Why dedicate my time if I can lose all my XP with a death penalty?

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adrenrocker#5143 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

What we don't need, is a handful of players who get an ego boost from the mechanic.

Yeah, everyone who likes XP loss and is arguing that without it too many people will get to 100 and thus their achievement is worth less are not helping their cause. If I run a Marathon in an hour my achievement is not lessened because someone else did it in 5 hours, it looks more impressive. Yes, with (as an example replacement) XP debt vs xp loss people will eventually get to 100 if they play long enough. If it takes them 4-5 times as long who cares? And lets be real, how many people are actually gonna do it that way. Even playing smart it takes forever to reach 100, i seriously doubt many people are going to put in 4-5 times the amount of hours to hit 100 even if XP loss is replaced with XP debt. Whats more likely to happen is people with limited time have been given the leeway to experiment and figure out what they are doing wrong.

All you need to do is look at the reaction to a mechanic, to determine if it's a good or bad one in a game.

This one, Has people complaining about it being frustrating.

And then it has people that like it, Defending it, by insulting and attacking those that don't like it. Bullying them.


That to me, indicates it's an unhealthy mechanic.

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paudertzz#2085 wrote:

Your achievement for a marathon in a hour looks a lot more impressive when compared to all of the people in the world that can't run a block in an hour or the ones that fail to finish the race.

No, it looks like I had a lot more free time on my hands and decided to dedicate that time to marathon running then the people who don't even run do. Comparing yourself to people entirely outside the activity is silly because there are tons of reasons they are not in the activity. I have no idea how good or bad they might have been, for all I know I got lucky because the two people faster than me woke up sick. If you are expecting a performance comparison to make you feel good comparing yourself to anyone outside the activity is nonsense. Unless you just want to feel superior I guess? In which case its a video game/race, get over yourself.

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Seiniyta#0050 wrote:

I honestly just find it an outdated mechanic.

I'd rather see the following (nerf xp gain by 10٪ after lvl 70 and give a 10 or 15% bonus xp for your next map when you beat a map without dying. Promote good play but also doesn't stress/frustrate you when you die.

Or just take away the player's exp for that map if they die, and introduce a consumable item that restores it.

Exp loss that can include loss of content you're not currently running + waystone loss + map attributes loss is a bit too much of a triple whammy imo.

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Waitn4D4#0477 wrote:

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BK2710#6123 wrote:

This is about retention and respecting a players time, if a player leaves satisfied they are likely to return

Is retention all that matters? I mean look at D4. That game is literally more popular than POE. Many of us absolutely hate it. I played it over 4 seasons and quit permanently because its such a brain dead, hollow shell of a game. Everything is trivial, nothing is a challenge, its just a big arcadey ARPG experience. Theyve capitulated to the casuals again and again, and sure they have higher retention but the game is soulless. You ding 100 and dont even get 1 drop of dopamine because its so meaningless and anti-climatic. There are no more chase items because you can just turn uniques into dust and combine them back into whatever unique you want off a list of uniques. Everything has been dumbed down and made accessible for 10 year olds or people who can only play games 4 hours a week. That doesnt make a game "good" even if it makes it "popular" amongst the masses.

Retention is an important metric for tencent, one of the biggest. Yes.
D4 bad is funny I know but they improve the product each update as well.

You use yourself and project it on everyone in regards to the dopamine. Many players playing any rpg, not just arpg, don't get such a huge dopamine hit because leveling is part of the expected character progression. That includes 100. 100 is not an achievement or anything skillful either (many defenders just want to sell boosts, they have a vested interest).
Just as you say, a game is not necessarily good because it is dumbed down, the opposite to that is true as well. Making it overly complicated is not good either.
This is taking it to the extreme anyway as no one asks for the game to be easier, as can be seen when following the topic (multiple threads by now) with things such as playing without deaths for long periods of time yielding greater rewards so you reward good players instead of punishing bad ones, the end result is the same of good players being rewarded but you are able to have returning players in the lower end making everyone happy.
The leveling to 100 is already dumbed down to the max lets be frank here, you farm level 80 enemies and as long as you are not falling asleep running waystones with build bricking affixes you are good to go but that is not something a player will enjoy as this is really on the levels of checking your excel sheet if you did things correctly.
Some of the greatest games of all time were made specifically for people who play 4hours a week, world of warcraft or deus ex and the list goes on, so the personal rankings of what is and is not a good/hardcore player are meaningless.
I used to play dota2 and was above 6000mmr when that was top 0.1%, nowadays I don't care anymore and spend little time in some games.. am I now a bad casual player? Time investment=/=intellect or capability to learn. People who are very casual timewise also partially play difficult roguelikes such as tome4, are they bad even though the games are complicated and offer more difficulty than poe could ever provide?

You do mention, whether knowingly or not, a more important problem that you yourself also suffer from. If leveling is your dopamine, lack of chase items and what not, you complain about other games being a hollow shell (I interpret this as railroad you to endgame, bad campaign experience (poe2 has been fun in campaign for me), so you get to grind current seasonal content), then does that not mean that the game is lacking in meaningful content for a player comfortably in end game?
There should be difficult content that requires attention and focus, challenging gauntlet runs and what not, but that is missing (let's say it is patch 0.1 to excuse it for now) so the only "end game" you have is the xp grind.
Seems to me like that is important enough to be worked on.

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Waitn4D4#0477 wrote:

If people got their way this game would let people level to 100 in a day, there would be infinite portals, no rarity or quant on anything but every monster would be a loot pinata, you could run any skill/support gem combo and kill anything in the game, and absolutely everything would be easy and trivialized. We already have that game though, its called Diablo 4.

None asked for that stuff you list there, why not stick to the topic - XP-penalty. According to your arguments, players should never turn to these forums with suggestions and feedback, a "the devs always know best" philosophy. Sigh...

I've got 5-6000 hours in PoE1, but only got one level 100 character - in softcore. It was just a "been there, done that, got the T-shirt" thing for me. I will never hunt for that again, because the XP-penalty made me play slowly and carefully - which gave me the most boring gaming experience ever in an arpg.

I prefer gameplay that has a good balance between challenge and respecting players time. The PoE2 end game in its current state only caters to the small percentage of no-lifers. I don't think that will keep the game alive in the long term, sadly.

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

If you aren't dying regularly, the game is too damn easy.

Right.

Right right right.

HARDCORE is the easiest game mode ever, and surely not even challenging.

Riiiiiight.

Hardcore should be a rogue-lite. You roll your character, get as far as you can, then start the loop again.

Getting to endgame in hardcore should not be the norm until you have mastered the game.

EXP penalties need to go.

They serve no purpose except making players quit at some point instead of pursuing the dream of seeing their build completed.

Well, that and the fact that only mapping exists in endgame which is pretty boring along with the totally lazy, one-size-fits-all "ascendancy" trials that are the same for everyone for some reason.

The game needs a LOT of work still and sadly it's things GGG has already put into the game so they are written in stone. GGG doesn't change things, sadly.

I died 3 times today so I in a away I have more left to level 92 then yesterday.

I cant stay 100 focused every map all the time every day need som slack maps specially with the awful pathing in EA. Or only run white blue maps wich isnt gun. Just to get exp.

I think 91 will be my last level I havnt found 300 or more divines like to many others yet :D lucky ppl

Xp penalties are good but there needs to be a recovery mechanic to make it feel more satisfying. Including a recovery system (like go back to the same or a similar place to where you died and get back all or some of the loss) would heighten tension and still prevent players from pushing too hard without adequate defenses for the area they’re attempting as long as a second death causes a permanent loss.

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WoodkingHard#4366 wrote:

I died 3 times today so I in a away I have more left to level 92 then yesterday.

I cant stay 100 focused every map all the time every day need som slack maps specially with the awful pathing in EA. Or only run white blue maps wich isnt gun. Just to get exp.

I think 91 will be my last level I havnt found 300 or more divines like to many others yet :D lucky ppl

If you died 3x today at 90+ then you have wasted the entire day, basically.

Welcome to the "fuck it, I quit" mechanic.