Death penalty - a thorough suggestion

Well, you can use the Holy Logout Macro™, as many "hardcore" players do.

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dW2005 wrote:

Well, you can use the Holy Logout Macro™, as many "hardcore" players do.

Yup totally it is much safer on HC with logout macro then on softcore trade, that is where it is really hard unlike HC noobland.

Chris, go penalty 5%.

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Pow3rFr34K wrote:

That and GGG can then balance the trees / end-game content properly instead of it being challenging for players level 92 and somewhat of a steamroll for those level 100.

The game isn't that much easier because a player is level 100, 7 or 8 passive points won't carry you. By 90 you should already have all of the important nodes for your build, each additional point isn't as impactful as the previous. Most builds I've played use those additional points on Life or ES nodes, maybe grabbing one more jewel socket.

Often players reach level 100 because they are playing a powerful build, and/or they've acquired enough currency to dump piles of exalts on 5-way legion and pure chayula runs. Which generally means they also have much better gear than someone stuck at 92. They reached 100 because they are stronger more so than they are stronger for reaching 100.

You can do it for cheaper, though also much slower, through running safe maps. But this is still making the conscious decision to invest time/resources into leveling over currency or other goals.

As things stand, level 100 isn't a functional goal, it's something you do only for the prestige. It is not expected that every player will be capable of reaching it.

Removing the death penalty fundamentally changes how people view max level, It becomes an inevitability. People feel entitled to it, and somewhat counterintuitively this can make the grind feel like even more of a chore. Especially if you further decrease EXP rates and "balance the game around it". The majority of players still wouldn't hit level 100 with current rates if the penalty was removed.

If your highest character is 95, you're approaching 70% of the way to 100 in raw experience value. But that doesn't account for the increasing penalties as you continue to level, both in monster level difference and the additional penalties added in 3.1. In total, 95 is closer to 15% of the way to 100, And you propose we make that grind even longer and mandatory?

It would massively discourage players from rolling multiple characters in a league.

Dying and losing experience feels bad because there are things in the game that can kill you unexpectedly. If we were to fix random one-shots, poor visibility in combat, and spikes in difficulty like aura stacking mobs and soul eater. The penalty would feel much less punishing. But because you can run a tier of maps that is 99% safe for your character and have your progress reset by the 1% of actually dangerous mechanics showing up based on RNG, you really feel it.

That would just encourage glass cannons even more on softcore.

It would be better if people invested a bit less in damage, two shotting instead one shotting a boss is fine to and invest that into defense instead so you don't fall over when a mob gently sneezes in your general direction.

Even if they where to remove the XP penalty we won't see that many more lvl 100's because the amount of XP you lost while playing won't even be 1% of the XP required to go from lvl 99 to 100.

Honestly, the game lets you level to 100 but its clearly not designed for it as it takes more than double the XP from all other lives combined to go from 99 to 100.

+ 100, OP, well said.

I agree with all this, but now we have Flawless Breachstones, so I guess not this league.
I think you already know what everyone will do - breach rotations.

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BINARYGOD wrote:

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vmt80 wrote:

Ah, the innocence of the phase when you still think your reasoning, consumer opinion and arguments might matter.

Ah the age of act of not actually reading a post you reply to - like in this case, where the person states this will not even be read by GGG, and even calls out some of the typical replies from the GGG faithul.

Yeah, there's no need for them to read it. It's enough their outsourced minion department at forums read them and judge any and all suggestions regarding xp penalties as bad.

As you said, we're not even in the boss room. Isn't it a sad state of affairs. Oh well, back to playing other games. Cya!

I will try to address as many points brought up by people.

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Lets give whole HC community a finger because i suck and keep dying.... No ty.

This is a point which I did not consider while writing it up. An easy fix is to either not increase the EXP required to reach 100 at all or to do it only for softcore. It was a proposed suggestion which, looking back at it, artificially increases the time required to reach max level which was never my goal to begin with. I do not want to make it explicitly harder for HC characters to reach 100 and this was clearly a suggestion which wasn't thoroughly thought out. Thank you for bringing it up.

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A wall of text just to say" i do not want to play better or make a better build, please game adapt to my laziness"

I have played many builds which were "meta" and which allowed me to push further and further, this has nothing to do with laziness. The proposed changes do absolutely nothing to ensure glass cannon builds are the new meta (I love Cyclone Slayer and Glad, neither of which are glass cannon to begin with). This doesn't address anything written and is just a cheap attack at what I've written.

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For those who specialize in delve, They don't care about defense or dying, because at 0% experience they lose nothing in SC.

And why does this matter? Saying they lose nothing is disingenuous since you use sulphite in order to go further. They're already addressing Delve in 3.16, who's to say they can't address it further in the upcoming patches? Just because Delve exists doesn't mean that the rest of the game should be balanced around endless EXP (not true) in Delve. If anything, Delve should be rebalanced so that it isn't a source of infinite exp, not the other way around.

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In fact GGG should change the XP penalty in a way you lose your last skill point if you are at 0% XP to keep the tension of the fear of dying.

Ah, yes, let's add even more frustration towards this. When this happens, if you die and are at 0% exp, you'd just go anywhere, kill 1 mob and you are no longer 0% exp. If you're in a boss fight, you'll just say "screw it" and open a map where you'll go above 0% exp. This change will, at best, do nothing, and at worst, it would cause a lot more frustration. While you and a handful of players might enjoy this, how many players would actually quit the game? And when that happens, I'm pretty sure you won't be paying the salaries of everyone in GGG from your own back pocket, would you?

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Removing the death penalty fundamentally changes how people view max level, It becomes an inevitability. People feel entitled to it, and somewhat counterintuitively this can make the grind feel like even more of a chore. Especially if you further decrease EXP rates and "balance the game around it". The majority of players still wouldn't hit level 100 with current rates if the penalty was removed.

Overall a good post which made me reconsider increasing the exp required to reach 100, both for HC and for softcore. I want to address only this part which brings up a good point - majority of players still wouldn't hit 100 with current rates if penalty was removed. This is absolutely true and, as mentioned in the beginning and now, increasing the exp from 90 to 100 is going to be counterproductive to the end goal. Because of this, I agree that the total exp shouldn't be increased, especially with all of the limitations on how you attain exp past level 95.

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That would just encourage glass cannons even more on softcore.

If the only way for you to get exp at high levels is doing high maps, how does it encourage it? Doesn't it do the exact opposite? You go in a t16 map, get 1 shot by regular mobs, repeat a couple of times, realize "hmm, maybe I need to invest into defenses?" and voalá - that person is now using orbs of regret to ensure they don't get 1 tapped. People keep saying that glass cannons will reign supreme but that's just not the case. Also, what is the issue with a glass cannon being a viable build? One where you need to dodge literally everything or you die? Oh, wait, this still happens to certain "tanky" builds at high maps / bosses currently. Unless you giga invested into a character, I am certain you can't just facetank everything in the vicinity.

I may edit the original post with the points brought up by people and will give a bit shortened answers as it is already a pretty long post. I truly appreciate people giving constructed feedback, especially the one addressing HC being made harder for no reason. I admit that I overlooked it and you are right - they shouldn't be discouraged to aim for 100 due to an exp increase. In fact, writing this down is making me want to edit the OG post even more.

I truly read all feedback because, as I mentioned earlier, I truly love playing the game but it feels discouraging and, in a way, empty, to accept that "95 is my limit" or, even worse, 92 or lower. I understand why, with the current way of leveling, getting to 100 is considered "prestige", although, when you break it down, it is nothing more than a boring, soulless grind. My question is simple - why should it be? Wouldn't it be better if you being "stuck" at 95 is because you truly are incapable of doing the harder content, rather than you not submitting yourself to do a tedious grind? The proposed changes ensure that if you're stuck at a certain level range, it isn't because you cba with playing "safe" and you don't want to mindlessly grind. No. If you are stuck at 95, that is because you do not wish to make your character capable of doing high tier maps.

Why are those changes needed tho?

Instead of being stuck at lvl95, youd then be stuck at lvl100.
What exactly is the difference aside from the obvious 5 skillpoints?

You did nothing to deserve it, so there wont be any sense of accomplishment.
It would be the exact same grind as it is right now, just idiotproof and thus removing the accomplishment.