How severe should death be --- or should it exist at all?

This is something I'm puzzling over in my game...

when we have a TPK, what should happen? At the moment, early in the game, I actually give the player a second chance, and if they completed a certain quest, a 3rd chance not to completely die. (about 1/3 of the way through you lose one of those options, and halfway through you lose the other)

But, even with that, death can occur... so... how should death be treated? the most common views I've seen.

1. Permadeath. There is no save, if you die, you start over. (This is a relic of arcade games to keep you feeding them $$$, imo it has no place in a modern game at all)

2. You return to your last save, no change in equipment/gold/etc (only consequence is you have to walk back, and if mooks dont respawn, it's just a time sink, nothing more)

3. You return to your last save but lose X gold OR you dont lose gold but your other party members are still dead (same effect since you have to pay to revive them)

4. No "death" consequences --- you are forced to reload your last save (can get tedius if you just finished a really long quest or dialogue)

5. You cant die. Every time your killed, due to some ability, one or more characters just auto-revive. (Which can trap you in a loop if the boss can only be hurt by an attack you cant perform due to missing a chest, side-stepping a quest, or the attack only belonging to a party member who's dead and you have no way to revive because you used up your MP/Pheonix Downs/etc)

I realize that some of these rely strongly on the game world and what "fits" (such as #5) but in general, how do you all think death should be handled? And should the handling change? (such as in my game you lose you 2nd and 3rd chances (you can still die and retry but without a revive item, your screwed while in-battle) by midgame due to the respective characters leaving the party --- one without warning!)

Thoughts?

I feel it greatly varies on the nature and 'setting' of the game.
I feel in classic RPGs default '4' option is starting to feel archaic, but is still feasible.

I would personally like to see more variance depending on the situation in the game in which you have a TPK.

Perhaps the story-line splits off and you're left alive, perhaps it was some bandits and they took your money or some items.
Perhaps it'll be like Dark Souls and you simple suffer annoying consequences.
 

These systems are starting to become more common and I feel are pretty interesting.

Other then that, your system sounds pretty good. Party members losing faith in the leader's ability perhaps? 
I'd say try to leave your list of common views, but they can be a good fall back as a last resort.

Actually permadeath does have its place, but pretty much only in dungeon crawler/RPGs.

I suggest you return to the place you last saved(but not reloading last save), losing 50% of your gold(that's why banks exist, if you don't make use of it, you deserve what you get), and perhaps 10-20% of your xp. Maybe even other more minor penalties.

Death penalties should be serious enough to make the player want to avoid being killed, like It's the plague, but not so bad it makes the player just reload game.

To Meoix: Yea forcing a player to reload the game, just makes them want to stop playing for awhile(most likely the rest of the day).

Permadeath is designed for a specific style of games. It seems only suitable to me if the game is SHORT. A game that can be beaten anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Any longer and permadeath risks frustrating the player beyond redemption (imagine getting a game over 40 hours into an RPG and being FORCED to restart the whole game...). From what I've seen, permadeath is really only used in rogue likes or games with a more hardcore difficulty. If you are going for a more traditional RPG, definitely stay away from this.

Dragon Quest's method works because they don't place save points in dungeons. If there were save points right before boss rooms (like many other RPGs do), this would be pointless. The player is more likely to just reload their save file than continue on from defeat. Nowadays, people are used to being able to save anywhere though, so this isn't necessarily a route you might want to go.

Try and cut the middle man where it makes sense. Do you place save points right outside the boss room? Can you save anywhere? If so, give the player the OPTION to retry the fight. I mean, if they want to, they were only just going to reload their save file except they would be forced to wade through any dialogue leading up to the fight. And should they wish to level up or go back to town to purchase a crucial accessory they didn't buy? They have that option too.

How you handle death doesn't seem related to difficulty to me. By applying strange penalties to death or needless wasting of time, the game is only going to be more frustrating. Difficulty is really determined within the battles themselves, not death. So choose a method that doesn't waste the player's time. Ask yourself, "What would the player want to do?"

Alright, let me see if I can help you out without starting a fight here...

First of all, you need to decide if death itself has any place in your game.  You shouldn't leave decisions like that up to the players because every player has their own opinion on every subject under the sun.  This is your game, you need to decide what works best for your game.  As in, does it have death or not?

The next thing you need to decide is the consequences of whatever you decide on.  If you don't die, what is a way to make sure the player feels the impact of a "loss"?  If you don't have that impact, regardless of what you decide, then you may as well make the characters invincible and nix combat altogether because there's no incentive from a player's point of view to avoid "death" or "game over".  If save points are far enough apart, just the walking distance can be incentive not to "die" at some point in the game.  If you lose 20% of your Gold as a penalty to "respawn", it can deter death from players with a lot of money to lose (Especially if it takes a while to get a nice chunk of currency).  Whatever you decide as a penalty should be consistent and the player should be familiar with it in the first two hours of play.  Death has no meaning if a player never experiences it, so be sure that it's kind of looming over their heads fairly often.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let me try to address your individual things here, because I'm sure what you're really after is some kind of consensus or arguments for/against what you're proposing.  I'm going to simply offer you some pros and cons to what you offered so you can decide on your own (as it should be), which method works best for your game, for your setting, and for the players you're hoping to get (do not design a game for everyone, design a game for yourself or for an audience you want to play the game in particular.  Designing for everyone gets messy and isn't a good idea).

1.  Permadeath works well in Rogue-like games.  However, it has to be a compelling enough game that lots of deaths don't deter play (randomly generating worlds, random loot, random challenges, etcetera are part of what make Rogue-like RPGs enticing and are part of what makes players use the deaths as a learning system instead of a punishment system).  For any standard "save the world" RPG...  Permadeath kind of doesn't work as most players would just savescum to keep from having to go back through the 5 hours of Questline they already completed.  If you're looking to tell a particular story instead of provide a place for a player to tell their story...  Well, permadeath isn't a good option for you.

2.  Time sink punishments as death are really only effective in one instance:  The distance to walk back is significant enough to make it a penalty.  The major downside with this, however, is that it can get very tedious.  By that, I mean, players may give up on the game if they have to do a 3 minute walk every time a boss stomps them into the ground.  At some point, it isn't worth the effort anymore.  If you use this penalty, you need to work on scaling enemies better and not make them "as challenging", because if your players have to make that walk from a specific point more than twice, they're going to get frustrated and annoyed.  It won't matter how good your game or story is at that point, because annoyed players shut off games and play something less annoying.

3.  Losing gold and other such things as a penalty for death (or penalty for losing in general) can be a good deterrent.  However, it shares some overlap with the Time Sink Punishment.  When you start losing almost 35 to 40% of your money from repeated deaths...  Well, most players will resort to a Savescum if they can...  Or just quit out of frustration.  This one is a bit harder to balance than the Time Sink Punishment, however, because you need to be very aware as a dev how much money players will have at any particular point (and how much they might need to grind).  If you make money too plentiful, the money loss per death is insignificant and pointless (Borderlands 1 anyone?).  If you make money too difficult to come by, each death becomes more and more frustrating as money quickly piles up in the inaccessible ether and drains from your pockets (Borderlands 2, anyone?).  A decent system to make this more balanced might be to lose set amounts of money to specific enemies/bosses in order to mitigate losses somewhat.  It can be really frustrating to lose as much money to the Great God Demon Dragon of Sapphire as you would to a Common Slime.  If you go the route of money deductions for death, be prepared to be constantly balancing the economy of your game to prepare for such things.

4.  If you have no consequences for a "death" or a "loss" other than reloading the save...  Then you really don't need to reload the save at all.  You could just dump them back at the save point and be done with it.  You could even mitigate the tedium by simply doing this and making sure all events and everything remain triggered so you don't have to do them again.  If you care more about narrative than about a combat system, this might be the way to go.  In fact, it's probably the best way to go.

5.  If there is absolutely no penalty for a loss or a death or anything...  Then you just as well not include Combat at all.  With no threat of death other than perhaps having to reset the game just to continue...  Well, there's not a lot of reason to engage in combat.  I can see a lot of players simply skipping random encounters and bosses (if possible) because combat holds little sway for them other than "I need to kill X to get Y".  If you must go this route, then completely ditch any and every combat system you have in mind.  Players won't really want to deal with it if it's just "mash X to win if you can win or hit 'reset' to find the way to win if you can't win".  If you must put this into a game, you need to find a way to "Have Conflict" without a standard battle system.  Maybe a dialogue battle?  Maybe a minigame?  Something else?  It can't be actual fights with swords and spells though.  Players will find it tedious from minute one.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject.

Personally, I always use Option 4 in my games --- death has no penalty.  The fact is, the intent is for the player to have the maximum amount of fun out of your game.  Even that still makes death have a penalty --- the player has to re-do everything since the last save.

I feel permadeath is far too stiff a penalty, unless you are going for a really hardcore level of difficulty.  And, I agree that is only really valid for games that don't take a lot of time to complete.  I remember playing an RPG using a text-based MUSH system in college.  And after reaching Level 8, through hours of play, my character died, resetting him back to Level 1.  I stopped playing that game because I hated that particular death penalty since it basically said "Your hours of character growth are now toast."

Here are two closely related questions:  When do you allow the player to save?  Everywhere?  Anywhere not in a cave or dungeon?  Only at specific spots?    I believe in letting the player save almost anywhere, except sometimes I block saving when the party is in a dungeon.

The second question is this:  How do you handle non-TPK deaths?  What if, say, a PC dies but not the entire party?   In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, this can result in permanently losing a player character.  

There is the option of making "Death" a temporary state, so if at least one character survives, all PCs are revived with 1 HP at the end of battle.

In my current work in progress, until you reach a late point in the game, there are no revival or resurrection spells.  The PCs remain with your party, but they are dead and not usable.  This puts a heavy emphasis on keeping the party alive.  But I do couple this with "save anywhere" so players can save right before a boss battle, and restore from save if a character dies.

My core belief is this:  Whatever makes the game the most fun for the player is the best answer.  If I'm trying for a story-based RPG (which I am), death just means "Try again" since I want the players to explore the story.  

If I ever decided to make a survival themed RPG, I would probably do something very different with dying and where I allow the player to save.  If I restrict where the player can save, and make death have some penalty, it cranks up the tension.  Then it's a tricky balancing act --- tension is good in that style of game, but it can easily go over the edge into frustration.

If I had the drive to make that many variants of the game, I woudl love to set it where death just splits you to a new story. (especially since that would mean players would have this bizarre goal of going into a certain battle specifically TO DIE so it would dump them into a certain storyline) Unfortunately, it's hard enough to do this with a single story. I might consider one branch but even that would mean from that point onward you had to have 2 possible sets of dialogue and possibly two entirely different sets of maps... x_x

Your comment gave a brainstorm! There is no obvious penalty for defeat --- but party members slowly lose faith in their leader and at certain number of defeats will actually LEAVE THE PARTY! (doesnt work for my current game, but I may impliment that in a future one)

My system actually falls into cliche... the leader (and only the leader) has the ability to revive once per battle if there's a TPK (swaps remaining MP for HP - forcing the player to balance their magic usage in hard fights), but halfway through the game, the Final Boss (who is a ghost of a necromancer) fights you and decides "hey, your stronger than my current host, I'm gonna use YOUR body instead!" and takes over, wiping the party out so they have to be saved by another group before they're dead-dead. 

I actually wasn't planning to implement banks, but that's an interesting idea since the most $$$ lost would be what you earned defeating mooks on the way... would also open up the inventory management challenge "if I hold onto this 'too awesome to use' item, a thieving enemy might steal it! but if I bank it I might not have it when I need it!" I may have to consider this...

I don't plan on allowing "save anywhere" because that takes the risk out of battles (though I might do that on the world-map) and I'm not going to place save-points outside the boss room (except maybe for the final boss and disc-1-final-boss) I've toyed with the idea of autosave, but recently I got burned HARD by that (replaying HalfLife and I passed one of the invisible autosave points... with like 1hp... made the game insanely difficult since I was nowhere near a health station) I should probably really decide now since I'm past the first map (which hardly needs savepoints since it's essentially a tutorial with 2 minor enemies and 1 boss --- though there *IS* a lot of dialogue that nobody would want to redo)

yeah... I'm thinking that on extra-long maps there should be at least 1 save if only to relieve the tedium of walking... (especially since enemies don't respawn) --- which makes estimating $$$ quite easy since I know the maximum avalible money (though at the same time, I'm not sure it's fair to the player not to have much option for earning money, especially since at BEST there wont be revive spells till late-game, possibly never, and items are hard to come by or insanely expensive...) and you'll only get a max of 1 per map...

dumping the character out at the lsat save would likely be the best option... not to mention it will discourage save-scumming if they're not dumped to a load screen... while having a lot of combat, most of my game focuses on story, and even at times on non-lethal solutions (I have a fun variant of the classic 'zelda guard maze' involving a shape-shifter)


I'm rather torn on how to handle deaths. The game, despite having a dark plot (even dead necromancer is pissed the world hated him, so he wants to destroy the world LITERALLY) the game itself is fairly light-hearted. I've considered the "at the end of the battle, everyone dead wakes up with 1hp" but I feel that would really lower the importance of revival items. I'm probably going to go with the classic "revive at a church" (or other holy place since you go like 6 maps before you come to a town... well a town that's inhabited...) Though you also will have 3-4 party members (counting reserves 7 total --- game has 'lots and lots of characters' though these 6 are permanent - discounting the leader's possession halfway through) and at absolute max 6 revives by then... probably a lot less (I'm actually thinking of being really evil and putting a condition on some chests where they only give you a revive if you dont have one)

Wouldn't it be cool if you had a TPK and instead of having to reload your save, you are transferred...to Hell. The. You could explore it as a dungeon. Maybe even take it over!

Wouldn't that be nuts?

In all seriousness, death in video games is never treated with the respect due to death, and for good reason. I remember reading once that Hideo Kojima had this fun little idea that dying in Metal Gear Solid would delete your save. Snake's death would be permanent. Imagine how frustrating that would be! Don't do it! As for NPCs having permadeth, I think the narrative should always address it, and the story should change to accommodate it.

Although I do approve of the gold/experience cost of dying, there's never a satisfactory explanation in the narrative, as far as I'm concerned.

The "reload upon TPK" is the most common and enduring, I think.

I'm very angry at you. I just thought of that XD


But instead of being stuck, you could do something to earn your way out, cuz I mean, who else is going to save the world? (Don't answer that question.)


And not necessarily Hell, but purgatory.

You just reminded me of a really neat death idea I had.  If you are doing a horror or thriller, or a "the game takes place in the player's mind," each death might represent the player becoming gradually more and more insane, so the world would change slightly with each death, as the player descends into madness.  NPCs start saying more and more bizarre things, the other PCs start acting strangely (perhaps forced actions even), the environment starts changing subtly and so forth.

It would also work great for a Demonic Possession type RPG where the entire RPG is the battle between a priest and a demon, during an exorcism...so it takes place entirely in the priest's mind.  

While not "take over" there are a few games where you are sent to some form of hell or purgatory (though usually after a plot-specific death) 

The only problem with that is you'd need a LOT of code to determine the enemies "level" depending on at what point in the game the hero dies... outside of that I love that idea!

 (see above)

Taking this a step further... maybe not so much death (or make death a part of it) but also different quests that are "good" or "evil" (kinda like a karma meter) and the more "evil" you are, the more bizarre the world becomes (since as a priest your supposed to be far on the "good" side of the alignment) As you descend into darkness the demon can grip you tighter and you start losing your mind, and as you fight your way back, you regain your sanity.

I think it's an awesome idea, though it would take a _LOT_ of work to implement it... if anyone ever makes a game like that I want to play it! :D :D :D

Personally, it has to make sense in context of the game world. In many RPGs, death is permanent, yet cheap. A single phoenix feather is all that it takes to revive someone. Sometimes the people are merely knocked out, (Though, this might stem from woolseyisms, rather than original design,) and simple require an item to waken.

One of my favorite games, Lost Odyssey, has immortal characters that come back from death every few turns, though they can be brought back, but it is still game over if all the party members fall. (Which can make some sense if you pay attention.) Another of my favorite games, Terranigma, as well as its spiritual predecessors, has you die, but respawn at a checkpoint or near a save spot with no loss of experience or items, (due to being the avatar of the Master/God/Light Gaia,)

As long as it makes sense, and the game is fun because or in spite of it, then you can do whatever you desire.

I dont know if it's due to a "softer" translation, but it might amuse you to know EARTHBOUND (english version of MOTHER2) has the characters lose consiousness instead of dieing (at least in the text... since their sprites appear as angels, not to mention the revival items as "cup of Life-noodles" and "horn of life" I'm suspicious)

Earthbound has a very interesting translation, Legends of Localization (Which compares translations and original versions) did an examination on it which is very fascinating.

I dont know whether to thank you or berate you, I have just spent all my free time since you posted that on LoL... my head is swimming but it was an awesome site anyway,  in the end I'm gonna say 'thanks' ;)