Death Penalties

First for all: Could be some sort of an underground area where the dead will be. A maze or something else. Small waiting to get out or some sort of credit that you can come out.

Secondly for the player killers: Economy, that the Outlaws would be in jail, and to indemnify deeds to get away. It could be restrained in vain to kill the other players.

Personally I'm a fan of the "exp debt" concept (i.e. exp points required for next level gets increased, rather than exp getting subtracted from your current total). It can potentially decrease your progress significantly, but you're never actually in danger of backsliding.

I realize this isn't an uncommon concept in games and has probably already been mentioned before in this thread, but 50-something pages is a lot to search through just to make a short response just as this.

Wow im coming to this very late so I am sure most ideas have been rehashed many times. Regardless I will voice my opinion even if it is shitty :).

A few quick concerns is the value and viability of currency in the game. How useful is it going to be? If in fact currency becomes a needed thing in the game I certainly suggest that penalty upon death will be a loss of the total amount of currency you have on the character.

I suppose dying more than twice within a time window of say 10-15 minutes should also further penalize by depleting a small amount of xp.

I really dislike the idea of having spawn timers. I would much rather have to run and get my body then sit there and stare at my body for 30 seconds to a minute.

Permanent Death for HC Characters and a small graveyard at the end of the act.

And for SC, I liked the idea that you have a 5% chance of dropping an equipped item and losing everything in your inventory.

Liked the idea with monster that killed your char to lvl up. Add some XP loss or debuf for short duration. Done=)

How about apon death you are teleported to an afterlife, and must do a couple of quests from the god or gods to be givin a second chance at life?

My take would be what would be fun for the player, corpse running isn't really in nowadays, on the upset something like a Power-up clicking on where you died (EX:could be a little mound with a sword on it) could provide with a boost to health/mana, could be to weapon damage or spells as well.

HOWEVER, Near the area from where the player death, there would be stronger mobs/one rare monster added or those monsters that slayed you rank up lets say

Another idea would be to decrease chance to hit by EX:10%, something minor. For this to fit in gameplay wise, the character would have some kind of death penalty for 10 minutes, however if he manages to kill the monster who delivered the death blow, the death penalty would be gone.

Now while fighting a boss that death penalty would stay active on your second attempt, but the penalty wouldnt have TOO much of an impact.

Just some quick thoughts :)

I really like the ideas about something else happening upon ones death. An underworld for souls who died and getting ur way out by 'playing a chess game' with death or doing some other fast errands or quests for underworld gods sounds real fun and 'new' and if they r timed right would b an answer to 'waiting for a period of time for a re spawn'.
And i fully support the idea about being rewarded/punished if u win/loose against death. This would maybe b an answer to how to b able to recover the loss upon death.

This have most like been mentioned about 50 times already considering the size of this thread but I'll say it anyway.

I think that having a bonus for not dying is better incentive, if you complete X without dying (or without dying more then Y times) then you get some kind of bonus upon completion, if you do die then you lose that bonus.

But that would be for a more "casual" death penalty, depends what kind of game you're trying to make ;) If you want it to be harder then something like dropping your money on the ground where you die or xp loss maybe. Or both.

Love some of the, in-depth ideas after reading through :)
Quick ideas off the top, would be:

Idea A:
1. You Die.
2. Cut-Scene appears with dark ghost figures, who drag your soul to the underworld. (Like something from the film "Ghost".) Big on-screen message "Your Soul has been Exiled! The darkness now surrounds you!"
3. You wake up on a boat on the "Sea of Souls" and have to speak to and/or, bribe the Boatmaster (with currency), to take you back to the world of the living.
4. You wake up, back in town.
5. Look up and you have lost, single or multiple things such as:
- "X" amount of currency.
- "X" amount of Experience.
- Socketed gem level has decreased slightly.
- All Attributes decreased by 50% for 10minutes.

Random Idea B:
- Once dead: "Your Soul has been Exiled, you will now join the undead, until released by another member of your group". <-- Group has to then find and kill you as undead, upon killed, you can then respawn. Not sure how it would work when playing on your own. :O

I know Ive mentioned a couple of the usual penalties, but you can always mix them up a bit, or have a random penalty, which gets worse the more times you die.

Overall, keeping in with the penalty idea, it would be a breath of fresh air to see something new and unique, to an action RPG.

Keep up the good work people! :)