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

Fair enough.

Then how would you do it?
Remove xp penalty and nerf xp gain at the same time to make up for it?

And then scale xp per map in a way that only the hardest content is rewarding xp wise. Less hard content would obviously still get you some xp, but you´d basically be doing the same grind as right now.

The only way to circumvent this would be chaining superhard content and naturally only the best builds can do that. So items for those builds would be in high demand and expensive, which means only a select few can do it.

The rest - read the casuals - are blocked from this content because they cant afford toptier builds and therefore cant do the hardest content. So they´d be running midtier maps forever and doing the same grind as right now.


Is that really a better way to do it?
I dont think so. Im not a fan of the current xp scaling but it allows even mediocre builds to go for 100 as long as the player is persistent about it.
Thats a plus to me. If you scale around difficulty, than problems as described above will arise and players will complain about that too.
So in the end GGG is screwed and cant win no matter what.

And thats why I think they wont even try to change it. Someone is going to be pissed anyways, why putting in the effort?

The thing is if there was no penalty, less than top efficiency builds would be able to progress to max level. In less time than it takes to obtain a license to fly a passenger aircraft in real life. They might still not be able to defeat Uber Elder, Atziri, etc. Fine.

But, they would be able to level to 100 comfortably without feeling like crap while doing it. Imagine playing a video game and not having it make you feel crappy. I'm sure someone would find a reason not to like that. If that's their stance, then they can play Hardcore. Right?

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ghoulavenger написал:

GGG generally resists community fragmentation for two reasons (although there may be more).

1. GGG approves of trading. The more spread out the community, the higher the risk of dead economies.

2. GGG makes money off of selling MTX. In a well populated community, MTX will be advertised anytime someone is walking around in town. Since the majority of the playerbase ends up walking in towns significantly, they experience firsthand a walking advertisement to buy MTX. Not a perfect system, but neither is rogue exiles wearing MTX.

I see your points, I'm just not sure GGG is better off that way compared to the added popularity and widened playerbase if they catered to yet another section of player demography.

The "optional no death penalty mode" question seems to be something like the auction house - definately worth to be tried out in a league or event. Maybe it will turn out well, maybe not. It's something we can't really know without testing it on a larger scale.

Keep the death penalty, but making leveling faster past 90 or even 95.

Losing 2 hours of progress has the same psychological effect on the player as losing 8 hours - it's not like the 2-hour loss will make players less inclined to adjust and improve their builds than the 8-hour loss, because the former is frustrating enough to induce change.

There's just no reason for leveling to 100 to take as long as it does, period.

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NemoJr написал:

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.

Literally everybody could spend a year running white tier 7 maps (boss skipping of course!) and finally someday reach level 100. I just don't think this playstyle should get rewarded or even kind of enforced. To me the choice to either explore the whole game with all content OR to make progress by avoiding most content is about as counterproductive as POE's atlas strategy policy punishing you for unlocking maps.

A game should invite and encourage you to play it, not punish you for doing so.
As stated before in this thread, I'd like to have a system like Diablo 1 that forces you to do a boss deathless, but doesn't punish you any harder for failing at the attempt then by making you try again or go levelling and come back later.

POE's motto "don't play most of the game if you want to stay alive" is a bad design principle.

I wouldnt claim to have given this a lot of thought, but can somebody explain to me if it would be worth looking at the exact amount of xp lost?

let's say you lose 2% of your xp per death. that would still be a significant drawback and punish you extremely for zerging your way through content where you dont belong.

on the other side it wouldnt punish you too much for the occasional death that will happen to everyone of us at some point. very experienced players wont feel much of a difference because they rarely die anyway. the people in the middle would feel less punished if they only lost a couple of minutes or hours at most after a stupid death instead of their whole day or even multiple days.

would that be an idea worth thinking about? or what about 1% or 5%? I just feel that the current 10% is too much of a punishment.

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Synopse написал:

The XP penalties are there because D2 had them too. PoE rose from a D2 clone, which is the reason why there are so many game mechanics that we know from D2 and some players would consider 'outdated'.

D1 didn't have it, and when D2 introduced it there was a lot of controversity in the community. It's nothing "natural" or "unavoidable" for the genre and remembering D1, nothing necessary to preserve and defend the original Diablo spirit.

There certainly are several things D2 did better than POE and I wish GGG would learn from it. But to me, XP penalty is not one of D2's good examples to learn from.

But if they insist on copying D2 in that aspect, they also should have copied D2's much fairer fighting mechanics. All attacks well telegraphed, less but tougher monsters, tactics actually mattering, big arenas for clever movement, slower speed, no one-shot damage spikes, less difference between normal, magic, rare and unique monsters...

POE's occasional unexpectable and unexplicable damage spike one shots are just like russian roulette. Playing a game normally and having a certain, uninfluenceable chance to drop dead.

POE locking you up in a tiny boss arena with overlapping AOE is like tieing a guy on a railway track and tell him to dodge the train. And yell "git gud" if he, surprisingly, fails to do so.

Severe punishments, if at all, require fair conditions. Diablo 1 just made you load your savegame and try again. No zerging, no spam death tactics to slowly bring down boss hp, and no frustration from lost XP.

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grogzor написал:

however, notice that with the troll types like robmafia they are somehow so scared of having an honest discussion, that they rather try to burrow it immediately and act as if there couldnt be any discussion or act as if everything had to be decided by definition already.

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

when hypocrisy strikes.

yes, i definitely am scared of having an honest discussion. /s

definitely. /s

you just pulled that strawman out of nowhere, ran with it, added an insult, and pretended it's all true and real - WHILE speaking of fundamental dishonesty.

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NemoJr написал:

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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".

...what are you talking about?

this is like the 50th post in this thread that plays this same strawman.

- the xp penalty doesn't make anyone do easy content.
- if you're deciding to do easier content, it's YOUR choice.
- if one's max level is 92 and one plays recklessly and does whatever one wants at that level, how is that "no fun allowed?"

I had stated in an earlier post that I do, as a choice, easier content because I want to avoid the death penalty when I decide I want to level. It's not that my character is not able to do the more difficult content. It's moreso that random things happen (whatever they may be) and the death penalty as such is very much unwanted.