Why Does PoE2 Keep XP Loss on Death?

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Morghus#4174 wrote:

Yes, exactly. I am convinced the people clinging to it are just hanging on to a sacred cow, with no regard for how this actually plays out, and have some imaginary version in their head of why this mechanic is so "meaningful."

The fact that you argue against it so vehemently defeats your point that it is not meaningful.

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LadyValkyrie1#3750 wrote:

They should just make you buy a new copy of PoE2 if you die in the game.

In the end this should be considered a challenge mode....

Or making us play with one hand till finishing a tough boss...

Innovative ideas: How difficult is to make a part of lost xp be claimed by other players in team. Why not?? Just to make people never reach 100 level? Sooner or later these players will see their efforts go wasted and instead stay in game or begining a new character, they will abandon game.

Because with it it's a dark rotten swamp, without it a children theme park

Yes, I've just reached the point where I'm losing experience. In such a difficult game, where you die so often, it's a ridiculous idea. It's a good thing I didn't invest any more money. It's easier to abandon a weak product. A great game until the end of the campaign, then a terrible failure. No wonder the number of players is decreasing; GGG clearly hasn't learned their lesson. In a few years, games that punish players for death, players who have a very limited amount of time to play, will be a thing of the past, just a memory of the old era of game development. This is an opportunity for other game development studios to take all the brilliant ideas from PoE2, throw out the idiotic concepts like death penalty, and grab a huge market share that GGG so squandered.

New player. Just learned about this. No warning at all. Vaal temple sucks so bad I was just dying to get back to the waypoint to bring gear back to the stash since you can’t even port out. lol what a terrible design. Guess I’ll save all hard content for immediately after I hit a new level and that’s it. Unless dying w 0 XP on new level drops you down? My lord

For me, the game has slowly turned into "tip-toeing simulator".

I respecced into a much more defensive setup just to stop dying all the time. It worked, sort of, but my DPS dropped by a lot and the whole game slowed down with it. Now it is safer, but also more boring. Great trade, I guess.

The main problem is that most of my deaths do not teach me anything. It is often just a sudden "boom, you are dead" moment. I do not know exactly what killed me, I do not know what I should change, and I still get punished with XP loss. Even with an Omen, losing 2.5% at level 95+ feels excessive when the death gives no useful feedback.

That is why I still think the penalty should be map-based.

For example, if I enter an Atlas map at 50% XP, then 50% should be my floor for that map. If I die there, sure, punish the map. Let me lose the portals, the juice, the loot potential, and the XP gained inside that map. But do not let one unclear death erase progress from previous maps.

That would still make death matter, but it would also let players experiment with different maps, harder content, and different builds without being overpunished. Right now the system mostly teaches players to play safe, slow, and boring.

And that is not really challenge. That is just carrying a bowl of soup through an earthquake again.

PoE2 has turned into nothing more than a “who’s willing to spend the most money on Mirrors” simulator.

There’s no way people are legitimately dropping Mirrors at the rate the market suggests — especially in a short-lived league. I’ve got nearly 2,000 hours in the game and I’ve never seen a single Mirror drop. Not one. In that same time, I’ve had maybe ~70 Divines total.

That’s with 150 MF, fully juiced maps, stacked rarity, pre-nerf tower overlaps (3–5 at a time), and now running on char 150 mf ,T15s with 120+ MF plus extra MF from tablets. I’m playing 10–12 hours a day, and in the last 4 days I’ve dropped 3 Divines. Three. And barely anything else of value.

So where exactly is all this currency coming from?

Let’s stop pretending. The economy is completely warped by people buying currency on third-party sites, and everyone knows it. That’s why “chase” items are already 50–200 Divines just two days into a league, with some pushing multiple Mirrors. That’s not a healthy economy — that’s a credit card competition.

And the worst part? The game is clearly balanced around those top-end, streamer “zoom” builds that delete everything instantly. If you’re not playing a braindead oneshot build, you’re at a constant disadvantage — risking deaths, losing XP, bricking maps, and getting punished for actually engaging with the game instead of trivializing it.

At this point, leagues feel pointless. I already did the grind once — learned everything, min-maxed, farmed my gear. I’m not doing that again just to compete in a broken economy where progress feels more tied to your wallet than your time.

Honestly, I’d rather quit or delete everything than go through that cycle again.

I played a Reaping Staff Blood Mage — full screen-clearing, braindead gameplay. I went from T1 to T15 maps in under an hour. T4 bosses? Dead in under 4 seconds. No challenge, no risk. I got bored.

So I rolled a Drain Essence Lich — completely different playstyle. I capped all resistances, pushed my ES to 17k, and actually had to relearn how to play the game. No more oneshotting map bosses or deleting pinnacle content instantly. At 36k DPS and 47k DoT, try killing bosses with 10–20 million HP — while knowing one single mistake means instant death.

At first, I thought the problem was my survivability. I had 12k ES, so I invested another 50 Divines to push it to 17k.

It changed nothing.

I’m still getting oneshot by the sheer amount of mechanics thrown at me. Which means losing XP, losing boss loot, bricking juiced maps, and failing citadels. Out of 10 maps, I fail at least 4 — either to random mobs or the boss itself.

And the worst part? When I die to a boss, I’ve already spent 15–20 minutes just getting there — carefully playing around every mechanic because literally any hit can delete my 17k ES.

Now compare that to streamer builds and their copy-paste fanbase. They’re never at risk. Maybe one death every 20 maps, if that. They ignore mechanics, facetank everything, and erase bosses before anything even happens.

That’s not balance. That’s two completely different games.

Sorry for long post bros.