It might be quite entertaining to introduce a penalty for dying in softcore mode. I propose that players lose a percentage of experience equivalent to their character level upon death. Indeed, this could even cause characters to drop levels. While this change doesn’t directly enhance the game’s mechanics, it would definitely lead to some amusingly frustrated posts online.
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Initially a death penalty was planned. I don’t know why they did not implemented it.
Right now there is a death penalty for Monolith though. You lose the echo reward and stability from that echo.
I think loosing potential rewards is less frustrating than loosing something you already did earn previously.
Yes, you’re right, and I think less player will play this game if there is one more death penalty, like he said, Lose a percentage of experiance? that’s bad IMO
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I personally would like a exp penalty, this would make the last few levels that take really long more prestige.
But I know this would be very polarizing.
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You could always add it as a challenge mode. That way people could opt in.
@Heavy This would make defensive layers more important and speccing like one would play hardcore to get those last levels. I’d be down for that but maybe not as harsh as 10% like POE.
Maybe the penalty only applies once you hit 100 corruption.
No, the game does not need more seperation between different game modes, options or possible challenges.
There are already more than enough game modes and challenges.
I don’t want to ask a person when we have a discussion about the game if they play: Softcore or Hardcore, Normal, Solo Account Found, Solo Character Found and if they choose to opt in on extra challenge A B or C.
In that case I think your idea is horrible and hope it never gets implemented. Negative reinforcement and feel bad mechanics don’t add enjoyment to video games.
Enjoyment is subjective.
I think the enjoyment of achieving something that you know not everybody can do is outweighing the “feel bad” moments when dying and loosing exp.
Especially because LE is very fair in terms of getting killed. There are almost no deaths that I personally had in LE that felt unfair or unjustified.
So a exp penalty encourages to build your character tankier, which is good IMO.
Right now everybody can do level 100. It is no achivement really other than mindlessly grinding echoes. There is no enjoyment or excitment when reaching level 100 for me.
It is just a tedious milestone that has no weight.
Especially because the last few passives points and Health/Mana you get from those last levels are very meaningless.
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@Hilio
Getting to level 100 in POE was incredibly exciting and felt like a milestone because of the death penalty. It meant something to get 100 where I even I respec’d my character as if they were playing HC and played differently to get those last few levels. As the @heavy said: getting to 100 in LE is not exciting because there is no difficulty in getting there.
Experience shrines and nodes become much more meaningful as well if we were to put in a penalty.
That’s fine I just disagree. Getting to level 100 has never been my goal it just happens while playing. I focus on creating a build and seeing how far I can push it. If I am at 300 corruption and level 90 I am fairly happy with that.
Personally I’m one of those players that hate negative impacts such as XP loss for dying. I don’t mind the game being hard which means I die from time-to-time (or a lot on the hardest bosses) but losing XP (or all my gear, etc.) does not make getting to level 100 more exciting or add anything to the game for me.
If people want to spec “like one would play hardcore” then maybe they should play hardcore.
I’m enjoying the game and yes agree that much of is should be a little harder. I just don’t agree with the mechanic of punishing a player for dying is the right way to do that. Dying in itself and having to start the “mission” or whatever all over is punishment enough in my opinion.
I will admit that I enjoy not being punished for dying in LE like I would in POE. 10% loss when trying to hit 100 there was the equivalent of losing 1-2 hours of grinding. But I also have to admit that it made it more special for me when I finally hit 100.
I also can see how lag spikes that come randomly are even more irritating with a exp penalty for death. People feeling like they are punished for not having the fastest internet connection and what not.
For me it added some spice into my experience and felt like getting bit of both softcore/hardcore without losing my character permanently. That being said I’ve only played hardcore on D2 because there was never a point where anything felt like it was going to one-shot me. (Except those stygian dolls lol!) There are many times where I get randomly one-shotted in LE despite my best efforts to gear defensively.
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I’m find with the game not having a death penalty. Just having to respawn some distance away with a bruised ego is punishment enough for me.
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Nice, die at lvl 100 and lose 100% of experience (I assume it would be total experience to spice things up). Die at 101 and get your character deleted 
Memes aside, I personally don’t care, as I’m playing HC most of the time, just currently tried Softcore, but still build as I would for HC. But forum will totally be flooded with “game completely unplayable” threads if this is implemented.
I wonder if there have been psychological studies that compare these two types of game players. Taking everyone at their word, it seems to be these two camps;
- Those that want punishment for failure to make success more enjoyable. Another way of saying this is that reward response is elevated with greater amounts of risk.
- Those that don’t have risk and reward tied so closely.
Wow, I really struggled to write those two bullets because I’m firmly in the second category and the first category is just so alien.
The first thing I’d want to know about the difference between those two camps is player longevity. Does the Risk=Reward camp stay around much longer?
Second question is, at what point does Risk and the inevitable loss that goes along with it, simply prevent the second camp from playing your game?
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Considering how PoE and other ARPGs have both HC and SC players, both of which can have thousands of hours played time, the answer to the first question is: need actual data, but both types of players can play very long time.
Second question, idk, probably if there is no softcore and the game is hardcore-only.
Can’t answer the question directly though, as I don’t know of any actual studies on this topic.
One might guess that HC players may need more time to progress through content, so they would naturally spend more time in the game, but SC players would be able to try more builds, even very silly ones that would die easily on HC, so they might have more time played due to that.
Just hit yourself with a hammer whenever you die.
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I was thinking that the camps vary on how they approach the game.
Based upon nothing at all and not being a psychologist (sociologist?), I imagine the Risk+ camp approaches the game as an alternate life. It makes the game more ‘real’, if there are more impactful risks involved, and that makes the rewards sweeter (my brain doesn’t understand this part).
The Risk- camp approaches the game solely as entertainment. They’ll stay as long as it’s fresh and fun (and there isn’t anything better to do), but they aren’t looking to be punished and have a low tolerance for it. I imagine this camp as being more mobile between games.
But as I said, I have no experience, knowledge or data to test any of this out.
That first bullet is really a much divided category as even that group will see how much punishment and risk/reward they are willing to accept.