Death Penalty System - EXP Loss in particular

What I really don't understand is why people who presumably enjoy the safe ultra low risk playstyle would even care about this. If you find that enjoyable, good for you. But removing the xp penalty does nothing to stop you from playing that way if that's what you enjoy.

There is plenty of disincentive towards dying, loss of resources to make the map, loss of opportunity to do map mechanics, no progress towards unlocking the next map and ultimately unable to sustain that level if dying too much will force you to go back down in difficulty.

GGG have their pillars they believe are essential to a good ARPG. None of those necessitate or even imply XP loss on death.

On the contrary, one of their pillars is Visceral Action Combat. And they have, for me, absolutely nailed that. The combat is fun and exciting. They have added challenges that encourage you to test your limits for great rewards. Their endgame is potentially amazing and all put together they have the makings of the greatest ARPG to date.

The XP loss on death absolutely goes against this. I want to enjoy the visceral action combat they have created and which I have built to maximise my enjoyment of.

The XP loss becomes the single most miserable thing about the entire experience. It is forcing me to stop enjoying the combat and just grind the safest content. There is already enough incentive to do that without absolutely forcing me to do so.

At best this mechanic it makes me consider making a new character, at worst it makes me consider quitting because I know that character will also hit a wall.

I understand I could copy some build and get to a higher level but that's not the point. It doesn't matter much if it happens at level 70, 80 or 90, the problem is the same. Rarely at best will I be able to thoroughly enjoy the moment to moment combat while making very slow but steady progress, entirely due to this mechanic.

Absolutely nobody who enjoys ultra low-risk gameplay will leave because this mechanic is removed. Because it would not affect them in the slightest, they can still play that same way and it is almost certainly stil, the most efficient way to play.

Many thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, will quit and never return entirely because of this mechanic.

This is an amazing game experience for me overall, and this single mechanic will ruin it for me and many other players. That makes me really sad and I really hope GGG will at least consider addressing it.

Reduce it, make it a different game mode, remove it. But please please do something so we can enjoy the great combat you have crafted and not be forced to super safe zoom around gameplay which will always be the most efficient even without the xp loss.

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Avaricta#4758 wrote:

If there is a chance for the player to succeed, then I think it would not hurt the game. The issue is, the game cannot differentiate between the types of death. And type 3 and 4 are much more common and are hard equipment checks. I believe it would much more hurt the game to remove the penalty for all types of deaths instead of keeping it for all. Since 3 and 4 are the most common ones.

So a player keeps dying because he's undergeared. So what?

You really think that dying twenty or thirty times won't get the message across, but adding an XP penalty suddenly will?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to think the game should force (or at least strongly encourage) players to play the "correct" way.

I disagree. If a player wants to die over and over against an "impossible" boss, that's their prerogative.

The most important thing, and the thing you're deliberately missing, is that you're advocating to teach players to avoid risk: that if they're dying on maps, they're doing something they shouldn't be doing.

Get better gear, choose easier maps, level up more - these are all things that make the game easier. Sure, you need to level and gear, but that shouldn't be the automatic response to dying on a map.

Death should be a constant companion.
If most players aren't dying regularly, the game is too easy and needs to be rebalanced.

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

Death should be a constant companion.
If most players aren't dying regularly, the game is too easy and needs to be rebalanced.

There is no reason for us to discuss this further.

For you dying has to happen or the game is boring.
I believe if a player keeps dying over and over again they are doing something wrong.

Those two are mutually exclusive. Therefor we will never reach a consensus.

As a little asterisk: I am talking about farming in maps. Not bosses. To me once you are at a point where you try to beat pinnacle bosses you don't really care about leveling that much. The priority at that point is defeating the boss.

In PoE 1 and even stronger in PoE 2 there are consciously designed mechanics that everything you do comes at a cost. So there is always something to lose. This is by design and was increased a lot in PoE 2. Other successful PoE like games like Diablo 2 and Last Epoch have similar design elements. So dying is disincentivized.

This is why I would argue that my train of thought is more in line with the intended design behind these types of games. And yours may be better fitting for other types of games like Dark Souls.

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Avaricta#4758 wrote:

The XP penalty serves a very important purpose and must not be removed.

It disincentivizes players to just mindlessly bash their heads against the wall and die over and over in content their character is not yet fit to play.

When you reach a point in an ARPG where you keep dying, the game is trying to tell you that your character is too weak for that kind of content. It is an obstacle that is presented to you to overcome. It is part of the progression of an ARPG.

In PoE especially the player can choose the difficulty of the content 100%. You choose the waystone/map tier, you choose the affixes of the waystone/map, you choose the additional content you do. Each of these things make the map harder or easier depending on your decision.

In my case for example. My build was able to clear the map tiers relatively safe up to tier 15. But when I opened a breach in tier 15 I was at risk of becoming overrun. Since my first priority was the Atlas passive points I simply avoided additional map content until I finished my 6 tier 15 maps. This way I was able to keep the difficulty in an area where I felt comfortable. My decision. Now that I have all Atlas passive points but my character is still not as strong I simply run tier 13 maps but can do all additional content in them without too much risk.

For some strange reason people nowadays are under the misconception that it is always the games fault. When in fact they simply do not want to look how to overcome an obstacle that is part of the natural progression. Most players have that typical LoL or WoW mentality of "I am the god gamer. It is my teammates fault that I do not reach diamond/Gladiator. I could reach that rank easily if I would not be kept down by others."

In PoE 1 this was mostly avoided because the requirements for build guides became so high, that basically every starter build had to be able to clear the campaign naked, finish the Atlas in blue items, be an excellent bosser and be able to do every league mechanic. In PoE 2 the knowledge simply is not yet there to do this. So we are back at the "work on your character" state.

If you die the simple fact is that it was your bad decision making. Except of some unfair one shots, which GGG already started to address and will continue to improve.

Then don't run a map you clearly cannot run.. you should know or at least learn the modifiers on maps that you're dying to. If that isn't the issue and you're dying to white maps then clearly somewhere you have a major flaw with your build.. it's that simple.


SSF players are fine you don't see them complaining HC players are even better they aren't bitching about anything because this is exactly the vision GGG wanted.

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nitefox1337#3569 wrote:

XP Loss Punishes Skilled Players.

I feel like only unskilled players feel this way

I have had a realisation that this is even more flawed than I thought.

Not only does it make you go backwards in progression, it makes you go backwards in difficulty.

Let's say you are happily running tier X maps and levelling slowly but surely yet without any significant upgrades. You die occasionally but not enough that your progress is unsatisfactory.

Yet through a run of bad luck on both crafting and discovery of upgrades for a few levels, you are no longer progressing because your character's power hasn't progressed significantly but the XP per level, and therefore the XP lost on death, has gone up significantly. Not sure of the XP curve but possibly the XP for running the same maps has even gone down.

So running the same maps you were happily playing to progress a few levels ago are now 'too difficult' even though you have not become any weaker.

You could run X-1 maps but the likelihood of dying isn't all that much less and possibly not even enough less to mean you progress any better.

This is completely backwards, feels awful and in my view ruins an otherwise great game.

I am only feeling stronger about this day by day.

I forgot to mention above that not only will this cause players to stop playing it will absolutely stop many from even trying the game because they know this is what's in store for them.

It is anti-fun and I am yet to see any good argument for it that is not predicated on having already accepted that this is how it must be because this is how it was in poe1 and people learned to live with it by sacrificing the moment to moment experience.

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Avaricta#4758 wrote:

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

Death should be a constant companion.
If most players aren't dying regularly, the game is too easy and needs to be rebalanced.

For you dying has to happen or the game is boring.
I believe if a player keeps dying over and over again they are doing something wrong.

Those two are mutually exclusive. Therefor we will never reach a consensus.

False dichotomy.

There is a whole range of experiences between the position that death should be a potential outcome for the game to feel exciting and that you should only die 1/100 maps, which is virtually zero chance of dying.

You keep referring to dying over and over as if people are dying the second they step foot into a map but I don't believe anyone is actually arguing that that should be rewarding.

I believe what typically happens is people clear a few maps and are feeling like the difficulty is about right. Then either through bad luck with random rare mods on enemies, a lapse, or a couple of beers they die and lose all the progress they had made.

The higher you go the bigger this issue becomes. The death rate of once every hour or two becomes intolerable.

It can be further exacerbated as I describe above where RNG doesn't give you any upgrades, the passives alone are not enough power increase and suddenly even though your death rateis lower you are going backwards because the XP loss has increased.

So now you are forced to reduce the difficulty and hope the lower death rate is enough to counter the XP reduction.

Yes there are ways to brute force this hurdle, trade for power, copy someone else's OP cookie cutter build, but ultimately this just kicks the can down the road. Plus somehow I got the impression GGG want people to be able to explore builds and endgame activities for themselves.

It's just a complete fun killer.

Game is too easy. When you die demote a whole level and reset the experience bar to 0. %10 is a joke, either remove it or boost it to a meaningful punishment.

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Wesnt23#6323 wrote:

Game is too easy. When you die demote a whole level and reset the experience bar to 0. %10 is a joke, either remove it or boost it to a meaningful punishment.

Remove it and let people who like excitement-free grinding fun go play hardcore to really get the full no-risk slow grind experience.

Or make it 3 modes.