is the xp lost on death a good design ?

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I agree and it would be fair enough, if they just add the option to toggle it on or off if you want, or an easier mode with no exp penalty I would play that. That wouldn't matter for the people who still want the exp penalty, and the people who dislike it can just click a button to disable it. And everyone would be happy. Or at the very least reduce it overall, or disable it during endgame bosses.

I appreciate your perspective, and I totally understand why a toggle option sounds appealing—it’s a simple way to make everyone happy, right? That said, I’d personally disagree with the idea of toggling XP loss off entirely because levels and skill points should mean something.

If XP loss could just be turned off at will, leveling would lose a lot of its weight. Every level, especially in the 90s, is a testament to perseverance and careful play. It’s not just about grinding—it’s about maintaining focus, managing risk, and learning when to push yourself. Without that, levels would feel like a mere formality rather than an accomplishment.

That said, I do think there’s room for compromise:
Scaling XP Loss by Level: Higher levels could lose less XP on death. For example, instead of losing 10% at level 99, maybe it’s reduced to 5%. This would still keep progression meaningful without feeling quite as punishing for players grinding in those later levels. (This is an example of course it would be level scaling but it was a quick example).

No XP Loss for Endgame Bosses: I completely agree here. If you’re bricking the boss and map after failing, that’s already punishment enough. Removing XP loss from these encounters would make them less daunting without trivializing the stakes of regular mapping.


This way, leveling retains its sense of achievement, but the frustration of punishing mechanics feels a little more reasonable. What do you think? Would scaling penalties or targeted changes like this hit the sweet spot?

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Fart_Smucker#3238 wrote:

“i see no one talking about this” you must be new or are rarely here because someone brings up this eye rolling topic fairly often and cries. Yes it's good design, you’re just mad and don’t learn from mistakes

Maybe avoid suggestions and feedback forum then, that would spare you some eye sprain by rolling them too much.

Another example of how can this be handled is replacing exp penalty with survival bonus.

- Let survival bonus be a stat which gradually increases from 0% to 100% the longer you stay in combat and kill monsters without dying.
- Each 1% of bonus gives +1% to outgoing monster damage, +0.5% to monster HP, +1% to monster loot rarity (not player's IIR stat) and +0.5% to monster loot quantity.
- When you die, bonus resets to 0%
- Bonus progression is non-linear, let getting from 0% to 30% be much faster than getting from 90% to 100%.

It would still incentivize nolifers and racers to not die for that improved loot, but also requires them to have slightly more defenses in exchange. While noobs elsewhere can play at their own pace without being rubberbanded back in their progression every now and then. Level 100 by itself is hardly a badge of honor in poe elite world, it can be cheesed or bought anyway, so I don't see any wounded pride for the top of the community coming from survival bonus.

The xp loss is just bad design. Just plan for about lvl 85 and ignore the xp loss. Get rushed when your build feels finished.

Now I think it costs roughly 30ish div to get rushed to 100.

I think xp loss sucks since it encourages a very stale way of playing the game, and a lot of deaths can't really be prevented unless you have a bonkers defense setup.

The amount of grinding to stop dying is significantly more then leveling to 100. That kind of is the problem, the people who need more levels don't get them because GGG decided to have a death penatly. So players are encouraged to just get rushed instead of leveling normally. What build wouldn't want like 12 more skill points?

If the death penalty is so good for the game and it helps teach players, make it remove level 100 from people. Surely the noobs at max level need to know they have to improve their builds. How else would they know if GGG didn't remove xp from them. Sarcasm in case it wasn't obvious, but I hate this argument. Mostly because poe didn't have any feedback to players.

The xp loss teaches nothing. The only feedback players have ingame is "you have died, resurrect in town or at a checkpoint." A damage log would actually do that and tell people how they died.

Why does everyone want everything togglable.

Tofort, how can you complain that the xp loss is devastating and terrible, and in the same breath saying getting to 100 is easy. It doesn't make any sense. If you don't want to lose xp, then get your character to 100 if its that easy. Then you don't have xp penalty. Seems pretty easy to me.

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roundishcap#0649 wrote:

The xp loss is just bad design. Just plan for about lvl 85 and ignore the xp loss. Get rushed when your build feels finished.

Now I think it costs roughly 30ish div to get rushed to 100.

I think xp loss sucks since it encourages a very stale way of playing the game, and a lot of deaths can't really be prevented unless you have a bonkers defense setup.

The amount of grinding to stop dying is significantly more then leveling to 100. That kind of is the problem, the people who need more levels don't get them because GGG decided to have a death penatly. So players are encouraged to just get rushed instead of leveling normally. What build wouldn't want like 12 more skill points?

If the death penalty is so good for the game and it helps teach players, make it remove level 100 from people. Surely the noobs at max level need to know they have to improve their builds. How else would they know if GGG didn't remove xp from them. Sarcasm in case it wasn't obvious, but I hate this argument. Mostly because poe didn't have any feedback to players.

The xp loss teaches nothing. The only feedback players have ingame is "you have died, resurrect in town or at a checkpoint." A damage log would actually do that and tell people how they died.

Honestly I thought it would be more expensive but 30 divs to afk to 100 sounds like a good deal to me lol, I'd only ever do it if I really want that extra 6% life on my build though. 96-98 is good enough to get all my jewel sockets. The lag in legion 5-ways is also just kinda annoying, there's a reason so many people used the old exp scarab that got deleted for no good reason other than "no fun allowed". It wasn't op, literally nobody asked for it to be removed, that was such a weird change. And this new scarab of evolving is pretty much useless since you can't stack the 30% exp effect with like 10 shrines.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

Why does everyone want everything togglable.

Tofort, how can you complain that the xp loss is devastating and terrible, and in the same breath saying getting to 100 is easy. It doesn't make any sense. If you don't want to lose xp, then get your character to 100 if its that easy. Then you don't have xp penalty. Seems pretty easy to me.

I can easily get to that level yes, by doing about 45 more lvl83 sanctum tomes. But I would literally fall asleep on my keyboard because its booooooooooooring. I did sanctum up to lvl100 once, I made over 100 divines from it and it was so bland. Absolutely 0 sense of achievement or anything lol

The exp scarab with breach spam and getting a bunch of shrines was the most fun way to get to 100, but that got deleted. Either way I'm gonna keep dying and resetting to 0% exp. I don't know if this pointless death penalty will ever be removed from softcore when there are already 50 other negative effects from dying in that mode. All I can do is keep complaining about it and simply wait for it to be changed.

i had a guildy that did the freezing pulse build your playing and he got to 90 without res cap and i think lightning was negative and he did all the ubers easily. It truly can be remedied with a more well rounded build.

If you're not having a sense of achievement getting to 100 theres really no reason to do it. Me personally when i hit 100 i get bored with the char. I manually leveled 2 chars to 100 this league and enjoyed every bit of it. If it was easier it would be meaningless just like max level in d4 is.

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

Spoiler

Another example of how can this be handled is replacing exp penalty with survival bonus.

- Let survival bonus be a stat which gradually increases from 0% to 100% the longer you stay in combat and kill monsters without dying.
- Each 1% of bonus gives +1% to outgoing monster damage, +0.5% to monster HP, +1% to monster loot rarity (not player's IIR stat) and +0.5% to monster loot quantity.
- When you die, bonus resets to 0%
- Bonus progression is non-linear, let getting from 0% to 30% be much faster than getting from 90% to 100%.

It would still incentivize nolifers and racers to not die for that improved loot, but also requires them to have slightly more defenses in exchange. While noobs elsewhere can play at their own pace without being rubberbanded back in their progression every now and then. Level 100 by itself is hardly a badge of honor in poe elite world, it can be cheesed or bought anyway, so I don't see any wounded pride for the top of the community coming from survival bonus.

Instead of punishing bad builds and poor choices, rewarding bad builds and poor choices? Thats one of the worst ideas I’ve seen.

From level 100 that have some value right now, turn it into meaningless automated step like leveling gem to 20 or finishing an act… Nah, please don’t diablofy poe any further, some of us enjoy reaching things that are harder/challenging to obtain/time consuming. Level 100 without exp on death loss would be meaningless- just like max level in diablo - noone cares about it. They should rather remove omens, exp from sanctum and make 5-way and breachstones solo areas.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I don't know if this pointless death penalty will ever be removed from softcore when there are already 50 other negative effects from dying in that mode.

What are these "other 50 negative effects from dying" you're talking about? Come on, I challenge you to post at least 5.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

All I can do is keep complaining about it and simply wait for it to be changed.

They're not changing it. The very fact that their new game has it as well should be hint enough. The game isn't balanced around you or anyone else who just wants to corpse rush their way to level 100. Deal with it.