King of Bullshit: 10% death penalty

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Almost every rpg has an exp system, and more often than not there is an exp penalty associated with death.

Is that so? I don't recall D1 having one, D2 had one but you could earn half the lost XP back. D3 had nothing, D4 has nothing as far as i know, LE has nothing. I don't know about Grimdawn/Torch Light but i'd say "almost every rpg" is quite a bit of a stretch. POE has an XP penalty because it wants to be a hardcore version of D2, that's why it has a penalty AND one that's way more punishing than what the original had.

^The only reason these games DON'T have an exp penalty is because there is a centralized currency and item durability. D2's corpse retrieval system sucked worse than just the flat penalty. Grim Dawn is a copy of the D2 system. So even in your short list, at least 2 of the titles have an exp penalty :) Sure, you can retrieve some exp back by getting your body/grave but that is just a straight up gimmick...you don't get all the exp back so there is STILL a flat exp penalty, it just fakes you into thinking its okay by giving some back.

Durability loss would be the perfect penalty but it is impossible in the PoE design. And I bet depending on the amount people would be FAR MORE pissed if the cost of death is items in any way...Also, durability systems have their own issues as well: the cost to repair would have to be meaningful enough to deter death (d3 got this wrong, so death had essentially no meaning and the game was WAY too easy, D4 suffers this too), but if you aren't careful in a durability system, you can permanently lose your items by breaking them without currency to repair. You think 10% exp causes rage, imagine getting to that point and accidentally bricking your whole softcore character thanks to durability.

Regarding no penalty being anti-rpg...historically every rpg has SOME kind of death penalty. Without one, there would simply be no reason to have defenses in the game at all. No matter what that penalty is, there HAS to be a penalty. And it has to be significant enough that the game makes players WANT to stay alive. Some games do this better than others, some games have certain infrastructure in place that allow for greater exploration of death penalties.
Unfortunately, PoE somewhat pigeonholed itself with its novel currency system into taking item loss off the table as an option. One could argue that portals fulfill this role, which is true to a degree, but if they remove the exp penalty I think they need to revisit the number of portals we are given because its too generous if that were the death penalty.


It is incredibly telling that, if PoE had a system like D2/Grim Dawn and gave back a portion of the lost exp upon doing something after death...a lot of these complaints would go away. And yet, with just a teeny bit of thought you'd realize that...there would STILL be an exp penalty! People hate it in the moment of death, especially if your goal is pushing levels past 96, but in that way the exp penalty is serving its legitimate purpose. And doing it rather well.

Better to pay the cost of death in time rather than permanent character downgrades.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Regarding no penalty being anti-rpg...historically every rpg has SOME kind of death penalty. Without one, there would simply be no reason to have defenses in the game at all. No matter what that penalty is, there HAS to be a penalty. And it has to be significant enough that the game makes players WANT to stay alive. Some games do this better than others, some games have certain infrastructure in place that allow for greater exploration of death penalties.
Unfortunately, PoE somewhat pigeonholed itself with its novel currency system into taking item loss off the table as an option. One could argue that portals fulfill this role, which is true to a degree, but if they remove the exp penalty I think they need to revisit the number of portals we are given because its too generous if that were the death penalty.

I don't know about you but if there was no death penalty I'd still build for plenty of defense because I don't enjoy constantly dying. Are you saying you wouldn't?

Honestly if someone wants to play the game by dying five times on every map, why would I care? Sounds exhausting, but to each their own, it doesn't affect me in the least. What are we actually afraid of here?

Currently, the XP Penalty is very prohibitive at higher levels. It forces us to play the speed-meta 1-button nuke-the-screen builds.

Further, the developers are forced to allow such builds, because any measure of challenge where we risk death would be largely avoided by players.

If we want a challenging game, we have to quit pretending that some regressive penalty left over from Diablo 2 can substitute for it.

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Khalixxa wrote:

Currently, the XP Penalty is very prohibitive at higher levels.

If by "prohibitive" you mean, "i can't pick mediocre builds that don't have at least one defensive layer and it isn't my fault that i go 100% delirium with it", yeah, it is prohibitive.

1mill dps is so criminally easy to get now and will literally carry you to T16s in which you can do all your grinding, leaving a butt load of passives completely towards defense.

You also haven't done any of the pinnacle bosses, so that "challenging game" you're talking about is what? Candy Crush?

Losing xp on death in the way ggg has done it doesn't really work with rpg mechanics. At its core arpgs and rpgs in general want players to explore and push limits.

Poe has two death penalties. The limited portals and a huge xp loss. Xp gets much harder to get at around 92.

Death and failure in rpgs tend to have minor effects. Think like durability loss on weapons and armor. Some devs are harsher with this stuff than others, some aren't.

The xp penalty in poe removes several maps of kills at higher levels, has no lore reason. It exists to make max level a chase goal before the company really figured out the endgame, and it feels stupid. It keeps many people from playing the game longer. It is a large part of why the playerbase dwindles so quickly every league. They get to where they are fine with the grind and then recoil when the punishment gets too severe.

The penatly outweighs the fun they are having. This is why the gitgud arguments are bad. They encourages a kind of player hostile design that isn't fun.

On the other hand, fun hostile design usually has some signaling before bad things occur. It builds anticipation and suspense. Poe is really bad at this in general.

In fact arpgs in genetal aren't that player hostile for good reasons. Arpgs have a really tight reward and punishment curve that doesnt really allow for kneecap players to much.

The death penalty reminds me of ds rpgs where walking around actively harms the party. It just sucks.

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satanttin wrote:

lmao level 100 wasn't meant to be reached. also u don't need to be level 100 to do whatever in this game.

When it is included in the league challenges then it is most absolutely meant to be reached. What planet are you playing from???

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RightHandofGod wrote:

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satanttin wrote:

lmao level 100 wasn't meant to be reached. also u don't need to be level 100 to do whatever in this game.

When it is included in the league challenges then it is most absolutely meant to be reached. What planet are you playing from???

??? No it doesn't you pick ANOTHER objective if you can't do level 100

LOL

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RightHandofGod wrote:

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satanttin wrote:

lmao level 100 wasn't meant to be reached. also u don't need to be level 100 to do whatever in this game.

When it is included in the league challenges then it is most absolutely meant to be reached. What planet are you playing from???

I assume that satanttin is referring to the game as originally designed and prior to general release. GGG assumed that 100 would not or extremely rarely ever be reached. They were surprised by the tenacity and ability of dedicated players to reach 100. It was originally much harder because map levels did not go up nearly so high as they do now.

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Turtledove wrote:

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RightHandofGod wrote:

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satanttin wrote:

lmao level 100 wasn't meant to be reached. also u don't need to be level 100 to do whatever in this game.

When it is included in the league challenges then it is most absolutely meant to be reached. What planet are you playing from???

I assume that satanttin is referring to the game as originally designed and prior to general release. GGG assumed that 100 would not or extremely rarely ever be reached. They were surprised by the tenacity and ability of dedicated players to reach 100. It was originally much harder because map levels did not go up nearly so high as they do now.

ding ding ding we have a winner xd