I don’t think dying should weaken the character because that discourages retrying and improving. If I’m able to go toe to toe with the enemies in a region or a boss but die a couple times then I’d want to keep trying to become better. Punishing me for that would be pretty frustrating imo.
Instead the player, maybe dying could affect the environment: each time you die the fog of war creeps back a bit in that area, and maybe more/harder enemies spawn.
That way, you always have enough enemies to fight so that:
you can train fighting them
your character gets stronger when you are able to kill them by getting rewarded XP and gear
While still …
pushing you back out of areas that you aren’t good enough to be in
preventing the war of attrition approach where you kill enemies until you die and repeat until you’ve cleared the whole area
It doesn’t discourage reattempting bosses because there’ll likely be a whisper nearby, so that there won’t be too many enemies in your way to the boss arena.
And it doesn’t let you keep trying indefinitely because you still burn food and consumables.
I think the point here is that death in combat on its own is an exhaustment for the player. Double punishing that cannot be good.
Maybe split between fall damage deaths/out of combat and in-combat deaths?
Just loosing equipment durability if you die by fall damage, so dying during a normal fight does nothing. That would prevent players from death porting to town.
This is an interesting suggestion. And kinda reminds me of Anti Form from Kingdom Heart. In KH, if you went into Anti Form, you move faster, you have different moveset, higher attack damage (?), but a bit uncontrollable, also can’t use magic, skills, or items, leaving you more vulnerable.
In NRFTW, the character could become a torn version of themself with no usable items or runes, a bit more chaotic, no parry/backstab, but with increased buffs like speed, damage, and stamina.
In a way, it’s not really a punishment since player can leverage their buffs to kill pesky bosses. But could also be used as a punishment since it kinda random after X amounts of death.
To make it less abused, for every “normal” death, you would be respawned at the last whisper, while dying in torn mode would spawn yiu back at Sacrament’s church.
I really like some of the ideas being put out there. I have some quick thoughts I wanted to share on durability:
The durability systems are already in place and a lot of time has been spent on them. I wouldn’t expect Moon to easily just scrap it.
Death shouldn’t be so punishing that it becomes almost impossible to advance or preventing the player from playing the game.
I think durability on day one was mostly fine. It was really just a problem with tools (my gf, who died A LOT, only had an issue with tools), players not realizing that Fillmore gave free repairs pre-Sacrament and learning that it’s okay to go farm easy bounties (like crabs/wolves) or head into a new Realm to get stronger if the cost of advancing is becoming unbearable.
Repair consumables getting a bump in drop rates and tools getting the necessary balance changes already help a ton. Players advancing past Sacrament where crafting, better gear/gem/rune options open up, more players getting used to the combat mechanics and players learning how to take advantage of the durability systems at their disposal should all be enough for durability to be the death tax it was designed to be.
As is durability is in a meaningless place where it has lost it’s edge in being the punishing mechanic it originally was designed to be. To make matters worse it has rendered those durability systems the team spent a lot of time on a watered down feeling of “Why would I ever care about this petty cost, rune, gem or affix?!” for many players.
So I think, now that tools and repair kit drop rates are in a much better place, Moon should balance durability closer to what they originally had it. If they want to go the extra mile then maybe educating players via an in-game glossary/help page (Last Epoch has a really good one) on what they can do to mitigate the downsides of durability might be time well spent and frankly, a glossary of sorts should be in this type of game.
In the most popular souls games, you lose absolutely nothing after your second death (which permanently loses the runes you had).
This formula has been working really well, and enables people to slam their heads against difficult bosses for hours on end, which the community by en large has applauded as a feature.
Any form of stacking penalty and/or that leads up to broken gear just punishes people that are doing their best against content they find challenging, which is the purest experience of souls games: getting your ass whooped until you are good at it.
It certainly doesn’t seem like the right approach to throw this out of the window
Agreed. Playing Elden Ring and this game is like night and day in terms overall general difficulty. This has a lot to due with the camera and how it is handled for us which not only gives us one less thing to control but gives us more vision as well.
I wouldn’t expect Moon to drop durability so the real question is how do we make it a better mechanic. I have stacks of repair consumables and crafting materials for them collecting dust in my storage. I have never put value on the Indestructible Affix or the Repair Rune. I no longer even look at the petty repair costs.
For me the game is at it’s best when there is something meaningful riding on every death. In the current EA build there is no real impact for death other than a little time lost. With the systems already in the game there is enough ways to mitigate durability that a properly informed player can smash their heads on anything all day long.
I have never been a fan of durability but it does become less of an issue to the point of being irrelevant at the moment (you are constantly changing/getting new items).
Maybe a system of reward for not dying would be better. A small but perceptible benefit for staying alive (maybe an small increase in XP gain, Item drop chance, etc.) Don’t make it so it is exploitable (although gaining a benefit before a boss fight may again be benefit of not dying), I don’t think I have ever used any repair items (and item spaces are so ridiculously in short supply) so the system as it is now is not working.
You also don’t want to panelise people who are new or who get pushed away by overly difficult fights. It has always been a balancing act. I tend to get fatigued by souls type games after a while. Its not the difficulty as such but rather the repetitive difficulty.
Durability needs to be removed all together, Dying should make you drop all your items everything in your bag that you have to go back to the place of death to get them, So that means if you die in the crucible you lost them forever, It’s today’s self deserving mentality that people owe them for being born, they expect everything they want handed to them on a silver platter, you could give them a million dollars and the very next thing out of their mouth would be, Why didn’t you give me a million and one, Biggest problem of today’s children they had cell phones and tablets for parents because their parents didn’t want to be bothered with raising them.
I mean, I agree with the sentiment here, but you have to realize that would leave basically every player, even top tier ones, naked basically all the time.
Its fine as it is honestly…the only thing i would change if i could is to add a classic world respawn on death, but then they would have to reballance droprates and potential bounty spawns.
And plz no item loss on death or some other bs…thats just crazy, im not wasing my time and ressource investing into minmaxed gear to just lose it to gravity death…this is not a survival game.
I agree. I think the game needs a better middle ground. The Mortal World, where only mortal characters can play, feels too punishing, while in the normal game death penalties are minimal—usually just equipment durability loss.
Some possible solutions could be:
Losing a portion of EXP, itens/loot, or only the current EXP progress.
If EXP loss is introduced, enemies could respawn after resting or fast traveling to balance the challenge.
Adding a “grave” or recovery point at the place of death, allowing players to recover lost items or EXP.
For the Mortal experience specifically, I’d suggest some kind of safety mechanic for fall damage for example, returning the player to land with -50% total HP and a blackout-style transition effect instead of instant death.
___
I believe we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are many Souls-like formulas that already work very well and just need some adaptation. This game is hard—and it’s supposed to be hard. Death should be something players want to avoid in order to create tension, but it shouldn’t generate excessive frustration.
Players will die eventually, especially in difficult boss fights or challenging areas. Losing all equipment or permanently removing a level from a character doesn’t really make sense and ends up feeling more punishing than rewarding at the end.