Please Remove 10% Exp Loss on Death

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frostzor27 wrote:

-10% Exp on every hit... :D

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Pathological wrote:

It is very easy to avoid the death penalty. Don't die. If you get frustrated at being affected by the death penalty, take steps to not die more.

Thats like saying "you can prevent being poor by being rich". Death penalty as it is is completely useless to the game. If it would vanish tomorrow nothing would change for the good players, the less good one would see a change by being demotivated less.

The problem with death penalty starts with deaths and the metrics around it, or to be more precise the lack of metrics around it. If i die the game does a realy horrible job of telling me how i died. Sure for bosses its more or less straight forward, but for the rest of the game its like a black box. I die, and i know iam dead, but there is no explanation about what happened. Without an explanation however there is no starting point to get some actual improvements done to my character. This was brought up alot in the past, but nothing has changed to this. There never was some information and there still is none. Anotehr issue related is the bad visibility of some skills. With all the stuff going around important events that require movement are often simply not visible enought.

For me personally i stopped playing leages because tehy are a waste of time, i stopped delving because 95% of the deaths caused by it are unclear to me. And this list goes on and on, im sure that this is the case for other players as well.

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Raxsyn wrote:

I have been playing since last December 2018 and think this game is a blast.

The number one issue that I Have with the game is the 10% exp loss on death. It adds absolutely no value to the game and just wastes players time. Clearly GGG is not valuing players time they put into the game by constantly setting us back when we die.

I have read most of the arguments as to why to keep it and none of them add any value either.

"Shows how good a players build is" or "Shows the players skill at the game" – players play for their own enjoyment, no one care about how gud you think you are

"Gives those with better builds or skill an edge over the others" - no one cares, it is a RNG massive loot ARPG

"Risk versus reward" - what a joke, it is a grinding RNG loot ARPG

The reality of the of exp loss on death is its GGGs way of slowing down the advancement of players. Nothing more and nothing less, so GGG clearly does not care about wasting players time when those of us who are not the best at this game, waste hours regaining the same exp we just lost because of the exp loss on death.

The game is already unforgiving as it is and players die at some point no matter what. So why add insult to injury when most content is either limited by six portals or in the case of the delve you lose everything once you die in the delve at the node you are at or the sulfite you spent getting there.

The entire reason for Hard Core mode is where skill, builds and risk versus reward truly matters. Anything else outside of HC is nothing more than an annoyance and frustrates players to just rage quit.

Stop wasting players time and remove the 10% exp loss on death, it adds absolutely no value to the game. It’s a twenty-year-old out of date mechanic that nobody uses anymore.

You want to learn why exp penalty exist? Play in hardcore =)

New Player here; I started roughly three weeks ago and had an absolute blast playing through the game! So far I made it to T12, mostly because it's such a grind to unlock the Atlas. I believe my character could go higher than that cause T12 isn't challenging at all. BUT:

I will just quit instead and probably check out Grim Dawn to carry me over to D4. And the one and only reason for that is the Death Penalty. Which is incredibly sad because it doesn't even effect me ingame. My character is done. There's not much to be gained from 10 more skill points. There's almost no difference whether I'm lvl 90 or 100. Furthermore, I rarely die anyways. 99% of the time my character doesn't even dip below ~70% HP.

So, why do I quit then?

Because the death penalty simply isn't fun. It doesn't add anything to the game. It just creates a massive "feelsbad moment" and it encourages a super boring playstyle. Since you can get one shot at any point in time, even if you're otherwise completely overpowered, you have to play super careful and super focused all the time. And the closer you get to a level up the more incentive you've got to mindlessly grind out super boring content. It ultimately created some sort of "ladder anxiety" that makes it rough for me to even log in. (Ladder anxiety comes from competitive games where at some point you are afraid to keep playing because you don't want to lose your rank)

Penalizing players with the loss of something is just bad design and it's completely out of place in a loot hunt ARPG*. The worst part is: POE's overall design is actually pretty casual friendly. Because you don't need to hit 100 in order to compete. But it still just feels soo incredibly bad... Compare this to D3 with it's infinite Paragon system. No one ever complained about that. There are no penalties so it's super casual, right? Nope, your character's powerlevel is extremely tied to Paragon levels and at a certain point, your level is the only thing that determines how much further you can progress. There's absolutely no way a casual will ever achieve the same powerlevel as a hardcore grinder. And still, the system feels much better eventhough it is actually infinitely worse.

It's such a shame to see an otherwise absolutely brilliant game to be completely ruined by one terrible design choice. I was soo hyped after Exilecon but I just don't want to deal with this BS. And since Chris literally said that everyone is happy with the death penalty there's not even hoping that it might get addressed in the future...

And to all the people saying "It's necessary to prevent glass cannons!" - Seriously?! Would you really play a character that gets oneshotted by everything? I don't think so... Using D3 as comparison again: "Maps" in D3 have a time limit and most players will hit their personal brick wall because of it (and not because they are too squishy). That's the point where you go full glass cannon to squeeze out that tiny little bit of extra progress. And it's horrible. :D You basically just do it once to see how far you can go and then go back to your normal setup. No one would grind with a glass cannon.

"But it's about prestige! Not everyone should be able to hit max level!"

Why? Like, seriously, just why? Nobody notices your level anyway and what kind of achievement is hitting max level? In it's current state it basically just says "I played this game a lot - like, really a lot"

"It's an endgame goal"

I don't know, I play these games to get the perfect gear and see how ridiculously op my character can get. That's enough of an endgame goal in my book. If anything, stuff like Delve or D3's Greater Rifts are endgame goals. A super difficult endgame dungeon can be an endgame goal. Level ups are merely a source of dopamine in case you're unlucky with your drops. It's a way to hand out some guaranteed rewards in respect to players time.

Anyway, this is turning into a rant and the majority of the POE community seems to actually like the penalty. So I guess it's just not a game for me. But I truly believe that it's something that should be on GGG's radar if they want to keep growing. I can't be the only new player that is turned off by this mechanic.

* Death penalties actually work well in games like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. They create some high tension while progressing but are ultimately not very punishing at all. You can usually recover everything you've lost and deaths don't feel as cheap as they do in ARPGs. You'll learn something from dying and you'll rarely die twice in the same spot because of it. When I die in POE my reaction usually is "Ok, what the heck just killed me???" or seconds before I die "God damnit, I can't see s**t through all this stuff going on!"

So .... t12 isn't challenging, but you keep dying in it ?

I guess we have different definitions of 'challenging', idk ...

The death penalty being removed will kill this game for me every character i play will reach 100 and i will feel no sense of accomplishment in it.

my favorite mmorpg final fantasy 11 you would actually LEVEL DOWN when dying without enough of an exp buffer, that game is still being played in mass to this day with zero updates and an even worse xp penalty.

so yeah this whole remove the exp debuff argument is just.. not going to work as an outright change to the game.

Asking for a means to mitigate it however? there are some solutions if presented properly with the right math even GGG could consider it being a potentially worthy add.

I'll put this below and all the numbers are just off the wall since im tired af.


some-kind-of-exp-loss-mitigation-item:

Item is consumed upon death and has the following tiers and effects:

These items can be traded to a vendor at 3x > for > 1x higher tier.


tier 1 (mirror rarity) no exp loss on death

tier 2 (50% mirror rarity) mitigates exp loss by 80%

tier 3 (exalt rarity) mitigates exp loss by 60%

tier 4 (60% exa rarity) mitigates exp loss by 40%

tier 5 (30% exa rarity) mitigates exp loss by 20%

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Fruz wrote:

So .... t12 isn't challenging, but you keep dying in it ?

I guess we have different definitions of 'challenging', idk ...

Well, that's one of the main issues with death penalty in POE. You can farm a maptier while reading a book and watching Netflix for 50 maps without ever getting as much as a scratch on your character only to get oneshot by some nonsense mod combination out of nowhere. The other issue is you might never find out what one shot you. Farming "easy" content isn't necessarily a guarantee that you won't die.

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BabyChaos wrote:

"But it's about prestige! Not everyone should be able to hit max level!"

Why? Like, seriously, just why? Nobody notices your level anyway and what kind of achievement is hitting max level? In it's current state it basically just says "I played this game a lot - like, really a lot"

You see that's where you are wrong. You can literally play POE for 20 years nonstop and never reach 100. That's the difference to D3 and why so many players are in favour of the death penalty. Reaching 100 actually has a meaning. It's not something everyone gets if he just plays enough.

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Fruz wrote:

So .... t12 isn't challenging, but you keep dying in it ?

I guess we have different definitions of 'challenging', idk ...

Did you read my post? I don't "keep dying". I die occasionally. I die during a map that is soo easy that it's mindnumbing. I die because the only damage I ever take barely scratches me and I feel save. And then some mob or effect out of nowhere deals 10k damage. Heck, this can even happen during a T1 map...

And it's not even the point of my post. I enjoy challenging content. I already kind of hate the slow progression system of the Atlas but figured it's not worth mentioning cause it gets reworked anyway. I like to jump into content my character can barely handle. It's the only way to see in which areas my character is lacking. And you WILL die in that process no matter what (that's kind of the point when you're pushing your limits).

I can totally play the game without ever dying at all. It's just not gonna be fun.

Rather than just leaving a sarcastic low effort comment, what about contributing to the discussion? I'm genuinely curious what exactly you enjoy about the penalty. Like, seriously, I don't get it, so I would love to hear from people what they actually like about the mechanic.

edit:

To further clarify my point of view: I'm currently not even really effected by the penalty. I became aware of it during the final boss encounter with the syndicate where I lost pretty much everything I had earned that day (and still have no idea what I'm supposed to do in that fight...). Since then it's more like a looming threat, something that is ever present during my gameplay. Even if I don't die, I know that dying is going to be painful. It's just a psychological factor that makes the game unenjoyable for me.

I accept exp loss if they get rid of logout macros. 20 seconds before you can logout if you are in combat.

I mean, the only reason there could be for chris to make such a statement, is he has not been reading feedback forums for the last 3+ years. Only reddit. I would bet that death penalty is the number 1 by far biggest complaint of all time in poe, far outweighing everything else even labyrinth. And that is because it sucks, it feels bad and it ruins the gameplay experience. When i check feedback every now and then it's nearly always one or more big new threads going on death penalty.

Jokes on everybody wasting their time giving feedback. This is why i stopped several years ago my extensive feedback, and their neglect is why i rarely play poe anymore. Lack of care is the death of dreams, and the death of dreams is the death of desire which leads to absence of interest.

I have already solved this death penalty problem years ago and posted it. There are so many good solutions to deal with it. And i am not the only one who has done it either.

Greatly increase the experience needed for levels 90-100 up till multiple times the current, pair this with a bonus for not dying reaching let's say stack 10% bonus for every 10% xp gained without dying with a cap on 50%. Then it's a couple of choices for how death tackles it, it can either remove the all bonus, remove 10-20% bonus or cut your current bonus in half. This i believe to be the best solution because it feels good to keep progressing, but also it will take the top-players longer time for the 100 grind because even if they don't die it's just more xp to grind than before, they don't die anyway and the 100 grind has become a shadow of what it once as in poe.

All these numbers above can be adjusted for the optimal feeling of playing.

Then there are alternative tactics such as the good old tombstone, paired with reducing xp penalty to lesser amounts on level 90-100, set by a person with a brain not a flat 10% at all levels. In this case i would still suggest increasing 90-100xp greatly.

There are so many great ways to solve death penalty that are so much better than current system. Current system is honestly pure shite. It is one of the most cancerous aspects of the game that has caused the most ragequites and stop-playing quits of all time in PoE. It punishes mediocre players, it kills dreams, it dimishes the variety of builds worth playing. It doesn't really affect top players.

All of this said, i hope you realize i still suggest a death penalty, because there must be some incentive to build a balanced character that doesn't die often instead of complete glass cannon. 6 portals helps, and endgame bosses that needs survival helps. Complete lack of balance and instagipping endgame bosses undermines all these things and trivializes the game. The game suffers so much because everything can be oneshot with the right stacking factors, undermining all intricate balance.