Experience loss driving some players away?

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Mooginator wrote:

Spoiler

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Courageous wrote:

There's nothing magical about 15%. The death penalty has a game related purpose.

Actually, it doesn't. Not a single person has provided any details rationalizing why the penalty serves any legitimate purpose. This is another reason why games have dropped similar punishments. It doesn't balance any progression, economy, or other mechanics of the game.

While some people may think it's purpose is to make it difficult to achieve maximum level, there's already a very tough infrastructure put in place to address that; the maps system, and the difficulty in securing and running high level maps.

There are already enough challenges built into the game relative to character progression.

The experience loss punishment serves no legitimate purpose of any kind.

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Jillian wrote:

What a bizarre thread. I legitimately can't believe people just want no penalty at all.

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What is the point of playing a game if there is no risk or punishment?

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Nearly every game ever has some kind of risk or punishment if you die.

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Would the game really benefit from being a mindless faceroll where no matter how bad you play you will always progress and never get punished? No.

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People would run through the game once, maybe do a couple maps and quit. Everyone who wanted to could get to max level just through sheer persistence.

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The best builds would all be glass cannons e.g. Diablo 3 softcore and people would just suicide run areas until they're clear.

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mkmaddage wrote:

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Mooginator wrote:

The experience loss punishment serves no legitimate purpose of any kind.

Yes it does. Putting it in bold and italicising it doesn't suddenly make it true lol.

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biralo wrote:

The 15% death experience is actually a good thing.

It is the only way for me (lvl 83) to catch up with my friend (lvl 85 and plays more than I do).

So this allows me to play more safe (im duel totem spark so pretty safe already), especially in a group, and once I pass him (he plays melee), I have something to laugh at him about =)

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Courageous wrote:

There's nothing magical about 15%. The death penalty has a game related purpose. There is nothing at all to say that this purpose cannot be fulfilled by various variations on a theme.

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Mooginator wrote:

Not a single person has provided any details rationalizing why the penalty serves any legitimate purpose.

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Mooginator wrote:

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.

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Mooginator wrote:

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Courageous wrote:

There's nothing magical about 15%. The death penalty has a game related purpose.

Actually, it doesn't. Not a single person has provided any details rationalizing why the penalty serves any legitimate purpose. This is another reason why games have dropped similar punishments. It doesn't balance any progression, economy, or other mechanics of the game.

While some people may think it's purpose is to make it difficult to achieve maximum level, there's already a very tough infrastructure put in place to address that; the maps system, and the difficulty in securing and running high level maps.

There are already enough challenges built into the game relative to character progression.

The experience loss punishment serves no legitimate purpose of any kind.

"

Courageous wrote:

"

Courageous wrote:

There's nothing magical about 15%. The death penalty has a game related purpose. There is nothing at all to say that this purpose cannot be fulfilled by various variations on a theme.

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Mooginator wrote:

Not a single person has provided any details rationalizing why the penalty serves any legitimate purpose.

And thus began the tale of the True Scotsman... anyway... seriously? Look, I'm not fond of death penalties, either. But they obviously exist to disincent glass cannon builds and play styles.

A cogent argument can be made that maps alone do that in their own right. But the XP penalty will hit you far sooner than maps, and it's likely good to know your build is broken before that stage.

--C