4Game

I'll start off by saying that I think that skill drain in this game is a good thing. For me it is the only reason I fear death. Most run backs for me are pretty quick due to back up armor and portals. But losing up to 5 hours of progress scares me haha.

Currently the skill drain system makes players fear death, but it does not do a good job keeping players motivated to keep caring about the skill system, or to grind back levels after what can feel like a devastating loss.

One tweak I would like to suggest is for a skill to gain back XP at an increased rate until you get back to your former ceiling. For example your sword skill drops from 80 to 76. XP gain could be 25% faster until you get back up to 80. Obviously 25% is just a random number, and play testing would be required to find what feels best. Maybe the buff gets stronger the further you fall from your previous ceiling. This would make the time you spent to raise the skill high in the first place not feel completely wasted, as well as keep you wanting to get back to your former glory. But this won't allow you to zerg things as your skills can still go down to 0.

There could be a lot of problems with this mechanic, I would love to hear your critiques on it and what other suggestions you guys would make, other than just getting rid of skill drain altogether.