Death Penalties

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."

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PistolPepper wrote:

Positive reinforcement, anyone?

Time played w/o death = more powerful player.

I can see this having issues in hardcore pvp. It would end up making things more uneven between players that are only a few levels apart, or who have just played for longer.
What if I level fast compared to other people, but they are all stronger than me for no other reason than because they took longer? Doesn't seem very fair, especially when you only have 1 life.
This, among other balancing issues, would make this feature hard to tweak, or marginalize its value, in which case dying becomes less of a big deal as well.

Okay, how about:

Enemies give LP (life points) depending on their lvl. LP can be spent buying mercenaries and/or unique one time skills (i.g. all creatures on visible map become your ally temporarily) and/or something (significant)

DP (Death points) are gained from dieing. DPs decrease LP earnings. DPs can be removed* through - quests, currency, xp, purchases*

An indirect route to xp/currency loss

As for the LP farmers? Dieing in a place you shouldn't, for instance: lvl 10 player in lvl 40 area = x4 the DPs.

A new grind mmmm

I enjoyed the way diablo 1 handled the death. Upon death you dropped all stuff that you were wearing and half of your gold you were carrying. (Gold could be saved by putting it into 'your' chest/bank)

Perhaps loosing all stuff is a little hard for most of the players. (You realy get desperate.) So what about getting stuff back by absolving a quest, something like: "Hello, Champion NAME. I heared about your defeat in the dungeons, but not only me, many did. I also heared that a group of bandits was able to get mighty items out of the dungeon. A mole of mine told me that those items once belonged to you. If you do me a favor, i can tell you where you can find your equipment"

So there would be 2 quests to absolve to get the stuff back. Perhaps the first one let's the champion wear "lend" equipment...

The result would be a time penalty and a "you cant go on" penalty, as your equipment is missing.