The reason why XP penalty exists and why it's not for everyone

They kept a feature from poe1.
With the volume of "friction" the player needs to deal with.
Their frustration will boil over

"

MEITTI#3999 wrote:

Why should we balance the game around players who are bad at the game? Should we go and make Sekiro and Elden Ring easier as well because some players can't get past the Ogre in Sekiro or keep banging their head against Tree Sentinel in Elden Ring?

Meeting rare mob perfectly countering your build is RNG, not "bad at the game". Same as not noticing one of ground explosions amidst the RNG fustercluck. Or common mobs rolling critical hits on you. GGG mentions their "Elden Ring inspiration" to gather more hype, but poe is fundamentally different.

Fromsoft's games have no randomness, the opposite in fact: you retry exactly same steps per battle until your movements become perfect and you get through without getting hit.

Poe is about managing character space to plug as many stat holes as you can. But you will die eventually, regardless of what you do, and regardless of how many times you ran this same map before. Poe2 is no different from poe1 in this matter. Actually worse, since now you cannot skip the "Tree Sentinel". You have to fight every rare mob on the map.

"

MEITTI#3999 wrote:

"

Orion_3T#9801 wrote:

But even if they did, and if someone is still having fun running T1 maps at 90 and still dying occasionally, why is that a problem for anyone but them?

Why should we balance the game around players who are bad at the game?

Nobody said anything about balancing the entire game around this scenario. I just asked why exactly is that scenario a problem?

In reality nobody that bad at the game is getting that far because they already have a build and skill combination capable of defeating the campaign. There are those who think parts of the campaign are too difficult, I am not one of them.

"

Should we go and make Sekiro and Elden Ring easier as well because some players can't get past the Ogre in Sekiro or keep banging their head against Tree Sentinel in Elden Ring?

That's a bad comparison because those are tailored challenges designed such that the player can improve and learn how to defeat them with multiple attempts. Beyond the campaign that doesn't exist in POE2 and is in no way comparable to the levelling grind.

"

You accuse me of strawmanning but I'm grasping at straws here because your argument has reduced into "its boring". I'm not a mind-reader, give a more clear definition of what is "boring content" and what is not. If its not lower tier maps then what is it? "Its boring" is not an argument, its a generalisation that is meaningless.

Can we agree that it is completely reasonable for a player to enjoy a game more when there is exciting gameplay? And that for it to be exciting, there generally needs to be some risk? In the case of a game like this, that risk is dying? And that without any of that excitement, the game could reasonably be accused of being boring?

I'm not saying the possibility of dying needs to be the only excitement - there is also excitement in identifying loot, crafting, etc. For the possibility of failure is generally a requirement for exciting and engaging gameplay. And if gameplay is neither exciting nor engaging, it's reasonable to describe it as boring.

There is surely a balance to be found that makes death undesirable, both as an individual outcome and as a general strategy, without making it so punishing that the only way to succeed at the game is to eliminate the risk of dying almost entirely.

The XP loss goes too far in my view, and the same thing can be achieved in other ways.

"

Echothesis#7320 wrote:

Meeting rare mob perfectly countering your build is RNG, not "bad at the game". Same as not noticing one of ground explosions amidst the RNG fustercluck. Or common mobs rolling critical hits on you. GGG mentions their "Elden Ring inspiration" to gather more hype, but poe is fundamentally different.

Thats all fair but thats not a death xp penalty issue, thats a general game balance issue. Thats not something that gets fixed by making death meaningless in the game.

"

What a bizarre claim. If the only thing that changed to make the game less fun was the XP penalty, then it is the one and only problem.

If someone is having fun making slow progress with a suboptimal build they enjoy playing, why is that a problem? It's not. Only for elitists who think if you don't play a super powerful build your enjoyment of the game is irrelevant.

Solve which problem? It absolutely solves the "making no progress due to the XP loss" problem. And the situation that remains after removing it, should not be of concern to anyone but the player experiencing it. Your response doesn't make sense.

"

If you are stuck at 70 with an xp penalty, removing it just means you are stuck on low tier maps that drop shit gear instead, which is the same thing.

Firstly that doesn't follow, and secondly it isn't at all the same thing.

"

You just skip right to the part where you lose currency, and then you’ll be right back on this forum complaining about the difficulty and ask,”why is all the loot bad, can’t we just have all the good loot drop from low tiers, so we can play at our own pace?”

Why are you making up things I have never said? I don't believe I have complained about the loot in the slightest, on any thread. So, another straw man.

I definitely haven't asked for the gameplay to be made any easier quite the opposite, I would like to be able to have some excitement and risk in the game. But apparently that's not allowed if you want to make progress.

"

“Why are the bosses so hard with my 1k health build, could you make them easier, so I can do it on any build I’m playing? that’s what’s fun for me!”

Constantly straw manning is a very good indicator that you have no good argument.

Simple cause and effect.
There are two types of people in the world, those that can extrapolate without all the

You have the option to do all those things now, you ignore them because you are risk averse.
I swear the level Dunning Kruger effect in here is insane.

"

MEITTI#3999 wrote:

"

Echothesis#7320 wrote:

Meeting rare mob perfectly countering your build is RNG, not "bad at the game". Same as not noticing one of ground explosions amidst the RNG fustercluck. Or common mobs rolling critical hits on you. GGG mentions their "Elden Ring inspiration" to gather more hype, but poe is fundamentally different.

Thats all fair but thats not a death xp penalty issue, thats a general game balance issue. Thats not something that gets fixed by making death meaningless in the game.

I don't think you realize that GGG will never balance these things.

Archnemesis monsters with a credits wall of text for mods is intentional. They forced Archnemesis into the game despite most players hating it. It's all part of "The Vision". They want random oneshots to be in the game.

It's hopeless to think these things will ever be balanced. They aren't even balanced in PoE 1 lmao

This is why people are just asking for the game to not be so punishing on death, if this game is designed to constantly kill the player then how about it stops kicking them while they're down with 5 extra death penalties on top of the bad feeling of dying?

"

Orion_3T#9801 wrote:

I'm not saying the possibility of dying needs to be the only excitement - there is also excitement in identifying loot, crafting, etc. For the possibility of failure is generally a requirement for exciting and engaging gameplay. And if gameplay is neither exciting nor engaging, it's reasonable to describe it as boring.

There is surely a balance to be found that makes death undesirable, both as an individual outcome and as a general strategy, without making it so punishing that the only way to succeed at the game is to eliminate the risk of dying almost entirely.

The XP loss goes too far in my view, and the same thing can be achieved in other ways.

Sure but again, I argue XP loss is not the issue because it wasn't an issue in Diablo 2 and it wasn't an issue in PoE 1 either. Now that we have an upcoming game, a mechanic that is present in all Souls games and most Arpgs is suddenly an issue? I heavily disagree with that.

And avoiding death as much as possible should be a thing in all games. You should not be rewarded for playing badly, especially in an rpg game of all things. PoE gameplay is all about handling the risk vs reward yourself. If the map is too rippy and instagibs you, then you can pretty much only blame yourself if you rolled multiple damage mods and Multiple Projectiles into a map.

I do give the concession that things like losing pinnacle boss progression on death is excessive. Thats multiple layers of punishments on top of each other which might be too much. But thats all about fine-tuning the balance which is what the Beta is for.

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

"

ogmersault#4806 wrote:

Wrong again, I’ve never hit 100 in this game or the original. It’s not a realistic goal to aim for. What am I gate keeping from you? I’ve tried meta builds, still never reached 100. I don’t play this game to feed my ego, I play it because it has depth beyond reaching an arbitrary number. It’s fun pushing against that!

Cool, so why can't you let other people have fun the way they want to in the game? Why is it so bad if they remove the exp penalty?

Yeah there are no downsides, only upsides to removing it.

Already explained it to you, pay attention. Circular reasoning.

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

"

ogmersault#4806 wrote:

Wrong again, I’ve never hit 100 in this game or the original. It’s not a realistic goal to aim for. What am I gate keeping from you? I’ve tried meta builds, still never reached 100. I don’t play this game to feed my ego, I play it because it has depth beyond reaching an arbitrary number. It’s fun pushing against that!

Cool, so why can't you let other people have fun the way they want to in the game? Why is it so bad if they remove the exp penalty?

Yeah there are no downsides, only upsides to removing it.

Already explained it to you, pay attention. Circular reasoning.