Death Penalties

Death penalties are difficult in a game like this. In most games, dying is annoying because it kicks you back an arbitrary length of gameplay and you have to do stuff over again. However, ARPGs are designed in such a way as to throw you straight back into the action right where you were very quickly, so this doesn't work.

Currently, I think the experience penalty does it's job - it makes death undesirable, meaning people have a motivation to build something other than all-out damage and throw their infinitely spawning self at every challenge until it eventually runs out of hitpoints as bodies stack up around it.

The only problem with an experience loss is...well, it's dull. It's functional, but uninteresting.

Perhaps the answer lies in adding incentive to staying alive, rather than incentive to not die. The difference is subtle, yet meaningful.

An interesting way to handle it that keeps with the game's current design philosophy would be to give, for example, a stacking buff of potentially infinite duration that stacks with every monster killed, and gives an almost infinitesimal boost to experience gained/item drop rate/both/whatever, capped at a value that seems sensible. If you die, you lose the buff and have to regain your stacks.

This still imposes a pseudo-experience-penalty (The potential experience you could have gained if you still had your stackable buff) without taking away what a player has "earned", which usually only serves to upset a player. It would also make death irritating, and undesirable.

It is possible that if the buff gave an experience bonus, some tweaking of current experience rates would be required in order to give a progression speed that is similar to the current rate for an "average" player. I'm not sure how much information GGG has on how often players die, and at which levels. Sounds like something that needs an Excel spreadsheet.

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iamstryker wrote:

There is no penalty for being a causal gamer. There is a penalty for dieing (shocker).

Ironically the Hardcore Ladder is more casual-friendly (in terms of time investment not skill) than Default as it's easier to stay ranked. People can put in 3x your hours and still not surpass you on the ladder if they are reckless/bad.

"I don't have time to reroll when I die" is an admission of defeat, I would wager if they had more time to play they still wouldn't play hardcore because the problem lies not in their free time but in their attitude towards the game.

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Birdulon wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

There is no penalty for being a causal gamer. There is a penalty for dieing (shocker).

Ironically the Hardcore Ladder is more casual-friendly (in terms of time investment not skill) than Default as it's easier to stay ranked. People can put in 3x your hours and still not surpass you on the ladder if they are reckless/bad.

Huh? You realize if someone is bad on hardcore, they wouldn't be on hardcore much longer.

Your argument is; "It's easier to level because they're not allowed to die." But if they died, they'd have to reroll completely, not at whatever level they are minus 15%.

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Govestun wrote:

Huh? You realize if someone is bad on hardcore, they wouldn't be on hardcore much longer.

Exactly! Remaining in hardcore has more to do with skill than time investment.

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Govestun wrote:

Your argument is; "It's easier to level because they're not allowed to die."

No, it's easier to ladder. It took my main 12 days of inactivity to drop off the ladder. I could probably get back on it in 4 hours of gameplay, assuming I don't make a stupid mistake and die. On default league I would have no hope of reaching the ladder without putting in several hours a day, simply because characters don't drop off it and the players on it have a significant time investment.

I'd argue the HC economy is also more casual-friendly as it's far less prone to inflation.

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Birdulon wrote:

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Govestun wrote:

Huh? You realize if someone is bad on hardcore, they wouldn't be on hardcore much longer.

Exactly! Remaining in hardcore has more to do with skill than time investment.

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Govestun wrote:

Your argument is; "It's easier to level because they're not allowed to die."

No, it's easier to ladder. It took my main 12 days of inactivity to drop off the ladder. I could probably get back on it in 4 hours of gameplay, assuming I don't make a stupid mistake and die. On default league I would have no hope of reaching the ladder without putting in several hours a day, simply because characters don't drop off it and the players on it have a significant time investment.

I'd argue the HC economy is also more casual-friendly as it's far less prone to inflation.

I see what you're saying now.

I'm not sure if saying 'easier' is the best term though. It definitely isn't easy. And if people on ladder keep dying, I guess you'll stay up on top for quite some time.

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jonnyj03 wrote:

lol @ all the scrubcore kids crying about 15% penalty. how bout you learn to build a character and stop going all out dps?

those that dont want to loose exp can do like the hc league alt f4 themselfs to safety

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jonnyj03 wrote:

lol @ all the scrubcore kids crying about 15% penalty. how bout you learn to build a character and stop going all out dps?

And this exact sentence made me wonder why the fuck i am playing on default, not on hardcore if the playstyle IS FORCED to play as PURE TANK.

I am ranger with 2k hp, considering myself tanky, because i have 50% of tanky passive mods. The problem is that Merciless endgame ASKS FOR MORE. You can't survive merciless by being semi-tank. And it's all fine until you realize you can't level up at all if you die constantly.

Death penalty is too big for default league. Well it's not too big overall, but it's too big for league where it's allowed to die. It's not a problem in early/mid game, but after level 75 you can't level up if you die. If you are forced to build tanky to progress, then why the fuck i am playing default?

It should be 100% exp loss on all difficulty levels, or u guys complaining about the anti-xp-loss-people are just pussies, too :-)

actually: it should all be hardcore and once u die u can never play the game again! pussies! :-)

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Antigegner wrote:

It should be 100% exp loss on all difficulty levels, or u guys complaining about the anti-xp-loss-people are just pussies, too :-)

actually: it should all be hardcore and once u die u can never play the game again! pussies! :-)

Attention seeking geek nobody compensating for real life failures and always will be.

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Pinchyskree wrote:

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Antigegner wrote:

It should be 100% exp loss on all difficulty levels, or u guys complaining about the anti-xp-loss-people are just pussies, too :-)

actually: it should all be hardcore and once u die u can never play the game again! pussies! :-)

Attention seeking geek nobody compensating for real life failures and always will be.

aahhhwww, cute. you should see what people say to the ones complaining about the death penalty and tell them, too, cuz what I do here is just the same the other way round. it sure is not useful but then again, there ain't much on these 126 pages.

btw: I dislike the exp penalty.