Death Penalties

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Skal wrote:

Sacred 2 had a very interesting mechanism, going the opposite way from death penalty: a survival bonus (http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Survival_Bonus)

To summarize: to more you kept playing without dying, the greater your survival bonus. The SB increased your base stats, damage, and MF. To counterbalance those benefits, it also increased mob level (relatively to yours).

The death penalty was quite simple: your SD is reset to zero. Not very punishing with a low SB (at the start of the game), but quite damaging when your SB could reach 50%+.

Good idea. Bonus for survival instead of death penalty. The bonus can be totally different than in Sacred but idea is really great

If there's no money or durability then don't add in any death penalty. Seems pointless anyway - it's not like anyone actually wants to die.

Just add in a self-rez on the spot (with the immunity period to get away from danger zone a little and heal up), and allow other players to rightclick rez players nearby. The self-rez should have an increasing cooldown, so players can't repeatedly die and rez immediately.

If players don't want to rez on the spot (or can't because of the cooldown) then making them return to a town seems fair as a "penalty" - as running back is a pita. If people fear others using death as a free town pass/portal skill, then add in a small debuff on stats. There should be no debuff for rezzing on spot however.

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Why does not having money/durability have to do with a death penalty?

Not having one would make the game way too easy. There will be no gold in the game, but that does NOT mean there won't be currency in the form of items. Durability is...well, something that I don't think anybody's really talked about, but I feel that it is unnecessary.


There should be reasons to avoid death in most games, and EXP loss is a norm and easy to implement/balance. It also increases the amount one plays a game, so it's a wise move for a F2P company regardless of what it is.


I like the idea of a slow buff that builds, as well. It's probably harder to balance though, and how do you factor in people in your party? But I think this makes the death be more impactful, which could be interesting.

XP loss is so asian MMO grind game. I know this game is going to have cash shops and all, but with the introduction of xp loss it likely would head down the path of needing to buy special tokens from the cash shop that stopped player xp loss upon death...and I seriously hope even the devs who would stand to gain financially from this kind of sale aren't thinking along those lines.

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kallisti wrote:

XP loss is so asian MMO grind game. I know this game is going to have cash shops and all, but with the introduction of xp loss it likely would head down the path of needing to buy special tokens from the cash shop that stopped player xp loss upon death...and I seriously hope even the devs who would stand to gain financially from this kind of sale aren't thinking along those lines.

Remember GGG is a business, and having a penalty makes sense for people to keep playing and extend the life of a character artificially.

More than J-MMOs have that... Final Fantasy XI was probably the worst (Much better now), but even Diablo II had EXP loss. It's a bit of a standard that most are OK with. Death can't be too forgiving.

I do like the "Nintendo rule" (1 death should not equal more than 30 min of time), but I feel that if they went for the slowly-gaining buff reset upon death would be OK to bend that rule.

I don't think death penalties have much of a place in action RPGs. You are almost certainly going to die at some point. You are probably going to have times where your particular class/build/gear is at a distinct disadvantage against particular foes and die a LOT. Having a penalty on top of that can get frustrating fast, especially if it's something that's going to contribute to you continuing to die (lowered stats, loss of gear, loss of xp/levels) or is so painful you'd rather log off than keep playing.

You never want to put your players in a position where they'd choose to stop playing because it's no longer fun. They might not come back. Earth and Beyond had one of the silliest death penalties ever -- an xp penalty that faded while you were logged off. If you died, your best bet was to log off the game and come back tomorrow. How's that for incentive to play? How's E&B doing these days? Yeah.

Rather than a penalty, why not do something different? Maybe you are stuck in the netherworld and have to complete a random puzzle to outwit Death and return. Or a mini game.

Or maybe you appear in the spirit world as a spirit, and have to fight your way out using ghostly versions of your skills and equipment, and can earn xp (but no loot) by doing so rather than losing it. Death becomes a learning experience, and player stuck fighting enemies to strong for them and dying over and over will have the opportunity to level up while recovering from death (assuming they're dying a lot) and maybe overcome the enemies.

The real penalty of a death in a game is loss of time. That loss can be expressed in a lot of ways, from losing xp or gear to suffering a stat penalty that slows you down. The end result is always the same -- a loss of the player's time or progress. There are plenty of ways to inflict that loss of time without generating frustration at the same time. The simplest is to force a respawn further back in the game and force the player to run back. Sometimes simple is best, but it would be nice to see something more inventive here.

Positive reinforcement, anyone?

Time played w/o death = more powerful player.

I'd much rather see the XP loss that has been prevalent in most games of this type and several MMO's. The only thing I don't know about the current death penalty that is implemented is if you can de-level from it. THAT is the real kicker.

A time spent without dieing buff gain over time could easily be manipulated if not put in correctly. Randomly afk outside town in a low level area with a single mob hitting you for 0 damage. Oh look my power level is over 9000!

The penalty makes you more cautious when you play. Whereas with a buff gain if you die oh well it just reset to zero with no real loss. However if you actually lose something from dieing you are going to try to not die as much as possible. I like the "edge of your seat" feeling you get from this while playing especially when you are fighting something that is relatively difficult.

everyone in this thread has a beta key lol

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A time spent without dieing buff gain over time could easily be manipulated if not put in correctly. Randomly afk outside town in a low level area with a single mob hitting you for 0 damage. Oh look my power level is over 9000!

I agree it could easily be manipulated. Of course you could cap it; a nice buff to have against an uber mob. xp loss upon death doesn't have to be thrown out. implement both.

"Hard boss, eh? I'll grind AND rebuff."