How to FIX the XP Penalty

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Could we stop pretending that "learning game mechanics" prevents you from randomly dying every now and then during mapping?

Could you stop using straw men instead of engaging with the argument? At NO POINT did I say that "learning game mechanics" means you will never, ever die.

Rather, I said the exact same thing you said in your reply: that you'll die so rarely that you'll very easily make it to level 98+, and that you can reach level 90 even without learning the game's mechanics because the penalty isn't harsh enough.

Wasn't planning on strawmanning. Your second paragraph simply gave me that impression.

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And who the hell goes "heavy on the juice" if they're trying to level?

Anyone who doesn't want to spend god knows how many hundreds of maps for the trip? As mentioned, i went rather heavy on the juice to get as many monsters into my maps as possible, though i did stick with t16 maps for the process and it still took me around a hundred maps. Roughly 1% progress per map. Without that juice it would take MUCH longer and my time is limited.

I didn't say anything about knowledge not mattering. I just said that knowledge won't translate to never dying which you seem to agree with so what's your point exactly?

As for not winning, i don't consider making level 100 "winning" at the game in any way. I do not consider it to be a show of skill or knowledge. Any moron can do it if they just run their maps white even if it takes a thousand maps. There is no skill, knowledge or even any big decisions necessary if you break it down. That is nothing to say about all the cheat methods there are to trivialize it even further. I consider it a pointless luxury at best or a needless drag at worst. Simply making the max level the natural consequence for everyone wouldn't be much different from what we have now as far as i am concerned but whatever. I don't expect GGG to remove the penalty and i won't waste my breath asking them to do so. If you want to give people ways to prove them selves, test their builds or whatever there are plenty more suitable ways to doing that.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Could we stop pretending that "learning game mechanics" prevents you from randomly dying every now and then during mapping? If you go heavy on juice and aren't super careful about map mods it's just a matter of time before some mod combination or the sheer amount of hits kills you.

Reread what you wrote here lol. "If you aren't careful in content you craft yourself, you die" juxtaposed with "it's not about learning"

Solution: don't be stupid? The game didn't "randomly" throw you a new mod that kills you. It's your own impatience and inattention, and you suffer the consequence. You don't have a time limit to check the mods...

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

As for not winning, i don't consider making level 100 "winning" at the game in any way. I do not consider it to be a show of skill or knowledge. Any moron can do it if they just run their maps white even if it takes a thousand maps. There is no skill, knowledge or even any big decisions necessary if you break it down. That is nothing to say about all the cheat methods there are to trivialize it even further. I consider it a pointless luxury at best or a needless drag at worst. Simply making the max level the natural consequence for everyone wouldn't be much different from what we have now as far as i am concerned but whatever. I don't expect GGG to remove the penalty and i won't waste my breath asking them to do so. If you want to give people ways to prove them selves, test their builds or whatever there are plenty more suitable ways to doing that.

"Winning" in a (mainly) single player game, is to reach your goals. If level 100 is your goal, reaching that goal is "winning".

The knowledge comes into play if you don't want to play as "any moron" (your words), and actually reach it in a more efficient, time-saving way; the balance between safe and efficient. But I do agree with you; reaching level 100 is a luxury, pointless or not. And I think it's fine that "any moron" has to work a little bit more for luxury than "non-morons" who use their knowledge.

You can downplay knowledge as much as you like, but it does matter in every corner of the game. You just take it as granted because you possess this knowledge. Other player might not.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Could we stop pretending that "learning game mechanics" prevents you from randomly dying every now and then during mapping? If you go heavy on juice and aren't super careful about map mods it's just a matter of time before some mod combination or the sheer amount of hits kills you.

Reread what you wrote here lol. "If you aren't careful in content you craft yourself, you die" juxtaposed with "it's not about learning"

Solution: don't be stupid? The game didn't "randomly" throw you a new mod that kills you. It's your own impatience and inattention, and you suffer the consequence. You don't have a time limit to check the mods...

Sadly it's not that easy. It's not a single mod that kills you and it's often not even solely the map mods. Mapmods, rare mods, mob types, random spirits and all other kinds of shit can come together unexpectedly creating damage spikes that go far beyond what you would normally expect from just looking at the map. I've got a bit of experience with this game and to this day i still find myself scratching my head sometimes wondering where all that damage suddenly came from. This game has so many random variables outside of your control that make things impossible to predict.

@Phrazz There are plenty of other less pointless goals to set for oneself in this game other than level 100. If anyone could reach it then people would simply aim for something else. This game wouldn't lose anything worth fretting over if the death penalty got removed, there are limitless goals to strive for, lot's of content for testing your character, knowledge and skill most of which being much better suited for all of those than trying to make level 100.

Also, once again since you seem to insist on this point for some reason, I am not downplaying knowledge. I am just sick of people pretending they never die because of how awesome they are at the game and mocking others for it.

it has come, the day we both agree on something

lvl100 is a proof someone: enjoys the build and plays it a lot and/or knows the 'cheeze' XP farm to cut the process and/or got carried and/or has waaaaay too much disposable time and/or the league lasts 10 months and someone did not know you could create a second character and it just happened

i wouldnt, ever, put 'skill' on the list

POE is a spike game, unless you play 100% safe, you will just die from time to time. even if it is a stupid AFK death when you respond to family situation and leave the PC standing near the last few mobs in a no-regen map and die despite having 13 endurance charges. it happens, who cares (altho it made me chuckle)

if by skill someone means 'play safe', 'logout instead of afk' etc. cool, the standards must have gone down again and common sense is now called skill


current xp penalty is mostly fine. if i would do any change it would be 'no xp penalty on first pinnacle boss attempt per character'. right now, if i actually care about my level (rarely, but some chars just HAVE to get that one last passive) it is just 'level up, then 6-portal zerg it' (i have very little experience with ubers as i consider them badly designed 'dialed to 11' binary stat checks, esp Uber Sirus)


other than that i actually consider it viable learning tool as it rarely is felt before 70 and at around 80-90 mark it actually forces players to maybe just maybe replace lvl32 flasks, or maybe even roll them, fix some resists - in general it is a valuable input to stop rushing and take care of holes in the build

but i would absolutely not shed a single tear if it was gone.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Also, once again since you seem to insist on this point for some reason, I am not downplaying knowledge. I am just sick of people pretending they never die because of how awesome they are at the game and mocking others for it.

I don't think many people view themselves as "awesome" just because they've played the game for many years and learned some things along the way.

I've already written what the game would lose - and how it would potentially change if the removed the XP penalty, so I don't see a point in repeating myself, you ignore what you want to ignore, I guess. But the main difference here, is that I want level 100 to actually be a goal, pointless or not, and something you have to think about - aim for. You just want it to be "something that happens for everyone" just by playing the game.

I am not ignoring what you said, i simply disagree. You feel like level 100 is a valuable goal to have, i do not. I also pointed out why. As far as i am concerned, if you want to proof you're skilled do uber uber elder without getting hit like havoc. That's a proof of skill. Level 100 is a joke as far as i am concerned.

it wont just happen for everyone. the xp curve is set as such you are mid-way at around lvl 98 or something.

no 'normie' ever gets there unless carried

and if you dont actually aim for it, doing leisure mid-juice T16 with non-xp focused strategy will get you there in several months, if you are a normie with an hour or so for games. not to mention that several activities like blight maps, heist etc give trivial amount of xp/hr

so no, it wont just happen for everyone. you are right that it potentially could, but in practice - nope, people who stop at 83 due to constant rips wont get past 95, just no

I wouldn't say lvl 100 requires a huge time commitment either. If you just don't die you can get there pretty fast. Its roughly around 900k-1m kills.

I got there on 2 characters in settlers league in a 2-3 man private league pretty easily in about 2-3 weeks. One farming destructive play and one farming breach/legion.

If you have any deaths after 95 is the problem. Its not the games problem though, its your problem for not building defense. If you take any build. Stick fourth vow/xibaqua in it, get 5k hp. You can easily get there if you mind your pdr. This setup is dirt cheap in sc because most people just want more dps. This is from the perspective of I'm not interested in dealing with suppression. I usually play hc and the investment in suppression if you're left side requires a lot of work.

I wouldn't treat 100 as "meaningless" but 100 in softcore doesn't hold the same weight as hardcore. It's also pretty hard to get carried to 100, definitely not impossible.

Most of the value in hitting 100 in PoE for me was nostalgic as I would have never bothered with it in D2. Doing it just to know first hand it really wasn't worth the effort.

I do think it still means something even in SC as its pretty easy to die to something silly long before you consider the really dangerous stuff.

A few weeks back some guy was stuck at 88 and asking for help. He ended up completely disregarding what me and someone else said and preferred the AI response. He did make it to 89. And to be fair I think my oldest character was 89 or 90 at the end of her league tho starting late. But that mindset to ignore the experience of others because accepting he needed to improve was too hard to accept, not exactly a unique state of mind either. I even remember a player of similar mind confidently remark that he'd be in red maps in a week and never made it past lvl 65.