My softcore death has meaning

Zorrah

Diabloii.Net Member
My softcore death has meaning

One of the things I was thinking to make me post this here is how much I hate dying only for dying's sake. Hardcore players say that they have a bigger adrenalin rush, more exciting gameplay when there's more on the line.

I have honestly never been a huge fan of big death penalties, and I suppose that is why I play on normal instead of hardcore. There's no real difference in difficulty between beating the game without dying and beating it on hardcore mode, well, besides the fact that hardcore mode says, and here's proof that I did it without dying.

Lately, I've been reading the "hardcore" survival guides to learn how to play through on softcore to keep character deaths from happening or to keep them as rare as possible and find the experience more enjoyable still.

It seems to me, that either the average softcore player does not care about dying or that the average hardcore player assumes the average softcore player does not care about dying.

Of course, the side effect of all of this may have something to do with why gamers suck so bad at video games these days. I guess the question here could be does death have to have a huge penalty to have meaning? Since death is so much more meaningful in hardcore mode, not dying is much more exciting, and thus, the game as a whole is much more exciting. Can Blizzard make DIII softcore deaths more meaningful with a lesser death penalty? Are these minor death penalties going to be bad for gaming as a whole? As a long time game and even some time role-player, these deaths bother me even if there is a minor penalty, but for the munchkins out there, I wonder if a death even registers as anything more than a minor annoyance.
 

Knarlfist

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

I know it might not relate, since it's not the same game... but in ffxi I felt the death penalty had a lot of meaning.

But then again, in that game you never insta-died, and the loss of exp and de-lvling helped quite a bit towards weeding out the bad players from the community. In D2 it's a little different, because in this game you CAN pretty much insta-die, and heap upon that all of the lag and server hiccups.

Nothing rages a person more than lagging out, getting booted, and then coming back to a "your deeds" msg. It's been many many yrs since I had my lvl90+ Hardcore SS Druid, and after he died to that very same problem is when I gave up HC. If I am gonna lose my char, let it be because I made a tactical error, not because of exploding dolls or Extra Fast Extra Strong Cursed Stoneskin Frenzytaurs or FE bugged mobs or Bugged poison from Vipers or server shutdowns or yada yada etc.
 

bodry

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

Bnet is not suitable for Hardcore playing in my opinion. A little story about this. Yesterday I found a party in softcore to beat Hell Ancients. I played a hammerdin (untwinked :)), a trap assa, a windy druid and several sorceresses joined the game. We did all we can, dropped potions on the floor, separated the barbarians properly and worked them. We got only 1 cold immune. What could go wrong? First of all two party members got massive lagspike, instadeath ofc. Second problem: Talic decided to roll Mana burn Extra Strong. He started to chase the druid, so we couldn't see his attributes in time. When he got back to the big party, 1 Whirlwind killed 2 players. My hammerdin got raped badly. Talic pretty much killed the party single-handedly, I had to Charge in naked to open a portal in Summit.

We could kill them on the third try though. Imagine this in hardcore, Ladder day: 4.
 

wutek

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

Last ladder was my first ever. I played both hardcore and softcore. This ladder i'm playing hardcore only. After making few Guardians and clearing Uber Tristram in HC (way too easy :p), PvM softcore seems really uninteresting and not exciting. IMO only reason to play SC is PvP.

@bodry: I can't imagine it in hc... no barb in team? Impossible ;)
 

Zarniwoop

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

If you want a death penalty that has meeting, Everquest was the model.

Hate it if you want, but everyone knew who could play and who didn't.

It was also the greatest gaming community that ever existed.
 

Kijya

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

How about this PvM death penalty then:
Level-down on death, with semi-random removal of the 1skill/5stats.

The level down process just needs to avoid going below character base stats, and the skillpoint removed must just not break a chain of prereqs for other skills.

Dieing at level 1 = permanent HC-style death.

Example: Level 70 sorceress with 50% xp bar filled dies:
Dropped to level 69 with 0% filled xp bar
1 point teleport removed (randomly picked worst case senario? :whistling:)
3 strength and 2 vitality removed



Don't know about you guys, but I'd start playing a lot less sloppy if this was the penalty ... sure, it's not a permanent death, but it hurts enough to encourage staying focused, especially on later character levels.
 

Knarlfist

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

Let me continue the example of ffxi so I can relate a story, because Zarn's comment about Everquest really hit home for me. There are a few games like this, that bestowed fond memories and truly felt worth the time you spent playing them.

I was a up and coming Red Mage, and ffxi had a cool system where you had to pass some pretty hard quests in order to level past certain stages. I had just passed my first Limit Break, and in celebration I bought a whole new set of clothes and sold off the older gear.

And then I made some dumb mistakes, and de-leveled back to lvl49. Suddenly I was completely naked, because I had stupidly bought all lvl50 gear and didn't have the foresight/experience to keep my old gear a few lvls. I was too embarrassed to show up in an XP party naked, so I trudged out to a dangerous area and proceeded to solo back my Lvl.

If you've ever played ffxi back in the original form, you would know how slow it was to gain xp solo like that, and it DID take ages. I know one thing for sure, my gameplay improved daily by leaps and bounds after that slap in the face, and I went on to be a godly solo'er (not for xp, for rare spawn mobs) and one of the server's top Red Mages.

Diablo 2 is gonna be different in many respects, not the half is which since it's not a MMO it's never gonna have the kind of tight-knit community that an Everquest or FF will. So harsh death penalties might not work so well for D2, but I like the idea of a slight penalty... I could see it replacing the full death in HC since I really doubt Blizzard is gonna fix the lag and server drops for a game that is this old. The de-lvl/random skill drop idea is a good one... not too harsh, and it would all be temp in comparison to how fast people gain lvls.
 

Zorrah

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My softcore death has meaning

XP penalties... I hate them, but they feel oddly appropriate. On the plus side, you'll either get better, never get past the level, or go back to where you should be leveling.
 
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