Yay, Blizzard listened to reason

[Kevin]

I have to agree with Tal.  The cost of the duribility repairs is frequently exceeding the amount that is getting earned on session if you happen to end up getting killed twice or more (20%+ duribility damage) on trip as melee character.

I know I haven't played a lot, and I know there are some situations where you die that you don't have a lot of control of (the item lag that I mentioned in another post). But I really don't think a death penalty is a bad thing. 90% of my deaths I could have avoided. Most of them were caused by going too deep into a spawn area, or not luring monsters away, or not grouping, or something else in my control.

There are problems with quest coloring. I have done orange quests that were a lot simpler than green ones. But that is another issue.

And I am torn a bit on the issue as well. I understand that if the penalty is too harsh then fun goes down. But if there is zero penalty fun goes down too, because everyone gets reckless, party dynamics break down, and you still have the time sink of dying, because you die more, at least with a lot of the average people out there. I was the kind of person who played hardcore and softcore D2 the same way. I'm testing in WoW right now so I'm less cautious in some situations.

This is a multiplayer game at heart some of the lack of grouping is caused by no penalty for dying. You get more exp solo, more loot solo. Why should you group? Well if it prevents you from dying and dying has a penalty, that is a reason. Of course I want to be able to solo as well, so yeah, it is a tough balance. I don't want to have to group for everything.

There are other problems with grouping. The early areas just don't need it. All the starter towns are designed to be solo'd. I know my biggest char is only L15 and my other 2 are only 8 and 9, but I've only had 3 or 4 quests out of the hundred or so that I have done that having a group was really benefical for. That seems to be a key underlying problem with a game that is supposed to be multiplayer. If you will need to group later on (and I don't know that you have to), then you probably want people getting used to it early. The number of party members in a group is another issue I have seen raised that can be just as much of a problem to group formation as well. There are numerous issues at hand.

I know tal's initial point was that durability loss was noticable. I'm saying I think that this might be a good thing. Though I'm worried that Blizzard is looking at it for a solution to a different problem. But I was always leary of a game that had very weak death penalties. Not sure what they have now is right or not. Durability loss generally doesn't slow down the fun since you don't lose a lot of dur in combat now and one penalty shouldn't need to be repaired right off the bat. I like that. You still feel the pinch, but you can spread the penalty out, you can usually still get back to it pretty much right off the bat. The res sickness is another issue entirely though. You can't really spread that out, and it has an immediate impact on the fun factor and can really slow you down. I'm less in favor of that. Of course it has less of a global impact because a money sink effects the economy a lot more than someone being less effective in combat or not participating in combat at all.