XP Loss

I will be blunt; XP loss ruins this game and any and all enjoyment in it's entirety for several reasons and needs to be removed promptly.

Reasons:
- It effectively robs players of hard work and progression with the potential loss outweighing any gain. The ratio is astronomically skewed in the wrong direction. A guaranteed 10% loss on death when it takes numerous hours to level up once from 70 and onward is absurd and whoever thought of this needs to seriously reevaluate there idea of a fun challenge for video games. If it were 2%, okay that's more reasonable, or if we gained XP at about 100% the rate we do now.

- It discourages making builds. Making builds in a game as expansive and vast as this one's skill system takes trial and error, the error resulting in death most times. In order to test a build, you have to push the content it can run, and with the penalty currently present, you are essentially forced to play a meta build until you get the levels needed to try something unique and creative.

- It's not disappointing, it's quite literally enjoyment theft. The game overall is amazing; interesting lore, gameplay, builds, the campaign is fun to play through, the enemies are all unique and crafted so meticulously, and the bosses are the best I've seen in gaming in a long time. But then you get to Maps, grind out for an hour or two, then you hit a rough boss or particularly crazy combo of effects on a rare monster and get killed in a few seconds. Instead of "Aww, dang. Lemme try and revise and reapproach" you are instead raging at losing hours of progress from a simple BS freeze. It angers me more than if the game was simply bad. It's great with a fatal crippling flaw

- It makes your endgame stressful, not fun. Instead of enjoying myself murdering monsters or trying to tune a build, I'm left stressing over every health bar that appears, every effect that's on a map modifier or enemy, and dreading the run if I see that ridiculous one-shotting quadrilla boss' name on my screen (You ALL know what I'm talking about). It is supposed to be a challenging and riveting ARPG, not stressful and rage-inducing enough to compete with meeting a job deadline.

- It effectively encourages you to get carried. Most elitists will say "git gud" or some other bogus remark claiming it enhances gameplay and anyone who says otherwise is just bad but this just simply isn't the case. If you want to get to mid 90's, you need to have a broken build to crush everything before it can touch you. But since you're probably level 65-70 ish, you will not have that and will need to enlist help from others. Other people your level won't have what's needed since every person that joins buffs monsters, so you need someone who's already became broken to carrying you through instead of you as a player being able to enjoy getting yourself to that point.

- And it's not worth mentioning the Omen that reduces XP loss. That has a low drop chance, requires you going to grind anyway to get it (meaning all grinding is basically a waste of time until then) and it's prices on the market are predatory due to the necessity of it to level efficiently.

Essentially, this simple mechanic has ruined what could've easily been the best ARPG to date. Mind you, I'd still put it above Diablo 4 but not by much. Despite it being a money-grabbing predatory game, D4 at least doesn't punish me trying to level my char and push content. I found myself loving PoE2 all throughout the campaign with 2 characters, then hit maps and lost so much xp from random BS. The random BS deaths happen in ARPG's, it's the nature of the beast and is fine. Losing 1 hour, 3 hours, 30, etc.. of XP is not and simply needs to be removed or at least lowered to 2%. Anyone who says otherwise does not have the game or community's best interest at heart; they are the elitists who managed to get carried or in some cases actually grinded it out and want to stay at the top to grind out omens and top gear to sell for crazy prices. As developers, do yourself and the community a favor and fix this so your player base grows as well as love for an amazing game.

XP loss forces us to evaluate which waystones we want to run. If you play some meta shit then you probably don't care but in SSF these choices matter. I'm also very motivated to not die so I try to play as best as possible and take only moderate risks.