Death Penalties

"

Chris wrote:

Last week we added an experience penalty upon death - a percentage of the current level (you can't go down a level). It was set at:

Hard Difficulty: 0%
Cruel Difficulty: 5%
Ruthless Difficulty: 10%

Hm, i have problems understanding that: Did you mean that it depends on difficulty and you accidently wrote level (or is level in this case just a synomym for difficulty (level^^)?) or does it mean that it depends on difficulty and char level?

I would prefer the second option lets say that on hard difficulty it starts with 0% for the first 10 levels and grows by 1% after every 10 levels (1-10: 0%; 11-20: 1%; 21-30: 2%; 31-40: 3%; 41-50: 4%) till a maximum of 4 %. It would be the same for the second difficulty mode: Starting with 5% independent of the char level and growing by one percent after every 10 levels starting at level 41 (1-40: 5%; 41-50:6%) till a maximum of 9% at level 71 and higher levels.

Wait, do we know the level cap. I was thinking it was around 100?

"

Rhesos wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Last week we added an experience penalty upon death - a percentage of the current level (you can't go down a level). It was set at:

Hard Difficulty: 0%
Cruel Difficulty: 5%
Ruthless Difficulty: 10%

Hm, i have problems understanding that

As I understand it, it means that on Hard difficulty there is no death penalty. On Cruel, when you die, you lose 5% of the exp needed to reach the next level. 10% on ruthless.

For example (numbers are made up):
- you are level 31, playing in cruel difficulty
- it takes 10000xp to go from level 31 to 32
- each time you die, you will lose 500xp
- losing xp in this way will never cause you to drop back down to level 30

"

Chris wrote:

Last week we added an experience penalty upon death - a percentage of the current level (you can't go down a level). It was set at:

Hard Difficulty: 0%
Cruel Difficulty: 5%
Ruthless Difficulty: 10%

So far this is working well. It successfully curbed abusive leveling behaviour that relied on far too many deaths. Some testers complain at me directly via MSN when they die and lose 20 minutes of grinding on their high level characters.

We don't know that we'll stay with this system - it's just a simple one we're trying to see how well it works...

this system sounds great and challenging

"

Malice wrote:

As I understand it, it means that on Hard difficulty there is no death penalty. On Cruel, when you die, you lose 5% of the exp needed to reach the next level. 10% on ruthless.

For example (numbers are made up):
- you are level 31, playing in cruel difficulty
- it takes 10000xp to go from level 31 to 32
- each time you die, you will lose 500xp
- losing xp in this way will never cause you to drop back down to level 30

Ok, that makes a lot of sense! If you're correct just forget my suggestion because it would hurt higher level players twice!

An interesting penalty you might also consider would be the implementation of a "Scavenger" NPC.

When a player dies they start back in town minus a random number of pieces of gear that they were wearing when they died. To regain the lost pieces of equipment they could go to the scavenger npc (who risked life and limb to find the stuff) and buy those pieces back for gold. This would provide a way to sink gold for the higher level characters. It also could create a way for low level characters to trade gold, which isn't all the useful to them at the lower levels, for better gear that is just vendor trash to higher level characters.

You could make it so the re-buy gear was available for a set amount of time or you could make it so only a dozen so pieces could exist in this state and any new gear lost in this way that ended up at the scavenger would bump out the older gear.

This would also be a way to have a cash shop item that helped you mitigate or negate this penalty.

"

Zidjian wrote:

Wait, do we know the level cap. I was thinking it was around 100?

That's what the FAQ says. But I think GGG will take the D2 route and it will be really hard to reach level 100. I for one definetely won't wait to reach the level cap to do end-game PvP.

If you're going to go for an exp penalty, I think it would be best to make it a penalty to gaining exp for a certain amount of time.
E.g. on if a skeleton of cruel gives you 100 exp, after you die for 10 minutes, it gives you 70. On ruthless - 40.
I think it's the better solution.

"

Lino wrote:

If you're going to go for an exp penalty, I think it would be best to make it a penalty to gaining exp for a certain amount of time.
E.g. on if a skeleton of cruel gives you 100 exp, after you die for 10 minutes, it gives you 70. On ruthless - 40.
I think it's the better solution.

I think that this suggestions was discussed already, however 18 pages are a lot to read...
I think it isn't that good because it more or less forces you to wait till the timer runs out, so it slows down the game a lot.