Exp Loss is freaking unbalanced

This is not right vs wrong, I never claimed I'm right about anything, this is always about personal opinion and taste in games.

In time, "normal" people will reach higher levels. When they will see their "crap" builds stuck, they'll say "no biggie", let's respec, I screwed up because I'm new. When that will be out of the question, they will end up here, because they invested a lot of time (for their case), and it will mount up.

Also, people avoid posting on this subject, because the loving "hardcore" community tends to ridicule them.

Experience penalty is outdated and obsolete mechanic. It is poor design even if put down as legacy from Diablo 2. It does not make a game any more hardcore--you have hardcore league for that--nor it make the game more complex--as in opposite of dumbed down/easy.

The biggest fail of current implementation of death penalty is the fact it seems to be thought and implemented with full game already developed and available for play. How can I say that?

Ask yourself when you started to feel death penalty is hurting? It was not before lvl65 or so. I dare to say this was because you have a content appropriate for that level where you can easily grind experience or quest to quickly regain the lost experience. It still takes you back 15 or 60 minutes, which should serve as a lesson and punishment.

Now, experience penalty at lvl75 is annoying because experience gains from static content, ie. non-map, is already heavily penalized. You can not regain experience fast enough with currently available areas--maps should not be considered here because this is end-game not accessible or available to everybody and at all times.

Level 80+ is a time when you simply do not want to die. Experience penalty is completely insane in terms of hours required to grind back that 15% loss. Even if maps are taken into consideration, lvl66 and 67 maps are no longer providing more than 1 or 2% per full clear.

I dare to say the draconic escalation of penalty effect is not intended or desired by developers or at least not fully. I understand that reaching lvl100 should be hard or nigh impossible but such difficulty is not achieved by introducing experience penalty. The difficulty should come from the diminishing experience gains from low level content and amount of experience required to progress to next level.


I'm not against experience penalty as such, I'm against its current implementation as a flat % irregardless of players level achieved and content available.

In regards of a vote on forums: I do not have any statistics but general trend is that the vocal minority, those that complain or defend a game, often hardcore players and fans of the franchise, post on forums. Any such vote will be heavily biased and should not be taken by developers into consideration (unless the vote population is in thousands or it was officially supported and presented in game/on forums for a long time).

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Baron01 wrote:

Experience penalty is outdated and obsolete mechanic. It is poor design even if put down as legacy from Diablo 2. It does not make a game any more hardcore--you have hardcore league for that--nor it make the game more complex--as in opposite of dumbed down/easy.

LOL. I love posts like this, makes me glad Im not an idiot.

It is not poor design. By definition it is good design. It is a mechanic that was put in place to serve a specific purpose. If it is properly achieving the design goals, which it is, then by definition it would be well designed. Quite simply, you don't agree with the design decision, but it is not bad design.

^learn to play, xp penalty is fine, don't like it? Don't play... :) if you don't like hardcore gaming this game is not for you. This game designed to be more hardcore then most /)

People already stopped playing because of this (and other reasons like maps)
I hope GGG is really satisfied with the current community, because I don't see it growing after the first month, it's just keep shrinking.

But thanks for pointing out we should all just leave instead of giving feebacks in the "Beta Feeback" forum...

I wonder how much of the problems of the 15% exp loss in late game would be reduced if there was content to be able to reclaim that exp in a reasonable time, as I feel this is the biggest problem here...the time taken to regain the loss, not that there is a penalty for dying.

Could it be simply that high level players have no content of the correct level thus leading to hours/days spent running lower level maps for hardly any exp.

Maybe its a case of needing higher level content rather than reducing the loss.

Still, just a thought.

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kodr wrote:

People already stopped playing because of this (and other reasons like maps)
I hope GGG is really satisfied with the current community, because I don't see it growing after the first month, it's just keep shrinking.

But thanks for pointing out we should all just leave instead of giving feebacks in the "Beta Feeback" forum...

The same thing happens in every game......

"It is a mechanic that was put in place to serve a specific purpose. If it is properly achieving the design goals, which it is, then by definition it would be well designed"

That is one of the most flawed statements I've ever read. There are literally thousands of textbooks published about elegant design spanning every subject in which design is required. The evaluation of something being well designed has never been and will never be Machiavellian in nature.

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Scrynor wrote:

"It is a mechanic that was put in place to serve a specific purpose. If it is properly achieving the design goals, which it is, then by definition it would be well designed"

That is one of the most flawed statements I've ever read. There are literally thousands of textbooks published about elegant design spanning every subject in which design is required. The evaluation of something being well designed has never been and will never be Machiavellian in nature.

Well the evaluation of design has and always will be about achieving the goals set out for the system. If the system is achieving exactly what it was designed to achieve then by definition it is good design. Sorry if that went way over your head, but you don't have to try use big words you don't understand. Seriously... Machiavellian? What does that have to do with this? Was it used because you feel the XP loss on death itself is duplicitous? Or do you not know what that word means either?

The goal of the death penalty is to provide weight, or meaning to defensive stats and passives and prevent people that are frequently dying from achieving high ranks on the ladder. I will say that it is meeting this design goal quite well, and so by definition it is well designed. If you don't agree with the design goals themselves that is an entirely different issue, however I believe the penalty is very consistent with the design goals.

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I wonder how much of the problems of the 15% exp loss in late game would be reduced if there was content to be able to reclaim that exp in a reasonable time, as I feel this is the biggest problem here...the time taken to regain the loss, not that there is a penalty for dying.

I wholly agree with this characterization. When the game says "the penalty for your error is that you lose your last week of play time in terms of progress," the game is saying "quit." This is not the same thing as being against a sensible XP penalty.

--C