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

"

alhazred70#2994 wrote:

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.

+1

Softcore is already the easy mode.

"

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 new gaming meta where everyone is a winner and there are no losers. Participation trophies for everyone! If the max you can consistently stay around is 90 because you keep dieing then work on why you keep dieing instead of asking the devs to allow everyone to get max level even with crappy builds. Believe it or not allowing everyone to do everything with very little friction is a bad thing for a game.

All the conflation of game balance issues with this issue isn't helping. One shots from off screen are a thing that needs to be fixed. You don't fix it by letting people throw their body at bosses without consequence.

People who insist that consequences for bad play have to be removed because they don't have the game balanced at end game are just not thinking ANY moves ahead on the metaphorical 4D chess board of game design.

Its very clear that GGG threw this endgame together with almost none of the fine balance work or iteration that happened in the campaign. And to be real for a second its also pretty clear that GGG has never understood the concept of mathematical scoping of a game, which is why both of their games have runaway compounding and goofy dice roll game over screens (random confluence of bad mods that one shot because someone thinks its fun in a game with millions of kills to just have statistically inevitable random instant deaths).


Its known by the community that many GGG employees play the game extensively. Whats not known is if any lead designers or people making the Yes/No executive decisions have any characters with /kills in the millions.

On death effects, and the "confluence of bullshit" statistically inevitable "game over screens" design suggests not.

But that has nothing to do with wanting to remove consequence for being bad at the game.

"

xpose#1651 wrote:

Respecting people's time is the new gaming meta where everyone is a winner and there are no losers. Participation trophies for everyone! If the max you can consistently stay around is 90 because you keep dieing then work on why you keep dieing instead of asking the devs to allow everyone to get max level even with crappy builds. Believe it or not allowing everyone to do everything with very little friction is a bad thing for a game.

Indeed, trophies for everyone means tons of meaningless trophies than only the shallowest and least considered mentalities can find any satisfaction in.

Like it or not games have winners and losers, its required or its not a game.

The less consequential your choices are the closer you are to "playing" pachinko.

"

alhazred70#2994 wrote:

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.

^^^ 100% this.

Agree completely.

And I say that as someone who barely gets 2 waystones most POE leagues and, until the last couple of leagues, had never killed an Uber boss. Settlers was the first POE league I ever downed TWO Uber bosses and only the second league I got anyone past level 97 or 98.

Why?

Because getting to 100 in a Path of Exile game, whether POE1 or POE2, means and should mean:
- Constantly improving your gameplay
- Continued investing in your gear until it gets super powerful
- Continued investing in your gems to get the max power out of them
- Figuring out skill and passive tree combinations to maximize damage output and defenses such that you clear maps without worry of death
- Figuring out boss mechanics such that you kill them before they kill you

The game is working as intended.

"

alhazred70#2994 wrote:

"

xpose#1651 wrote:

Respecting people's time is the new gaming meta where everyone is a winner and there are no losers. Participation trophies for everyone! If the max you can consistently stay around is 90 because you keep dieing then work on why you keep dieing instead of asking the devs to allow everyone to get max level even with crappy builds. Believe it or not allowing everyone to do everything with very little friction is a bad thing for a game.

Indeed, trophies for everyone means tons of meaningless trophies than only the shallowest and least considered mentalities can find any satisfaction in.

Like it or not games have winners and losers, its required or its not a game.

The less consequential your choices are the closer you are to "playing" pachinko.

No one is asking for participation trophies.

We're asking for trophies that need to be earned by beating challenging content, not by grinding out tons of low effort maps with no risk.

If you aren't dying regularly, the content is too easy.

the last online game I played a ton of with an EXP penalty on death was FF11 and that game definitely did not respect players' time; but we rolled with it because the rest of the experience made up for it, and (barring griefing from other players, and game limitations for rendering and processing actions in zones like Dynamis) 100% of the deaths were avoidable by understanding the game and its mechanics and either reacting in time or planning for them.

but that was also 25 years ago, and a stable game. I wouldn't accept an EXP penalty from any online game these days I don't care how well it's coded. definitely not in early access with stability issues and bugs.

I am both older now, with fewer hours to play in a week, and - believe it or not - video games have evolved in the past 25 years. so when experience is lost to a death due to factors outside my control, there is no learning from it. there is no challenge in it.

we're all just eating lost time with not even an apology from the game for having wasted it.

I'm currently 94 on my highest char and close to 92 on my farm char (MF), never changed gear or skill since level 80 and just farm easy t15, 16 maps and avoid any risk.

Exciting challenge, game working as intended by boring me to death. Makes me never want to return since the time requirement for a max character is way too much. Rather play "inferior" competition which will somehow to everyones surprise be profitable when the hardcore game is left in the dust long term.

No matter of cool systems can survive disrespecting your customers time, it's like making your washing machine explode because you did not use the perfect setting and telling the consumer to read the manual again. There are baseline expectations that you have to meet and one of them in a rpg is that people want to feel closure by "finishing" the game i.e. max level and see all the content.

You can put the high end content for good players at level 100+ with lvl 101+ enemies that you need real good builds or gear to clear that a casual player, time and all, will hardly beat.

If level 100 is not required, then the max level should be reduced to like 85 for example as to not set false expectations. A designers intend is meaningless if it goes against a consumers expectation and only those with huge sunk cost will defend it for reasons that are partially unreasonable. Some of the posts showcase it since it shows a disconnect from the average consumer and attaches labels/expectations meant to ridicule on them that were never mentioned or even desired if one follows the topic.. all to justify an opposing position.

"

BK2710#6123 wrote:

Some of the posts showcase it since it shows a disconnect from the average consumer and attaches labels/expectations meant to ridicule on them that were never mentioned or even desired if one follows the topic.. all to justify an opposing position.

This is a really good point. Theres no "I like it because it encourages me to do X." or "I really like being punished like this because." Its just "Anyone who doesn't want this is a baby" and at best "Game kicks me in the nards when I do something wrong, like these games always have. working as intended". Neither is a good argument for why the mechanic is better than the others suggested. Hell, none of them will even admit people have suggested alternatives.

"

BK2710#6123 wrote:

There are baseline expectations that you have to meet and one of them in a rpg is that people want to feel closure by "finishing" the game

Finishing the GAME and getting closure is done by killing the boss of Act 6 (currently Act 3 Cruel).