Death Penalties

I call people trolls when i see that they are giving me "points" why my system doesnt work knowing that it works or just not thinking and posting the first idea why it doesnt work.
As we talked about it few times i dont see why we should start this again.

"Morale", sounds like an interesting concept, albeit only for PvE most likely. Monsters may run away from you if you have slaughtered enough of them; or, if they have killed you enough times and, or if there were enough of them they would be more likely to charge towards you.

Along with that, there could be possibly be bonuses and deductions assigned to both the player and certain monster types (ranged, melee, magic) or a certain monster (e.g. goat men). That could make the game more interesting, furthermore, it would be sort of like what was suggested in these two threads.

I like this morale system too. It rewards you for not dying and punishes you if you die.

Maybe you can bind the morale to the area and on a timer. What I mean is that when you die a lot in the area, the game "forces" you (by lowering your morale a lot) to replay some easier content. Over time your morale is gradually set back to normal (both positive and negative morale gets reset to neutral after a while), so that you can retry the area.

Not only do you now have a interesting death penalty mechanism, but also another mechanism that rewards you for playing content adequate to your skill level instead of your character level. I hate the fact that for example in WoW they force you to play in certain area's by making it impossible to hit creatures more than 2 levels above you.

Positive morale should maybe not make it easier in my opinion, but maybe you should get a small experience / magic find bonus.

a Moral system sounds indeed intresting, but acually i would prefer it to be permanent instead of just one instance.

I guess a perma system would be alot harder to implement, but it could be worth it.

I find morale system interesting and creative.
You would maybe loose some stats while fighting a monster that you are "afraid" of.

I really can’t understand why people are trying to create death systems that frustrate players. This morale system sounds unique but all it does is punish players further if it has more negative effects. Forcing a player into older content? Not fun.

But before I blow up the idea all in one sentence, let’s see if we can find a reasonable implementation.

The purpose of a death system should not be to frustrate the player, thus making the game aggravating to play.

Let’s see, I like the idea of Morale increasing and thus giving some positive effect, especially for the amount of enemies killed before a death.

This is what I think might be best for the Morale system.

Here’s the thing, if you give the player a benefit for living (like + Experience or something similar) than they will naturally want to increase their skills to stay alive, because dying would cause them to lose experience and waste time running back to the area they died.

- Let’s say that the Morale buff is timed lasting only 30 seconds or so, and can only be activated and increased while killing enemies.

What type of negative effect (other than losing experience as that’s in the game already) could we implement that wouldn’t frustrate the player or create an unnecessary time sink? (I realize losing experience is a time sink)

- Maybe a short debuff on the + experience gained with increased morale.

I can’t think of much more then that, anything else would pretty much cause the player to wait-out a timer, or simply be counter-productive for the game as a whole.

The theory behind the debuff would be this – lets say max Morale gave the player +10% more experience for gems and levels. After the player dies there would be a debuff that reduces the max morale to +5% more experience only, until the debuff wears off after so many minutes.

Also, it would be good idea to attach Morale to receiving experience from enemies. The purpose of this is so that the mechanic isn’t abused by simply staying in combat (and maybe not killing anything before max morale) or abused by simply waiting it out.

So, in a way, the only way to get the Morale buff would be to effectively kill enemies without dying. If you die you morale buff will be weaker.

The reason the morale buff would be weaker after death and not 0% is because players would likely wait for the timer on the debuff to end before re-entering combat to get a full experience of the morale buff. With a weaker buff players are more likely to re-enter combat.

If you do add any other negative effects to this system then you’ll likely be punishing the player in a way that will be annoying, frustrating, or even unnecessarily un-fun. I would challenge someone to try and come up with another negative effect that would not be detrimental to the player’s game-play ability, or frustrating.

So, I suppose, if done right, this moral system could work. Maybe you could add a small kill-counter to it.

The main reason I see this as a good system is because –

- It promotes the idea that staying alive is beneficial.

- Dying is detrimental but not so much that it’ll cause a player to stay out of combat (Action RPG means Action)

- You have to kill enemies fast and effectively otherwise you lose the buff.

So, while this is not a “death does nasty things to you, thus you should stay alive” type thing, it’s actually probably an even better motivator to stay alive as the buff you receive for being an effective fighter would be a much greater carrot then death.

mhh, as i said befor i dont like the idea of such temporary buffs.
I would prefer to see it as a permanent character feature that builds up over the time playing.

Ofcourse u start out with 0 Moral and when u kill for example some zombies u gain X% moral per kill.
For each 10% moral u could gain 1% of extra exp, extra magicfind etc. Could also be diffrent for each kind of enemy.
I would like to see this splitted into diffrent "moral Meters" or however u wanna call it.
Im not sure how many diffrent monsters there are, it would be classed into the Basics like Undead, Beast, Demon etc. or even for each individual monster, not sure about that.
If u die u would drasticly lose ur moral towards the enemy that killed u, not sure if it should be 100% lost as this would depend on how long it takes to get back to 100%.
Slow Buildup on each kill = only like 50% of ur current moral lost
or
Fast Moral buildup with 100% loss on death.

(numbers are just examples)

This shouldnt hurt anyone on death but still giving a very good reason to stay alive.
No Debuff or anything to wait out, instead it hopefully motivates ppl to get back to fight asap to rebuild ur moral.

Some other thoughts towards this.
-Characters could start with diffrent moral bonus depending on ur attributs.
-Act Final Boss Monster could have a special category
-There should be a way that others can check ur moral ratings.
-Partys could have combined Moral that increases the bonus ppl have together.
(ofcourse in some balanced way, not just all added up)

Well, Narfi, you should try to keep any death mechanic sweet and simple. There shouldn't be any burden of UI elements or programming features. I think if we modified your idea this could work, though, I’m not sure why the buff should be permanent, as this could easily lead to abusing the mechanic. Maybe your morale will always start at 0 when you enter a dungeon? That could work, but I’d still recommend some kind of timer on the buff.

Here’s four ways to simplify the mechanic that you’re looking at –

- All enemies count as +morale.

- As morale increases you gain some benefit like +% to experience etc.

- Once you die you must rebuild your morale.

- Morale is represented by a kill-counter, or bar with breaks that show +% increase bonus.

With this, there’s no reason to have special mobs count as more or less morale. Even though that could be coded in, it wouldn’t be necessary.

Well, we do not know exactly how long 1 instance is, but im afraid that if it only last for that, that it must be way to easy to build up moral and its not realy a death penalty if u lose it.
With a Perma system, in a way that it is realy something that aint just gained in a few minuts of playing, u realy have something to archive or to lose.

A Perma system would surely be more work, but it could give alot more options compared to a temporary buff system.

When you die, you are definitely not happy about it. Even if theres no penalty. If the player isnt doing that well for long enough then they will quit.

We want to avoid aggrovating players in that situation as much as possible.

when you have something for long enough, it becomes normal.

the moral system is a complicated version of -10% xp per kill for 20 minutes.
If you had -10% magic find for 20minutes, that would make a party member reluctant to kill for 20 minutes.


Now to my latest ideas:(each '-' is a seperate idea)

-Xp loss with some potion charges lost too.
-Your awesome payshop animations/skins are temporarily disabled for 5 minutes.
-A yuck looking green aura with flies following the player. includes the blowfly soundeffect.
-The grim reaper resurrects you in a temporary location and you have to kill him before you get teleported back to a safe place in the area you died.