Revive in co-op is still REALLY BAD.

[raw cedar]

I gave this feedback many many months ago after playing demo for many hours with a friend.

I am sad to see that this system remained same on release.

Watching your friend to have fun playing the game for multiple zones is not fun.
Not only that, but you are loosing on many upgrades.

We played in 3 player coop. 2 people died. Our revive points were not even together.
One player would wait for 2 zones, while another for 4.

Any alternative system that would allow to continue further with friends immediatetly would be better:

1. Split health after reviving (Roboquest)
2. Curse revived player (World of Warcraft revive at Angel)
3. Pay gold/stardust price to revive
4. Limited revives during run

I beg you for the love of everything that is holy, re-work this system ASAP for co-op play.

[hallow gull]

Agreed. Business-wise, it makes no sense for a customer to be forced to not play the game they paid for at any point.

I can easily see people refunding the game within 2 hours of Steam's refund policy if they bought it for some co-op with friends or family.

Basically, if your wife dies in-game and she has to wait 2 business days for a revive, you're not going to be playing the game for much longer.

And if someone die in a game with randoms? Whoever dies will just leave. It's not worth the wait. Most people value their time.

Revives need to be easily accessible for this type of game to compete with other co-op games on the market. Right now, this is a singleplayer game for the average user.

[digital yoke]

I personally haven't had any issues with it with my friends, but I suppose it might feel nicer in some other way. Your proposed solutions have some glaring issues however.

1. Split health is only punishing if you don't have any healing (it's fairly easy to get in most cases, especially through guidance shrines), and effectively makes it "too easy" imo. Or very tilting for the people sharing their hp and then dying due to lack of it if healing isn't found.
2. Curses can be devastating/run-ending, so it might end up being worse than being dead for 3-5 minutes. Or it could be something small and irrelevant, therefor having no downside to the death.
3. What do you do if no one has enough? That also means that now the person doing the reviving is behind on upgrades, and that will tilt the teammate instead..
4. Ends up being the same issue if someone dies too many times, they don't get to play the game.

Ultimately it depends on how punishing the devs want dying to be. If they make it easier or less punishing, then the game becomes too easy. If they make it too punishing, then people will quit. After all, dying in solo just ends your run. Co-op is very generous with the gold and dust sharing capability, so you can usually make your way back to relevancy unless you're dying back-to-back.

If they do rework it, I think it should at the very least not involve teammates more than it already does (having to go out of your way and potentially change the direction you're going and lose on important/powerful nodes), because I don't think teammates should be punished for the mistakes of others.

[topaz sky]

Skill issue I like it stop dying

If my run is ruined because of bad teammates why would I play coop

Its their fault for being trash

[sharp dagger]

About teammates not being punished for the mistakes of others, I'd say that wish might be contradicting itself. Teammates are part of the same team and the team as a unit should be afforded a better or worse state as a result of the team's actions collectively.

Sure I concede that there are many instances in real life where getting hit for someone else's blunder is unfair, such as in school group projects where you are assigned to a team against your will, at a job, when legal stuff's involved etc. But in a game? We have to have that, why else is the whole team punished (with a score difference) when the ball crosses the goal in sports?

On this topic, I've seen various thoughts across multiple games and as long as we're talking about PVE games, I see two potential directions: either make revives really accessible for the sake of player engagement and accept that co-op will feel a lot different than solo - nothing wrong with being forgiving mind you - or coop remains punishing and a player's death or otherwise mistake has to ripple through the whole team.

Think of it this way, if we could cruise on as if nothing happened, if there's no material gain or opportunity cost presenting a strong reason to help our ally back, why do it? Faced with uncertainty that ally now stands to gain more from quitting (refer to J's comments above, they're very much correct here) than staying in the game waiting for the rest to take their time towards the boss and revive way weaker anyway.

[steep mirage]

that's a bad take,

new game, new players, new bosses, boss Patterns/Mechs, curses and other stuff that new players never seen and don't know about shouldn't kill runs on lower difficulties IMO.

[sharp dagger]

Because it's the whole team's run, not just yours 😛 of course you don't have to play something you don't enjoy, but what enjoyment even is there to co-op if not the experience of working with the team?

As for "it's their fault for being trash", really? What would you think/say if your friend had an unlucky streak and died a few times back to back

[digital yoke]

That's why I wrote specifically "more than it does already". Of course the team gets punished for someone dying, as the game is harder with more players, so someone dying means less people to deal with more numerous and difficult enemies. That and the need to chase after them is, in my opinion, enough punishment to not tilt the people not dying.

I specifically don't want them to include costs outside of that for other players. Health/resources/whatever else is not the way to go. That's a recipe for an unhealthy co-op experience and will lead to people flaming each other or just refusing to rez each other.

Only way I can think of a rework being made is for them to simply remove the soul spawning in a random location, and have it be "finish X rifts before player is revived". Unless they go for a complete overhaul, in which case I've no idea :v

[sharp dagger]

that's a valid concern

[raw cedar]

Well, I am playing coop games with my friends to play with them.

I would like to have option to revive on the spot, even if this makes game "easier".

• Reserve spawning souls remotely to higher difficulties, allow respawning after the fight in easy & normal difficulties
• Allow reviving friends on the spot at the cost of 20% experience

We are a group of dads that are playing coop games casually on normal difficulty for the fun of it.
We would never even touch nightmare difficulty during our playtime.

[topaz sky]

Id be accepting of it being a post fight thing in Easy but encouraging the punishment of other players for reviving is absurd. If my stats are negatively affected by helping a teammate in a game where bigger numbers matter so much, Id rather just fight the harder enemies alone. Same with gold or dust costs because currency is quite valuable. Its unfortunate if you die but its a skill issue if you do so. Pre loop "falling behind" isnt a thing if you just dont die. I personally only play with friends and we all usually die once and if we die more than that we just dont die again.

The revive system is unique and punishing in a game that is just as much so

Its well balanced as well for coop play as it doesnt cost anything besides a few rooms

AND if you arent playing nightmare you have to complete 2 rooms max to revive someone

It genuinely sounds like a complaint made out of frustration to spectating and not so much an issue with the system

Plenty of roguelikes make it EVEN harder to revive teammates and even discourage such action

The revive system in this game is far less punishing and makes you miss out on a little bit of loot because YOU have a skill issue

You cant miss out on major boss rewards either because if you for some reason arent revived (bad teammates not my problem) you will be revived at the end of the next boss fight to claim the rewards from that fight as well

I apologize you either A die right before the boss so you cant be revived 2 rooms away in the hunter area because you and or your team isnt strong enough to dive in to save you before the boss. B you die all of the time and therefore are spectating or C have teammates/friends who actively sabotage you and encourage the idea of this revive system being bad because they path away from you when doing revives

All 4 alternatives you offered as well set horrible president for what is fair/workable as well

1 requires team sacrifice and personally I am unwilling

2 required a specialized location so have fun finding a shrine just for that

3 would require resources which you would have to have/farm in order to do so which does pose the risk of longer downtime

4 is unironically the most unbalanced braindead of them all. If you just get free limited revives, you now just have extra lives at no cost. There is 0 punishment involved except for those who don't die except on rare occasions with that 1 teammate who eats every single one of the revives.

So now we are punishing people for not dying and playing well

If the game was heavily RNG based then it'd be one thing, but its not

Its heavily skill based with a smidge of RNG thrown in

[topaz sky]

If I were to change anything itd be the revives for boss fights, Id revive them at 25% HP before the boss to encourage them to hit guidance and that way they can still partake in the boss fight

[frail birch]

What is that bs? Why would i want to play coop at that point? If i am being punished for reviving people i will:

1. create elitist lobbies where i will only let people off max mastery on their character to play with me.
2. i will kick low-skill people or simply those that got unlucky too much, essentially locking slower builds from playing.
3. i will not even bother reviving people at late game of i will get a curse for that, cuz being cursed in late game with something nasty means death.

Current revive system is absolutely fine and do not require any attention at all.

[sharp dagger]

You're right that attaching an optional cost/punishment on the reviving player feels unfair, just the same as individual players having to stay out of the game for prolonged amounts while the rest of the team cruises on, that's why I think it's best if the detriment for deaths is forced and distributed equally across the whole party. I'm okay with one player experiencing an in-game penalty to the tune of slightly reduced power following multiple deaths but here we're talking about a different penalty altogether; not being allowed to play the game. You die once, it's easier than before to die again due to having less loot than expected, and again and again.

Not many roguelikes actually make it more punishing, Gunfire Reborn and Ravenswatch have pick-up revives on demand to name some. The main offenders I know of that are worse, are the Risk of Rain games. Later, you said you'd be unwilling to participate in a "team sacrifice" yet you claim to be willing to play in said team.

If your only enjoyment from playing co-op is being proud of your own performance or criticizing players for dying then I'd suggest keeping to singleplayer/friends games exclusively; and if that is already the case, I don't see how our improvement suggestions to the co-op formula affect you in any way

[sonic sail]

In later stages in Gunfire Reborn you wont stand there for 5 seconds reviving someone mid combat, maybe on the very first or second stage, so either you are lucky to be able to finish the fight in like 10 seconds or your friend bleeds out.

We could argue that maybe similar how you get revived at the end of the Boss immediately, they should allow you to revive instantly after an Elite. (especially if some of the effects stay this overtuned, looking at you the circular projectile shooting one + hopping enemies that just hop on top of you and you die in "1 hit" on stage 3+ onwards)

There are some Rogue-likes that also allow you to be like a little spirit helper that can shoot some little projectiles or do a small shield. Which maybe might be a nice alternative to just watching.

If Revives cost any currency to the reviver, the reviver that is doing good is now the one falling behind at their teammates fault. (Pretty sure Gunfire Reborn does since its taken as a "good example" if you dont in time rez the bleed out, costing me hundreds of gold.)
In Coop you can atleast revive, Solo players dont get a free chance at it again if they mess up, which some people might forget, that coop is a nice optional thing, instead of being an Isaac or Hades.

Easier difficulties also make the revive be literally the next stage over, its specifically the harder ones that make it 2+ away, so if you want to casually play and not be annoyed at someone dying, play one of the first two difficulties.

[sharp dagger]

Well, you started out great with two middleground suggestions, reviving after elite, or a pretty good one in my book, having some way to interact with your team still until you get revived such as by contributing as a ghost or other entity even if not at the full strength of your character.

If Revives cost any currency to the reviver, the reviver that is doing good is now the one falling behind at their teammates fault
Common sense dictates that the reviver being the experienced player that they are has the basic courtesy to tolerate the team's collective mistakes, recognizing how they themselves started out fumbling (we all do) and that nobody is truly immune to mistakes, not even the best of us. Now you've a point in that if reviving is optional (pay X currency to revive) then anybody that's not much of a team player will just never choose it, leaving the dead player now stuck in a downward spiral with the sole choice of quitting. If shouldering the team's burdens isn't your cup of tea and a failure born of your mate's missteps is enough for you to consider it wasted time, it is rather likely that co-op isn't going to bring you enjoyment anyway, so I'd avoid it.

And yes indeed, solo players don't get a second chance. I fail to see why that is a problem, co-op focused games often contain suggestions to party up and increase your chances of winning as part of their promotional material so yeah, expect solo to naturally be harder or less forgiving than having multiple people combining their wits to take on the same game.

Again the main problem isn't even missing out on rewards, that's secondary and mostly a symptom of the game's quick scaling of enemy attributes. It's not getting to play the game in any capacity for a given amount of time and to make matters worse that time is variable if you're playing with randoms - they can just choose to not pick you up...let's just say the original post has 30 upvotes and counting for a very solid reason.

[topaz sky]

This roguelike has the least punishing death system out of many, others encourage players to make sacrifices at the cost of the run. Which btw ALSO allow for people to just not be revived at all. Why would we want a stipulation that includes making the run harder for the person who is carrying a sandbag on their back. ESPECIALLY in harder difficulties this game is damn hard. I as someone who is not making mistakes should not be punished for making those mistakes. The cost of not playing for an INCREDIBLY short duration is not much of a punishment at all, you still make significant progress as a team and it makes your own individual meta progression easier to obtain. If the downside is you have to watch while your teammate gets you stardust then that is something you should accept

[topaz sky]

Also in regards to the not many games that make it more punishing,

Gunfire Reborn does make it more punishing reviving is expensive and time consuming. You risk throwing away the run simply because you either pick then up for wait until you find a shop(which might not be until the boss fight)

Heroes of Hammerwatch - The first one binds you together and makes it so if one of you dies both of you die

HoH2 - Reviving costs maxHP so its less punishing than its predecessor but demoralizing to pick people up. The game is hard no one wants to waste their survivability for a sandbag.

RoR2 has end of stage revival and no loot for dead people

Roboquest was mentioned by OP- Team sacrifice which destroys runs

Barony- Death until end of stage, these stages are long and very rewarding. This WILL set you back quite a bit

Synthetic and Streets of Rogue also have high impact stages that cuts you out of much of the required resources to survive

That list can and does go on

[lavish isle]

I think the problem here is you look at it as if your teammate are randos and you dont care about your team

theyre coming from a point

where they wanna play with friends

and their point stands better if you look at it from that perspective

idk why theres even an argument here its js different perspectives

[topaz sky]

All of their points make no sense even considering that as all of those games have some sort of matchmaking

If they hate having to rely on unreliable people then maybe JUST maybe they should make some friends

Ruining game design because humans will do human things is a ridiculous concept

[lavish isle]

If anything they should just make a lucid dream that lets you change the revive system to another type

cause i see your argument

tho i still think if ur tryna play with friends its a definite turn off if the cost of revives is them having to sit and afk for 5-10 minutes

[topaz sky]

I play with friends and no one is AFK for that long because every stage takes a minute or 2

Also we dont die and if we do the run is usually over

[lavish isle]

Yea but u gotta consider everyones different

thats the whole point of feedback

not everyones the same skill level

or plays the same

[topaz sky]

Play on an easier difficulty if its too hard making the game harder for people who play on harder difficulties over a complaint that makes no sense is lame

[lavish isle]

again why i said they should js add a lucid dream

[sharp dagger]

I see this post has attracted several elitists already so I shall take my chance to bow out. Pretty much all of my points were twisted, taken out of context or ignored altogether especially when it conflicts with the narratives built upon strong ties between the game, your own personal definition of fun and your self esteem.

[dire flicker]

I'd prefer revive to be possible at the exit portal of any stage, for the increasing stardust cost payed by the one who accepts the revive. With first death being relatively cheap, but gradually increasing to some cap.

[topaz sky]

That just results in longer death times.

Much longer

And because you dont get dust and gold while dead

How are you supposed to foot that cost if you dont have enough?

[dire flicker]

Under "stage" I mean current node. With current system you're locked out of the game for multiple stages, esp. if different players get souls spawned in different places.

[digital yoke]

I think if it's just on easy difficulty, then it can be same area revive. Just pick up the soul at the end of the stage and everyone gets rewards and very little time wasted. But absolutely not on anything above the easiest difficulty. This will make people complain that it's not fair that you can complete all the achievements on easy with no punishment, but that's the cost of making things easier.

The system as is is not super punishing, and even on higher difficulties, 2 stages are cleared within no more than 5ish minutes if they are long ones, maybe more if you're struggling as a team (or as little as 1-2 minutes if you have a non-combat stage in between, which is sort of common), and if that's still "too much" then.. idk what to say really. Cheer your friends on and motivate them to reach you faster or something.

[topaz sky]

Agreed, this system is incredibly well designed compared to others while also making it easy for a run to be lost for failure to succeed

[dire flicker]

Losing some resources from just 1 node (but still getting chaos etc after revive) wouldn't hurt too much. In the same time stardust pressure would either motivate to get better or run lower difficulty once average per-run balance goes negative.

[topaz sky]

You can be revived after 1 room on lowest difficulty, in the next stage as soon as you find the soul usually at the beginning of the stage

On higher difficulties its 2

Unless almost your entire team wipes

In that case it can be up to 5 rooms for the last one to get revived

But that is a punishment for failure

And its not a harsh one either

At first I agreed it was punishing but I liked it

And the more I talked about it the more I realized its a great system that is very unpunishing

It doesnt ruin runs it just makes a player miss out of a small portion of the overall loot

It all comes down to, if the game is too hard turn down the difficulty

The players on harder difficulties are exclusively the ones punished for these ideas that people are pushing

[dire flicker]

That's the point. When it's 2, some silly death of 2 players either ruins the fun for downed players, or ruins the entire run (when souls are spawned too unlucky).

Even if it's just a few minutes of outage, player is falling out of the loop for too long, managing to get a tea in the meantime. And here we're talking about a death in fast paced rougelike, not raid wipe in MMO. While it's okay to chill for few minutes after 10 mins boss fight, chilling for the same amount after random trash mob laser is meh.

[sonic sail]

We could argue, Souls should always spawn together to counteract unlucky "great, time to run 6 rooms to revive everyone" situations vs "hey we got lucky and everyone is in the same field"

But i think that 2 rooms is fair for higher difficulties. You have to punish death somehow, its a ROGUE-LIKE, its the whole genre, die and retry. You guys keep arguing with other genres, but keep in mind that Rogue-likes were always about dying and retrying. You are trying to make a Rogue-like into an RPG with Coop elements, like Path of Exile (the essence system is kinda like PoEs Gem System) or Diablo or Torchlight.
And encouraging people to sandbag higher difficulties instead of playing Easy or Normal, which dont have the 2 Rooms distance, if you are still in need of practice to increase your skill level, potentially to get better rewards for not earning your share.
Thats like saying people in MMOs should be able to run the highest difficulty raid and allowed to die multiple times per fight and still clear.
Play on the highest difficulty in a Survival Game and walk through it like a cake-walk cause you choose to coop.

Also there is a certain pride in staying alive and being the one to revive the others in this game. Be it friends or randoms. Being the one to potentially save the run. We could also argue, you signed up to watch for 2-5 minutes when you died by playing this game coop instead of playing solo and go again immediately, you choose to do Nightmare Coop even if you know you cant handle it well, trying to Cheese a win out by hoping someone takes up your slack or mistake that run. Especially if you decided to play coop with randoms.

[final whale]

do u have friends

[topaz sky]

Yes I play with them alot too, I have a friend group of 12 friends who all bought the game

Every one of them agrees that the system is great too

[topaz sky]

I like you, you are reasonable

[dire flicker]

Well, tbf there's no too much of "die and retry" in common 2hr+ SoD runs. It's pretty unlikely to reliably replicate builds once run is ended. If it's failed, we usually call it a day. That's about the part where current implementation sometimes just ruins long runs with bad soul spawns.

Using MMO example, usually you're actually able to resurrect dead players mid fight even in the hardest content (usually with certain limit/cooldown). That's basically a protection from bad RNG.

And you're right, we're playing SoD as ARPG, where we can experiment with builds and nuke surrounding for hours. And demo perfectly ringed the bells for us except for the revive system for reasons mentioned above.

But, again, who said that "rouge-like" equals "long downtime"? Isn't it about the maximum replayability and drive?

[topaz sky]

There isnt long downtime

Literally 1-5 minutes dependent on rooms

[dire flicker]

Also, we're basically advocating for making death more punishing. 2-5 mins downtime is mere annoyance and drive-breaking. Stardust cost for dead player to revive would make approach to the whole process way more strategic.

Player would have to deal with bunch of new problems:
"Can I stay stardust-positive in higher difficulty?"
"Oh, lets farm some stardust with reliable build to fund a run for insanely risky one!"
etc.

[dire flicker]

1 min is kinda okay. 5 mins is meh.

[topaz sky]

THIS IS THE PROBLEM I DONT WANT TO BE PUNISHED MORE FOR DEATH

Its completely unnecessary

[wheat spindle]

So don't died, that's the whole point of the punishment ain't it? to make you want to play better and gain the sense of achivement?

[dire flicker]

Well... actually, there's a legit (ancient tech) solution that may satisfy all. Just give an option to be resurrected for stardust at the exit portal from the node you died in. Aka good ol' "hero buyback".

Yeah, than just run both systems in the same time.

[wheat spindle]

Stardust revive will ruin the death system, you can easily have a tons of stardust that have no place to spend at end game and you will just stop caring about death and the game become boring

[dire flicker]

With progressive cost you'll run out of all the stardust.

Death sometimes happen. Some deaths are unavoidable.

[wheat spindle]

What type of deaths are unavoidable?

[dire flicker]

Jumping towards location that's being fired by laser from mob outside of the screen?

[wheat spindle]

I'm not sure how is that unavoidable, but some idea just cross my mind

How about a charge ability that takes kinda long to charge and allow you to revive 1 teammate

It requires you to decide weather you want it to use one of your skill rooms and effect your build

I wouldn't want to use the skill but someone might if it's there

After all I think the game is more about the strategies then about your gaming skill or Faker reflect time

Yeah beside that I think if there are more support skills can make the game more fun with different play styles

Yeah so if you are building a tank build and your friend wants to be a glass cannon you can revive your friend sometimes. Or tank in multi players game rn is just yourself being unkillable and not actually helping the team

More support skills will be so fun

I think band aid builds in game a acceptable, and there are already some pretty OP skills

You as a player can decide which build you want to play now, just don't add band aid to the system like stardust revive

[dire flicker]

Not a death in general, but multiple deaths, thus I was talking about progressive cost. In the same time, with a way to solve bad late game soul RNG.

Well, sometimes it kills really fun runs. Rarely, but happens.

[wheat spindle]

Man, we are discussing about a rouge game, why are we complaining that there's rng

Death is part of the game that force you to think about how you will make your build and add fun into decision making

If you can just stardust every time this game will become a hack and slash game instead of a rouge game

[dire flicker]

And currently it's a hack'n'slash game with 1-5 min timeout on death. With almost guaranteed revive anyway. Long waiting brings nothing uniquely impactful to the table, just makes the dead player to alt-tab. Well, unless player dies way too often, in this case stardust revive would reduce opportunity cost of death, but, again, progressive cost would offset cheesing potential.

Well, that depends on how often player dies. But restricting it to stardust-only revive would indeed probably stray the game too far from its current state.

Technically, both stardust cost and downtime are just amount of time "wasted". But, as they say, it would be handy to at least be able to chose your poison.

[digital yoke]

Stardust is already used in too many places in the game, and I even made a post about decoupling it from cosmetics because choosing between them and character progression is bad. If the option to resurrect someone was with stardust, even a small amount, I wouldn’t take it. It will stack over time, and I intend on maxing out all characters and trying out many different builds and constellations. If I have to lose out on even 5 dust per rez, that will be slowed down a lot. It would only be doable once I feel comfortable that all characters have majority of upgrades I want, which is still many hours away, and it means new players will almost never use this system.

My ultimate worry about adding any kind of punishment to surviving players it that it will make the coop scene toxic. Many people wont want to sacrifice any kind of resource to rez people, especially multiple times. The game is already made harder by the persons death due to scaling enemy amount and hp, it shouldn’t punish them further. If it costs dream dust or gold, be it a flat amount or% with some minimum, if you don’t keep that amount always available then you’re “trolling”. I’ve already seen a concerning amount of people complain about being kicked at the end of games for no reason, I’d rather not give more ammo to people like that.

If there was a skill that can revive, I’d make it like that one spear - you can use it once to revive an ally instead of whatever it does and then it’s destroyed. This is indeed just a bandaid fix, which I don’t think is the right way to go, but it’s something to mitigate death at least. And it implies that the best player on the team always needs to take it “just in case”, which is bad. But ultimately, to redesign the death mechanic, I think the game as a whole might need some larger overhauls, and I don’t see that happening or being needed. The system suits the game because it is by design made to give you progress room by room. Changing it would imo require the devs to rework how rewards are given. And then a lot of other systems will need rebalancing. It might turn into a different game and sounds more like a sequel amount of work than QOL.

[worthy juniper]

this type of death system worked fine in risk of rain and I think it works fine here as well

[solid sorrel]

I think it's really well done in its current state, tbh. If you die, you're not down and out too long, but just long enough to jeopardize the run as your friends are forced to fight without you.

[dreamy halo]

funny that you specifically describe that scenario for Gunfire Reborn, because you can absolutely stand there and spend the 5 seconds to revive someone mid-combat, all because of a single Talent: Benevolence.

when you have Benevolence, it makes it so when you are reviving someone, you are effectively unkillable (damage received cannot bring you below 1 HP) until the reviving is either completed or interrupted.
(though it seems like the effect was stealth changed at some point(?), making you immune to all damage instead. not sure if it was reverted.)

this creates a rather unhealthy(?) strategy of chain reviving - where you stick close to one another and revive if the other person is downed, effectively making the stakes of death moot. the only thing that can ruin this strategy is knockback as you are not immune to control effects.

[proper ginkgo]

Before fixing the revive system, they need to actually make the game require teamwork. I gave up on multiplayer because it's not even a game anymore. It's just a front-row seat to watching everything get blown up as soon as it spawns. If the combat actually demanded the damage output of the whole team plus actual teamwork from the class roles the game has that are currently meaningless, then they could easily just make revives take a bit of time to complete while standing over your ally's soul and that would be fine. If too many people die, the fight should end up likely wiping the party.