The XP Penalty is the worst thing in Path of Exile, remove it !!!

there are 2 schools of XP balancing:

1) There is a distinct level cap and players are expected to reach it easily. Most commonly seen in MMORPG's but Action RPG's also adopt this style. Death XP penalty is pointless here because levels are easy to achieve and such penalty is just a mild annoyance. Game uses alternate progression systems to motivate players to keep playing as they hit maximum level. The biggest POE competitor does this - Diablo 3. Level 70 is the max level and it is reached very very quickly. Then an alternative system kicks in - Paragon leveling. Uncapped, grindable, no penalty either.

2) Level cap is far above character level typically attained upon finishing the campaign and entering the so-called 'endgame' and is usually very time-consuming to reach. Most games will employ punishing XP curves as we are nearing the level cap - so it is easy to progress until level 95, but then really hard to hit 100. Players are not expected to hit maximum level, most will stop at whatever they feel comfortable with. Death penalty as a % of XP required to hit next level is initially not a big deal but becomes a big deal near the end of that XP curve - many players will feel discouraged from attempting to level up at all.

POE uses #2, very clear example of that. It's identical to what was employed by Diablo 2.

Both systems are actually quite similar to eachother. Buckling up and pushing through last few demanding levels in POE is equivalent to grinding few extra paragons in Diablo 3. This won't give you a significant character power boost, it's mainly for min-maxing and psychological comfort. The only big difference is that POE's system has a clearly drawn end goalpost. Diablo 3 does not. And we seen several big names get banned for botting, as uncapped grindy systems incentivize using that heavily.

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Orbaal wrote:

So what?
What if GGG defines their target audience differently from what you´d expect and if so, are they not free to do so and who are you to question their decision on what grounds?
They are making the game they want and put it out for free, so everyone can make an educated decision whether the game is worth dropping some money on it or not.
Whereas other games charge you upfront only for you to find its trash after the fact.

I dont think thats morally questionable at all, regardless of trashy tooltips.
Id rather have that and know what Im paying for than having to pay upfront and end up paying for shit.

Correct, and occasional overly sarcastic trolling rants aside, I never pretended my opinion to be the only one, and talked about expanding gameplay options, not replacing. About "who am I to question", well, I am one of the customers, and have same right to voice an opinion as the next man. Even though everyone on this forum knows that no amount of feedback is going to be taken into consideration by actual GGG leads.

Believe we've exhausted this discussion, and thank you for your arguments, some of them added to my perspective.

Last sidenote, about "game for free". You are well aware it is false. At the very least you need to buy currency tab, map tab and fragment tab, to reach endgame without ruining your hands too much. And at least 1 trade tab if you're in trade league. If you want to farm various league content, more special tabs are required, otherwise you'd plain run out of stash space.

Actually, the whole reason I am still here, ranting like an idiot, instead of quitting 2 years ago, is because PoE've managed to trick me, lol. Usually you can size up the game at first few hours, but not in this case. So I spent noticeable $ here before finally arriving to the endgame and discovering the real state of PoE. Got auto-banned for false reason on the way too. All in all, I don't really feel myself owing GGG something beyond what I've already paid.

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Echothesis wrote:

Last sidenote, about "game for free". You are well aware it is false. At the very least you need to buy currency tab, map tab and fragment tab, to reach endgame without ruining your hands too much. And at least 1 trade tab if you're in trade league. If you want to farm various league content, more special tabs are required, otherwise you'd plain run out of stash space.

Well I disagree here too.
What a surprise, I know ;)

I didnt spend a penny on the game for the first 100 hours or so, if you decided to jump the gun - thats on you.
After that I decided to drop 60 bucks for a supporter pack. Back then non of the fancy special tabs existed. All you could buy was either regular tabs or premium tabs - none of those were needed to trade, because the official trade API didnt exist either.
You actually had to have a thread on the tradeforum listing your stuff manually...

Afterwards I went on to buy a total of 36 premium tabs I think and then most of the special tabs once they were available, rendering my precious premium tabs into useless stashspace.

I could feel "cheated" over this, if I wanted too.
I dont tho, even tho I did overspend in terms of premium tabs. However, if I look at the amount of money spent versus hours played, I spent less than 1 cent per hour.
Meaning I had to spend more on my electricity bill to play this game than I did spend on the game itself. Thats not even accounting for the fun I had.

I dont think any other game in my library ever was this cheap, even tho I spent more on this game than any other game in my library, if that makes sense.


Lastly I will say this:
This game has a massive scope. If you want to find something negative to bitch about, you will find it - no doubt.
You will find enough positive stuff as well tho. It will never be perfect nor even close to perfect, thats an unrealistic demand and wishful thinking at best.

And at that point you have to make a decision. Do you wish to focus on the negative or positive stuff?
I made my peace with the stuff I dont like about the game, otherwise I would have left years ago. If you cant make peace with the stuff you dont like, thats cool but why are you still here then? I dont get this mentality tbh.