Death Penalties

Many games these days have removed the fear of dying and in some cases dying is a travel tactic. (since there is no penalty or a minor gold cost associated with death)

Games lose their edge when there is no Death penalty.



When you die, you should lose Experience.

You have to look at the purpose of a death penalty.

In gaming, you are usually going for some sort of goal (a challenge), and when you reach a point where the difficulty peaks you create tension with the user (this is not bad, because without tension, it would be endless grinding and boring). The important thing to recognize is that death has to -mean- something to the user; they have to be afraid of death, to create the tension/interest. A player in a game only has so many things... Time (make them wait to respawn), attention (basically a "spirit world" approach where you have to grind through and get back), currency, achievements (could be anything from items to quests to experience). One could even opt to temporarily weaken the character, but this creates the problem of a positive feedback mechanism, where dying yields higher chance of a second death.

A way to overcome this problem, maybe, is to have a penalty where after you die, you revive and have to retrieve a glyph that drops where you die. The glyph allows you to continue the quest you were working on (or maybe it let's you go to the next area or WHATEVER) but it gives you a curse that lowers a stat a small amount, then gradually becoming more bad of a penalty, then dissipating. The purpose of the gradual increase it to allow you to progress a little, but then have to push forward to get any farther (the player knowing this creates a sense of urgency, wanting to get farther before the penalty gets worse, at least that's the intent).

I hope you all like my idea. I just wish I could play.

for default league it should be an inconvenience not too much more. Personally I'd like something graphical, like your screen is in black and white and slowly regains color, or tunnel vision when you only see the center of the screen and it slowly expands back to full screen.

If you're dead set on having some more penalties maybe have this for the first death a day before you get a penalty, sort of like a free death

Death penaltys should be there to make sure people do not let themselves die without anny negative consequences.

Therefor i think that the deathpenalty shouldn't be to harsh if you die once but it will snowball on you if you die multiple times. For instance whenever you die you are given a 5% deathpenalty that decreases all stats by 5 %. Die again and another 5% is added.

Now this would be a problem if there was no way to work of the deathpenalty so i suggest that you lose 1% deathpenalty for every 1% of your exp bar you fill or something like that.

Also the DP shoul be capped around a certain number like 40% so that it does not make normal play impossible if you just happen to be tackeling verry difficult content.

you can play around with the numbers to reach an effective formula.

If you work on DPs this way they will punish careless play more and the carefull player will aviod to much problems.

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Forfeit wrote:

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MrBigwilly wrote:

This is a very good plan actually

1000xp without dying - you get 500xp bonus
5000xp without dying - you get 2500xp bonus
but then if you die you don't get the bonus for 1000xp without dying again, you have to get back up to where you left off to continue your progress up to the next bonus.

I really like that idea. It gives excessive players a goal and weak ones won't be that frustrated, because you can train at any time. Maybe players that haven't played hardcore yet, will try it, because they got used to being more careful anyway.
However, I would set the rewards at a smaller rate, like 1000XP without dying = +50XP, 10.000XP = +500XP,

Another idea might be, that you get a slight increase on XP-rate at a certain "battle-time" without dying. Especially at higher difficulty people will train anyways to not die (so for that kill weaker monsters that don't give them much experience anymore) and that would help give them a reward for that.

yeah that's a good point, it could really help with the 'hardcore' community as people might find the survival aspect really fun and get used to doing it. When i played D2 with hardcore i found that there really wasn't that many people playing

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vlandock wrote:

well after seeing some videos of the beta... there does not currently seems to be any gold in the game... perhaps this is going to change as time goes on...

or perhaps it will truly be an item driven economy. If their is no gold, then i'm guessing that my previous statements about durability loss/gold loss would have not be valid. not quite sure how the game would work without the gold mechanic.. so i guess until i get into the beta and see how it all works currently.. i don't think i can give a fair opinion on this topic.

The economy is driven by "currency items." See the developer diary for more details: http://www.pathofexile.com/news/2011-02-08/dev-diary-currency

nearly every idea has been said, i just want to say that in diablo 2, it was really useful to be able to quit and have your body and items at your feet.

So often was there a rogue higher level player going around and killing everyone and it was impossible to get your body back, so you could just join another game and it would be there, (provided u hadnt re-equiped and died again). This is one key aspect that i think needs to be used.

Sorry I didnt read all the ideas here but one of the ideas that jumps to the top of my head is a kinda recovery debuff, meaning say all stats drop for a given amount of time. Its main goal would be keeping you out of play witch no one wants in a fast pasted RPG. So a time loss and EXP loss might be enough to keep player in default league on their toes.

Another idea that comes to mind wes durability orbs, item that will bring gear back to 100%. After a few deaths items can lost effectiveness (stats/mods) do to durability loss witch would require this orb to bring them back to full strength. Also might be an item of great value in the economy :)

Death penalty - i really hate losing exp - you spend a lots of your time to get exp, you die, and then you need to exp again... And this feeling of wasted time...

In Cabal Online when you die you get Death penalty - it was a debuff(max hp and max mp was decreased). When you die again and again this debuff was getting stronger and stronger. To make this debuff disappear you need to kill monsters to get exp.

It was good idea. You didn't lose your hard work, and you had motivation for more grind ;)

I like the idea of a reward instead of a penalty. You could up the drop rate for good items (or exp gain rate) as time passes since the last death. In fact, to encourage teams, you could let this timer depend on the last death of any party member.