Brand new to POE, why is there EXP loss post 80 & EXP gating?

GGG loves the level 100 chase goal. That is the real purpose of the death penalty.

The death penalty actually starts when you complete act 5, I think. It's just a 5% penalty. Then after act 10 it is doubled to 10%. It's just not really noticeable until getting to levels in the late 80's depending on your build.

The best course of action is to not let the death penalty bother you too much or it will drive you crazy and ruin the fun. When the death penalty starts bothering you then take it as a signal that your build is either done or needs shoring up. If your character is level 90 or above then you can just decide that you're not going up any more levels. Play for other goals or start a new character. Maybe someday, if you have far too much time on your hands then you can try to achieve the level 100 chase goal. ;-) (Not something that I'd ever be interested in doing but, I'm just a casual hack player.)

The devs presumably think playing more Path of Exile is a punishment.

"

Travex1 wrote:

As title states, I'm brand new to POE this season but got really interested and invested into it and fell in love with the passion and creativity that the development clearly had creating some of the content this game has to offer. Sincerely - hats off, I have been impressed.

That having been said, while exploring the remainder of the end-game content, (obviously not at the highest level said content has to offer) I noticed that I was sitting at 0% exp at lvl 80 which seemed unlikely to be accidental as I been grinding a few maps, in addition to the fact that at some point certain content stops giving you exp. Quite literally the second I found out you lose exp for deaths I uninstalled the game and will not be looking back, and it feels like a damn shame and wasted potential.

This game has limitless hours of content to offer, legitimately, but the fact that you would be punished for dying in such a crippling way, your entire day's worth of hard work potentially gone in 5 minutes is too debilitating of a mechanic for me to want to continue. EXP required per level already assuredly goes up per level so the grind becomes more tedious as you progress, and there are plenty of other things to grind and barriers of entry, namely personal skill level, that this mechanic simply doesn't make sense to me. Moreover it flies in the face of what the game encourages you to do, which is challenge yourself. There are a large number of in-game events that reward you for performing very quickly such as incursions and...I'm sorry I don't know what they are called but the gray mirror 'portal' event. You can give a bad player a level 100 char with a meta build and he or she still won't be able to engage with difficult content either way. This type of punishment also discourages people from experimenting much with new builds or off-meta builds with the implicit knowledge that they will already be at a corresponding disadvantage compared to their peers. Lastly, there are always going to be either client-side or server-side latency surprises which in this game, from what I can tell, can within the span of a second and half or less yield a death from either misplay or just rubberbanding into a mechanic.

It seems also very ostracizing to stop exp gain entirely depending on the content you're doing. Assumedly the EXP/Level is already going up, why punish someone who wants to continue to gain character power if they prefer playing lower-difficulty content. This isn't me, specifically, but certainly there are a group of people who would prefer to just do some easier content and just play their slot machine or farm some currency and slowly level up.

Personally it just seems too steep a price for something so omnipresent in a game like this and it's just far too off-putting. Sorry for the rant if this isn't a novel point of conversation, just figured I had to get it off my chest because I really feel saddened by it's being in this game I so recently fell in and out of love with.

TL;DR: EXP gating and EXP loss on death seem insurmountably ostracizing and counter-intuitive to a game that offers so many different ways to play and content of so many varying degrees of difficulty.

This is really good 'newcomer' feedback and I hope someone at GGG takes it into account.

I won't try to assert what went wrong or why GGG do this, only say that I have seen a lot of newer players run into this problem over the years and each time, it seems like a case of bait and switch. I don't think GGG *intended* that but as you said, the initial impression of hats-off worthy and sheer awe at the ostensible variety to the game's...well, everything. Items, skills, passives, crafting, all that. It's functionally endless if you want to try everything the game seems to offer play-wise.

But that's the bait. The switch is when you realise that you're in 'end-game' and losing xp anytime you try something a little daring. As others have said and you have repeated, it seems to punish anything but the most boring, mindless way of playing it safe until you level, at which point you have a small window to push yourself a bit and see how it goes. OR, as yet other others have said here, give or take, 'git gud'. To them, if your character can do nothing but scrape by in its safety zone, that character is a mistake.

Which, if you think about PoE's initial promise and why you were so stunned at it in the first place, is a fucking tragedy.

The bait of PoE is the potential of SO many builds types and approaches; the switch of PoE is the reality of most of them just flat-out failing to handle higher level content.

And it's not as though the game makes respeccing major mistakes that easily, because another cornerstone of the game has always been consequences for actions. It stood in stark contrast to what D3 was doing at the time, which was pretty much doing away with passives altogether and allowing you to change your build on the fly -- in D3, builds are essentially load-outs for your character, who is equally little more than a vehicle with interchangeable parts. This flies in the face of traditional ARPG design...

But so does losing experience with absolutely no way to get it back. Even D2 had this. Titan Quest has it. Grim Dawn has it. But don't point this out because the resident gatekeepers will respond that they're not TRUE HARDCORE ARPGs and git gud did I mention how often they say that?

Anyway yours is neither a new nor invalid point, but it's been this way for over a decade and it's probably not changing in a hurry. Maybe with the overhaul of the game entire they plan to reveal in July next year. Maybe not even then.

Just be thankful you figured it out so much quicker than some of us, who have thousands of hours and sometimes thousands of dollars spent in our PoE rear view mirror.

There are more worthy games out there than you will ever have time to play before you die. And more come out all the time. This was briefly one of them. No great loss in the bigger picture, I promise you. :)

"

Turtledove wrote:

Maybe someday, if you have far too much time on your hands then you can try to achieve the level 100 chase goal. ;-) (Not something that I'd ever be interested in doing but, I'm just a casual hack player.)

I remember when I stumbled onto a build that was able to handle red maps with relative ease. I was like 'I am so going to get a level 100 character finally!' and then I hit 89 and was like 'christ in a kitty litter I'm bored' because I was just doing the same maps over and again. The kicker was it was less about the LEVEL of the maps and more about their nature. Certain *yellow* maps could wreck me, but about two or three red maps I'd figured out to a point of rote clearance. So it's not as though not getting 100 makes you a 'casual hack player'. It just makes you a player not content to settle for the most tedious way of playing a game that in theory and occasionally in practice should have SO much more to offer.

The EXP death penalty area of 10% only starts to be noticeable past 95 and a real PITA for levels 98 and 99.
The EXP gain penalty that accompanies content once you reach 95 is sadly one of the worst ideas that disincentives playing the "real end game" to actually level to 100.

We have the abortion of running pure Chayula runs and 5 way legions as the fastest ways to level to 100, just take a long look at the records of going 0-100...

A safer way to level, is to chain the most safe and still high in level, content available, be it Coward's Trial or Beachhead maps, and not die of boredom while running it to 100.

A bit more challenging is to run regular T16 maps, and manage them by not going overboard with juicing and actually read the Vaal outcomes...

Getting to level 100 became since a long time simply a grinding matter, even on HC, where you can reach it as easily as on Softcore, as long as you're not greedy, and grind instead safe content and nauseum...

The Devs sadly forfeited the chance to make level 100 a meaningful achievement when they took the easy route and accepted the status of each "decent" build being able to reach 100 in a timely manner, heck, they even encouraged hitting it in HOURS.

Dangerous content should have always rewarded properly EXP gain, yet with the exception of Delirium, this always seemed an afterthought, which lead to players always choosing the "path of least resistance" and removing the "achievement" status of a level 100 character.

And please don't start me on the "great choice" of having "zerging aka throwing corpses at a problem" from the start of the game (when there is no death EXP penalty), which translates to playing "end game" content at 0% EXP and using 6 portals - which was and still remains almost as asinine as still balancing the game around the instant logout...

P.S.: These are the humble findings of a player that has a level 100 character (don't think I ever got more than 12 mil EXP per hour 99-100) and recently experienced a gain of between 350-430 mil EXP per hour leveling from 96-98 via 5 ways FREE ROTATION, so I am more familiar than most with both extremes of the spectrum...

The main level 100 character is actually the initial character I started PoE with - dual wielding RT real melee solo grinding, and reached level 100 by a journey started since 1.3.0, being played hundreds of 24/7 real time days and registering thousands of deaths, which led to having to bring the required EXP to level from 99 to 100, 3 times, so it is always possible to reach your goal...

P.S. 2: To all "git gud" players, let me know when you managed leveling to 100 by simply playing solo from 95 to 100 a dual wielding RT real melee non-DoT skill versus only "end game" content - T16 Vaal Temple and Shaper as minimum requirements, and even better, post your findings on YouTube...
It shouldn't be that difficult, right? /s

You know I've a lot of time and respect for your views, sofocle, but how much of your post do you think a newcomer (i.e. just started this league) is going to understand?

That's no attack on your liberal usage of jargon, abbreviations and PoE-savvy terms -- it just shows how 'in' a player has to get to even begin to really deal with PoE's endgame and contemplate that 'level 100' Everest-wannabe.

If there's one thing I've seen well-meaning Exiles struggle to do when trying to help frustrated newcomers, it's code-switch out of Traditional PoEnglish and back into Basic Gamer.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

You know I've a lot of time and respect for your views, sofocle, but how much of your post do you think a newcomer (i.e. just started this league) is going to understand?

That's no attack on your liberal usage of jargon, abbreviations and PoE-savvy terms -- it just shows how 'in' a player has to get to even begin to really deal with PoE's endgame and contemplate that 'level 100' Everest-wannabe.

If there's one thing I've seen well-meaning Exiles struggle to do when trying to help frustrated newcomers, it's code-switch out of Traditional PoEnglish and back into Basic Gamer.

While this is all true, I very much enjoyed his post and so perhaps I can just think he wrote it all just for ME! :-) Thank you sofocle, I'm very flattered! :-)

"

Travex1 wrote:

Spoiler

As title states, I'm brand new to POE this season but got really interested and invested into it and fell in love with the passion and creativity that the development clearly had creating some of the content this game has to offer. Sincerely - hats off, I have been impressed.

That having been said, while exploring the remainder of the end-game content, (obviously not at the highest level said content has to offer) I noticed that I was sitting at 0% exp at lvl 80 which seemed unlikely to be accidental as I been grinding a few maps, in addition to the fact that at some point certain content stops giving you exp. Quite literally the second I found out you lose exp for deaths I uninstalled the game and will not be looking back, and it feels like a damn shame and wasted potential.

This game has limitless hours of content to offer, legitimately, but the fact that you would be punished for dying in such a crippling way, your entire day's worth of hard work potentially gone in 5 minutes is too debilitating of a mechanic for me to want to continue. EXP required per level already assuredly goes up per level so the grind becomes more tedious as you progress, and there are plenty of other things to grind and barriers of entry, namely personal skill level, that this mechanic simply doesn't make sense to me. Moreover it flies in the face of what the game encourages you to do, which is challenge yourself. There are a large number of in-game events that reward you for performing very quickly such as incursions and...I'm sorry I don't know what they are called but the gray mirror 'portal' event. You can give a bad player a level 100 char with a meta build and he or she still won't be able to engage with difficult content either way. This type of punishment also discourages people from experimenting much with new builds or off-meta builds with the implicit knowledge that they will already be at a corresponding disadvantage compared to their peers. Lastly, there are always going to be either client-side or server-side latency surprises which in this game, from what I can tell, can within the span of a second and half or less yield a death from either misplay or just rubberbanding into a mechanic.

It seems also very ostracizing to stop exp gain entirely depending on the content you're doing. Assumedly the EXP/Level is already going up, why punish someone who wants to continue to gain character power if they prefer playing lower-difficulty content. This isn't me, specifically, but certainly there are a group of people who would prefer to just do some easier content and just play their slot machine or farm some currency and slowly level up.

Personally it just seems too steep a price for something so omnipresent in a game like this and it's just far too off-putting. Sorry for the rant if this isn't a novel point of conversation, just figured I had to get it off my chest because I really feel saddened by it's being in this game I so recently fell in and out of love with.

TL;DR: EXP gating and EXP loss on death seem insurmountably ostracizing and counter-intuitive to a game that offers so many different ways to play and content of so many varying degrees of difficulty.

TL;DR (off previous post): Don't get discouraged that PoE missed the mark regarding EXP gating and EXP loss on death, but kindly keep in mind the game will always require from you to Improve and Adapt and always set toned down expectations in line with your current knowledge of the game.

If you persevere, you will be rewarded and learn to enjoy and appreciate PoE despite it's shortcomings!

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

Spoiler

You know I've a lot of time and respect for your views, sofocle, but how much of your post do you think a newcomer (i.e. just started this league) is going to understand?

That's no attack on your liberal usage of jargon, abbreviations and PoE-savvy terms -- it just shows how 'in' a player has to get to even begin to really deal with PoE's endgame and contemplate that 'level 100' Everest-wannabe.

If there's one thing I've seen well-meaning Exiles struggle to do when trying to help frustrated newcomers, it's code-switch out of Traditional PoEnglish and back into Basic Gamer.

Hi James, you're correct in your remark, but I would simply want to state that the previous post is simply meant as a short history regarding best ways to treat PoE's death EXP and gain EXP penalty...

Regardless of those, any new PoE player should know to tone their expectations when dealing with such a complex "work in progress" game.

If I could reach level 100 by simply being stubborn and sinking more time than most "sane" Exiles would ever consider feasible, the truth is that level 100 stopped being a "true achievement" and remained a shallow "ego" goal a long time ago...

The real, most important and on topic aspect is that even if these posts always resurface, more than a decade passed, yet the solution still eludes the Devs - they seem Hell bent on "the Vision" and the Ruthless implementation shows it - but they missed entirely all that feedback that PoE still lacks depth and requires a solution concerning the EXP progression and the impact the death EXP penalty & gain EXP penalty past level 95 have on the game...

Reading the hundred/thousand time the same concerns simply brings up too many mixed feelings - and the additional info might still help some new players figure out that "Grinding" is improperly implemented regarding the EXP progression in PoE still...

"

Turtledove wrote:

While this is all true, I very much enjoyed his post and so perhaps I can just think he wrote it all just for ME! :-) Thank you sofocle, I'm very flattered! :-)

Thanks for enjoying it, everyone should be welcomed to pitch in with their own findings, because as much and as great written were the initial poster frustrations and findings, we can only share some advice based upon our own experiences.

PoE was, is and might still remain a unique "ARPG", but it will need to improve even on this dreaded front if the Devs are serious about keeping it "playable forever"...

NGL dudefriend, I had to google 'dual wielding RT' because it's been that long. I was like 'I can't think of a single skill or weapon with those initials'...but I guess you mean Resolute Technique? Maybe?

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

Spoiler

NGL dudefriend, I had to google 'dual wielding RT' because it's been that long. I was like 'I can't think of a single skill or weapon with those initials'...but I guess you mean Resolute Technique? Maybe?

Yes, and let me tell you that dual wielding Resolute Technique "real melee" aka a Strike skill (like Static Strike used to be long time ago" is still one of the most punishing ways to play melee in PoE - you lose a shield for a measly bonus to attack speed (the damage bonus was removed sometime ago).

I was (and still occasionally am) playing Ruthless before it's official introuction, as most real end game content simply isn't viable to be managed with such limitations - except maybe by godlike gamers able to run the fights for hours at a time (you don't get to have more than 1 mil DPS with such limitations so you will know all the fights by heart)...

This Dino will need to remember to be more explicit at times as not everyone still thinks in such PoE-centric terms...