is the xp lost on death a good design ?

Hi,

I completely understand your concerns about XP loss on death, especially as a casual player. It can feel discouraging, especially when you’re trying to learn new mechanics or tackle challenging content. That said, I’d like to share some reasons why this mechanic can be beneficial and integral to the overall experience.

Risk and Reward:
XP loss on death introduces stakes to the game, making success in difficult encounters more satisfying. When you finally defeat a tough boss or survive a treacherous area, the victory feels earned and impactful because of the real risk involved. Without any penalty for failure, the thrill of triumph might be diminished.

Player Growth:
Facing XP loss encourages players to adapt, strategize, and improve their gameplay. Knowing there’s something on the line can push players to learn fight mechanics, refine their builds, or practice better positioning, ultimately making them more skilled over time.

Economy and Cooperation:
XP loss can foster a sense of community and cooperation. As you mentioned, you’ve hired someone to run bosses for you. While this might not be your favorite approach, it allows players with different skill levels or playstyles to engage with each other. Additionally, the presence of XP penalties means services like XP recovery or assistance remain meaningful.

Challenge Preservation:
The penalty adds a layer of challenge for endgame players. Without it, grinding to max level or repeatedly farming bosses might feel trivial. The penalty maintains a level of tension and respect for game content, keeping it engaging even after dozens of hours.

While these are some positives, I understand your frustrations. Features like omens or ways to mitigate losses are steps in the right direction for accessibility. Ideas like opting out of XP loss at a reduced gain are interesting compromises, but it’s worth considering how such changes might affect the game’s balance and community dynamics.

At its core, XP loss is designed to enhance the overall depth and longevity of the game. It’s not always easy to embrace, but it does contribute to the rich and rewarding experience that many players enjoy.

Hope this perspective helps, and happy grinding!

The only ones who like exp penalty in poe1 are ones not affected by it, either because they bend balance to such degree that they never die, or because they are willing to actively socialize and spend on omens or 5way to bypass penalty. While "normal" moderately-noob players are driven away from the game at a stable rate by random unexpected rollbacks.

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Risk and Reward:
XP loss on death introduces stakes to the game, making success in difficult encounters more satisfying. When you finally defeat a tough boss or survive a treacherous area, the victory feels earned and impactful because of the real risk involved. Without any penalty for failure, the thrill of triumph might be diminished.

Or maybe you just postpone difficult encounters until you've leveled up or lost all exp in current level anyway? Considering length of grind loops in poe1, I've stopped feeling any satisfaction after first 2 times beating any of the pinnacle bosses here. And my thoughs on death were like "ugh, whatever, respawn and roll that mob over in 1 sec"

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Player Growth:
Facing XP loss encourages players to adapt, strategize, and improve their gameplay. Knowing there’s something on the line can push players to learn fight mechanics, refine their builds, or practice better positioning, ultimately making them more skilled over time.

True, but to an extent. For a noob, that "growth" means he/she should completely ditch a build they wanted to use from a fantasy reason, and join the ranks of meta warriors running weird unkillable gimmicks. Not necessarily a great thing for a game that tries to make build variety one of main selling points.

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Economy and Cooperation:
XP loss can foster a sense of community and cooperation. As you mentioned, you’ve hired someone to run bosses for you. While this might not be your favorite approach, it allows players with different skill levels or playstyles to engage with each other. Additionally, the presence of XP penalties means services like XP recovery or assistance remain meaningful.

Have you ever tried 5way service?:) There is no great spirit of cooperation to be made there, more like hard work for the host, and grim necessity for noobs paying 5-7 divs per run, which is a lot for them. Host is the only one gaining meaningful rewards. As for leveling together in generic gameplay, you must have irl friends in advance for that. I don't see "public games for leveling" chat in TFT.

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Challenge Preservation:
The penalty adds a layer of challenge for endgame players. Without it, grinding to max level or repeatedly farming bosses might feel trivial. The penalty maintains a level of tension and respect for game content, keeping it engaging even after dozens of hours.

This one never ceases to amaze. So what if some noob you never meet reaches level 100 by dying 1000 times? Not in race event, in common softcore league. Why do you care about someone else's "respect for the game content"? There is no better loot or other competitive advantages for being level 100, but it gives noobs extra 5 passive points to plug the holes in their homebrewed build. Must be a bad thing.

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

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Helldrazi#4560 wrote:

Player Growth:
Facing XP loss encourages players to adapt, strategize, and improve their gameplay. Knowing there’s something on the line can push players to learn fight mechanics, refine their builds, or practice better positioning, ultimately making them more skilled over time.

True, but to an extent. For a noob, that "growth" means he/she should completely ditch a build they wanted to use from a fantasy reason, and join the ranks of meta warriors running weird unkillable gimmicks. Not necessarily a great thing for a game that tries to make build variety one of main selling points.

Even a "noob" can get better over time. Having no death penalty causes exactly the opposite of a positive learn curve as players can just roll over content without consequences.

There's also no need to play meta in order to do good and learn out of stupid mistakes like lacking defensive layer or greedy gameplay just to be fine in maps.
Same for boss fights as all it takes is some practice to get the simple boss indicators and cues down.
Everything else comes over time if a player, even a noob, is actually willed to learn.


I can't be stressed enough but it's always good to remind players that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

For example here we do have a player with lacking defense and little to no care in the world to avoid well telegraphed and obvious attacks.
Something that they could easily overcome in multiple ways but removing the death penalty obviously wouldn't change much about any players or "noobs" gameplay.

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There's also no need to play meta in order to do good and learn out of stupid mistakes like lacking defensive layer or greedy gameplay just to be fine in maps.
Same for boss fights as all it takes is some practice to get the simple boss indicators and cues down.
Everything else comes over time if a player, even a noob, is actually willed to learn.

In theory this is true. In practice, playing poe1 deathless requires stuffing ALL defensive layers onto a character and still have some dps. This cannot be done on a random homebrewed build.

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Even a "noob" can get better over time. Having no death penalty causes exactly the opposite of a positive learn curve as players can just roll over content without consequences.

if by learning you mean picking one of relatively few all-around meta builds (see above), sure.

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For example here we do have a player with lacking defense and little to no care in the world to avoid well telegraphed and obvious attacks.

And here we have another player who sings GGG praises on every opportunity, from a permanently hidden account:) Maybe stop trying to make this personal and then reporting whoever disagrees with you to the moderators for "derailing the thread"?

I think the 6 portals are enough of a protection for brute forcing an encounter.

Please keep in mind at all time that a casual player playing an hour is far less effective than an experienced player playing an hour.

So for a casual player, everything takes longer, so everything is more punishing.
I think experienced players loose sight of that.

Maybe it would be better if we could practice bosses at no cost and no reward.

I guess people selling boss services wouldn't like that :D

First off, you aren't a casual with 36 challenges. Like, not even close.

Second, you don't lose "hours" of progress with a death. Even at 99 it's no sweat making 10% in an hour or less. Unless you waste 6 portals on a boss while having 60% progress on your xp you aren't losing "hours" and if you actually did that then honestly the only person to blame is you.

Third, if you want to try out stuff, you can do that between leveling when you have 10% xp progress or less. Level 100 is by no means needed so it's perfectly viable to just stop caring at 95 and do what you like.

So with all the absurd exaggeration out of the way let's talk about the topic at hand. I think there needs to be a punishment for death and no, losing 1 out 6 portals is not a punishment. If we only had 1 portal there would be an argument to be made but not with 6. I also think losing xp is better than losing equipment or currency. I do believe there would be better ways to implement the XP penalty than how it's done in POE but i think it's a neccessary design choice for a company wanting to make a "hardcore" game. Whether it's good or bad ultimately depends on the individual.

At level 99 you're carrying an omen of amelioration that makes the loss 2.5 percent instead of 10 percent. Sure, this omen does cost a bit of currency but it's not very expensive. Was about 50c each a month into the league. Is 50c a high price to save that much lost time on occasional death that might happen (but at level 99 doesn't really happen often if you're grinding for 100?) No it's not.

I would turn off XP loss on bosses though. Bossing is discouraged if you're leveling up because on something like uber maven you might die 4 times and sink 40% xp into this attempt. You don't want that.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

First off, you aren't a casual with 36 challenges. Like, not even close.

Second, you don't lose "hours" of progress with a death. Even at 99 it's no sweat making 10% in an hour or less. Unless you waste 6 portals on a boss while having 60% progress on your xp you aren't losing "hours" and if you actually did that then honestly the only person to blame is you.

Third, if you want to try out stuff, you can do that between leveling when you have 10% xp progress or less. Level 100 is by no means needed so it's perfectly viable to just stop caring at 95 and do what you like.

So with all the absurd exaggeration out of the way let's talk about the topic at hand. I think there needs to be a punishment for death and no, losing 1 out 6 portals is not a punishment. If we only had 1 portal there would be an argument to be made but not with 6. I also think losing xp is better than losing equipment or currency. I do believe there would be better ways to implement the XP penalty than how it's done in POE but i think it's a neccessary design choice for a company wanting to make a "hardcore" game. Whether it's good or bad ultimately depends on the individual.

It doesn't matter if this is a "hardcore" game. People choose to play in softcore for a reason lol

And yes, some players do in fact lose a lot of progress from dying at lvl99. It takes me like a whole day or 2 to get to like 15% exp at lvl99 running Mesa maps all day, because it takes me like 30 mins to 1 hour to run like 8-9 maps. And I'm not running some crazy juiced strat specialized for exp, I'm just running strongboxes and have every league mechanic except heist blocked on my atlas. I die once or twice and there goes all my exp from a few days. And forget about even touching any atlas pinnacle boss or endgame encounter, my exp might aswell be eternally at 0%. So no, it is not easy to make 10% exp at lvl99 for the average softcore trade player, it takes me 5 lvl83 sanctum runs to get that exp and those take like 20 mins each even when I speedrun and skip as much as I can WHILE using a Sublime Vision 39% effect for Haste with my 21 haste in my +2 helmet. That is insanity, you cannot expect the average player to be doing this for 2% exp that can be lost so easily. If I'm lucky I get 4% from a sanctum run if I get the relic that converts coins to exp and I get like 6k coins.


Not everyone wants to just copy some boring meta build with only like 5 mil dps and all the defensive layers in the game and the same boring checklists of suppression and whatever else. Do you know how expensive and hard that suppression gear is to craft? You have to buy it all off players and the prices are insane. People just wanna have fun, and losing exp is unfun and has 0 positives for this game. It's a net negative. Absolutely nobody feels any stakes because of "oh nooo I will lose 10% when I die", they're just annoyed by it and then either avoid all dangerous content until they level up and are not allowed to boss or progress until that point, which is just bad game design. Or they buy a 5-way legion and afk in there burning all their divines, also some of these exp groups even require you to find and equip chaos res gear so that's fun.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

For example here we do have a player with lacking defense and little to no care in the world to avoid well telegraphed and obvious attacks.

Would like to know how many "obvious attacks" You can see with 12.000 MS on GGG servers. xD lol Their server response is bad in our country.

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modemwarr#6858 wrote:

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

For example here we do have a player with lacking defense and little to no care in the world to avoid well telegraphed and obvious attacks.

Would like to know how many "obvious attacks" You can see with 12.000 MS on GGG servers. xD lol Their server response is bad in our country.

That's also a big problem that just deletes people's exp lol, desync issues and just ms lag. My normal ms is like 36-40 but almost every other map I either desync when flamedashing or some enemy/projectile isn't where it actually is shown on my screen, or the game decides to just not render an attack and then you're dead. And I refuse to play on anything other than Predictive mode, because Lockstep makes me feel like I constantly have 5000 ms every time I click to move anywhere, its the most annoying thing ever.