It's 2025, and XP Penalties on Death Still Exist?

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Carinyc#0837 wrote:

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Talamor1#0630 wrote:

Please GGG, do not listen to those who ask you to remove the experience penalty. Don't make this game any worse than it already is.

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Thanks to the penalty, you're rewarded if you have a reliable, solid enough build, and if your playing style allows you to avoid death.

This is just so completely wrong.

1) Path of Exile 2 is not a competitive game. You are not competing against other players. It is a PvE game with a ladder element to highlight realistically unobtainable builds. Therefore, keeping the game competitive is a moot point.

2) You grind for hours in the endgame for better gear, not to level up. One level in the endgame barely means anything. If you are in a position to where you get a massive power spike from a level after 90, the build is bricked.

3) Because of how utterly time wasting the gambling craft system is, and how dying to one-shots sets you back hours because of map node planning, you end up being forced to use the trading system to get the gear you need regardless. You farm for currency to then trade with players. This creates a toxic situation where you are trying your best to game the drop rates, such as inviting people to your group who have massively increased magic find, the unique grave gloves and go AFK. This ruins the game economy, and subsequently 'crafting' for everyone else because of how everything ties together. What a great system!

"All you have to do is launch a bunch of maps and farm them like a brainless person without even looking at your screen. Even if your build sucks, you'll still end up levelling up to level 100..." This is already happening due to the aforementioned reason.

1. I think you misunderstand how PoE works. If a market exists, it's so that it can be used and players can interact with each other.

Because this market exists, the game isn't just Pve because all the players are competing to reach the endgame as quickly as possible and be the first to farm unique pinnacle boss items or craft god tier items, then sell them to the highest bidder and get even richer. That's why the start of every PoE league, and this will be the case in PoE 2, is a race to see who can reach the endgame the fastest.

2. Endgame grind is used to :
- find or craft the best stuff to be more powerful,
- gain experience and therefore levels to become more powerful.
Just as it's not easy to craft or find better endgame stuff, it's not easy to get the last 90 to 100 levels either.

3. This is a totally different topic, game is for now unbalance but this has nothing to deal with xp penalty bro.


4. Go check the ladder here : https://pathofexile2.com/ladders
Only 3 people are lvl 100 today, 5 weeks after the launch of the EA...

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QticaX#4168 wrote:

Exactly, it sucks to see people complain about it and how little of them they are that want a change.. then you go into game and get into the community that is pushing into the higher 90s and it's massive.

There is no point in changing something that isn't broken.

You guys are bloody delusional if you think the majority of the community is pushing into the 90ies.

The majority of the community is spamming alts in the first act.

Again take a look at the stats for PoE1, 50% have entered the first town, 45% have killed merveil, 20% have done the first half of the story, 15% have done the 2nd half of the story.

That's less than half the players who passed through the first act have even played through half the game. And you can be sure that the stats for PoE2 are going to be looking similar.

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

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Orion_3T#9801 wrote:

I would bet good money there would be more people playing if not for this feature. Because I know people who refused to play both POE and POE2 because of this, and myself am someone seriously considering calling it a day. Which would make me sad as the game is otherwise great. And because I do not believe that its removal would in any way reduce the enjoyment of those who defend it. Even if it did somehow affect them, it would not be to the degree they would no longer play.

I'll say the jury is still out on this.

The concurrent (that word is important) player count is still massive, but has been dropping.

One obvious cause is that people play more when they first start the game, then settle down into a more regular routine. Another is the holiday season is an atypical time for people.

What remains to be seen (by us - the devs will have this) is how many people start noping out of the game once they hit the maps and higher levels. I don't think we'll have a clear picture on that for at least another month, as most people take a while to clear the campaign.

Sure, I was not claiming that to be an objective fact, just my own firmly held belief which I think is an entirely reasonable one.

GGG know that player retention after initially trying POE1 was absolutely terrible. They said something like 90% never even reach Brutus. Who even for a casual is only a couple of hours into the game.

But yes, I would like to see the analytics on this. There are a lot of people who have absolutely no clue how many people have not even entered this conversation yet because they are still on campaign.

And campaign does not even remotely prepare the player for the misery once you hit 70+. So I think a lot will quit not long after reaching 70. And I am confident nobody has ever been, or ever will be, pleasantly surprised to find they lose XP when they die.

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NeoCyrus#3728 wrote:

99.99% of players know the XP penalty is legacy BS and the only ones in favor of it are a tiny vocal minority.

+1

Vocal minority are the bane of games. They like illogical and outdated things because they are sucky in person.

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Redthorne82#3177 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

If they refuse to remove these clearly outdated,archaic useless mechanics then they're just gonna lose soooo many players because of it.

This. Will. Never. Go.

Would like to debate they are no longer that indie hippy small company which people tolerate. They are now a company with a extremely rich investor which wants to garner a greater market share. The amount of money pumped into Path of Exile 2 on Early Access shows that they are standing between the edge of a knife. They need the money to move forward and prove their concept is appealing enough for Tencent to give them more funding.

Being stick and sick in the head has never served them well over the years. Think people have forgotten how stubborn they are until they were beaten down over and over again by players with better talents and design logic than them.

And GGG never pay a single cent of consult fee to feedback.

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Shamuza#7442 wrote:

As gaming has become more popular and widespread the industry as a whole has moved away from negative progression as a punishment for failure. Thus when we say it is an old and outdated mechanic we mean in the context of the modern era it is an OLD and OUTDATED mechanic that the rest of the industry has rightfully left behind.

Well said, and if I may expand on this a little this applies well outside of gaming also.

I think it was a different thread but an analogy was made to businesses docking their employees wages, or other forms of punishment, for unintended errors.

This was the norm back in the 1800s, Dickens's Ebeneezer Scrooge being the quintessential example of an Awful Boss even back then when it was normal. And it took a long time for society to recognise this point, which is why it's now unlawful in most civilised countries to arbitrarily dock an employee's wages for unintentional mistakes. And absolutely no respectable business would do it even if it weren't legal.

It is now the norm to reward people for good performance, and only discipline those who commit violations or have some repeat behaviour that requires correctional training.

Now I would bet based on what I have seen that GGG are not the type of employer to dock their employees wages for coding errors. That they reward hard work (as seen when they all got a good long Xmas break) and those who innovate and come up with good ideas.

I would implore them to extend the same respect to their players. I understand this was part of their original vision as the spiritual successor to D2. I understand players of POE1 have learned to cope with that, or had already accepted it coming from D2.

But times have changed - they have proven they can make an endgame fun and interesting without the need to artificially slow people down by removing XP they have already earned by successfully killing the monsters and completing the maps prior to their mistakes.

PoE 2 might have gone too far with all the penalties if you die in a map, but there has to be some sort of death penalty or else character building would lose most meaning.

If you don't have a penalty, then there is no reason to have a character balanced between offense & defense, which means you can remove more than half the passive tree and affixes on items. PoE would become a one-dimensional silly nonsense, where everyone would only ever grab damage.

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morbo#1824 wrote:

PoE 2 might have gone too far with all the penalties if you die in a map, but there has to be some sort of death penalty or else character building would lose most meaning.

If you don't have a penalty, then there is no reason to have a character balanced between offense & defense, which means you can remove more than half the passive tree and affixes on items. PoE would become a one-dimensional silly nonsense, where everyone would only ever grab damage.

Your precious balance doesn't exist. Gamers who literally could smash the game with their build are already doing what you said. This game is a lesser version of Path of Exile 1 but with the same approach. Nuke everything before they can touch you. Them getting to 100 is only a matter of time.

This only push people to use only meta build and ironically, the things Grinding Gear want is build diversity.

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stalkingjackal#2441 wrote:

D4 doesn't have xp penalty - does it lead to more player retention?

I don't think so.

You clearly have not given this argument any thought, or do not know the community you are referring to.

If D4 added non-optional XP loss right now it would be an absolute disaster for them. It would be the single worst decision they would ever have made. If you don't believe me, you are clearly speaking of something you know nothing about.

People don't stop playing D4 mid season because it doesn't have an XP penalty. That is a ludicrous suggestion. They stop playing because they have completed the season journey and played the available activities as much as they care to, and do not feel inclined to grind out more paragon just for the sake of it with no clear goal in mind. So they either make a new character or they go play something else until next season. At least, that's why I stop, and the same goes for my friends.

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XP penalty has never been an issue for PoE1

You don't know that - it's just a baseless assertion. You cannot know how much more or less successful it would have been without the XP loss. If it's just your best guess and opinion at least be honest about that rather than asserting it as fact.

It was absolutely an issue for me. And my friends. To the point we didn't even bother getting to endgame because we knew what was in store. I tried to enjoy the game for what it was but found the gameplay, story etc lacking and not nearly enough to hold my interest with the huge disincentive of XP penalties lingering over it.

D2 at least had an engaging story and characters and an obvious nostalgia to it. I loved the world and lore and characters. But the endgame was intolerable, I would have stuck with it longer if not for the XP loss.

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morbo#1824 wrote:

PoE 2 might have gone too far with all the penalties if you die in a map, but there has to be some sort of death penalty or else character building would lose most meaning.

If you don't have a penalty, then there is no reason to have a character balanced between offense & defense, which means you can remove more than half the passive tree and affixes on items. PoE would become a one-dimensional silly nonsense, where everyone would only ever grab damage.

Souls games have low stake penalties. Yet still, those games got build variety that dwarves Path of Exile.