Death Penalty Adjustment Discussion

Well, as I posted above, I hit that wall tonight; and it's just at level 80 (I've taken multiple chars to ~90, so this is quite early for me). Digesting the game now, the additional difficulty caused by the new combined augments for creatures and maps (far beyond what was in the game a year ago) have brought the brick wall much earlier. I simply don't feel compelled to play as I did before; I love the play style of my current character (it’s one of the most fun builds I’ve played), but after dying 4 times tonight (2 deaths were insta kills I still have no idea what happened, and the others were just bad luck/combos that would have killed me even if I had 6K+ health) and FINALLY making a level, the game has changed from fun to tedious.

Another point I want to make is the majority of players who have quit due to the penalty are not here. So having players who are posting in this forum that the penalty is "just fine" does not represent those who have quit. I came back for 2.0, but now I'm considering leaving solely because of the penalty.

My wife sits behind me in our computer room and we play numerous other ARPGs together (but she won't touch PoE because of the death penalty). Tonight as I explained how the game has evolved and changed, yet become more difficult at end-game due to those changes (i.e. causing you to hit the brick wall sooner), she asked "why do you keep going back? You always encounter this problem and end up not having any fun at end-game." Sadly, it's true - and it's all about the death penalty. While I enjoy leveling up the characters, now that the brick wall hits you sooner due to the increased difficulty (from new augments and combinations), I have little incentive to play in end-game and take any characters beyond 80. Heck, why build any new characters when you know the game become tedious and un-fun around ~80?

Another point I want to make is the Steam Charts (http://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All) show the greatest post-expansion decline of PoE players since the launch of the game. That's not good. I believe the decline is so sharp because of the factors I've mentioned here; and it does impact all of you. More players means more support to continue building the game. GGG wants casual ARPGers to play PoE and buy things. It’s good for everyone. Driving them away is very bad for business.

This issue is going to get worse and worse as new features are added to make the encounters/combat even more complex. As this happens, more and more players will be driven away. It's one thing to have fun factor from additional content and dynamic interactions, but it's another for gameplay to be tedious from the same thing; and tedious is what the game has become for many (if not most) players who enter end-game. Now, a spirit can jump into a boss right when you enter the room, and bloodline groups can have “that augment that will kill you”. This wasn’t in the game a year+ ago. In other words, the game has evolved to kill you more often and in more creative ways. Soon, there will be so many complexities, only the most hardcore gamers will be interested in end-game (I think we’re already on the path to that point).

I've posted a number of detailed thoughts on this topic earlier in this post, including potential solutions. I can only hope GGG considers them.

@mooginator

Please explain the types and levels of maps you do, as well as a general overview of the types of builds you do.


As a (now) HC player, I can say the XP penalty is fine, with the changes to predictive and the addition of lockstep "cheated" deaths should be extremely rare and obviously are more forgiving in SC leagues.


After a certain point though, perhaps you have to look and re-evaluate your build, gear and other choices about your character, so many people are able to reach much higher levels, despite the difficulty curve increasing. As stated multiple times, without the penalty, nothing keeps builds in check in SC, its an absolute must in order to prevent people from making as imbalanced builds as possible. GGG seriously did a number in reducing the instances of "cheated" deaths, for example no more reflect aura, which was a PITA, especially if they were "hidden"

Please for the love of god don't use steam charts as a representative of the playerbase, not only is it a fraction of the players that play PoE its not a good depiction of players like you or me that have been around for a while.


As far as I am concerned players that leave because of the XP penalty are not players that GGG designed the game for, this isn't suppose to be like D3, where it works for anyone that wants to play an ARPG, this is suppose to be a more "hardcore\traditional" ARPG game, not hold your hand and give you everything you want.


The day GGG caves and changes this penalty is the day they admit they no longer care about the original supporters of the game or their original design principles. Sorry, "casuals" aren't worth it, if you can't try and improve and better yourself, don't bother complaining here asking for GGG to change anything.

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goetzjam wrote:

As a (now) HC player, I can say the XP penalty is fine, with the changes to predictive and the addition of lockstep "cheated" deaths should be extremely rare and obviously are more forgiving in SC leagues.

They are not. On a high-latency / unstable connection you cannot play Lockstep ("automatic" also chooses predictive), and predictive still desyncs pretty badly sometimes. Within the last week, I have had more than 10 deaths due to lag or desync.

If such "cheated" deaths were in fact rare, I would not have a problem with the XP penalty either.

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Char1983 wrote:

"

goetzjam wrote:

As a (now) HC player, I can say the XP penalty is fine, with the changes to predictive and the addition of lockstep "cheated" deaths should be extremely rare and obviously are more forgiving in SC leagues.

They are not. On a high-latency / unstable connection you cannot play Lockstep ("automatic" also chooses predictive), and predictive still desyncs pretty badly sometimes. Within the last week, I have had more than 10 deaths due to lag or desync.

If such "cheated" deaths were in fact rare, I would not have a problem with the XP penalty either.

This falls into the scenario on why change the whole game because YOU don't solve a connection issue?

You specifically stated you have issues during peak times, which is clearly an ISP issue. GGG cannot begin to code to fix an issue like that. I'll admit I play on lockstep, but I have no reason to play predictive, although some people are claiming its better for HC....

You are 1 user out of how many, that after the numerous improvements they've made, still having issues. What you are essentially asking GGG to do is balance the game around a very small group of players that are still having issues after 2.0, how is that fair for the rest of the population\people? Can't you see how your request is 100% selfish?

We've had this discussion about trying things to improve your situation and according to you, you only have XX amount of time left and don't want to contact your ISP.

The only thing GGG can and should do is perhaps add a server closer to your location, but this has a lot to do with the amount of players in your area and whether or not its worth the additional cost.


Using connection issues, after 2.0 to argue to get the XP penalty changed is asinine, especially when you admit yourself, you aren't willing to do anything to improve your situation.

mooginator sounds like a crying kid.

sry.

whats up with that wall?

i know the old Black wall from D2. hmmm

i think there ia a huge amount of Players who absolutely love the endgame challenge of NOT dying and trying everything to stay alive, to Forward.

I like that idea:

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Darkkrows wrote:

Make death penalty like this.

First death of the day = -1%
Second death of the day = -5%
Every death after that in the same day = -10%

Most people die 1-2 times are usually not because of their character sucks but other issues like lag, crash, connection etc.

b4 2.0, most of my death is due to desync. After 2.0 I usually only die at opening laggy strongbox/client crash.

Account wide, not per Character.

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goetzjam wrote:

his falls into the scenario on why change the whole game because YOU don't solve a connection issue?

1) I still have not made any request to change the game whatsoever. I am reporting my situation to GGG, not to you.

2) If I made a request, it would be to not apply the death penalty when the death is caused by desync. I am pretty sure that finding out whether the game desynced before the death happens is technically possible.

3) As stated, it is almost certainly impossible to solve my connection issue, because internet connections in Santiago are generally crappy. Have you ever tried to get in contact with any customer support in South America? If not, well... just don't comment.

4) I have improved my situation already a lot by installing Windows rather than running the game on Mac OS, but it is still far from great.

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goetzjam wrote:

You specifically stated you have issues during peak times, which is clearly an ISP issue.

The game is unplayable during peak hours sometimes. During normal hours, it just sometimes locks up - but "sometimes" is too much if you want to level significantly past 90.

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goetzjam wrote:

GGG cannot begin to code to fix an issue like that. I'll admit I play on lockstep, but I have no reason to play predictive, although some people are claiming its better for HC....

They could. They could write code that detects desyncs. I am not sure however if it is possible to do that without making it exploitable. Furthermore, if you play on lockstep, just... don't comment. You basically have no idea what I am talking about.

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goetzjam wrote:

You are 1 user out of how many, that after the numerous improvements they've made, still having issues. What you are essentially asking GGG to do is balance the game around a very small group of players that are still having issues after 2.0, how is that fair for the rest of the population\people? Can't you see how your request is 100% selfish?

As I have made no request, I cannot see how my request is selfish.

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Char1983 wrote:

2) If I made a request, it would be to not apply the death penalty when the death is caused by desync. I am pretty sure that finding out whether the game desynced before the death happens is technically possible.

no you can't,
if you are playing predictive you ALWAYS out of sync.
and there's no metric to determine if it's enough for you to die over.
as every situation is unique and you can't code for that.

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Char1983 wrote:

The game is unplayable during peak hours sometimes. During normal hours, it just sometimes locks up - but "sometimes" is too much if you want to level significantly past 90.

i know it sux , to die over bad connections.
but you can't expect a developper to balance a game assuming people have bad connection.

and if the game is unplayable , why are you forcing yourself to play?
speaking from experience playing games with crappy internet is like kicking yourself in the nuts. it's jsut plain frustrating w/o any enjoyment, so why do it?
(obviously this is different for people where lagspike come out of nowhere)

"

Char1983 wrote:

"

goetzjam wrote:

GGG cannot begin to code to fix an issue like that. I'll admit I play on lockstep, but I have no reason to play predictive, although some people are claiming its better for HC....

They could. They could write code that detects desyncs. I am not sure however if it is possible to do that without making it exploitable. Furthermore, if you play on lockstep, just... don't comment. You basically have no idea what I am talking about.

"

goetzjam wrote:

You are 1 user out of how many, that after the numerous improvements they've made, still having issues. What you are essentially asking GGG to do is balance the game around a very small group of players that are still having issues after 2.0, how is that fair for the rest of the population\people? Can't you see how your request is 100% selfish?

As I have made no request, I cannot see how my request is selfish.

"detects desync" how on earth do you think they can detect when you desync? As for the comment about me playing on lockstep, you do realize that for over 3 years I played on predictive mode? Pretty ignorant to tell me not to comment, when I've experienced predictive mode far more then you ever will.

You have experienced predictive on a connection that is so good that it now can handle lockstep. Quite a difference.

The client already detects that there is desync sometimes, and then re-syncs. And as pointed out, the game is always slightly out of sync. So just detect whether it has been out of sync more than 3 seconds (specifically: packet loss has happened during the last 3 seconds / latency has spiked over 1500ms or so) and if yes, do not apply death penalty. That still results in some lag-deaths that do get the penalty applied, but it would not apply the penalty on complete disconnect, and it would catch probably more than 50% of the lag deaths and not apply the penalty on those. What would be wrong with that? It is not balancing the game around me (or the thousands of other people on bad connections), which I have BTW never asked for, even though I find the death penalty pretty silly as it is at the moment.

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SjakaWaka wrote:

and if the game is unplayable , why are you forcing yourself to play?
speaking from experience playing games with crappy internet is like kicking yourself in the nuts. it's jsut plain frustrating w/o any enjoyment, so why do it?
(obviously this is different for people where lagspike come out of nowhere)

I am not. I just do other things then, but the "lagspike out of nowhere" remains. Yesterday everything was very smooth (within the standards of my connection), so I ran Atziri. I then had three or four lag spikes between 1.5 and 5 seconds. Luckily I did not die. But its also pretty stupid to stop playing then, cause you have already paid your entrance fee and don't want to loose it (I did, in the end, kill Atziri).

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Char1983 wrote:

You have experienced predictive on a connection that is so good that it now can handle lockstep. Quite a difference.

The client already detects that there is desync sometimes, and then re-syncs.

the game doesn't detect dsync
it merely detects with a few things that it has gone way out of the norm.

but those things are very specific there is no way you could apply it to all occasions.

there's also a big difference between dsync and dying because of it.

just because you are experiencing a decent dsync does not mean your death is because of it.

if every mob around me is in another place but i face tank a vaal smash my death is not because the mobs were dsyncing.

this is but 1 simplistic example.
but there are million of them and every1 of them is slightly different.
different enough that you can't code a good check to see whether the death is legit.

not to mention that the Server does not know what happens on the client. or what you see on the screen in predictive. only the actions you take. and a bit of generic info of which you can't use to do a proper analysis on your death.