Death Penalties

Actually, I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I just had an idea about choosing your death penalty.

Each time you die you have a choice as to what you wish your penalty to be. If the penalties offered are of similar magnitude, the players won't be able to always pick the one with the least impact on them.

For example, say you have two options: lose a certain amount of experience or get a timer-based debuff (I'm thinking along the lines of GW; a certain -% of HP/MP or stats). This debuff would only disappear from in-game time on that particular character.

Now for those who are in the middle of a quest or boss fight or something requiring that they kill monsters, and they can't possibly survive with the debuff, they can pick loss of experience. (Perhaps the debuff could start small and for each consecutive death become worse, like in GW.)

For those that have something else they could be doing, like trading or chatting or anything that doesn't require killing powerful monsters, they can pick the debuff.

These don't have to be all the options; there could be others. Again, the choice of death penalty would depend on the player's current situation.

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resira wrote:

Actually, I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I just had an idea about choosing your death penalty.

Each time you die you have a choice as to what you wish your penalty to be. If the penalties offered are of similar magnitude, the players won't be able to always pick the one with the least impact on them.

For example, say you have two options: lose a certain amount of experience or get a timer-based debuff (I'm thinking along the lines of GW; a certain -% of HP/MP or stats). This debuff would only disappear from in-game time on that particular character.

Now for those who are in the middle of a quest or boss fight or something requiring that they kill monsters, and they can't possibly survive with the debuff, they can pick loss of experience. (Perhaps the debuff could start small and for each consecutive death become worse, like in GW.)

For those that have something else they could be doing, like trading or chatting or anything that doesn't require killing powerful monsters, they can pick the debuff.

These don't have to be all the options; there could be others. Again, the choice of death penalty would depend on the player's current situation.

Yes, i have suggested something very similar some time ago... Would be not to hard to implement and it's always good to have a choice

Even when you try to balance penalties to have a similar effect, people will still pick the penalty that has the least affect on them. You said it yourself, people will choose the timer debuff if they have to spend time in town anyway or they'll choose the XP loss if XP doesn't really matter to them. This means you would have to make the penalties significantly harsher so that when the player chooses the easiest one it can still hurt. Otherwise, you may as well have no penalty.

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tpapp157 wrote:

If you gave players a death penalty choice they would always choose the one that had the least impact on them. Not necessarily the one that was best for gameplay overall. No one likes penalties that actually hurt but harsher penalties may be best for the game as a whole.

Alright, true.

And I would not be against a timer-based debuff, but I take my time in games, I don't rush through them. However, most people, Im guessing, do not want a forced break in the gameplay and it would slow the pace down. Also, having that choice at death would eliminate that "cut-throat" feel the devs are striving for.

Also, still have not heard of penalty for normal mode.

If I could choose I will be all in for exp and cash/durability penalty on hell and cash/dur penalty on nightmare. No penalty on normal.

Reasons?
I'm just bored by games which do not demand anything from you to learn and think, just click mindlessly.
Games which treat player like a spoiled child, trying to prove that everyone are equal can win and be the best.
Just being dumbed down to meet that criteria like W3 -> SC2 ladder.
Losing could be a result in every game. That's why they are games not just exercises like aerobics. Devs shouldn't care more about keeping out that possibility as low as they can, instead they should think how to make the game entertaining to continue and try once more.

If there will be no exp penalty then:
LVL will not be any indication of skill/proficiency just showing time spent in grinding.
Climbing up the ladder will demand only time.
Ppl will tend to play recklessly and they will do it constantly just annoying other party members.
Defensive abilities will be pretty much useless as well as some affixes on items which means there will be less variety of good stuff available.
And last but not least gameplay will be boring.
Click click click move along click click click (sometimes death occurs oh no problem click click i'm back in action without a harm)... click click click.
Challenging like switching channels on tv.

The harsher death penalty will be the harder will ppl think/better cooperate to avoid it.

POE advertises itself as cut-throat after all.
There is no other option to be cut-throat than spank ppl asses from time to time.

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ness wrote:

If there will be no exp penalty then:
LVL will not be any indication of skill/proficiency just showing time spent in grinding.
Climbing up the ladder will demand only time.
Ppl will tend to play recklessly and they will do it constantly just annoying other party members.
Defensive abilities will be pretty much useless as well as some affixes on items which means there will be less variety of good stuff available.
And last but not least gameplay will be boring.
Click click click move along click click click (sometimes death occurs oh no problem click click i'm back in action without a harm)... click click click.
Challenging like switching channels on tv.

The harsher death penalty will be the harder will ppl think/better cooperate to avoid it.

Even if experience is lost upon death, leveling is still not synonymous with skill. It is grinding either way.

Climbing the ladder (in the parent league anyway) will demand time either way.

Playing recklessly and getting yourself/your party killed, even if no experience is lost in the process, still results in time lost. You are teleported back to town or wherever and you have to spend time returning. If many die, then the boss in question (since killing mobs recklessly will generally work to a certain extent, considering this is an ARPG) will return to full health. The party then has to start again.

Loss of experience upon death only results in a little more time wasted in total. It will not be enough to motivate those who not already "planning" on not being reckless.

I mean honestly, unless you chain-died in D2, who found the experience loss to be a major pain in the behind? I only thought of it as a mere nuisance.

That being said, in keeping with PoE's cut-throat theme, a harsher penalty than simple experience loss might be in order. Nothing so serious as gear-loss on the parent league however.

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resira wrote:

I mean honestly, unless you chain-died in D2, who found the experience loss to be a major pain in the behind? I only thought of it as a mere nuisance.

Hence, hardcore mode. I find myself playing a lot more recklessly when the consequences are reversible/temporary. That said, I do play softcore as well - it's easier to try out off-the-wall builds, and the occasional power trip can be fun - so I think a simple experience penalty will be enough for the basic league.

Just don't expect me to put most of my characters on it - I'll be hanging out in the permadeath sections.

I say add an exp penalty for normal mode making it like this:
0-5% normal
5-10% cruel
10-15% ruthless

The loss will still depend on player level. I agree with resira saying the exp loss in D2 wasn't really more than a nuisance. Also, this is just for an exp penlty being the only penalty. If any other penalty is implemented, then modify this accordingly.

In D2Classic (before LOD) death penalty made a lot of ppl stuck around 80-85 lvl.
They died too frequently and cannot be able to advance further.

There wasn't any easy exp areas like bloody foothills or cows, so dying was more frequent, and exping was slower then in LOD.
Also most of skills were weaker then in LOD (fanaticism or battle orders just to name a few).
It was pretty hard to retrieve your body when you fell. So death = 10% exp lost in most cases, often with large cash loss (almost everyone were gambling for sojs back then).

Depends on lvl it was from few hours to few days of playing lost.
I'd say it wasn't nuisance then.
And it fkin ruled.

LOD is another (dumbed down) story...
At least 1.08 and 1.09.

In my opinion death penalty should be like 3-6% of experience needed to advance to next lvl, it's fairly enough. For example when character dies one time you realy dont lose very much. Only when character dies few times you will feel that loss.
What do you think about that? ;)