS3 and it is hardest game you'll ever play.

and with Hardcore difficulty death penalty is just right ;)

Unfortunately, 59 pages is far too much for most people to read, but I have a few ideas, and I hope they haven't been mentioned yet:

City of Heroes had a very nice "debt" system, where you didn't lose experience for dying, but instead accrued an experience debt. Basically, this means you only get 50% experience until you've gained a certain amount. In the end, it works out just like an experience loss system would, except without ever losing anything. Additionally, it can carry over into the next level, which experience loss tends not to do.

I think it would be a great idea for this game to do something unique, involved with its other game mechanics. Losing experience for skill gems is a decent idea, as well as perhaps depleting flasks or similar items. This would encourage players to use every item available to avoid death, since a lot of players tend to save items for far too long (full rejuvenation potions in Diablo II, anyone?).

As a final note, I'm not a fan of rewarding players for staying alive.

i am sad to say that i have bot read all the 60 odd pages in this thread ( lack of time not interest ) so if something along the lines of my idea has been previously mentioned, my deepest apologies.

My idea go something like this;

upon death the creature that kills you takes some of your experience points momentarily, the player must avenge him(her)self ( proving his vengeance and returning his/her pride / experience points) by slaying this creature.

personally i see this system working best with bosses, because of the fact in Diablo 2 ( i don't like comparing to Diablo because i love the differences and although many label this a clone it's the subtleties that make the character in it. although it is our nature to compare.) bosses were the only thing that would ever end up killing you. unfortunetly i havn't been able to put this theory to test in PoE
(no beta key :_:)

comments thoughts additions all welcome positive or negative.