Let's talk about endgame. GGG, this concerns you too.

the current xp penalty on death encourages the planning of tackling more difficult content once you leveled up (uber lab, late endgame bosses, corrupted maps with alot of damage mods, etc.)

it's a great incentive to sink alot of time into more boring content.

i quite like the alternation between risk free play time and the time you better watch out for damage spikes.

any other system should keep that balance, there is no fun without disapointment, there is no exciting content without boring content.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

These are way too Utopian changes to be implemented. Turning XP on and off sounds absolutely horrible and hasn't been implemented and won't be implemented in any game. People will just turn it off for T16 and Shaper that give little XP anyways - nothing else really is matters. Might as well remove the XP penalty all together then.

The level penalty is irrelevant as well, nobody changes their playstyle because of that. You die in high tier maps and never in low tier ones. Oh well, not doing high tier then!

utopian: modelled on or aiming for a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic.

So am I to gather that you feel my suggestions are really good but just not very practical? (That's rhetorical but I couldn't resist.)

Used to be that if you died, you lost all the stuff that you picked up since you last went to town and you could lose levels from draining. Used to be that maps got drawn on graph paper. Who wants to go back to any of that? Used to be that games had a short shelf life but for some time now we have seen games lasting years - arguably staying relevant by adapting to an evolving player base. Turning off experience for high risk low experience reward situations is exactly what I envisioned. Why should someone have to give up on levelling just to sample higher content? I intentionally want to remove experience loss as a gating tool for content. Let people take on the Shaper if they can pay the entry fee. Let them die without further punishment. And let them go lick their wounds, think upon their short comings (or bad luck) and try again when ready. My opinion, different from yours. The game will move forward - we are just tussling over our opinions on the best path forward.

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vio wrote:

there is no fun without disapointment, there is no exciting content without boring content.

Ah so true - light loses context without darkness. But I feel that there is a difference between darkness existing and forcing me to walk through that darkness. A knowledge of darkness totally fulfils my context needs regarding light. If you want to dance in the darkness, fine - just don't expect me to be your dance partner. I'm OK with darkness being out there, but please don't restrict my means to dance around it.

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AnExile_onthePath wrote:

"

Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

These are way too Utopian changes to be implemented. Turning XP on and off sounds absolutely horrible and hasn't been implemented and won't be implemented in any game. People will just turn it off for T16 and Shaper that give little XP anyways - nothing else really is matters. Might as well remove the XP penalty all together then.

The level penalty is irrelevant as well, nobody changes their playstyle because of that. You die in high tier maps and never in low tier ones. Oh well, not doing high tier then!

utopian: modelled on or aiming for a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic.

So am I to gather that you feel my suggestions are really good but just not very practical? (That's rhetorical but I couldn't resist.)

Used to be that if you died, you lost all the stuff that you picked up since you last went to town and you could lose levels from draining. Used to be that maps got drawn on graph paper. Who wants to go back to any of that? Used to be that games had a short shelf life but for some time now we have seen games lasting years - arguably staying relevant by adapting to an evolving player base. Turning off experience for high risk low experience reward situations is exactly what I envisioned. Why should someone have to give up on levelling just to sample higher content? I intentionally want to remove experience loss as a gating tool for content. Let people take on the Shaper if they can pay the entry fee. Let them die without further punishment. And let them go lick their wounds, think upon their short comings (or bad luck) and try again when ready. My opinion, different from yours. The game will move forward - we are just tussling over our opinions on the best path forward.

Woops, I'm retarded. Lets go with "inadequate".

The motive is good, implementation is bad. Of course there is always room for improvement for everything, but not in the form that we're seeing here - exaggerations and purely personal preferences / rants while ignoring the population( not directed towards you).

Right now you prepare for your Shaper fight by levelling up before stepping in, increasing anticipation and excitement. You play more carefully and pay more attention because dying is meaningful.

Picking up items after death will have you either:
1) Trolled out and lose all your items, ultra frustrating - too many mobs or weird mechanics won't let you get close to the corpse, especially since you have no items. In ghost form you can just get instakilled and never leave. Last portal and got slammed? GG
2) Be completely unphased - you just have a boring walk back removing all excitement from the current fight. Lumbridge bank in Runescape was added because of that.

You can't remove everything from the game just because you don't like it and want an easier game. Higher content has to be earned. In every game you have to make sacrifices and adaptations in order to get further. Even if something does get changed regarding death penalties, there will be a new complaint.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

You can't remove everything from the game just because you don't like it and want an easier game. Higher content has to be earned. In every game you have to make sacrifices and adaptations in order to get further. Even if something does get changed regarding death penalties, there will be a new complaint.

I agree with those statements/sentiments except for "higher content has to earned". I feel the barrier to higher rewards should mainly be the higher content itself, and to a much lesser extent, the access to that content. Having voiced that difference, it seems that you have Chris Wilson firmly on your side with that and so you definitely have me there, for now (I recall that he even has a less than friendly phrase for players who expect access to higher content on their own terms).

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AnExile_onthePath wrote:

Why should someone have to give up on levelling just to sample higher content?

they dont.

people play chayula breachstones to power level for goodness sake, its one of the most brutal encounters in the game.


why does a build that sucks die and lose xp when it samples higher tier content? Because it sucks, make better builds. Learn, progress, figure out what you are doing wrong.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

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sofocle10000 wrote:

First of all, PoE isn't a finished product, as it still exhibits at times the qualities of a BETA product (although I could be mean and call out the "balance" as perpetually ALPHA, lets grant it BETA status as it is "broken" by choice).

As all unfinished products, PoE presents at times various technical problems, various bugs, delays, lag due to server-client communications etc. etc., and to top it all, PoE is a MANDATORY ONLINE EXPERIENCE - hence you'll never, and I do mean NEVER, see me touch the Hardcore settings with a 10 feet pole, because I like to be penalized solely for MY OWN MISTAKES (the only way to actually play PoE in a HARDCORE setting is to play Softcore and VOID the entire account upon character death, especially if you don't want to use "instant log out", and that just requires you to be true about the death cases).

It's an unfinished product for you because the game isn't exactly how YOU want it.

I've never seen a bug in POE during 1500 hours, except once visual lazer show, happens with all games.
Once or twice randomly DCd when the whole server went down which is nothing special again and happens with all games.

This thread's sole purpose is for burnt out players to vent and bitch about things that aren't exactly the way how they want it while making strong exaggerations about everything.
There is little to no "discussion", only moaning by special snowflakes who play SSF in protest / burn themselves out with horrible decisions / haven't got to endgame because of their negative attitude towards everything.

@#&&#. Just because you don't pay attention it doesn't mean it never happens.

Heck, watch patch notes regarding various "bug" fixes, not long ago Lightning Strike got a new visaul effect because it made PoE slow down to a crawl in certain scenarios, double heck, you've not used a shield to observe clipping, not to mention other various weapon skins improperly used by characters.

Not long ago, PoE had 3 difficulties due to a storyline comprising 4 acts. Just think about that and stop white knightning "just because".

When "Ascendancy" hit, "Labyrinth" was at times such a hit & miss regarding disconnects I had to wait for a couple of weeks just to enjoy a continuous "Labyrinth" run.

I stand by my words. PoE feels like a BETA product. It works, and that is it's redeeming quality, beside all the work and love clearly invested by GGG, and the implication of the community.

It's never supposed to be about the "game that I would like PoE to become". It's about how PoE could become so much better and keep everyone invested longer.

I am a harsh critic. Although I think of myself as a fair one also, sometimes I'm more objective, other times not.

This is one of the moments when I am as objective as I could be, and I highlighted more times than I could count all the aspects and a few potential solutions here, on the FEEDBACK AND SUGGESTIONS part of the POE forum.

If by "horrible decisions" you mean player not using "metas" or actively "breaking the game" via items/skills/mechanics and interactions, I got news to you, and everyone else. Level 100 became a sad "time wasting" achievement in Softcore. As long as you play, and keep playing, you'll get it, no matter what. If it would actually be a skillcheck threshold implied, it would have a meaning. Unfortunately, for the time being, that is hardly the case - (ab)using instant log out doesn't count as a viable solution versus difficult situations.

GGG wants to "balance" the game around players being the "ideal gods", that one shot everything and we all know how that went - either you "enjoy" such a "one shot damage spike/burst" in <0.5 seconds, or you get to watch phases just so you can "see" a fight longer than 1 second...

Much "balance". Much END GAME. Much WOW. /s

Before they added the new acts I did NOT look forward to leveling another character up in new leagues. Why? Because I only like the end game. Now there seems to be more variety, not the same stuff 3x, it is better but I can see that after I do it a few more times it will be like it used to be.

Simply put, I really like the end game. This is the best end game content in any games in this genre imo (at least the ones I have played). Compare it to TQ, GD, D2 or 3; what end game content do they have? Torchlight2 has maps and that end game is better than any I just mentioned.

I agree with 100% of what mark and snorkle uk said so I will not waste my time repeating. I have gotten frustrated with the death penalty, but without it the game would lose all challenge.

"

Speaking of, xxjanie's 'wasting time by wasting time' is particularly sticky. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to feel this way.

when you die in poe, you learn lessons, well provided you've got ability to learn from failures.

just like in real life if you have a lot of money and you decide to invest a bunch of it due to your shady investor friend advise, and you lose a lot of it- you didnt 'waste time'- you learned a valuable lesson

if you have a beautiful wife and trust her with your life and shen she divorces you while fucking another guy behind your back, taking half of your money- you didnt 'waste time'- youve learned a valuable lesson

the lesson in poe is 'don't die to x when you're high level'

"

My main reaction to folks who draw the conclusion that death penalty is the only way to prevent zerging is 'you're too conditioned to eating the dish of shit GGG keeps serving you'. I don't blame you, but please make a little more effort if you're going to engage in this discussion.

you should really take your own advise and speak of these concrete examples instead of condescending bullshit generalizations. do provide some examples from this genre that do have endgames, that have meaningful deaths and how they accomplish this. you're too busy writing portraits of gamers to actually have a concrete discussion.

"

So far the more useful responses have come from those with fewer challenges but high level experience.

what do challenges have to do with anything ? jeez, a thinly veiled ad hominem bs that has nothing to do with the topic on hand. you can have 0 or 40 challenges and it doesnt mean jack shit.

"

I figure if you're the sort to consistently go for 36+ challenges, you've already convinced yourself the system that is is just fine.

there is literally zero correlation between death penalty and 36+ challenges. you can do all challenges as soon as you hit 90 and dying a ton. no, literally, this is one of the worst correlation points in this whole thread. you can spend your whole time running shaped t5s with zero chance of death and get 36+ challenges via buying shit.

I really expected better from you, charan. you're slipping. that and the whole 'I spent a whole lot of money on the game how dare they' thread brings back 2013 charan. let's talk systems and gaming instead of trying to paint portraits of gamers who disagree with your opinion.

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k1rage wrote:

What if perhaps we introduce a dark souls like system

you die, you lose a bunch of XP but... if you can make it back to where you died and touch your blood stain for a second or two you can get at least a good portion of that XP back

However if you die again before you do this all the xp goes bye bye

just a thought

Dark Souls hardly innovated that one, my friend. In fact, it's so common in various iterations I was surprised to see it absent when I first found PoE almost five years ago. But then I figured it was just yet another 'these guys are still in beta, they'll figure it out' factors. Thought the same thing about trade though, so, eh, we've all given them more than enough leeway there I think.

__

Just woke up, processing responses. Mostly good, which I'm sad to say is still a surprise these days.

I'll add something that I've been mulling over in the interim, however: what is a glass cannon in PoE softcore terms? In other games, a glass cannon is a character or build that drastically prioritises damage output over durability. It is based around two principles: offence is the best defence; and what is dead cannot hurt me. That being said, I suspect a glass cannon in PoE is less that and more something that isn't sufficiently tanky, which is in practice far less glassy than traditional glass cannons. I understand it's difficult to quantify these things, to say flat-out that THIS is how much life you need to not be glassy or THIS much ES is the threshold, so is it more of a feeling? A notion that you can survive a certain number of hits? Or leech back enough to offset it?

And at which point in the game's progression should a glass cannon become ineffectual?

Maybe the fact that most of us see this game as a solo endeavour plays into that too. Glass cannons are much more acceptable in party orientated games, where you have dedicated nukers and assassins who know if they get hit they're done for, so the others keep the heat off them. That's obviously not how PoE works, despite GGG implementing things like taunts. Eh, that's another discussion I think.

Hell, is there even a place for the glass cannon in PoE? If not, why would the game present you with so many options to make one? GGG do seem concerned with newbie traps and red herrings when it comes to character development, and that strikes me as a rather large one.