Solution to EXP loss/Death Penalty that wont make everyone angry

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Fruz wrote:
Has it occured to you, that the xp penalty is here to make you understand that you need to improve your character ?
I realized something reading this.

The real ideological difference-maker between groups of players — you might label these groups "casual" and "not casual," or whatever labels you like — is how players answer that question. There are lots of players for whom the answer is truthfully "no."

I'm not saying those players are unaware of the message hidden within the death penalty. They understand that they're being told that they need to improve their character. But there's a big difference between being told something and agreeing with what you're being told. It's completely possible to respond to that criticism by saying "bullshit." You can blame desync or the economy or clearspeed meta or summoners or Canada.

But more importantly, it's possible to play a game with no pretense of wanting to get better, aware that you don't really care about the criticism coming at you because you admit you're not trying. It's possible to respond not with the defensive "bullshit!" but with the apathetic "so what?"

That, I think, is the definitive difference between casual and not-casual. Not how many hours you put in, not how many challenges you get, not even how intense you press the buttons, but instead: how much you view a loss as an imperative to improve.

And Fruz, many don't. At all.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Feb 24, 2020, 11:18:14 PM
A fair point, but what people think the word "improve" means is also relevant.

The way Fruz (and you, presumably) transmits it is in the sense, "make better decisions."

The way many players receive it (or--worse--intuit it) is in the sense, "get better gear." I.e., grind more and/or trade more. Unfortunately for them, this is generally not the more urgent problem of the two.

In fact there is, for most players, plenty of room in both of those categories to get better. But for most players to recognize that the former even is important requires that the game give them more (actionable) information, that the game's affordances are made more robust (or created in the first place!), and that there are fewer noobtraps.

So-called hardcore players require those things less, which is where I see the main distinction between the two groups of hardcore and casual: The casual players expect the game's overall design and affordances not to deceive them and play it accordingly (and also get pissed off when they do realize they have been deceived), and the more hardcore players say, "Fuck that, I'm doing some online research so I can min/max this shit." For the latter group of players, noobtraps don't even exist, because they can't.

This is one reason debates about the experience penalty in isolation from overall game design are rarely useful.

I'll go out on a limb and say that death penalty resentment would be far less of an issue if players perceived their deaths to be their own fault. And no, being able to use your knowledge gained over many years to demonstrate that most of their deaths are indeed their own fault is not anywhere near enough. It needs to be readily perceptible.

Edit:

A small (and admittedly simplistic) example: If a new player has good reason to believe (i.e., the game told them in some way) that taking a 6% increased life node is, generally speaking, a better decision than taking a 10% increased armour node, and they chose to take the armour node anyway, then being killed faster than they can react is going to not only be more fair but also be perceptible as more fair by that player.

Again, that is simplistic, but it's the kind of design consideration which needs to permeate the entire game before a death penalty can feel fair in almost all situations.

(Deaths from off-screen projectiles also need to go, for related reasons. There's another thread on that topic already, so no need to say more.)
Wash your hands, Exile!
Last edited by gibbousmoon on Feb 25, 2020, 3:36:42 AM
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gibbousmoon wrote:
A fair point, but what people think the word "improve" means is also relevant.

The way Fruz (and you, presumably) transmits it is in the sense, "make better decisions."

The way many players receive it (or--worse--intuit it) is in the sense, "get better gear." I.e., grind more and/or trade more. Unfortunately for them, this is generally not the more urgent problem of the two.

In fact there is, for most players, plenty of room in both of those categories to get better. But for most players to recognize that the former even is important requires that the game give them more (actionable) information, that the game's affordances are made more robust (or created in the first place!), and that there are fewer noobtraps.

So-called hardcore players require those things less, which is where I see the main distinction between the two groups of hardcore and casual: The casual players expect the game's overall design and affordances not to deceive them and play it accordingly (and also get pissed off when they do realize they have been deceived), and the more hardcore players say, "Fuck that, I'm doing some online research so I can min/max this shit." For the latter group of players, noobtraps don't even exist, because they can't.

This is one reason debates about the experience penalty in isolation from overall game design are rarely useful.

I'll go out on a limb and say that death penalty resentment would be far less of an issue if players perceived their deaths to be their own fault. And no, being able to use your knowledge gained over many years to demonstrate that most of their deaths are indeed their own fault is not anywhere near enough. It needs to be readily perceptible.

Damn I can't really disagree with that, but I want to add that I genuinely believe that many (I am not pointing at anyone here or anywhere else, really, seriously) people nowadays expect way too much from many things, are expecting to get everything for free (or almost), are expecting to get most things from the internet easily, without much effort, etc ....
And even id we would assume that such player are a minority, it would still add insult to the injury about what you just described.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

That, I think, is the definitive difference between casual and not-casual. Not how many hours you put in, not how many challenges you get, not even how intense you press the buttons, but instead: how much you view a loss as an imperative to improve.

I don't think so, I am trying to see keep part of the literal (or most of) meaning of "casually", and .... you definitely have who casual play the game, couple of hours here and there, not regularly at all, die (because lack of information/experience), and think "hmm, what did go wrong there ?! is it x or y or ...".
I would definitely call such a player a casual player, as the player is casually playing the game, and yet still gets the message and tries to find its way forward (to some extent I guess, because of the issue(s) mentioned by Gibbousmoon).

On the other hand, you can have a player spending ~4 hours everyday, following a summoner guide blindly, reaching lvl 95+ with an actually half-arsed built character and being like "wtf ??? Im loosing experience this game is just shit !!!" and not trying to find out the why, how or anything else really.
And I would not call that second player a casual player, as it would not be somebody casually playing the game.
SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading.
"
Fruz wrote:
On the other hand, you can have a player spending ~4 hours everyday, following a summoner guide blindly, reaching lvl 95+ with an actually half-arsed built character and being like "wtf ??? Im loosing experience this game is just shit !!!" and not trying to find out the why, how or anything else really.
And I would not call that second player a casual player, as it would not be somebody casually playing the game.
I would, but they wouldn't.

I included three, not two, archetypes in my post you're responding to here: the player who is not casual and knows it (which you covered, but I didn't quote you on), the player who is casual and knows it (which you ignored), and the player who is casual but not self-aware about it (which you focused on). And yes, that third kind of player may act like a non-casual in several stereotypical yet ultimately insubstantial ways, such as playing a lot of hours or complaining a LOT on these forums. But ultimately, if they don't want to receive constructive criticism from the game, in my eyes they're just a casual player who hasn't come to peace with their own casualness.

A player who is casual and knows it knows that they aren't looking to improve their skill at playing the game, and as such doesn't get upset by the game telling them they're not skilled enough — they respond to deaths with nonchalance, as a predictable and accepted result of their play. A player who is not casual and knows it knows that they are looking to improve their skill at playing the game, and as such DOES get upset by the game telling them they're not skilled enough — but they respond by placing the blame inward, and using the anger as fuel to improve themselves and avoid deaths in the future. It is the player who is casual and doesn't know it who feels the rage but can't find the will to direct that blame inward, and thus sprays it outward. Their own internal conflict leads to external strife.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Feb 25, 2020, 4:25:47 AM
Same as people who want to have an easy mode in Sekiro: Shadows die twice.
In love Hardcore solo self-found mode
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gibbousmoon wrote:
I'll go out on a limb and say that death penalty resentment would be far less of an issue if players perceived their deaths to be their own fault. And no, being able to use your knowledge gained over many years to demonstrate that most of their deaths are indeed their own fault is not anywhere near enough. It needs to be readily perceptible.
Dying in a videogame is a very old, very established affordance. It's pretty obvious to any experienced gamer — even if they're very new to PoE — that a death is a game telling you that you didn't do well enough, and to go back and try again but better. I don't really believe you when you say players aren't getting the message.

That said, there IS a difference between getting the message and believing that message. And let me say this straight out — not all PoE deaths are the player's fault. A big lag spike courtesy of the ISP you paid good money to, that's enough to murder a character. The game delivers a death anyway, as it's designed to, but in those cases there is dissonance between what happened (not the player's fault) and the message of death (the game saying it is the player's fault). Just because the player disbelieves the message that they are at fault, does not believe they didn't hear the message.

I believe that the number of deaths by lag spike is GREATLY exaggerated by the playerbase. But that doesn't mean they never happen. And I believe the effects are VERY detrimental to player psychology.

One of the disturbing things I've noticed about player behavior is that very serious players (by which I mean: very non-casual ones) have a tendency to interpreting developer mistakes as their own. They get a better internet plan than they should need, because without it (they think) they die more. They get a high-end video card, because without it (they think) they die more. Nevermind that plenty of other games with similar gameplay run better on slower internet, or that the developer said the game should run fine on a lesser video card — and these players will sometimes even encourage other players to "get good" in a similar manner, white-knighting against valid complaints. These players have processed in-game death as the affordance it is, uncritically, and thus internalized the blame of failure by upgrading their hardware and ISP subscription. To them, these real-world purchases are an element of gameplay skill.

The rational response to such deaths, even if they are more rare than the more vocal community members make them out to be, is to blame the devs. But the message of in-game death can be so powerful that it can convince people they're wrong about things that aren't even their fault. The problem most certainly isn't that it's imperceptible when it's applicable; it's that it is too often perceptible when it's inapplicable.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Feb 25, 2020, 5:35:08 AM
Not happening for balance purposes.
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
Dying in a videogame is a very old, very established affordance. It's pretty obvious to any experienced gamer — even if they're very new to PoE — that a death is a game telling you that you didn't do well enough, and to go back and try again but better. I don't really believe you when you say players aren't getting the message.


Aren't getting what message?

That their character is not powerful enough not to get one-shot?

Or that they should have zigged when they zagged? That they should have invested in X stat instead of Y stat? That they should have used skill B instead of the noobtrap skill A that looked like it would be fun, since skill B does literally 50x the DPS and the game is therefore balanced around it and not A?

See, I fully acknowledge that they are getting the former message. It should have been obvious that when I complained about PoE's absent affordances that was not what I was referring to, since a non-specific message of "you suck" is not a particularly useful one, and as such it certainly won't enhance a player's perception that the game is playing fair with them.

It is the latter set of messages that PoE needs to deliver.

(I mostly agree with the rest of your post.)
Wash your hands, Exile!
Last edited by gibbousmoon on Feb 25, 2020, 6:59:34 AM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
I would, but they wouldn't.

I included three, not two, archetypes in my post you're responding to here

I did not mean to specifically answer to your whole post, I merely wanted to explain what "casually playing" meant to me, and by extension what casual players are and what casual players aren't.

I guess I'm simply taking this more literally than you are :


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ScrotieMcB wrote:
And yes, that third kind of player may act like a non-casual in several stereotypical yet ultimately insubstantial ways, such as playing a lot of hours or complaining a LOT on these forums. But ultimately, if they don't want to receive constructive criticism from the game, in my eyes they're just a casual player who hasn't come to peace with their own casualness.

I don't think that I can consider somebody playing a game in a non casual manner (so there is a certain investment already, even if it's purely time and not much effort/thoughts) as a casual gamer.

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gibbousmoon wrote:
It is the latter set of messages that PoE needs to deliver.

Unfortunately, I think that there is a certain "pride" at GGG that makes them want to keep the game "hardcore" as ... like in some older games (which does not necessarily make it a good justification), making them not want to deliver that message.

Having to look for what killed you through experimentation and trial and error can definitely be a "valid" (=fun, engaging, whatever it is) game design for sure, but in PoE it's just not .... not the case in my opinion, there are too many elements (such as screen clutter, very obscure and unintuitive mechanics, noob traps as you mentioned, and others) that just don't fit in there.
SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading.
Last edited by Fruz on Feb 25, 2020, 7:41:50 AM
This game has been and always will be a hardcore experience. The first concept of the game was such and while GGG made the game a good tad easier since ye olde days, there's certain aspects of the game that cannot be discussed - one of which being the death penalty.

Twitch: https://twitch.tv/artcrusader

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