Endgame Punishment Feels Excessive?

So let me start this out by saying this is not a rant or an angry outcry. I'm genuinely curious about this and want to put my thoughts forward and perhaps be educated to understand why Endgame is the way it is. I'll also add; I am not a long-time POE player. I barely dabbled in POE1 and only started getting into POE2 when EA launched, so I don't have a decade of experience under my belt here on why GGG does what they do or the deepest mechanics of the game. I use guides to help me, a lot. I don't want to start an argument. Don't want to bash anything. Just genuine thoughts here.

Endgame Punishment feels excessive to me. What do I mean?

- When you get to Endgame, you're running maps to collect currency and progress through the Atlas. However, when you fail/die in a map, you lose a large chunk of EXP and an attempt at that map. Pretty straight forward, right? Well.... I want to question exactly WHY we lose both attempts at the map as well as experience?

So in the later levels, EXP slows down dramatically. You end up running higher level maps over and over to chase mob levels high enough to give you adequate EXP, and it takes several to attain a level and be able to semi-consistently farm drops/currency. All the while you're also trying to increase the difficulty as much as you can while surviving so you get the most chance to get currency you need to make your character strong enough to do higher tier maps in thee first place. In order to get the most benefit for currency/drops/exp, you have to stack maps with more and more modifiers. By the time you get a "good" key ready, it's got lines upon lines of highly lethal modifiers. So that's a huge difficulty spike. And difficulty is fine though, yeah?

In those later levels, we make a map as dangerous as possible for ourselves, or as much as we believe we can handle, to increase our odds of being rewarded for clearing the map. We take on that challenge of making it dangerous, plus spending time before hand gearing ourselves up with expensive equipment that's usually not up to snuff yet, we go in to attempt the map, die, lose EXP AND lose an attempt at the map. So basically for attempting a map and figuring out you're not ready for it, or you died to a bug, you're punished twice. Once with an attempt loss. Once with a loss of your time and effort in the form of EXP.

Now, if you look at this from the standpoint of a new/newish player - we start hitting map tier 5-8 and things are rough. We die constantly. This leads to us getting frustrated, asking for advice, being told 'get good', and ultimately many quit over it because they feel like they're being punished for playing. To be honest, I agree with that to some degree. It feels like for attempting to play the game and increase difficulty so we increase our chances for reward from drops and to just be able to get enough EXP to level up that if we're "not good enough" not only are we halted from continuing to attempt it, we get EXP stripped from us. It's a "GG, noob" slap in the face directly from the devs type feeling.

I want to also add that the game is in early access testing. There are bugs everywhere and we're not ignorant to that. So lots of deaths lead to reports and GGG checks it out and makes a bunch of bug fixes to try to correct it. As more content is added and things are balanced/adjusted, more bugs are certainly going to pop up that lead to people getting punished by the failure mechanic baked into the endgame. So on that, why is endgame punishment as hard as it is if we're expected to play it and test it in this period? It seems counterintuitive.

Anyway, I'm just wondering why we get punished twice? Why can't failing a map just be one form of punishment or the another? Either lose attempts on that specific map, or lose exp and allow the player to continue it until they clear it? Why, exactly, are we not simply allowed to play and attempt difficult maps without repercussion? What's the actual motivation behind that?

If there's a valid reason behind this I'd love to understand, but my overall thoughts are that : EXP loss should be reduced because it's already severely diminished at endgame. OR Map attempts shouldn't be reduced on death. Porting in and out to sell eats a portal? Sure. Death? Lose EXP. Lose an entire EXP bar if you want to just so you can keep attempting to clear it. I really feel like it should be one or the other, not both.


TL;DR - I don't feel like we should lose EXP AND Map Attempts. Only one of those per failure.

I dont have an answer to why. I'm also a new player.

When i want to get XP, i only use maps with mods i'm sure i can handle. I use omen of amelioration and omen of resurgence as extra security.

When i want to farm items with maps having a lot of deadly mods i try to go at the start of a level or i already mentaly prepare me for the XP loss. But i'm ready to face it since i want high level items/currencies. I pick drops as they arrive so i dont loose them if i die.

I don't try to get both XP and high level items on the same map. If i want XP i'm gonna set towers with XP/Monster packs size etc... to add benefit but i never use deadly waystones.

It's heavy past lvl 95 but i wouldnt want to play this game without a heavy death penalty. I played other games without them and you just dont even try to get better, sometimes you just die on purpose because it's faster to go back to your place.

I know a lot of people hate it tough.

Hey, thanks for responding! I can totally respect and appreciate that stance. Don't have anything to really argue with it.

should be obvious, they (and many poe players) dont want people to win even if they die.

overcoming the challenge should be reward, and theres no challenge if you win regardless of overcoming it or not.

thats the kind of game poe is and how poe 1 is.

Im not seeing why it sounds like you think that it should be lose maps or lose xp not both. what made you come to that decision. they are 2 seperate mechanics.

It is just a truth that the more safety nets/ obstacles to progression you remove in the game, less and less winning (eg completing map, receiving loot, getting to level 100) feels like an accomplishment. Im far more enthused with beating a boss or getting to level 100 when its this hard to do, than if it were a lot easier or basically inevitable.

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OniJihn#0420 wrote:

should be obvious, they (and many poe players) dont want people to win even if they die.

I'm afraid you're misunderstanding or looking beyond the topic? Dying is losing, regardless if you lose EXP or a portal or not. You still failed. I agree there should be some sort of penalty, but being hit with multiple doesn't feel like an equal exchange in terms to failure vs reward. Player time VS intended effort. If you die in a map and lose EXP, you lost. If you die in a map and lose a chance thus counting down towards being unable to complete it, you lost. Either of those should be sufficient in my opinion. In this situation if you fail, be it either by your own lack of skill, gear, or a bug due to the game being in early development, you're hit with multiple penalties.

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overcoming the challenge should be reward, and theres no challenge if you win regardless of overcoming it or not.

I'll point out that you can win a challenge, feeling accomplished, all while losing nothing in the process of learning how to do it; Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc. are monument to that. If you die you drop your souls/runes. Penalty. You can then recover them. The only penalty you face is spending time figuring the obstacle out (effort) and picking up your resources that you worked to gather (time.)

Not saying that's how it should be here, not at all. But I believe we see that statement differently in a broader view.

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Im not seeing why it sounds like you think that it should be lose maps or lose xp not both. what made you come to that decision. they are 2 seperate mechanics.

Yes, losing portals and losing EXP are two seperate punishment mechanics. Thus this post. When you die in endgame, you trigger the penalty of two seperate mechanics. 1 : Taking away an attempt. 2 : Taking away your Exp which is a hard won resource in end game, thus taking away your time spent. So why I personally think it should be one or the other is simple; one punishment for dying is enough.

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It is just a truth that the more safety nets/ obstacles to progression you remove in the game, less and less winning (eg completing map, receiving loot, getting to level 100) feels like an accomplishment. Im far more enthused with beating a boss or getting to level 100 when its this hard to do, than if it were a lot easier or basically inevitable.

I feel this is subjective from person to person, but I do understand where you're coming from and respect your view. However I would point to countless other successful games which either punish you with 1 penalty for dying/failing, or not at all, and they remain historical successes in the industry. There is a way to make something challenging but also not over-punish the player. We both agree that there should be a punishment/penalty for failing. I just don't believe that it should be both. It feels too much. And while many people may enjoy that or be used to and accept it, many others such as myself do not. And that's all my thoughts and reasonings are about.

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FateOfNines#4224 wrote:

Endgame Punishment feels excessive to me. What do I mean?

- When you get to Endgame, you're running maps to collect currency and progress through the Atlas. However, when you fail/die in a map, you lose a large chunk of EXP and an attempt at that map. Pretty straight forward, right? Well.... I want to question exactly WHY we lose both attempts at the map as well as experience?

Very good post, and I'm really saddened to see this very same problem repeated in POE2 as well. I had hoped for a fresh start with a new game, and GGG making better decisions for a more healthy game environment. Instead it seems like they are catering to the streamer crowd again, who generally have so overpowered and expensive builds anyway, that everything dies at the click of a button. Meanwhile, the common plebs among us, need to actually interact with enemy and boss mechanics, which means we die - a lot.

The issue was bad enough in POE1, but even worse now due to more aggressive and dangerous mobs. And like in the first game, our "time to live/die" period can be extremely brief. Even if you don't get outright one-shot (which also happens a lot), enemy damage is too fast and our life pool too small for human reactions to apply. Many a time have I hit the life flask, but it's too late to take effect. Bam, another 10% XP is wiped in half a microsecond.

The "punishment" is nowhere near fair for the risks taken (in my case, as little as possible in T1 maps), or the often non-existing time to react to sudden dangers. Then you have the usual pixel vomit of effects, which means we can't even see what is going on. But still, 10% of an entire level is gone when we die. Each time.

Especially now in POE2, the punishment for dying is even harsher than in the first game. We have fewer portals to use, and loot gets wiped from the floor. In the campaign, all enemies respawn too. And the boss is back at full health. We therefore have a long string of punishments already. To then slap on an extremely harsh 10% XP loss on top, is just insult to injury, and means a whole lot of us gets all motivation and energy to keep trying sapped out of us. Ultimately we leave the game, and the potential for more income from us is also removed. Often forever, or at least for years at a time.

I really do hope they will remove this idiocy and take a more balanced approach moving forward. Sadly I don't have much actual faith in it, their history doesn't bode well for making fairly big changes like this. But like they say, hope is the last to die, so I'm still allowed that at least.