10% xp penalty is far too frustrating

Death XP penalty is good for the game.

Sadly, people right now can buy their way to lvl 100 too easily. Stuff started to get out of control during Betrayal league with the intruduction of pure breachstones. During that only league, there was more lvl 100 characters than in all previous leagues combined.

I'd love to see stuff such as 5-ways and pure breachstones removed from the game soon, or nerfed in such a way that they're only useful to farm specific uniques.

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Kulze wrote:

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Xzorn wrote:

There needs to be a penalty for making mistakes. That's just how good game design works.

It was before people knew how to do it differently.

There's basically 2 approaches for that:

-Punish a player for messing up.
-Reward a player for succeeding.

The dev's choice is which one to pick there. Currently we're at the first.

Both have ups and downs, the downs of the system we have is that it punishes the people who aren't good players. It pushes them down without letting them progress. People get 'stuck' at specific stages.
This generally doesn't feel nice. Why play if there's no progression?

Death is supposed to have downsides, yes, like loosing the access to the content you're running, which is a risk/reward thing. Hence why 6 portals are a thing in the first place, we already have the downside implemented anyways.

The alternative to the current system is to provide specific rewards only obtainable if you don't die during a map, or leave it at all. This makes you 'loose' on rewards if your character isn't good enough to tackle the content yet without punishing you directly.

Rewards for success are vastly better for the mental state of players compared to punishments for messing up.

It's not good game-design, sorry to say.

I don't feel either work right currently due to the many other issue that stem from what I believe is the primary culprit Enemy Density. One thing that got me to play this league was the half truth spoken in the announcement stream "Less but more meaningful Rare enemies". I thought, wow, they're going a step in the right direction but no. Still swarmed by 10 Rares at a time.

The game isn't currently equipped to work with a success rate reward system. It can but in current conditions it would probably lower the bar. Portal limit isn't really enough due to stat smashing.

ie I have a build that's durable and high DPS but kinda slow so I struggle on Maven 4th memory game. I just die to it then jump back in and burn her down before she can do it again.

Heist and Ritual are the only designs that come to mind which punish death through success or not. It's obv double harsh with the exp penalty but technically there. I actually like the Heist system, well I did before AN. I used to play HC so a penalty like bye bye all loot is fine with me.

The death penalty for myself doesn't work twice over. Not only are some death out of control of the player but I design majority of builds for level 92-94 which is attained by even my most hipster builds. After that, I don't care if I die. Itemization plays the biggest role in progression and exp penalty doesn't affect that much. My theoretical high end is 32mil, currently 18mil. That's just gear.

Fundamentally either system could work but currently I don't feel either do.
The game requires some fairly major changes in it's design at this point.

Maybe they should try 1 free, non-additive, "Mulligan" per day. For you that are not golfers, a "Mulligan" is a stroke free 2nd chance, usually taken off the tee.

So every 24 hours everyone who logs in gets one free death with no experience taken. These free deaths are not additive, meaning the most anyone can have is one at any given time.

After the free death is taken, the rest of the day all deaths would have the current experience loss.

Even one free "Mulligan" with a %5 loss per day would be welcome if they think one non experience loss is too much.

At least then, when something weird happens, you don't feel like immediately logging out.

I have to agree with you this xp penalty is just fkd up.

I got to lvl 98,4 this league playing safe, 95% solo. Then I began doing harder content and saw 10 or more of hours wasted just because 1 death. Took the fun out of doing stuff myself so I gave in and bought the 5way boosts to 100 for 16-20 divines.

I really wanted to hit 100 by myself but hell naw. The 40% on the way to lvl 99 was a nightmare, felt like a second job.



Now I have other issues but that is for another post.

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Xzorn wrote:

I don't feel either work right currently due to the many other issue that stem from what I believe is the primary culprit Enemy Density. One thing that got me to play this league was the half truth spoken in the announcement stream "Less but more meaningful Rare enemies". I thought, wow, they're going a step in the right direction but no. Still swarmed by 10 Rares at a time.

Yes, that's sadly an issue, and a vast one.
Meaningful encounters are thrown out the window literally this league. It's a pure RNG festival if your map will make you snooze away and rush through or if you get a ridiculous sudden death from a AN mob which has unlucky combinations.

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Xzorn wrote:

The game isn't currently equipped to work with a success rate reward system. It can but in current conditions it would probably lower the bar. Portal limit isn't really enough due to stat smashing.

Yes, sadly not.
This is an issue of the general balance. The sheer disparity in power level between skills at different times of the game.
A normalization is vastly overdue, otherwise it can't be handled anyways.

But well, that's been talked about since ages from the community and we've seen basically nothing in regards.

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Xzorn wrote:

The death penalty for myself doesn't work twice over. Not only are some death out of control of the player but I design majority of builds for level 92-94 which is attained by even my most hipster builds. After that, I don't care if I die. Itemization plays the biggest role in progression and exp penalty doesn't affect that much. My theoretical high end is 32mil, currently 18mil. That's just gear.

Yes, but for some builds cluster jewels are still a vast increase in power level, but quite often only beyond some levels to allow them to be taken in the first place.
Hence levels above 95 are desirable for those... but unrealistic nonetheless for the majority of players. At least if playing 'normally' without actively grinding content which provides either no danger or is a known exp-farming method with literally no risk.

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Shakeyvick wrote:

So every 24 hours everyone who logs in gets one free death with no experience taken. These free deaths are not additive, meaning the most anyone can have is one at any given time.

It needs to be content based, not time-based. Otherwise it would reduce the amount several people play the game since they don't want to risk loosing exp when trying to level. That would be fairly bad design.

Hence... after every 10th map for example, with side-content of all forms adjusted accordingly to give dish such a 'free' death out.