Diablo 3 death mechanic
Sep
30
30 September 2008, Cake @ 11:43 pm

Death mechanic for Blizzard games has evolved a lot since Diablo 1. Diablo 1 didn’t have any, like the other games during it’s time. When you die, it’s game over for you and a menu that prompts you to quit or load from your previous save. Save the game a millisecond before you die then you’re screwed. The players found this annoying so Blizzard changed the death mechanic to something more lenient, which is, you respawn at the act’s town… nude… then you walk (run) your way back to your corpse and you get your previously equipped items back again. WoW’s death mechanic was pretty similar to this but you spawn as a ghost so you won’t get ganked/killed on your way to your corpse but that doesn’t stop you from getting corpse camped by either other players or mobs. Bashiok divulged some information on as to what death mechanic Diablo 3 is using in the current development build :

As posted by Bashiok
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.

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