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

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Synopse написал:

Me helped a combination of them. (Alt+F4 never was an option for me.) For me, there is no reason to leveling beyond a certain point by limiting myself in how I play this game just to avoid death.
Actually, I reached a state of apathy with regard to dying in this game. It always can happen and even if the build and gameplay is done right. It will happen in situations of ridiculous coincidence. Most HC players can explain the reasons much better than I could do.
Yet, there are HC players reaching level 100, which implies that there are successful strategies avoiding death at all.

TL;DR: XP penalty is an intentional design decision. If you can't adapt, the game will definitely not. The best way is to find a strategy to handle the XP penalty (most likely the frustrations it can create). Otherwise this game will not be fun on the long term.

Exactly this! Especially this line. "I reached a state of apathy with regard to dying in this game."

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Adaemeneten написал:

I find the game most enjoyable right after I level. I explore maps that I don't normally do and play at the more difficult content. At the point I decide I want to level, I find that I don't play the game - I try to game it just to experience some modicum of progress. That means doing 'easy' maps with low-risk mods. Leveling is not playing - it means merely avoiding death. This isn't fun. It's quite boring and tedious, which is not a good combination for any game.

I don't want to offend you, but just to understand: Why do you switch from enjoying the difficult content, to "i want to level now"?
If the content you are at is difficult, then there's your challenge right there. Make your character stronger at the stage you are at and it will level automatically, because it does not die anymore.

I would think that is "playing the endgame" in SC, isn't it? hm..

I just can't imagine myself only playing glass cannons, or having fun / feeling successful when I'm constantly dying, respawning, and wasting portals.

Maybe that's just me. Or maybe it's some people's competitive nature that compels them to ask for harsher and more "tangible" punishment than wasted time and a slap on the wrist.

Ever get pissed off when a game doesn't have proper checkpoints / manual saves, and one death can send you back hours in terms of progress? Because that's what happens with a high level PoE character, assuming you haven't already given up on leveling further.

It's a terrible system, which is why few games get away with it.


PS: An EC reference is always nice to see in these threads.

Funny how after hundreds of pages discussion, those defending status quo still don't get it: yeah, you can either git gut, stop leveling, enjoy what you have and stop bothering those last levels. Also I bet most players don't even have such competitive mindset playing PoE that they'd go glass cannon anymore, with or without death penalties. It's a particular view of the game which is being forced to all the players.

It reminds me of oldie games like Gradius or Salamander. You had a clusterfuck of things going at your face while manouvering a little spaceship trying to not touch any of them, and it meant the line between life and death. You could up the difficulty level of PoE in the same sense, you know. But PoE is not designed to be an arcade game like that. Why? Because you invest a shitload of time getting that XP and finding your gear. If I correctly recall, nobody took seriously suggestions of making players lose their EQ upon death, since deep down even the white knights know they WILL die at some point and they only want punishments which they themselves are able to circumvent. Others -be it lack of skill, lack of character optimization or simply lag spikes- won't.

After all, the only serious argument I heard for the harsh DP came from a HC player, who pointed out removing it would require balancing the game even further towards SC, which would mean playing HC would actually become more difficult from their point of view. That really makes one think about it. In fact, the harsher death penalties are, the more important it makes to design game quite unlike Gradius, diminishing danger of losing your character/gear/whatnot. And let me assure you, Gradius was a sh*tton more difficult game than PoE will ever be, requiring developed coordination skills and quick reflexes.

You can argue counterwise by saying, that's actually exactly not what we wanted from PoE. We wanted slow paced rpg, not the 'speed meta'. It's however not true you cannot reach any such goals without harsh DP. What DP means is losing your progress upon death. People hate losing their progress, that's what sucked even in games like Gradius. Lose your eq? Oh, sure, let us make a system where upon death you lose random equipped gear. That would actually be more fair compared to current system since it would punish proportionately vets more with their douple-corrupted legacy gear as well as those who will never have enough playing time per week to acquire those. Any such serious proposal would be met with such crying that there'd be no end, and with a good reason -people hate losing their hard-earned progress. It's about working towards those goals that makes many players want to play a game like PoE in the first place, that's why arguments like 'git gut' is so full of sh*t. I don't think less skilled people who play rpgs want things for free, but it's a whole different argument to take away fruits of their precious playing hours, say stealing a weeks worth of XP. It's basically just the same as making equipped gear randomly disappear upon death -pure bullshit.

Now, if people want to go HC and play it like Gradius, it's their choice. There is a HC league for them already. Then again, if those people want to balance other modes too around their chosen game mode, that's a whole different scenario -HC players shouldn't have any more priority to death mechanics than SSF players have priority to dictate item drops.

that's exactly the point.

it's not neccessarily about dying nonstop and zerging your way through content that wasnt really made for you. it's about having the occasional death every few hours or even every few maps while trying to enjoy the game.

for me for example right now that would be running different kind of red maps and alternating between them and delving. of course since I am not the kind of guy who plays this game for 10 hours a day and has lots of experience with every meta and different cookie cutter builds, I will be likely to die at some point.

so what can I do? I could go back to trash low level maps and low level delve to play it safe. is it fun? not really

I could just not give a fukk and consider my current level (lvl 93) the max for me and just play whatever I want. is this fun? not too much to be honest. I believe it would be more of an incentive if I knew that when I played 3 hours and 20 maps today, that the experience I gather will stick and even if I dont find nice currency or an upgrade, my character will still improve via leveling up, even if it takes a lot of time. this aspect is kinda missing and unless you are a hardcore poe nerd who plays like 10 hours a day, you will have a difficult time reaching really high levels in this game.

so what have I done to answer this question for myself? I switched up my passive tree a bit and I am using rather tanky stuff instead of dps stuff right now so I am close to 6k hp with lots of different defensive layers. I will continue to level up to 94, which shouldnt take me much more time. I didnt die since I hit lvl 93. then, when I reach level 94, I will stop giving a damn about xp and respec some of the life nodes back to dps and switch out some jewels and rings for their dps versions.

so my character progression ends at lvl 94. I am not a full casual, but I am lightyears away from playing this game in a serious way. and I can safely tell you: for players like me it would be a billion times more fun if there was much less of a death penalty. I could live with 1% or 2% per death, but 10% is just devastating.

'i play to have fun but i don't do fun maps because if i die i'll just complain a lot so i'm now just complaining on the forum that the xp isn't fun because i'm choosing not to play a fun way because i can't handle xp'

nutshell.

people feel entitled to everything.

I know you are an absolute troll in every thread with zero emotional intelligence at all, but let me ask you this robmafia:

you obviously disagree with having zero death penalty. can I ask you what you would think about losing 1% xp per death? or 50% xp per death? what would you think about losing 100% of the xp per death? what do you think about leveling down in case of death? what do you think about losing a random item per death? what do you think about getting your account deleted in case of death?

now let me guess: some of these options seem lackluster to you, some will probably seem to be too extreme.

what do we currently have? 10% lost per death. it used to be 15%, but ggg decided at some point that 10% would be better. this in itself already implies that we have kind of a continuum opening up here with too much of a penalty on the one side and not enough of a penalty on the other side.

we are discussing about this continuum here. however, people like you dont want to discuss about any continuum. instead, you act as if the question was already decided without even seeing this continuum.

explain to us why you think the number of 10% is perfect, why 5% wouldnt be enough or why it shoudlnt be 20% or any of the other options I mentioned above?

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grogzor написал:

it's not neccessarily about dying nonstop and zerging your way through content that wasnt really made for you.

Sure but that´ll be exactly the result, if GGG were to remove the death penalty and nothing else.


Dont get me wrong, Im kinda in the same boat as you are.
Im playing too much to be considered a casual but Im nowhere near the time investment of much more dedicated players.

Still I want the death penalty to exist - in a meaningful way.
Below lvl90 it means literally nothing. I dont even care about my defenses until I hit lvl90-92 because those 10% dont do much, not enough to hurt or stop me.

However, if you push for the 95+ region, you´ll feel the death penalty and only then. We are talking about the final 5% from lvl95-100. Thats the only region were the xp penalty hurts.


Thats fine by me. If you want to push for the final 5% - just for the purpose of min/maxing or bragging - then you should be grinding a lot and you should be punished for making stupid decisions.
I already know, that many players will jump on me now and tell me, that they are getting 1-shotted all the time and there is nothing they could do about it.

Thats wrong. 1shots barely exist in this game (ignoring bosses), if you build properly and whenever you die, its very likely to your own mistake. Id say like 90% or more of all deaths are due to player mistakes.
Which means: You could reduce the effect of the death penalty by 90%, if were playing flawless. Which you dont and me neither.
Still 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.

@orbaal: I think I basically agree with everything you say here and the death penalty isn't even that important to me.

I am just trying to convey this one simple point: would anybody here be fine with the idea of getting his account deleted after a death? probably not. which implies that there must be limits to getting punished. now, how do you define this limit? very good question indeed. a question that we should be discussing about.

it might be that 10% is perfect, it might be that 5% is perfect or any other number. everybody can bring forward their own idea what they think makes sense and so on.

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.

Sure, bad players always suck compared to the best players. The question is, are they, while minmaxing their characters, trying to compete with the best players? I don't think that's the real motivation of progressing a character for casual players, the motivation is the progress in itself. In fact, if there were no floors to XP loss, also known as levels, I would've quit this game long ago. Game which steals your progress is wasting your time in a bad sense for most players. Others go play HC leagues.

You know, many here say std is for losers, but it's the exact same reason I don't enjoy playing only temporary leagues: losing all the fruits of grinding your precious gear and crafting items just to start back from zero. I get it there are many players who see it differently but that's the reason I enjoy std more. I hate losing self-earned progress. If there was no standard I would not play PoE.