17,263
edits
Changes
ADVERTISEMENT
From Diablo Wiki
→Death and Difficulty
These changes make healing from [[health globes]] the primary way to stay alive, and monsters will be balanced to drop health globes just often enough for players to survive, but not so much that they litter the screen after every skirmish.
===Playing Recklessly===
Diablo II's death penalty cost some gold, and experience as well on Nightmare and Hell. This was painful for players who were trying to level up, but for a character who was totally devoted to finding items, the death penalties were meaningless, since no items were lost. It was therefore strategically wise to go full out on [[magic find]] gear and play with reckless speed, since you'd find more items, wouldn't die very often, and when you did the penalties were negligible.
Given that Diablo III will have even more negligible death penalties than Diablo II, won't this be a problem? It was never fun to party with a crazy player in Diablo II, since they just ran off on their own to find bosses, and made no effort to clear levels or play with any teamwork.
Bashiok said no, in an October 2010 post about the lack of death penalties in the game: <ref>[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blue-no-death-penalties-required-in-d3/ Bashiok forum post] - Battl.net forums, October 5, 2010</ref>
<blue>I don’t think death penalties need to edge into the ‘punishment’ definition (although I realize that’s a confusion of terms) to be worthwhile.<br>
Making sure someone can’t endlessly throw themselves against monsters/die/repeat and eventually win is something we’d want to stop. To make the player take pause and realize they’re not going to get past them unless they straighten up and pay attention and play better, or take some extra measures to buff up, or simply come up with a different strategy, those are the types of death penalties that work. Those are the ones we like and that I’m talking about.
Taking gold away from people, or taking a full level of experience away, yeah, that’s a wake up call. It’s also the quickest way to get someone to uninstall the game. A very select few people will put up with something like that. It’s fine in Diablo II because gold has almost no use, but imagine if it did. You’d be encouraged through the mechanic to grind in easier areas where you’re sure you couldn’t die just so you could earn gold safely. That sounds terrible. Without a gold penalty you can play the content you want to play and meanwhile you’re finding items and amounts of gold that are relevant. That sounds like fun. </blue>
Most fans still feel that some sort of death penalty is required, so players are not penalized for playing recklessly and ruining party games. The developers clearly don't think so, and since at this point they know the game far better than the fans, we basically have to take their word for it.
==Death Penalties==
