Having binged a ton of ARPGs lately I’ve noticed the genre has a general problem with having meaningful death penalties. Often the penalty boils down to paying a small amount of hyperinflated, essentially worthless currency in plentiful abundance so there’s never actually much of a penalty at all. Some games seem to just ignore the idea of having a death penalty at all and death is just a matter of walking back through the areas you’ve cleared to return to your corpse with little consequence. Some games seem to tinker with the concept of a meaningful penalty but never go all out with it. Diablo 3 for example as equipment degradation but it requires so many deaths before it really impacts you it’s still barely a penalty at all.
What I would propose is a Dark Souls light death penalty that applies a fixed health/damage debuff on each death with an immediate but not-overwhelming effect. The way I figure it is you can still respawn near you corpse and carry on the fight, but in a weakened state with an ever present and ever increasing risk of becoming weaker upon your next (and more likely) death, thus making the zone harder. Too many deaths will eventually result in the area becoming too dangerous to progress, forcing the player to retreat to a town of their choice to refresh themselves back to normal (which also resets the areas they’ve visited).
I think a system like this would ultimately keep people engaged and focused on the gameplay even if they’re storming through areas with their overpowered build as a lapse of concentration that could spell death is a meaningful threat without robbing them of their power too quickly. It would hopefully cause minimal impact towards the end of an area as well (say, midway through a boss fight) as without repeated deaths the player wouldn’t be overly punished but would be given an appropriate incentive to play as if there were. It would also give the experience of reaching a safe haven more impact and feeling of reward (ala Dark Souls) as you either managed to do so with barely a scratch on you, or you were made to really fight through a tough area with your back to the wall and the odds stacked against you.
I think it could work for any type of player as well as for more casual players they still get the opportunity to respawn and continue near where they died, and becoming too weak to continue is alleviated simply by returning to town and resetting, ready to try again with more experience of the zone and their xp/level gains from their previous attempt intact (the relative brevity of the zones between towns should make this relatively unfrustrating). For more hardcore players however death could serve as not only a potentially severe punishment for playing poorly but also as an addition layer of challenge (for example, making it to as many new areas as possible without resting/resetting and potentially being rewarded more loot/xp for doing so). All of this comes with the added benefit of not frustrating or impeding the player’s long term progress, such as by charging an overly large amount of currency or resources or robbing them of xp, as well as being uniform across the game (so the consequence of death isn’t uneven throughout the game, such as when a fixed percentage of currency or xp is taken away).
I think any death penalty system should only affect the end-game, or start very softly and scale the closer you get to the end of the campaign, otherwise it just becomes tedious and unhealthy especially for new players. Expanding on my argument, the two end-game systems we have right now already have a fairly meaningful death penalty - you lose your progress in Arena and you lose your buffs in MoF (maybe after 0.7.9 it will vary a bit).
Yeah that’s fair. I’m coming from a more campaign focused perspective (I far prefer a good campaign to play than 30 hours of tedium to get to the ‘real’ game). The more hardcore focused modes can have more hardcore and immediate penalties but a big issue with almost all ARPGs is their complete neglect in making the game-game engaging. I rather think LE has a fantastic universe and campaign, with the one problem being the current lack of a penalty. From what I understand it’s being worked on but as anything’s yet to be implemented I thought I’d offer my thoughts as I think a system like this could be introduced easily without having to overhaul what already exists.
Totally agree on OP. If there hasn’t changed anything, devs still plan to add death penalty, there were already rigorous dicussion regarding the topic.
Which death penalty they plan to add i am curious.
besides the actual penalty iteself, just knowing that there is a penalty let’s you approach the game different, at least that is the case for me. Currently there is no penalty and so dying on a particular mob group or against particular mobs often don’t make me rethink my actual approach/tactic.
Having some kind of penatly will definitely change that, which is good IMO.
I agree, that the penalty should probably scale up and maybe even shouldn’t be present in the very early game. but at least for the last chapters of the story and mroe importantly for the endgame modes there should be some sort of penalty.
Be it exp loss or maybe even gold. Gold just should be a penalty when the economy actually is centered around it, but not sure how the dev’s current plans for the economyare.
My first question would be, what we are trying to achieve with death penalties? Because to be honest, I really don’t see many benefits - at least in “everyday” content.
How I see it that if someone really wants feel death penalty, he/she will select hardcore in character creation. And have some arbitrary xp loss or some stacking debuff is just annoying and I can see people to quit game for no good reason.
What I like is content designed with “death penalty” in a mind. Like for example GR in D3, where you die, you will lose time. Or Labyrinth in PoE, where you have just one life, one try etc. I feel having this content in the game is achieving what I believe you want to achieve with generic death penalty but in much better way. Going into content like this, you are prepared for potential death penalty, it’s like picking hardcore character, but if you don’t feel it right now, you can go to some generic zone and just farm without fear of losing something.
For some time I was very “pro death penalty” player, but my personal experience with death penalty is more frustrating than anything else. You are trying new build or items, you enter the zone, where your resistances are lacking for example, die few times in quick succession and boom, you lost xp worth of like 6 hours of farming. It feels pointless. Especially when dying already feels like a punishment, because you can’t play effectively in that zone for example.
If some generic death penalty is going to be in the game for any content, I would rather reward people for not dying than punish people for dying. D3 has this nephalem something system, where you are stacking buff by playing, but you will lose it completely upon your death. This to me seems like more interesting idea.
I’ll cast my vote for a Demon’s Souls death penalty. Each time you die the game gets a bit harder, without your knowledge that this is even happening. If there’s going to be a death penalty might as well make it as punishing as possible. /sarcasm
All joking aside, I loved that game…and oddly enough its brutal death mechanic.
Exactly. Limit the (future) benefits if you must, but do not take away what you already regard as fairly earned and yours to keep (like xp or loot). To me an XP penalty is like a disconnect and the server reverting your character to a state from 10 hours ago. Not fun. For me, even 1 hour lost is worth more than 35$ investment, and the game and I part ways quickly, though not in a positive way…
But of course, that’s just my opinion.
I’m kinda against a death penalty that takes away a player’s power. This type of penalty only makes it harder for a player to progress through content that they already died in even without a HP/DPS penalty. A penalty like this that stacks could lead to a death spiral.
Not to mention I think a HP penalty would favor ranged characters over melee ones since they tend to focus on not getting hit in the first place.
