Dying penalty?

[MV]

Would it be too hard to implement a penalty for dying in the game?

It just makes it too easy, and there is no sense of mortality really. It means you could go a dragon naked and eventually kill it due to you being raised all the time.

The system ATM just seems to cheapen life and death of the avatar and the party.

I think there should be one "freebie" death for the avatar, but after that, how about stat loss or EXP loss or even level loss?

It's very possible to play through without dying, I do it all the time, but some people have no sense of strategy or protecting party members, or healing, etc.

[Darke]

That would be rather counterproductive since LB is on record as trying to
minimise the 'cost' of dying.

After all, giving a penalty to dying simply makes people take another
penalty using a non-gameworld means, that is loading your last savegame
and losing the work you've done since.

Currently there's simply the penalty that you're teleported to Paws, or
have to drag your party members body back to LB to get him or her
ressurected, which is pain enough for some. I often found myself on the
other side of the world and it was quicker to load and redo from my last
savegame, then it was to walk half way across the world back to where I
was last.

Darke

[The Viking]

"After all, giving a penalty to dying simply makes people take another
penalty using a non-gameworld means, that is loading your last savegame
and losing the work you've done since."

Or cheating...

[MV]

Personally I just reload a saved game. But being able to have a full party with full magic armor and weapons for all within 30mins legitimately is easy enough already without also being immortal on top of that.

But anyway, doesn't it cheapen the idea of death and life to anyone else?

The only penalty as such is if you die before getting out of trinsic, the game restarts, you've used your "one life".

[Bomb Bloke]

30mins legit... Pfft... Are you referring to the 'cheat room'? Main word being 'cheat'?

The 'help' spell is supposed to work only once, according to the manual. I haven't cast the thing since I used the original U7, but I think that spell could be used as often as you wanted.

As far as dying penalties go, they made up for it in U8. The leaping trails across the place would have racked up an incredible amount of time waiting for the game to save (chug chug) and load (grind grind)...

[MV]

30mins legit... Pfft... Are you referring to the 'cheat room'? Main word being 'cheat'?

Thems fightin' words.

You just need to know where to go. I know where the flying carpet is. I know where party members are. I know where armor and weapons are located that don't involve teleporters.

[Bomb Bloke]

Ok, no offense meant, but I wouldn't mind knowing where you get the armor from. Collecting eight full suits of the stuff in half an hour is beyond me. :/

...Though I have never tried...

[MV]

I should have clarified full party. I mean just the "usual" party of four. DOH! I've had the really full party before, but I personally didn't like it that large. Plus I don't think there actually is enough legitimate full (legs, gloves, gorget, boots, plate, etc), magic armor for more than even 5 people in the game.

[Bomb Bloke]

There is... I think... only just. But you really have to ransack the world map to get it all. There are some places where you can get single full suits.

[The Viking]

I always play with a full eight-person party (Avatar, Iolo, Spark, Shamino, Sentri, Jaana, Julia, Dupre). I usually only bother getting full magic armour for the Avatar and perhaps Dupre and Sentri, though..

[SB-X]

I think the penalty on death is a good idea if combined with a no-saving-allowed mode. That or one-save-only mode and a forced save to it if you or anyone in the party die.

[Bomb Bloke]

Hmm, that's an idea - save the game when any party member dies.

On the other hand, you can have multiple slots... So that might not work.

Taking away the multiple slots wouldn't work either, as it is possible to break the game, and it would kinda sorta suck not to have extra saves along the way, in case that should happen.

[SB-X]

Hmm... you could automatically save to a new slot each time the first one is force-saved, as long as you prevent the player from saving to any but the first slot manually. Of course, all of this is for the wimps out there. The real Avatar need's no savegames at all. Unfortunately U7 or Exult isn't stable enough for that kind of gameplay...and I don't know anyone who wants to sit in one session and finish the game.

This is to say nothing of the fact that anyone can just move their savegame files around. So it's probably best to let people enforce their own rules.

[Mirek]

Well, I personally hate games which limit saving with the argument that it increases playability. Perhaps it would be possible to add some "iron man" mode for such "maniacs" (I remember that it was e.g in Wizardry 8), but I would definitely hate to be forced to use it.

Mirek