Experience loss driving some players away?

I was talking to a friend the other day and I recommend he try PoE. He was very excited given the features, but once he learned about the experience loss, he said "forget it". He's a pretty hardcore gamer, so I asked him what the big deal was and his response was "I don't like games that take away my core efforts. The very essence of the game."

My friend isn't the only one who won't play a game with experience loss. I talked to my wife about trying the game out as well (she played D2/D3/Sacred/Dungeon Siege, etc) and she won't play it either because she doesn't want to deal with the XP loss penalty.

Granted PoE doesn't have gold or durability penalties, there has to be some sort of penalty for dying, right?

While there are a number of alternatives, one I believe would work is to add a new orb type to the game that acts as a buff that stays on until you die. If the buff is active, you have no experience loss. Make the orbs very expensive and rare, thus valuable. This way players can opt to play it safe by spending their rewards to acquire the orbs. With a few orbs, the player can (by choice) go out and play it "unsafe" to try new things out, etc.

I said to my friend "you played D2 and loved it, and it had 5-10% exp penalties on death" and his response was "there are many more choices of games to play now. Back then, there were not."

I believe PoE may be losing out on a substantial player base because of the death penalty mechanic, but I'm not saying remove a penalty for death; instead add a way people can avoid the penalty. After all, the game lets them choose hardcore, softcore, and will offer future leagues, right? Why lock them into this?

I'm sure there's plenty of other solutions out there - but there's no doubt a number of people won't play this game because of the Exp loss mechanic, but I think a few creative ideas could offer solutions that kept the balance of death penalty while not interrupting with the essence of the game.

PoE is by design a "hardcore oriented" game. As pointless as that may sound (to some people, that is), it is what it is.

HC players already belittle default players (scrubcore etc.), if you take away that as well, it will probably be called baby-core or carebear mode or even worse.

This simply isn't a casual game, where you can just start and do whatever, while cradling your baby on one hand.

You need basic skill and you have to live with the fact, that while you can be creative with your skill build (and you actually should be!), you have to sort things out properly.

Not dying is a top priority, even in "scrubcore" (where I still play btw :P).

You don't like that? Then either live with losing XP or don't bother with this game.

Sounds harsh, but you can't compromise the whole premise of the game, to cater to everyone - imho.

Have you ever tought that also people whould stop playing if there was no xp penalty?I for one would be bored of the game if i could just rush wherever i want and if i die it wouldnt matter.Its funny when low lvl players are complaining that they lose xp and you can get that xp back very fast at lower lvls and i mean lvl 70-75 and less.At higher lvl it sucks if you die and lose xp but that should teach you something.Im lvl 83 and i died 5 times,2 was because of desync but other 3 times i learned that some combinations of curses/auras are bad so im being more careful now.

Having a penalty on death is necessary to encourage trying not to die. However, XP loss on death is a pretty harsh one, and does also drive people away. Especially when there are many deaths due to server or ISP issues rather than playing ability.

I think a much better penalty for dying would be the inability to re-enter that instance. (Perhaps on cruel and merciless only.) If you die, you need to start again in a new instance.
This would mean if you were partying, everyone would have an incentive to try to stay alive, and to keep each other alive too (unless you are a detriment to the team!). It would also completely prevent people re-entering the same instance after dying (for example, to kill a difficult boss), which the current XP loss system does not. It would also be a tougher penalty for late game players who would lose access to their map if they died in it. (Instead of now when you can die up to five times and still loot the whole map.)

The current XP-loss system makes dying unappealing in some situations. The instance-access-loss system would make it unappealing in all situations.

"

Mooginator wrote:

once he learned about the experience loss he said "forget it".

"

He's a pretty hardcore gamer

I lol'd

LOL

"

boof wrote:

"

Mooginator wrote:

once he learned about the experience loss he said "forget it".

"

He's a pretty hardcore gamer

I lol'd

^ thought it was just me... that made no sense...

I am one for the Exp Penalty. I think more games should have this. Coming from 7 years of XI where you could delevel and doing end game meant a LOT of lost exp. Could you imagine if games like WoW had Exp loss and deleveling? Man I tell ya what, it would def. weed out shitty raid members real quick, because in most games raiding isn't hard at all. It's getting 10-20 idiots to listen.

Anyways, +1 to Exp loss, and yes, sometime I die and go wtf, but. Oh well, learn from your mistakes.


Edit: I'm also pretty sure you will be able to buy your own custom league at some point. So with that said, someone could make a Casualist League. x100% loot drops, No exp loss, free loot everytime you go to your Stash!

Normal mode doesn't have xp loss on death. I think that many of the people who would be put off by xp loss on death wouldn't play past normal mode anyway.

I'm starting to find the xp loss on dying to be annoying now, at L76 on merciless, but my response is to try harder not to die. I think the xp loss is relatively mild because there's a hard floor of your current level.

I'm a bit odd though - I like playing ADoM, a Roguelike game in which death is permanent. You die, your character is deleted. Game over. Roll a new character. It's also notoriously hard, so you will usually die. Although I wouldn't play hardcore mode on PoE, I think that the xp loss on higher difficulty levels on default is appropriate for this game.

So glad to see this thread has a point.