XP Loss on Death

@nick66234


If you are saying its 80+ which is hurting players, those aren't new players. They are at most just inexperienced players that are starting to map or have mapped in some levels pre 72 mainly. From 80-90 you really get to increase the power of your build significantly, find cool drops and learn a lot.


So I'll just stay again the XP penalty is fine, actually Chris said pre 2.0 in a Q|A they are fine with the current XP penalty, I highly doubt they change this at all and your arguments aren't really put together well. New players aren't level 80, inexperienced players are, just because they are inexperienced doesn't mean they should somehow get a free pass when leveling in maps, even so pre 85 is still a joke, hell for most players pre 90 is pretty easy to recover from. Players need to learn the challenges different map mods, mobs, ect provide, at least they aren't losing their character completely.

As for progressing, you can farm non map zones and still progress in gear and currency and slightly in XP, you can roll easier lower level maps fast, you can research similar builds and use quest rewards to respec.



Funny you say you don't want the game to be more simple but are advocating for an XP loss change.

when you are at lvl 80 and over you are not a newcomer to the game, and you can clearly afford a penality once in a while. The penality need to be there, because you want death to be painfull, so the player don't want to die.

There is little to no penality to death in Diablo 3, I'll suggest you to play this game if it's the kind of games you prefer.

But at the same time, the "no penality" kind of ruined it for me in D3 I just walked died a lot without caring at all and rolled the game non-stop. They lost many players due to that on the long term.

Death penality has it's importance in every game. It's a game mechanics designed to force the player to work better everytime in order to avoid death.

The XP penalty being "harsh" for new players is not the only problem with it. In fact I'd be surprised if even a simple majority of new players make it to the end of merciless before quitting.

One of the issues, which the XP penalty contributes to, is that playing PoE doesn't feel rewarding. Present end-game has extremely poor drop quality, poor map progression, and binary difficulty. In most cases the game is so easy that you're falling asleep, until you die in a split second, which, at level 95+, eliminates hours of play time and multiple exalts worth of map investment. It doesn't seem to take much time at all before players look to play a different game for a more satisfying/rewarding experience.

A change to the death penalty can address this in a few ways. No XP penalty (or a different way of applying/scaling the penalty) can help ensure that players obtain and retain some progression out of their play session. The notion that everyone would suddenly hit 100 is quite comical, given the sheer amount of XP required coupled with the relatively small number of accounts with characters in the level 95+ range. Additionally, a reduced penalty may allow for a much more overall/consistently difficult end-game. I'd love to see map progression gated by difficulty rather than RNG/currency, where players are not only more able to more frequently challenge themselves, but actually want to challenge themselves rather than skip difficult fights or play very safe builds.

Which brings me to the next issue: The XP penalty restricts viable build options, in a bad way (in a way that restricts fun). There are many builds that I'd prefer to play for fun, but they aren't viable if XP progression is a goal. In fact, in 2.0, I addressed the XP penalty by creating an invulnerable character, which I'll briefly describe in spoiler tags:

It's so mind numbingly boring to play a build that is so safe, but doing so is the most efficient way to reach 100. For me, that makes the death penalty completely broken. It either pigeonholes me into a type of build that isn't fun or exciting for me to play, or prevents the builds I enjoy from progressing.

Yet another issue with the XP penalty is it does nothing to penalize players who aren't trying to gain XP as a goal, namely IIR/IIQ farmers, bots, suicide boss runners (which are quite efficient now due to the checkpoint system), and other forms of speed runners (for example, kill-speed/mobility focused builds without iir/iiq, which zerg 75-76 maps to sell 77+). With a simple change of goals, the XP penalty becomes meaningless.

I don't think 80-90 is where most newer players find their stuff. Because most new players aren't playing higher level maps all because of their level. They have to get good enough to find those maps. And like I said, it's difficult for them to progress without levels and passives. I've seen it first hand. I've tried to convince friends to come over to PoE. It's never the beginning that gives them trouble, or finding a build. It's always the fact that the learning curve and gear grinding at the end game gives them trouble. So they try to level up, which obviously doesn't work. They need some time to progress. Although I do agree that they'd be good enough at 80-90 if they were able to get past 75 or so doing lower maps. If they still aren't good enough by then- they can keep doing lower maps. But it'd be nice if things were possible for them at the least.

Speaking as a newer player (highest level is one character at low 70's), I think the current death penalty is fine. Death does need to be penalized in order to be avoided. Multiple deaths are instructional. The penalty has to be harsh enough to want to be avoided. If you can't progress because xp loss due to death is preventing you, then you need to re-look at your build or play style. Making the death penalty less punitive discourages learning because it encourages you to keep doing what the game is telling you does not work. If the xp loss were deceased or eliminated then something else would need to be implemented not only to make death something to be avoided, but to also prevent death from becoming a viable strategy for difficult areas. No chip and die by resetting monster hp after death or make xp loss harsher but reduce it to current levels or lower with corpse recovery.

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Wolf287 wrote:

Speaking as a newer player (highest level is one character at low 70's), I think the current death penalty is fine. Death does need to be penalized in order to be avoided. Multiple deaths are instructional. The penalty has to be harsh enough to want to be avoided. If you can't progress because xp loss due to death is preventing you, then you need to re-look at your build or play style. Making the death penalty less punitive discourages learning because it encourages you to keep doing what the game is telling you does not work. If the xp loss were deceased or eliminated then something else would need to be implemented not only to make death something to be avoided, but to also prevent death from becoming a viable strategy for difficult areas. No chip and die by resetting monster hp after death or make xp loss harsher but reduce it to current levels or lower with corpse recovery.

The death penalty is not overly punishing for a character in the 70's. The mechanic is a loss of 10% of the XP required for your next level. At level 75, this is 10% of 49,853,964, i.e. 4.9 million XP lost on death.

At level 95, it's 10% of 235,163,399, i.e. 23.5 million XP lost on death.

Therefore, the penalty you currently experience grows to become 5x more harsh at level 95, and that's assuming XP gain remains constant. This, however, is not the case.

If you do a level 75 map at level 75, you gain the full amount of experience. If you do a level 75 map at level 95, you receive a 93% XP penalty due to the level difference. In effect, this means that the XP penalty resulting from a death at level 95 is over 71 times more punishing than at level 75 (5/.07=71.4).

What this means is, if a death at level 75 sets you back 5 minutes of play time, a death at level 95 sets you back 357 minutes of play time. Then, in addition to the loss of time, you have to factor in the loss of currency spent on enough level 75 maps to constitute 357 minutes of play time.

^^ good analysis.

Considering if your playing in HC you lose your toon to standard id say its pretty fair that SC players only lose 10% of their progress for every mistake! Its MUCH less harsh to lose 10% Exp than your entire build!

However i will also agree that the Exp Pen being a flat 10% can get pretty insane once you get over lvl 90 and have a mishap! Can cost anywhere from hours to days depending on how far into the 90s you are!
Then again i guess this is also intended since every lvl at that point is just adding a little more to the build!

So by then you better have your defenses and play for the build on point or your gonna run into a wall! I know i have before at around 91ish! But this also encourages you to tweek the build where you wont die anymore! At the end of the day the Exp Pen Its all about making you better at the game!
And if you look at the Exp Pen like this thats exactly what will happen! Youll make better builds more well rounded that has the damage to get the job done with the defenses to make sure you can do that job!

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diablofdb wrote:

Part of the challenges of the game are:

- learning how to build your characters to avoid dying
- learning how to beat bosses and deal with certain monsters to avoid dying
- learning the games mechanics in general to avoid dying

if there is no penality for dying, you don't have to avoid death it won't be a problem at all.

and if the is no problems about dying... well all the challenge above are obsoletes

These 3 statements are wierd to be honest.

I was playing today, suddnely a boss jumped to me, i didnt see him before and boom 2 fast melee hits and i was dead. Now i wanna learn something, it means i wanna know who was the boss, was it pure physical damage or was there some kind of elemental or chaos dmg. These things are important to know when you wanna build your character correct. To know how to beat bosses you need to know bosses and what damage and spells they use. Atm all this is total random in this game. Game dosent give any feedback why you died or who killed you.
Building character correctly means you have to read and read and read forums and guides. There is no chance that you just try your own spec, try to find what suits you and discover things by you own because you cant reset your skill tree. Yes actually you can but it costs huge amount of currency. So now lets take all this from the beginner aspect, i can bet that lot of players quit it because of these reasons.
By self i really like the game and the idea of the passive skills, i would like to try things by my own, try to find what suits for me and discover things. But no i just need to take some forum guide and take the cookie there. I would be ready to pay for the game monthly if i can reset skill tree when i want, get feedback about what happened and by who.

XP loss on death is not even bad before level 91+ or something.