Revival system makes multiplayer the opposite of fun

[Eshajori]

Playing with three of my friends, and not all of us are as good as others. With the shared pool of revives, some of us ate through them quickly. Then they're stuck sitting and watching until the remaining players find a new life, which sometimes takes FOREVER. Then the next person who dies gets to experiance the same hell. Even worse, there's no queue for the ORDER players are revived. It seems they're revived in line priority (left-to-right), meaning if Player 4 is dead, Players 1, 2 and 3 will always be revived before him. It's a horrible system.

You can use the infinite lives crutch, but then there is NO challenge whatsoever. There's no risk in dying. No way to lose... no fun. I wouldn't play without a challenge. There's no modivation for care or strategy, and clearing rooms or killing a boss doesn't feel rewarding.

Playing with lives means certain players stay dead far longer than others (if not forever) and are bored out of their minds, and playing WITHOUT lives means there's no challenge at all. So what's the point?

This isn't fun.

There needs to be a better way. Even if it's a crutch. I'd suggest the ability to revive allies - one that is less conveniant and/or more dangerous than the ankh ressurection. Perhaps by standing on allied corpses for a period. Or put shrines at save points that revive dead players when a living player stands on them. Or put in a respawn timer! In these ways there's still the danger of Game Over if everyone dies, but it doesn't make the game boring or pointless to those who are STUCK dead.

[Neko_Baron]

wouldn't resurection / a respawn timer just be the same as infinite lives?

[Flea Market Montgomery]

This is the leatning curve.

[Eshajori]

Originally posted by YIFFNeko_Baron:

wouldn't resurection / a respawn timer just be the same as infinite lives?

No, not at all:

A) Your remaining allies would have to get to your body, fighting through whatever killed you. This would be especially hard during boss fights.

B) Allies would have to trek back to a statue to ressurect you. Not saying this is a great solution by itself, maybe combine it with the ankh system in some way, like spending one ankh at a shrine to revive everyone who's dead.

Or, combined with a different system, rework the ankhs completely... To an individual item like potions, one that instantly revives you on the exact spot you died upon manual activation. Maximum one per player, like potions.

Whatever way, there is a window of fault where everyone could die, resulting in a game-over. There are a ton of similar games that do this: Castle-Crashers and Monico to name a few off the top of my head. It works very well. With infinite lives, you respawn instantly no matter what.

The thing about the current system is that the revives are just a buffer that is inevitably eaten through, causing the difficulty curve (or rather, the reprecussions of death curve) to skyrocket the instant you run out of lives. Whether you start with 5 ankhs or 100, there's no threat to dying until you run out. If you're good enough at the game to progress and get ankhs faster than you lose them, you might as well have infinite lives. If you're NOT good enough, you're eventually going to run out. And down one or more players as the game only gets harder, you're going to lose eventually. In the mean time, those dead players have to wait AGES to play again, missing content as they're essentially carried along the way. It's annoying as all hell and boring.

[Eshajori]

Originally posted by Flea Market Montgomery:

This is the learning curve.

Problem is, a learning curve relies on a trial and error system that ramps up as you move through the game. That's the whole LEARNING part. But new/inexperianced players who die are then rendered UNABLE to play the game.

Better players that stay alive move forward, and by the time the dead player is revived, the game is even harder! The same players will keep dying, and there's no way to pop them back up. How exactly will they learn and get better when they don't even get to play?

I understand that some people like VERY challenging games. I do too, and that's OK. Even more so, I HATE games that are way too easy. But not everyone is as good as me, and I'm not as good as others. Yet players of all levels would still really enjoy this.

That's why games with OPTIONS exist, such as multiple difficulty levels, handicaps, or additional challenges. I love the Crutch options in this game, I just think they could be vastly improved. Since they're OPTIONAL, your playing experiance needn't be effected at all, so you have nothing to complain about.

[Magical☆Melody]

I feel like a simple solution would be to have an option to have a large but not infinite number of lives available, and a way to track how many each player has used. Having 100 lives available for-instance, would be plenty for players to be able to be reckless and have fun, with the spectre of wasting lives showing up heavily during the bosses probably.

I would like to play this during a lan party, but if anyone invovled was a bit new to this style of game, it could potentially be very unfun for them to feel responsible for a run-wipe...

Still, maybe that's something I can just hack or workshop in?

[Dar]

I agree the system should incorporate whoever died first gets top of the revive queue, but I don't have a problem with sharing lives. If you check the stats it tells you exactly how many kills each player has, how much gold they've collected, how many times they've died, etc. If you think it's unfun to compete with your friends and call them out in jest about sucking at the game then you're playing the game wrong. If you play well and occasionally all buy a life each then lives shouldn't be a problem at all.

[Magical☆Melody]

Yeah, I understand that the game isn't intended for what I would like to use it for. But it /could/ have been if I could just set how many lives we have manually. Infinite is too many, and the normal amount feels too few. Seems like a middle ground would've been polite.

As for what the middle of infinite and 10 is... maybe 100?

[Gundies]

Shared health pool "penalty" is your answer. It combines everyones health and if hp hits 0 you all die losing however many lives you have players. If you only have 1 life left as you die only one of you will res but as soon as you usea staircase or warp everyone else resses on you.

I don't know why it's a penalty, I find it makes the game easier and a lot more fun at the same time. It also lets the warlock heal everyone with his hp drain spell, or the priest technically heal himself by healing anyone. Just a lot more teamwork comes into play.

[Magical☆Melody]

Wow, that actually does sound amazing! I'll definitely give that a shot :)

[Dasky]

A crutch with no shared ankhs?