Exp Loss is freaking unbalanced

"

deteego wrote:

Death was as irrelevant in D2 as it was in D3. I have played both games.

Death was arguably worse in D3 in later levels due to elite mob packs. There is a reason why many ex D2 players complained about this in D3 when it came out (the forums were flooded with this). In D3, when you died you lost gold and time, the time stacked continuously. This didn't happen in D2 at all.

Zerging in D2 was easily possible up until the really late levels

wow. death in D3? D2 players didn't complain about a fucking slap on the wrist. D2 players complained about the fact that they level capped us at 60 with no reason to continue playing and the fact that death had absolutely zero meaning on softcore. you may have played d2 for a few hours but you were clearly not a d2 player.

not to mention the resist rating system that forces resist stacking on every piece or its trash. the horrible main stat system that forces main stat on every piece as well. did i mention vit? Did i mention the fact that there was no player involvement in character build? How about the fact that a character is simply the sum of his gear with no actual power? These are things D2 players complained about. Not the harshness of a death penalty.

and i read the god damn forums, a bunch of whiny kids that cant stop dieing. These were not d2 players.

"

thepmrc wrote:

wow. death in D3? D2 players didn't complain about a fucking slap on the wrist. D2 players complained about the fact that they level capped us at 60 with no reason to continue playing and the fact that death had absolutely zero meaning on softcore. you may have played d2 for a few hours but you were clearly not a d2 player.

You clearly did not read the forums on D3.

There were as many complaints about the level cap as there was about the death penalty, which is why both things were adjusted

The death penalty was mainly complained about in context of the massive steep difficulty jump from hell to inferno (as I said before, having a big death penalty isn't bad if dying happens incredibly rarely)

"

thepmrc wrote:

not to mention the resist rating system that forces resist stacking on every piece or its trash. the horrible main stat system that forces main stat on every piece as well. did i mention vit? Did i mention the fact that there was no player involvement in character build? How about the fact that a character is simply the sum of his gear with no actual power? These are things D2 players complained about. Not the harshness of a death penalty.

This is irrelevant to what we are talking about. If you are going to bash D3, do it somewhere else

And some of those things hold true for PoE as well. With PoE you are pretty much forced to resistance stack as well, with it being on many gear pieces, at least when you start hitting 60+ you definitely have to look into it (there is also chaos res as well). In PoE you also have to stack health, even if you are a ranged character using a bow. The only real exception to this is summoner

At least in D3 only the "tanks" stacked health, and the DPS would stack DPS, which kinda makes sense. At least everything in D3 isn't a tank

"

thepmrc wrote:

and i read the god damn forums, a bunch of whiny kids that cant stop dieing. These were not d2 players.

You seriously underestimate how many people played D2

Almost all of the original D3 players were D2 players. D2 had ridiculously large massive casual fan base

iirc, D3 set the record for the largest preorders/release day sales for any PC game in history. Almost all of those sales were from ex D2 players

Those are the same people that complained on the forums regarding death penalty, as well as other things. A lot of those complaints either referenced things in D2 and/or the players themselves stated they played D2

In other words, they were ex D2 players

"

deteego wrote:

Except you are wrong because you are ignoring time investment

The amount of time required to retrieve the gold lost in dying in those games took a 10 minutes of your time, when you started getting to late game it was even in a few minutes.

Unless you were playing hellfire (a version I've never played) then you must be exaggerating. I haven't played the game in a long time but I remember it taking a bit longer to get that much gold. As I have said before the penalty wasn't horrible but it did matter. Everything else aside the chance at permanently losing all of your gear was worse than anything else. I would much rather have PoE's death penalty (which I still don't think is that bad considering its supposed to be very hard to get to the level cap).

"

deteego wrote:

Also false (unless you are doing the OP builds, stated earlier). There are so many mechanics in this game (shock,armor reduction,crits, being forced to stack health etc etc) that makes it much easier to die in this game. This is already pretty much established as fact, and many people say the same

You think its a fact that there are players who rarely die? Well your just wrong. My templar isn't a cookie cutter and he rarely dies.

"

deteego wrote:

Yes this happened early game, once you got into midgame, gold was irrelevant.

Now I am seriously questioning how much D1 your really played. The examples I gave you are NOT from early to mid game. They are from LATE game. Some of the best items in the game came from wirt or griswald. You did know that right?

"

deteego wrote:

How?

All of the content up until the point you reached would have already been dead. In fact, the only game that broke this is PoE, where if you take too long/forget to portal in an earlier level of something like a dungeon, the mobs would have respawned (taking you longer to get the original point)

You could avoid anything up until the point you died but its definitely plausible that multiple tough enemies killed you (hence why you died), and now your naked and much weaker. Also, you can't just go up and click a body. You have to manually click each item and then transfer them from your inventory back onto your character.

"

deteego wrote:

The only thing you had to do, was take the same path you took earlier to get to that spot (which was really easy because you already killed the mobs up until that point, you did kill the things in D1 as you were supposed to, right?).

Actually when your an OP wizard farming hell it was common to just quickly teleport all over the level so sometimes you might not have a set path to follow if you died.

"

deteego wrote:

The only concern was if the mobs were around at the specific location of the corpse, in which case you just ran around in a circle (you don't fight/tank them) and then pick up your corpse

There was no running in D1. You moved slow unless you were teleporting and teleporting consumes mana which you have much less of because your naked. You can't always just walk in a circle. In hell there were wizards spamming charged bolt. You could easily get killed by something.

"

deteego wrote:

Death was as irrelevant in D2 as it was in D3. I have played both games.

Good then you know how stupid it is to not have a death penalty.

"

deteego wrote:

Death was arguably worse in D3 in later levels due to elite mob packs. There is a reason why many ex D2 players complained about this in D3 when it came out (the forums were flooded with this). In D3, when you died you lost gold and time, the time stacked continuously. This didn't happen in D2 at all.

I was refering to D3 before they increased the penalty on gold. It was zerg rush city.

"

iamstryker wrote:

Now I am seriously questioning how much D1 your really played. The examples I gave you are NOT from early to mid game. They are from LATE game. Some of the best items in the game came from wirt or griswald. You did know that right?

I don't remember D1 that much because I played it when I was like 13.

I do remember that I was a terrible gamer back then, and I made it to hell without it being "difficult", in context of anything

In fact, I am pretty sure if you played D1 right now, you would find it ridiculously easy. Most people of this gaming generation played that game when they were really young, when they weren't good gamers, and hence thats why they found it hard

"

iamstryker wrote:

You could avoid anything up until the point you died but its definitely plausible that multiple tough enemies killed you (hence why you died), and now your naked and much weaker. Also, you can't just go up and click a body. You have to manually click each item and then transfer them from your inventory back onto your character.

Which is why you walked around in circles while picking up your gear........

That wasn't hard at all

"

iamstryker wrote:

There was no running in D1. You moved slow unless you were teleporting and teleporting consumes mana which you have much less of because your naked. You can't always just walk in a circle. In hell there were wizards spamming charged bolt. You could easily get killed by something.

Combined with pots, I remember doing it perfectly fine, or at least long enough so I managed to pick up my gear. Then again, I barely died in that game. I definitely don't remember it being that much of an issue

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Death was as irrelevant in D2 as it was in D3. I have played both games.

Good then you know how stupid it is to not have a death penalty.

And know you know how stupid it is when people say that this game having a harsh death penalty is fine because D2 had it

D1's death penalty was as harsh as D2's in any case

"

iamstryker wrote:

I was refering to D3 before they increased the penalty on gold. It was zerg rush city.

Than according to you, every aRPG had zerging, lolz

Look, irrespective of this, people are saying that this games death penalty is justified because D2 had the same penalty. This is outright false. Its also outright false when compared to any other aRPG of date. That is my point. Every other aRPG (including D1, in context) had a much more lenient death penalty and/or you died less often

Also note that PoE you can also zerg, its commonly done just after you gain a level (people would either zerg boss fights, or difficult levels to get to waypoints, or the hard levels before boss fights).

PoE has as much "zerging" as D3, its just done right after you gain a level

In fact, due to the stark extreme difference in exp loss, players are more likely to zerg in PoE just after they gain a level, because they know how large the death penalty is, and its also one of the reasons people farm boring areas like fellshrine all the time to gain exp, because its the areas where you are least likely to die (instead of just progressing normally through content as you should).

This is one of the few aRPG's where I saw the term "exp farming" being thrown around both in general chat and in online parties on the board

"

deteego wrote:

In fact, I am pretty sure if you played D1 right now, you would find it ridiculously easy. Most people of this gaming generation played that game when they were really young, when they weren't good gamers, and hence thats why they found it hard

I never said it was hard. I said that it had a death penalty that mattered. Just like this game needs a death penalty that matters.

"

deteego wrote:

That wasn't hard at all

Which doesn't always work which was my point.

"

deteego wrote:

And know you know how stupid it is when people say that this game having a harsh death penalty is fine because D2 had it

D2 had exp loss. I don't care if it was as harsh as this game or not. My whole point in this entire discussion is not that this game has a perfect death penalty. Its that this game needs a death penalty that matters.

"

deteego wrote:

D1's death penalty was as harsh as D2's in any case

If thats the case then D2's death penalty sounds like it was just fine. Again, I personally prefer PoE's experience loss over D1's naked loot run and chance at losing loot permanently.

"

deteego wrote:

Than according to you, every aRPG had zerging, lolz

Apparently many of them do and I find that to be pretty dumb. Deaths should matter and shouldn't be exploited IMO.

"

deteego wrote:

Look, irrespective of this, people are saying that this games death penalty is justified because D2 had the same penalty. This is outright false. Its also outright false when compared to any other aRPG of date. That is my point. Every other aRPG (including D1, in context) had a much more lenient death penalty and/or you died less often

Thats probably true but I personally don't care. I'm an adult now and I don't mind the game I am playing to be difficult. If GGG wants to tweak the death penalty then thats great. I just want them to keep it high enough that it still matters. Heck it doesn't matter at all in normal or cruel.

"

deteego wrote:

Also note that PoE you can also zerg, its commonly done just after you gain a level (people would either zerg boss fights, or difficult levels to get to waypoints, or the hard levels before boss fights).

That is true and if GGG wants to find a way to prevent that then I am all for it. At least you can only do that for a short period of time, especially when your a high level.

"

deteego wrote:

PoE has as much "zerging" as D3, its just done right after you gain a level

Not even comparable to early D3 where people zerged to complete the most difficult part of the game, the biggest achievement available. If your a high level in PoE you only zerg a little before continuing on and once you start gaining exp you can't even think about doing it again until you have completed that level which as we all know takes a bit to do.

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

In fact, I am pretty sure if you played D1 right now, you would find it ridiculously easy. Most people of this gaming generation played that game when they were really young, when they weren't good gamers, and hence thats why they found it hard

I never said it was hard. I said that it had a death penalty that mattered. Just like this game needs a death penalty that matters.

Which it doesn't in some cases, hence why people zerg in PoE just after gaining a level

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

That wasn't hard at all

Which doesn't always work which was my point.

And my point is that it happened so rarely, it was irrelevant, and it worked most of the time, enough so that dying was (generally) irrelevant in D1

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

And know you know how stupid it is when people say that this game having a harsh death penalty is fine because D2 had it

D2 had exp loss. I don't care if it was as harsh as this game or not. My whole point in this entire discussion is not that this game has a perfect death penalty. Its that this game needs a death penalty that matters.

Uh, it matters a lot

If you have a death penalty thats too low, its pointless. If you have it too high, it creates numerous other problems. PoE is a combination of the worst in both extremes, its pointless when you gain a level, its too harsh when you dont

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

D1's death penalty was as harsh as D2's in any case

If thats the case then D2's death penalty sounds like it was just fine. Again, I personally prefer PoE's experience loss over D1's naked loot run and chance at losing loot permanently.

This is in context of D1's death penalty being easy

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Than according to you, every aRPG had zerging, lolz

Apparently many of them do and I find that to be pretty dumb. Deaths should matter and shouldn't be exploited IMO.

PoE is one of them

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Look, irrespective of this, people are saying that this games death penalty is justified because D2 had the same penalty. This is outright false. Its also outright false when compared to any other aRPG of date. That is my point. Every other aRPG (including D1, in context) had a much more lenient death penalty and/or you died less often

Thats probably true but I personally don't care. I'm an adult now and I don't mind the game I am playing to be difficult. If GGG wants to tweak the death penalty then thats great. I just want them to keep it high enough that it still matters. Heck it doesn't matter at all in normal or cruel.

I am not for removing the death penalty, I think the current one is ridiculously stupid because its too harsh/lopsided.

Its meaningless when you gain a level, when you don't gain a level its too strong. Its also very lopsided in rewarding certain builds over others, among other things

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Also note that PoE you can also zerg, its commonly done just after you gain a level (people would either zerg boss fights, or difficult levels to get to waypoints, or the hard levels before boss fights).

That is true and if GGG wants to find a way to prevent that then I am all for it. At least you can only do that for a short period of time, especially when your a high level.

Well then exp loss, as a penalty needs to be removed and replaced with something else

"

iamstryker wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

PoE has as much "zerging" as D3, its just done right after you gain a level

Not even comparable to early D3 where people zerged to complete the most difficult part of the game, the biggest achievement available. If your a high level in PoE you only zerg a little before continuing on and once you start gaining exp you can't even think about doing it again until you have completed that level which as we all know takes a bit to do.

Personal experience, just as prelevant, I would argue its worse in some cases

In D3, it happened more often, but it was less of a zerg. You died occasionaly and continued. This was up until Inferno (1.03 pre era) at which point zerging was impossible if you didn't have the gear. You died too often, and then elite mob packs (which is most commonly what caused the deaths) would reset

In PoE, I see people doing things like piety, dying 5+ times in a row with portals for zerging. Even D3 wasn't this bad when it came to boss fights, since your gear progressively degraded which cost you money to repair if you died something like 5+ times in a row. If your entire group died, you would have to redo the fight

I mean pretty much, in act3, the whole point of group fighting against things like Piety was zerging. It wasn't uncommon at all for people to exp farm an area like docks, and just after they gain a level, they would zerg continously (dying more than 5 times in a row) as a group, to finish off piety

Only TL was as bad in this area

You also have to remember that Zerging is also a psychological thing. If people see the death penalty as too harsh (which they do, and which it is) which also has some massive gaping hole (which it does), they will abuse that. People are zerging so much in PoE (when they gain a level) because of the fact that the death penalty is so harsh

If the only argument about whether the death penalty should be adjusted or kept the same is comparing the death penalty against precedents set by others, then the argument is not convincing.

Following precedent is a nice support for a position, but it is not itself a position.

And for the record, D1 death penalty was practically HC mode if you didn't use backups. For later ARPGs it was easy to recover your corpse (unless the thing that killed you had move speed bonus or some reason you couldn't herd it), but not so in D1. Now the discussion about how POE's death penalty compares to D1 will hopefully end.

"

PolarisOrbit wrote:

If the only argument about whether the death penalty should be adjusted or kept the same is comparing the death penalty against precedents set by others, then the argument is not convincing.

Following precedent is a nice support for a position, but it is not itself a position.

Agreed

"

PolarisOrbit wrote:

And for the record, D1 death penalty was practically HC mode if you didn't use backups. For later ARPGs it was easy to recover your corpse (unless the thing that killed you had move speed bonus or some reason you couldn't herd it), but not so in D1. Now the discussion about how POE's death penalty compares to D1 will hopefully end.

I think comparing this game to D1 is pretty much irrelevant anyways, since D1 was a single player game that was quite different to PoE. In fact the only things that are comparable in the game is that they are aRPGS's

At the end of the day, the current death penalty is stupid. It doesn't prevent zerging (I personally see as much zerging in PoE as I did in D3) and its so harsh that its having a negative impact in the game (in context of the other things in PoE)

"

deteego wrote:

And my point is that it happened so rarely, it was irrelevant, and it worked most of the time, enough so that dying was (generally) irrelevant in D1

I died rarely with my wizard as well but that doesn't eliminate the idea that dieing was still something to be avoided. There was no exploting deaths to get ahead.

"

deteego wrote:

If you have a death penalty thats too low, its pointless. If you have it too high, it creates numerous other problems. PoE is a combination of the worst in both extremes, its pointless when you gain a level, its too harsh when you dont

I'm not going to argue about whether or not its too harsh. I'll just say that I am fine with it and leave it at that.

"

deteego wrote:

Its meaningless when you gain a level

How is it meaningless when you gain a level? The death penalty kept you playing the game safe.

"

deteego wrote:

Well then exp loss, as a penalty needs to be removed and replaced with something else

Then go ahead and suggest something else. I haven't read very many good ideas as an alternative.

"

deteego wrote:

In D3, it happened more often, but it was less of a zerg. You died occasionaly and continued. This was up until Inferno (1.03 pre era) at which point zerging was impossible if you didn't have the gear. You died too often, and then elite mob packs (which is most commonly what caused the deaths) would reset

I understand what your saying but it did still happen and its because of the lack of a death penalty.

"

deteego wrote:

You also have to remember that Zerging is also a psychological thing. If people see the death penalty as too harsh (which they do, and which it is) which also has some massive gaping hole (which it does), they will abuse that. People are zerging so much in PoE (when they gain a level) because of the fact that the death penalty is so harsh

And I am behind doing something about that as well. However I still say its not that bad because you can't zerg to gain levels. People do it a little to complete a goal and then they move on. Death is still avoided the vast majority of the time.

Edit: The whole D1 thing started because someone posted that death penalties came from MMO's and I responded that Diablo games did have death penalties. Which they did.

"

iamstryker wrote:

And I am behind doing something about that as well. However I still say its not that bad because you can't zerg to gain levels. People do it a little to complete a goal and then they move on. Death is still avoided the vast majority of the time.

It is just as bad because there are safe areas to level.

What matters about zerging is how often it happens and how strong it is, not where and when it happens. The fact that people can't zerg to gain levels is irrelevant, because they just farm safe areas to gain levels and zerg really really really badly in other areas (boss fights). In totality, the zerging is the same, which is the real problem. There is no penalty to dying constantly in PoE when you gain a level, there is in D3, there is a massive gold sink through repairing your gear all the time, and the stacking time penalty. Not only that, but in D3 you can't port when you are about to die, and you can't ALT F4 to avoid death

The zerging overall is just as bad as D3. If PoE didn't have "safe" farming zones like docks, ledge and fellshrine it might be another story, but that isn't the case

EDIT: as far as I am aware, the stacking timer penalty in D3 was removed