Losing way too much exp on death in end game

Another argument. Why not put experience loss in the campaign content? Isn't the logic that dying and being punished forces you to go back and do easier content? I believe it is not in the campaign because it would be ridiculously annoying.

If it's not in the campaign it shouldn't be in endgame either.

Stop focusing on XP. It's barely even noticeable until 90+ anyways. Max level is supposed to be lofty and something most people won't reach. It's not at all required; you don't need it. It's there for the real degen grinders. If you really want it, prepare accordingly with decked out survivability and grind for it. You are not immune to the concept of effort nor punishment for failure just for playing softcore.

And server issues suck, but they have nothing to do with game mechanics. Different issue.

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tarloch#1873 wrote:

LOL just LOL..its always the players fault isnt it.

Yeah. Sadly it often is.

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AlisVeritas#3919 wrote:

Another argument. Why not put experience loss in the campaign content? Isn't the logic that dying and being punished forces you to go back and do easier content? I believe it is not in the campaign because it would be ridiculously annoying.

If it's not in the campaign it shouldn't be in endgame either.

XP loss beyond the XP of the MAP itself... makes no sense. Losing the XP of the MAP... ok I can understand.. anything beyond that is not nice.

XP gain is bugged atm.

Yesterdays 3 mils is now 8 mils.
Same level.

Agree. As already mentioned in my mega-post a few days after EA launch:

Main reasons why this is a bad mechanic

1. I completely skip a lot of the content once I have some XP. I barely do Whisps, Rituals, and at some point not even Essences (because of that chaos dmg slam, super hard to avoid), and some map types with difficult bosses. The chance of dying is just too high.

2. The only time I would do pinnacle content is just after I leveled. Actually, the only time I'd do the special content above is just after I leveled. How random is that? Why should whether or not you just leveled determine whether or not you get a penalty?

3. As a result, the game is just several times more enjoyable right after leveling and becomes less and less enjoyable, and more stressful the more XP you accumulate and the closer you get to leveling. The last few deciles, I even start refraining from map bosses and more random encounters, in general.

4. The feeling of dying and having wasted several hours of time just causes an extreme feeling of sadness. Many times I just quit for the day, often time I think I'll just quit in general. I don't think this is a feeling that you want your players to feel? When I'm low level or at the start of a new level, I just feel like I want to keep and keep on playing. But at late level when the risk of dying gets greater, playing starts to feel much less enjoyable, and the only reason to keep on going is the prospect of leveling up after which I'll again be able to play carelessly.

5. I totally get that you shouldn't neglect defence. I really don't. I have 2k life, 1k ES, 86% eva, and 2 defensive spirit skills -- Ghost Dance and Wind Dancer. I play fairly carefully. But still there's always a reasonably fair chance of dying, and, as explained above, the price of that is just so extremely high that you want to avoid that 'at all reasonable cost', which means you are forced to play extremely slowly, much more slowly than your character is able to handle -- just to avoid that 0.1% odd difficult content. You just have to. Sure, there are undoubtedly some players who like this playstyle, and thus probably invest even more in defence, but... for those players hardcore mode already exists.

6. At a certain point, I'm sure pretty much everyone just gives up on the prospect of leveling even more; just accepting that they'll die occasionally and lose all their XP again. But at that point you forego one of the two sole means of getting better in the game and the ARPG genre in general -- through gear, and through going level up.

7. Which brings me to another point. For a game developed by a company named Grinding Gear Games, I'd expect the developers to recognize the concept of griding. For gear, sure, but a big part of grinding in an ARPG (and MMORPG) is also leveling up, to be able to get stronger without the RNG-aspect of gear drops. "Just a few more levels for these few more skill points which will make the build a whole lot better again; enabling me to grind for better gear, etc...".

8. You could argue that you could offset the risk with an Omen of Amelioration, but that basically just trades the loss of XP for a loss of currency -- either way, you have lost a lot of time.

9. All of this sort of forces players to only play the meta builds, the few builds which are simply so strong that you don't have to be high level to start tearing through maps and accumulating wealth; where you don't have to care about dying much, where you kill stuff so fast that you gain XP a lot faster and thus losing some isn't that big of a deal. I myself actually switched build because of this.

What I believe to be the best solution

Just limit the amount of XP you lose to the amount of XP you gained during the map. Actually, I really didn't need all those extra portals/attempts. I sort of liked the idea of 'losing the map' if you die. That's OK, that's I think an acceptable setback.

Alternatives, but I like these less:

- Increasing the availability of Omens of Amelioration, but I can see that being hard to get right.
- Downright removing the penalty entirely. During campaign it already doesn't exist, during mapping you already lose the map for dying so you are already penalized.
- Significantly reduce the penalty to a smallar flat percentage, e.g. 2% or 5% (but to be honest, I can see this getting just as excessive in one or two levels)
- Another XP penalty other than percentage-based, e.g. always around 1 or 2 maps worth of XP.

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ryun0911#6483 wrote:

I am so tired of losing all my progress due to stutters, the game resetting a zone while i am in it or the other 1 million other things causing these stupid random one shots.

Why do we need such a harsh exp penalty in the end game? I have almost 600 hours in and still have yet to get a character to 100. I haven't gotten a character past lvl 81 because it so frustrating.

I have 8 character's 70 + now. This is such a stupid decision and is what is preventing me and I suspect many others from actually progressing the end game and so we quit. Never mind the mapping sustain, players do not like wasting their time and having their time basically taken from them. Simply being able to level a character is one of the most frustrating things in this game and it really shouldn't be.

And before you all start saying get good. Post some screens on all you 100's and then we will talk.

Facts here is easy fix for the devs since they want softcore to have penalty they should just do it like this.

Enter map gain exp if you die in map any exp you gained from that map and that map only is lost. So still a penalty but you arnt going backwards due to stupid game design like 1 shots that are inevitable.

Yet another map and level lost due to lag. You lag a few times, die a few times, lose all exp.

Haven't leveled in a week (86). Can we stop with this?

While not dying I do not feel any excitement for how good I'm doing.

Trembling in fear of a one shot that will take away many hours of your grind is not exciting! It doesn't challenge me. Just makes me close the game as the inevitable lag spike or 5 meteors come to crash my party.

Totally agree. If it lose only 10% is okay ,but 20% is way too much.

When you die once, it’s not fun and not challenge. It’s a stress.

To prevent xp loss too much is using omen but what if you die 3 times+ from bullsh!t things in this patch? Waste a lots of exalts

Even I have 17,000 armour, 90%reduction, max 75% all resists, 70%block chance for all hits and defend with 200% armour when hit by criticalI but still die from 1 hit boss heavy attack.

This patch is lame

675 hours in Early Access here with a Level 92 LS Huntress (Dawn of the Hunt) and Level 94 Stormcaller Deadeye Ranger (Standard).

I can side with most of the players here about XP losses in End Game mapping. It absolutely sucks. The high risk, low reward (which is the XP and the loot itself) do not come hand in hand, that's for sure. Unless you're conducting Speed Farming, map clearing builds, like LS or Lich, you're going to suffer a slog fest to play EXTRA cautiously and meticulously not to get yourself in a situation you cannot afford to lose XP in. That goes along with LS Huntress and Lich Witch as well, even though those two main classes can fully map clear mobs, there is still PLENTY room for error, like off-screen AoE deaths, off-screen casts that result to deaths, ground map explosions from Rune circles covered by ground clutter (looking at you Expeditions in Maps), Prowling Shades, everyone's favorite mob that can one shot players, even the common (white) versions!

When I was Level 91, I had 99.4% XP to hit Level 92. I was in Vaal Factory on a T15 knowing I had to play cautiously and ensured I did not have Enfeeble or Temporal Chains on my Waystone, because we know how FUN those afflictions are and the community absolutely asked for them..right...RIGHT?? I was there mainly because of Irradiated on a non-Boss map (just kill All Elites to complete map) and Vaal Factory was on the path to a Corrupted Nexus. Was just about to hit Level 92 when I was ganged up by ~20 mobs, including 2 Elites, 3 packs of Magic (5 mobs x 3 packs = 15 mobs) and a few Prowling Shades out of the wood work. Well, as much experience I've had dealing with extensive amount of mobs being thrown at me at once, this particular situation was overwhelming and the more I back tracked or ran in another direction with very little choice where to go without running into another 10-20 pack mob (also part of increased mob density via Tower Precursor Tablet and Waystone and Atlas Passives), it was GG for me. Whelp, that's 10% XP lost (which was one of the changes to decrease the amount of XP loss on death in maps) and set me back around 89%. Whelp, that was frustrating to the point I just left Vaal Factory and went to another map to get to the Corrupted Nexus and eventually leveled up to 92 from that map.

Was the decision to go to Vaal Factory my own fault? Absolutely. Could I have chosen a better/safer map to level up? Absolutely. This was on me. The death, was on me. We ALL take chances going to maps and see where the experience takes us. Sometimes we die and other times we come up on top to fight another day, this particular Vaal Factory I did not come out on top, majority of other times in Vaal Factory, I survived w/o a single death. Sure, we can blame the game for the XP loss and all of the distractions the game has that can contribute to our XP loss on death, however, this does NOT need to be the way going forward. I have died multiple times to Map Bosses or a gang of mobs from Breeches (due to increased density through Atlas points), either way, the XP loss even at 10% XP loss now still hurts even when you die back to back, that's a HUGE 20% of lost XP and it's significant when you're mapping T15-16's with increased XP gains, it's still a slog fest to climb the XP ladder no matter how much XP you stack. The XP loss on death demotivates players to keep engaging in that content to reach a pinnacle of a level that isn't ideally attainable, which is Level 100 through T15-16 mapping unless you have insane XP stacking on 3 towers and all of the Atlas points counting towards to increased Magic/Elites in Maps ect. You want to motivate people to keep playing your game, not give them reasons to demotivate them and chuck the deuces on PoE2 no matter how good that person is clearing T15-16's, there is definitely still something wrong about the scaling in End Game maps with mobs vs player scaling. This is more of a game issue than a player issue.

I can't see how it's even remotely possible to attain Level 100 with just T15-16 maps witch after Level 90, it's absolutely a slog fest and the only reason why players would want to continue to keep pressing on, is the fact of the "easy clears" as a level 90+ over max Level 81 map content. However, even Level 81 mobs from T16's can kill Level 90+ players without any modifications on a waystone if you're just using a non-mod Common (white) T15 Waystone for testing. How is that even remotely possible? How are Level 81 mobs still THAT strong over a player with 11 levels between them? With all defensives, all the ES/EV/AR and HP, these mobs should do the FRACTION of their damage. Something isn't right between the mob damage to player level algorithm/scaling. There's NO SHOT a Common (white) or Magic (blue) Prowling Shade should be one shotting Level 90+ players with over 2k HP and 2K ES. How is that possible? And YES, I've tested this very thing on Sandspit where they love to be at including Vaal Factory. As SINGLE Prowling Shade has SO MUCH cold damage even with FULL 75% Cold Resistance can still bypass your cold resistance, knock out your ES and possible HP in one shot. Can you survive? Sure, you CAN, however, if you don't have HIGH enough Cold Resistance, decent HP and ES, you're good as dead by a single or double Prowling Shade.

I don't know what else GGG needs to do to keep End Game players over Level 90 engaged to keep pressing maps instead of shelving that character and making a new one. By that time, the player(s) are so exhausted from investing so much time into gearing and progressing that single character, the motivation to "start all over again" dwindles and possibly lose another PoE2 EA player. Sure, more will replace that one player, but that vast experience and knowledge of the game and the "vision" of GGG going forward, players have lost some faith in GGG into providing and much more engaging, fun and rewarding End Game experience. Currently, with the XP loss over such bad mechanics and "not at your own fault" (server disruptions, lag, ect) players just don't want to carry on. For what? Give us SOMETHING to chase. It's not Level 100 because that's not in reach with T15-16 Waystones by a long shot.

If you want players over Level 90 to keep being engaged in End Game content and motivate us to push to Level 100 and to keep playing PoE2, there's THREE things you at GGG you can do:

1. REMOVE Enfeeble and Temporal Chains afflictions on Waystone modifiers (nobody even asked or enjoys these afflictions, even in Sekhemas)
2. REDUCE the loss of XP on death by another 5%.
3. ADD Waystone Levels 16/17/18/19/20 to End Game mapping.

There you have it. This will motivate players over Level 90 (like myself) to keep engaged in playing the same character to attain Level 100. It gives us something to chase instead of leading us to more disappointments.

I am favor of the current mechanic.

XP is just a number. It was way more infuriating to lose the map. You had to find either a new map with events or grind for a new tower cluster to juice everything up.

Sadly the endgame is just a big statcheck.
"If you die, you're not prepared"

I argue that if everything oneshots you even with a full tank build then the late endgame is just how much you can brake the dps counter and hope your PC wont burn.