Come to me, Traveler. Let us speak of death and desire

[Sarno]

Today our team has been having some interesting discussions about dying. What consequences do you think there should be - if any? We’ve discussed a flat 5% or 10% XP penalty, losing all XP you’ve earned on that run, the possibility of gold or items being lost, corpse retrieval systems where you lose XP but can regain some / all of it if you manage to claim your corpse without dying again…

Please weigh in on this! We’d love to know what you think.

[Promethus]

losing some xp and regaining a portion if you can retrieve seems fair and consistent with the genre. Just as long as you can not lose a level through such a mechanic.

[Sarno]

Oh no. No, I don’t think anyone’s in favour of losing a level. That’d be a nightmare both to play with and to implement (level requirements, Passive Grid progress, etc.).

[Wazz72]

As Promethus said. I’d go with a flat 10% with the chance to regain around 50-75% of it if you make it to your corpse deathless, or alternatively kill the monster who slayed you; and, if it’s not too much hassle, add a timer to this

[Sarno]

Interesting idea, Wazz72!

We hadn’t considered that, but we’ll chat about it tonight and maybe early tomorrow.

[Sarno]

So some of the initial feedback has been in the form of concerns surrounding how reliable a mechanic this would be - and how fair it would seem as a result.

For example, you may have no way to exact your revenge if;

• You are killed by a Damage Over Time effect from an enemy after it dies.
• You apply a Damage Over Time effect which kills an enemy while you're dead.
• An enemy kills you with an 'on-death' mechanic, e.g. a Volatile Maw's explosion.
• If you're in a group with other players, they may not know which enemy got the last hit on you, and it could be impractical for them to refrain from killing an enemy which is actively attacking them. This could lead to resentment and discourage party play. Multiplayer is something we wish to incentivize, so this is something we're uncomfortable with.

That said, we absolutely loved the creativeness of your idea!

It reminds me of a few things such as Diablo III’s Nemesis mechanic, the similarly-named Nemesis System showcased in Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, and and any other instance of a game taking an enemy and elevating them beyond ‘thing that stands around and drops loot when it dies’. I’d love for us to have a system like that - perhaps a zone similar to Path of Exile’s Hall of the Grandmasters, populated exclusively with enemies who’ve killed you in the past.

[Promethus]

oo I forgot about the Nemesis system. I never played D3 on the console, but would love to have a similar system in place for this game!

[Wazz72]

All valid concerns, Sarno, and no easy way to deal with them… but let’s see

How about killing your own “nemesis” to regain (part of) the lost xp? Explaining it better, when you die you’ll have to make it to a special area/ place by yourself; only when you arrive your nemesis will spawn (or will unfreeze…) and you’ll have to kill it . Ofc only one nemesis per player may be active , and you only get one try - if you die from your nemesis all the xp from both deaths is permalost and the nemesis wan’t spawn again. So it’s a good risk/reward situation: if you are able to kill it you regain a good chunk of xp lost (or even all of it ), but if you fail you lose even more xp. The nemesis’ powers could be based on the monster that killed you if possible and should be balanced to not be trivial to kill but not impossible either. You can do it at any time, so if you’re playing in a group you can do this immediately or go on playing - but you better not die again!- and do it later…

Long wall of text, sorry, and don’t know if it’ll all feasible to implement, but I love the discussion and an xp retriaval system would fit the game well imho.

[Sarno]

It’s a cool idea.

I can see it being too much work to try implementing now, but the down the line when the game’s in a different stage of development we might be better able to invest resources into something like this.