exp penalty

An alternative penalty?

You die, you lose 10% rarity/quantity for ten minutes. And it stacks. The more you die, the more you can't loot.

Better than losing exp.
Worse than no penalty at all.

Good?

In response to scale_e:

One of the qualities people want in a death is for it to be a substantial setback for race events. I'm not sure how much a loss of IQ and IR would effect that, but I'd imagine something that effects experience would be more to the point.

I'm not really sure about timed penalties. They seem more appropriate when used as a disciplinary action against players for poor conduct with other players rather than as a core game mechanic. For example, the deserter debuff in WoW.

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Khalixxa wrote:

Diablo 3 is not the most balanced game by any means, but if you were to look at its leaderboards, all of the farthest progressing teams have at least one tank. This obviously isn't due to any penalty.

It also has a very different take on ARPGs than Path of Exile does.

Diablo 2 and 3 were always party oriented, as each class could synergize well with a different class. All players loved necromancers due to the tank-cloud they had, and paladins were loved in parties of any size due to their auras. Sorceresses were loved due to their ability to deal tons of AOE damage, making clear speeds faster overall, and they had teleport.

We don't have any of that in Path of Exile. All builds aim for high AOE DPS, and builds that don't have that aren't considered "viable" builds. The clear speed will be horrific, and their ability to help parties is limited. Summoners aren't liked because most people don't have computers that can handle a lot of entities in the game.

So I wouldn't begin comparing the Diablo series in terms of party play. Both games are completely different.

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Khalixxa wrote:

Isn't this a bad thing? Don't we want to encourage people to play with one another?

It is a bad thing. There are supposed to be benefits and drawbacks to playing solo and partying. In Diablo II, monsters became extremely hard to kill because they had the health to make their mods threatening. Parties would focus damage, so a sorceress would put everything into frozen orb and only deal cold damage, while someone else would deal only lightning, another poison, and another physical. This way the party would clear everything while not having to worry about immunities as much.

But parties meant loot is divided, and unless there is a system to "protect" loot for players, there will be leeches and if not leeches there will be advantages to playing melee. Melee is always where the kill was made, allowing them the chance to get all of the loot. This was a huge problem for D2 parties as ranged characters had to stay dangerously close to the boss in order to have any hope of getting any of the loot, but that risked death. On the other hand, they can pass on the difficulty and MF increase from parties to get guaranteed loot from solo play.

Both solo and party play need to be enticing, but not to certain builds or classes. It needs to be a flavor that the player can choose based on what they prefer.

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Khalixxa wrote:

Wait. Wouldn't a glass cannon build be a "not survivable" build?

Yes. I never said it wasn't.

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Khalixxa wrote:

We're touching on another issue here: the fact that the game is so easy and button-mashy that we even have to worry about glass cannons getting ahead in the first place. If the game were challenging enough so that glass cannons get held back by the raw difficulty of the game, there would be no worry. The current death penalty simply can't exist simultaneously with most challenges, since players are forced to avoid challenges (things that threaten to kill them) if they plan on leveling. At sufficiently high level, even dying once every 100 maps can mean zero or negative progression.

At the higher levels, yes. But keep in mind GGG plans on adding more content, so I'd say the max level is currently about 85-90.


As to scale_e:

Reducing MF is not the answer. The player can simply stop, wait for it to time out, and continue as though there is no problem. Additionally, if maps are a problem, the player can simply invite one of their characters on an alternate account, clear the map, and play as though there was no penalty. Or they can simply use the mule character to keep the map open until their MF build can play at no penalty.

I think half the problem people have with the exp penalty is mostly at higher levels. If there was more content than what a lv 78map? for players to kill higher level monsters it probably wouldn't be such a big deal for people.

I personally have no problem with the current penalty. When I die once, no big deal I keep progressing.. If I die a few times in the same area it makes me look at what I need to do to fix my character.. Am I missing some kind of resistance did I not spec enough HP nodes/Armor nodes/Evasion nodes.. Do I need to farm a few levels down to get the right piece of gear because I've progressed to fast and now I'm using 10+ levels old gear..

You shouldn't be able to zerg an area, you should feel the pain of dying, you should also plan your character out. I'm sorry that if the build you tried sucks, but that's just how it's going to be with 1300+ nodes to chose from. Like D2, if you had a crappy build it would be ok for a while but at some point you just wouldn't be able to progress anymore.. I like that about this game. Don't go making it into some entitled BS game just because you think your crappy sorry unique build should be able progess to end game. If you made bad choices those should show in your game play. Not ever game/char should be a happy place. Learn something from your mistakes and make better choices. but don't expect the makers to change the game to be like D3 or something gawd awful.


I see this exp penalty as a multi sided problem. Gear is extremely hard to get in this game. Time you get to Merciless with all of the negative to resist the gear you have is probably crap. Trying to find good gear is part of the fun, but I think they make it waaay to hard to find decent gear. Finding great gear or awesome gear I could see as being challenging to find, which it is but for decent gear is still way too hard than it should be.

So we have a gearing issue, we have a potential build issue and we have not high enough content issue that needs to be looked at along with the exp penalty. I am willing to bet that if those things were fixed or better suited the exp penalty wouldn't be a big deal. Currently it sucks to die even once at 86+ not to mention a few times because of the lv of monsters you have to kill just to get that exp back.

just my 2cents

The point of bringing up Diablo 3 was to mention a quality in it that everyone is worried about Path of Exile losing if the experience penalty were changed/replaced. It doesn't matter if a game has different emphasis, the point is that in the absence of a gigantic death penalty, the game can still be challenging with a range of viable player choices.

Diablo 3: Even in the solo leaderboards, you see ALL classes making sacrifices to stay alive despite there being no experience loss on death. The penalties for death are small in the long term, but players are still very motivated to survive since they are trying to beat a timer.

Warframe: When players die they can either resurrect themselves or be resurrected by teammates without any other penalty. Players are still very motivated to survive since dying at the wrong time can lead to mission failure and a loss of the rewards.

World of Warcraft: Dying costs gold (durability damage) and if the entire party dies during a raid, the boss encounter resets and everybody has to start over. Players are still very motivated to survive otherwise they keep having to start over.

League of Legends: When a player dies, they award their opponent some gold and experience while having to wait to respawn. Players are still very motivated to survive since deaths lead to an accumulated advantage for the opponent. If players lose a ranked game, they lose less ranking points (ELO) than they would have gained if they had won, yet players are still very motivated to win games.

These are examples of games where players aren't subject to a gigantic penalty for death, but are still motivated to "not die". Yes, these games are different from PoE, but the point is, the experience penalty is not some holy grail.

Path of Exile: When a player dies at the highest difficulty they lose 10% of their current level experience. This can amount to tens to hundreds of times the experience they could have gained from the map they were in.

Saying something like "death has to hurt" (assuming we're past the question of how death is intended to shape the game in the first place) leads naturally to the next question:

How much should death hurt and how?

"A lot" is a very poor answer since there are plenty of examples of challenging and diverse game environments where the answer is "the right amount in the right places."

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Khalixxa wrote:

It doesn't matter if a game has different emphasis, the point is that in the absence of a gigantic death penalty, the game can still be challenging with a range of viable player choices.

It can still be challenging, yes, but without a penalty the player does not fear death. There's no reason to avoid it other than for "quality of life".

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Khalixxa wrote:

Diablo 3: Even in the solo leaderboards, you see ALL classes making sacrifices to stay alive despite there being no experience loss on death. The penalties for death are small in the long term, but players are still very motivated to survive since they are trying to beat a timer.

There's your problem. You're tying leaderboards and other optional things to it.

The death penalty is something that should affect all players, regardless of what choices they make. If you play in leaderboards, you would focus on anything that maximizes your ability to gain experience, and having to do a lot of running will hurt that.

But players that don't care about leaderboards will simply not care about a death, since the penalty is oriented to counter that, as you would have it. This cannot be the case. This is why timed penalties are not an option. Players that have been playing for hours, or have something they need to do, will simply do it when and if they die. "Oh, I need more coffee and I just died. I'll just wait for my ten minute penalty to dissipate while I get my drink."

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Khalixxa wrote:

Warframe: When players die they can either resurrect themselves or be resurrected by teammates without any other penalty. Players are still very motivated to survive since dying at the wrong time can lead to mission failure and a loss of the rewards.

Again, you're tying in things that don't relate. I don't really know what Warframe is, but if memory serves it is a shooter game. Death is its own penalty. Your team is one less man shooting at the enemy, and allies will try to go help you. This means someone can simply camp your downed character to get another free kill. PoE is nothing like this.

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Khalixxa wrote:

World of Warcraft: Dying costs gold (durability damage) and if the entire party dies during a raid, the boss encounter resets and everybody has to start over. Players are still very motivated to survive otherwise they keep having to start over.

Again, an example of something that's getting off track.

World of Warcraft has a low-end currency: gold. Something that is easy to acquire, both legally and illegally. It costs nothing, and I've never once heard of anyone having trouble to repair gear. All you need to do is have a few crafting professions or simply sell ingredients you find during most gameplay.

Because it has currency that is readily usable, it can penalize death in that manner. Yet it has almost no affect on the game. Players are more worried about their downtime than the insignificant amount of gold. This basically turns it into a shooter, as your healer is not ressing you instead of healing, and your team has one less person to deal DPS, tank DPS, or HPS.

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Khalixxa wrote:

League of Legends: When a player dies, they award their opponent some gold and experience while having to wait to respawn. Players are still very motivated to survive since deaths lead to an accumulated advantage for the opponent. If players lose a ranked game, they lose less ranking points (ELO) than they would have gained if they had won, yet players are still very motivated to win games.

Even more off track.

There is a limit to the amount of gold and experience that can be gained from kills, and it's more about down time. Even if your enemy gets the bonus of killing you, they now have free reign to push and get greater experience and take advantage of other things on the field.

Again, it's more about down time than anything else.

Games like Path of Exile are about progression, not down time. All of your examples are able to use those penalties and balance them well (and seemingly easily), because they worry about down time. So regardless of what penalty is used, Path of Exile's penalty will have to affect experience in some manner.

A loss to experience gain? It's the same as a flat experience loss, except there is no way to abuse it. In fact, it becomes even more painful when you get closer to leveling.

The flat penalty would take 10% of level 89 from you, which amounts to, let's just say, 100 hours of work. But if you die at 95% experience with a reduction to gained experience, you lose far more than the 100 hours. It goes up to nearly 150 hours, simply due to the difference in required experience for the next level. (assuming a 10% of level increment)

If the flat penalty was replaced by the reduction, many more players would rage about it both in game and on the forums, and I'm certain that quite a few people would quit over it.

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Khalixxa wrote:

How much should death hurt and how?

Enough to where players should avoid it at all costs. A common factor between all games.

If examples from other games that successfully motivate survival while emphasizing experience gain and simultaneously not massively penalizing it on death are "off track", then what on earth would be "on track"? Examples from the very same game? Alright:

In Path of Exile, endgame maps limit player entry to 6 times, motivating survival even in the absence of any experience loss.

In Path of Exile, many quests have time limits, motivating players to survive independently of the threat of experience loss since they could fail the mission if they die.

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Khalixxa wrote:

If examples from other games that successfully motivate survival while emphasizing experience gain and simultaneously not massively penalizing it on death are "off track", then what on earth would be "on track"? Examples from the very same game?

You still don't get it.

Each of the examples you gave, with the possible exception of Diablo III because I don't play it, and don't recall the penalty, are all based around down time. They don't care about experience.

WOW/LOL: if your team suddenly loses one or two people, the enemy team is far more likely to push in some fashion because you are down on man power. Now is the time to grind up experience, money, and get some work done on the enemy base.

Warframe/Shooters: your team is now down a man and the enemy team has one less person to shoot at and to shoot at them. The chances of the enemy team getting another kill is higher because they just killed someone. This is why first blood is generally the most important deciding factor in hardcore games.

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Khalixxa wrote:

In Path of Exile, endgame maps limit player entry to 6 times, motivating survival even in the absence of any experience loss.

Yes, but we're talking about a general penalty for the entire game.

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Khalixxa wrote:

In Path of Exile, many quests have time limits, motivating players to survive independently of the threat of experience loss since they could fail the mission if they die.

"Many"?

Do you only play Haku missions, then? I haven't been leveling the three masters I have, Elreon, Catarina, and Tora, regularly but I have yet to see a timed mission by level 6. The only one I know that has time limits is Haku.

Masters are also a very small part of the game. No non-master quest has a time limit.

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MrTremere wrote:

Why should it affect all players?

I'm going to assume this is a rhetorical question.

If you really can't find the answer, I suggest you don't participate in this thread. Make a thread of your own.

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MrTremere wrote:

Should every player have to be as invested in the game as you are?

No, and I never said players should be anything like me. I'm also not invested into this game, and completely free of it after the bullshit that GGG calls "1.3".

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MrTremere wrote:

Is it really that important how other players are playing, despite their being slower than you are?

To the game, yes. But to me? I couldn't care less.

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MrTremere wrote:

I really don't think so. Sure, you can do the maths and discover that it's a higher penalty, but the important thing is that you feel that you're always getting closer to your goal, even when you have virtually gotten farther from it.

Really? Let's say your current level requires 100 experience to level, and the next level requires 150 experience to level. If you die with 0-90% experience, the difference won't be different from the flat penalty. You lose 10 experience either way.

But if you die at, say, 95%, you lose out on 12.5. That's more than the current penalty, and that's something you can't avoid. Dying at 9% or less is actually beneficial as you lose less progress, with the current penalty.

It's not a matter of thinking. It's a matter of knowing.

If you know you're losing more than you would've with the previous penalty, you'll just hate it more. So yes, people would rage more about the death penalty.

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Natharias wrote:

You still don't get it.

Each of the examples you gave, with the possible exception of Diablo III because I don't play it, and don't recall the penalty, are all based around down time. They don't care about experience.

In the quote that you said this in response to, I did point out that each of these example games does emphasize experience gain. If they also emphasize down-time, that doesn't detract from the point: that they motivate survival in the absence of massive experience loss. What you're pointing out is precisely the point I'm trying to make.

Path of exile already has some alternatives to the experience death penalty built into it (if there were any doubt that it could be done in the first place) that "could" be made more prevalent within the game.

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Natharias wrote:

Do you only play Haku missions, then? I haven't been leveling the three masters I have, Elreon, Catarina, and Tora, regularly but I have yet to see a timed mission by level 6. The only one I know that has time limits is Haku.

Elreon missions are all timed (defend the totem for a certain time). Two Vagan missions are timed (destroy more dummies within the time timit, and defeat Vagan within the time limit). Two Vorici missions are timed (kill the target within the time limit and defeat the target before the hostage dies). Dying during a Catarina mission can result in your resurrected minions dying, which is like a time limit, since they often spawn monsters that attack them.

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Natharias wrote:

If you know you're losing more than you would've with the previous penalty, you'll just hate it more. So yes, people would rage more about the death penalty.

We understand the example situation you're referring to. If you die at more than 90% level experience, the penalty would carry over to the next level and end up larger. This is a problem, but I don't think it's a very big one since dying at the border of leveling is (at worst) the same as dying at the next level. If we somehow agree that the penalty is fine for the first 90% of each level, the arbitrary increase at the end of the level doesn't seem very large. However, if it really is too large, then there are easy fixes such as prorating the penalty (making it a number equal to 10% of the current level) or just resetting it entirely on leveling.

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MrTremere wrote:

I'd suggest something similar to Khalixxa, but with a slight twist : instead of having a flat reduction to xp gains for a certain amount of xp gained, I'd have you slowly get back to the normal rate of xp gained as you gain experience.

I agree that this would be better to discourage the "zerg mode" after dying.

I'm not saying that the exact nature of this proposed penalty is already perfect. The numbers could be changed or it could stack two times or it could graduate like you're suggesting, etc. The removal of negative progression is the most important thing that this type of penalty accomplishes.