XP loss on death is seriously demotivating

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EdwardReynolds#6959 wrote:

exp loss on death adds nothing to the game, it only pisses people off. Get rid of it.

Yep +1

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Warrax#2850 wrote:

At some point you have to settle and accept that your current level is the "max" level, as soon as you accept this...exp loss won't matter anymore. Your character is pretty much done leveling.

If I ever experience this in a game, its new character time or I'm done. Game better be pretty damn good, or it won't be new character time.

I've already started a new character once though. So it is that good, lol.

have you considered not dying

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Glowie_Zigger#5018 wrote:

have you considered not dying

Nah thats ridiculous, you cant expect them to improve at the game.
They should be allowed to just keep dying over and over and still be rewarded the same as you.

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Nyon#6673 wrote:

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Kodavor#1200 wrote:

10k+ hours into PoE. Feels exactly the same as the first random 1 shot I got.
Hands on Factual experience. Exactly the same.

Something glitched out.
Something did not render.
Some random rubberbanding happened.
Some tree obscured the vision of the mob or ability.
Some Boss/mob ability has janky hitbox and hits you when it should not.
17 minor abilities overlapped with a deadly one and it was not visible.

ETC
ETC

All I can say is that I have prob around 500-600 hours played and Im having the opposite experience. Cant remember dying once where I didnt immediately know what killed me and what I couldve done to prevent it.

Heya,

I have this issue in the sport I compete in and I make a living at (bodybuilding), I have decades of experience in everything related to it, BUT, some keyboard warrior who doesn't know jack squat, THINKS they know better than I do. I'll take the 10K hours and real experience than someone trying to impress everyone like they're a Jedi POE2 player...hah.

Yes, XP loss is bad.

No, you will never convince the fanboys/GGG that it should go away

I say let them enjoy each other's company.

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Glowie_Zigger#5018 wrote:

have you considered not dying

Oh ok, never die in an ARPG game not in HC mode. Got it 🙄

I think it's the amalgamation of many frustrating and unfair feeling systems that are contributing to the demotivating feeling the game currently has and unfortunately EXP loss is just the most obvious, or it has at least become the face of that problem.

I didn't so much mind EXP loss last season because other aspects of the games still felt fun...I feel like we have just hit that "frustration threshold" of just too many things that feel unfun and demotivating since 0.2 and EXP loss is that "one cut too many" now that really pushes a lot of players over the edge (myself included) into not wanting to play anymore.

I think there is a couple of ways to fix this that will depend on where GGG want the game to be, but the solution I like the most is to make EXP loss possible to regain in most situations. Like returning to corpse to pick it up, or some other mechanic. I like this the most because I think it is the most compatible with the way the game is currently balanced and I do think that aside from the negatives, this IS how GGG want the game to play, and I do overall like it. It's just the balance that needs worked out, which makes sense given how complex these games are.

Hopefully they fix it soon because I want to play... but currently when I play I feel completely bored having to hold back how far I push into content for fear of dying, or actively avoid certain content as I get closer to levelling up.

It completely kills the fundamental idea of always pushing forward in these games, the idea of exploring your own build ideas instead of just jumping to whatever meta there is and it overall just completely pushes me to play other games.

Difficulty, depth and challenge are good. EXP loss with no way to recoup is none of those, it's just punishing the player for simply playing the game and it is just terrible design that does nothing but drive people away.

I believe in GGG...It will get worked out.

Stacking multiple punishments for death is the real problem. They should give players a blessing protecting them from exp loss after EACH map or just get rid of the exp loss altogether.

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Nyon#6673 wrote:

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

1. Arbiter doesn't even have exp loss now, so in case it wasn't obvious I wasn't speaking about your streamer - sorry, I wasn't speaking about your streamer.

2. Paying attention worked in D2 because rare mob options were limited, you eventually developed a gut feeling when to fight and when to flee. In poe it just doesn't work, no one will bother to learn combinations like "Mob skill X + added as chaos + aps boost". Poe is about wandering in blind and hoping your stat checks will hold.

This is opposite of soulslike gameplay, and every map which buffs mobs or debuffs players can lead to unexpected alpha hit on you. So yes, game is "filled with random oneshots" by definition. No way GGG had ever checked/balanced all those combinations, they just released it and slapped penalties on top.

About "hardcore community" - first they all sit on logout macros and heavily use POB before playing, second they spend a lot more time to do everything in game, third they do lose characters from time to time at high levels, anyone claiming otherwise is full of shit.

Random deaths are part of Diablo-style games by design, penalising players for it is like randomly removing their gear on a schedule - it is possible to do, but WHY?

1. I just assumed that you were referring to my example since thats what you specificly decided to quote.

2. Your saying that it works in d2 but not in poe2 without explaining why.
Ofc you cant perfectly calculate how much damage each mob is going to hit, you couldnt in d2 either.

No one claimed that people in hc never die.
And nothing of what you said has any relevance on my point.
If anything it supports my points, because if the one shots were random and unavoidable then why would they bother spending so much time with pob and preperation? Preciesely because its not random and its not unavoidable. Thats why they spend alot of time preparing.
If the game was filled with random unavoidable one shots then no one would bother playing hardcore, that is just an obvious fact. Yet alot of people do and alot of people do it successfully being able to only die a handful of times during a full league. This doesnt fit with your narrative that the game is filled with random unavoidable one shots that you cant do anything about.
They arent random, they arent unavoidable and you can play around them by knowing how to avoid them or how to properly make defenses in your build.

"Random deaths" are just random to people who lack the knowledge and skill to understand why they died. In the real world they arent random at all.
If the game objectively worked the way your trying to present it then this would be experienced by everyone, there wouldnt be X% of the playerbase dying never or almost never, X% dying sometimes and X% dying nonstop all the time.
This supports the fact that its skill related and not random.

If what I said isn't relevant to your point, then your point isn't relevant to why exp loss is so demotivating (per thread title) to majority of players, not to your hardcore.

Hardcore players exist and willing to put up with whatever GGG throws at them doesn't mean every other player should be willing to do the same, much less mean that game events are now not random. You imply that hardcore people behave rationally and they have chosen hardcore because it has advantages - no, lol, hardcore doesn't have a single ingame advantage other than to show off for your friends and random audience on the forum. Willing to go to such lenghts and spend so much time and effort on a game to show off is not rational behaviour.

Most players play games to chill, lesser part expects some balance between progression and penalties, and the least part is hardcore. If GGG made a separate league without exp penalty, you'd be surprised which of them would have had 19 players left, per your other post. Traditionally game designer's job is to consider majority first, while GGG... is standing out with their designs as always.

Now, about the nature of players dying to highly variable enemy damage or to map which removes their main defense layer, I really don't know how to rephrase it even more clearly for you. If you pretend to not understand it, fine, other people here seem to understand it just fine. Maps and mobs are created by RNG, hence deaths in those maps are random by definition. You cannot negate all of it by kiting or by overbuffing defenses, every poe2 defense layer has major holes, and you are bound to meet a map circumventing your specific character.

So when you are penalising players for dying in top-down arpg, you aren't penalising their low intellect or poor choices - those pretty words are a smoke screen for your wish to include another cheap retention driver, because your game doesn't have much to offer in positive field.