XP loss on death, why?

I really do not understand this mechanic, I didn't in Diablo 2 and I don't in Path of Exile. Why is the game you're playing for fun punishing you for, not facerolling content, but actually giving a shit and trying? Why should a game, one that's played for fun, entice you to try, even if it's out of your league, to try and beat it, when failing to beat it punishes you, telling you to not do it again.

This. Makes. No. Sense!

It's essentially a dps/gear check. As simple as that.

You can't progress past something then don't continuously beat you head against the wall. Take a step back stop losing xp. Check you gear, your passives, your playstyle everything, and see what you are lacking.

Most people would call this skill. I would coin the term, common sense.

It's purely monetary. GGG only makes money if you keep laying and donating and you are less likely to donate once you zerg rushed all your chars to 100.

The game would fast seem unrewarding without some sort of risk involved in pushing the envelope.

I can't say I like losing hours of work because of one ridiculous combination of shock/crit/elem pen out of nowhere, but I prefer it to the alternative of NO RISK. And I am, by no means, an endgame guy, my max char all time is 93 and I always play SSF. So that exp loss affects me LOTS.

GGG also has some sort of sacred relationship with level 100 and trying to make it as hard to reach as current mechanics allow (and the poop sock players defeat it quicker every league). Therefore, that penalty will never go away.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

The game would fast seem unrewarding without some sort of risk involved in pushing the envelope.

This. It's not a gear check, it's any check. It's there so literally not everyone reaches 100 for doing nothing. It's a game mechanic intended to push players into actually playing and being mindful of events, given it's nature of mowing down monster after monster.

I don't think it would destroy the game if it was removed, but it would certainly put it in the realm of those Chinese ARPG grindfests (cough Lineage cough)

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Dyntheos wrote:

It's essentially a dps/gear check. As simple as that.

What "check" it is or not is of precisely no concern, if it's a bad design. Trump once proclaimed that "The Electoral College is a disaster for Democracy", and a few years later, that exact same "disaster" is what made him the POTUS. Bad is bad is bad. There are no exceptions.

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Dyntheos wrote:

You can't progress past something then don't continuously beat you head against the wall.

This isn't University School, where if you find out you can't hack it, you simply quit and do something else. This is a computer game which primary function is to provide enjoyment and pleasure. What possible purpose does penalising this activity serve? Saying it's a "gear check, simple as that!!11" doesn't explain why it needs to be there.

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Dyntheos wrote:

Take a step back stop losing xp.

Yeah, uh, I think most players know how to do that.

- Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
- Then stop doing that.

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Dyntheos wrote:

Most people would call this skill. I would coin the term, common sense.

Riight. So what I need is not a gear check, it's a hefty dose of elitism. Check!

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Nephalim wrote:

It's purely monetary.

That it might have something to do with money, sure, but "purely"? No. The fact that this game was touted as Diablo 2.5, inheriting a shit-ton of mechanics from that game, lends credence to it's simply because... "D2 had it, let's implement it".

Seriously, how does people getting stumped at, say Clvl-92 make GGG more money. You think that "Fred Fuchs! I lost five hours of game play due to a 'whatever' issue!! What fun! I must re-roll another character and spend more money, isofun!!!"

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Nephalim wrote:

GGG only makes money if you keep laying and donating and you are less likely to donate once you zerg rushed all your chars to 100.

Well, exaggerate much, yo. This isn't Diablo 3, no-one is "zerging" to Clvl 100. I've been around since the closed beta, and no-one has been able to "zerg" to 100.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

The game would fast seem unrewarding without some sort of risk involved in pushing the envelope.

"Some sort", I can buy. Losing five hours on one, single death being somehow just "unrewarding" is frankly crazy. That has nothing to do with "rewards", that is outright Omaha Beach 1944 territory.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

I can't say I like losing hours of work because of one ridiculous combination of shock/crit/elem pen out of nowhere, but I prefer it to the alternative of NO RISK.

I agree, but the game has been from the start to try things out, to endeavour and progress beyond your abilities. To penalise you doing what the game wants you to do is like a reverse lottery; bet $100 and if you don't win, you get billed another $100.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

GGG also has some sort of sacred relationship with level 100 and trying to make it as hard to reach as current mechanics allow

Well, then I posit that they - finally - remove it!

I agree that there needs to be at least some sort of penalty for dying, but complete regression is something that I've always thought was dumb when a single event of bad luck or play could delete potentially hours or days of progress.

I've always liked the system that a few games have where if you die, you lose EXP, but it comes back gradually as pooled EXP that is gained at a percentage of your normal rate (so like 25% of what you're gaining for example). It makes you feel like you're making faster progress, but in reality you're just gaining back what you've lost alongside the normal rate, and if you keep dying you're not going to make any headway in that department.

Most of the time the people who complain about the experience penalty are people who have never levelled a character past the low to mid 90's. Which is funny because that's the point when levelling actually gets slow, with or without a penalty. Dying before level 90 is like 10 minutes of tier 10 maps max, and even less if you're running higher tiers.

Like a few people have said, it's because there needs to be some risk, which in turn should dissuade people from playing glass cannons, though that doesn't work at all. People have and will always complain that the game is the problem and not their glass characters, which is why volatile rares are a joke now and reflect doesn't even exist, aside from map mods.

People say that it's a DPS or a gear check because if you're dying faster than you can gain experience, it means that your character is shit. Your character can then be made not-shit by investing in better gear in most cases. Some people will blame the game for their deaths, and the game definitely can be the cause for a lot of people's deaths. But blaming the game for every single death on a character in it's 80's is simply being ignorant.

Also, don't say you're losing "Losing five hours on one, single death", even if it is a hyperbole, that's a bit too extreme for anyone that isn't pushing for 100.