XP penalty and likely 1 portal is NOT going anywhere

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

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I understand that it’s easy to jump to conclusions, but I’m trying to have a productive conversation about the design choices and difficulty balance in Path of Exile 2. We all have different perspectives on what makes a game challenging or frustrating, and personal attacks or sophistry aren’t helping move the discussion forward.

I’ve acknowledged that player mistakes are part of the equation, but I also believe it's important to discuss how game design can impact the overall experience. Can we please keep the conversation focused on the topic at hand and avoid getting into personal assumptions? I’d like to continue the discussion in a way that’s respectful and constructive for both sides.

Furthermore, asking me to constantly 'admit' personal mistakes in the way you're suggesting just shifts the conversation to anecdotal evidence, which doesn’t really help us explore the broader game design issues that affect everyone. A single player's experience, or even repeated failures, doesn't invalidate the points about potential design flaws or difficulty imbalances that can impact many players, regardless of skill.

Focusing on personal admissions doesn't move the conversation forward in a meaningful way; it's more about the larger context of game design, and how both individual player errors and systemic mechanics interact. Let’s keep the focus on that and avoid turning this into a back-and-forth over personal anecdotes or assumptions. I’d much rather continue the discussion about how PoE2 could improve and balance its difficulty without getting sidetracked by individual cases.

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Z3RoNightMare#7140 wrote:

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

In the hundreds if not thousands of posts you've made so far asking the game to be made easier and less punitive, we have yet to see ONCE you admitting that you may not be as good as you think you are and that you do mistakes from time to time resulting in death by your own fault, and it isn't because of unseen effets and imbalanced damage .

The issue isn’t that I refuse to acknowledge mistakes or personal accountability – I’ve admitted plenty of times that player error can contribute to failure. The issue is the tendency to dismiss or downplay the broader context of game design flaws and overly punitive mechanics that also play a role in those failures. It's about balancing both sides – acknowledging when it's the player's fault and when game design decisions create unnecessary frustration.

Also, I don't think it's fair to assume that a desire for a less punitive system equals a lack of skill. A challenging game can still be fair and rewarding. PoE1 made changes based on player feedback that improved the experience, and it's not unreasonable to expect PoE2 to do the same. When people ask for more reasonable difficulty curves or clearer mechanics, it's not about reducing challenge; it's about fairness and clarity – concepts that have often been overlooked in favor of design decisions that don't always take player feedback into account.

What I don't get is that all the one-portal hard liners seem to think that because they don't mind it, it's somehow laziness, lack of skill, or some other excuse as to why everyone that hates it hates it. The perspective is frustratingly myopic, very Principal Skinner AmIOutOfTouch.meme. Just because some might like it doesn't in any way negatively impact their gameplay if someone else got to use 6 portals again. Punishment =/= Challenge, Challenge =/= Difficulty, Difficulty =/= Punishment. Punishment should be teachable, but how punitive it is also needs to be sensible. There is an expectation that Softcore will be a relatively lax punishment, nothing that can't be too time consuming to make up for. One-attempt is tremendously punitive, and restoring 6 portal won't do anything to negatively impact or change the actual end game, just how softcore handles death penalties. It could be the easiest game in the world, but if it isn't marketing itself as a rogue-like/lite or harsh or hardcore and one death later it wipes your save or something, that's going to be incredibly frustrating and demotivating. As you said it, such a thing would be highly stressful. People player Hardcore because they want that stress, it's part of the fun. Softcore players play softcore because they do not want that stress, and one-portal is significantly and demotivatingly stressful.

Tryhards and content creators are already playing glass cannon builds. The only people 10% and 1-portal are making the game difficult for are new players and casual players.

These punishments are not for the elite amongst their playerbase, but for all the people they campaigned so hard to bring in with the release of this game.

Regardless of your stance on how much difficulty is fun or necessary, GGG isn't balancing the game for those performing at top percentages. They brought magic find back and made it easier than ever. They have done absolutely nothing to curb the use of TFT, since they have refused to implement an actual trade system for archaic, preferential reasons and are taking their sweet time putting one in for this game. Speed runners now have the campaign down to 3 hours and some change with prepared gear.

The only people GGG has upped the difficulty for are the new and casual players. The numbers have been impressive for them, but this balancing isn't for "fun" for a majority of people, but a minority of people. They didn't gate things like ascendancy behind controversially RNG and difficult content because the player base wanted them to.

GGG just needs to understand they're not making this game for all the people they heavily marketed to up to launch of 2. "LOOK, COUCH CO-OP," yeah until you get to maps and then there's no point. "PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS, BETTER MULTIPLAYER," but only during portions of campaign. "MORE DIFFICULT AND IMPACTFUL," but they still think "impactful" = tedious, annoying, time sinks.

If they're happy with that decision, then it's clear they're not trying to compete with Diablo. Diablo devs at least understand making a game people can play together that doesn't beat you down for a single mistake.

Mostly reading here that dying is your fault.

Yes it is. But I really feel this aint the point. That one portal thingy does not give you the chance to get better. It prevents you from doing so coz it prevents you from playing.

Say you gotta a job, a life outside of the game : I do not play 16 hours a day.
I farm a week say 2 or 3 hours/day to get a try on the King in the mist.
I watch a vid, prepare etc..
Go through P1, through the maze, and through P2. Kill the thing and die at the same time. Cant get the loot (utility belt lying there...)

Sure that s my fault, I messed up the fight, even though once again, bosses are design to punish melee builds. Also never understand the obsession with after death effects.


I can deal with that one time frustration if I get other tries. Except I won't because the game is designed to give access to regular content only to the few chosen.

I enjoyed very much dying on Maven (god knows how many times) and learning from each try, and the satisfaction of the first time doing her deathless, and managing the Uber version - mastering the memory game. All of this because you can reasonaby have access to 100 of tries for little farming, or few currencies. Every Uber versions are at reach.

I do not see what makes it bad to have tries. after all you are moslty competing against yourself in POE.

Anyway the 1 portal thing is a deal breaker for "moderate" players.
It's the way of the game to tell you : the end of the line for you is doing T15. So like after 200 of them you kind of know what they re like, and you want to move to something else.

Gonna wait for POE1 next league :D

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Z3RoNightMare#7140 wrote:

I understand that it’s easy to jump to conclusions, but I’m trying to have a productive conversation about the design choices and difficulty balance in Path of Exile 2. We all have different perspectives on what makes a game challenging or frustrating, and personal attacks or sophistry aren’t helping move the discussion forward.

I’ve acknowledged that player mistakes are part of the equation, but I also believe it's important to discuss how game design can impact the overall experience. Can we please keep the conversation focused on the topic at hand and avoid getting into personal assumptions? I’d like to continue the discussion in a way that’s respectful and constructive for both sides.

Furthermore, asking me to constantly 'admit' personal mistakes in the way you're suggesting just shifts the conversation to anecdotal evidence, which doesn’t really help us explore the broader game design issues that affect everyone. A single player's experience, or even repeated failures, doesn't invalidate the points about potential design flaws or difficulty imbalances that can impact many players, regardless of skill.

Focusing on personal admissions doesn't move the conversation forward in a meaningful way; it's more about the larger context of game design, and how both individual player errors and systemic mechanics interact. Let’s keep the focus on that and avoid turning this into a back-and-forth over personal anecdotes or assumptions. I’d much rather continue the discussion about how PoE2 could improve and balance its difficulty without getting sidetracked by individual cases.

"

CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

What I don't get is that all the one-portal hard liners seem to think that because they don't mind it, it's somehow laziness, lack of skill, or some other excuse as to why everyone that hates it hates it. The perspective is frustratingly myopic, very Principal Skinner AmIOutOfTouch.meme. Just because some might like it doesn't in any way negatively impact their gameplay if someone else got to use 6 portals again. Punishment =/= Challenge, Challenge =/= Difficulty, Difficulty =/= Punishment. Punishment should be teachable, but how punitive it is also needs to be sensible. There is an expectation that Softcore will be a relatively lax punishment, nothing that can't be too time consuming to make up for. One-attempt is tremendously punitive, and restoring 6 portal won't do anything to negatively impact or change the actual end game, just how softcore handles death penalties. It could be the easiest game in the world, but if it isn't marketing itself as a rogue-like/lite or harsh or hardcore and one death later it wipes your save or something, that's going to be incredibly frustrating and demotivating. As you said it, such a thing would be highly stressful. People player Hardcore because they want that stress, it's part of the fun. Softcore players play softcore because they do not want that stress, and one-portal is significantly and demotivatingly stressful.

The root of your problems is that you die, and you don't like it. There is nothing more to it.

You want to play a game where you can't die and/or if you do, there is no punishments involved ? Those exist. They are made specifically for people like you.

PoE1/2 are well known for being difficult, challenging, and punitive, and where death happens often if you aren't a focused and good player and engaging in hard content. Deal with it.

You can deal with it in many ways. You can accept the design and play around it. You can get better gear and better build. You can become a better player. You can suck it up. You can even accept this game is too difficult and too punitive for you and move on to something else that suits you better.

But no, you guys decided the only way to deal with it was indeed to not deal with it and have it changed or even removed from the game. As in, make it another game than what it is.

You want to make feedback ? Then you have to explain what killed you, how it killed you, why you character died from it, why it is unfair/unbalanced, why you can't overcome this challenge, and that with many tries and many evidences to support your claim. That's actual factual feedback the devs can work on ; to make every challenge balanced and every death deserved.

Saying "I dont like the feeling of death" isn't feedback. Because nobody does. That's the whole point. Now, most of the players deal with it.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

XP Loss is a bad stake for failure. One, because it isn't a penalty for failure of the thing you're doing - it's a penalty for failure retroactively applied to things you've already done. XP loss on death is "you retroactively failed the less fifteen maps you did", and has zip fuck-all nothing to do with the map you actually failed on.

Two, because it's clearly not stakes for failure, if players like yourself, Brumblez, and the rest are to be believed, as you've all said "I do not care at all about losing XP on death, I just hate losing map sustain". If you don't care in the slightest about losing XP - and clearly you don't - is it really a stake for failure?

Failure is supposed to sting. It's supposed to hurt. It's supposed to cost something. Yes, even in Softcore.Elsewise why should anyone ever care about failing and not just smash their face into T17s day in, day out whether they can actually complete them or not?

Trust me, no one likes exp loss, but many are willing to accept it as punishment. If you dislike exp loss so much, propose an alternative that is fair. There have been plenty of ideas, like limiting experience gain for a while or having a debt to pay off that caps, but you never risk losing so much as to be at 0 experience towards next level.

Meanwhile, one-attempt maps are not very teachable when you die, cost you loot on the ground, cost you a waystone that you needed for sustain, cost you the map's mechanics, and now you need a second waystone to even try and complete that node again, on top of the exp loss. In poE1, lots of mechs wiped when you died because they were timed or somehow contained and limited. No one would complain about that being the punishment for failing a breach, for example, but then if there was an Expedition still there, or a Ritual, or a strongbox you missed, or a boss to kill, or an untouched Harvest or Blight or unfinished Metamorph or any other league mech, you didn't also lose those just for failing the breach or vice versa lost the breach for failing them. THAT is the biggest reason why, for a softcore league, one-attempt is so damn punitive. It is frustrating, it is demoralizing, it is demotivating, it is stressful. Players play hardcore because they like the stress the risk provides. Players play softcore so that they don't experience that stress. One-attempt is creating that stress.

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

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In PoE 2, there isn’t an easy way to pinpoint exactly what killed you, especially in complex encounters or with certain mechanics. Without that feedback, it can be hard to learn from a death, leading to players feeling like they’re stuck in a cycle of repeated mistakes without a clear understanding of what went wrong. I’m all for the game being tough, but constructive difficulty means the player is given the tools to learn and improve, and right now, lacking in-depth death feedback feels like a major roadblock for that.

You mentioned providing feedback about how deaths happen, but in cases where the death isn't clearly tied to an obvious mechanic (or when the game doesn’t show us what happened), it’s tough to explain that in detail, let alone provide meaningful feedback to the developers. If I can’t identify the root cause, how can I give the devs specific feedback? That’s where the game design could improve—providing clearer indicators or ways to track what led to the death would help a lot.

I don’t think anyone’s asking for the difficulty to be dialed back or for a non-punitive experience. The goal here is to have a game where players can accept and learn from their failures, but to do so in a way that’s both fair and informative. It’s about helping players see where they went wrong in a way that’s actionable, so they can improve and adapt. That’s the balance that can make PoE2 even more engaging.

Let’s continue focusing on how game design can evolve to enhance this kind of feedback loop, so it’s not just about dying, but about better understanding how to survive and thrive in the game.

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

The root of your problems is that you die, and you don't like it. There is nothing more to it.

Strawman, ad hominem

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You want to play a game where you can't die and/or if you do, there is no punishments involved ? Those exist. They are made specifically for people like you.

Strawman, ad hominem

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PoE1/2 are well known for being difficult, challenging, and punitive, and where death happens often if you aren't a focused and good player and engaging in hard content. Deal with it.

Yes, and the rare deaths feel excessively punitive for a softcore league, hence feedback that one-attempt needs to be removed.

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You can deal with it in many ways. You can accept the design and play around it. You can get better gear and better build. You can become a better player. You can suck it up. You can even accept this game is too difficult and too punitive for you and move on to something else that suits you better.

Red herring, hasty generalization, willfully ignores the countless times the anti-one-attempt side has admitted to mistakes and sometimes biting more than we could chew.

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But no, you guys decided the only way to deal with it was indeed to not deal with it and have it changed or even removed from the game. As in, make it another game than what it is.

False dichotomy, hasty generalization, non sequitor, strawman

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You want to make feedback ? Then you have to explain what killed you, how it killed you, why you character died from it, why it is unfair/unbalanced, why you can't overcome this challenge, and that with many tries and many evidences to support your claim. That's actual factual feedback the devs can work on ; to make every challenge balanced and every death deserved.

Many of us have, you promptly insulted us or ignored our examples or acted as if they were still our fault no matter the case, making you a contrarian and not an honest interlocutor.

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Saying "I dont like the feeling of death" isn't feedback. Because nobody does. That's the whole point. Now, most of the players deal with it.

Strawman, red herring.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

you promptly insulted us or ignored our examples or acted as if they were still our fault no matter the case, making you a contrarian and not an honest interlocutor.

Fallacies, false dichotomy, hasty generalization, non sequitor, strawman, red herring. Proof you can't argue in good faith.

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

you promptly insulted us or ignored our examples or acted as if they were still our fault no matter the case, making you a contrarian and not an honest interlocutor.

Fallacies, false dichotomy, hasty generalization, non sequitor, strawman, red herring. Proof you can't argue in good faith.

So, you don't deny it. Good to know :)