Death Penalty - Replace XP Loss w/ Durability Loss

Why are you all asking for more punishing mechanics?

Just ask for the bosses and enemies to actually challenge you. Bam, game is challenging. You feel rewarded when you beat them. If you can't beat them, you need to go update your gear or build.

Does the same thing XP loss does, but better, because you don't lose all your motivation to stop playing after you die and lose 4 hours of grinded xp because some random invisible thing one shot you. You're not 'stressed' out, trying to avoid dying the entire time you play.

Armor durability isn't necessarily a bad thing to have in a game, but to replace XP loss on death, it doesn't really add a challenge to the game. It's just something you need to maintain.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Why are you all asking for more punishing mechanics?

Just ask for the bosses and enemies to actually challenge you. Bam, game is challenging. You feel rewarded when you beat them. If you can't beat them, you need to go update your gear or build.

Does the same thing XP loss does, but better, because you don't lose all your motivation to stop playing after you die and lose 4 hours of grinded xp because some random invisible thing one shot you. You're not 'stressed' out, trying to avoid dying the entire time you play.

Armor durability isn't necessarily a bad thing to have in a game, but to replace XP loss on death, it doesn't really add a challenge to the game. It's just something you need to maintain.

Agreed. I think XP loss upon death ultimately makes people lose motivation to stop playing. I think a death penalty is important, but shouldn't suck the fun out of the game. Having a durability loss upon death instead accomplishes the same thing but is a lot less frustrating for the player.

this is a POE 1 issue asked and refused repeatedly by the developers.

As ive said in other posts, this is not POE 2, its just POE 1 expansions.

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Thaynime#8492 wrote:

If I'm not the target audience then why did they promise more slow paced combat? Why did they promise on more meaningful loot drop?

Are you familiar with the concept of bait-and-switch?

PoE 2 was kind of like that in that regard: they said the game was going to be slower paced, more deliberate, etc, and it was... during the campaign, so technically GGG didn't lie.

GGG managed to sell A LOT of EA keys that they otherwise wouldn't have sold because of that promise. I'm included in that list of purchases.

I will do a mea culpa and say I could have waited another month or two to get more in-depth reviews of the game before buying, so that was the mistake on my part... I bought the game late December.

I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you... this game seems to be following the exact same steps PoE 1 went through after 2018: more item bloating, more "QoL" MTX to manage all that bloat.

Want proof of that? GGG is not even hinting at changing anything in the endgame. They barely made VISUAL changes to the already extremely bad attack FX.

Give another 1-2 years and this game will be just PoE 1 with makeup on.

great idea - replace xp loss for durability loss

I play to unload stress not to keep my anxiety high all the time.

NO XP loss
NO 1 death per MAP
add some reward for playing SSF

This forum... This forum never changes...

ummmm i kinda disagree with that

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PeterEugene#5773 wrote:

great idea - replace xp loss for durability loss

I play to unload stress not to keep my anxiety high all the time.

NO XP loss
NO 1 death per MAP
add some reward for playing SSF

Agreed. There should be a death penalty, but the XP loss is too punishing for the casual player. I consider myself a casual player as I have limited time to play with wife and kids. Don't get me wrong, I like the challenging experience of PoE2, but losing significant amount of time is not fun.

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_rt_#4636 wrote:

And the best games I've ever played lacked any sort of meaningful punishment when you died.
But these "best games" actually required skill and progression that could only be attained by taking risks and dying.

Weird, right?

You’re contradicting yourself. You argue that PoE relies on “arbitrary punishment” to feel challenging, but then claim the best games you’ve played lacked meaningful punishment while still requiring risk-taking and skill. But how is risk meaningful if failure carries no consequences?

If a game lets you take risks and die without any meaningful setbacks, then what’s stopping someone from brute-forcing everything without learning or improving? Punishment isn’t about making a game unfair—it’s about reinforcing skill expression and mastery. Games that require actual skill often do have consequences because overcoming them is what makes progression rewarding.

PoE’s death mechanics might not be to your taste, but that doesn’t mean it “sucks” just because it expects players to engage with its systems rather than spam brainless risk-free attempts. If you don’t like that, fine, but calling it arbitrary ignores the depth that a lot of players thrive on.

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N3vangel#0037 wrote:

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_rt_#4636 wrote:

And the best games I've ever played lacked any sort of meaningful punishment when you died.
But these "best games" actually required skill and progression that could only be attained by taking risks and dying.

Weird, right?

You’re contradicting yourself. You argue that PoE relies on “arbitrary punishment” to feel challenging, but then claim the best games you’ve played lacked meaningful punishment while still requiring risk-taking and skill. But how is risk meaningful if failure carries no consequences?

It's not that hard to understand the difference...

Just go play any game that has actual inherent difficulty to it.
What I meant by saying "taking risks" was "trying something new you don't know whether or not will work". Maybe it makes things more difficult, maybe it makes things easier.
Souls games, platformers, PvP online games. All of these genres have countless examples you can think of.

PvP games are more "strict sense" in the use of the term risk: you might die, lose a round, lose a match, etc. But still, those are not punishment arbitrarily set by the game devs to befall you. Those are the consequences of the risk you took. You might as well have stomped the game, or won the round almost single handedly.
And even if the worst happens, the things you learn carry on with you. That loss means you might get countless wins in the future because you learned and improved at the game.

The bottom line is: a few minutes later, if it fails, you're there to try it again with the added knowledge of that failure.


PoE, on the other hand, is almost completely void of these examples. The only thing you have like this are boss fights. And it's no wonder people praise the campaign in PoE 2: that's where you have deliberate combat and infinite attempts at new bosses against which you have to learn about through in-game interaction: trying and failing.
But on the endgame, which is where death punishment begins, that aspect of the game is completely removed.

For pinnacle bosses: people go to YouTube before their first attempt and are spoon fed what to do against each attack. It's not worth taking any "risks", because, instead of deaths being moments of learning, they're moments of nonsense punishment.

For mapping: people spend a ton of time prepping their Atlases, they go to a juiced map, they'll obviously AoE clear their entire screen. God forbid they get randomly 1-shot by something they can't even see and lose the node...

Not going to lie, when people try to argue in favor of what we have in PoE the way you did, all I can think of is that they have never played any challenging game and all they know is GGG's game design and Path of Exile

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N3vangel#0037 wrote:

Punishment isn’t about making a game unfair—it’s about reinforcing skill expression and mastery. Games that require actual skill often do have consequences because overcoming them is what makes progression rewarding.

PoE’s death mechanics might not be to your taste, but that doesn’t mean it “sucks” just because it expects players to engage with its systems rather than spam brainless risk-free attempts. If you don’t like that, fine, but calling it arbitrary ignores the depth that a lot of players thrive on.

Wholeheartedly agree.

Except none of these things exist in PoE.
PoE requires you 5 minutes of knowledge, knowing how to navigate with WASD, aiming with your mouse and pressing any other button of your choice.

How to win in PoE:
1) Max your resistances and get some HP
2) Get enough DPS
3) Braindead grind your way into being rich
4) Create new character and repeat

Death punishment adds nothing to this loop. It just artificially extends step #3