Death Penalties

I really don't think this sort of thing would work. It's way too conditional on the situation the player was in when he died. The penalty could be incredibly harsh or incredibly easy just depending on what's around the player which terribly arbitrary. Players would get very very angry about this sort of thing.

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Skivverus wrote:

Separately, though, the griefing-by-suicide is also a good point - evicting players from an instance (either by vote of the other players or automatically after a certain number of deaths) seems a decent way to go about it.

You know, the more I think about being kicked from the instance upon death, the more I like it.

I think it would make players far more cooperative and thoughtful when playing if they knew that their group of 4-8 people in the dungeon instance would get permanently cut down by 1 each time a person died.

Eventually even the last 2 players would be in for a long, hard battle of attrition against a boss that was spawned with 8 players in mind. Hopefully the team took off enough health before they all died so the last 2 could even have a chance at winning, but if not, tough luck. Maybe level up a bit, or iron out your team's strategy, or maybe you and your group are just out of your league until you *gasp* actually get better at the game.

Maybe modern games should stop holding our hands so much and return to the older SNES days when games didn't let you just face-roll your controller to victory.

This being kicked from the instance upon death is a great idea, it does not mean that you can not try that dungeon again, you can. At once even, just starting at the beginning with a different batch of teammates. Or you can wait for your team to re-appear in town with you, either victorious or defeated, so you can try again.

@tpapp:
I think you were responding to Skivverus. If so, please ignore this. Otherwise, could you elaborate on how restoring monsters to full health would make then angry?

@Skivverus:
I wouldn't have suggested something like that, except that pretty much every demonstration video has showcased AoE damage and all the revealed skills are AoE damage skills except Raise Dead and possibly Cold Snap.

Furthermore, characters focusing on AoE are most likely going to be better at crowd control than characters who specialize in single target damage, and so shouldn't be as at much risk of dying to groups of enemies. If it really is a problem, though, it might be better to have the health restoration function only for bosses and unique monsters.

@Skivverus
I don't really think random effects would be good, because that tends to make players angry when they get the really bad ones.

Also, I think it was already determined in this thread that buffing the monster that killed a player isn't a good idea, because if they couldn't kill it the first time, why will they be able to kill it now that it's stronger?


@boufbowl:
I had brought closing instances on player death in the looting thread (I don't really remember why), but it's a bad idea on a number of counts. First off, when a player is soloing, any items on the ground are lost. Nothing will piss players off more than having a unique item drop and then it's gone because they died. That's more or less equivalent to destroying items in the player's inventory on death.

Second, and more relevantly, kicking players from a multiplayer instance isn't good at all for playing with strangers. In a group of strangers, every player who dies and is evicted is one less player competing for the loot and sharing the XP. It would result in horrible behavior during boss fights where as the boss gets close to dead, people change their behavior to try to have other players die before the boss dies.

Anyway, if you want to challenge yourself, play in Hardcore Ironman leagues or something, but please don't require that everyone who plays the game has to challenge themselves to the same extent. Even those old SNES games had commonly known cheat codes for extra lives and stuff.

I find there is a major schism between people that think games are two easy nowadays and those that think the industry has just evolved.

I think that it is a combination of the two. Do i think it is a bad thing that they added a autosave feature instead of having to replay an entire area again in Final Fantasy no. I would much rather find my time trying to beat the Boss that beat me, not the random encounters in between that didn't challenge me.

No the other side of the argument. Lets say i am playing a FPS and i barley get through checkpoint A with barely any health. Upon the autosave i get shot in the face i die and the autosave kicks in. Now i start with full health and kill that guy easily and move on. This is how it negatively effects gameplay thus making it easier. Also the health regeneration mechanic has taken the industry by storm vastly making FPS mainly
about taking out a couple hostiles and waiting for the blood to get off their face.
We have to remember that games are not a niche thing like they were. Video Games have become a cultural phenomenon. People of all races, socioeconomic, able-ism, and age groups invest significant amounts of time into these games.

Now lets discuss PoE specifically was developed by the developers to hit a niche target audience AKA us. However they also want their game to be successful. To be successful this penalty needs to be deemed fair by most. Therefore finding a death penalty that seems both fair and not too strict is important. There are Hardcore leagues for a reason so unless you state your idea is for a different league then i am taking it by default that it will be a norm death penalty.

So with that in mind i have a problem with Arbitrary death penalties that shift. This may seem interesting at the moment, but in practice would leave the player with a sense of bitterness to the game. Remember players do not remember the easy death penalty they got an hour ago they remember this very strict one implemented 1 minute ago. A death penalty at least for a normal league needs to be a unwavering constant. Players need to be able to quantify what they are going to loose in measurable numbers.

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Zidjian wrote:

A death penalty at least for a normal league needs to be a unwavering constant. Players need to be able to quantify what they are going to loose in measurable numbers.

Truth.

lots of great feedback i have nothin to add :(

Just throwing my opinion on the pile. I am generally in favor of death penalties with consequences that can add to the tension. I don't think simply respawning, even if at the beginning of the area, is harsh enough.

I think an experience penalty, while not original, makes the most sense. It carries real weight and also makes sense logically. You gain XP for doing the right thing, killing enemies and progressing. You should lose XP for doing the wrong thing, dying and regressing.

One other suggestion is that you could implement different death penalties of increasing harshness tied to the difficulty level selected.

Make the player listen to the full version of Friday upon death before resurrecting at the death site.

Actually, I take that back. That would be worse than hardcore.

Any news on this?

That's a survival bonus, and it's been discussed before.

For a summary, most of the relevant posts show up in this search of the Path of Exile forums.

Anyway, the general result of a survival bonus like the one you mentioned...

Let's have two characters, Bob and John. Both characters are equal, until Bob dies. Now, Bob's equipment is slightly worse than John's is at the same level, so Bob is more likely to die than John. Thus, it's probable that Bob will die again. Now, Bob's equipment is even worse than John's.

Do you see where I'm going with this? If a player isn't dying, they find better items, making them less likely to die. If a player dies, they find worse items, making the game more difficult and increasing the chance that the player dies again.

In short, a survival bonus like that increases the difficulty for bad players and decreases it for good players, which is rather illogical.

Also, if the penalty to your item find goes away purely over time, it will just cause people to sit logged in and AFK until the penalty goes away...