Death Penalties

For the default modes I think that the Diablo style of death penalty is the best. You just lose gold you are carrying and time to go back and get your corpse. It was still frustrating and annoying to die, but you got to go back to having fun quickly.

Things like EXP loss, fatigue, etc just mean that you lose out on fun while you try and recover from them.

I think the most fun way to penalize a player for dying is to make them have to retrieve their body, and make it so monsters are attracted to the body. :) Within a certain range most monsters will close in on the body. Not to the point where you can't get to it without fighting your way in, just that you have to run by a lot of monsters to get to your corpse, then fight your way out.

I've just read about the currency items (in replacement of gold) and I really love that concept.

Then the death penalty could be related to these currency items. Some particular ones would be lost on death for example. It could also be a loss of xp (or something else), but that loss would be avoided if you carry a currency item which would be dedicated to that.

Sorry if it has already been said, too many pages :S

Item durability is a good way to control gold market in a way.

Good to make certain items rarer as well.

I think hurting a players pride would also be funny way to do it start out with title going up and down based on your kill/death for both pve/pvp. If you die to much you get like title next to your name like Fool Dertold vice versa if you kill alot and not die you get cooler title Unkillable Dertold.

this way you can tell if player is good or bad and even encourages people not to die as to not harm there credibility. bring a more hardcore feel to it without harsh losses to your charcter on a Normal Mode as opposed to a League/hardcore mode.

Pride is a sin my 2 cents :P

I cant enoughg praise the concept of HC league being child to the softcore league and that HC characters turns softcore when they die. It's perfect for all that use to play softcore but really would like the challenge of HC as long as the penalty isn't 100hrs f lost progress.

Is doesnt ruin HC in any way. Wish D3 had this too, but they didn't even think about it it seems.

How about instead of dropping items your items lose a little power for a certain amount of time, maybe you can buy something that would speed this up or eliminate it?

If you die you should loose a small % of your total experience.

There should maybe be a small chance to drop each of your equipped items. Containers should be always drop.

So if your unlucky you may drop multiple of your equipped items.

This will make you more afraid about what your doing in the game, because you really do not want to die.

I know lot of people may think it's to "hardcore" dropping items. But it could be different from server to server what the death penalties are.

But you should always loose some experience when dying, such big amount that you really do anything to stay alive.

Also I don't like the D2 style that you have to run back naked to your corpse or reconnect to get your equipment back on. You should be able to run back and take what you lost back(for example you dropped your helmet) but still the items you did not drop, those should still be with you after the re-spawn.

Other players should be able to loot what you dropped.

As I mentioned before there could be different server with different death penalties.

For example:
Hard - Death = Character dead forever and loose every equipped item.

Normal - Death = Loose 10% of total experience and 10% for each equipped item to drop.

Easy - Death = Loose nothing.

Also you should be able to buy for example "blessings" in normal mode that will protect you from loosing any items on a death.

I think that dropping equipped items is an incredibly bad idea. It's been discussed before, but keep in mind that when a piece of rare equipment is dropped by a player, they don't just lose that item, but also all the skill gems in it, which they have spent time leveling, and some of which may be rare drops themselves.

The potential to cripple a character by having them lose their primary weapon AND primary attack skills all at once is rather offsetting...

Alahadi, they're already planning for those stipulations you've mentioned; only with separate leagues: http://www.pathofexile.com/leagues/

Difficulty has nothing to do with one's league setting so the two are not interchangeable.

That being said, I detest the idea of losing one's hard-earned items arbitrarily when one didn't agree to those terms in the first place. However, there is a league for just such a thing, and it's called "cut-throat."

I would say just implement a kind of respawn or resurrection sickness that lowers all your stats and slows your character down by a small percentage. If you die again before it wears off, it's affects will double so that gives you incentive to wait for it to wear off before venturing back out.