-20% exp on death needed

I'm trying to think about why a player would complain so much about an XP penalty. Are they not thinking about maps in batches of 20 or 50? Do they not look at Xp-per-map? 1 death at 98 might only cost 1.5 maps or something. That's not "hours and hours" as the dramatic complaints seem to say. If classic breach spam, that's 10-15 minutes tops and could be mitigated by an omen.

I dont know how I would adjust things assuming they would be adjusted. One XP loss event per map? But make it 25%?

Well, they probably won't do it, but i would like to play the event again that had 50% exp loss. Maybe during poe 2 league in December for the non poe 2 players, lol.
I liked it. It was very cool to do lvl 90 in that event. A little smell of hc without being actual hc. And events remind you that it's all about the playthrough and progression and not about some irrelevant wealth that keeps on piling up in your stash.

As for permanent exp loss it's probably best it stays like it is. It worked out for so long and they at least changed the boss arenas, so that's that.

Let's put an end to RMT as well becaues RMT allows you to outgear the game and faceroll it.

By all means let's turn the entire game SSF then. Not kidding. The game would actually be way better balanced if it was SSF only.

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Nomancs#6176 wrote:

Increasing the death penalty would push players toward more thoughtful, resilient builds instead of hyper-fragile speed setups. Ultimately, it would make character progression feel more meaningful and restore some weight to the endgame, where decisions should matter.

Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth as it wouldn't fix the inherent flaws of the endgame that allows players to make fragile builds to begin with. It's like asking for everyone to pay more taxes; billionaires will keep evading it, it will only hurt the ones it shouldn't hurt and in the end it fixed nothing.

There's realistically only a few options which are hard or awful to implement: major re-balance to take into account player power or nerf builds to match monster power. Should they do it? Absolutely. Will they? Very unlikely.

Given the current state of the game, with significant power creep and an undertuned core experience, combined with how easy it is to gain experience these days and the many defensive layers getting handed out for free protecting players from most deaths, I think this would be a very positive change.

Honestly, a 20% death penalty is still just as generous as the current 10%. The penalty should be higher to make dying a truly high stakes moment, rewarding skillful play and optimized characters rather than encouraging corpse-rush gameplay.

Early acts should already carry a 10% death penalty, giving players a real sense of loss from the start. Once you reach the cruel campaign, around Act 6 after the first Kitava encounter, the penalty could rise to 15%. By the time players reach maps, after finishing the campaign, it should increase to 20%, then 25% for yellow maps, and 50% for red maps. Finally, at the highest levels, around level 90 it should be full go mode, where every death removes the entire experience progress toward the next level. At this point, dying truly becomes a high stakes event, forcing players to optimize builds and play carefully.

This kind of scaling would make every death more meaningful, rewarding careful planning and optimized builds. It would transform corpse rushing and dying into a moment that truly matters, rather than a minor inconvenience, and would encourage players to engage with the game instead of rushing recklessly.

If even this isn’t enough to push players toward better planning and optimization, I honestly don’t know what else would.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

Let's put an end to RMT as well becaues RMT allows you to outgear the game and faceroll it.

By all means let's turn the entire game SSF then. Not kidding. The game would actually be way better balanced if it was SSF only.

By all means, if you have a proposition to end RMT, please go ahead and make a suggestion about it. This discussion is about XP penalty though

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Z3RoNightMare#7140 wrote:

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Nomancs#6176 wrote:

Increasing the death penalty would push players toward more thoughtful, resilient builds instead of hyper-fragile speed setups. Ultimately, it would make character progression feel more meaningful and restore some weight to the endgame, where decisions should matter.

Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth as it wouldn't fix the inherent flaws of the endgame that allows players to make fragile builds to begin with. It's like asking for everyone to pay more taxes; billionaires will keep evading it, it will only hurt the ones it shouldn't hurt and in the end it fixed nothing.

There's realistically only a few options which are hard or awful to implement: major re-balance to take into account player power or nerf builds to match monster power. Should they do it? Absolutely. Will they? Very unlikely.

I think XP penalty is a good starting point to discussing the underlying issue which is how the game incentivises you to play for speed and more speed over more well-rounded characters. I laid out a few relevant points that I think the devs should address in my first reply ^^

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

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But that's the thing, players are incentivized to get more loot because that's currently the end goal. Players who are actively improving the build to match the content will almost always do so before optimizing for speed. Re-balance the game first and penalties that directly try to halt progression artificially become obsolete because they will become much more organically tied to it.

It's also the reason why people are complaining much more voraciously about loot and do not care about actual balance.

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Z3RoNightMare#7140 wrote:

But that's the thing, players are incentivized to get more loot because that's currently the end goal. Players who are actively improving the build to match the content will almost always do so before optimizing for speed. Re-balance the game first and penalties that directly try to halt progression artificially become obsolete because they will become much more organically tied to it.

It's also the reason why people are complaining much more voraciously about loot and do not care about actual balance.

You're of course right about defences being an afterthought. That's because DPS is more important, though, or the opportunity cost to build defences is too high by comparison. Compare stacking damage modifiers to e.g. sorting out chaos resistance

Also, defence doesn't make Tink sounds on your loot filter :P

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Everything_is_taken#0515 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Should be a two-prong approach:

1) increase the difficulty of the base game

[Removed by Support]

I fear I'll have to repeat myself, but refer to my earlier quote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

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TIGRElaranja#2163 wrote:

Or, and hear me out on this absurd idea, care about your game and not about what others are doing.

We all are aware of your antics on how the game is too forgiving and all that glass cannon nonsense but as soon as you stop caring about everyone else the game becomes what you make of it… [Removed by Support]

You are so close to understanding why these suggestions are made. So close.

I wished people would use actual arguments instead of immediately attacking the messenger.

If you have anything relevant to add to the topic, feel free to participate in the discussion! :-)

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

You are so close to understanding why these suggestions are made. So close.

I wished people would use actual arguments instead of immediately attacking the messenger.

The argument is there is you care to leave that reasoning bubble and here it is: This is not a competitive game, you get nothing more doing something faster or slower than anyone else. Your play style or what you do in the game has no influence in anyone else’s game. Anyone that says differently is just trying to impose their will into everyone else.

I said this over and over since I can remember, “why do people care about what others do?”

Does the game need balance? Yes but in the end it’s YOU that makes the choice on how YOU want to play YOUR game.