Death Penalties

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Silver wrote:

On top of that it could truly ruin one's experience to have a particularly harsh punishment incurred on a situation that was a simple mistake on the player's part.

Stupid mistakes made by a player that resulted in their death should receive the harshest penalties. Getting killed by a super-powerful boss is more legitimate and should receive the smallest penalties.

The point of death as a game mechanic is to punish players for playing poorly. It teaches them to become better players through negative reinforcement. Players play more intelligently so they can avoid death because death hurts. That's all death is as a mechanic. When you remove the feedback (death penalty) from the system then death ceases to have a purpose. People stop caring about dying because it doesn't matter. Since there are no negative consequences players don't learn to play better and they just play like crap through the entire game because they can and they don't care. It becomes like a shock test without the electric shocks.

If there is no significant penalty to act as a deterrent then the mechanic of death should simply be removed. It can be replaced by another feedback mechanic.

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tpapp157 wrote:

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Silver wrote:

On top of that it could truly ruin one's experience to have a particularly harsh punishment incurred on a situation that was a simple mistake on the player's part.

Stupid mistakes made by a player that resulted in their death should receive the harshest penalties. Getting killed by a super-powerful boss is more legitimate and should receive the smallest penalties.

The point of death as a game mechanic is to punish players for playing poorly. It teaches them to become better players through negative reinforcement. Players play more intelligently so they can avoid death because death hurts. That's all death is as a mechanic. When you remove the feedback (death penalty) from the system then death ceases to have a purpose. People stop caring about dying because it doesn't matter. Since there are no negative consequences players don't learn to play better and they just play like crap through the entire game because they can and they don't care. It becomes like a shock test without the electric shocks.

If there is no significant penalty to act as a deterrent then the mechanic of death should simply be removed. It can be replaced by another feedback mechanic.

death penalty is a MUST HAVE!

+1

If there are teleports / waypoints, losing items on death is easily abusable:

1. Fill inventory with craps
2. If nice item drops, remove some crap from inventory and pick up nice item
3. Go to town and put it in a stash
4. Go back to wilderness

If you die, don't bother - all you lost is some crap. Continue playing. If you eventualy lost useful stuff, no problem - login 2nd account, make a party with dead character and go pick what he dropped. Or even easier - have both accounts in party at all times you're "soloing".

Being in a friendly party makes losing items on death even more pointless.

Hmm, I think that maybe having a small 'debuff' like punishment after death would be better, maybe reduced damage or health. I can live with corpse runs, but to be honest I'm pretty sick of them >_<. But I think that the other ideas about being rewarded for not dieing through 1 act would be better than a punishment, and would, in my opinion, encourage people to not die as often and care and strategise a bit more before making moves, and actually using my brain instead of mindlessly mashing keys is more fun.

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Apocalypse23x wrote:

i always wondered why they didnt reward you for not dying as opposed to penalizing you for dying. probably harder to implement? i dont know but could be something someone will try

Sacred had a system like this, called survival bonus. It would slowly increase over time spent in combat, but with diminishing returns. It increased damage, xp gain, and magic find while it was active. This was definitely an incentive to avoid death at all costs if you had built up a good bonus. However if you had died recently then addtional deaths were essentially penalty free.

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luisagos wrote:

Every time you die, you add to a death xp bar.
Once you reach a certain level of death xp.
Certain things will happen.

Some ideas and not in this order. I let the Devs decide when and how much dept is needed for the following;

1) Run speed % loss
2) Damage % loss
3) Attack speed % loss
4) potions modifiers % loss

Only way to clear the death xp is to do the following;

1) Killing mobs.
2) Buying potions that clear xp dept, (this could be $$$, if you like).

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Apocalypse23x wrote:

2. weakened characters is something other mmo games have used before but has not been perfectly done yet imo. give me a weaker character but instead of slapping just a time stamp on it give me a way to work of the "sickness". something like we are weakened for 30min game time or whatever but each kill takes X amount of time off our penalty. multiple deaths should only reset the time not add onto it

The death penalty in Guild Wars was like this. Upon death you would respawn at the nearest shrine and be hit with a -15% death penalty, which lowered maximum health and mana. Every death would add another -15%, until your total reached -60% where it was capped. If you died while on -60% DP you failed the instance and were returned to town, you'd have to start the instance again.
Gaining xp would reduce your current DP, so killing a few monsters would remove a couple of percent, while receiving a quest reward might remove it entirely.
So your character's gear/stats were not permanently affected, and you were encouraged to continue playing (and more carefully) to avoid having to start again. The occasional death was no big deal and the DP would be worked off quickly, but multiple deaths in quick succession might force you to return to town and reconsider your strategy.
The system as a whole reminds me of yesteryear's platformers, you have x number of "lives", if you lose them all, start over.

I thought this system worked very well until they made potions that removed death penalty easily available, which essentially made the system redundant.



Another possible approach
Given that at least some part of this games business will be based on cosmetic changes and ego, you could have the number of deaths appended to a players name, for instance:

I create a character named "John Smith"
The first time he dies, his name changes to "John Smith the 2nd"
After 236 deaths, his name would be "John Smith the 237th"

Since I imagine name changes will already be sold in the cash shop, this might generate some extra revenue.

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tpapp157 wrote:

When you remove the feedback (death penalty) from the system then death ceases to have a purpose.

I disagree with this a bit. Take a game like TQ, when you die, you lose experience, and a tombstone drops where you die, picking up the tombstone allows you to get some of that experience back. It's not a terribly harsh death penalty, but every time I die in that game, it pisses me off. It's not the death penalty that makes me mad, it's simply the fact that I died. You spend a lot of time in ARPGs customizing your character to fight the way you want to fight, and when the monsters get the better of you, it sucks.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a death penalty in the default league, there should be one. I'm just saying if you took the penalty away, it' wouldn't change the fact that when my health globe drops to zero and I hear that annoying death scream, I'm gonna pound on my computer desk and scream an expletive.

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Oasisbhrnw wrote:

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tpapp157 wrote:

When you remove the feedback (death penalty) from the system then death ceases to have a purpose.

I disagree with this a bit. Take a game like TQ, when you die, you lose experience, and a tombstone drops where you die, picking up the tombstone allows you to get some of that experience back. It's not a terribly harsh death penalty, but every time I die in that game, it pisses me off. It's not the death penalty that makes me mad, it's simply the fact that I died. You spend a lot of time in ARPGs customizing your character to fight the way you want to fight, and when the monsters get the better of you, it sucks.

There are significant death penalties associated with what you just described.

Let's consider death with absolutely no penalties. In this case, when you die your character is immediately brought back to life at the same spot, no gear lost, no XP lost, full health/mana. It's as if you hadn't died at all (which is the point if death has no penalties). Would you still be cursing at your screen simply because you died? I don't think so.

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Malice wrote:

The death penalty in Guild Wars was like this. Upon death you would respawn at the nearest shrine and be hit with a -15% death penalty, which lowered maximum health and mana. Every death would add another -15%, until your total reached -60% where it was capped. If you died while on -60% DP you failed the instance and were returned to town, you'd have to start the instance again.
Gaining xp would reduce your current DP, so killing a few monsters would remove a couple of percent, while receiving a quest reward might remove it entirely.
So your character's gear/stats were not permanently affected, and you were encouraged to continue playing (and more carefully) to avoid having to start again. The occasional death was no big deal and the DP would be worked off quickly, but multiple deaths in quick succession might force you to return to town and reconsider your strategy.
The system as a whole reminds me of yesteryear's platformers, you have x number of "lives", if you lose them all, start over.

That actually sounds pretty cool to me. And it could work in ARPGs (even with town portals) as long as the instance was deleted. Even if you were allowed to start at the last checkpoint before the instance, you still have to do it all over again.

Edit: I suppose if you were in a party it couldn't be deleted. Maybe you just couldn't go back to that particular instance, or maybe all deaths would count towards the party.

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tpapp157 wrote:

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Oasisbhrnw wrote:

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tpapp157 wrote:

When you remove the feedback (death penalty) from the system then death ceases to have a purpose.

I disagree with this a bit. Take a game like TQ, when you die, you lose experience, and a tombstone drops where you die, picking up the tombstone allows you to get some of that experience back. It's not a terribly harsh death penalty, but every time I die in that game, it pisses me off. It's not the death penalty that makes me mad, it's simply the fact that I died. You spend a lot of time in ARPGs customizing your character to fight the way you want to fight, and when the monsters get the better of you, it sucks.

There are significant death penalties associated with what you just described.

Let's consider death with absolutely no penalties. In this case, when you die your character is immediately brought back to life at the same spot, no gear lost, no XP lost, full health/mana. It's as if you hadn't died at all (which is the point if death has no penalties). Would you still be cursing at your screen simply because you died? I don't think so.

If it's what everybody means by «no death penalty», then I agree that we need one. But I assumed that death meant at least going back to the nearest spawn point(I.E : Town) Considering the game has leagues (some of them punish you for death), I don't think the game needs a death penalty. Or If there is one it needs to be coherent with all the leagues. I dare you to find a better punishment for death than someone who died in hardcore mode and has to play default one with no death penalty :)

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Kahoder wrote:

I dare you to find a better punishment for death than someone who died in hardcore mode and has to play default one with no death penalty :)

Account deleted ):o~