Scrying Orb: of death and consequences

So, it's occurred to me that online games tend to have to treat death penalties differently from single-player games. One of the models I grew up was the quick-save model, where encounters could be as difficult as the game designers wanted - you could just restore the entire universe to a previous state and try again. The goal is essentially to provide the player with a means to gather information, so that you can design more sophisticated difficult encounters.

Why not enable this type of single-player play in Path of Exile as well?

Scrying Orb
Right click to toggle between being a Vision and being Corporeal.
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greytext: When you are a Vision, you cannot gain or lose experience, and items cannot be generated or modified. Being Corporeal allows you to gain or lose experience and items as usual. Portals are not consumed upon use.

(Corporeal is what we have now, and being a Vision basically allows you to play without any real consequences - no XP gain or loss, no items dropped, modification of items is locked, and you don't burn up any portals. It allows you to play through fights as much as you want in order to learn the mechanics, without fear of loss, but also without the rewards if you win.)

Advantages

• Somewhat equalizes the choice dynamic between 0% xp and 80% xp high level characters in Standard (aka "zerg him with your corpses")
• Justifies the design of tougher encounters
• Doesn't harm the "actual game"
• Single-player (offline) friendly - allows game to be enjoyed without wikis/guides/YouTube demonstrations of boss fights

Disadvantages

• May be perceived as "too casual"
• Players spend less time battling frustrations with artificial difficulty ("What killed me? I haven't the slightest clue so I have no idea how I can improve my character next time. Better reroll five times with basically the same character instead of actually overcoming any challenges!")
• May cause currency inflation (haha why would i burn 10 sacrifice sets learning the fight with zero rewards when i can just burn 1 set, play it through a bunch, and then profit off the other 9?)

What do you guys think?

a prior step for having starting or averagely skilled players learn from deaths and about the dangers of wraeclast would be to tell or indicate them what interactions of mechanics killed them in the first place.

your idea could be built on top of that.

I agree with vio on that.

I personally, learn from my experience, especially when dyeing.

I remember the first time i gone for atziri (I dont watch any YT videos explaining the mechanics or what the fight looks like, for me it takes away from excitment). I think I could not get pass the double vaals. It took me few sets to learn how to deal with them. Then was the trio who rekt me as well, before I learned what each of them do, who is a dangerous and who should i kill first. And of course atziri herself. After maybe 6-10 sets I finally got her down, it was brutal, it was intense, it was scary and in the end it was very, very satisfying.

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vio wrote:

a prior step for having starting or averagely skilled players learn from deaths and about the dangers of wraeclast would be to tell or indicate them what interactions of mechanics killed them in the first place.

Yup, although I think there's something preventing GGG from doing that, whether technical or for game design reasons. If I recall correctly, death recaps are a popular topic in Feedback+Suggestions, but GGG never commented or seemed to start implementing it. I would guess it's an engine limitation. Not sure if my suggestion or death recaps would be easier to implement.

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One thing I forgot to mention is that the Scrying Orb could be effected as a currency orb or as a persistent (quest?) item. If it were a currency orb I would imagine that it must be dropped very early on, probably since Twilight Strand, although due to thematic reasons I wouldn't object to them being earnable via Navali somehow too.

Lots of design space here, GGG! Don't leave it untouched!