exp loss on death is a bad old mechanic

I cant realy say penalty is bad but ther things i can say.

So my frend got like level 94 and im stuck on 89, reson is simple perandus monster in some maps destroy my performance and ther is also pernadus & Shrine, shrine & beyound, well you get the the combinations are there..

I dont wine but curently leveling for me is gated behinde my PC performance.
Performance hit is usualy not noticable until maps and for what i seen it start from T9-10 and it hit hard, difren zones with rain and some monster just make it besicly pointles to risk what you alredy have.

Its always funy when my frend say, you died to that. IoI
What he dont understand i stare att frozen screan and bash potions until i get message to respawn, just glorious. In one moment you puling 40-75 frame in next you cant do nothing.

Concept of roling insane maps come usualy with masive performance instability and if you dont to that crap you wont get maps, no maps no exp. For me geting from 88-90 some time take a month, i just accep it but it does suck. I know most people cheez the game with loog outh macros and crap, for me i think even that wont help but its just a example of how accepting they are.

As others have said, I support your right to argue the amount of the penalty but not to remove it.

It's fallacious to say some games don't have a death penalty therefore this one shouldn't. I defy you to find a good example of a grind-based game, let alone an ARPG, that doesn't have a penalty. Why do these games have penalties and others don't? Because in other styles of games, progression is about the story and the creator wants to make sure you get to experience the whole story because they know you're there for a good time, not necessarily a long time.

This game is different; the developer wants you to experience *a* story, but then keep on playing the game forever afterwards. The sooner you tick off all the things to do here, the sooner you leave. That's not good for the game. No penalty? Like someone said, we've all got level 100s coming out our ears (aside: of course they could UNCAP LEVELS WITH DIMINISHING RETURNS AND GET OVER THIS WEIRD OBSESSION WITH RACING TO AN ARBITRARY LEVEL WHICH ARTIFICIALLY LIMITS THE LIFESPAN OF TEMP LEAGUES!! - but let's not digress).

The above has all been said in different terms earlier. Let me just make two other observations though. Firstly, you'll find if you play enough, you die a LOT less. How long? Depends. But unlike some games, it won't be 1-10 hours. It may not even be your first thousand hours. Again, that's a design decision to make a game that can challenge you for a long time. It's your decision whether to rise to it.

My other observation/point is please don't consider the horrible performance of the Perandus period to represent the sum of the game experience. It has been much smoother in the past with many fewer crashes; we can only hope it will be again in future.

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CloudMagic wrote:

There's a whole mass of people playing with the penalty of losing THEIR CHARACTERS and you're complaining about a 10% exp loss.

There's people in the world that get their who arm blown off, what are you doing crying about only losing your hand?! ...lulz

But back to the point...
There's a few things in this game that are a complete turn off and why I haven't been playing lately. The lab is a big one and another is losing hours of play because the servers drop and I suddenly just lost hours of play. That or off-screen reflect or a beyond mob suddenly pops into existent with reflect I can't possibly know about and react to.

Even if the XP penalty was removed, there is still a death penalty in PoE. It's inherent. You lose time, however much time it takes to get back to where you were and rebuff. For some builds there's additional time loss for resummoning minions or restarting a momentum based build (charge reliant, or rampage reliant, or vaal skill reliant). In some cases there's additional risk (saving your animate guardian).

You lose a portal. Sometimes you fail a Zana mission. In co-op 6 player you lose the rest of the map run. You lose your labyrinth run.

Generally, players opting for softcore mode don't need an added penalty beyond all of the inherent penalties to incentivize death avoidance. The exception is boss runs in the main storyline, where portals aren't limited. Since the introduction of checkpoints, players brute force bosses. In many cases the current XP penalty does nothing here, because players wait to run "hard" bosses until right after they level. For magic find builds that run act bosses this abuse is rampant, where they don't care about XP or the death penalty at all. The XP penalty is also irrelevant for players at 100 or players who reach a target level and no longer have leveling as a goal.

There's also the issue where if you die at 80 you lose about 5 minutes of progression but if you die at 98 you lose a full day. If we need an added penalty, I'd rather have something more effective, comprehensive, and consistent.

A flat % XP penalty has a number of significantly negative side effects, such as restricting which builds are 100 viable, penalizing sandboxy testing behavior, and rewarding challenge avoidance behavior. Ultimately it makes the game less exciting, because the efficient 100 viable builds are very safe (and very boring). Some players would have a lot more fun leveling to 100 using a build that was riskier and required more attentiveness.

Victor Vran is an ARPG with an end-game that is grindy if you seek BIS gear, fully upgraded medkit, fully crafted & upgraded weapons, destiny cards with the right wicked enchants, and it doesn't have an added death penalty. They do other things, like zone challenges that require 0 deaths and boss battles that reset if you die. It's fun.

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davidnn5 wrote:

It's fallacious to say some games don't have a death penalty therefore this one shouldn't. I defy you to find a good example of a grind-based game, let alone an ARPG, that doesn't have a penalty.

You're right, it is an error to say that X does something, therefore Y should too. But it would also be an error to think that because there aren't historical examples of X, X is a bad idea. At some point in the not so distant past, ARPGs didn't exist at all: if at that point I had stood up and said "I defy you to find a good example of a game with this design", nobody would have been able to find one. And yet here we are.

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davidnn5 wrote:

This game is different; the developer wants you to experience *a* story, but then keep on playing the game forever afterwards. The sooner you tick off all the things to do here, the sooner you leave. That's not good for the game.

Eh, this is a user forum; our ideas of what's good design or a good experience don't have to come from concern for GGG's bottom line or preserving the particular ways they've chosen to do things up til now. Path of Exile is one videogame, I have no plans to be playing it for the rest of my life. I don't really care if GGG want me to play forever, and frankly I think they would be being really unfair on themselves to expect that magnetism of their game. People not playing games forever is normal, healthy human behaviour; not consuming people's entire lives is not some kind of failure.

There are vastly more possible builds to try out than I will ever have time to get to, XP penalty or no, so "the sooner you tick off all the things to do here, the sooner you leave" doesn't resonate with me at all. When I tick off all the things one character can do, I will most likely start a new character, not quit playing the game. I'll quit playing the game when I grow tired of it, and that isn't only going to happen when I get to the end of some list. I never had a max-level D2 character, but I don't play that anymore.

I don't know why people would care if there are more level 100 character floating around, especially in Standard which is never going to be the place for "serious" competition anyway. There's still hardcore, race, and temporary leagues for those who want to worry about the ladder. If you want time limits to restrict people's ability to level, you've got them. If you want modes where deaths are really important, you've got them.

On that note I don't think digression is to be avoided - changes in the game leading to further changes down the track is normal, so thinking about other related changes that might be made in concert to improve the game is entirely appropriate.

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davidnn5 wrote:

I defy you to find a good example of a grind-based game, let alone an ARPG, that doesn't have a penalty.

Diablo 3
Victor Vran
Dungeon Siege III
Torchlight 2
Van Helsing series (optional gold DP to respawn at location, or free respawn at base)
Grim Dawn (you can recover lost XP by clicking your grave marker)
Sacred (you lose a survival bonus)
Fable 2
Borderlands series (minor gold)
Dead Island series (minor gold)

You don't play many Action RPGs do you?

The death penalty in PoE softcore mode at levels 95+ is essentially forcing a hardcore gameplay experience on players who choose softcore. The time loss is too extreme, and too different from most games in the genre. For players who don't enjoy playing hardcore it's a fun killer.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

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davidnn5 wrote:

It's fallacious to say some games don't have a death penalty therefore this one shouldn't. I defy you to find a good example of a grind-based game, let alone an ARPG, that doesn't have a penalty.

You're right, it is an error to say that X does something, therefore Y should too. But it would also be an error to think that because there aren't historical examples of X, X is a bad idea. At some point in the not so distant past, ARPGs didn't exist at all: if at that point I had stood up and said "I defy you to find a good example of a game with this design", nobody would have been able to find one. And yet here we are.

I already explained in this thread why a death penalty is appropriate to Path of Exile. The TL;DR is that sometimes you're supposed to pull a Sir Robin: turn tail and run away. This wouldn't happen, particularly during maps, if there wasn't a penalty. And no, losing a portal isn't penalty enough, because then players would just save the hard stuff for last.

Now, does the death penalty need to be in XP form? Does it need to be as severe as it is? Fair questions. But there must be a penalty of some kind.

Grim Dawn 'click the corpse' recovers 50% exp AFAIK. I do not die there frequently enough to be sure but zerging content is not very effective

respawn cost should stay in PoE and if anything - it should go up. there are too many people playing glass, no-head, right-click builds and thinking they are doing it right because they 'only die a couple of times.. per hour'. the stimuli has to be strong enough for people to understand that they are not building their characters correctly

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sidtherat wrote:

Grim Dawn 'click the corpse' recovers 50% exp AFAIK.

I believe the amount of XP recovery from grave marker depends on difficulty selected.

PS. A high XP penalty is artificial difficulty. Would you rather have a game with more difficult content or a game with a very harsh penalty for dying to easy content?

IMO the current penalty restricts the content design space.

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sidtherat wrote:

respawn cost should stay in PoE and if anything - it should go up. there are too many people playing glass, no-head, right-click builds and thinking they are doing it right because they 'only die a couple of times.. per hour'. the stimuli has to be strong enough for people to understand that they are not building their characters correctly

Strong enough, or consistent enough. I feel one of the biggest failings of the current penalty is that you're sometimes incentived to zerg after an accidental death, either because your XP goes to 0 or close enough not to care. That's a design thing, not a strength thing - even if the penalty were "doubled" you'd see the same behavior. Actually, more of it.