Death bonus chains [dev1021]

[Neptune]

I'm writing this topic because of community concern over the death penalty. Many are concerned that there should be a means to promote party play, strategy, and avoid death. My suggestion is based on the pioneering work of B.F. Skinner in psychology and human behavior.

-When a player kills an enemy a value based on the comparative rank of the enemy is added to the player's death bonus.
-As subsequent enemies are defeated the death bonus chain increases.
-When player death occurs this bonus is reset to 0.
-While under the effects of a death bonus chain, damage and healing is increased according to the value of the death bonus.

This will change player battle choices as players will act more cautiously to stay alive and weaken enemies to ensure survival. In instanced PvE content it will bring a new level of meaning to non-boss battles as a party will try to build their death bonus chain in preparation for the difficult boss battle at the conclusion.

-Additional thoughts come to mind about related party situations but I can make note of that later as this is just the beginning of this suggestion.
-The name could be death bonus chains, victory bonus chains, prosperity bonus, or something similar.

[Kaedan]

While I appreciate the freshness of "thinking outside the box"... the system should be kept simple, IMO. The more complicated the system, the more annoying it can potentially be (and the more things can go wrong with it). Specifically with your system, it would be very hard to balance the "bonus" with content. Either the bonus makes content too easy, or content will "require" the bonus, making death an even harsher penalty than almost every other option.

Clawfury came up with a beautifully simple solution. While under the effects of Weakness, you cannot gain SP/XP.

[Neptune]

Kaedan, that's a terrible idea because in a challenging levequest party you would have certain people going without any reward for their time just for getting one-shot over and over again. You're right that it is a simple way of blocking sp gain but that doesn't make it stimulate the kind of effects in players that benefits others. In that system there would be no incentive for better players to take action to prevent the deaths of less skilled players. The only system that would is a system of positive reinforcement.

It would take time to take buffs into account when deciding on enemy difficulty but this game is full of buffs. It's part of the design process anyway and it's just like protect/shell. You want to think past the system itself and predict what would happen in all scenarios of player behavior.

EDIT: Another problem with Clawfury's proposal is that one death would punish the rest of the party members. A whole party would stop fighting to wait for weakened to wear. Right now the party can keep fighting.