THE DEATH PENALTY

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Not sure if RM supports this but this is simple.

99% of save mechanics fail even quicksaves because of cheap game design. It doesn't mean it's poor but players are often victim to surprises that often justify loading and hardcore players are often looking for 1 life or death games that a fancy death penalty is more gimmicky than a true penalty.

The trick is to convince the former players that it's more rewarding to die than it is to load a save game without any fancy scenario that makes it more exclusive to certain developers or worse, make it so that players end up going on suicide runs especially when walkthroughs spoil these for them.

To do this you make it so that cutscenes are skippable only after a spawn from death. It's not the only thing that can be done but it's one of the first case of rewards. Death spawn = no talkie. Quick load = long drawn conversations.

The penalty? In an rpg game where choices actually matter, dialogue maybe preferable over quick spawn.

The second factor is random events. If there's a chance loading from saves means losing a specific event - players would abuse the save system less. That's trickier but you can create a reverse pickpocketing system. Chance of success is high but once you do it and actually acquire the item, you lose it upon death and can't reacquire it after a save.

The third factor is the grind effect.

Version 1 is where the longer you don't save (but you have to at least have 1 save and load from it), the better items you will get after you load from that death. In fact, not just better but the best items. Basically a longer more tedious form of min-maxing.

Version 2 is where loading from save means higher rates of random encounters until you max out the settings where the maxed out setting is rage quitting. This isn't preferable and it's just a less rewarding form of "challenging fights in the future".

Version 3 is for more general protagonist games. Restarting from death means you can pick a special character. Like in one hentai (but not RPG Maker game), the main character turning into a horse meant the new character has a horse to start with. It's basically setting up a game over scenario where the sequel is built into the game.

Finally the deja vu effect. Unlosing Ranger for the PSP has this but it doesn't have a save system. If the PC dies, a percentage of his XP levels gets put into his potential stats so if he dies in a dungeon, he loses all items and resets all levels (there are feats to bypass this but late game ones) BUT he's a more powerful lvl 1 character upon living through that where as if he simply loads up and grinds, he'd be a weaker...lvl 10 character compared to how he was when he died and came back at lvl 1.

The simplest though is simply a timer. If you're in a rush to save a character, you don't have time to grind and if dying meant adding a +10 min timer to that character then only those who don't care for the character would grind and let the character die.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I don't like the random events. If there's a chance loading a save means losing a specific event, there's a chance it means gaining a specific event. People will continuously reload until they get the event. If they suspect the event might be there, they will even do this when they haven't died.

Some of the other ideas aren't too bad. The system from Unlosing Ranger sounds like a simplified version of Breath of Fire 5.

I'm not strictly sure the problem you're trying to solve is a real one though. The idea is to include normal saves, but then also include an alternative that's typically preferable to normal saves? I guess part of the goal here is to have less of a penalty than a normal save system provides, which I'm not sure is really necessary. I wouldn't call a normal save system particularly penalizing - especially one that lets you save anywhere. Though if your main goal is just to do something nonstandard with game overs for the sake of being different, then yeah, okay, I can see where you're coming from.
No, no. The random events doesn't pop up from loading from a save. It's the opposite. Once you gain an item, say from pickpocketing it, you lose it permanently if you load from a save. The item mustn't be reloaded because it can't be reloaded.

Here's a simplified example. Let's say there's this chest. Now this chest has certain random equipments based on %. To randomize those equipments, you can reload but of course you don't know what's inside. Once you got that random equipment though, you lose it permanently if you died and load from a save. In order to keep the item after a load, you have to put it into a special storage but that same item being there is a check against any random items appearing from the same chest.

I haven't played BoF5 but from your definition, it doesn't sound the same at all.

There's no xp "pool". In that sense, it's more not less complicated. With an xp pool, you have a certain customization. In Unlosing Ranger, you need items to customize. You lose those items and you have nothing to customize. Think of any dungeon crawler that comes to mind.

What the death events does though is that depending on a certain calculation:

See the FAQ for it:

Death Penalty
-------------
>>When you die inside a dungeon you lose all the equipment and items you are
carrying as well as all your WP. You still enter a dungeon clear screen so
don't worry about the levels you gained.

>>The penalty isn't limited to death. If you exit the game in ANY way while
you're still inside a dungeon, it will be counted as a death and you still
incur the penalty. These exits include:

-selecting the "Give Up" option in the menu
-using the HOME menu of the PSP to quit the game
-PSP shuts down

!!!WARNING!!! Put your PSP to Sleep mode at YOUR OWN RISK! There have been
many cases where players accidentally shuts down the PSP instead
of putting it to sleep mode. Unless you KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE
DOING, I strongly discourage putting the PSP into Sleep mode
while you're in a dungeon to prevent any unfortunate accidents.


&

Total Level (TL from now on)
----------------------------
>>Upon clearing a dungeon (or dying) you will enter the Dungeon Clear Screen,
where the game will take all the levels you've gained within the dungeon and
add them to your TL. TL is permanent and it directly affects your Base Stats
at lv1. You gain a fixed bonus to your Base Stats for every set interval of
TLs. This interval becomes larger as you accumulate more levels. Also as a
fun-factor bonus, the higher your TL is, the higher your jump will be in
the base. (square button)

In SOL, from the sound of it, there's zero threat. There's just a mechanic to recover your xp.

In Unlosing Ranger, there's truer death "penalty". If you're a bad player, dying is more favorable BUT you have to make sure you are not equipped or have acquired a rare item. If you're a good player, the item loss means you won't/can't abuse the level up system so you're forced to forge ahead.

As far as death penalty, hey it's not my thread. I'm just contributing to it.

Gameplay wise I don't really think there's a problem. That's not really my interest. I'm more for game design that injects the threat of death into a game so the player actually "respect" the events and you don't just go from A-Z boss battle, read dialogue, boss battle, blah blah blah.

If that's confusing, think of the death penalty in reality. Why do we have a death penalty in real life? Why does it create so many controversies?

There's no one answer to that but a common theme is that life has value. Even those who are for death penalty values the threat value presented by a living being. In games, you only get that if you are given a choice to decide between killing or sparing something but the protagonist is a snowflake regardless of how good a storyteller makes it because it's simply impossible to value an arbitrary sprite. You know it and your brain knows it so the best game designers should aim for more gravitas in delivering death while at the same time not adding too much complexity that it becomes pure death benefits.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Snodgrass
If that's confusing, think of the death penalty in reality. Why do we have a death penalty in real life? Why does it create so many controversies?


What? Man, the topic name was just a pun. Any analogy to real crimes and punishments is an absolutely wild stretch. One is something that you do to someone who isn't very good at a video game in order to get them to try it again, and the other is something you do to someone who murders a dozen toddlers in order to make sure they don't try it again.
Hey guys let's drop the topic of the death penalty in real life right now. Let's stick with digital avatars and Game Overs.
I apologize then. To me those two go hand in hand.

Death penalty in reality is interesting in that it's related not only to the psyche behind it's purpose but also to the depth of how our global culture has transformed it into punishment for the criminals.

In game design, it is just as interesting because where as real life tries to justify some arbitrary cheapening or special necessity to death - in videogames, the designer must deal with the arbitrary injection of empathy towards the life of a fictional character while also balancing the gameplay.
@Snodgrass

while I can understand and appreciate your academic interest there, in this context, the discussion is about "Game Overs", not character deaths.

To go back on topic...

I'm interested in what ideas people can come up with to reward the player for dying?

One idea, is reincarnation, the players are ghosts or A.I. or clones with transferred memories, however you want to explain it. Whenever a character dies, a new replacement body can be acquired, perhaps granting new and/or different abilities.






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