Replace XP penalty on death with a penalty to future XP gained

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cas5nq wrote:

There were some logical fallacies used against my proposal for the xp debt system, but it doesn't matter because I'm not so sure it's a good idea anyway and it's still not nearly elegant enough anyway. I have a far more elegant proposal that I now firmly believe:

Remove the death penalty.

1) Dying is already penalizing enough with xp loss. If you're in a map, you lose a portal. Even if you're not in a map, dying still wastes 5-10 minutes of your time as you have to wait through load screens and run back through the waypoint.

1a) Players will not just "zerg" content (whatever that means--I assume it means play more aggressively, risking death for faster kill speed) because of the inconvenience of dying. A 20% faster kill speed isn't worth losing 5 minutes of time every 10 minutes. Their net kill speed actually becomes lower because of all the inconvenient trips back to town.

1. Dying does not take "5-10 minutes of your time as you have to wait through load screens..." If you do not set up a portal, then you have to deal with running back. You do not resurrect where you died, and that's how death is. If it takes you ten minutes to run back to an area, I suggest you get the nearest waypoint, as nothing is more than ten minutes of running from a waypoint. All of my characters can easily return to the location of their death within two minutes at most, and that's if I forgot my portal. You should consider using portals.

2. Players will Zerg content. "Zerging" is a reference to the famous game called "Starcraft", produced by a huge company named Blizzard that made a game called Diablo which Path of Exile is basically based on. In Starcraft, there is a race called the Zerg that rely on numbers and positioning. "Zerging" was coined by gamers when they repeatedly die, run back to, fight, and die at a location many times in order to complete something. For instance, players will Zerg Merciless Dominus if there is no death penalty, as they lose nothing. Whereas, if they lose 10% of their experience, they will NOT Zerg him. Their builds will be more survivable, they will take fewer risks if any at all, and will set up portals to quickly run out of or use the exit option in the menu.

If you think players will not (or do not) zerg content, you are living in lala land. Players do it *now* to get through cruel Dominus.

The issue with zerging is that it trivialises the most difficult content, particularly boss fights turning them into an attrition exercise. If this is the 'best way' to do a boss then that is exactly how it will be done, by the majority of players. If you think this is a reasonable way to promote progression through a game then I think your opinion becomes void at this point.

Zerging in specific circumstances is *more* efficient than actual effort, since progress, however slow, is more efficient than no progress (however fast). By which I mean that hammering away at a piece of content that is too hard (eg, cruel Dominus), knowing that just beyond it is a much easier content (eg merciless a1) is worth however long and however many deaths it takes to get there. Allowing players to get there through this method as a primary strategy would be poor game design indeed.


Additionally, recently GGG included a 'fringe' support Cast on Death

Guess what most readily goes with that: Portal

That means when you die you get a portal exactly where you died. This is a device that makes zerging not only efficient (insignificant lost time) but actually becomes a reasonable tactic.
Providing there is no other penalty to doing so, at least.


The fact that your computer is rubbish and takes a long time to load is irrelevant to this discussion btw, since GGG is not specifically developing this game for you. Or me, for that matter.

B.

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Natharias wrote:

This is worse than the current system. Here's why:

The current system is a flat loss. You lose 10% of your current experience. The only time this is not a disadvantage is when you are at 10% or less in your experience bar, which means you can easily Zerg any material without worrying about further experience loss. The only problem with this system is that players can still Zerg content.

The point of a death penalty is to prevent players from Zerging content and punishing them for dying, but not at the cost of gameplay. Because this subtracts what you already had, it does not affect the future. This means all you do in the future is fully gained.

With this suggestion, players would wait the timer out and then play, which means that players could lose about fifteen minutes of gameplay. This is the normal duration for such a penalty. This is even more discouraging for players than losing 10% of their experience, especially if they just opened a map. You've lost a portal AND x% of the map's experience you would've gained. Even less if you die again and again.

As you can see, it's much worse in the case of maps. Now imagine the penalty for opening a level 78 map and dying twice. Two portals and X x 2% less experience gained. The player would likely uninstall the game.

I think actual death XP penalty loss is disaster and frustrating, 10% at mine lvl91 is about 5 lvl78 map to work on, how much lvl78 maps u have in your stash?
I die pretty hard and 90% of all my deaths are because desync, because that I stopped playing in hardcore (too frustrating)
Now I think to stop play at all because, no xp + no good drop = no fun, and I just dont want to play map avoiding to kill boss because i have 90% chance to die from desync from one shot boss
So IMO XP penalty need deep change, I think this suggestion from cas5nq will be nice to try I dont think it can be worst then actual.
Also there are some map bosses what need nerf, but that is another sad story.

I was thinking to show XP parody ... but after I finish Shrine I notice I failed with screenshots. LoL
So story goes I was at begining of my nice long loved level (again died from God's Chosen (Dominus) today, love that desync) so for that demonstration I run two pretty nice maps:
1. Temple (LVL71) with dual boss + temp chain + ...
2. Shrine (LVL77) with dual boss + vuln + fast cast/attack/speed +...
So after all I gain again nice 2% from that second map because after first I was still <1 http://i61.tinypic.com/fycvi9.png
My intention was in first place to show parody of XP on LVL71 map what can be pretty deadly, dual piety with temp chain ... XP gain is there soo terrible but will do some other day because I am now tired and want to go in bed.

PS. I had few hard desync problem on shrine but succeed keep my life, and get one Palace droped again to get tomorow where I was today (desync= 0%).

I prefer max 3 stacks on this penality, each one taking away about 20% of earned XP, 60% if with 3 stacks. Stacks should last for 2 minutes but refreshed each time you die.

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bredin wrote:

The fact that your computer is rubbish and takes a long time to load is irrelevant to this discussion btw, since GGG is not specifically developing this game for you. Or me, for that matter.

B.

+1



Also the biggest issue with this "reduced future xp" is the simple fact that you can still blow throw content, have no fears of xp loss and just do whatever content you want. People would gladly lose future XP than to lose earned XP. There's just no consequence.

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cas5nq wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

"

cas5nq wrote:

There were some logical fallacies used against my proposal for the xp debt system, but it doesn't matter because I'm not so sure it's a good idea anyway and it's still not nearly elegant enough anyway. I have a far more elegant proposal that I now firmly believe:

Remove the death penalty.

1) Dying is already penalizing enough with xp loss. If you're in a map, you lose a portal. Even if you're not in a map, dying still wastes 5-10 minutes of your time as you have to wait through load screens and run back through the waypoint.

1a) Players will not just "zerg" content (whatever that means--I assume it means play more aggressively, risking death for faster kill speed) because of the inconvenience of dying. A 20% faster kill speed isn't worth losing 5 minutes of time every 10 minutes. Their net kill speed actually becomes lower because of all the inconvenient trips back to town.

1. Dying does not take "5-10 minutes of your time as you have to wait through load screens..." If you do not set up a portal, then you have to deal with running back. You do not resurrect where you died, and that's how death is. If it takes you ten minutes to run back to an area, I suggest you get the nearest waypoint, as nothing is more than ten minutes of running from a waypoint. All of my characters can easily return to the location of their death within two minutes at most, and that's if I forgot my portal. You should consider using portals.

2. Players will Zerg content. "Zerging" is a reference to the famous game called "Starcraft", produced by a huge company named Blizzard that made a game called Diablo which Path of Exile is basically based on. In Starcraft, there is a race called the Zerg that rely on numbers and positioning. "Zerging" was coined by gamers when they repeatedly die, run back to, fight, and die at a location many times in order to complete something. For instance, players will Zerg Merciless Dominus if there is no death penalty, as they lose nothing. Whereas, if they lose 10% of their experience, they will NOT Zerg him. Their builds will be more survivable, they will take fewer risks if any at all, and will set up portals to quickly run out of or use the exit option in the menu.

For me, dying does in fact consume 5-10 minutes. Most of that time isn't spent walking from the waypoint to my corpse, as you suggest. It is spent waiting for (1) town to load, then (2) the instance to load. Each load transition takes anywhere from 15 seconds to 5 minutes, depending on (a) the number of players in town, (b) how crowded the servers are, and (c) how well my computer cached the last zone.

And even if players do choose to zerg, so what? Zerging is still less efficient than killing the boss properly, so there's still an incentive to do it right. The first time I attempted dominus on standard, I must have died about 15 times and it took me nearly half an hour. The second attempt on a different character when I understood the game better, I didn't die at all and the whole fight lasted a fraction of the time. Dying is always less efficient than not dying because you have to factor in the time wasted loading town, and loading the instance. Also there will always be a trade-off between walking from the waypoint versus using a precious portal scroll, for which 200 can often be traded for a whole chaos orb.

Besides, the risk that players will zerg content is fringe anyway. You're focusing too much on one tiny debatable cost while completely missing the huge benefit: no death penalty. Death is already penalizing enough with the added frustrating of xp loss. The fact that 90% of deaths are usually not even the player's own fault but server conditions further exacerbates the unfairness, frustration, and despair.

Please, if you have a solid argument against my proposal, I would love to hear. But so far I've only heard weak objections.

Then you need to deal with your long load times. I've yet to see an instance take more than a minute to load, and that's when I've first started the game. The only thing that takes longer than that isn't an instance, and that's the entire game.

GGG would have a problem with players who Zerg. Zerging is taking your character and repeatedly throwing yourself at an objective and fighting until you overwhelm it and defeat it. This completely removes the level system. Six level 50s can Zerg a level 60 area, instead of grinding and having to level to the suggested level or higher. This is the advantage of Zerging. Leveling is not required, as you can push to a better area and get even more experience when you want to level. You're still getting experience for Zerging, so in a way you are still grinding but spending less time to do so.

However, I now know that you are lying or aren't paying attention to anything that is being said.

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The first time I attempted dominus on standard, I must have died about 15 times and it took me nearly half an hour

15 deaths = "5-10 minutes".

15 x 5 = 75. That's one hour and fifteen minutes.

I'm not going to bother with the rest of your post or future posts. I don't waste time with trolls.

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Coolmer wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

This is worse than the current system. Here's why:

The current system is a flat loss. You lose 10% of your current experience. The only time this is not a disadvantage is when you are at 10% or less in your experience bar, which means you can easily Zerg any material without worrying about further experience loss. The only problem with this system is that players can still Zerg content.

The point of a death penalty is to prevent players from Zerging content and punishing them for dying, but not at the cost of gameplay. Because this subtracts what you already had, it does not affect the future. This means all you do in the future is fully gained.

With this suggestion, players would wait the timer out and then play, which means that players could lose about fifteen minutes of gameplay. This is the normal duration for such a penalty. This is even more discouraging for players than losing 10% of their experience, especially if they just opened a map. You've lost a portal AND x% of the map's experience you would've gained. Even less if you die again and again.

As you can see, it's much worse in the case of maps. Now imagine the penalty for opening a level 78 map and dying twice. Two portals and X x 2% less experience gained. The player would likely uninstall the game.

I think actual death XP penalty loss is disaster and frustrating, 10% at mine lvl91 is about 5 lvl78 map to work on, how much lvl78 maps u have in your stash?
I die pretty hard and 90% of all my deaths are because desync, because that I stopped playing in hardcore (too frustrating)
Now I think to stop play at all because, no xp + no good drop = no fun, and I just dont want to play map avoiding to kill boss because i have 90% chance to die from desync from one shot boss
So IMO XP penalty need deep change, I think this suggestion from cas5nq will be nice to try I dont think it can be worst then actual.
Also there are some map bosses what need nerf, but that is another sad story.

Let's make this personal then, since you want to. I play over 107 games, counting Steam only, with various friends. Seeing how I play with others almost all of the time, none of us like playing one game for five months. Another thing you might want to consider is school, and another would be work.

I don't think you want to go there. So don't.

If you read what I posted, and the OP doesn't want to understand, his suggestion is worse. Either way players will rage, regardless of the penalty used. Therefor, the point is not to make the penalty better, it's about making it to where players can still play without being penalized.

Example A: Player dies and loses 10% of their experience. They can continue playing without any penalty, and it's up to them to decide that they must "make up" that lost experience. There is no sense of punishment for playing after dying.

Example B: Using WoW as an example, players are hit with a penalty reducing attributes AND the damage they deal. Using this in PoE would completely destroy someone when they die. Whatever the duration of the timer, that player would leave the game. It is extremely likely that the player would not return after the timer, or for the majority of the day due to the hit they took. The main reason being that maps would be destroyed, as the loss of the portal would be minor. Parties would be destroyed as the entire party would either have to stop or ditch the player(s) that died. I can continue but the point should be made by now, for those who wish to understand.

Example C: Players only accrue a "debt" as explained by the OP. The player now MUST play after death, or the "debt" changes in some way. If the debt only expires after a set period of time, the player would only wait the timer out and then continue. This is child's play compared to example B.

Regarding examples B and C, if there is a method to pay off the penalty, then players who have currency would be able to "Pay to Win", even if using in-game currency. Players who do not have currency would be aware of this option and throw temper tantrums more often, and more players would leave the game. This means that paying penalties cannot be implemented. This also goes against GGG's stance, and it doesn't necessarily mean real money.

Seeing how penalties cannot be paid off, and games don't want to completely destroy valuable time that players can be enjoying their game, the 10% hit we currently have is many times better than anything suggested thus far.

The secret solution is more relevant items, more likely odds of finding relevant upgrades.

If you find an upgrade, no matter how small, then the experience loss from death becomes less enraging, imo, because you have 'locked-in' something that you likely see as 'progress'.

Currency items and gem experience are only so exciting.

If you grind for hours and hours, gain steady currency and gem experience, and then die, you likely see the experience loss as being more significant than the currency and gem experience gained, particularly if you are lvl 80+ and do not have uber-pwnage gear.

Most of the time when I am playing, I am not grinding for experience, I am grinding for upgrades. However, upgrades have been refusing to come for me for a long time now. So, any perceived 'progress' that I make is solely based in currency, gem, and character experience, with the majority of my perceived 'progress' being character experience. So, I get majorly pissed when I die, because the feeling I get is "Yay, all that time I spent grinding was essentially wasted".

TL;DR : The experience penalty is fine. RNG sucks terribly at end-game.

Answer to Natharias, will not quote that poem, I think I played many games, cant count, all finished with end game chars (maxlvl) so I can say this penalty without true end-game content is nonsense, my all time best games are still Asheron's Call (first release that from 1999) and Neverwinter Nights who play them knows about what I talk.

I just will say, u are pretty bad player if u died from Dominus on normal 15 times in row and in best case u deserve future penalty of one week not 75mins.
Don't want to go in detailsof your game play but rlly my 10% I can't get like you with that low lvl char, my 10% is if you read well 5x lvl78 map, and they are rare and expensive, also everyone who runs that maps knows about what I talk. And I cant get my XP back for free runing highest level of free map in game (67 or is 68) because I dont think I get any XP there.

I will only c/p what I add on my last post as example

I was thinking to show XP parody ... but after I finish Shrine I notice I failed with screenshots. LoL
So story goes I was at begining of my nice long loved level (again died from God's Chosen (Dominus) today, love that desync) so for that demonstration I run two pretty nice maps:
1. Temple (LVL71) with dual boss + temp chain + ...
2. Shrine (LVL77) with dual boss + vuln + fast cast/attack/speed +...
So after all I gain again nice 2% mostly from that second map because after first I was still <1 http://i61.tinypic.com/fycvi9.png
My intention was in first place to show parody of XP on LVL71 map what can be pretty deadly, dual piety with temp chain ... XP gain is there soo terrible but will do some other day because I am now tired and want to go in bed.

PS. I had few hard desync problem on shrine but succeed keep my life and get one Palace dropped again to get tomorrow where I was today (desync= 0%).

Need to add great thanks to GGG for not making future content for high lvl and not doing anything with desync problem (also please nerf more bosses in the way like u do with Shock and Horror, awesome job) so after lvl90 is a bit easier with actual 10% xp penalty and regain 2% from clearing highest rare dropped map, more time for gardening after all.

Probably is simpler (less brain/time consuming) to make another few month league with minor changes then make true enjoyable endgame content.