Death Penalty Adjustment Discussion

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Eh, the thing is, the death penalty isn't making the game any more hardcore than if it didn't have a death penalty (or it had something else)

You can't say it doesn't add at least some level of difficulty.

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With the death penalty, builds are forced to focus on defenses and party play is emphasized (that plus alt+f4). There is a reason why stuff like LC is so prevalent (and we had the history of Khaoms, block/evasion etc etc). You could argue that a death penalty means that people have to invest in defence, I would argue that death penalty dumbs down the game where people have to invest in defence (i.e. the famous Path of Life nodes remarks)

It doesn't dumb down the game, it ensures that even non perma death characters don't want to die, if you have nothing to lose, then why bother building defensively, just build enough where you can only die to tough 1 off things and never have a worry or consequence if you died, not to mention the removal of the death penalty or change like you later suggest decreases the difference of SC\HC and itemization.

The game is essentially the same as far as HC\SC goes, at least for the most part it should be, without the death penalty SC players are literally playing a completely different game then HC players, why on earth does that sound like a good idea to anyone?

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Without the death penalty, you would probably have glass cannons running around. Then again, I have played glass cannons in ARG's that don't have a death penalty, and it gets boring real fast, so that shouldn't be a penalty in itself. But then again, PoE has an economy to sustain, so thats not really an option

Not sure what your point is here, it kinda contradicts everything else you've said.

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Personally the biggest issue with the death penalty is that its just really bad design from a psychological perspective. The worst thing you could do in a game is make it feel like you have complete wasted hours of time

And HC players lose days and days of their time if they die, not only that they lose items, skill gems, jewels and most importantly the character themselves. The psychological perspective point is mute, SC players are playing the same game HC players are, just without perma death and should continue to do so.

If you think the SC\HC mentality and negativity towards the different playstyles is bad now, I can't begin to imagine the level of "scrubcore" comments that would come, further increasing the negativity in the community.

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If you want to prevent zergin/give an indicator of build strength, a much smarter system would be something along the lines of "lose additively 5% of all stats/defences for every death, up to 50%, stacking 5 minutes each time" or something like that. That would actually further penalize you if your build is bad (if you are running around with -50% of defenses on an already bad build, well you would pretty much constantly die). On the other hand, it would stop the whole "got stuck in mobs and died, lost 3 hours of gameplay since I am lvl 90+" problem

Much "smarter", no this exact solution or thing has been addressed before, if not in this thread then almost every other xp thread. Time based penalties are a terrible design, you think losing hours of mapping in XP isn't fine, why would encouraging players to NOT play the game be fine? That is, as always among the worst suggestions for a fix.

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@gotezjam Regarding hiding behind Chris's words when he says the death penalty is fine, Chris (or PoE) has been "wrong" on so many counts, that I wouldn't stick to that (loot allocation changes, desync, bartering, eternals, introduction of deterministic crafting are many examples, I am sure there are more). A lot of those things were part of the game design, so I wouldn't use that argument, its historically a losing one.

That comment, was pre 2.0, which encased the fact that they would not address this issue in the 2.0 patch, I was encouraging people giving feedback regarding this topic to wait and see after the various balance changes have occurred, as lots of feedback complains regarding XP loss had to do with things that have gotten changed, like desync for example, which was the #1 cause of threads like this.

Addressing being wrong in previous cases we will see, very few cases GGG have changed on a core principle or idea, like XP penalty. Loot allocation in a loot based game is actually quite critical, back when it was changed, there were no loot filters to help players see items they wanted to loot, temp allocation was time based and melee typically had first grabs, making most ranged builds have a disadvantage, lots have changed the looting aspect, but I'll agree people want to loot the item they had drop for them.

Desync, personally I didn't have the issues others did, when GGG was first writing the game I suspect they didn't think it would be "playable" in a lockstep environment, over time I believe they might have talken to devs or did some research and testing and did discover that while not 100% optimal, was playable in the lockstep environment. Not only that this "rewrite" from ground up was no small feat, they likely have been working on it for years. As far as I am concerned I played poe long before lockstep was going to be a thing, didn't experience the "issues" people were describing, so to me his view was correct in the past. This is probably the most touchy of all "wrong" things as the experience you had relies on so many factors.

Eternals just got removed, if I had money to wager they will be readded in some form or fashion, right now it plays a key part on why exalts cost so much chaos (as do other factors) and in a larger fashion the removal of eternals makes crafting feel "flat" and no dimensional. Only time will tell on this.

Bartering still works, yesterday I did 2-3 buys bartering and sold 2-3 things for different prices then I had listed. People that want the "easy way" can search for bo onlys or not bother bartering, but to say GGG or Chris was wrong on this isn't 100% or even close to that to be true. On a similar topic, that deserves its own thread, the reason why an AH will never be a thing GGG supports is they like bartering, I like it and many other players do as well.

As for deterministic crafting, many people love masters, few hate from what I understand. Its not to the point of where people I think wanted it to be, but to say they were "wrong" about this but removed eternals is kinda contradicting yourself a bit.

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Also I don't see how maps has anything to do with this. You reach a certain point in the game where you get 2-3 tabs full of maps, and as long as you know what you are doing in regards to crafting, you are not going to run into sustainability issues

Not sure if you don't or haven't played recently, but in temp leagues map progression can be painful if you are trying to both level and progress in your pool. I have 3 tabs full of maps, but 68-71s provide no use for me to run, aside from tempest mods that are fun.

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The amount was so much lower, you could also regain it by visiting your corpse

It was not "so much" it was after you picked up your corpse though.

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Also the defense mechanics in PoE are much more punishing in PoE than D2, there are a lot more ways to die in PoE

Not only is that not true, its completely far from the truth. D2, especially in hell was, no pun intended a nightmare. Immune mobs, no cwdt or anything similar, no curses, unless you went specific classes, not sure what you are talking about poe being more punishing then D2. Either you didn't play vanilla or your memory is a bit lacking :/

You pretty much took all credit you had and threw it out the window saying PoE is more punishing then D2.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Eh, the thing is, the death penalty isn't making the game any more hardcore than if it didn't have a death penalty (or it had something else)

You can't say it doesn't add at least some level of difficulty.

The effect on difficulty is a lot more trivial then you think it is. Difficulty is quite relative, especially in a game like PoE where your success in the game depends heavily on knowledge (which is quite easy) to obtain if you know where to look, i.e. PoE guides). PoE is a game where you can make it as easy or as hard as you want it to be.

All the death penalty does is skew what are defined as viable builds

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goetzjam wrote:

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With the death penalty, builds are forced to focus on defenses and party play is emphasized (that plus alt+f4). There is a reason why stuff like LC is so prevalent (and we had the history of Khaoms, block/evasion etc etc). You could argue that a death penalty means that people have to invest in defence, I would argue that death penalty dumbs down the game where people have to invest in defence (i.e. the famous Path of Life nodes remarks)

It doesn't dumb down the game, it ensures that even non perma death characters don't want to die, if you have nothing to lose, then why bother building defensively, just build enough where you can only die to tough 1 off things and never have a worry or consequence if you died, not to mention the removal of the death penalty or change like you later suggest decreases the difference of SC\HC and itemization.

Yes, and the direct result of that is it causes people to over invest in defences, which is dumbing down the game. It has a lot of other effects, like the long history of actual melee (as in fighting at melee range, not the ground slam definition of melee) being by in large always weaker than ranged characters barring a few gimmicks

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goetzjam wrote:

The game is essentially the same as far as HC\SC goes, at least for the most part it should be, without the death penalty SC players are literally playing a completely different game then HC players, why on earth does that sound like a good idea to anyone?

To be clear, I am not arguing for the removal of the death penalty. I am saying that the current one is stupid in design, and the only reason PoE has it, is because D2 has it. PoE then multiplied the numbers to try and make it seen "harder", which is a really bad design decision

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goetzjam wrote:

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Without the death penalty, you would probably have glass cannons running around. Then again, I have played glass cannons in ARG's that don't have a death penalty, and it gets boring real fast, so that shouldn't be a penalty in itself. But then again, PoE has an economy to sustain, so thats not really an option

Not sure what your point is here, it kinda contradicts everything else you've said.

No it doesn't, I am not being black and white. I am saying that PoE's current death penalty is stupid, but not having one is also stupid in a game that maintains economy. Not having a death penalty will have little effect on what you perceive to be hardcorness. What it will do is cause hyper inflation in the economy.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Personally the biggest issue with the death penalty is that its just really bad design from a psychological perspective. The worst thing you could do in a game is make it feel like you have complete wasted hours of time

And HC players lose days and days of their time if they die, not only that they lose items, skill gems, jewels and most importantly the character themselves. The psychological perspective point is mute, SC players are playing the same game HC players are, just without perma death and should continue to do so.

The game is not balance around HC, its a league of its own for a reason. Not sure why you are bringing HC into here.

If you think the SC\HC mentality and negativity towards the different playstyles is bad now, I can't begin to imagine the level of "scrubcore" comments that would come, further increasing the negativity in the community.

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If you want to prevent zergin/give an indicator of build strength, a much smarter system would be something along the lines of "lose additively 5% of all stats/defences for every death, up to 50%, stacking 5 minutes each time" or something like that. That would actually further penalize you if your build is bad (if you are running around with -50% of defenses on an already bad build, well you would pretty much constantly die). On the other hand, it would stop the whole "got stuck in mobs and died, lost 3 hours of gameplay since I am lvl 90+" problem

Much "smarter", no this exact solution or thing has been addressed before, if not in this thread then almost every other xp thread. Time based penalties are a terrible design, you think losing hours of mapping in XP isn't fine, why would encouraging players to NOT play the game be fine? That is, as always among the worst suggestions for a fix.

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goetzjam wrote:

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@gotezjam Regarding hiding behind Chris's words when he says the death penalty is fine, Chris (or PoE) has been "wrong" on so many counts, that I wouldn't stick to that (loot allocation changes, desync, bartering, eternals, introduction of deterministic crafting are many examples, I am sure there are more). A lot of those things were part of the game design, so I wouldn't use that argument, its historically a losing one.

That comment, was pre 2.0, which encased the fact that they would not address this issue in the 2.0 patch, I was encouraging people giving feedback regarding this topic to wait and see after the various balance changes have occurred, as lots of feedback complains regarding XP loss had to do with things that have gotten changed, like desync for example, which was the #1 cause of threads like this.

Addressing being wrong in previous cases we will see, very few cases GGG have changed on a core principle or idea, like XP penalty. Loot allocation in a loot based game is actually quite critical, back when it was changed, there were no loot filters to help players see items they wanted to loot, temp allocation was time based and melee typically had first grabs, making most ranged builds have a disadvantage, lots have changed the looting aspect, but I'll agree people want to loot the item they had drop for them.

If you look at my profile, I was playing for a very long time (joined just after alpha). Chris's opinion on loot allocation, gear drops, desync were just as strong as his opinion on death penalty. Just like there were 100 page threads going around on death penalty, the same was for loot drops, and GGG never wanted to change the system, because the game was designed to have loot tension (I.e. the ability to grab other peoples loot, amongst other things)

Turns out it was a bad design decision, just like the current death penalty is. Like everything, it just takes tames to change these things

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goetzjam wrote:

Desync, personally I didn't have the issues others did, when GGG was first writing the game I suspect they didn't think it would be "playable" in a lockstep environment, over time I believe they might have talken to devs or did some research and testing and did discover that while not 100% optimal, was playable in the lockstep environment. Not only that this "rewrite" from ground up was no small feat, they likely have been working on it for years. As far as I am concerned I played poe long before lockstep was going to be a thing, didn't experience the "issues" people were describing, so to me his view was correct in the past. This is probably the most touchy of all "wrong" things as the experience you had relies on so many factors.

I think you missed my point about desync. Chris made statements about desync which alluded to "every other game designed their network engine wrong, we can't fix desync because of the way PoE works". All of these comments were, in reality, tosh, and in 2.0, PoE finally implemented a networking system which basically behaves exactly the same way as the other games which he said we couldn't replicate

In regards to its fix. Desync has made 3 of my non viable characters, semi viable. The one which I just levelled from 70 to 81 in the past few weeks uses Whirling Blades for a lot of its survivability. In Desync era, this would constantly desync, making the game unplayable for that character.

Now?

Haven't desync once, and instead of dying 2-3 times in a map, I have died twice in a week.

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goetzjam wrote:

Eternals just got removed, if I had money to wager they will be readded in some form or fashion, right now it plays a key part on why exalts cost so much chaos (as do other factors) and in a larger fashion the removal of eternals makes crafting feel "flat" and no dimensional. Only time will tell on this.

Yes, and when Eternals were added, it was due to a design decision which was horribly wrong. Hence why there were removed.

Same deal with IIQ now that I think about it

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goetzjam wrote:

Bartering still works, yesterday I did 2-3 buys bartering and sold 2-3 things for different prices then I had listed. People that want the "easy way" can search for bo onlys or not bother bartering, but to say GGG or Chris was wrong on this isn't 100% or even close to that to be true. On a similar topic, that deserves its own thread, the reason why an AH will never be a thing GGG supports is they like bartering, I like it and many other players do as well.

Bartering is a failure due to what bartering is. Chris wanted to make game trading based around bartering. This is not the case. Obviously bartering still happens, but the vast majority of trades are done by using Eternal Orbs/Chaos as a form of gold. In fact thats what the game currently represents, the time when our civilization decided to make some rare object that has rarity (but little value compared to its rarity) as a form of currency.

This isn't surprising though, barting just doesn't work when you start scaling out trading. The only civilizations in real life that use bartering as their main form of trading in real life are the ones that are very isolated/small (i.e. trading pigs in Papua New Guinea). The minute you start implementing free/open markets with hundreds of thousands to millions of players (i.e. what PoE did), any hope of having trading predominantly use bartering goes out the window.

Humans do what humans do, they start getting really effecient of matters at scale, and they figure out its far more economical to say "this thing is worth 8 exalts"", then spending 25 minutes debating how much your item is worth. The concept of barting is antethetic to the concept of having a mass marking of lots of people being able to trade. The two just don't work together, unless you artificially segregate/prevent people from trading

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goetzjam wrote:

As for deterministic crafting, many people love masters, few hate from what I understand. Its not to the point of where people I think wanted it to be, but to say they were "wrong" about this but removed eternals is kinda contradicting yourself a bit.

Masters were added because people (including myself) asked for determinstic crafting. GGG initially, as part of their design (it was in their manifesto, as well as chris's comments), wanted all loot drop to be completely random, because he argued it was more fun/risky. Turned out, that due to how PoE is designed with sockets/link, its a really bad idea.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Also I don't see how maps has anything to do with this. You reach a certain point in the game where you get 2-3 tabs full of maps, and as long as you know what you are doing in regards to crafting, you are not going to run into sustainability issues

Not sure if you don't or haven't played recently, but in temp leagues map progression can be painful if you are trying to both level and progress in your pool. I have 3 tabs full of maps, but 68-71s provide no use for me to run, aside from tempest mods that are fun.

Thats why map crafted was put in

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goetzjam wrote:

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The amount was so much lower, you could also regain it by visiting your corpse

It was not "so much" it was after you picked up your corpse though.

Yes, which was really easy to do, unless you were really doing content well above of what you should be doing

You totally missed the points I was making though

Loot tension was meant to be, as core to PoE's design as the death penalty was. All of GGG were really strongly defending it. Its only when it became incredibly obvious that their deliberate design decision was pissing off a lot of players that it was changed.

Desync is an example of someone failing to admit that "they were wrong" by tip toeing. It was obvious what they were saying to anyone who has done backend/networking style software development

There are so many core design decisions that PoE has made which have been changed because they were bad design decisions. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, reality can be a bummer and things rarely turn out to how you theoretically designed them.

But using the argument that you are using is just a logically fallacious way to try and block debate

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goetzjam wrote:

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Also the defense mechanics in PoE are much more punishing in PoE than D2, there are a lot more ways to die in PoE

Not only is that not true, its completely far from the truth. D2, especially in hell was, no pun intended a nightmare. Immune mobs, no cwdt or anything similar, no curses, unless you went specific classes, not sure what you are talking about poe being more punishing then D2. Either you didn't play vanilla or your memory is a bit lacking :/

Armor scaling in PoE is useless
There are 3 status alignments to screw you completely (one way or another). Shock stacks/frozen/big crit burn etc etc. All of these status effects are stronger the less health you have (relative to damage taken)
Then there are things like perma stun lock
There is also chaos damage
Requires significant investment for flat damage reduction, values of which are pretty damn low
Curses as a mechanic can be used against you (running maps with vitality + -max res etc etc)

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goetzjam wrote:

You pretty much took all credit you had and threw it out the window saying PoE is more punishing then D2.

Actually you are conflating what I said and twisting it around. D2's defense mechanics are a lot less punishing. People stacked vitality, there was no reason to increase your INT (due to pots), etc etc. There were only a few stats that you had to increase to make sure you didn't die, you had to be really bad to get it wrong

In PoE, there are like 5-7 (depending on build) stats that you need to maximise. Sometimes this is less when PoE releases stupid stuff like pre nerf CWDT. Compared to D2, this doesn't make much of a difference in really end game content, but it makes a huge difference in mid game content.

The only way to survive in PoE is due to gimmicks like CWDT, which are mechanics which are obviously going to be/have been nerfed. This happens all the time in PoE. They introduce some stupidly broken item/skill gem, which skews everything.

You are looking at the history of PoE in a really small window, and through rose glasses. Before stuff like CWDT + IC (or w/e), the only way to survive PoE's endgame content was to have 7k+ life pool (khaoms) or 9k+ ES + max res + a lot of other things (and you could still die, and people still do)

He brings HC because the fact that softcore league exist in PoE is not really something that was desired from day 1, it's just a market reality check. I'm pretty sure that if you ask Chris, he'll tell you that in his dream the game should be hardcore only, and the death penalty should be the end of the character. I'm also pretty sure that he considered making the game hardcore only at one point, but it would be too restrictive and repulsive for a too large portion of players, so they made softcore leagues.
But you're right that it was also true for FFA loot and they changed it, so maybe someday GGG will make another market decision against their vision and will remove the death penalty. It will be a bad decision imo, like the FFA loot removal was, like every decision made against the vision just to please the market, but it might happen.

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goetzjam wrote:

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gesichtspalme wrote:

It's weird how players have changed compared to the days of D2:LoD.

No one questioned the XP penalty back then. Having something to lose if you die made the game much more enjoyable.

Giving everyone a guarantee to reach level 100 eventually no matter how much they screw up would completely ruin PoE because no one would have to care about survivability.

Not sure about completely ruin, but it doesn't align with the design of the game.


If I had to wager, I would suspect most people that want it removed or reduced are younger "hold your hand" type gamers that aren't used to the "punishment" we had (and enjoyed) when we played games like D2.

Well I guess I played a different D2. Unless you played Median XL Diabolo 2 was as easy as can be. Finding good upgrades for your gear was much easier than in poe. And the endgame wasn't that much rng gated.

on topic:
They will never remove or lower the death penalty because they don't want more people to reach lvl. 100 - it's simple like that!

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Dawmz wrote:

He brings HC because the fact that softcore league exist in PoE is not really something that was desired from day 1, it's just a market reality check. I'm pretty sure that if you ask Chris, he'll tell you that in his dream the game should be hardcore only, and the death penalty should be the end of the character. I'm also pretty sure that he considered making the game hardcore only at one point, but it would be too restrictive and repulsive for a too large portion of players, so they made softcore leagues.

Sure thing, but by the same token, if all of those things happened than PoE probably wouldn't exist now

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Dawmz wrote:

But you're right that it was also true for FFA loot and they changed it, so maybe someday GGG will make another market decision against their vision and will remove the death penalty. It will be a bad decision imo, like the FFA loot removal was, like every decision made against the vision just to please the market, but it might happen.

To be honest, the old loot had no place in PoE, but thats only because the game is trying to do too many things. Where as D2 was D1 + multiplayer + basic trading functionality, PoE is some weird massive multiplayer MMO/aRPG hybrid.

I mean if you want to go really back (like Alpha days), PoE was meant to draw inspiration from "rogue like" games, which emphasised gameplay that involved being sneaky, precise and involving a lot of skill, sought of similar to nox and some other games. The game obviously turned out to be completely different, with the emphasis now being on giant AoE spam fests

They should add a new league where there is no death penalty. Or at the very least; one where it is significantly reduced. I would join even if it meant I had to start all over and get new gear.

That way players who don't want to lose a week's worth of experience and get frustrated every time a lag spike happens or some cheesy critical comes out of no where have somewhere to go. This will also be ideal for players like me who want to be able to challenge themselves without being punished for doing so.

The players who for some odd reason think it makes them better players to be punished and have their time wasted can stay on this league and enjoy their punishment. Everyone wins.

That's the solution.

It's not because A) GGG is always reluctant to make easy leagues / easy modes because it diminishes the experience of the game and, let's face it, it will be exactly like the "choice" of PA vs FFA ; everyone playing in softcore will go there, so it basically means removing the xp penalty period.
and B) player base is already fragmented enough between 2 perm leagues + 2 temp leagues.

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Dawmz wrote:

It's not because A) GGG is always reluctant to make easy leagues / easy modes because it diminishes the experience of the game and, let's face it, it will be exactly like the "choice" of PA vs FFA ; everyone playing in softcore will go there, so it basically means removing the xp penalty period.
and B) player base is already fragmented enough between 2 perm leagues + 2 temp leagues.

I don't agree with your characterization.

The death penalty does not make this game more difficult. It actually has the opposite effect: and encourages players not to challenge themselves.

All the death penalty does is make the game more frustrating. That is not challenge. It leads to players ignoring or skipping over challenging content because it simply isn't worth the risks. So it dampens the game experience. It doesn't improve upon it.

I should point out there is a hardcore league and people still play that. But just the fact you fear everyone would join the soft core league proves what a flawed mechanic it is.

Off course every softcore player will go to the "easy softcore no death penalty league" and guess what, if you make a league where currency droprate is increased 10x, everyone will go there too ! Players, for the most part, take the path of least resistance especially when there's no additional reward to play with harder settings.
Btw, players skipping challenging content is _good_, it means players are faced with choices, and they have to take decisions. If everyone skips it, it just means the reward is not in line with the risk.