If you weren’t paying attention, earlier this year RuneScape ran a four-week event called Frank’s Free Deaths. This allowed players to engage in boss battles with the guarantee of no death penalty whatsoever. After 6.5 million bosses killed, Jagex is taking that data and using it to shape the MMO’s death system in the future.
“Going forward, we want to rework the death system to ensure that it’s simpler and easier to understand, while reducing the penalty for dying within RuneScape,” said Jagex. “Our ultimate aim is to improve gameplay and quality of life for everyone, but we also want to ensure that any changes we make are either neutral or actively positive for RuneScape’s economy.”
By softening up the death penalty, the studio hopes that players will feel emboldened to get into more difficult scraps. To this end, Jagex is looking at how to offset the gold sink of repair costs and give players more information as to the price of dying.
