What punishement would you like to see for death?

Permadeath as an option upon character creation or limited to specific regions of the game, and item dropping. I think games should always have a "hardcore" aspect to it but the rewards for risking your character and items should be significant or unattainable by normal, non-permadeath playstyle. Like Brothainarms said, offering "revives" as a cash shop item could prove to be very profitable for the developers.

 

I think a nice penalty would be that you come back with your same level and items, but you would get spawned on the opposite side of the map, in another realm entirely from where your objective is. No fast travel, no teleporting allowed for three days. Either that, or the ridiculous Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing shows up and has to explain to you why dying is bad and you shouldn't do it and you can't skip his lecture for a full 15 minutes.

 

I play a couple of games one of which has the possibility of permanent death. As a result, I don't play this game that often because I am unwilling to invest the time in creating and developing a good character.
Having no penalty for death is equally as distasteful to me. I am at the back of a cave where I just grabbed the fabled golden marshmallow (or whatever) and now I have to fight my way out through a plethora of trolls to return it. OR I let a troll kill me respawn right next to the questgiver and am done.
I am therefore in favor of a temporary penalty for death. Something significant enough that I try to avoid it yet not so permanent that I am uninterested in playing anymore. Temporary stat reductions (maybe an hour) would encourage me to stay alive, but wouldn't frustrate me out of playing.

 

Similar to some SPRPG's, I prefer the ability to set the difficulty. So for MMORPG's, there should be servers specifically for higher difficulty and others with default difficulty. Higher difficulty would mean I would lose inventory items upon death and get a temporary health debuff. Mind you, for higher difficulty servers, there should be an extra incentive to play on them as well, like higher experience/currency gains and/or certain types of gear not available on default difficult servers.

 

I think there is no single solution fits all the games.
It really depends on many facts such as how easy it is to get XP, gold, itemsmin a game, as well as if the game is a PvE or PvP based. I see no reason to punish people with lose items in a PvE game, and if the game is really hard to obtain XP and items, it is also not a good idea to allow players to kill other players for the sake of making them lose what they have spent so much time to earn. It will only make some people quit if they can't level up or get the gears they desire.

 

Lineage 2 anyone? The penalty when you die in that game is so brutal that it made most players quit. There is a chance that you will level down when you die. Yeah, that's right, losing not just exp, but possibly a level. For example, you just hit level 50 and have 3% of exp, then you died and lost 7%, then you are back to level 49 with 96% of exp. I'm not sure if the death mechanics of that game has changed over the years but at least that's how things were when I was playing back in 2009.

 

There are some games where you are punished in the manner of losing experience and you can even lose levels etc, the likes of terraria you can lose money and items and so on

 

Unless Lineage 2 had changed the game rule, I remember it was 4% XP lost for low levels, and lower % lost when you die at higher level. You can lose less by getting a "% rez" from healer classes. Bioshop armed with specific gears can do as high as 94% rez, which means you will only lose 6% of a 4% of a level (more like 0.24% of a level). There is also "blessed scroll of resurrection" which will give 100% xp back.

Most people did not quit due to the XP penalty... although it might be a indirect reason.
The game was packed with too many players, with limited farming areas. When one enemy clan achieve total dominance over your clan, you will find it's next to impossible to leave town without being pked. That's more of a reason for people to quit because they were unable to play when made powerful enemies. On the top of the boring grinding had made people quit too after a while.

 

Losing experience for death is something I have not encountered, but I actually like the idea. Death is a setback - and that is not a bad way of dealing with it. If it dropped you a level and made your gear unusable, that could be a problem, but I am sure there could be ways of dealing with that.

As I mentioned previously, some sort of risk is needed or people will choose to die as it is easier in some circumstances.

 

I know quite a few games that by dieing constant you could break your gear as well as your armor and on top of that you can delevel, but usually people delevel on purpose to make grinding easier at lower levels dieing is not so bad it takes no time to get that exp back, but when you reach a high level it becomes a pain.

 

Agreed, but at the same time, they don't want to make it an irksome thing having to regain all the lost experience, I know with the likes of Dark Souls, if you die you lose all your unspent experience and you have to travel to your point of death to be allowed to pick it up again, which can be pretty difficult depending on where you have died.

 

I can see that being a major hassle if for example you died in a dungeon that had a level 50 requirement to enter, then if you died you couldn't get back in since you were leve 49? Did it work like that or did it always let you go back to where you died?

 

In that case you will just be re-spawned back to the nearest town or safe zone. Not only that, you will be forced to remove the the weapon, equipment or accessory you are using/wearing for the said level if you leveled down. But as mentioned by vash, there are ways to avoid losing exp such as buffs, equipment and items (blessed scroll of resurrection). But just imagine if you down't have any of these, it would be a troublesome gaming experience lol. XD

 

Permadeath is AWESOME! It works amazingly in DayZ, but I could see how it wouldn't work in most other MMOs. I think WoW and Rift have a pretty good system.

 

yeah, Permadeath wouldn't be an option in an MMO, although maybe a hardcore mode like Diablo has could be really interesting.
I think WoW and RIFT aren't punishing enough though...

 

Losing items is usually the punishment for death. Permadeath works in some games, but if we are talking about the usually mmo's I don't really think you should lose your character. Items are usually a good measure of the worth of your character in these, in any case. Take more.. hardcore games, and permadeath is a good idea.

 

Loss of experience. Maybe also a modifier on health for a couple of minutes. And maybe a fee to pay for your hospital or funeral.