Remove xp loss on death, replace with xp bonuses for surviving

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Tempada wrote:

XP loss on death is one thing that really bothers me about this game. Why does GGG punish you for something that's sometimes (and more often than it should be) out of your control? There are many insta-death scenarios that happen too quickly for a player to react, and when people argue a player "should" have reacted, they often forget that this has turned into an incredibly fast-paced game with visual indicators that are frequently difficult to see in the chaos on the screen. Exploding corpses and volatile enemies are especially awful (see here). Or people may die from connectivity issues, which we unfortunately have to suffer through in an online-only game.

Now, when one of these ridiculous deaths happens at high levels (early 90s and higher), it's thoroughly demoralizing. People rage quit or lose incentive to play if they don't feel like they're progressing (and rerolling characters, for me personally, is anything but fun -- I've done it so many times -- except maybe at the start of a new league).

So, why not reward softcore players for surviving instead of punishing them for dying? I feel like there would be less resentment and better player retention if there was, instead of the death penalty, an experience multiplier that slowly grew, for example, based on map tiers completed without death. No one likes to feel that their hours have been wasted, and triggering that feeling is about all the death penalty accomplishes. I'm sure GGG would want to make significant balance changes so that reaching 100 doesn't take the ladder climber any less time, but making level 100 seem more achievable to everyone else would probably be a positive direction for the game.

There is a way to prevent losing exp due to dying.



Also, when we're at removing exp penalty and instead we'll have xp bonuses, can I have my free Shavs, instead of no drop, please? I know, I know, slippery slope, couldn't help. :P

tl;dr of your suggestion is make game casual because you can't handle it past lvl 90. And if YOU cannot get past level 90, this means there is something wrong with the game.

That is how you kill games - lack of perspective and consciousness of your own skill and abilities.
And because most players are average, they will always call to dethrone those on the top, calling for buffs, whining about nerfs and constantly arguing that the game is too hard (they won't word it that way, but it is more or less this).
When they finally achieve their goal, people on the top will be already long gone. And when they (casuals) reach end-game themselves, it will turn out it is boring and easy... And they will quit as well.

Welcome to World of Warcraft Diablo 3 Path of Exile. :D

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Tempada wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

And stop exagerating with "Pop the Weasel one shots" ffs.
How do HC players reach level 100 ?
Or even level 90+ ?

They stick to easy content unless they conform to a very specific meta, maybe run with a group, and, quite frankly, get lucky.

Seriously, if anyone know someone who needs to do a research about Dunning Krugger Effect, this thead is the place!

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grepman wrote:

lol at punishing death in a game being outdated.

cant believe people are saying it with a straight face.

what's next, failing in a game is outdated ?

Pls add MTX for resurrection, pls GGG, pls I die. :CCCC

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

I agree that the death penalty is annoying and frustrating. Why have it?

because it gives meaning to the game, if a shit build with no defenses doesnt have a reason to become a better build then whats the point in the build system? Just to see how much dps u can stack and how fast you can go?

Snorkle, death still matters in the idea I'm proposing. If you don't build up the xp bonus (that is, survive) then your xp gain slows to a crawl at high levels. The difference is that you would, in the new scenario, still be making notable progress after a long stretch of leveling that ends in one of those unfortunate deaths I described earlier and Ceri beautifully describes in the quote below. It's a way to make players feel like their time is valued and offset the oneshots (or disconnections that may kill you).

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Ceri wrote:

Most of my characters (at least the ones I attempt to level past 90) are built like hardcore characters and I almost never die due to player error. When I do, I'm fine with it, usually. After all, it is my fault. :)

The problem is that nearly all of my deaths are complete bullshit, and usually oneshots. Bameth and his Vaal DD has killed me many times, and I still don't understand how on Earth one is supposed to protect oneself from that, bar Vaal Immortal Call. Granted, it depends a lot on what type of character I'm playing - he's easier to avoid with ranged chars, very hard to impossible on melee chars. Last time I got him I was on a Cyclone char in a Breach and didn't even see him before it was too late. Instant nuke wiping 2 full screens of mobs, thanks. It's about as challenging and interesting as a Volatile that goes splat. Both are terrible mechanics and should definitely be reworked.

For the existing death penalty (and for that matter, Hardcore modes) to be viable this game really needs to tone down the oneshots that aren't clearly telegraphed. The really hard hitters that have good telegraphing (Vaal, Atziri, Dominus and such) are perfectly fine. Vaal DD needs a nerf and better visibility for sure. Volatiles and reflect mechanics need to be reworked (or even removed).

But yeah, since none of that is probably happening anytime soon, I'm against the current penalty system. It's demoralizing, it's not challenging but frustrating, and it adds nothing positive to the game. Just makes me far more likely to play less. It already has.

GGG (and many players) seem to confuse hardcore with tediousness & frustration. There's nothing either challenging or difficult about leveling to 100, it's just tedious. And it can be terribly frustrating if you're unlucky with bullshit deaths. Which is why I stop in the low 90s for most characters, I can't be bothered even though I'm perfectly capable. Is that a good feeling?

Thank you for this. These same thoughts were in my head when I created this thread.

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Perq wrote:

tl;dr of your suggestion is make game casual because you can't handle it past lvl 90. And if YOU cannot get past level 90, this means there is something wrong with the game.

Dude, I have a level 97 character.

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For the existing death penalty (and for that matter, Hardcore modes) to be viable this game really needs to tone down the oneshots that aren't clearly telegraphed. The really hard hitters that have good telegraphing (Vaal, Atziri, Dominus and such) are perfectly fine. Vaal DD needs a nerf and better visibility for sure. Volatiles and reflect mechanics need to be reworked (or even removed).

But yeah, since none of that is probably happening anytime soon, I'm against the current penalty system. It's demoralizing, it's not challenging but frustrating, and it adds nothing positive to the game. Just makes me far more likely to play less. It already has.

A hint here. Death penalty is not the problem. Those dumb mechanics (Volatiles and so on) are the problem.
Patching those dumb mechanics by changing a system that in fact does it job (stops people who keep on dying constantly from leveling past level ~85 or even sooner) is misplacing the work.

I can't even start to imagine how builds on SC would look like if this change saw light's day. I mean, most SC builds are already CRIT-FULL_DAMAŻO mongoloid retards - we don't need more motivation to make them any more retarded. :2

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Tempada wrote:

Dude, I have a level 97 character.

So, uh, what is the problem? :@

And what is the problem with bad builds making it past 85? What do they really get out of stopping bad builds from at least being playable? What does it matter if mr bad player can progress slowly on his bad build? - one of the major effects of it is that the amount of builds that make sense to play is drastically reduced. Also as other says it discourages players from pushing their limits going against the hardest content that they can and discourages them from fighting map bosses and instead promotes running easy safe maps and content.

The balance and oneshots in poe is never going to get fixed. They love scaling everything with such large factors that when enough of them convene its just gg.

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Crackmonster wrote:

And what is the problem with bad builds making it past 85? What do they really get out of stopping bad builds from at least being playable? What does it matter if mr bad player can progress slowly on his bad build? - one of the major effects of it is that the amount of builds that make sense to play is drastically reduced. Also as other says it discourages players from pushing their limits going against the hardest content that they can and discourages them from fighting map bosses and instead promotes running easy safe maps and content.

The balance and oneshots in poe is never going to get fixed. They love scaling everything with such large factors that when enough of them convene its just gg.

Why should people be rewarded for losing? That's ridiculous. I agree that the one shots aren't ideal though, but unless vaal pact and disconnect macros get nerfed some how they're probably not going anywhere. They're pretty much all telegraphed though, so it's not like they're random.

I have no love for bameth and volatile. I think vol should be reworked to have a timer so you can notice and have that moment where awareness and skill means you can get out of the way just like burning man and bearers. Heres a monster and if you kill it in melee range you instantly die, and it could be any rare monster so if you are melee be terrified of every single rare monster in the game and always find a safe spot when a rare monster comes on the edge of your screen and mouse over it to be sure + dont attack any devour or drop bear etc that just spawns right on top of you but kite back and try and lose the monster until you can verify its not vol blood and when you spot vol blood do not attack that monster at all or always have a ranged attack equipped on every melee to take the monster out without being in melee range.... which dev thinks that is good for melee builds?

Vol blood makes life melee feel like playing a fullout dps ranged char who cant take reflect because theyre glass cannon to the max. They have to be constantly scared of reflect, and that is the punishment for making an unbalanced build, its an intention punishment. What are life melee being punished for? For being life melee? Why is that being punished? I chose to play life based melee so now I must be terrified of attacking rare mobs in melee range? Out there we have a dev somewhere whos still "nope, its fine, thats supposed to work like that"... that fucking guy, seriously, hes an idiot who doesnt play high level life based melee.

Thats my take on vol blood.


Bameth, theres vids out there of it spawning off screen and vaal DD killing 10k+ life pool chars before hes even been on their screen... yeah its not right. But those are issues that need dealt with, I dont think you keep those issues and take out the xp penalty, you keep the penalty and stop killing players unfairly by dealing with these individual issues, thats my take.

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Tempada wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

I agree that the death penalty is annoying and frustrating. Why have it?

because it gives meaning to the game, if a shit build with no defenses doesnt have a reason to become a better build then whats the point in the build system? Just to see how much dps u can stack and how fast you can go?

Snorkle, death still matters in the idea I'm proposing. If you don't build up the xp bonus (that is, survive) then your xp gain slows to a crawl at high levels. The difference is that you would, in the new scenario, still be making notable progress after a long stretch of leveling that ends in one of those unfortunate deaths I described earlier and Ceri beautifully describes in the quote below. It's a way to make players feel like their time is valued and offset the oneshots (or disconnections that may kill you).

Its the same thing tho right? you lose time, its the same thing but you believe its psychologically better. I dont, for me losing the xp and then having xp I get if I keep playing being 100% effective would probably feel better than not losing the xp but knowing if I keep playing Im now playing at a slower rate, I think Id rather not have the play in front of me devalued, Id rather lose the play behind me. Its swapping "well all that time I just spent was wasted" for "if I spend more time on this char its wasted". If its the same thing then logic says neither is better, and Im not sure that even in an illogical way the second one feels better, thats individual perspective.

It kind of ends up worse right? Because at 0xp you can go and try out something horrible and die without losing anything, with your method you still suffer the penalty even at 0xp because its about xp in front of you not behind you, so from that sense your way of doing is actually worse for players because theres no floor they cant fall below. Unless you only have 1 of these stacked, so then they can die 5 times in a row at any point and only suffer the same sort of moving forward penalty as dying once, at which point that just forgives the worst sort of death zerging playstyle as much as 1 occasional death. Right now you have a tiny window where you can experiment with content and death zerg, but if you want to move forward towards the next level you must do so properly for the entire 100% xp of the level and not just chain rip through content.

I think its just open to being 'gamed' too in unfun ways. So how are we doing this? Map tiers? So I go boss rush how many white tier 7 maps to get my xp booster back up before I feel like I can go back to playing red tier maps again with the full xp rate? go on actual xp instead? So Id full clear lower content? any way around Im not wasting high maps when I dont have my full bonus right? Id go and suffer some really unfun kind of trivial nonsense to get my booster back before using my good maps surely?

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Ceri wrote:

In a business where player retention is the key to success, punishing players just doesn't make sense. This is not a debate about casual vs hardcore. It's an obsolete sentiment from the good old days, disagree however much you want but it's pretty much fact.

I think Diablo 3 did it well, with their enhanced XP bubbles that reward you for staying alive. It feels bad when you die, but it's not the end of the world. Just as it should be. Keep your players playing, keep their spirits up and encourage progress. PoE pretty much does everything the other way.

I've died a couple of times at level 95 and each time I just stop playing, sometimes for extended periods of time. It's so demoralizing it's not even funny, particularly when I die due to reasons outside of my control (network, server crash and such). Last time I whirled (Cyclone) into a volatile rare in a Gorge map and died instantly. That was fun, I learned a lot. The time before that I disconnected upon entering the Phantasmagoria boss room and the fat girl killed me while I was restarting the client. Gee, thanks. Those two bullshit deaths cost me like 50-60 maps worth of XP.

It might also be prudent to investigate if temp leagues should have a harsher penalty because that's where the actual racing is done. I see no reason to keep the penalty in Standard, though. That just pisses off the players, for no reason. I do see a point in keeping it where ladder races are a thing, though. I could see a reverse slider on the ladder position. The higher up you are, the more XP you lose if you die. If you're below a certain threshold (5000?) you have no penalty. Makes sense to me.

And if you really enjoy thrill and punishment, of course you play Hardcore. There should be no debate about that.

First of all we all have different goals. Mine is never player level. My goal is kill hardest bosses every season and could give fuck all about anything past 90 becuse if i cant kill them bosses at 90 build is a failure. Second even if your goal is 100 wouldnt that increase plyer retention by making it harder? Say on death? There is no excuse anyway for deaths with shaping or at least very few. You could run infinite lvl 11 strands if you shape right for an easy go it. So then its just time factor. No excuses. Yet y'all keep making them.

About volatile - run enfeeble on blas you wont die.

Hardcore is too harsh. Doesnt have to be all or nothing. I hate people who think this way. Balance is in the middle. If there was no penalty I wouldnt even take a life node - all DPS all the time. Like HC all defenses all the time. Prefer a balanced approach.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

About volatile - run enfeeble on blas you wont die.

theres a vid in the op of a vol blood 1 shotting a 9k life character in a t11 map, 9k life. The map has 1 extra as elemental mod and a 30% monster damage mod. Its not double extra as elemental, theres no shocking ground, no -max, its not a t15 map, its a t11 map and 9k life 1 shot. enfeeble does not save you.

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Crackmonster wrote:

And what is the problem with bad builds making it past 85? What do they really get out of stopping bad builds from at least being playable? What does it matter if mr bad player can progress slowly on his bad build? - one of the major effects of it is that the amount of builds that make sense to play is drastically reduced. Also as other says it discourages players from pushing their limits going against the hardest content that they can and discourages them from fighting map bosses and instead promotes running easy safe maps and content.

The balance and oneshots in poe is never going to get fixed. They love scaling everything with such large factors that when enough of them convene its just gg.

Completely undermines idea of levels. If everyone will get to level 100, no matter what, you can assume everyone is level 100. Because what stops you from doing so? So now it is just matter of who can no life more. Welcome to Diablo 3 Path of Exile, where your level doesn't matter!
One would then ask a question - if it doesn't matter, why have it in the first place?

Also, again, the argument of this X thing is broken, so lets patch it by changing something else.
By the way, if you think that they will never fix one-shots, what makes you think they would fix death penalty? Hmmmm? Because if you don't believe in them changing anything, what are you doing here?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Aim_Deep wrote:

About volatile - run enfeeble on blas you wont die.

theres a vid in the op of a vol blood 1 shotting a 9k life character in a t11 map, 9k life. The map has 1 extra as elemental mod and a 30% monster damage mod. Its not double extra as elemental, theres no shocking ground, no -max, its not a t15 map, its a t11 map and 9k life 1 shot. enfeeble does not save you.

There are videos of people finding Mirrors of Kalandra. Does this mean it is something that happens all the time?
If you failed to read rare monster description (which happened to be Skeletal Beast) and then got one shot by some very unusual and rare circumstances, does this mean you cannot progress anymore?
How many deaths like this will you experience during your gameplay? 1?
The rest will be you not reading stuff, or knowing stuff. And no, I'm not saying volatile is a good mechanic (in fact it is among the worst in PoE), but saying that you die day and night because of them is pretty damn silly.

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Perq wrote:

There are videos of people finding Mirrors of Kalandra. Does this mean it is something that happens all the time?
If you failed to read rare monster description (which happened to be Skeletal Beast) and then got one shot by some very unusual and rare circumstances, does this mean you cannot progress anymore?
How many deaths like this will you experience during your gameplay? 1?
The rest will be you not reading stuff, or knowing stuff. And no, I'm not saying volatile is a good mechanic (in fact it is among the worst in PoE), but saying that you die day and night because of them is pretty damn silly.

oh, like once a year it actually kills you if youre playing chars with responsible life levels, Im absolutely not supporting the idea that we need to lose or alter the death penalty because vol blood is currently broken.

It does however haunt and influence every second Im playing a life based melee in maps outside of boss rooms, so that once a year is maybe influenced by it being on my mind almost non stop and Im actually a fairly observant player. Im just ranting against it as a general mechanic because I think it needs changed. I think the change is coming, lets see what happens in 3.0.