Can We Get Rid of Death XP Penalties Already? Games Are Supposed to be Fun

The rest of your post is an "agree to disagree" kind of deal for me, but allow me to nag a bit about this part:

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Orbaal написал:

you have to accept the simple fact, that people beat every single aspect of the game in HC every single league.
And that means everything in this game can be done deathless, you and me are just not good enough players to pull it off.


Doesnt mean the game is at fault.
It means you and me suck as players compared to the best and thats fine.

"Someone, somehow managed to do it" is not a compelling argument in favor of a game's balance & design. A quick search can yield a video of someone finishing Half-Life in ~30 minutes (or was it 20?). Obviously, that's far, far from the norm.

Those few that go above and beyond, and do things that would be impossible for most players tend to become "community celebrities" and they're great for PR & word-of-mouth advertising, but they're terrible benchmarks to balance a game around.

I would like to add to the debate, that the XP penalty, when you died, is an incentive to improve yourself and your build. It forces you to get better and improve your build/gear. Dying is and should stay a signal to the player, that something got to change. Otherwise, SC would get even duller and more monotonous (eg burnout).

Otherwise, the only other tangible penalty is, that you lose a portal. And worst, can not loot a dead boss without a portal.

Further, one could exploit this with a special build against Uber Elder et centra, with cast on death shenanigans. As a purpose build boss farming character.

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NemoJr написал:

The rest of your post is an "agree to disagree" kind of deal for me, but allow me to nag a bit about this part:

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Orbaal написал:

you have to accept the simple fact, that people beat every single aspect of the game in HC every single league.
And that means everything in this game can be done deathless, you and me are just not good enough players to pull it off.


Doesnt mean the game is at fault.
It means you and me suck as players compared to the best and thats fine.

"Someone, somehow managed to do it" is not a compelling argument in favor of a game's balance & design. A quick search can yield a video of someone finishing Half-Life in ~30 minutes (or was it 20?). Obviously, that's far, far from the norm.

Those few that go above and beyond, and do things that would be impossible for most players tend to become "community celebrities" and they're great for PR & word-of-mouth advertising, but they're terrible benchmarks to balance a game around.

Disagree all you want - I really dont mind that and thats whats a debate is all about, right?


Now in response to you Id say this:
(Note Im not a native speaker, so my points may come across harsher than intended)
If you allow the worst players (exaggerating here) access to the hardest content and allow them to beat this content easily, then all sense of progression and accomplishment is lost.

If everybody can do it, than its not worth doing in the first place. Where is the challenge, where is the achievement? I mean no one is celebrating our ability to turn on our PCs right? Why dont they celebrate it? Because its not worth it, its not an accomplishment or an achievement.


Furthermore: If those bad players can do all content in the game, what about the better players? What are they supposed to do?
Trying to enjoy a snooze fest, thats not challenging them at all?

You proposal would indeed benefit the casuals but hurt everyone whos not casual. Who do you think provides rare items, currency and maps and all that stuff? Casuals or pros?
What if the pros were to leave? What happens to the market, how do you get items, how do you progress item wise?


I think the game in its current state cant afford to get rid of the pros. It would be devastating for the game and the community.
It would require a total overhaul of many aspects of the game.
Now Im not saying its impossible to do. Im just looking at GGGs progress reworking outdated skillgems and I have to come to the conclusion: A total overhaul is never going to happen.

Therefore you have to deal with the current state of the game or quit.
As bad as it may sound, thats how I see it.

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grogzor написал:

I dont like this mindset at all, it's fundamentally dishonest and prevents any kind of discussion from taking place.

You are totally right. But nothing will stop such oafs from posturing online. You can only ignore them and continue the debate with the other (luckily, the majority) people who actually contribute to the discussion. I have a (very short) mental blacklist of people who's posts I utterly ignore. Trying to argue with them is not only a waste of time, it's what they actually come here for.

It would be really interesting to see what would happen if GGG was to remove the DP for the duration of a league, but only in std. Would loads more people play std? Would std be trash? I don't think it would be healthy for the build variety in std, but that is just my belief. Trying it once would bring certainty. Trying it on std would mean the experiment won't fuck with the new league's balancing. Doubt it will happen, though...

I was going to start a new thread related to this, but this one already covers most of my feelings. Removal of the death penalty would equate to more freedom-of-build, and it would subvert the nerfs/buffs that many players state are required to make all builds equally viable.

Not that I really feel like all builds should be viable for all things. I don't think they would, though, either way. Some builds just can't do certain content, or at least do it well, even if they excel at other things. I would love to see the penalty removed, but I also don't think it's the key issue.

The cheap shots are what should go. That's my stance, at least. Today, I was about 85% into level 95. I was in a Waterways with honestly little baby mods on it that couldn't possibly bother me. A biggun spawned in an Esh Breach and I got stuck on terrain trying to move away from the zappy thing. 73%.

I thought, "Damn. That pisses me off. My fault for positioning myself poorly." It really wasn't though. I should have been able to move where I wanted. I've traversed the same gap at a sharper angle numerous other times. "I'll go run some really easy Delve tracks, maybe back up to 75%, and then log for the day because I'm kind of angry."

Azurite Vault. Depth 215; monster level 79. Again, weak mods that aren't a threat to my character. The second to last wave hangs for a moment as it spawns, and then one-shots me. I even Flame Dashed as it was spawning. I got reset to my point of origin dead as if it had killed me before the skill animated. 64%.

I would be fine if I was playing stupid or recklessly. I'd accept it and try again tomorrow. It's just that I am so absolutely (censored) sick of the (censored) cheap shots. I could definitely run a build that laughs at cheap shots. The big complaint is that those builds are obviously better because they are highly resistant to absolute BS.

To me, though, it's not a question of builds. It's not a matter of nerfing or buffing anything. If the cheap shots weren't substituted for actual difficulty in many places, then I feel there would be a lot fewer complaints in general. Neither of my deaths today involved a level of difficulty. Neither was caused by things I should or could have avoided. The only way I could have avoided my horrible experience would have been to not play at all.

And, I feel like that was probably the lesson. Don't play at all. It's not healthy to feel the way I do right now generally, much less because of a video game. I'm done with this league. Made a bunch of currency and had a bunch of fun. Got my times worth. I guess I'll just take a break and look forward to the announcement for the new expansion. Will definitely be giving in and running a beefcake build for it though, regardless.


TL;DR

Cheap shots are the key problem.

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Orbaal написал:

If you allow the worst players (exaggerating here) access to the hardest content and allow them to beat this content easily, then all sense of progression and accomplishment is lost.

If everybody can do it, than its not worth doing in the first place. Where is the challenge, where is the achievement? I mean no one is celebrating our ability to turn on our PCs right? Why dont they celebrate it? Because its not worth it, its not an accomplishment or an achievement.

Going by your example, we are able to turn on our PCs. We don't expect any celebration or compliment for doing it, but we do expect to be able to do it. In other words, turning on your PC isn't worth celebrating, but it's still worth doing.


Here's what I consider acceptable, for a certain task in a certain game:
- The best player can do it in 1 hour.
- The average player can do it in 10 hours.
- The worst player can do it in 100 hours.

And here's what "leveling to 100" feels like in PoE:
- The best player can do it while having fun.
- The average player can do it without having fun.
- The worst player can't do it at all.


Keep in mind that, for me, the discussion is about "the road to 100", not the difficulty of the content.

You can reach a certain level (let's say 92) after which you can completely ignore the penalty and recklessly throw yourself against the hardest encounters in the game, limited only by your portals. The caveat is that you stay at 92 levels -- that's your max level.

That's not a mechanic that teaches you to "git gud" or play carefully. That's "no fun allowed".

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RPGNoobANKA написал:

I would like to add to the debate, that the XP penalty, when you died, is an incentive to improve yourself and your build. It forces you to get better and improve your build/gear. Dying is and should stay a signal to the player, that something got to change. Otherwise, SC would get even duller and more monotonous (eg burnout).

Otherwise, the only other tangible penalty is, that you lose a portal. And worst, can not loot a dead boss without a portal.

Further, one could exploit this with a special build against Uber Elder et centra, with cast on death shenanigans. As a purpose build boss farming character.

Yeah, that's how i see the death of my character. Thinking "OK, i'll just TP to place where i died and continue like nothing happened" feels wrong to me. Death should show a player, that he's doing something wrong, he makes mistakes, has bad build or tries content he isnt ready for. Death penalty is there to encourage careful gameplay and tanky builds.
I've played games without Death Penalty (Grim Dawn, D3, etc.). I dont feel that losing no "progress" on death is realy a good idea, cause it just encourages silly "corpse run" and "full clearspeed" tactics.

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NemoJr написал:

Here's what I consider acceptable, for a certain task in a certain game:
- The best player can do it in 1 hour.
- The average player can do it in 10 hours.
- The worst player can do it in 100 hours.

You should be happy then.

Top players make to 100 in about 5 days, playing 18hrs straight a day at maximum efficiency.
Thats roughly a total of 90hrs playtime.

Assuming you are an average player you should be able to pull it off in about 900hrs playtime - if you were playing as efficient as top players do.
Ofc you dont, so lets double the timeframe to 1800hrs playtime.

Sounds more than doable to me. And no, Im not being sarcastic or anything.
I really mean it and its already balanced the way you want it to be.
You could do it, if were trying hard enough.

I quit at lvl97 when last I tried.
Its not difficult or anything. It just takes a fuckton of time and isnt interesting enough to me to go all the way.
In other words: Im just too lazy to do it. But I know I could - and if you are an average player, you could do it too.

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Orbaal написал:

I quit at lvl97 when last I tried.
Its not difficult or anything. It just takes a fuckton of time and isnt interesting enough to me to go all the way.

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NemoJr написал:

And here's what "leveling to 100" feels like in PoE:
- The best player can do it while having fun.
- The average player can do it without having fun.
- The worst player can't do it at all.

As you can see, that was my point. Most players can reach 100, yet most players don't.

The problem isn't that they don't play enough to get there -- that would be on them. The problem is they give up on it entirely because it's more fun to play harder and more rewarding content than to grind low-level / low-risk areas ad nauseam.

It just doesn't sit right with me when a game essentially makes you choose between having fun and making progress. It's even worse considering "hitting max level" is such an obvious goal in an ARPG, and XP is the most obvious metric for progression.

You can mess up your build and have to respec, vendor an old item and immediately regret it, spend your hard-earned currency on stupid shit... It's all part of the fun. But the one thing that should constantly (if slowly) increase is that XP bar. It just feels wrong to take that away.

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Orbaal написал:

...1800hrs playtime.

Or, you could get an FAA Airline Transport Pilot certificate. That's not a ridiculous number of hours to reach max level in a video game. Especially when the last four levels are only minor QoL boosts to performance. Not to mention that it's extremely healthy to play a video game for 18 hours straight. Everything is fine.

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NemoJr написал:

But the one thing that should constantly (if slowly) increase is that XP bar. It just feels wrong to take that away.

I agree with that. I wouldn't mind if the current XP to level requirement was doubled, or increased to an even greater magnitude. It's a matter of making progress, say 12 hours or gameplay over 48 hours, and then having it deleted. Not just because of player error, but more often because PoE likes to punch below the belt.