Death Penalty Changes in 0.11.3

As I mentioned in a different thread, I moved camp to PoE (from another mainstream RPG), because I got tired of facerolling content with no real danger or penalty for failure. As a (mostly) HC player, this change doesn't affect me much -- though I must confess I like the notion that the game is somewhat unforgiving. Not many of these left around.

I don't see why players have such beef with the Softcore numbers. Essentially people who play softcore are playing to min/max stupid ass builds or they're playing there because they're not a skilled as some of the HC/Onslaught players. A lower death penalty doesn't make the game easier, because I can just farm a place like docks until 74 that's a 63 zone. It doesn't make that any easier or harder, because I don't die there anyway.

The impact it has is minimal.

IMHO the death penality could be good as it is, the only thing missing is a way to restore part of the lost exp (50% maybe?) so a player have a reason to go back and fight to get at least that part back instead of the usual rage-quit :D

i vote for 7% and 10%. 8% is not enough.

Worst decision ever.
Another movement to transforms PoE into a random ARPG.

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ffogell wrote:

the problem isnt the actual xp loss but the time it takes to get it back as time for me is more precious than money.

Overall its not because the death penalty is lower that i won't take it less seriously when playing, even in softcore i always try to avoid death as much as possible

+1 totally agree

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Knowledged3 wrote:

A lower death penalty doesn't make the game easier, because I can just farm a place like docks until 74 that's a 63 zone. It doesn't make that any easier or harder, because I don't die there anyway.

QFT
Harsh death penalty -> bad reward/risk ratio -> people run trivial content -> easy gameplay
Bearable death penalty -> ok reward/risk ratio -> people try out unconventional builds, run challenging stuff -> fun, fun, fun

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Hornet85 wrote:

Good to see hardcore players bitching about a league that has got nothing to do with them.

The way the game shapes affects who plays the game, which in turn affects discussion on forum, which (evidently) affects how GGG changes the game. In short: more casuals -> more catering to casuals -> more casuals ad infinitum.

Personally, my main problem with the death penalty in PoE is isn't how much % of xp you lose, but that the only way to make 'permanent' progress is to gain an entire level. The feeling that, even if you're at 99% xp, you can still lose your entire level if you die a few times in a row from mistakes or desync/lag/disconnects/serverlag is just bad. It also means that any challenging content where you might die should really only be played right after you level up, instead of simply when you feel like it.

My suggestion would be to add permanent XP in your level that you can't lose by dying to give at least some progression if you're dying regularly (think people with bad internet or desync-heavy builds). One option would be to make it like 15% under your highest XP you've gotten, so that whenever you gain 15% or more XP without dying you gain permanent progression and you can only lose up to 15% by dying multiple times in a row. Another option would be something like 50% of the total XP you gain added as permanent XP, in which case people dying a lot will simply progress at half the speed (not counting time lost by the dying itself) of people who don't die at all.

The first option has the advantage that you can't lose an entire level when you die multiple times in a row, for example when servers/your internet are bad for a while, but people dying regularly but often still won't gain any progression. The second option will mean that everyone will get progression, just slower, but you can still lose half your level if you die a number of times near the end of your level. A combination of these two systems would probably be best I'd say.

And ofcourse there's the problem that many others have noted, that in the current state of the game the experience penalty becomes more and more severe as you get to higher level. At 70 10% of a level is probably less than an hour, but at 90+ it's multiple hours easily. Lowering the XP penalty for higher levels should fix this fairly easily, assuming it's not intentional to lose 10+ hours worth of leveling for a single death for people level 90+.


Another option to consider is doing something like Sacred has done, something that worked really well imho. Instead of a penalty when dying, they added a bonus for staying alive that you lost when you died. Something like +x% xp and/or +y% rarity, +z% quantity, slowly going up as you gain xp without dying. It will have a fairly high diminishing returns later on ofcourse, where you'll get say 50% fairly quickly, 90% if you stay alive very long, but never much above 100% or so, even if you never die. When you die you could lose for example half of your current bonus, a flat % of the bonus, or even simply the entire bonus.

This way you can choose a playstyle that fits you. You can choose to go glass-cannon, dying very often and having close to no bonus gaining only about half the XP of people that never die and less magicfind, playing softcore-style dying only sometimes, probably having an average bonus of around 50% or so, or playing hard-core style, killing things slower with a safer build, but getting 90%+ bonus constantly. And ofcourse the fact that getting a bonus for playing well is often better received psychologically than a penalty for playing badly/being unlucky, even if it does end up being the exact same thing in the end.

Here I was hoping the death penalty's would increase. Why decrease the exp penalty ? Wasn't 15% exp loss already a joke ? Won't this make Magicfind-builds who don't care if they die repeatedly even more prominent in the standard leagues ?


Did you guys at GGG ever think about releasing a league that has a way bigger death penalty then softcore, but not as rough as character and item loss like hardcore ?
Maybe a league where if you die your character does ends up in standard. However all items and inventory that character had on him gets put in separate Remove-Only stash tabs.
I think this system would be a nice balance between hardcore and softcore.