Dying in Diablo is something of a tradition. I vividly remember my Diablo I corpse runs and my memory is forever etched with images of Duriel trumping over my dead Ice Sorceress in Diablo II.
So what’s cooking in Blizzard’s lair when it comes to the death mechanic in Diablo 3? Listen to this:
Before I get in to what we are doing let me go over some things we want to avoid with a death mechanic. We want to separate being in town and being out on a quest/adventure/dungeon as much as possible. Leaving the safety of a town should not be a decision you take lightly. We don’t want to remove the sense of suspense and danger by making town something you’re always going back to pretty much whenever you like.
The intent is to create a greater separation from being in town, and not, and to make your time away from town a lot more tense.
On that same note we also don’t want to remove the player from the action. Throwing them back to town for every death really breaks up the action, and not in a fun, interesting, or necessary way.
So, with these things in mind we’ve found that a check point system works really well. Throughout your adventures, and generally at the ends of each “floor” of a dungeon your character is saved to a checkpoint. When you die you’re dropped back at the last checkpoint with a small amount of health, and the rest regenerates slowly. It’s obviously a very forgiving system as it is. It’s just too early to put a ton of thought in to what penalties there should be, if any, added on top of it.
Regardless, potential penalties aside, this is the death mechanic we’re currently using and it’s working really well so far.
OK, so they’ve borrowed the last point saved mechanic from any recent game that I’ve played. Not too original but I’m not complaining too much either.
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