New Take On Race Punishment - lose a level/Fight for a level

I love races so far, but below are the rambles on my mind.

Some thoughts.

1. How about when you die in a race you lose a level (a whole level) instead of being eliminated altogether. What is great about this is you are punished hard. Losing a level in a race about levels is a big deal.

(maybe it can scale depending on level = level 30 loses two levels or something)

What is nice, you will still gain the points you earned during the race. If you are level 25 and die, you are now 24. You can still gain the points for that bracket. Well dying sucks, at least you do not feel like your time was wasted.

Mainly I would want this feature because of dysync. I always restart the race and try again, whatever i'm just playing for fun and am noobz all the way. However, a death that was not my fault with only 30 seconds left is heart breaking. Especially since I get zero points.

Nobody in my guild or friends list will party with me for races because one death means time wasted instead of grinding :( This would help flip that mentality for all those people and get more racers.

2. I LOVE cut-throat. Love love love it. Since I'm not a hardcore racer I grind longer than normal and try and kill people for fun. Issue rises when higher level players are killing off low level players for fun. Camping zones and just face wrecking people.

My idea for cut-throat is this. If a low level kills a higher level, you get their level. YUP if a level 10 somehow kills a level 50. You are now level 50 and the 50 loses a level (or a few levels for scaling).

If a high level kills a low level they get nothing.

This encourages the low level players to initiate and contest fights, instead of the other way around.

Balance is an issue, cause you can't lose all your gear as a level 50, so maybe you lose all your inventory, but keep your items UNLESS you can no longer wear an item. Instead that item drops on the ground......this one is tricky.

Anyway that is my thoughts on some balance that I think would encourage players to continue to race and make the game a little enjoyable.

TLDR: 1. You lose a level when you die instead of being eliminated altogether. 2. In cut-throat if you kill someone that is a higher level, you get their level and they lose a level.

As someone who plays on hardcore exclusively, I don't like your first suggestion at all.
They've added some races that reward points for dead characters now, what more could you possibly want?

Blaming desync, a mechanic that plagues all of us almost equally, for your race death is kinda silly. You can prevent a lot of those desync deaths by changing your playstyle (e.g. not spamming certain movement heavy skills like whirling blade), getting more health and utilizing "/oos" as soon as you suspect desyncs.

Can't comment on the cutthroat suggestion because I usually skip those races, but a level 50 giving a low level player up to 50 levels for losing only a single level would be sooooo exploitable.

Normal races should always be permadeath, as one does not lose any experience in most races and a level takes only a couple minutes to gain.

On the other hand, cutthroat should not be permadeath, as the punishment of dying and losing your gear will cost you ~1/6 of the race time (time needed to regear, based on personal experience). You'll still get exciting fights like Helmann chasing down Kripp with the death system the practice leagues had, because killing someone will still give you a massive advantage over them in the rankings, the same incentive as hardcore cutthroat. Also, with non-permadeath cutthroat you get massive fights at The Coast which are fun as hell and don't happen in the permadeath cutthroat races, since there's a significantly higher risk pking there.

Losing a level is not a mechanic that works in this game. Not in races, not in any league. Remember, all your gear and gems require you to be specific level. Lose a level and you may not be able to use any of your gems or any of your gear.

Besides, the punishment can still range from extremely annoying and nothing special. For instance, dying as a level 13 marauder in Forest would not change anything other than the time spent running back. (unless of course you are using a woodsplitter lol). Losing a level in Docks is worth several minutes.