Death becomes meaningless

Wicked Feedback
1

Death used to mean a loss of durability and thus gold and time. It gave a real importance to repair consumables, playing smart and the indestructible affix. Now it’s just a small loss of time and so little copper (outside of the Crucible). Suicide can be the fastest way back to town in some cases thus rewarding death.

Other then rebalancing the durability mechanic or adding a difficulty slider another idea could be to reward players with a buff of some sort. Like a magic find, gold or xp boost that is based on kills (if based on time it could be easily cheesed) which can slowly recede over time. Or add a weekly challenge with a juicy reward for so many kills without dying.

Just some food for thought.

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I’ve been doing this a lot to get back to town lately just jump off a cliff lol

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I second this. Death should have a high impact, like even losing items (and have to get back to the place you died to collect the lost item), reducing EXP, losing gold, etc.

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Or they can add in a tele to sacrament I’m not sure if that’s what return does or not Havnt tried it but they could have it not be a rune in that case and be like a scroll or potion you can craft.

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I liked the original durability system as well :sweat_smile:

Kept me on my toes and fight more carefully. Then I unlocked the repair rune and durability was a non-issue. Dying a lot before or at Warrick didn’t matter since Filmore’s repairs were free.

I think a lot of people simply didn’t took the time to understand the systems in place and went full hivemind over a self fabricated death spiral.

Even the soulslike argument of: you die a lot doesn’t matter if you understand the systems. Oh, I can buy slot a repair rune and drink a focus potion gear restored. We are now at the point where you can just remove durability completely since it doesn’t do anything anymore.

Maybe a middle ground would have been better. Like somewhere between where we are now and at launch.

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I think you make a good point RomoloHero. Durability really should just be removed if it’s going to be this watered down. It’s more of a meaningless chore rather than the walk of shame it originally was designed to be.

I think this is a big design decision for the Moon team. Do they cater to the casual audience, the souls audience or can they come up with a solution that can keep both camps satisfied?

I think this game is at it’s best when there is something meaningful riding on every death. This is why I really enjoy the Crucible because I know if I F-UP then it’s gg. Now we don’t want this extreme in the open world but something is better than nothing and right now we pretty much have nothing in terms of a penalty for screwing up.

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I think this can be added later with something like Realm Settings.

And have like difficulties, like Normal, Hard, Ironman and Custom. Each has a different setting for durability. Normal is as it is now or maybe a bit more punishing, Hard similar to launch, Ironman you die it’s game over and Custom you can pick w/e.

Something for everyone.

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Good call. I don’t know if Moon has discussed this yet with the community but I do hope this is something they implement. Loot drop rate (or at least an increase of loot value), xp and gold gain can all be dependent on what difficulty one has chosen for their Realm.

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Agreed. While I didn’t experience the supposed struggles of earlier version’s repair costs, as it is right now it is (way) too cheap. There are gear pieces that are worth 1 - 1.5 silver. Repairing 3 gear pieces costs 50 copper.

I catch myself often enough too, considering just jumping off a cliff so I don’t have to run. That’s not how it should be.
Perhaps having discounted repair prices are alright until a certain level, but past that it should actually be punishing to die.

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The simplest solution is just to make repair costs scale with armor/weapon tier. This way the repair costs naturally scale as you equip or upgrade your stuff. Currently repair costs are negligible, especially mid and lategame.

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Equipped 1 diamond on 2 pieces of armor…

Now, I have to GIT GUD!!!

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That is one solution but doesn’t work too well when a player would rather prefer more optimal gems or hits max level.

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agreed. It has to come from the roots rather than players finding ways to make the game harder.

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i agree that death becomes meaningless but i islike those solutions. actually what i think would help solve that issue if first of all putting the “punishment” in dying somewhere that isn’t tedious, and second, improving the fast travel system.

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What about a revival fee? Don’t respawn the player at the last whisper, but the church instead. When the player is low on money, the church is fine with close to nothing, while they take x amount up to a certain threshold if the player has some gold.

Well, maybe scratch the relocating. That could be bad, idk. But something like that would put the punishment back into the death instead of repair costs

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Agree that death has become a little trivial.

What about a plague meter? Each time you die, the plague meter fills up more and more in intervals. The more it fills, the more debuffs you get (an extra debuff each death. maybe a total of 5?).

If the plague meter completely fills, the last debuff on death 5 is de-generating health that slowly drops over time. You’d have to use rune skills and meals to keep topping health up. There would need to be a fail safe to prevent builds that completely stop this (maybe at stage 5, health perks on gear don’t work?).

BUT - You could also incorporate BUFFS alongside the DEBUFFS to make an interesting system where you may want to die to a certain point. You could also make this purely a DEBUFF death system. Depends what works.

If going toe DEBUFF/BUFF route, the more debuffs you get, the more bonuses you also get.

So maybe your plague bar has 5 stages, one for each death up to 5. As you hit each death threshold, you keep your current buffs/debuffs, and also gain the next one.

1st death, Poise is reduced by 15%, but 15% more money is found.

2nd death, you take 10% more damage, but do 10% more damage.

3rd death, Stamina is reduced by 15%, but attacks and movement are 15% faster on top of current stats from gear etc.

4th death, you occasionally are interrupted by a vomit animation vomiting up plague, buy you gain 15% bonus XP.

5th death, you now slowly lose health over time. Only food and rune skills can give back health. Gear stats like heath on hit no longer work. Also, dying in this 5th state will also cost you money and XP. BUT, you now have a ‘plague frenzy’ meter that fills up from landing attacks. When it is full and you activate it, you do 100% more damage for 30 seconds.

Then to remove the debuffs, i’d say you have to use a special potion bought from the potion guy (that can also drop rarely in game?). When you take the potion, it gives you a buff for the next 3 deaths before the plague effect can start kicking in again.

This was a very quick idea that just came to mind reading this thread, so I haven’t really thought much about it or fleshed it out, but maybe it’s a good base idea for a future death mechanic?

1 Like
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This suggestion in it’s current form, I don’t see it as a good thing with the soulslike nature of the game, I’m sorry.

I feel like this is too punishing for newer players to the genre like myself. If I get punished after dying 1x, bruh…

I do like the idea of a plague meter replacing durability in it’s current state. Durability already doesn’t matter, and this seems like something lore accurate. I would just make them smaller penalties that need to be cleansed by the church or something, they would trigger after a fair amount of deaths to avoid player frustration.

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It is a very adjustable idea, just a template for how you can make death matter more.

I suppose if you make it take too many deaths before there is a negative, then you may as well just leave the system as it is where there is barely any penalty for death.

And honestly, I’m not sure a ‘happy medium’ exists. I think death either needs to matter quite a bit, or be a minor inconvenience as it is.

Like if a plague meter built up and after say 20 deaths you had to cleanse yourself for more money, well that’s not really any different to repairing items for less money more often.

I think they just need to decide does death matter, or does it not? and lean more heavily into which option they want for the game.

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Interesting thoughts!

Maybe this is combinable with sleep time to cure plague?
Or its not like plague … more like healthiness, so one gets healthy when sleeping in his bed. Atm sleeping has not so much of a use i guess.
Healthyness should affect your overall stats … as you said … getting more damage etc. having full potential at 100%

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21

Nice idea. Add exhaustion from dying and bump up the repair costs after players get to Sacrament.

Certain amount of deaths in a certain period of time = exhaustion. You need to leave your character in a bed for 30mins-1hour. Or pay 20 silver for instant replenish in the tavern.

Just spitballing with you lads.

Edit: also make durability lost from dying to 10% again. It was initially just a problem with the tools.

2 Likes