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

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LimeKoala wrote:

To make it short, you didn't understand my comment.

Answers like that are hardly constructive, no? Maybe you are the guy who knows at level 1, what items you'll be wearing in each slot at 100, and how exactly to get each of those items. I don't use POB and my characters are hardly optimized even by the time of 100. And it is actually fine to not know what idea of an upgrade you could stumble on next, rather than playing by railways, when all your total stats are already laid out for you.

So there is still room for improvement for me at 100, trying to get chase items, and it feels better at 100, than with "strategic" pacing and that penalty hanging over my neck. Hope I won't need to repeat again, why exactly is exp penalty does not contribute to the game anything else than constant frustration, it was all in this thread.

If I still don't understand you, feel free to elaborate. If you don't want that, at least spare me from entitled posts like above, please.

This reply in another thread explains how to level the last levels...
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3145489/page/4#p24916257

Basically, you do it by only playing content you know you can do without dying! Anything that has any appreciable chance of killing you, forget it.

Using the atlas for infinite maps and then running them blue or even white works well to reduce the risk. Use a strict item filter and just speed-run ad nauseum... Avoid league content that is dangerous.

If you don't play safe content for your character, it is not the death penalty that keeps you from gaining levels... It's you!

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Echothesis wrote:

But may I ask, how often did you roll through the map, taking all eldritch altars you've come across, and then next legion or harvest or expedition encounter suddenly produces rare mob who synergies perfectly with your altars and map mods, and thus wiping you out like nobody could do for the last 30-40 maps, by sniping through a single weak spot in your defenses?

That's a good argument in favor or death penalty if i've ever seen one. Not like i've never done "risky" things like that but you should be at least aware that it's risky and there should be some punishment for taking risks and failing. And no, portals are not a punishment unless you actually lose all of them. Reducing their numbers is also difficult because of the shitty trade system. If GGG was willing to improve that there might be room to discuss a portal reduction to 1 portal but we all know that will never happen.

That aside, i really don't get all the fuss about the death penalty. It's so laughingly easy to make it to 95/96. Just keep an eye on map/altar mods and skip bosses for a day or two and you are done. Why would you care that much about having 4-5 extra passive points? That isn't even 1% of the total powerlevel of your build. Just aim for a level you are comfortable with and stop caring afterwards, it's the same as being level 100. If you actually struggle getting through the 80s, go to the gameplay forum and get your char checked, chances are it's a mess.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

That's a good argument in favor or death penalty if i've ever seen one. Not like i've never done "risky" things like that but you should be at least aware that it's risky and there should be some punishment for taking risks and failing. And no, portals are not a punishment unless you actually lose all of them. Reducing their numbers is also difficult because of the shitty trade system. If GGG was willing to improve that there might be room to discuss a portal reduction to 1 portal but we all know that will never happen.

That aside, i really don't get all the fuss about the death penalty. It's so laughingly easy to make it to 95/96. Just keep an eye on map/altar mods and skip bosses for a day or two and you are done. Why would you care that much about having 4-5 extra passive points? That isn't even 1% of the total powerlevel of your build. Just aim for a level you are comfortable with and stop caring afterwards, it's the same as being level 100. If you actually struggle getting through the 80s, go to the gameplay forum and get your char checked, chances are it's a mess.

80-95 is fine, although still silly frustrating, as if I've come here to play, not to work. 96-100 is where problems begin. And people take risks not because they are dumb, but because there is no other way to get notable loot. Unless you abuse party MF culler thing, you have to get yourself killed to farm loot.

In games like Elden Ring, death penalty is more harsh overall, and I've reached level 500+ and several layers of NG+, because game is very well telegraphed and reasonably paced. In PoE, it is "dress the doll, hold 1 button, and pray for RNG". There is no "risk-free content" like Cyzax referred to above, you can be killed at T5 map with T16-viable character. When penalty is handed out at random, people at mass simply do not recognize it as "fair" and instinctively refuse to adapt to it, especially if the alternative is running 100+ bland white maps with 0 loot in hopes to get 1 level at 95+

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Echothesis wrote:

There is no "risk-free content" like Cyzax referred to above, you can be killed at T5 map with T16-viable character.

That is not quite true. If you apply an infinite map setup to your atlas, and run the same two maps over and over, you can make it very, very low-risk, or no-risk if you have a properly constructed character, AND take the necessary precautions.

I just started doing this yesterday, and I chose Ancient City and Dunes as my two maps (reasonably open and have easy bosses). I only run them blue, but could run them white. My build is up for blues as long as I pick the exact mods. Mods that make the mobs more dangerous are out.

Then you start churning through the maps, but you need to remember that things that make monsters more dangerous are out. Do not take eldritch altar options that increase damage, and do not engage with difficult extra content like morphs (my one death since starting, and I must've run 50 maps by now), essences, rituals, and so on that you don't KNOW you can handle safely. If you die to something, take it as a learning experience to not do that type of content again.

Note that I feel I'm making more currency doing speed-running this way with a very strict filter than I did before...

The only parameter that is then outside your control is mob modifiers, and apart from a few Archnemesis ones (run away if you need to), if something can kill you the character or your skills is not good enough to run the strategy at that map tier.

I agree you can't make it 100% 'safe', but you can make it very very low risk. With a properly built character (and players skill in playing that character) so low risk that you'll continue progressing your levels.

That it is boring as hell is another matter...

This is my atlas tree... I just respec'ed enough to get 100% chance to drop an adjacent map (mostly removing all essence nodes and some notables), so I get a LOT of extra content. Almost every map has an expedition, and most have a ritual and heist stash. As my character can run them that is good variety.
Wandering Path and Shadow Shaping is what makes this work. I've favourited all other adjacent maps from my two chosen ones.

Well I applaud your discipline and patience, and sincerely wish you luck in that endeavor. But you would probably agree that this approach cannot be extrapolated on arbitrary playerbase as "yeah, folks would like that". And it is not something that game penalties should be designed around, as the "only way out"

So, to summarize, the two main complaints about the current system are
1. Unpredictable deaths out of nowhere make it unnerving
2. When you freshly gain a level or hit 100 it isn't doing anything

Suggesting something specific and expecting that it gets implemented is a waste of time, nobody of note reads this so we pretty much come to feedback just to talk game design. Anyway, for the sake of discussion, let's assume they do something like this (numbers out of the ass, the concept is the important part):
- When you die, you get a nice, big skull in the corner of the screen saying 10% less exp gained and 10% less item quantity, and it stacks to, dunno, 80%
- You recover that penalty by gaining some percentage of xp without dying, the amount would probably have to depend on level, 20% of level 80 isn't nearly in the same ballpark as 20% of level 98

So, this would be more lenient if you play well, as you will get penalized severely only if you're dying too often. Occasional screwups won't be a big deal and you will never end your session with less xp than you started it with. However, you will never be able to ignore this, even if you're at 80% less xp/iq and can't go any lower you will still have to stop dying if you want to get anywhere.

Something like this would take care of both issues, but I don't think it would reduce the number of complaint threads much.

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raics wrote:

So, to summarize, the two main complaints about the current system are
1. Unpredictable deaths out of nowhere make it unnerving
2. When you freshly gain a level or hit 100 it isn't doing anything

Suggesting something specific and expecting that it gets implemented is a waste of time, nobody of note reads this so we pretty much come to feedback just to talk game design. Anyway, for the sake of discussion, let's assume they do something like this (numbers out of the ass, the concept is the important part):
- When you die, you get a nice, big skull in the corner of the screen saying 10% less exp gained and 10% less item quantity, and it stacks to, dunno, 80%
- You recover that penalty by gaining some percentage of xp without dying, the amount would probably have to depend on level, 20% of level 80 isn't nearly in the same ballpark as 20% of level 98

So, this would be more lenient if you play well, as you will get penalized severely only if you're dying too often. Occasional screwups won't be a big deal and you will never end your session with less xp than you started it with. However, you will never be able to ignore this, even if you're at 80% less xp/iq and can't go any lower you will still have to stop dying if you want to get anywhere.

Something like this would take care of both issues, but I don't think it would reduce the number of complaint threads much.

Yes, something like that or like survival bonus would work too. Main problem is not death in general, but very rare surprise blink deaths from nowhere, that feel like BS. And at level 95+, even 1 death in 50 maps is enough to screw you over.

However, since there are a lot of people here taking personal pride in their achievements, and wanting them to be on display for everyone to see, I stick to suggestion of doing any of those solutions in alternate league.

This would also have side benefit of "resetting Standard itemization". I have friends who would prefer playing Standard over league cycle of "play all acts again", but do not play it because of economy being long-corrupted by legacy gear, RMT mirror shops, and brilliant GGG moves like div-ex swap. If new longstanding league would appear, and won't be another kind of "ruthless", it can attract new players too.

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Echothesis wrote:

Well I applaud your discipline and patience, and sincerely wish you luck in that endeavor. But you would probably agree that this approach cannot be extrapolated on arbitrary playerbase as "yeah, folks would like that". And it is not something that game penalties should be designed around, as the "only way out"

The 'only way out' there should be is not playing content you can't handle... and 'the average playerbase' should not be able to reach level 100... Otherwise, what's the point?

When you die, the death penalty is there to tell you that either your build or your playing skills are simply not good enough for what you're trying to accomplish. Giving you rewards for trying and failing is not a good strategy because it takes away any sense of accomplishment you might get from playing.

The death penalty is not onerous for a decent build and decent playing ability until you reach above level 90.

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raics wrote:

1. Unpredictable deaths out of nowhere make it unnerving

Is there really such a thing as 'unpredictable deaths'?

Most (all?) deaths comes from three things:
1. Playing content your build can't handle
2. Playing content your playing skills can't handle
3. Playing content you haven't taken time to learn the mechanics of
(most often combined)

For all of them however it is entirely predictable that it'll end in deaths... and every single death in the game I've experienced have been caused by them, and I've been the person making the decision to do it anyway.
I could not predict which encounter would cause the deaths, but it was entirely predictable that they happened.

I'm not including networking/server problems... while they are unpredictable, they're not part of the game as such.