Death Penalties

As stated earlier, with so many replies thus far, please forgive me if this has already been posited.

What if upon death you have to fight off an enemy spirit or creature who is attempting to either feed off of or take your soul from your corpse? It would be in a "spirit world" and for every time you die in the real world you get a debuff that attracts more and more "spirit carrion" to your body. If you fight them off of your body you come back where you died with 3/4 or half health and a debuff that attracts more spirit carrion each time. If you do wind up eventually losing to the spirit carrion then you respawn at an NPC in town who has some kind of minor charge.

Also it might make joining teams more interesting if the spirit carrion debuff is shared by all team members in an instance. So if member X dies and fights off the carrion then upon revival member X,Y, and Z all have a single stack of the spirit carrion debuff. That might promote more tactical approaches to team fights.

My opinion is the experience loss when you die is the best kind of death penalty. It worked perfectly in Diablo 2 it will work here.

I think experience loss has a good balance between punishment for death and motivation to get lost experience back.

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Chris wrote:

Do you guys have any ideas for how we can handle this in an interesting way?

-> The monster that kills you becomes an elite mob and/or gets a pack of small minions

-> If you die you get a small debuf to heath and stats that lasts 10 min, if you die again doubles statcks 3 times max, refreshing the cooldown if you die again

-> Small loss of exp without lowering level

-> or maybe all of the above?

How about a buff to crafting for staying alive? Every X experience gained since your last death gives you y more chance to get an extra mod/socket/link per roll.

I like the idea of being rewarded per area for not dying(maybe exp+ modifiers for next area as reward) this losing experience is not fun some creatures are just over powered and will always kill you. If a penalty is needed though be it at NOT least due to unbalanced game mechanics(getting very little experience, then dying and losing a even huger amount, lest we forget D2s mechanics):P

I've always liked the idea (listed in this thread already) of item quality diminishing with death.

Maybe one of your items becomes "cursed" with a neg attribute when you die. You could then have to find a random drop that removes curses from items. No repair bill, but you have to find a curse remover (currency item?)



Example:
You die.

Your bow becomes cursed with "Party Back-stab" meaning that when you score a hit, it drains life from a random co-op party member.

This curse remains until you cleanse the weapon with a rare cleansing currency item.

I think that the "exhaust" effect would be best suited as a death penalty, ultimately meaning character is weaker than usual after death for an X amount of time. But thats just my opinion without consideration of all other important game factors!

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Vandro wrote:

How about a reward for not dying in an area? Increasing your magic find temporarily for example. That would be a good incentive I think :)

+1

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Chris wrote:

Do you guys have any ideas for how we can handle this in an interesting way?

Introduce permanent injuries. They can only be healed through a new orb, "orb of healing". The orb of healing should be about as rare as an orb of regret. This way, death's effects are reversible, but very costly. But you could go back to the fight with injuries, if you wanted to.

Normally, every time you die you would get one injury. "broken right hand" would mean lower attack speed. "concussion" means lower max mana.

To make it harder, you can get more than one injury per death.

To make it harder, you can have multiple penalties per injury. "broken left had" means slower attack speed, and lower cast rate, and lower max hp.

To make it easier, you can make it so you could get an injury upon death, or you might not.

To make it easier, upon death, you can roll an injury, and if the player has that injury, no new injury is given. This way, a player has a limit on how many injuries they could have, and the more injuries you have, the less likely you are to get new ones.

To make it harder, make the orb of healing heal a random injury. Conversely, to make it easier, let the player decide which injury to heal.

I think this will add an interesting variability to the game. Players are also forced to think about whether to heal an injury, or to live with it. Plus, this adds to the grit of this game, of which there is already a lot.

Finally, you can use different options in different leagues. You can even have a novice league where injuries do not occur.

When you die, you can negotiate with Death himself with a few options:

Selection 1:
Respawn instantly at town by paying Death some experience and currency (scrolls of portal, wisdom etc.)

Selection 2:
Respawn after 10-30 seconds, or give a 5% debuff(having death, a ghost image, on your back, slowing your movement speed and stats) on all stats at town, pay less experience and no fees.

Selection 3:
Beginning of the map, by paying Death bigger experience and bigger currency loss.



You can tweak each option to your likings.

And in custom leagues which is not hardcore, we will be able to tweak these values

x seconds, x% debuff, x amount of currency required to respawn.


Giving the player that died an option of what they would like to do is best, because it is your choice how you would like to receive this penalty.


If you get a ticket, would you like to pay it or hire a lawyer to go to court?

Life is all about choices, so let the players decide what they would like to do now they are dead.

Penalty is needed because dying is frown upon.