The Best "Death" Mechanic in Video Games?

[Tryuk]

As a mechanic of the game, I enjoy the Dark Souls system -- die and lose souls/humanity you haven't spent yet, but you can go retrieve them (unless you die again) so it's not overly punishing. Bonfires work well as checkpoints, although it's annoying that you have to activate PVP to kindle them.

EVE is simple and speaks for itself. Works well with the atmosphere of the game, as long as you treat any ship you obtain as already lost.

Super Meat Boy has an absolutely wonderful death replay. You can try as many times as you want on normal levels, however after you complete the level it replays all of your runs at the same time. Best used with levels containing lasers :P Unfortunately it doesn't replay on boss levels

The simple die and run back as a ghost works well enough though. Not everything needs to have 20 different quirks layered on top of each other to separate it from the norm.

[Deleted]

I loved the mechanics in Shadow of Mordor, where whoever killed you levelt up and got a promotion and everything. That whole Nemesis System is amazing.

[Shinzai]

Death or a fail state that doesn't present stakes to the player is totally inconsequential. Effective use of tension and the aspiration to do well is entirely predicated on something being at stake.

My favorite mechanic was in Radiant Aracana. Death accumulated debt up to the maximum XP needed for that level, death also caused gear to lose a huge amount durability. XP was needed even post level cap to pump-up your skills; so having to pay off 30% of your XP gains to debt was a huge blow but did not bar you from content or capability. Durability bonuses over 100% gave a reflection of that bonus to your stats; a 110% chest armor piece gave a 10% boost to the enchanted stats of that armor piece. One could repair durability with gold/money- which kept a permanent gold sink in the economy or reforge their armor & weapons, being free but time consuming.

The system made death something that stung and players definitely wanted to avoid dying. But at no point did dying lock players out of content or de-level, Death debt and durability loss made the death penalty something you genuinely wanted to avoid and feared but could still 'work off' or recover from without losing progression. It encouraged skillful play in favor of inconvenience.

I'd say Sunless Sea, for combining this style of randomized potential punishment system, along with a similar reward system to Rogue Legacy, in that the next captain may inherit certain items, or even a zub of yours, if you've met the requirements to pass it on as an heirloom. It's both punishing and rewarding at the same time.

[Amnaught]

And WoW has a few quests that you have to be dead to do.

Seriously? O.o That sounds awesome. What quest?

[Deleted]

Not sure if it counts as 'death' but Crusader Kings 2 always gets interesting when your player character dies.

Your realm might get smaller depending on succession laws and diplomacy suffers/changes too, which might lead to war in the near future... You start playing as your son, which means you have to make sure he gets his education and is able to lead a country. Being defeated doesn't mean the game is over for you either, because most of the time, you are turned into a vassal and you have a chance to regain your realm later on. The game is basically never over.

[squashdouche]

The Dog from Duck Hunt. He basically was telling you 'You Suck!" if you missed a duck.

nothing has ever put me on tilt more than that fucking dog laughing

[WarpedAcorn]

I loved the mechanics in Shadow of Mordor, where whoever killed you levelt up and got a promotion and everything. That whole Nemesis System is amazing.

You are absolutely right. That was an awesome concept and allowed you to make your own narrative.

[Afrospinach]

It's both punishing and rewarding at the same time.

Well that is precisely the why rogue legacy is so great. Sure you can almost fall down the stairs at the start and get something, but eventually you are going to have to perform to advance.

For those that do not know how this works, you raid a castle with your character until they die. When you die your offspring inherits all the cash from that run. You can spend on upgrades but when you go into the castle again you discard all your wealth you were unable to spend(items are kept forever), whereby if you have failed to amass enough cash for purchase anything at all your run was worth zip. It is both punishing and yet you cannot lose. It may not work for all games but I really cannot think of a better system right now.

Another system is what I am just going to call the squad mechanic. Sort of like crusaders kings mentioned above, you have more than one entity you control. State of decay comes to mind. Nearly everyone can be controlled and anyone that can can die. You do not lose until the last survivor is dead and when they are dead they are dead forever.

Rage also has an interesting "death" mechanic that is nearly a direct solution to what is almost certainly the point of discussing death mechanics at all which is avoiding the save/load system. You can go down but when you are you have a defibrillator that is a mini game. The better you are at it the more health you revive with and by the end of the game you have 3 defibs with their own charge timers iirc. It does save a lot of save/reload which is not really a hallmark of a great game imo.

[Halicia]

Another system is what I am just going to call the squad mechanic. Sort of like crusaders kings mentioned above, you have more than one entity you control. State of decay comes to mind. Nearly everyone can be controlled and anyone that can can die. You do not lose until the last survivor is dead and when they are dead they are dead forever.

I think the original Xcom really made this mechanic shine. Of course, this just made you (me) savescum whenever a good teammate died, but if they *only* got seriously injured and out of commission for a few weeks, you were left to decide whether it was worth restarting or not.

Planescape Torment was pretty good with the "death" too, waking up in a morgue after being dead a few hours is always fun.

[dwightyo39]

Makes me think of having the raid wipe in Temple of Veeshan. Now we have to run back naked through multiple high level zones. "Oh shit! Sontalak spawned outside the entrance!" Raid is picked off by large angry dragon as they attempt to make it back into the zone they died in to begin with.

[Slippermoon118]

I like the god of war killing mechanics and also I love fallout and shadow of mordor!

[Ciddy]

Seriously? O.o That sounds awesome. What quest?

There was one quest I remember for Blackrock Depths. The NPC that gave the quest was a ghost, and you couldn't see him or otherwise interact with him unless you were also a ghost. You didn't necessarily have to be dead to do the quest. You just had to be dead to get the quest and to turn in the quest. Or someone who already had the quest could share it with you, but then you still had to be dead to turn it in once you completed it.

The NPC himself was in Blackrock Mountain. With all the high ledges and lava and such, it was pretty easy to kill yourself for interacting with him.

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Franclorn_Forgewright

I'm pretty sure I remember a few other quests that used death as a mechanic somehow or other, but I can't remember specifics. Sadly, the above mentioned one for BRD got removed from the game a long time ago.

[Tryuk]

I'm pretty sure I remember a few other quests that used death as a mechanic somehow or other, but I can't specifically remember them. Sadly, the above mentioned one for BRD got removed from the game a long time ago.

I don't think there are any after the cata revamp. The Secret World has a few similar missions (2 or 3 of them? One of them is pretty annoying if someone else is trying to do it at the same time).

[lawow74]

I'm pretty sure I remember a few other quests that used death as a mechanic somehow or other, but I can't specifically remember them. Sadly, the above mentioned one for BRD got removed from the game a long time ago.

I seem to recall one that was an homage to the Zelda games requiring you to be dead to go into a graveyard and find something.

I don't think there are any after the cata revamp. The Secret World has a few similar missions (2 or 3 of them? One of them is pretty annoying if someone else is trying to do it at the same time).

This is correct, a number of quests that were homages to Nintendo games got removed. I recall a few in Un'goro Crater.

[Cæli]

1 death - small progression loss
too many death - big progression loss

progression = depends on the type of game. it can be gold, a progression toward the end of a level, a progression toward a boss ...

[melodramocracy]

As with so many other elements, Asheron's Call had the best death mechanic in any MMO I've seen.

Dying results in:

Your several most valuable possessions staying with your corpse. These typically wound up being pieces of gear that you were using, and your corpse exists in the world 5 minutes for every level your character is (so @ level 20, the corpse stays lootable for 100 minutes). You also get what is called a 'vitae penalty', which drops all your stats by a certain percentage until you work the vitae off by killing mobs. If you didn't get to your corpse in time, it would disappear, but leave a stack of items for a while longer on the ground.

The catch here was two fold: a) You'd better remember fairly well *where* you died, because while there was a minimap in the game, there was no indicator of exactly where your corpse was (this was unfortunately changed later on), and b) the penalties would stack, meaning that if you died again on your way to the first corpse or whatever, you lost another 3 items, and had 2x the temporary stat loss. As you can imagine, a few mistakes could become disastrous pretty quickly in any number of ways.

[Very Tired]

I remember in Runescape, at least back in the day, if you died to a monster you lost everything you were wearing and carrying except your 3 more expensive items. Which was pretty insane seeing as some of gear you could be wearing took many many hours of gameplay to earn.

Since they then realized the was a pretty poor mechanic that probably lead to a lot of players quitting the game and added some new stuff to make it easier. One was a gravestone that allows you a few minutes to run back to where you died to grab your stuff, the other was making players pay a large gold penalty based on the level of gear they were wearing. I wouldn't know, I generally avoid dying in this game.

[ro9ue]

As much as I loved EQ, I don't think the harsh death penalty was totally good for the game. It made you more careful and it definitely made to try to make friends with a Necromancer or Cleric who could corpse summon/res you.

But I think to have someone lose all their gear and even lose their levels was a bit harsh because of how much time was invested. I'm okay with "hardcore" servers like Diablo where plays can have the option to play that way, but for the standard death system in a game, I don't think it's that great.

I do like the whole, when you die, you have to overcome a challenge of some sort. Either hunt down the bandits that stole your gold/gear. Or whatever, but nothing that should be a permanent loss.

[Deleted]

1 death - small progression loss
too many death - big progression loss

progression = depends on the type of game. it can be gold, a progression toward the end of a level, a progression toward a boss ...

that will just make people quit. progression loss needs a cap to avoid a downward spiral.

this is why dark souls has a great system: you die once, you are carefull to get your souls back, you get stuck on a hard boss, you don't have to worry about loosing stuff every death.

[ghostblade]

Let us not forget this.