Death Penalties

I don't think losing exp when you die is all that popular of a penalty. Though it really depends on how long it takes to gain levels in this game. If it's short enough for quick level building in competitive ladders, it might not even be noticeable unless someone is close to leveling and loses it all, which is never really that fun.

I think someone mentioned something like spending a certain amount of money to respawn at a desired waypoint, or something similar. I like that idea, especially if the cost is based on the proximity between your current location and the nearest town(with closer points costing more). Though there's the lack of a standard currency system to deal with in that regard, which means you'll have to decide carefully whether it's worth parting with items you may find useful later. That probably makes the decision all the more strategic, though, especially if someone's trying to recover from a mistake in one of those competitive ladders.

One thing I think SHOULDN'T be done though is losing exp from skill gems(equipped or otherwise), especially if that can take a while between level ups. There's also the fact that people might use those to barter for other stuff they need to consider, and weakening those can only make it harder to trade for useful things in a system where even trades are already hard to make.

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Ketzal wrote:

3) I saw another suggestion about a random underworld encounter. I like the idea, but get rid of the randomness. Stay undead for a period of time or fight your way through for a free return. The only issue with this aproach is that for some people it will take too long to deal with and ruin the game experience for them.

That could be a lot of fun if they can keep it a seemless experience and not tedious.

"You have fallen in battle... The darkness swirls around you..."

"Fight for your life!" <insert cool and not lame mini game here. Climbing out of Hades? Keeping the darkness away with a torch?>

"You have succumbed to the darkness..." <in casual you can still come back at the town>

"You find yourself in bed. How can this be?"

<and just to be tricky, sometimes with a side effect>

"And your amulet is missing..."

"And you are well rested." <With some time based temporary stat bonus. Because seriously, if you couldn't do it the first time, you might need the help.>

I say no experience loss when you die ! It's not like you forget the mobs that you already fought or those who killed you !

Instead, make the character that died to loose something else, like : gold, inventory items lost(not dropped to the ground), some inventory slots marked red and unable to use for a period of time(consecutive death leads to a whole inventory marked red and unable to carry even health/mana potions).

Or even better : each death makes that character unable for playing for a several hours. A death automatically logs out the user and prevent him to rejoin the game with that character for a few/several hours.

Knowing that you have to wait 4 hours when you get your 10 level character killed makes you rage to hard... well.. after 4 hours you will be calm and ready to start killing again :)

Your armor should get damaged as it would in real life,experience loss is silly...wouldnt you learn something from death. I like the idea of penalizing future exp for a time though.

Heyy you know since you guys are making another difficulty (hopefully called Exile) you should make it to where if u die on that diff. it's permanent, but make it to where its worth it, like if you play on this mode you get like a higher lvl cap and a better chance for rare items or something.

Just a thought hope I helped

When you die you enter a spectral form with certain specific abilities (that are class based) and decreased xp gain and hp and mana regen. Each kill replenishes a certain %age of your soul and at 100% you regain all your old abilities and revert to your normal form.

Instead of punishing characters for dying, why not reward them for living?

Give players a bar that fills up as you kill enemies, with rare mobs and bosses filling this bar up more than regular ones.

Once the bar fills up, the character is rewarded with a buff that increases exp and magic find.

When the character dies, it loses the buff and returns to the nearest checkpoint with gear and exp intact and must kill more enemies to regain said buff.


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This would be a good way to help avoid frustrating and deterring people from wanting to continue to play after dieing.

It would also make the death penalty more interesting than a basic reduction in xp, not that death penalties are all that interesting more so than they are annoying.

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Zyzone wrote:

Instead of punishing characters for dying, why not reward them for living?

Give players a bar that fills up as you kill enemies, with rare mobs and bosses filling this bar up more than regular ones.

Once the bar fills up, the character is rewarded with a buff that increases exp and magic find.

When the character dies, it loses the buff and returns to the nearest checkpoint with gear and exp intact and must kill more enemies to regain said buff.
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This reminds me of Tera a little bit, they just have a stamina system that flat out increases your HP/MP when it's full. If you die, you have 0 stamina and all those lovely HP's and MP's are no longer there until you drink a stamina potion or rest by a fire.

I like your idea of that bar filling up by killing stuff, you just get stronger and stronger the more crap you kill and if you die, well; it matters. The only thing I'm uncertain about is the magic find portion, I think leave magic find to items and maybe do an exp buff, or the HP/MP buff, and it recovers after you die by killing stuff.

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Larnon wrote:

This reminds me of Tera a little bit, they just have a stamina system that flat out increases your HP/MP when it's full. If you die, you have 0 stamina and all those lovely HP's and MP's are no longer there until you drink a stamina potion or rest by a fire.

I like your idea of that bar filling up by killing stuff, you just get stronger and stronger the more crap you kill and if you die, well; it matters. The only thing I'm uncertain about is the magic find portion, I think leave magic find to items and maybe do an exp buff, or the HP/MP buff, and it recovers after you die by killing stuff.

I like the sound of Tera's death system.

The reason I went with magic find was to make sure people at max level would still care about not dying. Hp/mp could also work depending on how much hp/mp you would be losing.

It doesn't even need to be limited to just those things. The buff could increase your damage, main stat, or anything really.

As long as the buff provides something that is relevant to max and non-max characters, that should be enough to make people care about not dying.

Instead of losing EXP, why not give a penalty to your EXP gainings from your previous death?

A death-debt you have to pay off.

The more you die, the more you have to repay.

And if you die within the timeframe of the old debt, it will get more severe, meaning not only will you have to repay even more EXP/Currency, but you will lose 5% stats for the duration of the new debt.


So not only are you gaining EXP slower, you also have to repay more EXP from your first death.