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

My two cents: The exp penalty is so low that on the extremely rare occasion that I die, I barely notice it. Also leveling past 90 isn't all that impactful anyway.

People who think this is old-school hardcore have no idea. Real old school was full looting and losing ALL your exp. This is hugbox to the extreme by comparison. Maybe that colors my perspective.

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SwabbieGaming#5830 wrote:

The game has been out for a month. There are a grand total of SIX people in the entire world who have hit level 100 in a game where there has historically been a LOT of people who play 16+ hours a day. Do some math. That's likely 500 hours of gameplay. I'm not saying that everyone should hit level 100. I'm just saying that if even GOD GAMERS need 500 hours to get to level 100, something is wrong.

What's wrong ?

The XP penalty makes the end game loop casual friendly:
(1) pick one of the builds that don't suck from a build site
(2) farm currency in easy mode, where you don't die, with max rarity on your gear.
(3) buy your upgrades according to the build instructions.
(4) go to (2), this time will be a couple map levels higher than before.

Point (3) will become longer and longer as you'd need more expensive gear at each iteration, so this also solves the problem of retention. Players will play the league much longer.

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Nyon#6673 wrote:

Understanding the difference between a challenge and a punishment is fine, but you also have to understand that the two arent mutually exclusive.

Removing the exp penalty for example would make hitting level 100 a non challenge, because it would only be an indicator of how long you have played.

Sorry what alternative penalty are you referring to?

But see, it already is that. It doesn't indicate you were smart and had a good build nor does it indicate you were incredibly skilled. It indicates that you had a metric ton of time on your hands to go slow and overlevel. Games been out a month and 6 people are at level 100. I am not saying that number should be in the 100s, but it should be in double digits bare minimum. Especially when you consider EA is likely to have the most dedicated people and we just got off a time where a lot of people had some sort of holiday break/took some vacation time.

XP Debt is my preferred penalty (something like for the next 10% of XP you would get it takes 2 XP to = 1). Still penalizes you, but encourages you to try different things and not feel like you wasted all your time to make no progress.

However, between this forum and Reddit I have seen plenty of potential alternatives. Lose anything in your inventory, mark the overworld node as locked until you beat X number of maps, Having to Offer up a kind of currency to do certain tier maps, some combination of the above, etc. Some are harsher and potentially worse, many sound better. I just really think you can punish death whilst encouraging gameplay that is both fun and actually encourages you to change things up and reevaluate your build.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

a couple of you guys are blaming on death punishment when you should be upset about the XP curve. Which seems kinda over the top for a game thats supposed to be slower paced than POE1. But thats got nothing to do with XP loss on death. They are two different things that are related. You're blaming one of the consequences of poor play that's supposed to keep you from winning automatically by throwing your face at content. When what you're really unhappy about is the XP curve, and unfair, unsignaled one shots.

Unearned deaths are rampant in POE1 and I have a long history of criticizing that while also supporting consequences against poor play.

Notice a pattern? a Badly tuned XP curve and one shots are both things that make a game poorly designed.

Penalties for poor play are things that make a game well designed.

+1

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poe10000#0331 wrote:

The XP penalty makes the end game loop casual friendly:
(1) pick one of the builds that don't suck from a build site
(2) farm currency in easy mode, where you don't die, with max rarity on your gear.
(3) buy your upgrades according to the build instructions.
(4) go to (2), this time will be a couple map levels higher than before.

Point (3) will become longer and longer as you'd need more expensive gear at each iteration, so this also solves the problem of retention. Players will play the league much longer.

Casuals who do not play poe1, just like a larger marketshare of arpg players, do not play it because you need guides to play it.

Casuals do not think about currency efficiency and they sure as hell do not want to trade even more so when it is over a third party webside (also lmao at security issues thanks to trading).

You really do not know what you are talking about, did you only play poe1 for the past decade and never any other game? This is not meant as an offense but what you described is far from reality.

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adrenrocker#5143 wrote:

"

Nyon#6673 wrote:

Understanding the difference between a challenge and a punishment is fine, but you also have to understand that the two arent mutually exclusive.

Removing the exp penalty for example would make hitting level 100 a non challenge, because it would only be an indicator of how long you have played.

Sorry what alternative penalty are you referring to?

But see, it already is that. It doesn't indicate you were smart and had a good build nor does it indicate you were incredibly skilled. It indicates that you had a metric ton of time on your hands to go slow and overlevel. Games been out a month and 6 people are at level 100. I am not saying that number should be in the 100s, but it should be in double digits bare minimum. Especially when you consider EA is likely to have the most dedicated people and we just got off a time where a lot of people had some sort of holiday break/took some vacation time.

XP Debt is my preferred penalty (something like for the next 10% of XP you would get it takes 2 XP to = 1). Still penalizes you, but encourages you to try different things and not feel like you wasted all your time to make no progress.

However, between this forum and Reddit I have seen plenty of potential alternatives. Lose anything in your inventory, mark the overworld node as locked until you beat X number of maps, Having to Offer up a kind of currency to do certain tier maps, some combination of the above, etc. Some are harsher and potentially worse, many sound better. I just really think you can punish death whilst encouraging gameplay that is both fun and actually encourages you to change things up and reevaluate your build.

No I disagree, it is still a challenge, it might not be an incredible challenge of skill but its a challenge where you have played for hundreds of hours while having minimal deaths. Which is why so few have accomplished it.

Other then that I totally agree with you that hitting level 100 takes abit too long I feel aswell. I just disagree that removing the exp penalty on death is the solution.

I think you do make a decent argument tho and your alternative solution isnt terrible but I dont quite see what the difference would be.

A) You lose 10% exp on death

B) You get 50% less exp for the next 20% of your level.

Wouldnt it just be the same? Or do you mean that it should have a cap so dying repeatedly doesnt have any impact until youve leveled past the "cap"?

I have under 25 deaths at level 90 and I hate the xp penalty. 3/4 of those deaths came from mapping and one shots.

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poe10000#0331 wrote:

The XP penalty makes the end game loop casual friendly:
(1) pick one of the builds that don't suck from a build site
(2) farm currency in easy mode, where you don't die, with max rarity on your gear.
(3) buy your upgrades according to the build instructions.
(4) go to (2), this time will be a couple map levels higher than before.

Point (3) will become longer and longer as you'd need more expensive gear at each iteration, so this also solves the problem of retention. Players will play the league much longer.

When I read comments like this I legitimately want to unplug from the internet and avoid contact with humanity entirely because I can't even believe there are conscious minds on this planet that suggest that the best way to enjoy a video game is to have someone else tell me how to play the video game.

It's really not that complicated.

Exp penalty sucks. It's bad game design, and all it does is waste people's time.

Stop blaming the players for bad game design, and nobody should care how someone chooses to play a game and if they die 1 or 100 times to something before getting past it lmao this isn't some e-sport this is a PVE game it shouldn't even have any death penalties. There is no "right" way to play a game, let alone an arpg. If a game is so frustrating and bad that it makes people uninstall and quit then its on the devs to fix that, because guess what this is a live-service game. And EA is the best time for feedback and big changes in the game. The ascendancy trials are also another example of how this game has completely failed to retain players even during its campaign. Trying to make a "niche" """hardcore""" arpg that 5000 players enjoy isn't a very profitable idea.

All of them should be optional and if people want to they can enable em, there you go fixed all the issues with death penalties and everyone is happy. This is also why custom leagues exist, people can pay money to add custom mods. Just detach on-death penalties from this game and make them custom league mods. That's a 2nd solution I just came up with in 2 minutes. Its so easy to fix this its laughable literally it would take a few days for them to make these changes.

But hey maybe GGG will triple-down on the vision and watch as everyone leaves this boring slog of a game that disrespects the player's time investment completely.


Fact is that nobody should be telling me how to play a videogame, that's just bad design. I play games to have fun not to play it "how the devs intended". Exp penalty and 1 portal per map just pushes people into a certain playstyle,limiting the game extremely so much that it just makes people quit because why would anyone waste their time going 1 step forward 10 steps backward any time they die to a oneshot? People have better things to do with their time, just you wait till Monster Hunter Wilds comes out and all the flavor of the month tourists hop onto that train lmao


Like its time to move on and abandon all these outdated,archaic designs from 20+ years ago "just cus D2 had them". This is a horrible way to design a game.