Remove the goddamn XP Penalty! (in standard)

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dW2005 wrote:

Still, leveling via syndicate is a bad idea if you ask me, even if you use smart and interactive summoner of sorts.

You can run almost nonstop hideouts thanks to the Atlas passives and even the syndicate members themselves seem to give a lot of xp. It's by far the most xp / hour for me. (about twice as much than running regular T16 maps or depth ~180 delve)

Really, it's so much xp that I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed... xD

I would have stopped at 97 or 98 and never even attempted to go for 100 if I didn't realise how good syndicate was for levelling.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

No, the time constraint alone does not void the challenge. But removing the death penalty certainly does. I have had characters get stuck in low and mid tier maps. Additional time investment without changing the characters and improving my way of playing them would never have let me level them to 100.

I was under the assumption that every players initial goal is to complete the Atlas. Which means you need to build a character that can comfortably run T16. Any character that can run T16s can easily level to 100. That's why I believe that without a time constraint, it's not an achievement anymore.

Apparently, max level should be close to impossible for characters stuck in low tier maps. But I believe the regular xp penalty takes care of that.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

Spoiler

There is a difference between playing a glass cannon at 95, playing a glass cannon after reaching level 100, and playing a glass cannon well enough to reach 100.

You are asserting that everyone should reach level 100 with glass cannons regardless of their abilities to be able to compete economically. I do not see why the effort to reach 100 (either in adjusting the build, grinding less dangerous content, or becoming good enough to survive regardless) needs to be removed before granting the economic reward.

Incidentally, I enjoy playing glass cannons and seeing my health flicker from time to time rather than feeling invincible. This is why I play Softcore. I do not mind being locked from progressing in levels due to my lack of compromise however.

I have not played with Cast on Death - Portal yet, but I know people who do. And I do occasionally manually place portals "just in case" to avoid long walks.

Oh, I didn't mean glass cannons should easily reach 100. I phrased that poorly. I meant, glass cannons are already popular and people who play them are fine with only reaching lvl ~95. Cause the final skill points barely add any power anyway.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

Simply put, levelups are rewards for playing well and safely for long consecutive amounts of time. I think that this disagreement in perception is one of the fundamental sources of the argument over the exp penalty in the first place.

I do not think that the rewards need to be shifted, though I agree that it could be communicated better. How to communicate it better is a harder question to answer.

See, these are my two biggest issue with the xp penalty:

1) Level ups aren't really perceived as a "reward" are they? In pretty much any modern RPG / MMO whatsoever, you usually rush to max lvl just to get it out of the way and then the real game starts. I feel like other RPGs use their max lvl to mark the endpoint of the "tutorial".

This is further amplified by the tiny return in power you get from those final skill points. I don't need to get to 100, I just want to do it cause otherwise my character feels incomplete. But those final skill points are hardly rewarding.

It's like maxing out your main stats in Souls games. You hardly get any benefit from leveling your stats past 40/50 but getting all your main stats to 99 just feels good.

2) "Playing well and safely for long consecutive amounts of time"

This is the real killer. It essentially reads "You can't play the game if you want to level and as soon as you started leveling you cannot go back or take any breaks at all".

If we could get the option to "freeze" xp (no gain, no loss including gem xp) I'd be fine with the xp penalty. Cause then at least I could take a break from the mindless grind and go kill some bosses or do some simulacrums. Throw in a bunch of juiced maps. Just anything that mixes up the monotonous grind.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

Hypothetically, if EXP was hidden and only levelups were visible, people would be less frustrated with visibly losing the EXP they spent hours to accumulate, but on the other hand, never leveling up without any indication of why could be similarly frustrating. It is my impression that not even knowing why they are stuck (as in will no longer level up rather than why they keep dying) would lead more players to quit the game entirely.

Haha, funny you bring this one up!

I actually wish there was an option to disable the xp bar at the bottom. It would help OCD players like me to be like "Yep, this is my max level, not gonna bother anymore". But constantly seeing that stupid little bar moving up and down... Yeah, I would love an option to turn it off ^^

But apparently it would be an awful decision to have it turned off by default for the reasons you mentioned.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

Spoiler

I think that communicating to the player that "something is wrong" about repeated deaths is important (regardless of whether those repeated deaths are frequent enough to not level to 90 or just barely frequent enough to not progress from 99 to 100).

The one thing the game almost never does is give advice on how to actually do something right after it tells you that you are doing something wrong. This leads to a high degree of freedom along the lines of "you can do anything and we will not tell you what to do or suggest to go in either direction - play as you like".

On the other hand, giving struggling players some pointers on what to improve or whether they should consider running less dangerous content if they wish to progress their character further first might alleviate the feeling of being helplessly subjected to a penalty they perceive as arbitrary.

It has been a long time since I have played it, but an example of a game that decently communicates these things is Pokémon. You are advised to train your Pokémon and select the appropriate types before battling the gym leaders to actually progress your story.

PoE is no different in the requirements it asks from a player (though mostly in asking for the required defence, whereas all methods of offence lead to similar results), and grinding non-dangerous maps before attempting a boss fight in order to reach an appropriate level first is a regular approach. The main difference is that PoE does not tell you any of this. But in guides created by players you might be advised on what content to run and what defences to prioritise against certain bosses.

I don't think this is a big issue per se. If you keep dying, build defense. If enemies feel too tanky (most notably on bosses), build more offense.

The big issue here is ingame transparency and lack of proper tooltips. PoB should be included in the client. It's pretty much impossible to tweak your character without it.

When I first got stuck in yellow maps because of a lack of defense here is what happened:

1) Hm, I'm squishy, let's get more hp.
2) Still squishy, maybe let's get some more armor.
3) Ok, that helped a bit but I'm still taking massive bursts of damage...
4) checking all defensive stats to see if one sticks out as very low - oh chaos res, well, let's get some chaos res.

It's pretty much a guessing game all the time. And btw. just installing PoB doubled my damage without sacrificing any defense at all.

And then there are some layers of defense that I still don't understand. Like, when I found Rumis Concoction and my character instantly went from "Uh, still kinda squishy" to "Lol, I can face tank everything!". Or speccing into Zealoth's Oath (before I had Geofris) despite only having like 800 ES; it was a massive boost to my survivability.

Some interactions are just weird for a new player and I really hope PoE 2 provides vastly improved tooltips. Eventhough I have a feel that we will be stuck with PoB forever; the game is probably just way too complex to condense all the information into some easy to read stat screen.

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BabyChaos wrote:

Really, it's so much xp that I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed... xD

I would have stopped at 97 or 98 and never even attempted to go for 100 if I didn't realise how good syndicate was for levelling.

What i meant, intervention WILL fuck you up at some point as they like to spawn in the middle of the biggest possible clusterfuck, like a breach with beyond and harbinger on top of it. Depends on the members and map mods of course, and feels more like it when you don't have that herd of minions around you, but nevertheless, say back in blight league it was one of the few things that broken zombomancer of mine occasionally died to, hehe.

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dW2005 wrote:

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BabyChaos wrote:

Spoiler

Really, it's so much xp that I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed... xD

I would have stopped at 97 or 98 and never even attempted to go for 100 if I didn't realise how good syndicate was for levelling.

Spoiler

What i meant, intervention WILL fuck you up at some point as they like to spawn in the middle of the biggest possible clusterfuck, like a breach with beyond and harbinger on top of it. Depends on the members and map mods of course, and feels more like it when you don't have that herd of minions around you, but nevertheless, say back in blight league it was one of the few things that broken zombomancer of mine occasionally died to, hehe.

Oh, for sure! Definitely wouldn't recommend it for Alch Go levelling. But I'm basically running white maps (just alterate and roll until there's not even a single damage modifier), so there's really no risk involved.

Even the harbinger king + intervention situation happened multiple times to me and it usually worked just fine. Maybe a small hiccup or slight FPS drop but not this massive FPS drop described in the OP. Unlucky I guess... :(

Got another idea, Standard players should have free respect each time they start the game.



Also for standard player why not disabling the AI of monsters so they don t move at all so free XP and nice loot explosion in safe environment!

Sad to say, I can see that those discussions are a lost cause.
Everytime a case is being made against experience penalty, the penalty defenders (I generally try to avoid putting people in boxes, but just for the sake of argument let's use that term) come in and instead of actually making points and raising counter-arguments they usually go off-track and dodge the arguments and instead go about critisising someones' build - like it had anything directly to do with the issue itself - or repeatedly throwing pointless statements that go along the line of "just get good" or "just stop dying". Of course, I'm not gonna pretend that unreasonable or emotion-based arguments don't happen on both sides, but people making the case against the exp penalty generally bring good arguments in context of game design, game genre, game-related psychology, playerbase, playability and enjoyment, and those arguments just hit the wall or are being completely dodged instead of being met with actual reasonable discussion or counterpoints (if you wondered why btw - because there are none).
I can count on fingers of one hand the responses that actually tried to make a point, and those refer to sense and meaning of accomplishment and necessity for the game to be hardcore and punishing.
Which is strange to me. What follows is my personal theory and it's not directed to anybody personally, so I won't swear by it, by I believe that people who come from that point lack the chalenges/struggles in real life. I mean, if you have a job, family, other duties and obligations, when you reach for a video game you generally want to spend some good time. Sure, chalenge is great and usually required, but there's a difference between chalenge and something that gives you sense of wasted time, of being cheated, that becomes a hardcore grind and more like another chore. I think that if you have a life that is somewhat going somewhere, it gives you enough of that. If you don't - you project that onto a video game. Like most people who play video games I believe - I'd like enjoyment and sense of good-spent time from a game, among other things. If that makes me casual - then so be it.
But hey - you can enjoy being righteous in a sense that GGG won't change that mechanic, because after all what they care about is their game, and not their players.
I'm done.

I'm sorry but it's hard to take people seriously when they would rather waste time writing a phd thesis on removing xp penalty than just improving at the game.

Please stop trying to remove part of the game. If you don't like it, there are many others games you could be playing. That's how gaming works. Different games, different players. POE is POE, nothing more, nothing less.

well i repeat if u dont have fun in the process of leveling poe is not a game for you stop find excuses and try change the game so u can start like it

Balcyn, the responses made me laugh. ;-)
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GGG loves their level 100 chase goal too much to change the death penalty. At least that is my guess. People that have reached that goal, at least many, would likely feel "cheated" if the XP penalty was changed to something else. I think XP penalty hurts the games retention more than it helps but all we can do is state our opinion. That question should be at the heart of the debate within GGG but the truth is that there probably is no debate.

An important part to remember is that there are many goals one can set for oneself in this game. It is a real strength of POE.