XP penalty and likely 1 portal is NOT going anywhere
" Yeah, none of them seem to want to. It's depressing how few people are willing to argue in good faith in basically any forum like this. None of them have addressed any of my actual points, such as how it significantly risks negative feedback loops, how softcore league should not be punitive by its intended design (especially given PoE1's approach to Standard), or that one-attempt is far more likely to promote screen nuking metabuilds that can get away with worse gear at less risk (and thus have the positive feedback loop of clearing harder content faster and getting upgrades and tradables faster given fewer deaths), or that no one is going to somehow ignore defenses just because 6 portals lets them have more attempts given players will still want to level up and not lose out on efficient mech farming. The closest they've come to an actual point is bringing up individual class balance (like the state of warriors and Life/Armor) which has nothing to do with whether or not death mechanics are too punitive. That argument only further proves my point about players gravitating to screen nuking low effort builds because they don't want to die and lose progress. |
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" So far not a single "XP loss/1 map death bad" arguer has any good points to make. All their arguments devolve into "Challenge is not fun for me I want a no-brain Cookie Clicker game." The usual circle of "Penalty for dying bad" argument goes like this: 1)"Theres no good reason for it." Except without it you will rush to the highest tier maps and always juice the maps to the max, this behaviour has already happened way back in PoE 1 Alpha. 2)"Theres other better punishment options, like Slap on the Wrists, Free Participation Trophy and game developer message telling you that you did an oopsie!" This is a masked attempt at arguing #1 that there should be no punishment at all. 3)"The game will definitely die just like I've been saying for the past 12 years how the XP penalty definitely kills this game next League." Games that babysit casuals become games with extremely low skill ceiling and people get bored of those games very quickly, great example Diablo 4. 4)"My time is precious, I have 5 wives and 2 million children and I'm a busy dad! Games that are challenging are wasting my time!" If you don't have the time to play games, then don't play them. Games don't need to be ruined for everyone else because of your busy life schedule. Just Google "Congratulations screen" and press Search, thats the game you want. 5)"Getting to 100 doesn't matter, so they should make it easy!" If it wouldn't matter, you wouldn't be in the forums whining about it. 6a)"Other games like Elden Ring don't punish you for dying!" Except Elden Ring takes away ALL of your XP on death. 6b)"Elden Ring doesn't take away all of your XP if you just play well." If you play Path of Exile 2 well you don't die at all. 7)"Getting punished for taking risks is boring, it discourages people from taking risks!" False. It teaches players to manage risks. If you don't lose while gambling, you will always gamble the highest stakes at all times. If you don't get punished for losing, then there is no risks and dumb YOLO plays are always encouraged. 8)"Well its just not FUN(tm)" Games without challenge and fear of dying are not fun. They're not really games at all, they're glorified DvD menus. The point of playing games is to enjoy the journey, not the big congratulations screen at the end. Skipping games is silly, its like you want someone else to ride a rollercoaster ride for you, whats the point of that? All these threads go through this same circle. Those arguing for removal of XP penalty can't answer a single one of those 8 points, but then start a new thread and ignore you. Thus it is safe to say and generalize that all people arguing for removing dying penalties know they are wrong but they're pushing for it anyway because they want an easy game for babies. |
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" "But you aren't adressing any of my points in good faith !!1!" |
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" The phrase "you first" comes to mind. But sure. Let me try. " "Negative feedback loops" being losing maps, thus not replenishing maps, and being stuck doing lower-level content? This is working as designed. The entire point of the mapping/waystone system in Path of Exile - 1 or 2 - is to get people to do the content they're ready for instead of endlessly smashing their faces against content they're not ready for because stupid fucking Streamer Memers have convinced them that only people doing T17 nine-mod Ultra Juiced Pinnacle Endgame Content are "real" PoE1 players and anyone doing anything other than that is a pointless loser who should uninstall forever. Grinding Gear saw this problem in early builds of POE1, people smashing into endgame content they had absolutely no hope of clearing simply because they had access to that content and saw no point in doing anything else. They created maps specifically to make this content have a financial cost to run, and provide counter-incentive to get people to run what they were prepared to run rather than just ruining their own experience by being streamer-following lemmings. " By that "logic", all maps should have unlimited attempts, there should be no experience penalty, and a player should be given an ironclad guarantee of completely clearing every single map they open. This is absolutely terrible game design, at least for this style of game. For success to be meaningful, failure needs to be possible. The problem, and why a lot of people are of the belief that the "ONE DEATH IS HORRIBLE!" people are arguing in bad faith, is that your side of the argument will not tolerate ANY cost for failure. If you lose ANYTHING by failing, it's too punitive and needs to be changed. At this point, why bother playing? if success is guanarteed, then just assume you'd succeed if you play and go do something more worthy of your time. Overcoming adversity and pushing further than you've been able to before, or further than you usually can, is a primary reason many players choose to play difficult games. Eliminating the difficulty entirely ruins this, and would make the game unplayable for the people that are looking for this challenge. " "Screen nuking metabuilds" will always be favored over marginal builds that take twenty times longer to clear the content and have a dramatically higher risk of death, no matter how punishing or not death is. Streamer Groupies don't care about engaging with the game, they just want to maximize rewards per instance or currency per hour. You can't encourage people to play bad builds over good builds by making it less punishing to play bad builds. All that does is lower the cost of failure, and since we have established that ANY cost for failure is too high for the people constantly assmad over "ONE PORTAL BAD!", it really doesn't matter. What you are actually asking for is for "screen nuking metabuilds" to have no advantages over terribad marginal builds that can't accomplish much of anything, and that is simply not how a buildcraft game works. Folks who make this complaint hate that "build followers" do better than they do by letting someone else do their build thinking for them, and they want Build Followers to get nerfed so Original Build folks always do better by default. Here's the thing - that's not possible. Nor SHOULD it be. There is nothing wrong with seeing an awesome idea on the Internet and deciding to try it yourself because it looks like loads of fun. " And here you argue against your own point. "There should be no cost for failuyre in Softcore leagues, and if they removed the cost for failure it doesn't mean people would ignore the cost for failure!" You cannot advocate for infinite portal attempts and no experience penalty, then act like removing all of the costs associated with failure would not incline players to play as if failure had no cost. Why should someone build defenses and waste build resources on staying alive when dying has no cost or penalty? What's the point? " People gravitate to "screen nuking low effort builds" because many of them want to feel powerful. They don't want to struggle, they don't want to play a shitty marginal build that's constantly on the verge of failure when they can play something that feels like a badass demon-killing warrior. even players like myself that prefer to engage with the game and dislike the top end of player power being Arbiters-per-second aren't in it to get outclassed by three zombies with a single quill crab throwing fire support. I enjoy dueling a difficult rare with a memorably infuriating mod combination (We shall always remember Regen Jesus, i.e. "Regenerates Life, Damage Taken from Minions First, and Revives Minions") and using the tools available to me to win that little mini-puzzle battle, and I also enjoy dumping a nine-charge Falling Thunder on a dense horde of zomboids and watching them all explode in chunks of ice with an ever-so-satisfying CRONCH! of chilly mayhem. Considering how vehemently opposed you are to any sort of cost for failure, I'm surprised you're upset about screen nukers. What does it matter if the Falling Thunder or Spark builds can blow up the screen if you can attempt the same map hundreds of times until you can personally Mace Strike every single enemy to death one-on-one at base movement speed with unsupported default attack? You both clear the content, eh? |
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" Can I try to answer some of your points? " I don't like glass cannon builds, but they are a way to play the game. I'll give you an example, if you don't kill Bahlak before he casts his tornado, you'll be probably dead, so in this case glass cannon wins. " Are you serious? Who are you to tell me which games I can play and which I can't? And why do you think the game would be ruined if it wasn't perfectly how you want it? " 100th level is a sort of trophy for your enourmous effort, you are right. But I can tell you that these skill points are always useful: I can take, for example, more defenses nodes, so I can die less. " Have you ever played Elden Ring? Sorry but it isn't true. You loose all your souls, but you can retrieve them all, you can even ride Torrent and go through mobs, straight to your souls and get them back. " Do I need to remind you how many one shot mechanics there are in POE2? I give you another example: you've passed all four floors of Trial of Sekhemas, maybe you are already a bit tired, it doesn't matter, you are in front of Zarokh and his barely infinite health pool, you're almost about to beat him, but one moment of distraction and that stupid clock minigame one shots you (I usually die in Maven memory game too, I know). |
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" Read some of this but the thing about the chaos trial boss no just no. If Balakh cast tornado … run away. You don’t die if you move away Is this how people play the game? A mechanic shows up and they go “welp I’m not moving you don’t pay my sub” |
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" Colorful phrasing aside, this one is not so much a "get lost, dad" deal as a "why are you playing a punishing, time-intensive game like Path of Exile if you only have two hours a week to spare for it because of your self-proclaimed exceptionally busy life?" To be clear, nobody's telling anybody else that they can or cannot play a game. But this specific comment - "I have a wife and children and a full-time job" - is often used to justify the idea that ANY loss of progress for ANY reason is Absolutely Unacceptable, because every inch of progress is precious and difficult to regain once lost. That doesn't really jive with this style of game, and it leaves folks wondering why they choose to play this style of game when there are other games much more conducive to 'respecting your time' the way these folks mean it. Which is to say, they want the game to always give and never take, and to give at an ever increasingly generous rate. That is simply not the kind of game Path of Exile is. To be further clear on my own stance, I don't think the XP penalty for death should be present in PoE2. I like One Portal, and frankly I find it strange that you can attempt a node on the Atlas after bricking your first attempt. I feel like losing the map and the node should be punishment enough, they do not need to make you retroactively fail previously successful maps by removing experience. But that is specifically an endorsement of One Portal, which no one else feels is acceptable because losing the map means less sustain, and thus less progress. Either your past progress is eroded i.e. XP loss, or your future progress is hindered i.e. map/node blockage. ONE of those needs to be a thing, but both of them is probably too much. That said, there always needs to be a failure state. There always NEEDS to be a failure state, or the success state has absolutely zero meaning. |
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" I'll reiterate something I said earlier relating to Difficulty vs Challenge under a spoiler tag for brevity's sake.
Spoiler
Difficulty is arbitrary. Difficulty is just +Monster Life or damage. Difficulty is just making the player character weaker. Difficulty is just numbers. Challenge is tactful. Challenge is facing new attack patterns or rare and dangerous mob types that must be prioritized. Challenge is strategizing to overcome mechanics. Challenge is learning how to approach a fight.
Yes, difficulty can be an important part of challenge. Knowing how to approach greater difficulty can definitely be a challenge. However, that only works if executed right. No amount of strategy, preparation, or game knowledge will prevent a one shot from some mob you didn't even have a chance to register was there, or that was warming up an attack that was hidden in the visual clutter, or that was just some rare so overjuiced that it will do 2000, 3000+ more damage in a single basic swing than any other rare the whole map. There is literally nothing challenging about pushing your defenses to the absolute limit the game is allowing you, suffering significant diminishing returns, and dying to something so fast your eyes blinking was enough to miss it. There is literally nothing challenging about the game being so out of whack that even a perfect rolled set of gear and mod tiers might not have saved you from something you can't be faulted for missing in a game this hectic. " Not many people are suggesting there is no reason for any death penalty. Eeking out another 10-20 passive points is still very useful, so not many people are going to like being stuck under level 80-90 for very long. The primary issue at hand for most people as far as I can tell is PoE2's introduction of one-attempt maps (which also applies to campaigns). On top of time and exp loss, we lose: 1) Waystone, 2) Mechanics, 3) Loot drops. That is significantly more punitive than just xp loss. I imagine most people complaining about one-attempt maps are running more or less appropriate tier and are juicing only what they can consistently survive (I almost never run rare because of how common +damage/speed gets rolled, warrior and armor/life generally is in a shit place for defenses right now when I can go dozens of maps being tickled by 99% of mob packs and ONE +damage on a rare and his minions suddenly hits me for 4/5 my life, but that balance state has nothing to do with punitive death mechanics) " I'm responding to you in good faith. The least you can do is act with the same good faith by dropping the unnecessary ad hominem attacks on the opposing side's merit, character, or position. Very few people seem to be asking for complete elimination of penalties. The majority seem to just want one-attempt removed and stick to exp loss only. When I've overjuiced in PoE1, it was obvious. When it was the game expecting me to have 90% armor, 85% max resists, 6k health, 20mil DPS, and 80% move speed it was also obvious. Same thing is happening in PoE2 where no amount of skill is going to overcome those rare moments of bullshit that expected you to have some top 0.1% of gear when you otherwise are clearing that same tier at the same amount of juicing consistently without much trouble. " Exp penalty haters will continue to be proven wrong about its impact on player retention. These one-attempt maps, though, may suggest a different reality with the sheer volume of negative feedback on it. Again, players choose Standard/Softcore for a reason, because we do NOT want significant death penalties. Isn't exp loss enough? " Respecting players' time is important. The fact that you're so trollishly suggesting playing another game is actually a major point in favor of less punitive death penalties because people WILL go to another game that DOES respect their time. Respecting players' time does NOT mean the game has to lack challenge. I died to Malenia a good 120+ times over 6 hours of attempts my first run (aaaand died only twice the second run through go figure) and plenty of people experienced similar and still went on to beat Elden Ring. Plenty of people will keep trying against a challenge. It's not like everyone then had to start over from the beginning of the Halig Tree with every death to her, they started right at the fog wall every time. These punitive one-attempt maps would be more akin to having to start at the entrance of the Halig Tree every time. Absolutely nothing about that would be challenging. " Precisely why "everyone would just run maps without defenses/good build/enough EHP" is a nonsensical argument and total red herring. You're freely admitting people want to hit high levels for the extra passives and base life/mana. Why add so many more punishments on top of an already difficult task? " ... that you can then recover if you're careful, and in the end is rarely consequential given how quickly it can be farmed back, especially in some late game areas. There's literally NOTHING recovered in PoE1/2. You just made a point favoring less impactful death penalties, bud. " Most people are dying fairly unpreventable deaths. Again, no amount of skill is going to save you from an attack that can wipe 6K EHP in a single, spammable basic attack from some crit or overjuiced rare. This game's bizarre approach to balancing and the frequency of intense and spontaneous difficulty spikes because of one randomly super juiced rare is a huge reason I don't bother with hardcore, so why should softcore also be so damn punitive? " Absolutely no one is making an argument that punishment for taking risks is bad or that risk taking is being discouraged. I can run 50 white T15 and clean them out without issue, then the 51st suddenly has a rare with 3 bonus damage mods and one shots me before I even register it was a rare. What risk is being taken there? I actively run without bonus damage mods on my maps because this game doesn't handle mob damage scaling in any sensible way, what the hell "risk" am I taking, or anyone else doing the same? " And games that are overly punishing are not fun, no matter how good the challenge is. This is especially true if there are negative feedback loops. The negative feedback loop of one-attempt mapping is that you could run into a map drought. Not only are you losing the map, its mechanics, and any loot that was on the ground, you might then not be able to maintain map sustain, and suddenly someone consistently running t14/15 is down to 11's and 12's because the game won't stop dropping tier 2's and 5's. Nothing about that is challenging, just frustrating. "Fun" is what a game should be. If certain aspects are clearly not fun, or get in the way of the fun of the rest of the game as a whole, then that needs to be addressed. Fun factor also plays into how well a player feels a game respects their time. These current death penalties make many players feel that it does not, and that negatively impacts fun factor. Pretty much Game Design 101 and you're dismissing it out of hand. Remarkably dishonest argument. " No one is asking for the game to be made easier, just less punitive. Punishment does not equate to challenge. Punishment must be teachable. Being randomly one shot and losing the entire map, its mechanics, and all loot when you barely ever run into bad situations in the same difficulty tier is flatly not teachable of anything actually useful. |
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" That is what I've being saying... 1 Portal + no Exp Penalty = OK 6 Portal + Exp Penalty = OK 1 Portal + Exp Penalty = BS It isn't challenge, is gratuitos punishment for playing the game, has no risk/reward... just sure Risk and uncertain Rewards. But, there is five disingenous forumites engaged in every thread acting to dereail any constructive feedback. |
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Keep xp penalty. Remove one portal. The first game didn't have one portal and I see no reason for it to be in this game either.
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