Shuffling off the mortal coil

When it comes to death penalty, maybe Recettear can be of some inspiration. In Recettear you are dungeon crawling to gather items for sale. But when you "die" (rather render unable to fight), the fairy will come to carry you home. But she cannot carry you with all items, but only 1 (or 2?) of the loot you made so far. So you wanted to avoid death at all cost, but even when "dieing" you made a progress of at least 1 item. Still frustrating, but I think it was a fair compromise... though the hardest penalty was the time lost, time is money and money is your biggest issue in that game. :D

Markus S.

So, I can see basically two opposing (?) ideas: having death occur via ‘bad ends’ or having death not occur and make the player suffer penalties. My question mark does already give my thought: just implement both of it, it is not opposing at all, imo. Just don’t make the penalty thing a death thing – it should be more like the player barely manages to flee or get rescued or stuff like that. Therefore, just decide on two different ‘incidents of failure’: failure that doesn’t necessarily lead to death and failure that does (like the boss fights or some kind of traps you mentioned). As for the ongoing comments on reloading (I, myself, said something regarding it though): facing a bad end and having to reload is a common element in visual novels. When going back to those Bible Black days, I remember a lot of reloading because of a lot of bad ends, and guess what? I really liked that. Just like Mr. Klimov (one of the gang) mentioned, there can be even ‘good ways’ to present a death or bad end. Capid (another one of the gang, yo) mentioned that failure should kind of matter, which was complemented by Sukaiko (gang!) who said we should be forced to think smartly on our decisions. Having to reload can make me want to think about the decisions because I might be interested to avoid that. But I personally like to experience everything of a game like SoC which means I would want to experience death anyway and then I reload. But that might differ according to the person playing the game. The penalty on the other hand could be a thing if it occurs after battle for example. It would be bad to have the penalty but it might be bad either to reload and do the battle again. For that reason I support the thought of the penalties not being too harsh so that I don’t feel forced to reload, if I don’t want to. Sukaiko made another interesting suggestion with the toughness thing. I don’t know if I didn’t understand it but to me it sounds like offering the player to boost a stat for free without limits. We would just have to go out there and let us get beaten to pulp repeatedly so the stat increases. To even strengthen the player after failure does not seem to be the right way, imo (unless you are into masochism, no offense guys). My opinion in a nutshell: both, the penalty and the death, should be implemented. Balancing the penalty experience is crucial but we can help u with that, I guess. If it is too harsh u implemented it pointlessly (nobody will go through it and will just reload). If it is too minor people will not even bother about it. Dropping the stats to 1 might work if the player can decide on doing more peaceful stuff in the castle while recovering and continue dangerous undertaking afterwards. This way it would be like ‘oh, I can’t go out adventuring, that is a shame, but hanging around in the castle is fine too. ismyname, over and out

I agree with a lot that's been said. Personally I think you're better served with the fated hero trope than ressurections. <br>If you want to go that route though, let me throw in my two cents. You do have a setting that supports rezes, but perhaps you're not going deep enough. In addition to time, each death costs you serfs. The demon siblings use their parting souls as a bridge to rejoin the main character's soul to their body. Each additional death costs more serfs and a chance to lose part of that soul forever. The circumstances of the death dictate gear/monetary loss, and also accrue a cost in soldiers, representing the danger and peril of recovering the protagonists' body. <br>Just some off the cuff ideas.

Dinker

o.o

Dinker

Players will use load/save anyways. So, why trying to make in-game death softer? Just kill the character, make cool graphics for every death cause (maybe some of them even sexy?...), let them load last save. I remember when I played Tomb Raider (yes, in 90s)), it was even fun to kill Lara in different ways, see her screaming when she's falling long enough, etc)

Artem

Shining in the Darkness... that game still gives me nightmares XD Personally I feel that a game that isn't based on skill/action shouldn't have "you lose" senario's, in the past it has been a way to prolong game time/hours, this however does not make it good game-design or pleasant to experience. In the ideal world losing has consequences you have to live with - I'm trying to do that with my game, but as you can imagine the options spiral out of control rather quickly :)

Yron Vol

Agree with both points. And as you saw with the first bad end, I want there to always be a way for you go back to a point before it. Would be bad design if you went down a path to a game over with no way back.

Lord Arioch

A money and time loss is quite reasonable IMO, just remember to make it a bit harsher than simple wound, so that players don't get tempted to go around risking death because it's preferable to outright dying to resting every time they get wounded. A game over should come from a scenario that outright blocks any chance to advancing the plot (for example the siblings banishing the protagonist, or the protagonist's wife getting killed before he stops caring about her, something like that.