Do all the XP penalty complainers just body brigade through the game? Honest question

If you're butting up against the XP penalty a lot: its because you're not playing the ARPG correctly. You're intentionally losing; Stop that. You'll enjoy the game a lot more if you stop intentionally losing.

Your instinct as a gamer playing a hack and slash ARPG when you die to often should be to go back to a previous or optional zone and farm a bit. Get some upgrades, maybe a level. Why do you think you're supposed to just steamroll ahead until the last boss dies or you reach a leveling equalibrium because you lose XP throwing your face at it faster than you gain XP? Thats not the intent of the game or genre.

Playing well in an ARPG mostly means killing things for loot until you're powerful and not dying. Unlike a souls game or a platformer or a strategy game, here the entire goal of the game is to outscale the content with a powerful character. NOT puzzle solving acumen, 4d chess, thinking 20 moves ahead, not precise flinch jumping skills at the pixel edge of a platform and not pattern recognition of what moves the enemy always does on repeat. (though ofc POE2 is weaving a bit of this in, again though its still mostly outscalable as it should be using the ARPG gameplay loop)

Imagine this mindset in a strategy game: I'll just keep using the same tactic and hope for a different result via some RNG; sounds like the definition of insanity right? Its sure as hell not gaming.

I know this seems obvious to some but the amount of complaining about XP penalty suggests that a LOT OF PEOPLE CLEARLY NEED TO HEAR IT.

Stop losing intentionally.

do all the hardcore enjoyers just over level and play it safe and never take risks or have any fun? honest question

Thanks for that pointless wall of text that doesn't address the core of the issue at all. Now give me back my 60 seconds.

Its not about gear or anything its about respecting peoples time when grinding in the game at endgame. i myself have a very good gear but as an example i once died because of a stupid bug where your left click wont work and mobs swarmed and killed me. now after that i got -10% xp where i achieved atlease about an hour grinding t15+ maps at level 95. if they really dont want to remove the penalty im fine with it but keep in mind that the game is in early access state where it has several bugs and flaws and i think they should atlease remove or tweak it and later on add it into the full release where the game is actually polished and you dont die to some BS you have no controll over.

"This game is the dark souls of the arpg genre! It's so hard and fun!!!" and "Never, ever do aspirational content where you risk dying." certainly go together like peanut butter and jelly for some of you folks. You can't have it both ways. Either it's a hard game and pushing yourself should be rewarding, or it's an easy game and choosing to do content that might actually kill you is a mistake.

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Asylph#7752 wrote:

Its not about gear or anything its about respecting peoples time when grinding in the game at endgame. i myself have a very good gear but as an example i once died because of a stupid bug where your left click wont work and mobs swarmed and killed me. now after that i got -10% xp where i achieved atlease about an hour grinding t15+ maps at level 95. if they really dont want to remove the penalty im fine with it but keep in mind that the game is in early access state where it has several bugs and flaws and i think they should atlease remove or tweak it and later on add it into the full release where the game is actually polished and you dont die to some BS you have no controll over.

"Respecting people's time" is the most bullshit phrase I think I've ever heard.

This is a game, either you find the playstyle enjoyable or not. If you don't, then you don't play it.

You choose what to do with your time, so the only person that isn't respecting it is you.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

My thoughts,

Dying involves ;

- lost waystone
- lost content
- lost currency
- lost exp
- lost time investment


Dying gains ;

- potential knowledge of why you failed
- potential to improve character

I strongly feel they have to balance the death penalties as a whole.

Factor in the large amount of visual clutter or visual soup being thrown at you, especially in parties or group play, causing random "one-shots" and ground effects that you simply can't see or react to.

Factor in terrain issues, getting stuck in place, body blocked etc. etc.

Plenty of evidence of the above factors happening, no need to argue about it.

No need to argue with me at all actually, this is just my two cents.

If you care for the topic you should read the dozens of pages, aside a few trolls who seem to be getting mutes a lot of points have been made for potential solutions and thus also highlighting the problem.
What you said doesn't really address any of the points OP.

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cynic1984#0395 wrote:

do all the hardcore enjoyers just over level and play it safe and never take risks or have any fun? honest question

based on experience and years in the hobby most people try to ride the hairy edge and thus get to experience both challenge and power spikes. its not at all about "never" thats just a strawman.

"

Rivance#3976 wrote:

"This game is the dark souls of the arpg genre! It's so hard and fun!!!" and "Never, ever do aspirational content where you risk dying." certainly go together like peanut butter and jelly for some of you folks. You can't have it both ways. Either it's a hard game and pushing yourself should be rewarding, or it's an easy game and choosing to do content that might actually kill you is a mistake.

false dichotomy.

There's too little and too much (which is what we're arguing about) there needs to be some balance of challenge (risk vs reward) and overcoming it wether its deliberately taking risks or doing it safely by outscaling; that feels good to fans of any given game genre or sub genre. Some games are harder and more punishing some are less so. Its a spectrum not an either or. A series of choices that are either fun and compelling because they aren't trivial (can punish you) or they are light weight choices that mostly don't matter and success is handed out for simply showing up. This IMO is what you get with "too little punishment".

D4 as a great example. No important choices, punishments for failure are next to non-existant. This makes D4 a bad game. Too little consequence for bad choices = bad game. Too much can also be bad, playing HC can be too much potential for punishment so I don't do it. But an XP penalty? Thats avoidable via farming AKA playing the game correctly.

If you're constantly feeling weak and dying in a ARPG its because you're failing to attain the win condition of the game. Its feedback thats supposed to tell you to play better. Not complain that your bad play resulted in punishment.