XP penalty and likely 1 portal is NOT going anywhere

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1453R#7804 wrote:

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

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.

The phrase "you first" comes to mind. But sure. Let me try.

Quite fair, so hoping for the best here.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

None of them have addressed any of my actual points, such as how it significantly risks negative feedback loops,

"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.

Your first point strikes me as misrepresenting the reason for most complaints. I sincerely doubt most players watch many if any streamers, so some "memer" saying T17 super juice is the "real" endgame strikes me as impacting a minority. Myself, I purposefully run blue maps (in part because Warrior/Life&Armor is in a super shitty place survivability wise) because any +damage mods are waaaaaay too damn risky given my armor instantly turns into tissue paper and it isn't like 78% ele resist is helping much, either, with how high damage starts to spike. I imagine most players are trying to play the map tiers and juice them in ways they feel like they can clear reliably. If you make it to end game, you're likely going to know enough about the game itself to know your character and build's limitations.

Punitive one-attempt is a serious detriment to map sustain health. The significant risk of a negative feedback loop is probably the number one reason to be less punitive because anyone can run into a sustain drought at any moment. When you get bad luck and die from a couple bullshit moments and now you've lost your sustain, that makes it feel even worse to lose not just the map but also its mechs and any loot on the ground. I've had plenty of times where a dozen proper tier maps will not drop a single sustainable map, all crap I did 20 levels and 10 gear upgrades ago. Nothing is fun or challenging about that. Another problem this can cause is players then may feel compelled to take risks they cannot take because better maps = better drops, further exacerbating the negative feedback loop. I know I've done the same. Sometimes, I made it through. Sometimes, it was worth it, because I regained sustain or found a nice drop. Others, it just made everything worse. I can accept it was still my choice, but the game is now punishing me for its bad balance and RNG.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

how softcore league should not be punitive by its intended design (especially given PoE1's approach to Standard),

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.

Ok, I have to be blunt here, this is a grossly dishonest take on my argument specifically as well as on the position of most anti-one-attempters as far as I have seen. It is pure strawman. I don't think ANYONE is asking for unlimited attempts, just bringing back 6. I sincerely doubt any sincere interlocutor on death punishment mechanics just wants to steamroll without thinking or considering their build while expecting to clear some 800% magic find super juice map if they can get three tapped by most white mobs. There is plenty of reason for players to cry foul at death mechanics, anyway, given how out of whack this and PoE1's balance is. I still remember my last PoE1 league where a ruby flask plus something like 86% fire resist and nearly 6k life and some fire/physical defense conversion was still able to one shot me and it was a no-tell nothing of an attack with zero hope to avoid it. Same shit happens in PoE2 and it's even harder to push resists and life in this game. There is nothing teachable about moments like that where the game's damage scaling takes a toilet clogging shit when you are otherwise clearing the content without significant trouble. The balance state of the game only exacerbates complaints about the current state of death mechanics. I doubt GGG will ever really get the balance figured out in a less spikey and exponential way, so the least they can do is make death less punitive.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

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),

"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.

Screen nukers only further prove the point that one-attempt with exp loss is far too punitive. Balance problems aside, clearly intended to-be-viable builds are struggling unnecessarily because of many issues, that only are made worse by the punitive death mechanic. Not everyone wants to play screen nuker and are fine not having as much clear speed. Others just won't like the playstyle. Literally NOTHING about screen nukers are the problem here, either, just a symptom when they grow even more popular due to being less effort & risk for better rewards. I doubt anyone outside of a noisy minority is asking they be nerfed just to make less powerful or higher effort builds/classes feel better because it does nothing to improve their shortcomings. Furthermore, meta builds still have to deal with the exact same punitive death mechanics, and just because they are screen nukers doesn't mean they magically never die. I've never followed a single build guide and have had plenty fail and plenty others succeed. My Rolling Slam feels amazing overall and has great TTK on bosses in T15. But, that is beside the point of the thread and the complaints about punitive death mechanics. "Worse" builds, even if generally viable in their appropriate map tier for their gear power, do not somehow deserve to die more, and not being a safe, screen-nuking meta build does not somehow mean they deserve the punitive death mechanics more, either.

Please do make an effort to not put words into my mouth or anyone else's. I have never, whatsoever, asked for meta builds to be "less" effective. For the record, I'm a "buff first, nerf maybe" kinda philosophy, so short of extreme situations I'd far sooner see less performing builds/classes get buffs than meta builds get nerfs. But, again, none of that is the topic at hand.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

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.

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?

I fail to see how I am arguing against my own point, especially when not a single person I am aware of has EVER argued for INFINITE map attempts. Experience and levels are still desirable, regardless. Just because some might smash their head bloody against overjuiced walls because they think that's efficient does nothing to change the fact you still need defenses and base build viability. Again, you put words in my mouth and the mouths of others by strawmanning the anti-one-attempt position. The problem isn't with punishment, but how punitive the punishment is. Would you feel the same if a death meant a piece of gear could break? Could you imagine finding or buying a top 1% weapon, die to some bullshit or overconfidence, and suddenly the weapon is just poof gone? I imagine no one would, especially with this game's RNG, so why should I be giving it my all and be happy for a middle finger slapping across my face because I dared not have top tier Life mods on every piece of gear to survive that 0.1% of rares or bullshit situations?

Seriously, your "You first" preamble is advice I strongly suggest you take yourself because I am not interested in arguing dishonest strawmanning.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

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.

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?

And again, this actually is a point in our favor as the path of least resistance is a very attractive road. Excessively punitive death mechanics only make that road even more desirable and harms build diversity. Only a tiny minority are calling for all death penalties to be removed (and even then I bet they'd all be fine with 6 attempts a map with no exp penalty). The vast majority want at least for things to return to the 6 attempts of PoE1, because the time and exp penalty already feels like plenty. Stop putting words in my mouth or acting like you know my mindset or my build, because that makes you a dishonest interlocutor. Address the points, not the person.

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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.

Personally, I'd keep the exp penalty. No exp penalty but 1 attempt mapping has some serious risk of map sustain problems. The droughts are real, whether you die or not.

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

Best case scenario GGG does what Fromsoft did and does not care about your feelings on the issue and will just ignore your pleas to casualize the game at the expense of its quality.

Nice to see someone so clueless about Elden Ring and Fromsoftware... after launch the game had some balancing to overall difficulty.

Radahn was nerfed.
Shield Counter hit box was extended.
Godskin Duo IA was softned.
DLC was overall nerfed.
Damage scaling and damage reduction was buffed per Skadutree fragments.
Consort Radahn fight nerfed as well.

Fromsoft listen to everyone and makes the game more and more casual.

Did I talk about overall balancing? PoE 2 has had patches buffing drop rates and nerfing and fixing bugged out monsters as well. Fromsoft has never taken death penalty mechanics away because people whined about it.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

Again, you put words in my mouth and the mouths of others by strawmanning the anti-one-attempt position. The problem isn't with punishment, but how punitive the punishment is. Would you feel the same if a death meant a piece of gear could break? Could you imagine finding or buying a top 1% weapon, die to some bullshit or overconfidence, and suddenly the weapon is just poof gone?

But it's not how the game is designed.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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.

Personally, I'd keep the exp penalty. No exp penalty but 1 attempt mapping has some serious risk of map sustain problems. The droughts are real, whether you die or not.

Yeah, the 6 portals was a staple in PoE1 and never heard of people abusing. But, GGG tried to reinventing the wheel as a square.

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

Best case scenario GGG does what Fromsoft did and does not care about your feelings on the issue and will just ignore your pleas to casualize the game at the expense of its quality.

Nice to see someone so clueless about Elden Ring and Fromsoftware... after launch the game had some balancing to overall difficulty.

Radahn was nerfed.
Shield Counter hit box was extended.
Godskin Duo IA was softned.
DLC was overall nerfed.
Damage scaling and damage reduction was buffed per Skadutree fragments.
Consort Radahn fight nerfed as well.

Fromsoft listen to everyone and makes the game more and more casual.

Did I talk about overall balancing? PoE 2 has had patches buffing drop rates and nerfing and fixing bugged out monsters as well. Fromsoft has never taken death penalty mechanics away because people whined about it.

Why would they? the only death mechanics are respawning right before where you died and collecting your droped currency. Actually the stakes of Marika checkpoints outside of every boss room, is an addition they made. It obviously drastically reduces one of the major consequences of dying. Not sure you're really thinking your arguments through.

What is the actual, rational difference between "WE WANT SIX PORTALS AGAIN!!!!!" and "WE WANT INFINITE TRIES FOR OUR MAPS!!!!!"

There is none. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch-all. Jack monkey fuck-all squat. "No one's asking for infinite tries" is a dumb counter-argument to make because there's no actual practical difference between six tries and Infinite Tries. You're still asking to be allowed to Death Blitz the map and die/fail freely without cost or penalty.

The great screeching caterwaul for Six Portals is dumb because it has absolutely zero basis in rationality or gam design beyond "THIS IS WHAT IT WAS LIKE IN PoE1 AND PoE1 IS A PERFECT GAME THAT HAS LITERALLY DONE NOTHING WRONG EVER IN THE HISTORY OF GAMING AND EVERTHING SHOULD BE EXACTLY LIKE PoE1 FOREVER".

Others have said it - six portals with heavy EXP loss on death is a fucking trap. It means you burn up an entire level on content you weren't ready to do, instead of just one chunk of EXP. It's fundamentally backwards. It makes far more sense to retain One Portal with no EXP loss - instead of retroactively stealing progress you've already made, you simply do not progress forward. Blocking forward progress is much preferable to destroying already-achieved progress. Blocking continued progress makes you want to fix your shit so you can continue progressing. Stealing already-achieved progress makes you want to throw a controller and quit.

Frankly, I'm annoyed at myself that I didn't get the supporter pack map device that only provides a single portal. That would solve a lot of this, methinks - if people don't see six portals, they won't care about not getting to use the extraneous ones that really have no business being there. Refit the map devices in PoE2 to only show a single portal, and if you have to limit entry to the instance for economic reasons? Give that portal charges limiting how many players can enter it.

It's stupid. It's all just stupid. Just a bunch of knee-jerk reactionary howling from people who haven't fired a neuron voluntarily since 2009 and aren't about to start now.

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stecheese1#0850 wrote:

Why would they? the only death mechanics are respawning right before where you died and collecting your droped currency. Actually the stakes of Marika checkpoints outside of every boss room, is an addition they made. It obviously drastically reduces one of the major consequences of dying. Not sure you're really thinking your arguments through.

Yeah, Elden Ring compared to Dark Souls is incredibly friendly about experience recovery. Every boss is basically right next to a respawn point. And you start to learn to make the most of your current soul count before entering any new or dangerous zones, saving consumables until you need to eek out a few more points to get that level point, making death far more tolerable. Elden Ring--like any well design souls-like--also gives clear and concise reasons for player death. You may think the boss or mob is bullshit, but at least you more or less know why you died. For PoE2, it'd be like you just randomly get shot from a giant with a long bow that never fires again for some unknown amount of time and if you're unlucky enough for it to kill you, tough titties. Friggen people would defend the yeti in SkiFree.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

The great screeching caterwaul for Six Portals is dumb because it has absolutely zero basis in rationality or gam design beyond "THIS IS WHAT IT WAS LIKE IN PoE1 AND PoE1 IS A PERFECT GAME THAT HAS LITERALLY DONE NOTHING WRONG EVER IN THE HISTORY OF GAMING AND EVERTHING SHOULD BE EXACTLY LIKE PoE1 FOREVER".

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dwqrf#0717 wrote:

Remember, if you die in a video game, it's most often your own fault, not the game fault for existing as is. Some people can accept to fail every now and then and to improve on it, some people can't.

Yeah, no, your fault if you can't back away from a 6 portal map and need the crutch of the game forcing you to stop.