Remove xp penalty's from death

Going past all the psychology, perhaps a lot of people don't remember buffs because they weren't here?... ;)

I can't compare to CB or OB to now to say how difficult the game was back then. But I'm probably not in the minority in that respect. What I can say is min-maxing seems to be ever more encouraged in the face of constant tweaking of life nodes and additions of spike damage and desync causes. That's why my builds mostly feel incomplete right now.

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davidnn5 wrote:

Going past all the psychology, perhaps a lot of people don't remember buffs because they weren't here?... ;)

I can't compare to CB or OB to now to say how difficult the game was back then. But I'm probably not in the minority in that respect. What I can say is min-maxing seems to be ever more encouraged in the face of constant tweaking of life nodes and additions of spike damage and desync causes. That's why my builds mostly feel incomplete right now.

The game is a lot easier then at the start of OB. After the wild see-saw of health node buffs and enrfs nodes are slightly smaller then in OB- however the addition of the big health wheel, the drastic increase in base HP, and most notably the significant global reduction in how hard monsters hit(from the patch that aimed to make armor/evasion better) means that players effectively have more health.

Yes with the addition of devourers and birdmen is definitely more non-boss burst then before, but that is easily balanced out by the addition of Arctic Armor,Lightning Coil, and CoDT eduring+immortal Call. Heck, in those days it was mostly considered a requirement to manually cast immortal call every 4 seconds.

Chaos resist didn't exist on rares back in those days, so letting an alchemist bomb hit you was a guaranteed several thousand chaos damage to the face in any of the higher maps. Chaos damage in general was a much larger problem then it is now.

Increased max elemental resist is definitely harder to come by, which is part of the reason elemental burst is one of the few areas things have gotten a bit harder(Purity split into 3 aura, no more +4% all max resist node, Saffels nerf), but even this has been tempered a bit by the addition of Arctic Armor(due to burns big fire damage was one of the most dangerous burst elements) and for the builds that use it Mind over Matter.

Non-totem spellcasting and melee are both unabashedly better then they were in OB(no one played melee then and the addition of spell echo, reductions to monster elemental resists, and buffs to added X damage gems have made a huge difference for spellcasters). Tornado Shot and Kinetic Blast, likely the two best ranged attacks by a fairly large margin didn't even exist back in OB. And don't even get me started on trigger gems(they have made characters stronger in a lot of ways).

And all that is just looking at the "can I kill X without dying" aspect of "difficulty"- The increase to map drop chance, unique drop chances, increases to exp gain in underleveled zones, as well as the addition of masters have also made the game easier by easing character progression(the more you progress the easier the game gets). Lockboxes and rogue exiles have also increased ease of progression as has the previous reduction to exp lost on death. And of course with the addition of things like item corruption and new GG uniques the eventual gear power cap has also risen.

I guess one central point is it's not just about the buffs- every supplemental tool added to character's repetoir to support their main gig makes them stronger- every new spell which is better then the old best is also a bit of power creep. The nerfs don't just need to counterbalance the buffs- they also need to contend with the general tendency towards power creep that comes with patches regularly adding new tools.

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bilun wrote:

Most of the time in "hardcore" primarily PvE games like this the general consensus of most players is that the game has gotten harder when in reality it has gotten easier.

This, in a nutshell, is my problem with PoE these days. Like Diablo 3's Inferno, the difficulty has been scaled back to a ludicrous, autopilot extent, causing a once-innovative game to fall into all of the casual genre cliches.

But I already made a thread about that.

Congrats on Level 100 To My Friend _Tzst_ aka staz. Now we can finally have fun with end game maps, and not just run palace + pack size mindlessly for hours on end.

So in Standard, the only way to play without the XP penalty is to be Level 100. I know its a lot of maps, but bite your tongue and keep doing easy maps. Its easy to get to level 100, you just need to have a lot of time. Since the death penalty of 10% experience is so rediculious at later levels, its pointless to do the hard maps. Just do blue maps with pack size and you will be 100 in no time.

Once you hit 100, you can do all the content you wish you could have done but didn't want to risk the xp.

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levy42088 wrote:

Congrats on Level 100 To My Friend _Tzst_ aka staz. Now we can finally have fun with end game maps, and not just run palace + pack size mindlessly for hours on end.

So in Standard, the only way to play without the XP penalty is to be Level 100. I know its a lot of maps, but bite your tongue and keep doing easy maps. Its easy to get to level 100, you just need to have a lot of time. Since the death penalty of 10% experience is so rediculious at later levels, its pointless to do the hard maps. Just do blue maps with pack size and you will be 100 in no time.

Once you hit 100, you can do all the content you wish you could have done but didn't want to risk the xp.

Which is why the argument to reduce it wasn't even necessary. Put in the work to get a level 100 character and you are rewarded.

I can't speak to a comparison between the way PoE is now and Open Beta, but I can say I find the game to be quite challenging. If it reverted to the kind of challenge I've heard Open Beta was I personally would not be interested in playing. I have a feeling the power creep we've seen since Open Beta is actually deliberate: the game was simply too hard back then to attract the size of audience GGG needs to be profitable.

The past few days a character who had not died in a long time due to me being extremely careful, progressing slowly and doing easy maps, died 4 times in two days due to reflect mobs and, on one occasion, totally mysterious circumstances. All exp gone. I'm sure these deaths were avoidable, and as always I'm not mentioning this to whine, but sometimes this stuff happens to me - I spent all day respeccing at great cost of time and currency to become better at dealing with reflect mobs, and it wound up being absolutely no help at all. Maybe it's my build, maybe it's my playstyle, whatever: point is, this game is challenging even for players who are willing to adapt, strategize, take care, etc. The posts on feedback forums are always hugely out of sync with the many people I speak to in-game about difficulty, who almost always find PoE to be extremely challenging (and don't necessarily want to make it easier, mind you). We've got an elite class of players talking about the game here, and that's great. Except that it's sometimes unrepresentative of most players.

The reason I'm saying all this is that GGG has made a smart calculation that they can still provide content that is FAR more challenging and dynamic than, say, D3 without scaring most players off with the kind of game that I see so many forum haunters dream about. Seriously, all power to you guys and mad respect, but if PoE was much harder it would be too much for me.

By the way, please don't use view this admission of my flaws as evidence that the changes I argue for are just to make the game easier - that isn't true.

That this topic has gone on so long after Chris addressed it is really surprising to me. I guess that just shows how important the subject is to players.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

That this topic has gone on so long after Chris addressed it is really surprising to me. I guess that just shows how important the subject is to players.

It isn't that important of a topic directly its a side effect of a much larger issue IMO, which is the current state of PoE's endgame maps.

It was bumped and bumped by some that doesn't/didn't believe that when Chris said the answer the xp penalty is fine, he didn't specifically mention at all levels.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

That this topic has gone on so long after Chris addressed it is really surprising to me. I guess that just shows how important the subject is to players.

^^^ Exactly that.

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Mooginator wrote:

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

That this topic has gone on so long after Chris addressed it is really surprising to me. I guess that just shows how important the subject is to players.

^^^ Exactly that.

The thread stopped for 3 days, wasn't on the front page and you revive it with exactly that.

I mean I don't think there could be a less useful contribution to the thread.