Experience loss driving some players away?

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Mooginator wrote:

A lot of interesting feedback. Here's a few I'd like to address. Note there seems to be a bug where it’s not letting me post quotes from others (it’s saying “Only 3 quotes may be embedded within each other”) even when I try just 1-2 quotes. As such, I’ll do my own custom quotes.

Hzflank said: “Merciless exiles do not one shot. I will admit that I have dies 10 times to exiles, but 7 of those deaths cost me no xp (just levelled, died onece to viper strike exile in a1 merci, dies another 7 times before I killed it due to -60% chaos res). That are very risky to face and might require a couple of portals to refill flasks, but they do not one shot ever.”

I was passing on information from a friend of mine who runs merciless maps in full groups. They could have been in 70+ maps, and based on the raise in difficulty I've seen soloing in merciless, I wouldn't be surprised if a Rogue Exile in 70+ could one shot certain builds (sporkers, etc).

Evil_Dutch_Man said: “I'm wondering though, I'm only level 76 but I would expect by the time I'm ~85 to die far less often with the better gear/extra passives I have by then? Doesn't that balance the XP penalty?”

Unfortunately not; as a matter of fact, because of the experience penalty, which drives people to pursue higher level maps, the chance of dying increases as the mobs become more difficult and progressing slows to a snail's crawl (e.g. getting new skill points and gear).

Psyborg said: “The XP penalty makes you a better player. Fear is good. ... Without incentive to survive, or mistakes to prevent, there is no real learning curve and you will not improve.”

I disagree. I could counter this statement and say without incentive to progress or mechanics added to slow progression, a player will not improve - as a player is always looking for the best way to progress. The core point here is you can address the core of both our statements while not "taking" from the player. A good example is the Maps system. You only have a limited number of portals allowing your return. If you die too often in the map, it closes to you forever. This is just one example of an alternative mechanic to prevent abuse (or re-running content a player can’t handle); and since maps are the only real way to progress end-game, we already have a control mechanism in-place. There's a huge difference between saying "you lost access to that map because you can’t handle it" and taking hours or even days of play effort from a player based on a single death. We want players to be adventurous and try new and risky/difficult things, but PoE currently penalizes that attempt with the penalty to the point of deterring players from playing altogether.

LSN said: “XP penalty is strongly needed in this concept of game. Otherwise it would make the game boring as hell and there is no tense playing a map at all (just careless grinding as it is in d3).”

I completely disagree. As a matter of fact, if the XP penalty was removed entirely, I think the player base would grow and nobody would quit. Remember, it takes a skilled dedicated gamer around 1,500 hours to reach level 100 (this is from HvR's run to 100). And that was running in groups the majority of the time (e.g. substantial XP bonus). That's 188 days playing 8 hours a day, or 376 days playing 4 hours a day. A casual gamer with a job/family, etc. will be lucky to play 4 hours a day. This means it would take a casual gamer roughly a year to reach max level - without any death penalty. And that's just on a single character - in a game where playing different builds is fun and enticed.

This reaffirms my point. The death penalty is wholly useless as it already takes so much time to reach max level anyway.

Psyborg said: “Really? Youre #5 in Anarchy. Obviously youre doing something right, I cant imagine you die that often...can it really be a dealbreaker for you?” and then keighbanger said: “Ye(s) don't take this the wrong way because i love this game' i Believe they have done an incredible job! but when i grind for 15% exp for a couple of hrs' to have it taken away because i die its just to frustrating! if i want to be penalized because i die i would play hardcore simple..”

I know Keigh. He's a very easy going skilled player. We've spoken about the death penalty, and he’s in full agreement later on in the game, the penalty is too harsh. He was actually #2 on the ladder for awhile.

I think one issue is many of the people in this thread have not reached L80+ and experienced the effects of the penalty. It’s so easy to die in Merciless to things like desynch, multiple crits in a row, a group of extra damage blue ranged mobs that fire at you in unison, or an exile that rushes you out of nowhere while in the middle of combat. We need to remember, this game is designed to kill us; surviving and progressing is the core purpose – but as I mentioned, taking the time a player has put into a game is psychologically harmful as it angers them. As mentioned above, one player thinks “fear is good”. Well, reward is better. The majority of people don’t play a game to be fearful (and with the new Rogue Exiles in Merciless, when you first encounter them, your initial reaction is of Fear, wondering if they’ll kill you before you can escape and plan on how to fight them – all because of the experience penalty). People play games to have fun and be rewarded.

Zeekin said: “POE's death penalty is just a lazy cut+paste from D2.”

Incorrect; in D2 you could regain 75% of your lost experience by returning to your body. PoE has no such option, so the penalty is absolute, and far harsher than D2. It also takes MUCH longer to reach max level in PoE than it does in D2, and gaining any viable amount of experience at 90+ requires expensive and rare high level maps. This is another reason the penalty is ridiculous.

The simple fact is players are already penalized as they achieve high levels (80+) due to the experience penalty, and the only way to gain a reasonable amount of experience is through high level, expensive and rare maps. When a player runs out they're forced to go back to farm content that gives 1-2% experience to rebuild their map repository.

Iamstryker said:”All players in any game should be penalized for dieing. It would be downright silly if we were rewarded for dieing! ;)”

If the death penalty was removed entirely from Softcore, there’s no reward for dying; there’s just no experience penalty, and the penalty is knowing you were just killed by something and failed in combat… time for revenge! The inconvenience factor of dying to a mob is enough IMO, and given a death in a map means you lose a portal. As maps are the best end-game content for progress and item drops, this mechanic already addresses the issue.

Here’s a thought as an alternative to completely removing the experience penalty. What if you could regain, say 75-90% of your experience by slaying the monster that killed you? That might be an interesting way to address the penalty – the mob that lands the killing blow gains a perm aura of “life force” that you can steal back; and it would stack. This way if you want to fight a boss or rogue exile and you die a few times, you can regain the majority of your lost experience by killing them…

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Bushido74 wrote:

He's correct based on what I see with all my friends that left the game. The penalty for XP, currency drops, and XP death penalty has all but forced casuals to leave the game after reaching L70-75. If you can't manage to get maps due to currency penalty you dead in the water. How do you think that makes players feel when they have invested so much time and now they can't even finished what they started. I'm sure GGG won't listen, they just don't get it. lol

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Bushido74 wrote:

He's correct based on what I see with all my friends that left the game. The penalty for XP, currency drops, and XP death penalty has all but forced casuals to leave the game after reaching L70-75. If you can't manage to get maps due to currency penalty you dead in the water. How do you think that makes players feel when they have invested so much time and now they can't even finished what they started. I'm sure GGG won't listen, they just don't get it. lol

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arbait_333 wrote:

how is this whiny thread at 30+pages and still on General?